In our ongoing audit of the West's depeletion of what we have dubbed the "Arsenal of the Will," we , on rare occassions, encounter a piece of writing where we are forced to admit even we could not have said it better ourselves. The following, from our dear friend Roger Gardner at Radarsite , is just such a piece. Enjoy!
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"Paths of Glory"
Tonight, once again, I watched the late Stanley Kubricks' 1957 internationally acclaimed antiwar tour de force, the ironically titled "Paths of Glory". In the words of famed movie critic Leonard Maltin, a "shattering study of the insanity of war." A movie so profound, so powerful, so intelligent and deeply disturbing, so exquisitely wrought by a director of such singular genius and vision that it remains removed and aloof forever from any rational consideration of its true intrinsic value. Tonight, however, I watched it a little more closely and a little more critically through my wary post 9/11 eyes.
Somewhat sadly, I watched an altogether different picture tonight. Still moving, still poignant, still powerful, still filled with the bitter aftertaste of remorse and shame. So masterfully crafted is this unquestioned indictment of war that we willingly abandon ourselves to its most obvious message. We dare not think to question the basic premise of the argument, to do so would merely prove how far we have degenerated in our common morality. War is wrong. Period. End of argument.
The only socially acceptable reaction to this realistic depiction of this global madness is one of bitter regret and shame. Deep cultural historical shame. This is where we have come to today. In place of a national sense of pride, a pervasive and relentless awareness of shame.
And our dead warriors, those endless rows of crosses, merely serve to symbolize our shame, and our collective guilt. There is nothing here to celebrate anymore, nothing here to honor. How can we celebrate and honor these victims of our most egregious mistakes? The answer of course is that we cannot. We push them out of our consciousness with our gaudy parades and our honorific barbecues.
All we can offer up now are second-rate speeches and second-rate emotions. We feel self-conscious saluting our imperialistic American flag when it passes. We think we'd look silly if we stood up to attention. What would our neighbors think? Would they think that we actually approved of all this?
War, we have now learned, is nothing but a massive criminal enterprise. And our fallen warriors, for all of their individual valor, are really nothing but criminals -- innocent criminals perhaps, coerced into their catastrophic crimes by patriotic propaganda, but criminals nonetheless. We offer them only our grudging token condolences then quickly sweep them out of our consciousness and prepare our grills for the cook outs, hoping it's going to be a nice day and that it won't rain and spoil everything.
Occasionally, we feel a twinge of something approaching guilt about the true meaning of this special day -- but it's so insignificant and fleeting it's hardly to be noticed -- like forgetting about Jesus Christ at Christmas or Columbus on Columbus Day. This is our real Memorial Day tradition now. To avoid the embarrassment of the dead and celebrate the overwhelming reality of the living.
This, then, is how we have learned to think about war, and about our warriors. When there is no discernable enemy landing on our shores, when we feel safe and comfortable in our daily worries, lost in our selfish familial concerns, this is how we feel about war and about our war memorials.
In the comforting bosom of peacetime, we philosophize about war and make high-sounding moral indictments of it. We denigrate our warriors, because they represent a failed paradigm, the antithesis of our own great paradigm. We have learned that all wars for whatever reasons are absolutely evil and unnecessary, that to succumb to war is weakness. All wars, we have been taught, are essentially futile, gross senseless wastes of innocent lives. Young men sent to the proverbial slaughterhouses by cynical self-serving old men who have nothing to lose but their ideological arguments.
We lounge in our comfortable ignorance and refuse to stir from our virtual realities. We refuse to confront the glaring incontestable facts that we are only breathing now because men were willing to go to war and die to protect us. To protect our forgetfulness, our complacency, our self-centered myopic unconcern for their ultimate and final sacrifices. We are not in pain now so we refuse to believe in it. The threats, after all, are only virtual threats, manufactured ploys from our right-winger war-mongers. They have no real legitimacy and in no way conflict with our deeply held convictions that intelligent tolerance and understanding will see us through. We are, after all, civilized men and women, aren't we?
In short, Memorial Day is a farce. War is wrong and we protest it and we despise it. Warriors are, at their best misguided, and at their worst merely soulless unthinking brutes. We have convinced ourselves that we have risen above the necessity of all violence. We have moved beyond all that.
Well, my friends, I'm afraid we're in for a rude awakening.
Our 'brutal and senseless' wars have saved our precious tender skins. Our murderous brutish warriors have given us our lives and our freedoms and we use them to denigrate their victories. Soon, however, I fear that we will be reminded once again. Soon, I believe we will learn once again the truth that war is not an aberration, it is our American heritage. We have had to fight for every damn thing we have and we will have to fight again. The enemy is at our shore and they truly are real and they truly will take everything we have or they will utterly destroy us -- if we do not fight back.
Memorial Day is a day to remember. Not just to remember our warriors, but to remember our wars, and why we fought these wars. Once again, we must remember the hard won lessons that we have learned. That all peoples have learned: Defensive wars are simply refusals to submit.
And we will not, we must not submit.
- Roger W. Gardner , Radarsite , Memorial Day 2008
Showing posts with label Roger Gardner. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Roger Gardner. Show all posts
Feb 17, 2008
Diplomacy as It Should Be
Our fellow right wing, hate-mongering, xenophobic, racist, islamophobic, chuck-headed blogger associate Mr. Roger Gardner of Radarsite has been invited by the Pakistani Spectator to comment on the upcoming Pakistani election of 18 February. The election is crucial for Pakistan and the world. Mr. Gardner’s words regarding them are invaluable! I encourage you all to read (below) the wisdom of this very genuine, very American patriot who understands to his core what Thomas Paine and the American Founders articulated, lived, and died for: “The cause of America is in great measure the cause of all mankind."
