Tonight I heard that a NATO strike killed Gadhafi's son.
I am not proud of this, and I am not proud of the actions of my country. This does not mean that I condone Gadhafi's actions towards his citizens; any killing is wrong.
I'm really tired of killing. Again not just by my country, but by the whole world. It really doesn't solve the social problems, and our wrongheaded spending on what we laughingly call “defense” is ruining our economy and our country.
Two wrongs don't make a right.
I used to hear that in school, starting at about fifth-grade. I think I can even remember the moment that I heard that for the first time.
It still makes sense now.
We know it's not right to kill people, and we know even better than our love affair with military action is bankrupting our country. It's not “defense”, its offense, and we know it.
I'm really tired of it now; I'm tired, I'm angry, and I think we've gone in a terrible direction. As a country, and as a world.
Today, for the first time in a long time, I took my big peace symbol on a stick and tied it to my shopping cart when I went to Saturday's farmers market.
Some people looked at me strange; it was interesting to see people who are so detached from the war.
I got out of the Army in 66, and I immediately became a “peacenik.”
In 66, people looked at me strangely when I wore a peace symbol; I think that at that time, almost the only people who were against the war were “dirty hippies”; well, today, I was looked at like that. People were looking at me with this look of “oh my God, how inconvenient! Do I have to walk around that sign?”
It was an interesting feeling; people are so distracted, so detached from the death that is one of our biggest industries and one of our most profitable exports, but they just can't make sense of somebody who's tired of the fact that the United States is in a never-ending war. A war that is sending our reputation, our karma, and our economy down the toilet.
There were friends there too today, who applauded what I was doing. One of them, a veteran like myself, said “if there was a draft, you can bet they wouldn't be so god damned detached”
yes, I'm tired, I'm disgusted, I'm angry, and I'm going to do something about it. It has to start somewhere; it was public action in the 1970s that brought about the Case-Church amendment, which was one of the main things that effectively ended the Vietnam war after many profitable years.
I lost my son to an accident when he was 16. Trust me, it's a horrible feeling. I don't want anybody, not even Gadhafi, to feel that kind of grief; and I don't want our government, a government that didn't ask me if I wanted war, and didn't pay any attention to me back when the war started and I protested it, killing anybody's son. Not in my name and not with my money.
Enough. I've had enough.