Remembering the Christmas Truce

"The ones who call the shots won't be among the dead and the lame.
And on each end of the rifle, we're the same."

The same in 2017 as in 1914.  Study, watch, read, listen, pray, and resist, from Veterans for Peace.

Christmas 2017: The Hopes and Fears of All the Years Are Met in Thee Tonight

We finally acknowledge the obvious: that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital.  This is nothing more, or less, than a recognition of reality.  It is also the right thing to do.  It’s something that has to be done. 

-Donald J. Trump, December 6 (Feast of Saint Nicholas), 2017

Pence’s Christmas Pilgrimage Is Canceled.  

-New York Times headline, December 20, 2017

***

“Why are you visiting Israel?” asked the young woman soldier at the Allenby Bridge crossing.

I gave my simple and rehearsed answer: “Religious pilgrimage.”  It was the spring of 2009.

“Are you planning to visit the West Bank?”

“No.”

My friend who worked in the West Bank and would help me get around the next ten days advised me to keep my answers kosher.  

            Religious pilgrimage.  That was also what I told my mom after I bought the plane ticket, and it was partially true—I did want to see some of the Jesus stuff.  However, I had been a student of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since college, and I was much more interested in that modern history than in the sometimes not historically accurate events of 2000 years ago.

            From otherwise gorgeous Mediterranean vistas, I saw with my own eyes how Israeli settlements (called “facts on the ground” by U.S. newspapers and politicians) spread for miles and ate up vast portions of land—always the most arable land, too, with access to water.  These settlements cut wide swaths inside the ‘67 borders, which most Palestinians have accepted as the borders of their future state, even if that future state is well less than half of historic Palestine.  Israel and Palestine are negotiating the division of a pizza, an unofficial tour guide explained, and meanwhile Israel is eating the pizza.  I appreciated his attempt to make us Americans understand, for if we do not understand history we at least understand eating too much.  

Curiosity, chance, and friends of my friend provided me the surreal occasion of playing volleyball on the Mount of Olives next to Mordechai Vanunu one evening during my trip.  The Mount of Olives I knew from years of Catholic education and Catholic sometimes-Bible-reading.  Mordechai Vanunu I did not know.  I learned later that evening that Vanunu had spent eighteen years in Israeli prison—more than 10 years of that sentence in solitary confinement—for whistleblowing to the world in 1986 that Israel possessed nuclear weapons.  I remember he moved in quick spurts on the court, he frequently used his shin to keep the ball in play, and he wore cargo pants.  More importantly, I remember a piece of advice that he delivered enthusiastically to the whole group.  It was a farewell party for an American activist-humanitarian couple, whose visas the Israeli government would not renew.  Palestinian, Israeli, American, and European friends alike toasted this couple, who were deeply disappointed that their service in the West Bank was coming to an unexpectedly quick end.  Mordechai got the last word, though.  He knew some things about hope and resistance.  “You have been here fighting the occupation.  But now and perhaps more importantly, as Americans, you must go home to fight the second occupation: the Israeli lobby’s occupation of the U.S. Congress!”  (Translation: A. “the Israeli occupation is enabled by the billions of dollars in U.S. aid every year and by vetoing UN resolutions; fix that”; B. “No matter your issue, fight where you have the most agency.”)

I visited the separation wall.  It’s hard not to.  It winds and imposes everywhere. I passed through the Qalandiya checkpoint.  I stopped by the Dheisheh refugee camp.  And, I walked down the eeriest emblem of the occupation: Shuhada Street in Hebron.  My U.S. passport meant that I could pass through these regions fairly easily, with the privilege of a poverty-tourist.  My U.S. passport also, Vanunu would hint, meant that I was complicit. 

Fight where you have agency.  Even if you do not have agency, fight nevertheless. 

