I can't WAIT to see this movie: you can watch the trailer at michaelmoore.com or fahrenheit911.com... watch it! It's good! (If the movie's half as well put together, this'll be one for the record books!)  ¶ 1:37 PM (0) comments

  This columnist asked people for Iraq war poetry: I really think his favorite is the least good one, but I'm really happy to see the NYTimes offering this poetry to the world.


June 12, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Art of War
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Generals and presidents approach war as a vast struggle. But war, at its most achingly real, happens not to armies, but to individuals.

In my contest for Iraq war poetry, the most moving focused on individual tiles rather than the larger mosaic. Here are the grand winners (www.nytimes.com/kristofresponds has more poems):

Alexander Nemser of New Haven wrote about the death of a pilot:

His mother sent him pictures of his truck,
A pickup, hubcaps polished every time
He stopped to fill the tank, as clear as mirrors;
The dog, who'd lost an eye last spring; his town,
Apollo, Pennsylvania, near the falls
On Roaring Run; the watch his uncle won
From playing cards; his empty chair at dinner,
Audacious as the space left by a tooth.
We traded rifles, scripted final letters
And promised their delivery home. At night,
We planned escapes to Istanbul to join
The dervishes. Eleven miles from Baghdad,
I stood, dumb as a cow, and watched two choppers
Collide like fists and spin across the sky.


Jim Brown, a former U.S. marine now in Sydney, Australia, wrote from a soldier's point of view:

It's only a short dash, from this dusty wall to that one;
But you try it:
When someone you can't see is sending hot, cracking thunderbolts your way,
And you're clutching your young wife's sweat-faded photo so tight,
Your legs don't work properly.
Or try to tell the good Iraqis from the bad ones;
Make a mistake:
The good ones become bad ones, and you make the evening news.
The answer is to get from this dusty wall to that one, and get home.


Frank Sandoval of Louisville, Colo., thought of children:

A young girl in a pretty dress;
Her first kiss, her dried lips pressed
Into the dirt of a road. . . .
She's now a horrid little carcass,
Flies, tears dried to gelatin in her eyes,
Hair dirtier than a woman's hair should ever be.
She's free.
I look now at my little girl,
Blue eyes prettier than a flower,
Laughter more joyous than a bird song.
My heart swells in my chest and while I laugh,
I feel fear, smell a faint stench of insanity.

David Keppel of Bloomington, Ind., responded to the Abu Ghraib torture:

Did I hold a dog
To your terrified nakedness
Or perch you on a box,
Your outstretched arms wired
To the current of fear? . . .
Tell me what I have done,
I beg you, as you begged me,
Tell me what I can do
To make you forget
That my people never remember.

My favorite poem, from James Yeck of Boulder, Colo., focused on those left behind:

A tiny piece of metal hangs upon a frame,
That has "father" written below the name.
The tiny piece of metal hangs in glory there,
Never left to tarnish by neglecting care.
The tiny piece of metal brings fame to the home,
Glory for its man who crossed the ocean's foam.
Politicians send praises into the peaceful air;
Others smile now who once would only stare.
People from all around come especially to see
The tiny piece of metal, a symbol of the free.
A country's grateful token to the bravest of its land. . . .
Proud of their famous town the village people say,
"Do you know what this means?" with pride most every day,
To the little boy whose father went to war.
"Yes," softly he replies, "I have no daddy any more."



  ¶ 1:30 PM (0) comments

  Today I wrote a letter to the NY Times, in response to THIS (click!)

They probably won't publish it (especially since it's a little snarky), so I'm putting it here:

In Roger Cohen's "France Says, Love the U.S., Hate Its Chief," Cohen says of Bush, "He has the support of roughly half the United States [...] This America believes it is doing God's will in fighting for freedom. It equates pacifism with decline. It supports the death penalty, low taxes and the right to bear arms."

Might I point out that what the *other* half of the US (and France)dislikes about George W Bush has nothing to do with any of these perfectly sound political positions:

What they dislike is the (1) praising soldiers and firefighters with one tongue and agreeing to cut their benefits with the other; the (2) shifting of expenses and taxes like an artful dodge to make middle-class people shoulder more of the burden while Halliburton receives money instead of paying any tax at all; the (3) war that he got us into by lying to us, which has cost us lives, money, our reputation, and our moral high ground; and (4) all of the other lies and dishonesty.

The "half" of the US that currently approve of him do so in defiance of the facts, and their own values, because they are good people who believe in something, and our current president is a greedy, arrogant, dishonest disaster.

Thanks to Roger Cohen for trying to make it seem like an issue of right-left ideology, instead of an issue of Bush's total failure of leadership, and good luck getting people to buy that.  ¶ 7:16 PM (0) comments