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War
mrankh
Member Posts: 915 ✭✭✭✭
What do you guys think about all the fighting going on today with the US, like do you feel it is right or justified and like it is a worth while cause?
Comments
By Joe Bommarito
Beyond the count of years I walked the world,
and my children built their shrines to me.
Decades and centuries and millennia pass,
and still the shrines are built.
Temples insubstantial to men,
clear to my eyes.
No foundations or walls or roofs,
but shrines nonetheless.
Holy ground, consecrated.
Today, every day, somewhere in the world,
the earth is prepared for my coming.
My hallowed grounds are everywhere.
In valleys and on mountains,
on broad plains and deep in hidden passes,
in deserts, on city streets.
Nameless, unremembered places.
Named, remembered places.
Forest trails where the quiet lines of tall, clean-limbed men walked,
leaving behind them squat, hairy cave dwellers
in pools of their own blood.
Grassy plains over-marched by long rows of men with sandaled feet
and burnished helmets and spear points,
falling as chariots scythed their way through the ranks.
Glens where hollow squares of foot soldiers held spears
against the charge of armored knights
and storms of arrows found crevices between their shields.
Green ridges where thousands charged their countrymen,
muskets firing, cannon spewing grapeshot and canister,
and they cried for water,
and for their mothers,
and for the pain,
and died under bloody banners.
Muddy remnants of orchards where the machine gun fire
tore the trees to stumps three feet above the ground
and the men fell down in rows,
and the trenches where grenades and shells found them
and left them in buried piles
of limbs and torsos.
Forests where the scream of artillery shells
and the hollow thunder of tree bursts
sent foot-long splinters of wood
through the bodies of men below.
Frigid hilltops and foxholes filled with frozen bodies
left after their positions had been overrun
and the air support came too late.
Jungles where they bled and screamed and died,
bodies lying forlorn until they rotted into the rank growth under them,
a shiny bit of metal their only marker.
City streets strewn with the rubble of destroyed houses
still echoing
to the chatter of automatic weapons fire.
Incinerated landscapes where lost children weep for dead parents;
lost parents weep for dead children.
The dead with no one left to weep for them.
Megiddo. Thermopylae. Tyre. Kai-Sia. Carthage. Hastings. Stirling. Falkirk. Culloden. Quebec. Lexington. Concord. Saratoga. Yorktown. Leipzig. Borodino. Austerlitz. Waterloo. Manassas. Antietam. Shiloh. Vicksburg. Gettysburg. Cold Harbor. Gallipoli. Verdun. Ypres. Nanking. Pearl Harbor. Guadalcanal. Iwo Jima. Wake. Midway. Kasserine Pass. Caen. Bastogne. Dresden. Leningrad.
Hiroshima. Nagasaki.
Inchon. Pusan. Chosin. Hill 800. Heartbreak Ridge. Ia Drang Valley. Khe Sahn. Hue. Hamburger Hill. Saigon. Gaza. West Bank. Bosnia. Mogadishu.
Monuments with names of soldiers and battalions and brigades and regiments,
police actions, peace-keeping missions, conflicts, battles and wars.
Cemeteries with ranks of white crosses as far as the eye can see.
A black granite Wall with names and names and names.
and the visitors come and look down where the wall
is one, two, three inches high coming out of the earth
and there is a line of names there
and they think this isn't so much,
and as they walk the trail dips down
and the Wall appears to grow
and the lines of names are higher and higher until
the topmost line is so tall you need
a ladder to reach it,
to read it.
A monument to me.
Collateral damage.
Friendly fire.
Ethnic cleansing.
Suicide bombing.
Pre-emptive strike.
Keeping the peace.
Making the world safe.
My brothers and sisters are fading away.
It is right; it is just.
Their shrines are tumbled, forgotten.
No one brings offerings to Sun or Earth or Thought or Love.
My brother Peace died stillborn.
I remain because my children continue to consecrate the ground,
in my name,
with their own blood.
I thrive and grow.
Hate and Demagoguery, Jealousy and Selfishness
have joined my long-time outriders,
Fear and Panic.
We ride together.
We serve our father well, the Horseman who is called Death.
I am War.
http://www.strike-the-root.com/3/bommarito/bommarito5.html
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878<P>
war in Afgahnistan
war in Iraq
war on drugs
war on terrorist
the long war
We are at war. Most gun crimes are overturned on appeal.
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart His passport shall be made
And crowns for convoy put into his purse
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us
This day is called the feast of Crispian
He that outlives this day and comes safe home
Will stand a-tiptoe when this day is named
And rouse him at the name of Cnspian,
He that shall live this day and see old age
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors
And say, "Tomorrow is Saint Cnspian "
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's Day "
Old men forget, yet all shall be forgot.
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words,
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remembered
This story shall the good man teach his son,
And Crispin Cnspian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother Be he ne'er so vile.
This day shall gentle his condition
And gentlemen in England now abed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Cnspin's Day
-W Shakespeare, Henry V
Every normal man must be tempted, at tunes, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats
-H L Mencken
I don't like it. Seems pointless. Let the ragheads sort out their own crap. We need to be focused on ourselves, not other countries. Its like fixing your buddy's car, when yours is broken down.
+1,000,000
We spend more on our military than the rest of the world combined and that is a BIG part of what is bankrupting us. At least for the forseeable future, we need to come home and get our financial house in order. Spend a lot on the military, we must be strong, but these endless wars will put us out of business sooner than later if we let them. The fools in DC are considering war in Lybia and Iran. Worst case scenario, we end up fighting on 4 fronts for nothing. We have enough oil to last us centuries here in our own back yard.