Twain on War

I turned 40 the day the U.S. began its first bombing campaign against Saddam Hussein's Baghdad, January 16, 1991. As it happened, I was scheduled to leave the next day for Long Beach Peninsula in Washington State. I planned to live a solitary month in a trailer rental there and work on a couple of writing projects that I'd managed to avoid for far too long. If you're old enough, you'll remember that the first Gulf War was a television bonanza for CNN, with its cast of Pentagon experts and sexy reporters giving viewers their first taste of life in wartime as a 24/7 news event.

Vietnam is often referred to as America's first televised war, but its coverage was light-hearted compared to the news/hyperbole CNN floated in Gulf War I. The black and white imagery of annihilation, video shot from thousands of feet above the intended target, sanitized death--it was all there for the transfixed and undiscerning viewer. And then came the helicopter shot of the "Highway of Death," a sort of media dessert.

I caught glimpses of the coverage in a Seaview, WA bar near my rental trailer each evening before trudging back to work, usually in a dismal mood. Back in my trailer each night, I didn't work on my planned projects, but wrote an anti-war play instead, which I titled simply, The War. (Unfortunately, I have lost the play, both in my imagination and and on paper.)

Weeks earlier, I had dutifully protested the war, marching along with thousands of others through Portland's streets. As with every march since the Vietnam era, I knew what effect protest would have on militarism--none.

I was reconciled to living with that knowledge forever while using protest as a symbol.

But once the Gulf War began I was surprised by the depth of the jingoism and mindless sloganeering of the pro-war crowd as the U.S. commenced its slaughter. Somehow, mistakenly, I thought our citizenry had transcended such nonsense.

Then I realized that for half the nation the scars of the Vietnam era had faded away. The citizenry was ripe for another dose of poison.

The divisiveness of U.S. war policy had returned with a vengeance.

Death brought out the yellow ribbons and bumper stickers in 1991, along with the the "support- our-troops" messaging sent directly to the anti-war crowd: "We follow and we do not protest. We love America more than you do."

Here it is almost 20 years later, with the U.S. floundering in Iraq and Afghanistan. I am the patriot now. I choose to support the troops alright. By suggesting they be sent home from these untenable fiascoes.

In times such as these I draw solace from Mark Twain's great satirical essay on war and think perhaps my instincts are correct. Scoundrels have been around for a long time and will never go away.

TS