~ February 24, 2003 - 1:22 a.m. ~ What is it good for?
Timmy and I are watching a documentary on World War II. It is in color, and is taken from almost never-before-seen color film footage. The images from the concentration camps, the Japanese victims of the bombs, and the piles of dying soldiers all over the world are . . . revolting. Disturbing. Horrible. Just . . . horrible. War is hell, and somehow, we've forgotten it. There are letters from American soldiers, their wives, even Harry S. Truman, all saying the same thing: war is terrible, let's never do this again. And yet . . . Korea. Vietnam. The Gulf War. What comes next? The horror of mustard gas and firebombing will be a pleasant dream compared to the horrors we are capable of inflicting now. How have we forgotten what it is like to send our fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, cousins, sweethearts out to die? Why ever would we want to do it again? I have begged Tim again and again to never enlist, to dodge a draft, to do whatever it takes not to go to war, ever. I will kidnap him and take him to Canada before I ever let the military take him away from me to go die in the godforsaken desert that is Iraq. I hate the very notion of war; it makes my skin crawl to think of another generation like my mother's with Vietnam. I will never go to war, and nothing will ever make me support it. We were told "thou shalt not kill" and I believe in those words fully. I will never support the ending of another human being's life.
