I Have A Theory

The 20th century saw not one, but two world wars. World War I raged from 1914 to 1919. World War II started in 1939 with Germany's invasion of Poland and ended in 1945 with Japan's surrender. In both cases, however, it is not accurate to say that they ended in 1919 or 1945. The work wasn't complete. The Berlin Airlift, for instance, was an effort to provide necessary supplies to West Berlin, a direct consequence of World War II. Indeed, the Allied nations spent a great deal of time after the war rebuilding Germany and Japan. So to limit World War II to 1945 is to limit it only to primary fighting. The military is still in Germany and Japan today.

Something that has bothered me over the last couple of years is the apparent unwillingness of Americans to see this fight in Iraq through. The initial war was fought and won in the first half of 2003. The government was removed. The armies were defeated. The war, as far as a war goes, was over. Since then there has been the subsequent rebuilding operation. Most people see it as a continuation of the war because there are still terrorists attacking American troops and there are still troops losing their lives, and I understand that. But the current process is not a battle between two armies; it is a pacification and rebuilding process that follows the elimination of the Iraqi armies and government. Still, Americans don't seem to have the stomach for finishing what we started. Four years is too much. Never mind that World War II was an all-out war with nearly every free nation fighting the Axis with everything we could muster. Never mind that even then it took six years to end it. Never mind that the casualties for American forces alone were in the hundreds of thousands instead of the thousands from Iraq. Americans today are largely unwilling to see this thing through. It's too long, too expensive, to costly in lives.

So I ask myself, "What changed? How are Americans from the 40's different than the Americans today? What is the difference between then and now?" I don't have certain answers, but I have hit upon a theory that I think carries answers. Tell me what you think. Here's my theory. I think it is largely a product of technology. Hear me out.

First, the technology of war has changed the face of war. In World War II the technology of war included waves and waves of bombers that would roll over their targets and drop tons of explosives over a target area. Hitler promised his people he would change the face of Germany, and before the war was over he had kept his promise. Germany was largely a bombed out hull. While large numbers of troops died in the process, so did large numbers of civilians. Collateral damage was unavoidable in those days. When the Axis finally surrendered, they did so in utter defeat. There was no fight left. There was no "insurgency", no underground groups left to fight. There wasn't much of anything. They were pulverized. So the rebuilding effort was largely peaceful because the enemy was eliminated. Enter technology. Today we have pinpoint weapons. We can target a Command and Control complex in the center of a city and take out the building with minimal damage to the city. Collateral damage is still unavoidable, but the damage is vastly decreased. War is still a nasty business, but it is much more accurate than it once was. So when the army was defeated, most of the populace and the structures remained. So while our "more humane war" approach with pinpoint accuracy and diminished collateral damage didn't kill like we did in World War II, it also left lots of room for anti-Americans to hole up and become a problem. So from this perspective, our technology has hurt us. Now, don't misunderstand. I don't think it's bad that we used this technology. I simply am pointing out that it's different than before and we need to be aware of it.

The second aspect of technology that I think has had a major impact is our communication systems. Actually, I'm primarily thinking of our entertainment media. America is a TV/movie-fed country. We live in a world of entertainment glut. There is more to watch on TV or in theaters than we can possibly take in. The problem is that we seem to have largely lost the ability to recognize fiction as fiction. While most of what we see on TV and in the movies is fiction, many people have shaped their thinking based on that fiction. Look at the facts. Some lawyers are calling for a dismissal from juries of people who watch CSI shows. Why? Because they have unrealistic expectations. They think that a DNA test can be completed in an hour, that forensic science can pick out criminals in a half hour, and that all of the problems of crime solving can be finished in an hour. What they've failed to recognize is that it's fiction. People will believe that the government can read license plates from space because they've seen it in the movies. In Enemy of the State, the NSA looks at a security video from a store and is able to rotate it in three dimensions, seeing things behind obstructions. Clearly this is a possibility because it's there in the movie. Death on TV is a parody of real death. A single gunshot will likely kill anyone within seconds. A gunshot to the head is instant death. Never mind that this doesn't correlate with real life. We've seen it on TV, so it's true. In general problems on TV or in movies are solved within two hours at the most. So ... what's taking us so long in Iraq?

This twisted view of reality that is fed by the media we consume goes on and on. Life for us has begun to imitate art rather than vice versa. We have allowed our moral values to be set by our media sources. But it's not just TV and movies. For instance, our technology has served to separate us from connecting to people. There are, at last count, 6.5 million people in a virtual world called Second Life. These people are all living a fantasy connecting with images that are not real people and interacting as if this is a real world. That's not connecting; that's virtual connecting. Chat rooms, bulletin boards, forums, and more contribute to a sense of "connection" that is virtual, not real. So our technology gives us the illusion of connection while actually severing the connections. Even technology like air conditioning serves to sever connections. It used to be that people spent time on the front porch talking with neighbors because it was too hot inside, but now we have air conditioning and TV and the Internet; who needs to talk to the neighbors?

So here we are in the 21st century. We have the ability to wage a more "humane war", leaving larger numbers of hidden enemies to fight in the mop up. We have disconnected ourselves from reality by buying into the entertainment we have fed ourselves. We have disconnected from community while convincing ourselves we are still connected. And we haven't the stomach to finish what we started for the people in Iraq. Is that surprising? Not to me; not now. This should have been over in months, not years. I've seen wares completed in two hours in the movies. What's up with Iraq? Why are there Americans still dying? And what do we care about those people over there anyway? We're not even closely connected to our own neighbors. Come on! Let's get out of there, finish up these stupid DNA tests, solve all crimes, and go home!

I don't know, but I think it's a viable theory. What do you think?