Film: Why We Fight

Reflections and Notes:

No one can talk about "9/11" or "the war in Iraq" without touting some agenda; the emotions surrounding these and similar issues run too deep for anyone to speak of them without some bias. This is what I am thinking as the film begins to play, and I'm actually forced to stop watching and consider for a second what message I'm likely about to receive, from what source or sources, and what their angle might be.

This actually led me to a long consideration (which is still ongoing) as to what the "agenda" of the Human Rights program is. I'm sort of faced with a question: is there a way to "fail" the Human Rights minor from a personal developmental standpoint? ie. If one does all the work, jumps through all the hoops, watches all the films, does all the readings, writes papers and fulfills assignments and gets all the right grades, and say, still comes out adhering to the opinion that the death penalty is a good delivery of justice, or that women's suffrage is a bad idea (probably two very radical examples, but there you are...) has that student "failed" I wonder?

Or, for a more personal take, I am pro-military. I can't be anything but, really. I grew up in a military household; my father is an officer, and many of my ancestors have been in the military, not to mention a huge portion of the most influential people in my life and many of my current friends are veterans or currently serving. Consequently, I will not tolerate people who arbitrarily blast the military, who cut down and devalue soldiers and who criticize military decisions without any sort of understanding of how that culture works. (I hate the Westborough Baptist Church as much for their anti-soldier rhetoric as for their homophobic shit.) Furthermore, on some levels, I support "war." That's a broad statement that requires a lot of unpacking, but I guess what I'm really saying is I cannot just be across the board "anti-war." Yet it seems to me that in some ways that's kind of the goal of this program - to get you so familiar with the horrors of war you could never live with yourself if you so much as indicated a bit of approval for a militaristic action.

[will finish this post later, the original notes are a bit disjointed]