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CounterPunch
February
28, 2003
A Day in the Elephant
Park
by ELIOT KATZ
Bush's spokesman Ari Fleischer
tells the world press that nobody
but nobody wants to avoid war more than President Bush.
We are sleeping in a park, being run over by hundreds of giraffes--
occasionally a stray elephant smashes our foreheads into the
wet ground. We feel lucky to be alive, but we think the new massage
toys are a little too rough. We are trying to use paper cups
to hold back the waterfall of war. When we wake up under
the overbearing sun, there are Parisian vultures circling overhead.
These are the old softy vultures, the new more courageous vultures
are on their way flying from former Soviet republics where leaders
have time to shake our administration's hands in between show
trials
and contemporary confessions. The giraffes have long necks, they
are
beautiful. There are bombs that put on the most dazzling light
shows
any of us have ever seen. We have our TVs tuned to CNN, to Fox
News, to MSNBC, we know that a lively presentation of
Independence Day fireworks is due to surprise us any week now.
Have you ever seen how much water those elephant trunks can
hold? It's a miracle of nature--god is definitely on the side
of these
mythic mammals and rough sex toys. In the White House they are
mouthing a lipservice mantra against war, but sending in a few
hundred
thousand troops just in case. In a few weeks, it will be considered
irresponsible and dangerous to keep those troops in the desert
without letting them loose for at least a moderately heartpounding
calisthenics routine. At first, the claim was that Saddam would
never
let UN inspectors have unfettered access, now it is the lack
of evidence that proves the evidence exists. The goal posts have
moved, so the UN can be bribed or disregarded, though Saddam's
disrespect for the UN is cited as the main excuse for war. I
think
Bush & Co. have an understandable paranoia--after all, Saddam
is a tyrannical ex-U.S. ally with reason to want revenge--but
even honest paranoia isn't a convincing rationale for bombing
the people one is pretending to save, or for declaring bankruptcy
of the imagination by declaring the immoral precedent of pre-emptive
war. So, instead, a thousand possible reasons are placed into
a
digital mixing bowl and it is you, my friend, who will pick the
last
excuse on the back of a raspberry-flavored playing card. Colin
Powell says that if Saddam uses biological or chemical weapons
the U.S. just might use nuclear bombs to prevent a holocaust.
Even the giraffes and elephants stumble around the park trying
to figure that one out. Whether we are able to get a good night's
sleep
or not, the smart bombs are in the back room packing, the results
of their entrance exams will be announced on CNN at ten.
Eliot Katz
is the author of three books of poetry, including Unlocking
the Exits (Coffee House Press, 1999). He is a coeditor of
Poems
for the Nation (Seven Stories Press, 2000), a collection
of political poems compiled by the late poet, Allen Ginsberg.
A cofounder of Long Shot literary magazine, he is the new poetry
editor of the online politics journal, Logos.
Wire-Taps
after Whitman
by JIM COHN
I hear the tragedy of wire-taps
upon the world house.
The yantras of soldiers & revenues & insensate machinery.
We are cut off, at the enemy's mercy, none clapping for us.
We will not know what the crowd around us means.
Gone the tender & wondrous thoughts of America.
Alas for the generation that would withdraw
Unnoticed, silent & speechless--from life escape.
Curious, bared eyes gazing to the moon--corpses lit
With the many hardships of anguish advancing,
Not recoiling from what my own trampled soul asked,
Now missiles are trained on our cedars & redwoods.
Thousands sternly immolate themselves for one.
They depart with cheerfulness, freely giving up life.
They are men & women as divine as myself.
I am more resolute because all have denied me.
My affection is greater than had I been accepted.
After all the evidence is weighed, where do these wire-taps lead?
The answer is there before us, but not in words.
15 February 2003
Jim Cohn
lives in Boulder, Colorado and manages the Museum
of American Poetics website. He can be reached at: jimcohn@ecentral.com
Yesterday's
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February 22
/ 23, 2003
Laura Flanders
Security Threat?
Bernadette Devlin McAliskey Barred Entry to US
Alexander Cockburn
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A Universal
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Armageddon Anxiety
Jo Freeman
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Joanne Mariner
Pets Unite!
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The Zev and Ari Show
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A Monumental Hypocrisy
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Stepping Back from the Brink of War
Norman Madarasz
French Kisses from the Citizens of France
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The Revolt in Bolivia
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The Lies of Tom Lantos
Ranjit Hoskote
The Invisible Modernities of the Islamic World
Emily Zitter-Smith
Who's Safe Now?
An American in Cairo
Rich Procter
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Website of the Weekend
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Read
Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
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