The Iraq war is over!

Well, it must be... you don't hear about it on the news at all do you? The war seems to have completely disappeared. You would think there would be a story or two on this weekend, since it's Memorial Day...

I wonder if the upcoming election is part of the reason we are not hearing anything about the war anymore. Any good news out of Iraq will help McCain. I'm willing to bet that a big attack (or even a small one) against the U.S. or Iraqi government forces will result in front page news. Relative peace and progress will result in continued silence from the media.

A little disappointed watching "Ironman"

We went to see the movie "Ironman" today. It was a pretty good action movie, overall I enjoyed it. I had one little moment during the movie though that stuck with me.

First let me say, I know I'm over-sensitive to references to the military and to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but with good reason I think. Look at my last post about Stephen King, and look at the protests against recruiters. We are portrayed in the media as illiterate victims of the system, or war criminals. I think it's amazing that anyone even wants to be in the American military these days.

So I was happy to see a decent representation of military people (Air Force) in the movie. They were played a little naive and awestruck by the Rober Downey Jr. character, but it was pretty fair.

So the movie went on, I was enjoying it. The hero goes on his first rescue mission in some far-off villiage in an Afghanistan-like country. He beats up a bunch of bad guys and is suddenly confronted by, I think four, bad guys holding guns to the heads of innocent villagers. So he pulls a neat little trick with his suit, (I won't spoil it) and kills the bad guys, freeing the people.

And the crowd watching the movie cheered.

Nothing against the movie and nothing against the people watching it, but... There are real, live, actual men and women serving in those places right now doing that for real. Rescuing real, live, actual innocent villagers from real, live, actual bad guys. Not actors, not fiction, no CGI explosions or fake gunshots. Real.

When does their movie get made? When do moviegoers cheer for them? Why can't we see that? I know people want that movie, the cheer from that crowd today proves that. People want heroes, people want to be proud of something.

We are the good guys. It would be nice if someone would recognize that for a change. Rather than try to tell us we should be ashamed of what we've done.

Stephen King: Another clueless tool

Here we go again, another idiot who can't keep his ignorance and bias out of public view. He said to a group of high school kids at an event at the Library of Congress:

"I don't want to sound like an ad, a public service ad on TV, but the fact is if you can read, you can walk into a job later on. If you don't, then you've got, the Army, Iraq, I don't know, something like that. It's, it's not as bright. So, that's my little commercial for that.

Sadly, as fewer and fewer people have any exposure to the military, more and more will accept this stuff as fact. He is probably sitting at home right now wondering why this is such a big deal. After all, I'm sure all the people he knows feel the same way...