Sacrifice on the Home Front?

I got a very nice response from a member of the 2nd Platoon A Co. 2-136 CAB, which is Josh Hanson's platoon and I want to thank them and everybody who has been supportive of this blog. To the second platoon I say, stay safe and come home soon.

I used to wonder what it was like for my mother who was on the "home front" during the second world war. I wondered about the feelings of solidarity that must have been common to all the people on rations who were blacking out their windows in case of air raids and saving their rags and tin foil for the war effort. I imagined what it must be like to hear the reports on the radio and thought it must be wonderful to feel like one is a part of a group of people that is sacrificing their well being for a greater cause.

WWII PAPER DRIVE IN NORFOLK VA

I was a child when the U.S. went to war in Viet Nam. There was no agreement in my community about the purpose of the war. The radio and television did not send reassuring messaages, but instead we saw the misery of the people in Viet Nam and the discord caused by American public disagreement about the war. I told myself that this was a different situation and besides this wasn't a real war. Congress had never declared war and although those who supported the war effort seemed to have high ideals, there was so much disagreement about why we were there and then of course we found out that the Gulf of Tonkin incident had been manufactured and that there were dark shadows to those so-called ideals.

GAS RATION STAMPS FROM WWII


Now I am an adult and I once again am in the situation to examine a war on the "home front." I have met no one without tremendous sympathy and support for the soldiers who are abroad. (I hear this is different from the way people felt about the troops in the Viet Nam era - I was young with big ears and avid curiosity, and I have to say that I never met people even then, even among the most fervid anti-war protestors who believed that the soldiers were to blame). I have once again seen us enter a war based on ideals and wonder about the dark shadow of weapons of mass destruction that was used to propel the United States into war.

I can not decide where the differences lie. There has been no drive to ask the people at home to make sacrifices for this war. In fact after September 11th the only thing I can remember is a President that asked us to go out and shop. There has been no acknowledgement that war is a costly affair and no honest talking to the public about the costs of war and the value to be gotten from it. On TV we at home are shielded from the horrors. We see young, happy, smiling soldiers and images of "surgical strikes" that look like firework. We rarely see the aftereffects of the fighting. If we see the injured they are optimistic and determined to live without their limbs. We are not even allowed to see the caskets of the brave American soldiers who have given their lives. We have no data on the numbers of people wounded nor of the numbers of Iraqi casualties.We have a ery limited sense of what is happening on the real front. It seems to me that if the Government wants our support, then it owes us honest and clear acknowledgements of what is really going on and what our actions involve. It owes us a voice in what is done, instead of simply striving to manipulate us into comfortable ignorance and assuring us that our way of life need not be affected.

SCHOOL VICTORY GARDEN


I will not believe that people are so cynical today that they can not be appealed to in a rational and reasonable way. I can only believe that the government has forgotten how to talk to people about the important things. I feel like I am being treated like a child that is not yet old enough to hear the whole story. Why would those in government dissemble, create false fears and raise misleading information about weapons of mass destruction? I am ready to hear what the adults are talking about. I want to know the whole story. Perhaps if we had all the relevant information they fear we would not have supported the war, perhaps they have lost touch with our humanity.Perhaps they have lost touch with their own. I can not say what the answer is, but this remains for me a very disconcerting issue.

Images from www.npl.lib.va.us/sgm/ oldlobby/archives/wwii.html