Demonizing

essaysbysean.blogspot.com

Hello Reader,

Got demonizing?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Hey, how ’bout that War on Terror? And our boys in Afghanistan? 

This week a British Member of Parliament said that his Brexit vote-decision is about the hardest thing he has ever had to do in all his years in parliament. The only thing harder, he said, was the decision on whether to put British servicemen in harm’s way. I understand. In a democracy, surely, war should be harsh to contemplate, not easy. Here’s the thing: 

On a big American blog some people—the majority—didn’t know why folks would “demonize” the terrorists that their armed servicemen would be shooting and capturing. How could they not understand? To me history is clear,  but not to those blog commenters. They weren’t stupid, in fact many were science fiction nerds, but they were uninformed.

My aunts and uncles could speak of history, as they nearly all served in WWII. Back when my father was overseas fighting fascists, he would snarl at “krauts.” Back in the homeland, my mum would not eat “sauerkraut:” she only served liberty cabbage, and she referred to her friend’s “German Shepherd” as an Alsatian. In other words, out of solidarity with my dad plunging a bayonet, Mother would demonize the enemy too.

It goes without saying that war is bad, and therefore temporary, while blessed peacetime is the default. Then it is fine to say, “I only work here,” and “It’s none of my business.” But during a temporary war, in a democracy, the war is everybody’s business. Hence Mum would speak of being a part of “the war effort” and recycling “for the duration.” (of the war) The alternative is grim: To say the war “belongs” to Darth Vader and his storm troopers, while the rest of us as non-citizens say, “I only live here.”

I guess writers would know a little more history than most people—for example, in The Handmaid’s Tale the treatment of women is based on present and past history. (The author said so) Here in Calgary I attend a monthly writer’s group at Owl’s Nest bookstore, among a bunch of sensitive artists that includes at least one police detective, and at least one social worker. I am sure that for even for the scummiest of criminals those two will have contempt but not feel hatred. Instead they stay professional, never needing hatred—but then again, policemen and social workers never need to shout, “Fix bayonets!”

In peacetime over here (unlike in certain non-democracies) we don’t enjoy (or teach) feeling hatred, nor demonizing; to us hatred is unworthy of ladies and gentlemen. In fact, expressing hatred can be a crime. 

To me the way out of our discomfort of feeling war-time hatred, the way into feeling temporary permission to demonize, is to think of a judge’s warrant for what would otherwise be a crime: wiretapping. 

To underline the gravity of the act, the judge will say no wiretapping before (date) and no wiretapping after (date). Regarding war, the first “date” is the declaration of hostilities. If towns are in flames at midnight— be it only a month, a week, or a day before the blessed date of peace— then to fraternize with the enemy is an awful thing. But the day after the armistice? On that very day the energy of hatred may freely dissipate. (My Mum, although Irish, hasn’t needed to hate the English (when sober) since Ireland became a republic—and no, Brexit will NOT mean North Ireland finally joining the republic, not even to prevent a “hard border”) 

To me, the day after after peace is declared, it’s fine to come home with a Japanese bride, as in James Michener’s novel Sayonara. I once flew in a Canadian Armed Forces plane to Germany beside an older German lady who had married a Canadian soldier. As I see it, if a Nazi fighter pilot, the day after peace, is willing to burn his red swastika arm band, then I am willing to have him as a beloved uncle. And have him join the Royal Canadian Legion, too.

As for those strange blog readers who didn’t believe we should demonize terrorists, I don’t suppose they see themselves as social justice warriors or long haired hippies. I think they are simply ignorant that if their government is “of, by and for” the people, then something as grave as war is not the government’s business: It’s the people’s business. 

On that blog, commenting to those who, unlike my dear mother, have never tried to walk in the shoes of frightened men wielding bayonets, what I could have said was this:

When our troops kick down Iraqi doors at night and scare families, (a common tactic in the search for the enemy and his weapons) they are perceived by the Arabs as not being justice warriors, but rather, as being storm troopers “recruiting for Al-Quaeda.” Too bad we don’t have civilian women from America, Arabic-speaking, going along as interpreters during those night raids, to talk reassuringly to the families. —But wait! What if my sister were getting her degree in Arabic Studies, and spoke Arabic? Should she quit university? And then grab a long pioneer dress, and go be an interpreter for Americans in Iraq? 

After all that effort, surely the Americans would give her free room and board if she volunteered in Iraq. However… 

My advice? “Colleen, don’t sacrifice your degree. If the American people can’t be bothered to demonize… if they mouth “war” but stay slumped on their couches, eyes half-closed, leaving things to the civil service and the armed forces, then the American people are unworthy of you.” 

Sean Crawford

December

2018

Footnotes:

~Here’s a link to the facts that inspired The Handmaid’s Tale, such as rulers in Argentina taking babies from fertile women. 

~Korea was a “police action”—hence “the forgotten war;”  Vietnam was officially a “conflict,”—hence the conflict at home and abroad.

~I would hope that all loving, sensitive, scruffy artists, during temporary wartime, would make propaganda posters that showed the enemy in a very nasty light. 

~I suppose anger, too, is like a wiretap warrant: useful only to give energy within narrow dates allowing action in the real world… not for “action” in some past or present fantasy daydream. 

~I can imagine some foreign readers looking very, very surprised at the above thought: 

Question: “But isn’t hatred good and beautiful?… Especially after what their great-grandfather did to my great-grandfather?” 

