A Soldier Died Pity the poor souls who never question their role in wars, or poverty or just plain human misery. Car accidents receive little or no attention but a plane crash warrants public inquires and millions of dollars to recover minute bits of the plane. I find all this obscene. The piece quoted was moving and well composed but the plain fact is that people die every day. In ordinary and un-noticed ways people die from road accidents, from alcohol and other drugs and from industrial pollution.
People also die early deaths from the effects of poverty.
Of course we can get weepily sentimental at the death of a soldier but Humanists are more interested in the well-being of all than in the glorification of the few. There is also an uncomfortable feeling that, although the Wiz got his body home safely from Viet Nam to enjoy, without further effort, a reward from the state, there was nevertheless something of him that died out there, fighting for the benefit of powerful corporations in a foreign land of which he knew little. All rights reserved.