Is it because most Americans now have never known war?

[Jade Fox]

The world that produced the Geneva Convention was a world that knew war. Even those who weren't active military had made the economic sacrifices, seen the bombs drop, met the refugees and camp survivors, and lost friends and family members to war. Every American knew veterans. Every American knew someone who had died. Every American had been affected by two World Wars only 20 or so years apart.

Today's warmongers and torture advocates have mostly not done military service, but in addition to that they have no idea what the reality of war is, on the battle field or on the home front. As the WWII generation dies out, the majority of Americans have no real references to the reality of war unless they take some serious time to educate themselves, and even then it has the distance of theory.

We now hear talk of acceptable levels of torture because the talkers have no connection to what they are talking about.

[muntrv]

1. Yep. The only connection to war most people have is through movies

or Playstation video games.

[Jade Fox]

2. That's even scarier....

to think about, because those examples (movies and video games) are a false experience of war. Better no experience.

[Selatius]

3. Maybe if America bled as much as Europe did, there would be no war

When Americans think of war, they think of it in abstract terms, but to the survivors of the Holocaust and the devastation wrought by Hitler's war machine, it's not abstract. It's still very much terrifyingly, grotesquely, real and painful to Europeans though. You don't lose upward of 50,000,000 in Europe and not have your national psyche affected by it if it was your nation that had its lands destroyed and its cities turned to ash and rubble.

If there is anything people remember the longest, it is pain. They remember. That is the reason why they opposed us on the invasion of Iraq. They are not interested in starting a conflict that could end up being bigger than everybody involved, and they are damn sure not interested in seeing it happen again for the third time in less than one century.

They have more than enough war monuments and fields full of white crosses to remind them of the price they pay when they tolerate leaders who use violence first. They have seen enough of this:

[Jade Fox]

6. Yes, your average American kid today....

doesn't walk by a field of crosses or a commemorative WWII site everyday, like many in Europe do.

However, when I was growing up I was surrounded by adults who had lived through the Depression and WWII, and I at least got some idea that those events were pretty traumatic. Todays kids and adults under about 35 don't even have that.

[BlackVelvetElvis]

8. WWI - good example.

A lot of Europeans still remember because it destroyed an entire generation. This war dominated every action and thought for over four years.
How do most of us in the US remember Nov. 11th or any other day? Its a 3-day weekend with a cookout.

When Brian Williams brought the topic of citizen sacrifice up to Bush a few weeks ago, Bush said:

"Americans are sacrificing. I mean, we are. You know, we pay a lot of taxes. America sacrificed when they, you know, when the economy went into the tank. Americans sacrificed when, you know, air travel was disrupted. American taxpayers have paid a lot to help this nation recover. I think Americans have sacrificed."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14576012/

What Bush said was lame and proved he never learned a damn thing from history.

[kineneb]

11. "In Flanders Fields"

In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/flanders.htm

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

---
My Grandma used to recite this to me. My Grandpa was too young to enlist in the US Army, so he went to Canada and served in the Canadian Army. He was stationed in northern England, but never saw battle as he lost his hearing during an epidemic of measles. There was no treatment available for infections, only quarantine. So many others never made it home or were scarred forever by the "new" weapons used. How soon we forget.

[Karenina]

4. YES!!! Americans have never had

BOMBS DROPPED ON THEIR HEADS. They somehow believe the destruction of 3 buildings in NYC is in some way comparable. It is not.

[Jade Fox]

7. Yes, I was shocked at how.....

shocked people were by 9/11, not that it wasn't horrible, just that it was hardly unique. Many, many people have been killed throughout the world in similar ways.

[Karenina]

18. JF, I was at a concert in an old church

you know, high-vaulted ceilings, mosaics, statues, art everywhere... One of the Roman pillars was quite damaged. I put my palm on it and read the plaque, "A warning from the dead to the living" and simply burst into tears. My neighborhood was FLATTENED. These many years later it's easy to see exactly what survived. Then there are the plaques in the sidewalk marking the homes from which people were seized and sent to be murdered...

[applegrove]

5. Yes. Notice how the most vocal voices in 2003 were all over the

age of 75? Cause they knew. They refused to shut up for Busco...unlike most people in the press...they refused to shut up. They knew what a danger "appeasement" was to a bunch of bullies.

Everyone else pretty much shut up during that first 1 1/2 years of war in Iraq.

Also..Bushco seem to be meticulous about rich Americans (those in the upper middle class too) not sacrificing one little bit. Why is it they don't want to share the sacrifice of war if it is such an important thing? Why? Because of the point you make in your OP.

[Jade Fox]

9. Those over 75 also knew.....

the dangers of going off half-cocked into war. The disaster of WWI was a lesson in starting a war for stupid reasons, and that war left Germany hurting, defeated, and ripe for a demagogue. Enter Hitler and WWII.

[kineneb]

12. The old guys

wanted to strangle Bush, especially after the "Mission Accomplished" landing. My dearly departed "Uncle"* Vern called me up right afterwards and chewed off my ear; the gist of his fulminations were "How dare he defame the services by wearing wings on his damned 'uniform'"?

Uncle Vern was a Pearl Harbor survivor (Navy). He was on the island and survived by diving head first into newly dug sewerline ditch. The Japanese pilots flew down the ditch and the bullets hit on either side of him. Uncle then served during the war on ships in the Pacific theater.

*actually Grandpa's nephew

I am so glad that Grandpa (1898-1986) did not live to see BushCo ruin this country.

[applegrove]

13. Yes. Thankfully - those poor old souls, many of them, didn't have to live

to see this Bushco. Everything they worked for up for grabs to the greasiest .... (I want to say " highest bidder" here but that is not the right word..Haliburton didn't bid did it?..Hm.... even the old expressions don't fit with these goofs in the WH) palm.

[raccoon]

14. I've been having similar thoughts. I'm glad my mother didn't

live to see what happened in New Orleans last year.

[CarlVK]

10. War is a video game.

Or, something that Bruce Willis does between tee times. That's about the gravity that war is given by today's generation.

[raccoon]

15. Which is why stupid fuckers (so I heard) cheered "Shock and Awe"

in their local bars.

I hope they live to bitterly regret their insensitivity and arrogance.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

Despite some of their militaristic leaders

(significantly, Koizumi and his ilk are the first generation of leaders born AFTER WWII), the Japanese people as a whole are very anti-war, having had virtually all their cities bombed to rubble and having spent the first couple of years after the war starving in the ruins.

Americans lost 3,000 people in two cities on 9/11 and act as if the whole world should sympathize forever.

Tokyo lost 100,000 in a single firebombing raid in March 1945, and comparable amounts in nearly every other major city through the course of the war, not to mention tens of thousands each in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Then there's the havoc Japan unleashed on neighboring countries, slaughtering its way across China until it reached Chiang Kai-shek's capital of Nanjing, where hundreds of thousands were massacred in an orgy of killing that went on for weeks.

The veterans of Nanjing vary in their reactions, from "It never happened," to "It happened, but it wasn't that bad," to "It happened, but you had to have been there to know how we felt," to "It happened, and I hate myself for what I did."

I was in Japan when the 1991 Gulf War broke out, leading a student group. It was interesting to see this group of students, mostly born after 1970, not exposed to the cheerleading of the American media, and having learned about the devastation of World War II. They were scared, and one young man even phoned his parents to discuss the possibility of his staying overseas if a draft was instated.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

16. Inexplicable dupe

:shrug:

[RebelOne]

17. Who says most Americans have never known war?

Most Americans are not under 40, you know. I have known WWII, the Korean War, the Viet Nam War, the Gulf War and now the Iraq War.