Musings of a Dumb Ass

Musings of a Dumb Ass....... A thousand plus years ago the Mississippian Indians gathered red clay for the foundations of their homes from the banks of the water flowing near the little church called Shiloh, a hebrew word meaning peace. And peace was normal for that part of the world until April of 1862 when a hundred thousand Americans gathered there to rage against each other even to death for reasons not completely understood by many of those about to end their time in this life. The setting for The little Church could only be described as perfect Southern including the forty acre field of corn being farmed and planted within spitting distance of the church itself. What drove those to take part in that day is only academic to what actually did take place and the drama as it played out. The North had about 60,000 troops in the area and the South sported about 40,000 on that Sunday at Shiloh when man's inhumanity to man overcame sanity. The Battle actually started in a dry creekbed but somehow quickly arrived to the cornfield by the church, the North entering the cornfield from their side and the South from their side on the opposite. The weaponry was muskets, bayonets. knives, fists, feet, thumbs for eye gouging and spit to make each other madder. As they charged across the cornfield to meet the enemy, the majority were killed by bullets, but bayonets and hand to hand were responsible for incredible numbers also. As the day wore on control of the field went back and forth at least a dozen times as the bodies piled up in the field. In some cases it was relative against relative and neighbor against neighbor and by the end of the day each side had those still willing to die ready for the charges which now required running over the tops of those who had fallen during the day to meet whomever fate assigned to meet them at the top of the heap, and take them to death along with those like them. It was civil war at its most brutal and at the end of the first day the thousands who lay dead in the cornfield by the little church were uncountable, but replaceable by that many more and plus who would die the next day at Shiloh. I really don't believe that wars such as that are explainable in human terms that those living in peace can understand. We all are much like fiesty brawlers in bar rooms and those who get overcome by rage from whatever quarter in life, but we are susceptible to suggestion to rage from many sources including Government and religion, and when we get sucked in, we die. Present day, at this moment in time, it appears we have the foundation for man's inhumanity to man to fester up and explode in Iraq. Unfortunately our Government has much burden to carry in this one. We and we alone are responsible for the shift in power that removed the Sunni's and put in the Shiite's. There is some confusion as to whether or not the Iraqi's are actually having a civil war or not. I would suggest they definitely are. The factor that is keeping the Iraqi's from behaving as we did at Shiloh is simple. It is our presence in Iraq and our authority and power that will not allow them to meet in a field and kill each other until disaster, exhaustion and dispair forces one side to submit to the other. The terrible side of it is that we started it, created the environment for it to have birth, and now cannot find a way to stop it. Once man's inhumanity to man is fueled to deed, a tinsel and untimely settlement never stops it. We learned that when a short time after World War One, World War Two became a reality. We may cram a guarded peace down the throats of the Iraqi's, but one day the powder house we've built may explode into the equivalent of the meeting of the Christians and The Muslims to the meeting of The North and The South in the cornfield at the little church called Shiloh...........