Memorial Day at the Air Show in Mid Missouri May 26 – 27, 2007 A personal reflection... I have pretty well abandoned my attempts to participate in most public opposition to the war, as I believe protesting at this stage in our country’s history to be pretty much an exercise in complete futility. When I heard that the military was planning to make this year’s weekend Memorial Day Air Show into a massive PR recruiting effort, I felt it was my right and my duty to counteract these activities insofar as I was able. There is some crap up with which even I will not put. Fortunately I was not the only one. Many other organizations also shared my outrage in the attempted desecration of this holiday. People for Peace, the Columbia Peace Coalition, Military Families Speak Out, Fellowship of Reconciliation and Democracy for Missouri were among the organizations that showed up to protest the massive presence of the military recruiters at this event.[1.] I personally was most offended by the “Virtual Army Experience” which was the headliner in all the ads for the Air Show, superseding even the actual aerial events themselves. Since I knew this Virtual Reality “ride” was nothing more than a not so subtle recruiting tool by the military designed to have the greatest impact on the cannon fodder demographic, I resolved to make some small attempt to remind the attending public of this fact. Day One I got to the airport an hour before opening so I could get a spot in their paved paring lot near the airport side entrance. I was able to get on the tarmac even before the security forces provided by the Columbia police arrived. I wanted an early look at the layout for my own security. By 9:30 I was back at the car gathering my signs and leaflets to pass out. As it turns out, police security was pretty much of a joke. My quick survey found an unlocked gate, a security bypass behind a nearby storage shed that made it quite easy to get in undetected. It reminded me of a scene from an old Peter Sellers movie “The Case of the Mukkinese Battle Horn” where everyone got into a speak-easy via a huge open door immediately adjacent to the security door where you needed a secret password. [2.] I didn’t know if my signs would pass muster so I snuck them in via the unlocked gate, hidden from the prying eyes of security. This smuggling, it turned out, was unnecessary as signs were allowed (but not the sticks to support them.) The only people who would have been able to easily circumvent security vigilance would have been those who might actually have wished to do harm. They would have been able to do so with no trouble at all. The only persons inconvenienced by the security were the John Q. Publix: the law-abiding moms and pops, householders and their kids who had to stand in line. “Are you a terrorist with a bomb? Well I have your entrance right this way. No waiting.” So much for Columbia’s Finest’s splendid attempts at keystone-kop homeland security. Did they get their training from the feds, I wonder? Signs in hand, I proceeded to the “Virtual Army Experience” housed in an immense inflatable that looked like it could hold two basketball courts. A couple of people from Democracy for Missouri were at the exit, passing out copies of the Friends Service Committee DVD video, “Before You Enlist – The real deal on joining the military”. If you have a chance to see it you should. It gives valuable first hand information to young people that show the lies and fabrications the recruiters use to hoodwink our kids. [3.] I proceeded to the other side of the structure where there were about 300 people lined up to get into the “ride” and no doubt waiting for my message. The copy and the graphics on my signs were intended to be as provocative as possible: “WAR IS NOT A VIDEO GAME” (Picture of dead Iraqi child in the arms of her grandfather) ____________________ “WAR IS ALWAYS WAR ON CHILDREN” (Picture of Abeer Qasim Hamza who was murdered along with her mother, father and younger sister by American troops.) “ABEER – RAPED, MURDERED and BURNED” _________________________________ “WHO SAYS? END THE WAR IN IRAQ: 1]The American People 2]The Iraqis 3]World Opinion WHO SAYS? STAY IN IRAQ: 1]George W. Bush 2]Halliburton 3]Big Oil 4]Osama Bin Laden” And my favorite: “ATTENTION: The war in Iraq has nothing to do with defending our freedom. Our military in Iraq serves only: 1] A brutal US Imperialism 2] The suppression of democracy worldwide 3] The theft of Iraqi oil resources 4] A corrupt US war profiteering administration 5] An illegal military incursion in Iraq 6] Terrorism and the destabilizing of US and world security The presence of today’s display of militarism defames the service of our brave veterans of past wars and is a desecration of the hallowed dead that this Memorial Day would presume to honor. CEASE THIS WAR IN IRAQ NOW !” __________________________________ This last sign was intentionally lengthy and detailed. I would not recommend it for parades. It was really intended to be read, word for word, by the people in line awaiting their “Virtual Army Experience.” They were, in a sense, a captive audience. Rarely does one get a chance to have a lengthy say to someone who believes, as I think many at the Air Show did, that the War in Iraq should be supported. Based on my jousts with these war supporters in the Letters to the Editor columns in the local papers, I take it that many of them are not really very big on reading at all. As advertisers understand, consumers cannot resist reading copy held in front of the face for any length of time – especially when you have no way of escaping it. That is also why I deliberately kept the language from being too slogan-like, so that it would lure the reader to follow the lines out of curiosity if for no other reason. Of course I was unable to do a market survey to see how many actually read it and retained the information. Many did read it however. I would have liked to have had some serious discussions with people who supported the war. I didn’t expect much more than the type I received, which were a few jibes and insults – actually only two fairly vitriolic ones. Most just met my gaze with frowns, down cast and side cast eyes. One lady told her ten year old boy as they passed me, “Don’t look at him. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” One interchange, a notable exception, was a conversation I did have with the Army officer in charge of the recruiting/information center located close to the “Virtual Army Experience” exit. I guess they didn’t want the marks to get too far away too fast. Anyway, the officer asked me if I would be like an informational pamphlet about the Army. At nearly seventy years of age, I assumed he was not interested in recruiting me. If quotas continue to plummet - perhaps next year? By way of friendly introduction, he said that he was good friends with Jimmy Carter’s family. “Fine people.” He said. “Well, except for Billy,” I said, smiling back. He agreed. I told him that I bore no personal animus toward him or any serviceperson, I thought that Bush’s Iraqi disaster was going to ruin the Army and that, if I were a soldier, I would be even more upset with the president than the protesters are. He indirectly countered by saying that he thought Bush was the most honest man he had ever met. I didn’t ask for details of his relationship with the president, but instead asked him about the now infamous WMD lies. He responded that they truly did exist and had been spirited away to Iran and Syria before the invasion. I asked him about the UN reports that nearly all WMD had been destroyed or under seal after the first Gulf War. He said that Saddam had bribed the UN to falsify their reports. I told him that Nobel winner and head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed El Baradei was a man whose honesty I thought was beyond question. I don’t know if he just gave up on this point or perhaps didn’t know who El Baradei was, but he abruptly decided to change the thrust of his argument. “You know that Saddam used to regularly take dozens of 13 year-old girls out of their classrooms, drag them off to torture rooms, rape them and then tear their little limbs off before killing them.” I didn’t know if this bore any relationship to the WMD question but I hurried to answer that of course he was a brutal ruler. I argued that, as bad as Saddam was, there was at least an orderly society in place where most of the people were able to live some semblance of normal lives. I said that we have brought chaos, which in anyone’s book, is worse on the average citizen even than despotism. He asked me if I had any idea how much we (the occupation) had improved the country, that 80 percent of the water supply has been restored and that the electricity is now on. As if in an afterthought, he also replied that now women can vote and walk the streets freely and children are going to school. “Not anywhere in or around Baghdad.” I quipped in response to all of the above. Avoiding a tedious further, point by point, refutation, I asked him if he had read the Iraqi casualty figures that report that over 655,000 innocent Iraqis (not insurgents) have been killed since the invasion – a third of which are children. He said that he couldn’t believe there were those many people in all of Iraq. I told him to Google the Lancet site [4.] and read all about the study. The conversation sort of fell apart after that and we shook hands and parted amicably. He really seemed like a decent enough fellow who appeared to have been given some basic talking points that he could quote authoritatively enough down to a certain level but couldn’t seem to go much farther than that. I actually felt kind of sorry for him. I’m also equally sad that he’s the one with the license to kill – too much ammunition and not enough facts are a dangerous combination. Darn it! I forgot to ask him if he agreed with 80 percent of his fellow soldiers that Saddam was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Since no one under 13 was allowed in the big tent, there were many not so subtle hooks for the pre-teens to get them ready to kill terrorists when they grow up. These were in the form of kiddy obstacle courses with huge Marine slogans emblazoned on the sides, War toys for sale and a large blow up, life size inflated African American army officer doll that the kids were hugging passionately. There was a tent making personalized dog tags whose long line was liberally populated with many young tykes. Day Two Was largely a replay of the first day. I did find out that, once inside the tent, participants in the VR War Games event were strongly encouraged to hand over our Friends Service Committee DVD’s to an army enlistee who cracked them in half and dumped them in a barrel full of our similarly destroyed disks. I have no accurate assessment as to how much pressure was put on people. Most folks, I have found, like to cooperate with the man in the uniform. It seems the Army is as interested in stamping out certain forms of truth as it is in fighting terrorism. Actually I’m sure