by Chris Buell
Daily Collegian (Pennsylvania State U.)
(U-WIRE) UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — It’s Thursday night, and I’m sitting in a pub in Manchester, pint in hand. My friends shout over the loud music in the background, when along comes one of their friends. We’re introduced. We shake hands, say hello. Get to know one another.
“So, you’re a Yankee?” they ask. “That’s right,” I say, and then pause for the inevitable question. “So, what do you think of the war in Iraq?”
It’s happened on many occasions, enough to make me wonder if the British have produced a script, “How to Talk to Americans.”
But no matter how many times I’ve been asked, I still can’t give a straightforward answer. And if anything, the past two months I’ve spent in England have blurred the lines in my mind even more.
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Perhaps one of the biggest assumptions by many of the English students I’ve met is that all Americans love George Bush and can’t wait for U.S. troops to arrive in Iraq and carry Saddam out of Baghdad. Most are more than a little surprised that many of my classmates and I have mixed opinions on the subject.
Before I left the U.S., news articles told me Tony Blair and the British had our backs. They were with us all the way, the one nation we could count on when the U.N. proved itself an ineffective debating society. It was much to my surprise then that many of the British students I’ve talked to are steadfastly against the idea of such a war. Which begs the question, who is supporting this war?
The demonstrations that filled the streets of nations around the world last weekend certainly raised that question. The demonstrations were perhaps strongest in the nations with leaders who pledged the most support for the war. Voices of protest emanated from London, Rome and New York. Instead we have rich men in back rooms making the calls. And yet, they present a persuasive argument.
It surely can’t be said that Iraq has agreed to disarm or cooperate.
Their arguments were much easier to accept when I was in State College, when it was more of a case of us vs. them, good guys vs. bad guys.
A few months later, and I can’t tell which side I’m on. As these leaders whip up cries for war, many at home have worried about my safety while I’m abroad. My parents have asked, my grandmother has declined a visit and the university has sent a comforting e-mail to let us know that they will make sure we’re safe. And it all seems a little unnecessary because I’ve encountered no hostility, and I feel just as safe as I did at home.
The rhetoric goes on, and I find myself with mixed feelings. Saddam is truly an evil leader that has brought harm and suffering to his people. But on the page behind the war headlines are stories of a failure to agree on AIDS drugs for Africa and further agitation in North Korea. President Bush pledged a war only a year and half ago.
As he works for another, it’s obvious that the first was never finished, a reality that became frightfully obvious when authorities broke up a plot to make poison ricin, which seemed destined for the water supply in London. The investigation led to the arrest of three men only several miles away from where I’m staying, and the death of one of the policeman when the bust went wrong.
Two months in England haven’t changed my opinion on the possibility of war. It hasn’t given me a clear answer. Instead of a clear answer, it has given me many more perspectives and fewer answers.
