Today is Memorial Day (well, at least it still is where I live), and I have done a lot of thought today. About my own time in the service, about the people I knew who perished, and the people who have died in so many of our Wars of Choice, Convenience, and Expedience. And it struck me:
we have a day for people who have served their country
we have a day for people who have died for their country
what about the innocents? What about the collateral damage? What about the victims in all this? What of them, those who died because our country's gutted economy cannot survive without the perpetual slaughter of innocent men and women, and children. What of the victims of war here -- the people who are long lost to history who died in a hail of gun fire as two opposing armies faced off, or burned to death in their home as a bomb is dropped on their head, or blown up by some buried, long forgotten land mine in a struggle that no one remembers...
what of the victims of our wars? All of the struggles against communism, terrorists, ISIS, surely that must of created grieving widows and widowers, parentless orphans, and despair everywhere they happened? What of all the destruction or precious fight for freedom has wrought?
I do not say this in disrespect of our military, I respect those who have fought and died honorably for us. I would think that it would do our veterans, both dead and alive, right to have a day to look back on our wars all around the world and take it all in for a moment, and come to realize that we are sending young boys and girls to kill for wars that never needed to be fought in the first place.
Perhaps, if we had a day honoring and celebrating the sacrifice of the victims of war we wouldnt be so liberal in using these weapons of destruction all across the world so freely.