“The Whole World’s Raining Down…”

Ben Shahn - Morning, 1943.jpg 

A couple of weeks ago, I posted here an old Nashville Scene essay of mine on the Dixie Chicks-Toby Keith controversey. Near the end of that piece, I wrote:

“Of course, how the United States fights is also a matter of concern. And on that point, Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue” portrays one reality of war, or at least one reality of how the United States wages it, with more honesty than perhaps any record before it. “It’s going to feel like the whole world’s raining down on you,” Keith warns. This is true. In the first rush of attack, U.S. military might overwhelmingly does not take the form of boots on the ground. Rather, it rains missiles and bombs on enemy combatants and innocent civilians alike. The stated intent will be to drop those bombs only on the enemy combatants. But we know that even smart bombs will maim and kill husbands and wives, senior citizens and babies, lovers–people who are, in the most basic respects, no different from you and me.”

We don’t normally see the destruction I’m writing about above. Or rather we don’t want to see it–and aren’t allowed to, at any rate. Consequently, we find it comforting and all too easy to accept the official statements that U.S. bombs very, very rarely kill civilians and that, in the very, very rare incidents when they do, it is an accident. I’m thinking of statements like the ones Tim Wise has pointed out, such as “We are going to extraordinary lengths to avoid the loss of innocent civilian life…” and “Never before have weapons been used in war that were so precise, allowing us to target military and government installations without harming residential areas.”

All of which would be more readily identified as the bullshit it is if only we were the innocent civilians who had been turned out of those allegedly unharmed residential areas.

Though it’s not, I fear, a lesson likely to stick, one positive result of the current “Crisis in the Middle-East” is that there is at least the opportunity to make a valuable connection: What we are witnessing is the same as what has so often been perpetrated in our name. What’s going down right now in Lebanon, the destruction we’re able to get glimpses of by tuning in to CNN and Fox or elsewhere, is precisely what the people of, for example, Baghdad experienced when the United States bombed that city on its way to declaring “Mission Accomplished.” The innocent victims–like the American children being interviewed now in Cyrpus by Soledad O’Brien; like the reportedly half million Lebanese citizens who have been turned out of their homes and into the steets; like the civilians who are already dead–are just the same. No matter how often we are told otherwise, no matter how desperately we want to believe what we’re told, this is just the nature of the beast.

Last evening on ABC World News Tonight, I heard one on-the-scene reporter declare somberly that ”There is no doubt that civilians have borne the brunt of this conflict.” He was talking about the current conflict in Lebanon, but he could as easily have been referring to the ongoing Iraq War, its predecessor the Gulf War, or, for that matter, almost any war there’s ever been.  

What’s more, despite official denials by the Israeli government or the U.S. Departments of State or Defense or whoever, this destruction of innocent human lives is almost always deliberate, almost never an accident.

Think about it for a minute. If I spy my enemy in a crowd, and I choose to aim my shtogun at that enemy and to shoot him or her, I can’t later claim that the injuries and deaths suffered by those who happened to be standing near my target were harmed by me without deliberation or by accident. I can’t claim this because I knew they were there–I saw them–because I shot anyway and because I know how shotguns work.

The IDF, the U.S. military, they always know where they’re aiming, they know how their bombs, shells, and missiles work, and they fire anyway.

In the memorable words of Barrett Strong and Norman Whitfield, “War, I despise…’cause it means the destruction of innocent lives.”

War is the destruction of innocent lives. That’s what “war” means.

I am not a pacifist. I believe people have a right to defend themselves. But they also have, I believe, the moral imperative not to harm the innocent. Even if, as it often can, that road will make it more difficult to defend themselves, and more costly.

*****

Things could get very costly very quickly to people all over the world. As Bush and the United States government give the Israelies the go ahead to clean the clocks of Hezbollah and Hamas, as well as however many middle-eastern versions of you and me get in the way, the same neo-con nutjobs who brought you the Iraq War begin to bang the drums with unabashed approval, and with hard-ons at the ready, for a full-fledged World War III that, of course, would  be led by the United States. This view isn’t just in sync with those Christians who eagerly await Armageddon; it may be at least partly inspired by those very same End Times theologians. 

