The Poet's Eye
commentary by Lightning Rod
the Poets' Eye is skeptical
without being cynical, innocent
without being naive and
critical without being
judgemental
Let's Don't Lose Our Heads Over This
05-13-04
From time to time advancements in warfare have given the possessors of new bella-technologies a distinct advantage. The iron sword inevitably prevailed over the copper one. Gunpowder and lead superseded spears and arrows. Horses didn't stand much of a chance against tanks.
The latest advances in warfare include digital cameras and the Internet. Against a power that can muster long range cruise missiles accurate to within three feet and helicopter gunships that are agile as dragonflies and sting like bees, the clever adversary will resort to retro-technology-- a boxcutter or a dagger or a chip no bigger than your fingernail.
The Poet's Eye has to see modern clinical and antiseptic warfare as an improvement over the older versions. In the old days at places like Gettysburg and Verdun, the carnage was wholesale and tens of thousands of young men were killed and maimed and injured for a few feet of ground. But you had to actually be there in order to get the impact of the event.
Today a few Iraqis get humiliated in a hijacked dungeon, an American freebooter gets beheaded and thanks to the internet along with quick and ubiquitous photography, the snicker-snack of the meat machine is in living-rooms worldwide in a matter of moments.
Consider our own Civil War in which at least 618,000 Americans died. These casualties exceed the nation's loss in all its other wars, from the Revolution through Vietnam.
Chalk it up to American ingenuity. We are much better at killing each other than any of those foreigners or terrorists are at killing us. And in these days of inflation the currency of war is not backed by the gold standard of body count that it once was. At Gettysburg we killed over 50,000 in just three days. But those 50, 000 didn't have nearly the impact of the three thousand that died in the Trade Tower disaster. But Gettysburg wasn't televised.
The Vietnam War was the first time pictures became as potent as bombs. The images and the daily body counts steadily turned Americans against that adolescent exercise in Imperialism.
We don't have to travel back far in time or far from Baghdad for another example. The Iraqi-Iranian war (which America tacitly supported) cost over a million lives. They needed better television. The Internet hadn't proliferated in the 1980s.
It's upsetting to see a young American's head cut off while you are waiting for the pizza man to deliver your large thin-crust with sauce that looks like blood and brain matter. In this way war has become a video game. Shock and Awe are settings on your Nintendo machine.
Snuff flicks and pornography will always sell. Already on the Internet you can click into every orifice of the human body with sound and jerky sexual motion. You can see pictures of young children being used. Why not snuff flicks?
Death is the ultimate poetry, the finest punctuation. Just imagine what it would do to the ratings if every time George Bush made a speech on TV, he ended it by beheading a Muslim with a curved scimitar.
But that's not George Bush's style. He does his murders behind closed doors by lethal injection. (152 of them during his reign as Governor of Texas)
Wars are won by poetry.
Death is symbolic. Not every death, but some deaths. Every day, twenty-thousand deaths on this earth go ignored--deaths by poverty and starvation. Each and every day, another twenty-thousand. AIDS claims thousands more. The number of murders in three American cities totals more than the soldiers killed in the Iraq war in over a year. But one ritual death can galvanize the world if it is televised.
When one small digital camera can upskirt the entire Imperial United States military, you know the rules of war have changed. Information and symbols are the new bullets.
The Poet's Eye sees that one death is worth ten thousand if it is televised. War has become more efficient. Beware the terrorist armed with a cellphone camera.
"When Johnny comes marching home again,
Hurrah! Hurrah!
We'll give him a hearty welcome then,
Hurrah! Hurrah!
The men will cheer, the boys will shout,
The ladies they will all turn out,
And we'll all feel gay
When Johnny comes marching home." --Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore
•
to comment on ths article
email Lightning Rod here
Lightning
Rod
World Headqarters
Freedom
Hall--
Freeform Discussions
doreenperi.com-
–
Poetry, art, music