Whitewashed

 

 I feel pretty
Oh so pretty
I feel pretty and witty and gay
And I pity
Any girl who isn't me today 
--Westside Story 

The Ku Klux Klan, who saw Zelig as a Jew,
that could turn himself into a Negro and an Indian,
saw him as a triple threat
--Zelig (1983)

He married me up at the First Church of Harlem.
He told me he was the brother of Duke Ellington.
--Zelig (1983)

~I'm colored, Mr. Townsend. I'm a Negro.
~Gerber, what the hell have you been doing - 
sitting under a sunlamp? 
--Watermelon Man (1970)

Who in this world is what they seem to be? 
--The Spanish Prisoner (1997)
______________________

So Rachel Dolezal, a white woman, wants to be black -- our latest tempest in a teacup. How is this relevant to RangerAgainstWar?  Just wait.

First, the obvious: another example of not telling the whole truth. Some are bemused by Dolezal's fabulation ("girl got the hair"); others, outraged at the dissimulation.

But why does it make print that a white woman chose to present as black? If former Olympian Bruce Jenner wants to now be "Caitlyn" because he identifies that way, we are meanies if we do not accept her as a woman. But we mayn't cross the color bar (white-to-black). Why is that?

The first subtext is, who could imagine a desire to be black? Whereas blacks have been "passing" for generations in order to be better situated socially, it seems untenable to them that a "privileged" white woman (all white people are privileged, right?) would want to turn the other way. (This is not to defend Dolezal, per se, who seems like a troubled individual created by a chaotic family.)

New York Times Op-Ed writer Charles Blow wrote a tortuous column opposing Ms. Dolezal because hers was "a form of one-directional privilege that simply isn’t available to a black person." This is illogical EOE thinking, in extremis. Blow even admits "[race] is a societal construct" while trying to deny this participation to Dolezal. He accuses her of linguistic somersaults, yet his piece is full of them.

A female New York Times Op-Ed writer presented a similar non-sequitur argument against Dolezal that historically one has been labeled "black" if only 1/64th black. She seemed angry that this "one drop" rule was imposed upon the black race, but she did not address why she found it unacceptable for a zero-dropped individual to choose for negritude.

--Zelig (Woody Allen) turning black at Jazz club

Why be upset? Blacks do not mind that light-complexioned blacks have "passed" as white, nor do they mind whites co-opting blackness when following rap gansta culture, even adopting the patois and the dress.  What made Dolezal's emulation so unpalatable?

White women may co-opt pieces of blackness, like Bo Derek's cornrows, but they may not fake being black, unlike blacks who may fake being white.

The second subtext is that there are only so many good EOE-type positions available to blacks, and perhaps only a limited pool of qualified applicants for them. Therefore, Dolezal the white woman is cheating a black out of his or her rightful EOE slot. It is a not-so-subtle denigration of blacks by blacks that a white person could do black better than a "real" black person.

As a black woman of power and position, Dolezal would also have entree to a rarefied pool of desirable black males for possible relationship, another thing which many black women are protective of. With one in five black males incarcerated at any given time and a matriarchal culture, relationship-worthy high level black males are at a premium, and Dolezal through her dissimulation would have access to the pick of the litter. Especially in a black culture which favors light-skinned blacks.

Dolezal's "tan and black" costume rendered all of the prizes of the Equal Opportunity system at her fingertips.

There is also the unfortunate overlay of minstrelsy, which threatened Dolezal's project as a possible grand mime. She could simply be some striving academic trying to make a name for herself in a future study by going undercover for years, unlike John Howard Griffin (Black Like Me) who could only carry on his charade for a limited time.

But by all accounts, Dolezal has been a genuine and effective advocate for black rights, and her job as President of the Seattle NAACP was not race-dependent. Dolezal's earlier claim against Howard University for reverse racism against her then-identification as a white woman opens up space for a sincere dialog, as did Edward Bakke's reverse discrimination lawsuit in 1977.

