On Monday of this week (May 11), IndyFlix sponsored a showing of “Finding Our Voices” at the State Theater in downtown Traverse City. This is a film about the ways in which Americans expressed their dissent to the war in Iraq over the past eight years. It features the voices of six persons: the mother of a New York City fireman killed on 9/11 at the World Trade Center; the mother of a young soldier who was killed in Iraq, three weeks after he returned, reluctantly, for his second tour of duty; a soldier who was a squad leader in Baghdad who, when furloughed home refused to follow orders to return to Iraq, went AWOL, became a conscientious objector and spent nine months in a military prison; another soldier who became entirely disenchanted with what he saw and did in Iraq and founded an organization of Iraq veterans against the war; a social activist and the founder of Code Pink; and a black Christian minister-activist from New York City. The most recent peace demonstration shown in the film took place at the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis last summer.
The film, and the lives of those it featured, was inspiring. But the predominant feeling I had watching it was sadness, sadness over the fact that we in this country have lost our way and that in spite of the good things that have happened since last November, we still haven’t found it. Dazzled by the election, dazzled by the inauguration, dazzled by the first 100 days, we are, sadly, still lost. I had the feeling that if my one of my highschool-age grandkids would have seen the movie with me, she might have said, “Grandpa, this movie is sooo over, it’s sooo yesterday.”
Which reminded me of the piece by Dexter Filkins that appears in the current issue (May 20) of The New Republic (www.tnr.com). Filkins is a reporter for the New York Times and is one of the most respected war correspondents in the world today; he covered the war in Iraq since its inception (out of which came his acclaimed book, The Forever War) and is now doing it all over again in Afghanistan. I’m not going to tell you what Filkins said in his article (which is a review of Thomas Ricks’ new book on the surge, The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008); I’m going to quote verbatim its first two paragraphs:
“From centrality to banality: perhaps no other event in modern American history has gone from being contentious to being forgotten as quickly as the war in Iraq. Remember the war? It consumed a trillion American dollars, devoured a hundred thousand Iraqi lives, squandered a country’s reputation, and destroyed an American presidency. Given the retreat of the American press — the first American withdrawal from Iraq, you might say — one could almost be excused, in the spring of 2009, for forgetting that 140,000 American troops are still fighting and dying there.
“That an undertaking as momentous and as costly as America’s war in Iraq could vanish so quickly from the forefront of the national consciousness does not speak well of the United States in the early twenty-first century: not for its seriousness and not for its sense of responsibility. The American people, we are told, appear to be exhausted by the war in Iraq. But exhausted by what, exactly? Certainly not from fighting it. The fighting is done by kids from the towns between the coasts, not by any of the big shots who really matter. And they are not exhausted by paying for it, either: another generation will do that. No, when Americans say that they are tired of the war in Iraq, what they really mean is that they are tired of watching it on television or of reading about it on the Internet. As entertainment, as Topic A, the agony has become a bore. 'A car bomb exploded today in a crowded Baghdad marketplace killing 53 and wounding 112.' Click.”
There were about 25 people there to watch the film Monday evening, one of the lowest turn-outs of the IndyFlix series at the State.
“Finding Our Voices.” Ho-hum.
It was so over, so yesterday.
Click.
Postscript
I shouldn’t mislead you. Despite his intelligence and incisive reporting, you’re probably not going to find Dexter Filkins in the front lines of an anti-war demonstration. He’s too much a “realist” for that and, besides, he (and Thomas Ricks) are of the view that the United States has so terribly and so tragically screwed things up in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East that we can’t in good conscience just get up one morning, blow a bugle, and march out of there.
Moreover, he and Ricks are also of the view that, though the results are not all in, the surge appears to have been a success, at least for the short term. Filkins writes: “Today, in the spring of 2009, it no longer really matters whether Bush was brilliant or stupid, a man who listened to reason or an idiot savant struck, Forrest Gump-like, by a fleeting insight. Whatever one’s view of the war, it is impossible to deny that in the eleventh hour Bush was right. The gamble has worked, at least so far.”
