Okay, that feels better -

[kyburg]

Time for me to ground, center and get my feet back under me. It is comforting to find consensus on the Friends list - it is universal in dread, fear and disgust for this action taken against Iraq.

However.

I am not at war with Iraq. I hereby take three steps back and prepare to mop up after the children finish hitting each other over the heads with the biggest sticks they can find. I will not take part.

Ambitious man, George W. Bush. Sure hope you don't get your cajones handed back to you on your shield. *sighes* Get it over with.

I'm waiting for my life back.

Comments

[actionjbone.livejournal.com]

Nope, sorry, no universal consensus. I'm about as pro-war in this case as anyone can be, and for many, many reasons. I'm just so sick of hearing people talk about "the war" that I'm not dedicating any entries to it.

[miwasatoshi.livejournal.com]

I have to politely disagree with the "universal" consensus as well here. I would also rather talk about other topics than the war, after a rather violent (and nearly physical) disagreement between two close RL friends of mine about this topic (and sadly, the provocateur was the anti-war fellow).

Just a thought though ... please don't assume that because someone supports this action means they like war in the least. War is NOT glory, war is NOT a game. I would rather have seen a peaceful resolution to this ... but that would ignoring the simple fact that there was no peace in Iraq to begin with. One of my friends calls this "a just war by illegitimate means" ... I worry severely about the consequences, to be sure!

This is one sad, sad situation, and I pray for its resolution as much as you do. And I still value every single person on my LJ list (and every friend I have) regardless of their view.

I'm just here to remind everyone that it's not all black-and-white, pro-war versus anti-war, conservative versus liberal. And that there is no such thing as a universal consensus. Consensus can not be universal by its very nature.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

Yanno, I should put the year I was born on my profile. It would explain a lot.

1979. Okay, that would make you 25 or so. That's a good reference. I can remember what 25 was like - it was the year I got married the first time. I had to get a passport for the first time because I was going to go to Switzerland for our honeymoon. The first time I had left the country.

It was before the wall came down in Europe. The bulk of Europe and Asia was closed to me because Americans were so hated there. You couldn't visit. Despotic regimes in Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria ground their populations into paste - exactly how, was unknown. We were told they were doing it. But we weren't allowed to see it. People snuck in and out of those countries as students, businessmen on short leashes, watched every moment. (I remember my sister's trip to Eastern Germany while she was a student in Austria - they confiscated everything except the propaganda the government gave them. To get one coin home to show us, she had put it in her shoe...they took all of the currency they had before they left. If she'd had been caught, she could have been jailed. People were. For coins.) Tito still had a stranglehold on Yugoslavia. Solidarity was getting a firm hold on Poland, but there were fears it couldn't succeed and that at any time we would hear that Lech Walensa was dead or just *poof* gone. That's what happened to people like him back then.

I remember learning how much more of the world was open to me as the citizen of another county than as an American.

It was before Gorbachev and Yeltsin. We heard all about how superior the Soviets were from the Soviet media. You never heard the whole truth, just what they wanted you to hear. What made them look good. Kind of like CNN right now.

You were taught to distrust, even hate a large portion of the world because you were American. We had Enemies. That's what you did with Enemies.

When most of that ended towards the end of the eighties, it was like a huge weight had been lifted. True freedom. The liberty to consider oneself a citizen of the world, as well as an American. I was happy to leave those years behind. We had Friends instead, now. Friends cost less than Enemies, too.

I was your age.

I don't want to go back. I'm more than willing to dredge up every memory I ever had, write thousands of words - but I doubt anyone will believe me until they find themselves living it. Even if this war succeeds beyond our wildest expectations, we are going to be hated everywhere in the world except our own backyards for this. You have no idea what this is like - you've never known it.

Not only that, but our own government daily resembles the Soviet model more and more - not the ideology - but the repression, suppression, coercion, lack of personal liberties, distrust, lying - and if you think our media is telling you anything but what the Bush Administration wants you to hear, you are sorely mistaken. Stalin is winning, and he isn't even on the field. (Don't know why Hitler keeps getting trotted out - Saddam IS Stalin, and Bush is catching up fast....)

Support the war if you like. But be prepared - the world won't be the same when it's done. I suspect it will be a lot like the aftermath of a messy divorce. The good so submerged by the bad you wonder why you bothered - nothing got better. Just different.

And I refuse to have anything to do with it except for cleanup. Oh, that's right. I have to pay for it, too.

[2stars4arms.livejournal.com]

That was an excellent little essay, Donna. I think a lot of the younger people could use some perspective. I'm 31, and even I remember how it was, to a degree. My elementary school had fallout shelters all over the place. I remember my fourth grade teacher explaining how were working toward making some agreements with the big baddies, the Russians, before we blew each other up. This would have been 1980 or 81. I remember how she explained, using a diagram on the chalkboard, one possible agreement between our countries of destroying a missle for each new missle we built. I remember thinking that was the dumbest thing I'd ever heard of, and why didn't we both agree to just destroy them all? And why weren't the grown-ups doing better than this? I was only 9 or 10, but I was scared because we were constantly on the edge of WWIII. I remember what it's like to have enemies too, and I don't want to go back to that either. I don't want my own kids to have to live in that kind of world. I thought we were beyond it for good. I guess I was foolish.

