Guest Blogs: Hunter Roberts

I've been amazingly silent these last days. What is there to say? Television is saying it all. We are eyewitnesses to war. We are in the army, behind the lines, invading Saddam's palaces, blowing up tanks. I want to see a reporter embedded in an Iraqi home, not just in the 22nd Battalion, but oh well. We're getting to see stuff exploding (wow, cool), people waving to greet the "liberators," and occasionally a little, what do they call it, oh yeah, collateral damage. That's the official term for "accidental" civilian death. They call it that when they've killed or maimed someone they didn't "mean" to kill or maim, but hey, that happens in war, right?

Nothing seems coherent, not even my own thoughts. The coverage is a post-modern parody. The war itself is a post-modern nightmare. I thought I'd wait till my thoughts straightened out before sharing them, but it's not happening. So here they are in a post-modern jumble.

Saddam is a really bad guy. So "liberation" by the US is an easy sell, especially to the people of his country. Hell, they really have suffered under his rule. (He's more like Stalin than Hitler, btw, but I guess that's a fine point, and you might note we never went after Stalin when he executed large numbers of his people-another fine point, no doubt). Some people there seem to think ANY change would be an improvement, especially if it brings with it Armani sunglasses and video games. I can understand that. Others see that the solution could be worse than the problem, as it brings with it the long arm of US hegemony in the region. Tough call. But they're not getting the vote on it, anyhow, just the bombs. We've made the call and not for reasons of liberation.

My wide screen shows me men in the streets, waving at the camera, either with Saddam or US and British troops. Who cares? I think they just like to wave. There are few women. I remember riding buses through Syria and Turkey, seeing greasy looking men, always in packs, skulking at the edge of dirt roads where the bus would stop, near small stores for buying beer and cigarettes. They would stand and smoke and poke each other. They would leer. What was their political or religious agenda? What were they thinking? They did not seem to think very much. Mostly they seemed to smoke and leer. They men waving to the camera look a lot like that.

I see the other men, "our" men, looking serious and heroic, pumped up on adrenaline. They have a purpose in life, hallelujah, at last, after 30 years without one. They are our big strong protectors. I hear people on the radio saying "Our boys . . . Protecting our freedom." I've still seen no evidence that our freedom was threatened, while it seems seriously threatened now, with Patriot Act II on the docket, but never mind the details. This is a world not of analysis but of slogans. And people, even some people who were marching for peace a few short weeks ago, seem all too ready to believe them. They do not know that we are there for reasons other than what "Operation Iraqi Freedom" proclaims. How would they? Context is definitive. And the context of media coverage does not mention that the guy we just killed, called General Chemical Ali, because he used chemical weapons on the Kurds in 1988, got them from our own Donny Rumsfeld. Ah, those bothersome details are too much to keep track of in all this patriotic fervor.

I am at the gym. There is a row of televisions. Some are showing whatever game is on. On others the war being broadcast in living color. We run on the treadmill or climb the stair-master, looking from one screen to the next. Both are being discussed by the sportscasters, who are commenting on the moves.

One of "our boys," a captain, is being interviewed after a massacre, er, victory. "Well, how're you feeling after your big win?" "Well, I'm pretty happy, but y'know it's a team effort. I couldn't a done it without my boys. We did our best, and I guess we were just lucky. But y'know, we're feelin' pretty good. I'll admit we told a few war stories when we got back to camp last night."

Scores: US 15, Iraqis 0. Easy game.

I find myself thinking about the Romans in the Coliseum, eating their lunches while they watched the games of Christians against Lions. Maybe they didn't only cheer. Maybe they winced, too. I remember a bullfight I saw in Madrid many years ago. After the picadors stabbed the bull repeatedly, the heroic bullfighter came out for the kill. But he botched it. He was a butcher, and the bull was already incapacitated. I watched with horror as the man made attempt after attempt to kill the severely weakened bull. Finally I couldn't stand it. I stood up and shouted "Viva el Toro!" (I was lucky the crowd didn't go after me.) I could understand a fair fight, but this wasn't. Seemed to me they should have declared a victory for the bull, rather than prolonging the fight till the bull finally was massacred.

So I ask myself, where is the heroism in a massacre? These guys want to be heroes. Hell, for that matter, so do the suicide bombers. Most young guys want to be heroes, one way or another, and it's not just socialization that makes 'em that way. Nope, it's in the wiring. Nothing wrong with the impulse. It's the context. Context is definitive.

This isn't heroism. This is using that impulse -- to protect and defend others, and challenge oneself -- for the gain of people they'll never see and never understand. And that stinks. They've been sold a bill of goods, along with the entire American public, because context is not made explicit, because it is assumed that we're the good guys, because it isn't put into any sort of socio-historical context, and our collective memory is about 3 hours, approximately the same as a child of 6.

Whose responsibility is this? Yours and mine. Not that we're to blame, but if we don't take responsibility for setting a context and putting events in historical perspective, who do you think is going to? The frat boy in the White House? The corporate clones advising him? The media looking for the next cheap thrill to pump up their ratings? Not bloody likely!

This is an amazing time. There's only a certain amount the army can get away with, traveling with reporters. We are really becoming a global village, as we see the reports of Al-Jazeera on CNN. But take the same facts and put them in a different context, and you'll get a completely different understanding of what's going on. So far Bush and his spin doctors have been setting the context, without much help from us. "Operation Iraqi Freedom." Maybe that's what we should concentrate on. We probably can't stop the war, and street confrontations are just pissing people off at this point. But contextualizing what's going on for the TV watcher could make a difference in how they'll respond next time America suddenly decides to "liberate" someone. They might be a little more skeptical. It's a process of education. It will take time. But it's the only thing, in the end, that will truly liberate the world from any sort of tyranny.

--W. Hunter Roberts