The major media has decided to start counting bodies. If you are fifty years old, this should awake a long series of memories:
Official and complete death counts for Iraqis nationwide are unavailable. But a count by The Associated Press found that around 1,361 Iraqis were killed from April 1 to April 30 - 10 times the figure of at least 136 U.S. troops who died during the same period. AP
Sounds like the old Huntley-Brinkley Report, night after endless night. Vietnam by the numbers -- a cruel, attritive conflagration, in which territory, temporarily won or lost, meant less than the kill rate. Ten to one was a good week. Relatively speaking.
In the end, all that was left to point to were those numbers. And trying as hard as they could, the US military couldn't kill all the persons those numbers stood for. It was their country. They were born, grew up, died there. Like Iraq.
Back then the military was obsessed with the kill rate; now, they claim uniform indifference for either civilian or combatant casualty figures. It's policy, down the line. Or was.
AP did the above count, but something has changed with Fallujah. For the first time (that I was able to notice) on April 22, 2004, the US military started to count kills:
"[Health Minister Khudayer] Abbas said a total of 305 Iraqis were killed in fighting in other parts of Iraq this month. Added to the Fallujah toll, the total comes to 576 Iraqis killed since April 1.By contrast, U.S. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez said this week that U.S. forces have killed 1,000 insurgents around the country this month." ABCNews
If this is a hearts and minds war (and it is, for the territorial question has generally been answered), then the recourse to body counts does not bode well. A negative indicator, so to speak. Ten to one? There are twenty-five million Iraqis. Peace Conference, anyone? (Count me in.)
. . . Corporate Style.
The New Iraq may not be Camelot quite yet, but already it resembles the Dark Ages. This bright new wave of democracy, moral clarity and human rights washing over Iraq is actually as dark and fetid as a crude oil spill, and so deeply vile it may tarnish Saddam Hussein's own black human rights achievements.
First, six American troops were charged with cruelty involving sexual humiliation and torture. All six face court martial. At least eight other persons, including a brigadier general, have been suspended from their duties. A day later, as eight other investigations into British abuses continue, UK soldiers have been charged with, among other benighted practices, urinating on a naked, hooded prisoner, breaking his jaw, and smashing his teeth. Now, the UK Guardian reveals that "private contractors" (God Bless America) have been in charge of prison activities at Abu Gharib, where US troops were photographed performing some of their dehumanizing acts. It gets worse:
A military report into the Abu Ghraib case - parts of which were made available to the Guardian - makes it clear that private contractors were supervising interrogations in the prison, which was notorious for torture and executions under Saddam Hussein.One civilian contractor was accused of raping a young male prisoner but has not been charged because military law has no jurisdiction over him.Guardian Unlimited
If no cases of cannibalism can be found, who dare says the aftermath of the invasion hasn't gone smoothly?
First, destroy their libraries, their ancient art, and their hospitals. While you get the oil pumping, bring in 20,000 corporate hired guns, then stand back and watch what free enterprise can do. Voila! The utter deregulation of Iraq is complete, and even the new corporate-run rape rooms, free of all restraint, are getting things done the Dark Ages way, one brutal sodomizing and one jaw breaking at a time.
Somebody just turned out the light at the end of the tunnel. And the moon has gone down. Camelot was fiction: the New Iraq is dead.
You will read this often enough these days: "The military said another soldier died in a vehicle accident in western Baghdad." MSNBC
Dig a little deeper into this accident, and you'll find an April 29, 2004 Defense Department News Release:
DoD Identifies Army Casualty Pfc. Marquis A. Whitaker, 20, of Columbus, Ga., died April 27 in Scania, Iraq, after falling from a bridge. His vehicle was hit from behind by a civilian truck and left hanging off the side of the bridge. Whitaker attempted to climb out of the vehicle but fell. DOD
Accidental?
"Suspicious circumstances" would be a more apt understatement of the facts. But that would get people thinking.
One recalls a litany of other fatal "accidents" in Iraq, vehicles overturning and vehicles sliding into waterways. Helicopters falling from the sky.
