As The War Turns

Wow, how 'bout that, huh? We won!

Surprise, surprise. When thinking about how to describe what just happened over last few weeks, it feels like I'm describing a much-anticipated TV miniseries, or maybe a season of The Sopranos: "Well.. it sure was somethin' else! I laughed, I cried, it became a part of me... It made me think, it made me laugh, it made me mad. What happened to the bad guy? We'll have to wait till the next season, I guess. Sure were a lot of cool explosions, though. I like when stuff blows up." Although Tony Soprano is an infinitely more likeable guy than Saddam Hussein -- he's a pretty normal, cool guy, except for the occasional mob-rat strangling or best-friend/mob-rat execution, complete with cement shoes. I guess there are similarities, too -- both are mobsters, armed to the teeth, with loyal capos ready to die to protect them.

Maybe I feel like I watched an HBO series instead of a war because that's what I did. The media's coverage of the war was, although informative and entertaining, the most melodramatic and shameless bunch of nonsense I've ever seen. OK, maybe "nonsense" is a strong word, but Jesus -- "Showdown With Saddam" blazing up on the screen in giant red letters every five minutes, with what sounds like a Baroque war march or something playing ominously in the background, it looked A LOT like the opening screen on my friggin' Army Men video game on Playstation. Or maybe watching the opening theme sequence to that goofy USA rogue-rebel TV show starring Lorenzo Lamas.

Kinda pitiful, isn't it? There's people over there either getting shot and maimed and killed, or constantly in danger of being shot and maimed and killed, and we get to sit at home and eat our Tyson Chicken Chunks and Ore-Idas, and and laugh at the funny parts and say "Ooh, wow" at the neato parts and say "Awww.." at the sad parts, and then have a beer and watch The Simpsons. The whole thing makes some of us act like idiots and go block the Congress Ave bridge, and some of us just get mad and call local talk radio shows, and some of us write pithy little "rants" on our websites. But most of us just watch the war, and then go "Cool, the one where Homer eats the Guatamalan insanity pepper! Munch, munch, gulp, gulp..." How many times did I answer the phone and say, "Aw, not doing much... just watchin' the war." Or is it The War?

But, that's we do, because that's the way it's presented to us. The powers that be don't want everybody getting all freaked out, and making the economy go all to hell, so they feed us the war in a nice, neato, TV-movie-of-the-week package, and we take it as such. We are entertained and satiated, with our palates satisfied by the same "car-wreck mentality" that makes The War compete for ratings with The Anna Nicole Show.

I've mentioned laughing, or things being funny, a couple of times. You may say "War's not funny, man..." True, war's not funny, but the coverage sure was. Watching a British journalist with an ill-fitting, cockeyed Army helmet on his head and a bewildered but gallant look on his face, speaking calmly to the camera one second, then ducking and shrieking "BLOODY 'ELL!!!!" the next as a rocket whizzes by overhead and explodes nearby, then timidly peeking up into camera range, with just his helmet and eyeballs showing, and whispering "That one was a real humdinga, Bob..." Now that's funny. In the first days of the bombing, when the military was breaking out the chemical suits, one of the cable news stations was about to go to their "reporter in the field" , and there was a split screen of the news anchor on one side, and a grainy, web-cam shot of a guy in a full camouflage chemical suit, complete with helmet and gas mask, and holding a microphone! As if that wasn't funny enough, they go to the reporter and he says, in a voice that sounds like he's a police dispatcher talking from a tin can, "Ollie North, reporting to you live from the battlefields of Iraq..." I split a freakin' gut.

I gotta tell you, though... I did swell with pride a bit when they showed the Iraqi people actually welcoming our soldiers and cheering them as they drove by (and not just ones wanting food and water, either), and when the Iraqi people tore down the statue of Saddam in Baghdad. That's what it was all about. Those people were (literally) royally SCREWED, and generations of despair had all ended in a matter of days. All the bombing and war seemed worth it when I saw normal citizens re-opening their shops and markets, unharmed because of our military technology and prowess, already selling things they had to keep hidden before (and what hadn't been looted), from computers to cigarettes. Hmmmm... a smoking ban... how oppressive and tyrannical! But wait, that's another Soapbox....

OK, that was a funny moment in the actual events, not just the coverage -- watching the whole ordeal of the statue coming down. The news coverage went on for a couple of hours, starting with the crowd around the statue trying to take it down from the concrete base, with a sledgehammer! There were US military tanks all around them that they knew could easily bring down the thing, and they were going to take it down themselves, blow by blow, each taking a few whacks and handing it to the next guy, all of whom were so anxious for their turn that they were fighting over who got to go next. There was decades of oppression, poverty, violence, torture, and death in every whack from that sledgehammer. I was actually a little disappointed when the US tank stepped in to finish the job. They would have brought that statue down themselves if it had taken all day and night, for weeks if that's what it took. It was seriously badass when, after some average-sized guys had been taking small chunks out of the concrete with the sledgehammer, that a guy walked up who about twice the size of everybody else, looking like he just came from the local Gold's Gym, jerked the sledgehammer out of some dude's hand, and starting taking mammoth hunks of stone out of the thing with that hammer. Funny, nobody tried to take it from him, either!

Oh yeah, the funny part.... After two hours of anticipation, the US tank was hooked up to the statue with cable and ready to bring it down. Everybody is expecting a triumphant CRASH as the thing comes flying off its pedestal and smashing to the ground. Instead, an American soldier climbs up to the head of the statue and drapes an American flag over Saddam's face. I had to cover my face on that one -- what were they thinking?? I instantly pictured the hammering we would get for that politically, maybe even causing Americans to be killed, for years to come -- not occupiers, huh? Not to mention how just basically wrong and stupid that was to do. Then someone on the ground finally came to their senses and sent a pre-Saddam Iraqi flag up there, and the soldier took ours off (didn't know where to put it after that, either --- couldn't just to toss it off the side to the ground and all. That moment was good for a chuckle by itself) and put the Iraqi flag over Saddam's statue-face. But it was too small, and was going to blow off. So, he just tucked the flag in the rope that the Iraqis had draped around Saddam's neck when they were originally trying bring it down, and left it at that. There was no Iraqi insignia showing, and it actually looked like a white silk kerchief stuck in the front of his collar. In the statue they had Saddam standing proudly, with his arm extended upward in a gesture. After the soldier gave him the little neckerchief, I thought, "Aww, Saddam's gonna sing us some opera!" Then, the tank started pulling, and the statue started falling. It creeeeaked and moaned, falling forward from its ankles, the tank tugged and pulled, the statue gained momentum, then started really coming down, and then...... well, it just kinda let out a creaky groan and hung there flaccidly, like an enamored man thinking about baseball scores. There was an audible, tactile gasp, and then a pause, and then a collective, disappointed Arabic "Awwwwwww...." from the crowd. And I actually even heard somebody laugh! It was BEAUTIFUL! A bit of a letdown at the moment, but poetic nonetheless -- Saddam, with all his ego and power, couldn't even have his statue taken down with a dramatic flourish -- and then got laughed at! Both the statue and the man came to a pitiful and powerless end. Then the people tore the statue from its base, ripped its head off, stomped the body to smithereens, and dragged the head through the streets, a beaming little kid beating it with his shoe all the way. And what's the whole "beating things with shoes" deal over there? I'm sure it's some cultural thing. For three days, all you saw was guys tearing down pictures of Saddam and beating them with shoes. Oh well -- fitting, I guess. And pretty damn funny.