Monday, February 04, 2008

In Colin's Fields **



This post is from October of 2005, and while the specifics are a little dated now, as a small contributions towards the observation this year's Day of Shame (Fully explained here "The day the music died" at the mighty Corrente) it is dreadfully appropriate.
-------------------------

In Colin’s fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.


We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Colin’s fields.


Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Colin’s fields.

**(From "In Flanders Fields" by Lt. Col. John McCrae, M.D. (1872-1918))


It’s not terribly original, but the deja vu-abattoir-Merry-Go-Round waking nightmare that is Iraq has made me so sad for so long that it feels these days like an old and dreadful companion. The monster in the next room that won't be still, won’t let us sleep, and won’t go away.

Americans who used to be horrified enough to call for the end of a conflict if a handful of American soldiers perished, have long since stopped noticing that there is a pre-loaded “Death Box” in every major paper. Like the horoscopes or the crossword or the sports scores, the dailies have set aside a few square inches of holy ground for the numbers of Americans who have died due to George Bush’s folly each and every day.

And it is every day now, isn’t it? Or damned near. A bomb. A picture of smoke and the burnt out husk of a vehicle. The number of dead Iraqis, who might as well be so many Pac Man dots, so little do they matter to us as real, live human beings anymore. Not that they ever did, really.

And the number of dead Americans.

Yesterday we saw this story:


Iraqis Say Civilians Killed in U.S. Raids
Military Asserts Fatalities in West Were Insurgents

By Ellen Knickmeyer

Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, October 18, 2005; A01

BAGHDAD, Oct. 17 -- A U.S. fighter jet bombed a crowd gathered around a burned Humvee on the edge of a provincial capital in western Iraq, killing 25 people, including 18 children, hospital officials and family members said Monday. The military said the Sunday raid targeted insurgents planting a bomb for new attacks.

In all, residents and hospital workers said, 39 civilians and at least 13 armed insurgents were killed in a day of U.S. airstrikes in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, a Sunni Arab region with a heavy insurgent presence.

The U.S. military said it killed a total of 70 insurgents in Sunday's airstrikes and, in a statement, said it knew of no civilian deaths.

At Ramadi hospital, distraught and grieving families fought over body parts severed by the airstrikes, staking rival claims to what they believed to be pieces of their loved ones.

...
Residents and the U.S. military gave sharply different accounts of the air raid.




And a lot of us probably read right on by.

What the story is describing is a massacre.

When you call in air strikes because you are stretched too thin, or are unwilling to roll in the infantry, and your civilian-to-bad-guy kill-ratio is 3-to-1, that’s a fucking massacre pure and simple.

And it’s the kind of thing that most Americans used to get really furious about.

Of course the straight story is hard to pin down, and what the government said happened “sharply differs” from the accounts of residents. And were this 2000, I might be inclined to believe the government’s account of what happened.

But this is not 2000, and I am not so inclined for the simple reason that the government of my country has done little else but lie to my face every day for the last five years. Lied about every single detail regarding Iraq. Lied about 9/11. Lied about torture. About their cadre of fake reporters hires at taxpayer expense to lie to us more effectively. About Social Security. About FEMA. About global warming. About the budget. About the environment. About Valerie Plame.

Lied about pretty much everything you can possibly lie about, which is exactly the kind of thing that most Americans used to get really furious about.

In fact, we used to impeach people over it.

From Bush I never expected anything other that cowardice and mediocrity, and from Cheney I never expected anything other than bile and theft. They have traversed no moral arc: they started out as despicable and there they have stayed.

But from Powell I expected more.

Powell was the one man in the whole reeking whorehouse I had a little faith in. The one who lent integrity upwards, to those who did not deserve it.

Powell, who knew better enough to starkly warn George Bush of the consequences of being even a little bit wrong, but in the end found it easier to serve a bad President than a good principle. Who allowed himself to be tricked out like a hooker, and turned out on the corner.

Without Powell, there is no Iraq, because there is no one else of sufficient stature to close that deal: Powell the Statesman, reduced to Powell the Salesman, and finally to Powell the Sellout.

Powell is the one who took his beloved military up in his arms, carried them out into the desert, and left them there to be slaughtered.

Powell is the one who has broken “faith with us who die” and the dead -– the civilian women dead, the children dead, the fathers dead, our soldiers dead, ALL the dead -- want to know, Colin, why you have abandoned them?

These tragic ghosts that cannot sleep, though poppies grow

In Colin’s fields.

20 comments:

Phil said...

Hammer, meet nail.

Nobody does it better, nobody.


I have to ask, and if it's none of my business, tell me to piss up a rope.
Do you have a background in journalism or literary education?
Write novels? Shit you probably do the NY times crossword puzzle in ink, don't ya?

If you DON"T write novels. START.

Lemme know so I can preorder.
Oh, and I want signed copies too, thankyouverymuch.

Anonymous said...

Door gunner in "Platoon", after opening up on some Vietnamese working in their rice fields:

"Those who run, are V.C. Those who stand still, are well-disiciplined V.C."

