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Recently I have heard that there is a concern in the metro-Columbus area regarding the state of health care services for our veterans. Apparently the Department of Veterans Affairs is having problems meeting the current demand, and the nearest V.A. hospital for veterans in Columbus is over an hour's drive away. If our national administration is going to talk war, then thought and action should also be given to our young men and women upon their return to home-life. Although I did not see combat, I am officially a Vietnam Era Veteran, and someday if I am out of employment or medical insurance, I may need to use veteran health benefits.
To be honest, all this talk of war makes me really uncomfortable, not to mention the fact that my son, who joined the reserves for college money, has now been activated with orders to go to Turkey. And what worries me almost as much as that fact and its worst-case scenario is the notion of an on-going war without end. As I see it, if we as a nation did not waste so many resources on warmongering, then we would be able to supply everyone (not just veterans) with decent healthcare along with peace and security! Of course this would require rewriting the current economic fiction greased by oil guzzling and greed, in addition to soul searching as a nation to decide what kind of future we really wish to create.
The biggest challenge in all of this is getting past the horribly destructive and no longer viable notion of "US versus THEM." The reality is that there are no more them in the world; it is just us. The advances in communication and transportation have basically united us as a planet, and the advances in war technologies have given us no choice but to Live in Peace or Rest in Peace. We can either create a global village or a global graveyard. The question is: What role will America play in all of this? As the only so-called super-power left, we could be the creators of global economic justice and real security based on peacemaking; yet our national government seems determined to go in the opposite direction.
The 9/11 tragedy did not start the travail running rampant in the world today; it just brought it to our shores and no longer allowed us the luxury of denial. It is also being exploited to justify war. War does not make us safe and secure; it just breeds more war and reactive terrorism, while it debilitates our economy, leaving even fewer resources for healthcare and our veterans, not to mention the "Big Brother" intrusion into our Bill of Rights.
The spokesman of the Creator invoked by so many Americans, including our so-called nationally elected officials, said: "Blessed are the Peacemakers." What does this really mean? What does it say about war in the guise of peacekeeping?
9/11 was a threshold for America We have to make decisions about what kind of people we wish to be in this next millennium of what has come to be called the Common Era. A wise man once wrote: "The well-being of mankind, its peace and security, are unattainable unless and until its unity is firmly established." I suggest that the real destiny of America has to do with helping to bring about world unity based on grassroots democracy with liberty and justice for all.
To be honest, all this talk of war makes me really uncomfortable, not to mention the fact that my son, who joined the reserves for college money, has now been activated with orders to go to Turkey. And what worries me almost as much as that fact and its worst-case scenario is the notion of an on-going war without end. As I see it, if we as a nation did not waste so many resources on warmongering, then we would be able to supply everyone (not just veterans) with decent healthcare along with peace and security! Of course this would require rewriting the current economic fiction greased by oil guzzling and greed, in addition to soul searching as a nation to decide what kind of future we really wish to create.
The biggest challenge in all of this is getting past the horribly destructive and no longer viable notion of "US versus THEM." The reality is that there are no more them in the world; it is just us. The advances in communication and transportation have basically united us as a planet, and the advances in war technologies have given us no choice but to Live in Peace or Rest in Peace. We can either create a global village or a global graveyard. The question is: What role will America play in all of this? As the only so-called super-power left, we could be the creators of global economic justice and real security based on peacemaking; yet our national government seems determined to go in the opposite direction.
The 9/11 tragedy did not start the travail running rampant in the world today; it just brought it to our shores and no longer allowed us the luxury of denial. It is also being exploited to justify war. War does not make us safe and secure; it just breeds more war and reactive terrorism, while it debilitates our economy, leaving even fewer resources for healthcare and our veterans, not to mention the "Big Brother" intrusion into our Bill of Rights.
The spokesman of the Creator invoked by so many Americans, including our so-called nationally elected officials, said: "Blessed are the Peacemakers." What does this really mean? What does it say about war in the guise of peacekeeping?
9/11 was a threshold for America We have to make decisions about what kind of people we wish to be in this next millennium of what has come to be called the Common Era. A wise man once wrote: "The well-being of mankind, its peace and security, are unattainable unless and until its unity is firmly established." I suggest that the real destiny of America has to do with helping to bring about world unity based on grassroots democracy with liberty and justice for all.