Answer: I don’t have left-brain words for you, but I can recommend to you some right-brain art… 

I, like everyone in the audience one night, was very moved by the stage play, set in no particular time or space, called Death and the Maiden. I presume the movie version, with Sigourney Weaver, is set very precisely in place. Here (link) is what film critic Roger Ebert thought.

Learning from 2006

essaysbysean.blogspot.com

Hello Reader,

Got a queer view of the world?

Sometimes I am reminded this world is queerer than the painted-over flattened version I normally imagine…

I try not to get too offended at that May 2006 copy of The Atlantic magazine I wrote about back in October. It’s like how I get offended when I see photographs from our old western frontier days: complicated, messy, not like the simplified Hollywood narrative I am accustomed to. 

I even wince at modern Europe being complicated: Did you know there are six “micro states” that don’t show on political maps of Europe, or that the city of Vienna has three languages?

Here in Calgary I surprised a friend by teaching him that, contrary to popular belief, you can be Jewish and still be an atheist. (And he taught me things) Back west here, Jews are like homosexuals used to be: present in theory, but normally assumed to be off stage and out of mind. Out east, in contrast, from my reading of columnist Dear Abby, I think folks rattle off “church-or-temple” as easily as we say “parent-or-guardian.” Jewish holidays out there are public holidays, as documented in their University calendars, available at my local campus. A college teacher told me the traffic noises even change on those days—she said her friend had missed their long distance phone call because the friend had been using morning traffic as her alarm clock, and slept in. 

Yeah, sometimes we make our lives too complicated—Better to just set two clocks for getting up. Why two? Because for mine you have to set the time and set the alarm, pull out the pin, wind the main clock and wind the alarm bell: that’s five separate variables—at least I don’t need any snooze button, not if I put the time-delayed second clock over by the door.

From May of 2006 I see the U.S. is not, despite the American’s wishful gloss, a melting pot from sea to shining sea.

QUOTE (page 130, by Marc Cooper)

…The historic migration we are witnessing is radically remaking American culture, producing what some call, in a new twist on on old term, a “Los Angelization” of the country. More and more neighborhoods, even some entire towns, are now predominantly Spanish-speaking. Other areas are officially bilingual.

UNQUOTE

I am so offended from feeling, once again, “always the last to know.” To think I could have known back in May, years ago.

Getting heavy: What truly offends me? That all the shocked amputations and blasted guts of the Vietnam conflict did not inspire anyone to turn over a new leaf. You may recall the conspiracy by several U.S. government agencies to meet together to agree on a number, to tell the public and politicians, for Viet Cong troop strength. This after a lone C.I.A. operative, Samuel Adams, (yes, a descendant of the patriot, but not a brewery owner) “blew the whistle” internally to say that, scientifically, based on desertions alone, the Viet Cong should have already ceased to exist. I tell you, “conspiracy” is not too strong a word.

As writer Michael Crichton once said, “Science is not done by consensus.”

In Iraq, for the war on terror, the U.S. government was again trying to trick the public, this time by steadily refusing to count enemy dead. Call it War Without Windows. (book title) So two good citizens, O’Hanlon and Cordesman, had to glean their own count, and then they published enemy casualties covering a two year period.

Page 36 has a graph: O’Hanlon’s red line of the "cumulatively killed and imprisoned" goes up at a 45 degree angle, over a bar graph for the insurgent membership, month by month.

QUOTE

Despite steady progress in the killing or detention of Iraqi insurgents, the size of the insurgency seems not to have diminished, as new recruits have joined. 

UNQUOTE

QUOTE

(There were think-tank meetings at the Pentagon)

At one such meeting, a participant noted the large number of insurgents being killed or detained ( on O’Hanlon’s Iraq Index) and asked Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld whether this showed that the insurgency faced clear annihilation. “I asked him, ‘Don’t the numbers look pretty good?’” the participant says, “But he declined to make that claim. He was acknowledging that things weren’t quite as they appeared.”

UNQUOTE (Page 36-37, by Joshua Green)

He declined? Perhaps the lessons of Nam didn’t teach “the establishment” to stop hiding the truth, but merely to stop actively lying, from fear the truth might somehow come out. In Nam, as you know, the government got “in trouble,” getting not a tiny bit pregnant, but a tiny bit dishonored, a little bit exposed, by a great big thing called The (expletive deleted) Tet Offensive.

Some philosophy: While secret negotiations in Washington on declaring communist troop strength may take only a day or two, international negotiations can be like watching paint dry—one gets mighty impatient. A comic once offered these words of comfort… when world negotiations seem unbelievably long, let’s remember that back in the day, when a cold war chess tournament between a Russian and an American had all the front page drama of a Canada-Russia hockey series, how it took so very, very long merely to arrange that innocent chess game. The two masters played on neutral ground, Iceland, and we patriots still remember the match: Because Bobby Fischer beat Boris. (Yes, and “Canada” beat Russia)

I try not to forget, or gloss over, the competitiveness of those cold years.

I was acquainted with a boy—he would be in the background when I visited his parents—who was killed in action with the Canadians in Afghanistan.

I see on page 17, back in the day, that Britain was taking over from the U.S. in Afghanistan, and the Afghan president “…Hamid Karzai, confronted his Pakistani counterpart, Perves Musharraf, in February with evidence that insurgents are being trained, equipped and deployed from Pakistan…Karzai said his hope is that Musharraf will crack down and mitigate the attacks.” This in 2006. 

