Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

In high school, I wore a peace sign necklace every day. It was the late Eighties and it would be a couple more years before tie-dyes and hippie gear became trendy.

By then, just to be different, I'd started wearing miniskirts and Army boots, too.

The Reagan administration wisely kept its military actions low key, so we deluded ourselves into believing we were at peace, although we were engaging in power struggles in places like Grenada and Panama.

The U.S. was also much sneakier in those days; using hired thugs like the Sandanistas and the Muhajadeen instead of getting directly involved.

So to most people around me, my peace sign necklace was meaningless. Of course, that didn't stop them from deriding it. (These same people were wearing tie-dyes and Sixities love beads within a few years. Of course, their tie-dyes did say "Budweiser" on them...)

I also had a "WAR IS STUPID" T-shirt. One day, when I wore it to school, I left to sharpen my pencil and when I came back there was a note on my desk: "Your stupid." I was going to ask, "Your stupid what?" but the humor would have been lost on them.

My style of dress was iconoclastic enough in the Big Hair days of the late Eighties that it got a mention in our yearbook, in a list of class in-jokes called "Things to Remember." Although I was yearbook coeditor, I didn't see this page until after the yearbook was published. On the list: "Alice Wilson's peace movement."

This was almost as amusing as their hairstyles. The yearbook should have said, "Remember your mullet?" or "Can you believe the class song is by Whitesnake?"

I was in college when the first Gulf War started. Immediately, all of the TV lounges on campus were playing CNN 24 hours a day. Yellow ribbons sprang up everywhere and American flags were hung up on the bridge back home (replaced faithfully to this day).

When I was working at the dining hall, the managers tied a huge yellow ribbon to the cash register where I worked. I took it off and shoved it in the suggestion box.

I began to fear that if I wore my peace sign necklace or "WAR IS STUPID" T-shirt that I would get beat up. So I chickened out; I stopped wearing them, telling myself it was because I was "getting tired of them" or "growing up."

For some reason, people think that if you want peace it means you don't support the troops. Personally, I think the best way to support the troops is to bring them safely home.

War is only ever a successful conclusion to a problem when both sides decide to act in a civil manner afterwards. Case in point: our great allies, the British, formerly our "oppressors."

But Saddam Hussein, to borrow a friend's analogy, is like an autistic child at a birthday party. You can reason with him all you want, but it won't prevent him from throwing his cake. The solution: take the cake away and hope he doesn't start on the JELL-O.

So yes, I'm not afraid to say it, war is stupid. At its best, it is failed diplomacy. At its worst, it is vengeance and bloodlust.

I'm not going to pretend there are any easy solutions or that I have a better idea of what should have happened. But somehow, as a global human society, we've got to get past this reptilian stage of development ("fight or flight") and move on to a higher plane of thought and interaction.

And for heaven's sake, put down the cake.

Moral:
Some of the people who made fun of me in high school still have mullets. Talk about poetic justice.

Copyright 2003 by Alyce Wilson

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