You think war’s a good idea? Fine, go fight it. -Drew
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - Tom M
Carry – Liz
The Eastern Front On The Other Hand… -John
What Happened to the American Dream? -Eric
The Men of Killer Blue – Jordan
Hate… -Aaron
Unseen Injuries -Ryan
Loved ones left home. -Jordan
I am a twenty-three year old college student. I have lived during the times of several wars, some of which have been fought by my country and some that have not. I have learned about war in school and from newspapers and from movies but really, I do not know much about war.
I can pretend I know about what is going on in Iraq or Afghanistan. I can talk about détente and different forms of terrorism and maybe even seem like I have some knowledge of these subjects but really, I don’t.
I cannot even begin to wrap my head around what it would be like to have my hometown bombed by a country that said it was doing so for the purposes of protecting their freedom and promoting democracy. O.k. sure those sound like worthy causes, but how does a bomb or a missile spread the message of freedom?
Sometimes I wish this generation was as adamant about opposing the war as those during the Vietnam War. Sure, they did things their own way but that does not mean we cannot learn a lesson from them and stand up for peace and voice our opinions about what is going on.
I think every person needs to be more proactive about learning about what is going on in Iraq, Afghanistan, and every other corner of the world where America interjects itself and even where it does not. I feel it is our responsibility as U.S. citizens and as citizens of the world. Ignorance is bliss only if nobody is dying because of it.
I will take away from this course a greater need to be informed, a greater need for knowledge of wars past and present. I have shared some of the books we read in class to friends and family and they enjoyed reading and learned from them as much as I did. If anything, I hope I can share my need to know more about war with others.
A lot of people blame George Bush.
A few people blame Saddam.
Some people blame Al Qaeda. (Mostly two elderly women sitting at a nearby table while I ate lunch a couple of weeks ago).
Some people in the Middle-East blame the people in the West.
Others are still trying to figure out whom to dish their blame out to.
Someone has to be responsible for this mess, right?
Tim O’Brien wrote that there was always someone to blame in “The Things They Carried”.
“When a man died, they had to be blame. Jimmy Cross understood this. You could blame the war. You could blame the idiots who made the war. You could blame Kiowa for going to it. You could blame the rain. You could blame the river. You could blame the field, the mud, the climate. You could blame the enemy. You could blame the mortar rounds. You could blame people who were too lazy to read a newspaper, who were bored by the daily body counts, who switched channels at the mention of politics. You could blame whole nations. You could blame God. You could blame the munitions makers or Karl Marx or a trick of fate or an old man in Omaha who forgot to vote” (O’Brien 177).
Does blame change anything? Maybe it makes you feel better, get some closure, but it cannot change the past. When I think about it, blame cannot really change the future either.
Should we turn the blame over to President Obama for requesting a few extra billion for the war? If we do decide to blame him, what good would it do?
Should we blame the media for not telling us the whole truth?
Or, better yet, should we blame the soldiers for volunteering? Because if there were no soldiers then there would be no war.
Maybe I would be less skeptical about the joys of blame if there was one clear choice as to whom I should blame. Maybe not, too.
Maybe I should blame myself, for not knowing more than I do, or caring more than I do, for not protesting like the kids of the Vietnam era did, or for not writing a newsletter telling the real civilian casualty figures or for not volunteering myself. But I don’t blame myself. And I don’t blame you, or your neighbor or his cousin in Florida or his ex-girlfriend in Sacramento–mostly because blame does not solve anything.
What matters is caring at all.
Artist Jeremy Deller is promoting conversation and empathy through a new exhibit “It Is What It Is” at the New Museum and on YouTube. Deller took a car destroyed by a roadside bomb in Iraq around the U.S. and filmed people reacting to it and speaking about the Iraq war and all of the videos are posted on YouTube.
Read about it here: How artist Jeremy Deller is bringing the Iraq war home to Americans
In a land that worships the car, people want to know what happened to this smashed, scorched vehicle. Deller and his cohorts – an Iraqi citizen who worked for the Americans and now must live in exile, and a US soldier who served in Iraq – tell them. “The car was destroyed in a major attack on a book market in the cultural centre of Baghdad in 2007,” says Deller. “The street itself was totally destroyed, 35 people were killed, and hundreds were injured.” Conversations about Iraq, inspired by this information, then ensue, all of which are filmed and posted on YouTube. As Deller says: “It’s the conversation piece from hell.”
The conversations that ensued are not only honest but most of them shy away from placing blame on anyone and everyone all at once.
Here are links to two of the videos:
It Is What It Is: The Mall, Washington, D.C.
It Is What It Is: New Orleans, LA.
