52% intelligent. 9% modest. More monkey than bear.

Sunday, February 26, 2006

one is all that you can score



I went to the theatre this evening to watch "All Quiet on the Western Front". It's an adaptation of the novel by Erich Maria Remarque (which was also made into a film in 1930). The play eloquently describes the futility and pointless, indiscriminate slaughter of war as seen through the eyes of a young German soldier in the trenches of World War One (Wikipedia has a pretty good article on this if you want to read more about it)

It's a message that we've all seen countless times before - war is stupid and people are stupid - but that familiarity doesn't render it any less powerful. Of course, it's a message that just keeps on being relevant.... sadly it is as pertinent today as it was when the book was published in 1929.

The staging itself was wonderfully simple: a cast of 10 and very little in the way of scenery getting between the actors and the audience. The rat-tat-tat of machine gun fire was a spanner being dragged across a metal walkway and shells exploded with the slamming of metal trapdoors. Very simple and very effective.

One of the themes of the play is how none of the German soldiers has even so much as met a Frenchman, never mind have a reason for wanting to kill one, and yet that is exactly what they find themselves doing on a daily basis.

I found myself reflecting on that thought when I found this on some US Marine Corps site:



"Fahrenheit 9/11 Review

Hello guys and girls. I had the unpleasant opportunity to view the new movie "Fahrenheit 9/11" by Michael Moore last night. I have never been so offended in my life, he makes us Marines feel like we are over here fighting watching our friends and other troops die for no cause. Vote for Bush.
Semper Fidelis,
Corporal Howard II, W.M" (on the left)

----

Dying for no cause? I can see why no soldier would want to face up to that, and I don't in any way want to trivialise the fact that people are fighting and dying in Iraq (and elsewhere), but that's what it looks like to me.

I'm also reminded of the words of Muhammad Ali when he refused to be drafted to fight the war in Vietnam:

"No Vietcong ever called me nigger".

Stop the war.

Actually no. Can't we just stop war full-stop?

posted by swisslet @ 00:06  

20 Comments:

  • At 5:44 am, Blogger Jenni said…

    HBM and I saw a bumper sticker today that read: I'm already against the next war.

    That about sums up my position.

     

  • At 8:02 am, Blogger Aravis said…

    ST- All Quiet On The Western Front was required reading in my high school. I agree, it's excellent. The production you saw sounds wonderful!

    Jenni- I love that bumper sticker. *G*

     

  • At 9:43 am, Blogger Mark said…

    ...no aethist ever called me sinner...

    The film is saying that there is no JUST cause. It seems as if some people actually like being lied to.

     

  • At 4:45 pm, Blogger Alecya G said…

    I've actually seen the movie, they showed it in one of my civics classes in high school. Its very moving, I thought.

    I am glad you enjoyed the show.

    In related bumper sticker news, I saw one the other day it said "america's need, america's oil" I pulled closer to see if there was some sort of fine print that would make it a joke. Nope. I wanted to be sick. I also wanted to make rude hand gestures at the owner of the vehicle [an SUV, mind you] as I drove by.

     

  • At 4:53 pm, Blogger swisslet said…

    AG - have you not seen the "SUV Owners support war with Iraq" pressure group in the news? I thought they must be joking, but apparently not.

    Ridiculous people.

    ST

     

  • At 8:28 pm, Blogger Stef said…

    Last night I saw someone wearing a non-ironic 'operation iraqi freedom' jacket. How do I know it was non-ironic? He had a dodgy tash, spoke in a drawl and was very rude to the bar staff.

    Soldiers really have no choice about being sent to war and we do need soldiers now and again. I can't find myself getting too mad at them for not wanting to listen to arguments, no matter how believable, that point out the whole point of the war was a crock. Poor bastards.

     

  • At 10:03 pm, Blogger swisslet said…

    I think the thing that upsets me the most about the "war" in Iraq is the fact that it's not as though we didn't see this coming. When the war was started, millions of people took to the streets in protest. We had found no WMDs. We had no just cause other than the general feeling that Saddam was a baddie. We had no exit strategy. Hell. We had no strategy at all.

    And so here we are, nearly three years later, and Iraq is on the brink of civil war.

    Well done us.

