Going to Hell in a Handbasket

Where to begin? 

Presidents Obama and Putin were on the phone discussing the US sanctions when the news broke about another Maylasian Airlines plane ... this one shot from the sky ... despite Ukranian separatists' denials ... with hundreds of innocents on board.

Is it a problem of command and control in the field instead of at headquarters ... if there is a headquarters ...so that a jumpy junior officer shot first and asked questions later?  Is it a plot against the airline itself ... not a far-fetched idea from a woman who enjoys reading international thrillers?  Is President Putin lighting the wick of a global conflict? 

It must have been an interesting conversation, don't you think?

And then there's the invasion .... or incursion ... into Gaza.  TBG wonders what Hamas hopes to accomplish by shooting rockets into Israel. Beyond drawing attention to themselves, I have no answer. Those rockets are, for the most part, repelled by the Iron Dome.  If their intentions are to kill Israelis, they are failing.  If their intention is to stir up the world, they are succeeding.

Through it all, civilians are suffering, on all sides.  Mothers of slain children are chastising their countrymen for acts too terrible to imagine.  When I heard the story, I was stunned.  Jews don't do that sort of thing ... that phrase resounded through my head for days.  It's not how I was raised.  I may have harbored homicidal thoughts toward my shooter ...  now and then and not very welcomed when they came ... because I didn't like seeing that side of myself.  They were thoughts, though, and never in any danger of becoming actions.   Even the death penalty was more than I could handle.

And I grieve for the families of the three Israeli boys, kidnapped and killed and mourned across the globe.  There was a memorial service here in Tucson; I didn't attend.  I can't cry in public ... not any more.

I drove around town today, dropping off donations and reselling books and sending packages and having lunch and checking out wall-beds and coffee table repairs ... and I saw nary a rocket in the sky.  I didn't worry about tuning my radio to the emergency alert channel.  I drove without cares and I tried to imagine what it would be like to live in a world where tomorrow is truly not promised ... where there are forces actively engaging in events designed to end your life.

I have to think that the people are being very poorly represented by their leaders.  I refuse to believe that people are just evil.  I refuse.

*****
PLEASE use restraint when commenting. Everyone is wrong and everyone is right and people are dying ... and that's the part I just can't stand.