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AtomicFlx's comments:

on The Iraq Generation

Hold a war and no one shows up, its not much of a war. I applaud your courage to state such an unpopular (yet true) opinion. However its important to remember that the war's effects extend well beyond just the troops, your directly paying for this war by way of tax dollars, I think bridges might be a better expense.

posted 5 years, 2 months ago
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on The Iraq Generation

I wholeheartedly agree. During my entire education, high school, or college I had only one "maverick" college professor who discussed war. This might be because the professor was a marine at one time. My degree is in political science and It would seem there should have been more discussion about war but there never was. Why is this? Why can't the education system even discuss war? Has any one had any experience of formal education about war in school?

posted 5 years, 2 months ago
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on The Iraq Generation

I am am part of what you are calling the Iraq generation. I can still recall the first time this country invaded Iraq. It would seem every time someone listens to a bush someone spends 40 years in the desert.

I take offensive at being labeled as the Iraq generation. The people who are running this war should be called the Iraq generation, or perhaps the war generation. My generation has had nothing to do with this war except to be the generation dying in it. The United States is the only country in the world to be lead by cold war era leaders. Russia has had two major shifts in leadership since the cold war, starting with Gorbachev and then Putin. Europe has had countless changes in leadership since the cold war era. Europe is now a united Europe. The Europeans have set aside their differences to such an extent they even use the same currency. The former eastern bloc country's are becoming part of the EU and are starting to develop socially and economically. China is capitalism in drag and Charmain Mao Zedong is dead. Even the last holdout, Fidel Castro of Cuba has handed over power. The people who are running these current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are the same exact gray haired senile old men who plunged this country into debt to fund huge war projects during the cold war, who murdered 144,455 Americans in the Vietnam and Korean wars and the same people who nearly exterminated the entire planet in the 1980 playing "games" with nuclear warheads. What has our generation ever done to be labeled the Iraq generation?

The people of my generation have become ignorant of the true horror of war. During Vietnam every day there were pictures and videos of young dead and dying Americans on TV and pictures of the flag draped coffins arriving by the shipload. Now reporters are embedded with the military and are prohibited from showing anything that might be hazardous or damaging to the war effort. The footage is edited and if it sneaks out the reporters are arrested. It is now prohibited to take pictures of the flag draped coffins of dead Americans. Information is so controlled that after the Abu Ghraib scandal service men and women are prohibited from carrying cameras.

War to my generation is simply a distant problem, something clean, something other people have to deal with. War is only to be supported and never questioned. War is peace. My favorite media coverage is the little black and white pictures taken from a bomb dropping airplane showing some factory exploding. The idea is to show how accurate the bombs can be, what is never mentioned are the people who just died, right there in the little black and white picture on TV. Who were the people who just died? Why did they die? What reason did we just kill them? What did they do to me, or the pilot who dropped the bomb, or he officer who told the pilot to drop that bomb?

Not only is the horror of war from the U.S. prospective hidden from my generation so is the horror from the victims prospective. Why don't we see dead and dying Iraqis on TV? Why are we an occupying force in Iraq? Invading and occupying a country for not having anything to do with any known terrorism against the U.S. seems a bit extreme. If my generation is to be defined as the Iraq generation then we need to have something to do with a war beyond just dying in it.

I will leave you with this quote.

"Mankind will at length, as they call themselves reasonable Creatures, have Reason and Sense enough to settle their Differences without cutting Throats; for, in my opinion, there was never a good War, or a bad Peace." Benjamin Franklin

posted 5 years, 2 months ago
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on Memorize This

I agree poetry does seem to be the general topic, there is a lot more to this topic than poetry. I want to know where is the line between memorization and general knowledge? I prefer and am very good at general knowledge. I NEVER studied in school. I had three classes in college where I never even unwrapped the text book. When I hear something in a lecture I know it from then on. I can grasp general ideas and then apply the general ideas to answer specific questions on tests. I can ?figure? things out. Does this mean I am good at memorization? I am very bad at memorizing specific dates, multiplication tables, even phone numbers. Whats the difference between my creepy ability to remember but not memorize?

posted 5 years, 2 months ago
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on Memorize This

When does memorization replace critical thought? Your father has achieved a monumental feat of memorizing a very large and difficult work however when was the last time your father or yourself thought critically about the work you spent so much time memorizing? The bible is not a very logical or well thought out work, what happened to the many childhood years of Jesus? I'm not trying to start a theological debate but rather make the point, that in your case in in school it would seem memorization is replacing critical thought.

posted 5 years, 2 months ago
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on Memorize This

How do we as a society decide what poetry we should learn? It seems without sharing the exact poem then a shared body of knowledge argument is not valid? It would seem spending time on general knowledge instead of exact knowledge would be much more beneficial to society. In history its much more important to understand why and how instead of when. Critical thinking does not come from memorizing dates in history or poetry but from a lot of knowledge from a lot of sources.

posted 5 years, 2 months ago
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