Thursday, February 20
The world today--in February 2003--is just plain stupid, especially if you are living in the US. Reality shows dominate TV; a younger, stupider Bush is in the White House; the economy is going to crap; and, oh yeah, a war is coming, a war that (apparently) only about 10 people in the world actually want to fight--and those 10 people are not going to do any of the fighting. It's a terrible year, and it's only February. It's only going to get worse, too. First the war will start and all those morons who are sitting on their hands right now will finally get up and scream and try to be patriotic and call anyone who opposed the war a coward and a communist (it's true--that's already started, if you can believe it; don't these people know that the Cold War is over?). Then the war will end, and we'll have all those idiotic parades, just like after the Gulf War. You think people will have learned their lesson by now, but almost no one really remembers the Gulf War except those who fought it and those (like me) who opposed it with every fiber of our being.
So, here's a personal history lesson. In the Summer of 1990, I was working at various temp jobs, making very little money, and wondering what I was going to do with my life. I was 21 at the time (about to turn 22), and I was set to graduate with my BA later that year (December, to be precise). I was not sure what was in store for me in the upcoming years, but I thought I might want to be an elementary school teacher. Anyways, I was working temp jobs, and one of the jobs I worked was for Supply Services for Riverside County in California. This is the place that houses all the office supplies for the entire county (it's a big county: it stretches from the border of Los Angeles county in the west to the Colorado River in the east, and includes Palm Springs). My job was pretty cool. I was supposed to take an order form from this pile, find all the office supplies this one person somewhere in the county had ordered, collect them all up, wrap them up like meat in a butcher's shop, label the packages, and stick them on a shelf, where they would (eventually) arrive at their destination. I worked for this job for about two weeks (it was, after all, a temp job). Well, the job is noteworthy for me for two big reasons. First, one of the guys who worked there turned out later to be a big-time serial killer named Bill Suff, who killed a dozen or so prostitutes and, I think, is now on Death Row. Of course, I had no idea he was doing this back then, but it certainly has made those two weeks stick out more clearly in my mind than other odd jobs I'd done.
And, yes, that's only the first reason this job is noteworthy. The second reason is another guy who worked at this place. I forget his name, but he was one of the most interesting people I'd ever met--before or since. He worked at this rather low-level job, true, but he was incredibly smart. I was an English major, and one of my passions was James Joyce. In fact, I brought a copy of Ulysses with me to work to read during breaks. I was reading it one day and he came by and casually mentioned, "Oh, Ulysses. I've read that. Have you read Finnegans Wake?" This blew me away; in case you aren't aware, Finnegans Wake is just about the most difficult book ever written; it took me about two years to read it once I got to graduate school, and, when I told professors, with acres of experience and publications under their belt, that I'd read the book, they did a double-take. "You READ that thing?" they'd ask. So, the fact that a guy at this stupid, unskilled job would have read Joyce, even Joyce's hardest book, impressed me. As I talked to him over the course of those two weeks, I learned that he had been a musician and was (now I'm getting to the Gulf War stuff) a member of the Air Force Reserve. He spent about 2/3rds of our time during those two weeks explaining to me how great the Reserve was--how you got paid a bunch of money to do almost nothing at all, etc. Since this guy was really smart--he'd read Joyce, for god's sake--I didn't just scoff and roll my eyes. I paid attention. Maybe he's on to something, I thought....
Fast forward a month: August 1990. Iraq invades Kuwait. Bush Sr. orders troops into Saudi Arabia almost immediately. It took about 12 years for me to learn the real truth behind this war: it had nothing to do with protecting the soverignty of Kuwait. It had everything to do with getting troops into Saudi Arabia. The US wanted a beachhead in the oil-rich Middle East, but the Saudis wouldn't let the US establish a base unless they feared an attack by (say) Iraq. So the Bush people, knowing that Hussein was eager to get at Kuwait because it was on the Gulf and was really not much of a country--it having been established by the British only a few decades earlier in order to divide and conquer the various ruling families and factions in the region--hint to Baghdad that the US won't interfere if they choose to go into Kuwait. Iraq invades, and then realizes that the US was lying, but it's too late--war is on.
