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Sitting around “in the buckets”, no, not soused or mired or any such excessive state. Just tippin a couple and thinking. We stopped for dinner at The Hedge House and I had a couple of pints o’ stout. Well, more like a pint and a half. Tonight my second beer made me feel a bit sour, but it might have been the 90+ degree heat today. But I digress. A long lost like has returned rather suddenly, after being off for no good reason. A while back I purchased a Sheaf Stout. Now this is a fellow I used to drink a fair bit of, especially in my pre-21 phase. Now though, I have purchased a few bottles and I wonder why I ever stopped. It has a great flavor and it certainly has a place in the list in the top half dozens beers. Anyway, I just wanted to mention it.
On a more downbeat notion… If you ever want to feel like the Bush Administration isn’t that bad, sit down for White Light, Black Rain, an HBO documentary of interviews with survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is, of course, horrible yet strangely calming. It is hard to separate the political aspect of these deeds from the tragedy aspect (as is is with the other excessively inhumane tragedies of the 2nd World War) but, to an extent, they try. The movie focuses more on the survivors chilling stories of the actual incidents. While the stories and the images are horrifying, and you can’t help but feel for the people who lived through it and continued on with their lives, the most telling part for me was the one old hibakusha who said (and I paraphrase) “I don’t blame the Americans for the bombings, we lost the war… But I blame the government of Japan for not helping us afterwards”. He expresses an unsettling statement of such logical resolve that I still haven’t got my head around… but then the Japanese seem to have an old reputation for their attitude towards defeat.
70,000 Civilians, now gone. And the rest of us live forever with the knowledge of the possibilities
Whenever I think of this incident (and expand it with thoughts towards other incidents like the potential complicity of Pearl Harbor and the firebombing of Dresden), I can’t help but blame the Governments. I don’t buy the “All’s hell in war” theory. I guess I can handle it for soldiers, after all, killing and dying is part of the package of potentialities that they sign up for, but to kill tens of thousands of civilians in one fell swoop? It’s a bit too much for me to handle. Another problem with these kinds of tragedies is the lack of personal resolution. During events like September 11th (the WTC 9/11), there is always an issue of trying to identifying the remains so people can be moved from missing to dead. But with these firebombings and nuclear annihilation’s and Nazi purges there are tens of thousands who are incinerated. Hundreds of thousands of people end up with family and loved ones that they will never have any kind of a body to associate with (lord knows how many in the case of the Holocaust, I imagine that millions disappeared to never be identified). Though one could easily assume the death of someone missing, there will never be the closure that comes with the certainty of an identifiable corpse. Yes, sure, war is hell and war is glory and war is whatever else it is. But hopefully one day the “hell and glory” will be left to the warriors and the rest of us can live in peace.
2 Responses to “Along came a man by the name of Charlie Mops… and he made it out of hops.”
Here in my corner of the country, soldiering is not something you choose because you want to put your life on the line for your country. I mean, yes, that’s one of the good things. But enlisting ’round these parts is generally a way out of these parts. A number of people from my high school joined up because it was the only way they could afford college. For one or two it was a fast ticket out of here and away from the farm or the coal mines.
I heard a radio advertisement for enlistment not long ago and the entire pitch was about college funding. Not service to the country or fightin’ the terists there so we don’t fight them here, but “get money for college.”
Long story short, not everyone signs up because they want to be a warrior. A lot of people sign up because they don’t have many options.
Yeah, I know. But it seems like one of those things that even if you have a practical reason, it helps to keep in mind what the motive behind the organization is. I know that for a lot of people there aren’t many other visible options (my Pa was one, stuck in small town Oregon, poor and a high school dropout in the fifties. He joined the army) but still pays to at least be aware of what you’re getting into. By the time you’re down with Basic training, I imagine that you are well aware of what may be in store for you, especially in a country that enjoys sending its soldiers all around the world.
What I feel worse about is the national guard. You join what is usually a part time service with a mandate to protect the citizenry inside the country, to help with disasters and such… And then you get sent overseas to a fulltime trouble area! I am all for the Guard, but I think they should be here, guarding.
Honestly, I don’t have any problem with the military as a concept to actually defend this land, I have a problem with them being used as a tool for American political and business demands all over the world.