Humans tribe up, and it is that exclusionary and insular impulse which we must fight if we are to become an inclusionary world, a world in which we are all part of the human race. While the media is forcing various agendas in the name of removing exclusions -- such as affording the rights of marriage to gay couples and the inclusion of various gendered individual in the Armed forces  -- it is interesting that the racial line is being so vigorously protected.

If a person may go through religious conversions, naturalization ceremonies and gender reassignment, why is one not allowed to choose the race with which one will affiliate?

Probably, it has mostly to do with a scarcity mentality and economics. As in the film Soul Man (1986) where a white student claims for being black in order to gain college entree and tuition subsidies, blacks do not want to share this EOE windfall. It is similar to the Veterans Administration ratings system for medical treatment. Those prioritized in the upper echelons are just grateful that they are not at the bottom of the heap, and do not often fight for an equality in the treatment system for those lower down.

This is what preferential treatment hath wrought -- a mean and petty protectiveness of the succored individual's standing. Divide and conquer.

Whenever a system can get its members to participate in competitive and exclusionary behavior, there will not be the peace of a fully-functioning system.

The tie-in to RAW?:

This attitude of exclusive ownership without an honest discussion of what being black means is why racism persists in the U.S., for surely the black censure of Dolezal is racism, and racism is a form of war.

In the Middle East we see this harsh affiliation/disaffiliation playing out daily in a deadly game. If the warring members could rise above and see they are all one, with an agenda of a better life for them and their families, there would be a new day.

If divisions like race were not so contested and protected, perhaps the racial crimes we continue to witness would disappear. The guarding of race by the black community via harsh criticism of others reveals an exclusivity guaranteeing their isolation and resentment.

Unfortunately, the human animal cleaves from just as strongly as it cleaves to


NEXT: A wrap up on our general blindsightedness.

That's All Folks

 The blundering history of the human race
is always given coherence by power elites
and their courtiers in the press and academia
who endow it with a meaning and coherence it lacks.
They need to manufacture national myths
to hide the greed, violence and stupidity
that characterize the march of most human societies. 
--Our Mania for Hope is a Curse, 
 Chris Hedges 

I shouted out,
"Who killed the Kennedy's?"
When after all
It was you and me 
--Sympathy for the Devil,
 The Rolling Stones 

The people who burned witches at the stake
never for one moment thought of their act as violence;
rather they thought of it as an act
of divinely mandated righteousness.
The same can be said of most of the violence 
humans have ever committed 
--Violence Unveiled, Gil Bailie
 _____________________

For the Ralph Peter's crowd, the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©) is a legitimate given, not to be questioned or deconstructed. As he said with the manly swagger of the armchair FOX warrior in a recent NY Post piece, "Sorry folks, but that's war (it's not dainty)." His view complements that of people like Mr. Rumsfeld who saw democracy in the rubble (war smells like democracy in the morning?)

But the United State's actions in Afghanistan and Iraq defy the logic of war. The actions of ISIS in the region make more military and political sense than anything exhibited by U.S. policy to date.

The purpose of war is to achieve a peace. The PWOT © has not in any instance led to peace. Military violence -- whether theirs or ours -- is not war, but simply violence unrestrained, unjustified and lacking an achievable strategic military goal. This violence is merely criminal activity.

The media shovels us the "Good News" when the Iraqi forces (or some semblance of them) "regain territory previously held by ISIS," as though the conflict was about terrain. What it is about is a millennial struggle within Islam for hegemony of the combatants, the different stripes of Islam.

The violence in Iraq and Afghanistan is not about terrain or body counts [though body counts are de rigueur again, thank you Mr. McNamara.] It is about which side is the true and divine representatives of their god here on earth. 

That is pretty simple and, if true, U.S. participation in the rodeo violates our core belief in separation of church and state for as members of Western society we are not supposed to kill for religious reasons. That behavior is so Middle and Dark Ages.

So why is the U.S. funding and conducting military violence to support sectarian violence?

If we fail to confront this basic reality, we are doomed to live our military and political lives as if they were violent video games, which is but a poor simulacrum of real life.

[cross-posted @ milpub.]

Do You Love Me?

Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love 
--An Irish Airman Forsees His Death, 
W. B. Yeats

Uzi like a metal d*ck in my hand,
Magazine like a big testicle gland 
--Uzi Lover, Fur Q.

In every job that must be done
There is an element of fun 
You find the fun and snap! 
The job's a game 
--A Spoonful of Sugar, 
Mary Poppins
___________________

The film American Sniper based on Chris Kyle's eponymous book did better than it deserved to based upon some fortunate confluences.

In addition to its propitious opening date (the Martin Luther King holiday weekend), the recent murders by Islamist gunmen at the Paris office of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo added a bump of renewed outrage in the viewing public. Clint Eastwood, the aging film gunman who had softened in his recent cinematic depictions of bad versus good (The Unforgiven, Flags of Our Fathers, Grand Torino) has gotten right back on that black hat /white hat horse with Sniper, and that simplicity is what an angry and confused audience craves.

The pairing of Eastwood and Kyle -- the two outlaws for good -- provides a uniquely American antidote to evil. The pairing is as perfect as Fred Astaire with Ginger Rogers -- a pas de deux where each understands the dance executed from the pull of the trigger to the hit of the target. It is a ballet, and a love song.

However, a conflict sits in the heart of the solution. For every "American" sniper, there is a Syrian, or Iraqi, or an endless array of other nationalities, thus making sniping a zero-sum game. Moreover, the sniping has no forseeable end-point either in time or place, and Kyle can't be everywhere, so what began as a bromidic story of bravado and sacrifice becomes one of ultimate failure.

Moreover, the "Good" Bad Guy archetype in American films (from Zorro to the Outlaw Josey Wales and Dirty Harry Callahan) has been trounced by the level of brute violence demonstrated by the Islamic fighters. In a reversal of Crocodile Dundee's dictate to not bring a knife to a gunfight, now the knife or the scimitar wields more terror than the surgical strike with the grandest destructive materiel.

It seems the late Mr. Kyle was something of a fabulist who claims to have killed 150, and maybe 225 enemy. But even had Mr. Kyle killed twice as much, he did not make the American public safer, for the enemy is like a hydra. Each head cut down generates two more. The murders we commit lead to an animation of the rising generation.

We are like Utah's Kaelin Clay, dropping the ball one yard short of the field goal and calling it a win. The celebration and elation does not make it so.

Kyle apparently took glee in finding his life's profession, having failed at some early life projects. The origin of braggadocio can often be found in failure. The author presents a pure Horatio Alger story, but being a sniper is neither glorious nor especially patriotic, though that seems to be the emotion elicited in the average viewer of the film.

A sniper is a member of a military unit who executes a job, but does not single-handedly win a battle. The military does not bestow medals prodigiously to snipers.

Ranger has known several Army snipers of repute, and they all demonstrate humanity and humility. They do not brag, nor do they express a diminution, disdain or hatred of the enemy (unlike Mr. Kyle.) The qualification for the job is to be calm, steady and reliable. 

Perhaps the reason a film like American Sniper does so well is that tries to compensate for decades of lost American wars. Since World War II, America has not enjoyed a win. So we take the small story and pump it up, telling ourselves that at least we have heart. But in his book, Mr. Kyle reports that he would have liked to have killed everyone he saw carrying a Koran (though he did not), and, “I only wish I had killed more,” of which neither statement demonstrates heart.

Among Ranger's sniper associates, after their lethal engagements they spoke with respect for their former enemies. They do not brag nor do they express hatred for the enemies with whom they were formerly lethally-engaged, in fact, they speak with respect for them. Many have formed personal reconciliations with them. 

Killing was a job to do, and it was neither fun nor enjoyable. Mr. Kyle's stated enjoyment of killing belies the truth behind winning hearts and minds with a military. His attitude is neither fully human, nor is it necessary for the execution of his job. 

Watching the film gives the viewers a false sense of participation in a war we largely ignore. The true believers come as they do to Lourdes, deifying their savior (for few bucks and a couple hours.)

For the faux patriots, "Kyle, save us!" may be 2015's version of  "E.T., come home!" And just as unlikely. 

