Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 1, 1991 TAG: 9103010704
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-13 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARSHALL FISHWICK
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The ground assault - labeled the Mother of Battles - was over before we fully realized it had begun. The whole war wasn't even the length of a good World War I battle. The battle of Verdun went on for 10 months. Now we get a headline reading, "War Drags on Into Eighth Day."
It didn't take eight days to realize we had to learn new code-names and jargon. Can our M1A1 outgun their T-72? Is the Warthog better than the Apache at night? How many K.I.A.'s (Killed In Action) will occur in the K.T.O. (Kuwait Theater of Operation)?
Not many. Iraq's "battle-hardened army, the fourth largest in the world," turned out to be a pushover. The general called "another Hitler," Saddam Hussein, tried the French tactic of building a static Maginot Line to keep us out of Kuwait. We sent our tanks around the flank - just as Hitler did in France - and gained an early victory. All told, it was a bully little war.
That phrase is, of course, Teddy Roosevelt's, and his was the Spanish-American War. His war ushered in the 20th century; the Persian Gulf War will (we presume and hope) usher it out. Teddy's war got us a "little empire" of Cuba, the Philippines, the Panama Canal. What will our war get us? What do we want from it? Having won the war, can we win the peace?
In our highly pluralistic society, in which race, religion, culture, and gender wage their own endless battles, war seems the only thing that binds and bonds us. When our moral and military goals fuse, we are unbeatable. Not only the Spanish and Iraqis, but also the Germans, Japanese and all their allies have reason to know this is true.
But not all wars bring this bonding. World War I (with its failed League of Nations), Korea, and Vietnam proved this. Our wars have to be moral crusades, with good guys and bad guys. And guess who the good guys are.
After "good wars" our spirits rise, and everything goes well. After bad wars - think of the post-Vietnam years - we can't do anything right.
What we all dreaded was another Vietnam. President Bush assured us we wouldn't have another, but we had read his lips on taxes, and weren't sure. He was right. We got a pop-culture war, brought to us daily (even hourly) in living color.
We saw everything: the teary goodbyes, the embarkation, debarkation, arrival of the first Cokes, the stuffing for Thanksgiving turkeys - the whole nine yards. We got nightly greetings from troops in the field, and they, in turn, got thousands of letters from people they had never seen. Trees sprouted not green buds but yellow ribbons; flag and button salesmen made a killing. A new magazine, Operation Desert Shield, floods the newsstands, with blaring headlines: "America's Awesome Firepower, the Most Devastating War Machine Ever!" Suddenly Superman, Wonder Woman, Hulk Hogan, and the Incredible Hulk had all joined the Red, White and Blue.
"It's Vietnam revisited as it should have been," said Professor Robert Dallek. "It's Vietnam: The Movie, Part II . . . and this time it comes out right." The Agonizing '80s were giving way to the Nurturing '90s, amidst what the New York Times called "a heartwarming resurgence of patriotism."
Back home, politicians were already asking if "Stormin' Norman" Schwarzkopf, our bear of a general, is a Democrat or Republican.
Students of pop culture asked other questions. In the fast lane of electronic flashes, where everyone might be famous for 15 minutes, how long will war euphoria last? "When you're hot, you're hot, when you're not, you're not . . . " I'll never forget old what's-his-name. Norman who? Pollsters turn out to be tricksters. Prediction is a form of folly. The one thing about which we know absolutely nothing is the future.
Life in the 20th century has put us on a roller coaster: ups and downs to take away our breath, our balance - even our lives. No century (or so we think) has been bolder, bloodier, brasher. Everything nailed down is coming loose. The Earth changes as we walk on it.
The age of instant issues . . . endless crusades . . . posters and protesters unlimited. We have been for and against so many things that we aren't sure about where the action is, what the issues are, who's on whose side.
Still plagued by Earth-bound questions, we have moved into outer space. When astronauts transmitted back to Earth pictures of the Earth as a small orb floating in a cosmic sea, everything altered. En route to the moon, we perceived for the first time what it meant to be an earthling. What new perceptions will we have in 2001 A.D.?
Many factors and actions refute the charge that there is little purpose, elasticity, or individuality left. True, our world supports many monopolies and conformists, but often their similarities are only skin-deep.
The problem is to see underneath the surface - of our society, our technology, our kitsch - and identify new wellsprings of energy, technique and faith. This will mean clearing not only the junkyards from our highways, but the bric-a-brac from our intellectual attics. We must civilize technopolis, where barbarism and anonymity are well entrenched. To do this, we must comprehend our environment in new ways.
Weeding and watering the landscape of the mind, we may find an America that looks ever less like a Currier and Ives landscape and ever more like a Jackson Pollock abstraction. Why should we not rejoice in what we are becoming? A bully idea.
by CNB