Iraqis are not the only population, it seems, against whom the Department of Defense and a compliant media are using PsychOps. But this story is as old as Vietnam. As things got worse then, the Pentagon's figures started looking better and better. As Iraq slides further into the whirling chaos, it's no coincidence that the Official Speaking Machine is being used again to weaken or deny the brutal facts. In war, the weather is always fogged, but the traffic is always in murder, and truth, as they say, is only the accidental traveler.
The alleged crimes have led to these charges: assault, maltreatment, indecent acts against prisoners, conspiracy, dereliction of duty, cruelty. The photos of the accused troops that have come to light show them giving the thumbs up to the camera as they humiliate and further harm their prisoners.
And these are mostly young American soldiers, acting as military police. Incidents like these especially emphasize that war can swiftly lead ordinary men into depravity. Isn't that what John Kerry said back in '71? And he's unfit to lead?
It makes you realize, though it's no consolation, that it's probably best that hotheads like Limbaugh, O'Reilly, and Savage ducked their military service. When reporter Walter Rodgers rolled into Iraq at the spearhead of the invasion assault, talking wildly of Iraqi farmers being awed at America's military might, he could have sobered up for a moment to quite safely predict that many inglorious days like this would come. As the stateside sword-rattlers also could have. History's chiefest warning is that war is ruin, and no one who participates escapes its blast.
And thumbs up to the neo-cons for giving us this opportunity to view the inevitable fruits of their own sabre-toothed policies. For we have seen the enemy today, and the resemblance is remarkable.
In his congressional testimony today, the Pentagon's second in command, Paul Wolfowitz, responded pitifully when he told the committee the number of US troop deaths so far in Iraq. "It's approximately 500, of which -- I can get the exact numbers -- approximately 350 are combat deaths."
That was true enough in January of this year, but things on the ground have gotten worse in recent months.
"A good leader," a veteran Green Beret once told me, "always has a sharp pencil." If Wolfowitz has a pencil, which is doubtful, his lead broke a few months back. Add 230 deaths to Wolfowitz's uninformed response for the correct figure.
Just to catch you up, there have also been several thousand wounded, sir.
Leadership? In an apparently heartfelt way, this administration sometimes piously reminds us that each one of these deaths represents the ultimate sacrifice for country. But who's really counting? Not Wolfowitz. Somebody give this leader a pencil and several thousand sympathy cards. The ones with the heartfelt sayings.
The breaking news is US forces may be relenting in the bloody standoff that Falluhjah has become. In what seems a desperate but much needed move, U.S. forces will turn over Fallujah to an 1,100 man contingent headed by a former Saddam Hussein general, if these early reports are correct.
But as the occupation devolves into a widening landscape of shelled minarets, wrecked residences, and burnt vehicles, military solutions have proven futile. If General Jay Gardner had had his way, elections would have been held six months ago.
War is not, as they say, the continuation of diplomacy by other means. Organized violence is, of course, the uncivilized and constantly mutating problem in Iraq, and it is a dead end. Changing the brand name of the occupation forces in Fallujah without committing to a stand down from violence would simply be a reversion of the problem. But the military-industrial complex is in full swing, and civilized answers are not certain to be forthcoming in either in Fallujah, Najaf, or elsewhere.
Elections without delay, supervised by the U.N. or even an ad hoc international body, is the one solid answer that deserves immediate success across Iraq.
Changing the military logo in Fallujah doesn't change much. And while much needs to be changed quickly across Iraq, Fallujah itself could and should be a starting place for American disengagement. At the same time, dropping the phoney reconstruction efforts throughout Iraq is vital. For who is forestalling the promised Iraqi elections? Cherchez la cash. War is the continuation of business by other means.
The Wal-Marts and Starbucks can come later. Right now, Fallujah needs to be demilitarized, and a good faith effort might succeed. But Iraq doesn't need a corporate make-over, much less an an American or an American-made armed force to protect it. What it does it need are elections, in Fallujah, in Baghdad, in Mosul, in Bashra.
It's not really a chicken or the egg question, is it? No, there's an unambigious, humorless answer to this one. Certainly the first carnage that fell on Fallujah was of the American-branded Shock and Awe variety, although others now are focusing their near-sighted gaze at the killing of four civilian contractors/security guards/mercenaries as the flashpoint moment for Fallujah.
