Part 2: What was it like when I was my students' age...

Finding Answers… War is Over?

            A few weeks ago my 10^th year as a teacher ended.  I began thinking about my life when I was in 8^th grade, the current age of my students.  I was amazed at how much had changed in twenty years.  AOL was new cutting edge technology.  Now every one of my students has a smart phone, laptop and Ipad.  It boggles my mind; even my 11 year old nephew has an Iphone!  I was still trying to figure out Nintendo at that age.  I can’t imagine what middle school would have been like with that technological access.  In part 1 of this blog I talked about how the movies of Top Gun and Rocky IV were formative to my naïve view of the world as a middle schooler.  I grew up believing many simplistic notions, such as:

·      War did not happen again after WW2

·      America was not only good, but helped the little guy.

·      America = good, Russia = bad

·      Life was good, for everyone.  Everyone had it as easy as me.

·      Racism was something of the past that was now gone.

As a 14 year old, I had so many questions that were awakened in my mind by the beginning of the Gulf War and seeing the film, Forrest Gump.  The first of these was the erroneous symbiotic beliefs that war wouldn’t ever happen again after WW2 and that America always made good moral decisions, or more simply, America = good. 

When the Gulf War began in 1990, it was explained to me that a small defenseless country that I’d never heard of, Kuwait, had been invaded by a greedy, power hungry, dictator next door named Saddam Hussein.  This made sense to my mind.  America was good and helping the little guy from a bully.  The war seemed to be a quick success.  Iraq, led by their “evil dictator” was defeated swiftly and the threat to our friends in the Middle East was ended.  I found that this made me proud as a young American. Here we are being a peace maker and putting the bully in his place.  The one thing that confused me, was the fact that this “evil bully,” Saddam Hussein, was still allowed to be the leader/dictator of Iraq.  I wondered, if he was so bad, why would he be allowed to stay in power?  My mind was taught to be simplistic, but I was starting to ask questions.

Eventually I got to college and revisited this question and what I found out shocked me!  First, Kuwait was actually slant drilling Iraq’s oil.  In other words, they were illegally stealing oil from Iraq.  While it is true that the border is pretty porous between the two countries, this practice understandably infuriated Iraq, as their main income was from oil profits.  Secondly, Kuwait was deliberately flooding the market with oil in order to drive the price down.  This too infuriated Saddam.  While his invasion was fool-hearty at best, his invasion was not totally unjustified, and it was clear that it wasn’t just a bully picking on a little guy.  Kuwait was not being a good neighbor.  Ultimately, the US didn’t get involved to defend the little guy, as I was led to believe, they were primarily concerned with the stability of their oil imports from Kuwait and especially worried about any incursion into Saudi Arabia, one of the largest oil suppliers in the world.

Now, however, more bothersome questions arose.  Why are we supporting and defending a country that was breaking international laws on slant drilling?  Why are we supporting the House of Saud and their dictatorship in Arabia?  Saudi Arabia doesn’t allow women to drive or have any equal rights to men, they allow no freedom of the press and are one of the few countries to not sign the UN Declaration of Human Rights.  Why would we be so cozy with them?  This confused me.  How could we so strongly support a country that was so clearly against the principles we claimed to represent?  The answer really disturbed me, it was one word that I was slowly beginning to realize ran the world.  Money.

Over time I came to the realization through my teenage years that my assumption that war was over was naive and completely wrong.  The Gulf War was just the tip of the iceberg for me.  I began to realize that our military wasn’t on vacation since 1945, but had been deeply involved throughout the world and was stationed in countries all over the globe.  In my formative years (the 1990’s) the United States was involved in conflicts in Somalia, Haiti and The Balkans; yet shockingly absent from even trying to stop the most rapid genocide in history in Rwanda. 

When I was my students’ age, I believed that war ended with WW2 and that America’s actions were always good.  At first, the answers to the questions I asked didn’t make sense to me and I didn’t like them.  But then I realized that no nation or country is more morally superior to any other.  They are all stuck in the Machiavellian world of making decisions based upon survival of the state.  The ultimate goal is to keep power and to expand it, because the belief is; if we don’t, they will.  The “they” is always changing however.  It used to be the Soviets.  Now it is the Chinese or the Islamic fundamentalists, or any of the dozens of other groups mainstream America demonizes.  But there is always a “they.”  And sadly we try to keep this view that “we are better” alive.  I started realizing when I was about my students’ age that this is a myth.  War is a constant in the world and we choose sides not based on morality or Human Rights, but on what will keep us powerful.  It has been a sad realization…

Next time: Racism and race relations….

Remembering when I was my student's age...

      I’m not that old, but I’m starting to realize just how old I am.  When I first started teaching I realized that all of my students were born after the Cold War had ended.  Therefore, they couldn't understand living through that time, even though I lived through very little of it, I remember it well.  But today, my students have all been born after 9-11 and do not have any memory of that defining event…  Things are getting stranger for me as I get older, it’s harder to relate to my students.  They are 13 year old kids with smartphones and Facebook and I still don’t get Twitter.  When I was 13 I’d yet to have even heard of email…  When I think of what I was like when I was their age and what my world was like, really 3 movies come to mind.

