From: Mi_CHE_lleDate: Mar 13, 2007 9:03 AM
A New Patriotism
Does anyone look at the situation in Iraq and wonder how in God's name we ever let ourselves be duped into it? Now, you don't need a weatherman to tell you that Black 47 was against this unnecessary war back before it was even a gleam in President Bush's eye. It's not exactly that we were a bunch of geniuses either. We had all heard of Yugoslavia and what happened there after Marshall Tito bit the dust. We all knew that Iraq itself had been cobbled together by the British Foreign Office and was hardly a model of stability. We were familiar with the religious/ethnic makeup of the country and heard rumblings of 1400 years of Shia/Sunni enmity and what might happen if that was unleashed, not to mention the fierce desire of the Kurdish people for a land of their own. Why some of us had even read Graham Greene's The Quiet American and recognized the danger of sticking our heads in unwelcome places. Of course, none of us believed that Sadaam had workable WMDs and, if he had, that he would even dream of using them, what with American and British warplanes in the North and South of his bedraggled country just waiting for him to raise his head up from the romance novels he was writing!
Then again, some of us had watched an occupying army in the North of Ireland turn an initially sympathetic populace into a hostile, lethal force. All it took was a door being kicked in, a small terraced house being ransacked - its inhabitants insulted - and the whole street had turned against that army. And even then, the British soldiers spoke the same language as us, listened to the same songs, cheered the same football teams and were often co-religionists. What chance had American forces in chasing down an elusive enemy in a land whose culture, religion and mindset they knew little of? We also saw how a small, dedicated band of volunteers could pin down a large army in half a province of Ireland for thirty years. "Much hatred little room," as Mister Yeats might suggest; or, as we might put it, want to stay the course until 2033?
The fact is that this situation is too important to be left in the hands of venal, if lethal, politicians, Republican or Democratic. Apart from the issue that over three thousand of our people have been sacrificed for a madcap idea while more than 20,000 have suffered horrendous wounds, we have seriously destabilized the whole Middle East and helped give Al Qaeda a very generous foothold in Iraq, a country where they were treated as the plague previously. I reiterate that this is not a partisan issue. I'm actually terrified that Hillary Clinton might have been stupid enough to believe the whole WMD scare. I'd much rather have her be a smart, unprincipled woman who didn't vote against invasion because she felt it would forever negate her chances of being elected president. And then I look at what I've just written and think that such musings are a terrible indictment of both our times and principles.
Bobby Sands said "no one can do everything but everyone has their part to play." This is a time when we all must step up to the plate and make our voices heard. That's what citizen democracy is about. One of the saddest times of my life was back in '03 when Black 47 was speaking out against the war. We were used to political abuse after spending years in the trenches over the situation in the North of Ireland. It wasn't pleasant but there's little point being in the kitchen if you can't stand the heat. Anyway, I received many emails thanking the band for voicing unpopular views since the writers felt afraid to speak out in the same manner. And I thought, is this what America has come to - that citizens can be cowed into silence by a xenophobic bunch of right wing bullies and mental pygmies who wouldn't have the smarts to get laid in a brothel?
Well times have changed. Black 47 can get onstage and sing Downtown Baghdad Blues and might as well be lilting Tie a Yellow Ribbon for all the stir it causes now. People have grown inured to the carnage; after all, you can always switch over to American Idol. Still, the war drags on. Meanwhile the country is heading on a fast train to bankruptcy by borrowing billions a month from the Chinese Communist Government. Talk about ironic! Hey Barry Goldwater, Ronald Regan, quit kicking those coffins! We're about to hit a wall of our own making in the Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid stakes that will ultimately consign millions of middle and working class people to penury. I could type until my fingers dropped off about the various problems that are not being dealt with in this country because of political expediency. But why bother, you all know them. And anyway that's okay, we have a New Patriotism - Get thee to the mall, ratchet up those credit cards, buy lotto tickets for your retirement fund, we have hundreds of TV channels and thousands of politicians all willing to tell us how well we're doing; and, anyway, what's a few more dead in Fallujah in the grand scheme of things. Hey, if things get really bad, we can always set up a little military excursion into Iran to take our mind off things.
This not Republican or Democratic speak. It's the voice of one who is worried about the USA for the first time. The parallels between the downfall of Imperial Rome and our own country are just too glaring to ignore anymore. It's time to get our politicians to admit that we made a horrible mistake in going into Iraq, and now how the hell do we get out of there with some kind of grace and credibility? It doesn't have to be choppers evacuating people from the roof of the embassy or the Green Zone. We've created an awful situation but the first step is to admit to it. A solution will surely follow. It won't bring back any of the dead or restore limbs to the maimed but it will help us regain our self-regard and turn the country back into the gritty republic it used to be and not the overblown political, commercial and aesthetic empire it is fast becoming. The question is: do we have it within ourselves to step up to the plate and speak aloud of our convictions? I think so. I fervently hope so. But if not, well, baseball is almost here; we have the boys of summer willing to distract us. Think the Cubs will finally break the jinx? Will this be Torre's last year with the Yanks? Will Bonds break Hank's record? I don't know. I'm off to the mall, I just got a new credit card in the mail…. Long live Britney and Paris… see you in Teheran.
