Evolution: seeing without the lens of war

US Army photo

We never asked to be the world's parental nest. We never asked. But we had the most money, the most successful populace with a laissez faire attitude about world affairs, and the biggest fist, the strongest hammer. Yet, as President Obama said at the West Point graduation, last week, "Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail."

"[T]o say that we have an interest in pursuing peace and freedom beyond our borders is not to say that every problem has a military solution."

There is difficulty in letting go of power, but there is greater difficulty in using it in unwelcome ways, like missile firing drones and monitored cellphones. If we want to have a relationship with the world, we must allow that relationship to evolve. Once we have stopped being the heavy hand with the rest of the planet, we can be the tender touch to nurture, from the strength of knowing how to get things done, what a free world creates.

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What's so foreign about foreign policy?

In a time when so much of U.S. foreign policy involves our global military footprint, ongoing engagements, waning engagements and threatening engagements, it's easy to think that war is the sole function of that governing platform. Americans are conditioned that way; like a computer that insists on entering a discarded wi-fi password at your favorite cafe, many young voters cannot remember a time when it was not how we operated in war that ran our international relations, but how we manage our peace.

God, and the voters, willing, that period will return soon.

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Guantanamo Bay and the Big Shitball

"...the consequence of error may be detention of persons for the duration of hostilities that may last a generation or more, this is a risk too significant to ignore."

-from the Supreme Court decision
to allow for habeas corpus hearings
for prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay
(pp.56-57)

So habeas has returned to Gitmo. Like swallows to Capistrano, it is inevitable that as sense and law rotate back to their proper planetary positions, they eclipse fear's fury. The downside? It's only a chink in armor that's seven years' thick with piled bodies and reckless leadership, guarded by secrets as sticky to get through as electrified flypaper.

OH MY GOD! I hope whomever we choose for our new leaders have the sense to realize that Gitmo and torture and waterboarding and wiretapping are all part of the same petrifying, putrid shitball as the war in Iraq! It may seem like the typical multi-limbed monster that any government at war would have to deal with, but this is no fucking octopus; it's a goddamn plutoid!

So how do we fix it? Do we land some NASA rover on it to break off a piece at a time and hope that we find the secret formula to destroy it before the piece we broke off grows back, even more stubborn and resistant to reason?

Do we blow the whole mess up, pull out of Iraq, close Guantanamo, free the rendered innocent, indict our war criminals and let the burning meteorite chips fall where they may, even if it's back on us?

The way I like of clearing away this dangerous rock is to drill deep inside it, to the corrupted U.S. foreign policy that is at its core. If we repair our relationship with the world from the inside out, maybe the rest of the big hunk of goppy poo will just die and rot, then dry up and blow away. To me, that is the most elegant solution, though as such, it requires the steady hand of a skilled politician that works with surgical precision, and doesn't just go in there with a chainsaw and an earthmover.

Hacking away at something until it appears to be dead would be bad at so many levels. It would be messy, to be sure, not knowing for certain whether or not we'd slain the beast or just made it angrier. Worse still, another bad leader's cavalier carelessness might start with a moment of exultation (a la "Mission Accomplished") but as the cheers and applause began to die down, a small hiss would penetrate the din, and we would quickly devolve to the dreaded realization that we were getting sucked into oblivion through the black hole of annihilation that we created for ourselves when we chose who we wanted to fight for us. Oh, shit.

I do hope we are wise enough this time to choose properly.

-PBG

For the Sake of Surrender

John McCain will not surrender in Iraq. He continually says so.

In another military cemetery in America, a widow, a mother, a son receive a folded flag. The stars and stripes that draped the coffin of their fallen hero is a flimsy bandage for the bloody scar on their hearts. Each mourner, consumed by pain, let's out a wail, letting all who hear it know that they have reached the point when the deep sorrow they have been feeling has sucked even more emptiness from the depths of their already empty soul.

And we cry with the son, the mother, the widow. We reach our hearts around them and hope to heal them by our embrace.

Some of us wrap ourselves with our own flag, hugging it as close as a rabbi's prayer shawl, as we try to find meaning to the tragedy of this war. Beneath our shroud, we mumble:

For the sake of the wounded and the dead,

we must surrender to the error,

surrender to the folly,

surrender to the truth,

for God's sake.

In any case, we are the enemy to whom we must surrender.

During the Vietnam War peace negotiations, there was a term made popular in Washington: "Peace with Honor." It was a phrase that always seemed odd to me, a way of saving face during an unwinnable war. But it was never considered surrender.

