But then you turn a corner and one of the posters is about the Rape of Nanking, and you're forced to conclude that no matter how ugly and stupid and wasteful war is, some times it really is necessary as the only way to cut short a greater evil.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Virginia War Museum
We went to the Virginia War Museum in Newport News, about 45 minutes drive from home. They had some cool stuff, and it was kind of depressing. The exhibits are mostly about things-- weapons, uniforms, vehicles--rather than people or events; and they are mostly things that were mass produced, stamped out at a factory, rather than something an artisan put his time and skill and attention into. Even the propaganda posters were mostly simple, blocky, ugly. I was reminded of something from Cryptonomicon, where Cantrell is talking about guns: "Holding one of those things in your hands, cleaning the barrel and shoving the rounds into clips, really brings you face-to-face with what a desperate, last-ditch measure they really are."
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3 comments:
By the way, dad, I figured out what the huge artillery piece off in the distance was. It's a M65 Atomic Cannon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M65_Atomic_Cannon
I see from the first comment that Josh has taken to hiding his relationship with you and identifying himself as anonymous. I had wondered how long that would take.
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War is terrible. Sometimes it is not as terrible as what failing to have war would allow (Rwanda, Nazi Germany, Nanking, Hong Kong, the Montagnards after the US pullout, etc).
Mind you, even good guys can be pretty bad (Sherman's march to Atlanta, Bomber Harris, Nagasaki, Hiroshima).
I think the first Anony-josh was on the post about Pandora, quite a ways back.
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