The Price of War

I am not talking about dollars and cents., not that that doesn't fill me with great ire. More importantly, though, I am talking about the people. American Soldiers and Iraqi civilians. And those civilians’ only “crime” was being born in the wrong country. While on vacation at my in-laws, I shared a very interesting conversation with my mother-in-law. She is so very intelligent and amazing. Her perspective is so different than mine based on her life experience and I always feel grateful and enriched when she shares some of it with me. We were talking in disgusted tones about the war in Iraq and how awful it is. How unjustified. I was speaking of one of my closest friends who lost her brother to the war. And still, I can’t make sense of it. I can’t understand how Americans can support this war or our current administration. One of the things my MIL shared how much things have changed here in America in regards to war. We now avoid seeing the horrors or war. She told me that she clearly recalls during WWII, the whole country thought about it, and faced it, and acted upon it. The women went to work. Families hung banners in their windows, blue stars for a loved one at war. Should that loved one be killed, the stars turned gold. Many homes had numerous stars. The war was everywhere. You couldn’t avoid it. There was less involvement in every home during Korea to her recollection. I don’t think the whole Vietnam debacle even needs discussion in terms of changing tides of American sentiment. Now, the media won’t even show body bags on the news. It’s just too much for our delicate American sensibilities. It’s hidden from us. The true horror of what goes on half a world away. We can lie in our beds at night and sleep peacefully because we don’t see the repulsive images of the havoc we wreak upon these other countries. Perhaps we wouldn’t be so quick to go to war if we saw war. Perhaps the violence would be more shocking if we actually saw it and had fewer violent movies to compare it to. I recall people complaining about the first scene of Saving Private Ryan as being too violent, too gory. I guess it was just too real.