As you know, Pakistan steadily, year by year… as fresh paint aged, faded, peeled and had to be repainted… has refused to admit they are helping the Taliban by using Pakistan’s intelligence service. I guess these discussions take time. 

Last month, President Trump responded by cutting aid—300 million dollars worth. Change is up to the Pakistanis themselves—I refuse to help by flying over there to teach them what every American Muslim schoolchild would already know: “Islam means peace.”

On a comical note: Back in America, on the domestic front, women were “negotiating” in 2006. Someone soberly edited a serious essay collection called Mommy Wars: Stay-at-home and Career Moms Face Off On Their Choices, Their Lives, Their Families. (Random House) 

The response in The Atlantic was an article (Page 110)by Sandra Tsing Loh called Rhymes With Rich subtitled one women’s conscientious objection to the “mommy wars”

QUOTE

Lying in bed the other night, cradling some seltzer water, my stomach gurgling, the word for my malaise suddenly came to me: “afflufemza,” wherein the problems of affluence are recast as the struggles of feminism, and you find yourself in a dreamlike state of reading first-person essays about it, over and over again.

UNQUOTE

What? Hey, I’m a feminist! And I’m an essayist! Oh man, I’m always the last to know if I’m being insulted. But I think I’m safe, in this case. Besides, I don’t mind being offended if someone is funny about it.

…Well, that’s all, dear reader, for 2006 when an issue of The Atlantic cost U.S. $5.95 …$6.95 in Newfoundland. Maybe I should go try a 2018 edition, but it would probably have a bigger price tag: I’m scared to go look. 

Sean Crawford

October

2018 Anno Domini

In the foothills of the Rocky Mountains

Footnotes… held back… maybe for another time 

Lastly, on a funny, happy note: From the city of the first Fringe Festival, here (link) are some fun artist-hacked street signs, reported by the BBC. Scroll on down.

Group Level Integrity

essaysbysean.blogspot.com

Goodbye, Norma Jean … a candle in the wind

Rock singer, Sir Elton John

Who killed Norma Jean?

Folk singer, Pete Seeger

Who killed Whitney Houston?

Unsung

I’m still “getting it,” these questions of who did what.

What’s got me thinking is a passage from Book Three of a series about an ecological disaster, the Chtorr Wars, by a denizen of southern California, David Gerrold. The hero agrees to attend futuristic “human potential” training. There is a huge attendance, anonymous enough for guys to be tempted to wimp out and slack off, I guess. Friday night is “welcoming and orientation:” The students give their word that next morning they will be in their seats, ready to go, at nine a.m. Result? Some of them, about ten percent, “think so little of the words that fall out of their mouths” that they straggle out of their rooms late or don’t even show up and have to be summoned. The trainer is so angry. He explains this war won’t be won by accident; they will need “integrity,” which means: keeping their word and helping others to do the same.

So far, I get it; I try to have integrity too, not just because my favorite people do, but also as a consistent life style choice, even if I am in an anonymous crowd, or alone where no one will see me. The trainer continues—and let me say his anger is for emphasis, not for getting personal—and he says, looking unimpressed, to those who were on time, 

“So you think your integrity is handled because you were on time? Well, it’s not. Because there’s another whole level of it here that you’re not experiencing. It’s no accident,” Foreman said to him “that you’re in a group that can’t be trusted ten percent of the time. That’s you—that’s your integrity at the level of the group.”

As for me, well, at least I’m starting to get it, at least individually. My path to understanding began with my teacher, Mr. Thompson, playing folk records one day. He played for us Pete Seeger’s song for Marilyn Monroe, and another song of Seegar’s, Who Killed Davy Moore? “ “Not I…” said the manager, “Not I…” said the trainer…” They each had their reasons, rationales, excuses and so forth. What counts in the real world? Results! In fact, some business executives flatly refuse to hear excuses. I for one stopped trying to give “reasons” or to defend myself, after the first time some fool misinterpreted me as making an “excuse.” Ouch! So now I focus on results.

Mr. Thompson played those records only once. And so, down the many years, I have misremembered Pete as singing, “Who killed Marilyn Monroe?” (He actually said “Norma Jean”), years where I resolved not to wimp out if ever I came to be tested. (Although it’s too late for Marilyn) And never to say, “I’m only one man, behaving just like all the others want me to!”

And now, as I write this, my community is dealing with the untimely demise of yet another celebrity dying from over-doing drugs, however legal. Poor Whitney Houston. 

As part of our nation’s struggle to comprehend this, a British man on CNN interviewed two famous entertainers. Both were recovering addicts, one in a heavy metal band, and one in Hollywood. Both men said the group around Ms Houston, the “entourage,” failed her. The actor was so determined to publicly stay straight that he fired a man who knowingly offered him illegal drugs; the singer, married with children, finally went straight only after his manager was determined to walk away from all the cash, to quit, if the singer did not get clean. There will always be “reasons” to “enable” someone’s drug using… In my case, if I focus on having integrity, and accepting responsibility, then, I hope, I will “act as if” I am as brave as that metal singer’s blessed manager.