A couple years after that pilgrimage-of-sorts, I met Cy Swartz.  Cy and his wife Lois were founding members of Bubbies and Zeydes for Peace, a small group of older Philadelphia-area Jews who advocated on behalf of Palestinian rights and held weekly vigils outside the Israeli consulate decrying the occupation of Palestine.  Area Quakers, Catholic Workers, atheists, and Penn and Temple students alike would join them.  

Cy died at the end of this summer.  I didn’t know him very well—we had only spent about ten hours together over the course of three years—but he taught me a lot by his fidelity and his grace.  He knew how to receive with a smile an angry middle finger from a passing motorist.  He knew how to show warmth to someone who yelled “ignorant asshole” at him.  When I received my first “out of my way, shithead” from an angry Philadelphian (I was not really in the way, for the record), I became flustered and then embarrassed at my sudden lack of courage and conviction.  Cy assured me with a chuckle and a quip that the not-so-gentleman must have had an important lunch date.  Cy had been standing outside of the consulate for years and had received death threats—and then the requisite police protection—in the earlier years, when criticism of Israel was even less popular.           

At the end of every vigil, Cy would gather us together in a circle and hold up a loaf of bread he brought.  The group would sing a simple tune of peace first in Hebrew, then in Arabic, and finally in English. He would break the bread and pass it along, for each of us to consume and pass along until it completed the circle.  I recall fondly those informal eucharists at 20th and JFK, more meaningful than most formal Eucharists I’ve been to.  Cy and Lois knew about hope and resistance.   

***

            It has been a bleak advent, as the horror show of the Trump presidency drags on.  This new illiterate Caesar, who didn't even know Israel was in the Middle East gives carte blanche to Netanyahu, his beloved new Herod.  “It’s something that has to be done.”  Meanwhile, on the domestic front, in an alternative ending to A Christmas Carol, real-estate Scrooge really sticks it to the Cratchits all the while telling them that this “big, beautiful” tax cut is for them.  In a sickening, dishonest display, Scrooge’s oligarchic friends-of-convenience in Congress lavish him with praise for his “leadership.”

 Mike Pence stood with Christian-Zionist dreams in his faux-steely eyes as Trump made his Jerusalem announcement.  But, Mike Pence has had to cancel his trip to Bethlehem.  He and the white American imperial Christianity he is the face of could not possibly understand the story of Bethlehem—the Bethlehem of today and that of 2000 years ago. Religious pilgrimages and religious ceremonies and religious stories are empty and self-serving when they do not connect to the present.

 “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”

Bethlehem teaches us about hope and resistance.  We do not condone violence, but we support a people’s right to resist nonviolently.  Most Palestinian resistors have been practicing nonviolence consistently for the past thirty years even though you would not know it from most U.S. media which only highlights the violence.      

Mordechai Vanunu, Cy and Lois Swartz, Palestinians resisting in the West Bank and their Israeli allies.  These are the people that understand the Nativity.

And, Chelsea Manning and all whistleblowers.  And all transgender people living proudly in defiance of the Mike Pences of the world.  Tarana Burke and all #metoo women, from the famous to the farmworkers.  DREAMers.  Peace activists, conscientious objectors, and good military people still in and ready to disobey unlawful orders.  Saudi women gaining the right to drive, if not much else.  Working people, with two to three jobs, organizing instead of giving in to Trump’s racialized southern strategy.  Standing Rock.  People battling cancer, even as their health care is wrested from them.  The People’s Organization for Progress on their 99th consecutive “Justice Monday” in Newark (photos below).  Those police officers in Newark and elsewhere who protect our first amendment rights and serve us well and who do not see calls for police reform as personal affronts.  The Mennonite farmers near Lancaster we visited last week who have lived on the land for generations, new young urban farmers trying to get healthy food to city kids, and suburban horticulturalists cultivating their own gardens in between.  Parents trying to raise kids and take care of their own dying parents.  These countless people living with dignity—the leaven, the mustard seeds—in an undignified time.  From Bethlehem, Palestine to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and all the little towns of Bethlehem in between.  Fighting where they have agency and even when they have none. All these people are the shepherds.  These are the wise (wo)men.  These are the friendly beasts around the manger.  These are the lights in the darkness.  These are the reasons to believe and the reasons to resist and persist.  

