Below you’ll find a small selection from the many curious, provocative, amusing, often surprising responses and comments of readers to various of my dispatches. What impresses me is the range of people out there with the urge to find ways other than our mainstream media generally offer us to decode (and then change) the world — and I even include in that group the people who, from time to time, stumble upon my dispatches and send me messages like one I received recently, urging that I be “repatriated.”
Assumedly, he was thinking of repatriation to Mars, or perhaps Iraq, or North Korea, or even (since I’m at present in California) my city of New York, a reasonable thought since most people know that New York is actually an island floating off the coast of the United States. What amuses me is that, after almost a half-century of Cold War foolishness, we’re now a decade away from anyone being able to say, “Why don’t you just go back to Russia.” Times do change.
The regular media have audiences, but — and perhaps this is simply a phenomenon of the internet — it seems to me that all of your are closer to a community. Anyway, while I’m being repatriated to New York this week (and as I’m going to be in transit for a couple of days), I thought I might send out this grab-bag of responses. Tom
Let’s start with two sparked by Marilyn Young’s piece on the ways in which we can’t shake the Vietnam War. Bob Gaiek writes:
“Marilyn Young’s piece is a jewel–the only word I
can think of. No, a polished diamond. I have been able to bury memories
of my role in Vietnam for a long time in a deep place. [French President] Chirac is
right: ‘War is an admission of defeat.’ It’s 1 pm and C-Span has
opened the phones re: the shuttle crash. A very strange thing is
taking place: an absolutely steady stream of callers is intent on
explaining ‘God’s ways to man.’ As a Christian, I become
increasingly disturbed each day by the growing movement to blend war and
institutional religion–dozens and dozens of callers are
proselytizing on the air, both pro and anti-war. This is a
disturbing outgrowth of what Geon Parrish says is ‘Divine Bullying.’ A few have
called in for Allah. Where does this take us? There are untold
thousands of people being encouraged to pray to ‘speed up prophesy.'”
Robert Raiser, age 78 and from Michigan City, Indiana, offers this warning to those ready for a “cakewalk” in Iraq:
“As a combat veteran of World War2 (Battle of Luzon), I submit that
no one today, especially in the Bush administration, talks of the unintended consequences of war. I have the vivid memory, as a sophomore in high school in 1940, of being told in a school assembly by a colonel in the U.S. Army that ‘those Japs would never attack us, and if they did, they would be wiped out in 6 weeks.’ Five years later, I found myself in the jungles of the Philippines, and 2
atomic bombs later a part of the Occupation Army in Japan. The Korean War did
not follow script. Then came Viet Nam, and Robert McNamara made it sound so simple. The Green Berets were to be sent in and win the war. Now, those innocents in the Bush administration envision the 1st Marine Division marching through the streets of Baghdad to cheering throngs. History should tell us not to trust the experts, especially the military.”
Robert Raiser, age 78 and from Michigan City, Indiana, offers this warning to those ready for a “cakewalk” in Iraq:
“As a combat veteran of World War2 (Battle of Luzon), I submit that
no one today, especially in the Bush administration, talks of the unintended consequences of war. I have the vivid memory, as a sophomore in high school in 1940, of being told in a school assembly by a colonel in the U.S. Army that ‘those Japs would never attack us, and if they did, they would be wiped out in 6 weeks.’ Five years later, I found myself in the jungles of the Philippines, and 2
atomic bombs later a part of the Occupation Army in Japan. The Korean War did
not follow script. Then came Viet Nam, and Robert McNamara made it sound so simple. The Green Berets were to be sent in and win the war. Now, those innocents in the Bush administration envision the 1st Marine Division marching through the streets of Baghdad to cheering throngs. History should tell us not to trust the experts, especially the military.”
Writing, I believe, in response to a piece I entitled, “The first punitive war of a new imperial age,” Peter Nabokov, writer and professor in Los Angeles, made this point:
“What I haven’t seen in press is enough informed speculation that Iraq is but a training rehearsal, a testing ground, an opportunity to try out weaponries and battle strategies and journalistic-mollifying procedures and the whole gamut of war-college type maneuvers that have developed in the last decade without real world assessments. Is anybody asking indeed whether this ‘war’ is an elaborate multi-purpose message to obvious others about what we can do and a multi-tasking opportunity for our military gadget people and war games players as to what works and what needs work? Anybody on that in a cool dispassionate way, who also knows the current Jane’s Report backwards and forwards?”
On the same title to the same piece, Tom Lewis, novelist, of New York wrote:
“More like a Punic War and a Carthaginian Peace.”
Mark Selden, East Asian scholar at Binghamton in the New York university system, had this to add to a comment of Village Voice columnist Jim Ridgeway’s, comparing US plans to cruise missile Iraqi cities with the Nazi V-1 and V-2 rocket attacks on London:
“Indeed. It is important to remember that the Japanese and the Nazis
were among the pioneers of World War II bombing of cities/civilians.
