December 3rd, 2006 by tree
In his classic study, “The Great War and Modern Memory,” Paul Fussell wrote of how World War I shattered and remade literature, for only a new language of irony could convey the trauma and waste. Under the auspices of Mr. Bush, the Iraq war is having a comparable, if different, linguistic impact: the more he loses his hold on reality, the more language is severed from its meaning altogether. –Frank Rich, New York Times, Sunday, December 3.
Ahhhh so Derrida and deconstruction have won the day because the signifier has disconnected from the signified.
On July 1, 1915 the British army had 19,240 soldier killed at The Somme. Over the next five months at The Somme they sustained 420,000 casualties.
More young men are shot in American big cities every year than are shot or blown up in Iraq in a year.
Bush deserves a lot of criticism for botching up a war that could have been a lot of ‘fun’ (as wars are judged by those who enjoy fighting them). But foisting this NYTimes hack on us is not up to your usual standards.
“Under the auspices of Mr. Bush, the Iraq war is having a comparable, if different, linguistic impact: the more he loses his hold on reality, the more language is severed from its meaning altogether.” Reading this sentence I think it’s fair to assume that it’s Bush’s language that is being severed from it’s “…meaning altogether.” So what? Bush has entirely severed himself from reality. Ask any Republican who puts America ahead of his/her religious belief. But the vast majority of Americans have not been linguistically impacted by the war. There can be no legitimate comparison with the ‘linguistic impact’ WW1 had on the British.
The NYTimes hack really distinguishes himself with this phrase: “the Iraq war is having a comparable, if different, linguistic impact…” Comparable, if different…?
Lots of things are “comparable, if different” Apple and oranges for instance. Men and women, up and down, in and out, yin and yang, me and you, WW1 and the Iraq War…
Oh Bert.
More young men being shot in cities than in the war has no relevance at all when deciding if this is a just or even fair war. People die all the time, but the Iraq war, which I’ve hated from the minute it started, has caused thousands of people to die for no good reason.
I like the NYT hack and how our language changes based on just wars is relevant, to me, anyway.
But good to see you in fine form here and whenever you’re feeling overly-foisted upon, exit your browser immediamente.
With love.
I’m very glad that you know I’m trying to abuse the NYTimes hack, not you. The Iraq situation is all the critics say it is. But to compare it to WW1 is above and beyond silly. To say that the American psyche is suffering to the extent the British psyche suffered after WW1 is to cheapen what the British (and the rest of Europe) experienced as they came to terms with the impact of WW1.
Compare Iraq to Vietnam, because that is now the most valid comparison. This wasn’t really a war. It was an attempt to ‘cure’ the Middle East and radical Islam, just like Vietnam was about ‘inoculating’ our Asian brethren from ‘catching’ Communism. America’s place in the world allows our leaders to act with such grandiose abandon.
But it still doesn’t excuse the hack for writing “the Iraq war is having a comparable, if different, linguistic impact…” That’s hack writing and I ought to know, I am one. I bet he wishes his editor would have caught that.
(The 17-year old is up on the roof, stapling X-mas lights to who knows what. I can hear him shuffling about. Don’t you just love the sounds of X-mas?)
“…(it) has no relevance at all when deciding if this is a just or even fair war”
Are you saying that deciding this is subject to a vote? Like American Idol?
A war being ‘fair’ or ‘just’ (and the precepts are malleable over time and between cultural viewpoints) is based on at least two things: did you win or lose and are you inclined or disinclined to want to support it. There are still people who ‘justify’ Vietnam…
As you stated, you’ve been against this war from the minute it started. Turns out that this time you declared for the ‘winning side’ from the start. The rest of us could say we tried to be fair and keep an open mind.
Hey! Are you just patting yourself on the back?
I would pat myself on the back were the stakes not so high and all those legs and arms weren’t detached and being sorely missed. It might be more fair if you’d read the whole Times column before picking apart the argument. But the little snippet I posted was the comparison to WWI was how our literature was forever changed, and anytime the “state of literature” is brought up, I prick up my ears. I don’t think you can gauge where our psyche is right now; that’s a judgment for another decade, don’t you think?
I was more interested in how our language reflects the times. But equally interesting to me (housewife and micro business owner and mother of the next generation) is how the guy who’s been lying for several years now is completely detached from a realistic solution to an gross miscalculation of just about every factor. So would have I been more ‘open-minded’ from the beginning if the whole war–I’d call toppling a sovereign nation with no provocation a “war,” btw–hadn’t been based on a lie and run by some pretty awful characters who thought we’d get in and out in a quick heartbeat? Maybe. I was more open-minded when we were going to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban, a cause I thought was just. I am fairly sure that I’m not the only one who thought the whole Iraq move was a bad idea, and now we’ve all had a chance to vote and see if we could swing things. All my political donations don’t count for much, but the vote worked out okay for now.
Does this mean you’re going to give any president who wants to go to war a pass until we figure out if it’s going to be a calamity or not? You don’t feel the need to hold anyone accountible?
