What is the price of victory? Many feel that conflict is not a necessity and conflicts like the one in Iraq useless! How do you think those who serve feel? This is a question that has long plagued mankind. With all the books for class and the amount of time spent reading about past wars and researching the current ongoing conflict I now have a better understanding of true price of victory.

In there book Since You Went Away: World War II Letters from American Women on the Home Front Judy Barrett Litoff and David C. Smith show that during the trying times of World War Two those who wrote letters knew this charge very well one chapter is in tiled the price of victory in this chapter you have letters that start not being written to those that have go to war, but instead to those who are charged with leading the war. Most notable General Douglass Macarthur. 

“Liberation! So long our hearts have yearned for this moment when Old Glory again proudly ripples in the breeze over The Islands-we’ve preyed so earnestly for it – have pushed with you and with every fiber of our being”

These thoughts of can also be see in Rudyard Kipling’s poem The Choice.

The American Spirit speaks:

TO the Judge of Right and Wrong
    With Whom fulfilment lies
Our purpose and our power belong,
    Our faith and sacrifice,

Let Freedom’s Land rejoice!
    Our ancient bonds are riven;
Once more to us the eternal choice
    Of Good or Ill is given.

Not at a little cost,
    Hardly by prayer or tears,
Shall we recover the road we lost
    In the drugged and doubting years.

But, after the fires and the wrath,
    But, after searching and pain,
His Mercy opens us a path
    To live with ourselves again.

In the Gates of Death rejoice!
    We see and hold the good-
Bear witness, Earth, we have made our choice
    With Freedom’s brotherhood!

Then praise the Lord Most High
    Whose Strength hath saved us whole,
Who bade us choose that the Flesh should die
    And not the living Soul!

To the God in Man displayed-
    Wheree’er we see that Birth,
Be love and understanding paid
    As never yet on earth!

To the Spirit that moves in Man,
    On Whom all worlds depend,
Be Glory since our world began
    And service to the end!

These words touch on every aspect of the price of victory the sacrifice, the tears, the choice, and freedom. These words are very similar to some of the words that I have read and heard in the last few weeks of this semester. In his blog Life through the eyes of a Data Marine Psybain speaks of the price.

“You won’t see me cheering and clamoring for another 10 years of US forces in Iraq, nor will I demand we all pull out now. I think a timetable is stupid. If we said we’d leave in a year, the insurgents would wait us out for a year, knowing that we’d be gone soon and they could act a fool then.”

This is the sentiments of many of those who serve they do not wish to go on fighting for years, but it not up to them. As a marine said at a rally I went to

“The armed forces have two jobs one it to train and be prepared for combat. The seconded job is to achieve victory when in combat. Believe me we want to win NO we need to win it is what we train for. “ 

These words remind me of one of my favorite writers Thomas Paine for those who might not know or remember Mr. Paine is one of the forefathers of the United States he wrote an essay called Common Sense. He has two quotes if feel help define what those who both fight and those who want us not to continue the fight.

“He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates his duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”

“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.”

As this conflict continues there will be more deaths and there will be more anger and there will be more separation between those who want victory and those who want out.  

I experienced something new this week I was called a “PRO-WAR” conservative, because I want victory in the War. I not sure anyone is “PRO-WAR” war is a destructive form of diplomacy or perhaps it might be a failed form of diplomacy. Victory is that not the goal of any war! So if that makes me “PRO-WAR” then I guess I have to live with it since I feel we need to victory not for us, but for those who we have put in harms way and for those who have given all for victory!

“Faces of the Fallen” this is a link to those who died in service to their nation!

Washington Post

The Choice by Rudyard Kipling

Since You Went Away: World War II Letters from American Women on the Home Front Judy Barrett Litoff David C. Smith

Life through the eyes of a Data Marine by Psybain

With all the negativity that is part of war sometimes it hard to realize that conflicts have positives. I do not mean the battles won or lost, or the defeat of an enemy. I speak of friendship the bond that binds fighting men and woman together. This seen to only be on the victor’s side, but these bonds that last a lifetime and can cross boarders they are universal. In his fictional journal The Things They Carried Tim O’Brien shows just how these bonds are forged and some are lost in a physical since, but the emotions and memories are with you for the duration.