It is an undignified time indeed, yet still....

“The Risk of Birth, An Advent Poem”

This is no time for a child to be born,
With the earth betrayed by war & hate
And a comet slashing the sky to warn
That time runs out & the sun burns late.

That was no time for a child to be born,
In a land in the crushing grip of Rome;
Honour & truth were trampled by scorn–
Yet here did the Saviour make his home.

When is the time for love to be born?
The inn is full on the planet earth,
And by a comet the sky is torn–
Yet Love still takes the risk of birth.

Madeleine L'Engle, 1973     

      

"Where Does It Hurt?": Charlottesville, Barcelona, and Trump

In the past several months, I have been piecing together some thoughts on both the spiritual danger of hating the President, while necessarily resisting his policies, and the importance of cultivating empathy for him, even though he shows no empathy to anyone else.  I have found myself hating him and taking a very dualistic approach towards him and his supporters, with little empathy for them.  I will have to return and continue those semi-original thoughts, now with more fodder, as this past week has given us Charlottesville, Barcelona, and the ignorant responses of Trump to both attacks. 
What the attacker and the white supremacist marchers in Charlottesville, what the attackers in Spain, what Donald Trump, and what even many of us on our most puritanical days have in common is: a lack of love, a lack of wisdom, and an inability to inhabit gray spaces.  With that, I share the following pieces.  Only two are strictly related to this past week, but all speak to some degree to this interior life, or lack thereof.
A. Life After Hate, full interview with former white supremacist, on Democracy Now! (1 hour, 7 minutes)
B. Where Does It Hurt? full interview with Ruby Sales, from On Being (52 minutes)
C. Living in Deep Time, full interview with Richard Rohr, from On Being (52 minutes)
D. I Voted for Trump. And I Sorely Regret It. Julius Krein, op-ed contributor, New York Times 
E. And James Baldwin gets the final, brief word. (2 minutes)

Nagasaki: 72 years ago today

"The most racist, nastiest act by this country, after human slavery, was the bombing of Nagasaki," Kurt Vonnegut once wrote.  
And now, how horribly fitting that Donald Trump speaks of "fire and fury" upon North Korea in between Sunday and today, i.e. in between the two anniversaries.  How absolutely reckless.
Stop this reckless child. 

Hiroshima: 72 years ago today

72 years ago today, the United States used the world's first ever nuclear weapon.  The "Enola Gay" gave birth to her "little boy" in the skies above Hiroshima, in what could be described as the anti-Nativity. Meanwhile, 72 years later, we build and stockpile more "little boys" and "fat men."  Write a letter to the editor: We don't want another nuclear catastrophe. 
As the people of Hiroshima teach us and Wendell Berry wrote, we must "practice resurrection."   

Assumed the Watch, revisited (2): Okinawa

While onboard the USS Cowpens, forward-deployed out of Yokusuka, Japan, I had the opportunity to visit Okinawa twice.  The first time was uneventful.  I recall going out into town with fellow officers, drinking a lot of beer, singing karaoke poorly, and drawing attention to ourselves on the streets—not a scene per se but loud enough to be obnoxious and attract stares from locals.  That was par, though.  The next morning, we ate a tremendous Sunday brunch (with subsidized prices) at the Air Force officers' club.  The second time involved more drama.  While we were out to sea, a sailor from our ship who had previously deserted stabbed and killed a Japanese taxicab driver.  News had been released that the suspect was a Cowpens sailor and that the Cowpens was pulling into Okinawa that weekend (Good Friday and Easter weekend, no less).  While the crime occurred on Honshu, the main island of Japan, and not in Okinawa, Okinawans were no strangers to crime committed by U.S. military personnel.  We were restricted to the base that weekend, but a little murder/international incident did not stop the crew from enjoying two nights of revelry at the base club.