the enlistee in charge of confiscating our disks probably had no idea if the disks he was destroying contained any truth or not. He was just following orders. Needless to say, I stopped handing out the DVD’s to people entering the event and concentrated on those exiting instead. I was especially gratified at many who came up to me on both days with small messages of support, praising me for my courage in taking a stand at such a pro-war event. A surprising number of those offering encouragement were ex servicemen (sorry, no service women) from WWII, Korea, Vietnam and The First Gulf War. Some expressed merely opposition to the Iraq war and others went into greater detail that they felt Bush was, in effect, destroying the military and our armed forces’ ability to respond to legitimate crises and threats to our security elsewhere in the world. There were not as many who expressed outright hostility to my presence this day, although one big guy did actually manage to kick over my sign while I was passing out leaflets to the people waiting to get in the tent. Actually it struck me as pretty funny. I just spotted him out the corner of my eye as he surreptitiously snuck up and with a surprisingly gentle little gesture carefully flipped over my sign with the tip of his shoe. In a way I almost wish he had had the audacity to vent his protest with a bit more flamboyance and really give my sign a good boot. It might have done him more good than the weak gesture he accomplished. As he scuttled away I could not resist the temptation to call after him, “Striking another blow for freedom are we?” He kept on going. Lucky for me he was not looking for a confrontation as he was in much better shape and forty years younger than I. Actually I don’t know whether to be gratified, relieved or dismayed by the reception those of us who protested the event received. Mostly I was met by a passing stony silence on the part of those I solicited to take my handouts and the DVD’s. I can only assume that these people were, for the most part, either strongly opposed to my position or just were not willing to face up to this issue. I suppose I confronted a little less than a thousand people over the two days and the total of 12 plus hours I was at the event. Little more than two or three percent evinced a strong reaction to my message one way or another. I was a little apprehensive at first at the prospect of being beaten to a pulp by a bunch of ex-Marines. These fears were unfounded. As I said, most people just seemed afraid to even look at me. Perhaps “afraid” is not quite the right word. “Extremely adverse” might be a better one. I believe the level of American cognitive dissonance over the eroding credibility of Bush and his war is so difficult for some that they would rather be comatose than face what is really going on at home and abroad. I’m sure those in the “Virtual Army Experience” line were just hoping for a few minutes in the dark Orwellian theater where they could blow away a few pixilated Muslim towel-heads without guilt, fear or recrimination. It seems, as I have said elsewhere, a vast darkness has descended across the land. [5.] Nowhere is it more in evidence than in our Congress after this past week’s passage of the war-funding bill – essentially a vote for Bush’s war. Everyone now knows there is no hope - from either party. I say “Good!” I got back to the airport gate in time for the surge of people exiting the show. By then there was only one counter protester – a sunburned man from Operation Simply Shred, hoping for someone to give him one of our leaflets to destroy. His bag of shreds looked just as full as when he showed up in the morning. I suppose he could have emptied it while I was away. I tried to give him a little encouragement when someone finally did give him one of our leaflets. I suggested we simulate a drum roll to accompany each shred. He didn’t seem to find my comments funny at all. In fact he didn’t seem very responsive at all. The poor guy looked really pooped from the late afternoon heat. One of the last occurrences I witnessed was truly heartwarming. I was getting out of the heat under the People for Peace tent when one rather agitated “patriot” approached our table. A thirty-something guy who obviously thought we were very much against the troops asked us behind the table, “Have any of you ever fought in a war?” He asked in a sort of aggressive, rhetorical tone. He had sidled up next to Stacy Hafley, head of Military Families Speak Out, who was talking to one of the People for Peace. She is one of the most eloquent spokes persons for the support of returning veterans, is against the war and happens to be the wife of a returning vet. “Well sir, I haven’t - but my husband has.” My eyes drifted upwards in a prayer of thanksgiving to all the gods for the coincidence that had brought this gentleman and Stacey to the same place at the same time. I did not hear enough of the conversation to accurately report, but I’m sure that the “patriot” got a profound and deeply meaningful response he will not soon forget. I am going to recommend that next year, the City of Columbia on whose property the Memorial Day Air Show is staged allow anti-war groups be given booth space in which to do counter recruiting and other informational peace activities. I think that, based upon the way the military recruiters have turned this event into a shooting gallery designed to recruit cannon fodder for this petty dictator’s illegal war, the least they can do to be fair is to allow our side some