BAGHDAD EPITAPH


I suppose you could call me a human shield:
I prevented a bullet from hitting a wall.
I got in the way searching for water.
It wasn't my game plan at all.

I got in the way of so many things:
empire, democracy, dictatorship
diplomacy, policy, propaganda
(somebody's ego-trip).

I lie in a dusty Baghdad street.
Bosses drive over, wave after wave.
Here is the cradle of civilization.
Here is my early grave.

3.12.03

Today hundreds of thousands of people, including many of the poets I admire & whose work I enjoy, are joining to march against war. While I think it is always right to protest against war in principle, I also think that sometimes, and as they say "as a last resort", we have to fight for what is right. As I read this total situation, Saddam Hussein is in defiance of a UN resolution insisting that he cooperate, reveal & dismantle his weapons of mass destruction. The choice facing the UN is whether to force his compliance, or accept some arrangement which allows him to remain in violation. The French, Germans & Russians are proposing a middle path, which involves increasing the pressure of inspections with the hope of gradually forcing Saddam either to cooperate or leave power. This might possibly work, if the UN is forthright in sticking to this position, rather than assuming that by simply allowing inspections - even more strict inspections - Saddam is complying. That would be a mistaken assumption. Saddam can comply only by revealing what happened to the stockpiles already in existence. Unfortunately the divide betwen the US & these other Security Council members could give Saddam the notion that his strategy of evasion is working. Hopefully in the next couple weeks the UN & the US will achieve some compromise that will allow them to stand firm for full compliance backed up by force.

There are those thousands opposing war under any circumstances. But the counsel for appeasement out of fear of a war against extreme Islam is an argument for the status quo, and the status quo is one in which these same millions of civilians are held hostage by terrorist extremism, abetted by a dictator who has excelled in producing the tools they need & who has shown a readiness to use them. If war comes, because Saddam Hussein has persisted in defying the will of the UN, then Saddam will also bear responsibility for the suffering that war brings.

I think we are reaching a profound turning point in the way in which individual nations & the world deal with militarism, violence, weapons of mass destruction, & terrorism. Clearly the Bush strategy of US military hegemony plus willingness to intervene may have both negative & positive consequences for global maintenance of peace & security, but taken as a whole it is insufficient grounds for global order. The UN remains the only hope for a lasting mechanism for resolving international crises & injustices. Hopefully the intense strain of the give-&-take between the US & the UN over this issue will act as a kind of learning process, rather than a signal of breakdown & beginning of a new round of disorder & tension. Hopefully, if war comes, the US will go to war with the sanction of the UN. If not, we will all witness just how limited in efficacy are military solutions alone. On the other hand, I think that if Saddam will not relent, & the US with the UN goes to disarm him by force, the outcome may give the lie to those who are counseling peace at any price.

Looking at a book about Joseph Cornell at lunchtime.

"Those who live by the sword. . ."

"Do not return evil for evil but overcome evil with good. . ."

Listening to the poets on NPR last night in the supermarket parking lot. Whitman poem: "Are these what they call statesmen? Is this a President?" (or something like that.) Even if they happened to be wrong in this case, it's good to hear poems against war in principle.

I return to the idea that unless the hatred & bitterness & misunderstanding & alienation are overcome, "jihad" will remain after Saddam, after bin Laden. So something must be done on an entirely different level. Something to encourage the re-thinking of religion. Perhaps a shattering of mythological thinking rooted in all three of the Peoples of the Book. A historical re-interpretation & revaluation of events, beginning with Abraham in Ur. Not necessarily a secularization - but perhaps a kind of enlightenment (?). A re-reading : for the good & the evil, the wisdom & the folly, the knowing & the unknowing in "scripture" & all that followed.

Yes, as the Platypus of Doom, I find myself increasingly alienated from the poets who circulate in blogworld, so secure in their antiwar sentiments, so certain that they have seen through the conspiracy of Tex & Rummy et al. I want to agree with them, I want to think we are fighting the Vietnam War all over again against the American War Machine...

but then I look at all the facts I can gather & it seems to me a legitimate case can be made that the current Iraqi dictatorship does not deserve to have these mass-killer weapons, and if they are not willing to give them up, they should be removed by force. The arguments from fear are very powerful ("the Middle East is a tinderbox. . .
they will come & take revenge on us. . ." etc), but we should be moved by reason & not by fear. If Islamic extremists decided to massacre thousands of Americans because they were angry that we were taking away Saddam's WMDs - well, are we going to let them dictate the agenda? Because that is what it would amount to if we gave in to them.

The proto-fascism & extremism emanating from Islamic reactionaries must be opposed. So must the injustices of fundamentalist Israeli zealots & extremists.
So must the complacent imperialist logic which allows might rather than diplomacy to manage policy. So must the Karl Roves of the world, who think they can spin international crises into dividends for their faction & its plutocrat supporters.

I am very ambivalent about the situation. Maybe only poetry can express the ambiguities with sufficient exactitude & irony. I'm think of Marvell's ambivalence & his Horation Ode. Someone could take the descriptive satirical powers of prose & make a real poem out of this impasse, from the sands of Texas to the sands of Ur. The trouble is most of the poets are pleased to express cardboard opinions & make febrile tinny sounds. I suppose I'm one of them.

Then again, am I just being gulled due to an inability to accept the truth about this country? Are the longtime hawks like Perle, Rumsfeld & Cheney EVER to be believed? Are war, violence & killing going to improve anything? Are the underlying motives of the US (control of the oil & the region) using the war on terror as a smokescreen?

There are aggressive networks of terror fanatics who are actively preparing to attack the US again. There is evidence of Iraqi collaboration with those networks, along with evidence of Saddam's obsession with WMDs. But starting a huge new "battle" in this war will have huge consequences in turn. Before I am completely won over to the hawkish view I will have to find an answer to the questions above.

I guess the answers are easy for all those marching poets for peace out there. They always seem to know right away who the bad guys are.

Strong statement on poetry & politics by Eliot Weinberger in talk at Poetry Project in NY, forwarded by Kent Johnson to Poetryetc. list on February 3 (see February poetryetc archive under posting titled "Poetry is News"). Not sure his either/or argument about the last 30 years (which goes something like: either you have direct political speech & political engagement or you have pseudo-engagement & obscure wind-baggage over academicized issues of race/class/gender(basically a right-wing argument itself); and we've had the latter, while the Right has been dismantling rights & justice) - not sure either/or is that simple, but it's certainly a challenging polemic to those on the left. (Is it also sour grapes over the criticism of his anthology of 20th-cent poetry as too exclusively white & male?) But his comments about 3 typical approaches that poets have taken to political engagement are interesting & maybe useful.

As I see it, poetry can have a very substantial political character, while remaining poetic language (see for example the pervasive & deep political context of Montale's poetry of the 30s & 40s - often damned by ideological Italian critics as politically neutral or irrelevant); yet at the same time poetic language is just about as far from "political speech" as you can get, and the 2 should not be confused. . . but with poetry there are always the stunning exceptions. . .yes. "poetry is news".