Someone I know says he watches even more of the Leafs than usual. He says it helps keep his mind off the war. It made me wonder if I watch so much of the war to keep my mind off the Leafs. It’s often hard to know which of one’s needs are engaged. So many of us get caught up in reacting to public events like a fan. You’re up, you’re down, over a win or a loss, or even tinier moments.

Take the gloating edition of The National Post yesterday:

“THEY TOLD YOU SO: Comment by Steyn, Krauthammer, Jonas, Hitchens, Blatchford.”

Actually, none of the anti-war rallies I attended had as their point that the outgunned, press-ganged Iraqi troops would win:

U.S.A.
Here’s the news
Your big army’s
Gonna lose.

Must’ve happened at some other demo. But as I say, many of us tend to watch that way.

I say “watch” since, if you hadn’t read the papers early in the day, it felt as if you might as well skip them. Events had already moved on and TV told that tale. In Canada, the biggest audience share went to CNN. Watching the war was largely a matter of watching CNN.

The hosts (wait, was this thing actually hosted?), Paula, Leon, Bill, seemed to think we’d feel comfier if we identified with them and their issues — long hours, early rising, strange pronunciations and geography, adapting to time zones — so when they changed over, there was lots of “you take care now” chitchat.

Everybody at CNN was chuffed when Dr. Sanjay Gupta, embedded with the Devil Docs, assisted in operating on a two-year-old, shot in a taxi at a checkpoint by U.S. fire. The boy — they said in almost an afterthought — died, along with the driver and a passenger. His mother was critically wounded. All the stress was on their colleague’s behaviour, which was admirable, and the dramatic, implicitly magnanimous surgery.

Come to think of it, I quit a New York seminary during the Vietnam War when our teacher in homiletics (i.e., sermon-giving) asked if we’d seen a story on a Vietnamese peasant who swallowed some military explosive and was operated on through a lead shield by U.S. army surgeons. “Don’t you realize how valuable this would be in a sermon for illustrating the benevolence of our great nation? ” he asked. I think it was at that point I heard him say, “Salutin, do I detect a sneer on your face?”

CNN was obsessed with Saddam. Was he alive or dead? Was it him, or a body double, whatever that is, on a walkabout in Baghdad? Could such doubt occur over George Bush or Tony Blair? Wouldn’t we know swiftly if it was them or an actor? Is it because all those people look the same? They’d natter on about his fate. U.S. officials kept saying it didn’t matter, he was irrelevant. CNN kept nattering. Personally, I think it helped keep attention off other things: people with stumps instead of limbs; kids with parts of their heads blown off; burning, smouldering cityscapes — it isn’t really a war, it’s a melodrama. See, there’s this one sneaky villain …

You could skip TV and follow the war on the Internet. That’s where you found neat theories like: the real motive is to save the U.S. dollar from being undermined by the euro. It’s starting to feel as if you can get anything from the Internet except a sense of human scale and proportion — in other words, a bit of common sense. That’s what TV, even with the toothpaste and flakiness of CNN, can still provide. Hmm, you think, as you watch. But I’ve also become less enamoured of e-mail. One phone call can often accomplish more than a deluge of e-mails.

The Saddam statue takedown begged for visuals without audio. The minute anyone compared it — the Berlin Wall, Budapest in 1956, Prague, the Philippines, Iran in 1979 — the gap showed. Those were popular victories over tyranny, not the byproduct of invasion. A South African friend said it made her sad, thinking of Nelson Mandela’s lonely “walk to freedom” from prison, the result of decades of his people’s effort and sacrifice. Should have skipped the commentaries; silence would have served us better.

But the triumphal din is useful. It makes it harder to recall certain things: no weapons of mass destruction found or used so far. No links to 9/11, and never were. The sole justification now is liberation of Iraqis, who surely feel relief that the “foul tyrant” is gone, but at such a heavy price, to them and the rest of the world. An illegal attack on a largely defenceless society, with ancient armour and no air force — by vast firepower, using toxic shells, destroying water and health systems, leaving many dead and maimed, followed by looting, reprisals, families destroyed, kids traumatized, foreign troops and foreign rule — what’s my point?

My point is: there was no justification for any of this. The point is not: it is less horrible than it might easily have become.

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Rick Salutin

Rick Salutin is a Canadian novelist, playwright and critic. He is a strong advocate of left wing causes and writes a regular column in the Toronto Star.