Friday, April 8, 2011

The Fox And The Hedgehog

THE FOX AND THE HEDGEHOG: A Discourse on Liberties and Deaths, versus "Serving in A Rack." A Musing on Staying Alive.

"The Fox knows many things; the Hedgehog knows one big thing.”
Hesiod, according to the 20th Century philosopher, Isaiah Berlin, said that there are two concepts of liberty, one complicated, the other simple. The former, which Berlin termed "Negative," begins with deep roots, emerges into the light with a hardened trunk, branches out in every direction, sends off twigs that eventually sprout countless leaves. The leaves are expendable,: they die, they fall, become compost and are forgotten. Such a leaf was Pfc. Luis A. Perez.

Perez died in August '04, in Fallujah, Iraq from injuries sustained when his truck was destroyed by an I.E.D. Perez came from a small upstate New York Hamlet, near Lake Ontario, close to Fort Drum. He was in Iraq as a member of the Army Reserves (223d Transportation Co., Norristown, PA) He was 19-years-old.

Perez left a young wife and a family that loved him. That year, he missed the Labor Day weekend, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, Valentine's Day, Easter, his 20th Birthday, the July Fourth weekend, and, now, the cycle will go on forever.

We were namesakes. We lived close by, but we weren't related, at least I don't think so in any way other than we were brother human beings. So, what's my beef? There have been 4000+ other combat deaths, in Iraq, since, then president, George le Fou, a member in good standing of the Laccopluti, declared War and Victory almost a year and a half ago. He is only a 1/4000th part of the catastrophe. Like the others, he was a hero in death, but had he planned on being a hero before he was killed? That's a stretch. When one plans to be a hero, they join the active Army's Infantry, Armor and Artillery corps. They volunteer to go Airborne. Volunteer again to go to Ranger School, and then volunteer once more for the Special Forces, Delta Team...the Daisey Chain and the Grave (The last six words were lifted from Alan Ginsberg's "Howl").

My point? I don't think, at 19, he had any intention of being a dead hero which is not meant to disparage his contribution to the war effort or on a greater level to America. At 19, a young man is thinking about his future, a job, college, girls and girls and, then, the right girl. One enlists in the reserves to serve the Country, get a little extra pocket cash, respect from the community in which he lives and money for college. I don't think that he expected to die.

We, my family of Perezes, have been an Army family since the first World War. I've often stated it, but I don't mind repeating it, my father was a real "V" for Valor hero. I was in the Army, too, heh heh. Like I said my Dad was a bona fide hero and while, geneticists will tell you, that kind of stuff skips a generation, cynicism, we all know is an acquired trait.

"I serve the Lord of Battle and the Muses too;
for I recognize the beauty of their gift."(Ibid)


Many a day (and night) I got to hear him-- and others-- relate their war experiences, while I sat on the footrail under the bars of countless VFW saloons, wiping off the beer from my head that spilled over. So, I can attest to his courage and valor. One footnote: in the town square of Adjuntas, Puerto Rico, there is a statute commemorating one of my granduncles for his service in World War I. Seeing as the U.S. Congress had just passed the "Jones Act" in 1917, making Puerto Ricans U.S. Citizens, therefore eligible to fight in all U.S. Wars, he must have felt strongly about the need of stopping young Kaiser Wilhelm II. It boggles the imagination.

One of my sons served in the Army Reserves, neatly, between Persian Gulf Lunacy I and Persian Gulf Lunacy II.. There was no war going on, so, for the both of us, there was no problem. Had there been a war, however, there would have been a lot of tension. Skipping to Canada would have been out of the question. Neither of us likes the cold. Eh? Most importantly, we believe in the inviolability and sacredness of the "Contract." Further, neither of us could ever reconcile the thought of desertion, maybe a little late for Reveille because of too much Revelry the night before, but never desertion. Fortunately, I never had to come up with an alternative Patriotic Plan.

It's odd how that word "Patriot" comes up a lot these days. Before 9/11 and our not-too-well thought out reaction, Patriots were those guys that huddled together for warmth from 1776 -to- 1783. More recently, and I like the name application a lot better, it's the name of a football team from Foxsboro.

