At least 132 people died Sunday in two synchronized suicide car bombings near three Iraqi government buildings in Baghdad. More than 520 people were wounded. Headlines about the deadliest coordinated attack in Iraq since the summer of 2007 splashed onto Web sites across the world, but do most Americans even know this happened?
In The New York Times story “Iraq Ministries Targeted in Car Bombings; Over 130 Dead,” reporter Timothy Williams noted the blast damaged a water main and pools of water in the streets were red with blood. Words and phrases like “more than 130 dead” and “red with blood” aren’t uncommon when referring to the conflicts the U.S. is currently engaged in, but have they lost their meaning?
Mass cultural movements that defined wars in earlier eras — like riotous protests of Vietnam and heartening support rallies of World War II — don’t describe the war in Iraq. People, college students among them, have become desensitized to war, especially one that doesn’t affect them every day.
The war on terrorism is the first war America is fighting against a largely unknown and undefined enemy. People’s feelings about war are based on the perceived enemy and on coming together to fight that enemy.
Past wars have had “real” enemies: bad guys in uniforms and dictatorial leaders of countries with governments and borders and capitols. In WWII, the war wasn’t fought only by young soldiers in the trenches in Europe, it was also fought on American soil — the home front — by supplying “our boys” with the supplies they needed. But just because this war’s enemy doesn’t have a face, have we become desensitized to it?
As college students at the nation’s largest University, this war largely doesn’t affect our day-to-day lives. This generation is one that has experienced war since its early years; for most ASU students, the war started when we were in middle school. Are we so used to living during wartime that we don’t even think about it?
War has revolutionized, and journalists can now deliver information and pictures about it in mass form. Headlines about Iraq blur together because while there are so many, and whether they describe violence and death or victory and change, they don’t matter unless we feel a direct connection to the war. Have we chosen to simply read past them?
Our generation is experiencing war in a new way. Ours is a generation that has constantly been bombarded by war, a generation that hasn’t experienced peace and may not experience it for a while. Because of this, and because the definition of war has changed, what it means to be patriotic has also changed.
Whether or not this war is different, if we don’t know anything about the 4,351 Americans that are dead, are we doing our duty as citizens?
