monsters inc......

If you can remember back to when you were a kid, you can probably conjure up the image of yourself checking under the bed at night... or the closet. After all, that's where the monsters hid. Somewhere along the line, we all out-grow that little ritual, and get on with the business of growing up. We're pretty sure the "monsters" have exited the building, as there were new places to go, people to see, and things to do. And we run smack dab into life, where we discover there are worse monsters out there. Ones our parents tried to warn us about, but we were too smart to listen.... and ones we never saw coming at all. Ones that make us want to cuddle up on that very same bed we were afraid of so long ago.....but we're grown-ups now, so the very idea of taking to bed is inconceivable. Whether we like it or not, we must face the day with some type of bravado and carry on. Brave little soldiers, and all that.

But it has increasingly gotten harder and harder to do with all we hear and see. The state of the world is in a fine mess right now, and what's worse, it's a man made mess. No monsters like the fuzzies under our childhood beds, mind you, these scary ones look like us... and it's enough to make you horrified of the possibilities. We, the "thinking animal" have been capable of far surpassing the learning curve of basic needs; beyond that of communication, shelter and food. We have the ability to produce and study medicine, build bridges, and grow produce. No other animal in the world can do those things. So with all those abilities, all those great minds pregnant with ideas and ideals, how do we manage to find ourself in the quandary we are in now?

We hear of all the bombings around the world; carefully calculated, and executed by men who have a hatred in their belly so fierce for their enemy, that taking out innocent people who are just minding their own business get caught in...... all over a difference of opinions that can't seem to be solved diplomatically. In our leadership around the world, it appears that everybody is right in how they run their country, and everybody else is wrong. Instead of being able to solve the differences, we resort to threats and sanctions and eventually move to weapons and bombs. It's a simple jump from there to war and terrorism, and monsters you could never have dreamed of.

If you have ever seen the show "The Wonder Years", you would get an idea of what it was like to grow up during the late 1960's and early 1970's. Our parents had the worries of the world on their shoulders then. They were sending their sons off to a "conflict" in a foreign land, and worried that communism would spread. Missles were being tested, rockets fired, and now there were two super powers who had the formula for the bomb.... capable of blowing up the world 15 times over. (Like once wouldn't be enough, huh?) There was a stand-off between Communist Russia and The United States, and bomb shelters were easy thoughts because of the threat that was always prevalent. Yes, I do remember the "stop, drop, and cover", because it was taught to me in Kindergarten, in the early 1960's.

By April of 1975, our parents could breathe a sigh of relief, because the conflict known as Vietnam was officially over. As a nation, we watched as the last remnants of war scurried to leave a fallen Saigon. It was over, and our generation of fresh 18-year olds ready to conquer the world, would never have to worry about war again. Yeah, we had that brief stint in the Gulf for a few months in the early 1990's, but it was over in a flash. Not so with our current predicament. 9/11 has changed all that. Never in our wildest dreams could we have imagined anyone calculating such a scheme as to fly our own airplanes into buildings. It was horrifying to watch and gulp down the possibility that there was an enemy out there who actually wanted to do that much harm to innocent people..... someone who hated us and our lifestyle that much. This time we skimmed right over the sanctions halt, and slid right into war. It wasn't enough we had to hunt down the man responsible, we had to go after the nasty dictator we weren't finished with from the first Gulf War. And as Americans, many bought into the idea, because we were told it was a necessary function. In all the years from the first Gulf War to the second, this nasty dictator had had time to build up weapons of mass destruction, there was no way we could feel safe in the world knowing that this mad-man could be on the loose. Besides, he was sitting on a gold-mine of oil. It seemed conceivable, but then the plot thickened. No WMD's were found, and the reasons and excuses for war with Iraq changed to fit the mood of the moment. I just knew that was coming, didn't you?

As far as attacks due to terrorism, they've never stopped. It's not just the US who has become the target, it's happening in different cities around the world. We may not connect them all together, because they happen at random times and in random years, but it's all part of the same war. What's worsened the situation is that we aren't fighting a defined country, only an enemy that has infiltrated our cultures to locate and list "soft targets" for the next occurrence. It's making everybody just a wee bit nervous as we travel about our daily routines.
Part of us wants to hide our heads to the hate and destruction, as it's more than we can bear.... yet we can't. This is not a problem that will go away easily because every nation involved has their own reasons for being more right than the next guy. Diplomacy only seems to be going so far, and the attacks on soft targets are becoming images of revenge. Sadly, It's become our way of life now.

When will everyone just realize that terrorism is the lowest common denominator in the dictate of life, and that if you blow everybody up, you lose the very population you were trying to govern? With the bigger questions to deal with (like global warming, un-natural disasters, and how to handle our resource issues), why is it so important that we waste our time on the silly people who come along to destroy what we have already fixed? Why? Because whether we like it or not, we really don't know who the enemy is exactly. They could be living in any country as a sleeper-cell, and all you have to be doing is going about your life when, WHAM, it's shattered by an ideal born out of hate. It's not like you were knowingly walking into enemy territory, as there are no real borders.

It's sad, it's despicable, it's the complete reversal of everything we learned.... yet it's a real fact of life we have to deal with. These were not monsters our parents could warn us about..... but, sadly, it will be the monsters we warn our own children about.