I am a fan of John Steinbeck. I have been re-reading a biography written by Jay Parini, 1995. I just came across this comment that John Steinbeck wrote in a letter to a friend. He had just returned from touring Viet Nam, in the late sixties:

"I understand your feeling about this war. We seem to be sinking deeper and deeper into the mire. It is true that we are. I am pretty sure by now that the people running the war have neither the conception nor control of it. And I think that I do have some conception but I can't write it.
    I know we cannot win this war, nor any war for that matter. And it seems to me that the design is for us to sink deeper and deeper into it, more and more of us. When we have put down a firm foundation of our dead and when we have by a slow, losing process been sucked into the texture of Southeast Asia, we will never be able nor will we want to get out." (John Steinbeck, by Jay Parini, Henry Holt, page 477).

I can't help but wonder what John Steinbeck would say of our present war today? Bob(deckman)Nelson