Civil War in Iraq

So the new debate about Iraq (new a relative term of course) seems to be whether or not the "country" is in a state of Civil War. The Bush Administration desperately wants for the conflict not to be characterized in this way, suspecting that the terminology could cause further political fallout and erode support for the war even more than has been done so far. Democrats looking for a way to pull out want to use the term for exactly the same reason - thinking that it will give support for the argument that it is no longer our conflict. Meanwhile, news organizations seem to be trying to give themselves a harder image by "telling it like it is."

My problem is that to me - it's not a civil war, it's far far worse. Here's an apt description of the conflict by CNN's Michael Ware (as quoted by Washington Post's Dan Froomkin):

"I mean, if this is not civil war, where there is, on average, 40 to 50 tortured, mutilated, executed bodies showing up on the capital streets each morning, where we have thousands of unaccounted for dead bodies mounting up every month, and where the list of those who have simply disappeared for the sake of the fact that they have the wrong name, a name that is either Sunni or Shia, so much so that we have people getting dual identity cards, where parents cannot send their children to school, because they have to cross a sectarian line, then, goodness, me, I don't want to see what a civil war looks like either if this isn't one."

Only the situation Mr. Ware is describing isn't Civil War at all. Civil War, as horrific as it can be, implies some kind of organized insurrection from an established government. This isn't civil war it's anarchy. It's the complete absence of the rule of law, replaced by the law of the sword (or in this case the AK-47). It's gang violence on a national scale.

I guess what my point is that debating semantics is useless. Whether we call it a Civil War or not doesn't change the fact that if we (or preferably the whole international community) don't stop the extremists from killing every last moderate left, there will be no Iraqi nation, in fact there won't be even a Sunni nation fighting a Shia nation, there will only be neighbors brutally murdering their neighbors - chaos and the end to any semblance of civilization.

Forget words, forget religion, forget politics. We fucked up big time by causing this - we can't pretend we're not involved, but neither can we say we've fixed it or that it hasn't gotten worse. It's not about Democrat or Republican, or Christian or Muslim, or who did what when. It's about the people who just want their kids to go to school, who just want to work and laugh and live getting the shit kicked out of them and even if the level of violence it's reached hadn't been our fault, we would still have a responsibility as a witness to stop it from happening.

Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. -- John Donne

Happy but not Content

I've come to realize that I am, whatever momentary storm clouds of despair may float across my subconscious, incredibly and stupidly happy. I have so many things in this life to be happy about. I've managed to come through the public educational system virtually unscathed, with the ability to at least fool myself into believing that I can think for myself. Opportunities abound for me, and my future actually looks like it might have promise - I may never have the chance to do anything great, but I will have ample chances to do something good, maybe even lasting. I've had money enough to experience life without obsessing about survival, yet not enough to take away a sense of the value of a hard day's work.

There are many things on this earth that I honestly love. There are great roaring fires in the family hearth that keep away the bitterness of a winter night. There is good food to be eaten, good tobacco to fill my pipe, strong drink to fill my cup. There is wind in the trees that sounds like poetry, and poetry when read that sounds like music, and music that sounds like hope, or rage, or sadness, or love, or peace, or passion. There is Shakespeare, and Milton, Coleridge and Wordsworth, T.S. Elliott and Robert Frost. There is Poe, Joyce, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Kerouac, Tolkien and Lewis, and a million others. Pages and pages of dreams that remind us how much more there is beyond our own petty little lives. There is a smile from a beautiful stranger, the shared pleasure of a beaming child, the love of a loyal dog with his head resting across your lap.

There are memories: of walks under the moon, of football games played or watched, of little league, of my own drunken (figurative or literal) stupidity, of girls I've kissed and those I wish I had, of songs sung, dances danced, of life...lived.

And I am especially happy for those people - friends and family alike - who intrude on my solitude, who break me away from myself and my own egomania. People who, no matter how much you despise them from moment to moment, inspire you to love fiercely because they accept you for yourself even when you don't know who or what that is. People who somehow help you towards becoming the person you think you should become.

Here's the thing though. All these things make me happy because they remind me of home - and I don't mean Lexington, VA. I mean Home. I mean that place from which we've all been expelled or exiled, or just lost. You can call it whatever you want - Heaven, Never Never Land, the place between awake and asleep where you can still remember dreaming, The Far Country.
So I know that I will never always be happy. I know that things can go wrong for me - that my good life could end. But even when I am most satisfied, I know I will never be completely content. I can surround myself with all those things that remind me of home, but they will never be home. At my happiest there is that hunger, that pit of longing and desire for something that I know is so much better - like when you look at pictures of someone you've loved and lost. You love the picture, and couldn't part with it - but in some ways it actually makes the pain far worse. So, I'll keep searching for the hidden country, the door to the lost city, the key to a forgotten language, the leaf, the stone, the door. One day, God willing, I'll make my way back to Ithaca and the things I love then won't fill me with biting sadness, but with simple, happy, fierce content.

Look Homeward Angel

The Death of Benjamin Gant

The rattling in the wasted body, which seemed for hours to have given over to death all of life that is worth saving, had now ceased. The body appeared to grow ridid before them. Slowly, after a moment, Eliza withdrew her hands. But suddenly, marvellously, as if his resurrection and rebith had come upon him, Ben drew upon the air in a long and powerful respiration; his gray eyes opened. Filled with a terrible vision of all life in the one moment, he seemed to rise forward bodilessly from his pillows without support - a flame, a light, a glory - joined at length in death to the dark spirit who had brooded upon each footstep of his lonely adventure on earth; and, casting the fierce sword of his glance with utter and final comprehension upon the room haunted with its gray pageantry of cheap loves and dull consciences and on all those uncertain mummers of waste and confusion fading now from the bright window of his eyes, he passed instantly, scornful and unafraid, as he had lived, into the shades of death.

We can believe in the nothingness of life, we can believe in the nothingness of death and of life after death - but who can belive in the nothingness of Ben? Life Apollo, who did his penance to the high god in the sad house of King Admetus, he came, a god with broken feet, into the gray hovel of this world. And he lived here a stranger, trying to recapture the music of the lost world, trying to recall the great forgotten language, the lost faces, the stone, the leaf, the door.

O Artemidorus, farewell!

Carnifex

For those who may be interested, I've started writing a story, slowly, on another blog. It's fantasy story and mostly has evolved from the days when my brother and I were obsessed with fantasy books, yet couldn't stand them at the same time because they were so poorly written. We've always thought that we could essentially shit out books that would be better than the...well shit that's out there. So in that spirit you can feel free to read along as we write Carnifex (a horrible title that'll probably change - it means, among other things, executioner in Latin).

A word of warning - most of the posts for that story are, like this blog, largely unedited. While that means you get to see my unadulterated, raw, natural writing talent, it also means you get to see my raw, natural writing talent if you know what I mean. I'm doing this piecemeal when I have time and mostly as a writing exercise rather than as anything too serious. It is fantasy after all. And for once, I'm not trying to pretend to be greater than I am. This is run of the mill adventure type fantasy - not Tolkien.

Feel free to leave comments of approval, disdain, hatred, love, scorn, pity - etc. You can even suggest plot turns if you'd like, but I can't promise I'll listen to you.