After fourteen+ hours of really fascinating footage, broad coverage and excellent writing, Ken Burns' "The War" is over. Actually, it's not over . . . it will run most of October on KCPT . . . I encourage you to watch it.
As I sat there listening to Nora Jones' rendition of "American Anthem" - tears streaming down my face - the pictures of the young boys who consented to telling their stories in this documentary came across the screen. They're men in their late seventies and eighties now, most of them having lived full and productive lives. Remember, 1,000 veterans of this war are dying each day. Soon they'll all be gone.
Because I have this seemingly unquenchable thirst for history, it's easy for my whole heart to become engrossed in the magnitude and scope of their endeavor. But, when I let it - and I fight it - I start to think about the men and women who are currently fighting in the war. I wrote a blog for Fox 4 last week about this shift that seems to have happened in the mindset of the American people as it relates to war and our willingness to support it. I think it might have happened sometime after the Korean War and during the Cold War. I think the Cold War involved more political games than war games and kind of took the human equation out of the mix. That blog post I wrote got no comments (I got nine when I wrote a piece on OJ . . . )
During WWII, nearly everyone had a victory garden of some sort and there were tin drives, rubber drives, all sorts of drives to collect items that could be transformed into war materials. They even had drives for bacon grease, which could be converted into glycerin and then into bombs. There's nothing like that today.
And then I read a story in "Reader's Digest" about a returning Iraqi vet who has brain trauma, spinal cord injuries and PTSD and had to fight ten months to get his claim processed. Meanwhile, monthly checks totalling $14 million are being distributed to vets with hemorrhoids. Really. Whether or not they support the war in Iraq, most people are quick to add, "But I support our troops." How? A question I need to seriously consider myself.
2 comments:
man, you get some cooks on your other blog. makes me laugh. sometimes i don't read it because it's such a cluster...
i understand what you mean about this "war" compared to that "war". kate and were talking about it about a month ago. this war is very convenient to not be a part of or find a way to help out, just because that's how society has evolved, that's how culture has evolved, that's how wars are fought now, etc etc etc. you can't kick yourself in the behind. our increased level of technology, etc has made fighting wars almost impersonal if that's not twisted in it's own right... i dont' know what i'm saying.
This is great info to know.
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