At whose behest?
Were they certain of your brilliance and aim,
assured that your bullet would find its flesh?
Who sent you there with gun and grenade?
Did they know that you were a skilled assassin?
Who brought you to such hunger?
A profound reverence for the motherland,
or payment for her freedom's wonder?
Can you even recognize her, is she the same
as before you sent another soul to grave?
Who moved you to it?
Some grand leader, father, teacher, God?
Did they too have your hardy thirst for war?
Did they follow you there, to the foreign pit,
into the fray, ready to exterminate their foe?
Who sent you to kill?
Did they ready your legs for such a slaughter,
prepare you to painfully die for your country?
Did your victims go staggering alone into the swill
or did they put their filthy mouths to the lips of war?
© 2008 mrp/tpm
The Hollow Men... A tip of the hat to
Crooks and Liars.
Rolling along "S"...
S.T.i.T.P. - Sabbah's Blog - Sans-Culotte - Sasha Undercover - Seeking Higher Solitude - Shadow of the Hegemon -
Shakesville - Sherry Chandler - Shockfront - Silent Fallout And Watery Lies - Simply Left Behind - Sinister - Sinking In Quicksand -
The Sirens Chronicles -
Skeptical Eye - South by Southwest - Stinky Luvin' - Stone Soup Musings - Stop The Second Holocaust - Stump Lane - Sumo Merriment - Survival Acres - Suzie-Q
When the homes rupture into flame
And the warrior meets the peacemaker
Will it not be a humble reckoning?
Will not the nobility of man shine down upon them?
Will this light not rumble at the door of freedom,
The will for excellence and splendor come forth,
Be a splendid ballet upon the stage of governance
Pirouetting over all the ornately cold and corrupt?
Be gentle that our swollen eyes might shut
Or be done with it!
Bring our souls `round to enchanting music
Or be done with it!
Spring a fountain of hope and a child’s joy
Or be done with it!
Offer wine instead of overflowing blood
Or be done with it!
Be a voice to the sky hovering in the heavens
Or be done with it!
Be a builder, a carpenter of love and elation
Or be done with it!
Be a consoling hand and offer it willingly
Or be done with it!
Be a martyr of peace with strength and will
Or be done with it!
Emerge as peacemakers, not ravenous warriors...
Exploding not in shrapnel, creating shards of gloom,
But bringing with you a hope unwrapped and bursting,
A magnificent gift teeming in truth and radiance
With stars bowing their silent expressions upon all
Lighting the paths that lead back to human charity
Where the cities of paradise lift their breathing souls...
Or be done with it…
Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman
Hat tip to C&L for video and transcript.
*OLBERMANN TRANSCRIPT*
Finally tonight, a Special Comment about the Rose Garden news conference last Friday.
The President of the United States owes this country an apology. It will not be offered, of course. He does not realize its necessity.
There are now none around him who would tell him - or could. The last of them, it appears, was the very man whose letter provoked the President into the conduct, for which the apology is essential. An apology is this President’s only hope of regaining the slightest measure of confidence, of what has been, for nearly two years, a clear majority of his people.
Not "confidence" in his policies nor in his designs nor even in something as narrowly focused as which vision of torture shall prevail — his, or that of the man who has sent him into apoplexy, Colin Powell. In a larger sense, the President needs to regain our confidence, that he has some basic understanding of what this country represents — of what it must maintain if we are to defeat not only terrorists, but if we are also to defeat what is ever more increasingly apparent, as an attempt to re-define the way we live here, and what we mean, when we say the word "freedom."
Because it is evident now that, if not its architect, this President intends to be the contractor, for this narrowing of the definition of freedom. The President revealed this last Friday, as he fairly spat through his teeth, words of unrestrained fury… …directed at the man who was once the very symbol of his administration, who was once an ambassador from this administration to its critics, as he had once been an ambassador from the military to its critics. The former Secretary of State, Mr. Powell, had written, simply and candidly and without anger, that "the world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism."
This President’s response included not merely what is apparently the Presidential equivalent of threatening to hold one’s breath, but — within — it contained one particularly chilling phrase. Mr. President, former Secretary of State Colin Powell says the world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism. If a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former secretary of state feels this way, don’t you think that Americans and the rest of the world are beginning to wonder whether you’re following a flawed strategy? BUSH: If there’s any comparison between the compassion and decency of the American people and the terrorist tactics of extremists, it’s flawed logic. It’s just — I simply can’t accept that. It’s unacceptable to think that there’s any kind of comparison between the behavior of the United States of America and the action of Islamic extremists who kill innocent women and children to achieve an objective.
