Five Years Gone

WARNING: The following opinions belong to a pretentious college student and do not necessarily reflect the views of any honorable, clean-cut, tax-paying, baby-kissing, apple-pie-loving groups Geoffrey Dobbins may be associated with. He just wants to get something off his chest. Please chill.



Lately, it seems like a lot of us are revisiting the first days and weeks of the war in Iraq and the way it was portrayed by various media sources then. I couldn't resist doing the same. I managed to find something I wrote for the opinion section of Wright State University's student newspaper, The Guardian. It appeared in the paper exactly 5 years ago - April 30, 2003. After reading it again, several thoughts came to mind:

1. Thank God I write a little better than that now. Wow. (In my defense, remember I was a freshman mechanical engineering major then. I think I also had a few unkind edits.)
   
2. Remember when opposing the war and being critical of those responsible put you in a small minority? Wow. There is still widespread support for the war among some reasonable people, but I don't have to tell you how the tables have turned. I almost feel like going back to Dayton and tracking down old classmates and professors just so I can say, "How do you like me now, huh? How you like me now? I... told... you... so..." Burning all that expensive gas would kind of spoil it, though...
3. Seriously, I do wish more of us media types would publicly recall how a lot of us said invasion was a bad idea before it happened. It wasn't just me. Some of our key allies weren't exactly on board, there were protests around the world and religious leaders were coming out of the woodwork all over the place to publicly say this whole thing seemed unethical.

But the mantra I seem to hear now is "Who knew it could have turned out like this?" Well, a lot of us. Not a majority of Americans, but still a large number. It didn't take a crystal ball to see holes in the war planning, have problems with the idea of "preemption" being sold and realize that bloody chaos in war is the norm rather than the exception.

I wrote another opinion piece about the war with a reflective tone about a year ago in a columns and reviews class (Terron Austin probably remembers). I got a heavily (but reasonably) edited version of it printed in UC's newspaper, The News Record, later that year. One of the versions I prefer is below. Rereading this one, I was surprised by how relevant it remains.

Acoustic Imperialism

By Geoffrey Dobbins

John Mayer was my Jeremiah. I know it won’t score me any points with music snobs, but I’ve come to enjoy some of his tunes. Having seen him perform with Kanye West a few times isn’t the only reason, but I must admit that it helped. Between that and a prominent appearance on The Chappelle Show a while back, I think it’s safe for me to listen to him in public without being labeled an “Oreo” by the blackness police. He’s always had a certain funky grit absent from most of the suburban princesses that buy up his records.

That’s why I wasn’t shocked last summer when I heard antiwar sentiment in his song, “Waiting on the World to Change.” But for me, the single revealed a clear vision of the future. Mayer foretold the Democrats winning control of Congress like some kind of pop culture prophet. People slow dance to this guy at high school proms, and there he was talking about bringing “our neighbors home from war.” Remember the Dixie Chicks? If the media machine thought this sort of talk was safe enough for pop radio, it meant American attitudes about Iraq must have fundamentally changed. The results of the midterm elections were just fallout.

Until 2006, I’d lost all faith in our foreign policy. Hadn’t America embraced fear and bloodshed since 2001? Those guys in my college physics class sure did. Days after the invasion we had an argument about the wisdom of the war. I thought Saddam had anthrax then, but I still opposed the invasion. By “opposed” I mean I blasted Public Enemy in my dorm room and wrote sophomoric letters to the school newspaper.

I argued that even if our smart bombs had Ph.D.’s, leveling Baghdad would involve terrible civilian casualties. One of my physics classmates countered with, “Who cares if some Iraqis die? They’re going to die anyway.” That’s the fate of all of the barbarians beyond the reach of Pax Americana, I guess.

Of course, not everybody talked that way. I was amazed by how many people could agree with me and still add up to less than one quarter of America. They were all over the television if you watched C-SPAN as much as I did. Most of the black folk I ambushed with my political queries were also against the war, but terrorism is old hat to us. We’d been terrorized by the Klan before, so I guess we didn’t collectively loose our heads about Al Qaeda the way police action peddlers wanted.

As expected, words of warning from Coretta Scott King and Desmond Tutu were ignored. Jon Stewart’s satire stirred laughter, but inspired little serious thought. Everybody from the Pope to Lenny Kravitz had our backs. But even my fellow college students looked at war critics like something had flown over our cuckoo’s nest.

So then we few, we disgruntled few, looked on as President Bush’s band of frat brothers went once more unto the breach. A few guys in the dorm down the hall counted down the seconds to “shock and awe” like it was New Year’s Eve. They were literally entertaining company with chips and drinks. Needless violence was winning again, and America was applauding from the couch with a grin.

Few people are smiling now. According to the most recent Gallup polls, well over half of Americans think it was a mistake to invade, and about two thirds of Americans disapprove of Bush’s handling of the war. Hopefully, this antiwar trend can force better policy. But I suspect we’ve only reached a slightly higher plane in the gutter of our collective social consciousness.

Not long ago I found myself talking politics with people at a Socialist Worker newspaper sale on UC’s campus. In passing I mentioned to one of the self-described leftists in attendance that the Rev. Martin Luther King opposed the Vietnam War. I was shocked at what came out of his mouth in response. “I didn’t know that.”

There’s a day named after the guy. King called the U.S. “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” And somehow this college-educated leftist hadn’t heard? That’s how little traction nonviolence has in our society.

Many have turned against the war in Iraq, but few are willing to reject war as a way of life. Despite the widespread anti-war feelings among Americans, many anti-Bush Democrats like John Tester, Jim Web, and Hillary Clinton continue to market themselves as leaders that are “strong on national defense,” which means forking over vast resources to the military industrial complex.

Public acceptance of these circumstances seems to prove the Neo-cons are right about at least one thing. The antiwar trend may not be an ideological shift as much as a lack of resolve. We might just be tired of war. That’s a little better than being energized by it. But we still think the strength of our military will protect us better than our justice or our compassion. We still like Caesar. We just want him to mellow out into something more like Jack Johnson and less like Metallica.

The current civil war and occupation in Iraq comes from a militaristic view of the “real world” as a place where making “us” safe must require making “them” unsafe. If only we could beat our swords into plowshares. Translated for my friends that never made it to Sunday school, synagogue, or mosque that means using resources to heal and nurture life rather than to destroy it. It’s from Isaiah.

The country continues to think the dangers of the “real world” demand that we be like Mike Tyson, even though hippies like John Mayer spend less time apologizing. As Mayer would say, I just found out there’s no such thing as the real world. Just a lie you’ve got to rise above.

~Geoffrey Dobbins
UCABJ, Vice President