At a hearing of the Senate Armed Services committee recently, witnesses offered up their strategy on how best to meet the challenges of the next decade. But force structure and strategy is not so much dependent on the nature of the situation, as on the nature of Man. Man is, by nature, acquisitive; always was, always will be. The ruler of the forest and the trees schemes to embrace his neighbor’s land and his neighbor’s wife, all the while his neighbor lusts to claim the flocks and meadows of another as his own. And so it goes, and so it shall ever go, for the nature of man resides within us all.

The ruler of the forest and the trees
Lusts fiercely for his neighbor’s wife and land
No matter that the land he lusts to seize
Is barren, burnt and windswept driven sand
Meanwhile the ruler of the stones and rocks
Looks hungrily on meadows bright and green
And longs to sweet embrace his neighbor’s flocks
A hunger that is sharp and knife-edge keen
And so it goes, for nature has installed
Desires for aggrandizement and rule
To plunder neighbors smiling and be called
Admired though he be unjust and cruel
For history has favored those who fight
To take by force from those they deem as weak
To conquer and to rule by divine right
And as it was it is, and as we speak