...I'm okay with being REALITY-based.




Wednesday, March 26, 2003
      ( 10:46 AM )
 
Na-Na-Na-Na I Don't See You, War - I'm Covering My Eyes!!

I couldn't have said it better:

...this is our war and we should have to face it. Not the sanitized images on CNN and Fox. We should have to live with the reality of what is happening to the people in Iraq every minute.

It would be enough to make one crazy I imagine. Sleep disrupted for days. Looking at dead people. Not knowing one minute to the next what to expect. Having no control. It's much easier to support a war that you don't have to think about, let alone live with. And this is what war protesters are trying to do. Getting in people's faces and saying "THINK ABOUT IT". They are disrupting traffic and daily life so that people are forced to think about the war. Even if it's just a few minutes while you're sitting in your car in a traffic jam. War is ugly and inconvenient and disrupts and takes away life. So I'm not too sympathetic with people who are angry that they have to deal with the inconveniences here of war protests and people talking about how horrible the war is. A lot of people are having to deal with a hell of a lot worse than a traffic jam or pictures of dead people. And they had no choice either.

As usual, the eloquence on Hopes and Dreams is exceptional and I feel like this statement perfectly mirrors my own feelings on the matter.

After 9/11, our government's response was to go out shopping. There was no acceptance of collective grief, of the ability to just stop and consider what had happened and let things go for a little while. No, we had to act like life was normal and keep going. While I would like to blame the Administration for promoting this way of thinking, I can't - it is deeply imbedded in the modern American culture. "Act Like Nothing Is Happening!" seems to be the key motto of our country nowadays. I don't know when it started, but it's so prevalent, that it makes my head spin.

I would like to believe that a majority of people in this country do NOT think it is appropriate to consider what is happening in Iraq as a normal course of war and that the casualities that will be heaped on each side are just "collateral damage" and the "wages of war" as if "well, that's just the way things are - oh well!" It's also hard for me to confront my own feelings on many issues surrounding this situation, especially because I am not a pacifist and I do believe that sometimes armed resistance to oppression is the only last resort available to some people. But in the case of invading a country when no threat or attack has been made, and after over a decade of bombing and starving that country anyway, it seems to me that there is a line we must draw.

How can we continue to live and operate normally in a country that allows our government to carry on like this? I don't understand it. I don't understand how the stopping of traffic and the inconvenience caused by committed protesters has become "endangering innocent lives." Does anyone remember bombs going off in federal buildings every week during the Vietnam War? Have we become so calloused and so fat and spoiled by our indulgent culture that we don't even see that our option to being inconvenienced is Timothy McVeigh? I'm not even going to push the point about the dead, dying, injured and prisoners in Iraq right now (on both sides) - and for what? "Freedom???" When our country has the right to invade, bomb and then eventually (but probably not) establish it's version of "freedom" on other countries, then something is wrong with how we basically exist here.

Sure, you're pissed off you can't get to work on time or get home as quickly, sure you're pissed that you might have to wait for a march to pass before you can go into the shopping mall downtown. Well, I don't mean to be rude, but I don't feel sorry for you. If every time you are inconvenienced by a protest you have to stop and think about WHY they are there, then it's worth it.


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