And, oh goodie, while our attention was elsewhere the violence in Iraq has apparently ratcheted up another several notches.

****

Below are several recordings of the song I’ve been playing all day, “War,” the Barrett Strong and Norman Whitfield classic–including the crazed hit version by Edwin Starr, probably the hardest record Motown ever released (and the first 45 I ever bought), as well as Bruce Springsteen’s famous live version from his Born in the U.S.A glory day, a smokin’ version by the Temptations, and a funky reggae track by Tomorrow’s Children.  Excepting the Starr version, though, my favorite of the takes below is the one by Joan Osborne; it reinvents the song into something of a dirge, albeit one interspersed with lengthy moments of manic, terrifying grief.

Also below are two quite different versions–one pleading and heartfelt, the other pleading and pissed fucking off–”Bomb the World” by Michael Franti and Spearhead. ”We may even find a solution to hunger and disease,” Franti sings in both, then adds: “We can bomb the world to pieces but we can’t bomb it into peace.”

I like those lines very much because they point so directly to the human condition–to both the unrealized potential of our species and to the limits of our power–and because they remind just how difficult it will be to grant, as Franti later sings, “Power to the peaceful,” rather than to those clammering for world war. Franti’s line puts me in mind, too, of that old Vietnam-era Buddhist saying, “There is no way to peace; peace is the way.”

At this point, both Franti’s chorus and that Zen slogan have longsince become bumper-sticker cliches, and I suppose many see them as naive, as too easy, simplistic and namby-pamby feel good. I believe very strongly that the opposite is true. The easy way, the path of least resistance, is war–this is one reason why there have always been so many–and the feel-good path is to declare it all inevitable and therefore out of our control, or to pronounce war the only way and therefore necessary.

On the other hand, the hard and complex road to real freedom is always the path of greatest resistance, the way that cries–and believes–to quote again from “War,” that “Lord knows, there’s got to be another way.” The hard way is, next, the way that tries to imagine other possible yet more humane ways and, finally, to make those imaginings real.

All three steps are essential, and for the moment a new poll argues encouragingly that Americans, well ahead of their so-called leaders (see the ’graph above), have at least made it within spitting distance of step one. And still the bombs rain down.

Michael Franti & Spearhead “Bomb the World” from Everyone Deserves Music (Reincaranate, 2003)

Edwin Starr “War” (Motown, 1969) from War and Peace (Motown, 1970)

Bruce Springsteen & the E-Street Band “War” from Live 1975-1985 (Columbia, 1986)

Joan Osborne “War” from How Sweet It Is (Compendia, 2002)

The Temptations “War” from Psychedelic Shack (Motown, 1970)

Tomorrow’s Children “War” availlable on Funky Kingston: Reggae Dancefloor Grooves, 1968 to 1974

Michael Franti & Spearhead “Bomb the World (Armageddon Version)” from Everyone Deserves Music (Reincaranate Music, 2003)

[The painting atop this post is Ben Shahn’s “Morning, 1943″]

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 20th, 2006 at 9:37 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

21 Responses to ““The Whole World’s Raining Down…””

  1. eric Says:
    July 21st, 2006 at 5:48 am

    Hizbullah has amassed an arsenal of something over 10,000 missiles in southern Lebanon. If you believe in a right to self-defense, it isn’t hard to make a case for Israel, as the CNN poll you cite shows: 57 percent of Americans’ sympathies are with Israel. Of course civilians will die — especially because Israel’s enemy deliberately nests among civilians. I believe we have to recognize an equal if not greater responsibility for the increased civilian death toll on Hizbullah. Palestinians have used children as human shields in Gaza. Hizbullah appears to have a similar attitude about innocents. Geneva Convention? It means nothing to those we fight.

