Wedding Reception

I don't normally post personal stuff, but I want to rant about this somewhere:
Shortly after sitting down, a married couple sat next to my daughter and I. The wife was a very nice lady and I enjoyed the little bit I talked with her. The husband however had a series of things he said that really irritated me.
First, his wife went to the bar to get a drink and after a short chat about potatoes, which turned to talk about cooking potatoes, he informed me that all women are *@tches. He said that he has learned to accept that his wife is one too. I'm glad that his marriage has such mutual respect. I couldn't help but think at this point that if I still had a date, I could have talked to her instead.  I had my daughter there, but she had run off to play with the other little girls.
Later, he bemoaned the fact that most of Congress and most presidents don't have any background with the military but yet they make so many decisions for the military.
I replied that of course that's the way it is, because civilian control of the military is such a crucial element in our country. After all, its what has separated us for over 200 years from the two bit, third world countries that seem to go through unending strings of kleptocratic dictators, juntas, and generalissimos. There has actually been at least one occasion I can think of when the military was about to rise against the government and President Washington talked them out of it.
He became rather indignant and rambled on something. I was really doing my best to ignore him at this point. However, I did find myself talking him about all the equipment that would be left in Iraq and given over to the Iraqi security forces. He felt that we should take it back to the US and use it "along the border", presumably the Mexican border.
I just ignored him this time. That statement made absolutely no sense in so many ways:

1. Since we destroyed the Ba'ath Party regime and established the current government, we have an obligation to them to provide the means to defend their government and provide security to their people.
2. It much more practical to leave much of the equipment where it is because it saves time and money to hand it over instead of sending to Kuwait or Turkey to figure out where to ship it (spending more money we don't have) after that.
3. Do we really want to militarize the Mexican border? Realistically, the reason that our government doesn't do more about illegal immigration is because Mexican labor has become such an integral piece of our economy, from agriculture and construction to restaurant and maids for politicians decrying illegal immigration. Ask Alabama farmers who's picking their crops now!
4. Not only that, because of Posse Comitatus we'd have to had the equipment over to civilian law enforcement or the National Guard. Between the fact that so much of the National Guard is deployed and the expense of mobilizing the remainder its an unlikely option.

Somewhere around here my daughter was getting tired and cranky so I used it as an excuse to politely leave and hopefully never listen to him again.

May God bless all who read my ramblings,

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