by John R. Thomas

A conservative friend of mine asked me if I could tell what he reads and watches.  I replied, "Yes," I think I can. To start with you read the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. News and Report, and you watch the FOX channel on television."  "Was I correct?" I asked him.  "Yes, you are!" he replied.

I remember almost as yesterday the news that Vietnamese gunboats had attack US Navy destroyer!  This false news justified the expansion of U.S. forces in the Vietnam war.

More than ten years prior to that, however, North Korea attacked South Korea.  So some fifty –five years ago this August, my orders to active duty that September were to report to the COMMANDER DESRON SEVEN, San Diego for assignment as squadron chaplain of the eight ships, four in Division 71 and four in Division 72.  After sixteen months of that duty, mostly off the coasts of Korea, and twenty months of shore duty in San Diego and Great Lakes, Illinois.  I returned to the Ready Reserve, thankful to be home again and to start our family.  Outside of a mine exploding against one of our ships, killing eight men and wounding others, and a collision with another destroyer at sea, it was a relatively bloodless tour of duty.  I still have a good feeling toward the Navy and destroyermen (sic!).

I still subscribe to the TIN CAN SAILOR, a newspaper which helps me keep track of the past and the present among the small ships of the U.S. Navy.  Margaret and I attended a reunion in April in St. Louis.  We held a memorial service on the banks of the Mississippi River, with a floral wreath on the waters in memory of those who had died since our last reunion, and a prayer for peace for Afghanistan and Iraq and the Middle East.

I have ambivalent feelings about our Armed Forces, regretting our need for them.  I am outraged at the way they have been ill-used by our president and his defense department in both Afghanistan and Iraq.  I feel a great sadness for those nearly 1,000 who have already lost their lives in Iraq and for their loved ones, whose lives have also been forever changed.

Add to that figure the nearly 4,000 wounded, many very seriously, and the change in their lives and the lives of their families, wives, sweethearts, children, siblings and parents, and we begin to feel the enormity of the costs of these wars.  Add to those the over 10,000 others who were "otherwise" wounded and their families affected by their "wounds," we have an outstanding number of persons who will never be the same.  (P.S. my younger brother {now 76} was one of the latter from WWII and has been in VA hospitals off and on, since 1948, and the past four years in the Wisconsin Veterans’ Home).  But we , too often, avoid seeing the long-range effects of war on those who fight them and their families.

These totals don’t even include those untold thousands of civilians killed and wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq.  We are not involved in a "war on terror," which has been used to justify the loss of personal freedoms, but we do have a long, long struggle against terrorists, with no easy end in sight!

Yesterday I saw a Quaker bumper sticker which indicated that they had practiced peace since 1660!  I wish our Christian churches could have displayed the same bumper sticker.  As a world "power" our nation, despite the usual justifications, has a responsibility to God for the effects of the use of our power.  May God forgive us our nation’s blindness today, and may our leaders be guided in a search for peace as we its citizens make our voices heard in the cause of peace.