|
...itself; can be traced back to Homer and Virgil with their epics of courage and valor, of heroes battling against evil and mythical gods bringing victory to the righteous. Today's wars, however, do not invoke mythical gods nor praise chivalry; modern wars, with their massive destruction and the reduction of the "moral" to economic power and control, cannot fit the "fairy tale" version of war where the "hero" restores the moral balance after lot of "sacrifice" (Lakoff). (1) Both World War I and II have produced adequate examples of war poets and poems that have shaped our modern consciousness towards the miseries of war; the maimed soldier in Owen's poetry, and the general sense of futility represented in Auden's poetry have transformed war poetry from its glorious appeal of gallantry into a disappointment with the human condition. As Doug Talley puts it: "The pity of war, as distinguished from its patriotism and heroism, has become a persistent modern theme."
Nonetheless, on the political level, wars are still justified as "an eternal justice," where "a heavenly banquet of heroes [is] in store for the fallen dead, and an evil enemy whose expatriation is the will of God" (Mersmann, 12). This belief coupled with the American imperial fervor, derived from an "implicit source of imperial right in terms of police action," where "the capacity to define, every time in an exceptional way, the demands of intervention," has caused a series of wars across the world (Negri, 17). Yet poets witnessing these modern wars, unlike the ancients who glorified war, or the moderns who "accepted war as unavoidable reality," resist war (Mersmann, 12). With words as their only weapon, poets resist, explain and oppose war: waging their own war: a war for peace.
The poets' war for peace has over and over again expressed public dissent. In time of war, poets--to borrow Triggs's term--are "hurt ... into public utterance," as they assume their role as the spokesmen for dissent and articulate opposition. As Walden expresses in his poem "Where There's War":
Where there's war, there's an anti-war of writers writing, readers reading, veterans recalling what they served for.
Anti-war poems have become in prominence especially during the Vietnam War, the only comparable antiwar movement that comes to mind when the present global protest against the War in Iraq is considered. Similarities between the two wars and the two antiwar movements, which sometimes are striking, have caused a lot of comparisons and analogies. The current people's protest and the struggle to get heard with antiwar poems are reverberation of the 60s and the 70s when demonstrations against the war were led by poets and writers. Once more, antiwar poetry has taken force in opposition to the war against Iraq and poetry of resistance has started to gain dominance as it reflects the pulse of the people. As Robert Pinsky notes:
These events recall the long history of poetry and war, from the Homeric poems to the Vietnam War teach-ins. The old question of poetry's authority in political life has been in the news again.
War and politics have never been far from poetry; in fact all poetry is political, even if its politics is only acknowledged when it deals with the sociopolitical issues of an era. As W. S. Merwin says: "Where injustice prevails a poet ... has no choice but to name the wrong as truthfully as he can." Yet again, the world is protesting the US lead war against Iraq and once more poets are issuing antiwar statements and poems in their war for peace.
Similarities between the two wars are not confined to the people's opposition, but rather the opposition springs from the similarities in rhetoric and strategy used in the two wars. The rhetoric of "making the world sate for democracy," and "preserving the American way of life" has been used to manipulate public opinion and screen imperial motives, confirming Hard and Negri's view of "Yanqui politics," where they describe it as: "a strong tradition of imperialism dressed in anti-imperialism clothing" (Negri, 178). According to Chomsky, "[t]he Vietnam War was fought to prevent Vietnam from becoming a successful model of economic and social development for the Third World." With Iraq having one of the biggest oil reserves of the world, and having the capability of manufacturing nuclear weapons, one wonders if the war was to stop it from becoming a development model for the Arab World and the Third World. However both are called wars of "Freedom and Democracy."
Hard and Negri consent that "the war in Vietnam fit into a global political strategy to defend the 'free world' against communism" (178). Operation "Liberating Iraq," on the other hand, according to President Bush is "a war to liberate not to conquer" (Friday 3 January, 2003 BBC News), recalling memories of Napoleon on entering Egypt in 1798 and saying: "Peoples of Egypt ... I have come to restore your rights!" and Sir Stanley Maude, commander of the British Forces in Iraq in 1917, when he said: "Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enimies, but as liberators." The fact that occupation does not bring liberation is a straight forward fact that needs little proof. That is why, the Iraqi resistance to the American occupation is no strange phenomenon, it has been expressed since the beginning of the war with slogans painted on the walls asking "liberators to go home," yet the resistance was overlooked, or, as Mark Steel asks: "Do people on the street only count if they're dancing?"
Another similarity is the military strategy: Economic sanctions have "bleeded" both Vietnam and Iraq, making both easy-kills, or, as Chomsky calls it, "the Gulf Slaughter" (170). The Vietnam War was supposed to be, what has been called, a quick kill" short and effective; similar to the "shock and awe" technique used in the Iraq War. A technique that has been compared too many times to the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan in 1945. (2) Nonetheless, both were supposed to be "clean wars" with no or limited civilian casualties.
Most importantly, both wars have invaded the warmth of our homes; what has become to be known as TV battles. That is the war reports were/ are carried daily to the warmth and comfort of our living rooms. While historians call the Vietnam War the "Living room war," commentators on the present war, with its embedded reporters, and minuet by minuet live coverage, have called it the "Real TV war." In both wars media was used as a propaganda tool to win the "hearts and minds." Chomsky notes that reporters during the Vietnam War "would describe the U.S. forces wiping out towns in South Vietnam [as] an unfortunate necessity ... to defend these towns from attacks." (31) With embedded reporters objectivity becomes impossible, sharing the same bed, they become part of the military. They too become soldiers fighting the war with words and pictures as televisions project "bizarre images of reporters chatting happily to cameras in the midst of squaddies aiming rifles into the shells of buildings" (Bristow). Thus an official media that projects a "clean war" fought against the evil supporters of Saddam, with images of the coalition forces liberating Iraqis that are shown dancing in the streets after toppling Saddam's statues, keep circulating and repeated over and over again, making them icons that authenticate the image of the liberator. As...
NOTE: All illustrations and photos
have been removed from this article.
More articles from Studies in the Humanities
Medium cruel: Hamlet in 2000., June 01, 2004
Beyond border politics: the problematics of identity in Asian diaspora..., June 01, 2004
Hitchcock's Suspicion: reading between the lines.(Alfred Hitchcock), June 01, 2004
D. H. Lawrence's Paintings.(Book Review), June 01, 2004
Looking for additional articles?
Search our database of over 3 million articles.
Looking for more in-depth information on this industry?
Search our complete database of Industry & Market reports by text, subject, publication
name or publication date.
About Goliath
Whether you're looking for sales prospects, competitive information, company
analysis or best practices in managing your organization,
Goliath can help you meet your business needs.
Our extensive business information databases empower business
professionals with both the breadth and depth of credible,
authoritative information they need to support their business
goals. Whether it be strategic planning, sales prospecting,
company research or defining management best practices -
Goliath is your leading source for accurate information.
|
