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My Heroes Have Always Been Chicks

Well, I’m no hero, that’s understood—to borrow a great line from The Boss—but I know one when I see one. Out of the fog of hubris that will inevitably descend upon Foggy Bottom in the wake of Shrub and Don’s Excellent Misadventure, will emerge promiscuous tales of brave Americans who single-handedly held off enemy regiments or who risked their lives to save their buddies or while wounded and badly outnumbered beat back an advancing enemy force. Some of these will be true, some exaggerated, but all are necessary propaganda to put a good, moral human American face on an enterprise that while hardly good or moral, is all too human.

I begrudge none of these nice folks their moments of glory. It is not their fault that this is a war that has absolutely nothing to do with protecting the United States but was rather a war designed by some very evil men to a) scare the world with the beauty and ferocity of our killing machines, or, b) to free the Iraqi people (who apparently were not as aware of how badly they were being abused as we were), or, c) to destroy non-existent weapons of mass destruction, or d) to rewrite Middle Eastern history in a way more favorable to Israel. Choose one from column A and two from column B. Historians will sort all this out.

In the midst of the inevitable binge of self-congratulations (and before our regret at having won ourselves a $10 billion to $20 billion a year, not-fully-peaceful, ward of the American taxpayers for the foreseeable future), I hope there will be a moment or two to remember some of the unsung heroes of this war. My fellow Appalachian Jessica Lynch probably doesn’t know it yet but there are entertainment lawyers and book agents by the hundreds who are desperate to make her a wealthy woman. As subjects of biopics go, little Jessica has hit the trifecta—she’s young, pretty and white. But,what about the Iraqi lawyer who risked his life to tip off the Marines to her whereabouts? What about his wife and son? Are we taking care of them? Will it ever be safe for them to go back to their village? This man is a hero is ever there was one. If Shrub had a lick of sense (or even a flair for great public relations) that family would be spending a week at the White House while the INS works up their citizenship papers.

And what about those unidentified International Red Cross workers who risked their lives during the heart of combat to get water pumping again for the 1.5 million residents of Basra. A heroic act, indeed, and no doubt some of those brave IRC workers were even French.

Another heroine of this whole sordid affair is Natalie Maines of the wonderful Dixie Chicks, who spoke her conscience and refused to say she didn’t mean it, even after it became clear that defending freedom of speech from right-wing radio and TV fascists has economic consequences in today’s unsettling world. Nobody goes to see a Susan Sarandon or Sean Penn movie anyway, but the Dixie Chicks’ depend upon white bread America for their livelihood. It takes real courage to disagree with your customers. Arthur Andersen couldn’t do it but the Chicks did. And don’t give me this Fox Nuts’ mental midgit Sean Hannity stuff about dissing the U.S. in a foreign country. Where in the Constitution does it say you can’t do that? And, anyway, dissent is an American right, dickhead. Get over it.

And don’t forget poor, silly, but committed Rachel Corrie, who thought she could stop a bulldozer by moral force. She was killed by the Israeli government of Ariel Sharon for believing that people who had suffered through the Holocaust could surely be dissuaded from inflicting atrocities on another ethnic group. She was wrong but she did understand one thing that George W. Bush does not—the road to peace in the Middle East runs through Tel Aviv and Gaza—not through Baghdad.

posted by Jerry Bowles 10:57 AM