Masters of War

The last few days, I've had such dark feelings about things that it's been difficult to envision how to build a blog entry to express them. It's very important to me to find a tone that speaks to all of us, not just Democrats or whatever. It would be a lot easier if I just watered down the message, I suppose, or just played along to encourage harmony, but I'm a very passionate individual, and I can't dilute that. It's me.

I think we're going to go to war with Iran. I'm sure there are people who think that's a fine idea, that we can fix things once and for all with a few bombs. More on that later.

I'm going to ask you to do something you won't want to do, and that I don't actually recommend. Warning! Warning! Violent images! If you do this, don't blame me! Here is a link to a YouTube query for "Masters of War". If you follow that link, and play some of the videos, you'll see the toughest images to look at I've ever seen. Bob Dylan's classic anti-war ballad is the raw essence of humanity's opposition to war, and is the perfect background for the real truth of war. I looked at several of these, particularly the montage-style offerings rather than performances by Dylan himself or others like Pearl Jam. I confess I frequently averted my eyes, and I saw too much, frankly, to ever be quite the same again. I saw bodies ripped apart, mass graves, brutally damaged infants with a look of horror on their tiny faces that even Botticelli never imagined. I'm not sure I can ever dream again.

Remember my man Howard Zinn? (Yes, I finished his People's History.) On page 664 of that book, Zinn offers his essential view of war:

... given the nature of modern warfare, the victims would be mostly civilians. To put it another way, war in our time is always a war against children. And if the children of other countries are to be granted an equal right to life with our own children, then we must use our extraordinary human ingenuity to find nonmilitary solutions for world problems.

War is beyond imagining. War is beyond hell. War -- any war, not just nuclear war -- is to be avoided like the plague itself. No, I do not understand why everyone doesn't agree. I never will.

So now we're going to war with Iran. I can feel it. Cheney's been pushing for it for some time, and now the administration is going to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guard itself as a terrorist group. Never mind there's probably a grain of truth to that, but with the overwhelming tension in the air, joint military maneuvers by China and Russia, and the first halting steps at actual diplomacy, we're going full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes! Good God! If we want to keep bombing Muslim nations, man, we are hellbent down the path of total mutual annihiliation, if that's what we really want. And that's another thing I worry about a lot!

I've written congressmen. Heck, I've written the President himself, offering to have faith in him, if he'll just have faith in me, in order to start rebuilding together. I got nothing but a canned response, of course. I have a terrible, sickening sense of déjà vu, and I'm determined to do everything sane and reasonable to prevent this madness. I've been all over Barack Obama's website trying to persuade his organization to speak out specifically against the new Iran push. Dennis Kucinich has already done so. I may be powerless, but the elephant is going to be plagued by gnats while it tries to trample on the world.

As much as I love Bob Dylan, I could not in all sincerity sing his final verse. (I've been tempted to sing the song and put it up on this site, and I may still; hey, it's my blog!) In the final verse, Dylan speaks with a self-righteousness that can only be justified in the purity of youth. In my youth, I could have sung that final verse, but I'm older now, and I know my own compromises and corruptions. I have no right to wish harm to anyone, even those who do such harm to others. Why haven't I tried harder to stop all this before now? Why did I forsake my college protests and pursue careers, first in theater, then in technology? Because, in my inaction, I had become complicit.

I have now been six months away from gainful employment. I began this time intent on reading and meditating extensively, and I've done so. But while much of my reading has been highly eclectic and non-political, I've also been compelled to use this time to look deeply into today's political climate. It's been real tough on the meditative posture. It's never been that challenging to see through the political machinations, but I have a relatively coherent overview now, and it's no less disturbing than the images in the YouTube query above.

There's yet another verse of Dylan's song that I can't sing any more, not because I don't want to, but because I'm no longer young. If I were, I would sing this verse over and over:

How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I'm young
You might say I'm unlearned
But there's one thing I know
Though I'm younger than you
Even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do

(I sang the verse. A capella. For masochists only!)