This wonderful Youtube video of a surprise homecoming is touching in a very warm way.  I love it.

Perhaps it will give us something beyond anger and sorrow to motivate our opposition to the slaughter being carried out across so much of the world in our name.  The cost of our military adventures can be totaled in many ways, all of them valid.  But when we see big numbers of troops, fortunes spent to kill people who do not threaten us, or read about atrocities and “collateral damage” we are distanced.  In this time of video games war is a spectator sport, and that’s how the corrupt oligarchs want it. This video puts a very human face on the cost of war.

But beyond the children’s ecstatic  happiness, and the deeper pain that comes out as well, is still another step or two to take for us to really absorb the meaning of this video. First is that our men and women in uniform are men and women first, and many have families they dearly love and miss.  Second, many will not be coming home, and their children will never have such a moment of joy.  Third, others who do return will be injured physically and psychologically in ways that will continue causing pain for themselves and their loved ones.  Fourth, the same love of kids exists on the other side.  Their families also are joyous and relieved when their fighters come home intact, and plunged into despair and pain when they return injured, or not at all. Let us always always honor the men and women who volunteer to serve and never confuse them with the corrupt and cowardly creeps and worse than creeps who so easily send them off to war.

THAT should be what we remember on the Fourth of July.