All is Vanity

Yesterday, we had a farewell gathering at school for a member of our staff who is being sent to Afghanistan. He would have had reached his 20 year mark in the national guard in May, retiring with full benefits, and they snatched him up for an 18 month deployment.

I team-taught with this guy my first year, and we were as different as night and day. He taught civics, and I often cringed when he'd speak about his ideas of democracy. His subtle promotion of the military didn't sit well with me either. But at this gathering, he cried when he introduced his wife and three children, and I saw fear in all of their faces. I cried too, at the futility of it all. I thought of the countless little gatherings like ours, happening all over the country, and of the innocents everywhere who would never have the opportunity to say their last farewells.

I cried again, when I walked out of school. There was a van from a television station outside. I thought that was odd until someone in the parking lot told me a young man from our little town, 23-yr-old Andrew Kemple, had been killed in Iraq. The media was looking for a story.

I'm so sick of all of this. I hope George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and all of their neocon cowboy buddies spend eternity facing the anguish they have caused with their senseless warmongering. So stick that in your surveillance files, boys. An angry American? You bet I am.