I'm sitting here in the aquatic plant biology laboratory filing away teaching specimens, and it just so happens that I stumble across an editorial from February of 1991 in the Daily Campus, written by Colman McCarthy, on the words of Colin Powell and Barbara Bush influencing the nightmares of small children.
McCarthy's theme stemmed from Powell's statements that we needed to isolate Iraq's army and kill it" a concept that was "very, very simple". McCarthy went on to reflect upon Washington D.C.'s ranking in homicides per capita, which at them time was highest in the world for "industrialized nations."
Additionally, McCarthy skewered Barbara Bush on her statements regarding parents needing to make sure that children understood the content of the news, in order to avoid having nightmares.
As a person whose own nightmares usually revolve around war and concentration camp like settings, I could wholeheartedly agree with McCarthy's statements that it was precisely because children could subconsciously understand the content of the news that they would have nightmares: our world has yet to eliminate the brutality and misguided logic of violence that perpetuates wars among individuals and nations alike.
And then I pinch myself, Wait! What the f**!! It's 2009, McCarthy's writing about operation desert storm, 18 years have gone by! and what's changed? Not much except for a shifted focus towards a shadowy Al Qaeda and "insurgents" who are rationally responding (according to the same misguided logic of violence) to a foreign enemy has been militarily involved in their country for 18 years (directly), and to a cultural force insensitive to its own traditions (since the creation of the Iraqi state in 1920).
