The War List

My Uncle Brian recently emailed me a list of his favorite movie scenes. It was entertaining to learn which scenes he liked best. It was also revealing that he has way to much time on his hands. But that's a different matter altogether.

His email got me to thinking about some of my favorite scenes. Probably my favorite movie is Chariots of Fire and there is one scene that gives me chills every time I watch it. The setting is the dining hall of Caius College at Cambridge University, and the year is 1919, just after the end of World War I. The dean of the college is addressing the new freshmen at their first formal dinner. Here are his words:

"I take the war list and I run down it. Name after name, which I cannot read, and which we who are older than you cannot hear, without emotion; names which will be only names to you, the new college, but which to us summon up face after face, full of honesty and goodness, zeal and vigor, and intellectual promise; the flower of a generation, the glory of England; and they died for England and all that England stands for. And now by tragic necessity their dreams have become yours. Let me exhort you: examine yourselves. Let each of you discover where your true chance of greatness lies. For their sakes, for the sake of your college and your country, seize this chance, rejoice in it, and let no power or persuasion deter you in your task."

I always wish I could speak as eloquently as the dean does in this scene. And of course, the rest of the movie hinges on these student's pursuit of their true chance of greatness. But lately I have been considering the contrast between the public remembrance of England's war heroes during this scene with America's response to today's war heroes. Do we have a war list in our finest colleges honoring the students who sacrificed their lives and their futures? I find it hard to believe that many Harvard or Yale students would even consider joining the military to make such a sacrifice let alone having the dean of the college honor them.

Along the same point, I was watching MASH last night which is basically anti-war propaganda but still one of my favorite all time shows. Hawkeye was reminiscing about all the good songs that came out of World War 2. He then starts singing I'll be home for Christmas and it is a fairly powerful scene. It then dawned on me that we have no such songs coming out of the war in Afghanistan or Iraq.

Maybe the older wars are mythologized and the public felt the same way then that we feel now towards our current war. But something is very different between now and then. That difference is that we as a country have not been called upon to sacrifice and participate in the war efforts. This had led to our our greatest weakness in this war, which is not the chaos overseas but instead our collective unwillingness to fully embrace and commit to the cause here at home.

Instead we sit back in our comfort and discuss the war's successes or failures in terms of who it helps politically. We treat the war as news and entertainment rather than as the true battle of cultures that it really is. We are not united by a common cause. Is this because we do not have the same sense of community that our country had during World War 1 and 2? Do we have too much immediate information on TV and the Internet that it blurs our perspective on the war? I know some will blame the President for Iraq but that doesn't fully explain our lack of interest in Afghanistan.

It's a shame that our culture has become so divided because I want us to remember and honor our current war heroes the same way the dean honors his former students in Chariots of Fire. Our troops really are the glory of America and deserved to be remembered as such. Instead I fear that they will be remembered as nothing more than political pawns in an unpopular war.