Have they also forgotten the massacre of dozens of demonstrators in the streets of Fallujah by U.S. troops a year ago?
For those who began the carnage, the recent words of a Fallujah resident will be of no comfort: "Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. And the one who started it will be the one to be blamed."
The ending (cluster bombs in urban areas) looks to be as miserable as the beginning (cluster bombs in urban areas). Which bring up another question, one that's being buried in the rubble of Iraq cities and that's also become lost in the deteriorating rhetoric of the U.S. occupation. Which did the U.S. lose first: their hearts or their minds? After all, we know what's happening to the bodies.
Here's something hot off the AP Wire: "Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, once considered one of the world's most dangerous men, came to Europe for the first time in 15 years Tuesday, offering business deals and an olive branch -- along with a veiled threat to return to the 'days of explosive belts' if provoked by 'evil' from the West."
Didn't Bush convert and baptize him just yesterday?
Certain words will never find their way into print here, for instance "ethnic cleansing" and "spin." The first means mass expulsion and genocide. The second means dissemblance, or just plain lying. If you talk like them, you're already on board.
Another is "liberal media." The "liberal media" is actually the conservative media, though both those on the left and the right use the term copiously--with those on the left shooting themselves in the foot before pointing whatever loaded weapons they thought they had. Why deny what never existed? Start on clear ground. Put this phrase into common discourse: Conservative Media.
Consider the smear campaign against John Kerry's war record. As only a certainly conservative media could, they had this bogus story headlined everywhere in a matter of a few hours. Similarly, as only an entrenched, administration-serving media could, for four years the conservative press has failed to tell the simple, sordid story of how George Bush lost his wings and was then required to serve an extra six months in the Air National Guard. And, at this point, what does invoking the myth (even if only to deride it) of the "liberal media" have to do with describing the day to day operations of the actually conservative major media? A word oft repeated. . .
The conservative media, including the New York Times, feigned innocence on securing and publishing photographs of the U.S. war dead from Iraq. Until someone else forced their hand. And it wasn't Fox News. A clear starting point for analyzing this proprogandistic omission is to specify the media as the conservative Hydra it is.
Today the spider web word is "sovereignty." They are inviting you to use the term, even if you deny its propriety. Even if you deny its possibility. They'll settle for "imperfect sovereignty," and still have you beat. Call it what it is: just plain lying. By the current administration. In words that are repeated ad nauseum by the conservative media. But cheer up, Patriot, Clear Skies are ahead.
A Poem of Lions
September 1973September and liberty is the mirage Suez
The sunstruck vibrate like beings in peachy Bermuda
And pod glazed, an invaluable disbursement of spawned
Objects in the worst scene of melodrama
Every excitement accoutered, the mad made beachrunners.Only the wide-shoed boys, the penis-cutters
Dance together in meeting halls to water music.
Rubbing Asia between their fingers like magic,
Insistent with ebony club rings, ebullient in old helmets,
Fists blameless they may seize and fuck the Korean women
Along the silver fences of the refugee impoundmentsGarrulous with assertion in sea-blue roadsters
Dishonorable with liquor and cash, they brawl together
On the beach over an American girl. They are flagrant lions
Gnarled and delirious among women with brilliant manes that crash
The scene like thunder unperplexed by freedom.
MEMO: "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States"
Condoleezza Rice would have us believe that the title of the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing was just old scuttlebutt. The entire document, in fact, was ‘historical,’ that is, nothing of the moment then. How wrong an interpretation can be when disagreeing history happens, just weeks later. A forcibly awakened administration was finally alert to Bin Laden. But by March 2002, the administration was again slumbering on Bin Laden terrorism, because they had dreamed up a real nightmare of a Middle East war. The first real toad had appeared on the neocons' fantastically long lawns. Like many an ecological disaster, this illegal political debacle was drenched with oil.