As I said, I didn't know any of this until just recently. All I knew then was that Bush had called up thousands upon thousands of Army, Navy, and Air Force Reservists--including, no doubt, my Supply Services friend. Good thing I didn't take his advice, I told myself. I never actually found out what happened to him, but I always hoped for the best. Perhaps he was one of the guys who loaded up the airplanes with bombs, or perhaps he supervised the guys who loaded the bombs onto the airplanes. I hope so.
Anyways, troops arrive in Saudi Arabia (and in the Gulf and Turkey, as well). The New World Order is gearing up for a fight, but it takes until January for the fight to actually begin because of all that stupid UN stuff and that stupid diplomacy. Why can't they just shut up and let us get to work killing Iraqis? That's no doubt what Dick Cheney was saying then (and saying now). I remember, however, that there were a lot of us who knew the score--who knew that this was about oil and not about "freedom," as Bush claimed. There were peace protests going on, but they were pretty muted compared to the ones for this war. The reason? Vietnam. The United States was still pissed off that we lost a war to a bunch of Asian guys from a backwards country. So most Americans felt (though few actually said) that we needed to win a war, any war, and this seemed like a good opportunity. So once the peace protests started, a weird thing happened--there were WAR protests. Now, they didn't actually call them war protests; they called them "Support the Troop" rallies, as if peace protesters don't support soldiers (hell, peace protesters don't want soldiers to die for oil--that's the POINT of protesting against wars. How can that be anti-troops?). So all through the Fall of 1990 and into January of 1991, as I was graduating from college and still unsure what I was going to do with my life, the entire country was gearing up to kick some ass, and I, a person who was at the upper end of the age range to actually be drafted if, in fact, a draft was held for this war, just decided, "The world is idiotic; the country is idiotic; I'm going to listen to a lot of loud music and stop watching TV as much as possible."
So I tried that for a while. Then, of course, the bombs started to fall, and they were live on CNN. I remember exactly when I heard about this. I was working at an elementary school for a week--I'd decided to become a substitute teacher for a while--and school had just ended, I had left the parking lot and turned on the radio. "The Associated Press is reporting hearing what sounds like bombs falling..." I heard as I drove through rush-hour traffic in Riverside. I didn't really know what to think, but I was curious. Who wouldn't be? What would a war look like? I'd never experienced a war on TV before--just reports of wars in other countries. So I watched the CNN coverage and was fascinated by the bombs and the pyrotechnics and by the cleverness of CNN to get the story out in a way that no one else could. But that fascination lasted about, oh, a day. I spend that week teaching 4th graders (nine and ten year olds) who were incredibly annoying because they knew something big was going on but didn't really understand what it meant, so they just took it out on me by being loud, obnoxious, and completely uncontrollable. The irony of this situation? Right now, I'm teaching college students--college students who were in elementary school old during the last Gulf War.
So a few days later, at the end of that stupid week, I have a release. I go with my friend Scott to see The Replacements play in Los Angeles. It was the best rock concert I think I've ever attended. It wasn't the greatest music--that was the latter days of the 'Mats, after they'd already gotten rid of one or two members and after Westerberg had (let's face it) lost his edge (think Itchy & Scratchy after Marge's protest against cartoon violence). No, the concert wasn't memorable for the music; it was memorable for the simple fact that I was suddenly surrounded by 4,000 or so people who were as pissed off as I was that our country had gone to war so rich people could have more money. The entire crowd spent about 2 hours slam dancing so hard that I think I lost track of the bruises after an hour. People screamed, yelled, attacked, screamed some more, and otherwise tried to get all of its aggression out through the 'Mats blistering, noisy rock fest (they WERE loud, I'll give them that). It was a catharsis for me, since I realized I was pissed off about the war but hadn't had the courage or the energy (or, frankly, the inclination) to do anything about it except ignore TV and try to focus on other things.