    I took the link to the Posner piece in American Prospect. I guess I could be defined as an evangelical Christian, loosely at least. I believe in Bible prophecy (not sure I understand it all, though) and Armageddon. I certainly do not agree with John Hagee’s interpretation (not that I even know who he is). I think the mistake here is to make the jump from knowing that evangelicals believe in a great conflagration before the return of Christ to believing that evangelicals want to actively incite such a conflagration and thus fulfill prophecy. That is really a lunatic fringe. That is not the group Newt and McCain are appealing to. Posner is really off her rocker if she makes this connection, as she appears to do. I guess the truth is not exciting enough to make a column. [As an aside, the end-time evil power in the book of Revelation is a polytheistic “beast” — Islam is so rigidly monotheistic, Iran simply does not fit the prophecy.]

    It does appear that a wider conflict with extremist Islam is unavoidable, not because those with Christian beliefs will force it, but because the Islamists, moved by their own religious views, will force it. I think it is premature to call it WWIII. Although, if they succeed in releasing a WMD in a US city, it could well become that.

  2. livingin Says:
    July 21st, 2006 at 1:57 pm

    Hello Eric. Thanks for reading, and writing, again. I agree some sort of terrorist attack in the U.S. could have cataclysmic consequnces, though I don’t think it would need to be of the WMD variety. “Just” a small explosive almost anywhere could do the trick. And if that happens, I can imagine that there would be an almost immediate restriction of civil liberties, etc. here. indeed, many people will call for just that, support it intensely. It would be easy enough to do.

    My point, though, is that if we are indeed as moral, democratic, and freedom-loving as we attest, then we have already chosen not the easy-enough way but the hard one. How do we defend ourselves while also not trading in what we are ostensibly defending? Ultimately freedom and security are linked, not mutually exclusive.

    Same thing in this current middle-esast conflict. Saying, well, of course civilians will be killed, how could they not be, it’s the price of security, etc. is the obvoius and easy way, and, I’m sad to say, the way it will likely go. Saying, on the other hand, that we have a moral and legal obligation to, for example, shoot only at those who are shooting at us, and that the price for our security and freedom must be paid as much as possible >by us<, not civilians of any other nation…well, that’s hard. It means, most immediately, higher casualty rates for your side, at least in the short term. it means refusing to engage in actions that will knowingly harm civilians, even when, especially when, you’re enemy doesn’t give a shit about civilians.

  3. Roy Says:
    July 21st, 2006 at 7:26 pm

    Palestinians have used children as human shields in Gaza. Hizbullah appears to have a similar attitude about innocents. Geneva Convention? It means nothing to those we fight.

    And it means nothing or next to nothing to us and our ally Israel. Torture, targetting of civilians and civilian infrastructure, collective punishment. One could go on. Those are our government’s crimes. They can’t be washed away by saying “the terrorists” are worse. Terrorists offer no moral standard.

    And Israel has used human shields–quite literally–in previous invasions, as I’m sure Eric is aware.

    It’s worth remembering that we are supporting and supplying one side in this conflict with weapons of mass violence and destruction. We have little to no influence over what the crazies in southern Lebanon do. We have enormous influence over the other side of the border. And it’s quite literally a crime that our government is supplying, enabling and even advocating the current destruction.