Anonymous said...

BTW, who's Powell gonna endorse?

William Calley?

Anonymous said...

I had the same reaction to Powell's speech, once the fact that it was all lies soaked in. I, too, had thought highly of Powell before then.

But when I mentioned this earlier today I was directed to several sources on Powell's role in covering up the My Lai massacre. After reading this, I felt even more a fool.

We -- as in you and I -- should never have fallen for Powell. The Day of Shame, in some ways, applies to us, too. We were naive. We were too innocent. It's time to grow up.

Anonymous said...

drifty,

this one is stinging and with a sniper's vision. it's typically superb, as long as by saying that i'm not diminishing your talent as an essayist.

i remember immediately following sept. 11 actually praying for the wise counsel of statesmen to guide what would follow. that is, i prayed for colin powell.
the power of prayer, indeed.

Anonymous said...

This is good stuff, Drift.

We need to remind ourselves, early and often, of just how diligently "the good guy" in the bush coteris of petro-turds peddled the koolaid and bullshit cocktail to us and to the world.

But, I have to point out, we'd better enjoy talking about it, and seeing the shot of Powell waving the little vial of Anthrax at the world, while we can, because if we're brain-dead enough to nominate Hillary Clinton, we won't see or hear, a FUCKING breath of it, in the general.

Word.

Anonymous said...

A sell-out on more levels than it is polite to name.

Anonymous said...

Anybody that thinks they can "work with" the Bush regime ends up infected with their vile disease. No exceptions.

Anonymous said...

Drift,

You're the only progressive blogger (unless I missed it) who seems to care.


AMMAN (AFP) - When Saad Tawfiq watched Colin Powell's presentation to the United Nations on February 5 2003 he shed bitter tears as he realised he had risked his life and those of his loved ones for nothing.

As one of Saddam Hussein's most gifted engineers, Tawfiq knew that the Iraqi dictator had shut down his nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programmes in 1995 -- and he had told his handlers in US intelligence just that.

And yet here was the then US secretary of state -- Tawfiq's television was able to received international news through a link pirated from Saddam's spies next door -- waving a vial of white powder and telling the UN Security Council a story about Iraqi germ labs.

http://www.afp.com/english/news/stories/080204230348.13lh5ew7.html

Anonymous said...

Every word of criticism by Drift, and by the commenters, is the stone truth.

So. Next step.

Which of the two remaining candidates do we think is the more likely to point out the bloody, lying, perfidy, of Powell and the rest of bushCo in the general, when the republicans would dance naked to have a democratic candidate who would not remind the voters of what was done, and who did it, to get us to this point?

lostnacfgop said...

Another eloquence. Thanks.

res ipsa loquitur said...

Had Powell not acted as Bush's accomplice, he'd likely be spending today stumping in CA, IL, MA, NY or one of the other Super Tuesday states. I really think he'd have run for president -- and be running away with it.

Heckuva job, Powellie.

Imaginista said...

Many Americans trusted Powell to be the adult, the sanity, the brakes. He failed us on so many levels. He ruined his own good name as well as that of the whole damn country.

Anonymous said...

What "Bustednuckles" said! Awesome.

Unknown said...

Res Ipsa -

Boy, that's funny that you bring that up...

I DISTINCTLY remember saying (pre-2000) that, even though I'm a card carrying D for all my adult years, I would be hard pressed to not vote for him.

Thank the gods he showed his true face.

Anonymous said...

Big but early 13 point lead for Obama in California, according to the Reuters/C-Span/Zogby poll.

Phil said...

LOL!
Depends on who yer listenin' to.
Back to back headlines at Fark.com;

There's no denying it, Hillary is the clear winner in California: SurveyUSA says 52 percent Clinton, 42 percent Obama (168)
Yahoo Cool There's no denying it, Obama is the clear winner in California: Zogby says 49 percent Obama, 36 percent Clinton

Anonymous said...

I read a story in The Chronicle of Higher Education today. It was about a doctor in Iraq, an English-speaking, educated man whose job has been to deal with the hellish destruction we have wrought there.

The story opened by describing surgeons trying to aerate the lungs of a six-year-old boy who had inhaled toxic quantities of soot from an explosion, trying to insert the airway into the child as he screamed in agony, because many hospitals in Iraq can no longer get access to anesthesia. I never got any further in the story because I couldn't stop crying.

Damn this administration to hell.

--gravie

Batocchio said...

Powell was the one man in the whole reeking whorehouse I had a little faith in. The one who lent integrity upwards, to those who did not deserve it...

Without Powell, there is no Iraq, because there is no one else of sufficient stature to close that deal: Powell the Statesman, reduced to Powell the Salesman, and finally to Powell the Sellout.


Very much my take, as well.

The poem, and the McNamara comparison, are quite apropos.

"What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?"

Owl said...

Hey, I care and I'm a progressive blogger. My 5-year series is HERE

This is an incredible post by Driftglass. I'm so moved...