Here and now, in this war, we must pursue honor first, the honor of our own nation. When we vote this November, honor is what's at stake - our global identity as an ethical and honorable nation. Peace may follow; it may not. But at that point, when we stand in good faith to confront our enemies, we will do so as respected, responsible members of the world community.

Surrender? No. Cut and run? Puh-lease.

But when we are united in changing our country? Honor. And peace.

-PBG

Surge Plus 365

A War Going Better Is Not a Better War

Here we are, a year after Bush announced the Surge. Brave men and women have fought and died and many parts of Iraq have settled down, but the flaccid influence of America continues to slowly stir the morass of dysfunctional politics around the world.

Instead of being a banner of freedom we have become the hammer of destruction. It's like slamming a country over the head, and when it raises its bruised and beaten face, Uncle Sam says, "See? I told you freedom wasn't free."

-PBG

America in the Outhouse

A De Facto Empire under a De Facto Siege

America's transcendence to empire did not happen all at once - not when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 in the waning days of the Cold War, not with a mushroom cloud over Hiroshima in 1945, and not with the Rough Riders on San Juan Hill in 1898. Even in the case of the latter, "winning" Puerto Rico and the Philippines was at least as much a bullish attempt to consolidate power for ourselves in the world by exacting revenge on the Spanish as it was an exercise in expansionism and empire. Teddy's audacious actions were just a wink-and-a-nudge, the soft speech compared to the big stick approach to global assertiveness that our country takes in the world now. When is the last time that any rhetoric out of Washington was emblematic of the counsel to "speak softly" (other than the relatively meek reactions to General Musharraf's declaration of martial law last week)?

We spent the first fifty-five years after World War Two gorging on what we believed was the admiration of the planet, the illusions of banal nationalism. We swallowed it whole, and spent the last seven years squeezing out lump after stinky lump of stars-and-stripes shit that we offer back to the world as manna. Clearly there are those who are looking around because they can't believe the stink is ours. Our shit doesn't stink. To believe that it does would be un-American to Mr. Cheney and his minions, traitorous to Ms. Coulter and her ilk.

Why can't we get off the pot and create something more beneficial? Because we have made it a critical component of our foreign policy to turn assholes into allies. The sad thing is, if we were actually doing that, things might be going better. What we are doing instead is trying to turn assholes into Americans (though it's arguably easier to turn Americans into assholes) in some warped notion that if we could get them to think like Americans they wouldn't want to hurt us. Obviously we don't know ourselves very well.

We can't even pay them to think like us. They just don't want to. Despite that reality, and despite that our "verbal support" for Musharraf may be waning, John Negraponte says we will continue to give Pakistan millions of dollars, according to an article in yesterday's New York Times. But the money isn't helping. In America, power is just another commodity that we are trying to buy (at outsourced, bargain rates), which will be used to intimidate and strong arm and waterboard a culture passionate about living their own lives their own way, thank you very much.

Instead of hiring Neanderthal mercenary organizations like Blackwater to muscle them into submission, we should be investing in programs like CARE, the Peace Corps, Doctors Without Borders and organizations with experience in conflict resolution, like the Carter Center.

All the saber rattling engenders nothing except louder protests which brings more saber rattling. "My way or the highway" is a signpost on the road to hell. Let's flush the holier-than-thou threats, elect a sane government and have some movement toward meaningful dialogue.

-PBG

A Sabbatical for War

Letting the Killing Fields Lie Fallow
After the Autumn Harvest

So the seeds sown in the spring surge have been cut, and baled in flag covered coffins. The noble Petraeus, in the regalia of an honored soldier, and the honorable Crocker, intent hidden behind the skirts of his diplomat's robes, pay homage to the lords of state who put up the treasure of the people that they may do the king's bidding and return in glory and praise.

They bring gifts to the lords of the House and the stone walls of the Senate, those same bales of bodies of the honorable and the innocent, piled against the mark on a marble column etched MMI. They bow low as they present the lords with the grisly gift. "My lords, I bring you the promise of military progress," says the noble Petraeus, eyes still on his shoe tops. But from the bench, the chair merely clears his throat.

"This," says the chair as he glances at his fellow legislators, "this is what he calls progress?" The disappointed dais shakes its collective head.

