The Corner Turned? -- Who's Going To Hurt Them Now?

By the looks of things, a corner has been turned.

The turn is muddy, and we are muddled . . . but we are moving.

You see it, suddenly on T-shirts, sold at Target. A visit to that heaven on Earth will find a nice gold T with an anatomically exposed head, wearing earphones branded "Universalmind," with a banner: "FREE YOUR MIND."








Another has doves exploding in flight from the barrel of a tank cannon, a white Peace symbol beside it.





Yet another has a crowd over a city scape in silhouette, with one baggy-clothed young man raising a fist. The banner "POWER TO THE PEOPLE." Below it "Is The Message" in faded letters stands on a totem of dove and peace symbol.

This is commercial merchandise, at a Target. A national merchant, on the heels of Walmart. Hard to imagine a place more mainstream. What does it all mean, Batman? What Hath Wrought in Gotham, O Great Global God? . . .


Then . . . the Sunday NY Times displays big color pics of U.S. soldiers permanently damaged. One is being tenderly touched by his pretty wife. Another is a boy -- who looks junior high age -- strapped in a wheelchair, with a pencil, trying to comprehend the papers before him. Both were shot in the head. Both survived. Now as totems themselves, of a war gone terribly wrong -- just as so many had feared -- they live unknowing the deceptions that took their minds.

Seeing the seriously wounded men struggling with recovery like that -- even pictures of them in the moment of their bleeding crisis -- on the Sunday front banner, is a rarity, given the media record on this war. But it is also a revelation.

I couldn't help imagining that the woman in the picture was not the first guy's wife but a surviving warrior herself; that they had gone through this crucible together, as equals; then, surviving, returned home to rediscover not only their lives (which after losing part of your brain, must seem slightly unimaginable), but their selves, their individuality, their humanity, and the nature of their difference, as men and women.

I stared at the front page color, thinking of both men and women soldiers. Victims, ultimately. Lest we forget, men and women are fighting this war. Then I realized what could help turn the corner we need to turn . . . and with traction.

I imagined seeing a wounded woman in the Times pictures. The pretty girl we see here at home, there on the helicopter stretcher, in the arms of a medic, her blood everywhere. And then a shot of her in a wheelchair, trying to comprehend . . . the pretty girl we see at home. As Van Morrison once sang, back in the 'Nam days: "Caught one more time up on Cypress Avenue, conquered in a carseat, and there's nothing I can do . . ."

It's hard to keep emotion out of it. Soldiers are blown to death in faulty vehicles; innocent citizens are destroyed callously in the crossfire; billions of U.S. dollars disappear into the hostile environment, coming back as enemy bombs; the war excuses proving to be lies; and the real villain (?) bin Ladin still at large . . . it's hard to not get emotional.

So much waste and destruction -- in many ways, record destruction. (If you keep war records.) We address it as any number of things, besides bloody God-damned war. We try to treat it as just another issue, on the global table. Or -- as some claim -- that it's the "deciding conflict of our age." ("And I'm the decider!" sayeth the Bush. [Bush 43])

But we are, still, above all, Americans. We believe -- truly -- in freedom and liberation. And we love having friends, all around the world. We really do want everyone to be able to travel all around the world and visit each other. It's just that our intentions keep getting usurped, somehow; put to some dastard's design. A disaster here, a disaster there, and the whole fabrication falls in, and along comes Jones, on his high-horse, to protect the investors' heads. Whaty is their "national interests." But we are still freedom-loving Americans, the regular you-and-I's. We don't want this crap.

But how to end it? Huh? Come on -- let's have some ideas over here, kids! Think a minute beyond your comfortable routine ('cause if you don't, it'll soon be gone, for your kids, anyway).

I daresay, if a bleeding beauty female soldier is slathered across those Sunday pages, and the story of the women in war is told -- really told -- this whole myopic "mission" will come to an end. And quick.

"Women dying . . . for this?" the John Wayne cliche would go. "Not on yer life, pilgrim!"
Not because the war position is not true (though it is truly not). But because men do not want to need women to fight.