Well done Roger and congratulations!
Cheers,
Charlie
P.S. We also recommend you read Roger’s interview with the Pakistani Spectator.
****************
Hello again to my new friends at The Pakistani Spectator –
I have been asked to write a few words about your very crucial election there on the 18th of February. This is of course a very difficult assignment for me, in that I know next to nothing about Pakistan’s internal affairs or of your complicated political scene. I also feel that about the last thing you need right now is anyone from America chiming in with their opinions about your complex country or your present elections. So I just won’t talk about any of that.
But perhaps I can talk about what we say to each other about our own election process, and about this volatile and contentious system we share called Democracy. Here’s what we tell each other:
First of all, get out there and vote. If you don’t vote then you don’t have any right to complain about how things are being run. You’ve chosen to opt out of the system, so your complaints no longer have validity. Also, if your candidate or your party loses an election — and someone always does — then learn to live with it. That’s democracy in action. Learn from your defeat. Learn what it is about your message that just isn’t resonating with enough people, or is perhaps being totally rejected. But as much as you might disagree with the elections results, they do after all hopefully represent the voice of the people and you must honor that voice. And we must then put aside our partisan differences and all work together as a UNITED States of America.
Well, it sounds good, doesn’t it?
But, as any of you who have been following American politics lately well know, these ideals are seldom attained. Bitter political feuds still go on, political rivalries still continue and losers seldom just give up their battles and accept defeat graciously and quietly exit the stage.
But, nonetheless, these are our cherished ideals. And despite the fact that we seldom adhere to them, seldom get it completely right, and that nasty partisan wrangling goes on and on and becomes more and more vocal –
OUR DEMOCRACY THRIVES. It works. Cumbersome as it is, as contentious as it can be, it works. There are no coups, no bloody uprisings, no revolutions — not yet, anyway. But there are a lot af angry debates and passionate arguments. And that, it seems, is what it’s all about.
To a lot of us here, our democratic process is similar in a lot of ways to our jury system. It’s not perfect. There are loopholes and flaws. Sometime guilty people get away with murder, and sometimes the innocent suffer. Sometimes corruption and greed are busy at work behind the scenes, and sometimes we can get quite cynical and discouraged about these flagrant abuses of this system of ours.
But, despite it obvious shortcomings, it is still simply the best system out there. It is the best system yet devised to attempt to build a just society. And, somehow, it seems to work.
And this, my new friends, is how I feel about democracy.
Don’t lose hope. Don’t allow those inevitable abuses of the system to destroy the system. In short, participate and vote.
And this particular American wishes you great success in your democratic elections; may the results bring you closer to national — and international peace and harmony.
You have my very best wishes,
Your friend,
Roger Gardner
(Go to the actual link and read the comments from Pakistanis. Most fascinating!)
Well done Roger and congratulations!
Cheers,
Charlie
P.S. We also recommend you read Roger’s interview with the Pakistani Spectator.
****************
Hello again to my new friends at The Pakistani Spectator –
I have been asked to write a few words about your very crucial election there on the 18th of February. This is of course a very difficult assignment for me, in that I know next to nothing about Pakistan’s internal affairs or of your complicated political scene. I also feel that about the last thing you need right now is anyone from America chiming in with their opinions about your complex country or your present elections. So I just won’t talk about any of that.
But perhaps I can talk about what we say to each other about our own election process, and about this volatile and contentious system we share called Democracy. Here’s what we tell each other:
First of all, get out there and vote. If you don’t vote then you don’t have any right to complain about how things are being run. You’ve chosen to opt out of the system, so your complaints no longer have validity. Also, if your candidate or your party loses an election — and someone always does — then learn to live with it. That’s democracy in action. Learn from your defeat. Learn what it is about your message that just isn’t resonating with enough people, or is perhaps being totally rejected. But as much as you might disagree with the elections results, they do after all hopefully represent the voice of the people and you must honor that voice. And we must then put aside our partisan differences and all work together as a UNITED States of America.
Well, it sounds good, doesn’t it?
But, as any of you who have been following American politics lately well know, these ideals are seldom attained. Bitter political feuds still go on, political rivalries still continue and losers seldom just give up their battles and accept defeat graciously and quietly exit the stage.
But, nonetheless, these are our cherished ideals. And despite the fact that we seldom adhere to them, seldom get it completely right, and that nasty partisan wrangling goes on and on and becomes more and more vocal –
OUR DEMOCRACY THRIVES. It works. Cumbersome as it is, as contentious as it can be, it works. There are no coups, no bloody uprisings, no revolutions — not yet, anyway. But there are a lot af angry debates and passionate arguments. And that, it seems, is what it’s all about.
To a lot of us here, our democratic process is similar in a lot of ways to our jury system. It’s not perfect. There are loopholes and flaws. Sometime guilty people get away with murder, and sometimes the innocent suffer. Sometimes corruption and greed are busy at work behind the scenes, and sometimes we can get quite cynical and discouraged about these flagrant abuses of this system of ours.
But, despite it obvious shortcomings, it is still simply the best system out there. It is the best system yet devised to attempt to build a just society. And, somehow, it seems to work.
And this, my new friends, is how I feel about democracy.
Don’t lose hope. Don’t allow those inevitable abuses of the system to destroy the system. In short, participate and vote.
And this particular American wishes you great success in your democratic elections; may the results bring you closer to national — and international peace and harmony.
You have my very best wishes,
Your friend,
Roger Gardner
(Go to the actual link and read the comments from Pakistanis. Most fascinating!)
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