I couldn't agree more. Two terms that drive me nuts - "warfighter", as in our (defense company) supports the warfighter - just like a team sponsor, as opposed to saying our company makes obscene profits by manufacturing things that brutalize, destroy and maim - including our own warfighters; and "boots on the ground" - not people, no sir, just boots.
And George Carlin, as in so many things, was prescient in 1991 when he talked about euphemisms and how "shell shock" eventually morphed into "post traumatic stress disorder". - pain buried under jargon (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSp8IyaKCs0)
One of your most profoundly incisive posts, Bill. Bravo!
Most people, from what I've seen, don't pay much attention to specific words. They don't consider what's behind word choices, or reflect that those choices are always deliberate, at least in the cases of media, public statements, speeches, and so on. I'd even extend that observation to social media posts by public figures (Musk, for example). Writers are among the few who see behind the curtain, as do PR people and marketers/advertisers; those last two categories being those who set out to sell things via words. Joe and Jane Average usually take in the words and are thus manipulated to think the way they're intended to, as you've pointed out with regard to, "patriotism."
George Lakoff, whose theories I admire, points out that framing is everything. If the military uses certain targeted euphemisms, they change the entire conceptualization of war, as you point out. That's why it's so important to call out those euphemisms, as you do. Words matter more than just about anything else in affecting events, or, as Edward Bulwer-Lytton said, "The pen is mightier than the sword."
Great article Bill. The language used by military and political elites has always been their primary tool for getting the public to go along with horrendous atrocities committed by the US overseas. What bothers me as much as the fact that they so distort what they are doing (for example claiming that killing people overseas makes the US safer, whereas 9/11 proves that completely false), but rather that so much of the public believes it. The public has found out repeatedly over the decades that the US government and the military routinely lie outrageously during every single war they start, but somehow the current war is exempt from skepticism as far as the public is concerned. Until the public becomes 1) skeptical and 2) angry, then nothing will change. I just don't see how to bring that about as long as the public continues to watch and read the Corporate Owned News, which are the primary sources of the lies that keep the wars going.
The US National Security State has devised a strategy so that the American people never have to confront the horrors of war or see any body bags filled with US soldiers ever again. They are fulminating with glee at the prospect of being able to destroy Russia without a single US casualty. As usual, there is a hierarchy on the value of human life according to the US National Security State, and currently Ukrainian (and Russian) lives are as meaningless today as the 1 million Iraqis who died after the US illegal and devastating invasion of that country 20 years ago. Here are just a few snippets highlighting the psychopathic mindset among the US political class:
**Senator Richard Blumenthal assures Americans that “we’re getting our money’s worth on our Ukraine investment. For less than 3 percent of our nation’s military budget, we’ve enabled Ukraine to degrade Russia’s military strength by half. We’ve united NATO and caused the Chinese to rethink their invasion plans for Taiwan. We’ve helped restore faith and confidence in American leadership — moral and military. All without a single American service woman or man injured or lost, and without any diversion or misappropriation of American aid.”
**Senator Mitt Romney calls the war “the best national defense spending I think we’ve ever done. We’re losing no lives in Ukraine, and the Ukrainians are fighting heroically against Russia. We’re diminishing and devastating the Russian military for a very small amount of money … a weakened Russia is a good thing.”
**Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell argues that Americans should support the US government’s proxy warfare in Ukraine because “we haven’t lost a single American in this war,” adding that the spending is helping to employ Americans in the military-industrial complex. "Most of the money that we spend related to Ukraine is actually spent in the US, replenishing weapons, more modern weapons. So it’s actually employing people here and improving our own military for what may lie ahead. The most basic reasons for continuing to help Ukraine degrade and defeat the Russian invaders are cold, hard, practical American interests."
**Congressman Dan Crenshaw said on Twitter that “investing in the destruction of our adversary’s military, without losing a single American troop, strikes me as a good idea."
It is disgusting how obvious it is that the U. S. is going to fight this proxy war against Russia to the last Ukrainian. Considering the warmongering idiots behind that strategy, the payback for it could be a closer look at war for the U. S. than words on a page. Your comment is right on.
Thank you Bill. That is highly needed! and wonderfully clear and usable. I hope reporters will start to use it and maybe your readers can remind them, if they don't. I'm forwarding this to many friends.
On an adjacent subject, I wish you could do the same for the blame we have put on Russia - even Noam Chomsky and others I admire seem to think that Russia was not provoked enough to go to war. So I am asking a question: what constitutes a sufficient provocation? If killing your relations and friends is not a provocation especially when you ask over and over and over for them to stop and they ignore you for over 8 years and demonstrate plans to do even more in the near future, is not enough provocation, especially when it becomes apparent that so-called friendly neighbors who say they want to help you are actually plotting against you in this circumstance, I wonder what it would take if the same thing were happening to the US. Sufficient provocation? It strikes me that this "war" started in 2014 or before by the US. I wonder why virtually no one who reports on this war, even those who admit there was "a bit" of provocation" on our part, but apparently not enough for even genuine liberals like Chomsky or Hedges etc. to state that they think the US started this war, not Russia. Is it because they believe that the US deep state would simply close them down if they said the truth? Is that what would happen?
On the occasion of the 22nd anniversary of 9/11, a Question every American old enough to think for themselves needs to ask themselves, their families and loved ones, friends and neighbors, cohorts, colleagues, compeers, and compatriots is…:
WHAT WILL YOU DO, AMERICA, WHEN 9/11 HAPPENS ONCE AGAIN?