Growing up in the 1980’s and 90’s was interesting.  I am now amazed by what I assumed growing up.  Especially when it comes to what I thought was so great about my country and the world.  I remember the pride surrounding the Olympics.  I used to love watching the Olympics, especially when it was us vs. the Russians!  I’m thinking Rocky IV here.  Those were the days.  No matter what sport it was, no matter if it were the summer or the winter games, it was amazing seeing the freedom loving Americans compete against the brain-washed machine like athletes of the communist world.  Rocky represented everything great about America and Ivan Drago represented everything that was wrong with the USSR.  And at the end of that magnificent movie Rocky won, no not just Rocky, but America.  Our culture, our way of life, was shown to be more magnanimous and clearly more human than the defeated robots unthinkingly cheering for the mechanized Drago.  What a great film!  Little did how know how much was over-looked by this convenient way of seeing the world and particularly the US’s role in it.

In all honesty, I never saw Rocky IV until the 90’s, after the Cold War had ended, but it still made me feel glad that I was on the side that won.  One movie I did see as a young boy was only the greatest movie ever, Top Gun.  “I feel the need, the need for speed!”  I can actually quote every line of the film and have unquestionably seen that particular film more than any other.  As a young 7 year old boy, this film made me want to be a pilot.  No that’s not true, I wanted to be a Naval Aviator.  I don’t remember saying this, but my mom says I did… after I first saw the film and told my mom of my desire to join the Navy and become a fighter pilot, she said, “But son, you could die like Goose did.”  Upon that, I gazed at my mom and as serious as a 7 year old boy can be said, “Mom, if I have to die for my country that is ok.”  I was captured by the sensationalism of the film and the amazing Kenny Loggins music.  It was a highway to a danger zone that I wanted to take.  Again, however, so much of the story was missing.

As I moved into middle school I remember studying history and always studying wars, especially World War 2, which my grandfather fought in.  I remember being so relieved, that “we” won the war and good prevailed.  I remember thinking, what would happen if the bad guys actually won?  That thought terrified me, and I assumed everyone shared the same sentiment.  I remember thinking how great of a world we lived in and that war was over, forever!  Those things that I learned about in history class were so far removed the world that I now lived in.  America had won and the world was better for it.  The world I lived in consisted of boring days at a Catholic school, baseball, Disney World and ice cream.  What could be better than that?  War would never happen, could never happen in this world that I lived in.  America had won and would continue to win and all was good. 

CNN footage of the Gulf War. 

I don’t remember how old I was when I first heard of Saddam Hussein, but I must have been about 10.  America was at War again.  Operation Desert Storm.  However, it was explained to me that this was nothing like WW2.  This was a big powerful country sticking up for a little country (Kuwait) who was being bullied by a big one (Iraq).  This made me feel good.  WE were standing up for the little guy against the big bully.  To my 10 year old brain, this made sense.  I didn't need nuance or explanation, it furthered my idea that America was good.  I remember watching this on TV.  A dark screen with the lights of Baghdad in the background and explosions throughout the city.  The “war” seemed to be over very quickly, and now we were only defending a seemingly defenseless people.  Again, I liked that.  It made sense to me.  We always do that.  That was the narrative that I was told about WW1 and WW2 also.  We saved Europe and the “civilized world” not once, but twice from losing to the Germans.  But, I was still confused.  We were now friendly with Germany, how’d that happen?  The big bad bully got to keep his power after the Gulf War, why?  If he really is a big bad bully, shouldn't he be in jail and not the leader of a country?  As I got older, I got more and more confused about these things.

Fast Forward to when I was 14 years old, about the age of my current students.  I had a life changing moment.  I saw Forrest Gump.  I recall that I had nothing to do on a Friday evening and my parents were going to see it, so I tagged along to a movie of which I had no idea what it was.  I learned so much from that movie.  I learned about the 60’s, was introduced to some of the greatest music ever and discovered the importance of being who you are.  Forrest is always just Forrest, he’s never ever trying to be anyone else.  He loves himself and stands up for what his mother taught him.  Jenny on the other hand was searching.  She had lost who Jenny was, it was taken from her at a young age.  The abuse she suffered made her search in every dark corner of the world for Jenny, without ever realizing that happiness stood right in front of her the whole time in a simple loving man. It brought out in me emotions that I never knew I had, it turned a switch on inside of me.  It made me ask more questions. 

Gov. Wallace blocking entrance to the University of Alabama. 

The two issues from Forrest Gump that I really remember thinking about were racially inequality and the Vietnam War.  I knew Forrest Gump was a fictional story and so I partly dismissed the part about the University of Alabama and Governor George Wallace not allowing African American students just 30 short years ago.  I kept asking questions and realized that in fact, this was true.  I was shocked!  In America this happened?  In my parent’s lifetime?  That was the first crack in the mirror for me.  I remember thinking that a black man my dad’s age wouldn’t have been allowed to go to many schools in the South.  This astonished me.  But I also remember thinking, well look how far we have come, nothing like that happens today.  So while that was sad and tragic, America has made up for its sins and is now the “home of the free” and a country based upon equality. 

However, my questions were not answered fully yet.  What about this Vietnam War?  What’s up with that?  You mean, we have fought a war since WW2?  Why Vietnam?  Where is that?  That’s not a real country, is it?  The answer I first got was convenient as it fit right into my paradigm.  Vietnam was a country being taken over by Communists, and we went there to help them.  Oh, that makes sense.  Again, we’re helping, aren't we nice.  But quickly, the answers flooded in.