This is in reply to an author's response "bullshit" to my comment.
Friday night is take out food night. Since the kids have left either my wife or I can get what we want to eat, since we are well beyond trying to guess what the other wants one of us picks and I go get it. Last Friday it was my pick and we ordered Mexican food from El Rodeo in Lemoyne PA.
Following me in was a tall broad shouldered gentleman wearing a baseball cap embroidered with "Afghanistan Veteran". He stuck out his had with wide grin and laid the verbal yellow ribbon on me "Thank you for your service." I shook his hand and stood there looking befuddled.
He then mentioned that he had seen me get out of the car with the Vietnam Veteran license plate which I got last year after the patrolman gave me a warning that my faded conservation license plate could no longer be read.
He clearly enjoyed uttering the platitude to someone else. Surely he realizes Americans think of veterans like Santa Claus. The empire sends out it's armies to bring back glory and booty, but is rather uncomfortable afterwards. Everybody loves the the jolly old fellow on Christmas, but no one wants him sitting around in May snacking on lutefisk watching a World Cup match of Norway vs Finland, while reindeer trample the garden.
There is wisdom to be had and perspective to be gained in war.
Eating spam heated over a can of Sterno surrounded by the enemy, you realize that this may be the best meal you will have in the rest of your life. Lingering memories of this can make anything else taste better.
You find yourself in an Iraqi desert in 115 degree heat on a ten day recon patrol when call comes in that the pick up helicopter has been diverted to take Cooper Anderson for an interview with a general, and you will be picked up next week. You pack up your 100 pounds of gear and walk to a place where you can dig in a defensible temporary camp and realize this may be the last time you have two legs to walk on. That thought will add joy to the task if you are lucky enough to mow a lawn.
While others may express their belief that underneath it all we are all the same, you may have had an epiphany so that you absolutely know that to be true.
Continued below --
But the time came to bring out the dead. Army blankets were brought to the front. Some of the men went in and began to carry the bodies to the door where others outside helped to place them on the blankets. Each of the bodies was then handed down the line to the main deck. As one of the men attempted to take hold of a dead sailor's arm, the skin pealed back. I had lost all emotion at that time, and as a saw the dead sailor's pinkish, whitish flesh, I also saw his disfigured face, but I recognized him. He was a black sailor that I had seen often in the mess hall. And I thought to myself, black and white men are all the same color under the skin. As another body was being carried out, one of the carriers dropped him on one side and a gasp went out from us, and the Chief said, "don't worry, you can't hurt him anymore". Strange, but that had a reassuring effect on me, as I had never before had to deal with death so closely. I suppose that at that time, I could have pulled myself out of the line and gone to sit somewhere in the fantail where there was more fresh and clean air to breathe.
There is the knowledge that no matter the situation it can always get worse.
Consider Joe Kieyoomia a Navajo from New Mexico. Abandoned by his commander, who had risen in the ranks partially based on his successful attack on American veterans. He was captured by an Army that had contempt for captives, survived the Bataan Death March, years in captivity in the Philippines, a Hell Ship, torture when the Japanese thought he was a Japanese American traitor to his race, then more torture after he convinced them that he was Navajo and they thought he was a code talker. In Nagasaki he finally got lucky by being in a concrete jail when the bomb hit.
Or refugees driven out of their homes by the horrors of war, past hostile enemies, across the dangerous Aegean, past border guards, only to suffocate in the stench of a locked truck.
My Stepmother described a lunch period. She was a fourth grade teacher in Plantsite Elementary School in our hometown of Morenci, Arizona.
Plantsite had first through fourth graders. Lunch was a noisy period when the children, released from the enforced quiet of the classroom got to eat, and interact with their classmates causally watched over by adults. Food was obtained from lunch boxes for the cafeteria lines, companions were located, seats taken and the cacophony of youngsters filled the room. A wave of silence caused the adults in the room to look with concern at the children, then follow the gaze of the children to door.
Suddenly all the little heads jerked around when inside the hitherto invisible lunch lady, Penny King, all the pain of child birth, every drop of milk suckled from her breast, the giggles of a toddler and her dreams of grandchildren vaporized inside her and forced out that great cross cultural mother's scream of loss heard throughout the entire wing of the school. The two Marines in dress blues had located the person they had come to see.
View on YouTube
Now there are calls for the United States to do something about the war in Syria.
No No No
There is nothing honorable to do in war but care for the wounded and bury the dead. After more than a decade in Afghanistan we have come to destroying even that.
These people who don't have the courage to face a Penny King want to add carnage to carnage and waste to waste with pathetic ideas like no fly zones, and safe zones which sound like quarantine pens for the oppressed.
Shelter refugees and provide medical help where possible. Pray if you think it will help, but we do not need to blow things up just because Putin is doing it.