Yep. It is the Red Democratic Republic vs the Blue Liberation Front.
“We kicked your RDR puppy a$$es today!”
“Go back home to your mommies you Blue dogs. Don’t come 'round here no 'mo!”
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You probably have a deeply felt sense of duty and service, having had a career such as yours. The symbols of selfless duty resonate with you, regardless the side. You are like Mr. Sakai, having a drink over shared service despite having sat at opposite sides of the fence. Make sense?
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It is. But the educational system I was brought up in didn’t care for that. As long as I read and remembered what some old philosopher, poet or writer once said. I wasn’t taught to think and critizise. Someone had already done that so I didn’t have to. Just read and remember.
I’m not saying that we should ignore history, but we should think for ourselves and read our history with a critical eye, because fake news isn’t a totally new phenomenon.
I’m happy to say that the educational system of today has a sharper focus on teaching students to think instead of just repeating what others thought.
Sorry for the derail!
This thread is about war. 
To me as well. And given our history, knowing the differences in politics, that’s not so hard to understand.
But it’s always prudent to remember that they think the same way about you. They probably never saw me as more than just a bump in the road.
But I sure am glad we had NATO just across the western border, in case we would have to back up.
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It’s had many different names over the ages. Heresy. Propaganda.
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When people do not like the truth, they will embrace the lie they are comfortable with.
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And then that lie is propagated as the truth, and history is written.
Not in every case and in varying degrees, but still.
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And when they’re afraid of a world they can’t comprehend, they fear any other story that would put the lie to the test and they’ll start burning the heretic.
I’m all for embracing the heretic. I’m a xenophile by principle. To defer judgement until the ideas are at least no longer strange and unknown is what I try to live by.
I have strong beliefs myself, but I strive to A) keep them to myself, B) not let them cloud my view of the others. Because that way lie strife, ruin and war.
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As usual, wonderful words. 
OK…I will admit the juxtaposition of phrases “start burning the heretic.” with “all for embracing the heretic” did give me an odd mental image and a little chuckle…but great sentiments.
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Don’t embrace the burning heretic!
Safety first!
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I’ve found Tuck’s medicated pads do wonders for burning heretics.
I feel the same, 109, MiG, USAF, I am just an actor playing the part of a young man in an amazing machine. Politics dont apply.
Now ED, give us Vietnam and MiG-17s. I want to be a young NVAF pilot with a low life expentacy and a high target count.
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Let me fix this for you…
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A telephone call that I made in 1992. Probably cliche, but at the time was very moving.
“Uncle Bill, this is Dan the third. How are you?”
“Dan? Good to hear from you. Your mother tells me that you are in Germany.”
“Yes sir. I’m living and working in Hamburg.”
“Is that a fact?” pause “You know that I went to Hamburg twice in a B-17G?”
“No sir, I didn’t know. I mean I knew that you had bombed Germany of course, but not where.”
“Yeah, two mission in the day. RAF at night and we went during the day.”
“I didn’t know. Well it’s a beautiful city.”
“What about Altona?”
“I’m standing here now across the street from the Altona Bahnhof waiting for some friends. A really nice German couple. They are meeting me and my girlfriend and we are going to dinner.”
“We bombed Altona. How does it look?”
“It looks like you didn’t bomb it very well. It’s a beautiful day here anyway.”
very long pause
“Uncle Bill, you there?”
“The Brits started a big fire and we probably made it worse. We got beat up pretty badly. Many 190s. They were not good missions.”
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have called you. Mom said that you had been to Germany and I forgot about the war.”
“Later we went to Munich. In the late 50’s. When your dad was a pilot, we met your parents over there. We all went skiing in Garmisch.”
“That’s crazy. I bet that you had fun.”
“You have a German girlfriend?”
“No, she’s Russian.”
“I’m not going to tell your father that! You know that he sat on alert in England with a nuke? The target was Leningrad.”
“Hell yeah. That’s why he can’t know that I’m dating a Russian.”
laughs “What’s the world coming to?”
“Hey uncle Bill, my friends are here. I’ve got to go.”
“Have fun in Altona. You be safe. We miss you over there.”
“You too uncle Bill. Give aunt Ann my love. Bye.”
“Bye son.”
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My mom is still alive. She immigrated to Canada from Germany when she was about 18. She can still remember the smell of burning flesh from the bombed out buildings. One time the train she was travelling on got strafed. The perfect holes the bullets left in the windows are still very vivid in her mind.
War sucks.
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“War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. “, William Tecumseh Sherman
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I agree on the first part. It is. By it’s very definition.
But just as there are ways to improve how cattle are butchered, or huge improvements have been made in surgery, so can war be made less wantonly cruel. Using a laser guided missile from a drone, whose operator has been watching, following and verifying his target for days ensures maximum violence is brought upon his head, while leaving his neighbours and cousins unscathed.
But of course when push comes to shove, out come the cluster bombs, the land mines, the napalm, the nukes.
I would argue that’s just a matter of transferring the trauma, instead of lessening it. When we started using more and more UAV’s over the 'Stan instead of traditional troops, there were massive spikes in suicide and accident rates of the operators, and it’s still an issue for the military, last I checked- in some ways, worse than that typically experienced by infantry troops, because of how personal the kills are- you watch the target for days beforehand, watch the kill, then watch the family come, mourn, remove the body parts, and bury them. It’s a different kind of horrific than sending rounds downrange during a frenetic firefight.
As for the family/ close neighbors of the target of those strikes, it’s more personal for them too for the reasons mentioned above, not to mention the psychological effects of feeling constantly like you’re living under this silent, invisible Sword of Damocles that could rain down a Hellfire at any time. In some ways, I’d argue it’s worse than traditional warfare.
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