  4. Austin Says:
    July 22nd, 2006 at 5:41 pm

    So just about the only pacifist argument out there that is not based on some form of religious dogma arises from the prohibition against killing innocents in the process of warfare (aka, Just War Theory’s Principle of Discrimination). The argument goes like this: The conduct of just war requires that one not kill innocents; Warfare as conducted in the modern age cannot secure this requirement. Therefore, there’s no way to conduct a just war. This is, most recently at least, the argument of the stubborn pacifist Robert Holmes, but could be attributed at least as far back as Hugo Grotius, one of the first Just War theorists. (Just War theory is the source of pretty much all our international reasoning on this, so it’s a good place to look). What’s happened, though, is that peple have been tempted by the Holmes style argument, not towards any variety of pacifism, but to throw the baby out with the bath water–all right, they say, we can’t conduct a just war, but some necessity or oter requires that we conduct a war anyway, so let’s not trouble ourselves that we can’t avoid killing innocents. The inevitability breeds apathy, and people start spouting cliches about war.
    All this to say, both sides can be right: it may be impossible to comply fully with the Principle of Discrimination. We may have to make it about “targeting” innocents and start talking about, god forbid, unintentional collateral damage. Even in modern warfare it’s a mistake to think bombs are “smart” enough to always hit their targets. We may never find a solution for what to do about “innocent threats” like babies strapped with bombs. That doesn’t mean we get a clear conscience either way, especially when we egregiously violate rules of justice, or that it’s ever sufficient to point blithely at other nations’s violations. Think about how that would play in a courtroom starring Hitler and Stalin. I agree with Roy that we have a nasty habit of turning a blind eye toward our own violations of just war, from bombing Hiroshima on. Who thinks Hiroshima was a war crime–raise your hand. Try that in a class of undergraduates. Also, it’s silly to pretend we don’t have a moral stake in what is done with the weapons we supply. It seems to me that one of the chief moral obligations in this arena is to continually debate the issue, to point out the egregious violations and suffer over the middle ground. To pretend there aren’t clear cut cases that count as violations of just war conduct is to pretend that we can’t tell the difference between night and day because of the confusion of dusk. There’s a lot more night and day than dusk. Sorry to go on about this.

  5. Mitchell Moore Says:
    July 23rd, 2006 at 3:53 am

    That this conflagration is having an unconscionable impact on non-combatants is not, it seems to me, a state of affairs incidental to the fighting, the so-called collateral damage of contemporary warfare, smart bombs gone accidentally or inexplicably dumb, soldiers making mistakes in the heat of battle, all the horrific enough things that fall under the rubric of Eric’s “of course civilians will die” line. On the contrary, targeting non-combatants, collective punishment writ large, seems to be integral to the strategy of both sides.
    Hezbollah fires missiles into Israel that don’t appear to have military targets, to the extent that they are targeted at all, and seemed designed only to terrorize civilian populations. And one only has to see the video tape coming out of Beirut or Tyre to see that entire neighborhoods are being reduced to rubble, or read news reports that the Israeli forces are focusing their might on destroying civil infrastructure - power grids, bridges, transport systems - to conclude that terrorizing civilian populations is just as much a military imperative on the Israeli side. And it’s apparently working. A reported 200,000 Lebanese refugees are fleeing to Syria, and the mayor of Tyre reports that he is being forced to the unenviable labor of arranging for mass graves for the all the dead there, as there is not nearly enough wood available to build coffins for all who have perished.
    This is barbarism, pure and simple, the nihilism of the weak meeting the nihilism of the powerful. I think Eric is right when he says that the niceities of the Geneva Conventions are lost on those he would have us fight, but, regretably, they are lost on those he would have us defend too.

  6. Rick Says:
    July 24th, 2006 at 5:42 pm

    The root cause of this latest war — as with all the Arab-Muslim wars against Israel (1948, 67, 73, 2000) is Islamist supremacism. They can’t stomach the “foreign body” in Dar al Islam, and they give themselves to right to undertake any war or terrorist action in defense of their religious-national-ethnic identity camp. I swear (to God?) that that is what one of the protestors on the Plaza Sunday told me. For the real blood-curdling translations of Arab imams and media (”We will drink the Jews’ blood,” etc., etc.) visit the Middle East Media Research Institute — www.memri.org.
    So, fight that while not hurting any innocents? Impossible. They are civilians until they fire the rocket, and they return to such status immediately afterward — or so they think.
    Well, Homie don’t play that game.

  7. Roy Says:
    July 24th, 2006 at 9:04 pm

    Over half the casualties in Beirut have been children. Excuse me, I mean they were children until they turned into rocket-launching Islamist supremacists, and then they went back to being children just in time to get blown to pieces.

