Old Poem from first wave of Iraq War in 2003

GIVE ME SOME OF THAT OLD-TIME XENOPHOBIA

(a memoir of the first wave of the Iraq War in 2003)

They did it in World War I

when sauerkraut was known as “liberty cabbage”.

They did it in World War II

when actor Eduardo Ciannelli changed his first name to Edward. 

They did it during the 1979-81

Iran hostage crisis

when pictures of Mickey Mouse circulated widely.

Mickey raised his right middle-finger.

The caption was HEY IRAN!

Now, it’s being done again.

And it’s not even against

an enemy country.

A café owner in Santa Barbara

changes French fries to Uncle Sam Fries. 

People, showing off for TV cameras, 

threaten to boycott camembert cheese. 

French wine is poured into the gutter. 

David Letterman makes derogatory jokes 

about the French in WWII.

I stay indoors,

scared of being scarred

by thoughtless hatred

wearing the mask of patriotism, 

wishing it could be safe to say 

“God Bless The World”

instead of

“God Bless America”.

Revised Poem: CRUISING TOWARDS DAMASCUS 2020

The best summary I've read of Brian Williams-as-Anchorman-In-War.

The really dumb, pitiable thing about Brian Williams’ circumstance today is that he felt he had to do it at all – that his maleness or reportage or patriotism would be enhanced by it. But death doesn’t need a punch-up or rewrite. Nearly 20 years ago, I stood outside a club in New Haven, Connecticut, and some argument resulted in a bunch of handgun fire, and I dove in full chickenshit mode behind a car. It would be infinitely sexier to claim that someone standing next to me took a bullet. (They didn’t.) It would be sexier still to claim that I was in the coffeehouse a block away that got shot-up in retribution. (I wasn’t; I’d left it five minutes before.) But all of that is scary stuff without elaboration.

Being shot near is abnormal enough to hold people’s attention; it’s sad that Brian Williams seemed to think he wasn’t taking a brave enough risk by merely flying over one of the most dangerous cities in the world, in the same kind of vehicle that had been shot down merely an hour before. That he felt he needed to claim to be in that other vehicle and “incapable” of remembering whether it was struck with a goddamn rocket is just dumb as hell.

But what’s especially silly – and what will make his firing sillier still – is that he felt a kind of duty to “authenticity” to zero the distance between himself and the troops. In the very climate that he and other media members helped foster (the one in which all soldiers are heroes by default), the solemnity of his war reporting comes with the prerequisite that he seem, at least in one or two telegenic moments, indivisible from the heroes around him.

Maybe it speaks to some defect in Brian Williams’ character that he felt he needed to be a character as much as a reporter – like his sideshow gigs of being the Disembodied Head of Brian Williams on the TV wall behind Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, or being yet another mega-Springsteen fan journalist, or being a nine-time recurring guest gig on 30 Rock as himself. Given all of that, maybe Brian Williams putting on fatigues was just another form of dress-up and being liked.

There was another option for him – there always was – but, depending on how you define the word, it was always a lot more dangerous. Brian Williams could have renounced feel-good features on the “regular joes” feeding a war machine revved up on lies and focused instead on the lies endangering them. He could have reported more on non-heroes – both the desk bound creators of the war or the volunteers of questionable stability who make the Hadithas every time. Or he could have reported on heroes who worked as contractors for the American occupation and were left behind in a radicalized nation without Uncle Sam’s backing or, even better, on the black-books contractor class that took US payouts and did their jobs with minimal inconvenience and maximal collateral damage.

All of that is less fun and more threatening to one’s contract than a sexed-up trip in a whirlybird in a warzone, but it’s reporting too. Edward R Murrow had his war reporting moment, but then he made a second one by fighting a cynical patriotic narrative in service to posterity and at great risk to himself. Not everyone can do that, but failure at the attempt is nobler than a successful joyride. Besides, it seemed to work out for him all right.

The above passage comes from Jeb Lund's op-ed for the GUARDIAN titled "Brian Williams will lose his job for giving us what we wanted to hear."

Link to the complete column: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/10/brian-williams-will-lose-his-job-iraqi-helicopter-story

Re the latest declaration of the Iraq War's end: two old poems from 2005.