--by Jim and Lisa

Pretty Dead Things

--ISIS and Iraq, 
Arend Van Dam

The image is re-presentation,
which is to say ultimately resurrection, and, as we know,
the intelligible is reputed antipathetic to lived experience

*   *   *

 The type of consciousness the photograph involves
is indeed truly unprecedented,
since it establishes not a consciousness
of the being-there of the thing…
but an awareness of its having-been-there.
What we have is a new space-time category:
spatial immediacy and temporal anteriority,
the photograph being an illogical conjunction
between the here-now and the there-then. 
--Rhetoric of the Image, Roland Barthes

  Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou mayst shake the superflux to them,
And show the heavens more just 
--King Lear, Shakespeare  

Wars and elections are both too big and too small
to matter in the long run.
The daily work - that goes on, it adds up
 --Animal Dreams, 
Barbara Kingsolver
_______________________

ISIS is looking like a one-trick pony, with its latest journo beheading. But sometimes, one good move is all you need. The Afghan national game is Buzkashi, after all, in which a beheaded and be-hooved goat is dragged roughly around the field of play, so it seems playing with dead things can be fun.

The West continues its fascinated horror at these actions, committed even -- especially -- in the face of pathetic begging on behalf of the murdered and their families. Why pretend to care? When the rubber meets the road, the question for most is, "What of me and mine?" and IS is not threatening Kansas, after all.

This is reasonable, as we are neither giants nor martyrs. A martyr would leave his actual family in a lurch, in the name of pursuing the salvation of the universal Family -- the prerogative of very few.

In his book, War, Sebastian Junger mentions the chimpanzees who do not seek to aid their fellows in the face of a threat, but invariably run away from danger in order to save themselves. This self-preservation behavior comports with evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins' theory of the "Selfish Gene", that lives on to fight another day.

For those peoples not burdened by a martyrish savior, the concept of being one's brother's keeper may not have much relevance in the race for survival. But what about those people who do understand the concept of service and martyrdom?

In China recently, members of a forbidden proto-Christian sect bludgeoned a 38-year-old woman to death in a McDonald's restaurant for refusing to give them her contact information. The more remarkable thing, however, is that the murder occurred before the watching eyes of others in the establishment, who were too busy documenting the event on their smartphones to intervene. For those who uploaded their photos to the cloud, it must have been a stellar "capture".

Similarly, the murderous members of the Islamic State (IS) members are mastering the art of social networking, being sure to publicize their gory work on the various platforms, disseminating their handiwork in real time.

A recent NYT piece ("Losing Our Touch") asks if we have entered an age of “excarnation,” where we focus on the body in increasingly disembodied ways "For if incarnation is the image become flesh, excarnation is flesh become image. Incarnation invests flesh; excarnation divests it." And what if, through reliance on the intermediary of the transmitted image, we do lose our sense of touch? Does that equate with losing our compassion?

What is the effect of instantaneous documentation on our tolerance reaction? Will witnessing and documenting preempt the impulse to act?

Chimpanzees, smartphones and brutality ... do you see any nexus here?

Vietnam Fell, and My Kooka Hurts

 ~What the hell do you know... 
~I know it's pretty damn weird to eat people
 --Sin City, Frank Miller

Where have all the soldiers gone?
Gone to graveyards, everyone.
Oh, when will they ever learn? 
--Where Have all the Flowers Gone,
Pete Seeger 

The biggest purveyors of hatred and violence
never wore combat boots or carried a rifle
--Ranger quote
_________________

Saigon fell to the Communists 39 years ago (30 May 1975), and we do not often discuss the legacy of that conflict in everyday terms.

We seldom discuss the exploitation today of the Vietnamese workers who labor in sweatshop conditions in a nation without human rights, a nation for which my fellow soldiers fought, and ultimately abandoned.

The military was amped up in its mission to squash the threat, and as a young man Ranger's world was surrounded by and dominated by hatred and violence. Most of his fellows were enthusiastic volunteers, certainly before the endgame emerged. But what did all of that ardor gain him, his little world, or his country?

