No. 100: that fickle thing we call potential

My 100th post. Sort of auspicious, I suppose. And I guess the subject I want to breach is appropriate.

I'm thinking about war.

Last night, randomly, the Boys and I went to go see Lions for Lambs at UniTheater. There was a free showing, the last showing of the night. Now, if you know the boys (Brian, Greg, Lou, Elvis, Geof), you know they don't tend to have strong political leanings, and we all love our Shoot-Em-Up movies (none more than me). So the fact that we went to go see that for the last night Greg was in town was sort of bizarre.

In any case-- the movie hit home with me. I went in nonchalantly, ready to cheer half-heartedly along with an anti-war, liberalist inspired Redford film. Instead, I watched a generally fair and balanced presentation of life in this country from three perspectives. It involved the war but it wasn't about the war. It was about people. People and their potential and how they waste it because they're afraid, or how they brave it, they spurn that fear and rise about it.

I had to leave the theater for a minute at the end (I won't spoil a bit for you and tell you why, but it made me emotional) and call Corey. For those of you who don't know, my cousin's a Marine, and a few weeks before he was supposed to be deployed to Afghanistan, a circular saw rolled over his foot, nearly cutting it in half. He's in a cast for the next few months and is therefore, obviously, missing his deployment date. The Marine Corps is Corey's life. It's what he was made for: that sense of brotherhood and dedication and a place that will never desert you and where he can give his all (when he's not with the Corps, he works for our grandfather's contracting company and the local fire department). It would've killed his spirit not to be able to go back to the Marines. But I've never been so glad of an injury in my life as I was that his foot is cut. Corey (aka Spuds-- my dad gave my cousins and I nicknames) and I are very close in age, me being six months his senior. When we were younger we spent a lot of time together at Gram's, at the beach, camping. I used to sass him and push him around and stuff, he was kind of a puny little kid and then as he got older, he got kinda chubby.

Then he went to boot camp. He came back a beast-- slimmed down, got ripped (I'm pretty sure he could bench my car), and was doing 6 mile runs for breakfast. He was no longer my little push-around-able cousin, but my big bro.

I am fiercely protective of my family, so when I heard he was signing up to go to Afghanistan, I was trying to figure out ways to get messages to the terrorist cells there that if something happened to my baby cous' there would be murders. I needn't have worried. Even if Corey had gone, I know the Lord would've had his hand over him.

So now, with this movie (which you've got to see, btw) and with Corey, and with all the men and women signing up to deal with this complete mess of a war (which I am admittedly not near to completely informed on) for those fools in the marble houses on the Hill, I have to look at myself and think, "What am I doing?"

Answer-- not much.
I've been hiding in my university and my desire for writing gritty fiction and drinking good coffee. Sure, I've been to war protests, I've sent a box of goodies to a soldier at Christmas time, etc. But I haven't done my homework, I haven't written letters, I haven't spoken to anyone, I haven't done anything. And I'm tired of it.

I found this quote in Michael Fumento's article about Covering the Iraq war and it made me think. Is there something we can actually do about it?

"Vietnam was the first war to give us reporting in virtually real time. Iraq is the first to give us virtual reporting. That doesn’t necessarily make it biased against the war; it does make it biased against the truth."

Maybe. Maybe each journalist who goes and says the truth as best as they can see it and doesn't sell it to corporate. Sure it might not get published broad screen, but it's out there. Somewhere someone is being honest. So don't anyone panic, but I've been reading up on war correspondents and talking to Mom about who we know and who I could go see. I've become convicted about things, one of which is that this war is too important for me to hide behind a wall made out of fear and complacency and believe everything the people looking over the wall tell me (they can't see it all that clearly from their vantage either, and it pays to keep the people in the city panicked). I tell myself to not dig too deeply or look to hard because I get emotional about war of any kind and I'm enough of a basket case as it is. But I think I'm ready, Lord help me, to man up a bit.
We'll see.

H.

PS-- Greg left last night. The next time I'll see him is at his wedding. Life is so weird.