The latter example is dramatic, and one might argue that we should only blame the "few bad apples."  But, both instances are emblematic of American-style imperialism in the 21^st century: we take for granted that we should and will be “over there,” if we even think about it at all; we get on with our normal American lives; and we don't know anything about the people whose land our bases occupy. 

What did the Europeans say about American GIs after World War II?  "Oversexed, overpaid, overfed, and over here."  That seems apt.

Despite these two visits and despite my being a history teacher and peace activist, I have remained embarrassingly ignorant of Okinawa.  For instance, I obviously know of American neo-colonialism because I partook in it, but I did not know much about the earlier Japanese colonialism.  I just assumed Okinawa was always part of Japan.  Asian is Asian is Asian, to the American officers at the brunch and the golf course. 

With that in mind, I share two relevant stories on Okinawa: first, a eulogy for former governor Masahide Ota by Veterans for Peace and The Japan Times; and second, an article on the ongoing anti-imperialist struggle on the island.

 

 

Appetite for War

More on the making for war in Iran, by Vijay Prishad.

Stop the Impending War with Iran

Like the war in Iraq in 2003 had been in the works for years before it happened, war in Iran has been in the works for decades.  Now, enter Trump.  The Mask Is Off, as Trita Parsi writes.

The 2015 Iran nuclear deal, while not perfect, was a crowning achievement of the Obama administration and of the other countries involved, to include Iran.  Our Democratic senator, Bob Menendez, by the way, voted against the agreement, as did fellow Democratic Senators Joe Manchin (WV), Ben Cardin (MD), and the minority leader Chuck Schumer (NY).  So did our Democratic Congressman, Albio Sires.  Contact them: vis-a-vis Trump in the White House, where do these Democrats stand now?  

Protect the agreement.  Stand for peace!

Close US Foreign Military Bases

Say No to Foreign Bases.

Peace in the Post-Christian Era

Thomas Merton, 1968, from The Inner Experience, published in 2003:

The sense of sin is therefore something far deeper and more urgent than the prurient feeling of naughtiness which most pious people have trained themselves to experience when they violate the taboos of their sect. There is something scandalous about the religiosity of popular piety. All the empty gestures of people who do not do good and avoid evil, but make signs of the good, go through gesticulations which symbolize good intentions, and allay their guilt feelings with appropriate grimaces of piety. All these gestures are performed with scrupulous fidelity and accompanied with the right degree of optimism about God and humanity, but at the same time the most terrible of crimes are accepted without a tremor because they are, after all, collective. Take, for instance, the willingness of the majority of “believers” to accept the hydrogen bomb, with all that it implies, with no more than a shadow of theoretical protest. This is almost unbelievable, and yet it has become so commonplace that no one wonders at it anymore. The state of the world at the present day is the clearest possible indication that the whole human race is full of sin—for which responsibility becomes more and more collective and therefore more and more nebulous.

It has been remarked that the more totalitarian a society is, for example that of Russia or of Hitler’s Germany, the less its members feel any sense of sin. They can commit any evil without remorse as long as they feel they are acting as members of their collectivity. The only evil they fear is to be cut off from the community that takes their sins upon itself and “destroys” them. This is the worst of disasters, and the slightest indication of disunion with the group is the cause of anxiety and guilt.

This is the way our world is going, and in such a world the spirit and the spiritual have no more meaning because the person has no meaning. But it is the vocation and mission of the contemplative to keep alive the spirit of humanity, and to nurture, at least in oneself, personal responsibility before God and personal independence from collective irresponsibility.

Merton's once-censored Peace in the Post-Christian Era shares similar poignant observations on collective responsibility.  

