Hello everyone! Today I’ll be writing about my maternal great-grandfather, Adam Penich – or as he was more colloquially known to my sister Katie and I, Poppop. He served in 1942-1945 as a member of the 1049^th Engineers Gas Generating Unit in the US Army Air Corps, meaning that he was one of many units who rebuilt towns the progression of the war had destroyed. Specifically, his unit followed behind the Army and rebuilt whatever it had been through. Poppop served in the Naples-Foggia campaign, the Rome-Arno campaign, southern France, and the Rhineland, a section of West Germany near the River Rhine. He rose to the rank of Technical Sergeant and received four medals in total for his service. As far as I can tell from talking to family members, he never was involved in combat, nor gave his opinions on the war or the act of war itself. He was, according to my maternal grandmother and aunt, one of those guys that didn’t want to discuss such things. Sadly enough, he passed back in 2011 so he’s not exactly available to ask interview or anything like that. As such I think it may be appropriate to move to my reflections on war, as I’ve always been interested in war history for as long as I can remember, and thus I’ve had an interest in both studying it and forming my opinions.

 

First of all, you guys know I’m pretty anti-war; I think I’ve made that about as clear as possible without climbing on a table with a sign or something. If you haven’t figured out I’m anti-war, I’m not sure where you’ve been. That being said – I think war can be justified. The problem is that inevitably, with the way the military-industrial complex is set up, there is always a profit incentive for private companies to be involved in war and benefiting from its continuation. Since before this country’s inception, the military and militias have been used to bully, coerce, displace, and slaughter whomever it considered in the way and disposable without much trouble. In the 1600’s-1897, it was the Native Americans who lived with the land and found a way to use their resources without undermining them – a lesson we would have done well to try to learn long ago – who were pushed out of the way and obliterated, eventually pushed onto “reservations” and considered barely second-class citizens. In the early- to mid-1900’s, it was the various peoples of South America, the Caribbean, and parts of Asia whose countries and land were trampled and destabilized for the economic interests of rich white men on Wall Street. From the 80’s onward it has been the people of various Middle East countries whose countries have been fought over and in by, again, white American and European men. There is quite a difference between helping and a thin façade of aid and generosity helping cover up greed and political motivations, a difference we haven’t yet nor will ever find. To that end, we as the public must continually put increasing pressure on our elected officials for increasing transparency, organize and continue protesting. The 19^th Amendment would not have been enacted without the protests of many women. Recall that it was people at colleges, in academic institutions, in non-governmental organizations and transnational advocacy who forced the likes of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher (among others) to turn to South Africa and say “you have to find a different way to live, because apartheid is not an ethical system upon which to live”. There is power in knowledge and willingness to fight for justice. That has been and will be our hammer and sickle upon which we will move the monoliths governing our society and world towards enacting some semblance of justice in this disordered world.