Of course it’s acceptable to think that there’s "any kind of comparison." And in this particular debate, it is not only acceptable, it is obviously necessary. Some will think that our actions at Abu Ghraib, or in Guantanamo, or in secret prisons in Eastern Europe, are all too comparable to the actions of the extremists. Some will think that there is no similarity, or, if there is one, it is to the slightest and most unavoidable of degrees.
What all of us will agree on, is that we have the right — we have the duty — to think about the comparison. And, most importantly, that the other guy, whose opinion about this we cannot fathom, has exactly the same right as we do: to think — and say — what his mind and his heart and his conscience tell him, is right.
All of us agree about that.
Except, it seems, this President.
With increasing rage, he and his administration have begun to tell us, we are not permitted to disagree with them, that we cannot be right. That Colin Powell cannot be right.And then there was that one, most awful phrase.
In four simple words last Friday, the President brought into sharp focus what has been only vaguely clear these past five-and-a-half years - the way the terrain at night is perceptible only during an angry flash of lightning, and then, a second later, all again is dark.
"It’s unacceptable to think…" he said. It is never unacceptable… to think.
And when a President says thinking is unacceptable, even on one topic, even in the heat of the moment, even in the turning of a phrase extracted from its context… he takes us toward a new and fearful path — one heretofore the realm of science fiction authors and apocalyptic visionaries.
That flash of lightning freezes at the distant horizon, and we can just make out a world in which authority can actually suggest it has become unacceptable to think. hus the lightning flash reveals not merely a President we have already seen, the one who believes he has a monopoly on current truth.
It now shows us a President who has decided that of all our commanders-in-chief, ever… he, alone, has had the knowledge necessary to alter and re-shape our inalienable rights. This is a frightening, and a dangerous, delusion, Mr. President.
If Mr. Powell’s letter - cautionary, concerned, predominantly supportive — can induce from you such wrath and such intolerance — what would you say were this statement to be shouted to you by a reporter, or written to you by a colleague?
"Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government…"
Those incendiary thoughts came, of course, from a prior holder of your job, Mr. Bush. They were the words of Thomas Jefferson.
He put them in the Declaration of Independence. Mr. Bush, what would you say to something that annti-thetical to the status quo just now? Would you call it "unacceptable" for Jefferson to think such things, or to write them?
Between your confidence in your infallibility, sir, and your demonizing of dissent, and now these rages better suited to a thwarted three-year old, you have left the unnerving sense of a White House coming unglued - a chilling suspicion that perhaps we have not seen the peak of the anger; that we can no longer forecast what next will be said to, or about, anyone… who disagrees.
Or what will next be done to them. On this newscast last Friday night, Constitiutional law Professor Jonathan Turley of George Washington University, suggested that at some point in the near future…some of the "detainees" transferred from secret CIA cells to Guantanamo, will finally get to tell the Red Cross that they have indeed been tortured.
Thus the debate over the Geneva Conventions, might not be about further interrogations of detainees, but about those already conducted, and the possible liability of the administration, for them. That, certainly, could explain Mr. Bush’s fury.
That, at this point, is speculative. But at least it provides an alternative possibility as to why the President’s words were at such variance from the entire history of this country. For, there needs to be some other explanation, Mr. Bush, than that you truly believe we should live in a United States of America in which a thought is unacceptable.
There needs to be a delegation of responsible leaders — Republicans or otherwise — who can sit you down as Barry Goldwater and Hugh Scott once sat Richard Nixon down - and explain the **reality** of the situation you have created.
There needs to be… an apology from the President of the United States.
And more than one.
But, Mr. Bush, the others — for warnings unheeded five years ago, for war unjustified four years ago, for battle unprepared three years ago — they are not weighted with the urgency and necessity of this one. We must know that, to you…thought with which you disagree — and even voice with which you disagree - and even action with which you disagree — are still sacrosanct to you.
The philosopher Voltaire once insisted to another author, "I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write." Since the nation’s birth, Mr. Bush, we have misquoted and even embellished that statement, but we have served ourselves well, by subscribing to its essence.
