The War
I’ve been making my way through Ken Burns’ documentary series The War. It seems relevant in so many ways: both my dad’s and mom’s fathers fought in The War. I’ve been thinking about Pops and Grandpa Frank: what did they see? What did they do? What were the sacrifices my family gave?
It’s surreal to see the United States depicted in wartime then as tightly unified, everyone struggling toward the same goal, sacrificing their blood and sweat to halt an obvious evil. In current times we seem so divided, like we live in several different countries: the red states, the blue the purple. We’re at war with each other, and we’re at war in Iraq which seems to matter so little compared to World War II. The depth of that war is difficult to comprehend: so many people died. I can’t understand losses so large. Each episode of the documentary has found me moved to tears at the stories, the disaster, the challenge and idealism.
But I also find myself wondering: what do the Japanese and Germans think? How does it feel to have something this horrendous and futile in your past, that so many nations were rallied and devastated in the grasp for power?
The War seems relevant today because it christened the United States as a superpower. It’s when our national ego swelled, and has ebbed and swollen til the last few years when we grew so incredibly pompous under George W Bush as to provoke war without merit. This seems a symptom of WWII, that this moment could only come after those that came before. It seems important to remember how the cycle started, with so much pain. It would seem obvious after that that we should use every means necessary to avoid more war, that the gains of The War shouldn’t be more war. The gain of war, if anything, is loss, and an outside chance at peace. I don’t want to see us to squander that chance. We should remember.