Playing Dominoes With History

I've been spending the morning listening to the web cast of Neil Young's new album, "Living With War," thinking back upon that awful row of dominoes that got us here to this point in time and space; back to those months after 9-11, sitting in the drug store cafe on Brady Street reading the reports leaked from the Pentagon on plans to invade Iraq, wondering to myself if it was just contingency plans, an awful joke, or if something more dark and menacing was on the horizon. But why take the eyes off Osama; why invade Russia, especially after Napoleon had gone down in flames?

Then came the big flight over the ocean and reading of the march to war from a computer in a little Czech library, everything so completely incomprehensible, nothing adding up--the saber-rattling soon to turn to lightning war ending in quicksand.

And then a few nights before the fireworks let loose, sitting in a Irish Bar in Karlovy Vary, young men sitting a table away wearing gas masks, Ïn case Saddam attacks first," they said jokingly. But no amount of whiskey could drowned that awful knowledge that fools across the globe were at the helm, and we were all at their mercy.

Then the morning dawned when I had to walk into my classroom and say something to my kids, who were only beginning speakers of the English language anyway. My country had just started a war. And I didn't buy the fairy tales that Uncle Rummy was telling anyway; I knew the bastards' heads had been cloudy by the most powerful opiate know the Man--hubris. We would be there a long time, and that it would change everything. I looked into their young eyes, all expectantly looking up to me. What could I say? I was the only American they knew, the sole representative of my country. And this was the hard reality that I had to come to grips with, that as much as I hated talking on behalf of anyone or anything besides myself, I was still "the American," and I had to answer for the actions of the country I had been raised in. I did not defend anyone, and I did not pin the tail of blame on any jackass (though I suspect in any world capital you can walk blindfolded in any direction and successfully hit your target). All I said was that, "This is an awful day. A war has begun." Unlike their elders who had seen war and oppression close up, both at the hands of the Nazis and the Russians, all these kids knew were the promises of the post-Cold War world. But looking into their eyes that morning, I could see the sad sense of comprehension that most, if not all, felt. War does not know good or bad, right or wrong, guilty or innocent. The bullet and the missile does not distinguish between ideologies. There are only those lucky enough to make it through the metallic hale, and those cut to bloody shreds. Somehow these children tucked away in western Bohemia could sense the demon box about to be opened upon the Persian Gulf, Pandora never looking back.

And so here I sit, April 28th of 2006, Iraq still a black hole, the tide turning against Bush (but so what?), and Iran comfortable enough to thumb its nose at the world. I take it all in, I see the pieces of the puzzle in its whole, and I am left infuriated with a dumb, futile sense of frustration. The question that starts as a whisper then raises above the din of war and lies--How in God's name did such a pack of terminally insane, two-faced, spineless jellyfish come to run this world? What man on the street would have anything to do with a nuclear missile, or use God's name (irregardless of the God) as a battle call? And yet, we elevate these criminally insane demagogues to the level of emperors. Dismantle the empire? Have everyman be a nation, a republic of the individual, with equality and fraternity towards all?

What do you do in the face of that, knowing that all our fates rest in the hands of such men? It would be funny if it weren't true, but it is. The Button in the hands of children, and the curtain can fall at any time. So drink up your wine before closing time and gaze at the night's sky. And keep praying whatever prayer it is that soothes your soul in the middle of the night. As long as you can hear your voice, you know your still here and breathing and there still might be some morning light to pull you through to tomorrow.