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While it is very popular to denounce the war in Iraq, Afghanistan and potential involvement's in a multitude of other countries, the reality is that the REAL WAR is here in America. We are surrounded by and complicity in the bloodiest ongoing undeclared war since the Union fought the Confederacy.
If you define war (in numbers of AMERICANS killed in combat) then the on going American class war taking place here in the 48 contiguous is the supreme leader. Not dissimilar to any combat zone, American inner cities are for all practical purposes composed of green zones and killing fields. Virtually every American City with a population above fifty-thousand has a few square blocks where it is every bit as dangerous as the streets of Baghdad. Larger American cities have entire neighborhoods that are daily gauntlets within which residents deal with stresses and dangers equal to those experienced in Iraq and Afghanistan's cities.
If you travel to any American City and listen to local news broadcasts, the daily report is of death and destruction of an unprecedented dimension in American History. In the same time frame that American troops have been deployed into Afghanistan and Iraq, well over 75,000 Americans have died violent deaths (this does not include an equal number of suicides) on our city streets. Most were killed with guns of every variety, others were murdered with knives, set afire, bludgeoned, and beat to death with bare fists.
It would do little good to compare the American combat deaths in the middle east, to those of American citizens gunned down on our own streets, as it is comparing apples to oranges, however, to the parent of a deceased American citizen, dead is dead no matter the place, time, or motivation. But at least with the death of military personnel, there is higher mission associated with their death.
America is at war abroad, there is no doubt. But, I would more greatly fear for my son or daughters daily safety if they were a beat cop in Camden NJ, East St. Louis, Illinois, or South Central Los Angeles. To further irritate the condition is that in those same years 2002-2006 over 120,000 Americans were murdered by drunk drivers.
Yes, our YOUNG men and women are representing America's interests on foreign soil, and yes, some die in the process, but lets keep our world in perspective. That portion of the North American land mass that is defined by the United States is by any definition a war zone. We who occupy that landscape are responsible for its condition. Either by omission, or commission, we are all participants in a war of mass American destruction.
As it relates to American soldiers, the most dangerous thing that a soldier does is drive on American highways. The likelihood of becoming a statistic is greater when doing war with late night drunks than when hunting down the Taliban. And, it would be a far greater loss to die at the hands of an American drunk, than at the hands of an Islamic madman. At least the madman has an ideology (perverse as it may be) to defend, but a drunk is just a drunk.
Maybe we should focus on the REAL WAR at least as much as our foreign involvement's.