Both the determined Bin Laden and the telltale memo have had a tenacious if generally clandestine durability. But only a few months later, it seemed that Bin Laden was old news and that the hidden memo had become all but unwritten. The turn from Afghanistan to Iraq has itself turned out to be a grand waffling, accompanied by solemn but hollow assurances. The Bin Laden mission has never been accomplished.
Now in April 2004, the massive diversion of resources into Iraq and a visibly threadbare record of shoring up key domestic terror opportunities show the current administration still sleeps at the wheel. Worse, when awake, it veers all over the map and then ends up vacationing in Texas. Whatever sustained commitment there actually is for hunting Bin Laden and his denizens continues to be eclipsed. Their brashly elective war burgeons, requiring 20,000 more troops. The rest of the administration’s energy is spent avoiding cameras, committees, and microphones. Despite this administration’s parsimony for admitting failed facts and mangled tasks, an unwillingness which has become legendary, their disarray is now undeniably and visibly pandemic. The public is having quite a show.
What Has Happened
Even with the consolations of bicameral majorities and an opposition party that generally agrees with them on taxes, war, and trimming the social agenda, the Bush administration is falling fast by its own executive disorder. Domestically, the public has seen recriminating attacks from a heavy roster of the administration’s own officials, as well as foot-dragging, cover-ups and career sabotage. With phoney drug cards, Old Testament intolerance and the Endless War as their best election props, it seems that, as the Angry Simpleton once said, "Cards have been played." With deuces and treys for the environment, education and health, it’s time to go fish. Bin Laden’s capture is attainable, but their international success rate is approaching zero.
The public has witnessed careening policy courses and the failure of initiatives from Turkey to North Korea to Iraq. The public has seen in Afghanistan a slippage back to tribalism, the heroin trade, and the Taliban. In Haiti, it has looked on perplexedly (because the news is thin and uncritical) at the overthrow of an elected but helpless democracy with weapons provided by the Bush administration. They’ve also heard the administration speak in agreement about state murder in Israel (church goers and the wheelchair bound unexcepted). This week the public heard the first details about the administration’s sea change to openly hawkish unilateralism for Israel, the nation-breaking approval for the liquidation of Palestine into "already existing major Israeli population centers."
The public has also seen the results of recent elections in allied Spain, a harbinger for the Italian, British, and Australian elections that will spell the end for Bush’s poorly cobbled together Coalition. Finally, amid so much domestic and international misdirection, the public finds out that this administration, lost in a sandstorm of its own making, also has a long history of lost focus on what it claimed as its special mission and immovable purpose: defending and revenging Bin Laden terrorism.
What Hasn’t Happened
Ignored in the months before 911, Bin Laden quickly became neglected again in the months shortly after 911. As early as March 13, 2002, Bush was pettishly saying, "I don't know where Bin Laden is. I have no idea and I really don't care. It's not that important." Cherchez la terroristes? The way this attention-deficit administration sidestepped Bin Laden terrorism before 911 is regrettable. That they deflated that effort as they invaded Iraq has become just another example of the administration's own flip-flopping through history. Whether you talk of the ever-shifting rationalizations for beginning that war or of the frequently altered plans for restoring Iraq, the on again off again handling of the Bin Laden threat from 2000 to 2003 also clearly reveals the administration's vacillating and unnerving leadership.
Their myth about Bin Laden today? In his April 13, 2004 news conference, Bush said of him ". . . we will stay on the offense until we bring people to justice." No details of this sustaining offense were offered by Bush, and the AP and UPI wires have no references to it. In fact, Bin Laden's only serious moment in the cross hairs was November 2001 to March 2002.
Three years later, the headline declaration of the August 6 memo remains dangerously accurate. Al Qaeda is not history and Bin Laden is not history. A thousand days after making his darkest scrawl on history (yet), Bin Laden is free. By conservative accounts, Al Qaeda’s more numerous and internationalized than when Bush, Cheney, and Rice decided to start a second war before decisively concluding the first.
