Morning at the Compound is one of my favourite times in the day. The sun just rising over the barbed-wire and machine gun nests, the air has that delightful tang of midsummer dew to it – but the ass-gas that passes for “mist” in this city hasn’t yet ascended from the ground and the sewer lines. Early morning in Toronto is a magical affair, believe it or not, and it’s a joy to experience it fresh every day.
Jeff and I usually meet at the café in the courtyard of the Compound for our daily preparatory meeting. Yes, we actually have preparatory meetings – you don’t think this shit writes itself, do you? Whilst enjoying a tray’s worth of breakfast Caesars (or “Bloody Marys” for the American crowd, only spicier)
we comb through the news to find a topic or story of interest that sets one or both of us off. Often that’s not hard to do, because we’re both quick to anger and, as you may have noticed, we both have a lot to say about pretty much every topic under the sun. Sometimes it takes as many as six Caesars before we hit upon something truly worth our vitriolic attention, but we always find it. Then we check for correspondence from Jim (by way of email, text, telephone, telegram, carrier pigeon or smoke signal) and go our separate ways and get to work. To this day I genuinely don’t know anything about Jeff’s writing process, but mine sort of goes like this.
I like to arrange my workspace so I’m as comfortable as possible. That means an open window through which to enjoy the air of any season, and out of which to spew cigarette smoke and the occasional curse word if I can’t make a sentence work. It also means proximity to both a coffee machine and a liquor cabinet, because it says in my copy of the Cliché Writer’s Handbook that I’m supposed to drink lots of caffeine and alcohol. To offset the effects of both, I like to have plenty of fresh oranges on hand, as well as good French bread and a hunk of aged cheddar. A letter opener stained with lime juice, because nobody really sends me letters, but I do go through an awful lot of lime. A hard pack of Camels and a comfortable chair completes my ensemble.
For a lot of writers, my study is a little piece of heaven. Years ago I remember reading a quote about how if you’re orderly in your life you can be wild and uninhibited in your writing. Well, my little piece of heaven might be the only orderly thing about my life, but I guess it’s enough.
Today, as I sip whiskey from a decanter and look out at the beautiful Toronto greenery outside my open window, enjoying the warm June breeze and the jewel-clear sky, I’ve decided to write about war.
Human history is defined by war. That is to say, we use wars as milestones along the road of our shared past. It’s a great way to cleanly parse eras and ages, and wars make great chapter pieces in textbooks. Think about the last hundred years. We kick off the century only fourteen years in with the First World War, a.k.a. The Great War, WWI, etc. etc. &c. Twenty years go by and we go direct to the internationally best-selling sequel, World War II. After that? The Korean War. The Vietnam “Conflict”. The Cold War. The Persian Gulf War (recently re-envisioned as the First Persian Gulf War, or Gulf War I, etc. etc. &c.) And, of course, the current war in the Middle East, sometimes called the Iraq War, the WMD Debacle, or the “What The Fuck Are We Doing In The Middle Of The Desert?” Conflict.
A lot has been made of the futility of war, particularly by pundits, comedians and political activists. Saint George Carlin once attributed war to the “bigger dicks foreign policy” theorem: “They have bigger dicks [than us]? BOMB THEM!”
Henry Rollins, another big hero of mine, thinks war is a cop-out of putting in serious work towards diplomacy – “We’ve run out of options, let’s have a war.” He also noted that it’s a great excuse for the Powers That Be to try out all their nifty implements of destruction they spend so much time, money and talent developing. What’s the point in having a whole truck load of Bunker Buster Bombs if you never get to bust any bunkers, right?
The late, great comedian Bill Hicks was one of the first people to take notice of the interesting new concept behind the coverage of the Persian Gulf War, which would become the standard for how war was covered in the media from then on. He rightly pointed out that CNN’s coverage of Desert Storm looked an awful lot like a video game, and that the American public was being fed a Hollywood version of the conflict rather than an accurate representation of what was happening.
This Hollywood gloss would be taken to the Nth degree by the administration of George W. Bush, whose use of such buzz phrases as The Axis of Evil and The Coalition of the Willing, as well as the circulation of those playing cards (each emblazoned with a photo of a “bad guy”) took the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to dizzying new heights of commercialism. One postulates that George Jr. envisioned himself the hero of this particular comic, leading the Justice League in the battle against the tyranny of the diabolical Saddam, who in a previous issue, had tried to kill George’s father. It was all very epic, and for a time, it appeared this grand theatrical device had won over the American people, at least so far as to convince them that yet another tryst through the desert of death was a pretty damn good idea. Not to say my neighbours to the south didn’t have some justification for their anger:
but it seems to me they were pretty happy to jump on board that whole Justice League angle, because it feels much better to go to war when the ideas of Right and Wrong, Good and Bad are so seemingly clear-cut. That’s kind of why WWII is still such a shining example of the idealism of the West. During that conflict, perhaps above any other conflict in the last hundred years, there was a very definite sense of Good versus Evil – it doesn’t take a huge leap to paint the Third Reich as not particularly friendly.