The war was almost over before it had begun. That first night of bombing just about wiped out most of Baghdad, and though there were scuffles between the US and British troops and Hussein's Republican Guard, those scuffles are really nothing noteworthy, since by the time ground troops made it to Iraq, it was pretty clear the war was over save the mop up. For me, the end came after that 'Mats show, when I realized that I was pissed off, and I also realized that I wasn't alone. Now, I didn't do much about this new invigoration. There was no Internet then (not really), so my only sources for information were CNN, The Los Angeles Times, and whatever I could pick up from others. That wasn't much information, as the military did a brilliant job lying to the press so no one knew the truth about the war until much later (some of the really evil details--like the ones I've already mentioned and the fact that Gulf War Syndrome was actually caused by the US's own weapons, some of which were laced with depleted uranium--are still not reported in the mainstream press). But it did kindle my desire to learn, to improve my education beyond what knowledge I'd already gained. I wanted to know more about the world we lived in. I started graduate school later that year. Granted, studying English isn't like joining the Peace Corps, but I wanted to learn about the world, I wanted to expand my mind, and this was the best way (for me) to do it.
So what does any of this have to do with the current Iraq war? Well, the same players are still involved--Cheney, Bush (well, one of them), Powell, and many others. Cheney is the real dickwad, I think. He's the one who has spent his entire life either getting rich off oil companies helping other oil company guys get rich by working for government. The important thing I think people need to understand about the 1991 war is that most everyone in the country was for that war, and that, after the war, there was a huge outpouring of emotion towards soldiers who (let's be honest) didn't do a hell of a lot to win that applause. There was a reason for that overdone celebration time: as I said, Vietnam. People were trying to apologize to all the Vietnam Vets who were pissed on after they came back home. In some ways, it was for this reason that people went along with Bush Sr. on the war thing--to "exorcise" the demons of the past.
Well, the demons of this current conflict are, according to Bush, those who were killed on September 11, 2001. That was certainly true when the US forces went into Afghanistan (heck, even The Nation backed that war). But does anyone honestly believe that we are fighting Hussein because of 9/11? No, of course not. That link doesn't hold, since Bush hasn't been able to make that connection clear. The key difference between 1991 and 2003 is simply that we--that is, those of us on who oppose this war--have an opportunity to push our case, to fight against this potential war, in a way that was simply not possible in 1991 for the reasons I've outlined. I don't know if we can stop the war, but we can make this war (if it IS inevitable) as unpopular as wars can get, if we keep yelling and screaming and slamming into every possible barrier we can find.
And what's the best way to do this? The Internet. The government doesn't control this thing yet, so let's use it. Read as much as you can about US foreign and domestic policy (start at Smirking Chimp). Learn what other countries are saying about the US at World Press Review. Learn about a Iraq and the other countries in the Middle East and Central Asia at Eurasianet. Discover what's going on in the entire world; study, think, and then share what you've learned with others. Trust me, it'll make a difference. You might not change the world, but you will definitely change yourself--and, through that change, you can influence others.
So, here's a personal history lesson. In the Summer of 1990, I was working at various temp jobs, making very little money, and wondering what I was going to do with my life. I was 21 at the time (about to turn 22), and I was set to graduate with my BA later that year (December, to be precise). I was not sure what was in store for me in the upcoming years, but I thought I might want to be an elementary school teacher. Anyways, I was working temp jobs, and one of the jobs I worked was for Supply Services for Riverside County in California. This is the place that houses all the office supplies for the entire county (it's a big county: it stretches from the border of Los Angeles county in the west to the Colorado River in the east, and includes Palm Springs). My job was pretty cool. I was supposed to take an order form from this pile, find all the office supplies this one person somewhere in the county had ordered, collect them all up, wrap them up like meat in a butcher's shop, label the packages, and stick them on a shelf, where they would (eventually) arrive at their destination. I worked for this job for about two weeks (it was, after all, a temp job). Well, the job is noteworthy for me for two big reasons. First, one of the guys who worked there turned out later to be a big-time serial killer named Bill Suff, who killed a dozen or so prostitutes and, I think, is now on Death Row. Of course, I had no idea he was doing this back then, but it certainly has made those two weeks stick out more clearly in my mind than other odd jobs I'd done.