If the truth be told, and all other things militarily equal, to have women fighting suggests a weakness in the men -- a failed ethic, a cultural crisis. It is a sign that something has gone drastically wrong with the race, with humanity . . . in the hands of men.

When the men have to be joined by women in the trenches, the moment is dire. It is very close to the fall . . . like Moscow and Stalingrad. (If you watch the war channels.) But even worse. It is a situation drawn very close to global religious apocalypse. Far closer than either Kennedy or Johnson would have let it. Or even Nixon.

But "religious apocalypse" -- where does that language come from? Oh, yes, it's the "word of God." Well . . . Which one?

Is it about the Bible's god, or the Koran's god? Which god do they propose we fight? For to engage in the battle, one has to be fighting someone's god, in defense of their "own." And so it is with religious language, the "holy" words we use. Is it really about a true god and a false one, and therefore the beievers in the false must ALL be destroyed? Or is it just about the oil? Or maybe . . . merely about a man's legacy now? Not Man . . . a man. One man, and his chosen sociopaths . . . for whom women are dying. (Seems they wouldn't mind seeing one killed at their own word, either, for marrying the "wrong" man," as the Scooter Libby trial shows.) Forget about the females in the Iraqi population, the little girls. Just focus on the American losses. But show it -- show how American women are dying, for Bush's brood, for Bush's language. The war would lose its biblical righteousness if we see real footage of American women and children dying -- maybe even Christian women and children -- oh my god!

Both sides, and all the fractions therein, will have to call off their God's holy holocaust. Revelations will be saved for a later day. The Rapture? The final "ascension of man"? . . . let those men do it who want to, way off in a desert somewhere all by themselves, like kids in a neighborhood war games. But leave the rest of us out of it.

Because fully-developed people want to live. Normally adjusted people want to get along and have fun, but not by playing war. They want at least for the wives, mothers, and children to live . . . war-free someday.

In the land of heavenly cypress and hanging gardens of delight, where the mythic Tigris joins the legendary Euphrates, where civilization itself is said to have developed . . . women and children lie bleeding and dead. Ours, theirs (if you keep sides). But not on the cover of the Times --
Oh no! My god! That would be unpatriotic!













That said, Senator Murtha is a fool. Another perfect example of why the Democrats can't do their contituents' will. They simply cannot unite around a unified policy, and follow the correct diplomatic steps to see it succeed. Murtha, a most powerful man, suddenly, worked up his admirably-conceived war-curbing bill all on his own, and pushed in out to the public before having his party members review. He either wanted all the glory or feared losing because he knew it was too radical. Not even his buddy-in-arms Nancy Pelosi (who, by the way, is superbly adept at Capitol politics) saw it. Murtha just went ahead and broadcast it -- the unrefined, unshared bill, over -- get this -- an antiwar website!

Smooth move, Ex-Lax. Another asshole, clogging up the works.

The Republicans, pressed to the wall, couldn't have been happier. Suddenly they have a campaign issue they can beat the Dems with, mercilessly, like a big lead hammer, 'til the population is stupid. (Hey, it worked in 2000, and 2004.) Their most desperate dream had come true: Murtha had self-destructed. Better, he "exposed" the party's character, as being worse than antiwar -- as being anti-troops. Thus, anti-patriot.

Thanks, Murtha. You wasted as much national empathy from 11/7 as Bush wasted after 9/11. And not only will it now not stop the war, it will have the next Democratic presidential candidate under a nasty spotlight, and the wicked label: anti-troops. Almost as bad as Commie Pinko or neo-Nazi, or "towelhead."

And we've already seen how good Howard Dean and the Dems are at getting out from under spotlights and labels. Of their own ignorance of words, and timing, and methods -- basic diplomatic stuff -- they help create the Republican disasters. They are unconscious accomplices, because they, too, are maladjusted. We know the Republicans love playing "brain police," but if no one else appears to have a brain at all, what choice do they have?

Don't get me started on brain issues, and whose is in a frying pan . . . that really fries me! . . .

A whole other tissue.

In fact, a whole box. 'Cause they're gonna keep dying, and we'll keep crying.



Capt. Dreadnaut