Last night I ate an avocado. In Northern California. In midwinter.

Because it came from Chile, that avocado might be enough to get me kicked out of the Locavore movement of people who pledge to eat only what originates within 100 miles, but it was worth it, because it was the last straw in a growing pile of evidence that the United States is not at war, no matter what the government says.

Here's war:

• You save your food cans and flatten them to contribute to the war effort.

• You drain bacon grease into a container and contribute that to the war effort. (That is, if you have any ration stamps for bacon, and if your neighborhood grocery store has any bacon.)

• Your backyard is a garden, a Victory Garden, where you grow food all summer and spend the harvest season preserving it for winter eating.

• All the adults in your family who are not in military service pool their ration stamps for food and gas, and are very frugal about trips. Mostly they take the city bus.

• As a child of the greatest generation, you send off for a Captain Midnight plane spotter chart so you can watch the skies after school. And you feel pleased that your presence in the family provides extra milk rations for the grown-ups' tea.
  

Some other evidence:

• Gas may cost more than three dollars a gallon, but we can buy as much as we want or can afford. Our military airplanes must use some other kind of fuel these days, and I suppose whatever vehicle transported that avocado to my supermarket has found the same mystery fuel.

• Nobody has suggested that I put blackout curtains on my windows, or asked me to walk around the neighborhood in the evening to make sure other people have their windows darkened against air raids.

• I can stay out as late as I want without carrying identification papers or documents to prove I have a good reason to be out.

• Last month, I flew to Miami for a pleasure trip. I didn't need any government permission to travel, and the plane was not full of military folks.

• If I want to, I can take a cruise to just about anywhere in the world. In fact, that would be downright patriotic, because my government keeps telling me that if I stop shopping and traveling the terrorists will win.
  

Getting old doesn't have a great deal to recommend it, but getting old with a good memory raises some fascinating questions. How can we be at war without needing civilian support? Why isn't this war pumping money into our economy? Where are the factory jobs? Where is Rosie the Riveter? Who's building all the military stuff, and where are they building it?

And I keep coming back to the same answer: This Iraq adventure is not a war. Heaven only knows what it is.

Now that you mention it, I am entertaining some doubts about the 1969 moon landing. Thanks for asking.

Sophie Annan Jensen lives in Lucerne.

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smurf - not just a war- Registered | 01-21-2008 11:32:25 it's an investment. As the VP reminds us, the American way of life (wastefulness) is not negotiable, therefore we have to occupy places that have stuff we need until they run out of whatever it is we just can't live without. And if we have to kill a few hundred thousand people in the process of making a fast buck and providing rogue nations (Isreal) with security so be it, because God is certainly on our side. Amen!

Donna Christopher - Thank You Sophie Author | 01-21-2008 11:38:58 for capturing this madness so well. America isn't at war, they're at the mall per our fearless leaders' orders. What can we expect from a group in Washington that were only adept at winning deferments from actually serving themselves in 'Nam. And I regret to inform you that Rosie the Riveter's job has been outsourced to a 5 year old in China. Well, probably better get going, its Martin Luther King Day so there must be a sale on at the mall.

purplegirl - Reminds Me Registered | 01-21-2008 12:40:48 First of all, thanks for posting this. I think, we all needed a little reminder of how (as small as the world is getting via mass media/internet) it is amazing that at this day and age we find ourselves so detached from what is happening beyond our front door much less beyond the sea. You know, part of me really wants to say it is the mass media blackout where we no longer see the real story but a whitewashed "American" version of it but your article brings home another point that really hits home which I believe we all need to be aware of. What has happened to personal responsibility? Maybe, it is because this time "America" doesn't feel responsible for this war. It is almost as if we have taken a stand to say "this is not our war". I know, personally, I feel that way, sometimes. I mean, from the beginning, I knew this war was not about being attacked but being on the attack. I knew it had more to do with keeping America comfortable rather than keeping America safe. So, I have to say, I am definitely to blame in that area. I don't "feel" like it is my war. Maybe, many people feel the same, maybe that is why we aren't doing all these things to support it. It reminds me of something I once read. A woman once wrote (forgive me, I can't remember the exact quote) that it is amazing how we can't give up our automobiles to keep the peace but we so easily give up our sons and daughters. I think, that pretty much says it all.

sannan - PurpleGirl-- Manager | 01-21-2008 14:46:37 Don't blame yourself. I'm sorry I didn't make it clear that we didn't do those things voluntarily during WWII. They were required by the wartime government. Except the plane-spotting by kids--that was voluntary. :-)

Raphael - Good points Author | 01-22-2008 03:15:51 from every one but I will add that this war was never designed to be won: the goal or victory here was never to free Iraq and go home, but to establish a permanent military presence in the middle east. For this to happen, a quagmire had to be facilitated, and it was, as what has been called mistakes were part of the strategy (no one could be that stupid). It is all a game to these top strategists, politicians and ideologues. Because the majority of the American public would have never accepted this agenda, the war was very rapidly sold under false pretenses, while America was still in post 9-11 shock, and before Congress or anyone could think. The mad, ideologically extremist neo-cons developed this strategy under Clinton, who dismissed it, and they simply jumped on the opportunity given by 9-11 to implement it, like a bunch of hyenas jump on a carcass. I understand the point made, but I sure would not tell a vet who returns without arms or legs, or a family who looses someone in Iraq, that we are not at war...and I wouldn't tell the Iraqi people either. This is simply not the kind of war the public was made to believe in, such as WW2, the kind that looked like a good cause: it is the ruthless, corporate-driven, amoral and cynical 21rst century type of war waged by the haves against the have-not, as was done by all empires in the distant past that ruled by might rather than principles. As Mahatma Gandhi said in 1922: "Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as cooperation with good". The public should know better...when it is so obviously manipulated to fear, it should be able to smell a rat. Other nations did, from miles away...

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