That manager set a fine example for me. We all set examples for our groups, in matters ranging from the life-and-death issues, to the small every-day ones; from a local business, to our national war on terror. A co-worker of mine, Lorna, told me about once being part of a group that traveled on business. As a lone voice, at first, Lorna persuaded all her colleagues not to fudge their expense accounts. In the long run, this surely meant a stronger, more effective group, a group with integrity, knowing they could all count on each other. At the national level the principle would surely apply too. I guess we are stronger, as a body politic, when we help each other do the right thing. The opposite would be, say, doing like folks in the Arab world, where they abdicate their citizen responsibility.

As for what we do, or don’t do, in our group lives… it all matters. For example: Today, if we are in an office, stationed overseas for counter-insurgency, where the “terrain” in which we are maneuvering is the “culture,” then at the very least, if we have given our word to understand that culture, we would stop a buddy when we see him carrying korans (bibles) down the hall to burn them. As you know, locals have found the ashes. As I write this, according to this morning’s newspaper, the riots are continuing, and the death toll is rising, without any regard for the public apology by President Barak Obama. The groundwork for giving the president’s apology a little credibility could have been started long ago. “Ugly Americans” could have encouraged each other to be respectful Americans. Ignorance is just not acceptable: The war will not be won by accident. Even more than in a conventional war, counter-insurgency requires individuals to be taking responsibility to have integrity.

And if my readers think I shouldn’t, in the middle of an essay, suddenly mention the War that now occupies our minds, then perhaps, in reality, we don’t care about the words out of our mouths, or heard in our ears, or even feel responsible for the proper noun “war,” and then maybe, in reality, we don’t possess enough integrity to prosecute the War. And if so, then we should stop… and think about such a lack of commitment.

Perhaps, for individuals and groups, it is fear that keeps us from accepting, and acting, on our responsibilities. Gerrold considers such fears in a passage in his first Chtorr book, where the hero is in high school. I can still picture the hero sitting at his desk in global ethics class, with the teacher symbolically pressing his hand down hard on the kid’s shoulder, putting him on the spot, saying to the kid something like, “…Is that what you think responsibility is? Blame, shame, burden and guilt? Sounds like a law firm.” In time, the class decides that responsibility is not a burden, but instead is a “willingness to be a source.” Yes. For me this definition invokes lightness and empowerment. In other words, when I am acting on my perceived responsibilities I might become tired, but I won’t feel all twisted up. Not anymore.

As for the concept of “group level integrity,” I’m still thinking it through. Consider the death penalty. Up here in Canada, where a “life sentence” is at most 25 years, (even less with statutory release) a released killer might kill again. On the other hand, a death penalty means killing too. We-just-can’t-win! What I think now is we make our choice, and then, whichever we choose, I wear clothes of gray. As I see it, I’m a responsible, weathered adult. I’m not someone wearing virgin white robes who pins the blame for our “not having a death penalty” totally, and solely, on the government. Nor do I say sending peacekeepers to dusty barren Afghanistan is solely of the government. My feeling is this: Even if, say, I didn’t even vote in the last election, I am still not lily-white innocent. Living with this grayness, I think, is part of my responsibility at the level of the nation.

During my youth we lived in black-and-white, saying, “If you aren’t part of the solution, then you’re part of the problem.” Maybe that is true, while, as a paradox, I also live in a gray world. As for star entertainers, it seems to me that their plight is... living in a nation that puts intense pressures on them, and enables their drug use, despite contrasting ideals not to do so.

It's not easy, being in the real world. I’m trying to do the right thing, trying to have an awareness of my responsibility for the level of integrity in my group as a whole. I wonder: If I was associated with a woman’s luncheon group, would I mention the death of Ms Houston, and try to discourage us all from getting prescriptions from multiple (two or more) doctors; would I suggest bringing in a guest speaker to speak on housewives overdoing substances? Or would I wimp out of making the effort to speak truth to the power of peer pressure?

As I documented in my essay Better to Sow, I have strong recycling credentials, but I still don’t know if I would speak truth to power: If I was with some environmentalists, standing idly near a house that had been condemned for toxic mould, from a marijuana grow operation, and suddenly one of us pulled out a joint, then—? Would I say, “Stop!” while I pointed to that house and the enviro-damage? And then say that poor Whitney had been embedded in a society where some of us enabled drugging? Would I add that I, for one, just can’t be supporting the big drug machine? …Or would I be too afraid, and instead just patronize my peers, by rationalizing that they weren’t ready yet to be part of the solution?

I wonder.

… Goodbye, Norma Jean, …Goodbye…

Sean Crawford,

East of Eden,

February 2012

Footnotes:

~As you know, the Greeks lied, falsified, covered up their debt status in order to be admitted into the euro-zone. Was the Greek government able to do this because they were embedded in a nation that believed in falsification and graft? Perhaps. And perhaps any “group” turn around, to finally produce "economic productivity through integrity," would have to be a “national” turn around. Where each and every one was participating. Or perhaps, instead, it will be easier for Greeks to endure years of poverty (over a decade) than to change. …Yes, I read about Greece in the current best seller Boomerang Travels in the New Third World by Michael Lewis.

~Integrity counts because things are connected: interesting quote from the above, p 202, "It's not just a coincidence that the debts of cities and states spun out of control at the same time as the debts of individual Americans."

~The Japanese may be encased in formality, yet their nation did a fine turn around, for the time being, to dress informally—no jacket and necktie—in business offices so as to save energy (from air conditioning) after losing some nuclear reactors to the tsunami.

