I’m sitting here watching “Schindler’s List.” “What is a person worth to you?”, says Amon Goethe. He’s the villain, but he speaks for all of us in some ways. What is a person worth to us? We’re surrounded by the main stream media and politicians who have reduced the Iraq War, the War on Terror, Gaza, Darfur and the endless conflicts around the world to meaningless euphemisms.
Everyday people are being murdered in the name of democracy or in the name of one religion or other or whatever policy. Soldiers don’t fight and die on battlefields for countries or flags, they fight and die to protect their buddies. It’s survival that’s all. There is no flag waving, no martial music. So called civilians are killed and called collateral damage. Can you imagine such an inhuman word to describe what has been created by God. When will this perversion of the natural order end?
Anyone who questions this sinfulness is labeled extreme, left wing, out of touch. Today I watched a clip of Nora O’Donnell of Hardball intimating that Cindy Sheehan was actually doing harm to the United States by fasting for peace. Ms. O’Donnell seemed agitated by Mrs. Sheehan’s grace and cheerful demeanor. I was amazed that Mrs. Sheehan could maintain her calm under such and onslaught.
Recently much fuss has been raised about a young marine recording a song about killing some Iraqi girls. I think it was called “Haji Girl.” There are other stories coming back from the war zone speaking of the professionalism of our soldiers and how these murders are not typical. These men are professionals. They don’t murder innocents, they only kill the enemy in battle. The battle lines get blurred. It’s not natural to kill other people, that’s why you must go through basic training when entering the military.
The young Marine has shown us what we don’t want to see. We don’t want to see our combat and war as murder. We’ve been at war since 1941 with very little actual peace time in between. We say we’re a Christian nation, but you’d have a tough time convincing anyone of that if you witnessed our foreign policy.
What is a person worth to you? Peace.
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schindler’s list, war, peace, spiritual