    ST

    (and I totally agree with you Stef - I do not in any way blame the soldiers for needing to believe that there is a reason for this war, that they are killing and being killed in the name of some greater good. Watching "All Quiet on the Western Front" last night, where the German soldiers come to the horrible realisation that the war they are fighting has no rationality and no logic, and that life and death is decided by brutal chance...well, it made me think of Iraq.)

     

  • At 3:14 am, Blogger -L said…

    Well said, ST!

    Will we, humanity, ever learn? Sometimes I just don't know.

    I've always liked the thought of sending the political leaders to duke out the wars.

     

  • At 8:18 am, Blogger Stef said…

    When the people making the decisions are not the people dying on the battlefield there is little chance of humanity learning.

    If every senator, congressman or MP had to send one of their children to fight iwhen ever they sent the country to war things might start panning out differently. Until then, it'll just be the poor dying like in pretty much every other war throughout history

     

  • At 10:56 am, Blogger Robin said…

    "All Quiet..." is one of the long-term inhabitants of my "Should read/watch" list. One day I'll get round to it.

    "Farenheit 9/11" seems so biased that the message Moore is trying to get across is lost amongst all the "Isn't Bush Stupid" rhetoric. I watched it expecting a decent, non-sensational documentary into the background of the war and summaries of the specific reasons why it wasn't justified. I was disappointed to be faced with an episode of "You've Been Framed".

     

  • At 11:47 am, Blogger John McClure said…

    If the soldiers start questioning the "reason" for going to or being at war, then someone didn't do a very good job of training them. They do have a choice about going to war though - either don't sign-up in the first instance or face court martial and go to prison. The latter isn't an overly pleasant way to get out of it, but it's better (in my view) than killing innocent people.

     

  • At 11:47 am, Blogger adem said…

    "You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!"

    *pounding fists on the ground*

     

  • At 2:08 pm, Blogger Alecya G said…

    No, Swiss, I am afraid I haven't heard of them although there isnt much that doesn't shock me over here anymore.

    It makes me really sad that there are people that think want is equal to entitlement. And now we are going to end up, as you put it, pushing this county to the brink of civil war. There is no limit to the suffering those people are going to go through. What makes me even more angry is we are likely going to turn tail and run at the first sign of civil war.

    I am quite ashamed to call myself American sometimes. My country is full of greedy cowards.

     

  • At 3:43 pm, Blogger swisslet said…

    to be fair, every country is full of greedy cowards. The human race is full of greedy cowards. It's not just Americans.

    ST

     

  • At 4:05 pm, Blogger HistoryGeek said…

    We could stop war, but we would all have to agree, wouldn't we. And therein lies the rub.

    And it's a tough question because, while all of us here can agree that this is a bad war, we could probably have a very lively discussion about whether there is ever a just war. It kind of comes down to the very basics of the question: "Is violence ever justified?"

    And then, of course, this presupposes that everyone will be willing to engage in the conversation in the first place (Bush & Co certainly would not, I'm sure).

     

  • At 7:25 pm, Blogger Jenni said…

    Guess I know what to get Aravis and Fox next Christmas/Saturnalia. :)

     

  • At 8:19 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Sorry to go of the subject Toni but I've lost sight of the blog address of the homeless girl. Could you let me have it please? Thanks. Mike's Allright Ma x

     

  • At 9:22 pm, Blogger Alecya G said…

    Swiss, I completely agree that there are greedy and cowardly poeple all over the world.

    It just seems to me we are breeding them in the US. There's more than a fair share in my state, I know. *Plus* my country is run by a greedy coward. Something to be really proud of.

    I think the problem was we ignored the dialog, Spinny, not that we didn't have it. I think Foxy points it out well, after dialog was over we went and occupied them anyway. [Well said, by the way, Foxy]

     

  • At 10:16 pm, Blogger swisslet said…

    the homeless girl is

    http://wanderingscribe.blogspot.com/

    ST

     

  • At 11:34 pm, Blogger bytheseashore said…

    You'll probably remember a particular line from the play ST - something about leaders needing wars to preserve their place in history (something like that, anyway). It got quite a reaction the night I was there.

    Unfortunately the war was inevitable because whatever Bush says, one of the main motivators was the need for him to be seen by the electorate to do 'something' after 9/11. That smacks to me not of leadership but of follow-ship.

    What I find depressing is that regardless of what actually caused us to go to war, we're in a position where we can't pull out and leave Iraq with stability. So in that sense, I guess we've got a moral obligation to maintain a military presence (discuss...).

    Anyway, fridges...

     

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