Thanksgiving

So I've been terribly slack in writing recently. It's been quite a busy few weeks and I feel like I haven't had time to sit down and reflect very much, never mind getting the time to actually write.
I suppose Thanksgiving is good for that sort of thing though. Once you fight your way through the airport check out lines, or crawl your way through traffic to your destination, you can sit back and relax. My father said "I love thanksgiving. All you have to do is eat". There are no prayers. There is no fasting. You don't have to avoid certain foods, or even fight your way to a crowded field to watch fireworks. You just sit back with family and eat. You might watch football. You might sit back and have a beer with that weird uncle who puts you in a corner so he can talk to you about cars and trucks. Or perhaps you have that weird cousin who brings in exotic wines made from "interesting" ingredients. He insists that this particular parsnip wine is the latest craze in all of California. So you take a sip, smile politely and try to gulp down a glass of water before any of the fermented parsnip flavoring lingers in your mouth.
It's all about family.
I remember one or two Thanksgivings in which family wasn't involved. I went to to two Thanksgiving meals in England. A friend of mine was kind enough to make a thanksgiving meal for several of us at the synagogue in Reading. They were replete with bad American beer, pilgrim salt and pepper shakers, and plenty of gentle America bashing.
Another was as a grad student in Madison: I decided to stay here rather than fly home. So, I went to a pot luck and had quite an exotic mix of food and drink. Turkey was involved, but it certainty wasn't traditional.
So, once you've done the traveling, once you've fought the traffic and the crowds. Take a minute to relax. Enjoy the craziness of whomever you are with, and give thanks for the chance to do it.

The Things They Carried

My girlfriend lent me the book "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien. It's his account of his experiences in the vietnam war. He was drafted in '68 after he graduated from college. His accounts are harrowing, humerous, vivid, and clear. He puts war right in front of you, cutting through the politics and the ideals, or lack their of,behind the war. An example:

"But in truth war is also beauty. For all its horror, you can't help but gape at the awful majesty of combat. You stare out at tracer rounds unwinding through the dark like brilliant red ribbons...You admire the fluid symmetries of troops on the move, the harmonies of sound and shape and proportion, the great sheets of metal-fire streaming down from a gun-ship, the illumination rounds, the white phosphorus, the purply orange glow of napalm, the rocket's red glare. It's not pretty, exactly. It's astonishing."

He writes of nearly dodging the draft in Canada. He describes his Lt. Commander and wrestling with his conscious after he loses one of his men.
I grew up after Vietnam was in the past. The ideas supporting the war were confusing to me. Communism was not something I really feared. The Soviets might have been a declared "enemy", but I never really understood why.

Naturally, as I read this, I make comparisons to the war on Iraq. We have men and women, barely old enough to drink, giving their lives for the country. Civilians and combatants alike are also being killed, and are often lost in the shadows of American lives. Whether you think these sacrifices are worth it, is of course a matter of controversy and debate. The circumstances of the two conflicts are different, but the costs are the same: human lives.

I have always been mixed on the war. On a theoretical level, I could understand it. Saddam was an awful dictator who did unimaginably cruel things to his people. Ridding Iraq of him is certaintly not a bad thing, regardless of whether the infamous "weapons of mass destruction" ever existed.
But I have always questioned whether we could actually succeed in stablizing the country. To succeed it would have to be done with care and with careful planning.

It's possible of course, that twenty, or even 50 years from now, Iraq will be a better place. We don't know. It's possible that the lives that have been sacrificed have prevented more deaths under Saddam's continued rule. But it could easily spiral further downhill. We'll see more violence and more bloodshed. It could "stablize" as the breeding ground for terrorists that the war's critics have often predicted.

So now we must once again, proceed with caution. We must remember those soldiers in the line of fire who don't care about politics. At that moment, they are from both red and blue states. They are democrats, republicans, Iraqis, Shiites, Kurds, Sunnis: they are human. We must always ask, are their lives worth it?