With maturity came the insight that the world has enough hatred and violence without his adding to the mix. Hatred and violence backed by a Ranger or Special Forces tab is still anger and violence.

Mostly, our attention now is turned to the new thing, the Islamic Global Jihad, or whatever the term du jour is. Certainly Bernard Lewis's "Clash of Civilizations" is too brusque, too biblical. We do not want to play it too big, but neither diminish it to a graspable size.

The United States hated Communists then much as we hate terrorists today. We even called them Communist Terrorists (CT's), so threatening did they seem to our way of life. Yet today, the Communist nations that did not fall have integrated the most usurious parts of Capitalism into an odd griffon, and we are still fighting to "bring democracy" to fallow lands, forgetting that our democracy was never imposed upon us in the first place.


We speak occasionally with a polite and well-spoken Buddhist Vietnamese restaurateur about his country (to which he occasionally returns.) During our last talk he spoke of the Vietnamese labor protesters jailed late last year for speaking out against 12-hour days with no breaks; he said he had received a You Tube of the situation which the government had taken offline, but which a friend had copied and secreted out.

He said some advocates for the jailed protesters had been trying to present their plight to President Obama, but we could find no online sign of this. Groups like Human Rights Watch however have reported the move of various factories to Vietnam once they started getting flak for their sweatshops in South America.

The thread binding Capitalists and Communists is the goal of squeezing every drop of labor from the worker, sans protection or fair remuneration. Who could better produce the cheap underwear that we love than a Communist Capitalist? Costco and Vietnam exist, cheek-by-jowl, a world apart yet joined over the cheap XXXL sweatshirts we consume without conscience.

Lisa has even encountered people who should know better -- parvenue military history department grads who, when brought to the topic, actually have the temerity to say, "Is he still on that?" when the topic of Vietnam is broached. Maybe this is because we do not like sitting with their discomfort and ignorance.

But it does not matter if a thing is uncomfortable or simply an unknown to the listener -- the waves of the actions will continue to ripple out. Whether you are in the group who are blissfully unaware of the violence done in your name, atoning for or ruing your participation, insecure because you didn't participate, or still carrying the fight, war will not fail to impact you.

It is good that we can laugh when Snooki falls drunk off her bicycle and wonders if her kooka is hurt, right? That, too, is free market capitalism at work.

Which Way is the Front Line From Here?

--WSJ Breakfast Briefing w/ 
Sebastian Junger

 Third boxcar, midnight train
Destination...Bangor, Maine.
Old worn out suits and shoes,
I don't pay no union dues 
 --King of the Road,
 Roger Miller
___________________

"Happy Birthday!" cried the four old grandparents as
Charlie came into their room early the next morning.

"Charlie smiled nervously and sat down on the edge
of the bed. He was holding his present, his only present,
very carefully in his two hands.
WONKA'S WHIPPLE- SCRUMPTIOUS 
FUDGEMALLOW DELIGHT, it said on the wrapper."
--Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,
Roald Dahl
___________________

[Happy Birthday, to me.]

Mr. Junger has created a moving homage to his friend and fellow film maker, Tim Hetherington, in his Which Way is the Front Line From Here? screened yesterday at the third annual FSU Student Veteran Film Festival.

I see his film Restrepo differently from Ranger, however. The  documentarian's hand was subdued but quite visible in scenes like that of the flummoxed village elder before a Capri Sun drink packet; the frustration of the Captain with the tribal elders he felt were misleading him, and the relentless view into the soldier's faces as they appeared many leagues away from the camera's lens. As Junger said yesterday, the role of the film maker is not to tell you what to think, but rather, what to think about.

The relationship of Mr. Hetherington and Mr. Junger to the wars they covered is complicated, as they say. Mr. Junger's book War covers some of this ground. He looks at war from a sociological viewpoint, and seems most fascinated by the connections between soldiers and the even finer interstitial zones therein. He explained why soldiers miss war in an NPR interview, arguing that understanding is key to their successful reintegration into society.

