I'm one of Them - part of what we used to call
The Movement, back in the
sixties and seventies. I worked, and yes, protested,
against the war in 'Nam.
Go read what I've appended to this: the lyrics
to Eric Bogle's "No Man's Land".
That'll put you in the right mood.
I never expected it to be the 21st Century (tm)...and
to be back in the same
place as I was 35 years ago. Back then, it was
friends, and could easily
have been me. Now it's our kids, and could well
be my own: sitting out in
the heat in a country halfway around the world,
waiting and hoping not to
be shot at, and hoping to make it home. Trying
to stay alive in someone
else's country, who, it's clear, doesn't want
them there. Over there for
what, once you toss out all the pseudo-patriotic
bullshit and ideology, are
is obviously for oil and power, and nothing to
do with threats to us back
in what my bothers who went called The World.
Back here, I read the news, and see the Canadians
and British, our alleged allies,
decrying the pusillanimous US media, that carry
almost nothing not approved by
the Bush team. I see the polls that I know are
rigged, but that will convince far too
many to simply say "what can I do, all alone?",
and give up, not even to vote.
Here we are, the oldest democracy, and we count
ourselves "lucky" to have a
50% voter turnout. When the Blacks in South Africa
got the vote, some waited
in lines for three *days*. In France, in their
presidential election a year or two ago,
they considered it a shame that, in the first
round of voting, turnout was *so* low
..."only" 72%. Here, it's "too much trouble".
If there's any freepers or libertarians or conservatives,
go away, what I'm about to say
is too complex for you to understand; it's all
shades of gray, with no white or black at *all*.
So I sit here with the same feelings I had back
during 'Nam: I want all those kids home,
safe...and at the same time, it seems as though
the only thing that will get this country
out of its video-game-drugged stupor is for them
to come home in body bags. I don't
want our troops to go through the same thing
that happened to my brothers (and some
sisters) in 'Nam and after...and yet I want the
Iraqi resistance to succeed, to increase the
deaths until the Administration can no longer
deny that it's a full-scale guerilla war, not by
"fighters" or "Ba'athists" or "Saddam loyalists",
but the Iraqi patriots, Iraqi troops, fighting
against an conqueror, just as I would fight were
the situations reversed.
How does it make me feel, to want them home safe
and dead at the same time?
As miserable as can be, but I see nothing else
down the path they've taken.
Bill Clinton was, and stood up for his beliefs,
during 'Nam. I, too, kept out of the draft,
but on principle, and stood up to be counted
against it (and breathed my share of tear gas).
I look at the cowards of the Administration,
who were, when they were not for the war in Nam,
not against it, and all but Powell found ways
out of it, with W, who literally deserted after
refusing a direct order to take a drug test.
I don't see them following any other course of
action than that of their Christian Millenialist-inspired
ideology, if they are not forced to
...and I see nothing except body bags with enough
leverage force that change.
And I sit here and watch as the death count grows
higher. And mourn, for them,
for all of us, and for the America that could,
no, *should* have been.
mark
*********************
This
is a song called "No Man's Land"
... or "The Green Fields of France" it was known
in Ireland...
It's
a song that was written about the military cemeteries in
Flanders and Northern France. In 1976, my wife
and I went to three or four
of these military cemeteries and saw all the
young soldiers buried there.
And...
couple of months later, I wrote a song called "No Man's
Land," which is asking questions of a dead soldier...
Lyrics as performed by Eric Bogle & John Munro,
"Pumpe", Kiel, D, NDR-FM
Broadcast May 25, 1982; transcribed by Manfred
Helfert. Copyright Larrikin Music, Ltd.
*****************
Well, how'd you do, Private
Willie McBride,
D'you mind if I sit down down
here by your graveside?
I'll rest for awhile in the
warm summer sun,
Been walking all day, Lord,
and I'm nearly done.
I see by your gravestone you
were only nineteen
When you joined the glorious
fallen in 1916,
I hope you died quick and
I hope you died "clean,"
Or, Willie McBride, was it
slow and obscene?
CHORUS:
Did
they beat the drum slowly, did they sound the fife lowly?
Did
the rifles fire o'er ye as they lowered ye down?
Did
the bugles sing "The Last Post" in chorus?
Did
the pipes play the "Floors1 O' The Forest"?
And did you leave a wife or
a sweetheart behind
In some faithful heart is
your memory enshrined?
And, though you died back
in 1916,
To that loyal heart are you
forever nineteen?
Or are you a stranger, without
even a name,
Forever enshrined behind some
glass pane,
In an old photograph, torn
and tattered and stained,
And fading to yellow in a
brown leather frame?
Well, the sun's shining down
on these green fields of France;
The warm wind blows gently,
the red poppies dance.
The trenches have vanished
long under the plow;
No gas and no barbed wire,
no guns firing now.
But here in this graveyard
it's still No Man's Land;
The countless white crosses
in mute witness stand
To man's blind indifference
to his fellow man.
And a whole generation who
were butchered and damned.
And I can't help but wonder
now, Willie McBride,
Do all those who lie here
know why they died?
Did you really believe them
when they told you "the cause?"
Did you really believe that
this war would end wars?
Well the suffering, the sorrow,
the glory, the shame,
The killing, the dying, it
was all done in vain,
For Willie McBride, it's all
happened again,
And again, and again, and
again, and again.
As of Sunday morning, we have 244
Willie McBrides,
but that will probably change before the sun sets.
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