A few thoughts on another topic...intermission, so to speak

In preparation for our June 6th remembrances, the roomie and I have been watching "Band of Brothers" again. We've both been through the set a few times, so it's not like a new revelation.

I'm always in awe of the real people these stories represent. War ceased being any kind of "noble enterprise" about the time gunpowder hit the scene, and impersonal death at a distance became the new paradigm. The commitment men and women in combat show to each other has so much impact on me. Thirty-three years ago I declined to participate in the military milieu, mostly because I could not accept being placed in a position where refusing to obey someone who's logic I did not agree with could be a federal offense. In the private sector, if my boss was an idiot who tried to make me do something unwise, I could just quit. Can't do that on the field of battle.

These folks were working in a different environment; I believe the fight against the Axis powers in WWII was a worthy fight against a dictatorial, expansionistic regime, committing atrocities we hardly knew of. So many answered that call, to provide the ultimate sacrifice; which sacrifice, in the heat of battle, was not made so much to great ideals as it was to the preservation of their comrade's lives.

I am so humbled by that.

I know, too, that many of those adversarial combatants were themselves victims of their regimes-many did not fully understand what their governments were trying to accomplish. Many were just trying to do their duty as they saw appropriate. That combatants on both sides have been able to reconcile their roles between themselves proves their genuine humanity; I only hope we can find that reconciliation between the combatants still engaged in the conflicts of today.

The challenges that face us as a species, to assure our survival, far outweigh our ideological differences...I only hope we all realize that and act upon it, before it becomes too late.