Martini Republic » Ending the war involves ending indifference: "For most Americans, day to day, there are no daily updates from the front. For most, there are no casualty reports in a day, no frets about where a loved one might be stationed, no reminders that so many are at such risk. For most, the war is something, if discussed, to politicize.

A few on the Internet obsess about the war, looking for daily doses of it, easily finding it, and they express their outrage or compassion accordingly. Many more who watch TV see the war as compartmentalized as the nation experiences it, chopped down to a minute and a half each night.

Whether or not even to call it a ‘war’ at all at this point is a difficult proposition—the country has already been taken, occupied, its former usurious political infrastructure has been destroyed.

Amidst all the uncertainty, one thing is certain: the military effort in Iraq is unlike anything that is in any of our memories. The volunteer draft has made it so. This is a war in towards which indifference can easily exist. "

(Via Martini Republic.)