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interesting. thanks deltona.
let's pull this apart, though.
1. it is pretty obvious that no narrative about the "war on terror" is complete.
2. it is pretty obvious that the war in iraq has nothing to do with the "war on terror"--but it is also obvious that the actions of this administration have not only put lives needlessly in danger, subjected many many people to appalling situations for no bloody reason etc.---but further that the action in iraq has generated its own internal dynamic which is really not a good thing.
this internal dynamic apparently involves an appropriation of nationalist-style terminology in order to mobilize against a colonial invasion.
from a distance, this is not surprising and further is just another variant of the self-defeating logic of the bushwar.
however: i am not in the least suprised to see that if your viewpoint is shaped by your life having been in danger within the conflict itself, your view of what is happening is going to be shaped by what you encountered and not by the logic of debates about policy happening amongst people who have not been in the same position.
problem:
(a) it will appear, then, that arguments concerning policy logic invalidate the narrative of someone who was on the ground in iraq, and vice versa.
and
(b) the affect that one brings to bear on this matter will be affected by this.
so.
groundrule question before this goes any further:
i am entirely opposed to the war in iraq. period.
BUT
i am interested nonetheless in information about how this is playing out on the ground.
it has been quite difficult to get anything approaching reliable information about the situation being endured by the folk who simply by doing their jobs have found themselves in very considerable danger. this as a function of marketing the war, of the "lessons" the right apparently drew from their fucked-up version of the history of the vietnam war--which links the widespread opposition to that debacle to 2 factors above all: "excess information" particularly on television concerning the reality of war and the draft.
notice the centrality of these two issues in shaping the policies around iraq: pooled press, constant marketing on the one hand, and a refusal to institute the draft no matter what on the other.
anyway, the groundrule question is basically one of arriving at some kind of understanding about how the different types of narratives can co-exist within a debate about the "war on terror" and all its ramifications.
for whatever it's worth, i accept the incompleteness of information as given and would welcome more about what is endured in iraq: but i wonder how you, deltona, will deal with political dissent concerning the policies themselves.
any conversation involving your experience and political opposition to the policies that shaped your experience is going to involve problems of talking past each other.
the groundrule would then be some kind of agreement or understanding that such talking-past does not involve an invalidation of your perceptions of what happened to you.
if you can accept the inevitable talking-past-each-other matter, i for one would be interested in hearing more about your experiences---but i am not sure that anything positive can come of your sharing that information if there is not some kind of prior understanding about this.
keep in mind that a significant aspect of the marketing of this war in iraq has hinged on this talking-past issue--conservatives routinely tried to argue that any opposition to the war in iraq invalidated the experience of those who were there--this as a mean of trying to stifle dissent. while i might think this argument idiotic--and i do--it is nonetheless part of the sad political climate within which we operate, like it or not, and this motivates the gorundrule question that i am trying to pose to you.
so there we are for the moment.
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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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