This is the fine print: There just aren't a lot of really good ways to die. But I think if you give it some consideration, being burned alive with incendiary weapons, dying of shrapnel-inflicted sucking chest wounds, and having your skin and respiratory tissues violently and suddenly corroded by blistering agents are probably three things you should logically want to avoid over just about everything else. (Likewise, wishing the same on anyone else pretty much makes you one sick bastard, though this goes without saying, I'd think). Personally, I'm hoping for a nice, quick, in-my-sleep sort of death, mebbe around eighty, after a nice meal; my last thoughts warm, grateful ones concerning my happy grandchildren. None of whom are fighting in Iraq. Which, sadly, will probably still be simmering around then, in 2050.

Outside my Window (reprise, 2003)

An I'm against burning people alive — are you¹ production

Note on posting: I originally put this together in February and March of this year, but never posted it to my site. This was a combination of my being overcommitted and my having some reluctance to put much online (more than the original posting of the poem, on the Poets Against the War site) about the war in the charged atmosphere of the time.

I guess I'm getting over it. It's that, and it's that it's now Armistice Day. And time I posted this. This is the work, with annotations as of March, 2003.

— AJM, 2003 November 11

At the bottom of this page, you will find the first poem I've published in any medium in something like eight years.

And to those of you who will now be muttering it's about bloody time, yeah, okay. It's on my to do list. Always. Really.

That dispensed with: the work below served as my first really public statement on the violence in Iraq, as I posted it, some weeks ago, to Sam Hamill's Poets Against the War project².

And yeah, for those of you who might feel it's still left a bit ambiguous by the work below (and, strictly speaking, this is would be fair, this work is not so much about that; it's more specifically about what I see as the alarming abstraction of the reality of war — and more to come on that shortly), yeah, in case you were still wondering, for what it's worth, you can indeed count me as one more voice opposed to removing Iraq's current government by force, at least, as of now.

But contrary to what you might expect (yes, I am aggressively, shamelessly partisan and given to expecting any idea a Republican came up with — and particularly any idea for which that consummate wanker Dubya voices any support — is probably an incredibly stupid one), this did take some thought.

Yes, notwithstanding that Dubya and Blair have been lying their asses off on this from the very beginning, and notwithstanding that the White House's claims about Hussein's involvement with al Qaeda are nothing short of pathetically transparent as pretexts go ³, and thus, it's quite fair to say their motives in pursuing this action are rather suspect, let's face it, there are reasons to like this idea — I mean, it's not like anyone's gonna miss the US's former paid thug⁴ in Iraq if they do manage to get him out of there. But the calculus of my opinion in this matter, frankly, is a subject for a much longer essay, I'm afraid, and I'd really like to get this work on the web as a mere matter of principle at least before the shooting is actually over⁵, so I guess I'm not really getting into all of that here.

As I said: this work is, however, more specifically about the abstraction of the reality of war — the desensitization that follows when the questions on which lives and misery hang are reduced to tactics, to politics. It should go without saying, but when we begin to talk about the cost of war in terms of dollars and of votes rather than in the echoing screams of the dying, maimed, and bereaved, I suggest to you, we're losing perspective. To quote someone of a little more notoriety than myself who has also noticed this:

"Do you feel safer now as a result of a year of bombing Afghanistan? As a result of a year in which we kill several thousand people in Afghanistan? In which very large numbers of people are wounded by cluster bombs and kids end up in hospitals blinded and without arms because of our bombing in Afghanistan?

"I have a very vivid memory of this one ten year old kid — these stories only made their way into the papers very intermittently so that nobody could really put them together and come up with a large and frightening pattern — but I have a very vivid memory of this one story about this ten year old kid in a hospital on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan — a kid named Nour Mohammed — and his eyes were gone and two of his arms were gone as a result of American bombing and the father was standing there, saying to a reporter, 'Look at him. Does he look like Osama bin Laden?'

"This is what happens when you bomb. In all of this discussion that goes on about inspections and weapons of mass destruction and the violation of UN resolutions, in all of this there's been very little discussion of who is going to die in this war, who is going to be wounded in this war, how many people are going to be blinded, how many children are going to lose their limbs. There's no human, vivid picture of what the result of this war will be, and it's important for us to keep this in mind and remind other people about that."

— Howard Zinn, author A People's History of the United States, and bombardier in World War II,
February 23, 2003 in New York city, at an address celebrating the sale of the millionth copy of his book.

I reiterate — this is what this work is about. I want it clear, when the alleged president of the United States, during his state of the union address talks about 'resolve', it is, of course, also resolve to kill a rather large number of people, even if, apparently, this is all done in the interests of freeing them from someone else who would also probably kill (and torture, and maim) a large number of them (in addition, of course, to the ones to whom he has already done as much), given time. So though I'm rather against this war, the poem isn't so much meant to be pro-war or anti-war. It's just meant to be pro-honesty. Even pro-brutal-honesty, if you will. Because brutality, you may be reasonably sure, has been, and will be, in ample supply, throughout all of this.

This work is actually a reprise, as the title suggests, though virtually all of the text is fresh as of this version; it really only borrows a few of the signature lines from the original. The original 'Outside my Window', for its part, written in the shadow of the first gulf war, is now more than a decade old.

The original is also really one of a set — I remember writing more than a few works at the time coloured by the milieu that was the first gulf war — I still remember riding a bus in Ottawa and overhearing a couple of young teenagers (I'm guessing they were around fifteen, sixteen, but the impression is as vague as the memory is distant) bragging about how much they hated Iraqis (the language was more colourful than this, mind you), and how little they'd take as payment to kill them on a nine to five basis — this conversation inspired, I must suppose, by the debate at the time over just how much it was going to cost my country in particular to go to war. This moment is referenced directly in another of my works from the time, and it colours more than a few of the others, indirectly, at well.

I suppose I'm startled more than I should be to hear the same language again, this year, more than ten years later — though this time in the fora and the blogs of the net (I don't ride buses much these days). Some part of me seems to have thought in more than a decade we should have made some progress in this regard. My subconscious remains terminally naive, apparently.

In the fora, in the comments of cheap, anonymous cowards trying to dilute an online petition calling on the mayor and police chief of New York to allow that city's citizens to march in protest of this war⁶ — trying to dilute this petition by voting in just to write in pro-war (or more just anti-Iraqi, pro-regressive, brutal viciousness) rhetoric into the comments — in all of these places, more of the same language. Here, and on the radio, in a description of the life of verbal abuse suffered by an Iraqi-American girl in high school, the same, nasty conceit — tough-talking, adolescent warhawks describing the Iraqis, the others, the aliens from way out there, as animals, fit, one must suppose, only for slaughter.

People are suckers for hate. Been so a while, apparently. And it goes without saying — this is also the language of all brutal, repressive, murderous regimes — before you kill, you must first cheapen and demean the worth of your victims, the better to convince yourself this isn't actually murder, since they aren't actually human.

I've been trying, generally, until now, in public, at least, to keep my language as diplomatic as I can manage in arguing issues related to this conflict, feeling generally, in a violently, painfully polarized debate, your voice carries best if you speak in calm, measured tones, for contrast in a room where no-one else seems to be able to string together six words without leaning on profanity. Furthermore, I've been focusing a lot on arguing the case to Americans (I spend a lot of time with them, and, I argue, they're really the ones to whom to put the case), and there is inevitably a diplomatic component to this, and thus it only fits that I try to be respectful at least. I'm asking they do me a favour, as the only ones in the world who actually vote directly for or against the government most behind this dangerous venture. I'm asking them, to please — though it is not without cost to them either to do so — to please find it in their conscience to lobby their government in the cause of reason. It just isn't appropriate (nor, for that matter, particularly smart) to be anything but civil, given this context.

There's that and the fact that I think it only fair to say that, despite the apparent polarization in public discourse, this really is a matter for substantive consideration, and there are honestly points to be made on both sides. While I do find the oversimplified, good versus evil, we are the white knights charging in to save the day rhetoric out of the White House deeply disgusting for its obvious hypocrisy (I might go a little easier on these gentlemen if they'd come up with a little rhetoric more appropriate to their actual situation here — like, say, maybe, hang their heads properly, acknowledge that yes, now that you mention it, actually, we helped Hussein gas his own people insofar as we helped out with supplies, and, for that matter, even passed out satellite photos that probably assisted in targeting when this bugger was gassing the Iranians, but we're sorry about that now, gonna make up for it, and get him out of there, and sure, we'll face the war crimes court for Halabja too when we're all done here, so come on, are you with us), I also do have some respect for some of those arguing for the war. There are reasons, and it is true: by the book, there was a resolution, and Baghdad isn't really playing ball.

