All wars have the same pattern: Innumerable casualties, right wing protestors, left wing protestors, and a government with too much pride to back out. There is one thing that makes the Iraq war different: the Internet.

In the 1960s, war was aired for the first time through television. It became the biggest breakthrough, providing actual footage of a grisly reality in Vietnam. Today, the Internet allows users to search, buy, and create anything at any time.

Over the past five years, the world has been able to tap into Iraq with the click of a mouse. Whether it is videos sent from the troops or blogs written by the guy in your astronomy lab, there is an unending stream of Iraq-related information on the Web.

With so much insight into the war, I wonder how it still wages on. We have seen soldiers and civilians killed on our computer screens. We have seen Saddam Hussein hanged to death on YouTube. Most of the videos can’t even be aired on television, but we revel in finding them online. We all sit at our desks and watch gruesome details about real events. We might as well be in the middle of the desert watching it in person.

Instead of wrecking our spines to bend over a keyboard and write our strongest opinions about Iraq, why don’t we get out in the streets and protest the old fashioned way? I don’t think more exclamation points at the end of a blog really gets the message across to those in charge. Vietnam would not have had such an impact if people weren’t parading the cities with megaphones and showing their emotions face to face.

When we put our opinions into words, as I am right now, the passion is lost. Without the bands of striking youth demonstrating with their arms, legs and faces, no one can understand the severity of the situation.
Perhaps it is the Internet that has made millions so apathetic. We have become so desensitized from seeing death on our computer screens that it doesn’t seem real anymore.

When I open my home page, and yet another story is covering the events in Iraq, I am not moved to protest. Is it because I am callous or because it is my only defense against being depressed by the war?
After five years, the Internet coverage I see on Iraq has become more incessant than eating.

I resolve that we step away from the computers and find a way out of Iraq that doesn’t require a username.