War and Pieces

“War: what is it good for, absolutely nothing!” Those words, recalled from a Motown hit song back in 1960’s, or ’70’s, when we were dodging the draft, endeavoring to stay out of the Vietnam war, a war that we lost anyway. But the question echoes through the decades. Looking back on it all. . . war was good for evicting King George’s soldiers out of our brand new nation. Moving right along, it was good for enforcing President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. In the 20th century, it was good for stopping the German juggernaut twice, especially the second time, when the little kraut madmen with the funny moustache had thought he could take charge of Europe and exterminate the Jews along the way. War was, maybe, not as bad, after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, when we Americans demonstrated the power of the new atomic bomb at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I mean, certainly it was not good for the Japanese people, and I pray that they have forgiven us for demonstrating to the world that those nukes should never be used on anyone. But like it or not, they took the hit for all of us. May it never have to be done again! In recent years, the little Russian, Vlad the Mad, started making war on Ukraine. The situation was similar to 1938 when Hitler wanted to take the Sudetanland in Czechoslavakia, just because there were a lot of Germans living in that region. So there has been some confusion about Vlad the Mad in Russia, because supposedly, he wanted to guide Russia into a more reasonable, democratic nationhood. But the power went to his little bald head and he decided to try and take Ukraine back into Russian hegemony. I guess he thought he was acting like Peter the Great, or Stalin with gulags. Meanwhile, back at the Maralago ranch, trump was faced with the predicament of dealing with Putin, because everybody knew that the USA was now the big kid on the world block. But Vlad the Mad kind of saw himself as the big kid on the block, and he thought that trump might let him get away with it, because they both saw themselves as the big kid on the block. . . As it turned out. . . trump did give Vlad a pass, or a wave or something like that . . . when he posed a meeting with Zelensky, the Ukrainian leader. I guess trump just told Zelinsky that he could not be one the big kids on the block. Vlad and donald just wanted to demonstrate their bully hegemony. What the people of this world didn’t realize was that the hood ole boys club, Vlad, donald, Xi and a few other tagalongs were more dedicated to performing their roles as big kids on the block, you know, the round block that circles around the sun. Then the occupant of the Oval office got stir crazy when an opportunity came up to take it upon himself to destroy the ancient country of Iran. I guess he thought it would be a walk in the park as he was putting on his defensive bully hat to help Ben in Tel Aviv. but it has not turned out that way. So the war in Iran drags on, I guess. . . I mean we don’t hear much about it, but then again its so far away. . . like the war that Orwell wrote about in 1984. I suppose its always been this way, since our times turned modern, and we’ve gotten used to there always being a war somewhere in the world.

Lastly, I’ll mention the novel I wrote about the war that started in Europe in 1937. The passage of time is cloaked in smoke. And remember, its just a matter of time before the winds of war start to blow again, and again, and again, until? Carey Rowland