(Yes, Christmas makes me really happy. I am a gracious gift recipient, always.)
Bush hasn’t had an original thought in his little pumpkin head since he woke up that one morning and decided to give up drinking.
I don’t know (and neither do you) if the information/lies that were fed to the Pres, and to us, were intentional or just the product of bureaucratic incompetence. Obviously were it intentional, they had a dupe willing to entertain the notion that Saddam just had to be toppled.
You didn’t comment on my Vietnam/Iraq comparison, that American “Leaders” weren’t at war, but were trying to ‘inoculate/cure’ less fortunate ‘heathen populations.’
In their arrogance the probably never considered that religious affiliations would be the undoing of the establishment of a viable democracy in Iraq. Perhaps someone should have known better, but most of us assumed that by removing Saddam and the Baathists that ‘common sense’ would prevail. And all the purple-fingered people who voted in the two national elections probably hoped so, too.
Imagine the arguments in France, during the American Revolution. Anti-Slavery proponents were probably disgusted with the fact that the new America would not disavow slavery. French mothers might have been decrying the loss of young French lives, all to create a country that allowed one set of human beings to own a set of a different color. Not an apt comparison, but now 230 years later maybe those French critics, if they could be contacted, would think more kindly of us.
Being human is the most imperfect situation we confront in our life times. (See? Pure hack’ism!) I admire your tenacity in caring as you do. Our difference may be that I’m not going to ‘care’ about things over which I have no control. But I will comment about it, when my adversary is worth the effort …
Do you lie in bed at night grinding your teeth about Iraq? Is this a gut level emotional outrage or an intellectual exercise based on unchallenged pacifism? Either way, I remain your devoted servant.
I like to think that we’re just as dug into the social trenches in iraq as we were into the ground in WW1, but then again, we didn’t start WW1 and we did start this war, so bert’s right, the situations are very different in time, place and reasoning. and if I know bert, this is where he’d say something about the rightness of any war depends on one’s perspective and personal situation etc. (Even if I don’t completely agree with him, he has a point so I’ll give it to him). It’s hard to compare any two wars totally, but there are likes and differences among most of them.
I love Bruce Springsteen, I can’t help it, and on his Pete Seger sessions CD, he does a song about war where a woman welcomes her wounded son home from war after he’s lost both his legs and one of her lines is something like: “War lives on a young man’s blood and a mother’s pain…I’d rather have my son as he used to be rather than the King of America and his whole Navy.” Even though the song is over 200 years old, it makes me think of today.
Bertram000. I guess the case could be made that we were trying to cure Iraq, but I don’t believe it, so I can’t say it and that’s why I didn’t address it earlier. I think we were trying to mark territory, protect our oil interests, and punish Hussein for a botched older war, damaging our status in the world and making life potentially more difficult for future generations. I am glad you don’t agree because that means maybe I’m wrong and things will be just peachy from here on out. The world would truly be better if your version of things were right. So there’s that one small glimmer called Hope.
Do I grind my teeth every night about the war? Not every night, but some nights, yes. Do I think we all bear some responsibility for what’s happened? Yes. We are all responsible for rolling over and being open-minded toward what I truly believe is a criminal war. In fact, (and here’s my rant coming) Bush should be tried for war crimes or at least suffer through impeachment, in small part as retribution for the blow job impeachment suffered by the rest of us a few years ago but mostly because he deserves punishment, along with his cohorts who told him this would be a good idea and that it was just fine to lie to everyone in order to get troops over there. Put the whole lot of them in federal prison wearing jump suits to play cards for awhile and let the rest of us figure out how to clean up the mess they’ve made, even if what you say about them not being able to forsee religious violence (come on!) and that common sense would prevail. This is not a valid excuse. If you do a search, there were LOTS of people advising against the war as it has been executed because of the very things that have come to pass. Bush et al didn’t want to hear dissenting views and hence didn’t hear them and now a bunch (not millions, but a lot) of young people are forever dead or critically wounded, not to mention the Iraqis who have died, and we here at home rush to the malls to fight over video games and that disconnect has to come back to bite us either psychologically or politically or both later on. I can’t say for certain whether this is an intellectual exercise on my part, but I think it’s a valid gut reaction to very bad, self-serving, and ill-conceived policies wrought by very bad, self-serving, and ill-conceived men.
I know you believe that the role of goverment should be small and unhelpful. I would like it to be medium-sized and very helpful to people who need help and who will probably never be able to get out of their entrenched poverty on their own. So we disagree and we agree to disagree about this point. But until we get out of this immoral and destructive war, no one’s going get help.
All of this I’ve said must be received with the caveat that I’m just a peson with an opinion and that what I believe doesn’t matter because it will have no effect on what will happen. So it’s fluff, no better than a cottony wisp on a really sulfuric breeze.
“Bush has entirely severed himself from reality. Ask any Republican who puts America ahead of his/her religious belief.”
