What About This? By Wayne William Cipriano

I have been following the deployment or potential deployment of some of our most powerful military assets to the western Mediterranean Sea with what borders on astonished disbelief when no real military threat has even been imagined.

I cannot understand how this deceptive saber-rattling can even be proposed, let alone executed by our government under such diaphanous “menace” when we have lived through so many instances, in just my lifetime, where extravagantly unnecessary military action for all the wrong reasons has cost us so many military casualties. Casualties among those who have pledged to go where we tell them to go and do what we tell them to do, asking no questions, demonstrating no hesitation.

Our family has a long and very distinguished history of military service. To us, military personnel are not pieces on a chessboard, not negotiating positions, not shiny objects to take the attention of the citizenry off the misbehavior of our political leaders. Military personnel are our sons and our daughters, our nieces and nephews. They are those who stand their watches on the wall and whose dedicated service allows us to sleep well at night. They are not to be squandered.

And those who would even suggest that those lives be placed in jeopardy, be potentially squandered for some personal gain, to protect a reputation, to deflect our attention, should be held in contempt by the rest of us. They should be required to accept the consequences of their soulless behavior.

Will you hold them in contempt? Will you require they accept those consequences? Or are our fighting men and women merely chess pieces, negotiating positions, shiny objects to you?