Never such a feeling of disconnect

We just had our house painted. The Angels will go to spring training

next week. The Academy Award nominations have just been made. The vet

tells us that our dog, Coco, needs her teeth cleaned. Our friends

from North Carolina will soon be coming to visit. The stuff of life

goes on. Mostly good stuff.

But so does another life from which I feel totally disconnected, a

life that spreads a patina of uncertainty, bewilderment and anger

over the normal stuff of life. These feelings, in various

manifestations and degree, have always accompanied war. But never in

my lifetime with the sense of disconnection I feel today. Always

before, I was a willing participant, a strong supporter, a noisy

dissenter or somewhere in between. But my country allowed me,

encouraged me to be involved.

Now my two worlds are disparate. One goes on without the other.

The people running my country tell all of us daily in multiple ways

that they have no interest in our opinions or feelings, that they

have chosen a course of action in our names and that matters are well

in hand.

“Don’t call us,” they are saying, “we’ll call you -- when and if

we need you. Meanwhile, if you’re a good American, you’ll support

what we’re doing.”

I am a good American, and I don’t support what they are doing.

Neither, if we are to believe the polls, do half of my fellow

citizens. And that half is growing steadily.

But none of this seems to touch the obsession of the people

running this country to take us to war. They plow ahead,

tunnel-visioned, ignoring any and all evidence, arguments, and deeply

held convictions of the citizens of our country that would bid them

to pause and reflect.

Their sense of urgency is inexplicable, as if Iraq were somehow

poised to attack us. So is their mind-set on Iraq, which diverts

their attention and resources from the pursuit of the zealots who

carried terrorism to New York and Washington, D.C.

But all these arguments have been made over and over. There is no

pulpit as powerful as that of the president of the United States, and

he has used it with telling effect to provide a one-dimensional view

of the necessity of a war on Iraq.

Only recently has the groundswell of opinion -- from poets to

naked middle-aged ladies spelling “peace” with their bodies -- begun

to erode that pulpit. And that may be the real urgency to the

progenitors of this war: the fear that if they delay much longer,

public opinion against their war will prevail.

The only thing I can add to the growing national desire to be

heard by a government that isn’t listening -- beyond a clear

statement of opposition to this war -- is a bit of historical

perspective. Except for a handful of World War I survivors still

around, my generation has lived through more wars than anyone. And I

can remember no period or set of circumstances that parallel what we

are experiencing today.

The greatest difference, of course, is our present vulnerability

to terrorist attack. Except for a few shells from a Japanese

submarine lobbed onto the coast of Oregon and California, we have

always been exempt from attack. The collapse of the Soviet Union

virtually removed the missile threat except for a few rogue nations

who have created nuclear weapons -- one of them is not Iraq -- and

who are either perceived as being on our side or regarded as an

irritant because they divert attention from Iraq.

But the threat of terrorism is real and raises two basic

questions: one, does an invasion of Iraq lessen or increase the

likelihood of such attacks?; and, two, should our attention be

focused on tracking down the terrorists who have already struck us --

and with whom an Iraqi connection, even by Secretary of State Colin

Powell, has never been clearly established?

While we seek answers, a look at public attitudes toward the wars

in which we were involved within my life span might be instructive.

Although public support for World War II was total and

enthusiastic, we forget that Roosevelt had to fight our isolationists

-- who had refused to join the League of Nations -- to send military

equipment to England when she was standing alone against the Nazis.

Only when we were attacked by Japan did public support coalesce and

never waver until we won a clear victory.

There was a good deal less enthusiasm for the Korean War, but it

was supported here because it was a joint action by the United

Nations.

Vietnam was a different story entirely. We interfered in a civil

war ostensibly to thwart the spread of communism, but there was

little public attention until Lyndon Johnson used a phony attack on

one of our warships by the North Vietnamese to inflame our citizens

and persuade Congress to support an enormous expansion of our forces.

Opposition to that war started late, grew slowly and finally opened

deep divisions in this country that have never healed.

Our involvement in Desert Storm and Bosnia was supported by most

Americans because both were actions initiated by the United Nations

to punish aggressor nations in violation of international law. Our

other two “wars” during this period were muscle flexing in Panama and

Grenada that scarcely caused a ripple in the U.S.

In every instance, our government considered the support of you

and me, the Congress we elected, and -- where appropriate -- the

United Nations vital ingredients in taking this country to war.

For the first time in our history, we have an administration that

has made clear its intention to start a preemptive war with or

without any of that support. We are invited to go along if we stay in

the back of the bus and don’t raise our voices except to say

“Hooray.”

And for the first time in my recollection -- as illustrated on the

UC Irvine campus the last few weeks -- we have a strong peace

movement growing before the war has begun and the body bags start

coming home. And no one is listening.

Meanwhile, we go on with the mundane while we teeter on the edge

of an abyss that no amount of reassurance will remove.

At such a time, we go to our strengths. That’s what my wife and I

will do later on this day when we pick up our North Carolina friends

at the airport.

It will be a rich week ahead, mostly of talk and a running game of

killer hearts. We will sit with a drink at dusk and enlarge on World

War II stories that have been told before and explore feelings about

the present that haven’t.

Even though the shadow of a war we don’t want will be just

offstage, awaiting a cue, we will find a sense of peace in these

strengths that have been tested before and can cast light on the

deepest shadow.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.