St. Patrick's Day

One of my favorite history professors in college, a first generation Polish American Jew from New York (at Eastern Illinois University! Go figure?) Taught me that if you couldn't read history with empathy, there was no purpose to it. He taught us that we should read the history of Cherokee people, the Warsaw ghetto, slavery, Tibet, (Warning: Not a complete list) and weep; if we couldn’t, there was no point in learning history.

For me, to read the history of Ireland is to weep, and yet one of the most oppressed peoples in the English-speaking world, have given us some of its most beautiful, profound and valuable art. Irish immigrants to America where originally met with racism and bigotry, they were considered an ignorant, corrupt, diseased, uncivilized criminal community that was a threat to American culture.

I spent some time a few years ago teaching English as a second language here in Dallas to immigrants, of which 90% were from Mexico. According to the bigots on cable TV and the GOP, including one prominent Irish-American, these people were a threat to American culture because they are an ignorant, corrupt, diseased, uncivilized criminal community. The first American solider to die in Afghanistan? Latino. First American solider to die in Iraq? Latino. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

But it won't be an Irish celebration without a sad song, so here it is:



Happy St. Pat’s fellow immigrants, now where's me Guinness?

In the beginning was the Word and it was a rant,

Doonesbury



In the past week my local paper, The Dallas Morning News, has published, with little notice or comment, the obits for three young men in our military, two died in Iraq, the third at a state-side base after returning from Iraq. Yesterday, Obama announced that he will be ending Bush/Cheney's policy of hiding the bodies from their two failed wars by their suppression of photos of our war dead.

I wonder if it will make any difference?

During the last election the National Press, NPR especially, ignored, under reported, white washed, forgot (take your pick) the 250,000+ troops deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Now, it seems like there's even less coverage.



As someone that can remember Vietnam, it looks like the Pentagon learned its lesson that knowledge is power. In the name of "protecting the privacy of the troops" the Pentagon has decided to keep the US public ignorant of the consequences of war. The compliant US press has not provided the American public with the images like these from Vietnam:






(Photos by David Douglas Duncan, via Harry Ransom Center University Of Texas. http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/web/ddd/gallery/war/vietnam.html Per Fresh Air: "Life magazine has called David Douglas Duncan perhaps the best war photographer since Matthew Brady. In 1999, Duncan received a lifetime achievement award for excellence and bravery from the Marine Corps.")

Gary Trudeau of "Doonesbury" has a blog "The Sandbox" that features posts by our service men and women: http://gocomics.typepad.com/the_sandbox/

"The Sandbox, our command-wide milblog, featuring comments, anecdotes, and observations service members currently deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. This is GWOT-lit's forward position, offering those in-country a chance to share their experiences and reflections with the rest of us. The Sandbox's focus is not on policy and partisanship [snip], but on the unclassified details of deployment -- the everyday, the extraordinary, the wonderful, the messed-up, the absurd. "

Be warned, knowledge is a dangerous thing.

As a society we ask our men and women and their families to sacrifice life, limbs, and treasure to protect us. It seems the least we could do is pay attention.

(I will leave the equally distressing issue of civilian causalities for another day.)