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Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Michael Hastings, General McChrystal, and the Nobel Prize winning novel Lord of the Flies

Well, I finally read the WHOLE Michael Hastings article in Rolling Stone about General Stanley McChrystal. It was sooo long! It was a good article and it explained a lot about what's happening behind the scenes. To me, it read like a novel, like West Side Story, but most like William Golding's novel Lord of the Flies. Remember having to read that one in high school!?! It's a classic! Golding won a Nobel Prize and everything! I think Mr. Hastings is hoping for a prize for his article too. I don't know if I agree with the war or not. I don't like that we are dumping billions of dollars into Afghanistan to "win over the civilian population." We need that money for our own who are suffering with unemployment, homelessness, hunger. But I don't want any terrorists killing my family. I don't like hearing how many of our soldiers are dying or killing themselves during this war. And I sure don't like reading about the high school interpretation of our so-called leaders..."General Petraeus is kind of a dweeb, a teacher's pet with a Ranger's tab, McChrystal is a snake-eating rebel, a Jedi commander." So Lord of the Flies! At the end of Golding's novel, all the boys run onto the beach and stumble upon a Navy officer who is there to rescue them. All the boys start to cry..."Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of a true, wise friend called Piggy." The boys all realized that evil dwells within all human beings, even in the most civilized of nations...and so maybe Mr. Hastings, in his blind quest for a prize...had a touch of evil in his heart when he wrote such negative things about The General.
Laura NP

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