this is our one demand

It was a busy, irresponsible summer full of visiting and hiking and revisions. But not much in the way of blogging. I’m not apologizing, I’m bragging. Just to be clear. There may or may not be in increase in posting now that the weather may or may not be getting less cooperative. Then again, there’s hockey to play.

Today, however, I came across the following - a creative, subversive, beautiful, and heart-breaking response to media complaints that the Occupy Wall Street movement has not stated specific goals. That they are just protesting, willy-nilly and all, and don’t have enough direction to their dissent. How dare they not have a published set of reasons! How dare they not have made a list!

This is their response, as copied and pasted from wilderside.wordpress.com: 

This is the fifth communiqué from the 99 percent. We are occupying Wall Street.

friction

I didn’t know what to talk about today. I was conflicted, and the friction of dissonance made me feel like I was trying to walk in two different directions at the same time.

I wanted to talk about climbing, partly because the weather is changing that way it does here in the spring – dramatically (I love you, DST) – and outdoors is becoming so doable, and also because it will be dominating my week. My local gym, Beyond the Crux, is hosting a bouldering comp this weekend and I get to help out with tearing the gym apart to set new routes, and with judging the early rounds on Saturday.

I’ve said that climbing isn’t generally competitive, but I also mentioned the caveat regarding comps. I’m not a huge proponent of turning climbing into a competition. And yet, when the comps come around, there is an electric atmosphere full of gymnastic feats of strength and daring-do. Competition, with self and others, will push climbers to stretch and grip like they never have before. There will be skin left on the wall and holds. There will be blood.

And there will be cheering. And competitors cheer for each other. I’ve never seen anything approaching poor sportsmanship among climbers. I’m sure it exists, have even read about it – I’ve just never seen it first hand.

My personal belief is that it’s because climbers are ultimately competing against themselves and the route, not each other. I think that appreciation of the accomplishments of others, both historically and in the now, is so ingrained into climbing culture that being a sore loser is just too embarrassing to contemplate.

Still, to be honest, I kind of wish we wouldn’t put it to the test. I have yet to master defeating myself; why would I want or need to defeat anyone else?

I wanted to talk about Libya too, and coalitions, and no-fly zones. If I’m conflicted about climbing comps, imagine the dissonance that I feel about Libya.

Part of me is very happy that Qaddafi won’t be able to inflict damage on the rebels from the air with impunity any more the way, say, the forces in Afghanistan inflict damage on insurgents from the air – with blatant inaccuracy and a stunning lack of care for the lives of civilians. Part of me cringes at the thought of the West getting involved at all though, mostly because our impulse control is usually so poor when the chance to invade presents itself.

Most of me believes, with the rebels, that this needs to remain an internal Libyan affair as much as possible, and that they need to finish it themselves. Part of me hates that they have to finish anything and wonders what kind of trauma that finishing will inflict on a people, a nation.

Civil wars are horrible things. They tear apart a group of people that are supposed to be unified, and leave scars so deep that healing ends up being measured in centuries. Look at the US. The war might as well have been last week the way they shout at each other across old battle lines. Look at Canada. Quebec is practically a different country in all but the legal ways.

Hawks say that war is just a fact of human existence; that the best way to deal with it is to recognize that fact and get about it in as efficient and ethical way as possible. Doves say that all war is an atrocity and should be abolished; that there’s no way to intentionally kill another human being ethically; that the concept is ludicrous and mad.

My internal friction is that, as much as I hate to agree with hawks, as much as I love to agree with doves, they’re both right.

I love the idea of not needing war anymore, of abjuring it so completely on a global level that we banish it into the realm of legend. That one day, so far from now that we can’t really imagine it, it would become myth; stories told to children the way we tell them about cannibalism now – to scare and awe, but without current applicability.

If we must have war, intervene in the flow of things by intentionally injecting death and conflict into the current, then I’m glad that the coalition we’re sending is so conflicted itself. There are undeniable reasons to get involved in Libya on humanitarian grounds. Qaddafi would have slaughtered thousands, hundreds of thousands, without the no-fly zone. The rebels wouldn’t have stood a chance in the long run. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”, Clarke said. The rebels might not have thought it was magic raining down on them, but it would have been essentially the same thing, something indefensible from either perspective. So I’m glad that somebody is stepping in to stop it, even if stopping it means doing it, only more brutally and with stronger magic.

I like that the coalition is so broad and diverse. That diversity – the friction inherent in it – will help keep all the participants slightly more honest. It will make it less efficient, something that the hawks will hate, but that inefficiency will be a small price to pay in exchange for its instability. Hopefully NATO and the Arab League will hold it together just long enough to prevent Qaddafi’s madness from dominating the story, and then, optimistically, that instability will tear the coalition apart before anyone can get any stupid ideas.

I’d love to put my foot down and say that all war is wrong (which it is), and that there’s never really a good justification for violent aggression (which there isn’t), but I think that I think that this is more complicated than that.

In the Independent they ran an article about the rebels coming out of Benghazi the day after the first coalition strikes against Qaddafi’s armored columns. I quote the article:

‘Some of the Shabaab were shocked by the human cost of what had taken place. “This is a different kind of war. I am sorry that so many people had died in this way. I was fighting against them only yesterday, but I am still sorry…” said … an engineer from Tobruk who had joined the revolution. “But look at him: he is somebody's son, a poor mother, a wife, children would be crying," he added, gently covering the face of the man on the ground with a torn blanket. His companion … murmured: “May Allah give them peace. We all want an end to all this.”’