You see this in the books dedication one that maybe given to the real men or to the faded picture that these men where or since it a book of fiction it might be a dedication to O’Brien’s own imagination

“This book is lovingly dedicated to the men of Alpha Company, and in particular to Jimmy Cross, Norman Bowker, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Henry Dobbins and Kiowa”

The bond is real the world and memories have fade, but the feelings have not you get this by the fact that O’Brien repeating

“I am 43 now and a writer”

Why to remind himself perhaps that yes today he is a writer, but once he was part of something special he was a soldier with men he loved. Some of these men died, the strangest part is the fact that it not just them men in his unit that he shares this bond with it is the very enemy they fought. They too forge bonds and carry things. They also wonder did I kill that man, was it my mistake that got others killed the to carry the guilt of wartime bonds. These men on both sides can both feel and understand O’Brien when makes the statement

“I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth.”

They have all been a part of the truth and must live with the story! But his tie can still been seen to day with those who fought together and those who fought against. This bond can be split and rekindle by chance. 

“ George Serkedakis and Ken Myers may have been in their last parade. They rode together on Memorial Day in a parade in the District, a couple of elderly vets of the Battle of the Bulge in a ceremonial Jeep. But Myers is closing in on 87, and Serkedakis, at 93, is finding it harder to muster the energy. They have nothing planned for the Fourth of July; neither is sure he will make it to the 99th Infantry Division Reunion in September. “I was really scared he was going to fall out of that Jeep,” says Serkedakis’s wife, Faye, 70, on recalling her husband’s last public excursion. “They are slowing down now, for sure.”But even as they bow, finally, to the inevitable struggles of age, the two still make a point of getting together. It has been more than 30 years since they rediscovered one another, but they still thrive on rehashing the remarkable fate that brought them together twice. Once on a blood- and snow-covered battlefield in Belgium, where one saved the life of the other, saved it against the direct orders of an Army doctor who had already consigned the wounded soldier to a Belgian grave. And again, three decades later, in a traffic jam in downtown Washington. “Hey buddy. Hey buddy.” Serkedakis looked over at a burly guy in a pickup. Does the name Ken Myers mean anything to you?” It didn’t. Serkedakis stared and said: “Pull over.” They stood on the curb and talked for four hours. Serkedakis had found the guy to thank. They had been living, all that time, less than five miles apart That’s what Myers and Serki have been ever since: buddies. Dinners together, parades and lots of long, repetitive talk about the same series of events. They don’t care if they’ve been through it a thousand times before. “The same stories, over and over,” said Faye Serkedakis, laughing. “They have a lot of pride about what they went through. They want to hang on to it a little longer.”

Or sometimes it can is done to remember those fallen on both sides.

“One by one, survivors from ships sunk 65 years ago Thursday in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor laid wreaths under life-preserver rings honoring their ships”

“The veterans, most in Hawaiian shirts, were honored with prolonged applause at the solemn ceremony near where some of the ships remain in the harbor, rusting and covered with algae”

“Japanese veterans who participated in the attack as navigators and pilots will also pay their respects, offering flowers at the Arizona memorial for the Americans and Japanese who died”

Those once enemy’s now share the story of war the pains, and the joys. War is not a pleasant thing, but the friendships that are formed go beyond those in a civilian world we talk about the war and here in are blog’s we try to analyze it, but we can never understand these friendships because they are not built on simple trust they are built in forge and fire of conflict and this is a truth that you must know to have this type of union.

The Things They Carried Tim O’Brien

Washington Post

This blog is probably not going to make me many friends in class you see this was a blog that I put on a personal site on the 27^th of March I guess I have to give thanks to this class and my History of Warfare class constantly thinking about war and its place in society. I ask Dr. Rozema if a RANT could be used on the first day and he said no after I posted this blog I realized that I think it could fit into the structure of the class he said I could use it if I tied it into what was in the class so I needed to reread my own work and then see how it lined up with what we have been going over I think I have done that, but the real test will be you the reader. (NOTES FOR READERS)

Anything that is in italics is the original blog.

