War. Basketball. Madness.

I'm not really sure what I'm trying to accomplish here (and I mean that in terms of this article, this site, and existentially). Please bear with me.

It's early March. Post-season basketball is on the horizon. Bracketology beckons.

For one glorious month, the entire country becomes an expert on the Missouri Valley Conference tournament, debates the most likely 5/12 seed upset pick, and inevitably loses their office bracket pool to some HR dude named Keith that chose his Final Four solely based on mascots. In a way that even the NFL cannot fully claim, March Madness permeates American life. For offices and friends and family group chats, it's a time to learn what the hell an Oral Roberts is, where Gonzaga is located, and to establish deeply held opinions on the announcing style of Bill Rafferty.

You're here, so you already get it. It's the best sporting event of the year, bar none. It's joyous. It should be fun.

And yet, and yet, and yet. Our country, in a fit of pique, bluster, and unquenchable idiocy, has once again gone to war in the Middle East. There are thousands of American women and men in uniform that are and will remain in harm's way for the foreseeable future. The war isn't a week old, and yet several have already been killed. Our leadership has told us that more will die, that "that's the way it is." There are tens of thousands of our compatriots that are stranded across the region, unsafe while they shelter in place, yet unable to get home. This group includes a buddy of mine, my wife's best friend, and their two kids, our godchildren. Many unreasonable cases for the conflict have been chucked at the wall. None have stuck. No reasonable case for war has been offered. And yet, here we are.

If it feels familiar, it should. We have been here before.

In 2003, the four #1 seeds were given to Rick Barnes's Texas, Kelvin Samson's Oklahoma, Tubby Smith's Kentucky, and Lute Olson's Arizona. Lots of Big Ten touchpoints! The bracket was set; the opening round was set to play in Dayton, Ohio. All familiar thus far. But the first day of March Madness was overtaken by events.

I was a scrawny little 12 year old visiting Biloxi, Mississippi for spring break with my family. My younger sister and I watched the George W. Bush speech and ultimatum to Saddam Hussein while my parents played craps in the hotel's casino. Military jets soared overhead the following day while we flew kites on the beach. It's a different time to imagine, but there was real fear then. The post-9/11 era was one of paranoia and concern and terror. It's long forgotten and lost in the ether, but there was a moment in which the March Madness tournament could have been cancelled on account of the invasion.

But the games continued. CBS had to shift some programming around. It took a bit of finagling to broadcast CBS News and 60 Minutes and the serious coverage along with over 60 plus March Madness games, but they pulled it off. In an era before social media and streaming and cell phones and ubiquitous WiFi and all the rest, the in-game updates from the bombing campaign above Baghdad were almost required viewing.

Spoiler: Carmelo Anthony (Honey Nut Cheerios) and Jim Boeheim (who later killed a man) and the Syracuse Orangemen (before they changed the team name) won the title as a 3-seed. The war and the occupation of Iraq continued for another 8 years. Thousands of young Americans died. Nearly as soon as we left in 2011, we would return for the fight against ISIS.

All of that said: we deserve the distraction of basketball, of March Madness and brackets and buzzer beaters. God, we desperately deserve the distraction. But we also deserve a leadership, a political class, a governmental system that doesn't do this fucking idiotic war every goddamn quarter-century.