My wife gets irritated if I joke about the war. After reading The Onion’s Military Promises ‘Huge Numbers’ For Gulf War II: The Vengeance movie spoof, I just can’t help it. “The budget for Gulf War II: The Vengeance is somewhere in the neighborhood of $85 billion,” Rumsfeld continued. “And every penny of it is up there on your screen.”
And here’s an even better movie poster.
One of my sons has nagged me into watching the Daily Show on Comedy Central. What a hoot. And I keep singing the refrain from Country Joe and the Fish’s “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die” rag.
And it’s one, two, three,
What are we fighting for ?
Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam;
And it’s five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain’t no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! we’re all gonna die.
The whole thing is compelling drama, like a great war movie, only better. This one is live, just like the Super Bowl. I found myself getting irritated when Bush’s 48 hour deadline passed and the war didn’t start right away. C’mon, I got my popcorn, the trailers and ads are over, start the freakin show, man! My wife was not amused. Of course, they won’t show bodies splattered all over the place… too much realism might cause people to stop watching. War movies are still better for that.
A column by James Traub on the return of the draft, All Go Down Together, appeared in NY Times Magazine a couple of weeks ago: But what if conscription were equitable and were used to fill a military that was widely respected rather than scorned? This was the case, after all, in the period between the Korean and Vietnam Wars, when military service was widely accepted as the price of citizenship. Why wouldn’t that be true today? Why wouldn’t it be just the kind of sacrifice young Americans would agree to make at a time of heightened patriotism?
My wife thinks I’m nucking futs but I really agree with Traub. It really would make it interesting, no matter whether you’re conservative or liberal, if the sons and daughters of the middle and upper “ruling” classes were drafted… no deferments for college. I try to imagine what I’d be doing if my sons were in this war — protesting against it or marching to support-our-troops? I really don’t know, but I do know it’s easy to not wrestle with the problem since they’re not overseas with their necks on the chopping block. I can be a spectator citizen — unlike this father, a “Volvo-driving, higher education-worshiping” North Shore of Boston novelist whose son joined the Marines; and unlike the parents of the young American woman who was crushed by an Israeli bulldozer.