Anything in bold is new and added to join it to the class and the ideas shared within the class.

Well hello there blog fans today is a special day because I am ready able and willing to go off like a 100 megaton bomb that is one big ass explosion!

I guess I really should have done this about a week ago, but for some reason I waited I think it was so that I could calm down and think. So that my words did not just role out of my mouth and into my keyboard making me seem stupid or crazy I want my words to be hard hitting and hopefully a little infectious. If not then I do hope they at least make you think and feel for a brief moment in someone else shoe’s namely mine.

I guess I did this much like both Vera Brittian and Tim O’Brian they had thoughts and experiences that need time to find the write words.

“For nearly a decade I wanted, with a growing sense of urgency, to write something which would show what the whole War …Has meant to the men and woman of my generation”

“On occasions the war was like a Ping-Pong ball. You could put a fancy spin on it, you could make it dance.”

I felt I need to say something give my spin so many times about the anti-war movement I didn’t because I know it will seem like anger or as some have stated hate, but it is not its my feelings towards something I am passionate about, only this time I waited for the words to come to me so that others might see my side if only for a moment and I believe this is what these writers want as well.

Let me fill you in on a few things I go to a very liberal university right in the middle of one of the most conservative counties in the country. Now I have no real anger towards those whose opinions differ from mine other then I think for the betterment of our country that their ideas are wrong for it. However there is something that is going on here and around the nation and that is the anti-war movement! I will be totally blunt this sickens me not because of their protesting, it an important right in this country to be able to have those protest. What does make me ill is they have lost sight of what is really at stake in the War on Terror. The fact is they are protesting the wrong thing most of the protest that I have seen have been for us to stop the war in Iraq!

The funny thing is we are not at war with Iraq! Since March 20^th of 2003 out troops have been in a theater of operation in a much large conflict just like in World War II there was the European and Pacific theaters with this war there is Iraq and a Afghanistan theater and in this war there will be other theaters to come.

Many would say that we as a nation are at war and it is called the Iraq War that is more of a media spin (MORE ON THAT LATER) this spin can be seen in many ways, but the law only sees it one way

“Public Law 107-243 107th Congress Joint Resolution to authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq. H.J. Res. 114 www.c-span.org/resources/pdf/hjres114.pdf“

There is not a formal declaration of war with Iraq when I was thinking about this as I was going over it was drawn to some of what O’Brian said

“I did not want to die. Not ever. But certainly not then, not there, not in a wrong war”

Who decides if it is a wrong war the Congress and the President both bodies who are elect by the people you really want the War over change them! But in 2004 we kept the President 2006 we changed the Congress who can change the law about the war, but did not instead extended it and continued its funding.  

What really infuriates me is the fact that many of those who are against the war have forgot that the war did not start on March 20^th of 2003 or October 7, 2001 in Afghanistan! It started on a September morning in 2001 when as a nation we came under a brutal and well thought out plan of pure hate and anger. This was not an attack with bunch of bombs or hail of bullets; no it was a one of cowards, men who twisted the ideals of others from thousands of miles away as they sat in safety and basked in their evil plans!

You see even I had forgot that a bit so I did something I went to youtube and watched it again and felt that numbness and the tears the weld up and ran down my cheeks. To see the planes, the buildings burning and to watch as they come down again and to feel my stomach twist into a knot! To hear our nation anthem played by the UK during the changing of the their guards, and to mourn not for soldiers, but for countrymen. Have we let time soften us to the fact that we are at war not with people, but with men who hate what we live for? So then next time you get up and feel that the war is wrong remember that those we are fighting hate the fact that you can protest the war that they STARTED. When you go to work, take your kids to school, chose the way you want to worship, shop where you want, buy the things need and want and all the other things you do is what the want to destroy! They see your life as a disease you ideas as propaganda they find you as the most evil thing on the planet someone who does not agree with them!

