Barrage at Rest
Cannons of Fort Phoenix, Fairhaven, Massachusetts
Copyright, Michael V. Matheron
The cannons have grown silent
Were they stilled by death
Or was I?
Bob Quigley
Memorial Day – Barrage at Rest
Category: Memorials
Memorial Day 2024
For nearly a decade now many have seemingly invited strife and battle into our lives. Many young, many old, have never learned or have forgot the bloodstained horrors of civil war. They, like those summer soldiers of 1861, have the look of, have the sound of pleading for violent revolution, and they, like the civil warriors of 1861 believe it will all be over and decided by next Christmas. So strong do they believe themselves to be; one marvels at the confidence that only self pride can muster from those who know nothing of war, war up close, cheek by jowl, bleeding into each other. There’s a certain feeling of inevitability about it, as though they have their eyes set of it as a prize that they’ll surely win. Yet, the ending of it all, should it come, will certainly, as do all ravenous conflits, resemble this instead:
Disabled
BY WILFRED OWEN
He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark,
And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey,
Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park
Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn,
Voices of play and pleasure after day,
Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him.
About this time Town used to swing so gay
When glow-lamps budded in the light-blue trees,
And girls glanced lovelier as the air grew dim,—
In the old times, before he threw away his knees.
Now he will never feel again how slim
Girls’ waists are, or how warm their subtle hands,
All of them touch him like some queer disease.
There was an artist silly for his face,
For it was younger than his youth, last year.
Now, he is old; his back will never brace;
He’s lost his colour very far from here,
Poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry,
And half his lifetime lapsed in the hot race
And leap of purple spurted from his thigh.
One time he liked a blood-smear down his leg,
After the matches carried shoulder-high.
It was after football, when he’d drunk a peg,
He thought he’d better join. He wonders why.
Someone had said he’d look a god in kilts.
That’s why; and maybe, too, to please his Meg,
Aye, that was it, to please the giddy jilts,
He asked to join. He didn’t have to beg;
Smiling they wrote his lie: aged nineteen years.
Germans he scarcely thought of, all their guilt,
And Austria’s, did not move him. And no fears
Of Fear came yet. He thought of jewelled hilts
For daggers in plaid socks; of smart salutes;
And care of arms; and leave; and pay arrears;
Esprit de corps; and hints for young recruits.
And soon, he was drafted out with drums and cheers.
Some cheered him home, but not as crowds cheer Goal.
Only a solemn man who brought him fruits
Thanked him; and then inquired about his soul.
Now, he will spend a few sick years in institutes,
And do what things the rules consider wise,
And take whatever pity they may dole.
Tonight he noticed how the women’s eyes
Passed from him to the strong men that were whole.
How cold and late it is! Why don’t they come
And put him into bed? Why don’t they come?
Kissinger (1923-2023)
“Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately.”
Henry Kissinger
But it took 100 years . . .
Happy – and Peaceful – Thanksgiving!
From John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)
John Eastman, Trump Co-Conspirator Match.com Photo
Adieu, Tony
And thank you . . .
Tony Bennett (1926-2023)
Iraq – The Beginning of the End of Memory
December 15, 2011
“Those who control the present, control the past
and those who control the past control the future.”
-George Orwell
[I saw his round mouth’s crimson deepen as it fell],
Like a Sun, in his last deep hour;
Watched the magnificent recession of farewell,
Clouding, half gleam, half glower,
And a last splendour burn the heavens of his cheek.
And in his eyes
The cold stars lighting, very old and bleak,
In different skies.
–Wilfred Owen (1893-2018)
Nothing could have been less noticeable than the whimper with which the United States claimed it had ended its nearly 10-year Iraq war and occupation. Short of our own Civil War that now is carried forward in the Congress, almost nothing in our history needs more national soul-searching. About Iraq, we hear little but a whimper.
Few expected celebrations. No ticker-tape rained down from the New York City’s Canyon of Heroes. None is expected to; the Pentagon has not been ordered to plan one. The troops themselves and their long-suffering loved ones fell into each other’s arms, though, as in all wars’ ends before. Now quickly follows an unspoken, “Where next”? “When”?
Have we learned enough of this war’s genesis to come away with anything resembling wisdom at our exodus? What did we learn from Vietnam? Little but the value of deploying overwhelming force on a battlefield of our own choosing under our own cold war rules. Like the British we fought in our professional way, the world outside of our own strategic box did not always cooperate. Unlike Vietnam, a victory retreat in overfilled helos barely able to gain airspeed enough to leave the roof of the Green Zone HQ was not broadcast for all to see.