"But my lords," says Petraeus, edging his eyes up from his still bent head, "You cannot call this anything but a good sign. The enemy is at least partially, somewhat subdued. See how our divine guidance has enabled us to shrink his harvest! Why, by next summer, we will even be able to give him fewer seeds to sow."

"Correct me if I am wrong, Petraeus," responds the chair, "but aren't you the one who recommended giving the enemies of our republic the extra seed with which to sow their killing fields, those self-same seeds that you now say you will soon rescue from the scythe of our country's foes?"

Petraeus shuffled his feet together and examined his chest of medals. "I never said it would be easy," he offered meekly. "I am merely a soldier in service to my king."

At this point, the court jester and her friends began their taunts in an allegro chorus:

"Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah.
You brought the seeds.
You brought the knife.
You dared the enemies to take more life.



"Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.
You say in Anbar
The enemy scurries,
But here you bring us our children to bury!


Owww. Owww. Oww. Owww."

Showing bemusement, the chair calls for the jesters to leave, lest he reveal his amusement with their song and incur the wrath of the king. "Get them out," he shouts, and when they are gone, turns to the ambassador. "Do you see the clamor of the people, Mr. Crocker? Surely you can guarantee them that all this blood and treasure is worth the cost."

"Well, it is worth it to those our deaths and money protect," says Crocker proudly. "But," he adds, "I cannot guarantee victory."

"Then woe to our country and God bless our people and its vacuous leadership," concludes the chair. "Woe to us all."

And in the hallways, someone is singing, "Woe. Woe. Woe. Woe."

-------------------

So goes the conversation after six years of conflict, six years of sowing the killing fields with dedicated, patriotic men and women for our enemies to harvest "over there so they don't kill us over here."

Rare is the harvest that cuts down life to no purpose.

For whose consumption do our brothers and sisters bleed and die? For us or for our enemies?

If it is for me that they die, as we start the seventh year of the conflict of a generation, let's give the war a sabbatical. I wish that by next September 11, we allow the killing fields to lie fallow, to sow no more seeds, that we may allow honor to recover. Then, after another year, we can plant the seeds of peace, that we can all eat of its fruit and restore the devalued soul of our great nation.

-PBG

Power Failure

Last Power Standing

Rockets and bombs, tank tracks and bullets, leave blood-soaked boots standing burnt and empty. In the flash of mortar fire, a fallen, legless marine loses his hold on purpose, and lets his life go, seeping, into the sand. "I will not be the last to die," his mind says when he finally releases. "I will not be the last."

Meanwhile, a half a planet away, the Superpower says that more are needed. More must go. More will die. They see honor in turning cannon fodder into heroes. They are doing them a favor. It's a slam-dunk.

The war goes on. The bullets cost money. The money is borrowed. I will not be the last to pay. I will not be the last. We were not asked if we wanted to pay for this war, this failure. To finance a war, we are usually asked to sacrifice. That's why in World War Two everyone had a chance to be a hero, whether you held a rifle or a rivet gun, because everyone sacrificed. So this is not stopping Hitler. This is a slam dunk, a walk in the park. It's Grenada. It's bombing Libya. Only it's not.

They want us to think this is a different kind of war. It is not, except that with this one, each death does not lead us closer to victory. These soldier's sacrifices just disappear into invisible coffins, hidden under the tainted banner of a country led by stubborn and greedy fools.

Even now, NOW, that two-thirds of the country thinks this hole thing is a colossal mistake, that we are tired of young people dying and killing for a mistake in which none of us want to share, even when the administration's integrity is smaller than the debris in a super-collider, they are still afraid to let us see and honor the soldiers' coffins. What do they have to lose by giving us at least that?

Children who have yet to be born will be paying for this war, and not just with money. Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld didn't just send the military to war; they sent our country to war, all of us. When we finally turn off the lights on this thing, we will limp home, a weak and wounded nation. In less than ten years, the enemy we are so hot to destroy will have more political clout than we do now, and all the money will be in Russia and China.

We may have won the Cold War, but somehow, in the smoke of the World Trade Center we got turned around and did a face-plant into the hottest war in modern history.

It's time to learn that we don't have to be the biggest or the strongest or the richest country. That is not what makes us the best. It's the simple, human things that make us great, like a sense of community, a drive toward tolerance and equal opportunity, and a work ethic that revolves around creative solutions. It's all of those things coming together that make this country one of the best. Those are the reasons people still come here from all corners of the planet, even from our own backyard.

I don't care if we are powerful. I just want us to be good.

-PBG