This war is not like others it not about resources, it not about fascism, it is not truly about political ideology, and it not about religious zealots. Sure many of those have some factors, but the truth is it about your very existence as an not even an American, but as some one who has FREEDOM, COURAGE, AND THE RIGHT TO LIVE YOUR LIFE!

Now I am smart enough to know that not everyone even my friends will agree with me, but go back to 9/11 and relive that pain the shock, the horror, cry and feel the lost and wonder who and why. Be a bit angry am I saying that we need to live at that moment in time NO! Living there would not be wise, but forgetting it is not wise either THE WAR WAS NOT STARTED BY US!

The similarities between my words and those in the letters in the book Since You Went Away from the onset of World War II for America was well I thought fascinating 

“I’ve just been listening to the radio. I’ve never been so blue or heartsick as I am right at the minute.”

“Everyone is talking of war, war, war!”

“To say we were all stunned to hear the terrible news of Sunday last over the air is putting it mildly”

These words seem so similar; did we not have this same dedication after 9/11? Yes we did what changed for many it the fact that not a quick war many who are leading the charge for the anti-war movement are in there 20’s the only war then know is the Gulf War that last 100 hours that is a rarity. Most wars have names some show the length 100 years War the Seven Years War. What would have the out come of WWII been if the public had lost it focus in spring of 1944 would have D-Day been a joyous day?

So why should we stop it (the war) I feel for those who have lost family I know how many have died the media will not let us forget, but they will let us forget the first strike against us.

Now back to media look at the headlines from the last few days:

“U.S. Deaths in Iraq War Reach 4,000; Green Zone Is Shelled”

“Antiwar activists march on Pentagon”

“Wisconsin Army Recruiting Center Vandalized”

Where are the headlines about 9/11 there are none unless it deals with celebrity, money, conspiracy, or how we as a country our wrong for being upset by the attack still.

“Oscar-Winner Marion Cotillard Thinks 9/11 Was a Conspiracy”

“Families Settle Claims In Attack on Pentagon”

“Stop Getting Mad, America Get Smart”

So as this war goes on please remember why we fight the armed forces of the United States are an all volunteers some before 9/11 and after some before Afghanistan and after and some before Iraq and some after! Those who have gone and will continue to go know why AND THEY REMEMBER that is why the go!

So from now on I am going to expand something I have done I make sure I shake the hand of every person I see in uniform and say thank you NOW every time I see a anti-war person I going to ask when did the WAR start and if they say anything other then 9/11 I just inform them they are mistaken and start my own rally to remember 9/11 the being of the War not in Iraq, but the War against LIFE!

Now let make sure you understand me I see myself as a patriot I would go as far as to quote Vera Brittian and say that I believe in  “the bloodthirsty armchair patriotism” not that war is the answer, but when it is brought to your front door you must fight it. President Theodore Roosevelt said, “speak softly and carry a big stick” the world knows we have that stick, as a nation we must stay united when that stick is swung. Does this mean I feel that that war is just well if O’Brien touches on that:

“When a nation goes to war it must have a reasonable confidence in the justice and imperative of its cause”

Those we elected made a decision and we as a nation have had ample opportunity within are legal scope to change that leadership we did not. So it not up to me if I feel it just that duty falls to the hands of the historians I have twice said that war is theater and I finish by going there again. The title of my blog is War conflict with life? Well I now see that war and peace are the antagonist and protagonist of life the questions we are stuck with as mankind is which one is which, is war a period between peaces or is peace a period between war?

Testament of Youth Vera Brittan

Since You Went Away: World War II Letters from American Women on the Home Front Judy Barrett Litoff David C. Smith

The Things They Carried Tim O’Brien

Washington Post

Fox News

I came upon a military pod cast about Fredrick the Great and it made me wonder about his title see his true title was that of Fredrick II of Prussia. However he became the Great because he took a small nation and reshaped it military so that it would be such a power that it would reshape Europe with its influence until 1945 and the defeat of Nazi Germany. Here is a man who used raw power to change the way the world looked at him and his country.This is not the fist time this epithet had been used there is of course Cyrus the Great of the Persian Empire, Alexander the Great who conquered the know world. William the Conqueror of England, Ivan the Terrible who changed Russia, and Louis the Fat of France the names all give you an idea on why they are famous.

