By John Ballard
These quotes from Ike make me want to be a Republican.
Unfortunately, the tragedy of our age is the GOP betrayal of these ideals.
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron."~~~~~
"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history.
There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes that you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas.
Their number is negligible and they are stupid."� Quotes from Dwight D. Eisenhower
I have no argument with the point made, but now is not the time. Memorial Day is the day to honor those who gave their lives in the service of their nation, and to comfort those who waited in vain for their return. It's not about wars, it's about lives lost. It does not matter why they are sent. It matters why they go. Why do they go? Kenneth Roberts summed it up in Rabble In Arms,
ReplyDelete"They go to war these young men, not to die for their country, but to place themselves, their precious lives, between their home and the forces which would destroy it."
I see your point. And I gave it some thought before I put up this post. But for all the federal holidays that continue to whip up images of war and call it patriotism I always get a growing suspicion that as a nation we are becoming more dedicated to war than to peace. Part of the reason is the ease with which technology makes wars easier for those with the technology and tragically more devastating for those without.
ReplyDeleteThe imbalance is reflected in the changing ratios of civilian to military casualties, a factor which is becoming worse with the passing of time. I came across this by Howard Zinn:
...the people who die in wars are more and more and more people who are not in the military. You may know this about the different ratio of civilian-to-military deaths in war, how in World War I, ten military dead for one civilian dead; in World War II, it was 50-50, half military, half civilian; in Vietnam, it was 70% civilian and 30% military; and in the wars since then, it�s 80% and 85% civilian.
It was stated elsewhere as World War I: 10:1; World War II: 50:50; Vietnam War: 30:70; in the wars since: 20:80 to 15:85, with children comprising one-third of the civilian tolls most recently.
And this year, with budget cuts at the state and federal levels, it seems the military continues to be solidly supported at the expense of a number of fraying civilian safety nets, not just Medicare (for those fortunate enough , i.e. not yet poor enough to qualify for Medicaid) and growing numbers of those for whom Medicaid is all that stands between survival and slow death.
As a veteran (draftee in 1965) I get your point. But as a citizen I regard military service as a disagreeable but necessary duty, not a cause to celebrate with car races, taking leave of work, drinking to excess, all mixed in with enough patriotic flag waving to make us feel vindicated as we ignore the civilian challenges about which we continue to be in denial.