  8. Rick Says:
    July 24th, 2006 at 10:10 pm

    Yellow is an entirely appropriate color for Hezbollah, hiding, as they do, behind women and children.

  9. livingin Says:
    July 25th, 2006 at 12:58 pm

    Hey Rick. I didn’t know you checked out the sight. Good to know you’re out there reading now and again.

    Here are my questions that emerge from the tension between the necessity to protect oneself and the moral requirement that civilians not be deliberately harmed…I’ll use the current conflict as an example, but the questions apply to modern wars generally.

    First, how can the distinction between civilians and Hezbollah be made with any degree of accuracy when the chosen means of fighting Hezbollah is primarily through air strikes and missle launches? My point is that the difficulty of doing so does not relieve one of the basic moral obligation to shoot only at those who shoot at you. Air power is used thse days to avoid casualties to one’s own side on the ground, but that thinking–our military personnel are deserving of greater safe guards than, as it were, the children and other civilians in harm’s way–is exactly the problem. War will be costly, by definition, but the cost should be paid as much as possible by those who have >chosen< to wage the war, not by those who are merely in the way.

    Second, what color is appropriate for anyone who would shoot at an enemy >through< children?

  10. Rick Says:
    July 25th, 2006 at 4:03 pm

    Red, white and blue? Ever heard of Dresden? or War is hell? Israel has offered peace — to divide the land — again and again, and received war at almost every turn. Iran is a dark force striving mightily to keep the pot boiling. Their leader is a 21st century Hitler. They lead the Islamofascist threat (Shiite branch) [Remember Woody’s “This machine kills fascists”?] that is every bit the threat to western, liberal, constitutional democracy that the Nazis or communists were. Greater even, because neither of those powers had a worldwide religion behind them — yes, a fifth column, as we saw in Bali, London, Madrid, etc. Sorry to use such “McCarthyite” terms on this forum, but we have to wake up and smell the coffee. I’ve met many Israelis, and I believe they do their level best to avoid civilian casualties in a war, as in this case, and in their ongoing struggle against irredentist terrorism. Guerrillas and terrorists love to force democrats into this hellish choice — kill my kids or defend yours. That’s why they are cowards. Golda said it best: There will be peace when they love their kids more than they hate ours. And for that, an Islamic reformation is probably necessary.

  11. Rick Says:
    July 25th, 2006 at 4:12 pm

    P.S. This is a great Website, David, which I value for your erudite take on matters usually removed from, and much more pleasant than, Middle East religio-politics — American country and soul music. For my money, you’re the best writer in town.

  12. Nina Says:
    July 25th, 2006 at 7:45 pm

    BTW, David (and Roy), what do you think the Israelis ought to be doing right now? I’m not asking this as a rhetorical gotcha kind of question; I’m serious. I think that what they are doing is atrocious (in all senses of that word) but I can’t think of preferable alternatives. I’d like to think that there are some that I am missing, but (well, by definition) I’m missing them. Got any?

  13. Roy Says:
    July 25th, 2006 at 8:39 pm

    Hezbollah is a shitty, dangerous neighbor, but the fact is that neighbor hadn’t caused a single Israeli civilian casualty since Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000.

    Israel has negotiated prisoner exchanges and cease fires with their enemies before; they could do that now, rather than continuing with a blatant policy of collective punishment of civilians–which, far from “degrading” (ick and sic) Hezbollah (or Hamas), is only going to strengthen popular support for the movements in the long run.

  14. Nina Says:
    July 25th, 2006 at 9:32 pm

    Well, see, if I were in charge over there I think I would have gone with negotiation from the outset of the latest round of violence. But as you point out, Roy, the Israelis have negotiated before. And all it gets them is more bombings, attacks, and kidnappings. How often does a government go through that before they decide it’s not worth it? I think they’re wrong–I think they’re being suicidal. But I don’t find it easy to fulminate about it, because I think all that negotiation does is to push the current violence off into the future, the next time or the time after next that there’s a provocation. It doesn’t actually resolve anything. Do you have any suggestions for actions that might start to resolve things?