Names are powerful history and war a filled with them so I took the time to looked back over Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five and put the names in a new perspective.

Bill the Pilgrim: if you look at this and the book you see he is taking many journeys during the book from home to war, from the earth to another planet, within time, and inside him.

Roland the Weary: some one who is tired and weak, but ironically thinks he is the strongest of them and even in death is so weak he blames another for it.

Edgar the Derby: a man racing against time most arguably the strongest of men who dies for the weakest of reason in a race that he could not win.

To have these names to go with the characters seems fitting it puts another layer into the story. I think Vonnegut must have researched these names for sometime. And unlike the other names these are ones that seem very appropriate. History has away of seeing things a bit askew. It makes me ponder if the practice of giving a title comes with the job a leader does would any of the world leaders of today have one and what would the titles be?

Military History Podcast 

Slaughterhouse Five By Kurt Vonnegut

The Holocaust you hear that and your mind is instantly transported to the darkest part of the human psyche! The parts that will allow one human to degrade, defame, and destroy their fellow human. Yet at the same time your mind and heart are drawn to fact that the Holocaust is for the most part remembered for the death of the six million Jewish who died. Not as well known or as well publicized are Other targets of the Nazi Genocide or “Nazi genocidal policy”, that included Slavic’s Polish Russians, Ukrainians, Byelorussia’s, Serbs, Romania’s, and others that included the mentally ill, Homosexuals,  “sexual deviants”, and of course political opponents. They have all been remembered in some manner, but mostly the Jewish contingent. Does the Holocaust touch so many because those who performed it the German Nazi’s who so well documented it? Is what happened in World War II differ from the other atrocities of Genocide. In the movie Schindler’s List you see the efficiency of the Nazi’s as the move people and record every detail. This very sentiment is stated in the graphic novel Maus

“They marched us to the main courtyard and lined us by alphabet at tables. This the Germans did very good always they did everything very systematic and it was all done in one day”.

Elli Wiesel would see this system again in the book Night, this time it would be seen for a lifetime,

” In the afternoon, they made us line up. Three prisoners brought a table and some medical instrument. We were told to roll up our left sleeves and file past the table. The three “veteran” prisons, needles in hand, and tattooed numbers on our left arms I became A-7713. From then on I had no other name”.

Is this fact of the Nazi’s prolific recoded keeping that moves this from just Genocide to the Holocaust? Now don’t get me wrong the lost of life and the torment that they endured is still minded numbing. It is however Genocide the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural groups just as all the others in history. Like the very one that is in the news today. You would of course think that I am speaking of Darfur no I speak of the Armenian Genocide that happened in 1915 during World War I over a million died and still today it is only a Genocide not a Holocaust. What truly saddens me is the position some Israelis take on it.

“Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres visited Ankara and announced, “We reject attempts to create a similarity between the Holocaust and the Armenian allegations. Nothing similar to the Holocaust occurred. What the Armenians went through is a tragedy, but not genocide”.

Is mass death not all the same why would any take a position like this and one that appears to be a official governmental one. Then as you look on Darfur many demand this!

“U.S.-led military intervention to halt genocide in Darfur by the Sudan government and its militia proxies”.

Where is Israel it would seem that they should have the most compassion and eagerness to stop such atrocities. Why not a cry for an Israeli lead intervention! Now some say there is no genocide going on.

” Khartoum Karl said, “The United States is the only country saying that what is happening in Darfur is a genocide”.

