The Bomb Squad Comes To Fairfax

I heard the siren in the distance as it came into town. Soon after it rounded the corner onto Bolinas Road and started west. At that point, I realized that there was something different going on here. This truck just looked odd, and obviously was not an ambulance, fire truck, or police car.

The sign on the side read "Police Bomb Unit...."

Fairfax as usual. Never dull.

Hmm, this is kinda different, even for Fairfax. I looked at my friends in front of the park, and we all shrugged. I offered up that sombody likely found grandpa's long forgotten dynamite, decaying in the garage, oozingly crystaline, and ready to blow up with the wind. My friend suggested a hand grenade.

By the time I got over to Deer Park the drama was all over. My friend had called it, a hand grenade, dug up by someone working in the garden -- and welcome to the neighborhood, by the way, apparently found by folks who had moved in recently.

The grenade was empty of explosives. End of the drama, and everyone's hairs could relax down into the sweat of explosive adrenaline.

It seemed a little Kestone Cop"ish" after the sirens and the lights, with everyone standing around talking. However, had there been something explosive, it could have been much different. These folks are potentially risking their lives, on every call.

The conversations later, on facebook, were interesting as well. The concerns -- who, what, where, etc -- and the arguments. One friend was venting about the excessive costs of a bomb squad and how little they work, and another friend had friends, or friends of friends, blown away and shattered by bombs in exotic faraway places like Iraq, Somalia, and Nicaragua. They argued into the electronic night, which was a waste of electrons, as they are on the same side and had nothing to argue about really.

I suggested they both cool it and go after the real jerks, fear, greed, ignorance, and that the endless wars are costing so much more than a few guys racing around on adrenaline.

Bomb squads may be expensive, and they do serve a purpose. They are a defensive mechanisim, protecting us all, mostly from forgotten dynamite and the like, and sometimes from misguided jerks who have no voice besides violence.

One could go into things like why we do not value or fund education or healthcare, when considering the costs or usefulness of a bomb squad, and where does the money really go? Certainly not to defense. The best defense is through education, and a healthy community fabric. Our military is not a defensive device.

Eiesenhower said it best, "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."

I am all for a bomb squads. They a defensive device.

On the other hand, there is our military, which looks more like an offensive device of pain and destruction and not one of defense or protection, at least not in the overall picture. I do not believe that security comes through blowing each other up, or that the innocents slaughtered in the crossfire are an acceptable cost. Being poor, and speaking another language, does not negate any human's value or their own hopes and dreams.

Just imagine if bomb squads opperated as our military does, what a terrible aftertaste.

There is defense and there is offense...

And we seem to have become the bad guys.

Outta control and unregulated.

I hope we grow up and learn to take care of each other and work for peace, before natures' bomb squad has to clean us up.