"I Can`t Write Left-Handed"

Today, President Obama launched a series of military missions in Iraq aimed at providing humanitarian aid to thousands threatened with genocide in that broken country. A country broken, I might add, by ill-advised neo-con inspired American intervention. This humanitarian effort may also lead to more malicious, although limited, military action to stem the tide of an ISIS led rampage in the country.

This glimmer of international benevolence is occurring while Putin’s Russia turns up the volume on its aggression in the Ukraine, Hamas and Netanyahu pumps up the usual Israeli/Palestinian strife in Gaza, war-like gang violence rages in Central America sending thousands of children fleeing into the arms of US Border Patrol Agents, and the Ebola virus silently stampedes through West Africa like General Sherman through Georgia.

All this…after spending over a decade fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan!!  The President’s foreign policy plate is full, to say the least. I trust his judgment and I buy his philosophy of exercising “smart power” and only fighting "smart wars." But I, like Bill Withers, will remember even the "smart wars" (in which there is death and destruction) like I remember ALL wars…”as one big drag!”

There seems to be a common thread  running through all wars…the death, of course...but also the pain and suffering it inflicts upon the innocents who fight and survive them…not to mention the horrors endured by those who are simply in the way.

It reminds me of a profoundly thought-provoking song written by Bill Withers in the 70s toward the end of the Vietnam War.  He told the story of a soldier he met who, returning from the war, had lost the use of one arm.  The soldier poignantly stated that he was doing okay, “getting shot at didn’t bother him, it was getting shot that shook him up.” That song was entitled, “I Can’t Write Left-Handed,” and it should serve as a reminder to young and old that war is not a video game…and that American soldiers bleed just like enemy soldiers do.

John Legend and The Roots smashed a remake of the Withers classic, and I’m sure Withers is proud.  Check it out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqQBpd31SxM

 

May wisdom reside with our President...courage with our soldiers...and may tranquility eventually descend upon our world.

 

Until we rendezvous...

Peace!!