Monday, January 30, 2006

How often do you think about the war? How often should we?

Is anybody else getting regretably numb when it comes to coverage of the Iraq war? It's the same news day in day out: two killed, forty bombed, some big number injured and sent home but they never say how many, etc. It's awful, gut-wrenching news coming in a slow and steady stream of information. If you don't stop for a moment in your day-to-day life and consider it, however, it's easy to go about your business and not think too much about it. I'm sure lots of people do. Is that how it should be? Whether you are for or against the war, how often should we be reminded that we are in fact a country at war? Should we be asked, for example, to conserve fuel? I find it odd that when challenged, the Bush administration uses terrorism and the war in Iraq to justify activity such as warrantless eavesdropping on Americans. But otherwise the message from the top seems to be "carry on, spend your money, prop up the economy, drive your big cars and leave this war stuff to us." (Okay, that's not a real quote.) It's baffling to me that for the large part, we as Americans are practically invited to forget about this pesky war stuff and just live our lives. Good or bad?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The answer is that we should think about it every day. We have thousands of my generation sacrificing their youth, safety, and time with loved ones to fight a war most of them believe in. We owe it to them to help in any way we can.

One way we can help is by being informed about the goings on there. We can also help by making their time there more comfortable by doing things like this: http://www.pusatera.net/?p=196

We owe it to those who make our safety and freedom their lives work.