Stuck In Between In Gaza

In between the screeches of outgoing missals
there are explosions that shake you about.

In between apartment buildings
there is concrete rubble.

In between parents are children
hunkered down in stairwells.

In between one family is an extended one
that has no place else to go.

In between the quiet
there are screams.

In between the periods of commotion
there is the stillness that teeters

in between hope and terror
and knows not which way to fall.

What a week....

Crazy week we've just had.

• Scott McClellan, the former press point man for the Bush Administration writes an unflattering view of the Bush White House and the administration send out it's people with their talking points to counter his harsh criticism. Funny thing is most of us arrived at the same conclusions as Scott well ahead of him and it's comical to see the president's defenders try to play this down, like we've never heard any of it before. Then we have the newest White House press secretary Dana Perino who says it was his own fault if McClellan felt he was an outsider. "You can be as in or out of the loop as you choose to be," she said. Ms. Perino should keep that in mind if she some days finds herself in front of a grand jury.
• Senator John McCain who scolded Barack Obama over Iraq and suggested he could teach Obama a thing or two if he'd travel with him to Iraq said yesterday, "I can tell you that [the troop increase] is succeeding. I can look you in the eye and tell you it's succeeding. We have drawn down to pre-surge levels." The only problem is the troop level in Iraq is at about 155,000, well above the 130,000 that would mark a return to levels preceding the "surge."
• Then come Father Michael Pfleger, who evidently feels his calling is to mock Sen. Hillary Clinton in racially charged language from the pulpit of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago (home church of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright who earlier stirred controversy for the Obama campaign.

Anyone else wondering what the weekend might have in store?

Will, a quiet one news wise would be nice. I do intend to do some household chores this weekend and some writing. Yes, I did say writing.

Time to get real

Reportedly speaking in a condescendent tone, Sen. John McCain challenged Sen. Barack Obama on Wednesday to travel to Iraq with him to better understand the war. I challenge Senator McCain to visit the real world and come out of President Bush's delusion.

Puzzled? Laughing hysterically

When White House officials claim to be puzzled by Scott McClellan's assertions about the Bush administration in his new memoir, I find the whole thing laughable. First of all, it is nice to see the former press secretary to the president acknowledge what most Americans figured out long ago. That top officials in the Bush administration including the president and vice president themselves have been bold faced liers to the American public.

When the current White House spokeswoman Dana Perino calls McClellan's description of his time at the White House "sad," it is, but the reason it's sad is the Bush administration not only lied to the American people but conducted much of the nations business, including foreign policy based upon those lies.

These aren't little white lies. These are lies that have cost 4,589 American servicemen and women their lives thus far. Lies that have cost American taxpayers so far in excess of $523 billion and counting. Money that in many instances has been paid out to fat-cat contractor that have over billed American taxpayers. In other cases there are funds paid for services and supplies that cannot be accounted for.

That the President and Vice President will retire with pensions and leave this mess for the next President and the American people is beyond sad. My belief is based on their conduct in office, both should be serving time behind bars.

STOP THE PRESSES!

STOP THE PRESSES! McCain: U.S. can win Iraq war within 4 years

• And he assumes we believe this?
• And he assumes we are willing to drain another $500- 600 billion (of unbudgeted $) there?
• And he assumes we all feel safer because of this?
• And he assumes we have the military personnel to maintain that kind of presence?
• And are willing to lose another two to five Americas every day X 1460 days?

GREAT - FOUR MORE YEARS OF A MORON IN THE WHITE HOUSE!

Discussion with Brian Turner - Poet & Veteran

Transcript of Washington Post Discussion
Book World: 'Here, Bullet'
Iraq War Poetry

with Poet and Veteran

Brian Turner

Blogger, McCain, Iraq, et al

I'm not posting my day 8 NaPoWriMo draft poem yet.... because it has yet to be drafted, but we are at day 8 of the month and blogger still has my NaPoWriMo blog (created just for this April project) hostage because "I may be in Violation." Somehow, I think this should like make me feel dirty or something. I don't. In fact I'm feeling really pissed. I wake up each morning and it's starting to feel like it's dragging on into.... gee I don't know, the same place the Iraq war is going- infinity.

