Where do we stand?

Flowers mark a World War I memorial at the Arc de Triomphe, Paris

Where do we stand? Like the song says, "You've got to stand for something or you'll fall for anything."

On Sunday I heard that my young nephew in the National Guard is being sent to Iraq. And regular readers of Paris Parfait will know that for a long time I have been outraged - and frequently vocal about my outrage - at the Bush administration and their hopelessly inept handling of the Iraq War. I am also outraged about practically everything else the Bush administration has attempted - the list of their abysmal failures and repeated efforts to suppress civil liberties is so long, I work myself into a fury, just thinking about them.

Today, Mark Morford's column in the San Francisco Chronicle struck a chord. Remember the scene from the Oscar-winning film "Network," when a character says, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!!?" Well these days, too many people seem to follow along like sheep, accepting whatever happens with nary a protest. I can't understand this way of thinking. Whatever your politics, I urge you to read Morford's piece and consider what we stand for as a nation and what we believe as individuals:

"I think it was Keith Olbermann who said it first, who said yes wow that Virginia Tech shooting rampage was horrible and shocking and brutal and oh my God we lost a lot of really good, honest American kids and Something Should Be Done.

"And maybe let's start with the wide-eyed gun-rights maniacs and the conservative pseudo-cowboys and those twitchy Second Amendment paranoids who somehow still think that we all must cling to our nasty little Glocks 'cuz gosh, what might happen if our own government turns on us and nobody has their little handgun to protect their kids from the tanks and the missiles and the heat-ray guns? Right.

"But hey wait (Olbermann went on to say), then again, in the 10 days prior to that horrific shooting, didn't we also lose nearly exactly that same number of young people over in Iraq (well over 30) to even more brutal idiocy and insanity, to cluster bombs and insurgent shootings and gruesome death and a hugely inept, warmongering American president who is so violently unable to see just what kind of bland, lackluster evil he has wrought upon the planet that he is now on the verge of entering the record books as the Worst President in History?

"And maybe, just maybe, given how we are still losing double-digit numbers of good, honest American bodies every week in Iraq, just as we have for the past four solid years, perhaps we should be equally -- if not perhaps quite a bit more -- appalled and disgusted and shocked that this "war" is still raging, nonstop, to the tune of 3,400 dead Americans and tens of thousands wounded and counting fast?

"What, in other words, is wrong with us? Where is our outrage? Where is the pain and wailing and the candlelight vigils? Why has it become so easy to let Iraq turn into this numb, forgettable, boring thing, a blip in media, a sad yawn in your day?"

"Yes, maybe you heard all that and, like many Americans, reacted by saying, well yes, Iraq is awful and all, but it's a war, and like it or not, kids are supposed to die in wars, in unspeakable and unrecorded and unbloggable ways, it's understandable and acceptable and even (tragically, morbidly) expected, whereas that's not supposed to happen in a nice upscale college where most kids can keep their nervous rage in check with iPods and drugs and beer bongs and lousy recreational sex.

"Or perhaps you replied, well, it's easy to ignore Iraq because, unless you're in the family of a soldier, this might be the most painless, distant, unfelt war in our short history, so removed and so disconnected from our everyday lives that it's almost as if it's not happening at all, just some minor political irritant as opposed to a horrid, gory embarrassment that's costing us $100,000 per minute, or $275 million per day -- enough money, by the end of it all, to rebuild every school and every park and every free clinic in America and then go on to house every homeless person and solve the oil crisis and cure a few diseases and perform a thousand other social improvements you can't even imagine right now lest you feel disgusted and sour and sad for the rest of the month.

"See, it's all about perspective. And when it comes to Iraq, we aren't really required to have a great deal of it anymore because, let's be honest, we're not really at war, are we? War requires a clear enemy, serious consequences, something powerful and vital must be at stake and there's nothing at stake in Iraq -- except, of course, our own crumbling identity.

"What's more, no one except the most bitter die-hard neocon is actually claiming that America itself is actually under any sort of attack and we're certainly not fighting and dying for anything, not really, unless you're naive enough to believe in the "march of democracy" thing and if you do, I have a time-share on some swampland in Florida, cheap.

"Maybe it's merely the natural progression, the way it must be. Iraq has been going on for so long, will be going on for so long, maybe the only response possible is to become numb to it all, to tune out the dreary headlines as they trudge on by because every day it's a new bombing, a new helicopter shot down, five or six or 20 more American bodies ripped and gored and blown up and to feel every one would be to quickly induce trauma fatigue.

"And then there's the horrible feeling, that deeper understanding that no one really wants to acknowledge but which everyone knows to be true: The terrorists have already won. Oh my good Allah, yes they have.

"Bush has seen to it that America has become, post-Sept. 11, a reactionary, rogue, knee-jerk, hateful outpost of isolationism and thuggishness that no self-respecting developed nation really wants to deal with anymore. Just like the terrorists wanted. Disrupt America and make us paranoid and implosive and openly loathed by the few remaining shreds of the Middle East that didn't mistrust us already? Hey, mission accomplished.

"Me, I like to imagine the babies. I like to imagine all the children born back in 2003 (or 2001, if you count the equally failed Afghan campaign), the Year of Brutal Idiocy, the Year It All Went Wrong, the Year America Jumped the Shark.

