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July 17, 2005
Good guys vs. bad guys
Yesterday Liam and I were watching the Red Sox when Gina came in to say that she saw a funeral go by with a flag on the casket. I told her it could have been any veteran, it doesn't mean it was necessarily somebody killed in the current war(s).
Liam said "Good thing it wasn't Uncle Chip", and so I explained to him that Uncle Chip was in the embassy inside something that's kind of like a giant fort, that he never leaves the fort and really only the soldiers who have to leave the fort are the ones who get hurt because the roads outside have bad guys on them.
He thought about this for a second, and then said, "Do the people who live in Iraq think we're the bad guys?"
I have to admit I don't think my long rambling vague answer satisfied him much. Fuck, what do you say about that to an 8-year-old that they'd understand?
I remember asking my mother a similar question when I was the same age. I liked drawing war pictures, and I remember remarking about how the Japanese were the bad guys in the war, and in my pictures. She pointed out that the Japanese were good guys now and that the war was a long time ago, and I said "oh yeah, Vietnam is the bad guys now". And I remember her saying something kind of vague and confusing and non-commital about how it's not always about good guys vs. bad guys.
All I knew was it was on the news every night. Vietnam and the Middle East. The Middle East and Vietnam. And some place called Belfast, which I thought was also in the Middle East since the guys with guns wore the same face masks all the time.
Posted by ray at July 17, 2005 3:52 PM | Permalink
Categories: [kids | politics ]
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