In weather like this, it's kind of hard to imagine that across the world, suicide bombers are targeting English-speaking schools in Pakistan and Iraq. March 20th marked the four-year anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq; that's a fifth of my life or the length of a presidential term. Though to tell you the truth, I sometimes forget that the United States is still at war.
The world may be a different place for many from that of four years ago, but it isn't so different for me or my friends. Wars are supposed to change the lives of the citizens of the countries involved via conscription and food rationing, but I'm still here, and I still eat way too much. The war hasn't even directly affected my taste in music or clothes, though I must say that camouflage made a brief comeback. Some may point out that its because of our sheltered and privileged upbringing that our only real first-hand exposure to the War on Terror is sporadic 15 cent increases on gasoline and longer waits at airport security.
It is not our fault that the war has become a surreal concept to us in University. After four years, the war has become white noise of muffled explosions to us bred for success. There are some of us with siblings serving or international friends who fled injustice, but any real exposure comes vicariously to most of us Quakers with the push of a remote. Even then we can mute yesterday's news of a suicide bomb that killed 80.
It simply doesn't feel like we're at war. When the war finally ends, how different will our lives be? Granted there will be different political party slogans, but there will be some new calamity in a distant land to take Iraq's place.
When a kid asks me someday how it was like to live during the Iraq War, I might mistakenly remember it as that time Jack Bauer once again saved Spring Break from Islamic fundamentalism. And I won't feel guilty for saying that. After all, those 9 a.m. IR classes sure are a bitch.