Anyway. I've been trying to be diplomatic. Yes, it's tempting to give that up, on this subject, at least — when it comes to adolescents (of all ages) talking about slaughtering Iraqis like animals. It's a particularly disgusting sorta brute that speaks in such dehumanizing terms of the people who have suffered and who will suffer the most in this conflict.

But I try to remind myself: these are (most of them, at least), mere children, who talk this way. If they live long enough, they may yet come to realize just what they're saying, and to regret it with an appropriate intensity.

We can always hope.

And so, as diplomatic as I can be (given the subject matter): to the voices in the online fora who call the Iraqi people — the poor suffering buggers now bearing the brunt of the violence yet again, to be sure — the poor buggers betrayed once before by the intransigence and cowardice of the last Bush in the White House, when he incited them to rise up against Hussein, then walked away and let them die — to those who talk cheerfully and enthusiastically of slaughtering the Iraqi people, 'because they're animals, and they deserve it', this is as gently as I can possibly comment: young sirs, need I remind you, we're all animals here (a fact I find difficult to miss when I hear you speak, in particular). But please, do let us try to keep in mind we are actually talking about human lives nonetheless — lives I think you'd find not so very unlike your own. And — whether or not you have to capacity to know what you're actually saying — hearing you express such hunger for the abject pain and misery about to be inflicted, once more with feeling, on a people who, really, to now, have had their share, doesn't just make me sick.

Frankly, what I feel right now toward you transcends disgust, and dwarfs mere revulsion.

Show us you're better than this. Show us you're men. Show us you're human, and weep properly. A tragedy is unfolding, and death waits in the wings.

— AJM, 2003 February-March

Outside my Window
(Reprise, 2003)

(A rewrite of a Gulf-war era poem
Rewrite composed for Sam Hamill's Poet's Against the War project
With regrets that I now have the occasion to revisit it)

In the lot outside my window
Children are playing at war
Young minds behind such wide, clear eyes
Stage mock assaults, bold attacks
Imaginary weapons brandished
In tiny, child's hands

Do they imagine, as they play
Living flesh burned to carbon
Living men, women, and children
Still tenuously,
And all too temporarily
Connected to said living flesh
Screaming in unearthly
Sky-shattering agony
Beyond anything the rest of the living can imagine
As they die this way
Carbon, then ash, dripping from their bones
Caught in the roaring, voracious, pitiless synthetic hell emitted
By the relentless machinery
Of 21st century warfare

In the lot outside my window
Young voices bounce and clatter
Through the clear winter air
Bell-like
Happy shrieks
Young alpha males to be
Atop a clump of snow in a parking lot
Do they picture
Raising imaginary flags on quiet city streets
In quiet suburban yards
Do they picture
Bullets tracing
Perfect, graceful
Euclidean parabolae
Through soft tissues
A soldier's eyes dilated with shock
The desert light seeming suddenly
That much more blindingly white
Fingers thick and sticky with blood
Hand clutched in futility to abdomen
As though to hold the remaining shreds of viscera
From spilling into the desert sand
And drying, finally
From red to brown

Do they imagine
The sudden stunned, shocked silence
In a tiny household
A young mother told
The father of her child
Choked out her name one last time
With the last of his wet, sputtering breath
Earlier that morning
And that she will never see him again
Do they picture
The short, trembling, silent, pitiful sobs
Of her tiny, wide-eyed child
Told by her mother
Her mother's eyes still red, and damp
Her composure regained just long enough
To perform this inevitable ritual
Told by her mother
Your father who loved you
Beyond all else
Is gone

Young voices clattering
Boys at war
At six years of age
A gun carved from plastic
Is an abstraction, a theme song
A sound effect
A prop
I don't begrudge them their game

But ask yourself this:
To a six year old
And to your president's cabinet
And to yourself, sir
What is a gun?

And how long have you lived
And how much have you seen
And shouldn't you —
All of you —
Shouldn't you know better by now?

— AJ Milne, 7 February 2003, posted 11 November 2003

Footnotes

¹ Rhetorical question. But you knew that. Right? And yes, for the record, I'm also against (a) gassing them, (b) shooting them, (c) burying them alive with bulldozers (and no, actually, that doesn't just have to be another reference to Anfal — here's fun activity for the day: Google on Barrick, Bush, Palast, and Tanzania, for a lark), and (d) running into the buildings in which they're working with planes full of jet fuel, so that they are asphyxiated by choking fumes, roasted painfully alive, or crushed when the buildings collapse. And, for that matter, I'm also against telling disgusting, sanctimonious lies to the grieving friends and relatives of those atrocities, toward manipulating their very human grief and fear — but then, we'll be coming back to that shortly, I expect.

