Way back yonder, when I was but a lad, there used to be road signs from a company named: Burma Shave. What they had done was to put up small signs that when put together had a little saying on them. Kind of like dividing up a paragraph by spacing sentences a few miles apart. Some were funny and some were not, depending on one’s sense of humor. There were also tons of signs that said: Fresh Eats Ahead- 10 miles. This was on the West Coast so you had to be there to see them unless the East Coast was also a haven for roadside advertisements. Basically, these were signs of a simpler time before computers and even before color TV. Told you I was old.
Simpler times, except for nations, that is. I never get surprised at the utter stupidity of leaders of nations. History tells anyone who will listen that wars kill innocent people. Probably the citizens of the nation that starts the war. No matter where they are or what they are, friend or foe, children get killed and mothers get killed and grandmothers and grandfathers all get killed. So do aunts and uncles, cousins, nephews, dogs and cats, lizards, mice, fish . . . Butterflies. Collateral damage is the word used for killing innocents. Stick collateral where the sun don’t shine is my advice. You know where that is, right?
Long ago I participated in doing just such a thing as above. I didn’t know it at the time but when I found out I felt betrayed. Sure, I went to war, Vietnam, but had no idea I was participating in the killing of innocents. All I was doing is the job of finding radar signatures in North Vietnam. Those radars were guiding missiles to our planes flying above. What I didn’t know was that the North Vietnamese put those radars in villages among peasant families. War, it isn’t a nice thing now is it?
This is partly why I write now. Though decades ago, it still weighs on me like about five tons. It also, thank God, turned me to the bible where I learned that even I may be forgiven. If you are like me in experience then you know what I am speaking of. The bible will help you through what I didn’t handle correctly at that time. Darn near killed me. Oh well, now I just write and wile away the hours getting old. Two cents for my thoughts? Not likely.
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