As Americans are getting up to go to work..........
As they go about their daily routines, showering, breakfasting, lunching, snacking, taking their coffee breaks ...........
During travel time, shopping, cooking, walking the dog.......
When they fall asleep at night..........
.......... They know that other Americans, inevitably some friends or family, or guys from their hometown, are desperately busy in this or that poor foreign country killing bad guys - and often enough inadvertently dispatching as well, the bad guys' children, relatives and friends along with a lot of family of 'good guys'.
The newscasters praising the wars and those who will die fighting them, the viewers across the nation sitting on their couches and believing everything they hear................
The charming actors speaking during the Grammy and Academy Awards shows, those in the theater audience, the millions watching them on TV.......
The marvelous athletes running the ball, the fans in the stands cheering, those tuned-in at home, and "those American servicemen and women 'serving' all around the world" watching..................
The priests, ministers, rabbis preaching about everything BUT the wars from the pulpit, the listening members of the congregations feeling religious togetherness ..................................
Have all at one time or another seen footage of their fellow Americans, dressed to kill, carrying star-wars-quality heavy weapons and electronic battle gear in one of dozens of poor former colonies....
Have seen footage of bombs being dropped or missiles excitingly fired followed by brilliant explosions and are aware that it is being done in the name of all Americans.....
Have paid their income tax, knowing they were funding all this mayhem on non-Americans in their own countries, towns, homes, described so absurdly and scarily as 'defending America, the freedoms of Americans, and the "American Way of Life" (understood to be much better than the way of life of the other ninety-five percent of humanity).
Your author, as a draftee, served in the occupation of Nazi Germany. Back then, we soldiers, and our families stateside, tended to hold all Germans responsible for the fifty million lives, taken mostly in hails of flying metal, subsequent to their government ordering their friends and family members to commit war crimes on innocent populations.
Everyone, everywhere, should pause to take thought that no one is completely innocent in country perpetrating crimes against humanity. Everyone is involved in one way or another. We servicemen in the US Army that had lost so many guys while pushing the Nazi armies out of invaded nations, pictured these Germans we afterward occupied, enjoying concerts, ball games, movies, their families, only some few upset about the loss of life, as their relatives, friends and countrymen were on a rampage of killing innocent citizens in other peoples countries.
Nobody during war WW II, nor any war ever, was just ordinary people. When the killing is going on, no one is uninvolved. Everyone in the aggressor nation, will be contributing, collaborating, supporting, acquiescing, be 'understanding' and accepting, grovelling in fear or oppose the war in the most effective way possible.
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