I wanted to shake the hands of these two men, maybe hug them, and then make them generals. And then, in the next sentence:

‘But there were others who stripped money and watches from corpses. A teenager exultantly cried "Allah hu Akhbar" repeatedly as he stood over the body of a fallen soldier, scarcely older than him, legs blown away.’

I don’t know if I’d have left the adverb, but still – lovely bit of journalism showing the friction, how nothing is simple. Nothing is simple. 

I wish it was.

And just in case you think that I’m suggesting that what NATO is doing is at all admirable, please understand: This is another mess we made.

We’ve been supporting Qaddafi for years, after all, selling him weapons and the planes and anti-aircraft installations that we’re bombing now, propping up his regime to create enough stability that Western petroleum companies could operate with a modicum of safety. If the rebels hadn’t forced the hand, we’d still be shaking Qaddafi’s, quietly, away from the press and the lights. For the sake of commerce and lower gasoline prices.

Bet our ass we would be.

And when this is over, we’ll sell Libya replacement armaments, bet our ass.

A friend mentioned that some general had talked about how much “skin” the US had in this operation. I agree with her that it’s a powerful little image. He said that the US didn’t have as much skin in because of the broad base of support.

But we do have skin in, all of us that vote for our leaders in our developed countries. We have plenty in. Let there be no illusions, please. And when there’s as much friction as there is right now, there will be plenty of skin left behind.

lest we forget

November 5^th to 11^th is Veteran’s Week in Canada, culminating on Remembrance Day on the 11^th. It is the equivalent of Memorial Day in the U.S. It is, in many ways, a weirdly conflicted holiday for me.

Last year I got in a bit of trouble with some respected and valued friends for posting a quote by Noam Chomsky that focused on the yellow ribbon campaign, “Support Our Troops”. I’m going there again, yes I am. This time, though, I’ll try to be clearer about how I feel.

Chomsky’s point in that quote was that PR slogans as ambiguous as “Support Our Troops” are propaganda, and that the ambiguity serves to cloud over a lot of issues. I mean, really, who in their right mind would say they don’t support our troops? “Our troops” are people, like us, flesh and blood. These are men and women that are wiling to put their lives on the line for their countries. Sadly, it takes a war for them to prove it.

And that’s where things get sticky and where propaganda slogans can muddle over a lot of complex, dicey issues. Pointing out that we aren’t fighting any really noble wars these days, or noting the ridiculous death toll among civilians and how lopsided those casualty statistics are, or suggesting that the sophistication of modern indoctrination methods in the military can make soldiers into machines can make it sound like a person doesn’t support our troops. And that’s the point of vague slogans like “Support Our Troops”, because unless one is willing to get into the nitty-gritty of it all and really chew the subject to pieces, it can just sound like one is unsympathetic and unappreciative of the efforts of people who are willing to make supreme sacrifices.

For the record then, just as I felt it last year: I am very sympathetic and appreciative. I treat every service man or woman I meet with respect and gratitude whether they serve now, or served in the past.

I don’t support the war effort though, especially not the current ones. I also have very strong opinions about why our governments have us in the wars we are in, opinions that aren’t very complimentary. I think our governments got us there for all the wrong reasons, and through lies and manipulations. I have concerns about the part that economies play in the martial decisions our governments make, and profit should never, ever be a reason to kill people.

I think that everyone -- soldiers, freedom fighters, mercenaries, the civilians and those left behind who lose people they love – are casualties of war. Nobody gets out of it in tact; not really. Whether it’s directly, or by degrees of separation, we’re all casualties. Even when the cause was good, we were all injured by it. We’re still injured by it, scarred at a cultural level.

I wonder sometimes if those scars remind us, or whether they just deaden nerves and make it easier for us to forget the kind of pain we’re actually capable of inflicting.

In Canada, in the weeks leading up to Remembrance Day, we buy little plastic poppies to signify our remembrance and wear them on our lapels and jackets. There’s a poem about Canadian soldiers dying in France in World War I called In Flanders Fields that explains why:

In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918), Canadian Army

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

It’s kind of amazing, although I do wish there was no need to pass torches. But that's why we wear poppies to show we remember. Our cenotaphs are inscribed solemnly with the declaration, “Lest We Forget”.

I prefer “Lest We Forget” to “Support Our Troops”. It’s more honest; less ambiguous. It’s not, in any way, disingenuous or manipulative. “Lest We Forget” recognizes that war is just fucking horrible and suggests that nobody really wins; that we need to remember this and not make the same stupid mistakes over and over and over. "Lest We Forget" honors the truth that, if we’re lucky, at its best, the least correct side loses in any given war, but even that’s not a guarantee. It’s all so blurry these days, and every side seems gray-washed. But no, no matter the outcome, nobody wins.

I wear a poppy during veteran’s week, I do. And I observe the minute of silence on the 11^th. I wear and observe in honor of the people that have given their lives, made sacrifices big and bigger, for me and for others. I have deep respect for that sacrifice, even when politicians and generals and CEO’s seem wiling to spend lives so carelessly.

I wear the poppy and remember all of them. Not just the ones that wear or wore a Canadian flag, not even just the ones on “our” side. They all lived and felt the dawn, loved and were loved, even the ones that we fought against. And like us, they fought for what they thought were the right reasons too, even when they (and we), were (and are), wrong.

Damn rights I wear my poppy. I’m all for “Lest We Forget”. Let’s have more of it. So far, we haven’t gotten the point.