I'm not quite sure how to post a diary entry here, as this is my very first one. While I have lurked this site extensively, I've never posted more than a comment, and I only recently became a member/subscriber/victim/participant.
There is something I have to say, however, and it relates to where I'm from and where we're going, it seems. Last night I tucked my daughter in and I sang her "Yesterday" by the Beatles, and caught myself tearing up at the line "...I'm not half the man I used to be. There's a shadow hanging over me..."
The shadow is war. But not just this little stupid dust-up in Iraq we've bungled for a few years. Not the forgotten Afghanistan 'reverse all accomplishments crusade'. No, what I've been thinking about is the war we're heading into, the war against Iran and Islam.
We all know the undercurrents, I suppose, the PNAC manifesto that has us remaking the Middle East and sending our armies to that land where so many other Imperial armies have ground down to dust throughout the centuries. Like Hezbollah, the Iranians after being so many times bested, occupied and conquered will say, "we are still here". When we are done.
Unless of course, we nuke them, which we've been contemplating. I grew up under the shadow of the atom bomb, and only for a very brief time was that shadow lifted from me. After the Berlin Wall came down we made peace with our enemies, beat our spears into plowshares under Clinton (or at least briefly cut spear production), and I dreamed that my children would grow up free from the threat of nuclear extinction.
Understand, I'm not afraid of an Iranian bomb. Even if they make one, they won't use it. I'm confident of that as a student of human nature, as a friend of many middle-easterners and as a student of politics and history. Weak states do not commit suicide; which is what using the bomb would be for Iran, and they well know it. If they make one its purpose will be to keep us from attacking them, deterrence.
No, the atomic destruction I fear will be at OUR hands. I fear that the present call for an attack on Iran may very well be nuclear, based on our military mens' use of language such as "precise nuclear weapons" or "small yield" nuclear weapons...
It is not that I, sitting here in Lubbock, Texas fear that my children will be "nuked". That is ludicrous, and so many things would have to fall apart before that became even a remote possibility, that I should worry about them being hit by lightning more.
No, what I fear is the death of our soul as Americans. We used to be AFRAID of the atom bomb. Now we think of it as just another weapon system. We used to respect the diversity of other cultures and strive to understand them. Now we despise them.
What prompted this introspective turn? I heard G Gordon Liddy on a radio program ask the question: "Can a person be both a good moslem and a good American?" His answer was no. I heard Sean Hannity call Islam a "violent religion", and I heard Rush Limbaugh berate some "liberal" for "humanizing" our Islamic enemies (God humanized them! I yelled at the radio). And a hundred times I've heard "Islamic Fascist, Muslim Extremist, Jihaddi" and the like. Forget the similarities between these things and Nazi propaganda. Forget the broad unfairness of them. Forget that we are teaching hatred.
Think for a moment of what they portend. These things we hear are a wind blown from the fire of apocalypse. We people, of whatever culture and time, dehumanize our human prey before we annihilate them.
The sound of dehumanization precedes the sound of murder. Murder is the shadow hanging over me, the stain of murder being committed by the people who stand for me on the world stage.
And this is why I cry.