a lie we don't believe anymore

I am old enough that I was on the tail-end of “duck and cover” drills in elementary school, a practice that felt as terrifying to me then as it does ridiculous now. I remember the Cold War, could work my second-grade self into all kinds of anxiety over the possibility of nuclear annihilation, the big dark THEM that was the Soviet Republic obliterating us all. Terrified, despite the fact that the threat was largely theoretical.

Sting released “Russians” in 1985.  I was seven or eight at the time, and I remember one of our teachers playing it for us and while it is perhaps a little overly trite in its messaging the lyrics have stuck with me over the years.  There’s no such thing as a winnable war, Sting sings, it’s a lie we don’t believe anymore.

I was lucky enough to be in the room when the Wye River Memorandum was signed in 1998, pressed against a back wall watching history unfold before me.  (It was maybe the first time I really fangirled Joe Biden.)  Arafat and Netanyahu and King Hussein, President Clinton and Vice President Gore. There was a palpable sense of accomplishment in the room, measured hope. 

Or maybe I was just a young, idealistic kid who wanted to believe, desperately, in resolution. Because sixteen years later it’s hard to remember what that hope felt like. There are no easy answers, there is an abundance of armchair quarterbacking, and image after relentless image of parents mourning their children. My heart aches, from this place I live where that kind of violence is still largely theoretical.

For whatever it’s worth, this is maybe the smartest thing I’ve seen written about what’s happening - what’s happened for years - in a long time: [What to do when an Israeli-Palestinian ‘peace is out of reach.]

It’s hard to pray for peace anymore. Maybe the change in vocabulary will help.