And, yes, that's only the first reason this job is noteworthy. The second reason is another guy who worked at this place. I forget his name, but he was one of the most interesting people I'd ever met--before or since. He worked at this rather low-level job, true, but he was incredibly smart. I was an English major, and one of my passions was James Joyce. In fact, I brought a copy of Ulysses with me to work to read during breaks. I was reading it one day and he came by and casually mentioned, "Oh, Ulysses. I've read that. Have you read Finnegans Wake?" This blew me away; in case you aren't aware, Finnegans Wake is just about the most difficult book ever written; it took me about two years to read it once I got to graduate school, and, when I told professors, with acres of experience and publications under their belt, that I'd read the book, they did a double-take. "You READ that thing?" they'd ask. So, the fact that a guy at this stupid, unskilled job would have read Joyce, even Joyce's hardest book, impressed me. As I talked to him over the course of those two weeks, I learned that he had been a musician and was (now I'm getting to the Gulf War stuff) a member of the Air Force Reserve. He spent about 2/3rds of our time during those two weeks explaining to me how great the Reserve was--how you got paid a bunch of money to do almost nothing at all, etc. Since this guy was really smart--he'd read Joyce, for god's sake--I didn't just scoff and roll my eyes. I paid attention. Maybe he's on to something, I thought....
Fast forward a month: August 1990. Iraq invades Kuwait. Bush Sr. orders troops into Saudi Arabia almost immediately. It took about 12 years for me to learn the real truth behind this war: it had nothing to do with protecting the soverignty of Kuwait. It had everything to do with getting troops into Saudi Arabia. The US wanted a beachhead in the oil-rich Middle East, but the Saudis wouldn't let the US establish a base unless they feared an attack by (say) Iraq. So the Bush people, knowing that Hussein was eager to get at Kuwait because it was on the Gulf and was really not much of a country--it having been established by the British only a few decades earlier in order to divide and conquer the various ruling families and factions in the region--hint to Baghdad that the US won't interfere if they choose to go into Kuwait. Iraq invades, and then realizes that the US was lying, but it's too late--war is on.
As I said, I didn't know any of this until just recently. All I knew then was that Bush had called up thousands upon thousands of Army, Navy, and Air Force Reservists--including, no doubt, my Supply Services friend. Good thing I didn't take his advice, I told myself. I never actually found out what happened to him, but I always hoped for the best. Perhaps he was one of the guys who loaded up the airplanes with bombs, or perhaps he supervised the guys who loaded the bombs onto the airplanes. I hope so.
Anyways, troops arrive in Saudi Arabia (and in the Gulf and Turkey, as well). The New World Order is gearing up for a fight, but it takes until January for the fight to actually begin because of all that stupid UN stuff and that stupid diplomacy. Why can't they just shut up and let us get to work killing Iraqis? That's no doubt what Dick Cheney was saying then (and saying now). I remember, however, that there were a lot of us who knew the score--who knew that this was about oil and not about "freedom," as Bush claimed. There were peace protests going on, but they were pretty muted compared to the ones for this war. The reason? Vietnam. The United States was still pissed off that we lost a war to a bunch of Asian guys from a backwards country. So most Americans felt (though few actually said) that we needed to win a war, any war, and this seemed like a good opportunity. So once the peace protests started, a weird thing happened--there were WAR protests. Now, they didn't actually call them war protests; they called them "Support the Troop" rallies, as if peace protesters don't support soldiers (hell, peace protesters don't want soldiers to die for oil--that's the POINT of protesting against wars. How can that be anti-troops?). So all through the Fall of 1990 and into January of 1991, as I was graduating from college and still unsure what I was going to do with my life, the entire country was gearing up to kick some ass, and I, a person who was at the upper end of the age range to actually be drafted if, in fact, a draft was held for this war, just decided, "The world is idiotic; the country is idiotic; I'm going to listen to a lot of loud music and stop watching TV as much as possible."
So I tried that for a while. Then, of course, the bombs started to fall, and they were live on CNN. I remember exactly when I heard about this. I was working at an elementary school for a week--I'd decided to become a substitute teacher for a while--and school had just ended, I had left the parking lot and turned on the radio. "The Associated Press is reporting hearing what sounds like bombs falling..." I heard as I drove through rush-hour traffic in Riverside. I didn't really know what to think, but I was curious. Who wouldn't be? What would a war look like? I'd never experienced a war on TV before--just reports of wars in other countries. So I watched the CNN coverage and was fascinated by the bombs and the pyrotechnics and by the cleverness of CNN to get the story out in a way that no one else could. But that fascination lasted about, oh, a day. I spend that week teaching 4th graders (nine and ten year olds) who were incredibly annoying because they knew something big was going on but didn't really understand what it meant, so they just took it out on me by being loud, obnoxious, and completely uncontrollable. The irony of this situation? Right now, I'm teaching college students--college students who were in elementary school old during the last Gulf War.
So a few days later, at the end of that stupid week, I have a release. I go with my friend Scott to see The Replacements play in Los Angeles. It was the best rock concert I think I've ever attended. It wasn't the greatest music--that was the latter days of the 'Mats, after they'd already gotten rid of one or two members and after Westerberg had (let's face it) lost his edge (think Itchy & Scratchy after Marge's protest against cartoon violence). No, the concert wasn't memorable for the music; it was memorable for the simple fact that I was suddenly surrounded by 4,000 or so people who were as pissed off as I was that our country had gone to war so rich people could have more money. The entire crowd spent about 2 hours slam dancing so hard that I think I lost track of the bruises after an hour. People screamed, yelled, attacked, screamed some more, and otherwise tried to get all of its aggression out through the 'Mats blistering, noisy rock fest (they WERE loud, I'll give them that). It was a catharsis for me, since I realized I was pissed off about the war but hadn't had the courage or the energy (or, frankly, the inclination) to do anything about it except ignore TV and try to focus on other things.
The war was almost over before it had begun. That first night of bombing just about wiped out most of Baghdad, and though there were scuffles between the US and British troops and Hussein's Republican Guard, those scuffles are really nothing noteworthy, since by the time ground troops made it to Iraq, it was pretty clear the war was over save the mop up. For me, the end came after that 'Mats show, when I realized that I was pissed off, and I also realized that I wasn't alone. Now, I didn't do much about this new invigoration. There was no Internet then (not really), so my only sources for information were CNN, The Los Angeles Times, and whatever I could pick up from others. That wasn't much information, as the military did a brilliant job lying to the press so no one knew the truth about the war until much later (some of the really evil details--like the ones I've already mentioned and the fact that Gulf War Syndrome was actually caused by the US's own weapons, some of which were laced with depleted uranium--are still not reported in the mainstream press). But it did kindle my desire to learn, to improve my education beyond what knowledge I'd already gained. I wanted to know more about the world we lived in. I started graduate school later that year. Granted, studying English isn't like joining the Peace Corps, but I wanted to learn about the world, I wanted to expand my mind, and this was the best way (for me) to do it.
So what does any of this have to do with the current Iraq war? Well, the same players are still involved--Cheney, Bush (well, one of them), Powell, and many others. Cheney is the real dickwad, I think. He's the one who has spent his entire life either getting rich off oil companies helping other oil company guys get rich by working for government. The important thing I think people need to understand about the 1991 war is that most everyone in the country was for that war, and that, after the war, there was a huge outpouring of emotion towards soldiers who (let's be honest) didn't do a hell of a lot to win that applause. There was a reason for that overdone celebration time: as I said, Vietnam. People were trying to apologize to all the Vietnam Vets who were pissed on after they came back home. In some ways, it was for this reason that people went along with Bush Sr. on the war thing--to "exorcise" the demons of the past.
Well, the demons of this current conflict are, according to Bush, those who were killed on September 11, 2001. That was certainly true when the US forces went into Afghanistan (heck, even The Nation backed that war). But does anyone honestly believe that we are fighting Hussein because of 9/11? No, of course not. That link doesn't hold, since Bush hasn't been able to make that connection clear. The key difference between 1991 and 2003 is simply that we--that is, those of us on who oppose this war--have an opportunity to push our case, to fight against this potential war, in a way that was simply not possible in 1991 for the reasons I've outlined. I don't know if we can stop the war, but we can make this war (if it IS inevitable) as unpopular as wars can get, if we keep yelling and screaming and slamming into every possible barrier we can find.
And what's the best way to do this? The Internet. The government doesn't control this thing yet, so let's use it. Read as much as you can about US foreign and domestic policy (start at Smirking Chimp). Learn what other countries are saying about the US at World Press Review. Learn about a Iraq and the other countries in the Middle East and Central Asia at Eurasianet. Discover what's going on in the entire world; study, think, and then share what you've learned with others. Trust me, it'll make a difference. You might not change the world, but you will definitely change yourself--and, through that change, you can influence others.