What will you do when your government once again fails its Constitutionally-mandated duty and responsibility to preserve and protect the Life, Liberty, Property, and Pursuit of Happiness of America’s citizens from all enemies, foreign and domestic? Will you meekly and absent-mindedly accept the fact that, once again, not one single elected politician, not one single entrenched civilian or military career bureaucrat, not one single anointed political appointee is to be held accountable or made to be responsible and to pay for his or her failures?
WHAT WILL YOU DO, AMERICA, WHEN 9/11 HAPPENS ONCE AGAIN?
What will you do when thousands more of your countrymen are murdered before your very eyes on live television? Will you once again dutifully and diffidently shrug off your absolute, inalienable, and unconditional Right to know the Real, Whole Truth about WHAT actually happened, about HOW it actually happened, about WHY it actually happened, about WHO actually made it happen, and about Who actually LET it happen? Will you once again passively and patriotically accept the Official “conspiracy theory” version of events as explained to you by your government, and as packaged and presented, marketed and sold to you by its experts, cheerleaders, gatekeepers, and champions in what used to be called The Media – mainstream, corporate, liberal, alternative, conservative, progressive, patriotic, radical, which, what, and/or wherever?
WHAT WILL YOU DO, AMERICA, WHEN 9/11 HAPPENS ONCE AGAIN?
What will you do when the so-called War Against so-called Terrorism abroad and at home is transparently, clearly, and undeniably demonstrated to be a total, abject failure and thus lie, scam, hoax, and sham? Will you once again give even more untaxed money, unchallenged political power, and unchallengeable legal authority to the very people, offices, organizations, and agencies by whose failures this “War” was created and is waged, and who can promise you only that your -- and their -- investment in it will last forever?
WHAT WILL YOU DO, AMERICA, WHEN 9/11 HAPPENS ONCE AGAIN?
What will you do when your elected and appointed officials further dismantle Constitutional government in the name of “civilization,” further diminish individual and civil liberties in the name of “freedom,” and finally destroy the last vestiges of whatever power We, the People, may have once commanded, all in the name of “democracy” and “security”? Will you obediently and obsequiously once again hide and watch the next stage in the biggest seizure of government power on this planet since Stalin’s Russia in the 20s, Hitler’s Germany and Roosevelt's New Deal in the 30s, and Mao’s China in the 40s?
WHAT WILL YOU DO, AMERICA, WHEN 9/11 HAPPENS ONCE AGAIN?
Will you rush out to buy brand new flags and ribbons and bumper stickers, buttons, posters and signs, to replace the torn, shredded, faded, matted, pealed, and rusted ones you rushed out to buy after the first 9/11? And then once again go on with your lives, desperately hoping that you can somehow continue pretending to pretend that nothing has really changed, that life does indeed go on the Day After The End of The World As We Knew It, Once Again.
WHAT WILL YOU DO, AMERICA, WHEN 9/11 HAPPENS ONCE AGAIN?
Will you piously, stoically, and heroically accept a Draft as part of the necessary, national sacrifice demanded in this time of new national peril and challenge? Particularly if you get to keep your tax breaks and gas in your SUVs, and your kid gets to get his Deferment?
WHAT WILL YOU DO, AMERICA, WHEN 9/11 HAPPENS ONCE AGAIN?
Will you, the so-called “peace, anti-War, and social justice” community of America, once again walk right past GROUND ZERO -- The Real, Whole Truth -- looking for something more significant, something more relevant, something more important? Will you once again rush to hold your episodic and periodic semi-annual Gatherings Of The Tribe to rail and rant and beat your breasts and massage your gums and egos against the newest extension and expansion and endless continuation of this so-called “War” at home and abroad?
This War about which you have -- from DAY ZERO, from September 11, 2001 -- completely refused and thus failed to “think the unthinkable,” and thus understand, and thus first prevent and then and now stop?
Will you ever succeed? Will you ever stop ANY War? Will you ever really want Peace instead of just Power, Justice instead of the Judicial Authority that comes with that Power, and Truth instead of nothing more or less than simply your fair share of the Loot?
WHAT WILL YOU DO, AMERICA, WHEN 9/11 HAPPENS ONCE AGAIN?
What will you do when those who benefited most from its happening the first time determine that the time has come for another major Terror Event, because maximal strategic and tactical political, economic, and, above all, psychological gain is to be achieved with another, with a second “new Pearl Harbor”? Will you once again feign ignorance of their -- and your -- history?
WHAT WILL YOU DO, AMERICA, WHEN THOSE WHO BENEFITED MOST FROM THE FIRST 9/11 DETERMINE THAT THEY STAND TO GAIN EVEN MORE WITH A SECOND ITERATION?
Who and/or What is going to stop them? Do you have the courage to even ask yourself these questions? Let alone answer them?
[Note: This was originally written and posted in early December, 2001. And the exact same Questions could be asked today about another Saddam and his “WMDs,” another 2008esque “Too Big To Let Fail” financial “¢risi$,” and, of course, another Pandemic. Particularly the last Question.]
Thank You, once again, Bill, for Your reference and link to WORDS ABOUT WAR.
As i commented earlier: This is something that i wish had been written ~ and that i [and a whole bunch of other people] had read ~ 22 years ago today, September 10, 2001; aka the Day Before “The End of the World as We All Knew It.”
And again, Thank You for Your part in making WAW happen.
i urge every BVer ~ and every American who wants to understand what has happened in this nation and on this planet since 9/10 ~ to read WAW’s “Guide for Discussing War and Foreign Policy” at https://www.wordsaboutwar.org/ . And then ~ and particularly ~ that they read Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language,” a [if not the] foundation document for WAW’s Guide.
