Friday, August 13, 2004

Pearl Harbor

What have we done with our freedom?

Pearl Harbor happened, sixty years ago. It brought the Americans into a war that the soldiers saw a righteous, noble, necessary.

At the Punchbowl National Cemetery words carved in stone tell the living that the dead died not in vain. A clear call to arms put the innocent in harms way. Lives sacrificed for the idea of freedom.

The enemy: overt and unashamed of it's designs on the world. The spin doctors not relied on so heavily. The human appetite demonstrates its might. An early phase of a borderless world achieved by political rapacity.

A war was fought. Lines redefined. Concentrated power reassigned. Surviving soldiers returned as heros, liberators.

On December 7th, America remembers that infamous attack on U.S. military instilations on the Island of O'ahu. We mourn the dead. We recognize the living that lived through it. Honour the warriors.

I wonder if we don't also placate and pacify them. Young soldiers walked their lives into battle: hand to hand, bayonet and fist, mathematically, academically, and with machines of modern wizardry. For God, for Country, for Destiny.

What have we done with what they fought to foster in this world?

The war ended with the defeat of the Axis Powers. What the Axis represented continued unabated: commercial conformity, consumer culture, industrial servitude, convienience addiction, nationalistic xenophobia, media consolidation, economic enslavement. We answer "here!" when called a human resource. A resource like coal, oil, or water.

We still have the freedom to question the wisdom of our "elected" officials. What will we do with it?

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