Hetherington, who died from a mortar round while covering events in Libya in 2011, shared Mr. Junger's interest in the group dynamics of the men who carry out the war policies of their nation or tribal affiliations. In one outtake from the film, Restrepo, Hetherington had labeled that rocky outpost stripped of any civilizing luxuries as a "Man Eden", and we hear a voice over saying that regardless of a man's status or achievements off of the COP, if he's not shoveling sand into a HESCO, he's nothing. There is no "man-caving" to compare to the adrenaline of battle.

While Junger admits this, he said he decided to stop covering war within the hour of hearing of Tim's death. He says that he and Hetherington understood that by the act of documenting these tragedies, they were also playing a part in them. Though both had a goal of understanding how and why men commit these atrocities, they realized that they were at once outside of the action and yet also somehow complicit.

Perhaps Junger understood that though there would always be a new conflict to record, it would simply be a reiteration of the same actions in a new town, with men wearing different uniforms and perhaps toting different weapons; the urge to war always emanated from the same impulses, the bonds between the soldiers would remain. His work will continue now off the front lines.

In recognition of the freelance journalists who will continue the field work -- often without any sponsorship due to the extreme cutbacks in foreign news bureaus -- he has launched the non-profit  Reporters Instructed in Saving Colleagues (RISC) to help train reporters gratis in basic life-saving procedures. He formed it in response to Hetherington's death, which might have been prevented had someone in his group known basic triage procedure.

Junger's next project involves a cross-country tour of the United States following railroad lines which he took with a couple of ex-soldiers. They lived off the land and gathered perspectives from individuals encountered along the way vis-a vis war.

We wish him luck in his continued endeavors to reveal and heal fractured peoples.

Letter to Mr. Junger

{Yesterday we were pleased to meet director Sebastian Junger at a local screening in the 2013 Veterans Film Festival of his most recent film, Which Way is the Front Line From Here?, an homage to war documantarian Tim Hetherington, his friend and co-director of the award-winning film, Restrepo.

Below is Ranger's open letter to Mr. Junger; I will post my impressions following. --L.}
___________________

Dear Mr, Junger,

Since military matters intersect with political considerations, I wish to clarify my comment yesterday that most documentaries and military coverage discusses the "how" of our wars, but seldom the "why".

Let's start with my war. As I write this I am wearing underwear made in Communist Vietnam, and we are happy with this arrangement. In that war, U.S. Special Forces fought and died protecting the populace from Communist forces. After the battles, the U.S. usually pulled up stakes and the deaths were meaningless. Examples abound, but Lang Vei and Hamburger Hill come to mind. 58,000 of us are still dead.

In Oct '83, 240+ died the Beirut bombing and we pulled up our skirts and left the AO. We did the same after the Day of the Rangers in Mogadishu.

We fought Gulf War I and Kuwait is STILL not a democratic nation. We fought in Iraq an the WOT and what was accomplished of long-term significance or of benefit to the American people?

All those killed are still dead and the wounded are still suffering. For what? Now to Restrepo.

The fights in Korengal, Waygul, Wanat, et. al. were not militarily logical nor did we introduce democracy or anything of value to the Afghan people, nor did America benefit in any appreciable manner. The entire WOT was an emotional response to a senseless act of violence. As such, the U.S. reacted and relied on violence, as did those attacking us. What did the killing in Afghanistan accomplish?

The film festival is a wonderful idea and your work is ideal for such a venue, but it cannot be a venture carried out by wrapping ourselves in the flag and pretending that our violence is somehow different from their violence. We older soldiers must ask, "Why"?

Why is a democratic humanistic-based philosophy so degraded that our policy is to always rely on military power even when there are no meaningful military objectives attainable.

Therein lies the rub.

--Jim H.

McCain and Abel, Pt. II

____________________

John McCain used to drop big, sophisticated bombs from weapons platforms off of large mobile airfields called aircraft carriers on North Vietnam during the United States' military action there. He was never tried in court for those bombings, even though many considered them illegal actions.

