Two years ago, we were scheduled to go to Egypt on a Cruise.  I asked my Facebook friend, an Egyptian general, if we could somehow get a special tour of the Great Pyramid.  He replied that there was going to be a civil war next Sunday so he would think a trip wouldn’t be likely.  Of course, he was right and we ended up traveling to Israel instead, which was incredible. I recall seeing road signs for “Megiddo” on the way to the Dead Sea and marveling at just how close everything was. His warning reminded of how orchestrated such events can be. This was echoed last night when we saw the latest James Bond movie, Spectre, in which a U.N. security council vote to allow surveillance in something that sounded like the real-life Strong Cities Network was altered after a staged terrorist event in the dissenting country.  Stuff of fiction but it makes you wonder why even the new security apparatus of the “9 eyes network” (an obvious Spectre octopus reference was an acronym of SCN (CNS).

Earlier this year, I met an Egyptian handyman at a DMV motorcycle training course and we spoke briefly about politics to which he replied, “We will only know 10% of the truth in 30 years and most of it, never.”

As I look out West towards the setting sun, my reality is not yet transformed by the thought that we may already (or still) be at war with Russia.  You see, last night, a U.S. Navy asset launched a missile and for the next week, we are told that airspace is closed over LAX for incoming flights from the West.  Not too worrisome, right?

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34759177

In the fog of war that we know as the CNN/ESPN news cycle, Americans have blissfully abrogated their responsibility for waging war to professionals in the military/intelligence wing. Constitutionally speaking, the act of declaring war is the sole power of the congress, which has also abrogated that solemn responsibility to the executive branch since WWII. 

Since WWII, we have been at war with Russia in countless theaters.  The most famous examples are The Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cuban question, the Soviet War in Afghanistan, the annexation of Eastern Ukraine, and now the theater of Syria.  You can read Vladimir Putin’s account of the history of the world thus far in his address to the UN in late September.

Are we at war or just playing chess? What is not being denied are the following facts:

1. Putin recently increased support for attacks on anti-Assad forces (the queen is in play).
   
2. The US has just deployed advanced dogfighting F-15C jets to Turkey (knights have left the home rank and are now in play).
3. The founder of Russia Today (a western-based news arm of Russia like Al Jazeera or CNN) and close ally of Putin just turned up dead from an apparent heart attack in Washington DC. (Black bishop lost?)
4. 224 people died when a Russian MetroJet exploded over the Sinai Peninsula on October 31st.  (pawns taken?)
5. There is something going on with a secret military tone that has changed flight rules around LAX and which has coincided with missile unannounced but confirmed missile launch. (castling our king?)

A few years ago, I spoke with a patient who was a destroyer captain off Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  He confirmed that things indeed got pretty hairy. When I asked him whether there really was no other vessel in the Gulf of Tonkin, he did not answer. As with the movie A Few Good Men, perhaps none of us can really ‘handle the truth’. 

All the proxy wars, arms and drug deals, coup d’etat’s, bribes, contracts, betrayals, back-channel negotiations, market manipulations, asset seizures, and assassinations are all “grown-up talk” reserved for those who can calmly hold the reins.  The citizens sit on their hands at the kids’ table waiting and hoping to be served pumpkin pie and not some kind of unpleasantness that is beyond our ability to comprehend. 

But if really is our fate to suffer through more attacks upon civilian aviation and then fund and fight more proxy wars on behalf of abstract threats in foreign lands, shouldn’t we be given the courtesy of knowing whether we are at war or not?

I leave you with the dialogue from one of the all-time great black comedies about war, Dr. Strangelove (or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb)

General Jack D. Ripper: Mandrake, do you recall what Clemenceau once said about war?

Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: No, I don’t think I do, sir, no.

General Jack D. Ripper: He said war was too important to be left to the generals. When he said that, 50 years ago, he might have been right. But today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.