Father's Day

I haven't really gotten personal on this thing, but to me this is pretty significant.

When I was young, I was really into the military. If a movie had war in it, I watched it. I had a BB gun and pretended that was my M-16. I made models of fighter jets, played with the little green army men, and played "army" like other kids would play tag or baseball. For some reason, we have a few Jane's books so my brother and I memorized all sorts of facts about anti-aircraft guns, tanks, jets, and so on. We had a Tandy 1000, and a simulator (wire frame) with missions into Libya, and we were damn good at performing the Split-S, Immelman, and other maneuvers. I ended up joining the Army National Guard, and then later transferring over to the Navy doing four years in both. I had to do basic training over again because of the transfer and had fun both times (I have to say the Army training was more fun though).

At the time, it was still during the cold war. No one ever really got sent off to war. The worst was some stories about stuff that happens on the DMZ in Korea. I didn't go to Desert Storm because of a unit transfer for college. I transferred from a construction unit to an artillery unit, so the unit I left was getting called up for clean up efforts and the unit I went to was coming back. I got out of the Navy before 2000 and got used to life as a civilian.

It didn't take too long with the current conflict in Iraq for me to understand the real cost of war. I went from a time when the soldier was glorified and because there was no conflict or war there was no actual misuse of the military on a grand scale at least. Sure there was some drug operations, or peace keeping missions, but nothing on the scale we see today. The military was pretty out of the news. Now that there is a large scale conflict going on, I sent a lot of time on "Why are we in Iraq?". I dug for information and what I ended up with is simply a fight for resources (oil). Protecting the American oil dollar. I was all for a just cause, but was unable to find one. I find out that we are just using our military so that corporations can profit. But instead of the corporations hiring their own military, we are using soldiers that think they are defending freedom to do it.

Now I was in a position that my own father was in during Vietnam. We both see the unjust war that is happening. And we both hate the idea that our sons might end up going to fight and die for corporate interest. What's a father to think or do when he's told this war may go on for 100 years? At least enlistment is still voluntary at the moment, but what if my son gets enamored with the military like I was?

My son isn't the most popular kid in his school, and he likes doing his own thing with the friends he does have. He was talking to me one day, about some other kids he doesn't hang out with, but they sounded friendly. I asked, "Why is it, you don't hang out with Daniel?" and he replied "Because all Daniel talks about is war and guns." Wow, how cool is that?

So this Fathers day I received a gift from my son. A "pinch pot" that has inscriptions carved into it. On the clay pot is the peace symbol. My son has already learned what took me a lifetime to realize.