North Korea launches rocket tests on our Independence Day, in defiance of warnings from several nations (including us), but with silent support from Russia and China. Trains in Mumbai are bombed. There’s still a war in Afghanistan, with passive support from Pakistan by hiding terrorists in in their mountains. Iran is building their own nuclear arsenal and thumbing its nose at America while Russia quietly stands behind them. Iran and Syria are supporting, both monetarily and with materiel, the continuing terror attacks on Israel by Hamas and Hezbollah. Saudi, Syria and Iran are supporting the terrorists still wreaking havoc on the Iraqi people under the guise of an "insurgence" against the infidels. The UK says there are at least 20 different terror cells somewhere within their borders. And then we’ve got the 8 American citizens (that we know of) who were plotting and planning terror attacks on their own country. (What are they thinking?!?!?)

If the world isn’t on fire yet, it soon will be; blazing like those out of control wild fires in Southern California.

I have friends who live in Israel. I have friends who live in Beirut (well, not any more; now they are fleeing north or west). Three years ago around this time I had planned to spend two weeks in Lebanon and Syria, and Christmas in Jerusalem. Those plans were canceled by my parent’s deaths. But I had hopes of visiting some day. Even now, everything in me wants to go there and do something. But what would I do?

To see the dead and wounded, on both sides, hurts my soul more than I can express. It breaks my heart to see the devastation and know that the rubble on the screen was once someone’s home, or someone’s place of work and income.

I received an email last night from some of those friends, telling of their narrow escape from Israeli bombs in their own neighborhood. It told of how their friends and neighbors reacted as the bombs fell. Among those were a 20 year-old who had a nervous breakdown even as the the rockets fell and bombs exploded; and a five year-old who, "crawled into a corner with fear on his face and froze there for the whole time.”

Oh, my heart grieves for the children! For everyone who must live through the horror of war.

How blessed, and how spoiled, we are here in America. We haven’t seen a war on our shores since our own Civil War over a hundred years ago. Yes, we were bombed  at Pearl Harbor, and yes we were bombed in New York and D.C. One-time attacks — which we swiftly exacted retribution for, btw — that are nothing in comparison to daily, hourly bombing runs of jets and rockets. We no nothing of real war.
Especially my generation.

My parent’s generation knew war. They lived through the first world war, through the depression and through the second world war. They knew what it was to suffer through desperate hunger, extreme unemployment and sorrowful loss of son after son after son. But most of them have now died.

We are left with the Boomers, and my generation and the one after.

Only our soldiers know of war now. And too often they receive our "national scorn" over battles and wars fought far away for freedoms we are so accustomed that we completely forget the rest of the world does not have them. We blame them for the decisions of compassionate leaders who choose to send our soldiers into harms way to liberate and offer the freedoms to others who have never known them in their national/ethnic history.

We whine about $3/gal gas yet buy another gas-guzzling SUV and drive 800+ miles on our various vacations through the year because airline prices are "too high". We cry about high healthcare costs, rising interest rates and increasingly expensive groceries yet we still eat too much (I’m preaching to myself here too, fyi), live beyond our means and insist on getting a battery of tests and a round of antibiotics every time we sneeze.

We obsess on conspiracy theories about JFK (I mean, come on! Put it to rest already), demand our rights be respected and insist on having everything our way, and cry "Global Warming"  while at the same time are completely oblivious to the  deep ongoing needs of the poor and oppressed of our world, trash any group who stands up for their own beliefs and convictions with the new hip epithet of "religious right" and label them "intolerant" all while driving our SUVs the 20 miles to work and 20 miles back, carry our groceries home in plastic bags (obviously you’ve never been to India or Ethiopia and seen how those plastic bags collect in rivers and lakes and cling to every desert plant; they don’t just disappear when you throw them away people!), and veto every public transportation bill because it’s too expensive or "it will create too much noise and draw ‘undesirable’ people to my neighborhood," or "bring down the value of my home."

Yes, we are a spoiled people, America. But I think our time is just about up. I think the rest of the world is about to give us a good swift kick in the ass.

Oh, we’ll kick back.

And beat the living crap out of them. But we will still pay a high price.

And perhaps, just perhaps, we will finally be humbled enough (or is that humiliated?) to finally see what our forefathers knew their whole lives: we have it really, really, reeeeaaally good; we are blessed beyond measure and its time we appreciated that instead of taking it for granted.

Okay, I’m stepping off my soap box… for now.