LFS: The Storyteller

©2010 by LeeZard America’s military mission in Iraq is over; that’s what our political leaders tell us. So, is the war over? Who won? Nobody. Certainly the U.S. cannot claim victory, not with almost 40,000 of our young soldiers killed or wounded; not with about (GASP!) $900-BILLION tax dollars down the gun barrels and certainly not because the war started with lies from Dubya and his goons. Weapons of mass destruction my ass. But we all know the war isn’t over. More than 50,000 U.S. troops remain in Iraq. Call them “advisors,” call them “trainers” but whatever you call them, they are still at risk. Why? I’ve Iraq’d my brain and can’t come up with a good reason. Of course, I couldn’t come up with a good reason for the war at the outset. This is Vietnam in reverse. In that doomed war we started as advisors and ended up defeated combatants. Just flip it for Iraq (LeeZard slaps his head in disgust). No, we didn’t get our ass kicked in Iraq as we did in Vietnam but this war is mor...

I came across this free-verse during a recent move - and cleaning out of old (and I mean old) files. It was written in the late 1960s, at the height of the Vietnam War. My older brother was in the Marines and in the middle of the war zone, as he put it, "building the road to Da Nang with a rifle and a shovel." It is short but, I believe, very powerful. Sadly, it is still true today. ©2007 by LeeZard (Pulitzer Prize winning photo: Kent State students killed by National Guard during Viet Nam War Protest) He’s a boy. You’ve given him a gun, You taught him how to shoot. You’ve given him a knife, You taught him how to kill. You’ve taken him from home, You taught him how to hate. You call him a man. He’s a boy. A boy who can shoot, Kill, And hate.