Wait a minute - They sent you all
the way to Afghanistan and
you didn’t ask why?
“War, we have come to believe, is a spectator sport. The military and the press have turned it into a vast video game. Its very essence — death — is hidden from public view.”
- Chris Hedges, author of War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning.
This was the quote to begin an email a friend sent out on a Peace Talk list-serve. The email was titled “Truth” and was about how we seek escape in frivolous entertainment and news rather than face the ugly truth of the war in Afghanistan. It was a very sobering thought.
Another person on the same list-serve wrote about the movie “Mash”. He said: “The movie was an anti-war masterpiece, in my opinion. Comedy is the best way to tell the truth. As Mary Tyler Moore said, ‘If you are going to tell the truth, it better be funny’!”
Is telling the truth serious or funny? I have a hard time finding anything funny about war but I have laughed at black humor like in “Mash”.
On the other hand I have been very serious when presenting persons with their accountability about war. A war may be “unjust, illegal and immoral” as the late Pope John Paul II declared about Iraq, but soldiers follow the orders of the politicians, and we support our country and remain silent.
Some people blame the Iraq war on Republicans. Now in Afghanistan, like Vietnam, the Democrats are ready to escalate a war. After 8 years, they are about to give us another reason ‘why.’ Our democratic congresswoman who was against the war in Iraq is not for the war in Afghanistan. The death and injury of soldiers in both wars, the loss of lives and suffering of civilians seem not to matter much to people in power and, as long as we are not directly affected, to many Americans.
I guess the fact that Republicans and Democrats, despite all their rhetoric, are pretty much the same as far as perpetuating wars, is funny and sad. It reminds me of the bumper sticker put out some years ago by Sojourners that still is on my car: “God Is Not a Republican or Democrat.” Many have smiled in agreement on seeing this bumper sticker. War is no laughing matter, but maybe if we laugh at it we can face the truth of it.
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