War in Iraq won’t end with parades

On Oct. 17, 1943, in the comic strip “Terry and The Pirates,” Col. Corkin gives Terry, a military pilot, a lecture about humility.

He says, “Don’t forget that every bullet you shoot, every gallon of gas and oil you burn was brought here by transport pilots. You may get the glory – but they put the lift in your balloon! And don’t let me ever catch you being high-bicycle with the enlisted men in your ground crew! Without them, you’d never get 10 feet off the ground! Every grease monkey in that gang is right beside you in the cockpit.”

In October 1943, during the height of World War II, the newspapers were filled with popular culture reminders that a war was going on. A feature story on movie star Clark Gable depicted his life in the service. Advertisements for breath fresheners featured sailors with halitosis.

This weekend, we’ll read and hear a lot about the 60th anniversary of V-J Day, the end of World War II. Stories told by aging veterans remind us that we’re losing members of the Greatest Generation each day, along with their memories of the last war that united our entire country.

The oldsters in my life tell enthralling stories of life here during World War II. The women, along with their tiny children, rode by train across the country to kiss goodbye their husbands headed to war. Families endured shortages of sugar, coffee and butter, in sacrifice for a greater good. People grew victory gardens.

I feel envious. My baby boomer generation has experienced only bad wars, though the term “good wars” seems a disservice to those on the losing end. We grew up during the Vietnam War, perhaps the saddest war of all because people dishonored those who fought in it.

Now we have Iraq and we snarl about the war, as we eat and drink in our usual ways, no food shortages to endure, no gas rations to limit our SUV trips to the grocery store.

Brad Pitt or Ashton Kutcher would never volunteer for the military, the way celebrity heartthrobs did in World War II. A comic strip, with a continuing patriotic storyline, would be laughed off the funny pages.

This week, Iraq finally made it back on newspaper front pages, and the war led newscast reports once more, but it took the deaths of 21 Marines. And during this bloody week in Iraq, our president went on vacation.

Shame on all of us.

The war, instead of showing up everywhere in popular culture, competes with it and often loses out to Michael Jackson trials and the latest on Paris Hilton, whoever she is.

Popular culture has given us one offering – “Over There,” a television series about the lives of soldiers in Iraq. I watched it for the first time Wednesday. It was so appalling I turned it off halfway through. In the first scene, a soldier is tortured by an Iraqi insurgent who speaks in an accent so fake you cringe in embarrassment.

The war is too real to fictionalize yet. During the Vietnam War, popular culture showed respect for war’s grieving process. The major movies about Vietnam – such as “The Deer Hunter” and “Apocalypse Now” – didn’t come out until years after the war ended.

Nostalgia can mislead emotion, I know. World War II’s popular culture – and the memories of those who lived through the war – gloss over the horror. Some U.S. soldiers returned ruined in body and mind. And we speak now of the Japanese internment camps with regret and sorrow.

My big envy I reserve for this: We will never be able to celebrate the end of the Iraq war, the way World War II’s end was heralded.

My favorite image from that time is Alfred Eisenstaedt’s photo of the sailor kissing the nurse in Times Square on V-J Day; 2 million people gathered there to celebrate victory.

Instead, we’ll slink away from Iraq years from now, thousands of Iraqi and U.S. lives lost or altered forever, billions of dollars spent, as civil war rages on there indefinitely.

I hope I’m wrong about this bad war’s bad ending. If I am, I’ll hop on my high bicycle and ride it with humility in a victory parade.