Yesterday, I learned via a Facebook message that one of my friends serving in Iraq had been shot in his leg. I was completely stunned because I rarely experience the realities of the war on Iraq directly. I thought it was awful and completely scary. My friend, on the other hand, was ecstatic because, at least for a while, he won’t have to spend his days wondering if he will be blown up. I can’t imagine what it must be like over there. I can’t imagine what conditions I would have to be under to be happy to experience that kind of pain.

But, what struck me most about this event was not the specifics of my friend’s situation or the smashing reality that people could be harmed by this war. I know that people die everyday in Iraq. I know this, but I’m not sure I was ever able to really feel it. I’m not sure I actually feel the urgency, the seriousness, the magnitude of what is going on over there, because on a day-to-day basis, I’m not accustomed to really thinking about what people’s deaths mean.

When I think of soldiers in danger, I think of some general person in uniform but not of the friends I went to high school with and who follow the Nebraska Cornhuskers online from around the world and play the same Facebook trivia games that I do. When I think about the deaths of Iraqis, I’m lost. I disconnect. I hear the facts, and I have a general innate “that’s horrible” response. I think, “death is horrible,” but I’m not fully understanding or completely feeling what it means that people are dying everyday. I’m not sure it’s even possible to fully “get” war, even if you’re fighting in one. Would you be able to keep living your life during a war if you were able to fully comprehend what goes on in wars? I doubt that’s possible. I don’t think societies could both sustain wars and sustain themselves if people fully comprehended everything that’s lost in war, all the death involved.

In many ways, this seems to just be a natural fact. We don’t understand death. We sort of understand it a little bit when someone close to us dies, but in order to keep living, we have to push it out of our minds. This seems like the way it has to be. But when it comes to war, we both push the reality out of minds and at the same time vote in presidential elections that will decide the course of that war. And most of us in this country will only spend a nominal amount of time researching and thinking about for which candidate we will vote. This is a problem.

I think we’ve got to try to understand what’s going on, even though we’re probably ultimately doomed to fail at completely understanding the meaning of the war. We’re responsible for authorizing this war, and we’re responsible for all of the consequences if we don’t authorize the war. It’s not just the president or the Congress who decide what we do. It’s also us, as voters. We’re helping direct this initiative, and it’s our friends and fellow national and global citizens who are out there dying. So, we may not be able to individually affect the course of the war or fully grasp the meaning of it, but we’ve got to at least try to understand the real impact-the full meaning-of the death associated with the war on Iraq because it’s real.

Jill is a junior in Arts & Sciences and Senior Forum Editor. She can be reached at [email protected].

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