Cheyenne [11/18/2002]

By Cheyenne

Are our sons or daughters going to war?Over the last few months several of my friends have expressed considerable concern about their children becoming involved in a war on the other side of the world.There has been a lot of saber rattling going on. People talking war that never held a saber in their life. In the Marines the saber is a tool but today the saber is largely used to salute a friend. The saber, a sword with a broad back, is usually held in one hand, except when in war the holder of the saber is more motivated to use both hands on the handle and swing with all your might. How many in Washington ever saw a saber? To say nothing about knowing how to use one.What kind of a slant do you think the world news would have if Tom Brokaw was knee deep in bodies and all he had to depend on was a Marine Corps saber?Do you think all these anti-war folks could fight if they knew their body was going to get dragged around the street of some hind end of the world called Baghdad?Saber rattlin'. The men that have been there know what is going on. It is a game; but it is not a game. Some of us have been warriors all our life. It is a state of being. We cannot help ourself. We are what we are. With both hands on the handle. But the question is, are our children going to war?Looking at the situation, with the election behind us, with the power that is in our hands, I see no way for the rest of the world letting Saddam being stupid enough to go to war. The king has no clothes. The naked truth is we can change the geography of the whole world any time we want. And George knows it, as do the leadership of all the rest of the world.As an old Marine, with both hands on the handle, even if a million or two of the enemy are willing to die trying to kill us, they are going to lose. If they want to stone us to death, we got all the rocks. Yes they might have "bad stuff" in their bombs, but if it is bad enough to kill us it is going to get them also.Again the men that are experienced warriors know when a war is going to happen. Your insides tell you, and today war is not in the picture, as far as my insides tell me. A more specific example is when a serviceman goes to town, when they see a good lookin' woman, your eyes meet, you know right then what is going to happen, could happen, might happen, surely will happen. The older we grow the quicker we pick up on it.Do you wake in the morning with both hands on the saber?Well kick my butt.War is not a nice place to be. The people that make war are not usually the people that fight the war. It is our sons and daughters that do the fighting any more. Mostly by remote control. But then there is the day that some "Joe" has to go in and clean-up, and remember it was a Marine that got his butt dragged around the streets of some forsaken place off in Africa, where the average annual income is a little less than $50 a year, pennies a day. Is your son's life worth that?