Soldier's Home : Lest We Forget? Or, Have We Already?

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Lest We Forget? Or, Have We Already?

David Botti

Thomas E. Ricks, the Washington Post military reporter, posed an interesting question the other day--one some people may not want to admit their own answer to.

In an online chat with readers (part of The War Over the War Series), Ricks asked:

"Are Americans tired of hearing about the war in Iraq? I have been hearing such comments lately. I suspect they may be right. The other day I heard about a television executive who said that movies about Iraq are failing because people just don't want to see them....Here we are, perhaps only halfway through the war, and people are turning it off, even as Americans and Iraqis continue to die in Iraq. What does that mean -- for the war, for our politics, and for us as a people?"

Interestingly enough the next reader response had nothing to do with the question.

I remember talking to my best friend a few days before I flew to Iraq, about a week after the 2003 invasion began. His thoughts seemed to echo the rest of the country's at the time--he couldn't take his eyes off the television's war coverage.

Now it seems many Iraq news stories are produced out of a sense of obligation, rather than genuine interest.

In conversation with friends, non-veteran and veteran alike, the Iraq war is usually mentioned only during watershed moments (i.e. the Petraeus report). I used to feel bitter about this, now I just feel I’ve become a realist. People have their own lives to worry about.

Every moment I catch myself not thinking about the war is a guilty one, but in the rush of day-to-day life the mundane can foreshadow what truly matters. My solution for a time was an obsessive check of the Department of Defense's press release Web site. Each day I clicked on the bookmarked page, checking the identical headlines one-by-one, trying to remember where I left off from the day before.

Part of it was a sense that I should read every dead soldier's name to honor them. Another part if it was because the military, and in particular the Marine Corps, is a very small community. I always expected to see the name of someone I knew, and one day when I wasn't looking their names appeared.

I don't have an answer to Ricks’ question. But the fact it needs to be asked at all may provide one.

The War, The Personal, The Issues, Iraq

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Member Comments

Posted By: whiteBELT (October 15, 2007 at 12:15 PM)

Where is that everyday obsession with the details of the battlefront? I remember in 2002 talking with the woman who rung up my groceries about the logistics of taking Kabul with light infantry so that heavy mechanized forces would be free to sweep through Tora Bora. Were we grossly overinformed? Maybe a little, but its possible that the pendulum has swung the other way.

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