Killing Our Soldiers

The recent release of photos with American soldiers posing with the deceased and their body parts is not unexpected!

Don't hunters pose with their kill? Because they won! They survived! They met the challenge of the "beast" and conquered!

When reason is lost and purpose buried under a pile of killing and ceaseless death, bodies and body-parts become the trophies of survival, victory, life in the face of death - it comes down to them or us.

Such is war.

But more than war - a protracted betrayal of America's armed forces - that's what our warring adventures are - a betrayal of our young women and men and their families, and it can't bode well for the future.

They will return to "civilian life" at some point in time, and their souls, damaged by violence against them and perpetrated by them, will render them marginally disturbed at best, and at worst, criminally dangerous to themselves, their families and to the rest of society.

These pictures don't surprise me.

They sadden me.

For those soldiers have lost their bearings, and who can blame them?

American violence.

Whether it be the NRA and its madness.

Or a neighborhood watchman.

Or our colonial adventures.

We are dripping in blood, as the Prophet Isaiah notes of Judah, Your hands are dripping with blood - ironically, the blood of many religious sacrifices, of which God is profoundly tired, and the blood of victims - the oppressed, the widow and the orphan (vs. 17).

America and violence go hand-in-glove, I fear.

From the first Native American killed because we wanted his land to the tens of thousands of deaths in the Middle East because we want oil, America the Violent.

We've much to learn about ourselves.

And we're killing our soldiers, even as we ask them to kill for us!