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COMMENTARY: To All Iraq Veterans: “Thank You”

December 29, 2011 by Barky

Mistakes Were Made — Again

The last U.S. troops have been pulled from Iraq. To all the folks who served in that country, thank you. I’ll never know what you went through, but I’m certain it wasn’t pretty. I hope you’ve at least made it home safely. And to those who’ve lost a spouse, a family member, or a friend in that country, I am truly sorry, and very much appreciate the sacrifice you’ve made. So thank you, all of you.

Instead of saying “thank you”, however, I really should be saying “I’m sorry”. It certainly seems much more appropriate, and much more honest. What I really should do is paraphrase terrorism expert Richard Clarke’s famous opening statement to the 9/11 Commission: your government failed you, those entrusted with protecting you failed you, and the people of these United States – all of us – failed you, too. It was a terrible, terrible mistake to invade Iraq. It was off-purpose, off-policy, off-mission and incredibly stupid, and should never have been done in the first place.

I wonder what you, the Iraq veterans, think when you hear or read comments like this.  It probably pisses you off something fierce. You went halfway around the world to some Godforsaken country, fought a ruddy complicated insurgency, avoiding exploding garbage cans and roadside trash all the while, and hopefully made it back home in one piece, all to hear jerks like me say stuff like “it was all a mistake”. But I can’t say anything else about it. It was a mistake, a huge mistake, and a mistake that didn’t need to be made.

Now, I could write paragraph after paragraph about the manipulated intelligence, the fabricated link between Saddam Hussein & al Qaeda, and the lack of WMDs. I could write about the theoretical Neocon conspiracy to commit fraud upon the country and the world for their own political (or perhaps financial or perhaps retributional) gain. I could discuss at great length all the strategic and tactical blunders that occurred: dropping the ball in Afghanistan; letting bin Laden go; not providing adequate body armor; poor Humvee design; aggravating international relations; trusting the advice of an ex-pat Iraqi playboy. But all of these things have been talked about ad infinitum, and by people far more knowledgeable. I will say that all of these things, put together, are enough to convince me that we owe you all a tremendous apology for all we’ve put you through.

From the viewpoint of an amateur historian, here’s the real reason why we owe you an apology: it seems we all forgot what “war” really meant. Which was completely idiotic, we’ve been in enough wars that we should definitely have known better. But in the days leading up to the invasion, I heard almost no one in power talk about war in realistic terms. No one talked about the inevitability of American casualties. No one talked about the inevitable impact on families. No one talked about the certainty some veterans would suffer disabilities, brain damage, or PTSD. No one talked about the inevitability of massive civilian casualties, and the immense amount of guilt good soldiers have when they kill civilians. No one talked about friendly fire, prisoner abuse, and other ugly facets of war that I will not speak of here, but all of these things are (and here’s that word again) inevitable in wartime. We basically forgot history and repeated it, which is sacrilege to a historian (even an amateur like me), and man am I sorry for that.

I do want to be clear on one thing: I have no illusions that we live in some “cuddly, fluffy” world where there is no real evil and war is pointless and we should all plant daisies in our gun barrels. No, not at all. War has been and will continue to be necessary in certain situations. But before you go you have to weigh the reasons for the war (including the accuracy of the intelligence), the benefits of the victory, the risk of a defeat, versus the damage it will cause, and THEN make a decision whether war is necessary. With all the unreliable intel and shady connections (not to mention MUCH bigger fish to fry, namely al Qaeda & the Taliban), there is no way that such an analysis, done sanely, would result in “yes, let’s invade Iraq”. But a sane analysis was not done, so we invaded, and the entire country owes you an apology for that.

So why am I the one apologizing? I didn’t sign any declaration of war. I’m just some schmuck with a homemade soapbox. Well, it’s simple: I am a citizen of this country, which happens to be a democracy. According to the law of the land, I have a say in government equal to every other citizen. I am 1/300-millionth responsible for everything that happens in this country. And every other American citizen is equally responsible, and they also need to be accountable for the nation’s failings.

