Ka Leo O Hawaii

Issue date: 12/10/07 Section: Commentary

Media Credit: Courtesy of U.S. Army Center of Military History This is Your War: "Two-Thousand Yard Stare" by Tom Lea was painted from what he saw in the WWII battle for Peleliu.

The semester is over, and so is the series on the impact of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on local soldiers and their families. I hope you have grown and changed over the past months and weeks; I certainly do not see myself or who and what surrounds me the same way.

I've learned so many things, but I will limit myself to sharing only one: We don't understand war because movies and TV rarely show us what soldiers are like and what they experience. Unless we understand war, how can we intelligently tell our representatives to vote for war or demand peace?

For example, in the series that has sprawled across Ka Leo since Nov. 14, the human cost of the war in Iraq has been emphasized with descriptions of the local soldiers and Marines who died, and the grief of their families, friends and comrades.

Few, if any, of the soldiers and Marines seemed like the rebels and troubled loners seen most often in movies and TV. Few also seemed to like killing people or being in battles.

Instead, a consistent thread running through the stories was how much each person liked to help people, even people they would never know. Selflessness and generosity are what seemed to separate them from most people we meet.

However, gun battles with face-painted American warriors makes a much more exciting movie scene than a Humvee blown to bits - even though the latter far more typifies our war.

So that is what and who we see in movies: explosions and ricochets and flames and thrilling music and dramatic cuts from reaction shot to extreme close-up.

What we rarely see is the grief men feel for friends who "didn't make it." What we rarely hear is the silence of men thinking of their mother and father and wife and son and daughter and home. Or the silent longing of family members and friends for those far away.

I am increasingly sure that war is not so much about guns and bombs and even blood, as it is about long silences and framed photos that are never moved of men forever-young and memories too painful to speak of. Long after the last echo of the last bomb and shot fades, after the calendar turns the most shocking events into footnotes, these memories and silences remain.

Continued...

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