MORE WORDS ABOUT WAR THAT MATTER [at least to me]…:
It is November, 1969; and tens of thousands of Vietnamese and thousands of Americans are killed.
Among the Americans is a young helicopter pilot from Van Nuys, California, who dies when the AH-1 Cobra attack gunship he was piloting was shot out of the sky by .50 caliber machine gun ground fire. CW2 Lawrence J Babyak left behind a young widow bride, and two elderly parents paralyzed with grief.
At the military funeral in Van Nuys on January 3, 1970 ~ four months and a day before four more young Americans were to be killed in a place called Kent, Ohio ~ in a massive, solemnly packed Russian Orthodox Cathedral ablaze with emblems of patriotic fealty and fervor, many words are spoken. Among those words are these by a young soldier, the only enlisted man in the church. He was a door gunner who’d flown with Larry on UH-1 assault helicopters down in the Mekong Delta back in 1967-68. They’d survived Tet together. And more. Lots more. Too much more….. :
EULOGY
It is difficult, my friends. Very difficult.
I know none of you, yet I call you my friends. Thank you for being here, for sharing this, for enabling me to bear it.
After two years of this War, I have finally lost someone I love. Buddies? There’s been plenty. Never, until now, someone I love.
It is said that tragedy is the fire that tempers the soul. I can only hope that my soul, and my heart, and my mind, and my life is
tempered and forged from this nightmare into a design of dedication NOT to the forces and elements that killed him: rage, hate, lust for violent revenge, a mindless, headlong flight into, through, and finally submerged by insanity.
Not to that, but to the ideals and principles that should have been the forces and elements at work that could have kept him, you, me, us all nowhere near Vietnam, or Biafra, or Suez, or Korea, or Normandy, or Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima, and on and on back thru the ages and the battlefields, back to the beginnings of time, the beginnings of man, the beginnings of War.
The ideals, principles, forces, and elements of understanding, concern, love, peace, and the knowledge of our status as but “the family of Man, fellow-passengers on the Spaceship Earth…. .”
And how meaningless, empty, and vapid these words sound and are tonite. But, a man’s words are really nothing more than indicators, the elements of the metaphor that his living is, as it seeks to explain to him, and to us, his life.
Perhaps these moments of futility, emptiness, and tragedy are the price we must pay for having had the privilege of his company, the strength of his presence, the happiness of his warmth and joy, the security of his being.
We have all lost something. A friend, a husband, a son. But there is a greater loser, a more tragic victim from all this than we, his wife, his parents, his family, and his friends. And that victim, my friends, is the world.
It is this world…this world that murdered him, that is the big loser.
The terms I think it might understand are that he is no longer at its disposal; that he is free and no longer subject to the prices that the world and mankind demand from its children as they attempt to struggle as individual human beings, with individual lives and loves, and concerns and cares, projects, goals, and plans, and wins, losses, and rainouts.
The world requires that you be more than a man or a woman ~ which, until death, is impossible.
It requires that citizens of nations become us all. Citizens of nations, and pawns to realities revolving around such grandiose, eloquent, pompous terms, tenets, and ideas as ideology and geopolitics, alliances and balances of power, negotiations, diplomacy, and treaties, and on and on ad nauseam…. the vocabulary of Government.
And much more real, final, and meaningless terms as enemy and body-counts, and hot LZ’s and .50-caliber machine gun positions, and frozen rotor blades at 300 feet, and notification of next-of-kin…. the vocabulary of the logical conclusion of the rhetoric of Government, the vocabulary of War.
The world required this of him, and he agreed to pay his portion of the price. Tonite, however, the world’s account is overdrawn. Tonite, there is the matter of revenge. No. No, not revenge. Avenge. Avengeance. aVengeance… revenge without Vengeance; revenge without Violence.
But against whom does one direct it? And how?
Is it to be directed against those people and places and principles that killed him? Against other young – and old ~ women and men from other nations who, too, are but paying [and playing] their price and thus part, as their world ~ this world, our world ~ demands? They are but pawns as we. And as long as we pawns keep fighting ~ and paying for ~ all these Wars, there will be War.
What, then of the kings and queens and bishops and rooks and generals and knights and such? They, too, are but pawns. Their bloodshed is not their own; rather, it is of those that they like to call “their Peoples’.” These, too, however, are paying a price: the price of being those most directly associated with the true killers ~ the ideas, and terms, and tenets, and vocabularies. And, having to live with them, by them, and for them, they thus become the emptiness, the insanity, the impotence, the wretchedness that these words are.
No. It is neither the pawns nor the princes ~ the presidents, premiers, and propagandists ~ that are to be sought out and made to give retribution for Larry. It’s not the people who are directly, and thus apparently responsible for his having been there, and thus being no more.
Rather, it is those who are truly, though indirectly responsible. It is those that could have stopped it, could have prevented this specter from becoming the spectacle that it is.
It is, indeed, those who permit the world to make them pawns and slaves, and legions to, of, by, and for these ideas and words. Those who permit themselves to go and become but the bit-players in this passion play, the finale of which is the death of their brothers and their sisters, their sons and daughters, their fathers and their mothers, their selves.
A death as meaningless, as senseless, and as empty as their lives. Lives spent under the tyranny of ideas, killing and thus dying under their effect. Lives lived under the anarchy of this self-imposed despotism, rather than in and through the fulfillment that is to be found in the truth, the beauty, the reality of the mind’s products ~ Ideas ~ as they are used instead to eliminate the trials, tragedies, and traumas of man. Rather than, as today, propagating, perpetrating, and perpetuating them.
