"Integrity..........."

”Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed”… Dwight D. Eisenhower

I’ve started another book, three different ones now being perused at the same time, each one a different genre. This latest purchase is written by Ray Atkinson, author of “The Longest Day”, his subject here but one more historical novel entitled “The Last Guns of Light”. World War II facts have always held my interest. I was born in October of 1941, less than two months before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. My father fought in the mountains of Italy, one of only two men in his battalion who survived, no wounds suffered other than nightmares on occasion. As a child, I quickly learned it not wise to wake him from slumber. Casualties of such hell are surely measured in more ways than one. In reading about Eisenhower this morning, though, it surprised me to hear several of his contemporaries express poor opinions of him, one fellow observing that “When it comes to war, he doesn’t know the difference between Christmas and Easter”, another judging him to be “no real director of thought, plans, energy, or direction!” Our 34th President, however, while bothered some by their criticism, struggled with more important issues, as far as I’m concerned, this particular account stating elsewhere that “While he was neither philosopher nor military theorist”, he believed too few commanders grappled with what he called “subjects that touch the human soul – aspirations, ideals, inner beliefs, affection, and hatred.” It makes one wonder if he took both of those evaluations into the Oval Office with him. I look at politics much as I look at the Church. We elect and accept our leaders mostly out of (a) party/denominational preference and (b) some charismatic quality the person holds with us. What we get is a man or a woman wrestling with life even as we do. Humanity always factors into the matter, on both sides of the voting booth, on both sides of the pulpit. Government doesn’t necessarily always equate to Washington, D.C. and the above quote need not distinctly apply to all military conflict between nations……