"All these children born at the war's beginning are well over four years old now. They are walking, talking, speaking in complete sentences with more complexity and coherence than the president himself. And for their entire lives, America has been at war. They have never known a day where we have been at peace, where we haven't lived under this bitter cloud of rampant incompetence, violence, a deep sadness, a sense that something has gone very, very wrong with the American idea, and no one really has any clue how to fix it. How will they be affected? What sort of perception of a broken, lost America will they have drilled into their baffled little bones?

"Which leaves us right here, in this murky no-man's-land of vague dis-ease, this foul, anesthetized place where our brutal-war-that-isn't-really-a-war has become the norm, a time when it feels like we as a country should be getting stronger and should be leading the world in everything from peacekeeping to environmentalism to medicine to technology, and yet we have this giant, bloodstained monkey on our backs, violent and ugly and still shockingly strong, and he is laughing, cackling at our feeble attempts to shake ourselves free, even as he eats at our soul."

Comments

[giggles]

Not at all a weak woman I am reduced to tears by all the comments here, the frustration I feel bouncing off the page overwhelms me. It’s all so sad. If even one mothers child dies, the war is not worth it….but several…..it’s devastating beyond words. Tara I am so sad for your nephew…so deeply sad for your family and every other family whose children will be forever changed by what they are FORCED to witness in a war torn country!

Tearfully I pray!
Sherrie

[maddie]

I agree with Carter - Bush has led the worst Presidency in the
history of the United States.

We should be leading in peacekeeping and environmentalism -
and here we are in the dark ages.

Powerful writing and thankyou Tara for posting it

[JanePoe (aka Deborah)]

I'm a Mark Morford fan & he once again got it painfully right with this article. How sad for all the four year olds and the rest of us who are living through this painful piece of history. JP

[Becca]

Each day when I open my internet browser, the first headline I see is "_______killed in Iraq." My heart sinks each time I read it. I AM outraged, and so disappointed in the direction this country has taken.

Very thought provoking post~thank you for sharing this article.

[Becca]

Each day when I open my internet browser, the first headline I see is "_______killed in Iraq." My heart sinks each time I read it. I AM outraged, and so disappointed in the direction this country has taken.

Very thought provoking post~thank you for sharing this article.

[Nic]

Given the content, the line out of this track

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoN6XfyQsr4

May be of interest (Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip - Thou shalt always kill)

"Thou shalt give equal worth to tragedies that happen in non-english speaking countries, as to those that occur in english speaking counties"

:)

Video is not 100% safe for work, tho it depends on where you work - it's tame compared to anything on MTV tho.

Someone asked about Laura Bush - well, HER kids aren't there, and her family is profiting from the war, so why should she be outraged? ;-)

[Janet Spicer]

Great post! I am in complete agreement with you about the unfortunate lack of outrage concerning our misadventures in Iraq. I think the American people have been in a deep slumber for the first 6 years of the Bush administration and (maybe) are just not waking up to the horror.

[kim (via Pearl)]

Oh man... DO NOT get me started. I lived in NYC on 9/11 and I just knew that this major asshole of a president was going to do something stupid and I knew that the Americans would follow lock step behind him. I wrote letters to Senators Clinton and Schumer begging them not to vote in favor of the war. I got the stupidest replies back from them. I'll never forgive them. If I could see that Bush and Cheney (and all the rest of them) were lying then certainly the press corps and all the gas bags in public office could have seen it too. But NOOOO. We all lined up behind him and marched right into Iraq. And my heart breaks not only for the American and British lives lost but what about the Iraqi people!? Look how many are suffering. My nephew, too, is in the national guard and he's over there now and he ain't coming home any time soon.

[ali la loca]

You can see the outrage - quiet and somewhat subdued - in many places around the Bay Area.

There is a memorial up outside the Lafayette BART station. An entire hillside is covered with crosses representing the soldiers that have died in conflict. The crosses stretch on and on and on...

[awareness]

It's so difficult to ascertain what is holding the masses back.....the apathy seems to me a symptom of a collective depression......and no energy to do anything about it.

I'm not tying the Iraq war into 9-11, but it seems to me that the shock of 9-11 and the grieving process which followed set up the country to live on a desire whereby they wanted a leader to step up to the plate....that they felt weak and unable to deal with the reality of it all....so they surrendered to the Bush regime thinking that he was good and wise and effective. Once things got rolling......and the Iraq war kicked in, it still took time for folks to wake up. well, maybe they haven't opened their eyes yet......too painful.....too messy.....too horrific.

The outrage hasn't happened......and will it? And if outrage can mobilize the American citizens, is there anyone out there who could effectively fuel it?

Laura Bush? She's sitting in a library reading a book.

[Di Overton]

Even though I am not an American I am outraged by the behaviour of your President and our little sheep of a Prime Minister. I haven't a lot of time for our Royal Family but they stop us having someone like Bush as a leader.

[tut-tut]

Thank you for this quoted article. My husband has been saying the same things for months and months.

[Regina Clare Jane]

God, just brilliant- brilliant...
I have one question- where is Laura Bush? Where is her outrage? As a mother I would think she would have something to say about all the young kids dying... both Americans and Iraquis!
I can stand up to my husband when I feel he is doing something wrong- can't she? Or maybe she doesn't think he is doing anything wrong? But how can she- she's a mother?
You're right, Tara- where is the outrage?

[Tammy]

I thought of our soldiers the day of the VT killings and also wondered why they are becoming a "daily sad yawn." It's war but they are dying for another country. I'm outraged!