What of the 400,000 dead no it is not the numbers that the Jews faced, but it does not stop these images from being true.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/artsandliving/magazine/features/2007/documenting-atrocity-061107/gallery.html

Now I am well a ware of movies such as Hotel Rwanda and other books that tell of Genocide and I feel great compassion for anyone who has to endure the memories of such horrific massacres of humans, but is not all Genocide a Holocaust, is that fact that so much was filmed, written and logged in by the Nazi that we turn a different eye to it. In war millions die some go unforgotten and the plight of the Jewish during WWII should never be forgotten, but should it be singled out by name and if yes why?  

Washington Post

Fox news

Maus by Art Spiegelman

Schindler’s List Universal Studios 1993

Hotel Rwanda Lions Gate Universal 2004

In one of my earlier blog’s I depicted war, like theater, so now I am going to somewhat revisit that idea. An actor at a live play is much different then one on TV or in the movies. Those scenes are shot over and over the best of them sliced together. On a stage it is alive the actor is a person playing a person, wanting you not to see them, but who they are pretending to be. This is called the willing suspension of disbelief it is a quid pro quo; the audience tacitly agrees to provisionally suspend their judgment in exchange for the promise of entertainment. Giving the actor and spectators a moment of duality! It this duplicity that stuck me when I was watching, the movie Schindler’s List reading the graphic novel Maus, both depicting the Jews holocaust of World War II and then reading a article in the Washington Post about security issues in Iraq and the many forms that duality can take.

For Schindler’s List and Maus part of this was the black and white qualities how shadow and contrast played the role of Angel for bright and Devil for dark. The physicality of the worlds how the splendor was exposed with clarity to enhance the prosperity lost. In Maus this is done with a half page drawing of a large dinning room viewed through a just as large window with the of the captions saying

“When first I came home it looked exactly so as before I went…it was still so luxurious. The Germans couldn’t destroy everything at one time”

Since I am speaking on Maus I should talk about its other duplicities. It greatest asset is the fact that it is a graphic novel. This is a special type of duality just in the way you read it you need to read it with one eye on the words and the other on the drawings. They share the world in a symbiotic relationship much like the live theater I feel this form of comic is as close as you can get to that. You are pulled into the world by the pictures and then hammered home by the words.

The fact that the Jews are mice and the Germans cats, this is of course and allusion to the idea of the cat and mouse games the played for their very lives. There is the father son relationship with it moment of good like when his father draws on his sketchbook to show the elaborate hiding places.

“Show to me your pencil and I can explain you such things it’s good to know exactly how was it”

Then there is the bad the constant fighting or in the writers eye the nagging just to get the story. This is seen when his father calls him to help and he decides it better to not go and face that feeling.

“No way I’d rather feel guilty!

Then the biggest Duality that is shared by both Schindler’s List and Maus is the dual people that you become to survive for me this is best seen in Schindler’s List with Oscar Schindler he is a Nazi who sole purpose was to get rich. He used the Jewish investors the real man to run every thing was Itzhak Stern, but at the same time that he bribe his way to the top he made sure food, water and life was given. He gave away a fortune and as depicted in the movie wept saying

“I could have done more, this car Göth would have bought this car that 4 more I could have saved”

This brings me to, yet one more double-dealing, the market Schindler’s List, Maus and Washington Post in the first two it the black market where everything is sold for survival even to the last as for the Iraq it just the survival of the market. The article that stuck home for me was one telling of how a markets in Baghdad are prime targets.

“Sabah Abd’s fruit stand is a few feet from the concrete barrier dividing Baghdad’s Sadriya market from a bus depot that was bombed April 18 in one of the deadliest attacks since U.S. and Iraqi forces launched a major operation in February to secure the capital… But only three days after the attack, Abd was back at his stand, charred vehicles still littering the parking area a few yards away. “My wife said, ‘If you go there, I will divorce you,’ but what can I do? There is no work outside,” he said”.

Here the simple needs of living are again being tested. The biggest test is how to remain secure and profitable. To have a world that is split.

 “It’s a constant trade-off between security and convenience,” Dodd acknowledged. “We could wall this whole place in, and nothing would happen. But economically, that’s not viable.” Hussein said he might eventually go elsewhere to find another job. But for now, he is staying. “Maybe it will get better,” he said. “We’re waiting for security.”

