War is no a video game. (April 2003)
In the old days, the day before yesterday, it sometimes took weeks to receive a correspondence from abroad. Then the fax was born, and it seemed like a miracle to be able to send a document to the other side of the Earth in the time it took to make a telephone call and for the paper to slide through a little machine that you could keep in your own home or office.
Later, the Pentagon, through the interest and efforts of Al Gore, allowed the Internet to become an asset of public dominion, available to anybody on the planet who possessed a computer and a telephone connection. It didn’t take long for us to get used to the immediateness of the web and e-mail, to the point where we click on our mouse and we expect it all to happen like the clicking of our fingers, that is, like magic. And it is indeed like magic. But even that isn’t enough to satisfy us. If you’ve used an ADSL connection, it seems like going back to the middle ages if you have to use a dial-up system. And for those who have moved on to optic cable connections, ADSL seems like it takes forever.
Wars, too, used to last for ages, decades, then years, and today only months or weeks. The first Gulf War lasted for a month and a half. The one in Kosovo a little over two. This one seems to be over in little less than a month. However, a couple of weeks ago people talked of it going on forever, “another Vietnam”, they said, pointing their finger at the Pentagon for having “got it all wrong” by promising a “lightening quick” war. From the moment it began, people spoke obsessively about how long it would last, as if soldiers and heavy artillery could occupy a country as large as Iraq with the click of a mouse. As if it weren’t necessary to consider the millions of unforeseen and unforeseeable events that are part and parcel of what a war is all about. Someone needs to inform public opinion and even some top notch journalists that war is not a video game.
Even those who expect that democratic elections should take place immediately in Iraq are reasoning in terms that are virtual and not real. The American plan to reinstate essential services within the next 90 days and to provide for an interim Iraqi government before passing on to free elections within two years, is a plan from people with their feet on the ground and not their hands on the remote control of a play station.
Sandra Giovanna Giacomazzi writes for the Roman daily, L'Opinione della
Libertà. She also received the Mario Soldati Prize for Journalism
and Criticism for 2002.
giogia@giogia.com Return to List Return to home page