How to Play “Forever War”

I’ve been watching what’s happening in Syria for a while now, and the kaleidoscopic permutations of alliances among the players, and the fact that, while victory is periodically declared by one team or another, the war just goes on and on.

Of course, the war is a major profit center for so many of the players. In our own country, war-making accounts for more than half of the government’s discretionary budget. Notice that word: “discretionary”. It means that a deliberate choice has been made. Let’s think about that for a moment…

Apparently, except for those times when you’re pretty sure your death is imminent, war is pretty boring. Seeing the same faces on your “side” every day gets monotonous, as does facing the same old guys on the other end of your assigned implement of destruction. The utter tedium of it all must make it extremely difficult to carry on the conflict to the extent that it must be carried on, in order to keep those monitary units accruing on your side.

So, what they’ve apparently decided is to play “Mix-n-Match” with the players. Here’s how it works:

There are 10 teams:

• Syria
• Turkey
• Russia
• Iran
• Iraq
• Kurds
• US
• UK
• ISIL
• DAESH

Probably a few more teams, I haven’t thoroughly assessed the teams lately. Anyway, each month, each team draws a card from a standard deck. If they draw A through 7, they go on one “side”, 8 through King on the other “side”. Then that’s who fights whom for the month. Next month, we’ll draw again! The combinations are endless! Well, no, they’re not (I’m a mathematician, and one can calculate the combinations, if one were to stoop to doing mere arithmetic.). With only ten teams, it is possible that all teams choose cards that place them all on one “side”, at which point I guess peace breaks out. On the other hand, if we designate enough teams, then we could have enough of them such that there will always be at least one team on the “other side”. (I believe the magic number is 29 total teams—check my arithmetic.)

Something similar must be happening here. Or maybe it’s just the US team that keeps changing sides, I dunno. But if you really want to keep a war going, and the US apparently does, then this would be a way to play it and make it seem legit.