So, TNTHD had the Lord of the Rings Trilogy on today – a real undertaking, but well worth the investment. Tolkein started it while he was in the trenches during World War I, and the metaphorical connections are obvious throughout the film version. He later said he began creating his fantasy world of Middle Earth to keep from going crazy.
World War I was as sensless as war as any before or after – a conflagration that left eight million soldiers dead, and as Remarque said in All Quiet on the Western Front, destroyed a generation of men. It was fought over … well it’s still not clear. It was fought by the Monarchs of Europe because that’s what they did. It just lead to the next war, World War II, fought, in part, because World War I had such a messy ending. I found myself thinking that the ending of a war is what really matters. In Tolkein’s fantasy, the "evil ones" just went away. That’s not how it works here on just plain Earth.
World War II slid seamlessly into the fifty year "Cold War." And I guess the ending of the "Cold War" flowed into our Iraqi misadventure. Now we’re thinking about the end of the Iraqi War. Our Administration is still talking about winning, whatever that means. Seems to me that we already won the war, but lost the occupation, in spades. At issue is how to end the Iraq War in the least detrimental way. I’m not sure "winning" has anything to do with anything. We’re dealing with the best way to lose – or maybe, the least bad way to lose..
In Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings, good conquered evil. Tolkein’s Hobbits [his tribute to the British foot-soldiers of World War I] destroyed the Ring [of Power]. Not a bad idea. It’s the Power-Mongers at the top that need to go, here and in the Middle East. Unfortunately, "good" and "evil" doesn’t define any clear division in the Iraq War.
Frodo, Sam, Help!
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