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Saturday, December 22, 2012

The Red Bomb


Imagine you are a young girl, about 11 years old out one sunny carefree summer’s day riding your bicycle. Imagine that you and your family just moved to a housing complex available to the families of military personell and your Dad is in the Navy, so this housing complex with it’s look alike buildings and it’s neatly paved streets all laid out in a neat grid-like pattern is near an Air Force base. Imagine you hear a sound like thunder approaching with a strange added whistling noise. You look up to see where the clouds are for the oncoming storm because last time you noticed the sky was bright blue, absent of clouds. What you see instead of clouds is a low flying black jet, approaching with a speed so fast it leaves you breathless and as you hold your breath and notice that it is flying so low that it almost touches the trees and you can see markings painted on the slanted back wings and as it gets closer to you and the noise becomes deafening, you see what you have imagined a bomb looks like, painted bright red in contrast to the black of the plane. Your mind goes into overdrive! You are wondering through your paralyzing fear “Is that a bomb? And am I going to die right here right now?” You feel the hot tears streaming down your face and you think, “But why? Why is this flying monster with the red bomb going to kill me?” Just as quickly as the “bomber” approached and shook your reality to bits, its gone. Disappearing into a bright blue sky with no clouds. Leaving you shaking, and gripping onto the handle bars of your bicycle unable to put one foot in front of the other to run to the imagined safety of your home, where you know your Mother is cooking in the kitchen and your brothers are glued to the tv, watching cartoons on this peaceful, Saturday, Summer’s day unaware of what you have just experienced. What’s there now in your mind and heart is a fear and an insecurity that you will never be able to erase from your memory. You are only 11 years old and you were not hurt, you were not blown to bits by a bomb drop and you have no answers to your questions of why. Why do we wage war, why do we think we are safer with these killing machines flying in our skies? That young girl was me and I never felt safer at all in this country of ours from that moment on. I realized at only 11 years old for the first time that my government had the means then to wipe even me off the face of the earth. I never feared another country coming in to destroy Americans any more than I began to fear my own government!

The insecure feelings of being in that position, vulnerable to a plane or a drone targeting you is tremendous. I am filled with empathy for the people that our Predator Drones target and bomb. I am filled with horror and fear for the people and the children especially of Palestine who were just almost wiped out by the bombing of the Israeli government. Not to mention the many who have endured this in our wars past.

Also just as horrific are the mass killings we are experiencing in this country and maybe will continue to experience if we don’t do something about the ease with which to purchase weapons that kill. People who say guns don’t kill, have little idea of what they are saying in my humble opinion. If that pilot in that jet airplane had pulled a switch and had dropped a bomb on my head he would have been killing me WITH a bomb. People kill people WITH guns in their hands! They kill people WITH knives and axes and other lethal weapons.

I think now is the time to start “beating our swords into plowshares” It’s a statement that conjures up pictures of great peace and a lack of aggression. Instead of being afraid and being of the mind set that you have to protect ourselves from some imagined or real enemy, we need to start more pooling of the energy of loving each other, accepting each other, helping each other and stop the fighting over who’s right it is to bear arms and who’s right it isn’t!

I don’t’ want my Grandchildren or anyone’s children for that matter to have to live in a world where at any moment they can be vaporized just because they might be standing out in the street in their neighborhood riding a bike, or sitting in a classroom with their friends, or walking down to the village market, thinking all is right with the world and then all of a sudden in the blink of an eye, have to realize that it’s not.

6 comments:

  1. A very poignant and topical piece She....obviously I agree with the points you make, violence begets violence, it always did and it always will, remote controlled weapons of mass destruction like drones makes human life worthless. We struggle for a better future.

    Happy New Year to you!

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  2. Thank you for reading Aaran. Yes we do continue to struggle, hopefully we will get there before we blow the whole world up.

    Happy New Year to you as well.

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  3. Beautiful post. I think we have to have more rational gun laws, and no I'm not talking about people having guns for hunting or self-defense, but it's it's too east for anyone to get a weapon with a huge ammo clip and no background check and something needs to be done and I'm trying to do my part.

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  4. Thanks for visiting and for your comments Doug. I agree we need to change the way we sell guns. Doing something about the gun shows and requiring they do background checks would be a good place to start. I'm constantly baffled by the pro gun folks who are getting in such a defensive stance about this issue. It seems they want to believe that changing the laws about buying guns means we are headed for some kind of ban of all guns. They really are getting irrational.

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  5. Sheila,
    An amazing piece, so full of anxiety I could feel it in my bones. It is not right that people who live in the "land of the free" should have to fear their own government, but you are correct, that is who we must fear.

    Our fear of what they could do to us mest be accomapnied by our fear of what they will allow others to do to us.

    For several weeks I participated in what I thought was going to be a logial discussion of the 2nd Amendement and was astonished by the rhetoric. I thought I was reliving a Joseph McCarthy episode.

    The part that just made me want to vomit was their non chalant attitude about Sandy Hook and the other mass murders as the price we pay for living in a Democracy. It was almost like getting sunburned is the price you pay for going to the beach.

    I finally had to walk away ... the gun fanatics in this country are just as much zealots as the Jihad suicide bombers in the middle east.

    God help us all.

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  6. Tim, it's good to see you here in Blogger. Thank you for echoing my thoughts about the gun control discussion. I too have had to walk away from those discussions because it seems to be useless and its frustrating. I can't get my head around the fact that the people who want more and bigger guns seem to think that the people who only want some common sense regulations applied, are saying "ban all weapons and come and take us to Fema Camps now." This discussion is worse than the discussions we had during the election! And I was so in hopes that after that ugly mess was over, we would get back to sanity in this country but we seem to be in a downward spiral.

    Thanks again for stopping by. :)

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