May. 02, 2004 - 22:29 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

Sanitized Society

In this morning's The Denver Post is a long column by Helen Thomas a woman long respected by me from her days in Washington, D.C., wherein she says, "We Need To Know War's Human Price"

She points out things that show the ridiculous attitude of the administration and its various arms and fingers.

Some of our people know very well the horrors of war and its end product, including the shattered lives of the survivors. Some of our people near death from old age lived through the Holocaust, some saw unimaginable things in their countries during the breakup of old Jugoslavia or in the Africa of recent years.

Some of us have tried to raise our children to see through clear eyes the absolute devastation of war. Some of us have been fat, dumb and happy. Fat can be overlooked, dumb and happy in the face of such awfulness is to my mind unforgivable.

Even in our best journalism in the media the dead of the people of the other side are not shown, the "collateral damage" pictures of humanity are not shown nor is much made of them in print.

In the end, you cannot pretend it isn't there because you turn your back on it, cover it up and stick your ostrich head in the sand. It is still a fact, it did happen, and many perished, many have suffered and many will starve and be deprived the rest of their lives.

Our dead from the Iraq war are returning in flag draped coffins, accompanied by their live, respectful escorts, in neat rows, much like they will be buried on their home soil.

I definitely do not believe that they should be sneaked in the back door and shoved in the ground. There should be an honor guard from the back of the aircraft all the way to where they are going to be buried with honor . . . . . .in my eyes.

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Today Heather and I took dinner to our son and visited with him for awhile. He has lost his hair, is thinner, hurts a lot, has blisters on his body from radiation. There is one thing that has not been disturbed or destroyed though, his indomitable spirit and his love of family. It is so hard to see him suffer without us being able to allay his pain. A parental, "Rather me than he," thing, much like most of us parents feel. We pray.

With all the bad things happening in the world, it is not possible to have a Sanitized Society . . . . . . . . .

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