MAN is the object. MAN and LIFE. All of LIFE. Ideas are but vehicles. The price for avenging Larry shall have been extracted when that simple statement becomes a world-truth.
We live now in the insanity of Man being the vehicle, and terms, tenets, vocabularies, ideologies, and ideas being the object. The object that man has permitted to become, at not only his expense and thus life’s, but at the world’s, as well.
The guilty, my friends, is you and me and him and her and everyone. Each and every one of us all. Including Larry. And we begin, now, to pay the price for this. We have lost someone for whom Man and Life was the object.
Larry, as the rest of us, the young, was at but the beginning of this realization, at the beginning of this work. Because those of us that could have helped, long ago, to prevent what has happened did not, we are now paying the price.
Again: MAN is the object. MAN and LIFE. Ideas are but vehicles. The price for avenging Larry shall have been extracted when that simple statement becomes a world-truth.
The question, again, is “How?”
If, in fact, a man is ready to die when he knows himself completely, I am at last ready.
With this experience, with these words, I have come now to know and to understand the meaninglessness of the meaning I have permitted the world to attach to my, to your, to Larry’s, to everyone’s being.
And knowing this, I swear… No more.
aVengeance will be mine. I pray, my friends, yours as well.
Thank You, Bill, for another chapter in the forthcoming anthology “The [Very] Best of BRACING VIEWS.” Once again, You nailed it in every way.
But first, Thank You for Your role in making Words About War happen. i’ve only scanned their Guide and wished immediately that somebody had written this 20 years ago. And that i had read it back then. But especially, that a LOT of people read it now.
From the perspective of the two years i spent in Vietnam [August 66-68] ~ first as an infantryman, then as a door gunner on assault helicopters, and then as a rear-echelon staff puke ~ the two bluntest, truest statements about War that i have ever read and/or seen are:
i am looking forward to digging into The Guide; again, just from a quick scan, there is a Lot to chew on there. And a lot to chew on this this article, as well; which i’ll do later today. Have a Great day. ~ jeff
In Ukraine the number of their war casualties so far is considered state secret. Which tells you something. Russia was publishing their numbers but at some point stopped.
I couldn't agree more. Two terms that drive me nuts - "warfighter", as in our (defense company) supports the warfighter - just like a team sponsor, as opposed to saying our company makes obscene profits by manufacturing things that brutalize, destroy and maim - including our own warfighters; and "boots on the ground" - not people, no sir, just boots.
And George Carlin, as in so many things, was prescient in 1991 when he talked about euphemisms and how "shell shock" eventually morphed into "post traumatic stress disorder". - pain buried under jargon (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSp8IyaKCs0)
One of your most profoundly incisive posts, Bill. Bravo!
Most people, from what I've seen, don't pay much attention to specific words. They don't consider what's behind word choices, or reflect that those choices are always deliberate, at least in the cases of media, public statements, speeches, and so on. I'd even extend that observation to social media posts by public figures (Musk, for example). Writers are among the few who see behind the curtain, as do PR people and marketers/advertisers; those last two categories being those who set out to sell things via words. Joe and Jane Average usually take in the words and are thus manipulated to think the way they're intended to, as you've pointed out with regard to, "patriotism."
George Lakoff, whose theories I admire, points out that framing is everything. If the military uses certain targeted euphemisms, they change the entire conceptualization of war, as you point out. That's why it's so important to call out those euphemisms, as you do. Words matter more than just about anything else in affecting events, or, as Edward Bulwer-Lytton said, "The pen is mightier than the sword."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Lakoff
Thanks, Denise!
You're welcome, Bill!
As usual, unusually well said, Bill (and that’s no “euphemism”) !
Great article Bill. The language used by military and political elites has always been their primary tool for getting the public to go along with horrendous atrocities committed by the US overseas. What bothers me as much as the fact that they so distort what they are doing (for example claiming that killing people overseas makes the US safer, whereas 9/11 proves that completely false), but rather that so much of the public believes it. The public has found out repeatedly over the decades that the US government and the military routinely lie outrageously during every single war they start, but somehow the current war is exempt from skepticism as far as the public is concerned. Until the public becomes 1) skeptical and 2) angry, then nothing will change. I just don't see how to bring that about as long as the public continues to watch and read the Corporate Owned News, which are the primary sources of the lies that keep the wars going.
Thanks, John. Appreciate your comments, which are always thoughtful.
Good article, Bill. Linking it today @https://nothingnewunderthesun2016.com/
Thank you!
I appeared on "Podcast by George" to talk about words, language, and the proliferation of war.
Here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUsgQABmd1I
The US National Security State has devised a strategy so that the American people never have to confront the horrors of war or see any body bags filled with US soldiers ever again. They are fulminating with glee at the prospect of being able to destroy Russia without a single US casualty. As usual, there is a hierarchy on the value of human life according to the US National Security State, and currently Ukrainian (and Russian) lives are as meaningless today as the 1 million Iraqis who died after the US illegal and devastating invasion of that country 20 years ago. Here are just a few snippets highlighting the psychopathic mindset among the US political class:
**Senator Richard Blumenthal assures Americans that “we’re getting our money’s worth on our Ukraine investment. For less than 3 percent of our nation’s military budget, we’ve enabled Ukraine to degrade Russia’s military strength by half. We’ve united NATO and caused the Chinese to rethink their invasion plans for Taiwan. We’ve helped restore faith and confidence in American leadership — moral and military. All without a single American service woman or man injured or lost, and without any diversion or misappropriation of American aid.”
**Senator Mitt Romney calls the war “the best national defense spending I think we’ve ever done. We’re losing no lives in Ukraine, and the Ukrainians are fighting heroically against Russia. We’re diminishing and devastating the Russian military for a very small amount of money … a weakened Russia is a good thing.”
**Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell argues that Americans should support the US government’s proxy warfare in Ukraine because “we haven’t lost a single American in this war,” adding that the spending is helping to employ Americans in the military-industrial complex. "Most of the money that we spend related to Ukraine is actually spent in the US, replenishing weapons, more modern weapons. So it’s actually employing people here and improving our own military for what may lie ahead. The most basic reasons for continuing to help Ukraine degrade and defeat the Russian invaders are cold, hard, practical American interests."
**Congressman Dan Crenshaw said on Twitter that “investing in the destruction of our adversary’s military, without losing a single American troop, strikes me as a good idea."
And who do you think is paying for all this? Rhetorical question. The US taxpayer!
It is disgusting how obvious it is that the U. S. is going to fight this proxy war against Russia to the last Ukrainian. Considering the warmongering idiots behind that strategy, the payback for it could be a closer look at war for the U. S. than words on a page. Your comment is right on.
Thank you Bill. That is highly needed! and wonderfully clear and usable. I hope reporters will start to use it and maybe your readers can remind them, if they don't. I'm forwarding this to many friends.
On an adjacent subject, I wish you could do the same for the blame we have put on Russia - even Noam Chomsky and others I admire seem to think that Russia was not provoked enough to go to war. So I am asking a question: what constitutes a sufficient provocation? If killing your relations and friends is not a provocation especially when you ask over and over and over for them to stop and they ignore you for over 8 years and demonstrate plans to do even more in the near future, is not enough provocation, especially when it becomes apparent that so-called friendly neighbors who say they want to help you are actually plotting against you in this circumstance, I wonder what it would take if the same thing were happening to the US. Sufficient provocation? It strikes me that this "war" started in 2014 or before by the US. I wonder why virtually no one who reports on this war, even those who admit there was "a bit" of provocation" on our part, but apparently not enough for even genuine liberals like Chomsky or Hedges etc. to state that they think the US started this war, not Russia. Is it because they believe that the US deep state would simply close them down if they said the truth? Is that what would happen?
On the occasion of the 22nd anniversary of 9/11, a Question every American old enough to think for themselves needs to ask themselves, their families and loved ones, friends and neighbors, cohorts, colleagues, compeers, and compatriots is…:
WHAT WILL YOU DO, AMERICA, WHEN 9/11 HAPPENS ONCE AGAIN?
What will you do when your government once again fails its Constitutionally-mandated duty and responsibility to preserve and protect the Life, Liberty, Property, and Pursuit of Happiness of America’s citizens from all enemies, foreign and domestic? Will you meekly and absent-mindedly accept the fact that, once again, not one single elected politician, not one single entrenched civilian or military career bureaucrat, not one single anointed political appointee is to be held accountable or made to be responsible and to pay for his or her failures?
WHAT WILL YOU DO, AMERICA, WHEN 9/11 HAPPENS ONCE AGAIN?
What will you do when thousands more of your countrymen are murdered before your very eyes on live television? Will you once again dutifully and diffidently shrug off your absolute, inalienable, and unconditional Right to know the Real, Whole Truth about WHAT actually happened, about HOW it actually happened, about WHY it actually happened, about WHO actually made it happen, and about Who actually LET it happen? Will you once again passively and patriotically accept the Official “conspiracy theory” version of events as explained to you by your government, and as packaged and presented, marketed and sold to you by its experts, cheerleaders, gatekeepers, and champions in what used to be called The Media – mainstream, corporate, liberal, alternative, conservative, progressive, patriotic, radical, which, what, and/or wherever?
WHAT WILL YOU DO, AMERICA, WHEN 9/11 HAPPENS ONCE AGAIN?
What will you do when the so-called War Against so-called Terrorism abroad and at home is transparently, clearly, and undeniably demonstrated to be a total, abject failure and thus lie, scam, hoax, and sham? Will you once again give even more untaxed money, unchallenged political power, and unchallengeable legal authority to the very people, offices, organizations, and agencies by whose failures this “War” was created and is waged, and who can promise you only that your -- and their -- investment in it will last forever?
WHAT WILL YOU DO, AMERICA, WHEN 9/11 HAPPENS ONCE AGAIN?
What will you do when your elected and appointed officials further dismantle Constitutional government in the name of “civilization,” further diminish individual and civil liberties in the name of “freedom,” and finally destroy the last vestiges of whatever power We, the People, may have once commanded, all in the name of “democracy” and “security”? Will you obediently and obsequiously once again hide and watch the next stage in the biggest seizure of government power on this planet since Stalin’s Russia in the 20s, Hitler’s Germany and Roosevelt's New Deal in the 30s, and Mao’s China in the 40s?
WHAT WILL YOU DO, AMERICA, WHEN 9/11 HAPPENS ONCE AGAIN?
Will you rush out to buy brand new flags and ribbons and bumper stickers, buttons, posters and signs, to replace the torn, shredded, faded, matted, pealed, and rusted ones you rushed out to buy after the first 9/11? And then once again go on with your lives, desperately hoping that you can somehow continue pretending to pretend that nothing has really changed, that life does indeed go on the Day After The End of The World As We Knew It, Once Again.
WHAT WILL YOU DO, AMERICA, WHEN 9/11 HAPPENS ONCE AGAIN?
Will you piously, stoically, and heroically accept a Draft as part of the necessary, national sacrifice demanded in this time of new national peril and challenge? Particularly if you get to keep your tax breaks and gas in your SUVs, and your kid gets to get his Deferment?
