Rumination on The Flag
The US flag is all state glorification, the 13 lucky originals showing their red blood and whiteskins, and the current crop high in an orderly constellation; few flags in this world have an agenda of development as ours. I was born between the admittances of Alaska and Hawaii in 1959 but I haven't seen the 49 star flag which surely must have flown during that summer; and at some point someone must have designed a contingent 51 star model for POOH purposes. Our flag is all about states asserting themselves as individuals, nothing could be more American.
You can't be a country without one. Even Antactica has a flag, although it is just a mindless silhouette of the continent, white on blue. The British Indian Ocean Territories has a cool one, a union jack in the upper left like other Brit-derived places, but with wavy blue stripes, like ocean waves, and a palm tree and the royal crown. Nepal is the only country that doesn't use a rectangle, they have a double golf-flag design. But only the US has this long orderly development where the design has systematically changed in order to accommodate the number of states; it engages one's geometric and compositional sensibilities.
In Jamaica Plain, MA, where I live, the gayest zip code in a state lurching headlong into what will be endless years of wrangling and legal conflicts over same-sex marriage, most of the flags I see fly in front of gas stations run by immigrants. But bleached by the sun the red strips fade to pink; lordy, this is indeed gay America... Out my window flies the noblest flag in the neighborhood, in front of the Mann-Mann (same sex again!) Funeral Home, where for a year has been festooned a big RW&B banner reading "We Support All Our Troops" - well, Of course a funeral home would support the war, good for business...
I am somewhat disheartened, naively perhaps, that flag hygiene has declined since I was in the cub scout honor guard, and people do not replace worn flags or take them down at dusk, or declare Unclean one that has violated the touching-the-ground taboo. Perhaps it is because the scoundrels keep wrapping themselves in it; they can give it a bad name; jingoism leaves such a bad taste, if we asked to stop thinking in order be team players. Some of us Americans happen to believe in the legacy of the Enlightenment that the Founding Fathers bestowed to us. We have a nice flag, and it has been a powerful symbol for all that can be good in people when used for the proper purposes. Part of the origin of flags must be as an organizational battlefield tool, and in the past most were in truth no better than that; let not our Old Glory be just another military patch. Things by themselves have no meaning, only the meaning we put into them.
With some irony the flag of the Russia is now blue, white and red; no political party symbol like the USSR. Russia doesn't really have a ruling party anymore, anyway, just a Putinized coalition; he's the doctor and they were sick and they trust the cure. Hope it all works out. Who isn't disarmed by Canada's wise choice to honor the showiest of trees - that's a flag that doesn't seem well suited to fomenting bloodlust on the battlefield.
Having a flag out my window is a practical advantage as I always know the speed and direction of the wind. Flags depend on renewable wind power; no fossil fuels consumed as it represents the fluid patterns of the air; it brings us back to a basic, even as we may sit inside sealed buildings with false atmospheres and temps; remember, our flag cannot fly indoors, it can only hang. Is America changing from an outdoor to an indoor country now as we are up to our knees in the electrically driven things that enable modernity? Maybe soon they'll have a light-sensitive flag that can represent flying for the indoor people to enjoy, and sure that would be cool, maybe it would flutter flawlessly, and not get tangled and wrapped around the pole. But I agree with the central doctrine of American military thinkers since 1941, Air Superiority; air is superior.
Sunday, April 18, 2004
Saturday, April 17, 2004
Iraq is becoming something one does not want to think about. Who wouldn't want that nation to emerge as an exemplary democracy, a shining beacon on a hill to encourage the latent and hidden democratic aspirants of the region to endeavor to spread the good word in their own countries, and add nations of the Islamic homelands to join the happy worldwide trend since the late 1980's towards rule by the people that has transformed East Asia (S. Korea, Phillipines, Indonesia, Taiwan, many others), Africa (S. Africa, Uganda, some others), Latin America (Nicaraugua, El Salvador, Peru, Argentina, many others), and of course East Europe.
But the continuing swirl of entropy and miscalculations in Iraq may undermine democracy in the region, even in poor Iran that seemed hopeful so recently with the reformist majority in its parliament that this year has been undermined by the fundamentalist Cromwellian imams. Although we might not blame that on the Bush administration, because the 'hardliners' in Iran are surely bullheaded and very resistant to reform, the attitude of the US determinators cannot have helped. In the run-up to the war in 2002-2003 the Bush administration managed to utterly alienate the mild Islamic nation of Turkey with hamfisted attempts to buy loyalty that insulted the elected officials of that nation and their constituents. Do we remember that diplomatic blunder? Did it disgust you? Does anybody remember that episode or does the bumper sticker mentality prevail in America? Turkey could be a great player in the democratization of Islam, and it is no friend of terrorism, having suffered much itself from it, but the Bush administration handwaved this asset in its blind confidence in the technologically unparalleled forces at its disposal. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld famously wanted no more than 75,000 armed US people on the invasion of Iraq out of confidence in superior highly-expensive military tech, and imagine the level of chaos in Iraq if this view had prevailed. Not seeing beyond the victory to the problem of occupation, pure hubris, which as students of the classical Greek view know is punished harshly by the gods.
