Tag Archives: Agent Orange

War, Oil, and Family

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(No one came up with an answer to my last blog. So I will keep trying.)

 

In my life, War and Oil are intertwined like a crown of thorns and thistles around Family. They make my love bleed. The biggest thorns are war, causing untold injuries the results of which I see and weep over, every damn day: Agent Orange causes diabetes, coronary heart disease, all of which blossom into strokes, heart attacks, stents, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, etc., etc., etc. Every war breeds mental disabilities, PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury, leading to alcoholism, other addictions, cigarettes, depression, suicide . . . etc., etc., etc. There is no end.

Really?

Yeah.

The last decade of wars aches for more oil. Please, we must have it. Oh, and keep the oil companies in profit (Billions a quarter? No prob.). Who cares if us lowly peons have to pay more and more for gas? Grow that crown of thorns, war, by ensuring the thistles, oil companies, are as healthy as possible. Those two weeds are choking our priorities of life right off the planet. Soon, flowers, trees, wilderness will be merely another challenge to overcome in order to feed the weeds. Well, actually, they already are. Don’t look now but a fracking well may be moving in next door.

 

Then there is family, our loved ones, those who support us when we fight for our country, defend freedom. They support us and cry blood for years after we come back. If we come back. Are we defending freedom, or ensuring the continued survival of an overwhelming machine of war and support for oil. Can we tolerate $10 a gallon, or will civil war result in son fighting father? Sister killing brother? What is the price we are willing to pay for driving our cars to work? Mowing the golf course twice a week? Four-wheeling for fun over wilderness terrain?

 

We are the most powerful nation the world has ever seen and we act like adolescents in conservation, peaceful negotiations, and putting love before violence. Can we survive? That is why I wrote Dan’s War, to ask some of these questions, and get people to think. Every word, action, and evolution in Dan’s War is not only possible but becoming more probable every day. It can happen. Tomorrow. And the only thing left will be our humanity—if we haven’t destroyed that, too, with war. In Dan’s War humanity may save the hero. May. We must find a way to make humanity work, to rid beauty and peace and all those creations that make us laugh and cry, from the most destructive and ugly force in history: War.

 

As long as we are at war, ugly things happen, like killing children, massacring villages, virginity checks. Who knows, we might even drop a nuclear bomb or five that kills millions, “To Save More.” How can war not cause bad things, when war sucks out love and preaches kill thy enemy, and do it now, and move on; kill more. Can you find a way to stop it? Please.

 

I know you have hope. We have a whole generation of new fodder for war that we can save with that hope. Do it. Find a way to prevent another war.

Maybe even a cookie?

Milt

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What if EVERY DAY was Veteran’s Day, Whether you Liked it or Not?

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I don’t have their problems, thank God. They had to spend months and sometimes years wondering if the next IED or RPG would have their name on a piece of its shrapnel. Or, they already got their brain pan blasted and now can’t figure out how to make a simple to-do list. Maybe they came away with a mangled eye or leg. Could be the only thing that happened was running through a jungle that had just been sprayed with Agent Orange, and now they’ve got diabetes or prostate cancer or had a heart attack. Yep, that’s right—we gave them that. Not the enemy. The U.S. government. And in a democracy that means us. You and me. So we should be responsible for their rehab, paying their family if they can’t get a job, making sure they get surgery or medication for their illnesses.

Not all of them had really traumatic experiences in the service. Many had a great job with good friends, and then got discharged into an economy that has no jobs and gang
members that want to take a piece of “the war hero” every day. All they really want is to feel a part of something more important, feel useful again. But, just like in Vietnam, something happened when they were gone. The U.S. of A. changed. Now they must change, too. And we must help them.

 

No. Veteran’s Day is only once a year for most of us. For them it’s every day, whether they like it or not. Memories haunt them, or are carved into their anatomy.

Click on this video and click through the initial advertisement, if one comes up.

I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to help those who have sacrificed. That’s why I work for the VA. It is also a big reason I wrote Dan’s War. I hate it that our soldiers must fight in a land most would never have dreamed of going, nor wanted to. They have to fight for oil, which happens to allow us freedom. I want to be green, tomorrow; but there’s getting to work, visiting relatives, heating my house—all things that require fossil fuels. I hate and love oil every day. We must keep trying to be green, and to stop war,
for those that have served, and for our future sons and daughters.

That’s why, beginning December 1 2011, $1 for every Dan’s War sold will go to the VA.

Maybe you have something you can do every day for veterans, too. It doesn’t have to be much. But with the war in Afghanistan winding down, funding for the VA is already
reducing—out of sight, out of mind. I’m not saying we need another war, God no. We just need to keep helping the veterans until each and every one has recovered from the horrors they experienced to allow us to continue living in freedom.

They sacrificed for us. The least we could do is sacrifice something for them.

Don’t make Veterans Day only one day a year. Do something every day.

http://www.volunteer.va.gov/