How does this tie into the other well look at the fact both markets are place where for just that moment in time those that are oppressed have a bit of power a say in what then need and what they are willing to do for it. This human trait is seen best in theater we are moved, by something we know is not real, but the universality of it draws us in. Humanity has way of showing the best it has to offer in the worst places and in the briefest of moments. These are three stories have captured one of those moments for Schindler’s List and Maus it the will to go on, and live for the Iraqis it simple to go on with life.

Maus by Art Spiegelman

Schindler’s List Universal Studios 1993

Washington Post  

No matter how you feel about the War on Terror one catch phrase you here is “well I support the troops”! This makes we wonder do they? Or are they simple falling to the wayside of political correctness or using the only tool they have to give power a cause. To be honest I think many are pushed into a sort of false support for the war. United States military is very unique, and in the modern age it is all volunteer armed force and should be respected and support for that.

 And the strange thing is I think many of those who are serving fall into the political correctness camp, they not sure why they our there and why did diplomacy fail. I think we should remember many serve not just in the battlefield, but do they have “support” as well? There is however the feeling on the battlefield of do I support myself in her blog Everyday is Groundhog Day in Iraq Rachel The Great has to question her own beliefs.  

“If only we could all find that one thing. Why am I out here? I don’t believe in this cause enough to die for it. I guess I believe it my country though and support it and you can’t just say something like that. You can’t pick and choose when you will or won’t love your country. Either you do or you don’t and I guess those that do are willing to pay the price for living in such a blessed place. I really think America is the most beautiful country in the world and although it’s not perfect, it’s the fact that we keep trying that matters most. I wonder if those that have paid the price though would look back from where they are and say it was worth it”

 She plainly states she not ready to die for the cause, but still she volunteered. Is this the same fever that Vera Brittan talks about in Testament of Youth.                                     

“the bloodthirsty armchair patriotism”  

No, if it is just patriotism then there would be no focus on the troops it would be on the war as a whole. The such as it is point put by Brittan again                                      

“thousands of our men had been shot down” 

Not even a clear as to how many, but in the War on Terror look at some of the headlines!          

“Five U.S. Soldiers Are Killed When Convoy Is Hit in Mosul“        

“Blast Kills 6 as Troops Hunt Iraqi Insurgents“ 

“9 U.S. Soldiers Killed in Two Attacks North of Baghdad“       

“Six U.S. Troops Killed in Ambush in Afghanistan“  

The troops have become the main issue and that is why it is so important to “SUPPORT THEM”, both sides for and against need the troops to push their agendas to give power to their words. Many times the soldier has been call the pawn of the diplomatic machine, but looking at all the support they have I would say they have become the meeting point to those who do not wish to meet.

To put it another way, in most wars the enemy was clear-cut and the loss of thousands was accepted, even possibly understood. But in this war there is no sure enemy. The political cannon that has become part of the American idea of war makes every life seem the most brutal of loses for America, but in reality the death of a solider is nothing to support that death is the most telling sign that diplomacy has failed.

• Testament of Youth Vera Brittan
• Everyday is Groundhog Day in Iraq Rachel The Great
• FOXNews.com 
•  washingtonpost.com – Iraq – Washington Post Continuing Coverage

In the first weeks of my English class that is looking at warfare I have come to a personal understanding or maybe more of a personal belief I see war as something a kin to live theater. What do I mean well, when you go to the theater you dress up for it. You make plans you get your tickets so you can have the seat you want. It something you are going to share with every other person in the place and time. It is temporal no matter how many times you come to the same play it will be different, the actors will give a different performance, the crowd will react to that moment in time.

I now see wars in the same light. They are something that feels like a play wars have a time and place a theater on a much larger scale. As matter of fact I would say the military might see it that way as well since a modern combat zone is call a theater of operation. As I was reading my google posts I was think of these comparisons not of only words, but of feelings. In one of the Blogs that I am reading called of all things Everyday is Groundhog Day in Iraq a allusion to the movie Groundhogs Day in where the same day is lived over and over being stuck in a moment in time. She mentions many of the same things that I said you might do for that play.