~Here are the two songs.

~Better to Sow is archived under November 2011

~Focus and Commitment is archived under June 2011

~For things Chtorran, David Gerrold’s home page is here.

(I still don’t believe in doing links, especially for my own posts, but David’s a computer guy, so I guess he would want me to link to him)

Atrocities and Our Troops

essaysbysean.blogspot.com

(The Associated press) MAJAH, Afghanistan - Taliban fighters holding out in Marjah are using civilians as human shields, firing from compounds where U.S. and Afghan forces can clearly see women and children on rooftops or in windows. The intermingling of fighters and civilians has been confirmed by Associated Press journalists. It is part of a Taliban effort to exploit strict NATO rules against endangering innocent lives to impede the allied advance through the town in Helmand province, 610 km southwest of Kabul. (Thursday Feb 18, 2010)

There were a half dozen of us nice middle-aged men and women in the Good Earth organic coffee house. My associates tended to be into health food, spirituality and new age. Like I said, nice people. The topic changed to speculation as to whether our young people in Afghanistan, under the stress of combat, were resorting to atrocities and massacres. Back when my peers were young they had all had long hair. Among us only I had the relevant background or book learning. Unfortunately I floundered. I can think and express things so much better when I have a long time to do an essay. So here goes.

We have all read of how Saddam Hussein and his sons, if not the Iraqis, if not the Muslims, believe in using people as human shields. Perhaps the Taliban, too, believe in shields and collateral damage. We know that our boys, in contrast, believe in fairness and the Geneva Convention. And when under stress, our boys can be furious at unfair lawbreakers. They may lash out and—...I can sympathize. My coffee friends, I am pleased to say, also sympathized. They did not try to avoid the issue and just abandon our young people to their plight. As a poet once said, "War is too important to leave to the generals."

(Police action)

I know this topic isn't pleasant. I would ask you to take a deep breath and read, but don't answer, the following question: what if the Taliban put their relatives in a longhouse with loopholes and then fired on passing NATO troops? OK, breathe. Obviously the Taliban won't risk their own relatives, right? ...It would be easier to approach this topic with the emotional distance provided by time... I am thinking of the UN "police action," also called the Korean war. I still remember the black and white footage of the UN soldiers having checkpoints for the refugee columns. The troops resorted to holding up their big round land mine detectors over baby carriages. The communists, you see, believed it was OK to hide guns and bombs under a baby's swaddling clothes.

And what if you found the reds opening fire on you from within the crowd? (This happened.) During the safety of peacetime a police officer might sacrifice his life, might take a bullet for the public. During wartime, though, the wisdom of Abraham Lincoln applies. He said, "You can sacrifice a limb to save a life, but you cannot sacrifice a life for a limb." If soldiers are needed then the actual life, the very existence, of the nation is at stake. So the soldiers must not sacrifice themselves: they must return fire. They do so according to their military doctrine of minimum force.

This doctrine mandates things like firing single shots, if that will do, rather than firing on full automatic. A peacetime equivalent, I suppose, would be the homeowner who can legally stab a home invader to death, provided he uses the minimum force needed to defend himself. It's common sense.

(First Point)

Soldiers take their military manual seriously. They are drilled and trained and practiced and indoctrinated with a sense of professionalism... until they can perform their duties, such as using minimum force, even when under stress, with proud self-discipline. This is a part of the reason why officers usually have to spend years at military college before they are given their first command. You and I, of course, lack this professionalism. If we had a job overseas as, say, civilian security guards and if we heard a single round go past, then we might save our own skins by blasting back on full auto with everything we had. However, soldiers are not like me and you...

So my first point is that soldiers take pride in doing the right thing. (Incidentally, soldiers learn to react to "effective fire" not to stray single rounds.)

For my second point, I would try again for emotional distance. As a boy I read a rousing story, in a British special Children's Reader's Digest, called They Remembered the "Birkenhead Drill." When a passenger steamer, the HMS Birkenhead, was sinking, the civilian adult men were lined up on deck and they stayed there, for as long as it took, until their women and children boarded the boats. Then it would be their turn, if still possible, to join in whatever life boat space might be left. I forget how fast the water rose, or how many men died. If just one man in the line up had bolted it would surely have started a panic. But no man broke ranks.... These days, to be sure, I talk like a timid middle-aged man, but I had I been on a sinking ship the "remember the Birkenhead" reflex would have hit me. I too would have sucked in my gut and tried to be brave like everyone else.

I saw the RMS Titanic exhibit at the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria. When that ship was first sinking, after that bump in the night, they didn't know how bad it was. And so some men innocently joined the boats. In later years one or more were to commit suicide: they could never outlive the shame. (Incidentally, when the "unsinkable Molly Brown" asked for a brawny crewman to join her boat as an oarsman he first got written permission from the captain, in order to be able to prove afterwards he wasn't a coward) So far, so good.

But recently, when a large ferry sank? Off the roadless coast to Alaska? I imagine the passengers, husbands and wives, boarded the lifeboats two by two—and this was morally right. Partly because, in practical terms, there were ample lifeboats, and partly because women, for practical reasons, now need less protecting: they don't often die in childbirth, and they do have equal rights. Practicality is the horse, morality is the cart.