Okay, I'll say it once more: Pfc Luis A. Perez died in Falluja, August 2004, and I don't think he should have. Because of that, I will always feel a little guilty when I eat a piece of apple pie, drink a fine Bordeaux or kiss my kids.

"No one in the city honors the dead or even
mentions them. Alive we prefer to court the living.
Nothing good can be said for being dead." (Ibid)

A Few Thoughts about "SERVING "IN A RACK!"

The second concept of liberty, which Berlin called "Positive" is simple and goes directly to the core of what is historically inevitable, albeit, the truth..

I have been thinking about sedition, recently. Don't get me wrong, I'm not planning to be seditious: I love my country and its people too much for that. It's true that, sometimes, I become very exasperated with my countrymen, especially when they behave like children who, after having been warned not to lean out of an open window for the 50th time, do it, again, anyway.

I hate dragging out old horses like the Spanish-American philosopher, George Santayana, who warned all of us that if we do not learn from the mistakes in history, "We are doomed to repeat its failures."

My mind has been wandering toward the Espionage and Sedition Act of 2001. Scratch that. I meant "Patriot" Act of 2001. Old Woody Wilson would have mused that an Espionage and Sedition Act by any other name smells as pungent as cow manure in the July noon-day sun. I searched around: he didn't say it. So, I Wood-y.

Had I been around in 1912, I would have voted for Teddy Roosevelt, hands down. He was a man who understood the nuances of Realpolitik and a staunch conservationist who gave the Nation the National Park System.

The problem with the Espionage and Sedition Acts (1917) for me, however, is that they essentially eviscerated the First Amendment. One could receive 20 years for saying, writing (woops), or printing anything "disloyal, profane, scurrilous or abusive" about the American form of government, the Constitution or the armed forces.

The producer who made the film, "The Spirit of Seventy-six," received a ten-year sentence because his film risked stirring sentiment against the British.

It was against the law to say that war went against the teachings of Christ. (The Administration and the Congress of 2001 missed this one... or, did they?) I may be in trouble there, too. I have to go back and reread the Act.

When September 11th happened, I was in Europe. I learned almost simultaneously with the rest of the country what had just occurred. First, from the internet page of the NYT that seemed like a faux version of itself, then, from the Poughkeepsie Journal which was not subject to the same power and communications outages. It was surreal. I can not claim to have suffered more of a psychological blow than other New Yorkers (Americans), but from my window on West 12th Street, as I am wont to tell people, I watched, daily, as the towers were being built. My son, his mother and I would bike down to the building site and check it out, up close. When finished, we used to go up to the top, regularly, and scan the horizon. It was all a very personal experience for me as a denizen of Greenwich Village and as a New Yorker. So, I took it very personally, when a bunch of psychopathic zealots took them down.

My reaction was similar to most other Americans: anger and rage, and what follows, a desire for revenge. I wanted those responsible for the misdeeds of September 11th, dead and buried-- not just once, but 3,000 times for as many of us who perished that day. That feeling remained until the Twits started coming out of the cellar waving the flag. It was a signal for me that it was a good time to tredwater and think

I am old enough to have remembered when the two American destroyers, the Maddox and the Turner Joy were reported to have been attacked by the North Vietnamese Navy on August 2nd and 4th, 1964. I was enraged by the thought that peaceful American sailors at sea, going about their regular duties, would be attacked by a sneaky foe. It smelled of Pearl Harbor all over again. By August 7th, however, while the U.S. Senate was falling over itself to rush out the "Gulf of Tonkin" Resolution (98-2), I was already having misgivings. I began asking myself what kind of fanatical superpower, which I knew the government of North Vietnam was not, would attack two American warships with err, gun boats? Something was beginning to smell rotten and, as we learned much later, what was stewing in the noon-day-sun, was not the truth.

That patriotic rush of 7 August 1964, absurd as it now seems, led to over 55,000 American servicemen and women losing their lives and another 250,000 becoming casualties in what became the longest military conflict in which America had been involved, YET!. There are many "YETS" in our lives as a friend used to tell me. Further, there are twits in the George W. Bush administration who have already called this war on terror whereever it might sprout its ugly head, the "Long War."

