Why God Invented Pneumonia

So far Tim (I'm going to call him that now) has talked about love, death, friendship, pride, and God. Each thing is taken on a little bit differently than what we would call typical.

Now they are building some kind of fort in a church, probably somewhere in southern Vietnam. The monks living there seem so grateful for the Americans and show no sign of reluctancy in letting them set up in their Church. I really don't know much about the Vietnam War- I know we had to somehow stop Communism and whatnot, but there were probably some selfish government reasons involved too. Tim didn't agree with the war, or he didn't before he went. I don't know his take on it now, but I'm sure there were others that didn't want to be there either. And I know war probably isn't the number one solution on any sane church's list, but these really holy men appreciated the war efforts, I assume. So if the monks appreciated it, I'm sure that the average southern Vietnamese citizen also appreciated the Americans. I noticed that through reading this.. but I don't think the soldiers did. Kiowa was was afriad to be at the church.. "'It's bad news,' Kiowa said. 'You don't mess with churches'" (page 113).

I think maybe in the midst of all the fighting, the Americans didn't realize why they were there? They just concentrated on the day to day and humped fake things.