- There was a newspaper comic strip I remember reading, and getting a chuckle out of, when I was a kid. It was a daily look at this no luck army grunt who could never get a break. He was created by a WW 2 army Sgt. named George Baker, who in his own way, succeeded in representing the mundane day to day life of a poor army private he named Sad Sack. Poor Sad Sack, when he broke up with his girlfriend, his family sided with her! If you remember the Sad Sack stories over the years, I think, in his own way, he was trying to tell us in a simple way about the fruitlessness, the waste, the hopelessness, the loneliness, and the loss of self brought on by war. The comic strip, it’s self, was not outwardly anti war, but if you read between the lines, it comically portrayed the tragic loneliness, the no sense of real purpose, and the pathological sense of emptiness brought about by war.
- Over the last few days of this tragic Afghanistan fiasco, I sense a terrible deja vu sweeping over our country. Is it worth asking the question again? Do ya think we’ve learned our lesson? The Civil War, did we learn? No! World War 1, did we learn? No! World War 2, did we learn? No! The Korean War, did we learn? No! Vietnam, did we learn? No! Afghanistan, did we learn? No! Iraq, did we learn? No! I know that everyone has an opinion on the use of the military to achieve our goals, but ask a Vietnam grunt, or a Afghanistan, on the ground, veteran, and see what they have to say. No matter how they view it, the personal stories they will tell won’t be happy ones.
- Here is the real story of Sad Sack. Sgt. George Baker came up with the character, but he didn’t come up with the name. War is beyond tragic because we chose to do it to ourselves! Earthquakes, floods, pandemics, and droughts are tragic! Mother Nature has no ability to be negotiated with, no diplomacy is going to stop global warming! But wars! I’m asking the question, what have we done and what are we doing to ourselves? It truly is as crazy as our own citizens storming our nation’s Capital to overthrow our fairly elected President and hang the fairly elected and now defeated Vice President! Is that normal??
- At the moment I feel like Sad Sack. But the news cycle only lasts a week or two and the last couple of days will fade into a sad part of President Biden’s library papers. The responsibility of our actions over the last twenty years will live on for years to come in what Paul Simon calls “The Sound Of Silence.” And we become the true meaning of the comic Sad Sack, “A Sad Sack of Shit.”