And we can wax poetic for sixty or seventy years about the bravery of those men who died in defense of freedom. They tried to paint the Iraq thing the same way – the defenders of democracy riding in on shining steeds to stop the maniacal dictator from completing his goal of world conquest using the fearsome weapons at his disposal. And it would have worked, too, if Saddam Hussein had designs on conquering anything other than his own people – oh, and if he’d had weapons.
As it turns out he didn’t, and now thanks to the internet, there are hundreds of dead Americans and thousands of dead Iraqis on display (even though CNN and Fox and the other major networks like to pretend they aren’t there), and people are starting to get pretty upset.
So the face of war has changed considerably, or at least its public face has. I think it’s fair to assume that everybody knows (and has always known) that war is a pretty terrible situation to drop any human into – a lot of people die, the ones that don’t often come back missing critical pieces of their anatomy or their psyches, and in the end, nothing is really gained. It’s been a long time since the whole world faced a threat on the scale of the Nazi regime, unless you count Bush Jr. -era United States (and I do). The wars we fight today are perhaps even more politically and economically based than any that have come before, and for all our vaunted technology and mastery of the tools of destruction, well, today’s wars just seem to last and last, don’t they?
And that’s just military wars. Troop mobilizations, tank formations, aircraft carrier squadrons, whatever – sooner or later those fires burn out (only to flare up somewhere else, sure, but it’s been a few centuries since a Hundred Years’ War). The wars that really stand the test of time are the ones that burn my ass maybe even more than the military conflicts do.
How long in this culture have we been waging a war on poverty? A war on drugs? The war on terror is a relatively new one, but I think it fits in this category. How far have we come in those campaigns? How far has the line of scrimmage moved? In World War I, the main line of battle in Europe didn’t move more than about 60 miles in either direction at the cost of over fifteen million lives. Seems to me we’ve had just about as much luck waging war on conceptual, metaphysical ideas. Let’s take the War on Drugs as a good example of what I mean.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fG1tNO0_Pk
The War on Drugs was declared by President Lyndon B. Johnson way back in 1964, and since then has resulted in millions of arrests and incarcerations for drug-related crimes (usually possession). Here’s a fun fact: according to a 1994 study by the New England Journal of Medicine, the War on Drugs results in the imprisonment of over a million Americans each year, about a quarter of which are for possession of marijuana (incidentally, the fourth-most common cause for arrest in the U.S.). Sounds like a war to me, doesn’t it?
So what has this war accomplished, other than to put a bunch of kids with joints behind bars, where they will doubtless be rehabilitated into well-adjusted, functioning members of a law-abiding society?
Let’s see…
Here are some great stats for you, straight from the Center for Disease Control. Between 1980 and 2007, here’s some of the great leaps forward the War on Drugs has provided.
1980: Percentage of high school seniors smoking pot = 33.7
2007: Percentage of high school seniors smoking pot = 18.8
Good job warriors! But wait…
1980: Percentage of eighth-graders smoking pot = (data not listed…earliest date available is 1991, when the percentage sat at 3.2)
2007: Percentage of eighth-graders smoking pot = 5.7
Wait a minute, that looks awfully strange…
1980: Percentage of high school seniors snorting coke = 5.2
2007: Percentage of high school seniors snorting coke = 2.0
Not nearly as impressive a drop as the weed, but still…
1980: Percentage of eighth-graders snorting coke = (data not listed again! 1991 was 0.5)
2007: Percentage of eighth-graders snorting coke = 0.9
Now hang on just a fucking second.
I know you can spin statistics any way you want, and I’m not one to rely on the numbers to prove a point for me, but what I’m getting from these stats is pretty damned interesting, and frankly, too good a target to pass up.
Let’s do the math for a second, shall we? First, let’s assume for the sake of this argument that between 1964 and May 13 of this year (when the Office of National Drug Control Policy announced they were finally retiring the War on Drugs moniker because it’s counter-productive to their goals) the trends of drug use listed above are directly affected by the procedures of the War on Drugs. Let’s look at the numbers.
Between 1980 and 2007, the prevalence of high school seniors smoking weed dropped 14.9%. But the prevalence of eighth graders (children five years younger than the first group) exhibiting the same behavior actually rose two and a half percent. Okay, this is weed we’re talking about. Clearly somebody thinks it’s a big issue in high schools, which is why we’ve seen such a drop in the numbers. I know when I was in high school it was a cardinal sin to be caught smoking a joint, and the cops in the town I lived in liked nothing better than busting kids for possession. And if a bunch of 13 year olds have discovered pot a little earlier than the previous generation, well, I guess that’s to be expected in today’s media culture. You can thank Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre if you’d like. Or Gary Gygax, whichever you prefer.
But let’s take a look at the much more interesting statistic, shall we? Between 1980 and 2007, the prevalence of high school seniors snorting coke dropped 3.2 percent. Another victory in the War, right? Well, yeah, I guess so. I mean, if you’re of the mindset that a drug’s a drug and they’re all evil, then any drop in use is probably good. But it strikes me as funny that the War on Drugs would be more concerned about limiting the use of something like marijuana (clearly a widespread phenomenon) than they would be about eradicating the use of cocaine, a somewhat more dangerous drug in my estimation. Okay, we’ll let it go for now.
