“To the victors go the spoils,” is how the old saying goes. The winners get the “goods or property seized from a victim after a conflict, especially after a military victory.”
Indeed.
The spoils of America’s wars since the First Persian Gulf War began in 1990 have mainly been foreign oil; it’s the underlying thrust between our two current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The big oil corporations and government have tried to put a much more genteel face on all of it: chasing down terrorists and spreading democracy. Many people knew the real motive from the beginning; many more have finally come to the understanding.
For a number of years we were banned from seeing the signs of something really “spoiled” in these wars: the lives of men and women who died fighting in them. To spoil also means “to damage irreparably; ruin.” You can’t get much more “irreparable” than dead, and to stem potential outrage of this ruin, the American government banned the press (and therefore all of us) from witnessing the return of flag-draped caskets holding fallen soldiers, flown in under cover of darkness. That ban was finally lifted a while ago. We finally have a chance to see images of one cost of these wars. We have a chance to see, and we have a chance to act.
This Memorial Day, the holiday holds even more poignancy as we watch the Gulf of Mexico become a giant marine grave for countless forms of sea life. The sticky red crude is washing up on our shores, spoiling them to be sure. Too much oil is spilling; too much blood has been shed by too many people due to the pursuit of that oil. Too much red is mixing in the blue; we could all stand to bring a little more white (light) into the equation.
We’ve been a little spoiled in our lifestyles, to be sure, and I am no exception. The oil company executives have been spoiled beyond belief, though their run of childish tyranny may be starting to wane. The shift will not come easily, and it won’t happen all at once; it won’t happen today. We can take today to stand witness to the image of the Gulf, the image of the flag-draped casket, the images of lives that have been, including our own. Today we allow for a little stillness to honor memory, for tomorrow we must be fully in the present so that we may have a future.
Beautiful “tribute” for Memorial Day. Honest and real. Thank you.
Amanda,
Thank you.
ef
Silence along the city streets
nary a soldier to be found
Only an echo of the battlecries
across the emerald sea of despair
Shadows line the corridors
with yesterdays song
Remembrance of brotherhood
a stronghold beguiled
Tradewinds blow across the
marbled foundation
Awakening the sleeping kings.
Hosanna! Hosanna! Hosanna!
Victory wrapped in crimson
Love sitting on her throne
Oh sword of truth!
your song I sing!
Breastplate of righteousness
as a babe to her teat
Shield of faith, my emblem encrusts
Rosey Cross
Helmet of salvation, to you I owe
my minds eye, forever true
I read a very very sick joke into that BP statement – one they did not intend.
BP Claims Oil Cleanup Crew illnesses are related to “food poisoning”.
yesterday as I read PW I looked around me. I touched; felt everything made of plastic or otherwise beholden to the great god of Oil. In my small personal environment, the quantity of items seemed endless. For each item I said a prayer; for each item I searched my imagination for what I could do to replace that oil with anything else – even a “void”.
I’m grateful for what my computer can do – I am not grateful for how we have handled those precious resource/s.
I also was grateful for the wicker, wood, ceramic etc that I found around – substances that I normally choose – and yet the plastics seem to be everywhere – sort of like high fructose corn “syrup” and wheat are found in our “food” stores.
http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Jan05/Orangeplastic.deb.html
And I understand that plastics were originally manufactured from organic materials.
So many choices seem so easy from a common sense perspective. (Unemployed persons sweeping the street instead of those monster vehicles that stir up dust chemicals and waste water can start the list of millions of situations we could change to better our world).
Love to all this day of Remembering.