post-finals bliss

I'm elated in a sort of foggy headachy kinda way...
It is so very nice to be done with finals and be able to read whatever I want to for the next few weeks. BLISS. Anyhow, I want to throw some things out here that I've been pondering lately.

IS it "foolish" to be anti-war as long as troops are committed? Even if you have friends among them? I remember after the first troops were deployed to Iraq (this time) people kept saying, just stop protesting war because it's already going. So you might as well stop whining about it and just support our troops. I watched the film "Regret to Inform" today and I think that it, along with the film "Hearts and Minds" should be mandatory viewing as early as 10th grade. Yes they're tough films but so what, dying and killing is surely tougher. Besides that, teenagers can simulate the experience of all sorts of killers from hitmen to alien killers to police and soldiers, so surely showing them a documentary on war shouldn't piss too many parents off right?

That film is so tough to watch because you see how many lives (and these are the lives of those who survive war, not just those who fight the war) are destroyed by war and all aspects of war. Mothers. Daughters. Passers-by. Women forced into prostitution. Women considering harming themselves to keep their husbands from volunteering themselves...etc. etc.

What is interesting is that so many of the American wives (of soldiers who died either in direct combat or subsequently from their combat experience) kept reiterating "He was so patriotic" "He wanted to do something to serve his country" "He knew that if he didn't go, someone would have to go in his place" That is the thing that gets me about patriotism, sacrificing your life and that of others for a lie that the government tells should make you think twice about serving, should it not? The "Hearts and Minds" film makes this explicitly clear as Daniel Ellsberg explains how president after president lied to the American people over and over about why we were in Vietnam and what our goals were. Do you think it would change if kids were told the truth about Vietnam. From what I've heard from other younger students, they don't see why Vietnam was "such a big deal" and equate war protests with orgies and drug parties. Apparently too, there is a habitual co-optation of songs from the sixties that are explicitly or implicitly anti-war being used to sell war now. Imagine that. Trying to talk to these same kids about Cambodia or Rwanda or the Sudan leaves you with this blank, confused and bored look like why are you wasting my time and yours? I don't know why on both counts. It's SOOOOO ironic too that these same kids know more about the Holocaust and about the evils that the Nazis did (even if their dates and facts are a bit off) than they do about other genocides or other corrupt governments. It makes you wonder what they'll be teaching children fifty or a hundred years from now? What will make "history" then? Hopefully the truth about war. Wouldn't that be amazing if people have finally figured out (in twenty years? ten? fifty? a hundred?) that war is not the first option nor is it the only option and certainly far from being the best option? I hope I live to see that day. Until then, peace!