By Sandra Kay
May
1 , 2003
Shock and Awe, The Fog of
War, Axis of Evil, Weapons of Mass Destruction, war criminal playing
cards? If I had relied on the amount of clichés that have been surrounding
this war in my high school creative writing class, my teacher would
have had me lynched. “I curse your moustache…”
You know, I really wish I
could just let myself go and be happy about the world as we know it
today. I wish I could just go have a drink, be happy, and be absolutely
sure that I was right about everything and knew that everything was
going to turn out exactly the way it was suppose to turn out whether
I did anything or not. I remember once not that long ago I had to have
an impacted wisdom tooth taken out. “Give me the hardest stuff you
got doc, I want to be knocked out cold.” I woke up feeling like everything
in this world was wonderful, I felt that I had been enlightened. I was
actually NICE, something that doesn’t happen very often. I want to
be like that all the time. Sure, I couldn’t walk without assistance
out to my car, much less drive, but those are just details.
This isn’t about the war,
or the many wars that it seems to me we are going to be fighting over
the next few years. No, this isn’t about any of that. This is about
ME, and how this war has fucked ME, and it pisses ME off, because we
all are, according to Freud, ultimately selfish. It was a Depeche Mode
song too.
First thing, I like to travel,
a lot. Europe is wonderful, and I would like to be able to go there
without the stigma of being a crass American. Okay, I would be thought
of as a crass American irregardless, but things are just a little bit
more dodgy right now. As if the French didn’t have enough reason to
call us rednecks before President Bush. I don’t care what the French
say, I’m going to Paris whenever I damn well feel like it, but I still
hate being lumped in with our President. Oh, you think people are smart
enough to figure out that WE are not necessarily our government? I
seem to remember a boycott of all things French and “Freedom Fries”.
Oh yeah, and the ads in the New York Times this week begging for the
people that weren’t coming to eat at French restaurants anymore to please
come back. That’ll teach em’. I don’t give a shit if the only people
we’re hurting are American citizens. One of New York’s best French
restaurants was forced to close this week. Now, this could be due to
a weak economy, and French restaurants aren’t exactly known for their
cheap food. Yeah, you could say that, but that wouldn’t explain people
at the Federal Building pouring Merlot down the gutter. Bastards probably
bought the $2.00 French wine at Trader Joe’s and kept the good stuff
for company. Now THAT’S patriotic. My friends own a sandwich shop
called Vie de France. I asked Chris if everything was okay when this
whole French boycott nonsense was happening, and she said, “well, we’ve
been getting prank phone calls telling us to go home.” To Britain,
uh huh. They’re American citizens from Britain. Seems like the British
are our only friends anymore. Ah, screw em’.
The other thing that fucked
ME during this war was I was planning on going to London long before
this ever happened. People thought I was nuts for going to London when
a war had just been declared. I’m like “uh, if you think I’m going
to give up my free ticket I got with American Airlines just because
of something like war, YOU’RE WRONG”. So there. We went to London
and had a lovely time in spite of the war. I must say though, Britain’s
media coverage of the Iraqi war is completely different from the US.
We would generally be back in our room before the bombings would start,
and the news became our primetime TV viewing if we were too exhausted
to go out, and the bombs were really big ones. Mind you, the war hadn’t
started before we left, so our first experience of the war was in London.
This is what I didn’t understand
until I experienced it. War can be portrayed in pretty much any way
you want it to. Britain’s take on the war was completely different
than the US version, and they are our ALLIES. There was so much footage
shot on this war, and by so many different sources, the decision to
include certain footage and not others can dramatically change the way
a news story is played out. Ask any editor in Hollywood what he can
do with a 70 to 1 ratio of film. Meaning, you have 1 minute to show
for every 70 that you have. Think of the possibilities there. Now think
about a newsroom, and a war, and the amount of footage you have, and
differences in culture, and you’re STILL reliant on the reporter’s and
cameraman’s judgment of what they think is important, and then you have
to run it by the White House so you don’t give away strategic military
maneuvers. Just how accurate of a picture do you think you’re going
to have?
This is not to say US media
coverage is bad or inaccurate, I don’t think it is either of those things.
I guess what it got me thinking about, is, if this is being played out
in the United States as differently as it’s being played out in Britain,
how is it being viewed by the rest of the world? How about Argentina,
France, Belgium, the Middle East? This is what concerns me.
Now normally, I wouldn’t
give a shit about what anybody thought, but since we live in a “global
village” now, I would like to think our leaders are smart enough to
figure out that we might actually need somebody else in the rest of
the world to sustain MY way of living.
I don’t think this war was
about oil, I don’t think this war was about anything quite frankly.
I’m glad Saddam is gone, and apparently so are a lot of other people.
That’s the rub, this isn’t cut and dry, as much as I’d like to think
that it is. I’ve finally come to the conclusion that sometimes things
just ARE. Why do people do what they do? Because they CAN. The bottom
line is you have to trust your gut at any given moment, and hopefully
you have a sane enough moral premise that you’re not going to hurt or
kill people, right? But again, the rub. What if someone else is killing?
To what extent do you justify your actions in order to stop somebody
else that is OBVIOUSLY doing wrong? What do you base that morality
on? Christianity, Islam, Judaism, or maybe it’s some New Age combination
of all of the above. Again, there’s the rub. The difference between
a terrorist and a hero is a matter of perception. Try thinking about
that if you want to have insomnia for the next year.
Again, I defer. This is
about ME, and my life, and this war. I don’t want to die young, I don’t
want to have to worry about getting nuked off the face of the planet,
I’d venture to say 99% of the rest of the world would agree with me.
And the other 1% are psychotic and don’t matter anyway. The real question
is, how do we achieve that? That’s the million dollar question, and
there are as many different opinions out there as there are religions.
Does that make any one of them wrong? No, it doesn’t. So, I guess
you could base all logic on the outcome. If indeed there are many different
rights and no wrongs, you could base your morality on whether something
actually worked or not, right? If indeed the Iraq war leads to peace,
that means that it was right. Problem with that is, we aren’t going
to know for another 10 years what the outcome of all of this will be.
We basically flipped the UN the bird, so we obviously didn’t think that
was the way to peace, as we once did after the Second World War. Does
that mean the UN was wrong to begin with? The whole idea of the UN
is an antiquated one?
More questions than answers.
I’m going to go have a drink now and ponder the meaning of life and
death. Then I’ll watch American Idol. Who do you think the next to
get the boot is? Those are the real questions in life. Maybe I’ll actually
get some sleep tonight.