Assumed the Watch, revisited (1)

In June 2008, I finished my eighteen-month tour on the USS Cowpens and thus reached my minimum service obligation of four years in the United States Navy.  I resigned my commission, separated from the navy, and moved to Canada a couple months later to start graduate school at the University of Toronto.   During that year in Toronto, when I had free time, I pulled together some disjointed stories and musings from my previous four years in the navy.  By the summer of 2009, they all came together in a self-published book, Assumed the Watch. Moored as Before. (An Alternative Naval Officer’s Guide).

            Eight years later, when I occasionally reflect back on both the navy and the book, I harbor no real regrets.  True, I could have left out one or two of the more superfluous penis jokes and references.  I probably could have weaved some of the stories into a better cohesive whole.  And, it probably could have been less bitter or angry.  That is, if I were to have written a book about my time in the navy (2004-2008) now, it would look a lot different from the one I wrote.  Yet in 2009, after Toronto, I was on my way to Uganda for a year-and-a-half volunteer teacher program.  One of my closest navy friends encouraged me to get the book out sooner rather than later, to capture the bitter me in the bitter moment, especially before I became too “peacey-lovey” in Uganda.  And so I did: I tried to capture an honest, bitter moment, and I’m glad I did.  

All in all then, I am proud of the book.  Short of bringing down the entire U.S. Navy, it accomplished what I wanted it to do: it was fun to write; it exorcised some of my demons; it made a handful of officers and sailors still out in the navy laugh and even cry; and it eventually broke even and, somehow, still brings in a couple dollars of royalties once in awhile.  

In Assumed the Watch, I do not paint life in the navy as a surface warfare officer (SWO) in a good light.  And by sharing all of my reactions to that life, I admittedly do not paint myself in a good light either.  John Wheelwright, the narrator in John Irving’s beautiful A Prayer for Owen Meany, reflects on his move to Canada during the Vietnam era: “But I didn’t come to Canada to be a smart-ass American….  I didn’t want to be one of those people who are critical of everything.”  He, predictably, had become “one of those people.”  I went to Canada in a different time and for different reasons, but by many accounts, I was the smart-ass American that he described.  I was critical and complained of many things, both American and non-American.  This comes out in the pages of Assumed the Watch.  There are positive reviews of the book on Amazon and elsewhere.  But, there are certainly negative reviews as well and some reviews in between.  Among the mixed reviews, these two are my favorite:

A shockingly accurate yet incredibly whiny and negative view of life in the surface navy.

I am in the Navy but luckily not a SWO.  [SWO’s] are miserable and yes they do like it that way. It is just the culture. LT Fitzgibbons didn't like the Navy, but the Navy is not about liking it is about serving. I only fear Mr. Fitzgibbons will find himself as bored in the corporate world as he did in the Navy. Hopefully he finds a job crab fishing or smoke jumping I don't think he can hack the 9-5 world either.

All through high school, I never got in trouble.  I never argued with my parents.  I dutifully did any schoolwork or housework asked of me.  It appears, then, that I had saved my teenage angst for my early-to-mid twenties and for my respective commanding officers.  I was, at times, a little shit.  If the now-high-school-teacher-I was in charge of the then-sophomoric-me, especially on my first ship, I would have tired quickly of my attitude.  Thus, I am thankful that my captains went easier on me than they could have or perhaps should have.

None of this is to absolve Uncle Sam, John Paul Jones, or Commodore Barry of any malfeasance on their part that led to our divorce in 2008.  But almost ten years later, I recognize my own role in the matter.

When I wrote the very first draft of Assumed the Watch, it was much longer.  It contained a second half which attempted to summarize, theologize, and philosophize away not only the surface navy but the need for all wars, ever—past, present, and future.  Fresh out of the navy, I had embraced pacifism, and I felt like I had to make the case for it there and then, or never.  When I sent the first draft to my friend Weston, who had served in the navy and was in the army at the time, he told me he really enjoyed the first half of the book.  However, he didn’t like the second half.  Not necessarily because he disagreed with all of it.  But rather, I was in over my head and trying to do much.  I was more effective in what I didn’t say—stick to the stories—he said.  He was right, and I lopped off the second half.

