This started life as a comment, about ten minutes ago. But I thought it better here.
Smiling Happy People
DTF. So good to see your words here. Lovely thought provoking words.
I’m reminded of so much.
I’m reminded that as a young compassionate soldier when I went to serve the far-flung borders of the empire in 1986 in S. Korea. I was introduced to a young man. He was my KATUSA. A Korean Augment TO the United States Army. KATUSAs were the creme de la creme of South Korean society, we were assured. The smartest young men of their generation. Fluent in English. Scholars. Leaders. For the days to come. There to serve at our beck and call. To guide us through the periphery of our empire. As it grew in its capitalist aspirations — to be a better part of our world. My KATUSA, Kim Chan-Heung, was an exceptional young man. Brillian economist. Serving as my clerk. Kind man. Friend. Over our year together we were friends. Beyond our countries complicated arrangement. We traveled the Korean country side. Distributing parts for the toys of our war machine. Me learning of the land and the people. He took me to counter-culture rallies at Seoul University or the University of Seoul (I forget how to say it). Where committed Koreans sought to overthrow the empire. Beaten and tear-gassed by the pro-empire elite. And here is the point. One point. Kim was my friend. And we sat burning Army manuals in a barrel to keep warm one day, camped in the field, training for war, and he continued to explain the subtle hatred of common South Koreans for our occupying force. Some thirty years after the war. And I, fully of the exceptional mold at that time — though even then there were seeds — perhaps seeds planted by Kim himself — said to him this, in all sincerity, and to the best of my recollection. “I don’t know why we are here, man. None of us want to be here. We all want to go home. And if the North is such a threat, then you all could just come and live with us. We’ve got so much room in the United States. We could take you all. Give you Wyoming. That’s at least as big as this place. And fuck the war. Come and live with us. Why don’t we just do that?” Kim laughed. Gently explained that Koreans were Koreans. That they loved their home as much as I loved Michigan. He was wiser than I, then. And I doubt I’ve caught him, even now, though we grown apart. America the Hubris.
Reminded of marching through the villages as a conqueror of sorts. And the look of a child (someone else just reminded me of this). How can anyone love a man with an M-16? The look of the child was fear, I think. I don’t know. But something. Odd. He looked at me like a foreigner. I’ve never felt so foreign.
Reminded of an old woman. Ancient. Who walked up and kissed me, as Kim and I hiked on a mountain. She talked. Kim translated. I looked just like a soldier she had known in the war. She loved us. We had done some good. In her mind.
Reminded of a photo I saw yesterday. Of a child’s shattered head. In a Haditha home. Fucking completely shattered like a ceramic doll’s head, only there were brains left inside. Just a few. Innocent. But deformed. Fucking shattered. I can’t bring myself to send the photo to anyone else. I would post it. But I don’t have the technical ability. I have the technical ability. But not without great effort. And the balance of expending the effort versus the need not to share the horror. That equation leads me to just describe it in words. That don’t do it justice. But I hope they act like a warning. Like a bird calling danger to his fellows in the wood. A beaver thumping his tale. A buck pounding on the dirt at the site of a hunter. The picture is soul-shattering. I weep as I sit and type. Or I do what I can do, as a man in the mighty America. I tear up. My eyes moisten. They feel heavy. But through some act of manly, patriotic will, I do not let tears flow down my cheeks. I don’t even know the muscles that I use to keep the tears in my eyes. They work subconsciously. But I can hold them back. And see the screen. Just a bit bleary. But the photo. I don’t even need to see it again. It is floating right here before my eyes. How many years to get the image to go somewhere? More than it takes to forget the frightened look of a Korean boy. I know that. But I don’t want this to be the image I see when I draw my last breath. I want our country to become human. The first powerful, human place. Skulls must crack like that poor baby’s skull did, in natural ways. A great fall. A vicious beast in the wild. But we should not do this to one another. Human beings. They should not do this to one another. No matter the mass delusion of being an exception. It is that clear. A simple rule that lives behind the unknown muscles of your eyes.
I’m reminded of something Ralph Nader told me. That people in other countries cannot even fathom that we have a word in our culture for something that is “un-American.” That such a concept. To label those that have escaped the dominant cultural paradigm are reserved for understanding only by those who live in the most stable forms of fascism.
This is now a diary, I guess. And I’ll put it there. If you cry. It has to be a diary. It is a man rule. If some screw hadn’t come loose in my head. On a Korean mountain top. Or sitting here viewing photos on my computer. It would be a secret diary. Or something locked away from any voice, in my heart. But I’m kind of drifting out there in the whole world at this point. In this life.
Thank you DTF. For sharing your thoughts. I wish they were not true. I wish that our humanity outweighed whatever in our culture allows this unleashing of most vile death upon the world. Some spark of humanity keeps nagging at me. I don’t even know where it is. I can’t identify its home in me. My brain. My heart. My eyes. Somewhere a part of me wants you to be wrong. Wants to believe that we — all of us — we are more human. More humane. We are the exception. We are incapable of unleashing death on the world. That we are not a biblical plague. But I just don’t know.