I recently read somewhere that the
US has been at war for 93% of its existence. More specifically, for 222 out of
239 years since 1776, we’ve been at war with somebody. The past 14 years since
the 9/11 attacks have upped the percentages a bit, since it’s now 14 straight
years of fighting in the Middle East. There is agitation to go at it with Iran,
but the president seems to have found a way to avoid that, to his tremendous
credit I think. Iran’s ruling theocracy is bad news, but a war with them would
be terrible. In this poem B. is recalling Korea. “Some remember (‘Pretty well’)
the Korean war.” Note the sarcastic undertone? “Some” remember it, “‘Pretty
well,’”—as if something like that could be forgotten—except, yep, it’s already
history, so screw it. Many are more than happy to forget what it was like, what
it was about, what it meant. Yet the presence in history of the Korean War
underlies the Bay of Pigs debacle. History lives with us, whether we’re
blissfully unaware of it or not. When we do think of our history of warfare, it’s
with pride in the fact that we win more often than not. Hollywood picks up on
this: George C. Scott as Patton: “The thought of losing is hateful to an American.” Bill Murray in Stripes: “We’re American
soldiers; we’ve been kicking ass for 200 years!”
I’m lucky in that I’ve never had
to go to a war, I’ve never seen combat, never saw someone killed, never had to
join the military, and at this point, it’s almost certain that will never
change for me. My students have gone through it, my uncles, one landed on Utah
Beach and was in Bastogne during The Battle of the Bulge, another fought on Iwo
Jima, my brother-in-law served in Vietnam, my niece was in Iraq and my nephew
in Afghanistan. A student fresh back from Desert Storm in Kuwait showed me
reams of snapshots he took that I’ve never gotten over, more than twenty years
later. Another student, a beautiful young woman in my class, told me one
afternoon about her combat experience on a .50 caliber in Iraq and how much she
loved it and missed its power. It’s all around us. My experience as an American
almost seems like an anomaly in historical context. But my birth date slipped me
into one of our few warless time slots when my peak military years approached. People
my age were fortunate that way. But unlike many of the Americans B. is railing
against in this poem, I’ve been a student of history, so I think I have some
idea what Korea meant, and I know what the slaughter of Cold Harbor was—it was
the action that Ulysses Grant most regretted in his military career—and what
the Bloody Angle at Spotsylvania was about. One of my dad’s good friends manned the
waist gun of a B-17 over Germany, and he told me that the major feeling he
experienced when the Messerschmitts attacked wasn’t fear or dread, it was disbelief
at first, and then when he saw the yellow flashes at the fighters’ nose and
wings, his feelings went straight to rage. No time for fear and he wasn’t
interested in that. Jeez. I haven’t experienced any of that, but at least I’ve
listened and I’ve paid attention to the stories that came my way. My Uncle Joe
was pinned down in a shallow foxhole in the black sand on Iwo Jima, Japanese
bullets inches over his head and slamming into the back of his hole, and it was
looking very grim for Joe’s chances. A Navy Dauntless dive bomber was called in
to attack the machine gun nest. The gun was trained upward on it and the plane
was shot down, but it crashed onto the Japanese gunners. Everybody dead. That should
be unspeakable. But as a result, my uncle got away. We have a painting hanging
in our home that he did in 1998. Had the Japanese gotten him in 1945 like they darn
well almost did, the world would be a less beautiful place for it. That’s the
loss that comes with every single life lost in a war. But we forget that and
celebrate the power, victory, the freedom to vent a just rage.
And there’s more violence in the poem:
Three political murders. I think it must be a reference to the two Kennedys and
Martin Luther King, the three great—and disastrous—political assassinations of
the ‘60s, but it could be others. There were plenty more to go around. Carl von
Clausewitz wrote that “War is the continuation of politics by other means.” So
is assassination.
Henry is admonished in a strange
way in the poem by the voice of Death, hovering around as his ever-present conscience,
who reminds him, “Adhere, Sir Bones, to Heaven; tho’ the shrine is still, /
what here or there by the will / of hidden God git done? Ah ask.” Henry, quite unimpressed
with God and God’s ways on this day, has his answer: Pakistan. War of course
was raging then between Pakistan and India, over the disputed region of Kashmir
and control of its resources. God, according to Henry, has nothing whatsoever to
do with war in Pakistan. And then this: “Henry couldn’t care less.” Why not,
Henry? You should care for all men! says Death.
—Overloaded.
It is my country in my country only
cast
is our lot.
It’s a brutal, callous statement,
but I think it would be a big mistake to take this at face value without recognizing
the bitter irony of it. The whole poem is driven by an anguished concern for
what violence costs, for what war costs, and there is a solid recognition of
the influence of history’s violence and tragedy on our here and now. It’s that
word “overloaded” that does it. It’s too much to take, and as we’ve seen over
and over, when Henry is challenged by too much—when he’s overloaded—he retreats, shrinks away, cowers, curls into a ball and
impotently wishes it would all just go away. It’s all too much for any one
little man to be expected to deal with. So, “in my country only” is actually a
retreat, but it’s really best seen in the broader context of The Dream Songs. The ironical point is
still clear: Henry is adopting a devil-may-care posture, and by the way, the
posture of American Exceptionalism, and all of that amounts to a cowardly
shrinking away from an honest and full appraisal of the consequences of our
violent history. We’re happy as a country to bravely fight, if we have to, and
sometimes we do have to, sure, and there is absolutely courage involved in doing
that; but we also fight—do violence—because we want to. The implication is that that ironically amounts to hiding
from the even deeper, more genuine, and more difficult courage of the
peacemaker. What Korea, Cold Harbor, the Bloody Angle remind us is that we’ve
failed as a country from adopting a deeper, peacemaking courage, shirked it. We’ll
attack, do battle, assassinate, before we take on the real hard work. India and
Pakistan do it too, so we’re justified. “Cast is our lot”, which is to say that
we have no choice. That, according to B., is not a position of courage. Look at
what we’ve been responsible for! It’s too much for any one country to face the
consequences. So instead, we keep on doing it. The world is consequently
rendered less rich and less beautiful. And immeasurably less secure.
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