Walk softly and carry a big stick.
Watching the news in a Denver bar in 2003 with some foreign friends.
My foreign friends(from South Korea, Slovakia, Mongolia and Mexico) were all staring at the TV screen, jaws open, eyes wide. Some guy on CNN jawing on about the underhanded tactics the Iraq Army/Hussein was allegedly employing. (Human shields and so on.) I remember watching it. I became acutely aware of my American-ness.
I turned to my friend, Zuzana from Slovakia and asked her 'Do you know the word 'propaganda?'
She looked at me and said 'Yes' and her eyes widened a little.
That was all I said.
Was what I was watching true? It probably was. But I'll never know. You never know if the propaganda is true or not. Often it is. It's more potent if it is. But it's still propaganda
I didn't want to spell anything out to her about how I felt.
President Smirk.
In my mind this picture happens the same day as this one:
I mean, the pictures say so much. The first one with it's triumphant background and that American Smirk. That Smirk that seemed to say,
“A man's greatest pleasure is to defeat his enemies, to drive them before him, to take from them that which they possessed, to see those whom they cherished in tears, to ride their horses, and to hold their wives and daughters in his arms.”
Now, I realize that history is full of lies. The story I'd been told about the USA wisely rebuilding the nation of Germany with the generous Marshall Program failed to mention the slave labor it employed or the war crimes perpretrated by the Allies back in the second World War.
You don't expect the smirk.
YOu expect this pilot shit to stay in Hollywood films where it belongs. Who is he Will Smith. I cringe at it even now.
And overtime, the annoyance at the President Smirk gave way to bitter realization of the irony it represents.
And finally the awareness that it actually represents a Great Tragedy, a tragedy that begets tragedies, and tragedies that beget more tragedies.
Like all historical tragedies.
And President Smirk might as well have been me for what some people thought of me. It wasn't fair. But I blamed Smirk more than anyone.
ABU GHRAIB
In 2005, 2006, upon waking up, my first thought was often: what horrible thing has my country done today?
Pictures of humans piled in naked pyramids; prisoners with bags over their heads jacking off in fear; those pictures of dead children that people managed to sneak into websites before bloced by moderation; pictures come across by chance; those pictures you never want to see and never really fully unsee. Fire, burned flesh, blood.
Electric torture in ABu Ghraib, waterboarding in Cuba, prisoners shackled to the ceiling and beaten black and blue or even to death for information. Congress debates torture. Poland, UK, Sweden complicit in something called 'extraordinary rendition.'
And all in my name. Even if I am only 1/320 000 000th.
Pictures of Over time, as we look back at the fiasco of that time and the chaos of the Middle East now and the causative role Iraq played in the present mess the world is in, the picture gains a lot more resonance. At the time, the sure-headed cockiness just annoyed me. The smirk in the face of death and the besmirching of the American name in many parts of the world just pissed me off.
Over time,, that gave way to a sense of irony which has by now deepened to a sense of real tragedy--a tragedy that begets tragedies, like all historical tragedies.
In a way, the sums up everything wrong-headed about US policy.
In a way, the sums up everything wrong-headed about US policy.
It makes me feel a little ashamed, yeah.
South Park Satan begone.
Hussein with beard, found in a hole in the ground, dirty, afraid, squinting and blinking in the sunlight.
. After the mutiliated corpses of his son were gleefully paraded before the world the gallows was a bygone conclusion.
An era ended.
Nothing going on inside me.
The shards of it all
The news continued; phosphorus, dirty bombs, uraniam shrapnel, Michael Moore, the Patriot Act(not scary now, but in the future, not scary now but in the future, not fascist yet but in the future), Israeli-Hezbollah conflict making me realize that the USA and by extension her allies had sacrificed their integrity on the altar a Smirk and his puppet-master, the immortal ghoul with the plastic heart. And the picture that doesn't quite make me weep but should:
And beside me, my son eats a roll and watches a Lego program on the computer.
Dusk
And visiting the US ten years ago and seeing the yellow ribbons, the bumper stickers, the Support our Troops signs and thinking what has happened? It was understandable but it wasn't the USA I had left.
I supported the troops. I think it's shameful that Vets got spat on in the Vietnam War.
I didn't support the War, though. If I said that I didn't support the War in the USA, I wondered, would some people react with anger?
I didn't support the War, though. If I said that I didn't support the War in the USA, I wondered, would some people react with anger?
I thought about symbols and wondered if they meant anything.
And when Osama bin-Laden died, I thought of all the thousands of others that died. And I was glad he was dead.
But the celebrations I saw in the streets of the USA filled me with a deep shame.
They felt like an antidote to the proud tears and exhilaration I felt on November 5th 2008, as I drank celebratory shots in a Wallachian bar with some fellow Americans and we toasted to Obama and history. WE knew that problems hadn't been eradicated. But we had a new hope in a new president..
But human nature didn't change with Obama. And yes, I'm ashamed of human nature sometimes.
Written Feb 12th 2016
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