There, now see what you did blogger? You got me started on the war. And speaking of the war, the military top brass will be up on the hill today to update us on the current situation in Iraq.

Here in Kansas City, Sen. John McCain delivered a speech on Iraq. ABC World News said last night McCain "accused Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton today of a failure of leadership for promising to withdraw US forces from Iraq." McCain "told the Veterans of Foreign Wars that promising withdrawal from Iraq without considering the consequences is in his words, 'the height of irresponsibility.'" NBC Nightly News said McCain "delivered a glass-half-full message about progress in Iraq." McCain was shown saying, "We are no longer staring into the abyss of defeat. And we can now look ahead to the genuine prospect of success."

This brings me to the question I'd like McCain to answer. Exactly would "success" in Iraq look like. It's interesting that both McCain and the Bush Administration have dropped the term, "victory" that has been used for so long. We were told over and over the Democrats wanted to "lose" the war and the Republicans wanted to "win" it. When pushed to describe what a "victory" or "win" in Iraq would constitute rather than define that elusive term, they have now chosen the term success. It question remains. What would success in Iraq look like. What would be the benchmark that we could look at and say, yes, we are there? The fact of the matter is McCain can't look the American people in the face and tell us what it is because he hasn't figured it out himself.

Because he can't define it, he can only use evasive terms about the future. We are suppose to accept that because there was a downward turn in violence during the surge, "we're closer". Closer to when and What?
The violence has picked up. It's Iraqi against Iraqi violence and America in right in the middle. Now they want to freeze troop levels at pre-invasion levels. Our military presence has weakened our readiness for American defense elsewhere.

There are serious questions aside from the obvious Military ones. None of the massive expenditures on this war are part of any budget. For five years we have waged a grossly expensive military operation on credit. $12 billion a month is what it's costing presently, and that is not including costs to benefits and medical care for returning veterans that will be continuing for many years. When we are asking ourselves, are we safer because of this war? I think we have to ask, what the cost to our security is if we are economically crippled because of it?

Meanwhile, a related breaking story of interest: Draft agreement could allow US troops to remain in Iraq 'indefinitely'

Oh, and how about the special Pulitzer for Bob Dylan, citing the mark he has made on our culture over decades. Isn't that an interesting bit of news?

Poets Against The War Anthology

Last night was our bi-weekly meeting of K.C. Metro Verse - a local chapter of the Missouri State Poetry Society. I did not take much of my own to read, but chose to read three selections from Poets Against The War.

My selections were:

1. Of a Forgetful Sea by Kelli Russell Agodon
2. Freedom From Speech by Terry Tempest Williams
3. On A Photograph of a Severed Hand by Jim Shugrue

I was taken by the number of poets my own age who were anthologized in this book. I recall seeing a seventeen year old, s few 20's and 30 somethings, but it is amazing the number that are my age. Men and women who were part of the Vietnam generation. There are a lot of profoundly committed voices that experienced the tragedy of our misadventure in southeast Asia and continue to be guided by the wisdom they acquired through that experience. Unfortunately we were lead into Iraq by those who failed to learn from the mistakes made in the 1960's.

Anniversary

Anniversary

The odometer of fallen, rolls onward
Over too familiar terrain.
A merry-go-round insanity
Propelled by stubborn indignity,
Denials-
Capitulating nothing
While eating our young.

Memo to John McCain

When Senator John McCain said yesterday to win the general election he must convince a war-weary country that U.S. policy in Iraq is succeeding. If he can't, "then I lose." But no sooner than he uttered those words he quickly backed off, "Let me not put it that stark, Let me just put it this way: Americans will judge my candidacy first and foremost on how they believe I can lead the country both from our economy and for national security. Obviously, Iraq will play a role in their judgment of my ability to handle national security. If I may, I'd like to retract 'I'll lose.' But I don't think there's any doubt that how they judge Iraq will have a direct relation to their judgment of me, my support of the surge. Clearly, I am tied to it to a large degree." For many Americans, myself included, it would be a mammoth undertaking to reverse the notion that this war was and remains a failed war.

