Tag: war

I know the adjective “Orwellian” is used too much

But sometimes you need to drag it out. This time it’s  the BBC news trying to choke down the latest buffet of insanity from our military in Iraq:

IRAQ ‘REVERSE SURGE’ PLAYS ON U.S. MINDS

There are a few gems, but this one stands out for me:

“US commanders are reluctant to allow the backward momentum of the reverse-surge process to merge seamlessly into a wholesale withdrawal of American forces“

What the hell does that mean? Mostly, it means that they don’t really want to pull the troops out yet. Or maybe ever. So the pull-out of troops is now a “reverse surge” and since the “surge” was a “good thing” this means we should be really careful and probably not do it! And we don’t want it to “merge seamlessly” into an actual withdrawal. In other words, because we’re not “surging” we should not leave for an undetermined time, because that would be, well, bad. Got  it?

This is that rare and beautiful news story in which every single item is a lie. An easy way to fix it up would be to replace each paragraph with this: “There is blood everywhere and no plan.”

I’ll  sell t-shirts! Meanwhile, as Orwell put it, “The fascist octopus has sung its swan song, and the jackboot  is in the melting pot.”

GO READ HIM NOW and every week from now on, so you can understand the weird stuff in the news. It’s a short little essay and people forget how important it  is.

The war, via the Huntington Beach California Police Blotter

Waverider Circle, non-emergency. A man reported that he “doesn’t have an emergency, however he may have one soon.” The caller was a soldier who said he had just returned from Iraq to find that his wife was at another man’s residence. A dispatcher advised the man “to stop if he felt he was going to commit a crime.” The man said he would drive somewhere and “cool off,” 2:16 p.m.

Neely Circle, 4800 block, burglary in progress. A woman reported someone was trying to break into her apartment. While several police units prepared to respond, including the department’s helicopter, the woman said the man could be her husband. The woman turned out to be the wife of the soldier from the earlier call. The soldier had followed his wife to her new boyfriend’s apartment after he learned she didn’t want to be married to him anymore. The soldier had “scaled the balcony railing to see what his estranged wife was doing” and “was shaking the sliding door violently,” 2:57 p.m.

Don’t go ’round tonight.

I went to a restaurant the other day to celebrate the birthday of a friend. The place was a cheerful surf-themed tacos ‘n’ booze joint of the kind you see a lot around here. It was the early end of Saturday night and a covers band was playing.

We had a good time. The food was mediocre, the band was awful, and we were all good friends who don’t see each other enough.

While waiting for my car outside, I heard the band go into CCR’s “Bad Moon Rising.” There was a happy yell from the crowd and the all-white, mostly middle-aged people on the dance floor capered inexpertly.

I am too young to remember that song as new, but I know its story. John Fogerty wrote “Bad Moon Rising” on the occasion of Richard Nixon’s election as President in 1968. Nineteen sixty-eight was one hell of a year. Nixon’s election came after the disastrous Chicago Democratic Convention where the liberal dream died, after the Tet Offensive, after another thousand things gone wrong, many of them permanently. Fogerty’s song is an accurate assessment of a grim situation.

Watching the boomers and fortysomethings shake it happily to CCR’s doom song wasn’t easy. Some of them were old enough to know better: old enough to have fought in Vietnam or lost friends there, old enough to have seen badgeless cops beating people in the streets of Chicago. What the hell were they doing here? It’s a great song but it’s not boogie. It’s a warning. These people had chosen isolation: not just from poverty, not just from the poison gift of privilege, but isolation from meaning itself. War and terror and the loss of innocence? Maybe partying will help.

Later that night I went to the drugstore. I entered amidst a wave of high school boys. The high schoolers were laughing and punching each other and jumping up and down for nothing. One of the drugstore employees, a large affable black woman I’d talked to before, was restocking nearby.

The kids recognized her and ran over to say hi. They knew her son from school, although he was older and had graduated. She asked how they were doing and they gave bouncy teenager answers, “just hanging out!” and “oh I’m all around!” She smiled indulgently. “So how’s Greg?” one of them asked. “What’s up with him?”

She kept her smile. “He’s serving. Abroad.”

The kids didn’t know what to do. They kept hopping about, looking blank. She kept her pleasant smile. After about ten seconds of this some more kids came roaring up and greeted her and things were easy again.

Hope you got your things together
Hope you are quite prepared to die
Looks like we’re in for nasty weather
One eye is taken for an eye

che-che-che cheetos

It is customary for followers of a cult not to know the real life story of their hero, the historical truth. (Many Rastafarians would renounce Haile Selassie if they had any notion of who he really was.) It is not surprising that Guevara’s contemporary followers, his new post-communist admirers, also delude themselves by clinging to a myth—except the young Argentines who have come up with an expression that rhymes perfectly in Spanish: “Tengo una remera del Che y no sé por qué,” or “I have a Che T-shirt and I don’t know why.”

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1535

Abu Risha, he dead.

This is a fascinating al-Jazeera news story about the new “U.S.-Friendly” Sunni alliance in Anbar, the now-dead sheikh supposed to have been in charge of the alliance, and the inevitable money and power game behind that show.

Part I riffs on Apocalypse Now in a very heavy-handed way, appropriately so.

Friday, and we’re still in Amman…