Dance Band on the Titanic

I thought this posting would emerge from an almost-finished draft that deals with the gender and race issues in the Democratic presidential campaign, and the gender issue concerning the "proper" role of the spouse (i.e. wife) in the latest edition of the powerful-politician-goes-sexually-astray story.

As important as these issues are, however, and I believe they are very important, this post will address money and how we spend it (or how it is spent by others for us).

More to the point, the Iraq war's inevitably costing American taxpayers more than $2 trillion, and the federal government's bailout of the financial world's private sector, beginning with Bear Stearns and ending...who know knows where, when or with whom, are coming out of my (our collective) pocket. I'm almost embarrassed to add those now trivially obvious and tedious tidbits: our peerless leaders choose to spend our money as they do and not on the 40+ million Americans who don't have access to affordable, competent health care and the continuing third-rate public education that is available to many children in these United States.

To paraphrase the late Harry Chapin, the president and legislators from both parties comprise an off-tune dance band on the Titanic, and most of us are content to dance along or watch as wallflowers as the band plays on. Who do we think we are and what in the world are we doing?

Two years ago I published This Open Eye, a collection of poems that marked the third anniversary of the bombing of Baghdad. The longest poem in the book, "Common Thread," provides five perspectives on America. To mark the 5th anniversary of the hit tune, "Operation Iraqi Freedom," I've posted the poem below--one perspective for each year. The blog formatting doesn't allow some of the indents and line breaks that the poem should have, but I'll live with that:

Common Thread

1. Gulf War Vet

I deploy to Iraq in ’91 to get that
bastard Hussein out of Kuwait and we
rain hell on Baghdad forty days and
forty nights nonstop though we never
do get him. A desert
storm for sure.
A dozen years later and
I’m dyin’, and find out I got killed over there—
Reagan says Hussein is cool, sells him
choppers, bombs and dual-use hardware,
Rumsfeld shakes his hand, and in ’84, my
CIA pals help him gas Iranians. Commerce
okays 21 batches of anthrax,
and in ’86 only my country refuses
to condemn Iraq’s chemical warfare.
Now
I’m dyin’, creatin’ half-orphans and a widow, and
can’t get a straight answer about
depleted uranium in my own ammo.

My country—
‘tis of thee, I sing.

2. Baghdad Doctor

I was 28 when Saddam purged the Baaths
and Communists in 1979. I healed people,
protected my family. When
Saddam attacked Iran in 1980, the
Americans removed us from their list
of terrorists—even opened
diplomatic relations, gave us loans,
subsidies and military intelligence. When
Saddam slaughtered the Kurds between
1987 and 1989, the presidents,
Reagan and Bush, barely blinked.

When they finally chased Saddam’s
army from Kuwait, the Americans bombed
my city day and night for more than a month—
targeted our water, electrical plants, hospitals
and roadways—
killed two of my children.
Their sanctions killed individual Iraqis over
half a million times with starvation, malnutrition
dirty water and lack of medical supplies.
American
and British planes bombed my country almost
every week for the next decade. Clinton’s
missiles killed Layla al-Attar, our beloved
artist, and her husband, creating wounded
orphans.
The world envies America’s six- and
seven-figure incomes, while American taxes
bring Iraq the need for six- and seven-figure
body bags.
Never satisfied with what
they’ve created or destroyed, the Americans
attacked my country again in 2003, killing more
thousands of civilians—my wife this time. The
American general says they don’t do body counts.

Since they captured Saddam my country
remains a war zone—
if this quarter century
is a taste of freedom and American democracy,
I’d prefer to have my children and wife back
under the dictator. I hate him, but at least
we were safe. At least there was order. In
the 1960s, an American Army veteran wrote
that freedom really means nothing
left to lose. I guess my country
and I are just about free. Americans
slaughtered each other almost a century
after their own independence—an independence
they had fought for freely. How can they think
they can force democracy here—
even if some
of us do want it?

3. Teheran Teacher

The American cowboy president says
my country turns on the axis of evil. Twenty
years ago his father sold Saddam Hussein
mustard gas and anthrax, which he
used against my people and his own.
His father sold Saddam helicopters and
cannons, and the presidents before him
protected our corrupt Shah, and
now the Americans look at the mess they’ve
made in Iraq—and they say the Iraqi people
must clean it up themselves. I pray
the Sunnis, Kurds and Shiites in Iraq
live in peace. My anger is with Saddam and
Reagan and the Shah and the Bushes—people
like them—who are these men and women
who order killing so easily?

4. Kurdish Rebel

From 1973 through 1975, America, Israel and Iran
supported our fight against Iraq, but when Saddam and
the Iranian Shah agreed to close their borders against
us, the Americans cut off their aid, and watched as
Saddam destroyed villages and slaughtered 100,000
of my people with chemicals. After the Americans
removed him from Kuwait, they encouraged us to rise
up against him, but denied us access to captured
weapons. U.S. warplanes circled above as Saddam’s
helicopters slaughtered my brothers. Why
did the Americans do this?

5. Vietnam Vet

Somehow, Charlie’s rounds missed me—
I survived Tet in ’68 and two tours with
Agent Orange.
Lost eight years on my discharge
to Jack, José, and Mary Jane, but
got lucky with a consolation named
philosophy and a woman named
Sophia and brought JoAnn, Nick
and Chris into the world.
Actually—
into New York. When Y2K
fizzled, JoAnn was a semester from
her MSW, Nick and Chris were a
year apart at St. John’s, and
Sophia and I immersed ourselves
in good fortune.
Actually—she
immersed herself. I couldn’t believe
it, but I soaked up what I could
until
the second jet hit the south tower
and cremation by fireball left
nothing of Sophia to put in an urn
or a coffin or the ground, and left
three half-orphans and a hole in
my heart that I’ll never fill or
close
but through which I’ve
seen for the first time the millions
of holes that I helped leave in
the hearts and landscape of
Vietnam, and the holes in the
hearts and landscape of Iraq,
and the holes in the hearts of
young Americans and their
families
and I want to disinter
Johnson, Nixon and Reagan,
grab McNamara, Clinton, Cheney,
bin Laden, the Bushes, Hussein,
Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Powell, Rice
and the rest by their throats, and drag
each one through every heart that’s ever
been stopped or broken by their
distant orders to kill in the name of
freedom, royalty, democracy, oil, or a
God they have never known despite
their claims to the contrary.
Fightin’ infidelity.
Fightin’ Communism. Fightin’
terrorism.
Let me tell you—
I’ve been there and never once
held a concept in my crosshairs—
never once saw a soldier’s or
civilian’s body broken by a 60-
millimeter idea, rocket-propelled
precept or bunker-busting belief.

Yeah, I survived Charlie and Dow
Chemical, got lucky with Sophia’s
love and my heart broken open with
her incineration, and now I live with
knowing it took a hole in my own heart to
see the holes in the hearts of others,
and what I wish for my kids—for
JoAnn, Nick and Chris—what I wish for
what survives of Sophia on this earth—
rather than endorse more slaughter
in their anger and fear, in their loss
and despair—what I wish for my
kids and your kids and all kids—
is that they can take
their own broken hearts and help
open the hearts of others—
before they’re broken
or stopped by
those of us who kill
so easily.