by Declan Hayes, Strategic Culture:

Wars are really ugly
They’re dirty an’ they’re cold
I don’t want nobody
To shoot me in the fox hole.

So sang Frank Zappa, the father of comedy rock, in his classic I don’t wanna be drafted song, which goes on to exclaim

Roller skates in disco is a lot of fun
I’m too young’n stupid to operate a gun.

Let’s just back up and see what funny man Zappa is saying in his song. He is proclaiming that wars are not only ugly, dirty, brutal affairs but that he is too young and stupid to be a useful soldier. Let’s leave to one side that Zappa was very bright and say that, during America’s Vietnamese turkey shoot, Uncle Sam enlisted hundreds of thousands of McNamara Morons, good, home lovin’ Yankee boys who were little better than imbeciles and who ended up as easy meat for the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese Army because they lacked the necessary skill sets to be effective combatants.