What is War? Horrible!
And that’s why you shouldn’t change the channel
Our thoughts and prayers go out to the people of Ukraine, so do our tears.
The Russians started their invasion of Ukraine on Feb 24, 2022. I woke up the next day crying, even though I hadn’t yet seen the pictures. No one had. I continued to cry every day for a week, then two weeks, then three. I cried harder once I saw the images.
I am not in Ukraine; I am in Los Angeles. Our sky is blue, the sun is shining, and spring flowers are blooming. Yet I look at the flowers and see the pink smiles of my roses and can’t stop thinking of the young girls in puff pink winter coats, and knit hats with mouse ears clutching teddy bears. The jump out of my television screen and grab me with their blank expressions as they walk through the destroyed cities and villages of Ukraine.
I am drawn into this war as if I was experiencing it myself. I am them, and they are me. Why is that?
Yesterday someone in a meeting on Zoom openly expressed concern about how she is processing this war. She told us she asked herself over and over whether she is more affected by this war then other wars? Maybe because the people we see fleeing, the mothers that are crying, and the dead grandmothers being buried in mass graves all look a lot like us?
That makes me feel uncomfortable. War is war and humans are humans, right?
Perhaps its because we don’t see other wars like we see this war. We are overwhelmed with images of close ups of white faces.
Why didn’t CNN rush to the frontlines of the battlefields of Ethiopia or South Sudan? Why didn’t we see more of the bloodied bodies of children in Afghanistan or Iraq?
Why is this war different? Do we care differently? Maybe.
Maybe we need to see more war footage of all wars
What we see, and what they want us to see, makes a lot of difference to how we are affected by it.
The bombing of Iraq was fed to us in tiny chunks. During the invasions, journalists had to embed with combat units and were assigned minders making sure that the world saw only what the military and our leaders wanted us to see.
