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Mike Caron of Liberty was a Green Beret medic in Vietnam. He is retired, but remains active with Maine Special Forces Annex, an informal group of current and former Special Forces veterans born in or with deep connections to Maine who meet up each month to swap tales with buddies who know what war is really about.
The deaths and destruction in the Middle East are real. America and Israel have military capabilities that are unmatched by any other nation on the planet. Iran has demonstrated it can withstand “knockout punches” from both those powerful fists.
Whether the bomb blasts come from Tomahawk missiles or Shahed drones, the simple truth is that when U.S. War Secretary Pete Hegseth and his counterpart on the Iranian side boast about the oil and blood they are spilling, it sounds to me a lot like roosters convinced they are causing the sun to rise.
Their puffed-up silly tough talk would be laughable if it was not causing so much pain. The pain at the pump is real, but the suffering among the civilian victims and survivors who have been by far the most impacted by over 2,000 deaths and at least 17,000 who have suffered wounds already by St Patrick’s Day barely two weeks into this latest quagmire has not yet penetrated the cotton balls war leaders always figuratively stuff in their ears to avoid having to hear the cries of the innocent. Cotton balls are exactly what it takes to start a war.
Bombast is a word most etymologists trace back to Medieval Persia, the old name for Iran. We English speakers picked up that term from the old French bombace. The Latin term for cotton bombax only became associated with puffed-up pretentious, silly macho boasting after the French started to stuff cotton into clothes to puff up sleeves and make fashionably dressed men appear more muscular and intimidating than common folks.
Americans have been branding politicians bombastic since well before the Civil War. It refers to gassy windbags who make public speeches deploying over-the top macho rhetoric to rile up their supporters and attempt to intimidate their opponents. Remind you of anyone?
Shaggy, the Jamaican-born Persian Gulf War Marine Corps vet, sang about Mr. Boombastic in his 1996 hit. Turtles know better than sticking their necks out at dangerous moments. Mr. Boombastic boasts: “With my sexual physique, yah know me well-built. Oh me, oh my, well well, can’t you tell I’m just like a turtle crawling out of me shell?”
Pete Hegseth, our “boombastic” secretary of war, was just reaching puberty when that song hit the charts. He would do well to recognize the irony in its lyrics.
No one can predict how or when this war Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump started will come to an end. What we can predict with a high degree of confidence is that the boys in charge of the war machines on all sides will continue to follow the bomb blasts with matching tonnage of bombast intended to drown out the screams of the mothers and children who bear the costs of this latest costly chapter of the endless war.