Talk talk talk but when it comes time to vote, Republicans vote for the religious crackpots and corporate America everytime and in doing so vote for all the extreme positions that go with them. Lets let the Credit card industry write the bankruptcy laws, lets let the pharaceutical companies write the drug laws and let’s ;et the oil corporations dictate our policy in Iraq.
Expand Freedom? LOL its about money.
War in Iraq is to establish position for oil.
The comparison of Bush’s language used right from the beginning in refusing to admit an awareness as to the level of the failed military, political,etc., policies his administration pursues in Iraq with that of the horrific blundering of the French and English political and military leadership resulting in the pointless slaughter of thousands and thousands of soldiers in WWI is very apt. In both cases the tactics were completely worng-headed right from the beginning and yet they continued on for years no matter how many people died as a result. To be wrong or make a mistake is human but to continue at high human expense is a criminal offense. The inept French generals should all have been hung by their necks and buried in their trenches. Bush and those members of his administration responsible should be arrested and sent to trial. Ms. Tree and everyone here have every right to be mad as Hell that our elected government ( a reflection of all of us ) acted so foolishly for so long a time without apparently ever grasping the situation and changing direection, not to mention their little regard for the lives of our soldiers and the citizens of Iraq. This is not a question of being on the winning side of some silly-ass game of politics, this is a case of huge criminality. To suggest that Bush’s group or the French generals were ignorant of the obvious facts year after year is absurd.
Ms. Tree, each person’s anger and voice are important, the list is endless of individuals who were instrumental in changing the world ( for good or bad ). To say anything different is bullshit/incorrect.
Treemonisha, you carry a lot of weight on your shoulders, for ‘just a person with an opinion.’ I have opinions, too, but I apparently don’t suffer the least bit when the opposite of what I’d like to have happen takes place.
I didn’t mind that Clinton had to endure an impeachment. If Bush has articles of impeachment laid against him, or if he and Rumsfeld are hauled before the World Court in The Hague, I’ll go yadda yadda about it if given the chance. Just like I did during Clinton’s impeachment. Great entertainment, but you couldn’t really dance to it.
I like the mental exercise of staking out a position and then writing position pieces as the need arises. I think you can tell that I enjoy it!
I’m sure you know there is a case to be made for the proposition that there has never been a calendar year without a war. Wars don’t require that observers or participators justify the war’s existence. There has never been a war that didn’t have proponents and opponents. WW1 was so bad that it changed langauge and literature. WW2 was an order of magnitude worse, but most of us have been taught to be “proud” of America’s role. So it was good war.
Human males have war in their genes. We got into a bad war in Iraq. But perhaps we can look forward to
being ready, or ‘readier’ for the next good war.
You asked about accountability at one point. I believe that this is an ‘opposition’ point of view. Accountability isn’t an issue to people who are ‘enjoying’ the war. The early Iraq war proponents may not be happy now, but we take solace in the ‘fact’ that we meant well. And that is Bush’s defense strategy, and it could work. You say that there were voices in the wilderness warning him. But before any large (or small!) undertaking there are always opposition voices. Even for that most popular of wars, WW2. No one remembers them now.
It’s not that so much that I disagree with you… I prefer you be happy…
For some reason this is all reminding me of an old joke: This guy brags to his buddies that he rules the ol’ roost, that he’s king in his castle. His friends razz him, telling him they don’t believe him. So as proof he tells them that he’s the Big Cheese in his home and he decides all the major issues. “Like what,” they ask? “Well, I am in charge of our policies regarding Red China, the Middle East, Indian gaming, Colorado River water rights, the India/Pakistani situation and global warming. I leave the minor items to my wife, like deciding where we live, how we raise the kids, where we go to church and our retirement planning.”
Somehow this thread went from what I thought was an interesting commentary on how language reflects social thought and became a psychoanalysis of me because I think the war is wrong and I worry about the direction of our country? I was raised by hippie parents, but my very conservative grandparents tried to instill a sense of national pride. So I’ve always felt that there is this long thread of inherent good based on sound principle of governance, and when a marching band went by in a parade tooting Stars and Stripes Forever, I got a lump in my throat and this intense wave of comfort in knowing I belong to something bigger. When W came into office and started dismantling everything I thought was good about us and met little to no opposition from a scared and timid crowd who is supposed to be overseeing him, it hurt. It must be wonderful to live as a bemused observer of life, dipping your toe in and swirling the waters when you want, never being tinged by shame about what people are doing on our behalf. But I just can’t do it. Now even my elderly grandfather, watcher of Fox News but otherwise a decent and moral man, says it’s time to get out of Iraq. I consider that a small victory. Things don’t change without opposition.
PS–I do have lots of things to be happy about and I am happy about them. So don’t you worry about me.
What, me worry?
I never intended to imply that you are “wrong” about Iraq!
Whew! Now we can go back to normal. Is all your shopping done?
You two are both crazy.
Crazy is as crazy does.
I’m just crazy about being crazy.