War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing!

I have been watching The War miniseries on PBS. It is fascinating and yet very disturbing on many levels.

First of all, I feel like there has sort of been this almost love affair with WWII in the entertainment industry over the last few decades (or maybe it has always been that way, and I just didn’t realize it). But since Schindler’s List I feel there’s been this bombardment of images relating to WWII; unsettling images, really, that previously would not have been shown to the American public with such gory, gruesome detail. There was Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan, and Band of Brothers. Do we notice a theme here? Thanks Steven Speilberg (and Tom Hanks!)

I guess I believe on one hand that it is necessary to see these images. To be reminded that this is what war is. That it’s terrible and horrifying, traumatic and harrowing. Some of these images will turn your stomach, or at least I feel like they should. This is the part that I’m struggling with. I feel like since I’ve been bombarded with these images since I was 11 or so they don’t even really faze me anymore. It is like my mind is saying, “You see one terrible thing, you’ve seen them all.” I’m totally desensitized. This appalls me! I feel like no matter what, when I see these images I should be affected on some deeper level. Instead all I can think is yeah, yeah, that’s terrible, war sucks, what can you do? So in the end, I feel like maybe it is worse to see these images all the time because then they don’t hold as much meaning or have quite the same effect. It’s not like seeing these images can change anything that is taking place today. It can remind us of our past, in hopes that we don’t repeat it in the future, but that’s pretty much it. We, the little people, can not do much to stop our government from doing what it wants to do.

Which brings me to my next point, the other thing this mini-series has brought to the forefront of my mind is something that I’ve always known, but just keep pushing back. That is how our government has kept us perpetually at war for hundreds of years. Yes, yes, this is what Orwell was getting at with 1984. It is a basic fact we all know, but when you sit there and you list the wars we’ve become involved in since WWII, you realize there has never really been a time when our military hasn’t been drawn into some snafu or another. I feel like at least with WWII we were fighting for something. We were coming to the aid of Europe as a whole and not some country that happens to have a commodity our government cares deeply about.

That in turn ties into a discussion we were having about PTSD in Abnormal Psychology last night. When the WWII veterans came home we threw them ticker tape parades, patted them on the back, and made sure they would have jobs when they came home. When the Vietnam veterans or the Iraq war veterans came home they were/have been largely ignored. When our government gets involved in wars that the American public doesn’t support, it’s the soldiers who suffer the most.