Bill Dalton: Losing sleep
"Ever worry when you go to bed at night about whether you’re going to wake up dead?" columnist Bill Dalton writes.
EDITOR'S NOTE: The views and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not of Ottawa News Network.
Ever worry when you go to bed at night about whether you’re going to wake up dead?
Fortunately, it doesn’t happen often. But with a recent line of springtime tornadoes ripping across the Midwest, it happened to me the other night.
Weather alerts going on and off, startling you out of a sound sleep. You're awake, breathing heavy, wondering whether your house is spinning in the air like in “The Wizard of Oz.” Finally realizing it’s thankfully just another false alarm.
It’s no way to live.
But it's a scary sensation similar to what it’s probably like to live now in Iran, Israel or other countries in the Middle East.
Ordinary people trying to sleep, fearing a missile or drone or ordnance dropped from an unheard Stealth bomber might be raining down upon your head or the heads of your loved ones in the middle of the night.
Yet being human, they must sleep eventually, too exhausted to worry about whether they’ll ever wake again.
It’s no way to live.
Yet they have no choice if someone thousands of miles away, sleeping in the relative safety of Washington, D.C., or Mar-A-Lago, decides whether you live or die. Someone leaving many in this country and others around the world wondering why.
To what purpose? What objective? Is there one?
One can only wonder after listening to an emotionless Donald Trump drifting day-to-day from regime change to unconditional surrender to dismantling nuclear capabilities to who knows what may cross his mind next?
One can only wonder after listening to the bizarre rantings of Pete Hegseth, Secretary of War, likening death and destruction to a video game, oblivious to the real lives being lost, including those of Americans.
One can only wonder after listening to a confused Marco Rubio, secretary of state, struggling to explain an ever-shifting foreign policy increasingly tilting toward reckless imperialism and might-makes-right.
Are any of them losing sleep over the maiming and killing of innocent children and heavily armed revolutionary guard, without really knowing who is being killed in dozens of air strikes?
One can only wonder, too, about the brave foot soldiers of America’s armies, members of the 52nd Airborne Division and others, preparing to put “boots on the ground” in another ill-conceived war in the Middle East.
Are they and their loved ones losing sleep? Worried about whether they will be called up yet again, knowing with certainty some will never return? And for what?One can only wonder whether this undeclared war lasts weeks, as Trump has predictably promised, or months as many fear? Or as history has shown, possibly years.
It’s no way to live. Yet the recurring nightmare goes on and on, day after day, year after year.
Until hopefully, someday, we finally wake up.
— Bill Dalton is a former reporter and editor for The Kansas City Star and worked for several Michigan newspapers. He spends summers on the family farm near Fennville. His new book “The Bank Game” — a trashy crime thriller — is available from Amazon.
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