Like, A War
Monday, February 10, 2003
Listen to this piece through WBEZ.
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A few decades ago, 20-something guys like myself quaked in their Birkenstocks when the government started beating the war drums. But like most 25-year-olds who didn't have to take the Army's money to pay for college, I don't have to worry much about fighting a war in Iraq. Unless they bring back the draft, I'll probably never have to fight in any military conflict. In fact, I don't even really know what a war is.
Since Congress hasn't declared war since 1941, the only reliable way I have of judging whether a particular conflict counts as a war is The Movie/Sitcom Test. The test dictates that if a sitcom or more than one movie was made about a military engagement, then it was a war. Thus, Somalia (Black Hawk Down) doesn't count as a war, whereas World War II and Vietnam do. Korea counts, too, thanks to M*A*S*H.
I realize that the Movie/Sitcom Test isn't terribly scientific. But, clearly, I can't count on the government to define the word war for me--they'll call anything a war. We've been involved in some war or another my whole life: from Grenada to Libya to Bosnia. But those didn't seem like real wars, at least from where I was sitting. War, for my generation, is a remote experience: Smarter bombs and weaker opponents have made the "wars" of my lifetime increasingly similar to video games.
All this has meant fewer American casualties, of course. But it has also made it hard for us to take the word "war" seriously. Some Americans think of war and picture D-Day. When I imagine a "war," I picture America playing hair metal to get Manuel Noriega to leave the Vatican Embassy in Panama. We have little real experience with the costs of war. From here in Chicago, the "wars" in Bosnia and Somalia might as well have never happened, for all they changed my life.
Of course, these conflicts look a lot more like wars to the people we're fighting. I don't think 25-year-old Iraqis have a hard time defining the word war - its meaning is all around them. They know that war means sacrifice, whereas I only know that it means yellow ribbons. But if the United States pursues its new-found policy of preemptively striking regimes it believes may one day pose a threat to our national security, the men and women of my generation will learn the true meaning of war soon enough - and I suspect it won't be nearly as comical as they made it out to be on M*A*S*H.
A few decades ago, 20-something guys like myself quaked in their Birkenstocks when the government started beating the war drums. But like most 25-year-olds who didn't have to take the Army's money to pay for college, I don't have to worry much about fighting a war in Iraq. Unless they bring back the draft, I'll probably never have to fight in any military conflict. In fact, I don't even really know what a war is.
Since Congress hasn't declared war since 1941, the only reliable way I have of judging whether a particular conflict counts as a war is The Movie/Sitcom Test. The test dictates that if a sitcom or more than one movie was made about a military engagement, then it was a war. Thus, Somalia (Black Hawk Down) doesn't count as a war, whereas World War II and Vietnam do. Korea counts, too, thanks to M*A*S*H.
I realize that the Movie/Sitcom Test isn't terribly scientific. But, clearly, I can't count on the government to define the word war for me--they'll call anything a war. We've been involved in some war or another my whole life: from Grenada to Libya to Bosnia. But those didn't seem like real wars, at least from where I was sitting. War, for my generation, is a remote experience: Smarter bombs and weaker opponents have made the "wars" of my lifetime increasingly similar to video games.
All this has meant fewer American casualties, of course. But it has also made it hard for us to take the word "war" seriously. Some Americans think of war and picture D-Day. When I imagine a "war," I picture America playing hair metal to get Manuel Noriega to leave the Vatican Embassy in Panama. We have little real experience with the costs of war. From here in Chicago, the "wars" in Bosnia and Somalia might as well have never happened, for all they changed my life.
Of course, these conflicts look a lot more like wars to the people we're fighting. I don't think 25-year-old Iraqis have a hard time defining the word war - its meaning is all around them. They know that war means sacrifice, whereas I only know that it means yellow ribbons. But if the United States pursues its new-found policy of preemptively striking regimes it believes may one day pose a threat to our national security, the men and women of my generation will learn the true meaning of war soon enough - and I suspect it won't be nearly as comical as they made it out to be on M*A*S*H.
