As the Nobel Peace Prize winning President of the United States prepares to perhaps unilaterally attack Syria to show he was darn serious about that whole "red line" thing, Robert Martin remarked on Facebook that his children have known nothing but war for their entire young lives. I commented that at 41 years of age I have barely known "peace" at any time in my own life. As I thought back on this question it was a pretty sober realization of how true that was.
From birth to high school I lived through the waning days of Vietnam and the Cold War. I attended an elementary school with fallout shelter signs and assumed that the Russkies were going to attack us at any time. Of course there was also the invasion of Grenada to get the U.S. of A. a win to take some of the ashes of Vietnam out of our mouths. As the cold war ended and I graduated high school I headed off to college. I made it all of two months before the invasion of Kuwait and then Operation Desert Storm. That lasted a very short time of course but it was followed by the battle in Mogadishu in 1993 memorialized in Black Hawk down and the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in 2000, not to mention various other military actions around the world. Still, the decade between Operation Desert storm in 1990 and the Cole bombing in 2000 were relatively peaceful. Until that fateful day of September 11th, 2001 when the world changed. For the next 12 years we have been at war nonstop. The bodies come home in flag draped coffins, soldiers come home with fewer limbs than they left America with, occasionally we see the all too common sight of dead women and children, "collateral damage" in our war on terror, a war that ironically seems to be defending American families from terror at the cost of inflicting terror on families overseas. In four decades as a citizen of America I have know peace perhaps 25% of the time.
As we seem bent on repeating the same mistake that we have made so many times before, I am praying that those calling for war will be thwarted and I also pray that those in leadership in our nation who profess the name of Christ will seek peace rather than war. Endless war is no way to run a country and has proven to be futile at leading to a lasting peace.
1 comment:
Hi Arthur,
There is a very high cost to war for sure. I think the USA paid a higher price than we did in Canada. We in Canada have largely sat back and enjoyed the 'work' that the Americans have put in to war since world war II.
Sometimes war is needed and justified in my mind. How else do nations deal with 'tyrants'? They will not stay between their own borders unless someone makes them do so. These 'despot' leaders lust for more power, more land, more authority, greater kingdoms ets. They will not rest or be satisfied.
We have paid a price here in North America surrounding war, but other peoples, especially children, have paid a much greater price in other nations where war is conducted right in their midst. I can't imagine bullets flying about my head on nearly a daily basis. Of chemical gas being released in my midst and amoung my children because of an 'out of his mind' 'oppressive' 'wicked' leader of my country.
War should be avoided but not 'at all costs' Some thoughts from me.
Post a Comment