On the news yesterday, five GIs were killed fighting insurgents. What was not noticed was that there were probably five GI s nearby that were wounded. Say they lost a foot and an eye. We will compensate them $880 month for the rest of their lives. Plus cost of living increases.
So in May 2065 we can go to an old folks home and meet one of them in his wheel chair, and he can tell us about the hazards and the tensions of the second Iraq war, and we can compare them with the ongoing seventeenth Iraq war.
We will ask “How long before we can stop fighting and learn to live together?”
6 comments:
Sadly there will always be someone who wants a fight. Hope you are being good and keeping well.
Sylvia x
*sigh* yep. Very insightful.
Sadly, I doubt it will happen. Seems people just love a good (or even a bad) fight. Always seems to be one. This side of the pearly gates it's always going to be that way . . . Blessings, Penny
Amen! "Can't we all just GET ALONG" ~ Rodney King
I've got to believe that we'll make at least some progress on this stuff. I mean, just look back at how much attitudes have changed in your lifetime. For all our problems, we're no longer lynching black men for looking at a white woman, no longer putting people in interment camps solely on the basis of ancestry (Guantanamo being only a partial exception), no longer tolerating all sorts of bigotries--at least, not on anywhere near the level that used to be socially acceptable in days gone by. Society has gradually learned to be a little less ready to divide people into Us and Them, especially in a country like the US, where pluralism is part of our history and heritage. Maybe in another generation or two, there will be less Us and Them thinking in even the most sectarian countries, and between one country and another. That's what it will take to finally "get along." I think it's achievable.
But we still have a long way to go. Today's Hitler would never get away with setting up death camps--but clearly, Iraqi prisoners were treated as a "them" in the abuses of last year, foreign contractors in Iraq are a "them" to the people who kidnap them, and entire ethnic groups are a "them" in parts of Africa, to be pushed aside, starved, raped, or killed. Yeah, we have a long way to go--but I still say we can make progress on that journey!
Karen
Amen. Sometimes I don't think we have evolved from the cavemen, we have just invented weapons that cause more harm than sicks and stones. So muuch pain-physical and emotional-to carry for the rest of their lives, for what? Margo
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