We live in a time where war is almost portrayed as a video game where bodies rack up points. We see “shock and awe” on television and when it stops being entertaining, we change the channel.
The fact that real human beings are being slaughtered in front of us just doesn’t seem to register with some among us.
One would think that the human species would have evolved in a manner such that we no longer kill one another under the banner of “national interest” or “territorial sovereignty,” but, sadly, we still do.
In fact, the world is far more dangerous today with the proliferation of nuclear weapons and dictators willing to push the button and unleash hell for their own political survival.
America is a nation that has a long history of defending democracy with bullets and bayonets. Our forefathers went into battle along with their sons to create the great republic of the United States.
When democracy was threatened in the two world wars, young men in America left their farms and factories and sailed off to countries they could not find on a map, and a lot of those young men never came back to tell of their exploits. They were buried in graves far away from their homeland.
Wars such as the War of 1812, the Korean War and the invasion of Grenada in 1983 have fallen into obscurity despite the fact that American boys died under the banner of the Stars and Stripes.
In the instance of Vietnam, the dead may have been the lucky ones as the veterans who survived came home to ridicule, castigated as “baby killers” when they were just young men following the orders of the political establishment.
Veteran Jerry Willis says he recently saw a billboard from an attorney’s agency that read “Happy Memorial Day,” and he could only shake his head.
“There is nothing happy about Memorial Day. It should be a day of somber remembrance,” Willis said.
James E. “Little Coot” Henderson Jr. agrees and says Memorial Day should not be a commercialized holiday but a day of respect for those that laid their lives on the altar of liberty.
“I don’t go out for the sales and go buy things because someone says it’s a holiday and things are on sale. I don’t take part in that,” Henderson said.
A decorated veteran of the Vietnam War, Henderson says he witnessed things that still, after decades, interrupts his sleep at night.
“The main thing is, you don’t think about it when it’s going on. You have to keep going, even when your buddies are falling down around you. You have got to do what you have to do to survive. It is after the fact when what you witnessed sets in, and it never goes away,” Henderson said.
Personally, I wish that humanity would come to the agreement that peace on this Earth should be a more pressing issue than climate change or national debt. I hope that people will eventually come to the understanding that we humans are mere specks in the universe with relatively short life spans.
Sending our sons and daughters into a war where carnage ensues to only bring a temporary solution is, in itself, sinful.
Until then, we have Memorial Day to remember the fallen, the young heroes who didn’t ask where, didn’t ask when, didn’t ask how and didn’t ask why; they strapped on their boots, fought and died for the rest of us to enjoy the lifestyles we have today.
Scott Hudson is the Senior Investigative Reporter and Editorial Page Editor for The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com
