When I commented it on it at the time, farther up the road I called it:
The Final Cut
This week marks the beginning, five years ago, of the "Shock and Awe" with which the liberation of Iraq began. Being almost 56 years old and realizing I've learned next to nothing about myself, or anyone for whom I care, I'm not sure what I think, hope or pray we might learn about ourselves as we look back at what is the first five years of the Last War on Earth.
I came across a reference earlier this morning to The Thirty Years War which, for a moment, I found comforting until I realized the name is a tag developed by historians long after its end and NOT by the leaders who provoked it or the soldiers who fought it.
This will sound cynical, and I'd apologize for that, but it's not like you didn't already realize it, but even the critics of President George W Bush (and he had a few of those) would have to concede he didn't underestimate how this would play out, at least not when he described an enemy the likes of which the world had not yet seen.
I'm old enough to see Southwest Asia as Vietnam with sand instead of rice paddies. Does that mean My Lai and LT William Calley were replaced by Abu Ghraib and Lynndie England? That's not what frightens me so much as that we're not ready to acknowledge the 'monster label' we conveniently place on others (actually, a variety of denigrating terms for everyone with whom we disagree) makes it easier for us to 'deal with them' and NOT have to interact with one another and own the consequences of those actions and inactions.
It took decades longer to get here than Orwell feared in 1984, but that brighter tomorrow has finally arrived for this province of Airstrip One, and I just hope we live long enough to appreciate it.
When you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there. And while I love W.B. Yeats' Slouching Towards Bethlehem it's with a growing unease that I re-read the lines "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world......Surely the Second Coming is at hand. " and wonder if he's drawn a map or created a souvenir book of where we already are.
The Rand Corporation has offered, online, a cleverly entitled attempt at a way ahead (use of the indefinite article is deliberate on my part) War By Other Means, that can perhaps be made into a motion picture to be shown on a plasma screen in the back seat of a stretch Hummer limo while chatting about whatever with some BFF on our I-phone.
We don't know what 'victory' in these endless wars looks like. Maybe it's the Stars and Stripes flying from a minaret on a mosque in Baghdad or Kabul, but I suspect not.
I came across a reference earlier this morning to The Thirty Years War which, for a moment, I found comforting until I realized the name is a tag developed by historians long after its end and NOT by the leaders who provoked it or the soldiers who fought it.
This will sound cynical, and I'd apologize for that, but it's not like you didn't already realize it, but even the critics of President George W Bush (and he had a few of those) would have to concede he didn't underestimate how this would play out, at least not when he described an enemy the likes of which the world had not yet seen.
I'm old enough to see Southwest Asia as Vietnam with sand instead of rice paddies. Does that mean My Lai and LT William Calley were replaced by Abu Ghraib and Lynndie England? That's not what frightens me so much as that we're not ready to acknowledge the 'monster label' we conveniently place on others (actually, a variety of denigrating terms for everyone with whom we disagree) makes it easier for us to 'deal with them' and NOT have to interact with one another and own the consequences of those actions and inactions.
It took decades longer to get here than Orwell feared in 1984, but that brighter tomorrow has finally arrived for this province of Airstrip One, and I just hope we live long enough to appreciate it.
When you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there. And while I love W.B. Yeats' Slouching Towards Bethlehem it's with a growing unease that I re-read the lines "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world......Surely the Second Coming is at hand. " and wonder if he's drawn a map or created a souvenir book of where we already are.
The Rand Corporation has offered, online, a cleverly entitled attempt at a way ahead (use of the indefinite article is deliberate on my part) War By Other Means, that can perhaps be made into a motion picture to be shown on a plasma screen in the back seat of a stretch Hummer limo while chatting about whatever with some BFF on our I-phone.
We don't know what 'victory' in these endless wars looks like. Maybe it's the Stars and Stripes flying from a minaret on a mosque in Baghdad or Kabul, but I suspect not.
In the maze we've created of our lives here on earth, we persist in moving the cheese. When we reach the day when we don't remember what life looked like before 09/11/01 or the Nairobi Embassy Bombing, or Khobar Towers or the USMC compound in Beirut, what then? Reboot?
There are too many home fires burning and not enough trees.
-bill kenny
There are too many home fires burning and not enough trees.
-bill kenny
No comments:
Post a Comment