We all like to sit on our fat asses in our Lazy-Boy recliners and piss-and-moan about the government. But you know what? The sh*t that happens here, like the fatally flawed invasion of Iraq, is our fault. We’ve allowed this to happen to our country, through our sloth and our focus on rash consumerism and our willingness to vote for people “we’d like to have a beer with” rather than paying attention, voting soundly, and fighting for what’s right. We can all whine and cry that “we’re all powerless” but you know what? We are powerless because we allow ourselves to be powerless. All we want is Monday Night Football and Wal-Mart and 3-D movies and Starbucks. We don’t want to be involved, we don’t want to take a stand, we don’t want to take our country back. Even with this recent wave of activism from both ends of the political spectrum, how many people are actually involved in movements like the Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street? 1%? I seriously doubt there are 3 million people actively involved in these or other movements intent (rightly or wrongly) on fixing our country. The real 99% just doesn’t give a damn.

Well, I don’t give a damn if they don’t care. If someone’s a citizen of this country, then they are 1/300-millionth responsible for it anyway. And the least they can do for you, the Iraq war veteran, is walk up to you and, as sincerely as they possibly can, say “I’m sorry”.

 

UPDATE: another good post on this topic: http://themoderatevoice.com/132701/gratitude-wont-pay-the-bill-for-returning-iraq-afghan-war-veterans/

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Leadbelly

December 12, 2011 by Barky

History of an Art Form

The greatest joy I have in studying history is coming across those amazing “nexus” moments, those moments where you realize “holy crap, if X didn’t figure this out, and Y didn’t make that choice, then not only would Z have turned out differently but A, B, and C might not even exist”. It’s those “EUREKA!” moments that makes this little hobby of mine worth while.

Lately I’ve been trying to flesh out my understanding of the history of music. Not Bach, Brahms, and Beethoven, but Chuck Berry, Jimmy Yancey, and Muddy Waters. Not only am I a big fan of rock & blues, but I find the whole history of it to be utterly fascinating. As an art form, well, there are definitely richer, more textural forms of music out there, but as an evolving cultural movement, it’s inspired, and fascinating, and controversial, and revolutionary, and damn sexy.

This is American classical music, not born out of an age of royalty and patronage, but cooked in the cauldron of Jim Crowe oppression, Depression-era poverty, Dust Bowl hardship, and Edison electricity. It comes from the fertile loins of the uniquely American amalgam of races and cultures. There is no other place on Earth where this unique confluence of happenstance existed, and there is no other place on Earth where the music we now know as Rock & Roll could have possibly been invented.

As much as I love it, I’m also terribly ashamed my knowledge of it is not incredibly deep. I’ve only just recently listened to Dylan’s “Blonde on Blonde” end-to-end! I’ve really missed out on an awful lot of classic recordings, and therefore am clearly missing out on a lot of great stuff and a lot of great context. It’s embarrassing, really. So, in order to correct this gross oversight, I decided to go back and not only acquire, but really listen to, all the classic recordings throughout rock history.

The other day I was perusing my favorite used music store (http://www.turnitup.com/) and came across the 4 CD box set Leadbelly: Important Recordings 1934-1949. Leadbelly (aka Huddie Leadbetter) is one of the preeminent, influential figures, having been inducted to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as an Early Influence in 1988. He’s definitely known as a forefather of the Blues, but only when I gave this box set a solid listen did I appreciate just how much of an influence he truly was, and just how reflective of an entire chunk of neglected history his music truly is.

Let’s just start with the recordings themselves. These are gritty. Full of scratches and stutters and variations. No dreaded autotuning here.This man is the real deal, with all his pockmarks, rough edges and foibles there for all to see. In today’s overproduced age, where anyone can be a star thanks to audio waveform manipulation, this realism is incredibly refreshing.

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Modern-day marvels:

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Assuming you lived through that, try this:

Goodnight Irene

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Important Recordings causes a time machine effect as well. A trip through this collection is a trip back to Precambrian rock, soul, and R&B. I love finding older versions of modern songs.  It’s like finding a dinosaur skeleton and realizing it’s the great-grandpappy of the blue jay. On this box set, you’ll hear 60+ year-old versions of such great songs like “C. C. Rider” (later covered by John Lee Hooker, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley & the Grateful Dead); “The Gallis Pole” (retitled “Gallows Pole” & recorded by Led Zeppelin); “Midnight Special” (famously covered by Credence Clearwater Revival); “Rock Island Line” (a Johnny Cash staple and a famous John Lennon bootleg); “How Long” (covered by Eric Clapton on his excellent From the Cradle CD); an amazingly uptempto “In New Orleans” (aka “House of the Rising Sun”, inarguably the biggest hit of the Animals); and “Where Did You Sleep Last Night”, which was eventually covered by, of all people, Nirvana on their outstanding Unplugged album. Hearing these songs in their near-original state is akin to going to the Smithsonian to see the Model T or the first light bulb.

