This War and That War

With the turn of the seasons I find myself in darker thoughts. Loneliness, loss, and death (not my own but death in general, but thanks for being concerned) occupy my thoughts much of the time. It's obviously time to pull out the SAD lights, but while I adjust and reach a new equilibrium I'm trying to harness my darker mood as a philosophical impetus rather than a simple life-sucking depression.

Ken Burns has produced another war documentary, something he vowed never to do after his masterpiece on the U.S. Civil War. Then a few years ago he woke up to the fact that U.S. veterans of World War II were dying at the rate of 1000 a day, and their stories were vanishing with them into the grave. But something more was happening. Some of the surviving old soldiers and sailors, after 50 years, were finally ready to tell their stories. Since our family doesn't have any TV reception we won't be hearing those stories right away, but the documentary has spawned some other stories on NPR that are touching and thought-provoking.

There are plenty of reasons for a country for go to war. I might say, "some good, some bad," but I have trouble imagining the act of going to war ever being good. It's an awful, horrible choice, most often driven by the assumption that a good life for my people can only be bought by taking resources from someone else, permanently. Peace and justice are the highest good, but I am a realist and sometimes the only way to them is through the war that is already upon you. I believe we're all one people but it can be tricky to argue that with an army marching straight at you. In that light, sometimes a country or people is the victim rather than the perpetrator, and in some circumstances war becomes the least bad choice they have.

For the U.S., World War II was a rare confluence of such circumstances. For the country as a whole and for individual citizens, entering the war seemed the right thing to do. Oh, not at first certainly. The horrors of World War I were not forgotten (and horrific as that war was for us, we paid much less dearly than our European allies). Up until Pearl Harbor, the debate against war was strong. But that "date which [lives] in infamy" drove home to the American people that like it or not, the war was coming to them.

It's been said the main reason a soldier kills in a war is to keep from getting killed himself. After that he fights to save his buddy next to him, then to protect the other guys in the army, and last for the people back home. But in World War II, you could truly argue, without hypocrisy, that our soldiers were fighting to make the world a better place than it otherwise might be, not only for us and our children but ultimately for our enemies and their children as well. The confluence of motivations made the supreme effort and sacrifice of the U.S. and our allies possible.

So our fathers and grandfathers went, and became killers, and some got killed themselves, and the ones who survived came home scarred to a world that was itself scarred forever by what they had done, but was better than the world would have been if they hadn't. And for the most part they didn't talk about what they did. They had done what they had to do and came home, put their lives and families back together as best they could, and got on with it. For all of that and more they've been called the greatest generation, an assessment I have to agree with.

Now thanks to their willingness at their life's end to share, and Ken Burns' and others' willingness to listen and sift and interpret, the stories are coming out to us. I am humbled and awed by what they managed to come through.

Today I look at our war in Iraq, and my heart weeps. Our soldiers are going through trauma just as severe as that suffered in WWII. They are killing and dying and if they come home they are maimed in body or soul, to families equally injured. Whether they come back alive or dead, they and their families will carry the burden of their sacrifice for the rest of their lives.

But what is it for? They fight for themselves, for their buddies, for their country. They truly believe in what they're doing, for the most part. They want to make their own country safer, and life for the Iraqi people better.

The difference is, in WWII we were justified, and we had reason to believe, based on clear evidence and experience, that what we were doing would work. Today we are unjustified, and we have nothing but the unfounded convictions of a cadre of fools in the White House for evidence that what we are doing will work.

In two generations we have gone from being a country reluctant for war but willing to do it well if we must, to a country spoiling for war and willing to do it poorly because we can. I am ashamed.

Please work for peace.