In fact, some expressed disdain at our departure. Absent Ron Paul, GOP presidential candidates were uniformly opposed to ending our occupation.
From the non-stop media, virtually nothing is said of the beginning, the craven dishonesty throughout the Bush administration, their bullying of national security agencies, the dismissal and criminalizing of dissent. No mention of the media’s early supplication that continues today.
The silence is resounding. The GOP presidential candidates far and wide decry the decision to leave. The assumption throughout our national meditation on this war, if anything at all, revolves around what we accomplished there as we move on from a thoroughly disjointed country and its downtrodden people, hundreds of thousands fewer that when we arrived. And the lifelong physical and emotional injuries will starve Iraq’s spirit for multiple decades to come.
272 Words in Gettysburg – November 19, 1863
Occupy Wall Street – A “Ragtag Mob,” Congressman King?
October 10, 2011
“It’s a ragtag mob, basically.”
Rep. Peter King (R-NY)
On the Laura Ingraham Show
October 7, 2011
Ragtag Mob?
“We have to be careful not to allow this to get any legitimacy. . .”
Rep. Peter King (R-NY-3)
On Laura Ingraham’s radio show
October 7, 2011
FDR 1934, A Fireside Chat That Still Resonates
September 23, 2011
By 1934 our country was pulling out of the depths of the Great Depression. During FDR’s first hundred days, from March to June 1933, with a huge Democratic party majority in the 73rd Congress, a parade of legislative enactments emerged, including the Emergency Banking Act to the National Industrial Recovery Act. Such a response to economic emergency was unprecedented and caused much concern among many, especially the conservatives who mostly occupied the Republican party.
The arguments against federal “intervention” then were philosophically the same as what we hear today from the likes of Eric Cantor (R-VA), Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH), and all of the GOP presidential primary contestants: allow the free markets to operate unfettered by government regulation in good times, and without government assistance in bad times.
FDR faced the same kind of resistance that President Obama faces today. Roosevelt, an upper cruster with ancestors who arrived on the Mayflower, and having a cousin named Theodore Roosevelt, became known among the scions of industry as a “traitor to his class,” a socialist, or fascist, or communist. His relentless program of relief, recovery, and reform frightened those accustomed to near absolute privilege. This is a primary theme in American – and world – history. It is class warfare, in its diplomatic stage.
In mid-1934, FDR gave one of his “Fireside Chats” to summarize the achievements of the first session of the 73rd Congress. In it, he discussed the numerous programs designed to continue the progress begun in the first hundred days, including the passage of the Securities Exchange Act. Below is a portion of that chat. It’s both eloquent and, these days, familiar in his descriptions of the criticisms he’d received from opponents:
FIRESIDE CHAT — June 28, 1934
Later in the year I hope to talk with you more fully about these plans. A few timid people, who fear progress, will try to give you new and strange names for what we are doing. Sometimes they will call it “Fascism”, sometimes “Communism”, sometimes “Regimentation”, sometimes “Socialism”. But, in so doing, they are trying to make very complex and theoretical something that is really very simple and very practical.
I believe in practical explanations and in practical policies. I believe that what we are doing today is a necessary fulfillment of what Americans have always been doing — a fulfillment of old and tested American ideals.
Let me give you a simple illustration:
While I am away from Washington this summer, a long needed renovation of and addition to our White House office building is to be started. The architects have planned a few new rooms built into the present all too small one-story structure. We are going to include in this addition and in this renovation modern electric wiring and modern plumbing and modern means of keeping the offices cool in the hot Washington summers. But the structural lines of the old Executive Office Building will remain. The artistic lines of the White House buildings were the creation of master builders when our Republic was young. The simplicity and the strength of the structure remain in the face of every modern test. But within this magnificent pattern, the necessities of modern government business require constant reorganization and rebuilding.
If I were to listen to the arguments of some prophets of calamity who are talking these days, I should hesitate to make these alterations. I should fear that while I am away for a few weeks the architects might build some strange new Gothic tower or a factory building or perhaps a replica of the Kremlin or of the Potsdam Palace. But I have no such fears. The architects and builders are men of common sense and of artistic American tastes. They know that the principles of harmony and of necessity itself require that the building of the new structure shall blend with the essential lines of the old. It is this combination of the old and the new that marks orderly peaceful progress — not only in building buildings but in building government itself.
Our new structure is a part of and a fulfillment of the old.
——————————–
For the full text of this Fireside chat.