I take all the lies that flowed out of the White House from 1964 through 1975, very personally. For me, it was an outright breech of faith.

So, in the Fall of 2001, when our elected leaders became indistinguishable from the ever present and always reactionary, people's militia types, and wrapped themselves in the flag while holding aloft the cross, I reached for my Boswell's, "Life of Samuel Johnson." Now, there was a man who had no problem defining his mother tongue nor expressing himself in it. "Patriotism is that last refuge of a scoundrel,." said Johnson. Boswell goes on to explain that Johnson did not mean, a real and generous love of country, "but that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and countries, have made a cloak for self-interest." (April 7, 1775)

As I peruse my notes of September 11th and the weeks and months that followed, I found one letter that I wrote to my former faculty colleagues at an upstate New York college, an institution as liberal as any one might find any where in the U.S.

In that letter, I invoked the specter of Vietnam. I suggested that if we went into Afghanistan, we should send in the gun wackos, lunatics, homicidal maniacs and other social miscreants who would never be missed. Failing that, we should hire one of the Mafia's. The Colombian and the Russian Mafia seem to know how to get the job done. Further, I suggested that our heroic President should distinguish himself by leading the "Corps of the Wild."

"At least," I argued, "it would spare the flower of our youth from the vagaries of an adult world caught up in its own self-interest" I said that, "I had come to one unalterable belief: that there is no such thing as a "Just" or "Unjust" war, ... just war. It follows, then, that trained killers, not politicians should lead, plan and execute wars." It was obvious to me even then, that to follow the Russian failed example and try to bomb the bad guys to Hell wasn't going to work. I likened it to hitting mercury with a hammer.

You can not imagine the level of vituperation in the responses I received. I was so taken aback that I, probably wrongly, stopped writing to them. I was accused of: being intellectually deficient, mentally looped, an Arab lover, having sexual disorientation problems, anti-God, anti-Christ, unchristian, unpatriotic, speaking to the voices in the corners of my ceiling (Now, that one was right on the mark. My problem has always been, however, that the voices never seem to want to speak back to me).

I was crushed... for a second or two. But, I have always known not to put too much faith in Liberals, or anyone frozen in that dialectical inter-esse of the two sides of the coin, because they can never make a decision.In this group I include pensioners and especially, the Beemer set. Both of htese groups are caught in their invested self-interest. But what shook me for a while was that the common folks, those who drive Chevys, Fords and VWs were just as much caught up in the war fever. "My God," I thought to myself, "it's like Vietnam never happened."

Josef Goebbels was a being, who I understand plied his craft in Europe during the 1930's and 40's. It is Goebbels who is quoted as having said, "If you tell the people a lie long enough, they will eventually come to believe it." Enough said.

But, how many times do we have to be told the same lie before we realize it's a lie?
Recently, an article in a local New York daily, reported that over 5,000 American men (presumably women, too) who were over 50-years-old, were serving in the military theaters of Iraq and Afghanistan. Of that number, more than 50 had been killed. Of those, one was, 59, a few years younger than I.

I tried to put myself in his boots.

All I can tell you is that once the temperature climbs higher than 95 degrees, no power on Earth would make me move off my rack by the window, where the only thing approximating a breeze in my billet could be felt. In Iraq, where the temperature hovers around 115 degrees in the summer, war goes on as usual. Men and women in Tee shirts (bras), fatigues and bullet proof vests walk, work, wait to kill or be killed.

Maybe it is my age, or just my natural insubordinate nature, in either case, had I been serving in Iraq and my Commanding officer had told me to get up, I would have said, "Sir, until the temperature cools down, here, and in Washington, I'm staying in my bunk. Remember, Sir, They, too, serve who lie In A Rack and wait.'

"Some Thracian is waving the shield I reluctantly left by a Bush, a flawless piece.
So what? I saved myself. Forget the shield. I will get another, no worse." (Ibid)