It is impossible to sit in front of my word processor today and not think of war. But meanwhile life goes on. The Super bowl is still "on" for 4:18 on the 27th. The Nuggets are still trying to win a game. Home Alone and The Godfather part III continue to play to good crowds. The supermarkets are still full of everything that supermarkets should be full of. School is in session. Business is as usual. The whole concept of another war is so overwhelming that some degree of normalcy is all that keeps us sane. And meanwhile we are marching inexorably toward war.
A commentator on public radio said last week that the past months have reminded her of seven year olds playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. To check it I got out my Game Boy and watched Leonardo, sword drawn, charging toward the enemy who disappeared into bloodless nothingness if my fingers were fast enough. This was a game. War is not. But as we have watched world leaders the past few months it seems like play acting, like a slow, deliberate game. Barbara Tuchman says of politicians, "Persistence in error is the problem. Practitioners of government continue down the wrong road as if in thrall to some Merlin with magic power to direct their steps."
I like to think that war is a stage in human evolution which we will outgrow as we become more human. So far history does not seem to bear this out. We continue to kill each other off in huge numbers every twenty years. So. The question still exists: What do rational people do in an irrational world?
The First World War and I began the same year. Needless to say, it interfered in no way with my peaceful days but it was my first war.
Then came WW2, the last "real" war. That one has now almost become a part of mythology. We remember Rosie the Riveter who went home to her kitchens and babies when the "boys" returned. And we remember the anthem of the time, "Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition," which suggested somehow that patriotism and religion were connected and that God approved of the whole thing. We vaguely remember gasoline rationing and sugar rationing, but that war is not real to most of us any more - unless we fought it.
But Korea and Vietnam were real. They weren't wars, legally, but they were oh so very real. We saw Vietnam in our living rooms at dinnertime and we knew the men who were fighting there. A lot of us were those men and women. And for the first time there was serious dissent in the American public about war as an instrument of state, or at least that particular war.
Now we are headed into another war, and the potential devastation during and after it is beyond our comprehension. "They" say it will be short. "They" say the casualties will be light, perhaps only a few thousand Americans! How do you define "light" in terms of human life? "They" say we are protecting the American way of life. "They" say it will not be another Vietnam." Perhaps "They" are right.
Let us hope "They" are. Let us hope this is not another Vietnam in the way we react to it. All reasonable Americans will give support and loyalty to those who are and will be serving in the Persian Gulf. Those men and women must have whatever they need and they must know they have full support on the home front. But many of those same reasonable Americans are seriously questioning the political issues and the validity of the reasons, which have been given for war, and are opposing the war before it even starts. They are expressing their patriotism in a different way and they must be allowed their opinions without being called traitors.
During the Vietnam War those two views of patriotism got mixed up and nearly tore the country apart. We cannot confuse anger at the war with anger at the troops. Denying the value of war does not deny the value of the country or its military personnel. Let us not, this time, confuse jingoism with patriotism.
January 16, 1991, 5:00 pm. We are at war. My friend the philosopher heard the news on her car radio and went home and burst into tears. Perhaps that is the only rational response.