Remembering...

Who invented it?
Who used it?
Who fears it?
Who uses that fear of it?

Whose finger is on the button now - again?

A Child's Experience.

We were all told that we should never forget, so what I remebered after I learned of the horrors as a school child was that war was wrong. It was that simple.

What others learned was to live in constant fear: run, duck and cover - a very serious matter made into a child's game by the purveyors of propaganda who always wanted everyone to believe that others were ready to drop the bomb on your head at any given moment because they were evil while those who dropped those bombs at the end of WWII were good for doing so. I never could wrap my head around that one - not after I'd read the passage in the book 'Hiroshima' which described someone reaching out their hand for a little girl to grab, only to find that the skin of her hand came off like a glove from the burns she had suffered. What possible good could there be in that?, I wondered.

We in the western world who are old enough have lived through the constant reminder that the Evil Empire was ready to obliterate all of us at any time, just as the Americans had done to the residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And, we're still taught - and we're teaching a new generation of children - that Iran and North Korea (the 'Axis of Evil') are now the countries that hold our future, their future in our hands. But, what children don't understand and what those of us who have have a few more years on us know is that those who keep warning us that we could all soon be dead too are the same people who refuse to go along with international treaties banning such weapons - ever insisting that they must have a 'deterrence'.

And so this fearful power struggle of nuclear weaponry goes on while we, the people, have absolutely no say in the matter. And if you're an American, it doesn't matter which political party you support, neither one of the big two will ever stop the fearmongering that makes people feel like they are doomed to die a horrible death like those innocent Japanese people did. No. There is no end in sight to all of this.

And so, we go on in our daily lives and we have many choices to make. And one choice I made long, long ago was to at least try to never support any regime, any nation, any group of people who think war and weapons are the answer to everything - especially when they won't even acknowledge that there are so many other ways to answer the question posed in the first place.

So remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But recall this as well: As you are reading this, dozens of people around the world have died in wars of choice - women, children, men, young and old. And thousands of others are suffering from wounds inflicted by western made weaponry in the name of the glory of war - a false god to be revered by those who live in ignorance and fear; a demon wrapped in metal.

What does it mean, exactly, when George W Bush declares that we, in the west, live in the 'civilized' world?