It’s not the side effects of the cognac, I’m thinking that it must be war
Last night my wife and I were talking about her cousin, who returned in February from a yearlong stint in Iraq. We’ll be seeing him Saturday, at the welcome-home party his mom’s throwing.
My wife mentioned this yesterday to a professional acquaintance, who dropped her voice and asked about him with the pinched sincerity normally reserved for inquiries about cancer patients or young widows. He returned physically intact, my wife told the woman, but her concern touched my wife and made her like the acquaintance more.
Somewhat strangely enough, this exchange led my wife to believe that the woman opposed the war. Of course, most people these days do, in one way or another, so that’s not terribly unusual. But I knew exactly what she meant and – maybe it was because we were drinking Grand Marnier at the time – the realization seemed particularly illuminative. Someone who unquestioningly supports the war and its prosecution, someone who draws comfort from the idea that our troops were off fighting on the other side of the world might, the cognac encouraged me to believe, have reacted by asking my wife how proud she was, or asking if her cousin would participate in any Fourth of July events or something along those lines.
Basically, it seemed to me that a blindly loyal war supporter would somehow skip past the reality of her cousin’s individual sacrifice, the possibility that, even if he weren’t physically injured, he might have suffered in some other way or held mixed feelings about having been there, and react instead as if he were a souvenir from the war, like a flag that had flown over a battle victory or a trinket from one of Saddam’s palaces, something to be paraded around or shown off, rather than an exceedingly quiet guy in his mid-30s who’d been away from his wife and 10-year-old son for a year, and was just now going to be seeing his grandfather, aunts, uncles and cousins this weekend for the first time since he returned home four months ago from a foreign war where he saw or did God knows what.
I’m obviously familiar with the way people ignore the humanity of the people we fight or their neighbors who unfortunately get in the way, and the sick irony that permits a person to feel good about our bombs bestowing voting rights on the people who were lucky enough to have survived until the elections, and how that disconnect is necessary to sustain a war effort. But I guess I never quite realized in a tangible way that it’s necessary to do the same thing with our own troops. I guess the alternative is just too heartbreaking.
…and react instead as if he were a souvenir from the war, like a flag that had flown over a battle victory or a trinket from one of Saddam’s palaces, something to be paraded around or shown off… since he returned home four months ago from a foreign war where he saw or did God knows what.
It’s the ‘foreign’ part of this ‘foreign war’ that makes this reaction possible – Australia does exactly the same thing.
People react differently when the war is not so distant – which might explain the European attitude somewhat…
I hope he find healing – both for his sake and for everyone else’s.
The European attitude has a bit more to do with losing entire generations of young men and far too many civilians on the battlefields of 2 world wars and having to rebuild entire cities back up from rubble. We’d never wish that sort of devastation on anyone. Americans, with all due respect, have never faced that sort of destruction. And no, 9/11 doesn’t come close either. In fact a lot of Americans have a very casual if not downright cavalier attitude about inflicting that sort of destruction, vis a vis Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
Admirably, most American soldiers who remember it are repelled by it. Politicians, on the other hand, faced with only the numbers and statistics… not worth mentioning.
That is so spot-on about how Americans have never suffered the sort of devestation European countries have in a major war (at least, not since the Civil War).
During WWI in France, six out of ten men between the ages of 18 and 28 were either killed or seriously, permanently maimed by the fighting.
To put that in perspective, that would be about eleven million American men today.
Unfortunately, America still has the juvenile mindset of invincibility, because nothing really bad has happened to us in a long time. God knows I don’t wish the horror of war on any country – but I wish there were some way that we as a nation could internalize just what a horrible thing war is. We don’t get it.
Your wife’s cousin will be in my thoughts, Travis. I hope he is well.
Please shake the young mans hand for me and tell him that you are glad that he made it back home where he is loved and respected. I knew a few guys who would up dead over in Iraq, just kids basically, high schools grads,, so I am really happy this fellow made it back.
Ive been thinking about this a lot as we head into the fourth of july weekend. We celebrate fourth of july in a little cape town that has always been liberal–at least the summer visitors are–and over the last few years the anti-iraq war component of the fourth of july parade has become more apparent and the sense I get is that the people lining the streets (a mixture of locals and visitors/summer residents) have become more open to protesting the war visibly. My little girls both fly flags and protest the war. But I’ve been wondering how to fully express my deep support for, and respect for, our returning and returned troops–who may be standing on the parade line or walking in the parade (its a very dinky, small town thing) while simultaneously protesting the ongoing war. I’d love to figure out a sign that we could hold up that would, somehow, say it all neatly and meaningfully. something like “support the troops/bring them home/thank them by throwing bush and his incompetents out” but neater, you know?
