Tuesday, March 29, 2011

The Utter Folly Of Wise Men


Every country has a pantheon of vaunted heroes and leaders. Their names grace universities, libraries, towns, and cities. Children bear their names in remembrance of their contribution to country. In contrast few parents bestow any honor on the knaves of a nation. Adolf and Benito were banned by an unspoken edict during my childhood. Pol Pot is spoken as a ghost to young Cambodian children. They had no other memory of the Khmer Rouge. The Year Zero was over 36 years ago. People forget history faster than sports records and few fools are forgotten as fully as Mad Lopez of Paraguay.

Solano Lopez had been appointed Paraguay's vice-president by his father in 1855 and the Francophile supplied the national army with foreign arms with the express desire of confronting his more powerful neighbors. Egged on by his Parisian courtesan Eliza Lynch, Lopez satisfied his Napoleonic obsession by ordering his forces to aid Uruguay in their war against Brazil. A strip of Argentina separates Paraguay from its troubled ally. Their incursion incited Argentina to join Brazil and its puppet government in Uruguay to embark on the War of the Triple Alliance.

Three against one.

Enough to drive a man mad.

Lopez had his mother flogged for an unspoken offense. Her execution was forestalled by her confession that the leader had been born a bastard. He sought canonization from the Church. The depraved theocracy rejected his claim. He died with the cry “Muero con mi patria!” on his lips.

A madman to the end

Three against one.

It is utter folly to fight against those odds. Waging two wars at the same time proved disastrous for Hitler and Mad Loepz's idol Napoleon, but this week President Obama went for the Trifecta with the launch of an allied air war against Libya's Muammar Muhammad al-Gaddafi, one of the 20th and 21st Centuries' most reviled dictator.

Active combat troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Aviator aces attacking key strategy concentrations of power in Tripoli. The city is mentioned in the Marine Hymn. It's a only site for the Corps. Drone warriors cruising the skies over the Khyber Pass. Obama in the Oval Office with a IPad 2 on his lap directing firepower like a VDO killer in HOMEFRONT.

Three wars at once.

Barack Obama is a smart man. The blackish president graduate from Columbia University and Harvard Law School. He was the president of the Harvard Law Review. My cousin Ty Spaulding went to school with him in Hawaii. He swears that the president isn't a foreigner. The religious right consider anyone of color not of this country.

A crazed nigger with little discernible method to his madness.

Just the way I like my leaders.

Bring the troops home.

ps GW Bush graduated sine laude or without honor.

Me too.

pps the foto is of Lopez's French woman, Eliza Lynch.

The Irish emigre of the Great Famine is buried in the National Cemetery.

She buried her husband and fallen son with her bare hands after the Battle of Cerro Cerro.

A heroine for a fool.

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