[Mb-civic] (no subject)

[Hawaiipolo at cs.com]

What a great piece of writing !...MD
About War 
> 
> By John Cory
> t r u t h o u t | Perspective 
> 
> Friday 01 October 2004 
> 
> Slogans -- that's war for most folks. War is Hell. Support The Troops. Uncle 
> Sam Wants You. Yellow ribbons and candlelight vigils. War. 
> 
> Listen friend, war, is electric. It's a jangle of short-wired nerves; raw 
> blue sparks that jump the gaps of politics and twist the ignition key of 
> survival. War is living fast, hard, and furious, life between the teeth. You are 
> never so alive as when you're about to die. War is a five-and-dime store of 
> friction toys and cheap tin thrills. War, is all the power of heaven accessed 
> through the front door of hell. 
> 
> War is a mad minute, sixty seconds of Godhood: let there be light in the 
> rocket's red glare and the Zippo flame of razed hootches. God is an amateur who 
> took six days to create the earth, but a grunt with a radio and artillery and 
> air support is true holy power in a fiery obliteration of inhabitants and 
> geography - all in less then six minutes. 
> 
> War is weather. Sometimes so hot, you have to chew a hole in the heat and 
> swallow, just to get a breath of fresh air. And sweat that drips from the leaky 
> faucet of your pores and into your eyes; sweat that scalds and blinds. So 
> hot you could have lunch with the Devil. 
> 
> And there's the rain, day after day and night after night. Warm rain, muggy 
> rain at first, slick oily droplets skidding across your skin in a muddy film 
> that never refreshes. Then night rain, dark rain with a chilly breeze that 
> crawls inside your fatigues and pools around your ankles and crotch, and 
> quietly peels away the layers of your wrinkled soggy flesh. 
> 
> War is solitaire. Humping, marching, moving or standing watch, a soldier 
> packs a rucksack, weapon, ammo, and thoughts. Always thoughts. The only retreat 
> allowed in war is the retreat inside your own head. Eyes are on the terrain 
> while radar sensors process the physical world, clicking and categorizing 
> shapes and shadows. But the mind is crowded with another world and a cast of 
> thousands. It's all there, living in the past and living in the future, while 
> praying to survive the present. 
> 
> War is looking into a child's face, having to instantly decide whether 
> friend or foe. Wondering what's in their smile or in their hand. Constant 
> suspicion. Constant sadness when you see them wounded and you wonder, was it your 
> bullet that made them an orphan or stole their limbs? 
> 
> War is language of the numb and damned, anesthesia to protect the soul. Call 
> them gooks or hajis or anything but people. You don't kill people--you kill 
> the enemy. Don't care why they are the enemy. If you care too much you will 
> die in pieces day by day. 
> 
> Sweet Jesus, what the hell? Incoming! Incoming! Hit the dirt! 
> 
> Voices scream as the show begins. It's rock-and-roll time; psychedelic funk 
> explodes like a bad trip on cheap acid cut with speed. The world goes slow-mo 
> and real-time, all at once. Strangers in a strange land intent on killing 
> one another. Don't want to die in this dirt clod of a hellhole. Dust to dust is 
> not for me. 
> 
> Blip boom bang. 
> 
> Light 'em up! Grease the bastards! Zap the mothers, now! Medic! Medic! 
> Exclamation points galore: with bodies strewn across the mud like so much broken 
> furniture in the living room of violence. 
> 
> Turn up the volume and bring it on. Lock and load is the rhythm of surviving 
> one more minute, one more hour, one more day. 
> 
> Never look down - never stop shooting - never stop. Not now. Move. Move. 
> Move. 
> 
> The more you move the closer to home you get. Buddy to buddy lay the fire 
> down and carpet the joint with anything that will kill them and preserve you. 
> 
> The firefight is a cacophonous rock opera gone insane: smashed guitars, 
> squealing amps that spit fire, and drummers pounding on the audience. 
> 
> Sulfur smoke curls up inside your nose and passes on the stench of 
> cauterized flesh and amputation. Youth and innocence are crumpled like discarded 
> ticket stubs on stadium cement, but the band riots on and on. And then- 
> 
> It's over. The plug is pulled. Silence. 
> 
> Not, silence is golden, silence. 
> 
> Silence of the dead and doomed: cutting silence that slices tomorrow into 
> shards of guilty relief and hope. One day down - another day to go. 
> 
> There are no politics in war. Politics is the luxury of the safe-at-home. 
> War is a lottery of survival. 
> 
> There is no morality in war. Morality is the privilege of those judging from 
> the distance. War is only death and destruction, regardless of which 
> scripture is quoted. 
> 
> War is the tool of small-minded scoundrels who worship the death of others 
> on the altar of their greed. War is the cemetery of futures promised. 
> 
> War is eternity jammed into frantic minutes that will fill a lifetime with 
> dreams and nightmares.
> 
>  
> 
> 
> 
> John Cory is a Vietnam veteran. He received the Purple Heart and Bronze Star 
> with V device, 1969 - 1970. -------
> 
>  Jump to TO Features for Saturday October 2, 2004                            
>                  
> 
> Print This Story E-mail This Story
> 
> 
> 
    
    
    
© : t r u t h o u t 2004 | t r u t h o u t | forum | issues | editorial | 
letters | donate | contact | 
| voting rights | environment | budget | children | politics | indigenous 
survival | energy | 
| defense | health | economy | human rights | labor | trade | women | reform 
| global |   

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20041001/2905ee6f/attachment.htm