Land of Oz

11/11/11

The war to end all wars - that's sounds pretty stupid now doesn't it? Did you notice anything special yesterday? Probably not. Maybe you missed your mail or wondered who all those old guys in funny hats selling ugly paper flowers outside of Wal-Mart were, but that's probably about it for most people.

November 11, at 11 a.m. World War 1 ended. It was so horrible that everyone figured it would never happen again - yet, not twenty years later we did it all over again. And at various levels, we've been doing it pretty much non-stop ever since. What is it that makes us as a species so stupid. Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Beirut, Kosovo, Israel, Egypt, are all just places where the only winners are the funeral directors.

The other day, some kid, Marine Cpl. Jason Dunham, received the Congressional Medal of Honor for his sacrifice in Iraq - posthumously of course. Would you be willing to bet that Jason would gladly swap that medal and all the ceremonies that went with it for a cold beer in his backyard?

I spent my 22 years in the USAF, but managed to duck pretty much every hostile action during that time. My biggest dangers were probably environmental; 100 mph winds in the Aleutians and Greenland, -60 degree weather in Fairbanks and hurricanes in Mississippi. I did manage to miss the terrorist bombs of Europe in the 80s (the terrorist bombs of today are nothing new). Instead of Al Quida, it was the IRA in England and the Red Brigade in Italy, the Red Army Faction in Germany. We used to have to go to work in Italy wearing civilian clothes and once spent a week in England confined to our office buildings -- too many protesters in the area. But never a "war."

But you know what? That tornado in Kansas or IRA bomber in London kills just as efficiently as a sniper's rifle in Vietnam or Kosovo. Do you think some kid's parents who see her body in a casket really care if she was put there by "enemy action" or because she was run over by a drunk driver outside the gates of Spangdahlem Air Base?

Until people finally figure it out, there's always going to be body bags coming back home. Someone's parents or spouse or kids will have to go through the paperwork of yet another body. Whether the body is full of shrapnel from some Medal of Honor recognized "enemy action" or was squashed under a dump truck while changing a tire, the kid is just as dead. Let's not try to polish the loss under the trappings of so-called military glory and its pomp and circumstance. It's still a dead kid because people are just too stupid to work things out - no amount of spit and polish will change that.