Beyond all those trees----------is a forest.

I've read the threads about Chris Kyle's murder.

Some made me ashamed.

Some made me think.

Most of them missed the point.

I am a lifelong member of the "Major General Smedley Butler Appreciation Society"; i.e. "WAR IS A RACKET". I know I could kill to defend myself or my loved ones but, other than that, killing another human being is immoral; it is uncivilized; it is foolish because it solves nothing.

Before, however, we examine the morality of the actions of individual grunts---be it Kyle or Calley or England---let's look at the morality of the "leaders" who placed them in harm's way. I am not proud of any war we've waged in my lifetime, and I was born in 1949. Why, I wonder, does no one scream at the idiots who consider war "just another tool" in our foreign policy supply cabinet?

Eisenhower was the first president I can actually remember. A Republican, he was one of the great generals of WWII, yet look at what he thought of war:

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final
sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone.
It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."

I don't think I could do what Chris Kyle did, but it is not my place to question his morality, doubt his decency or call him names.

It is OUR place to deny power to those who will send his children to war one day.

It is OUR place to select leaders with the wisdom to allow us to live in peace and dignity with everyone else with which we share this planet.

That's what I think.