You see, most of us, if we've not had out heads buried in the sand, or someplace else, realize a few truths about Iraq that will not change tomorrow, next week or next year. Those truths go something like this:

1. The war was not only unnecessary, it was unwarranted. The lies that the Bush administration fed the American people are so blatant that only the narrow mindset individuals cannot see that one after another the stated reasons were false.
2. The war has not made us safer and has in fact detracted from pursuit of Osama Bin Laden (you remember him don't you).
3. The was has stretched our military commitments to dangerous levels.
4. Some $500,000,000,000 of non-budgeted expenditures later, we are in an economy that requires extraordinary measures prevent economic crisis and we will be passing this ongoing cost for the war to our children and their children.
5. The problems in Iraq [caused by this failed policy] are no longer military but political and require the Iraqi people to start working together to achieve success.
6. The unknown cost of this war is not the casualties or monetary price tag, but the loss of American respect and prestige around the world. How long will it take us to recover that respect and what are the sacrifices that will have to be made in foreign policy as a result of the war?

Memo to John McCain. Seventy-five percent of all Americans killed in Vietnam were lost after Lyndon Johnson privately acknowledged what most Americans already knew. The war was lost. Like Vietnam, Iraq was not a war lost by the military it was lost because it was a failure of policy. There were no real justifications to go there and once there, we had no strategy to win anything, only destabilize. As we approach the 5 year anniversary of this war you need to "get it" because what Americans want to do is to get over it and move on.

Think about it

From Kelli @ First Draft

Fools Gold?

Wine anyone? At left is a snapshot of a portion of an art piece that was done the the top raps of wine bottles the cover the corks. A gripping piece of art work my daughter and I saw yesterday. When I first saw it from a distance I had no idea what the medium was but it locked on me like a heat seeking missile and we were inseparable at that point. I had to see it up close.

The brilliance reminded me of fools gold. Sort of chunky and multi layered in texture. I wanted to bring it home though it would have taken a massive wall to display it on.

We saw a number of exhibits - many old black and white photos - lot of them civil war era. I am continually impressed with what a talented photo artist can do with black and white.

There were some civil war battle photos. I was remarking to my wife how gory they were when Meghan (daughter) took issue with the gore description. And she was right. They were certainly not gory by cinema or even news standards today, but they were disturbing none the less in a very real way.

While there was not the blood and or mutilation we often equate with gore, many were battlefield shots taken the day after a battle. The stiff and sometimes bloated bodies would have configurations of limbs that suggested that many were left dying - scattered about the landscape perhaps for hours in pain, or one reaching for another nearby in life and frozen in that reach to their final ounce of remaining life was gone. It was perhaps more properly a morbidity than gore.

Today we took Meghan to Christopher Elbows Chocolate to celebrate her birthday. You want decadence? Try it. There is supposed to be one opening in San Francisco for you out west.

Quote of the Day

"I am not only a pacifist but a militant pacifist. I am willing to fight for peace. Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war." ~ Albert Einstine

Defining the inner life through poetry

Marvin Bell is gray haired and bearded. The 70 year old is Iowa's first Poet Laureate. In the mid 1960's Bell was an army officer so it is perhaps not at all surprising that he has written on the subject of war extensively. Of his 17 published books of poetry, many deal with war.

In a recent Des Moines Register interview I was particularly struck by his response to the question, "What is the role of art in war time?" Bell's response seems particularly relevant to writing in a broader prospective about any social concern, not just war. He said, "Poets talk about current events, just as everyone does, but some of us also embed it in our art. Poetry doesn't change minds. However, it becomes part of the consensus. It finds words for what it feels like during wartime. That said, there is no one way to write and no right way to write. A poet is perfectly within his or her right to graph the inner life without reference to outer events."

It seems that poets have long been charged with defining moments in the use of language. It is the utilization of individual words and phrases that bring "feeling" into better focus. This not only gives greater clarity to the feelings but the words themselves. I've had times and I am sure I am not alone, when I have felt some way that I was not able to adequately describe. That ability to graph the inner life is one measure of exceptionally good poetry.

Klaus had a birthday yesterday....

