Posted by
Maitreya The Friend of All Souls on Thursday, July 03, 2008 12:00:00 AM
This morning, I received a passionate email from an old friend. The email contained a poem that he had written 30 years a go while hunkered down in a smelly bunker in Vietnam after a night of shelling by the Viet Cong. His poem was filled with passion and fear, and not just a little anger at those who had sent him there. He recalled how he had changed since those days. He is now a fellow Conservative a Republican and a Patriot. My friend asked me not to judge him too harshly on his feelings back then. I cannot publish his poem and would not even if he gave me permission. It is just that personal. But I do want to share with you my heartfelt response.
Fear not, dear brother, that I will judge you or pass judgement on your poem or you at the time. I think that your poem is elegant and beautiful in every way - especially in its expression of the universal abhorance of the awefulness of war. Even General Dwight Eisenhower expressed such feelings toward war as you have so eloquently written.
I understand it in ways that no words can tell and I weep for that man and all men who sit in bunkers far from home - caught up in the insanity that is war. Though in these, my latter years, I have come to grips with the horrible necessity of war and of wars against evil and aggressors, I will never put asunder the fact and the truth that war is the lowest point of human relations.
War is a bloody affirmation that all human consciousness and wisdom has failed us and only the basest animal instinct of kill or be killed is left to us. We must never begin war lightly. For once it is begun, the death and destruction of innocent men and women is guaranteed. And this, without regard to race or religion or wisdom or worth or goodness. In war, the most noble and wise and good and compassionate innocent man or woman becomes nothing but grist for the hungry mill of death and destruction.
My dear brother, there is nothing that I hate so much as war, except it be darkness, tyranny and slavery. As terrible and unfortunate as such a cause as war may be, good and civilized men must rise up and fight against these mortal foes of humanity and civilization - to the death if needs be. Or, be self-made victims of darkness, tyranny and slavery.
God Bless you my dearest brother.
God Save America
Reverend Bhagavan Friend
-Last Man Standing -