² Background: Laura Bush, former librarian, and by many accounts a good friend to the literary community (notwithstanding the fact that her husband by his own description isn't much of a reader), recently canceled a planned poetry symposium at the White House over concerns that some of the poets might read works critical of the war. Hamill, one of the invitees, had written a letter to friends soliciting such works so he could present them to her at the event, and this is probably what prompted the cancellation. As of this writing, for the record, Hamill has received more than 5,000 such works. His site is at http://www.poetsagainstthewar.org, and it is here I contributed this work. The original, at Hamil's site, is here.

Update, 2003 March 6 — the list grew to over 12,000 before Hamill closed submissions; Hamill never got to present them to Bush, but did present them to members of Congress in the progressive caucus in a ceremony on March 5.

³ And really, by these lights, some incredibly cheap politics. 2,700 people just died — torn from this world in violence and agony, their families left bereft. In their memory, we are now going use this as a pretext to blast the hell out of a regime which, in all probability, had absolutely nothing to do with their deaths. That nasty taste you feel in the back of your mouth right now is disgust, sir. And if you can't taste it, what the hell is wrong with you?

⁴ And if you didn't know this by now, come now, where have you been?

⁵ For the record, the shooting hasn't stopped for about twelve years now — fun facts on the ongoing bombing in the so-called no-fly zones from 1991 through 2003, at http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/flyindex.htm.

In fairness, to those of you burning to know some of the whole business of just why I might come out against removing a bloodthirsty thug who seems comfortable using mustard, VX, and cyanide on his own people (not to mention machine-gunning them by the tens of thousands, and bulldozing them into mass graves — see the HRW report), well, in brief (a) the people who are promising to remove him for us effectively helped him pay for the stuff (or do you suppose the fact that Bush Sr. voted the guy another cool billion in aid six months after Halabja was entirely public has somehow escaped me), if not actually develop it (see http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/1213-02.htm on the memo the UN security council's rotating members never quite saw in its original version), and as they haven't exactly been apologizing for this, and as they seem pretty comfortable propping up some other rather brutal regimes, it's hard to believe their intentions for replacing him are particularly honourable, which leads to (b) the reasonable assumption that, given the go-ahead to do this, a really rather horrific number of people are going to die from the massive air strike planned, followed by decades of cancers and birth defects thanks to the indiscriminate use of depleted uranium, with no particular guarantee they won't just get another brutal repressive regime to replace the last as reward at the end of this long, bloody tunnel (reference Afghanistan), and (c) the virtual certainty that even if the war goes relatively well and relatively quickly, thanks to the utterly hamfisted diplomacy of the Bushies, the "coalition of the willing" (cough) is now going to be seen (and probably accurately) as a coalition of the bullied, and thus we can reasonably expect the Arab/Moslem world to resent this deeply for decades to come, meaning the nasty little bands of Islamists looking to grab power in any number of Gulf states are going to garner that much more support, and the angry young men in the Sharia schools are going to be that much angrier, and the name of the West of and democracy will be that much blacker everywhere (and, most sadly, perhaps deservedly, though I should like to protest to any in the Arab world, for what it's worth, look, the Americans didn't even exactly vote for this schmuck either, and they're not all that happy with him now, and I think that only speaks to their wisdom), and the hope of anything like secular democracy ever taking root in that part of the world becomes that much more remote, the threat of terrorism that much more acute, the world, in short, that much nastier, that much more dangerous. To name only a few.

(Appended to note on final posting, November 2003). An irony here, of course, I guess I have to acknowledge. I really didn't have to hurry much to get it posted "before the shooting is actually over", did I?

By this standard, I had and have all the time in the world. It is now November. And the shooting continues. And the shooting is expected to continue for the forseeable future.

⁶ A large number of New Yorkers who'd rather have liked to march against the war on the 15th of February (2003) were denied a permit by the city, the claim being would be a security risk, since they wished to go past the UN. An online petition was started to reverse this decision; it was comments written into this record of which I speak.

Update as of 2003 March 6 — the city upheld the ban, but the protesters wound up marching anyway — and in rather impressive numbers — several hundred thousand, out of some six million worldwide.