The North Coast times-eagle., August 01, 2003, Page 14, Image 14

PAGE 14
NORTH COAST TIMES E A G L E , AUGTEMBER2003
SEPTEMBER 11 TH
Thunder in the wind
No rain.
Peace mourns its passing.
No pain.
We are still human,
But our existence is bane.
Do we not bleed and die?
It is always the same refrain.
Nothing is right.
Terrorism shakes its ugly mane.
Are we not all human?
Do we not feel pain?
Peace comes to an end
As the old moon wanes.
Jets fly overhead,
We decide to take trains.
We are struck by horror.
We are struck by pain.
What do we do
When the time comes again?
Send our boys into battle,
Watch them die in vain.
Peace waves goodbye as
War says hello again.
-JESS/ DUNKIN
Jessi Dunkin wrote this poem right after 9/11 when she was
16 and it appeared in the Jan/Feb 2002 Times Eagle. She
was a member of the cast of The Laramie Project performed
last spring by Astoria High School students and is onstage this
summer as a stand-in for Shanghaied in Astoria. She will be
18 on October 21.
RAYBARTKUS
FORE VER 9/ / 7
The national angst of the past two years since 9/11 has also been a highly charged
personal nightmare — that a highjacked jet airplane loaded with helpless captives is aimed
at all our windows.
It is a nightmare that has proved very fruitful for the homeland fearmongers of the Bush
administration who have kept the terrorist paranoia at high fever since 9/11, the day the calendar
stopped whenever the Bushies are questioned or criticized about anything.
The great vehemence is that everything must be done to protect the USA from the rest
of the world while simultaneously ensuring the rest of the world is vulnerable to the power and
might of the USA — this is the Bush Doctrine, under which the USA is rapidly mutating into the
sort of rogue nation it accuses others of being, soon to be the world's major nuclear terrorist.
And it seems that at present the immediate fate of the world is edgily framed by the
personality of one man, George W. Bush, which is unfortunate; a graspy little Nero pretending
to be Caesar, a war deserter masquerading as wartime Commander in Chief — a Tory imposter
claiming the mantle of Super Patriot.
Bush, as Jan de Hartog wrote about another messianic fraud, has “a head of a choleric
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and behaves like a phlegmatic. Such a sin against nature can only be the result of a religious
conversion."
It is more than remotely possible the real conspiracy of terror against the USA is inspired
at the highest levels of government in Saudi Arabia — most of the 9/11 kamikazis were from
there, as is of course Osama bin Laden (whose family has long been in business with the Bush
family). Saudi Arabians, if not the government itself, have been at the center of world terrorism
for decades.
As much paranoid spook literature projects, there might be infinite layers of intrigue
impossible to ascertain — even conceivable that separate agendas coalesce for reasons of
opportunity or indispensability such as the Bush and bln Laden families in gray conspiracy
leading to 9/11. (A former CIA agent has written a book In which he accuses the White House
of “selling the country’s soul for Saudi crude.")
There are a few certainties among the disingenuousness, principally that two years since
9/11 the war on terror is no closer to closure than the day it ostensibly started with that astonish­
ing surprise attack on the United States that congealed the calendar.
-MICHAEL MCUSKER
A LAST WORD ABOUT AUGUST
August is a month of memories. To select from a tightly
subjective list, the Nuclear Age got its start 58 years ago with
the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan. That same August,
Vietnam declared independence from the revival of French
colonialism that followed Japan's surrender and the end of
World War 2, which culminated in a generation of wars against
two Western powers. In August 1964 a fabricated incident that
involved two American naval destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin
led to a virtual declaration of war by the United States a few
days later (the Tonkin Resolution) that began ten years of
disaster for both countries. A year later, in August 1965, U.S.
Marines fought the first large scale battle against Vietnamese
guerrillas known as the Viet Cong ('Operation Starlight1), and
at the same time, 37 years ago, what is called the Watts Riot
in Los Angeles. In 1970, a quarter of a century after Vietnam
began its wars of independence, as part of a growing disen­
chantment with the American war in Vietnam, a coalition of
antiwar groups from the Pacific Northwest challenged the
American Legion at its annual national convention, which
began in Portland, August 28.
The coalition called itself the People's Army Jamboree
in recognition of the theatrical nature of political demonstrations,
and was spearheaded by the Vietnam Veterans Against the
War. Although the Oregon National Guard and almost every
police officer in the state were mustered against the demon­
strators, there was no violence. Governor Tom McCall claimed
major credit for the aversion of violence. He had taken the
unprecedented step of sponsoring a rock concert which was
intended to draw young people away from the protest. The
concert (Vortex 1)* was well attended, but not by political
activists: there was a tendency in those days for authorities
to link all elements of what was called the counter culture.
The news media acted disappointed about the lack of
violence and accused the coalition of being lightweights because
it didn't leave its blood in the streets. Out of state reporters
assigned to the demonstration went off to cover forest fires
instead. One visiting columnist proclaimed that the People’s
Army Jamboree was a lot like the Lock Ness monster: everyone
talked about it, but no one ever saw it.
For the veterans who opposed the Vietnam War, the
confrontation against their older counterparts was the start of a
journey to the nation's capital where the following spring more
than a thousand hurled their war medals at Congress (and a few
of them a week later hurled gobs of fresh chicken defecation at
the doors of the Pentagon, which is considered the last major
assault upon the Department Of Defense prior to 9/11). It was
the second time in the 20th century that war veterans took their
grievances to Washington, D C. (the first was the Bonus Army'
of World War 1 vets in 1933): both got their start in Portland.
The latter visit was spared the bloody rout of the first, although
the war continued for four more years and will probably not truly
end until the last of its veterans are dead.
The WAW was the only veterans group formed during
the Vietnam War. Unlike the other veterans groups, which have
acted as rubber stamps for the Pentagon, it opposed war. More
than even such an opposition by war veterans is necessary to
counter the war fever that currently grips this nation and the
world. It is owed to the dead they left behind and those who will
surely die if the present formula of perpetual wars is not
reversed. It Is an obligation, a lifelong duty for having survived
war's slaughter.
- michael M c C usker
*HipFish columnist Matt Love has given an oral presentation
about Vortex in Astoria and Newport (“When Oregon Rocked:
The Far-Out Story of Vortex 1"), and is writing a book about it.
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