The birthday boy and his brothers enjoyed a home cooked meal for a change. K gets so freek'n excited when we sing happy birthday to him. The shot at the right was taken last night at the dog park where they romped and attempted to prove their dominance over the world. All except Barry... he just hangs and and tries his best to stay out of the fray.

Yesterday I started putting on paper some of my thoughts about revisions. The formation of a post is coming along. I've been thinking a lot about many aspects of this.

Yesterday I read Jilly's blog. Our Internet had been down and I was kind of behind on things. Se had several really interesting things worth noting. All of these links I owe to her:

• Poetry as Right-Hemispheric Language
• Poet recounts Polish couple's heroism in WWII
• In the line of fire

Hastert Blames Americans' Impatience For '06 GOP Losses

I read with amazement this article about the retirement of former House Speaker Dennis Hastert. After all this time he blames the GOP losses in the midterm election on American impatience.

I won't even bother to discuss the numerous scandals among GOP House members which he denied lead to the Republican electoral demise. But I will take issue with the insistence that the American people are impatient where the war is concerned.

Patience, or lack thereof is only a small part of the electoral revolt where the war in Iraq is concerned. It is far more than impatience. He ignores the fact that the vast majority of America realizes that they were mislead in the first place. There was no compelling reason for the US to make an unprovoked strike on Iraq. Information about possible nuclear concerns were grossly exaggerated and information at the time suggested so. We had UN inspectors in the country again surveying the situation.

It is true that the existing government in Iraq was wrought with human rights abuses, but so is the Sudan, so is China, Sri Lanka, Labia, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Côte d’Ivoire, El Salvador, Colombia, Turkey and the list of places with major human rights abuses goes on. Where is the U.S. response in these places? The fact is that our government and in particular the Bush administration found it politically expedient to go to war with Iraq, and they believed it would be a short campaign and there would be minimal causalities. They shifted resources from Afghanistan (a real stronghold for anti-American extremists) to Iraq.

For all the bad you could say about the Saddam Hussein, he did after all rise in power with behind the scenes help from the United States government. Further there existed a stable government environment that was not susceptible to outside interference in the region.

What Representative Hastert ignores of fails to understand is that we know the truth about Iraq and it is an ugly scar in the history of the U.S.

At last count, we've lost at least 3,699 U.S. servicemen and women in the ear in Iraq. At least 25,000 Americans have been wounded. This Mr. Hastert is a pretty heavy price to pay for what amounts to a lie. Your President was bound and determined to go to war in Iraq to the extent that he would present less than honest assessments of facts. That is a polite way of saying he lied.

On the other side, the price has been worse. By other side I am speaking of Iraqi citizens. Bush's war has created a vacuum in leadership in country where there is no consensus among the Iraqi people themselves. There are deep divisions between neighboring people. To the point of bloody civil strife on a daily basis. The death toll in one day alone in a northern Kurdish province that was previously one of the quieter spots is now at least 400.

We've destroyed so much of the countries infrastructure, in the capital alone they are lucky to have an hour or two electricity a day. One seriously has to ask the question, are they better off today than under Saddam?

Efforts to create a democratic government in Iraq have had only partial success. While the structure of a legislative body now exists, the divisions between the Iraqi people themselves are so deep that this brave body of men and women that rick their own lives daily are in worse gridlock than anything we've ever witnessed here in America.

Given this, and the fact that this whole mess has in fact lead to greater disdain for America Islamic people worldwide, how exactly has this made us safer?

In all this it is amazing how prophetic Dick Cheney was in 1994. The question is what lead to his mental lapse?

Congressman Hastert needs to understand that the American people are not simply an impatient bunch. No, we realize that George Bush pulled a Gulf of Tonkin on us (see here, here, and especially here) and are angered and the loss of lives on both sides, the loss of American prestige, the monetary cost of over $450 billion of non-budgeted tax money and counting , and creating a cause celeb for recruiting anti-American terrorists. If THIS is not a crime against the American people and humanity as a whole, I don't know what is.