Mr. McCain is now leading the charge to try the Boston bombers who used knapsack bombs as "enemy combatants". However, is it not Mr. McCain and company who daily delivered high doses of explosives on a nation with which we had not declared war who should have been tried as the "enemy combatant"? The North Vietnamese goverment has films of the U.S. dropping 250, 500 and 1,000 pound bombs blasting their country's civilian as well as military targets. Is McCain less culpable of civilian death because he wore a flight helmet and not a backwards baseball cap?

The U.S. military operated in Vietnam without an act of war or a United Nations mandate. From the NVN perspective, the U.S. soldiers were illegal enemy combatants subject to the rules of military tribunals and execution for their actions.

Can Mr. McCain not see the hypocrisy behind his call for military tribunals for these small-time bombers, while he delivered orders of magnitude more devastating destructions to the civilians of another nation under the auspices of a killing machine called the U.S. military while he himself did not face a military tribunal?

The U.S. did not asked to be bombed in New York City or Boston any more than did the Vietnamese people. We will not begin to understand the phenomenon of terrorism until we are able to view our own part in perpetrating and perpetuating the dance of death.

Somewhere, a Predator drone is launching with Hellfire missiles hanging from the fuselage, and somehow we believe that this is legally, emotionally or humanly different than the bombs that were detonated in Boston; perhaps the pilots even wear hoodies and backwards baseball caps in their down time.

Perhaps it all comes down to which country you are in when the ox gets gored, from which country you originate and to which country you return, and how good your cover and protection is.

A Yard Sale

Where does creation end
and destruction begin?
--Under the Glacier, Haldor Laxness

When I discovered that history is a fable,
and a poor one at that,
I started looking for a better fable,
and found theology
--ibid.

"Summertime and the living is not easy"
--Heading for a yard sale advert,
6.15 Tallahassee Craigslist

Wars are poor chisels for carving
out peaceful tomorrows
--Martin Luther King, Jr.
__________________

At a yard sale last weekend, a middle-aged woman living in a most humble house tried to sell me some books by Right-wing political writer Cal Thomas. Ranger replied to the effect that he would not read such tripe, to which the woman said she was a Conservative and proud of it.

Putting her to the test, he replied, "What has the Conservative philosophy or leaders ever done for you?" To this, she could not reply save to say honestly, "I don't know."

Pressing on, "The Conservatives have given us middle Americans nothing but war, and we are still suffering the consequences." As many good Americans do, she sought refuge in her faith:

"In the Bible, God wants us to have wars. What if my neighbor strikes me? What am I to do?"

Ranger: "Wouldn't Jesus say to turn the other cheek?"

She: "If they strike my children, I will strike them!"

R.: "Strike them maybe, but burn down their house?"

Well, it was clear this was not what the woman was in for when she tried to sell her Cal Thomas book. Surely her intellectual rigor is not grossly less than that of her local fellows. Ranger hopes his point was not lost, adrift in a sea of contradictory biblical directives.

If his followers think Jesus wants war and killing, Ranger suggests perhaps his message was not that successful.

You Can't Go Home

--Europa, Martin Sutovic (Slovakia)

Old man, look at my life,
I'm a lot like you were
--Old Man, Neil Young

[I] am learning to shoot, beat, stomp and bayonet
another human being
--Elevich's letter to his mom, Letters Home

When you finally go back to your old hometown,
you find it wasn't the old home you missed
but your childhood
--Sam Ewing

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
--The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost
______________________

Final thoughts on my letter for Ron Moor (Letter to a Young Man):

Ranger recently met with fellow ROTC '68 classmate Dick Gill while in Ohio. We mused upon the fact that we all had the luxury and good fortune to have a few good years at college before being thrown into the mix.

Former Lt. Gill made the poignant observation, when asked about his faith, "How could I go back to being a good Quaker after killing so many people?" One can't go back, which is my point. Unless quantum mechanics proves otherwise, we move from this point forward.

Ranger suspects men like himself, Gill and Moor would pick up a rifle to defend the U.S. if we were threatened by a credible existential enemy. Problem is, good enemies are hard to find these days, and terrorists must serve as stand-ins. The Army should not be a make-work program.

This, is not worth one American Soldier's life.

