What does Pynchon do?

[Terrance]

>From 

 A Soldier of the Great War:

"Unfortunately, the war is ruled inordinately by chance, to the point
almost where human action seems to have lost its meaning..."
(Allessandro in a letter to home from the
front).

This reads like W.W.I. It's a  perfect example of a W.W.I letter. It
could be a W.W.I poem. But I can't see how it has a  universal to it
that has anything at all to do with Iraq's current problem. Chance,
luck, fortune, dehumanization, automation, absurdity, meaninglessness,
these were the themes of W.W.I.  There is no chance, no turn of
fortune's wheel that might reverse the war, change its direction drag it
out for years. If war comes,  Iraq will be run over in a matter of
weeks. Even if Iraq is criminally insane enough to risk using its
weapons of mass destruction, it will be defeated swiftly and soundly by
the United Nations.  There are no trenches, not machine guns, not
automation, no war of attrition, no mud...blood...shit, and no no man's
land. Iraq is not fighting W.W.I. It is playing a game of chess with the
world and it is going to lose. One way or another it is going to lose.
The world hopes that Iraq will lose at the table and not in the streets
of Baghdad. But Iraq has only a King on the board and one pawn (France).
A pawn can be a very powerful piece, but not when the opposition has
nearly every piece with which to take it. France will be taken. Iraq
will be defeated. 

I'd say that a W.W.I novel has little to tell us about the current
problem with Iraq. A novel like GR might be more appropriate if we could
discuss it not as a W.W.II novel (since it is not really a W.W.II novel,
but a novel about weapons of mass destruction and the proliferation of
such weapons), but as a novel written in the 1970s. Why does Pynchon
drop the bomb after GR? VL doesn't mention the bomb. Why not?