A War Ended

Ok, so I am fairly new at expressing myself in print (or in bits and bytes if you prefer) but like most people, I like to express myself to my friends and coworkers.  Only, they don’t much like it, but they are a captive audience! I won’t be so lucky with you, so I must find some way to keep you on my page long enough to absorb my bits of wit and fabulous commentary. Here is what I am pondering today;

The war in Iraq is officially over. Yeah, pretty much sums up the press today too. They are all like, “4500 dudes died, 32,000 got really messed up and stuff and uh, yeah like the President says thanks.” Really!?! We went into Iraq not once, but twice, balls to the wall, blowing up the bad guys, 24 hour coverage. You couldn’t escape the news either time. I felt as if I was under assault and CNN was the aggressor.  When daddy Bush went in, it was news! When Junior went back, Bam! More news to enthrall the masses. Well we got that dude pretty early on really, but it has taken way too many years and way too many lives to get out of there again.  It seems as if we are immune to the pain of war these days, it is just part of our landscape now.

Another thing occurred to me, my children have grown up at war. At no time in their lives have we been at peace. Think about that! Today a war ended, yet we are still at war in Afghanistan. The cold war ended before they were born, that was my childhood and my mother’s childhood. My kids get the Chinese. The unfortunate problem with the way they do business is that technology really promotes freedom and that isn’t their thing. It makes me wonder how long the powers can keep the masses beaten down.  My children aren’t really aware the war is over, it hasn’t really touched them that they know of now.

So today a war ended, hardly anything, no parades, no wild cheers, all is just situation normal. Well situation normal for everyone but all the dead heroes and the families that mourn them. Life is no longer normal for the over 32,000 troops whose bodies are all messed up now and no one is talking much about all the shattered minds that came home from that little conflict.

My children have only ever known war.