A few thoughts on Gettysburg

[blueraven95]

I just got back from a trip I took with my parents and younger sister to visit the monuments. We took the trip as a school field trip for my sister (who is home schooled) and they invited me along as the member of the family interested in American history (and I went because I haven't been since college). Honestly, I can't say that I really enjoy going to old battlefields because I tend to feel almost like I am desecrating sacred ground; its a little going to Ancient Egypt exhibits at art museums -- we refuse to give the dead their rest. (I don't mean this in a particularly religious way, just that the monuments, like the sarcophogi, feel like they should be left in peaceful quiet.) Today was a particularly bad trip because our air conditioning cut out a half hour into the drive there (from Baltimore, MD) and it was HOT.
To escape the heat we went and watched the electric show. For those who have never seen it, it is a program plotting out the three days of battle, skirmish by skirmish. It was almost like watching a game. As we walked outside to see the hundreds of rows of graves and the multitude of different statues, I was struck by the magnitude of dead.

On the drive home, I found myself thinking that what is so heinous about the current war is that for most Americans, it is like the electric show. Like a game, we have very little sense of actual loss. At Gettysburg, we lost 51,000 American lives in the course of three days. In Iraq, we have lost fewer than 1,000 lives over a year. The truth is that the Civil War was so devestating because all of the lives lost, were those of Americans, and civilians saw the carnage everyday. Today, we do not see that carnage, and we do not know any of the many more Iraqis who are losing their loved ones.
While I am not advocating a war on any soil, and I do not want a war on US land, I can't help but think that our lack of real threat has made us arrogent. Maybe we need that kind of a war to wake us up. (And by us, I do not mean individuals but Americans as a whole.)

Anyway, most of this is probably pretty self-evident to most people around here, and I probably should have written this a year and a half ago., but I had to get it off of my chest. Thanks for reading.