Henri Reynard Speaks Out

SHOCK AND AWE OR AW SHUCKS?

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Well folks we have now seen "Shock and Awe", the Bush league version of a blitzkrieg focused on giving the Iraqi population of Baghdad shell shock in a matter of hours. It brings me back to the portrayal of our men in a far different war, the war to end all wars, WWI. We entered WWI because of the sinking of a ship by the German Navy. We have never really liked fighting wars, we entered that war reluctantly too, but once we were in it the nation caught fire. The surge of patriotism buried many of the scars that still divided our nation along the Mason Dixon line. Men lined up in droves to join the army and fight the Kaiser's armies. War was uglier then, there were no international laws and the existing weapons of mass destruction were accepted as legal. The nerve gasses and nuclear weapons had not been invented yet, but diseases and mustard gas combined to kill millions of people. There were no antibiotics or vaccines against the flu, and a virus came out of Asia that killed twenty million people worldwide. Most of our would-be warriors came out of small towns and off the farm. They had hayseeds sticking out of their ears when they stepped off the boat in France. The German artillery knocked those hayseeds out after a few days, and all sensibility out of many of them within a few weeks.

A lot of those men paid a horrible price for fighting in that war, scarred lungs, destroyed eyes from gas, and altered minds with shellshock being a major problem. From aw shucks to shock and awe in one easy lesson, courtesy of the Krupp Munition Works and the German military. Is that what this campaign adds up to in Iraq, an attempt to give a lot of people shell shock in order to keep them from resisting our march into Baghdad? It is clear that it is always an effective strategy to destroy the will to resist of an enemy. Seldom in human history has it been sanitized in the way it is being presented to us now. We want so badly to be believable as the Liberators of Iraq, but in the end we will probably be seen by most of the worlds Moslems as bloody tyrants. Since we have inevitably demolished at least a few buildings where children were trying to hide, the pictures of dead and dying kids will dominate the airwaves in other Muslim nations. You see they love their children too, over there, where Shock and Awe is being acted out in real time.

I heard an Iranian woman, in the short time between the end of diplomacy and the beginning of the war, tell a reporter that the Iranian people didn't want us to attack Iraq because of what it would do to the children there. This was not a naïve person with no experience of war, she had lost a son in the war between Iran and Iraq. The people in that region of the world have suffered from the ravages of war long before our nation existed. In the time of Alexander the Great whole populations were moved far from their homes or killed in order to impose the will of the conqueror on their lands. How is this war of conquest different from that one? Why of course, we can use "Shock and Awe" to stop all opposition, we don't have to kill them all we can just scare them out of their wits. And that will save our image worldwide? We won't be viewed as a bloody tyrant, just as a shocking big brother? Horseshit! Too many of those people in the nations that already had reason enough to fear us know better. They understand the brutal uses of power.

Our history is nothing like the history of the Middle East. We have fought one war against one another inside our nation in our two hundred years of history. Their history goes back to the time before the bible was written and the Ten Commandments were handed down. Their history includes so many wars long forgotten that no history of the world in existence has enumerated them all. "We come bearing peace" are words that they are familiar with down to their genes. The Greeks, Persians, Romans and Crusaders all uttered them at one time or another. Now here we are, the bearers of "Shock and Awe" telling them that "I have come to you with good tidings of great joy"? No, that phrase was used to announce the birth of a Prince of Peace, as I recall. They certainly might think that we might be overreacting to 9/11 based on their history. They know who we are, we have been there before, and after we leave another will show up and stay for a while. We are the unwanted conqueror. They know how to wave our banners and welcome us with open arms. They also know that we will tire of the occupation eventually and that they will then get back to living their lives until the next one comes along.

From "aw shucks, it twaren't nuthin" when we saved the world from war in WWI, to Shock and Awe in a new series of wars to end all wars. That is where the intellectual giants of the Neocons have taken us today. Where will they take us tomorrow? I'll bet you just can't wait to see, if you can see at all through the Shock and Awe that they so like to inspire.