Commentary Series (VPR): Middlebury’s Jay Parini on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war

Commentary Series (VPR): Fifth Anniversary: “ANNOUNCER: On this Fifth Anniversary of the War in Iraq, commentator, poet and teacher Jay Parini reflects on this particular war – and war in general.

“JAY PARINI: Decades ago, as a student during the height of the conflict in Vietnam, I was reading Homer’s great epic of war, The Iliad. The death of Hector in defense of Troy struck me as one of the most moving things I had ever read. To this day, I remember weeping over the pages of Homer, and wondering that humanity could be so cruel and stupid. Was there really any point to war? Did anybody ever really ‘win’ a war, in that the cycle of violence seems only to pass on to the next generation, and there is never relief from the bloodshed and misery.”