(Flying)

Some years ago, back before 9/11, I flew to visit my brother who lived in Fort Lauderdale. If my jet had been hijacked to Cuba I would have sat with folded hands: my brother might have despised me had I tried to be a hero. It might have been morally wrong to risk my fellow passengers. But suppose I flew on flight 93 on that day of infamy? After the first three jets had crashed it was no longer practical to be passive; now my brother would surely despise me if I didn't risk everything and say, "Let's roll!" and go down fighting. Again, morality follows after the horse.

A digression...Here is a joke from childhood:

On the Los Angeles to New York flight a man goes into the cockpit. He pulls out a knife and says, "This plane is going to New York!"

"But sir-"

"This plane is going to New York!"

"But sir, we always go to New York. This is the LA to New York flight."

"Don't give me that! The last three times I was on this plane we went to Cuba!"



(Second Point)

And now our sons and daughters, reservists and regulars, are fighting to build a new Afghanistan. I propose a not-too-scary thought experiment. Although the Afghan economy surely doesn't allow for animal shelters, lets suppose: The Taliban have sneaked into the dog shelter; they have filled sandbags, cut loopholes, and have opened fire on our NATO sons. Now what? Despite some doubt and indecision, of perhaps only a few milliseconds, (those poor dogs!) the young men would surely return fire. The second time it would be easier to react properly. And then the next morning in the mess tent our young reservist daughters, who have left their own dogs safely back at home with their parents, would be having breakfast. They would nod solemnly to each other and agree it is altogether fitting and proper for the boys to return fire... A new horse—innocent dogs as shields—has meant a new cart: returning fire even unto the death of "man's best friend."

My second point, therefore, is that our children overseas would be trying to be as moral as they could be, redefining morality as needed, in order to be as civilized as possible.

Now I should probably "digress" to discuss South Vietnam. After all, my grizzled longhaired peers and I had our formative years during the brief life of that republic. It was hard for the young troops back then to understand that war, and it was hard for them to bear how their own civilian peers hated them and spit on them: the average age was 19 as compared to my father's war where the average age, for a G.I. Joe, was 26. (Same as my university graduating class.) But wait—it wasn't a "war;" it was officially a "conflict." Are you confused? So were the young men. The conflict was supposedly real important but... troops in Germany felt no urgency, the national guard was never called up and the occupation troops in Japan continued to eat ice cream and play baseball. Are you frustrated? So were the troops. And let's not even begin to discuss feeling stabbed-in-the-back by the people they were trying to save...

Do you know the term "regimental family?" This comforting phrase was used a lot during a recent military funeral in my hometown. The funeral, let me say for the record, was for a young hero killed in action in Afghanistan. Corporal Nathan Hornburg. My coffee buddies had all attended, had all known his family. In contrast, sadly, the poor boys in Nam scarcely had the phrase regimental family in their vocabulary. The controversial "Vietnam year" meant the soldiers were rotated in and out like spare parts without a soul, while their peers were also coming and going, "new guys" and "short timers," while they all knew—they knew!—that the whole effort was a fiasco, from top to bottom, from the White house down to the ignorant citizens on main street U.S.A. The boys would not have known it at the time but... they were all terribly lonely... There is a reason why Nam vets don't have reunions.

(Third point)

The military climate in Afghanistan, in contrast, is much less conducive to war crimes. My third point is that our troops have healthy unit cohesiveness. It would never occur to young volunteers (not conscripts, not draftees) to refer to their middle-aged leaders as "lifers." Not like in Nam, not at all.

Here at home nearly everyone my age knows of a young slacker, call him LeFool, who lives in his mother's basement and won't get a job. You might imagine LeFool getting into the army and behaving inappropriatly, doing such things as brandishing his rifle in the air like foreigners do on TV, or perhaps, while on patrol on a clear day, with no Taliban in sight, suddenly shooting a round into the wall of an animal shelter just because it "felt good." Won't happen. No way. Better to imagine LeFool with peer pressure, in a warm noisy regimental family, which allows no space for "hiding in the basement." His peers will have the work ethic and the sense of purpose that comes only from high standards. If LeFool were allowed to slack off do do what "feels good" then he would be of no use: neither to the military nor to himself. Long before his character declined to the point of rudely brandishing or shooting into a wall he would have revealed his inner weakness by how he took care of his personal gear and group shared equipment. A hawk-eyed corporal would have intervened in time. The same principle applies to sailors and ground crew.

I am reminded of how, early in world war II, General Patton ran a vast desert training base in Nevada. Today I have a brother living in Las Vegas, but at the time, before air conditioning, Vegas was still a town. Patton wanted his men to feel pride and determination: to be, in other words, soldiers between their ears. He ordered that if any man, after leaving base, was found in town, by the military police patrol, with his necktie undone... then his company commander would have to write a letter to Patton to explain why. If it happened twice then the officer would have to resign. No one ever had to.

I mentioned the sharp eyes of the corporal. The armed forces has a series of such checks, right up to the Inspector General. If such a general, during an inspection visit, found the troops dressed like pirates with their unit equipment dirty and not oiled, then surely all the officers would be instantly replaced. I know of no such case; I say this only as a thought experiment. I do know of a tank regiment in world war II, with grave morale problems, that, understandably, had things like rusty side arms...They ended up getting the great honor of a presidential unit citation. Their change in outlook came, understandably, when they were assured that they would indeed be allowed to go overseas to fight. (Yes!) These were "Eleanor's (Roosevelt) troops." African-Americans.

