Today is World Humanitarian Day. The day was created to commemorate the deaths of 22 aid workers in Iraq in 2003, but it honors aid workers and human rights workers across the planet.
You won't find flagwaving ceremonies at baseball games to honor aid workers. You won't hear patriotic songs or find an aid worker who is the special guest at a game, nor will you see the son of an aid worker reunite with his father who has been away in dangerous lands. No, you won't hear any thank-you-for-your-service or any kind of thank you at all.
Aid workers risk their lives to make this world a better place, and they do it without guns and tanks and all of the deadly things that a soldier uses in his service. They help people get food, education, and healthcare. They build houses and schools instead of destroying them with bullets and bombs. Aid workers clean up the messes that soldiers make in their destructive wars.
Despite the propaganda, most soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines are NOT heroes. Despite no propaganda, most aid workers ARE heroes.
The families of aid workers are left behind when they die. There are no funds for them. There are no Gary Sineses setting up foundations for them. You don't hear anything from celebrities honoring their work, their courage, or their service.
Instead, you hear Americans whining about "foreign aid" spending, as if feeding and curing people is evil. And they do this with no knowledge of the miserly spending levels that we appropriate for foreign aid, the less than 1% of our budget, this, from the richest country on the planet. God, this country takes so much from the rest of the world; you'd think we could throw them a bone.
We need to reset our values. We have our morals out of whack. War is good and helping people is bad? And you think GAY MARRIAGE is immoral? Geesh.
You won't find flagwaving ceremonies at baseball games to honor aid workers. You won't hear patriotic songs or find an aid worker who is the special guest at a game, nor will you see the son of an aid worker reunite with his father who has been away in dangerous lands. No, you won't hear any thank-you-for-your-service or any kind of thank you at all.
Aid workers risk their lives to make this world a better place, and they do it without guns and tanks and all of the deadly things that a soldier uses in his service. They help people get food, education, and healthcare. They build houses and schools instead of destroying them with bullets and bombs. Aid workers clean up the messes that soldiers make in their destructive wars.
Despite the propaganda, most soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines are NOT heroes. Despite no propaganda, most aid workers ARE heroes.
The families of aid workers are left behind when they die. There are no funds for them. There are no Gary Sineses setting up foundations for them. You don't hear anything from celebrities honoring their work, their courage, or their service.
Instead, you hear Americans whining about "foreign aid" spending, as if feeding and curing people is evil. And they do this with no knowledge of the miserly spending levels that we appropriate for foreign aid, the less than 1% of our budget, this, from the richest country on the planet. God, this country takes so much from the rest of the world; you'd think we could throw them a bone.
We need to reset our values. We have our morals out of whack. War is good and helping people is bad? And you think GAY MARRIAGE is immoral? Geesh.
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