I don’t know how to talk about the war anymore. I’ve avoided everything about its “anniversary.” Bleak. That’s how I feel and have been feeling. But I’m not the only one, of course, and if I let bleakness drive me to total silence and avoidance, then what? I don’t want to know the answer to that question.
For a while now, one of the jobs I’ve had is writing content for a website that wants to make accessible, easily understood information about nations and cultures available. While digging up some resources at the public library, I happened across this book for young people: The World’s Hot Spots: Iraq. Published by Greenhaven Press of Thomson Gale, it’s part of a series (The World’s Hot Spots — other hot spots/books are Afghanistan, North Korea, Pakistan, The Palestinians and the Disputed Territories, and Saudi Arabia). Here’s how the imprint describes the series:
Greenhaven Press’s The World’s Hot Spots series provides context and insight into some of the most unstable and conflict-ridden places on the planet. Each volume is an anthology of primary and secondary documents that provides historical background and contemporary analysis on the conflicts in one country or region. An introduction outlines essential background information, and a historical chapter illustrates the roots of the conflicts. Next a wide range of individuals–from world leaders, activists, and professional writers–presents the causes and potential solutions to the current hostilities. In addition, each book includes extensive research tools, such as an annotated table of contents, comprehensive bibliographies, and a glossary of terms and important figures. Greenhaven Press’s The World’s Hot Spots series will help readers develop a firm grasp of some of the most important issue to affect the international community.
Last night, I began reading, the introduction:
On March 21, 2003, the long-awaited military campaign against Iraq began. Designed by the Pentagon to produce “shock and awe” in Iraqi troops, the first round of air strikes involved the dropping of more than thirteen hundred cruise missiles and bombs on command and control targets in Baghdad as ground forces began a march toward the city. The war continued for a mere three weeks: President George W. Bush declared on April 15, 2003, that “the regime of Saddam Hussein is no more.” [my emphasis]
The passage continues on to describe who was involved in the war, and the next section entitled The March Toward War discusses what it says, and maybe, later on somewhere in this book there will be more clarification. But still. Though this is technically correct it is misleading. Three years later I am reading this book and there are still U.S. troops in Iraq fighting. Dying.
C. and I also just finished Vonnegut’s A Man Without a Country yesterday — we read out loud to each other while making dinner or doing dishes or in between other things and had finally gotten around to this book. I’ve heard Vonnegut speak before, in Columbia (SC) in the early 90s, maybe late 80s, and thanks to my older brother, who had the books on his bedroom shelf, first read his Breakfast of Champions around the same time as Orwell’s 1984 when I was in 3rd or 4th grade and really didn’t get them, of course.
Here then is something from A Man Without a Country:
How about Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes?
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.
And so on.
Not exactly planks in a Republican platform. Not exactly George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, or Donald Rumsfeld stuff.