WHAT WILL YOU DO, AMERICA, WHEN 9/11 HAPPENS ONCE AGAIN?
Will you, the so-called “peace, anti-War, and social justice” community of America, once again walk right past GROUND ZERO -- The Real, Whole Truth -- looking for something more significant, something more relevant, something more important? Will you once again rush to hold your episodic and periodic semi-annual Gatherings Of The Tribe to rail and rant and beat your breasts and massage your gums and egos against the newest extension and expansion and endless continuation of this so-called “War” at home and abroad?
This War about which you have -- from DAY ZERO, from September 11, 2001 -- completely refused and thus failed to “think the unthinkable,” and thus understand, and thus first prevent and then and now stop?
Will you ever succeed? Will you ever stop ANY War? Will you ever really want Peace instead of just Power, Justice instead of the Judicial Authority that comes with that Power, and Truth instead of nothing more or less than simply your fair share of the Loot?
WHAT WILL YOU DO, AMERICA, WHEN 9/11 HAPPENS ONCE AGAIN?
What will you do when those who benefited most from its happening the first time determine that the time has come for another major Terror Event, because maximal strategic and tactical political, economic, and, above all, psychological gain is to be achieved with another, with a second “new Pearl Harbor”? Will you once again feign ignorance of their -- and your -- history?
WHAT WILL YOU DO, AMERICA, WHEN THOSE WHO BENEFITED MOST FROM THE FIRST 9/11 DETERMINE THAT THEY STAND TO GAIN EVEN MORE WITH A SECOND ITERATION?
Who and/or What is going to stop them? Do you have the courage to even ask yourself these questions? Let alone answer them?
[Note: This was originally written and posted in early December, 2001. And the exact same Questions could be asked today about another Saddam and his “WMDs,” another 2008esque “Too Big To Let Fail” financial “¢risi$,” and, of course, another Pandemic. Particularly the last Question.]
Thank You, once again, Bill, for Your reference and link to WORDS ABOUT WAR.
As i commented earlier: This is something that i wish had been written ~ and that i [and a whole bunch of other people] had read ~ 22 years ago today, September 10, 2001; aka the Day Before “The End of the World as We All Knew It.”
And again, Thank You for Your part in making WAW happen.
i urge every BVer ~ and every American who wants to understand what has happened in this nation and on this planet since 9/10 ~ to read WAW’s “Guide for Discussing War and Foreign Policy” at https://www.wordsaboutwar.org/ . And then ~ and particularly ~ that they read Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language,” a [if not the] foundation document for WAW’s Guide.
And then, i urge them to read Christopher Hitchens’ WHY ORWELL MATTERS [ https://www.amazon.com/Why-Orwell-Matters-Christopher-Hitchens/dp/0465030505/ ], published in 2002, and Andras Szanto’s and Orville Schell’s 2007 anthology, WHAT ORWELL DIDN'T KNOW: Propaganda and the New Face of American Politics [ https://www.amazon.com/What-Orwell-Didnt-Know-Propaganda/dp/1586485601/ ].
MORE WORDS ABOUT WAR THAT MATTER [at least to me]…:
It is November, 1969; and tens of thousands of Vietnamese and thousands of Americans are killed.
Among the Americans is a young helicopter pilot from Van Nuys, California, who dies when the AH-1 Cobra attack gunship he was piloting was shot out of the sky by .50 caliber machine gun ground fire. CW2 Lawrence J Babyak left behind a young widow bride, and two elderly parents paralyzed with grief.
At the military funeral in Van Nuys on January 3, 1970 ~ four months and a day before four more young Americans were to be killed in a place called Kent, Ohio ~ in a massive, solemnly packed Russian Orthodox Cathedral ablaze with emblems of patriotic fealty and fervor, many words are spoken. Among those words are these by a young soldier, the only enlisted man in the church. He was a door gunner who’d flown with Larry on UH-1 assault helicopters down in the Mekong Delta back in 1967-68. They’d survived Tet together. And more. Lots more. Too much more….. :
EULOGY
It is difficult, my friends. Very difficult.
I know none of you, yet I call you my friends. Thank you for being here, for sharing this, for enabling me to bear it.
After two years of this War, I have finally lost someone I love. Buddies? There’s been plenty. Never, until now, someone I love.
It is said that tragedy is the fire that tempers the soul. I can only hope that my soul, and my heart, and my mind, and my life is
tempered and forged from this nightmare into a design of dedication NOT to the forces and elements that killed him: rage, hate, lust for violent revenge, a mindless, headlong flight into, through, and finally submerged by insanity.
Not to that, but to the ideals and principles that should have been the forces and elements at work that could have kept him, you, me, us all nowhere near Vietnam, or Biafra, or Suez, or Korea, or Normandy, or Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima, and on and on back thru the ages and the battlefields, back to the beginnings of time, the beginnings of man, the beginnings of War.
The ideals, principles, forces, and elements of understanding, concern, love, peace, and the knowledge of our status as but “the family of Man, fellow-passengers on the Spaceship Earth…. .”
And how meaningless, empty, and vapid these words sound and are tonite. But, a man’s words are really nothing more than indicators, the elements of the metaphor that his living is, as it seeks to explain to him, and to us, his life.
Perhaps these moments of futility, emptiness, and tragedy are the price we must pay for having had the privilege of his company, the strength of his presence, the happiness of his warmth and joy, the security of his being.
We have all lost something. A friend, a husband, a son. But there is a greater loser, a more tragic victim from all this than we, his wife, his parents, his family, and his friends. And that victim, my friends, is the world.
It is this world…this world that murdered him, that is the big loser.
