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FRYMER |
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 "OVER THERE! OVER THERE! WE DON"T KNOW WHAT THE HELL WE'RE DOIN' OVER THERE! BUT WE'll KEEP ON TRYIN' AND WE"LL KEEP ON DYIN' AND WE WON'T COME HOME TILL WE FIGURE OUT WHAT WE''RE DOIN' OVER THERE1' |
War really isn't supposed
to be like this, is it, folks?
By MURRY FRYMER
of TheColumnists.com
I’m not a war correspondent, but I know war. I was alive during World War II. Yep, I know war.
Also lived through Korea, in fact I was
in the military shortly thereafter. Talked to a lot of Korean
vets at my base in Arizona. They told me that southern Arizona
reminded them of Korea. And I was there.
And Vietnam. That one I actually marched against. Me and some
movie stars and folk singers. That was a war, all right.
And the Gulf War. Short and sweet. The U.S. Army vs. Saddam’s Army. Remember that?
OK, so those were wars. What have we got
now? This is war? Come on!
Where are the marches? U.S. soldiers go off to Iraq now with
nary a parade. I don’t even read about them going.
I remember as a kid collecting tin cans for WWII. Nobody collects
anything now.
There are no big signs saying “Loose Lips Sink Ships!”
This is a war?
Where are the war songs? Where’s our
version of “Over There” or “Praise the Lord and
Pass the Ammunition”? Where’s “The White Cliffs
of Dover” or “I’ll Be Seeing You”?
Can you have a war without war songs?
Where’s the nasty names for our enemies? Where’s today’s version of Japs or Gooks? We have no names for the Iraqi enemy?
Come to think of it, where’s the enemy army? Can you have a war against suicide bombers or terrorists? And how do you figure how many of them there are? We had 130,000 troops last I heard. How many do they have?
We have a leader (Bush?), generals, captains, whatever. Who’s their leader and how come they don’t have uniforms?
Our air force wiped out some cities, but did not encounter their air force. In war, air forces require other air forces. That’s how we know it’s a war.
There are damn few speeches in this war.
Bush sometimes comments on this or that, but a full-scale war
speech? No way. And their side never makes a speech, not that
we hear about.
But here’s a big one: Where are the battles? I can list
all kind of famous battles from wars. But this war has no battles,
unless you count Falujah where we took the town apart. But was
that a battle? Where were the front lines and the rear lines?
In this war, our 130,000 seem to just drive
around in trucks and occasionally a bomb in the bushes goes off.
We have lost 1,250 soldiers that way, but without a battle.
While this so-called war continues, we get the Grammys and Miss
America Pageant and we are going to get the Mardi Gras. But all
this is going on without anyone mentioning a war. At the Mardi
Gras, a hurricane will upstage our war. Our soldiers in Baghdad
just don’t rate a mention.
Nah, this is no war. Casualties do not a war make. But if we don’t have a war, if the other side has no army or air force, how come we have casualities? ‘Cause we’re there?
I say there is no war. But that makes what we do have even sadder. There are heroes in wars.We hailed our heroes when they came marching home from other wars.
The way you get to be a hero now is by dying, getting blown up, and that is damn sad. Damn damn sad.
©2006 by Murry
Frymer. The Murry Frymer caricature is
©2000 by Jim Hummel. The illustration is from IMSI's Master
Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506,
USA. This column first posted Feb. 20, 2006.
You
can comment on this column online. Please address your message
to either "The Editors" or Murry Frymer. To send an
email, click here and don't forget to mention Murry's name: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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