(Dressing for dinner)

I could have reminded my coffee friends of how the Duke of Wellington said the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton (boarding school). I could have called their attention to how colonial administrators in rotting remote jungle outposts would insist on always formally dressing for dinner, always taking down the flag before sunset. "The sun never sets on the Union Jack" we said. These things matter.

I could have told them how an army base is like a God-fearing small prairie town, complete with the three Ps: the post office, the police and the protestant chaplain. On that base, during rare and hallowed evenings, the men would put on their dress uniforms, get out the old Boer war candlesticks, and the chaplain would say grace. The first toast would always be to the queen. They would, during that toast, be reaffirming the values of civilization.

Next day, in broad daylight, it is the entire base that packs up big tents to go overseas. And so when tired dusty troops are returning from an Afghanistan patrol at sunset... they are returning through the gate to the three Ps and civilization. There can be no war crimes, not when such men and women, determined and proud, hold their ground.

Our sons and daughters overseas are motivated. They don't feel forgotten or hated by their peers, not when they are visited by NHL players and there is a civilian staffed Tim Hortons for donuts. They have unit morale. When they return home, those who survive, they will probably spend less time down in the basement with LeFool and more time up in the kitchen with us grownups. And we will be proud of them.

God save the queen.



Sean Crawford

on the prairie,

essaysbysean.blogspot.com summer of 2009.15


Note: For more on what you can do, see my essay of April 24 entitled "Are Yankees Stupid?"

Footnote: Patton told his officers of how the American colonists, lacking weapons, at first resorted to rolling logs downhill against the Redcoats. In Starship Troopers by R. A. Heinlein the equivalent of Patton's "necktie," for teaching determination, is when the recruits, who would normaly have ample ray guns and atomic grenades, are forced to practise throwing a mere knife against a straw "sentry." A lack of weapons is no excuse to quit. When I had no shovel I dug with my helmet...

Funny footnote:
After the general says a soldier can "take this shovel..."

Young officer: Uh, Sir, that's an entrenching tool.

General: I'm a general; I can call a shovel a shovel.

(from a half forgotten novel by, I think, Philipe Jose Farmer)

Are Yankees Stupid?

www.essaysbysean.blogspot.com

What would I say if a European friend asked me about my neighbors to the south, asking, “Are Yankees really that stupid?” I’d be honest. I’d reply “Well, just last year a responsible high up Washington official said publicly that some of the terrorists of 9/11 had crossed the border from Canada into the U.S.” Of course, that was not a responsible thing for her to say since it was 100 per cent false. I don’t remember whether she apologized.

I’d refer my friend to that new passport law, that law bitterly opposed by congressmen of the border states, that law whereby North American farmers and townsfolk would still be able to cross county lines and state lines for free, but would now be stopped at the 49^th parallel unless they had a big expensive passport. And then I would relate how, only one month before the new law was to come into effect, two former U.S. presidents were doing the “rubber chicken thing” in Toronto. And when a journalist asked these two “Mr. Presidents” what they thought of compulsory passports for the world’s longest undefended border, both men said… they didn’t know anything about it. The scandal made the front pages all over Canada. I don’t remember whether any congressmen were asked for their reaction.

In fairness, if I was a former president, depressurizing after the stress of holding office, then I too might stop reading newspapers and instead get all my news from the six o’clock infotainment, but of course this excuse can’t be applied to that Washington official who, by the way, was the head of Homeland Security. Perhaps the crux, then, is not that Yankees are “stupid” so much as irresponsible. Declaring war on terror without being committed to learning basic information verges on something far more serious than mere stupidity. Perhaps, even though as individuals Americans don’t like losers, as a group they are just not committed to winning. (There is no try to win; you either do or do not.)

In fairness, I must say that Canadians, being equally North American, are equally prone to irresponsibility. In Afghanistan, for example, according to my memory, the Canadian counter-insurgency effort is, supposedly, to deny aide and comfort to Taliban recruiters, by winning the people’s hearts and minds and nourishing a strong democracy. Supposedly this is to be done by building schools, wells, bridges and so forth. The Canadian armed forces are to be merely support troops, a mere sideshow, assisting this main focus by keeping Canadians safe to do their development efforts. Otherwise the Taliban will dig up their rifles and rush back in again when the Canadians leave. Yet somehow, or so it seems to me, every reporter who goes overseas reports solely on the armed forces. Of course I believe the army is glorious, and of course I have a “support the troops” ribbon on my car, but that doesn’t mean I take my eye off the ball: the development efforts.

What if General Patton had closed his eyes after Pearl Harbor? What if, instead of making an effort to develop a big army as quickly as possible, he had frozen all such development for six months? The Canadians in Afghanistan, I regret to say, after their initial success, had a six-month period where the development workers didn’t leave their compound because they weren’t safe. This does not trouble me nearly as much as how it was so long after the six months were over that the news finally leaked out. That’s not good enough. If the journalists, and the government, didn’t care enough to notice for six months, then the Canadian public obviously doesn’t care either: That’s not glorious, that’s not a noble tragedy, that’s just small and petty.