             “Like I have my dad’s clothes and gear on and I am just playing at being a Marine”. 

The fact that in the time that she has been in the war she has had many people come and go and change the way her duties feel to her.

             “My units advanced party has left for home now and it make me realize how much I am going to miss everyone. Some of the people out here have become like family and seeing them go is so sad…. then there are other people who I just can’t wait to see go because every moment I was trapped here with them felt like a moment down the drain…. completely useless and I will never get it back. You either grow to love or hate someone when you are exposed to them over a 6 month period of time on an almost 24 hour basis. I will miss my roommate so much! We have become like best friends and it have been so refreshing after dealing with men all day and having to play the part of Marine and everything that being a Marine entails, that I could come back to my room and just girl talk and giggle with my roommate like I was back home. Just like we were normal everyday girl”            

These moments of normal life trap in the surroundings of the day after day of the reality of war. This caught my eye and made me wonder who is the actor in a war and who is the audience? We see a war everyday in are papers, tv’s and internet, but are we watching or are we not also living it, with those who have gone away to fight it. Vera Brittain makes a very strong argument that we do live in those moments with them.            

“Time- as in the tense intervals before a great push (knowing their soldiers where getting ready for an offensive into no mans land) – seemed to stop” 

Even when she wad thousands of miles from the front at the time even the poet Rupert Brooke saw time as part of the ideas of war in his poem The Treasure.  

“Still may Time hold some golden space”

Was he talking about the moments when things seem so normal from the everyday dangers of war? This moment when you are just a girl away from home missing life. What is a year? A common year is 365 days or 8,760 hours or 525,600 minutes or 31,536,000 seconds. All of these tick off and for the most part seem to fly by unnoticed. That is unless you or someone close to you are at war then you seem to be trapped in one moment. I know every day I read on the war even before this class because I am one of those stuck in a moment my cousin is in the Army and has been in combat from the 1st Gulf war and Bosnia to Iraq now, but I am fortunate that I am not one of the now almost 4000 whose loved ones are forever stuck on that moment when the act of war ended for them. My heart goes out for them the biggest difference between war and theaters is when you end the night at a play you temporal period is over, war last forever in the stone of the tombstone, the memories of those who carry on, and the ones who must live everyday stuck in a moment.

• The Treasure. Rupert Brooke
• Testament of Youth Vera Brittan
• Everyday is Groundhog Day in Iraq Rachel The Great

Well now that I am able to get on this site I guess I should write about each one of the sites I will be using to get my news and so forth. Choosing a site is in itself bit of a statement about yourself, the process could be as simple as I like to more complex for me, well I guess I will just tell you a little about each site add a link and tell you why I picked it.

The first site was easy it has been part of my life in one form or another for a long time. That would be the Washington Post this paper has been my newspaper since I was in my late teens use to get it every afternoon. Now I get it on the web I like the writers plus I am a big fan of politics and it is at the heart of all American politics both domestic and aboard. In reality I have 3 different links for the Post the main page. Then I also have military and Iraq sections.

For my google search I picked Iraq war it part of are vernacular now it comes up almost everyday in hundreds of ways it has become almost and afterthought to some. I have two military blogs one by a woman and one by a man both of them are Marines. I picked them because I have a special place for the Marines, I was not one, I do have many friends who have been that been out of the daily military life for years and still call themselves Marines. The old motto “once a marine always a marine” seems to ring true. The other reason for me is the for the most part are the first to fight for America and the last to leave. That just speaks to me about the code that they must embrace.

And as my military pod cast I pick one on military history since for the most part we are kind of doing that we are seeing history with words why not with sounds as well, and least but not last I put Fox News on it as well just to see if I would get anyone’s attention with it. Well those are my sites and the why’s behind them maybe also just a little insight to me have fun and I will see you in class.