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What’s the value of a single North Korean soldier? Would you believe it’s approximately one percent of a goat?

Thanks to authors like Joseph Heller (Catch-22), Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse-Five), and Richard Hooker (MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors), whose books I was probably reading far too young, I grew up with an acute sense of the absurdity of war. But those novels are all so 20th-century. When it comes to absurdities, the 20th might not have much on the 21st.

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Russian strongman Vladimir Putin’s blitz through Ukraine, now about to complete its third year of minimal gain for maximum effort, is going so well that in October, Putin took delivery of about 10,000 North Korean rent-a-troops.

While some warned that the arrival of Nork combat troops in Russia heralded the start of World War III and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed last month that “Some of these troops have already taken part in hostilities against the Ukrainian military. Yes, there are already losses,” the reality is murkier. The Standard reported last week that the Norks have yet to join the battle.

“We say due to poor training and lack of logistical support as the primary reasons why DPRK haven’t started the fight yet,” an unnamed Western official told the paper.

Still, Putin seems grateful for the gesture, if nothing else. Newsweek’s Hugh Cameron reported Tuesday that Russia has returned the favor by dispatching 100 “pedigree dairy goats” in the latest “gesture of goodwill between Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un.”

By my math, that means one Russian goat is worth no fewer than 100 North Korean soldiers. Who’s poorly trained now, Mr. Unnamed Western Official?

It’s just like when Communist China gifted the Nixon administration two giant pandas, the adorable Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing, whom I got to see at the Washington National Zoo in 1978. Only instead of adorable pandas, North Korea got goats.

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No offense was intended. These are elite Russian goats, according to the report.

Meanwhile, in Syria, the absurdities compound like a “thirty thousand dollar loan at fifteen and a quarter percent.”

Despite the rapid end of the 13-year-old Syrian Civil War last weekend, somebody forgot to tell some of the more enthusiastic participants.

Open Source Intel reported Tuesday on “a battle currently raging in Syria that’s receiving less attention” between “US-backed Kurdish SDF (The Syrian Democratic Forces) [and] the Turkish-backed Islamist SNA (Syrian National Army).” In other words, there’s something of a proxy war being fought in Syria between us and our NATO ally, Turkey.

The Syrian National Army (rebels) is not to be confused with Bashar Assad’s Syrian Arab Army (defunct).

But wait, it gets weirder.

The Biden administration’s preferred partner in Syria is the defacto/interim government Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) that took Damascus over the weekend. HTS is headed up by Abu Mohammad al-Julani, who used to be al Qaeda but now swears he isn’t. Washington supports him because… uh… reasons. 

HTS is also supported by Turkey. So when our proxies aren’t fighting one another, Washington and the Turks both have Julani’s back.

Until perhaps the Biden administration hears about this:

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If you’d have told me two weeks ago that a former al-Qaeda free-market reformer would be in charge of (most of) Syria today, I’d have finished my martini in one gulp and made another. And then a third.

If the first 25 or 30 years of the 21st century fail to produce a literary talent like Heller or Vonnegut, that might be the greatest absurdity of them all. 

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