After President Trump has fired Tomahawk cruise missiles to Syria—or was it Iraq?—while eating “the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake,” I now feel compelled to revisit some of the more explicitly anti-war sentiments from the original draft.  Much of the popular U.S. media, which had been relentless in their criticism of Trump since his inauguration, now fawned over the new president and his missiles.  This was his first “presidential” act, many commentators applauded.  MSNBC’s Brian Williams went so far as to, oddly, describe “beautiful” images of the ships firing the missiles.  Was he speaking of the missiles themselves?  Of the gray ships illuminated at night?  Or, the smoothness of the operation, at least seen from this end?

That is not to pick on Williams alone.  He and we are part of a larger current.  More than 70 years ago, Orwell wrote, “Political language—and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists—is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”  Sleek missiles fired from sleek gray ships intoxicate Americans of all stripes and parties.  It seems respectable.  As for the other end of the missile, which we rarely see, the powerful have fed us phrases suitable for our palate: collateral damage, enemy combatants, extraordinary renditions, and enhanced interrogation techniques.  We mindlessly accept the language and in turn do our own sanitizing and euphemizing.       

Those Tomahawk cruise missiles—and the ones before and the ones since—came from navy warships similar to one I served on.  In fact, in 2003, three and a half years before I reported on board, the USS Cowpens fired thirty-seven missiles in the initial “shock and awe” devastation in Iraq.

In 2003, while the Cowpens fired those missiles, I was studying abroad in Cairo as an undergrad and as an inconspicuous ROTC midshipman.  Watching the Iraq invasion unfold from the center of the Arab world necessarily colored my view of the war, and from then, March of 2003 would forever color my political worldview.  And so, when I took the oath of office in 2004 and was commissioned an Ensign in the navy, I said aloud with my right hand raised that I had no “mental reservation or purpose of evasion.”  While I took that oath freely and while I did not have any purpose of evasion, I certainly had mental reservation.  What would I be asked to do?  Would I have to participate in what I believed was an unjust war?  With modern weaponry, can any war be just?  And even if I was not directly involved in that or any war, did my being part of the institution nevertheless equate with guilt and complicity?     

Assumed the Watch, without that second, moralizing half of the book, attempted to describe the boredom and the bureaucracy of the navy: fudging spreadsheets; counting bullets; painting and re-painting the hull; circling with the carrier in the Pacific for weeks at a time; sweeping; inspecting and preparing for inspections; and more sweeping.  Some degree of bureaucracy and non-glamorous work, I’ve learned since, is part of life in any institution.  And, toxicity can exist in any work environment, military or civilian, to be sure.  Yet, lurking behind my mundane, soul-crushing paperwork was some larger soul seeking.  Behind our carelessly vulgar and often dehumanizing everyday language were some essential human questions.  That is, I no longer believed in the mission of the United States Navy, and in particular instances and particular places, I found that mission to be explicitly immoral.

In 1951, W. H. Auden wrote a poem entitled “Fleet Visit,” which seems like it was written specifically for the USS Pelican or the USS Cowpens.   In it, he feels bad for the sailors who come ashore, “mild-looking middle-class boys,” who are victims to some larger social forces.  But, I think he gives us too much credit when he says, “No wonder they get drunk.”  I can’t attribute my fake suicide notes, my going AWOL for a concert, or my drinking copious amounts of cheap beer most weekends, for instance, to some connection or disconnection from any “Social Beast” that Auden names.  All of my shenanigans did not stem from a larger moral and existential crisis.  But, I nevertheless navigated through a moral and existential crisis.      

