Sunday, August 04, 2002

The Unreality of War   I helped my son and his girlfriend move to Ithaca, NY this weekend, and as I drove through the hundred year old villages of upstate New York, I was struck by the absolute tranquility I saw everywhere.  From the road, past Albany, farm after farm has corn growing for their livestock, a large feed silo, and a rambling collection of outbuildings.  Driving through the towns, where the state highways still become Main St., the Victorian and later houses all have large front porches, sometimes winding around the side of the house as well.  On the weekend, it was easy to see people sitting on these porches--eating ice cream, talking and going about life outside a bustling metropolitan area. How can these people be about to be involved in a war.  In my view, they are not.  War in history is something that terrifies and frightens a whole population.  You don't really know what will happen to you, or what you must do to survive.  This is the experience of the population in Afghanistan, in Palestine, in Israel, and in Iraq.  It is not the experience in the U.S. We are increasing insulated from the consequences of our actions.  As I drove through New York, I also noticed  that in every village square there was a monument to the union soldiers of the civil war.  At that time, these villages lost many of their children and most able-bodied men, and saw many others come home wounded.  This was a terrifying and terrible war, with losses that touched everyone.  Yet it was taken on wholeheartedly, and with purpose. The losses of Sept. 11th also were terrible for many people, especially  in the Northeast, where there were ample personal connections.  My sister's neighbor died in the world trade center, and the wife of a teacher in our school system was a flight stewardess on American airlines, and traded her slot on the hijacked flight at the last minute for a doctor's appointment. Yet, the idea of war in Iraq has a total unreality--because it is presented as without any American sacrifices.  The army commanders are resisting the republican political echelon's demand for blood because they realize that this is not an abstraction, and that someone's sons and daughters will be killed. The more that American's are uninvolved in actual sacrifice, the more the media plays up the heroism and sacfrice of the few unfortunate soldiers who are killed in America's sanitized actions.  By making a media myth, the reality is disguised.  Americans can be blasé about these very few combat deaths, because the heroes are celebrated, and no one really knew them anyway.  Instead of the reality of the civil war deaths in the New York villages, we have the unreality of a media myth with a happy ending for America, if not for the actual soldier killed.  In this myth, no one is killed by stupidity, by the hypocrisy  of the political class, to preserve some one's power, or to cover up a mistake.  All are killed only fighting heroically to protect our shores. There is a lot of wisdom in the villages of New York, and political leaders have a duty to make the case for war, and for sacrifice, and if they cannot make the case, they must oppose the war.   I don't see anyone saying that America's years of safety and prosperity are about to be endangered by a reckless war of agression, which promises to make our soldiers and civilians targets once again as they have not been since the earliest years of our country.   11:08:26 PM   comment []

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