roachboy

ok so...

(a) putting the thread in politics made it an object of debate rather than a call for silence/reflection----another way: the call for reflection itself became an object of debate.

this is in no way surprising.

that said, i wouldn't have put it anywhere else because, like it or not, whyat the op requests is a political action.
so the op is itself a political action.

(b) now things get more complicated.

what does the request mean that one pause for a minute and think about the people in the american military who find themselves in fucked up situations because of policy choices that one does not, has not, and cannot support?

obviously, the people who are sent into harm's way in the military do not themselves formulate the policies that get them sent into these situations--but the fact that they are where they are, in the contexts that they are in, means obviously that their situations are not separable from policy choices.

so

(c) can one think of the individuals who happen to have signed up for the military in the situations they occupy--which are the result of policy choices--to the exclusion of those policy choices?

in a way yes.
in a way no.

what the op asks those of us who opposed, oppose and will oppose the bush administrations military adventures to do is to make a separation between the administration's actions and their results----to imagine that these folk are simply teleported from their homes to these theaters of conflict. like these theaters are self-contained, the way tables are. or to imagine war as like the shit that happens to people over which we the people have no control. like a gas main blowing up, but bigger.

so you might as well pretend that the wars in iraq and afghanistan are like the weather.

so let's do as the op suggests, and think of the people in the military who find themselves in danger over the holidaze as regular folk who were teleported into these situations arbitrarily.

but that's absurd: they are not where they are arbitrarily.


ok so let's think of these folk as human beings in dangerous situations.

well, since that erases any trace of differences between dangerous situations, which ones are elective (as a function of political choices) and which ones simply happen, then fine....but it trivializes what it asks for, requiring us to consciously erase features of the wars in aghanistan and iraq in order to access the "simple" position of just thinking about folk who are in harm's way.

everything about such a request is totally political.
not only that, but it's a cheap, nasty kind of political.
let's not screw about pretending that it isn't the case.
it is, like it or not.

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but this isn't all one can say.
i can say this:

my sympathies and to some extent anxieties go out to everyone involved with these conflicts.
on all sides, civilian and military, "us" and "them"--->that they all are able to return to their elective lives safe.
that they all can become who and what they want to become.
that the idiotic conflicts that explain the dangerous interactions which prompt such concern will end, sooner rather than later, and that all human beings can find themselves in a position to do what makes them happiest, in a context that allows for it...

these sentiments are not so difficult: who wouldn't wish them for themselves and---- because they wish it for themselves--wish it for other people as well?

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that this desire amounts to a call for revolution can wait perhaps until after the holidaze. after all, commodities await: commodities like "stopping a moment to remember."--you know, like what you did before, when you bought one of those 7-11 yellow ribbons to tack on to the back of your suv...

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite