the good old wars

ben stein's funny.

in a nutshell, a bunch of golfers paid the equivalent of their mexican housekeeper's daily salary to listen to ben stein pontificate about the evils of the movie industry, with exhibit A being their failure to observe a moment of silence at the recent academy awards for our armed forces members in iraq.

first of all, can we please for the love of christ stop politicizing people's feelings about our troops? who the fuck are these people that hate our troops? can we all just agree that we would love to have all the troops over to our place for beers and a nice well-stuffed pipe? next.

secondly, what should be pointed out here is that ben is clearly waxing nostalgic for a period he never even lived through: world war II (he was born in november of '44). i wasn't around then, but i would be willing to bet that it was hard to go anywhere in the US and not be confronted with some reminder of the war. car stickers and ribbons to the contrary, the iraq invasion does not seem to have generated similar broad-based appeal. while opinion polls should probably taken with a grain of salt, it seems clear that, at the very least, there is great ambivalence on the part of a not-insignificant portion of the population. gee, maybe what people think about their government's military dealings is important. who knew?

what's more insidious than annoying, however, is the implication behind ben's rant. the government doesn't want us to think of this as an invasion/occupation. they want us to think of this as a war. they want us to think of this as our government defending us, as opposed to, say, as our government going out and stirring up trouble and making us potentially less safe in the process. just as an example.

and here's the kicker: this war doesn't end. for when can you reasonably claim that terrorism is completely eradicated?

world war II lasted for almost 4 years. that seems like a long time for your country to be locked in such a monumental struggle. i think that will look like nothing compared to the war on terrorism. instead of spending 4 years watching the maps of the world shift like tectonic plates, we'll spend generations sitting with an uneasy malaise. we won't have to ration bread, but we may wind up rationing things far more important.