Child Soldiers [draft)

A slumping night
Wept for those pressed into duty battle
By grown men with archaic presence of mind
To plunder the natural order- peace-

It is all remedial arithmetic.
More soldiers equals more tokens in their hands.
More chips they can gamble away
With low maintenance child warriors.

No enlistment paperwork or die-cast metal tags
To string around their necks.
No toe tags for the dead.

No one knows where they come from
Or cares where they go;
No duty to notify families or messy emotions.
Just a simple war-
With child labor.

The Sexuality of War

It's Tuesday, it feels like it should be Wednesday and I wish it was Thursday. How's that for defying reality? Further, I really have no idea why I wish it were Thursday.

I've always considered that Virginia Woolf was never in short supply of thoughts to express. Nor timid about getting them out. I found an interesting quote that is one of the more profound statements I've heard attributed to her. "If you insist upon fighting to protect me, or 'our' country, let it be understood soberly and rationally between us that you are fighting to gratify a sex instinct which I cannot share; to procure benefits where I have not shared and probably will not share." -Virginia Woolf

It seems very evident that Woolf sees war largely the sexual aggression of men (emphasis on gender). I don't suppose I am qualified to challenge or uphold the psychological pretexts of such assumption, but it is rather profound that she is serving notice that she shares no such stake in these actions. A strong stand that I have to admire.

Guantanamo Poetry - five commentaries

This past week I received an e-mail from Jeff Charis-Carlson, Opinion Editor for the Iowa City Press-Citizen. He noted an earlier post in which I referenced the book, Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak that UI Press has published and brought to my attention a series of op-ed pieces on the subject that have appeared in the Iowa City Press-Citizen. I promised him I would take a look at them and I did. There were some interesting point offered in these editorials.

Jeff Charis-Carlson himself writes of his reactions to reading these poems and relates it to the haunting feelings that surface from reading Psalm 137, a song of exile in which the psalmist denounces those who captured him.

Shams Ghoneim, in another op-ed writes about the contrasting values on which America was founded and the code we are operating on with respect to the detainees at Guantanamo. She writes of Moazzam Begg's poem, "Homeward Bound," in which she can sense his hopelessness and sorrow. Begg received a letter from his 7-year-old daughter in which the only line that avoided the censor's pen was, "I love you, Daddy."

Joseph Parsons noted the poet Adrienne Rich has expressed that poetry can remind us of what we are forbidden to see. Parsons believes"Poems from Guantánamo: The Detainees Speak," is not about these accusations of maltreatment... "Its only ambition is to provide a glimpse into the lives, hearts and minds of the men held by the U.S. military at Guantanamo -- something we have been forbidden to see....as they pine for their families, their homes and all they hold dear."

Spring Ulmer writes, that words are dangerous things and "Poems from Guantánamo," had to be liberated from the Pentagon's "secure facilities," where most detainee writing remains in confinement, as it is considered "a security risk." I was struck by Ulmer's story where a year ago, after reading detainee Jumah Al Dossari's descriptions of torture (smuggled out and published online), she began writing letters to Dossari, only to have them returned by the military, marked and brutally ripped open as if to frighten her.

Tung Yin is a law professor at the University of Iowa, specializes in constitutional law and national security law. He writes of the poems giving human voice to the problems caused by applying the war model to non-state actors. He distinguishes the differences between traditional wars between nations, and that between the United States and al Qaida/Taliban. In traditional war, the enemy easily is identified, whereas in this conflict, the enemy hides among civilians. Because al Qaida members deliberately conceal themselves and because even the Taliban fighters did not wear traditional uniforms, there's higher likelihood that the United States would have incorrectly identified a person as the enemy. And in traditional war, it may be unknown what date the war will end, but it is known that the war can end when there is an armistice. In this conflict, it is unlikely the United States would negotiate with al Qaida, and we never may know if we have succeeded in destroying it as a threat to this country extending indefinitely the detention of these individuals without any due process.

I applaud the Iowa City Press-Citizen for dialogue it has contributed to the discussion of the Guantanamo poems.

Call for Censure by Feingold

Over the weekend Sen. Russ Feingold called for the censure of President Bush by Congress. He laid out his two part basis for censure on Meet the Press Sunday Morning. You can watch the program here.