April 18, 2007: City Lights Bookstore, San Francisco
Of news and poetry and sharing our humanity
Late this afternoon I admitted to myself that I wasn’t much in the mood to do this tonight… When I examined why I felt this way I realized that I don’t bring philosophy. I don’t write poetry. I’m not even melancholy. I realized that what I bring – and this is probably why I didn’t want to do this tonight – is news. All’s I have to offer is news, and not very good news either. And what good is news? It comes. It goes. Nothing much happens in between. But that is what I bring so here is some news:
- After 9 months of being AWOL from Ft. Hood, Texas, Kenny is being sprung from the military. He went in with the best intentions – sold to him from this entertainment culture that shows war and militarism as something he can do and will be rewarded for. Instead, he ended up being so abused by those in charge of him -- abuse that was systematically ignored by those further up the food chain – that he took off. He and I worked to get his release and today, right now, he’s on a greyhound bus headed out of West Virginia for Ft. Knox, Okalahoma, and discharge. He’s scared and, last night, spent about an hour on the phone with me getting up the nerve to go to Ft. Knox. Kenny doesn’t really have a chance in this world mostly because he simply doesn’t know what to do and he’s isolated. He sees visions of Jesus – he says its when he’s sober and NOT when he’s stoned – but doesn’t know what to do to express his humanity in this world. Right now he’s news so that feels good to him. But next week he’ll be home again and he’ll have to find another construction job in West Virginia.
- More news: After returning from Baghdad’s combat zone 3 weeks ago, Captain Paul is back – apparently physically unharmed – and encouraging Americans to recognize that the military is not to blame for the mess we’re in as the military only does what it is told by the president and congress. He’s a lovely young man, a West Point grad, and he is a philosopher who reads other philosophers and history to make sense of these times. He is creating a strategy for peaceful revolution. His job in the military is something to do with making sure that the missiles guided toward “them” get to the targets and ensure that missiles guided toward “us” are intercepted. We didn’t talk about the blood and guts when the missiles reach their targets – we talked about ideas.
- Also, today, right now, there are about 3 thousand Iraqis sleeping inside and outside the biggest refugee processing facility in the world about 20 miles from Damascus. Refugees fleeing Iraq shove their goods into a car or a truck and run the gauntlet of thieves, militias, Islamists, and corruption strewn out along the highway to Syria. When I traveled to Baghdad from Amman a few years ago my convoy ran a similar gauntlet – minus the Islamists for it was early in the tragedy that is Iraq these days – and it reminded me of young gazelles being culled from the herd by hungry lionesses. My convoy was hijacked but we were unharmed. From what I gather about the current run from Baghdad to Syria the gangs along the highway are more ferocious than lionesses and their hunger is never sated.
- So far about 2 million Iraqis have fled to avoid the various missiles and other flotsam and jetsam raining down on them. Meanwhile, our administration is asked to set up “catch basins” on the border for refugees. They’d better hurry for Jordan has closed its door to Iraqis, Lebanon can’t handle its own refugees from the summer war, and Syrians are running short of everything including patience. But the Turkish Army is massing on Iraq’s northern border willing, as they say, “to see to the Kurds.” Did I mention that Kurds are now showing up at the UN facility? Did I mention that, Palestinian Iraqis are not allowed into Syria but wait in camps inside the no-man’s land between the Iraqi and the Syrian border? In January I drove through the no-man’s land between Syria and Lebanon’s border and it is stark out there. God or Allah only knows how the Palestinians can stand it. But what option do they have?