As we watch the news and shake our heads, those of us who suffered through the Vietnam War days probably have a bit of a different perspective on what is happening in our world. It is easy to look back at the 1960s and feel that those crazy times are back upon us.

There are three superpowers in the world right now: Russia, China and the U.S. China, with its incredible economic growth, is the only one not at war. We and Russia are spending our national money as if there is no tomorrow. Wars flat out cost money and lives. In the older times, we were the last ones to enter the world wars, be it World War I or World War II. Now we start them.

We chose to enter Korea because our leaders believed that this was the domino theory on the spread of communism. We entered Vietnam on our own for the same reason. We were not personally threatened in either war, but we opposed any attempt of communism to take over a country, small or large. We attacked Iraq because there was a threat of nuclear weapons of mass destruction. There were none. Then we followed the USSR into Afghanistan and got our butts handed to us, as did the Soviets.

The war interventions since have not had a distinct reason, such as the bombing of Pearl Harbor, to enter into a conflict. Now we have another war that has been totally started by us with no better reasons than we did in Vietnam, a different form of government. We are now seeing protests of this war and the fact that our President, Donald Trump, conferred with none of our legislators before making his decision to have us engage in another war. At first, we heard it would be over in days. We had totally destroyed Iran with our first strikes. Well, at least that was what we were promised. It just hasn’t quite turned out that way.

As my readers know, I am an old music fan, and I listen to Sirius/XM a fair amount. My days of music started with rock and roll with Elvis, Fats Domino and Ray Charles. Soon we got the protest songs of the mid-60s. Then it moved on, but so did I, and music took the backseat to the practice of law, raising children and llamas.

But in those 60s I was all over the country and parts of Europe. While living temporarily in Washington, D.C., I was basically forced by my roommates to attend an anti-war rally at the Lincoln Memorial in 1967, the same one featured in Forrest Gump. I saw what our young people felt and feared as we were being drafted by the thousands, with many of us going to a country we had barely heard of.

We had protests that ended up with deaths, like Kent State. Now we may be heading in the same direction. A friend of mine who lived in the Middle East says that what we do not understand is that the important issues we Americans and Europeans believe the strength of a country lies in its wealth, trade and power. In the Middle East, however, the only important issue is faith. To live or die is not that important to the Iranian as long as there is faith. Not so for us.

One of the songs that played last week was by The Buffalo Springfield. I remembered the name but not much about the group. The song that followed got my attention,

“There’s something happening here, but what it is ain’t exactly clear

There’s a man with a gun over there tellin’ me that I got to beware.

I think it’s time we stop. Children, what’s that sound?

Everybody look what’s going down

There’s battle fields being drawn, Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong

Young people speaking their minds. Are getting so much resistance from behind."

The song was entitled “For What it’s Worth,” and is probably the most widely known protest song of the ’60s. The Buffalo Springfield released it as a single, and it hit the top ten immediately. But the group would not stay together very long. To my surprise, two of the members of that group were Stephen Stills and Neil Young, both of whom went on to more fame individually and in other groups.

Listening to that song again brought back those times, the loss of lives, some of whom I knew, the lies that our president and government told us, and the frustration of our nation to cope with this unnecessary and undeserved war. Now we are back at it again, and the faith of our opponent is lengthening our most recent conflict. We are losing faith from our allies, spending hard-earned money and gaining nothing. Will the leaders of the world ever get it right? For what it’s worth.

· Dennis Marek can be contacted at llamalaw23@gmail.com.