I ain't no LIBERAL weenie

All of you out there who really know me, realize that I am not a Liberal tree-hugging weenie. But there are some things in which I am more in agreement with the left than I am with the other guys on the Far Right. I am anti-war. I was watching TV this morning, a Boston station, and they announced the death of a 21 year old young man killed by a roadside bomb. I don't remember his name because he is not as famous as the man pictured to the left, Pat Tillman, another victim of the war in the Middle East. I do not speak of this hypothetically. I treated and performed amputations and major surgical reconstructions on many young soldiers at Walter Reed during another dumb and fruitless war, Vietnam. I still see their faces in my dreams 40 years later. And yet, here we are, comfortable in our beds in the good old USA watching TV while the best of the best are being killed and wounded for no good reason in some holdover from the dark ages desert. Though I don't believe that being a rock star gives you any special wisdom in world affairs, I was watching a video on YouTube of Michael Stipe of REM performing "When Day is Done" in which he spoke to the audience about our unilateral invasion (which continues) of the "sovereign nation of Iraq." Protest songs are a tradition in our country. There is way more truth in song and story than ever came out of Washington. Look back on history and ask yourself who had it right in the 60s and 70s...Joan Baez or Robert McNamara.

World War 2 seems to have been, retrospectively, a necessary evil. Millions of people died and the world was saved from tyranny and genocide, at least for a while. Since then, we have had several wars that just don't seem to have done a damn thing except divide our country and kill our children. Back "in the day" (early 1800s) Thoreau and Emerson protested against wars that America was engaged in and suggested that we resist the folly of government. Thoreau wrote "On Civil Disobedience" and spoke of the obligation of citizens to resist stupid government tricks.

Yet, here we are, lead by first "W" and now "O" down the primrose drain to more and more war and less and less real protection for us. Our borders are a joke, we are drowning in Crude Oil, businesses are closing right and left, and people are out of work by the millions. You can "Party on, Wayne, and Jane," and put your trust (or worse still, pay no attention to) in your government and their decisions and pop open another brewski. Or you can consider looking around you and generating a little Civil Disobedience of your own. The "blindly going along" plan seems to be falling on its proverbial ass.