            My “war story” is fairly clean and normal.   Because of that, it is no story of real war, and for that, I am grateful.  I have my life, my limbs, and my wits.  I never felt real danger in those four years, and I thankfully never had a comrade or friend killed in war.  Given the choice between navy war games in the Pacific and Marine wars in Fallujah, I still would go with the navy war games every day.   Whether it was in Cairo as a student, in Bahrain as a newly minted Ensign, or on the Cowpens after it had fired those missiles, I was always several degrees removed from the action.  Thus, my war story is neither Ron Kovic’s Born on the Fourth of July on one hand nor Chris Kyle’s American Sniper on the other.  But precisely because my war story is so normal, so clean, and frankly so removed, I believe it is worth sharing or, rather, sharing again in a different light.  

In theory, uniformed military members take orders from a civilian commander-in-chief and civilian cabinet members and advisors; that commander-in-chief must seek a declaration of war, or now at least some type of “resolution,” from Congress; furthermore, both that commander-in-chief and those members of Congress purchase the hardware for any war; but both that commander-in-chief and those members of Congress serve at the pleasure of the citizens of the United States, who elect them.  And so in theory, the citizens of this country have a say in foreign and military policy.  Yet, so many of us have outsourced our critical thinking on these matters.  The decision-makers have given us the clean images and the clean language of war.  In turn, we have given them our consent.  We are, for the most part, neither a check nor a balance on their decision-making.  

Most Americans do not view war from the vantage point of Ron Kovic or Chris Kyle, even after we have read their books.  Let alone from the vantage point of the Vietnamese or the Iraqis.  Many Americans choose not to view war at all or do not even know we’re at war, which is a luxury, because it all happens “over there.”  If we do indeed view it, it is filtered through our cable news channels of choice.  The closest we get to it is those “beautiful” missile videos from the foc’sle of the USS Porter and the foc’sle of the USS Ross this past April 7.  And this goes for a great number of military members, too.  The closest we get to the action is the air-conditioned “combat information center” on the USS Cowpens—the dark, blue-lit room with all the radars like you see on the movies—where actual armchair warriors preside.      

None of this is to argue that all civilians and current military members not on a front line should sign up for the infantry.  Nor that you have to do so in order to state an opinion on a war or on war in general.  I think the fewer people exposed to direct violence the better.  Nor is this to argue that Bashar al-Assad is a good man, as we use the missile attacks on Syria as an illustration.  Nor that all use of force—in Syria or elsewhere by every actor always—is a priori wrong.  While I hold a presumption against war, I am in the end not a pacifist.  But, these issues cost lives, and therefore they merit debate.  There is little to no debate in the United States of America about war.

“Mild-looking middle-class boys” and girls grow up with an easy and simplistic patriotism.  This patriotism prefers slogans to critical thinking.  It demands flag-pins and support-the-troops car magnets over sacrifice and responsibility.  Its images of war are beautiful missiles that, by definition of nation of origin, are morally justified.  That patriotism, combined with an endless supply of consumer goods, makes for a deluded and distracted public that acquiesces in endless war.    

I am thankful that I was not on the Cowpens when it fired those 37 missiles; I am thankful that I am not currently on the Porter or the Ross; but my own non-explicit involvement makes little difference to the people on the other end of those missiles.  The fudging spreadsheets, the counting bullets, the painting and re-painting of the hull, the circling with the carrier in the Pacific for weeks at a time, the sweeping, and the inspecting and preparing for inspections has all been for those missile moments.  All that bureaucracy eventually kills, as it has killed before.  That is its mission after all.  Are we okay with that?  Some say “yes,” but I doubt most of us have really thought about it.  Thus, the mission proceeds with easy patriotism’s blessings.  This is the normal war story—the normal, clean, and removed war—that we are a part of, and the story continues.  It is a strange and latent militarism that we possess.  We receive it very early on in our lives, and it all appears so normal.  

“In a free society,” said Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, “some are guilty, but all are responsible.”  With that spirit and in this little corner of the internet, I revisit the USS Pelican and the USS Cowpens.  This is a longer series that I will for the moment call, “Assumed the Watch, revisited.”  I will post new parts here and simultaneously compile them on the page labeled as such.  Perhaps we can exorcise some other demons.  I will do my best to stick to the stories.