We lost the war in Vietnam.

To counter that, in the decades following that war, we made two kinds of war movies.

The first kind of war movie we made centered on the insanity of war. The second kind centered on the idea that we would have won in Vietnam if, instead of sending a huge army, we'd sent somewhere between one and four weightlifters armed with big machine guns and really long knives.

We got rid of the draft, too, restricting membership in the armed forces to those who apparently enjoyed insanity or were able to bench press at least twice their own weight.

And then, we became involved, not in wars but in a series of colonial punishment expeditions requiring the increasing use of those Americans who had joined the military.

We had, however, learned two crucial lessons from Vietnam.

The first was that referring to all soldiers as "heroes" absolves from any responsibility for any killing done in any of our colonial expeditions.

The second was that we weren't going to lose another war.

The third, rapidly being learned, is that he only way not to lose is either to stay there forever, or keep returning time after time.

Some bombing. Some "advisors," or, better yet, "training forces." Some special operations troops, who are presumed to be heroes, are known to be skilled in the use of long knives and who, we guess, enjoy insanity more than most.

This spreads the volunteer army pretty thin but there will be no draft, no matter how tired the heroes get. We'll use the reserves, and the National Guard.

There will be no draft because the people at the top, the legislators and the president are scared to death that a return to compulsory military service would reveal to our enemies that a significant percentage of our young people will not fight for this country, or even serve.

And that, more so than planes crashing into towers, more so that rusting, abandoned Detroit, more so than the billions of tons of cocaine we hoover cross the border every year, would signal the end of America, or at least its reinvention as a very large version of Sweden.

I don't see, in the demeanor of the young Americans I know, any kind of broad-based ability to take orders, to accept the fact that they can do what everyone else can do and, most of all, that their time and their lives are not their own, at least not for the period of service that would be required by law.

There are still enough volunteers to handle our state of constant emergency. There are still enough of them to fire the missiles and the rifles, to crouch when told to crouch and run forward when told to run forward but their number is so few that we have to send them back again and again because we will not lose another war.

To find out more about Marc Munroe Dion and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. Dion's book of Pulitzer Prize-nominated column, "Between Wealth and Welfare: A Liberal Curmudgeon in America," is available for Nook and Kindle.