Oddly, there are other words of Voltaire’s that are more pertinent still, just now. "Think for yourselves," he wrote, "and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too." Apologize, sir, for even hinting at an America where a few have that privilege to think — and the rest of us get yelled at by the President.
Anything else, Mr. Bush, is truly… unacceptable.
Bush to Address Key UN GatheringUS Muslims say Anti-Islam Bias on the Rise
Many More Dead in Iraq Blasts
Afghanistan hit by wave of suicide bombings
British soldier admits war crime
Iran to `hit back' if US attacks
Iran's supreme leader has given warning that his country will hit back at US interests worldwide if America attacks Iran to thwart its nuclear programme.
On Thursday, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said: "The enemies [the US] understand well that the Iranian nation will give a comprehensive response to the aggressors and their interests worldwide."
In response, Gordon Johndroe, a US national security council spokesman, said: "Khamenei from time to time makes these unprovoked statements and we would certainly hope they are not directed at the United States because President Bush has made it clear we have no intention of going to war with Iran."
The US has said it wants the standoff over the Iranian nuclear programme solved through diplomacy, but it has not ruled out military action against Iran.
Khamenei said: "They should not intimidate the Iranian people with these things, since the United States has previously attacked Iran."
The Greatest Generation?
by Howard Zinn
They tell me I am a member of the greatest generation. That's because I saw combat duty as a bombardier in World War II, and we (I almost said "I") won the war against fascism. I am told this by Tom Brokaw, who wrote a book called The Greatest Generation, which is all about us. He is an anchorman for a big television network, meaning that he is anchored to orthodoxy, and there is no greater orthodoxy than to ascribe greatness to military valor.
That idea is perpetuated by an artillery barrage of books and films about World War II: Pearl Harbor, Saving Private Ryan, and the HBO multi-episode story of the 101st Airborne, Band of Brothers, based on Stephen Ambrose's book of the same name. And Ambrose has just published an exciting history of the valiant "men and boys" who flew B-24s.
The crews who flew those planes died in great numbers. We who flew the more graceful-looking B-17s sardonically called those other planes Bdash2crash4. I wrote from my air base in England to my friend Joe Perry, who was flying B-24s out of Italy, kidding him about his big clunk of a plane, but the humor was extinguished when my last letter to him came back with the notation "Deceased."
Those who saw combat in World War II, whether they lived or died, are celebrated as heroes. But it seems clear that the degree of heroism attributed to soldiers varies according to the moral reputation of the war. The fighters of World War II share a special glory because that war has always been considered a "good war," more easily justified (except by those who refuse to justify any war) than the wars our nation waged against Vietnam or Korea or Iraq or Panama or Grenada. And so they are "the greatest generation."
What makes them so great? These men-the sailors of Pearl Harbor, the soldiers of the D-Day invasion, the crews of the bombers and fighters- risked their lives in war, perhaps because they believed the war was just, perhaps because they wanted to save a friend, perhaps because they had some vague idea they were doing this "for my country." And even if I believe that there is no such thing as a just war, even if I think that men do not fight for "our country" but for those who run our country, the sacrifice of soldiers who believe, even wrongly, that they are fighting for a good cause is to be acknowledged. But not admired.
I refuse to celebrate them as "the greatest generation" because in doing so we are celebrating courage and sacrifice in the cause of war. And we are miseducating the young to believe that military heroism is the noblest form of heroism, when it should be remembered only as the tragic accompaniment of horrendous policies driven by power and profit. Indeed, the current infatuation with World War II prepares us-innocently on the part of some, deliberately on the part of others-for more war, more military adventures, more attempts to emulate the military heroes of the past.
To decide which is "the greatest generation" involves a double choice. One is the choice of a particular time period. The other is the choice of who will represent that time period, that generation. Neither is decided arbitrarily, but rather on the basis of one's political philosophy. So there is an ideological purpose in choosing the generation of World War II, and then in choosing the warriors of that time to represent "greatness."
I would propose other choices if we are to educate the young people of our time in the values of peace and justice.
We might take the generation of the American Revolution, another generation almost universally considered "great." I would not choose the Founding Fathers to represent it. Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, Madison have had enough adulation, and their biographies clog the book review sections of the major media.