But the U.S. led the way to the emergence of city bombing as the
centerpiece of modern warfare in its annihilation of 62 Japanese
cities, beginning with Tokyo on March 23, 1945 and culminating in the
nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.“This approach to warfare would be presuppositional to the US approach
to all subsequent wars, and the strategy would be extended from
cities to the countryside, as in the use of Agent Orange and cluster
bombs in Indochina. It is the essence of the US practice of state terror.”
In response to a piece I sent out on the business of war, a reader rang this bell:
You may remember a Vietnam-era poster made for the movement by Seymour Chwast:
WAR IS GOOD FOR BUSINESS.
INVEST YOUR SON
Of Pervez Hoodbhoy’s essay on the nature of the American empire, Mark Crispin Miller, New York University professor and author of The Bush Dyslexicon, wrote:
“A thousand thanks for Hoodbhoy’s piece. I’ve been trying to make the same
point for months now. As you surely know, one bit of groupthink, both on
the left and the Buchanan/Novak right, holds that all of this is due to the
extraordinary influence of Israel, a/k/a the Elders of Zion. Now, there’s
no doubt that Perle and Wolfowitz and Abrams and a lot of others at the top
are very close to the Likud [Party], and that the White House theocrats are also,
for their own doctrinal reasons, solidly pro-Israel. But it’s a major error
to regard this moment of insane expansionism simply as a Jewish thing.
First of all, of course, that paranoid fantasy is fraught with
anti-semitism; and, as a political (or, I should say, imperial) analysis,
it’s actually too optimistic, because it represents the junta’s aims as
limited to just that one large, well-oiled region of the globe. According
to their plan, Israel will serve as chief Middle East enforcer for the
USA — which will then move along to North Korea, and then China, while also
turning up the heat in Venezuela and Colombia and other restive areas to
the South. The over-focus on Islam, while surely understandable, is
therefore dangerous, because these goons aren’t merely interested in
spreading Christendom. The Busheviks are out to rule the world.”
In response to some personal comments I made on my experiences at Yale in the 1960s (where I overlapped with George W) and on the way in which George had led an affirmative action life (as a legacy admittee to college, among other things), Wally Katz, who teaches history and humanities at Dowling College, commented:
I really liked your affirmative action column. In 1955 I applied to Harvard, Columbia and Princeton, but it was the latter, being a nerdy kid from New Jersey, that I thought I had my heart set on. I did get into Harvard but after having inhaled the intellectual air of Morningside Heights decided to go to Columbia. But at Princeton I was told, point blank, no embarrassment at the time at all, that I would not make an eating club and would not therefore like Princeton, so they were doing me the favor of rejecting me. Oddly, I had no interest in Yale and still don’t (wait, you’ll turn out to be a Yale alumnus), because I guess I had somehow intuited that it was a place for dumb WASPs like Shrub. Of course it had changed some by the time Shrub got there, which probably accounts for his resentment of intellect and his ‘born again’ Texas Christianity — you know Bill Coffin etc., not to mention Harold Bloom. Everyone talks about the resentment of guys like Nixon, but not the deep resentment and psychic anxiety of the current crew in the White House. My ex-wife worked at the NEH for Mrs. Cheney and I met Jeb on several occasions (though Jeb is a little classier than Shrub); these people are full of resentment. Oddly, it is as if people like you and me had taken over the world, and from their standpoint I suppose they have.
“Which is one reason, among many, why they practice not only the politics of regression but what I call the politics of decline Of course, they believe in ‘diversity’ so long as it as accommodating and especially talented as Condi Rice and Colin Powell, both of whom can be qualified as ‘special’ for two reasons: they had special formations which socialized them almost perfectly to be ‘team players’ (a term of art in the Bush White House); and they are the kind of people, two in a million in any group or race, who are sufficiently talented, self-knowledgeable, and disciplined so as not to require other than their own ambition to achieve success (which indicates that the exceptions — the special people — prove the rule and not the other way around; in short, more muddled Bush and radical conservative reasoning). Whereas guys like you and me and all the rest of us ‘anti-American’ intellectuals are so damned uppity. We actually believe that we belong to a common humanity. But you bet your pants on this: the whole world is watching. The politics of decline isn’t as easy as it once used to be.”
Edward Clapp responded to a “modest proposal” by a San Francisco Chronicle copyeditor that the California schools be relabeled prisons in order to get a little decent funding with this amusing proposal:
“I want to lay claim to a better idea for school funding. There was an article recently in the SF Chomical about proposals to name schools after sponsors. Imagine going to Enron High! As if it weren’t bad enough to have schools making deals with Pepsi and Coke for exclusive access. Now add the problem we have with funding out international ‘policing’ efforts. So here’s the solution. Use the money that currently goes to the Dept. of War for funding schools and let the free enterprise system sponsor our military efforts. Think of it! The 82nd Airborne becomes the Exxon raiders. The Pentagon becomes the Chrysler Building. I’m sure you can come up with other ideas. Everyone comes out ahead. Except perhaps a few souls outside our borders, but they don’t count, do they?”
