I WISH THERE WAS NO “MEMORIAL DAY”

My first thought this morning was it’s not “Happy Memorial Day” which Americans are wont to say. It’s a very sad day. How wonderful if there were no dead men and women to remember. How wonderful to have no wars. If religion is so much a part of every country, why do men kill in the name of it? I don’t get it. I’m not a religious person, so maybe that’s why I don’t understand all this. But, I'm pretty sure religion has nothing to do with it: the Irish Catholics and the Protestants; the Tutsi and the Hutu tribes; the Sunni and the Shiah tribes, and it goes on and on, ad nauseum. WHY? Isn’t there just one God? Does he wear a white robe, a baggy pair of pants and a turban, a long gown and sandals? Or is he of the spirit realm and wears nothing? We all see him in our own mind’s eye as our life script has taught us.

Wikipedia translates a religious war as: …as a war caused by religious differences. It can involve one state with an established religion against another state with a different religion or a different sect within the same religion, or a religiously motivated group attempting to spread its faith by violence, or to suppress another group because of its religious beliefs or practices.

In the 7th Century, some church rulers even sanctioned a “Just War,” stating that in the name of religion, it was okay to rape, burn and pillage if the bad guys didn’t accept their beliefs.

Okay, we’re not in the dark ages now. It’s no longer about so-called religion. We all know that the Desert Storm and Iraqi wars were not about saving the poor people who were being raped and murdered, it was about OIL. I didn’t see our leaders heading for Darfur to help the downtrodden souls who were being slaughtered. Sorry! No OIL, no help.

So if it’s not religion, it must be something another country wants? Could it be OIL, territory, power, with the end result being loss of our most precious commodity: young men and women who joined to learn a career, to be able to afford college on the GI bill, to see the world, to honor their country, who instead came home in body bags.

My grandson just joined the Navy. I pray that he returns safe, having seen ports of call he’s only read about in school books, that he continues his schooling and learns a way to make a living to support himself for life. That he makes lifetime friends like his grandfather did in the Air Force. That he continues to be our Pride and Joy.

So, on this Memorial Day, let’s all pray to whatever deity we believe in, that someday this endless and senseless killing will stop, and that eventually our children’s children will only be remembering the men that gave their life for their country…years ago.