  15. Roy Says:
    July 25th, 2006 at 9:48 pm

    I guess we disagree about the premise, Nina: “all [negotiations] gets them is more bombings, attacks and kidnappings.” I think that’s incorrect. Negotiations haven’t begotten any of those things. Decades of eye-for-an-eyeism on all sides have.

  16. Nina Says:
    July 25th, 2006 at 10:25 pm

    Yes, I guess we disagree about the premise. And that’s all I’m going to say about that.

  17. Austin Says:
    July 26th, 2006 at 5:41 pm

    It’s not sufficient to say you disagree on the premise and part ways. You just can’t both be right. The premise “all [negotiations gets them is more bombings, attacks and kidnappings” is a premise the truth of which is determined by facts. It is a premise that shouldn’t devolve into the lazy relativism of undergraduates. Clean that premise up and make it clear, and you can’t really disagree about it without one party being irrational. Are “bombings, attacks and kidnappings” ALL negotiations have gotten the Isrealis in the past? Really? If that’s not all that it’s gotten them in the past, does that not mean there is some moral responsibility for pursuing those avenues again before bombing civilians?

  18. Nina Says:
    July 26th, 2006 at 8:07 pm

    I’m not being lazy, nor is Roy. We are refusing to allow our very serious differences of opinion about certain facts and their interpretation to culminate in a heated argument in this forum. I would have thought that that was obvious.

  19. Austin Says:
    July 26th, 2006 at 9:28 pm

    I’m did not mean to accuse either of you of being lazy; if you two both had rockets, I’m sure you wouldn’t kill each other over your differences and that’s refreshing. I’m simply saying that what you disagree about is not the premise you claim to disagree about, and if it were, one of you would be blatantly wrong. You disagree, but about something else entirely. At this point I side with Roy, not only because diplomacy is an option and it has worked in the past but because there are other options. Isreal is not being “suicidal” by any means; they’re far and away the greater military power and have the backing of the greatest military powers in the world. This is not to claim that they are not at risk, but they’ve certainly got the biggest arsenal and the most powerful army. Hezbollah has some shoulder rockets they got from Iran that can’t hit the side of a barn, but CAN manage to kill civilians indiscriminately. That’s the only weapon they’ve got.. What Isreal is up to is sending a message, a message Sharon would never have allowed and refused to send in the past, that Isreal is not to be perceived as weak after their withdrawel from the territories. It’s all about deterrrence. As for your quesiton about what Isreal should do, in the past they have engaged in reciprocity based military operations that target Lebanese political or military structures. That’s the way reciprocity is SUPPOSED to work. The point of David’s post I take it is that they are now instead engaging in indiscriminate airstrikes which kill children, which is NOT the way reciprocity is supposed to work.

  20. livingin Says:
    July 28th, 2006 at 8:25 pm

    That’s a big part of what I meant, though just something the Israelis are doing now. It’s what the U.S. routinely does, as well. So another part of my point was that all of this carnage we’re seeing on the news, all of the people who have lost their homes, etc, are an example of what we usually don’t see when one of the combatants is the United States.

    But what to do, morally speaking, if one were to find themselves in a situation that required a military defense? You have to go in on the ground, not eventually but from the first shot, and accept that your side is going to take a huge number of casualties. if the cause is truly necessary, it will be a cost that most Americans, Israelis, whoever, would willingly stand in line to pay. And if the cost seems too high, why are you there in the first place? But other people–women, children, civilians, etc–don’t get to pay your costs in your stead.

  21. B&Massa Says:
    July 31st, 2006 at 12:09 am

    Springsteen’s version of War, way back when I was a kid, was what turned me onto actually thinking about what my starting opinion should be on war. Basically, war is the last resort of diplomatic failures. Seems there’s not a diplomat left in service.

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