Middle America

Grrr... My computer over-heated and I just lost the huge blog entry I was working on! Hate that... But, after I put the computer down for a few minutes to cool off, I was observing the people around me, and I heard something that made me decide to change the topic I was writing on anyway. Let me set the stage first. I'm in my hometown, Battle Creek, Michigan. I've been here visiting for the holidays. Driving around town I've been musing about what has changed, and more so, about what hasn't. But I have to admit, I've been feeling mildly smug about how small-town this place seems in mind set and in it's geography and feeling glad about the fact that I no longer live here. But now I'm sitting in a very nice little coffee shop in what was a corn field when I was in high school. It's sits across the street from the new high school, also located in what used to be a corn field. It's growing rapidly, but I wonder, how many people here even know where Malaysia is? There were four other people in this same coffee shop when my computer over-heated. Two of them got up to leave, and either knew the two ladies sitting near the door, or just wished them Happy Holidays the way people often do in this part of the country. Anyway, the blond woman looked up and said, "My son is Iraq. I had hoped for a phonecall yesterday, but I didn't get one, so it wasn't a great Christmas." You can see the stress on her face, and her voice trembled a little as she explained that her son's unit is out moving around constantly, only returning to base about once every 30 or 40 days to shower, so they can't always call. And she said a little about how difficult the holidays are when you're just worrying 24-7. And she explained how difficult is to explain to people who don't have family members in the military.

And my smugness went out the window. Yesterday the Battle Creek Enquirer ran an email interview with an old friend who is also in Iraq. It was a really good thing to read. Then last night while I was visiting my other Battle Creek family, my best friends mom was on the phone to some family friends who told her that their son has just found out he too is being deployed to Iraq.

I can remember a time when I never thought I'd know people who were headed off to war. I can remember my mom talking about friends who didn't return from Vietnam and friends who were called up for the draft. I realize now that what seemed like ancient history to me, something much bigger than I was and far too difficult to understand in my 6 year old mind, was actually fresher in her and my dad's minds than the first Gulf War now is in mine. Now, I've run out of fingers to count the people I know who have gone. Thankfully I don't know anyone who has been killed.

A couple of years ago I was lucky enough to live in Vietnam for a time. Over that time I learned a lot about the Vietnam conflict. I learned about it from both perspectives, the American through reading, and the Vietnamese through touring the old battle sites, museums, and talking with people who vividly remember it. I spoke with countless Vietnamese people who lived through hell, never meeting anyone who didn't lose at least one or two friends or family members during that conflict, and yet said this to me time and again. "No one blames the soldiers that were here. They were just kids and they were doing what they were told." I wish I could say that the Americans back home had seen them like that when they returned, but as history tells us, we didn't. The view on what the war was about, and whether it was justified was different with every person I spoke with. For many people it was just one part of a larger conflict that had raged for forty years. There was certainty that the peace that followed the war didn't bring happiness for many many years after. There were those in the south that suffered untold retribution at the hands of the north after the war ended. But in the north I worked with kids who were third generation victims of agent orange. And people in that part of the country firmly believed that the Vietnamese government has always had their best interests at heart. What I saw as blatent propaganda they saw as the only truth they'd ever known. What I saw as human rights violations in Central Vietnam, they saw as a secret plot by outside actors to create unrest in their country. Our ideas of truth were so far from one another, and yet, you couldn't convince either party that what they'd grown up believing to be truth could possibly be wrong. At the time I also recieved a lot of emails from a friend in the US who had served in the Vietnam war and though highly successful is still haunted by the memories of his time in Vietnam. I was lucky to, in that time, be able to see the conflict from so many view points. In the end, what did it do to my ideas about war? It changed my understanding of war. It was no longer a bunch of evil people doing evil things (though there is no question that it exists...). But instead it became mostly a lot of ordinary people caught up in an extraordinary conflict that tore lives and people apart, and yet, you could clearly see why it wouldn't just end, why there could be no agreement and no treaties on either side and why, however ill concieved, it started in the first place. How cultural misunderstanding contributed to the conflict, how collective fear made it worse, also how forces on both sides affected the conflict for better and worse. I understood more thoroughly, and because of that it thoroughly confounded me. While I was there this new war began.

Now it's three years later. And the war has very little effect on my daily life so far. But as I'm sitting here in this cafe I have a re-newed appreciation for small town America. It is places like this, my own hometown and countless others just like it that are bearing the burden this war. Five minutes ago, that mom's phone rang, and she picked up the phone before the first ring finished, the look of relief on her face, the smile that could've lit up the darkest room, and the tears in her eyes told me in an instant who was on the other end. Her entire person changed in an instant. And so did my outlook on this small town. Maybe she knows nothing about Malaysia or Malawi. Maybe she can't even locate Australia on a map. I don't know if she is for or against this war, and I wouldn't ask her. But she is a stronger more resilent person than I am in ways that really matter.

This is about people, not about the war. For me, the above experience was profound. I hestitated to post it, and have posted and unposted it more times than I can count, because the war itself is such a devisive issue and I didn't want to offend. But the experience is worth sharing, and I hope and believe that the people who read it will understand that, regardless of where we all stand in our views on the war itself.