Life in the American bubble
As vicious as the onslaught against Lebanon is, we might as well recall that in Iraq there is the equivalent of nearly two Qana massacres on average every day.
Nonetheless the US President has the audacity to present Iraq as a model of democracy which Russia should strive to emulate, to Vladimir Putin’s face, in front of press.
How come this monster’s approval ratings are not in single digits? One reason is that a majority of Americans are blitheringly ignorant imbeciles of the kind that thinks the sun orbits the earth, or more ludicrously still, that “history will give the US credit for bringing freedom and democracy” to Iraq. However, I suspect there is an even more egregious reason as well.
Most Americans simply do not care about non-Americans. They couldn’t care less about what goes on in Iraq insofar as it doesn’t affect Americans, especially themselves. If you doubt this, consider the runup to the 2000 Presidential election, where it was a commonplace that one couldn’t find two Americans in a row that cared about foreign policy. Otherwise, a man whose experience with the world abroad was pretty much limited to Mexican hookers would never have come within a bloodless coup d’état’s reach of the Oval Office. Even the rediscovery of the outer world on the morning of September 11 2001 had nothing to do with an interest in the welfare of same and everything to do with restoring, by whichever means, the illusion of living on a planet of one’s own, shielded by the seas, a ferocious military, and Star Wars from the rest of the pale blue dot.
That’s why the ad hoc, ex post facto justification for illegally invading Iraq — “spreading freedom and democracy” — would have been ridiculous even without the civil war. The American people would never have given a used kleenex for “spreading freedom and democracy” to a country which, after four years of continuous coverage, two thirds of young adults cannot find on the map.
Not only do the vast majority of Americans not know that their so-called great nation has sponsored the worst of the worst war criminals and murderous despots to walk the earth since World War II, including but not limited to Mobutu Sese-Seko, Pol Pot (after the genocide!), Mohammad Suharto, the Shah of Persia, Jonas Savimbi, Augusto Pinochet, Gulbuddin Hekmatayar, Fulgencio Batista, Rafael Trujillo, Manuel Noriega, Hissène Habré, Carlos Castillo Armas, Antonio Somoza, and Saddam Hussein. They also wouldn’t care if told.
A nation’s thoughts and dreams and priorities are reflected in its movies. I honestly cannot think of a single Hollywood movie, apart from cheesy “historical” dramas like Ben Hur, wherein the world outside “America” appears as anything but a scary place for Americans to be at risk. In the ongoing movie cycle called Iraqi Freedom, US soldiers and Marines are at risk from ungrateful savages; and to the limited extent that there is a movement to call off the operation, it has precious little to do with any wish of the Iraqis. It has to do with the wish of Americans for a happy ending, wherein their heroes helicopter off to safety as the $1-2 trillion set explodes in the background. Titles.
Among my most dogeared books of poetry is Carolyn Forche’s “The Country Beteen Us.” I read it many times before 9/11 and have reread it many times since.
In “The Return” she writes:
“Your problem is not your life as it is
in America, not that your hands, as you
tell me, are tied to do something. It is
that you were born to an island of greed
and grace where you have this sense
of yourself as apart from others. It is
not your right to feel powerless.”
The title poem, which is the last one in the book ends with these lines:
“In the mass graves, a woman’s hand
caged in the ribs of her child,
a single stone in Spain beneath olives,
in Germany the silent windy fields,
in the Soviet Union where the snow
is scarred with wire, in Salvador
where the blood will never soak
into the ground, everywhere and always
go after that which is lost.
There is a cyclone fence between
ourselves and the slaughter and behind it
we hover in a calm protected world like
netted fish, exactly like netted fish.
It is neither the beginning nor the end
of the world, and the choice is ourselves
or nothing.”
My sense after 9/1l was that the cyclone fence had been penetrated. Bush has been doing his best to resurrect it by making statements like, “We’d rather fight them over there than here.” While I understand this desire, I think it is naive, short-sighted and as ill-advised as trying to put an evil genie back in the bottle or trying to go back to sleep after a rude awakening.
To read another great Forche poem “The Colonel,” go here:
http://www.starve.org/teaching/intro-poetry/colonel.html
Comment by Gal — August 7, 2006 @ 7:43 pm
There are a number of vets from the Iraqi war running for Congress this fall. Mostly as Democrats. It will be interesting to see how well they fare in November.
Brian Turner, a vet and poet, wrote the following while serving in Iraq:
Here, Bullet
If a body is what you want,
then here is bone and gristle and flesh.
Here is the clavicle-snapped wish,
the aorta’s opened valves, the leap
thought makes at the synaptic gap.
Here is the adrenaline rush you crave,
that inexorable flight, that insane puncture
into heat and blood. And I dare you to finish
what you’ve started. Because here, Bullet,
here is where I complete the word you bring
hissing through the air, here is where I moan
the barrel’s cold esophagus, triggering
my tongue’s explosives for the rifling I have
inside of me, each twist of the round
spun deeper, because here, Bullet,
here is where the world ends, every time.
http://www.alicejamesbooks.org/turner_interview.html
Comment by Gal — August 7, 2006 @ 8:16 pm
Thank you yet again. I loved all of those.
I hope this rant didn’t offend you. Sometimes one feels like scrapping all nuance and diplomacy… and doing so is perhaps a privilege of being but a humble blogger, as opposed to, for instance, POTUS.
I wish godspeed to any anti-war vet running for Congress.
Comment by Sirocco — August 7, 2006 @ 9:52 pm
Nah, you didn’t offend me. I think Americans have been living in a bubble as you put it. Maybe that’s why we elected a president who some have referred to as “the Bubble Boy.” I’ve noticed that Americans are not fond of seeing themselves through the eyes of other people unless the portrait mirrored back to them is a flattering one.
Comment by Gal — August 8, 2006 @ 12:41 am