Soldiers
Three in a week.
The “Honor Roll of American Service Personnel, killed”
A public service of the PBS Newshour.
Fourteen, twelve, and twelve, I think. Dead.
Dear soldiers.
About 2000 dead, I stopped crying.
Every face someone I coulda known.
Some hope of that face never to be found.
3000 now, in a war we should not have waged.
3000 persons.
kids.
corporals,
sergeants,
colonels.
people I coulda known.
There was a time I could have been there, done the amazing job of killing. But I will never know what it is to be them. To know what it is to kill. And knowing the people back home don’t have any idea what it’s like.
A war for no reason. A fight we cannot win. People dying for no real truth. At the bidding of a demagogue.
This war is being fought in the land of the most holy, to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. That is not a coincidence. George W. Bush has read revelations. It is a war set between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. And people are dying. The signs of the end times are upon us, or so says The Bible. Bush is trying to save the world for the righteous. Too bad it is he who is being the aggressor. It is he who will lead us towards Biblical devastation. Or so says The Bible.
Perhaps the end will come on 12/23/12, the end of the Mayan calendar. I will be on the right side. Not smitten by fire or whatever The Bible says, but without my dollar bill and other signs of the beast, which is Capitalism, I will be saved. Or so says the Bible.
Thirty-eight by my count. In one week. Some have been worse. That is real. That is not faith.
Those are kids I coulda known.
A war based on Biblical text.
Written two-thousand years ago.
By four different sources.
And some guy, Paul, who didn’t even know Jesus.
It might be correct. Stranger things…
But how sure are you that you are on the right side?
When three-thousand soldiers are dead.