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NPR

October 10, 2007 - 6:30pm

Since my commute was tripled in March, I've been listening to NPR a lot. It seems many of my coworkers listen to NPR as well and stories from the morning often come up in conversation. (Like the one on Radiohead's unique method of distribution for their current album. In case you didn't heard, it's a pay-what-you-want model.) Listening to NPR has been really great for me and definitely expanded my knowledge of what's happening in the world.

Years ago, I listened to NPR on a regular basis and loved it. But when the Iraqi war started, I couldn't continue listening. The reports of how many soldiers and civilians died was just too depressing and overwhelming for me to hear day after day. I felt so frustrated with a war I couldn't support and had no control over. So I stopped listening in order to separate myself from the war as much as possible. I just didn't want to think about.

Now that I'm listening to NPR again, I'm beginning to feel the same feelings. In the pit of my stomach, I feel sick about this war. I'm frustrated. I feel helpless. I just want it to be over and all the troops to come home. I get angry, especially after I heard pieces like the one which says that Iraqi soldiers get a week of vacation after every two weeks of work. I'm sorry, but when our troops don't get to come home for years, I'm pissed they have such a policy. There isn't time for vacation when your country is falling apart! And if your soldiers don't care about your country, why should we? (Yeah, I was really angry after that story.)

We'll see how long I can continue to listen to the news about Iraq and the emotional roller coaster I feel. But I'll definitely keep listening to NPR for all the other news. And I'll keep reading their website and finding gems like the article about Theo Jansen, a dutch sculptor who creates amazing kinetic sculptures. This piece wouldn't translate particularly well to audio, I'm afraid, because you just have to see the pictures to believe it. Go watch the video, the "sand beasts" are fascinating, amazing, and strangely beautiful.

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Comments

I sounds like to me that you only have empathy for the U.S. Troops involved in Iraq and not with all the other people the troops are preventing from becoming victims of a genocide. If it were so simple to just "pull" the troops without any thought to the consequences that it would bring to the different ethnic groups in Iraq we would have done it long ago. The cost in American lives has been great, but the amount of progress being made and the greater number of Iraqi civilian lives saved is ten-fold. It would be wrong to say that one U.S. Soldier's life is more valuable than an Iraqi child's, or ten Sunnis. If the U.S. doesn't do it, no one else will. It is the right and moral thing to do.
Posted by Anonymous on October 12, 2007 - 6:26pm
And how is it not "moral and right" to stop the killing in Darfur...?
Posted by Nat on October 15, 2007 - 10:41pm
The bigger problem is the lack of any sort of political solution in Iraq, since it's not a conventional war; I think that's contributing to the sense of frustration. (Sorry, the computer crashed before I could complete the first post; that's why 2!)
Posted by nat on October 15, 2007 - 11:02pm
I think all of us who claim to really care about the troops need to actually do something about it (donate time or resources to groups that support wounded vets and their families, scholarships, etc...). Maybe you have, I haven't yet. Those of us who haven't and talk about how much we care about the troops are doing just that...talking.
Posted by Collin on October 26, 2007 - 2:37am

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