Oh wait. No we won’t. Because here’s the best stat of all: between 1991 and 2007, the prevalence of nose-candy use among 13 year-olds went UP almost a half-percent! Jesus H. Tacked-Up Christ on a Billboard! Stop the presses! This is serious shit!
But Alex, that’s ONLY a half a percent…and the original number was only 0.4 percent of 13 year-olds to begin with! It’s not like we’re talking about a huge trend or anything.
That’s not really the point, is it? The fact that American taxpayers have funneled literally millions upon millions of dollars into a program designed to stop their children from taking hazardous and potentially fatal drugs should itself necessitate a drop in use percentage, or at least a maintenance of the status quo. There is NO excuse for a rise in that percentage – no matter how minute – in the first place. Second, we’re talking about a serious fucking disparity in priorities here. Oh, good for you, Generals in the War on Drugs – stem the flow of a relatively harmless narcotic like marijuana whilst allowing a bunch of thirteen year-olds to start doing their best Rick James impressions in public school bathrooms nation-wide. You haven’t just dropped the ball here, you antiquated octogenarian sock puppets. You’ve totally misplaced the entire court.
This is what happens when you try to fight a war against a concept. There’s no way to win a “war on drugs” unless you get rid of all the drugs, and I think it’s pretty fair to say that’s never going to happen. Same thing with the war on poverty – you can’t “fight” poverty, all you can do is provide relief to the poor and try to improve the economic conditions of your country in a general way to help stem the scenarios that result in people being poor. But this is a capitalistic culture, which means there will always be a class system, which means there will always be poverty – as such, any “war” waged on that notion is a thin facade of liberal goodwill painted over a vast cavernous consumerist maw that will inevitably gorge itself on every last resource this planet has to offer. War on Poverty, my Aunt Matilda. War on the Poor is more like it.
It’s the same thing with this stupid fucking War on Terror concept forwarded to us by the previous administration. I always loved the concept of the “War on Terror” because frankly, what I’m terrified of are clowns. And I would throw my support wholeheartedly behind any organization who wanted to declare war on that pack of painted, giggling freaks.
But seriously – how do you expect to wage a war on a group of individuals who are indistinguishable from the average citizen, who strike without warning and without real motive, and who have access to all sorts of nasty gadgets and implements of destruction (and display a disconcerting ability to turn everyday items into implements of destruction when they can’t secure real ones)? These people are masters of what I like to call “alternative warfare”, folks. That means you aren’t safe, and neither am I, and all the technological genius and military might of the United States Armed Forces is not going to protect any of us from a suitcase nuke or a vial full of ebola or anything else those nutty extremists might have planned. Fighting a War on Terror is like trying to nail Jell-o to a tree.
So what’s the deal? Why War? Well, I hate to beat a dead horse, but it’s like Saint George used to say – it’s a form of entertainment. Think about it! How many people still watch war coverage on CNN or Fox like it’s the trailer for Call of Duty 4? How many people watch Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” adverts or this particular gem:
for ironic amusement? And when was the last time you gave money to a homeless guy, versus the last time you laughed when some poor schizophrenic passed your workplace screaming at the people only he can see about how the CIA put a chip in his brain? War is fun, folks. Time to embrace your inner monster, because there’s no point in denying it anymore. We like war. It’s stimulating on personal, spiritual, economic and political levels. And it’s not going away anytime soon.
The bottom line is, unfortunately, that we can no longer afford to look at any conflict in terms of purist “good” and “evil”. Is cocaine bad? Probably, yeah, but how bad? In relation to weed? In relation to heroin? Can you answer that question? Can anybody? Was Saddam Hussein bad? Yeah, I’d say so, but how bad? In relation to Hitler? In relation to George Bush? Can you answer that question? Can anybody?
War is a fundamental part of humanity. We’re war-like. And until the next wave of evolution comes around and we stop being war-like, I guess we’re going to have to get used to the idea of declaring war on everything we don’t like. But if you’re going to make me fight, I’m going to fight on my own terms, with my own brothers-at-arms watching our flanks. Guys like this:
And this:
And this too:
who know the value of an idea, who know the power of a word, and who know good and goddamned well that nothing is black-and-white.
War – what is it good for?
Keeping me employed, for one thing.
Pay attanetion to this man Kttens, he is worthy of your respect and admiration.
[...] Morning at the Compound is one of my favourite times in the day. The sun just rising over the barbed-wire and machine gun nests, the air has that delightful tang of midsummer dew to it – but the ass-gas that passes for “mist” in this city hasn’t yet ascended from the ground and the sewer lines. Early morning in Toronto is a magical affair, believe it or not, and it’s a joy to experience it fresh every day.Jeff and I usually meet at the café in the courtyard of the Compound for our daily prepar Excerpt from: What Is It Good For? [...]