Domestically, not enough has happened well. The combination of stirring rhetoric, inadequate security preparations, and too few successful terrorist prosecutions have added up to a mediocre performance on antiterrorism here. Remember the anthrax killer? Or killers? Who knows? Although there has, indeed, been an understandable glut of get-tough rhetoric on terrorism from 911 onward, lately most of those words have been misapplied to Iraq, and they have backfired mortally and with fierce frequency. Not nearly enough (less than 3%) of the Defense budget has been spent on assuring a comprehensive domestic defense. The borders and ports are porous to terrorists. After three years, the terrorists that Ashcroft and his Federal forces have caught and convicted are more than a dozen less than the original nineteen. They all could be housed locally in any small county jail.
Internationally, in spite of some cooperative successes, there’s been nearly too much Bin Laden style terrorism for a weary globe to bear. The administration’s single resolute devotion (to essentially truculent solutions) has borne its poisoned fruit: Madrid and Istanbul have suffered heavy terrorist blows. Nationals from Finland to Japan to Italy have been kidnapped and murdered in Iraq, probably with Al Qaeda connivance. The Taliban is resurgent. Indonesia has been bombed. Opening new statist wars is not the answer, but that has been the US’s answer so far and it continues to have strong advocates in the administration. But perhaps they are learning what must always be the way with endless wars, that they are back at the beginning. In this case, the inability to catch Bin Laden is a failure of the first order. The second failure is Iraq.
Why It Hasn’t Happened
Is the administration serious about the self-described war footing it claims we are on? Compare the thousand days Bin Laden has successfully avoided capture with the five hundred days that Bush has spent vacationing while nominally in office and you get some idea of what's not been happening across the American top. In rare, non-fund raising appearances, Cheney still absurdly claims WMD found, while the shrewder Rumsfeld now limits his own Delphic mumbo jumbo to a simple parsing of verbs like "know." All the while these major fiddlers play, dissemble or obfuscate, real history takes serious strides forward. The systemically leaderless Al Qaeda has been dispersing and probably reduplicating for the last twenty five months, while our Leaderless President has been paying inordinate attention to things no more palpable than brush cutting and bass fishing. Oh, steroids, gay marriage and hydrogen cars. War footing? A sense of immediacy? Of sacrifice? Of seriousness? As Bush so candidly said of Bin Laden on March, 13, 2002, "He’s not our priority."
But the sinkhole of Iraq is. Its growing complexities seem to have somewhat creased the face of our top executive. Rested after seventy-one weeks and three days of holiday, Bush, of course, does not look as Lyndon Johnson looked on the day he admitted Vietnam had whipped him. But around the edges, Bush begins to look beaten. (Though in this political age where appearances are as crafted as the facts, perhaps his wane look is calculated.) Nonetheless, the invasion and policing of Iraq continues to be a black hole that sucks away the attention and the dollars needed to defend against domestic strikes by terrorists--not to say thwarting the programs and resources needed to improve the lives of ordinary Americans.
Well known to all, while more troops and their inevitable corporate camp followers are called up to march away toward Najaf and Fallujah, our cargo-rich ports and our chemical and manufacturing plants remain wide open to devastating subversion and massive human destruction. That's the part of this history that's become "historical" to this administration, something they have now accepted as long-standing fact but do too little about. Seen your local air raid warden lately? (He's probably in Iraq where they're still looking for WMD). And chemical plant security measures are costly for businesses.
The plain and pointed title of that grudgingly declassified* August 6 report looms as true now as when Bush and company originally ignored it and inadvertently made way for 911. That leadership preferred instead to spend defense dollars greasing the skids for a boondoggle missile defense system that was profitable for their political contributors, but expensive and ineffective, except in tests now admitted to have been rigged. That system has nothing to do with thwarting terrorism, and Rice canceled her September 11, 2001 speech promoting it. It’s left for us to wonder if a mental picture of that captioned memo flashed inside her that day.
The compelling message of that terrorism report seems lost again on our distracted, geographically misplaced leaders. But then this administration is coming apart at the seams, as the unworkable plan in Iraq puts holy shrines under siege and calls for thousands more troops to quell a popular disturbance instigated by a curtailment of free speech. Exactly prescient in August 2001, that memo's durable title speaks just as urgently now. Iraq has been humiliated by the gun-wielding apparatus of indefinite occupation and sees its future sovereignty being co-opted by the construction of fourteen US military bases across the country–-the latest reasons to stir Al Qaeda to act again against the American population.
