American Wars

Memorial Day My dear mother, who died last year at the ripe old age of 102, was adamantly, unequivocally ANTI-WAR. After all, her husband and father to her four children, Doreen, Pat, Mark and Jay died at the age of 42 as a result of WWII leaving her a grieving widow of four small children, living in a second floor flat in the west end of New Bedford. With typical American heroism, my mom put all 4 of us kids through college, grounded us with good strong values, and even went back to college herself in her 50's and earned a college degree. Whenever Memorial Day and Veteran's Day roll around each year, I am engulfed with conflict. On the one hand, I have tremendous respect for The Greatest Generation of American Heroes who stepped to the plate and helped the rest of the world overcome Hitler's Nazi's and the Holocaust. As anti-war as I am, I do believe WWII is a knowable exception to the rule that all wars are evil. On the other hand, there's no question we've had a long sad history in meddling in the affairs of other countries, often prodded along to do so by the Miliary Industrial Complex that Eisenhower warned us about.