memorial

It is Memorial Day, and I have been watching a lot of Gundam lately.  This means I have been spending more time than usual contemplating war, peace, soldiers, duty, honor, criminal orders, justice, mercy, military history, human nature, consequences, just war theory, and the terrible things we can do if we are convinced we are doing the right thing or that our cause is just or that our goal is noble and right and thus our means are justified no matter what.  I have been thinking about the soldiers who are alive and dead and the military relatives of my friends. I have been thinking of my grandfathers and the soldiers still POW and MIA.  I have been wishing that people would just stop having wars and armed conflicts, that they would stop finding causes they would kill for.  Conflict is the heart of a story, and humans, warped and twisted as we are, live and die in stories of conflict real and imagined. I long for the time when all those stories are told and finished and there is a new story structure in place and peace is all that is left behind.

To all the soldiers who have sacrificed so much and to the families who have lost so much, I send my thanks and prayers.  To the dead and the living both, thank you for trying to do what you thought was right.