You Want Them Dead? Do It Yourself!

Disclaimer: This post might make me sound stupid or naïve, but I don’t care. It’s my small sliver of the Internet and my current thoughts 😊. 

I really don’t “get” war. When I watched Game of Thrones, I found it weak and pathetic when they had “to the death” matches and the people had proxies fighting in their place. There may be actual words for what I’m talking about but I don’t know them and don’t feel like looking them up. Then, I was thinking today. . . we do the same thing. Actually, that’s going to bug me, so I will look it up. 

Okay, so trial by combat/trial by battle is what I see for the Game of Thrones thing. Doesn’t sound much better than “to the death” matches, so I’ll stick with mine. Anyway, global-wide, that’s what we still do to this day. I get that it may have been necessary at one point in time, but it’s 2024. Can’t we just give it a rest? 

I respect the heck out of our military people. They put themselves on the frontline for people they will never meet and do so willingly. They help in times of natural disasters and crises without asking for a thing from us civilians. But to be told that you are being sent to another country to literally kill people you’ve never heard of or met because your overlords want “power,” are unhappy or slighted about something, and you are being told to do the same? What the actual hell? 

If the people demanding these proxy wars were forced to fight for themselves, they would be scrambling to find a solution to whatever bug was up their butt that day. Leave the innocent out of it. On top of that, these militarians see and do things most people will never see or do in a lifetime, just to come home and be labeled murderers and worse. 

I wasn’t around for Vietnam (my uncle was there), but the only thing I feel for those soldiers is extreme sadness and injustice. These American boys were unceremoniously plucked from their homes and plopped into extremely foreign territory and told to kill. For their sacrifice, they were promised (if they made it home alive) healthcare, GI bills, and a pat on the back with hardly much follow-through on most promises. What?? 

Now, many, many kids fresh out of high school can’t control themselves enough to transition from living with their parents/families to living essentially on their own in dorms, fraternities, or off-campus while attending college. Why would anyone, especially flippin’ leaders of a country, think it would be a good idea to strap them with guns and explosives? Not to mention, Vietnam was a pretty dirty war with Agent Orange on our side and the strapping of explosives to women and children and using them as their own little kamikazes, on the Vietcong’s side, but I won’t get into that. 

After seeing and being involved in atrocities beyond our comprehension, these boys were sent home to folks with appallingly misplaced anger calling them murderers, baby killers, rapists, and whatever vile thing the reactionary brainless could think of. Who does that? How can someone say they are all for “peace,” then turn around and spout such hate to soldiers who did not choose to go to war? I just don’t get it; sadly, I think about it often. I am against war, but I am not going to berate and hate on those who are merely doing what they are told or forced to do. 

Because people learn absolutely nothing from history, the same thing is going on today on a bigger scale thanks to the Internet, which really grinds my gears. You cannot publicly state that you feel for one or both sides of the current goings-on between Palestine and Israel. If your comment gets any sort of traction, you’re virtually torn apart at best and meet serious consequences that impact your entire life in worse cases (most recently, the Harvard students that are being blacklisted and strong-armed). 

I don’t understand how this can be happening and people still say they don’t know how Nazism spread to people who were against Hitler. It’s the same concept going on but with connectivity and globalization making it worse. I will not be told who I can have sympathy for. I don’t really have much to lose, however.