Long forgotten is the administration’s claim of 30,000 troops in Iraq by August 2003. Afghanistan, too, has been effectively forgotten, except by its thinly garrisoned occupiers to whom it continues to offer perils. Thus, the biggest bait and switch scam in American foreign affairs has involved abandoning the hard hunt for Bin Laden for an easy grab at oil fields. It was, from this administration’s outset, the plan most vigorously pursued. Bin Laden has only served as the adventitious excuse for the oil administration’s main thrust: the realization of long nurtured ambitions by rapacious and imperative means. Oil first, vengeance second, whispereth Cheney. And to poor George he says, Relax.
Thus at the top we watch in dismay as a self-styled War President inexplicably takes time for thirty-three trips into the brush of rural Texas and dozens more forays into the juniper hedges of idyllic Camp David. In search of terrorists? No, catching Bin Laden has been a study in delay and convenience, not necessity. And no, historically Bin Laden has headquartered himself, not in Texas, but in Afghanistan, working long hours, "determined to attack." Again? You bet. Read the memo. Historically, not that it matters, it holds up well.
_____
*Declassified but purged. The actual memo is a full ten pages longer than the meager page and a half that was released. Redaction Alert!
As I came across an excerpt of George Bush's February, 2001 speech to the Joint Session of
Congress, I realized the past is looking better every day, relatively speaking. But the rub's the
future, which could turn out much worse than the admittedly problematic past, and worse
even than the very messy, conflagrating present. Somewhere in all this (in the recalcitrant present, unfortunately) a descisive break must be made.
Bush tendered that speech back at the end of the comparatively good old days, just about the time the recession was beginning to wreak havoc on mutual funds, when Enron was surreptitiously bilking billions from unsuspecting Californians, and when disreputable schemes for controlling Iraq had only been tacitly approved. The good old days. Sad to say, there's been another marathon's distance of downhill racing in human affairs since then. How long and low can it go? Low. But, at least, here's a warmed-up portion of that compassionate 2001 speech, by way of Pandagon:
"America today is a nation with great challenges, but greater resources. An artist using statistics as a brush could paint two very different pictures of our country. One would have warning signs: increasing layoffs, rising energy prices, too many failing schools, persistent poverty, the stubborn vestiges of racism. Another picture would be full of blessings: a balanced budget, big surpluses, a military that is second to none, a country at peace with its neighbors, technology that is revolutionizing the world, and our greatest strength -- concerned citizens who care for our country and care for each other."
The misshapen metaphor apart, today the painter's palette has dried to monochromatic shades of
failure. At home and internationally, color the good old days gone. Or if you want to ponder
Bush's badly mixed-up trope, all the painters can scrape from the bottom of their buckets are
zeros: the country's losing jobs, while real income for the employed and underemployed keeps going down year after year, and nothing's going right in Iraq when both their children and our soldiers are dying. What is the state of the country after Bush's disastrous adventuring in the Middle East and his thrice sweeping out of the national treasury? It doesn't take a soothsayer to know. Blessed, as he says? No, fragged over there and busted over here is nearer the truth.
The Clinton era begins to look beckoningly good, unless you are Serbian, Iraqi, or Palestinian. Of course, for lots of Americans, the Clinton decade was no walk in the Green Zone. The American
social contract shrank. Health care was forgotten, while poverty became formalized as indenture
under Welfare to Work, and imprisonment topped the Soviet Union at its worst. The storm wasn't
just gathering then, it was already hard times for plenty of non-dotcom Americans. But now, after
a 200 billion dollar invasion and a trillion dollar tax break for the Four Hundred, the pattern of descent clarifies. It's been a gradual but steady trip down, this recessive transfer of wealth euphemized as globalization. Thus both aisles of the corporate party have put in long years stacking the deck against ordinary folk. Recently, however, that controlled descent has had an ugly Roman landing, and war is openly tolerated by some leaders as a necessary extension of our roughly enterprising culture. The good olden days, indeed, of moving armies and forcible cultural appropriation.