As great as these old finds are, the real heart and soul of Important Recordings is reflected in the other tracks, the tracks that haven’t made it into the vernacular of modern music. These are tracks like the repentent “I’m Sorry Mama”, the work-weary “Boll Weevil”, the sorrowful “Po’ Howard”, the fairly creepy “Black Snake Moan”, and the lamenting “My Friend Blind Lemon”. These are songs from the forgotten era of the sharecropper, a hardscrabble life of poverty where your only support is from faith, friends & family. You’ll also hear more than a handful of Negro work songs like “Pick a Bale of Cotton”, and chain gang songs like “Take This Hammer”, complete with the percussive “huh” grunting by unnamed background vocalists. Give these a good listen, try to put yourself in the shoes of these men in their time, and tell me it doesn’t give you the chills.

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Hampton National Historic Site, Towson, Maryland

July 18, 2011 by Barky

Screw the Rich

[Note to my sensitive readers: there’s some pretty strong language in this post, just thought I’d warn ya. Also, this post is not meant to insult or demean the NPS or the fine staff & volunteers at Hampton NHS. They were friendly & terrific and I thank them for the job they do. — Barky]

In the tony suburbs north of Baltimore sits the magnificent mansion and grounds of a wealthy, “old money” family: the Ridgleys. Tourists traipse through the buildings, marvel at the architecture and rare collectibles (like Chinese pottery, Swiss grandfather clocks, silk-upholstered Queen Anne furniture, and ivory-handled cutlery). They meander through the grounds and ogle the symmetrical gardens and flowering shrubs, oohing and aahing all the way. If they’re feeling adventurous, they may trundle to the old farmhouse and sigh “oh dear, slaves once lived here”, followed shortly by “let’s get to Denny’s before the Early Bird Special expires”.

Who gives a fuck.

Seriously, I couldn’t give a rabid rat’s ass about fawning over treasures or discussing “the history of wealth in America”. Why? Because that history is a nasty, sordid one. By and large, the truly wealthy are nothing but a pack of leeches and have been for most of our history. From human traffickers to slave owners to Civil War profiteers to robber barons to market speculators to environmental rapists to “offshorers” to Bernie Madoff to the Koch brothers, these soulless bastards have screwed over this country time and time again, and continue to do so to this day.

It wasn’t always this way. Way back in the beginning, many of the wealthiest people on the continent gathered together to overthrow the yoke of British imperialism. Benjamin Franklin was an inventor, entrepreneur, and visionary businessman. To this day, adjusted for inflation, he solidly sits amongst the 50 wealthiest men in America. John Hancock also sits on this list, he ran one of the most powerful trading companies on the Atlantic coast. Many of the other signers of the Declaration of Independence, the crafters of the Constitution, and the financial backers of the Continental Army were wealthy businessmen and landowners. These folks risked their fortunes, put their necks in the metaphorical noose, and stood up to oppression for the good of all.

The rich don’t have to be jerks today, either. There are all sorts of good guys in business, folks who provide good value for a fair price, use innovation and provide quality products and services to the public and turn a tidy yet fair profit. There are business people who support noble causes, stand up against injustice, and work as much for their employees as they do for them. Sadly, though, these people will never become one of the “uber wealthy”, that gaggle of cocksuckers who connive and conspire to screw over the country for the sole purpose of lining their own pockets and stroking their own ego.

Folks like those have been here since the beginning of the country. Shortly after we gained our independence, the wealthy began to be part of the problem instead of part of the solution. A mere 35 years later, wealthy merchantmen pressured James Madison and Congress to declare war on Great Britain. Publicly, they wanted “honor”, but in reality, their businesses were in jeopardy due to the British execution of naval power. In the eyes of these rich Americans, war was a small price to pay to return to profitability.

