I say this with deep sadness, and, not even revulsion, when i read Bush's reflections on his past legacy. The best he offers is that he believes that America remains on moral highground.
Believes. moral highground. how empty these words are, when we justify anything in the name of torture.
I am not downplaying the complexity of dealing with a world--- i won't say gone mad because really, we as a species are incredibly inventive in devising ways of killing ourselves---where young men believe they need to eradicate others and themselves in a one-second bomb bid for glory.
but can't we acknowledge, that perhaps, we never ever know the consequences of our actions, that we, like our forefathers, always visit our 'sins'/problems (whatever you call it) on our children anyway. I say this not in judgement of parents, who are themselves afflicted with the consequences of the actions of their own parents anyway, but to return to Bush agai, to say, his actions will be justified as long as America doesn't pull out her troops is lame to say the least. When you, uh, invade a country and meddle sufficiently such that people are hurt, dying, and angered, it seems to me you have to continue meddling in a continual contest to prove who is stronger.
Freedom? human rights? what are these words but empty banners when we cease to remember the fundamental human-ness of each and every person, yes, even the mad man who is out to take our lives? We do have reason to fear, yes, but it seems to me that the pity, empathy that is over-ridden and forgotten as we go on the offensive and defensive is what keeps us human, and makes life living, if at all.
Look at Bush's face. This has got to be one of the most incredibly closed faces typical of war mongers. the way his lips and chin are defiantly set against the world, drawing himself hunch over to protect his beliefs.
It's funny to think how i have changed in my responses to him. I use to rage evertime i heard him, my blood pressure goes up because i was so angered by his blinkeredness. I still am, but a deep sadness fills me, because this is the way of the world, only those who are incapable of the following: self-doubt, of being fully human in understand the limits of their understanding and being strong enough to cope with "i don't knows" can be presidents.
Bush isn't alone, though.
There are warmongers amongst us all, Muslims, Christians, everyone, because when we solidify something as a universal truth we need to defend (how strange, indeed, when we think we need to defend the God we claim to revere as God, oh the delicious irony), that's when we indeed perpetuate an existence not worth living. How strange, then, that we can fall into a trance where we actually think it's our bounden duty to defend God.
Five Ways to Kill a Man
There are many cumbersome ways to kill a man.
You can make him carry a plank of wood
to the top of a hill and nail him to it.
To do this properly you require a crowd of people
wearing sandals, a cock that crows, a cloak
to dissect, a sponge, some vinegar and one
man to hammer the nails home.
Or you can take a length of steel,
shaped and chased in a traditional way,
and attempt to pierce the metal cage he wears.
But for this you need white horses,
English trees, men with bows and arrows,
at least two flags, a prince, and a
castle to hold your banquet in.
Dispensing with nobility, you may, if the wind
allows, blow gas at him. But then you need
a mile of mud sliced through with ditches,
not to mention black boots, bomb craters,
more mud, a plague of rats, a dozen songs
and some round hats made of steel.
In an age of aeroplanes, you may fly
miles above your victim and dispose of him by
pressing one small switch. All you then
require is an ocean to separate you, two
systems of government, a nation’s scientists,
several factories, a psychopath and
land that no-one needs for several years.
These are, as I began, cumbersome ways to kill a man.
Simpler, direct, and much more neat is to see
that he is living somewhere in the middle
of the twentieth century, and leave him there.
Edwin Brock
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