One last thought before we head into the weekend. This is from a column that was syndicated yesterday in a number of newspapers around the country. I found it in the Sacramento Bee. It’s by Rod Dreher, a Dallas Morning News editorial columnist. The subject will be made quickly evident by the clips posted below. [NOTE: see that the Sac Bee is now is making you register. Here’s another link to the piece at Common Dreams.]
I have spent the last two weeks carrying around a chunk of bloody flesh. It is masquerading as a paperback novel called “All Quiet on the Western Front,” but in truth, it’s the ravaged heart of a man who was a soldier once. If there is a work of literature more searing in its description of modern warfare’s personal horrors, I have not read it and don’t know that I could withstand it.
I started reading Erich Maria Remarque’s 1929 novel — a perennial high school lit fave — for the sake of civic edification. You know the drill: Read a certified Great Book…..
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“All Quiet” is thought by many to be the greatest war novel because it tells the universal combat experience of the soldier: the sanity-crushing bombardments, the murder of ideals, the barbaric clawing for survival, the scorn for authority figures who don’t suffer the consequences of their decisions, the alienation of fighting men from the people back home, who can’t possibly understand what they endure, and so forth…….
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As shattering as “All Quiet” is, the wretched truth remains that war we will always have with us. Because men are born to trouble, sometimes war is a necessary evil.Ah, but on that one word — necessary — hangs the world.…
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As I read the final pages, I heard my 3-year-old stirring in his bedroom. I went to check on him and stood there regarding with wonderment the blond boy slumbering in the soft glow of the nightlight. I prayed hard for him and his brother to be spared war’s desolation. As I will pray constantly for their Uncle Mike — faithful husband, devoted father and brave soldier — when he deploys to Iraq this month.
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Kentucky poet Wendell Berry has written: There is no government so worthy as your son who fishes with you in silence beside the forest pool. There is no national glory so comely as your daughter whose hands have learned a music and go their own way on the keys. There is no national glory so comely as my daughter who dances and sings and is the brightness of my house. There is no government so worthy as my son who laughs, as he comes up the path from the river in the evening, for joy.
A novelist, Mario Vargas Llosa,” writes Dreher, “recently told The Wall Street Journal: ‘I think that literature has the important effect of creating free, independent, critical citizens who cannot be manipulated.'”
Yep. Quite so. Read on.
“on that one word  necessary  hangs the world”
Interesting…’cuz Rod Dreher is very right-wing. He used to have a blog for National Review Online. Strikes me as a thinking conservative one could break bread with – in contrast to the brain-dead BushLove bootlickers who’ve poisoned our body politic and driven the country deep into a ditch these past six years.
Incidentally, a poll that come out today had 45% favoring the Congress initiating impeachment against President Bush and 46% opposed – an even split, which is a shocker. (25% supported the impeachment of Bill Clinton.) 54% favor impeachment proceedings against Cheney with only 40% opposed. 47% of Republicans and 80% of independents disapprove of Bush’s letting Libby walk. The “Partisan” & “BushHater” cliches to isolate critics are totally now dead and buried. This administration is officially in Freefall. A complete disaster. His critics have not only been vindicated, they’re more often than not tailing current public opinion. Even the “BushLove” crowd can be seen running for cover and disavowing the guy.
Interesting about Dreher. Thanks for that info, reg. I knew nothing about him, just liked the column. Given what you’ve said, this particular ‘graph, which I didn’t clip for the post, has more poignancy:
“It’s impossible to be released from the world of this novel and regard one’s own responsibility as a citizen of a democracy for the current and future wars with equanimity. So many of us never served in combat, yet we rallied uncritically to the call of those who valorized martial prowess, extolled American power, and spoke of killing and maiming  and the risk of being killed and maimed  using words like â€Âcakewalk.†Did you? I did. And now look.”
About the polls, yeah, I think this is the proverbial tipping point. A week and a half ago when I was in DC, I’d not have bet on it. But, to (drastically) paraphrase Keith Olbermann in his July 3 broadcast, this may truly be the firing-of-Archibald Cox moment.
Amazing column, particularly, given the addition information offered by “reg.” It tears at the gut.
There were two comments to the piece when I read it. The comment by “anotherview” was instructive. While the writer catches Dreher’s admission of not having served in his/her reference to “civilian pukes,” s/he misses the broader point of Dreher’s thinking, preferring, perhaps, to see the piece as a failure to support the troops, rather than the poignancy of the worthiness of the children whose lives will be shattered by it, in one way or another. The commentor fails to grasp the notion that war is never a “cakewalk” for those who fight it, and recognizing that it isn’t a cakewalk, doesn’t signify a failure to support the lives of those who fill the ranks of “our troops.”
As the drum beats more loudly for engaging Iran, the drum also beats more loudly for censure and/or impeachment.
Poetic and fancy words don’t make for reality. War is only fought because peace was given a chance and it failed.