I'd really like to hope this time around that the pre-emptive war in Iraq--mostly fought because it was easier than capturing Osama Bin Laden at the time; plus it was something that George Butch Jr. had signaled he'd do during the 2000 election--is over and done with for the sake of Americans and Iraqis alike.
These poems were written in 2005, when only 2000 American soldiers had been killed in action:

2000-A LATE OCTOBER MILESTONE




2000

War in Iraq is winnable!

Just ignore the bleats of the Liberal Media

who’s out of touch with heartland America.



2001

Thank God for local news affiliates!

They treat this war just like WWII.

Wasn’t it great when Channel 7

ran that story about military wives/girlfriends

willing to pose for sexy pinup photos

to raise….the morale of their boyfriends

and husbands serving their country?

It’s the perfect story-

patriotism plus cleavage!



2002

White House note to Roger Ailes of Fox News:

Pass along our new talking point

about how the media should quit

using the word “insurgents”

and replace it with “Saddamites”.

Pronounce it the Biblical way (Sodomites)

to appease the Red States.



2003

President Bush memo to Vice-President Cheney-

There was this old Jerry Lewis movie

last night on TV where a millionaire and

his four friends formed a private fighting force

during World War II.

That’s a great idea.

We could use more small, flexible five-man armies

to protect the interests of

Halliburton and all the other companies

making profits from this war.

Wouldn’t cost the taxpayers a dime.



2004

Note to Pentagon staffers from Donald Rumsfeld-

Let’s keep this war low-budget.

The next time someone complains

about soldiers dying from inadequate

armored protection, I’ll just remind them

of the General Sherman quote

about war being Hell and walk away.

And tell the UN in no uncertain terms

that they’ll enter Gitmo over my dead body.



2005

White House note to CNN-

We loved your balanced special

about stateside families who lost loved ones in Iraq.

Keep emphasizing the parents who have decided

to stay loyal, repress public grief

and say that We Can’t Leave

until Iraq can properly fight the Insurgency

on its own.



2006

Note from Karl Rove-

Can we distract Americans

from Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson

by planting either a live girl or a dead boy

in Cindy Sheehan’s bed?





2007

2008

2009

2010…..



It doesn’t matter if the next President

is a Democrat or Republican,

the war in Iraq will never end.

It really doesn’t matter about the Iraqi people anymore.

We can’t lose face now.


2000-VERSION TWO




2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010….



The White House says we can’t leave Iraq.

The pundits say we mustn’t leave Iraq.



I say we’ll never leave Iraq.

The human rights abuses of Henry Kissinger--overlooked by mainstream media.

Let's start with something recent:
"[Bob] Woodward writes that when Gerson asked Kissinger why he supported the [Iraq] war, he replied, “Because Afghanistan wasn’t enough,’ … In the conflict with radical Islam, he said, they want to humiliate us. ‘And we need to humiliate them’ … In Manhattan, this position got him into trouble, particularly at cocktail parties, he noted with a smile.”

For more information on the career diplomat [who was depicted in the mainstream media as the globetrotting "Super K" in the 70s] and his darker side: http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/415715

Malia Obama wears a peace-sign T-shirt in Italy; Barack Obama in charge of offensive in Afghanistan.

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/07/13/hate-speech-finds-a-home-on-the-web/?icid=mainhtmlws-maindl1link4http%3A%2F%2Fwww.politicsdaily.com%2F2009%2F07%2F13%2Fhate-speech-finds-a-home-on-the-web%2F

I can't help but remember a poster for a Amanda Bynes film called WHAT A GIRL WANTS. Amanda, in the first version of the poster, flashed the two-fingered peace sign. Warner Brothers apparently shrieked because the film came out in the post-9/11 George Butch Jr. era; Ms. Bynes' peace sign was airbrushed away in the next version of the poster.

One wonders if Sasha and Malia are allowed to speak to their father about peace in the world. Or, maybe they do--and Barack solemnly shushes them with the words "PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH" just like the GOP slogan of two decades ago.

And the more things stay the same.....

SALON's Glenn Greenwald on David Gregory's brand of "tough" journalism.

No need to comment. Just read Glenn Greenwald's SALON column on David Gregory, MEET THE PRESS and the current fighting between Israel and Palestine's Hamas:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/12/29/gregory/index.html

George Butch Jr. still clueless about why some Iraqis may hate him.

http://news.aol.com/article/man-throws-two-shoes-at-bush-in-iraq/241945?icid=200100397x1214711641x1201007398

Nothing else to add.