The terms I think it might understand are that he is no longer at its disposal; that he is free and no longer subject to the prices that the world and mankind demand from its children as they attempt to struggle as individual human beings, with individual lives and loves, and concerns and cares, projects, goals, and plans, and wins, losses, and rainouts.
The world requires that you be more than a man or a woman ~ which, until death, is impossible.
It requires that citizens of nations become us all. Citizens of nations, and pawns to realities revolving around such grandiose, eloquent, pompous terms, tenets, and ideas as ideology and geopolitics, alliances and balances of power, negotiations, diplomacy, and treaties, and on and on ad nauseam…. the vocabulary of Government.
And much more real, final, and meaningless terms as enemy and body-counts, and hot LZ’s and .50-caliber machine gun positions, and frozen rotor blades at 300 feet, and notification of next-of-kin…. the vocabulary of the logical conclusion of the rhetoric of Government, the vocabulary of War.
The world required this of him, and he agreed to pay his portion of the price. Tonite, however, the world’s account is overdrawn. Tonite, there is the matter of revenge. No. No, not revenge. Avenge. Avengeance. aVengeance… revenge without Vengeance; revenge without Violence.
But against whom does one direct it? And how?
Is it to be directed against those people and places and principles that killed him? Against other young – and old ~ women and men from other nations who, too, are but paying [and playing] their price and thus part, as their world ~ this world, our world ~ demands? They are but pawns as we. And as long as we pawns keep fighting ~ and paying for ~ all these Wars, there will be War.
What, then of the kings and queens and bishops and rooks and generals and knights and such? They, too, are but pawns. Their bloodshed is not their own; rather, it is of those that they like to call “their Peoples’.” These, too, however, are paying a price: the price of being those most directly associated with the true killers ~ the ideas, and terms, and tenets, and vocabularies. And, having to live with them, by them, and for them, they thus become the emptiness, the insanity, the impotence, the wretchedness that these words are.
No. It is neither the pawns nor the princes ~ the presidents, premiers, and propagandists ~ that are to be sought out and made to give retribution for Larry. It’s not the people who are directly, and thus apparently responsible for his having been there, and thus being no more.
Rather, it is those who are truly, though indirectly responsible. It is those that could have stopped it, could have prevented this specter from becoming the spectacle that it is.
It is, indeed, those who permit the world to make them pawns and slaves, and legions to, of, by, and for these ideas and words. Those who permit themselves to go and become but the bit-players in this passion play, the finale of which is the death of their brothers and their sisters, their sons and daughters, their fathers and their mothers, their selves.
A death as meaningless, as senseless, and as empty as their lives. Lives spent under the tyranny of ideas, killing and thus dying under their effect. Lives lived under the anarchy of this self-imposed despotism, rather than in and through the fulfillment that is to be found in the truth, the beauty, the reality of the mind’s products ~ Ideas ~ as they are used instead to eliminate the trials, tragedies, and traumas of man. Rather than, as today, propagating, perpetrating, and perpetuating them.
MAN is the object. MAN and LIFE. All of LIFE. Ideas are but vehicles. The price for avenging Larry shall have been extracted when that simple statement becomes a world-truth.
We live now in the insanity of Man being the vehicle, and terms, tenets, vocabularies, ideologies, and ideas being the object. The object that man has permitted to become, at not only his expense and thus life’s, but at the world’s, as well.
The guilty, my friends, is you and me and him and her and everyone. Each and every one of us all. Including Larry. And we begin, now, to pay the price for this. We have lost someone for whom Man and Life was the object.
Larry, as the rest of us, the young, was at but the beginning of this realization, at the beginning of this work. Because those of us that could have helped, long ago, to prevent what has happened did not, we are now paying the price.
Again: MAN is the object. MAN and LIFE. Ideas are but vehicles. The price for avenging Larry shall have been extracted when that simple statement becomes a world-truth.
The question, again, is “How?”
If, in fact, a man is ready to die when he knows himself completely, I am at last ready.
With this experience, with these words, I have come now to know and to understand the meaninglessness of the meaning I have permitted the world to attach to my, to your, to Larry’s, to everyone’s being.
And knowing this, I swear… No more.
aVengeance will be mine. I pray, my friends, yours as well.
The question, at last, is “How?”
This we will learn. With help….. .
……..............................................................
EPITAPH: Much Too Late For Yesterday, Early For Tomorrow [to be toed in the sand at low tide]
Like the shadow of an important line
that clings within the mind, and refuses to permit itself be spoken,
his life was spent at dusk and dawn walking with the pipers;
lost not in memory, begetting no conspiracy,
attempting but to find in now a meaning.
And is the world a better place because he was alive,
or is it that this is not a worthy question?
To take a moment with his view,
might not it be in some sense true
that he is better off in learning dying?
###
Some words about War: VIET NAM WAR POEMS (extracts, 1966-1969)
<<JUST AN ODE
Out of so too many
shattered moments
one could find
but brief respites
That would seem to silence
empty longings
which haunted
death’s wish from bleakened nites.
An empire built on sands of fate
had crumbled in our mud;
a tempest borne destruction, we,
as pillars engorged with hate,
would rise in lust with
calls to arms.
Impotent screams, too much,
too late.
Childess of God
is near this truth.
Why, then,
do I seek revenge?
<<C.O.
I’d vowed once
not to meet the bitch
under any but the most noble
of circumstances.
Ah, to be swept
up by her, into her,
womb, truth, being.
To be sundered awash
in her crimson gutter,
the waxen awe of
someone I’ll never know
my statement to all.
A yellow-green sacrifice
to some such forgotten
worthy cause as “liberty.”
