The "Frustrated Youth" series continues. An exercise in retrospection. I can't urge you strongly enough to read the below essay if you have any love of democracy or curiosity. Whether you consider it prescient or just well thought out fiction, it is startling.

The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012

   I have no idea where to start on this one.  I was fumbling around the internet, searching and researching, and I found one strange document entitled "The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012" written by now Staff Judge Advocate, Headquarters Air Combat Command, Brigadier General Charles J. Dunlap Jr. in 1992.  It was submitted for and won General Colin Powell's strategy essay competition at the National Defence University that year.

   The author clearly states that "It goes without saying (I hope) that the coup scenario above is purely a literary device intended to dramatize my concern over certain contemporary developments affecting the armed forces, and is emphatically not a prediction,"  It does appear though that he has turned out to be a little more right than he probably wanted to be about a good many things.  Read it and see what you think.

   Apparently I missed something and people have been discussing this document in light of recent events.  On May 13, 2004, Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to President Clinton wrote an article entitled America's Military Coup.  This article itself is fascinating, claiming that "Donald Rumsfeld has a new war on his hands - the US officer corps has turned on the government,"  At the end of the article he mentions the above essay and says that it is "today circulating among top US military strategists."

    So there's today's 'food for thought'.  I would of course prefer lighter meals, but when democracy calls, it calls, and no matter what conclusions and solutions we can all come up with, we must first pay attention and devote thought.  Do your part.

   "Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." - John Adams