PERSPECTIVES on WARS and PEOPLE..

I was, and still am, intensely against the Iraq war. There should have been better reasons to go to that war or, really, any war.
My Dad lived through World War 2 But many didn’t. At least it was a war of principles. Even the Korean War was to a degree. I served 4 years in the navy during that war. I felt good about it. My dad went into the Army in January of 1944 and got out in November of 1945. He was overseas in France and Belgium nearly 2 years and in the ‘Battle of the Bulge’, as they called it. He was 34 years old when he went in.
Bush and Cheney said that Iraq would welcome us into their country. They would rejoice at being liberating. Bush said, aboard an Aircraft carrier decked out in flight gear, that the ‘Mission was accomplished’. Yeah! That was over five years ago. After we went into the Iraq war, I found an article written by Ernie Pyle, A war correspondent during ww2 who was in the thick of battle. One of his final notes of ‘perspective` at the end of the war was:

“Dead men in winter and dead men in summer. Dead men in such familiar promiscuity that they become monotonous. Dead men in such monstrous infinity that you come almost to hate them. Those are the things that you at home need not even try to understand. To you at home they are columns of figures, or he is a near one who went away and just didn't come back. You didn't see him lying so grotesque and pasty beside the gravel road in France. We saw him. Saw him by the multiple thousands. That's the difference”.

I cut this out when I found it and put it up on a wall at work as I felt strongly against the war. A fellow employee wrote at the bottom, “Sissy”. It was written by someone who never served in the military. He was all for us going into Iraq. (Note: “us” but not “him”). But I never said anything to him. I simply took it down because the message of what 'could be' was lost on him.