The Conflict Overseas

Terminate the, enemy
Eradicate the hated enemy
I am an enemy
My very greatest enemy
--Conflict, Disturbed

Eyes may open but cannot see
Torn open to a bleak reality
The silent waves of a pitch black sea
Laying waste the last of me
--Words Mean Nothing, Veil of Sorrow

After serving in the conflict overseas.
And the time that he served,
Had shattered all his nerves,
And left a little shrapnel in his knee
--Sam Stone, John Prine

Ranger Observation:
Calling a war a conflict is like
calling a sniper a people person
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After watching viewing several memorial Day programs stating how we honored our dead from foreign conflicts, the word began assaulting my ears.

Conflict (n): A state of disharmony between incompatible or antithetical persons, ideas, or interests; a clash. A state of open, often prolonged fighting; a battle or war.

Why do we use the word "conflict" to describe the brutal fact of war? It seems too mild a word when the result is the reality of combat deaths. Since WW II the U.S. somehow lost the will or ability to declare war, even when our armies were locked in deadly conflict. Even when 35,000 Soldiers died in Korea or 58,000 in Vietnam, we could not bring ourselves to call the deadly activity for what it was. They were conflicts, altercations, scuffles . . .

Why do we have an overseeing agency called the Department of Defense? Why not call it the Department of Overseas Conflict? Then our wars would be simple matters of conflict resolution, with our Soldiers becoming arbitrators. The Combat Action Badge (CAB) could then morph into the Conflict Arbitration Badge, with the Combat Infantry Badge (CIB) becoming the Conflict Infantry Badge.

The next logical step would be to amend The Constitution to legalize the concept of endless conflict by granting the President the authority to declare CONFLICT, thereby simplifying the whole shooting match by making WAR obsolescent. Congress would be disburdened of a duty they are clearly too timid to exercise.

It is so simple: In a snap of the finger war becomes truly a thing of the past. Simple, except the dead patriots in the cemeteries will still stay dead a long time.

Bonfire of the Vanities

All we have to do is send two mujaheddin . . .
to raise a small piece of cloth
on which is written 'al-Qaeda' in order to make
the generals race there, to cause America to suffer
human, economic and political losses
--Osama bin Laden (fr. 2004 video)

'Cause the only reason that you're here.
Is 'cause folks died for you in the past
So maybe now it's your turn
To die kicking some ass
--Freedom Isn't Free, fr. Team America

Its real beauty is that it destroys
responsibility and consequences
--Farenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
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My parents were born in the early 1920's, and the recent death of another old-timer led me to the topic of peace and prosperity in America, something which skiddaddled out the back door at some indeterminate time in recent memory.

In my parent's lifetime the U.S. fought Germany for a second time and Japan in a World War. We then proceeded to Korea, South Vietnam, Gulf War I, Afghanistan and Gulf War II, with sundry other conflicts along the way. This translates to six major wars in one lifetime; in my lifetime, there have been five (approximately one every 12 years.)

The other little wars should not be forgotten, for they add to the scale. They include Haiti, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, the Greek Insurgency, assistance to the French in the IndoChina War, Lebanon (mid-1950's), assistance to the Israelis (1948-present), assistance to Chaing Kai-Shek, CIA sponsorship of the Cuban Invasion, secret wars in Laos and Cambodia concurrent with the Vietnam War, secret war in Angola, armed peacekeeping, Grenada and Panama Invasion, the Contras, and the Bosnian and Balkans interventions, to name a few.
as hot-button issues

It is difficult to tabulate the actual years spent in warfare, since the events overlap. At least one-third of my lifetime has seen a peace-loving nation killing folks, and a large contingent of our society sees this as Christian and equitable. It is quite a sobering topic, when one considers the incessant nature of our warring.

The dog days of summer have given us the Muslim community center flap near Ground Zero and proposed Koran burnings, but Ranger wonders why Americans are not more concerned with the fact that the Constitution has been figuratively burned on a daily basis since the events of 9-11-01, by two administrations?

It might benefit mankind immeasurably if we burned all the Korans and Bibles in one big bonfire, using the resultant fire to immolate everybody, Christian and Islamist, who believe in waging Holy Wars.