Thanks, Douglas. In the US these days we tend to give the military a
complete pass. Can do no wrong. Has the public's trust. This is mostly
unexamined guilt left over from the American War in Vietnam. A dangerous
precursor to fascism. I think we're very close to that, now.
Peter, the poet always marries the horse.
jd
On 10/1/07, Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Joe
>
> I read the piece with interest this morning, after finding my first
> reference to it in a reply to a note I haven't found yet. It was an
> interesting piece, but I think you've caught the aspect that bothered
> me too. Her concern for those she teaches is fine, but,yes, her seeming
> lack of concern that her charges are going off to fight an immoral &
> illegal war in a country where the country they serve has destroyed
> both hundreds of thousands of its people and much f=of its
> infrastructure as well as created millions of refugees, for a set of
> lies ddid bother me.
>
> Thanks for pointing that out so clearly....
>
> Doug
> On 30-Sep-07, at 5:42 PM, Joseph Duemer wrote:
>
> > Here is my comment on the article, from my
> > weblog<http://www.sharpsand.net/>
> > :
> >
> > That is what Elizabeth D. Samet appears to have written in her
> > forthcoming
> > book, excerpted
> > here<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/magazine/30WestPoint-t.html?
> > ex=1348804800&en=1295af93deef8a15&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss>i
> > n
> > the
> > *NY Times Magazine*. I find her her eerie coolness about the Iraq War
> > deeply
> > unsettling. I suppose it is a good thing that the young officers she
> > describes carry Wallace Stevens or Andrew Marvell into the gibbering
> > moral
> > idiocy of Baghdad with them. A tolerance for ambiguity of the sort one
> > learns from poetry might also serve as a kind of restraint against the
> > military culture of certitude, I suppose. Samet's accounts are full of
> > budding *noblesse oblige*, but all the Stevens & Marvell in the world
> > doesn't change the truth, as Tim O'Brien (an infantryman) put it in
> > "How to
> > Tell a True War Story" — "Send young men to war and they come home
> > talking
> > dirty."
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Joseph Duemer
> > Professor of Humanities
> > Clarkson University
> > [sharpsand.net]
> >
> >
> Douglas Barbour
> 11655 - 72 Avenue NW
> Edmonton Ab T6G 0B9
> (780) 436 3320
> http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
>
> Latest book: Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
> http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
>
> When you combine two unique voices
> it creates a third, phantom voice.
>
> Emmy Lou Harris
>
--
Joseph Duemer
Professor of Humanities
Clarkson University
[sharpsand.net]
|