Nonetheless, the “greatest irony of the surge,” says Filkins, is that, even if temporary, even if “the outcome of the war in Iraq is still up for grabs,” its success has “all but ensured an even longer American commitment to the people of Iraq. And, we might as well add, to the people of Afghanistan.” Filkins then comes on with this admonition: “America, take note: we are still in the middle of two terrible and complicated wars, and we are likely to be fighting them for many years to come, even if we lose.”
So much for over. So much for yesterday.
Maybe, just maybe, with this realization, the peace movement in this country — and in our community — can find its voice, once again.
The film, and the lives of those it featured, was inspiring. But the predominant feeling I had watching it was sadness, sadness over the fact that we in this country have lost our way and that in spite of the good things that have happened since last November, we still haven’t found it. Dazzled by the election, dazzled by the inauguration, dazzled by the first 100 days, we are, sadly, still lost. I had the feeling that if my one of my highschool-age grandkids would have seen the movie with me, she might have said, “Grandpa, this movie is sooo over, it’s sooo yesterday.”
Which reminded me of the piece by Dexter Filkins that appears in the current issue (May 20) of The New Republic (www.tnr.com). Filkins is a reporter for the New York Times and is one of the most respected war correspondents in the world today; he covered the war in Iraq since its inception (out of which came his acclaimed book, The Forever War) and is now doing it all over again in Afghanistan. I’m not going to tell you what Filkins said in his article (which is a review of Thomas Ricks’ new book on the surge, The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008); I’m going to quote verbatim its first two paragraphs:
“From centrality to banality: perhaps no other event in modern American history has gone from being contentious to being forgotten as quickly as the war in Iraq. Remember the war? It consumed a trillion American dollars, devoured a hundred thousand Iraqi lives, squandered a country’s reputation, and destroyed an American presidency. Given the retreat of the American press — the first American withdrawal from Iraq, you might say — one could almost be excused, in the spring of 2009, for forgetting that 140,000 American troops are still fighting and dying there.
“That an undertaking as momentous and as costly as America’s war in Iraq could vanish so quickly from the forefront of the national consciousness does not speak well of the United States in the early twenty-first century: not for its seriousness and not for its sense of responsibility. The American people, we are told, appear to be exhausted by the war in Iraq. But exhausted by what, exactly? Certainly not from fighting it. The fighting is done by kids from the towns between the coasts, not by any of the big shots who really matter. And they are not exhausted by paying for it, either: another generation will do that. No, when Americans say that they are tired of the war in Iraq, what they really mean is that they are tired of watching it on television or of reading about it on the Internet. As entertainment, as Topic A, the agony has become a bore. 'A car bomb exploded today in a crowded Baghdad marketplace killing 53 and wounding 112.' Click.”
There were about 25 people there to watch the film Monday evening, one of the lowest turn-outs of the IndyFlix series at the State.
“Finding Our Voices.” Ho-hum.
It was so over, so yesterday.
Click.
Postscript
I shouldn’t mislead you. Despite his intelligence and incisive reporting, you’re probably not going to find Dexter Filkins in the front lines of an anti-war demonstration. He’s too much a “realist” for that and, besides, he (and Thomas Ricks) are of the view that the United States has so terribly and so tragically screwed things up in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East that we can’t in good conscience just get up one morning, blow a bugle, and march out of there.
Moreover, he and Ricks are also of the view that, though the results are not all in, the surge appears to have been a success, at least for the short term. Filkins writes: “Today, in the spring of 2009, it no longer really matters whether Bush was brilliant or stupid, a man who listened to reason or an idiot savant struck, Forrest Gump-like, by a fleeting insight. Whatever one’s view of the war, it is impossible to deny that in the eleventh hour Bush was right. The gamble has worked, at least so far.”
Nonetheless, the “greatest irony of the surge,” says Filkins, is that, even if temporary, even if “the outcome of the war in Iraq is still up for grabs,” its success has “all but ensured an even longer American commitment to the people of Iraq. And, we might as well add, to the people of Afghanistan.” Filkins then comes on with this admonition: “America, take note: we are still in the middle of two terrible and complicated wars, and we are likely to be fighting them for many years to come, even if we lose.”
So much for over. So much for yesterday.
Maybe, just maybe, with this realization, the peace movement in this country — and in our community — can find its voice, once again.
1 comment:
good job bro.........send it to the RE for the forum, if youve passed the required time lapse.........any idea how to re inspire the peace troops?
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