2001-08-26 - 9:10 p.m.

War, with Preface By Liralyn

We were eating at Applebees today when Dar Williams' "What Do You Love More Than Love" started playing on the radio. Liralyn got into it, and when it was over asked me what it was about. I explained that I didn't really know how to explain what it was about, but I could tell her what the chorus was. She promptly informed us that what she loves more than love is chicken soup. Needless to say, I cracked up.

Anyway, I was going to write about some thoughts I'd had when watching China Beach this week. In the end, though, I thought it might make more sense to write about why I'm so interested in war and military history.

When I was young I thought war was just plain cool. Soldiers got to carry guns. They had all the big tanks and the fast planes and they got medals and so on and so forth. From the viewpoint of age 6 it all seems much more interesting than, say, school. Or cleaning my room.

As I grew older it became obvious even to me that war is a bad idea. In particular I became disenchanted with the part where I might get badly hurt if I was in a war. But the hardware and the tactics and so forth still fascinate me.

Destructive as it is, war is also the ultimate in extremism. During war the usual half-measures get left behind. People worry about staying alive and killing the enemy rather than sparing anybody's feelings. When anyone tries to change those basic facts, it usually blows up in their face- witness Vietnam.

In the vast majority of cases, the effects of the things we do in daily life are imperceptible. If my group screws up and some people can't sign on to the internet when they want to, who really cares? In war, though, when people screw up, other people die. I don't actually want that responsibility, but I'm fascinated by the fact that it's out there. I hope that if we ever got into another real war, a war where our country was on the line rather than just cheap oil, I might have the guts to join up. But even more, I hope I never have to find out.

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