CLUSTER BOMBS
Part of my tour in Vietnam was spent providing back-up to the local Vietnamese army security for a road-building operation. This was a big deal back then, part of the nascent strategy of Vietnamization: Making the Vietnamese responsible for carrying the burden of the war. Stop me if this sounds familiar.
Eventually the road was done and we were wrapping up operations. I overheard command talking about dropping CBU's (cluster bomb units) along the side of the road. The idea is a bomber drops a single bomb that opens up and deploys hundreds of little bombs that land and DON'T explode. They just sit there, growing increasingly unstable, waiting for some poor sucker to walk on one of them and detonate the explosive, maybe weeks or years after the initial drop.
I remember thinking at the time that this was a shitty thing to do. We all knew who the ultimate victims would be, the villagers who lived there. But hey, we would be long gone, so xin loi or sorry 'bout that. War is hell but combat is a mother-f*r as the saying goes.
Those cluster bomb units are a good analogy for the current geopolitical situation. The world is facing a cluster-bomb of problems. Sovereign debt. A faltering global economy. Climate change. You name it, it's getting worse.
These problems have been around for a long time. They are all becoming increasingly unstable. Each year that passes, each decade that passes, just brings the inevitable moment closer when someone steps on one of these sleeping bombs and detonates an explosion that will be heard 'round the world.
Between you and me, puppy, I would seriously be looking into buying 100 acres in Idaho and stocking up on . . . well, everything.
February 28, 2010
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