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CounterPunch
March 15,
2003
Bush's
Snipe Hunt with a Body Count
Support Our
Troops...Quick
by BEN TRIPP
War is Hell, according to General William Tecumseh
Sherman, who knew about these things. It is Sherman who gave
the order to burn Atlanta to the ground during the American Civil
War so that 'Gone With The Wind' would have a punchier third
act. Sherman is among the most famous military leaders in history.
Named after the Shawnee warrior Chief Tecumseh (not the manufacturer
of hermetic compressors as is often claimed), Sherman saw the
worst of the war that sundered the United States, and prosecuted
that war with brutal determination. "Sherman's March to
the Sea" does not refer to a holiday expedition in quaint
bathing costumes. America's primary battle tank of the Second
World War was named after Sherman, possibly because it had a
similar smile. So Sherman knew from war. Here's something else
Sherman had to say--and he said this to the Mayor of Atlanta
before he lit the match:
You cannot qualify war in harsher terms
than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those
who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions
a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war,
and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you
to secure peace.
In other words, he didn't talk the talk,
he just walked the walk. And that leads us to the hawks of today,
who insist that war is the only way to Support Our Troops.
Most of my hate mail comes from very
angry people indeed who believe that dissent is treason. That
would have put them in firm opposition to the Founding Fathers
of our nation, back in the day (except John 'Alien & Sedition
Act' Adams, but he was a notorious spoilsport). Those old wig-sporting
cats dissented like nobody's business. My hate mailers believe
in our political leaders with the passion of zealots (the zealot
is a type of goat-eating mongoose). As many of these people
are also hardcore Christian Nation types, I suppose this could
be a habit of mind: you believe one thing with unquestioning
faith and after a while you can believe anything, as long as
it has the imprimatur of evangelical legitimacy on it. Children
do this all the time, and it's charming in some ways to discover
so many adults willing to believe in politicians with the same
unquestioning fervency as a kid's belief in Santa Claus (Santa
Claus is a type of goat that eats mongeese). ultra-patriots selflessly
provide me with endless arguments in support of the Bush Administration's
policies which are so arcane and complex and ill-informed they
would make the Flat Earth Society roll its collective eyes with
embarrassment. Unfortunately the ultra-patriots correspond with
me, not the Flat Earth folks, so I'm stuck with them. Be that
as it may, the main thread of the argument for total war all
the time in the name of Jesus and America seems to be that if
we kill everybody who is from somewhere else, we'll be safe.
The problem with this argument is if you're not eligible to
open a casino on tribal land, you are from somewhere else.
These ultra-patriots gustily enumerate
their relatives in the military, and extol the virtues of same,
and deplore my apparent hatred of anybody in a buzz cut and boots.
This is silliness. Let it be here recorded that I support our
troops. I support them wholeheartedly. Why wouldn't I? They're
mostly folks who needed some college money, or grew up in an
area where there weren't any other jobs to be found, wanted to
learn some discipline, or felt like they owed their nation a
few years of their lives in return for the opportunity to be
called Americans. What the hell's wrong with that? Nothing,
and I put it to you that most folks in the anti-war movement
would agree. I've had relatives in every single war this nation
has ever fought, including the Civil War (1st New Hampshire Cavalry,
Reb,) but I don't go around sending people lists of them to
show I'm the way most patriotic, so there. Particularly seeing
as I have never personally served in the military, owing to a
severe allergy to camouflage. George W. Bush had the same condition;
it's extremely widespread among the sons of affluent white people
for some reason, a kind of sickle-cell anemia that strikes the
country club set. How the hell I got it is anybody's guess;
my people are Swamp Yankees that didn't get telephone service
until Gerald Ford was president.
So the hawks can cut that crap right
now. Support for our troops, those poor bastards in the middle
of the desert with their tents blowing down and Meals, Ready
To Eat from here forward, is not in question. The question here
is whether to support this administration of lunatics who in
less than two years have squandered an entire century of goodwill
towards America and her ideals, destroyed the young edifices
of international law and order, undermined Cherished American
Freedoms, laid waste to the protections of earth, air, and water
which ensure we continue to enjoy purple mountains majesty, amber
waves of grain, and the like; and intend to create an American
empire that runs the entire world according to the interests
of a handful of venal plutocrats (a venal plutocrat is a kind
of mongoose from outer space that subsists entirely on liverwurst).
These Perles before swine don't care a tittle about American
troops. They're just little khaki pawns on a great big board.
Expendable common folk. Soldiers don't even make good consumers,
so why worry about them?
I worry about our troops. I wish they
weren't involved in the biggest roll of the political dice since
Hannibal sized up the Alps and figured he could get elephants
over them. The war could be over in three days, but its repercussions
could last for centuries--just as Germany is still swarming with
elephants due to Hannibal's carelessness. I wish, in a more
conventional bleeding-heart liberal way, that our troops weren't
in Mesopotamia arrayed against a foe composed mostly of ill-equipped
men and boys-not because I'd rather they faced a burly enemy
with proper uniforms, but because it's going to be a ghastly
slaughter, and even as our soldiers roll through Baghdad it's
going to cement America's role as global bully and target of
terrorist hatred, like some big pimply thug on the playground
that the skinny geeks conspire to take out by slipping firecrackers
down the back of his pants.
"Who cares how the world sees us?"
My correspondents ask, although in coarser terms. They seldom
go abroad and they don't see why we should care about the opinions
of Dagoes, Chinks, Wops, Frogs, Wogs, Krauts, Zipperheads, or
Belgians. What the ultra-patriots fail to comprehend is that
America is not an island, and it cannot be sealed off from the
world as if in a giant Zip-Loc bag---and that furthermore the
administration they so fervently endorse is embarking on a series
of international adventures that would make Homer tremble in
his caligulae. This contradiction doesn't seem to disturb the
ultra-patriot, as long as our endeavors around the world are
strictly violent. What they miss is that the only alternative
to remaining responsible to global interests (not to mention
world bodies such as the United Nations, the International Court,
and Salma Hayek) is holding the entire world hostage, and that's
not what our troops are for. It's un-American, and it dishonors
our military. For all his faults (that moustache, what is he
thinking!) Saddam Hussein is not responsible for the attacks
of 9/11. Osama bin Laden is. He's the guy who, in Sherman's
words, deserves "all the curses and maledictions a people
can pour out." He brought the fight to America. So why
is America bringing the fight to somebody else? Why not North
Korea, which has stated its hostile intentions by manufacturing
nuclear weapons? It's obvious to anybody except my correspondents
on the extreme Right that Bush has sent our forces on a snipe
hunt (a snipe being, of course, an imaginary bird not eaten by
any type of mongoose) for reasons unstated, at least by him.
The real reasons, that is.
So support our troops by all means.
I'm supporting them by opposing this grotesque war every step
of the way. I want our men and women in uniform to come home
without a shot fired, because we allowed the inspections to work,
because we contained the putative threat from Saddam Hussein
and thus made our forces available for serious threats in other
parts of the world (such as North Korea and Lichtenstein), and
because we didn't rush things so Bush could throw a tickertape
parade for himself instead of facing up to the shambles his administration
has wreaked or reeked upon our nation.
Let me put it another way: in support
of our troops, I recently offered one of my angry correspondents
on this issue a bet: I will try my damnedest to keep her son
out of combat in the Gulf, and she will continue to support the
president's war drive. Whoever keeps her son alive longest,
wins.
Ben Tripp
is a screenwriter, satirist and cartoonist. He can be reached
at: credel@earthlink.net.
Yesterday's
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