The War on Fat

“It is well that war is so terrible. We should grow too fond of it.”

— Robert E. Lee

Confederate general

Civil War

No, my new T-shirt does not say, “Watch your beagle. Vick’s an Eagle.”

That’s in reference, of course, to quarterback Michael Vick’s return to the National Football League after a dog abuse conviction and subsequent incarceration.

My new T-shirt proclaims, “I’m already against the next war.”

It’s part of my new fall wardrobe, which consists entirely of five T-shirts. Budget cuts, you know. The Great Depression, as any old-timer will tell you until your ears turn blue, was only fair to middling.

The current recession, meanwhile, is no recess. Those of us who still have jobs are the lucky ones.

The T-shirts arrived just in time for the temperature to plummet into the mid-20s. Maybe it was God’s way of punishing me for their provocative slogans such as, “Over 25 percent of human genes are the same as those of a banana: Get over yourself.”

Before you jump to conclusions, leap to assumptions or do a pirouette looking for platitudes to denounce me as a Communist, Socialist, Bolshevik or some other -vik for being anti-war, let me set the record straight.

Yes, drive down the street in La Grande or any other Northeast Oregon town and it’s difficult to know the country is at war. The soldiers stationed half a world away seem mostly forgotten, even though they have sacrificed their tranquility so we may have ours, as “Snow Falling on Cedars” author David Guteson  eloquently writes. Media coverage has dwindled.

For me, two wars have converged — the war in Afghanistan and the war on fat. Two of my co-workers, old Army veterans, and I are part of a team based out of Fort Lewis. There are five teams in all. The team that exercises enough to get from northwest Washington to Afghanistan the quickest will be the winner.

The object is more than just personal fitness. It’s to show support for the soldiers now assigned to that hothouse and their families here at home. The war is 10,000 miles away, give or take, with many soldiers separated from their wives and husbands and missing out on some aha! moments in their kids’ lives.

The folks back home are anxious for the soldiers’ safety.

It’s easy for me to participate here. I am not in harm’s way, unless you count the station wagon driver who nearly ran me over while I was riding my bike.

I can call my loved ones anytime I want, without standing in long lines or getting permission from superiors.

As I conduct my own War on Fat, I think about wars in general and what they are good for.

“I have never advocated war except as a means of peace,” said Ulysses S. Grant.

The great Civil War generals, the Rebel Lee and the Yankee Grant, knew what they were talking about.

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