Wealthy Southerners prevented the nation from handling the slave issue. Slaves were dirt-cheap labor, the source of Southern wealth, and the foundation for the entire Southern economy. Of course, it was a double-edge sword, for the slave economy also prevented entrepreneurism, invention, and advancement in the South. But it was what gave the wealthied gentry their power, their prestige, their income, and therefore they influenced Congress for decades to ignore their “peculiar institution” until 600,000 Americans died horribly painful deaths to end the barbaric practice. Of course, some folks became wealthy as war profiteers, which I guess proves the point that the rich almost always prosper at the hands of the rest of us, one way or another.

The rest of our history is equally sordid. Railroad magnates paid pseudo-slave wages, cared little for the safety of workers, used well-practiced fraud to steal millions from the government, and influenced the pace of the near-annihilation of the native Americans. Oil magnates displaced homeowners, despoiled huge tracts of land, crafted vertical monopolies to control the nation’s commerce, and formed holding companies to hide their tracks. In the industrial age, the rich burned people alive in shoddy New York City garment factories, flooded the entire city of Johnstown because they didn’t maintain the dam at their country club, violently cracked down on mine safety protests and spread cancer and misery across the land by polluting the air we breath and the water we drink.

Nowadays, they don’t act in nearly as bloody a manner as in the past. Instead, they use scam after scam to steal from the common man and bribe and cajole lawmakers to let them do so. They’ve moved far from simply convincing lawmakers to look the other way. They’re packing the courts so they can have free reign, paying off Congress to legalize their schemes, and use phony “grass roots” organizations to convince the voting public to support more scams intended to fatten their wallets and enable the continuing screwing of America. Oh, and occasionally they rape the maid.

So here’s the question: what good does the rich do for America today? None. Do they create jobs? Yeah, overseas, where they can (again) get cheap labor and work the local population so hard they jump to their deaths from high windows. Do they provide quality products and services to the public? Yeah, as if: the richest men in the country today sell technology so weak and treat our personal privacy so poorly, I’d bet a Russian crime syndicate knows more about your private life than you do.

Do today’s fat cats even use their wealth to support charitable endeavors? Frankly, I’m not even convinced that’s true. Look at right-wing nonprofits like the Heritage Foundation, who preach the screwing of America. Who funds that? Not middle-American bake sales or bike-a-thons, those things are funded by rich fuckers trying to “prove” that screwing over America is good for America. I would love to see an honest study of charitable giving by the rich. I’d bet far more goes to private “shell game” foundations (set up to protect their trust funds) or supports  right-wing “foundations” preaching the Gospel of Screw-You and buying off Congressmen than goes towards curing cancer, buying ambulances, feeding the hungry or rebuilding communities devastated by tragedy.

This long-winded diatribe is not intended to encourage or condone another Bolshevik revolution. I fully understand that we are a nation that succeeds because we are allowed to succeed, and that becoming rich is one part of the American dream. What it is intended to do is call out the wealthy in America for their thoughtlessness and greed.

In that spirit, I will address the rest of this post directly to them, the top 1% of income earners who control 40% of the nation’s wealth: there is nothing on heaven or earth that gives you the right to abuse your wealth and power. There is nothing on heaven or earth that gives you the right to profit off the misery of others. There is nothing on heaven or earth that gives you the right to scam millions off your customers whilst providing nothing of value or (even worse) causing harm to them. There is nothing on heaven or earth that gives you the right to earn 300 times the income your employees earn while your bad decisions ruin the company.

What does exist is your responsibility to act as much in the good of the country as the next guy. It could even be said that because you have more wealth and power than the average man, you have more responsibility to contribute to the nation in which you live in a positive and constructive manner. You are rich and powerful because of the freedoms this nation affords (witness a certain oil executive living life in a Russian prison if you doubt what I am saying), and you owe this nation your honest and kind-hearted support.

Bottom line: you need to stop being douche bags. Not all of you are. You can be rich, you can be successful, you can have power, but you can also be  decent human beings.

[All pictures on this post, and the post itself, are mine and mine alone and are not to be copied without my express written permission. My other photos of Hampton are here.]

