(This note was sent to me by Erik. It gives some real food for thought.)
Many years ago I had a book of single panel cartoons with the title “With Sgt Mike in Vietnam”. The cartoons had been drawn by a Marine by the name of Michael Hodgson and provided a gunt’s eye view of life in Vietnam.
While reading recent accounts of the Marines fighting in Afghanistan and their (apparently) restrictive rules of engagement I was reminded of a particular Sgt Mike cartoon. It was of two, side by side, briefing charts with one showing a Vietnamese farmer and the other a VC guerilla. The pictures of the farmer and the VC were exactly the same, except the VC had a rifle in his hand and a bandoleer across his chest. The caption read something like, “As you can see there are clear distinctions between the farmer and the VC.” Change the clothing (black pajamas for ‘man shirts’ and a conical rice hat for a ‘turban’) and VC to Taliban and the dark humor is as current today as it was forty years ago.
I suppose you could file this under, ‘The more things change, the more they stay the same.’
Erik
