Is the war simply not hip anymore? I ask this question in all seriousness. I want to know. Is the idea that thousands of women and men, Canadian and American, are still overseas and engaged in active combat just not very interesting? Did we win or something?
The fact that one can watch virtually a nightly news broadcast on any network these days without hearing a soundbyte about Iraq (and often Afghanistan too) is a disgrace. It's like the viewers, and by extension the reporters, just decided one day that any war news was boring. "Let's go cover Heath Ledger instead," said the mainstream media.
Hell, even Al-Jazeera doesn't have a headlining story on Iraq on its website.
The U.S. Election (still ten months away people) takes up so much talk that no-one even seems to remember why it's so important. It's the War, stupid. Neither Obama nor Clinton has yet to offer anything concrete on how exactly they intend to "bring the troops home." McCain and Romney on the other hand, can't wait to send more soldiers over to Iraq, and probably Iran, Syria and Pakistan too.
It's not like the war is over. Last year was the bloodiest year yet for U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Add to that the nearly two thousand civilians killed in combat and ten times that figure over in Iraq. Throw in nine hundred U.S. troops and thirty Canadian troops and you've got anything but "mission accomplished". That's just 2007. We've been at it for five years in Iraq and seven in Afghanistan. My little cousin just turned three. We've got an entire generation coming of age that doesn't know what the world looks like without Iraqi insurgents and Taliban militia. That offends me.
The fickle protest community, with its earnest sociology students and neo-vegan hippies, has already moved on. Now they're all about carbon dioxide and Darfur. Next it'll probably be testing on rabbits and civilians in Burma.
Look, I know it's difficult and boring and we've all been hearing about this war forever now. The images are never easy, the stories always depressing. We students have it rough already. Who needs to hear about a 7 year-old girl getting machine-gunned to death (happened Monday in Diyala)? We've got enough things to worry about like exams, jobs, loan debts, relationships, Facebook requests...
I also understand that the news business these days is in the middle of a kind of revolution it hasn't seen since the invention of television. This internet generation is abandoning print and television and turning to strange and unprofitable things like the blogosphere and podcasts. Websites with funny names like Fark, Digg, del.icio.us and Technorati compete with the BBC and The New York Times. Classified ads are losing out to the new school of Craigslist and Kijiji. Times are rough and covering wars is expensive.
But these are all pitiful excuses in the face of what's truly important. Let's not lose sight of that fact. No matter how many young actors overdose and pop stars get locked up in mental hospitals, or even if the islanders from "Lost" get rescued by the Mexican Navy, we ought to keep a simple thought in the back of our media-saturated brains:
People are dying. For us. For this country.
Whether you support their mission or not, or whether you care or not is irrelevant. The fact remains they deserve your consideration anyway. More so than a dumb smog monster anyway.
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