War... What Is It Good For
- Wade
Well, it's begun. The Coalition Of The Willing started with a Decapitation Attack in Operation Desert... something or other. I want to be the guy who comes up with all of those pithy phrases chock-full of mutli-syllabic words. It nearly distorts the fact that we're going over there to kill people.
I sat glued to the TV last night, starting around 8:45 p.m. Glued, despite all of my desires to not watch. It was like I was a little kid, watching Dukes of Hazzard. Full attention, watching dawn break over Iraq as NBC switched from one unmanned camera to another. From time to time a car drove by. I wondered what the driver was thinking.
Tom Brokaw was my talking-head / harbinger-of-disaster for the evening. He won out over Peter Jennings only because we don't get ABC on our upstairs TV. (And it's cable. Explain *that* to me.) Tom was talking to people whose names I learned in 1991-- Peter Arnette, Fred Francis, Norman Schwarzkopf... Almost comforting, in such an uncomfortable situation.
Shots sounded, lights flashed, and I inched closer to the TV, unconsciously. September 11th was my generation's Lee Harvey Oswald assassination-- if you don't watch, you could miss something. Nevermind the permanent visual scars that 9/11 left on me and others. Nevermind the replays that would flood the airwaves following any tangible attack. I couldn't turn away.
On comes the President. I hope Paul Wellstone's spirit isn't reading this right now, but Bush's speech was impressive. He seemed to say all the right things-- not self-aggrandizing, no references to sayings from Texas. Very confindent, smooth-- Clintonesque. I'm not sure we should be there in the first place, but since we are... I'm supportive.
And scared. Sure, the Fifth Street Towers aren't exactly the Pentagon. But there are crazy people all over the world, even Minnesota. (Of course, even they eat hotdish. Just crazy-person hotdish.) I'm scared this won't be brief. I'm scared that countries who have been our allies for decades may change their tune before this is all over.
And I'm scared that we're all going to have to keep living in fear for several more years.
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