But all that is beside the point. Give your cousin a huge hug from me and tell him how glad we all are that he is back and how much we hope that life going forward for him and his family can be all that he hopes it will be. And please let him know, if you can, that every person who is protesting the war is doing so from a real conviction that his life and his family’s happinness was more important than geo-political considerations.And we will be fighting to see that no more young people are sacrificed (or made to sacrifice) in vain in an Iraqi civil war.
aimai
About a year ago, my nephew returned from a 14 month stint in Iraq. He celebrated his 20th birthday there. Unfortunately, the kid that came back is not the same kid that left. Obviously, my whole family was very worried while he was gone but I honestly don’t think my sister will ever recover.
My nephew also supports the Bush administration; when I ask why, he says that as a member of the Armed Forces (he’s in the Reserves; money for college and all that), he is not allowed to do otherwise. I believe that it’s the only way to live with the things he saw or did. From photos and various conversations, I get the impression that these young kids were encouraged to, um, behave badly.
Oh, and good luck getting the VA to pony up benefits.
god bless our soldiers. get them out of this mess.
exactly. support our troops. impeach bush.
Two guys that I graduated with were killed by roadside bombs in the past year. I went to a very small school (100 in our graduating class).
2% of my high school graduating class was killed by roadside bombs in the past year.
The logical progression I just went through when writing this post was terrifying. I am not against this war because I was against our soldiers or my two classmates. I am against this war precisely because of the pointlessness of their demise. What were they doing there, anyway? Why did they have to die? “Our freedoms”? Please. Bush Jr. had a hard-on for the man that “tried to kill his daddy”. And my two classmates are dead. Great trade, George. You’re doin’ a heckuva job.
Spot-on about the blissful ignorance of countries that haven’t had a war sweep through.
I was lucky enough to grow up in such countries. Always knew war was a dreadful business, but never really “got it” in a gut way until I went to Berlin.
If you’re ever in Berlin, catch the train or U-bahn to Zoo Station. Exit the station on the zoo side, but turn left instead of right. Say, about a 2 o’clock angle from the exit. Cross the street, and look at the old church. You can’t miss it.
It’s a church that was partially bombed. Instead of repairing it or demolishing it, it was made safe and solid exactly as it was. The ripped walls were drilled and rebar’d, and clear glass put in place where the stained glass had imploded. The transformation from a beautiful piece of architecture into the shredded stuff-of-nightmares hits you hard when you look at it, and it just gets uglier the longer you look at it.
It’s thoroughly shocking in its own right. But surrounded by clean tidy modern buildings, it’s even worse – you know in a flash what war would do to everything and everyone standing around you.
Walk through it, and look up at the stark light falling through where stained glass once was. The message to me was “God has left the building. And for what?”
War suddenly had an emotional depth; I got a tiny taste of just how awful it really is. I could say “war is terrible” over and over, and believe it. But one look at that church and I didn’t have to believe. I knew.
If you’re anywhere near Berlin and haven’t seen it – see it.
, math is *not* my forté, but backing the calculation up a bit… if 11 million is 60% of our current population of 18-28 year-old males in this country… that’s roughly 15.4 million 18-28 year-old males. Is that true? That seems, somehow… paltry for a nation rapidly approaching 300 million (coming this fall, evidently). Wow, there must be a helluva lotta ol’ farts like me kicking around!
Doing those sort of ratios can be enlightening. If you compare Iraq’s populace to ours (24-300 million), and take the low-end “collateral damage” figures that Shrubco has been pedaling at us–30, 000 dead, minimum. To see what the equivalent casualties would be if some fictional occupying army was casually slaughtering American civilians (as well as multiple “insurgent” forces setting off Hummer & Cherokee bombs everywhere–good thing that they’re in their “last throes!”), multiply that by 12.5 to get 375, 000! Even more horrific, if the higher casualty estimates are somewhere in the correct ballpark (100, 000+), an equivalent figure here would be one and a quarter million. So, yeah, things can happen to countries that are a heck of a lot worse than 9/11.
, math is *not* my forté, but backing the calculation up a bit… if 11 million is 60% of our current population of 18-28 year-old males in this country… that’s roughly 15.4 million 18-28 year-old males. Is that true? That seems, somehow… paltry for a nation rapidly approaching 300 million (coming this fall, evidently). Wow, there must be a helluva lotta ol’ farts like me kicking around!
Doing those sort of ratios can be enlightening. If you compare Iraq’s populace to ours (24-300 million), and take the low-end “collateral damage” figures that Shrubco has been pedaling at us–30, 000 dead, minimum. To see what the equivalent casualties would be if some fictional occupying army was casually slaughtering American civilians (as well as multiple “insurgent” forces setting off car bombs everywhere–good thing that they’re in their “last throes!”), multiply that by 12.5 to get 375, 000! Even more horrific, if the higher casualty estimates are somewhere in the correct ballpark (100, 000+), an equivalent figure here would be one and a quarter million. So, yeah, things can happen to countries that are a heck of a lot worse than 9/11.