2003-03-03 3:38 p.m. I was so thoroughly, thoroughly disappointed with Gods and Generals that I think I actually cried my self to sleep Saturday night. Of course, I've read the book so many times that I had to buy myself a second copy to replace the disintegrating original. Shaara's novel is exactly what all great historical epics should be: grand in scope and fine in detail. It balances, almost perfectly, the stunning social and political changes of the mid-1800's with exceptionally detailed character studies of the principal players. You're left not only understanding that time, but feeling it as well. You know what it would feel like to defend your home, send a son off to war, die for the rights of people you've never met. Today, we rarely see the Civil Wars' soldiers and generals as anything other than marble statues or cultural icons. But it was these men of flesh and blood who accepted the inevitability of their time and, in the end, impacted the shape of the nation and of the world. The men of the 1860's weren't saints; nor were they demons. They were people just like us, nobly motivated and humanly flawed. Culturally ignorant yet acting with honor. And, as Shaara's introduction says, "their story is our story." If we can understand a little about who we were at that point in our history, we understand that much more about where we are today. And where we're going. And that, I think, is where the movie fails so miserably. There is no attempt, none whatsoever, to place the characters and events into a larger cultural and historical perspective. We never know Lee's dispair over turning his back on the country he loves. We never learn the source of Jackson's inner fire. We never see Chamberlain's fierce determination of will needed to transform from softened college professor into hardened battlefield commander. The movie gives us a set of pre-arranged pictograms and points to them in order to explain itself. It never, not once, asks us anything. It doesn't make us think. We may now know the sequence of events, but we don't understand them. At all. I've been thinking about Iraq all day, and my mind keeps coming bck to my frustration with Gods and Generals. I didn't quite get the connection until just a few minutes ago. And then it hit me; the larger cultural and historical perspective. Just as the Civil War didn't spontaneously erupt in the spring of 1861, neither did our issues with Iraq spring to life in 2002/2003. What we're calling the "second" Iraq-must-disarm resolution is, in actuality, the 18th. That's right. Eighteen. Over the last 13 years, there have been 17 other resolutions requiring Iraq to take a less agrresive stance in the Middle East. President Bush is quite right when he says the UN is in danger of irrelevancy. If a cop pulls you over for speeding and gives you a warning and threatens a ticket, odds are, you'd listen. If he does it seventeen more times always with the threat of the ticket, but never actually the ticket itself - where's your motivation to follow the speed limit? The UN needs to act on its resolutions or not issue them at all. The larger historical perspective? We're told that we have no right to go to war with Iraq as Iraq has yet to attack us. By that logic, was it right to go to war with Nazi Germany? Of course it was. And yes, I know Iraq is no Germany and Hussein is no Hitler. The point is, attacking an enemy before they come after you is neither unprecidented or immoral. Sometimes, unfortunately, the greater good is served by starting a war. The larger cultural perspective? Well, of course we're talking about the war's opposition. I don't have too much to say on opposition from within the US. Blah blah blah, tree huggin' hippie commie pinko liberals. Yeah, sure, whatever. Most of the war opposition I've heard in person has been reasoned, informed, and (at its core) faithfully patriotic. Look outside the borders though, and things take on an entirely different flavor. The three biggest war-with-Iraq dissenters are France, Germany, and Russia. The President of France is a personal friend of Saddam Hussein, the Chancellor of Germany was recently elected on a strong anti-US platform, and Russia still struggles with the worst ghosts of the Cold War. Two of the three were long time enemies of the US. The other, while friendly, has held us in casual contempt for years. Iraq is a major consumer of German, Russian, and French weapons and technology. Iraq's three largest purchasers of crude oil? France. Germany. Russia. This war's about oil all right. That said, I still struggle. Last night, a good amount of the talk at Church centered on the Catholic Just War Criteria. I won't analyze here, just click over and read for yourself. I believe we have Just Cause, Comparative Justice, Right Intention, Last Resort, Probability of Success, and Proportionality. Do we have Competent Authority? I don't know. If thre UN is reduced to ineffectiveness, then I think we do. If they're still a functioning conglomerate of the many nations, we should be sanctioned by their go-ahead. In the end, I'm not really sure how I feel. I do keep coming back the the larger cultural and historical perspective. Well, not the perspective itself. More of the desire to discover it. I know people for the war and people against. A vast majority of them seem to only have interest in the here and now. They're looking at that page of pictograms and using it to explain their position. What we all really need is to understand the sequence of events. And to do that, we need to clear our heads. And look up. downtown----uptown leave me a note, fool!

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