SETTLE OLD SCORES OUTSIDE, WIN THE BIGGER WAR INSIDE

 

 

Small wars turn into bigger war, small conflict to large scale

How far back do you go to find a good war?

It’s not that war, the Good War, the Last Good War, the Big One.

The end results justified the means in WWII.

Industrial death and human neglect in the Axis Powers didn’t stand against motivated Allies.

But add fire bombing and nuclear weapons to any side and you get questions of proportion.

And fairness. Can’t forget the effort toward fairness.

WWII seemed to redefine fairness.The biggest wars do that.

If you run human gas chambers, use humans for experiments, for bayonet practice, you can’t complain about fairness and proportion.

Doesn’t mean they don’t, though.

The bigger war just looks small

Was the Korean War really a police action, a regional conflict.

That’s what we learned about The Forgotten war.

When I asked my Marine Corps dad about his job in Korea, I asked if he was a policeman since it was a police action.

He said no, he wasn’t a policeman.

Wars define their era

The Korean War, an Asian land war, pitted the new United Nations against North Korea, Russia, and China.

It was China’s coming out party on the world stage like America showed up at the big table after defeating an Old World Power in the Spanish-American War.

China didn’t loose, but they didn’t win, either.

Winning the bigger war takes baby steps

The Soviet Union sponsored communist China during it’s civil war.

They followed up by helping North Korea and China in the Korean War.

China sponsored Vietnam, or North Vietnam, in the Vietnam War.

American soldiers bled against communist regimes too often, but somehow kept the world from blowing up.

From the first Iraq War, the second Iraq War, to the Afghanistan War, where were the Russians?

They were fighting a bigger war with baby steps

The Russian, U.S., and England alliance won WWII together, but Russia had the most losses.

Germany and Japan together took nearly seven million military and civilian deaths.

The Soviets had twenty million alone by this chart.

Along with Axis totals of over eight million and Allied totals over forty eight million military and civilian losses, protecting against bad guys comes at a steep cost.

Who are the bad guys working the stage today, and who works against them?

Is watching nationalism creep into new places, sponsor new clients, take new land, clue enough?

You win the bigger war with vigilance and persistence.

Living life with vigilance and persistence also works.

Make a plan, hope for the best, adjust accordingly.

But it’s hard.

People get tired, get sick, and shut down.

Ideas get crushed, creativity neglected, until all you feel is, “Leave me alone.”

Shutting your eyes to current events won’t help when you decide to open them.

You may need an appointment with Dr. Jackson Brown to find help:

Doctor, my eyes have seen the years
And the slow parade of fears without crying
Now I want to understand

I have done all that I could
To see the evil and the good without hiding
You must help me if you can

Doctor, my eyes
Tell me what is wrong
Was I unwise to leave them open for so long

‘Cause I have wandered through this world
And as each moment has unfurled
I’ve been waiting to awaken from these dreams
People go just where they will
I never noticed them until I got this feeling
That it’s later than it seems

Doctor, my eyes
Tell me what you see
I hear their cries
Just say if it’s too late for me

Doctor, my eyes
Cannot see the sky
Is this the prize for having learned how not to cry