Rooting for Catastrophe

Over sixteen million Americans served in the military to save the world during the Second World War. By the time the draft churned up in earnest for Americans to serve in Vietnam, there were numerous legal ways for young American men to be exempted from service, though the poor and uneducated found it difficult to escape the draft without fleeing to Canada. I have read that in our all-volunteer military less than two percent of Americans chose to serve. Yet, millions of chicken-hawks want America to fight just about everyone else in the world. They would never don the uniform of the country themselves, nor encourage their blood-relations to join up, but they are eager to have folks they don't know die for our country. I deplore what Red China is doing to Hong Kong (and incidentally to Tibet, the Fulan Gong, Muslims, Christians, and anyone else who does not instantly bow to the demands of the despotic government). I hate the fanatic mullahs in Iran who threaten the existence of Israel as well, but I recognize that these are not American fights. The worst thing the warmongers in the US can do is to tell people to pick a fight somewhere under the expectation that we will or even can help, and then leave those who are dying for our values to their own fate. We did this to an extent in Hungary in 1956, in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, and again in 1968 to Czechoslovakia. Don't tell people you "have their back" in a fight to the death and then only offer to hold their coats.