Feelings of Hopelessness and Distance

As I went to the Vista page and clicked through the introduction to this class, the PowerPoint presentation, the article, and the assignment for our first blog, I thought about four guys I went to high school with who weren’t particularly good students and were generally trouble makers since as long as I can remember. These four guys all had plans to or had already enlisted in the Armed Services last I heard from them, which was around graduation time. Although I wasn’t friends with these guys, I had known some of them since third grade.
At the time, I didn’t give the situation much thought. After all, I was graduating high school in a week and had plans of my own to worry about. Plus, I would probably never see or talk to these guys again, even if they weren’t enlisting. Now, however, I realize that I can still name those four guys. It has taken a while, but the seriousness and weight of the situation, of what they promised to do when they signed those papers, has finally really hit me. These people are my age – 18 and 19 years old – and I could never imagine being in war. I never heard what happened to them, and for all I know they could be anywhere in the US or even in the world right now.
Another guy I know, a very close friend of mine, has recently signed up for the Navy. He’s leaving for boot camp in August. I still can’t believe – or I don’t want to believe – that he’s really leaving. His decision, while I respect it, is something I don’t think I’ll ever understand.
While it’s true I don’t know anyone who is in or has been in Afghanistan or Iraq (or at least I don’t think I do), something I’m very thankful for, knowing my close friend will be in the Navy soon enough is too close for comfort to me.
Up until my friend informed me he joined the Navy, I felt no connection to the war. Even now, I worry about my friend, and about his safety, but him actually being shipped off seems like a ‘that would never happen to me, that happens to other people I don’t know’ situation. One of those things you only hear about on the news. I suppose that’s called ‘denial.’
Not that I watch the news, or read the newspaper. I have little interest in current events, including this war, simply because I don’t know enough to be able to say I can defend a position. Most of the time it doesn’t bother me, though. Like many of my peers, I feel like I can’t change what’s going on anyway, so why bother. I have my own life, with my own problems and situations that are directly affecting me. Things I can’t avoid or forget about obviously seem more urgent than the war that seems to be stuck in limbo – with each side being too stubborn to come to an agreement – while the death toll rises.
Who knows what’s really going on with the war, anyway? Between the stuff that never gets reported, the stuff that the media covers up, and the stuff that the government covers up, how can anyone? How can Americans ever know if they are being lied to or not? What’s the likelihood any average person could find out the whole story? Basically everything we hear is bias towards our side, whether it’s on purpose or not.
So yes I hope my friend is never put in the extremely dangerous situation that so many soldiers have had to face and will continue to face, and yes I feel terrible when I think about how many people have died because of this war, and yes I wish we weren't in a war right now, but I still feel ultimately hopeless and rather distant from it, as well. Maybe I’ll feel differently when or if someone that I know gets shipped off to Iraq or Afghanistan.