ira cohen, apr17th, 2003, “some lines written on a cold day on 113th & broadway to the iraqi people”:
i am ashamed to be an american
when i think of the blood
spilled in the nights of depleted
uranium bombs which still
pollute your reticent eyes
drowning in disbelief of destiny’s mocking laughter
your culture from the very cradle
of time lies shipwrecked in
deserts devoid of seeds while
poisonous gases of a dead future
blow away the last remnants of
hammurabi’s dream
the gold harp will not sound
& even your organ harvest
will plummet in the teeth of
democracy’s eternal hunger -
now in the name of the lord
americans will celebrate the
easter bunny & prepare to eat pig
–
it is five years this week.
all i remember about those days is the dull fear which set in. i was supposed to be working on high school courses but they faded in the face of this fear that undercut everything else. the one president issued an “ultimatum” to the other, a set deadline and consequences outlined. this, after how many such deadlines and ultimatums had already been met, the most humiliating terms agreed to. hindsight revealing these as manipulations, maneuverings toward apocalypse. and then the last date set: so-and-so many hours before the first bombs were to fall, the first cruise missiles and daisy-cutters and bunker-busters sulphur-bombs cluster-bombs tomahawks and b-52 aircraft were to move in, pincers for the kill. i spent those hours listless, drifting from one thing to the next, watching news sites and waiting for news updates, hoping against all hope, a cold dread underlying everything, a terror that refused to abate, that grew as the hours passed - an anticipatory fear, breath that would catch in my throat. because we knew, we could not but know, that the next hours would bring horrors, would bring pains we could not feel, would mean such destruction for so many lives, for lives not our own. and - as though we were shouting into a void, we were screaming, begging, that - there is so much pain already in the world. why- why add to it, why add to it the cries of so many. so soon after the debacles of afghanistan, the isolation imposed and that darkness gathered. how is this possible, we all, billions of us, human beings, watching this unfold
and damn you, mister bush. damn you and all those who smile, who continue to smile, at this carnage. damn you, and damn you, at the last, for not facing those millions of human beings who curse you before they sleep at night, for every afghan and iraqi and american into whose life you tore.
it is five years this week, since that searing fear.
–
uranium dust and the smell of decay
sewage in the street where the kids run and pay
not enough morphine and not enough gauze
firefight in darkness like snapping of jaws
this is baghdad
this is baghdad
this is baghdad
this is baghdad
you couldn’t see the blast - the morning was bright -
but some radiant energy flared up into the light
like the sky throwing its hands up in horrified dismay
or the souls of the dead as they sped on their way
carbombed and carjacked and kidnapped and shot
how do you like it, this freedom we brought?
–
and this becomes a point for reflexion on the failure of people to stop this from happening. i do believe, and i think i have always believed, at least so far as i can remember, in a form of negative responsibility - of layers of collective implication that nothing can expunge. rage arises, arendt says, “only when there is reason to suspect that conditions could be changed and are not.” because yes, things could have been different / they can be different. and the antiwar movement, the movement that mobilized millions of people across the globe, that brought hundreds of thousands into the streets of berlin, and santiago, and montreal, and london, and singapore, and karachi, in a historically unprecedented global “movement” (because i do not think there is a better word for it), ultimately failed.
why did it fail? there were other, smaller victories, of course, and aspects i do not want to discount - communities were built through these movements, some horizons shifted, certain governments were kept from joining the war effort. but the invasion occurred largely as planned and, except for the occasional hiccup (as at fallujah), met from little effective resistance in its initial phases.
why the antiwar movement failed in what it set out to do, i believe, has to do with a basic naivite regarding the ways in which the modern state exercises its power - a failure to recognize the ways in which modern institutions associated with the state shape the forms possible for life, how all our acts, now, are effectively regulated by the state. it is this, i think, that neutralized the supposed “radicality” of the stock of mechanisms for resistance that we were to draw upon, imaginative strategies largely based on the peace movement of the 60s and 70s (a time which is often remembered for its hippies and its hope, but was also the decade when military expenditure rose like never before).
there was a sense of surprise, at the reaction of others. not only do i feel this way - my neighbours feel this too, this desperation and this resolve. and here there was a power: in the gathering of people. even in edmonton, which we often denigrate as a bastion of conservative sentiment (which supposedly translates into neoconservative politics), 22000 people gathered in the cold at churchill square. we marched, and wrote letters, and sang songs and shouted, and prayed and pleaded, held vigils and held hands, but did not in any other way express our rage and our fear drawn by love - because we did not know how. we did not know how to use the energy, the power we had together, in community, to imagine a way to go beyond “having our voices heard” to in fact dismantling the war machine entire. our refusal to admit that the rogue state to the south (whose administration should under american law face the death penalty for its acts, the past seven years), to which we are necessarily economically and politically allied, could gratuitously spark such a conflagration. how could we translate this might we found we had, with each other, through our bodies and our voices and our prayers, into actions that would stop the auto-da-fe to come?
we did not know.
and so it did not happen.
it’s been five years.
–
pictures from mar22.03. the multitude of people, thousands and thousands of people, communities coming together. photo credit unknown.
if you look carefully in the first one you can see muntaka, myself, lara, farooq(?).

