And Two More Semesters of Spanish To Go

I don’t speak War. Reading about it makes me feel stupid. The politics of war have become this foreign language that I don’t even come close to understanding. I don’t speak Pentagon. I don’t speak Collateral Damage. And neither do millions of other Americans, which the White House realizes.

I don’t speak War. However, I do speak TV. I’m fluent in Hollywood. Color Pictures are my second language. If the Pentagon needs to get a message (Shock and Awe through Jessica Lynch) across to me and everyone else lolling around in front of the TV, they have to speak our language. And they do, a lot better than we speak War.

I don’t speak War. And if I was an Iraqi when the U.S. was marketing safety, personal survival, and the desire to return home, that’s a language I could have understood. It’s human. War turns people into helmets (camouflage) and numbers (death toll) and 2-D action figures (bleeding in smoky photographs).

I don’t speak War. It’s my fault. Right now I speak Final Papers. I speak Sleep. I speak Daffodils. I’m carrying on too many other dialogues to make myself learn another language, so I don’t, and I’m weaker for it. We’re responsible for learning to understand what’s going on (War through Bird Flu), and it’s our fault if we leave ourselves open to be manipulated.

I don’t speak War. I’m off to speak some Mac and Cheese.