MY PERSONAL MARK TWAIN
Every ounce of my maturity surfaced by the age of eight. The only problem is, I wasn't happy with my maturity level in 1957, and now I've all but given up hope of ever leaving that high-water mark: my personal Mark Twain. Even my 14-year old daughter has moved on, responding to my observations with, "Isn't that a little silly, dad?"
Gone are the days of "Wear Food," sitting around the dinner table with apricot ears, making olive trebuchets out of eating utensils. The world has grown up around me, leaving me behind. So why is it that Barack Obama, and now John McCain, feel they must apologize for what would seem all but obvious to a child: that 3,100 dead Americans in Iraq is an unimaginable waste?
Call me immature -- out of my depth, but I can't fathom why those 3,100 soldiers and 23,000 seriously injured (not to mention the 100,000 plus Iraqis who have perished), weren't a colossal waste. And who is more qualified than John McCain, who rotted in a Viet-Cong prisoner of war dungeon, in that other useless war, to know the meaning of "waste?"
To call it a "waste" may be the understatement of the year. With the underhanded run-up to the Iraq war, murder would be closer to the truth.
And why must we dance around protecting the troops' feelings -- but not their lives? It's as if questioning the war effort will catastrophically unravel the mystique of the soldier. That somehow, messing with their minds will affect their ability to kill on command, without question, when we really do need them: that somehow this sacred pact we have with our warriors will shatter the moment we reconsider their marching orders.
Of the military mystique, Mark Twain wrote:
"To be a patriot, one had to say, and keep on saying, 'Our country, right or wrong,' and urge on the little war. Have you not perceived that that phrase is an insult to the nation. All war must be just the killing of strangers against whom you feel no personal animosity; strangers whom, in other circumstances, you would help if you found them in trouble, and who would help you if you needed it. Before I had chance in another war, the desire to kill people to whom I had not been introduced had passed away."
I certainly would want to be properly introduced to the person George Bush wants me to kill. But then, people much more mature than me go to great depths to protect this sacred zone of military mystique, where logic, reason and morality are barred at the door. In my immaturity, it almost seems that our last two extended military adventures have gone quantum: vanishing the moment they're exposed to the light of day.
Immaturity may be the only way to escape the mature world -- to safely float above our bottom-most instincts. Mashed potatoes cascading from the ears is much funnier than the spilled brains of a dead child-soldier on my TV screen this morning. Young children and I need a sizeable buffer between us and the mature thinking of Junior and his Number Two Dick-head. The more we honor their dead, the more dead they honor us with.
Every ounce of my maturity surfaced by the age of eight. The only problem is, I wasn't happy with my maturity level in 1957, and now I've all but given up hope of ever leaving that high-water mark: my personal Mark Twain. Even my 14-year old daughter has moved on, responding to my observations with, "Isn't that a little silly, dad?"
Gone are the days of "Wear Food," sitting around the dinner table with apricot ears, making olive trebuchets out of eating utensils. The world has grown up around me, leaving me behind. So why is it that Barack Obama, and now John McCain, feel they must apologize for what would seem all but obvious to a child: that 3,100 dead Americans in Iraq is an unimaginable waste?
Call me immature -- out of my depth, but I can't fathom why those 3,100 soldiers and 23,000 seriously injured (not to mention the 100,000 plus Iraqis who have perished), weren't a colossal waste. And who is more qualified than John McCain, who rotted in a Viet-Cong prisoner of war dungeon, in that other useless war, to know the meaning of "waste?"
To call it a "waste" may be the understatement of the year. With the underhanded run-up to the Iraq war, murder would be closer to the truth.
And why must we dance around protecting the troops' feelings -- but not their lives? It's as if questioning the war effort will catastrophically unravel the mystique of the soldier. That somehow, messing with their minds will affect their ability to kill on command, without question, when we really do need them: that somehow this sacred pact we have with our warriors will shatter the moment we reconsider their marching orders.
Of the military mystique, Mark Twain wrote:
"To be a patriot, one had to say, and keep on saying, 'Our country, right or wrong,' and urge on the little war. Have you not perceived that that phrase is an insult to the nation. All war must be just the killing of strangers against whom you feel no personal animosity; strangers whom, in other circumstances, you would help if you found them in trouble, and who would help you if you needed it. Before I had chance in another war, the desire to kill people to whom I had not been introduced had passed away."
I certainly would want to be properly introduced to the person George Bush wants me to kill. But then, people much more mature than me go to great depths to protect this sacred zone of military mystique, where logic, reason and morality are barred at the door. In my immaturity, it almost seems that our last two extended military adventures have gone quantum: vanishing the moment they're exposed to the light of day.
Immaturity may be the only way to escape the mature world -- to safely float above our bottom-most instincts. Mashed potatoes cascading from the ears is much funnier than the spilled brains of a dead child-soldier on my TV screen this morning. Young children and I need a sizeable buffer between us and the mature thinking of Junior and his Number Two Dick-head. The more we honor their dead, the more dead they honor us with.
posted by R. Reynolds at 9:42 AM
7 Comments:
You left out "Celery-Nostril," where olives rolled down the two chutes and into the milk.
Great column today!
Well said!
Your phrase, "...protecting the troops feelings -- but not their lives" was especially poignant. We need now to just bring 'em home!
Does "Number Two Dick-head" refer to his position in the government or his scatological resemblance? or both?
Humans don't mature much past childhood. Only the Born-Again assholes, like GWB, think they have.
rick: the peanut butter and raison facial was my personal favorite. the older one gets, the more you realize that life isn't all that complicated. The ones who are telling you it is are usually the one's complicating it.
Do you have any funny, light- hearded dead people jokes? This piece left me a little sad.
Not only is life not that complicated, for most of us it's not all that difficult.
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