I’ve come now
to regard that pit
as a poor attempt,
and wonder
whose climax I’ve breached.
For, a whore is truly worthless,
and permeates all.
<<A POINTLESS PROVOCATION IN 8/3 TIME FOR VIOLA AND TAMBORINE
I saw an outpost overrun last nite
a day ago, oh boy……….
Women, children, dogs, pigs, cows, soldiers Vietnamese
raped, robbed, plundered, and mobbed;
left to bleed into the Delta mud and
to stink into the warm, soft, pungent, ugly nite…
We carried out casualties and lifted out condemned.
It’s funny, you know? They bleed,
and scream, and cry, and die just like we do
when we’re overrun.
And tears, like cunts --
contrary to popular belief --
are not slanted…
I saw a mortar attack last nite, oh joy…
depending upon where you were,
on, or at, me.
The Dream Merchant of Orrifficci
would come and leave behind her
the shattered ruins of men
confronted with the dreams of each other.
The shadow of her being
would linger within their souls
and lengthen as the nite of knowledge
enveloped them.
And the dreams.
That told why what is….
And isn’t, so….
And won’t be, thus….
And can’t be, impossible.
The dreams that failed only
to tell why Why.
And they all then knew
what God didn’t understand.
And She understands
what God doesn’t even know.
But what,
asked one very young man,
of yours…..dare we know
of them?
Dreams shaped like 75-millimeter recoilless rifle shells…..
mama…Mama…MAMA…MMMAAAMMMAAA…
<<A LETTER
Eternal Spring of Eternalness,
The poem…”The Delta”…Remember?
“Men are making war together tonite in the Delta…” You cried.
Last nite or before, I flew to some arena up the canal
and heard Dustoff 85 call that he’s got “30 casualties…”
and I saw from where and knew what was happening
and shrank back in the terror of a man brought suddenly
face-to-ace with that which he has strived and strided to avoid and deny.
Again.
The insanity factory of life, love, hate, and death
as performed in the stretches of green south of Saigon.
And I wondered,
“How many mothers will soon cry?”
How many?
How many it was indeed.
“30 more casualties,” the medevac pilot
metallically informed.
Human beings in death…
screaming, sobbing, choking, ghurking, and dying…. .
What was life is now empty.
Desolate.
Vapid the stare into the face that God has to face
every morning.
Just like that.... So easy.
So bloody,
fucking,
easy.
“30 more…” And that’s just the friendlies.
How many bad guys now stare into whatever it is that we all will?
How many of the “enemy”?
How many MORE mothers?
Love and death are so mathematical…..
a mother’s love, a child’s scream…
a mother’s love, a child’s shudder…
a mother’s love, a child’s moan…
a mother’s love, a child’s ghurk…
a mother’s love, a child’s stare…
a mother’s tears…
a mother’s screams…
a mother’s sobs…
a mother’s life unto death and death unto life…
a thundercloud is pierced…..
a raindrop’s falls…..
How many it was indeed.
But how can such be so? And I shuddered and remembered.
Because it is. That’s why.
I watched the Delta nite filled with sons and fireflies
touching the dusk of a man whisked off to a field hospital
where all is in vain because he has choked to death
on his own blood and supper.
Man........was I happy I was here when it was there and
that I could think about all that that was happening before me…
In time, I would realize
that it had already happened to….
<<WHY. WHY NOT.
a little boy,
a pimp of sorts,
his voice destroyed by the VC,
saw me and
began crying,
explaining his joy
as having thought
me be dead.
a young mother,
baby in arms,
is smiled at
by me as I wave
to the child.
she spits
in my face,
not bothering
to explain.
do you know
what it feels like
to be hated?
perhaps tomorrow
I’ll kill that
little pimp. God
forgive me
the mother and her child.
<<6 PM, DAWN OF THE MIDNITE NOON
The people gathered at the corner
and between them composed a song
that asked whoever was listening,
where had God gone wrong?
And the children at war in the streets
put down their weapons for play;
and mingled among the silent mob,
claiming nothing to have to say.
And then someone whispered
even above the mammalarian cries:
“Remember the days I was hungry
and it was your world…..
for tomorrow,
it will be mine.”
<<CONFUSION SAY
At nite’s fall
is moment to rest
and reflect
in your wake
of the days’
moments.
Thank You, Bill, for another chapter in the forthcoming anthology “The [Very] Best of BRACING VIEWS.” Once again, You nailed it in every way.
But first, Thank You for Your role in making Words About War happen. i’ve only scanned their Guide and wished immediately that somebody had written this 20 years ago. And that i had read it back then. But especially, that a LOT of people read it now.
From the perspective of the two years i spent in Vietnam [August 66-68] ~ first as an infantryman, then as a door gunner on assault helicopters, and then as a rear-echelon staff puke ~ the two bluntest, truest statements about War that i have ever read and/or seen are:
Mark Twain’s THE WAR PRAYER; and Bruce Springsteen’s rendition of “WAR: What Is It Good For?” available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mn91L9goKfQ .
As regards Twain’s masterpiece, there are two brilliant modern video versions of it at https://www.imdb.com/video/vi3005394713/ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVYIRbmxHpc .
i am looking forward to digging into The Guide; again, just from a quick scan, there is a Lot to chew on there. And a lot to chew on this this article, as well; which i’ll do later today. Have a Great day. ~ jeff
Stop the war and bet ya the # of Ukrainians Russians and mercenaries killed/maimed stop as well.
In Ukraine the number of their war casualties so far is considered state secret. Which tells you something. Russia was publishing their numbers but at some point stopped.