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Links:

Hampton National Historic Site

By the Numbers: Wealth in America

Warren Buffet on Taxes

Does Income Inequality Matter?

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Sesquicentennial of the Civil War

April 10, 2011 by Barky

An Editorial

This year (April 12th, to be exact), marks the 150th anniversary of the shelling of Fort Sumter, the first act of the Civil War.

As usual, this anniversary is controversial. Brooks at Crossroads has been blogging about this controversy for the last few months, he’s stated the issues and inanities far better than I could, so pop over there and catch up if you’d like.

You can probably imagine the various debates: should Confederate soldiers be honored, should slavery be included in any remembrances, was the war really about “states rights” or something far more sinister, etc. There are groups out there trying to use this anniversary for their own political advantage as well, whether drumming up support for unrestricted gun rights, nullification, secession, or even outright rebellion against the current administration/government, or something else. Most of these folks are, of course, nutjobs. But that’s to be expected: every anniversary celebration, whether it’s Independence Day, 9/11, or the sesquicentennial of the War of Northern Aggression, brings out the nutjobs trying to rally support for their own cause. They need to do so, for their cause doesn’t stand on its own, it needs the crutch of misrepresented history to lean on.

In my view, we definitely should honor this sesquicentennial with reverence, respect, and honesty. Yes, the war was about slavery. Yes, the Confederacy was wrong about seceding to “preserve the peculiar institution”. Yes, “states’ rights” arguments were used to dupe Confederate soldiers into fighting. Yes, Lincoln was wrong about suspending habeus corpus. Yes, the draft riots were handled badly. Yes, Reconstruction failed and led to the rise of Jim Crow and the KKK. Yes, yes, yes, nearly every horrible thing that led up to and occurred during that war was tragic and contemptible and disgusting and true. War is like that, war is nasty, miserable business, and always results from failures of leadership and integrity on at least one side, but usually by both.

But yes, we still need to respect and honor the soldiers who gave their lives on either side. Yes, we need to respect that these men were fighting for a cause they thought was just. Yes, we need to allow such ceremonies to take place on either side of the Mason-Dixon. Yes we should have wreath-laying ceremonies at Union and Confederate cemeteries. But yes, we should also recognize the slaves who suffered under the yoke of oppression, and honor those who ran the Underground Railroad and abolitionist movements, or who acted as conscientious objectors to the whole thing. Yes, yes, and yes again.

People need to realize that these events occurred 150 years ago. We are generations and generations removed from those events. There is no longer any need to take any of this stuff personally. It is behind us. Let’s not act like those barbarous regions of the world, areas still waging wars of hate because one country oppressed another 100 years ago, or one king conquered another 500 years ago, or two brothers hated each other 1500 years ago, or some tyrant murdered a prophet 2000 years ago. People and cultures who hold onto these historical transgressions (real or imagined) and allow them to torment them in the current age are weak, foolish, and stupid. When you’re stuck in the past you never move forward. We are Americans, we should be better than that. We need to look at the now, and at the future, and not dwell on what was (or what we erroneously thought it was).

Here’s what we should honor on this 150th anniversary of the War Between the States: we survived the greatest man-made catastrophe to ever occur on North American soil. We never regressed back into further military conflict amongst ourselves in 150 years. How many other nations in the world can claim that? Precious few, that’s for sure. Look around: some regions have been fighting civil wars for 20 years or more! We are “one and done” in terms of civil war. I find that truly remarkable.

Not only that, but we have absolutely thrived in the aftermath. We stretched our influence across the continent, across the world, and into the reaches of space. We have excelled in economics and business to become the world’s leading economic power. We have excelled in science and technology, harnessing the atom, conquering horrible diseases, cracking DNA and connecting the world with electrons and photons. We have turned our slaveholding society into an artistic machine, spawning the blues, folk, gospel, rockabilly, bluegrass, rock-and-roll, country, soul, and R&B. We have done a lot of cool shit, folks, since the end of the Civil War. Yeah, we’re troubled now, things don’t look too rosy, but we still have it pretty good (whether you live in the North or the South).

Here’s my advice for appreciating this Sesquicentennial: take the opportunity to learn about history, and reflect on how far we, as a complete nation, have come since those unenlightened times 150 years ago.

And let the past be the past.

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