OK, let’s face it. The Iraq War won’t go down in history as Vietnam 2.0, thanks to President Bush’s appointment of a competent general who in turn has been surrounded by intellectuals — read Newsweek’s “Brainiac Brigade” on that subject. But if historic warfare mistakes seem possible to be corrected, one would undoubtedly agree that basic instincts, on the other hand, die hard.

Just as a snack refreshment, we need to be reminded that during the Vietnam War, the U.S. military deployed the ability to evolve Thailand’s R&R past into some sort of I&I — Intercourse and Intoxication — upgrading the 20,000 sex workers that roughly existed by 1957 to some half a million by 1964 — incidentally, on the zenith of the apocalypses now.

How, Sen. William Fulbright pondered, did the United States manage to turn Thailand into “an American brothel”? Now we know it: With some money here and some wars there.

Which propels us to the next question: Who’s doing the quid pro quo on the Iraq arena nowadays? The Saudis? Iraqis? Syrians? Or maybe the administration has expediently taken care of it with a Department of Crotch Affairs that we should know the existence of? Yes, what was that in the last row? Someone said “in this war this issue doesn’t exist”? Oh, because the present GI’s generation have been so efficiently boot-camped that they look like Terminator chasing Linda Hamilton? That would be a marvelous “fait accomplit” indeed, worthy of the best Spartan training. But we all know, too, human minds are designed to be fallible — no matter how much training they receive. Take a look on the movie M*A*S*H, for example. Weren’t all nurses around treated like de facto hoo ehem, ehem? Oh, well yes, it was a movie after all, sorry.

But aren’t sex workers something intrinsic of any war, like bullets or collateral damage? And some could argue less lethal? Until the Ultimate States Army manages to finance an army of UAVs and other unmanned land vehicles — like jeeps, tanks, kamikaze rats, etc. — for the next war, we should just remember that the catch phrase “democracy wagers” will bring along something else than just filibustering.

Evidently, this daily uneasiness generates its good ratio of suppression or at least selective filtering on the media. But there’s nothing wrong about that censorship. Following my tenet of American Puritanism, the American public just needs to know that the war is on the track for V.I. day soon. The rest, just details. Who really cares if there is some surge in condom imports in the Middle East?

It could be too, this time the Army of one is just being the benefactor to other countries. According to an Iraqi women’s group, Women’s Will, published on the Web site of The Independent, there are approximately 50,000 Iraqi refugees whom Syria is forcing into prostitution as a result of the war and the sectarian violence in Iraq. Compared with truck bombs and beheadings, that might be another petty detail which along with time we will learn to oversee.

David Soler is a biomedical sciences graduate and a columnist for the Daily Kent Stater. Contact him at [email protected].