the Nobodies

Okay, I didn't write yesterday, but does writing in your head count? If that's the case, then I'm writing more than I'm talking. Anyways, lots going on in my brain today.

My mother is an Israeli citizen, and when she was 19, she served in the military for two years, as is manditory. And I couldn't help thinking that for a lot of us left-leaning western liberals, being in the military is bad. It implies a willingness to cooperate in warfares we don't know, don't care to know, or know about but don't support. It implies complicity in the American brand of cultural imperialism we love to criticize. It brings to mind crewcut-and-combat fatigue uniformity, handling weapons of destruction and heartbreak. In short, it elicits a distaste for a particular side of humanity we'd rather ignore or reform through prayer or pacifism.

What if we, as Canadians, had to serve, manditorily, in a Peacekeeper/maker corps? What if we devised a military power that was founded on the principles of pacifism, with emphasis on helping those that wanted our help to reconstruct their lives and towns and governments in an unarmed capacity-building irrigation systems and supporting sustainable agriculture, building schools and shelters, working within a religion and culture rather than imposing our own? Our military wouldn't wear combat fatigues or carry weapons, because that wouldn't be our purpose, to intimidate, to pre-empt violence. We'd be of service to others, not pushing forth our own social/political mandate. We'd serve for two years, maybe even get to choose which region of the world we'd like to co-operate in...

Part of me knows this is laughable and impossible. We would never take a stand against the American government and openly oppose the war from all levels of government. Nor would we ever foist the burden of compassion onto our citizens with the force of law. But a large part of me feels a lot of us are arrogant in our ignorance and scorn of the Canadian military and what it means to enlist and be a part of a greater good-at least that's what I think is the reasoning for enlisting. Do we know or care enough about international politics(seeing as we barely care about our own) to understand that decision? On a more practical level, do we know what it is like for troops stationed abroad, living in everyday peril in a foreign land, missing families and sweeties, and chocolate chip cookies? Shouldn't we?

Almost every morning, I turn on my computer and check out certain websites. Yes, I have about three or four news sites that spark my interest, but appallingly enough, I also have three or four celebrity gossip sites I check. The result of this daily disclosure of smut is that I am astonishingly well versed in celebrity scandals and disgraces, but I would be hard-pressed to speak with the same amount of ease on world events as I would an Elton John event in which Scarlett Johannsen devoured some actor with her impossible lips and beautiful cleavage. Which begs the question; For a society obsessed with reality television and the very real downfalls of celebrities, why are we so completely ignorant of real people, people actually worth remembering and celebrating?

In the Toronto Star yesterday, I read a quote by an Iraqi citizen who was being asked about the release of James Loney and the other hostages, the flavour of the article being that Iraqis seem indifferent to it. And he said that he is indifferent, if we can call it that, because spilling Western blood is expensive, whereas Arab blood is cheap. We don't know the countless local victims of this war, this is the travesty. But we know the soldiers who die, we know their families, we see pictures of their weeping widows and sweet-faced children. There should be no inflation in the currency of blood! The human cost, for the most part, is the same.

I'm not saying anything new or groundbreaking here. I'm just feeling like we are so complacent! Like I have an excuse to not get involved on a mental or physical level in world events, because I am looking after my sick mother, because I'm depressed, because a customer was mean to me today. I know it's easier to focus on the Brad Pitts' of the world, because they can ache and be insufferably human from the comfort of their million dollar homes, and because they have the millions to get involved on a mental or physical level. What can I do? Write letters? Send fifty dollars I barely have to Tsunami victims? Maybe that is why people join the military. Not for glory or because they're bloodthirsty, but because it's something, it's a contribution, an extraordinary sacrifice of personal security and the comforts of home.

I'm not signing up, I've got fights on the homefront here that need my presence and engagement. But I'm not going to contribute anymore to the meanness of society, like the buying of magazines that play games like "Pin the tail on the starlet anorexic", or the gossip sites that trumpet relationship break-ups with vicious "I told you so" cruelty. I'm not going to view soldiers solely as puppets to dangerous administrations. I'm going to keep an open mind to unpopular opinions, ones that don't necessarily accord with the liberal left, keep reading and writing about the international backyard, because right now, it's all I can do, to keep the haunting of the nobodies at bay.