Author’s note: Raw Spillage is a spontaneous outpouring of thoughts introduced to me by the poet Carolyn Forché at a writers’ conference in Washington, D.C. I have come to use the sound-alike name, Ross Pillage, and I visit him at times of emotional upset or mental turmoil.
Laurence W. Thomas
RAW SPILLAGE, 14 April, ’03 – IMMEDIACY
Last night I watched a fire fight between U.S. Marines and a sniper right outside the hotel where journalists stay in Baghdad. It went on for quite a while, and one of those ubiquitous retired American generals explained it all to us. Apparently this general had written a book about the 1991 Gulf War and one of his complaints was that at that time, there wasn’t enough actual footage of events. Now of course, all that’s changed. We have all those ‘embedded’ press people with cameras and microphones to let us know what’s happening as it happens. Is that progress—or what?
It’s a fault of old people to look back at how things were, and I’m going to commit that fault for a minute. In WWII when I was in high school, we rushed to the radio in time to hear “Cunningham’s news ace zooms into your home” with the latest reports from places we were learning to recognize: Kwajalein, Guam, Wake Island, Luzon, Guadalcanal, Midway, and then the various Normandy beaches with names we invented and on into the low countries, France, etc., and North Africa, on up into Italy. We had maps on the walls at school with front lines moving up and back. Radio was all we had. Our only visual evidence was in newspapers and, when we could afford it, newsreels at the cinemas. All this news was filtered through so much—film had to be flown home (and censored) etc., so that by the time we got it, it was old news. There was no contact with ‘the other side’ so that what we learned of the Germans, Italians, and Japs—which really were the ‘evil axis’—was highly romanticized and subverted and twisted out of shape. I think I’ve made my point.
Today, we’re so immediately immersed into what’s happening NOW that we lose objectivity. We need and demand pictures and voices, such as last night’s fire fight. We never ask, “Do I need to know this?” or “Am I any better off for having immediate contact with men dying and cities being destroyed?” Worse, we don’t question whether all this needs to be happening. The comments of General Bob Scales of last night are taken for granted and become part of our history. I’m not saying that this is necessarily bad.
It is the history of the war, and it comes, not only from the American press—which carefully omits what it chooses not to reveal--but from many sources presented from their viewpoints. We even heard from Iraqi ministers and Arab news gatherers. Imagine listening to Himmler or Goebels or Tojo at the height of the push toward Berlin or the Battle of Midway! Ransacking the National Museum of Iraq was publicized almost as it happened. 170,000 treasures, dating back to 8,000 B.C., were stolen, a tragedy that might have become only a footnote under other circumstances. Maybe it’s no more than that now, but it shouldn’t have happened, could have been prevented, and I don’t know that I’m any better off for knowing it, horrified as I am. Theaters were looted. I was not aware of any theaters from when I was in Saudi Arabia, not in our sense of the term, so this news came as a surprise. But wars do that. I have somewhere in my basement a catalogue of the paintings by a man I met, a known artist of the 30’s and 40’s in Berlin, Max Pechstein. His son was a baby in a cradle in 1946 and would be in his 60’s by now—if he’s still around. “Verbrannt” is superimposed on many of the items in Pechstein’s catalog, pictures burned in the War. Multiply THAT by the number of artists’ works that will never be seen again.
If there is any benefit to be gained by all this immediacy, somehow I doubt that it will do anything to prevent wars. Already our sights are aimed at Syria whose occupation of Lebanon may attract the attention of the warmongers. The Beirut I knew is already in disarray, and places I frequented destroyed. The Teheran I so enjoyed is, at present, still only a twinkle in the warmongers’ eyes, but a country with oil is never far out of focus for the greedy. I suspect that our dalliance in Iraq will eventually translate into higher prices at the pump for us at home.
Bush often repeats the dangerous stereotype, “If they’re not for us, they’re against us.” That implies its corollary, “If they’re against us, kill them.” I should think that with all the immediacy of visual images of the horrors of war brought right into our living rooms, people would begin to ask, “What about diplomacy? What are our ambassadors doing?” And of course, “What ever happened to the basic tenets of Democracy upon which our nation was founded?.”
by Laurence W. Thomas |
