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ChickenHawks
Crow for War
By Matt Bivens Monday, Sep. 2, 2002
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"A chickenhawk [describes] public persons—generally
male—who
(1) tend to advocate, or are fervent supporters of those who
advocate, military solutions to political problems, and who have
personally (2) declined to take advantage of a significant
opportunity to serve in uniform during wartime."—The New Hampshire Gazette |
WASHINGTON—We are being dragged toward war with Iraq by such chickenhawks. The loudest voices demanding war are those of men who once
upon a time quietly skipped out on the fun in Vietnam. Men like Dick
Cheney, who famously explained, "I had other priorities in the '60s
than military service."
Cheney received draft deferments as a college student until he got
married in 1964; marriage removed him from the draft. But the next year,
the government announced married men would be drafted, unless they were
also fathers. Nine months and two days after that announcement, the
Cheneys had their first child.
A list of chickenhawks—including many who are
eager for war with Iraq, yet who had "other priorities"
when Vietnam came a-calling—has been compiled by Steven Fowle,
a Vietnam veteran who edits The New Hampshire Gazette. (It's at
NH
Gazette.)
It starts with the president himself. George W. Bush waited out
the war from a post with light duties in the Texas Air National
Guard. And, apparently, even that cushy deal was too onerous:
There's an unexplained one- year gap, from May 1972 to May 1973, in
Bush's service record. That year he was supposed to have reported for
duty at the Alabama Air National Guard, but apparently never showed.
Bush's reply is that he was honorably discharged and is proud
of his service—but also that he can't recall the specifics. Specifics
are also in short supply for Defense Department Iraq hawks like Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle; for White House adviser Karl Rove; for
professional blabbers George Will, William Kristol, Rush Limbaugh and
Pat Buchanan; for Republican congressional leaders Trent Lott, Dennis
Hastert, Dick Armey and Tom DeLay; and for many others—right down to
Rambo himself, Sylvester Stallone.
Some of the explanations offered by those who
avoided Vietnam sound hilarious today. Pundit and politician
Buchanan got out for "bad knees," but went on to become
an avid jogger. DeLay, who was working as a pest exterminator
during Vietnam, is reported to have complained that he would have
served but all the places were taken up by black people. (Blacks
in the 1960s had no "other priorities?") And then
there's rabid radio personality Limbaugh's excuse: "Anal
cysts."
As Matthew Engel noted in the Guardian, "It is not my
custom to mock others' ailments, but anyone who has listened to
Limbaugh's program can imagine the dripping scorn he would bring
to the revelation that a prominent Democrat had skipped a war over
something like that."
The poster boy for draft-dodging, to hear the media tell it, has long
been Bill Clinton. But Clinton also organized anti-war protests in the
late 1960s, and years later, while running for office, was thoroughly
grilled by the media and the public for his Vietnam-era conduct. By contrast, the chickenhawks weaseled out of
Vietnam while loudly proclaiming their support for it; they've
never once been called to account for doing so; and now, they want
to send a new generation of Americans into a Middle Eastern ground
war. [Matt Bivens, a former editor of The Moscow Times, is
a Washington- based fellow of The Nation Institute [http://www.thenation.com].
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Salvage the Bones
A Novel by Jesmyn Ward
On one level, Salvage the Bones is a simple story about a poor black family that’s about to be trashed by one of the most deadly hurricanes in U.S. history. What makes the novel so powerful, though, is the way Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico. Without a hint of pretension, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy. The force that pushes back against Katrina’s inexorable winds is the voice of Ward’s narrator, a 14-year-old girl named Esch, the only daughter among four siblings. Precocious, passionate and sensitive, she speaks almost entirely in phrases soaked in her family’s raw land. Everything here is gritty, loamy and alive, as though the very soil were animated. Her brother’s “blood smells like wet hot earth after summer rain. . . . His scalp looks like fresh turned dirt.” Her father’s hands “are like gravel,” while her own hand “slides through his grip like a wet fish,” and a handsome boy’s “muscles jabbered like chickens.” Admittedly, Ward can push so hard on this simile-obsessed style that her paragraphs risk sounding like a compost heap, but this isn’t usually just metaphor for metaphor’s sake. She conveys something fundamental about Esch’s fluid state of mind: her figurative sense of the world in which all things correspond and connect. She and her brothers live in a ramshackle house steeped in grief since their mother died giving birth to her last child. . . . What remains, what’s salvaged, is something indomitable in these tough siblings, the strength of their love, the permanence of their devotion.—WashingtonPost |
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Incognegro: A Memoir of
Exile and Apartheid
By Frank B. Wilderson, III
Wilderson, a professor,
writer and filmmaker from
the Midwest,
presents a gripping account
of his role in the downfall
of South African apartheid
as one of only two black
Americans in the African
National Congress (ANC).
After marrying a South
African law student, Wilderson reluctantly
returns with her to South
Africa in the early 1990s,
where he teaches
Johannesburg and Soweto
students, and soon joins the
military wing of the ANC.
Wilderson's stinging
portrait of Nelson Mandela
as a petulant elder eager to
accommodate his white
countrymen will jolt readers
who've accepted the
reverential treatment
usually accorded him. After
the assassination of
Mandela's rival, South
African Communist Party
leader Chris Hani, Mandela's
regime deems Wilderson's
public questions a threat to
national security; soon,
having lost his stomach for
the cause, he returns to
America.
Wilderson has a
distinct, powerful voice and
a strong story that shuffles
between the indignities of
Johannesburg life and his
early years in Minneapolis,
the precocious child of
academics who barely
tolerate his emerging
political consciousness.
Wilderson's observations
about love within and across
the color line and cultural
divides are as provocative
as his politics; despite
some distracting
digressions, this is a
riveting memoir of
apartheid's last days.—Publishers
Weekly
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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