Artistic Offense

It makes me want to step outside 
I want to loosen my tie 
Sweet Jesus, my heart 
Is beating faster and faster 
--Modern Art, Art Brut

Nobody does it better 
Makes me feel sad for the rest 
Nobody does it half as good as you 
Baby, you're the best 
--Nobody Does it Better, 
Carly Simon
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And while we are at our day of remembrance, witness the new Purple Heart pin fronting the cover of this month's Military Order of the Purple Heart magazine (on right).

The pin is supposed to be a facsimile of the noble Purple Heart medallion featuring our first president, George Washington.  Instead, it looks vaguely like a Labrador Retriever, or perhaps Veronica Lake.  The features have been so obliterated that it could be some insect's pupa.

This, no doubt, is a Chinese manufacturing effort, lacking the tolerances and oversight that used to be the hallmark of American-made goods. (Efforts to get an answer as to the source of the monstrosity were met with ambiguity.) So Americans fight and die, and buy things from our once great rival, Communist China -- now, Most Favored Nation (MFN) People's Republic of China, the nation who rolls over civil rights as we fight wars to ostensibly install those rights in lesser places.

Meanwhile, we suffer along, calling a bad the "new normal", gobbling up shoddy goods and calling it a day, forgetting that at one time, such items wouldn't sit on the discount table at Woolworths (if we still had a Woolworths.)

Where does pride end, and expediency begin? Gall?  This horrific effort -- fronting a national magazine, no less -- brought to mind the recent botched effort to restore an ecce homo fresco of Jesus in Spain -- "probably the worst art restoration project of all time"  -- by 80-ish parishioner Cecilia Giménez.

Take a gander, if you dare, and tell us which you think is the worse offense:

Home Wreckers

Well, you may think the world's black and white
And you're dirty or you're clean
You better watch out you don't slip
Through them spaces in between
--Cross My Heart, Bruce Springsteen

I built this house
With my own hands
And she just came
And burnt the plans
-Homewrecker, HelloGoodbye

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm,
this England
--King Richard II, Shakespeare

[in remembrance today of the start of the Blitz, 1940]
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Purple Heart magazine featured a hooah piece generated by Marine Corps HQ on the actions of Navy Cross recipient Gunnery Sergeant Brian M. Blander (not a Purple Heart recipient), a piece that was more befitting Soldier of Fortune's "I Was There" feature than a fraternal magazine (p. 12).

Not to denigrate the brave actions of Gy. Sgt. Blander, but the piece glorified behavior not meet to win hearts and minds, but rather to stand gladiatorially alone on a patch of ground. But unlike King Richard, it is not our ground:

"'When you're not standing on the ground of the enemy at the end of the day, the enemy won. Instead, we took the stand, we drove the enemy out of their homes, and then we left on our own terms when we were ready to.' Blonder said he was happy to be victorious."

As a Vietnam veteran and lifetime MOPH member, I cannot glorify driving the Taliban or anyone else out of their homes. We call the Taliban insurgents, yet drive them from their homes -- does anyone else see the disconnect? If kicking people out their homes is the standard for earning a Navy Cross, my banker should have 50 by now.

If Taliban are insurgents, then what legitimate government are they insurging against? Surely, not the United States. In fact, they ARE at home, and fighting a civil war as there is NO legitimate Afghan government. I resent spending my tax dollars propping up a corrupt Afghan government which does not defend America.

The U.S. is dictating the internal policies in a society we do not understand. Our history shows what happens when another group that didn't understand home feeling (British soldiers) drove colonial people from their homes in our Revolutionary War.

As Gy. Sgt. Garret Dean said speaking of his brother Marines, "Our number one job is to locate, close with and kill the enemy. What we did that day is what we trained for, and that's what we'll always do." Yep, and Dean can't be faulted; that is what Marines do. But it is not a solution in a country that has seen continual fighting for the last 36 years.

Continuing the cycle of violence is in opposition to the concept of reaching a peaceful accord in the midst of a violent civil war. The U.S.'s military presence in the fray just teaches the Aghanis how to become better fighters.

The Asunción

Men prefer sorrow over joy
... suffering over peace!
--Ran (1985)
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Ranger is tired of the warrior ethos overlaid upon our soldiers. Why the need to apotheosize their human undertakings? As though their transubstantiation from soldier to warrior will ennoble the entire corrupt undertaking.

Everyone offers the doxology. Purple Heart Magazine awarded a Special Leadership award this year to senator Jim Webb, for among other things, his legislation to create a new G.I. Bill.

"Webb's legislation. . . will make it possible for today's young warriors and their families to live the American dream (Purple Heart Magazine, Mar/Apr)."

Sen. Webb is a great advocate for veterans issues, and it is through no fault of his that the New York Review of Books calls him a "warrior-intellectual" (imagine -- a thinkin' warrior?) though he has never referred to himself or our soldiers as "warriors" (aside from discussing the so-called "Wounded Warrior Project.)

Unfortunately, the P.H. Magazine and by extension, the Military Order of the Purple Heart, is endorsing a warrior mentality which is the opposite of the beliefs of our Founding Fathers.

The American dream used to be peace and prosperity and adherence to a set of core values. Both the concept of being a warrior and arriving at the American dream through warfare are gross distortions of the concept of a democracy.

George Washington, the originator of the Purple Heart, never branded himself or his soldiers as warriors. Like the insurgents of Iraq and Afghanistan, Washington fought only in a defensive posture. This is not the stance of the warrior!

Washington left office warning of the dangers of entangling foreign alliances.

We have run afoul of his vision.