Find more videos in the series by searching “It is what it is” on www.youtube.com
I once learned in a communications class that people share fantasy themes, such as those of the American ideal, patriotism, nationalism, and so on, in order to build a vision that ultimately pulls them together and gives them a sense of identification with a shared reality.
War is one of those shared fantasies.
From the Revolutionary War to the war in Iraq, just about every American shares in the fantasy of war.
But, just because almost every American shares in the fantasy of war, doesn’t mean that almost every fantasy is good—bad fantasies are still fantasies.
Soldiers fight for the freedom of their country. Families and loved ones tie yellow ribbons around trees. Patriotic citizens buy “Support Our Troops” bumper stickers and slap them proudly onto the backs of their pick-up trucks and SUVs. Twenty-three year old college students write blogs about war, something they will probably never understand…
We all have a fantasy about war—they are not all the same.
In a scene from Oliver Stone’s movie, Born on the Fourth of July, the boys talk about how fighting in the Vietnam War would make them a part of American history. It did not matter if they made it back alive. After all, their dads had fought in WWII and their grandfathers fought in the WWI, these boys only wanted to do their duty, to be a part of something bigger than themselves, to be a part of the fantasy.
But when, if ever, does the fantasy become replaced by something that tears apart instead of brings together?
In an article titled “America’s Imperial Wars” the author, Dave Lindorff, talks about how Americans need to see the horrors of war before the fantasy of war can be separate from the actual war.
When I was a 17-year-old kid in my senior year of high school, I didn’t think much about Vietnam. It was 1967, the war was raging, but I didn’t personally know anyone who was over there, Tet hadn’t happened yet. If anything, the excitement of jungle warfare attracted my interest more than anything (I had a .22 cal rifle, and liked to go off in the woods and shoot at things, often, I’ll admit, imagining it was an armed enemy.)
But then I had to do a major project in my humanities program and I chose the Vietnam War. As I started researching this paper, which was supposed to be a multi-media presentation, I ran across a series of photos of civilian victims of American napalm bombing. These victims, often, were women and children—even babies.
Henry Dobbins, a character in Tim O’Brien’s novel “The Things They Carried” is definitely one that shares in the fantasy of war.
“In many ways he was like America itself, big and strong, full of good intentions, a roll of fat jiggling at his belly, slow of foot but always plodding along, always there when you needed him, a believer in the virtues of simplicity and directness and hard labor. Like his country, too, Dobbins was drawn towards sentimentality” (O’Brien 117).
I believe more people are turning away from the fantasies of Henry Dobbins and turning towards more negative ones, even if they are finding faults in places less deserving than others are. Costs usually outrank casualties on the evening news. And, if no one you know is over there, then what does it even matter anyway?
Lindorff tries to answer this:
No wonder that even today, most Americans oppose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan not because of sympathy with the long-suffering peoples of those two lands, but because of the hardships faced by our own forces, and the financial cost of the two wars.
When do lies become unavoidable truths?
When the lie is intended to frighten?
When the lie has the potential to hurt?
When the lie is used to kill?
War, like life, is full of lies, some great, and some small. Each lie has a different consequence, while each of those consequences causes a ripple, a butterfly effect, and goes on to affect more people than the liar* (not necessarily one person or a person at all) intended.
Regardless of my opinion about the administration of George W. Bush, there is no denying the lies they fed us resulted in the loss of many lives. The term WMD has become a part of our vernacular and it is all because of a great lie.
In an article titled “Ten Appalling Lies We Were Told About Iraq”, the writer plainly states ten lies the Bush administration told the American public and the world about the situation in Iraq and then goes on to point out why they are lies and what the actual truth, if any, is behind what was said.
LIE #1: “The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program … Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.” — President Bush, Oct. 7, 2002
Tim O’Brien addresses lies in “The Things They Carried”, but for a different reason. His lies are used for different purposes, even though the lies are still contained within the body of war. Did he kill that young Vietnamese boy? Does it even matter?
“You can tell a true war story by the questions you ask. Somebody tells you a story, let’s say, and afterward you ask, “Is it true?” and if the answer matters, you’ve got your answer” (O’Brien 83).
Is there a right time to lie and a wrong time to lie? Maybe. Probably, in fact. But only if the ends justify the means. Only if the liar is smart enough to know the difference and only if the interests of others are put before everything else.
I think the end, as of now, shows an America left with a bitter legacy of lies–lies that have killed 4,261 members of the U.S. military and wounded 67,237, according to a recent article on Consortium News.
I think O’Brien was right in saying “…story-truth is sometimes truer than happening-truth” (O’Brien 179) but I think it only applies to certain circumstances. Happening-truth is always truer than story-truth when lives are lost in-between.