And hey, mister, have you got a dime? Sorry, no. It's the largest deficit ever in America, and social progress here will have to wait longer than ever. Hoover, remembered for the jobless Depression, did better with jobs than his junior Bush. Further, Bush has let the country fall to a place lower than the considerable depths and sufferings of economic depression. In these present days, what even darker, more regrettable memories are we forging for ourselves? War, after all, is the total failure of the human spirit, and we've been led into a moral tarpit thick with a ruthless and monied cronyism that now relies even on mercenaries to help turn its foreign, no-bid profits. There are now at least fifteen thousand no-flag soldiers in Iraq, carrying out the instructions of their non-military employers. Death is now a corporate tool. How low is that?
All this has taken a deal of time to mature into its present rottenness. That the nineties look rosy is just another indication of Bush's particularly profound descent into the low regions of international and national affairs. But to ponder for a shuddering moment the very least regions of Hell, what would four more years of these policies in action look like? A Further Study in Black? You bet, if there's left light enough to see by. Let us hope the last train wreck has already happened. Four more? What, indeed, would that look like? Somebody, please, turn out the lights as we leave the deadly, degrading circumstances of these last bungled years.
That time flies is the essence of any good news these days. The present has never more importunately deserved to become the past. If it can become a shameful relic convincingly renounced on our way up to clearer, higher ground, the break will then have been made. It's never just this: how high, how far can we go? It's this: When do we leave the station?
In this age of the Incredible Shrinking Man (skyrocketing health care, the curtailment of due process, the loss of real income, the loss of overtime pay), there's one guy who's still got everything he started with and more. George Bush has got it made, and he's living the life of Reilly, extra large. But then he always has.
From prep school to the National Guard to Harvard, this guy's seen some long stretches of smooth sailing. But no rest for the well rested, it keeps getting better and better. In 2000, he accepted the supreme gift of the election with a practiced nonchalance born of many unreasonable but fulfilled expectations. He scored 25 on the pilot's test? Welcome aboard! He snorted coke and was nabbed for DUI? Forget about it! He can't remember the names of his Coalition allies? Who does? Now, between vacations at the Crawford spread, trips to comfy Camp David, (and flying around the country in circles after the Trade Towers collapsed), Bush has racked up, you won't believe it, 500 vacation days. And even though he lost his wings long ago, no telling how many frequent flyer miles. Could happen to anybody! So take 500 days of paid vacation!
That's a heap of time, a profligate amount. Seventy-one weeks. And three days. In less than four years. While others beat the mean streets looking for work at a loss of pay, or, worse, leave their families and jobs to fight and die in Iraq (many with their wings on), George Bush is stateside and flush, as he always has been. And, thus, very well rested for the gifted future ahead, I imagine. But don't compare your benefits package (if you have one) to his. That would be class warfare! And besides, you've got Clear Skies, Healthy Forests, and Flextime!
Washington March
Baghdad thrived behind their box hedges
near the small shingled houses I notice still stand
but Huntington’s green roof has burned down and
the back cedar gate and the Martin house are gone
the sharp holly hedgerows hiding tulips, irises and
jonquils and monarchs and fireflies are all gone
and nothing of summer or Persia is left.
Young James reads the maps, naming off cities
one by one, as we reach them. In a rental car
littered with schedules and tickets, bothered by NPR
I dream less certainly of misplaced keys and the lapsed
blue sheets of old builder’s plans.
Arrived, in DC we walk under the branches
of cherry trees, still reluctant
on the National Mall. Through their complicated bareness
police photographers on the building tops
aim to intimidate the crowds.
But then walking up from the Metro, in leather
and nearly late, the thin young figure of Liberty,
her hair spiked for Peace, a book of war poems in her hands.
So beautiful and bold and brave--
her eyes lively and shining much clearer today
Than her New York sister, the half goddess who stands
in her cold April stone-colored water.
At home in milder mornings, we measure,
make square, paint. Outside, Martian saucers of may apple
appear in unwanted utterance near the garden.
Inside the news is war.
Yesterday we discover, downed by storm
the huge willow bole, already green with lancet leaves. Cutting
its struck branches, we go back through days, nights
but can't recall when or where Persia was at all.