Homework for the Overactive Brain

Today's Quote--"Happy birthday to me, Happy birthday to me..."

Monday, November 11, 2002

 

Today's quote--"Most people coming out of war feel lost and resentful. What had been a minute-to-minute confrontation with yourself, your struggle with what courage you have against discomfort, at the least, and death at the other end, ties you to the people you have known in the war and makes for a time others seem alien and frivolous."--Lillian Hellman

Happy Veteran's Day.
Have you hugged a vetern today?
Here are some more quotes about war that I think most veterans would feel acurate...:

"War does not determine who is right-only who is left."--Anon.
"There are no atheists in foxholes"--William Thomas Cummings
"In peace, sons bury their fathers; in war, fathers bury their sons."--Herodotus
"Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come."--Carl Sandburg
"The object of war is to survive it."--John Irving
"What the hell difference does it make, left or right? There were good men lost on both sides."--Brendan Behan
"The supreme excellence is not to win a hundred victories in a hundred battles. The supreme excellence is to subdue the armies of your enemies without even having to fight them."--Sun Tzu
"In time of war the first casualty is truth."--Boake Carter
"Boys are the cash of war. Whoever said: we're not free spenders--doesn't know our like."--John Ciardi
"Sweet is war to those who have never expereinced it."--Latin proverb
"There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but boys, it is all hell."--William T. Sherman
"There will be no verterans of World War III."--Walter Mondale

I know a lot of people on this campus can't stand to think of the military at all, but I think they forget that soilders are human beings too. Human beings who've been trained and put into positions where they have to kill other human beings. *sigh* We mustn't forget that they too are victims of war. Find a veteran of any war, from either side, and give them a hug. Thank them, remind them that there are people who care about the sacrifices they made in the process of protecting (in the way they thought best) what they thought most important, usually the safety and freedom of their families and friends. It doesn't matter if they were right or if that's what they were really doing, or what the reasons for the war were. They were there because they had to be, either because of duty, law, or the search for glory, they were doing what they thought best at the time. And they went through hell for it. Compassion encompases all humans, soilders too. So hug a vet, wear a poppy, cheer a parade, pray for those lost, and make efforts in your life to prevent any more young boys from going off to war. That's what I do. That's just how I feel.

GL 12:05 AM