Maybe the Dead Died in Vain… But Does It Have to Continue?
November 24, 2009
We’ve lost nine hundred plus young men and women in Afghanistan, good soldiers all. It’s the same though. Death by war. The figure is well over four thousand in Iraq. It was over fifty thousand in Vietnam. These deaths, these losses, sadden me as they should, for they diminish me. I am less and feel less because of this incredible loss because they paid such a high price for so little. The President is thinking about sending another 40,000 troops to Afghanistan, increasing the 70,000 that are there. Many more will die. The troops are only one side of the death equation for these troops will kill their tens of thousands, and, teach other young men and women to kill and keep killing. It is so futile. It never stops. The price is paid over and over. Shouldn’t we, at some time, ask what we receive for this ultimate sacrifice? What are we buying with death?
For years we have snatched our young from their door steps and fed them to the war machine that we created. Congress just keeps voting more blood money, more death money and we receive nothing for it except more death and endless debt. Meanwhile the cemeteries fill up with our young and there it is: death and more death, debt and more debt. Does it ever end?
Congress doesn’t even know where it is going with this. There is no guiding “mission statement” giving direction to our foreign policy. That policy changes every four/eight years with each new administration and every new wind that blows through town. Vietnam was about killing commies that it turned out didn’t need killing. Iraq was about a can of Mobil oil and Bush’s need for a war. Congress should at least set forth what goals this ‘paid for death and carnage’ is to obtain. But no, that’s too simple. They just vote more money and the carnage never stops, ever.
Am I the only one that sees this futility? This hopelessness?
People, the goal should be peace. It should be humanity. Peace is the fruit of education. Instead of buying guns and bullets we should build grade schools, purchase books, and educate everyone in Afghanistan who wants an education, from kindergarten to college. Smart people don’t go to war. Most wealthy people don’t go to war. Educated people tend to be wealthy. They tend to self-govern. Teach them to read and write. Teach peace. Teach the rejection of war. The circle of death must be broken. A simple education is the only answer. Don’t give them fish; teach them how to fish. Don’t give these people M1 carbines. Give them books and teach them to read instead. Teach science, mathematics, and language. To make a point: Who reads Alice in Wonderland then goes and promptly kills his neighbor for what he believes?
We should do something crazy. Make all refugee camps into campuses for trade and medical schools; a place, to eat, sleep, get well, and learn peace. Give the gift of learning that peace might be meaningful as well as enduring. Maybe then the dead might not have died in vain.
If I am not mistaken, the Constitution of the US does not allow for all of these “policing actions” we are and, for a long time have been, undertaking around the world. However, the ignorance of the US Population, combined with the selfishness and self-centeredness, allows our elected officials to engage in this behavior. You write that the fault is a lack of education. I would tend to agree with that – but the first lack of education, the first dark abyss of ignorance needing attention, is within the US. When the average High School graduate in the US is a “functional illiterate”, and “mathematically incompetent”, as defined by the incapacity to read and grasp main news articles and editorials in major newspapers and the inability to balance a checkbook or understand a simple balance sheet, we are certainly not ready to discuss the Principles of the Founding Documents.
You write that the educated and rich to not go to war. True, for the most part. But, they certainly do start, direct, and carry out wars. The current elected officials of the US are generally well educated and wealthy. While they may not go to war, they certainly get the uneducated and poor to carry out their wars for them.
Until the US population understands our heritage, in conversant with our Founding Documents, and grasps and holds dear the Guiding Principles of our once and former Democratic Republic, all who have died in uniform have done so in vain. And it will continue until we, The People, stop it. Remember the closing line of the Declaration. As long as we care more about feeding our families and paying our bills and getting ahead, we are unworthy of living in a Democratic Republic. Living in a truly free land requires the same mind set as it took to establish it – a pledge of life, wealth and sacred honor, to be sacrificed on the altar of freedom. Young and ignorant military members who rush off to war, “willing to die for our country” do so, in the main, in ignorance. They do not even know that, for the most part, their actions are at best, extra-legal, and at worst, traitorous to the very land they think they are defending.
I like what you’ve said. It makes me wonder why we aren’t focusing on changing things. We, the people, that is. Instead we hear about it, note the tragedy, and then continue with the immediate needs at hand, our hands. Are we at fault for it? Not necessarily, we do need to pay our bills and feed our families, but how do we make the concerted effort to do both? How do we make it happen?