All the best,
Larry Kirwan
http://www.myspace.com/black47band
A New Patriotism
Does anyone look at the situation in Iraq and wonder how in God's name we ever let ourselves be duped into it? Now, you don't need a weatherman to tell you that Black 47 was against this unnecessary war back before it was even a gleam in President Bush's eye. It's not exactly that we were a bunch of geniuses either. We had all heard of Yugoslavia and what happened there after Marshall Tito bit the dust. We all knew that Iraq itself had been cobbled together by the British Foreign Office and was hardly a model of stability. We were familiar with the religious/ethnic makeup of the country and heard rumblings of 1400 years of Shia/Sunni enmity and what might happen if that was unleashed, not to mention the fierce desire of the Kurdish people for a land of their own. Why some of us had even read Graham Greene's The Quiet American and recognized the danger of sticking our heads in unwelcome places. Of course, none of us believed that Sadaam had workable WMDs and, if he had, that he would even dream of using them, what with American and British warplanes in the North and South of his bedraggled country just waiting for him to raise his head up from the romance novels he was writing!
Then again, some of us had watched an occupying army in the North of Ireland turn an initially sympathetic populace into a hostile, lethal force. All it took was a door being kicked in, a small terraced house being ransacked - its inhabitants insulted - and the whole street had turned against that army. And even then, the British soldiers spoke the same language as us, listened to the same songs, cheered the same football teams and were often co-religionists. What chance had American forces in chasing down an elusive enemy in a land whose culture, religion and mindset they knew little of? We also saw how a small, dedicated band of volunteers could pin down a large army in half a province of Ireland for thirty years. "Much hatred little room," as Mister Yeats might suggest; or, as we might put it, want to stay the course until 2033?
The fact is that this situation is too important to be left in the hands of venal, if lethal, politicians, Republican or Democratic. Apart from the issue that over three thousand of our people have been sacrificed for a madcap idea while more than 20,000 have suffered horrendous wounds, we have seriously destabilized the whole Middle East and helped give Al Qaeda a very generous foothold in Iraq, a country where they were treated as the plague previously. I reiterate that this is not a partisan issue. I'm actually terrified that Hillary Clinton might have been stupid enough to believe the whole WMD scare. I'd much rather have her be a smart, unprincipled woman who didn't vote against invasion because she felt it would forever negate her chances of being elected president. And then I look at what I've just written and think that such musings are a terrible indictment of both our times and principles.
Bobby Sands said "no one can do everything but everyone has their part to play." This is a time when we all must step up to the plate and make our voices heard. That's what citizen democracy is about. One of the saddest times of my life was back in '03 when Black 47 was speaking out against the war. We were used to political abuse after spending years in the trenches over the situation in the North of Ireland. It wasn't pleasant but there's little point being in the kitchen if you can't stand the heat. Anyway, I received many emails thanking the band for voicing unpopular views since the writers felt afraid to speak out in the same manner. And I thought, is this what America has come to - that citizens can be cowed into silence by a xenophobic bunch of right wing bullies and mental pygmies who wouldn't have the smarts to get laid in a brothel?
Well times have changed. Black 47 can get onstage and sing Downtown Baghdad Blues and might as well be lilting Tie a Yellow Ribbon for all the stir it causes now. People have grown inured to the carnage; after all, you can always switch over to American Idol. Still, the war drags on. Meanwhile the country is heading on a fast train to bankruptcy by borrowing billions a month from the Chinese Communist Government. Talk about ironic! Hey Barry Goldwater, Ronald Regan, quit kicking those coffins! We're about to hit a wall of our own making in the Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid stakes that will ultimately consign millions of middle and working class people to penury. I could type until my fingers dropped off about the various problems that are not being dealt with in this country because of political expediency. But why bother, you all know them. And anyway that's okay, we have a New Patriotism - Get thee to the mall, ratchet up those credit cards, buy lotto tickets for your retirement fund, we have hundreds of TV channels and thousands of politicians all willing to tell us how well we're doing; and, anyway, what's a few more dead in Fallujah in the grand scheme of things. Hey, if things get really bad, we can always set up a little military excursion into Iran to take our mind off things.
This not Republican or Democratic speak. It's the voice of one who is worried about the USA for the first time. The parallels between the downfall of Imperial Rome and our own country are just too glaring to ignore anymore. It's time to get our politicians to admit that we made a horrible mistake in going into Iraq, and now how the hell do we get out of there with some kind of grace and credibility? It doesn't have to be choppers evacuating people from the roof of the embassy or the Green Zone. We've created an awful situation but the first step is to admit to it. A solution will surely follow. It won't bring back any of the dead or restore limbs to the maimed but it will help us regain our self-regard and turn the country back into the gritty republic it used to be and not the overblown political, commercial and aesthetic empire it is fast becoming. The question is: do we have it within ourselves to step up to the plate and speak aloud of our convictions? I think so. I fervently hope so. But if not, well, baseball is almost here; we have the boys of summer willing to distract us. Think the Cubs will finally break the jinx? Will this be Torre's last year with the Yanks? Will Bonds break Hank's record? I don't know. I'm off to the mall, I just got a new credit card in the mail…. Long live Britney and Paris… see you in Teheran.
Larry Kirwan
http://www.myspace.com/black47band
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