Finally, several people wrote me about a “Rice for Peace” campaign — an idea so modest and deeply peaceable that I found it touching and inventive, but I wondered whether it was real or not. Fortunately, Jeff Clark, a reader from Maine, did all the nasty footwork for me and I leave you with his long dispatch on one small part of the ever-burgeoning antiwar movement in America.
“Don’t know if you’ve heard of the Rice for Peace campaign. I received the following e-mail about it this morning from a friend associated with the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association. It had the smell of an Internet-fueled urban myth, so I tracked down and e-mailed Pastor Susan Goering ([email protected]) at the Boulder (Colorado) Mennonite Church. She was kind enough to respond this afternoon; her e-mail is also attached. Thought you might find it interesting. Apparently the campaign is becoming so widespread that the U.S. Postal Service is issuing guidelines for rice mailers. The only question I have: Is Bush II as smart as Eisenhower? Silly question, I suppose.
“Subject: Iraq
“The following is derived from a message from the Pastor of Boulder Mennonite
Church and is a creative protest you can do right now from your home. Feel
free to pass it on.“Dear friends:
“I have put together this very eclectic list of persons who I think might be
interested in participating in a simple protest against war in Iraq. My
apologies to those who might already have received this message in another
way.“There is a grassroots campaign begun by a local peace center with a secular
focus.“Place 1/2 c. uncooked rice in a small plastic bag (a snack-sized bag or
sandwich bag work fine)“Squeeze out excess air and seal the bag. Wrap it in a piece of paper on
which you have written“If your enemies are hungry, feed them. Romans 12:20 Please send this rice
to the people of Iraq; do not attack them.”“Place the paper and bag of rice in an envelope (either a letter-sized or
small padded mailing envelope – both are the same cost to mail) and address
them to“President George Bush
White House – 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20500“Attach $1.06 in postage. (Three 37 cent stamps equal $1.11)
“Drop this in the mail TODAY. It is important to act NOW so that President
Bush gets the letters asap, preferably before the report from the inspectors
comes out on the 27th.“In order for this protest to be effective, there must be hundreds of
thousands of such rice deliveries to the White House. We can do this if we
all forward this message to our friends and family.
There is a positive history of this protest! Read on!“In the mid 1950s, the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation, learning of
famine in the Chinese mainland, launched a “Feed Thine Enemy” campaign.
Members and friends mailed thousands of little bags of rice to the White
House with a tag quoting the Bible, “If thine enemy hunger, feed him.” As
far as anyone knew for more than ten years, the campaign was an abject
failure. The President did not acknowledge receipt of the bags publicly;
certainly no rice was ever sent to China.“What nonviolent activists only learned a decade later was that the campaign
played a significant, perhaps even determining role in preventing nuclear
war. Twice while the campaign was on, President Eisenhower met with the
Joint Chiefs of Staff to consider US options in the conflict with China over
two islands, Quemoy and Matsu. The generals twice recommended the use of
nuclear weapons. President Eisenhower each time turned to his aide and asked
how many little bags of rice had come in. When told they numbered in the
tens of thousands, Eisenhower told the generals that as long as so many
Americans were expressing active interest in having the US feed the Chinese,
he certainly wasn’t going to consider using nuclear weapons against them.”From: People Power: Applying Nonviolence Theory by David H. Albert,
p. 43, New Society, 19.“And the response from Pastor Goering to my e-mail query:
“Dear friends:
“Excuse my lumping you together. I have received so many e-mails about this that I cannot send this individually.
“As I have indicated to most of you, the Rice for Peace – Feed your Enemies campaign is raging on. It has reached people beyond my wildest dreams. It has captured the interest of people from all denominations and from coast to coast.
“I did not begin the protest. It came to me from a local peace center. I merely sent it on to my friends/colleagues/family, and put a slight religious bent to it since I’m a pastor, and my friends and colleagues and family tend to be religious as well.
“We have been contacted by postal inspectors who have said that some folks have packaged rice improperly. Envelopes are leaking or breaking; this is causing consternation in post offices. This e-mail is an attempt to share updated information with persons with whom I have had some e-mail correspondence. I know it may be difficult for you to replicate the information chain. Nevertheless, I am attempting to comply with the postal inspectors request.
1. Please notify folks to package the 1/2 c or rice in a padded envelope or box, not in a regular envelope.
2. Please notify folks to put a return address on the envelope.
3. Please notify folks to write “Rice for Peace – Do Not Attack Iraq – Feed Your Enemies” on the outside of the envelope.
“There is now a web site with updated information on the protest. Please check www.riceforpeace.org.
“Here’s to our God-given creativity and persistence!
“Pastor Susan Ortman Goering”