room inside the gate. After all, this event is being allowed on public property maintained and supervised at taxpayer expense. Those currently charged with the prosecution of this illegal war seem unchecked by all reservations of decency and respect for the memory of the war dead. The sponsors apparently do not think it important that these war propagandists are converting our solemn holiday from a hallowed celebration to an exploitation. I suppose next year war profiteers like Halliburton, Blackwater and big defense mfg contractors like McDonnell Douglas and Northrop Grummon whose business it is to reap billions from death will have booths to set up and hawk their advertising campaigns as well. When I last looked, the city of Columbia, MO was still governed by a functioning democracy. Perhaps it is still time for us to use it before we lose it. They may even let us walk around the tarmac with our own big inflatable versions of famous antiwar moonbat [6.] heroes: Jesus, Gandhi and Dr. King. I guess that would be going too far – it might tend to corrupt the youth. Peace, Bob Boldt Notes: [1.] Full disclosure requires the mention of the presence of several members of “Operation Simply Shred” who were protesting what they erroneously thought was our disrespect for veterans and offering to use portable paper shredders to dispose of our leaflets. One Shredder had a sigh that read, “Troops are our heroes” I didn’t ask him what he thought we thought our troops are: chopped liver? Several of these people were at the gate on Saturday. On Sunday only one was there. I think many of the shredders moved over to the other gate on Sunday. Actually I think the Shredder idea is rather clever. One should not be afraid of respecting little acts of innovation and creative strategy – even in those who oppose us. I’m sure many of the counter protesters who stand against me possess far more certainty than I do about all these issues. I am an unrepentant epistemological, ethical and cultural relativist. I treasure my skepticism and my doubt. I challenge the truth of those who argue against me less than I question the truth of my own beliefs and those of my supporters. It is easy to see others faults and difficult to see my own. I am always adjusting my position, my arguments and even my beliefs based on new data. An argument I will never attempt to win is one against truthiness. This being so, I really think the division in our country is not so much a dispute over the facts as it is a far more fundamental conflict between two paradigms. And that is the hardest thing to argue successfully - on either side. [2.] Excerpt from Mukkinese Battle Horn screenplay starring Peter Sellers and the cast of the Goon show (mostly.) The following excerpt will not seem as funny to those who are not familiar with the rapid fire incongruity which was the Goons’ trademark. Suffice it to say Monty Python is but a poor shadow compared to The Goon Show. EXTERIOR MAXIE'S CLUB - NIGHT. QUILT Brown? I want you to get a message through to Scotland Yard to say that we're coming here and... In the door a shutter slides open and MAXIE peers through it. He wears a false beard and moustache and dark glasses. MAXIE Yeah? QUILT I haven't knocked yet. MAXIE Sorry. Closes shutter. Quilt raps on the door. The shutter opens again. MAXIE Yeah? QUILT Are you Mr. Maxie? MAXIE Such is my name. QUILT I'm sorry to bother you, Mr. Such. Will Mr. Maxie be along? MAXIE I AM Mr. Maxie. QUILT Then you weren't very long, were you? We were wondering if we could get into your club here. MAXIE You were wondering if you could get into my club here? QUILT Yes. MAXIE No. QUILT Why not? MAXIE This is a specially-fitted, double-strength, armour-plated door, and nobody can get through it. QUILT Then how did you get in? MAXIE Easy. I came through there. We now see that next to the door is an opening with Saloon-style louvre doors. QUILT Cunning, very cunning. A man is flung head-first out through the louvre doors into the street. QUILT Anyone we know? BROWN No, sir. QUILT Brown? BROWN Yes, sir? QUILT You'd better stick around and see what clues you can find. BROWN Very good, sir. Complete screenplay at: http://www.epicure.demon.co.uk/battlehorncss.html [3.] I believe that the most effective thing a person of conscience can do today is to stop the flow of recruits to the military. Remember the old expression, “What if they held a war and no one came?” American Friends Service Committee has the expertise on resistance to all forms of militarism. http://www.afsc.org/youthmil/ [4] http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673605718675/fulltext [5.] The present war hysteria in some ways reminds me of the crescendo of fear, violence and recrimination that just preceded the fall of Joe McCarthy. Only today there is no Edward R. Murrow or a Robert (Sir, Have you no shame?) Welsh with the stature or the courage to deliver the coup de grace to our current reigning demagogue. [6.] According to William Safire, "The prevailing put-down of right-wing bloggers is wingnuts; this has recently been countered by the vilification of left-wing partisans who use the Web as moonbats..." The term has come into popular use among a few columnists at the Boston Herald newspaper. Howie Carr uses the term regularly in his columns. Margery Eagan, another Herald columnist, has used the term several times to characterize some supporters of Democratic governor Deval Patrick, and Michael Graham has also used the term. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonbat