I wish this war were the American Revolution. Then romance would flutter, the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot the aural ring to any bemused thought of machine death or injury.
But it’s not. The eloquence of Tom Paine’s war talk gives way to what today? Stock political speech? Nielsan ratings fast talk amid digital flags and toupees and studio makeup? Pass the easy targets. What is the most memorable thing said about this war in the past 3 years? Who said it?
The soldier letters, blogs, bestsellers, and even the discredited early war TV network movies are quite a mix of war record, for sure. My own reluctance to open up my thoughts on this blog comes right out of clear concern for heaving this topic of "soldier letters" as some kind of mass to help an argument - same concern for soldier blogs. There is no monolithic opinion, save for general expressions of politics revealed in the trumped type for the heroes’ effort of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The need for articulate, public war talk is no more equal on a national holiday than on any other day when soldiers die in Iraq. The Presidential use of the 4th of July to say the war is being won is predictable, if not condemnable on the same day that national papers are counting the percentage increase in bodies in the Baghdad morgue. But I don’t want to argue the war with Bush speeches and newspapers.
That’s not why I brought up Tom Paine. The need for voices is no more pressing today than it was last year when I first wrote these sentences about Paine, "the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot" early notes for an essay dealing, through reflection and contrast, with the war in Iraq. I still don’t exactly know why I wrote it, or for what point. Where does a political pamphlet that was read, cheered, and condemned a few hundred years ago fit into contemporary war talk? I suppose, at the least, Common Sense was popular. At the least, it rang.
Who writes about the war these days with any kind of ring? I ended the essay that opened with Tom Paine with this Harold Pinter poem. By heaving language and undermining the concern for being offensive, it mocks rhetoric with a point, which seems such a necessary step in figuring out how really to comment, critique, and talk about our current war. And it rings.
American Football
(A Reflection upon the Gulf War)Hallelullah!
It works.
We blew the shit out of them.We blew the shit right back up their own ass
And out their fucking ears.It works.
We blew the shit out of them.
They suffocated in their own shit!Hallelullah.
Praise the Lord for all good things.We blew them into fucking shit.
They are eating it.Praise the Lord for all good things.
We blew their balls into shards of dust,
Into shards of fucking dust.We did it.
Now I want you to come over here and kiss me on the mouth.
