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Volume 26, Issue 34, april 22, 2004

opinion

A day in American history

mug
Nick Bahl
Columnist

In class this Monday, a student went on and on about how badly the war in Iraq is going for the United States. He continually reminded the class that 700 Americans have died, and that this is a tragedy (historically, what is "tragedy?"). I can't say I don't wish this didn't ever have to happen, but who honestly expects a war to go 'as planned;' who honestly expects life to end up in any way other than what we expected: any way other than death?

I've heard everything the left has to say about the 'lies' leading up to the war; I've heard the same from the right, and I'm just as convinced. The honest truth: sometimes the reality of life is depressing, but it's always real; life is only depressing if you attempt to live above it (but hey, that's just me).

On April 19, 1861, blood was first shed in the American Civil War.
Late last year, I visited the beaches of Normandy where American, British, and Canadian troops landed and subsequently liberated Europe. Before personnel carriers dropped troops on the beaches, allied aircraft heavily bombed numerous locations killing up to 500 innocent civilians per night. Why? Diversion: if the Germans knew where the Allies planned to land -let's face it-Germany may have won the war. It worked, and now Europe is free (would they have been "free" otherwise?).

On April 19, 1993, the 51-day siege of the Branch Davidian Seventh-day Adventists' compound in Waco, Texas ended when the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms raided the compound, killing between 72 and 86 people.

On April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh parked a rental truck in front of the Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City killing 168 people and injuring countless others (the worst terrorist attack on American soil at the time it happened).

Over Christmas break, I traveled to South America. While the quality of life in Brazil and Argentina was very comparable to that of America, just over the borders in Paraguay (just as south of the U.S. boarder) the quality dropped off significantly.

A couple of years ago in rural Spain, I observed low-quality rural life, but I have still never seen anything like what I saw in Paraguay.

On one corner, a huge air-conditioned department store stood as still as the guards at its door with their machine guns keeping locals out.

Our guide told us the Arabs in the region owned the store, and an article I had read about a year prior in The New Yorker concurred (according to the article, funds were raised and funneled to terrorist networks in the Middle East - oddly enough, the embassy questioned me up and down because, they said, large numbers of Americans had been going into Paraguay; the embassy didn't know why).

The department store was stocked with beautiful people wearing ritzy formal wear and catering ice-cold beverages, electronics, golf clubs, and all the other material items 'we' think will make 'us' happy.

Just outside the doors, frail elderly women literally wandered the streets with white-plastic grocery bags, picking at the trash left in the alleys so they could eat that day. Children wandered the street with a hopeless look on their faces; a look that cried out, "I'm human, too, and I'm alive, too." A dry heat from car exhaust echoed and pulsed through the caverns made by the city's buildings.

Teenagers stalked back and forth across the bridge leading back into Brazil. Tied to their backs were large boxes of cigarettes wrapped in garbage bags to waterproof them.

East of the bridge's peak, the teenagers dropped their boxes into the river where a boat would pick them up so that they could be sold in Brazil.

This happened all day long-the scolding received when cameras came out was intense, expected, and terrified our brace-toothed Brazilian guide (cigarette trafficking is illegal but economics makes the chance worthwhile).

On April 20, 1999, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris rampaged through the parking lot and halls of Columbine High School in Jefferson County, killing 13 and wounding countless others before they turned their guns on themselves.

I can't say that Americans haven't experienced hardship, pain, and suffering during this week in American history; but, who honestly thinks that what we have gone through, are going through and will go through, is sensibly whine worthy?

I don't!

Will you come back to reality so that you can help those who have to live in it, or are you going to continue to whine about your 'lack' of transcendence thereof?