Thanks, Tootsie. I, too, wish people would choose to be open minded about this, and accept that it is a positive gesture and a huge honor...and be gracious about it.
Can't we all realize that all Americans, in fact, the entire world... can benefit from it, if we will just stop the internal bickering. What is so important that we are allowing everything to divide us? To cheer when our country loses the Olympic bid, and now to ridicule the Nobel Peace Prize. What are we thinking?
I often think how much could be accomplished if the negative energy that is sent forth over the airwaves 24 7 was turned, instead, into positive energy to bring peace, feed hungry people, especially children, educate those who can not read, heal those who are sick and dying...stop the wars, help people save their homes...stop domestic violence and eliminate drug use and sales that result in innocent children being burned almost to death in a meth fire...help elderly people who are sick and frightened, save the beaches from the oil rigs, and the rest of the environment from the oil cartels...
I just saw an interview with some of the marines and army troops who survived that horrific attack a couple of days ago; eight of them died and the insurgents overran their lonely outpost...they were surrounded, the young soldier said, 360 degrees...and they had wounded they could not evacuate.
In the middle of the fire fight, they started giving blood to the wounded to keep them alive--Think about that image: you are on the side of a frigidly cold mountain, gun fire is coming at you from every direction; your buddies are dying on both sides of you; and there is no way for help to reach you--you are firing a weapon with one hand, while your blood drips into an IV that is hooked up to another team mate who is about to die. It is an image that will keep me awake tonight--and I wish it would keep a lot of people awake; maybe then, people would be provoked into doing something positive to make a difference that really matters.
I think we should all be ashamed to know how we carp at one another as we sit here safely in our houses arguing about Rush or Keith's latest escapade, while some 23 year olds are dying trying to hold outposts in those unforgiving mountains of Afghanistan and the deserts of Iraq...and the rest of them are giving the wounded their blood to try and keep them alive until the medivac choppers can get to them...and the brave pilots of those choppers are taking greater and greater risks to reach them before they are killed. And when they finally get them to a field hospital, the doctors and nurses are so exhausted from combat that they operate on auto pilot--it's the only way they can survive what they see every day.
We need all the positiveness we can find in this world and when the the Nobel Committee offered us a gift yesterday by honoring the President the American people elected; what do so many of us do? Make light of it, say it's undeserved, ridicule President Obama and the Nobel Committee..FTLOG, who are we to question the Nobel Committee? The behavior is disturbing and sad IMO, and as you said, so many will never really learn what it all means.
We have our priorities all out of whack and we need to wake up and realize that we need to work together.
Sometimes lately, I think the terrorists have already won--they killed many people on 9-11...and for awhile, we were all Americans. But now, it seems that even if they did not kill us all that day--we have let all the things that happened since slowly eat away at our sense of country and humanity...our very sense of what it means to be an American...instead, we are labeling each other in a derogatory way simply because we have a difference of opinion about politics!
Those young men on that mountainside didn't ask each other are you a conservative or a liberal, they did not care if one is black and another white or brown, they have no idea what some insanely ridiculous talk show host said today...they were too busy trying to stay alive, following orders, fighting for America-- for all of us--and mostly for each other, because that's all they really have.
They all deserve more than what we are offering them right now--and so do the people who are dying from lack of health care because they do not have the money to pay for the insurance.
These are the important things I believe--and I wonder what it will take for us to realize how much better we could all be if we took a different approach to a lot of these issues, and exhibited some compassion and love for everyone.
letter I received by email on Oct 9 from Mr. President... it just so happens that I have it saved forever, I mean still in my inbox so I shall share it with my friends here. I'm sure he won't mind.