Secretary of State Powell should have planned the invasion; recall the 'Powell doctrine' of the 1991 Gulf War: Overwhelming Force! If there were 450,000 US troops on the ground in Iraq, would we have the current headlines?
The average Iraqi was happy to see the end of the Hussein regime, but then suffered from lack of electricity (air conidtioners!) and the most basic service fo decent water for too many months, and their most often quoted complaint, "security", because there was and stilll is much lawlessness, and this can be blamed for the most part on the slackness of the US occupation force. Apache helicopters can't stop looting and muggings. So many doubts were raised in the populace.
The Iraqis suffered a lot from the sanctions leveled upon Iraq after 1991, which did not effect the higher-ups with their privileges who could always obtain what they needed from the oil revenue. The UN sanctions were a cowardly shame that only hurt the average people in Iraq. If Republicans need to blame the Clinton administration they should mention this, but since they supported the sanctions and they have no ability to think they don't and they won't. The Repbulicans do not care about humanity, only themselves, their families, their neighborhoods, their country, which is ostensible plausible morality, but lacking empathy for foreigners they cause problems because the US is the globe-straddling power and its actions fall out everywhere.
The lack of understanding of other peoples in the US is disheartening. I hear all the time "How come they don't appreciate that we liberated them" about Iraqis. Well, most Irquis DO appreciate this; but as there are many points of view in America, so it is in other countries, monolithic national attitudes do not exist in any country, there are always different points of view, because people are people and do not all line up to a strereotype; different points of view exist in every society, and in the middle east some always fall under the spell of fundamentalism or remember all too well the history of Western intervention, interference, and hostility; in America the simplistic formulas become conventional wisdom; those other places are far away and stereotypes are the default; what we see on TV is what is filmed, mad demonstrations, dreadful tragic violence, angry voices. Peaceful markets and daily life - not news.
But the continuing swirl of entropy and miscalculations in Iraq may undermine democracy in the region, even in poor Iran that seemed hopeful so recently with the reformist majority in its parliament that this year has been undermined by the fundamentalist Cromwellian imams. Although we might not blame that on the Bush administration, because the 'hardliners' in Iran are surely bullheaded and very resistant to reform, the attitude of the US determinators cannot have helped. In the run-up to the war in 2002-2003 the Bush administration managed to utterly alienate the mild Islamic nation of Turkey with hamfisted attempts to buy loyalty that insulted the elected officials of that nation and their constituents. Do we remember that diplomatic blunder? Did it disgust you? Does anybody remember that episode or does the bumper sticker mentality prevail in America? Turkey could be a great player in the democratization of Islam, and it is no friend of terrorism, having suffered much itself from it, but the Bush administration handwaved this asset in its blind confidence in the technologically unparalleled forces at its disposal. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld famously wanted no more than 75,000 armed US people on the invasion of Iraq out of confidence in superior highly-expensive military tech, and imagine the level of chaos in Iraq if this view had prevailed. Not seeing beyond the victory to the problem of occupation, pure hubris, which as students of the classical Greek view know is punished harshly by the gods.
Secretary of State Powell should have planned the invasion; recall the 'Powell doctrine' of the 1991 Gulf War: Overwhelming Force! If there were 450,000 US troops on the ground in Iraq, would we have the current headlines?
The average Iraqi was happy to see the end of the Hussein regime, but then suffered from lack of electricity (air conidtioners!) and the most basic service fo decent water for too many months, and their most often quoted complaint, "security", because there was and stilll is much lawlessness, and this can be blamed for the most part on the slackness of the US occupation force. Apache helicopters can't stop looting and muggings. So many doubts were raised in the populace.
The Iraqis suffered a lot from the sanctions leveled upon Iraq after 1991, which did not effect the higher-ups with their privileges who could always obtain what they needed from the oil revenue. The UN sanctions were a cowardly shame that only hurt the average people in Iraq. If Republicans need to blame the Clinton administration they should mention this, but since they supported the sanctions and they have no ability to think they don't and they won't. The Repbulicans do not care about humanity, only themselves, their families, their neighborhoods, their country, which is ostensible plausible morality, but lacking empathy for foreigners they cause problems because the US is the globe-straddling power and its actions fall out everywhere.
The lack of understanding of other peoples in the US is disheartening. I hear all the time "How come they don't appreciate that we liberated them" about Iraqis. Well, most Irquis DO appreciate this; but as there are many points of view in America, so it is in other countries, monolithic national attitudes do not exist in any country, there are always different points of view, because people are people and do not all line up to a strereotype; different points of view exist in every society, and in the middle east some always fall under the spell of fundamentalism or remember all too well the history of Western intervention, interference, and hostility; in America the simplistic formulas become conventional wisdom; those other places are far away and stereotypes are the default; what we see on TV is what is filmed, mad demonstrations, dreadful tragic violence, angry voices. Peaceful markets and daily life - not news.
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