The Founding Fathers did lead the war for independence from Britain. But they did not do it for the equal right of all to life, liberty, and equality. Their intention was to set up a new government that would protect the property of slave owners, land speculators, merchants, and bondholders. Independence from England had already been secured in parts of the country by grassroots rebellion a year before the battles at Lexington and Concord that initiated hostilities with Britain. (See Ray Raphael's A Peoples History of the American Revolution, New Press, 2001.) It is one of the phenomena of modern times that revolutions are not favored unless they are led by people who are not revolutionaries at heart.
I would rather recognize the greatness of all those who fought to make sure that the Founding Fathers would not betray the principles of the Declaration of Independence, to make sure that the dead and maimed of the Revolutionary War did not make their sacrifices in vain. And so I would honor the soldiers of the Pennsylvania and New Jersey lines, who mutinied against George Washington and Mad Anthony Wayne. They were rebelling against the luxurious treatment of their gentry officers, and their own mistreatment: 500 lashes for misconduct, Washington decreed, and execute a few mutinous leaders to set an example.
Add to the honors list in that great generation the farmers of western Massachusetts who resisted the taking of their homes and land for nonpayment of exorbitant taxes. This was the Shays Rebellion, which put a fright into the Founding Fathers, especially as it led to uprisings in Maryland, South Carolina, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. That rebellion persuaded the Founding Fathers that a strong central government was needed to maintain law and order against unruly dissidents, slave rebels, and Indians. These were the true revolutionaries of the Revolutionary generation.
I submit as additional candidates for "the greatest generation" those Americans who, in the decades before the Civil War, struggled against the takeover of Indian and Mexican lands. These were the Indians of the Five Civilized Tribes, and especially the Seminoles, who resisted their removal from Florida in eight years of guerrilla warfare, succumbing finally to a combination of deception and superior force. And the dissidents of the Mexican War: Seven regiments deserted on the way to Mexico City. And the Massachusetts volunteers- that half of them who survived-who booed their commanding officer at a reception after the war ended.
Why do we use the term "greatest generation" for participants in war? Why not for those who have opposed war, who have tried to make us understand that war has never solved fundamental problems? Should we not honor, instead of parachutists and bomber pilots, those conscientious objectors who refused to fight or the radicals and pacifists who opposed the idea that young people of one nation should kill young people of another nation to serve the purposes of politicians and financiers?
The generation of the First World War was not made honorable by Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, by General Pershing and Admiral Dewey. What nobility it had came from the courage of Eugene Debs, Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, Kate Richard O'Hare, and the leaders of the Industrial Workers of the World, all of whom were imprisoned for opposing the entrance of the United States into the slaughterhouse of Europe.
If there is to be a label "the greatest generation," let us consider attaching it also to the men and women of the sixties: the black people who changed the South and educated the nation, the civilians and soldiers who opposed the war in Vietnam, the women who put sexual equality on the national agenda, the homosexuals who declared their humanity in defiance of deep prejudices, the disabled people who insisted that the government recognize the discrimination against them.
And I suggest that some future writer-not an anchorman, but someone unmoored from traditional ways of thinking-may, if the rebels of Seattle and Genoa persist and grow, recognize the greatness of this generation, the first of the new century, for launching a world movement against corporate domination, for asserting human rights against guns and greed.
Howard Zinn is a columnist for The Progressive.
WAR WAR WAR WAR WAR
O! In these times, this infant land; in our sour belly, the warriors
Of old and new are dying
To the filthy refrain of war, war, war, war, war…
Those that came before
Breathed toward a fresher world,
A sea green life in a globe drearier than this;
Yet we have cultivated the flavor of battle
Without actually pulling the joyful trigger.
Distanced ourselves from the entry wound.
Taken leave of the truth behind a looming void,
Ate of it so that we’ve dulled the senses.
We’ve lost the will to foretaste
And now stand agape outside our pleading hope
With no tools to dig our way to her;
Is this what we want of our love; suffocation?
O! In these times, this infant land; in our sour belly, the warriors
Of old and new are dying
To the filthy refrain of war, war, war, war, war...
A stranger at the door;
It is we,
Wringing our flesh of war…
Might we tunnel forth to rescue her?
Will the world lend us its many shovels?
Four Marines Killed; US toll now 3,114
It is no use blaming Iran for the insurgency in Iraq