Maybe you should post your reply as an actual journal entry. I think it would be helpful to a lot of your young Live Journal friends.

I'm not a "younger person"

[weightinggame.livejournal.com]

I'd put my age in the range of both of yours.

Sorry, you can't write the people who support this action off as young and inexperienced people who don't know any better. I have the perspective that you feel is necessary, and I support this action completely.

I don't like George Bush. Not a bit. I don't like war. Not a bit. But I support this action.

Re: I'm not a "younger person"

[2stars4arms.livejournal.com]

All right. Well I think you must be somewhat of an anomaly, as I've yet to encounter anyone who says the don't like Bush or war, now a bit, but supports this action. Maybe you'd be willing to tell me why you support it?

Re: I'm not a "younger person"

[weightinggame.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure that I'm so much of an anomaly. I suspect that if you asked the people who simply aren't being vocal and dramatic and who aren't jumping into the fray, you'd find that many feel the way that I do.

I am a staunch democrat, and while Clinton was in office I watched him get lynched by Republicans, no matter what he did. He could have been Mother Theresa and his actions still would have come under attack. I was appalled and dismayed at the biased, unfocused venom that was spewed his way. It struck me as shrill, pitiful and desperate.

Now I'm vexed at the fact that Democrats are falling into the same trap with Bush. I was hoping that "my kind" was above that.

Do I like the guy? - nope. Not one iota. But I'm not going to name call, spew hatred, and denounce every move he makes as president. I'd rather focus on what Democrats can do to improve their situation and to take office again - not on obsessing against the actions of the Republicans. It's not productive.

One needs to be able to separate one's political (and often irrational) hatred of the leader from each individual policy and action - and the more vocal people that we read don't always seem to be able to successfully do that.

As far as my support of the current Iraq situation - I don't like the way it was handled. But I believe that this is merely the continuation of a situation that has been simmering for years. In many ways, like it or not, it was inevitable.

Re: I'm not a "younger person"

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

I was a Democrat until I went overseas. I came back Green Party.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

I'd have to say that in this case, it's not the age - it's the mileage. And it's not war *exactly* that I find offensive - but the sheer impatience to get to it still bugs me.

And at this point, I reiterate - nobody is asking me, nobody is listening to me and I'll have to use my vote in a year or so to do anything about it.

But I would spare anyone who hasn't known true hatred of Americans the experience.

Maybe I should put my YOB...

[murphymom.livejournal.com]

...on my profile as well. (FWIW, I have a few years on you -in fact I was born - just barely- in the first half of the last century.)
Count me in as one of those solidly against this war- while I agree that *someone* had to do *something* about Saddam, the idea of the U.S. charging in like John Wayne(1) without the support of a good part of the Free World (I'm not even talking a general consensus here) distresses me beyond words.
Back during Watergate (2), a Canadian friend and co-worker asked me, "Do you really think your government lies to you?" My response was, "No, I don't *think* they lie to me - I *know* they do." That holds true no matter what party is in power, BTW.
One minor point of disagreement - given what he did to the Kurds last time around, I can certainly see some parallels between Saddam and Hitler. But I'm a Jew-by-Choice, which makes me a little more sensitive there.
Looks like we get to go back to being the "Ugly American" (3) again. Santayana(4) was right. Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat its mistakes.
I watched them build the Berlin Wall(5). I saw others tear it down. The barriers which will go up because of this war will be far worse.

1. U.S. movie action star - check out "The Green Berets" or "Sands of Iwo Jima"; ironically, Wayne never actually served in any branch of the U.S. Armed Forces.
2. Name given to the scandal which caused the (so-far) only resignation of a sitting U.S. President (Richard Nixon); at least in those days we had a Congress and Supreme Court that were not in the Administration's back pocket.
3. Originally the title of a book by Wm. Lederer and Eugene Burdick which exposed USAian arrogance, ignorance and incompetence in Asia, it came to stand for a pervasive attitude of "We know better 'cause we're from the U.S."
4. Spanish philosopher, 1863 - 1952
5. Structure erected by the Soviet-controlled puppet government of East Germany in 1961 which divided East Berlin from the western-controlled sectors of the city. Ostensibly, its purpose was to keep Westerners out - that it also kept East Germans in was never really acknowledged until it was opened in 1989 as the Soviet Union was crumbling. It was finally torn down completely in 1990.

[actionjbone.livejournal.com]

I have to agree with miwasatoshi. I am an "anti-war" person, but in this case I foresee no alternative to war - (relatively) quick and dirty if now, long and drawn-out and horribly nasty if postponed to the future.

There is no possible diplomatic resolution. Hussein has toyed with the diplomats at times, flat-out laughed in their faces at others. Iraq has not complied with any of the meat of what the UN wanted, and has only put up a face to appear better to the rest of the world.

The U.S. is already hated by much of the world. This war isn't going to change that fact. However, this war may save millions (or billions) of our own lives.

I am no warmonger, and I am no die-hard optimist. What I am is pragmatic. If someone's been trying to kick you in the nuts for years, you can't politely ask him to stop and expect him to.

[arkibet.livejournal.com]

Heh... I keep saying: "George, you don't need to finish the war your father started. Please keep in mind that you are Mr. President. Not El Presidente."