So long April - I'm happy you're going

April 30 is such a crappy day in history - my car accident today just makes it a little more so for me personally.

Sixty two years ago today, nearly 20 feet below the fighting, death and mayhem on the streets of Berlin, Adolf Hitler killed himself, along with his wife of mere hours, Eva Braun, in the Führerbunker. (Above, is a 2005 picture of the site of the Hitler's bunker.)

Unfortunately, the more I read about World War II, the more some dates just stick in my mind, and April 30 has always been one of them. Maybe it should be just a bit of a happier day, memory wise, because Hitler finally ended his unspeakable horror on the German people, and most of Europe. (At left is the first Time Magazine cover after Hitler's death.)

I'm constantly decrying the use of analogies with Nazi Germany, but after thinking about this for a long time, I've come to the conclusion that there's a rational explanation for it - Nazi Germany one of humankind's darkest hours, so any war or genocide is going to be compared to it.

I still think it's overused, but, to a certain extent, I understand it.

Today also marks the fall of Saigon, the capitol of South Vietnam. I just can't help compare Vietnam and Iraq - both civil wars, the difficulty in Americans figuring out who the enemy is, and politicians from both political parties not wanting to admit defeat. In the meantime, the situation grows worse, and more people die. For nothing.

I can't tell you how sad and sorry it is to me that my generation is now having its own Vietnam. I really would have thought that the baby boomers, whose generation fought that war, would have learned the lessons of a stupid, misguided, unjust war, which was started on false pretenses (The Gulf of Tonkin Incident, and WMDs). Of course, I don't include the current leadership of this administration, which doesn't know thing one about combat. Most importantly, both are civil wars, which we have no business being a part of.

I really hope this madness and killing end soon.

It's now up to Bush to determine how long this will go on, and it will go on until the neocons in Congress turn on him.

What are they waiting for?