A GOOD OLD KENTUCKY BOY CAME HOME RECENTLY

A bit late, but nevertheless welcome.

19 year old Pvt. Randolph Allen of Rush was laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery, 70 years after he died fighting for us on a tiny dot of an island in the Pacific. Full military honors were accorded him, as family members stood by---not one of whom ever knew him.

Each year the military finally identifies the remains of our finest who have been missing in action..as he was..maybe 80 a year. But there are 84-THOUSAND GIs still missing from past wars..and at 80 a year, we may get the last of them buried by the year 3064.

We don’t think of that when America goes off to war. We are too “het up” over WMDs and Osama Bin Laden often to  think of the long view—or 84,000 families who will not have closure for years, if ever.

We know, now, the WMDs were lies..and the reports that bin Laden was in cahoots with the Taliban in Afghanistan was wrong also (but it didn’t stop us from going into our longest war ever—then.)

Now, it’s different.  75% of us think the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were failures, according to a recent poll.

While almost all of us think WW2 was justified, we have also just discovered  it will take another $420 M to get the Paducah atomic plant  cleaned up from contamination and, maybe, ready for a less warlike future.

Wars have a way of getting out of control, dollar-wise and moral-wise. Pres. Obama confirmed what we all knew, the US tortured people—a violation of our own laws, while the “government” spied on our Senators. We know they are spying on us but we kinda thought maybe Senators were different. They were supposed to be under an agreement between them and the “government” but the government broke the agreement and then lied about it to the Senators…and us.

Things just happen differently in wartime. We may try to be the same honest, ethical people, but we aren’t.  We need to be reminded of these things (and a lot more, such as we are still finding munitions buried in WW I) when we are in the throes of patriotic fervor and ready to march off to war.

Putin’s action in the Ukraine are wrong and dangerous, and could lead to war..that’s just one of a half dozen places I have heard public officials say we should consider going to war---this year.  Let us, instead, consider the many, and long range consequences of war before we act—consequences neither Israel nor Hamas apparently took into consideration before rushing into their current, tragic entanglement.

I'm just sayin'...