WAGES OF WAR

“I’d give anything just to be back home.”

‘Cause there are people, asking why.

There are people, who believe in… Life.

Well how do we get to where we come from?

Peace and love ain’t enough these days.

Evolution says “Time is running out,

We’ve been here too long…

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Seal.  Seal. “People Asking Why.” 1994

The endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have gone largely unnoticed except for political, polemical debate, pro and con. The right pays lip service to these struggles for calculated, hollow praise of the American military to score political points. The left cringes at the suffering inflicted by and against our troops as a disputation on the immorality of these conflicts and, perhaps, war in general. It's like the troops don't matter beyond points of argument. There's an intellectual detachment where sympathy or empathy are felt on the ideation level but not in the gut.

The problem is that these wars have been fought by only one percent of the population, so that the families and loved ones represented by those killed in action (though substantial) is only a modicum of the total population—that along with the fact that these conflicts, unlike the Vietnam War, have not been projected into everyone's living room.

I can still feel those CH 46 choppers shaking like they were going to fall apart as they rumbled toward some LZ in RVN (Republic of Vietnam), with us grunts sitting on our helmets (less we take a round in the family jewels). I can still remember not writing home for 6 wks., because I was too tired and focused on the immediacy of survival and preparation to write some nice, edited letter about how well things were going.

Carl