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April 8, 2003

Vacillating Syllables
By Janet I. Buck

So many readers, editors, and fellow poets are asking me where I stand on the war in Iraq that I feel the need to come clean on utter vacillation. Do I believe that the U.S. armed forces should remove Saddam Hussein? When I read documented narratives of genocide, torture, hangings, and beheadings, yes I do. If the Iraqi people had the inherent power to overthrow Saddam, they would have done it themselves. Cameras on the path of war are showing us whole villages of civilians who are embracing the presence of American troops. Who in his right mind would shake hands with an armed intruder of his country if the present government didn't cruelly oppress him?

Am I happy we have gone to war? Of course not. Like most American citizens, I see war as sad and unfortunate -- a hideous admission that the world is incapable of ironing out its differences in a rational way. When the casualties are counted and said and done, everyone loses and no one wins.

As a writer, I must ask myself the questions I can't possibly answer with certainty. It's our job to vacillate and emerge from the litter of letters with simply more questions refined by thought and reflection. Would I be for this war if I were sending my husband or my son to the frontlines? I cannot say for sure. Read me a bedtime story of beheadings, public massacres, and Iraqi villages wiped out by chemical weapons and I will say America is doing the noble thing. Ask me to hug my husband goodbye for the very last time and I would probably tear the shirt off his chest to hold him back.

Poets are generally anti-war and those who condone it are uncomfortably silent, afraid to speak out. Unilaterally opposing war is just as dangerous as unilaterally embracing it. For some reason I can't explain, most of the art world views all aggression as self-indulgent hubris. To say violence has no place in the world is to naively ignore human nature. Poets don't mind writing or reading a 'Let's Bash Bush' poem, but I haven't seen a single scathing word in verse about Saddam Hussein and his abominable behavior. We'll attack our president with accusations of greed and self-righteousness, but I haven't read a single simile targeted at Hussein's heartless tactics and his oppressive regime. A significant portion of the art world prefers easy images and musical potshots at politicians over gritty revelations and the raw exposure of inhumanity.

I imagine I'm not the only poet in America who is writing poetry that rethinks his position on this war and watches in surprise as a new and contradictory ideology forms of its own accord. I can't be the only poet I know who is somewhat afraid to admit that passivity may not be the answer to growing terror and violence. Peace, love, and pot didn't change the world in the sixties and it probably isn't going to take down a terrorist right now. If political pressure and negotiation were an answer, Hussein would have put down his weapons and gone into exile. If we lived in a sonnet or fairy tale, we could afford to rock ourselves to sleep on the back porch of easy street with crickets for noises in lieu this groping with guns, but we don't. To live in this world, really live, means taking a stand, taking a risk, and admitting that answers are few and questions abound.

I am proud of the young men and women overseas fighting for freedom and democracy. Each time I punch the black remote, I punch it with a weak wrist. I pray that no one else will die in a battle that should have been won at the round table of the U.N. before we ever reached this hideous point in history. Part of my common sense tells me that Iraq is none of my business, yet freedom strikes me as the sine qua non of peace. Ethics are just letters in an alphabet without sacrifice standing behind them. I think about what might have happened had Hitler's regime not been pulled like a bad tooth. What if minds like that just multiplied and ruled the globe? It's a well-known fact that those who disagree with Saddam Hussein are rewarded by torture and death. Put simply, discussion ends in bloodshed. Under the thumb of tyranny, I wouldn't have the liberty to write what's in my soul, what's arguable, what's prone to error, what carries some thread of a personal truth. I find it somewhat ironic that peace protesters demand bandwidth and their right to dissent at the same time our soldiers are overseas fighting to give another nation the very same gift.

Vietnam has been called our first television war, but technology has advanced so rapidly that we are literally watching the intricacies of battle as they happen. Journalism, while it strives to give reality a fair shake, offers us decisively chosen slices of truth. History itself is all about angles and points of view, yet new technology has the power of spontaneity and precision. If Vietnam was in our living rooms, 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' is in every room of the house.

While I am aware that television coverage is not a movie set, at times the whole thing looks like a 3-D computer game. I have to remind myself that Bruce Willis isn't going to shake off the dust, shower off the red paint, and take a limo home when the 'shooting' stops. I also worry that the presence of cameramen traveling with military units could be a serious and dangerous distraction that interferes with split-decision making on the part of a soldier. While a camera lens has the power to record history and humanize the myths of battle, it may also jeopardize lives.

Where do I sit on Iraq? I sit on the fence, wishing the dead were alive, wishing the tyrant would dissolve like salt in his sleep, wishing our troops were back home with their families, wishing the gift of peace would fall in our laps. I sit on the fence, wishing the wood weren't there.

The Grayest Hour

'War has a conscience or it's ordinary murder.'
Don DeLillo

Skies are gray, grisly and appropriate
for hours in the shade of fear.
The march begins. It's hard to breathe
even from a TV screen thousands of miles
from battlegrounds of singeing dust.
War's ersatz must solve
the riddles minds have failed.
A unit of 8,000 men
surrenders to approaching tanks.
Most of them are underfed --
arms are arrowed in the air
as if the body hair of earth
is standing up in feckless quills.
Every muscle flinches
at the falling bombs.

A soldier and a citizen
tear down posters of Hussein
no one dared to fondle
'til our troops arrived.
Four hands on the handle
of clear liberty -- stronger than two
on triggers of murder and tryst.
Defectors must be searched for guns
and cameras catch the groping
palms that move with cautious dignity
across another's private terror.
The grayest hour will split
with rays of coming light.
In Arabic, in every language
of their eyes, they put
out welcome mats and smile
at freedom marching up the road.

by Janet I. Buck

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