Aquarian Weekly 5/9/01
REALITY CHECK

WAR IS HELL
& OTHER EXCLUSIVES

As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.
- Oscar Wilde

Big story this week: Innocent people died in Viet Nam. Other noteworthy events were the sun came up today and when you stop breathing…you die.

Stop the presses: War is Bad. Put it up in huge letters on the front page and send a copy to Dan Rather when you can wake him.

It was apparently newsworthy for Time magazine to slap former Senator and Navy SEAL, Bob Kerrey on its cover for his recent revelations about killing women and children in combat. At first he wasn't sure he didn't kill the enemy. He might have killed women and children. Somebody killed women and children. Whatever.

This is still an issue for anti-Viet Nam activists that cannot seem let go. They somehow feel by laying it all out on the line about the horrors of that unjust war, as if any war is just, then a nation and humanity will be healed. These are the same dupes who protest this country's involvement in ceasing the systematic eradication of people due to religion or race or some other insignificant attribute.

But who among us can blame them? Anytime a father, brother or friend gets shipped against his will to a jungle halfway across the globe to be slaughtered for the pride or ideology of the rich and powerful, it tends to take all talk of glory out of the thing. No one wrote any clever musical ditties or memorable slogans promoting that.

War is Bad. But war is also the best thing a country can do for its economy. There are still scholars and historians who swear on stacks of Bibles that every war from Ancient Greece to WWII to that asinine Desert Storm was the result of sagging economies. War is good for money and if there is killing, mass or otherwise, there is most likely money involved: Money, power, God, all of that crap. No Time cover or endless debate on burning babies and massacred innocents will make it stop.

Blood is on the hands of Kerrey and his troupe. This is the unfortunate reality of war, but blame, fault, public derision and outcry should not accompany it. Kerrey was put into one of life's most impossible situations. He was a soldier. His job was to kill and break stuff. Mostly, Kerrey wanted to stay alive. In the midst of chaos and disorder, shit happens.

The Shit. Isn't that what the poor souls like Kerrey called battle in South East Asia? Kerrey has to live with that, but the blame, no sir.

Blame goes to John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. This was their war, enacted strategically by the heartless kill mongers who culled paychecks from the Pentagon, the CIA and the military. If there is anything resembling a hell, there is a special wing housing them. And they are surely trading anecdotes with the litany of leaders who sent the masses to their doom for a patch of land.

But these have been the gory details of civilization since its senseless inception; so dissecting these concepts, as if it happened for the first time yesterday, is redundant and silly and really should stop. Now.

The ONLY reason to perpetuate this sorrowful mess, beyond television and radio ratings and newspaper sales, is the remote possibility that someone might learn about how disgusting and meaningless the loss of ANY life is over rifts about borders or perspective. But that will not happen, because as long as there is the penis and available currency, atrocities will soon follow. Dredging up memories of the poor souls sent across the globe to set this horror show in motion does no good for anyone.

Sure its interesting, like watching idiots eat bugs for a million dollars, but after its over we'll be distracted by Cuban refugee children or a celebrity drug overdose. What is most important is that we understand that this country has been involved in some heinous war crimes. This is a prerequisite for any country. Ask the original natives of any continent. Ask Native Americans.

Viet Nam was a major fuck up. It was wrong and pointless and costs thousands of lives for little reason beyond ego. But in the grand scale of the putrid abortion man has made of this globe, Viet Nam is nothing more than blowing through a toll on the Garden State Parkway.

We used to revile people who came forward with the truth about war. Then we applauded them. Now we want them to stand for everything that is bad about anything. And when they are done, we wonder how they sleep or could have kept it hidden for so long.

Bob Kerrey wanted to be president. He failed. Now he is pouring his heart out to magazine editors and 60 Minutes. But this is not going to mean a hill of beans to people who lay in wait for the next big American invasion, so the sales of ammo and helicopters and flags can rise and CNN can make media stars of cub reporters willing to stand on rooftops and be bombarded by missile fire. It makes for great television and wins awards, don't you know.

People will protest, make noise and eventually governments will come to some compromise on how to satiate the masses and gear up for another slice of Hades. And in the middle of it all will be another Bob Kerrey, and he will kill innocents and be haunted by it. He may or may not tell us about it. But it won't make a fucking difference.

Hey, did you hear?

War is Bad.

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