Secure yet?

There are a total of about 47,000 U.S. troops in Japan.

Can anyone explain this to me?  It has been 67 years since the end of hostilities.  The Korean War ended, the Vietnam War is over. Yet we still feel compelled to keep 47,000 U.S. troops in Japan?

The Japanese people don't like them there.  Crime is up (hey, they are young and pretty much bored).

We are borrowing money from the Chinese to pay for troops to watch the Chinese.  It is total insanity.

Our treatment of veterans is a shame

"Of the 850,000 disability claims currently pending before the (VA) department, more than 35,000, or 4 percent, are from World War II veterans."

What?  Talk about a back log!  Read the full article here.

A Poem

The End and the Beginning
by Wislawa Szmborska

After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won't
straighten themselves up, after all.
Someone has to push the rubble
to the sides of the road,
so the corpse-laden wagons can pass.

Someone has to get mired
in scum and ashes,
sofa-springs,
splintered glass,
and bloody rags.

Someone must drag in a girder
to prop up a wall.
Someone must glaze a window,
rehang a door.

Photogenic it's not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.

Again we'll need bridges
and new railway stations.

Sleeves will go ragged
from rolling them up.
Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls how it was.
Someone listens
and nods with unsevered head.
Yet others milling about
already find it dull.

From behind the bush
sometimes someone still unearths
rust-eaten arguments
and carries them to the garbage pile.

Those who knew
what was going on here
must give way to
those who know little.
And less than little.
And finally as little as nothing.

In the grass which has overgrown
causes and effects,
someone must be stretched out,
blade of grass in his mouth,
gazing at the clouds.

Wislawa Szmborska was a Polish poet. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1996. She died in 2002, at the age of 101.

Purposeful peace-keeping

My primary work is with homeless people. Peace-keeping is my "hobby."  But there is a direct link between my work at Operation Nightwatch, and the true cost of war.

We never really understand the cost of sending young men and women to kill people.  Here's a story from Thursday night:

It was about 10:30. My friend Evan and I stopped by one of the shelters where we hang out. I wear a clerical collar in the normal course of doing my late-night homeless work.  I'm not there to pound people or evangelize. Of course, I say that, but when you walk into a shelter wearing a collar, people want to talk.

Last night, a very-drunk shelter resident saw me. "Hey" he growled. "Read me something from my Bible."  He staggered around the room, found his Bible. I opened it up to Isaiah 25, read something about fine aged wine, and thought I could have done better.

He flipped over to Romans: "If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved," he slurred. "Now you read something." I read something, then he read something, back and forth.

Suddenly, his boisterous gravelly voice grew quiet.  Tender.  "I graduated Catholic. Went to Penn State.  Went to war.  Now this," pointing to his Bible, "is all I've got."

The damage we suffer when we go to war doesn't end when the bombs stop.

War's impact

The dog of slain Petty Officer Jon Tumilson refused to leave his side during the Navy SEAL’s funeral earlier this week in Rockford, Iowa. The heartbreaking photo taken by his cousin, Lisa Pembleton, shows Tumilson’s dog Hawkeye lying by the casket. 

Navy SEAL U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Jon T. Tumilson was among the 30 American troops killed August 6 when Taliban insurgents downed their Chinook helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade. At his funeral in Iowa, his dog Hawkeye paid his last respects, walking up to the casket, lying down in front of it, and heaving a sigh.

Pembleton wrote on Facebook that Hawkeye was Tumilson’s loyal pet who wouldn't leave his master’s side during the funeral in Rockford, Iowa.

“I felt compelled to take one photo to share with family members that couldn't make it or couldn't see what I could from the aisle,” Pembleton wrote.

Tumilson's family and/or friends also posted this looping, time lapsed video of Hawkeye at the service...commencing application of kleenex tissues now...... 

Day-after Memorial Day

The price of war is much greater than we think.

Returning veterans are profoundly marked for life. All the flag-waving and hoo-hah cannot make up for the lack of adequate support for our veterans.

Read about the inadequacy of our response here.

Just how much money?

A friend handed me this brochure, based on President Obama's 2012 federal discretionary budget, sent to Congress in February 2011. Percentages are rounded.

Military, Department of Defense, War, Veterans Affairs, and Nuclear Weapons programs = 60%
Health and Human Services = 7%
Education = 6%
State Department = 5%
on down to
Transportation = 1%

Dwight D. Esienhower said: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."