War yawn

"It’s not just torture we want to avoid. Most Americans don’t want to hear, see or feel anything about Iraq, whether they support the war or oppose it. They want to look away, period, and have been doing so for some time."

The above from Frank Rich's column in today's New York Times. He right. Nation-wide battle fatigue has set in.

Went with my father to see Kimberly Pierce's Stop-Loss last night, which is a very intelligent and artful film. Still, I felt antsy throughout the screening, and I winced when some of the familiar arguments against the war were put in the mouths of the beautiful young actors; statements of the by-now-obvious-to-almost-everyone truth that this war in is a very bad business that damages anyone who is involved in it. For all of its sincerity, Pierce's film hardly an eye-opener.

More to my taste would be an absurdist representation of the war on terror, something along the lines of Tony Richardson's Charge of the Light Bridgade or Mike Nichols' Catch-22. A feature film with the wry sense of a Michael Moore documentary. Fewer tears, more jeers.

Rich is right. This war has come to seem like a chronic, wasting disease. The end is not imminent but inevitable and it will be bad. Let's ignore the war just as we ignore the inevitability of our own death, lest we be paralyzed by the contemplation of it. In the corner of our minds is the vague hope that Bush's departure from Washington will somehow result in our troops coming home. This hope persists even though neither of the Democracts likely to replace him are guaranteeing that withdrawal will happen immediately upon their achieving the office. And if McCain wins? So long vague hope.