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i do not think that the important aspect of this story lay inside the story itself.
think about it:
isnt it interesting to note how opposition to rumsfeld from conservatives has to pitch itself?
it is like this whole business is infolding in code:
since it is inadmissiable to confront the debacle of the iraq war (either in principle or in fact) directly;
since it is impossible to not participate in the festishization of the troops--not in themselves, of course (witness the exchange discussed in the other recent rumsfeld thread about armor) but as signifier the primary function of which is to shut down spaces for opposition to the war....(for example)....
this is the kind of thing that the right opposition has to use as a wedge issue to express their opposition to rumsfeld.
what is clever about this tack is that it is a good allegory for the administration itself with reference in particular to the troops that it has sent into harms way on the basis of crackpot imperialist delusions.
but it is also no more than an allegory, and a kind of flimsy one if you look at it straight on...i think the debate above shows this problem clearly---it is not about anything substantive, the story, but it is a way of trying to impugn rumsfeld by calling the detail of his committment to "our boys" into question.
those of us who work outside the discursive frame particular to bushworld and its relay systems in the major media (you know, the liberal press, the one that has spent the past two years on its knees) find that discourse to be an obvious problem--however we at least have mobility---the problems of being boxed in by the groupthink of bushworld is far more developed for anyone who tries to oppose the administration from within its own general terrain.
so it appears that bushworld has the more conventional right boxed in.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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