It is not possible merely to wish benevolent government on a nation whose history, both recent and of old, has been a field of war invasion and lawlessness. So, our troops remained deployed to (a) guarantee a measure of security while Afghanistan citizens went about the first steps to democracy and the extension of basic rights, (b) assist in building the essential elements-schools, a justice system, infrastructure, roads-that any society must have, and (c) offer humanitarian assistance where possible.
Rex Murphy, Canada and Other Matters of Opinion, p.139

I live on the Canadian prairie. As in Afghanistan the grass is dry and yellow. Many of the surrounding farms have Quonset huts for barns, those long half cylinders from World War II, made of arching corrugated steel bolted together. In the next town, Cochrane, is a pre-war barn that’s shaped like a Quonset hut, but the structure is made of brick. Whatever works. Another (infra) structure easy to bolt together is a WWII style Bailey bridge, like something out of a giant’s mechano set.

I remember as a boy, driving with my father, when one day Dad stopped the car to show me a Bailey bridge, a sturdy bridge like something out of a war movie, explaining to me how amazingly fast they can be extended over the river. Now I’m as old as Dad was then, while every day I drive past a well that is something out of a cowboy movie, a well with rotating vanes on a tower. These wells are common here on the plains.

Now ask me, as a fine Canadian citizen, “What do the schools, bridges and wells we are building over in Afghanistan look like?” My answer is: “I. Don’t. Know.” Yes, you may call me petty. Just don’t call me a Yankee.

Here in Calgary, if any European asks me in amazement, “Is there something in the drinking water that makes Yankees have a low I.Q.?” then I can only reply, “I can’t judge intelligence, not when Calgary has the highest per capita ownership of library cards in Canada.” The first thing I noticed, when I settled here, is how the Coles Bookstore downtown, besides having sections for standard categories like cooking or self-help, also had an entire section for oil and gas. How brainy. We are such a progressive city; I think we’ve elected the first Muslim mayor west of Toronto.

In fairness to U.S. citizens, their issue is probably not stupidity, and not exactly irresponsibility, but something else, something that occurred to me just recently as I was writing my essay Knowing Nam (February 2011). I have come to realize: In the U.S., the average man or woman in the street, judging by their behavior, wants “plausible deniability.” However, it’s hard to have deniability if your peers are actively seeking information; it’s very hard if your downtown bookstore, in addition to the standard “for males only” war and history sections, has, as well, a war on terror section that includes books by civilian females. Thoughtful, engaged females. Unfortunately, those are mighty big “ifs.”

Are there such sections? If I’m too stubborn to fork out for a passport that would cost me three night’s accommodation at my usual cheap Edmonton hotel then I’m not going to drive down into Montana to see for myself.

By this point I can imagine some U.S. reader sputtering indignantly, “Drinking water! (sputter) plausible denia—(sputter)… Are you crazy? Listen, Americans are really smart and really responsible—so there!”

At which I can only reply, as gently as I can, “All of my readers are responsible. And you, dear reader, may well prove me wrong. Go ahead: do the “citizen thing.” Go to your downtown library, or bookstore, and ask them to include a war on terror section. Tell them how your fellow citizens want to seek out new information, new concepts, and boldly put their actions where their commitment is… I am sorry to say I think you will fail… Then you may write a comment here to tell the rest of us what happened.”

Sean Crawford

In driving distance of stupidity

April 2011

Footnotes:

~This essay was inspired by the elation and gloom of reading A Woman Among Warlords by Malalai Joya, a young idealistic Member of Parliament in Afghanistan.

~I think my last word on this war, after several essays at the intersection of citizenship and war, is Pick Your Wartimes Well, archived September 2013.

Someone cares about development. According to the Calgary Sun, July 5, 2011, page 10, Kandahar's provincial governor, Br. Toryalai Wisa, "took part in an international conference in Montreal, only to find: "The Canadians were not aware of what is (happening) here.... The only news the Canadians were getting was just explosions, death, killings, assasinations."

On that visit, he said no one seemed aware of the schools the Canadians have built and refurbished, roads paved or the irrigation and dam projects military engineers have created."

Memory Upgrade- At first Canada sent 1,000 armed representatives, under Prime Minister Chretien. It was under PM Paul Martin that Canada opened... "a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) base (compound?) in the Taliban heartland of Kandahar city. A  modest initial deployment in November was followed a few months later by about 2,000... (troops). The daunting second assignment was to lead an open-ended new combat mission across a province notoriously regarded as the most dangerous in the country." Calgary Herald June 4, 2011 p A15, by Matthew Fisher, Counting the Cost of Combat.

~Matt Fisher again, Nov 30, 2013 p A2: The mission began with a small combat deployment… switched to a larger mostly peacekeeping role in Kabul  from 2003 to 2005 and returned to Kandahar with a large task force  for combat operations between 2006 and 2011 when the Candadians transitioned to a training role...

A Final Word- I like the final paragraph of Michael Den Tandt's book review, as published in the National Post p. A6 Sept 23, 2013, of Graeme Smith's The Dogs Are Eating Them Now. 

Tandt writes: ...Despite its very bleak tone, and its scathing assault on Western hubris, the author's empathy—for ordinary Afghans, and for ordinary Canadian soldiers—shines through The ironies are palpable throughout, and elevate this beyond the level of a combat memoir, to something more timeless and sad. It was former chief of  defence staff Rick Hillier who  declared in 2005 that success in Afghanistan would be a 20-year project. He may have been right. Eleven years in, we will never know.