Dulce et Decorum est.

My grandfather, whom I never knew as he was a bit older when he became a father, fought in WWI. He was in the trenches for two solid years, only getting brief respites at a staging camp behind the lines. He was a typist and a gunner. He would type orders as the shells rained down upon him and his comrades, while the cannon-shot gas canisters sputtered just outside the trenches (he suffered lung damage from chlorine gas, which is making a comeback in Iraq), and he was so far out there in the 23,000 miles of winding, man-dug trenches (nearly once around the earth's circumference!), no one would venture out to aid the soliders other than the army supply trains (infrequently) and the Salvation Army. The Red Cross wouldn't even go into "no man's land" (another parallel with Iraq). It was total war. Everything that could be shot or dropped on your enemy was: there was no Geneva Convention. The Geneva Convention arose from the aftermath of WWI because there had never been so savage a war, and one fought with such total disregard for life. The "Great War" was supposed to be the war that ended all wars. Well, we know better now, don't we?

On memorial day, when I saw all the pictures of parents and loved ones, faces twisted with grief, in Arlington Cemetary, and saw the newest graves strewn with flowers, teddie bears, and pictures of children, and when I saw pictures of the burials of Iraqis, such as a twenty-year-old man who had been walking home and was shot for no apparent reason by a masked man in a car, I thought of my grandfather and of his (and one of mine) favorite poet, the WWI poet Wilfred Owen.

Owen had been a big booster of the war, like many at home in England, until he became a soldier. He had written poetry before the war, but it was soppy, dreadful stuff. It was only during the war, he came into his voice—a voice that haunts us still. Owen was wounded at least once, recovered in hospital, and was sent back to the front lines. He was killed at the very end of the war; if I remember right, only hours before it officially ended. He left us an invaluable and disturbing collection of war poetry. It seems so much more applicable to the Iraq or Afghanistan war than, let's say, WWII because of the sheer savagery and insanity of it all, and the seeming indifference of the architects of the war for those who are on the front lines, or in the cities and villages of Iraq and Afghanistan. I am going to post below Owen's most popular poem. Oxford University has a database of his works online if you care to read more. Just enter "Wilfred Owen" into google, and it is the second or third entry.

Dulce Et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!-An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.*

* Translated from Latin as “It is sweet and right to die for your country.” These lines are take from an ode by Horace and were often used in support for WWI.

Disappearing Act

I haven't quite vanished off the face of the planet, but I have moved. What a nightmare. Of course, nightmares are relative. I haven't suffered the fate of the poor Iraqis who are forced at gunpoint to move from integrated neighborhoods by radicals and militiamen of differing sects. So my suffering is really, really minor in comparison. But my back and wallet have seen better days.

I haven't watched as much news as of late, but I did catch "Meet the Press" this past Sunday. Both Christopher Dodd and Newt Gingrich were on the show discussing the quagmire in Iraq. Gingrich started with the argument that 'al qaeda is in Iraq. This is a war against our enemies who want to destroy our way of life. We leave and al qaeda will think we are a paper tiger.' Dodd responded that 'the occupation brought al qaeda to Iraq—that they weren't there before (which is correct), and that we provided a great recruiting opportunity for al qaeda because the Iraqis might hate al qaeda, but they hate us more (as one shopkeeper in Kirkuk stated).' Dodd asserted that we can't help Iraqis in the middle of a civil war, and that the Iraqi government must be held accountable. Gingrich said that the Iraqi government is too weak and too new to be held fully accountable (which is correct as well). Dodd countered that we were running out of troops and that we will appear weak anyway if we can't maintain troop strength in the area. The longer a soldier stays in Iraq, the more likely he or she is to engage in egregious or self-destructive behavior because morale drops precipitously after two fifteen-month tours of duty. When speaking about such things, I think the Union (American Civil War) General William Tecumseh Sherman put it best:

I confess, without shame, that I am sick and tired of fighting—its glory is all moonshine; even success the most brilliant is over dead and mangled bodies, with the anguish and lamentations of distant families, appealing to me for sons, husbands, and fathers ... it is only those who have never heard a shot, never heard the shriek and groans of the wounded and lacerated ... that cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation

"War is hell,"as Sherman famously stated later in an address to a Michigan Military academy. And it is the people who never experienced war, i.e. the President, Vice President Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle and the rest of the neo-con clan, who started this death spiral in Iraq. A spiral that has made millions of Iraqis lives more miserable than they were under Hussein and has opened the door to insurgents of every stripe and sect. And a war that has killed nearly 4000 American troops. Iraq has become the new Afghanistan, post-Soviet invasion. A lot of good the Soviets did, and a lot of good we have done, and the parallels are striking, indeed. Each country sought to thrust its ideology on a country at gunpoint. People don't take kindly to that sort of thing, even if their present government is repressive and blood-thirsty. History is replete with examples and the resulting insurgencies.

But back to Sherman. When he made his infamous "march to the sea" during the American Civil War, he was seeking to end the war by inflicting total war, if that makes any sense. He literally burned and plundered his way south. He told his troops to live off of the civilians because they aided the confederate rebels. He torched fields and cities. "Hearts and Minds"?, no. He didn't care. Because Sherman thought the South had gone mad when it attempted to secede, he felt no compunction to treat it with respect or restraint.

So do we want to be Sherman in Iraq, or do we want to be United Nations Peace Keepers? Or do we want to be something in-between. Sherman would argue that it is impossible to win hearts and minds when you are invading a people's land, but it is impossible to harness the aid and talent of the people if you don't. So far, we have not had much success with this. It is a true dilemma in the classical sense of the word.

So I see Dodd's point, but I also see Gingrich's. We cannot abandon Iraqis, but we must find a better way to help. And if that means a smaller footprint, then so be it. And if it means a bigger footprint, then we need a draft. Few Americans are making any sacrifices for this war. Perhaps it's time that we do.

Ultimately, it is up to the Iraqis. If they want us to leave, we must respect this and do so—even if the consequences are dire. The specter of sectarian blood-shed is a scary and appalling possible consequence. But there are nearly 100 Iraqis dying everyday. I'm not sure that it could be much worse than this (of course, it could be). I also think the Iraqis are capable of dealing with both the militias and the al qaeda insurgents. Tribal leaders in the "Sunni Triangle" have successfully recruited and trained local men to fight al qaeda and have done so with some success.

This war is hell; I would argue even more hellish than Vietnam. As Sherman so eloquently wrote "even success the most brilliant is over dead and mangled bodies. . ."