The World According to Oliver (consider yourself)

The war was over. Thousands of relieved parents poured onto the streets in celebration more than of the victory, than the end to the senseless death that had already taken so many thousands. Thousands of children poured onto the streets for no reason better than to shout and run and be free like they hadn’t for years. Three generations had fought for this day, and now it was here and no one had the temerity to point out that victory is when the hard work begins: that day was not a day for sense and logic, but for triumph and merriment. Walking with my mother, dressed in the requisite red shirt and black pants, waiving little blue and white flags right alongside the red and black ones, most of us with the peasant-inspired straw hats so en vogue after the revolution, I was of the people. There is no greater sense of freedom than the first dizzying moments of debauchery, drunkenness and love-making. How more free could one be than that one day, after one persecution ended and the next hadn’t yet begun?

We went back to school. The actual fighting in the cities had only taken one year out of school. Then, there was the literacy campaign, that took most literate men and women of 16 or older and took them to the fields, the jungles and the steppes, to teach those who had so long been kept in darkness the power of the written word, the sense of numbers and the words of the new founding fathers. History is the boon of the victors, and there was so much to rewrite, retell, redo. Thus, then, two years passed before we went back to school, but we went back.

To be sure, an endless debate could start by merely trying to pin down the real reasons for the revolution. Power corrupts those who hold it, but many who don’t lust after it to their souls’ decay—and we had both. Ultimately, Somoza faced thirteen armies, divided into three groups; each group had its own ideology, but mostly everybody agreed on one thing: Somoza had to go. He was not a nice man. He was not a good leader. He did not have the nation’s interests at heart. The United States had installed his father into the presidency many a year before for no better reason than to have a friend in a slightly unstable area. American economic interests required a modicum of stability to facilitate commerce—and (at the time) the possible construction of a canal, as I recall, but that might have been before. Unfortunately, there was a bit of a misunderstanding regarding the nature of that stability, and the Somozas assumed a despotic and tyrannical choke-hold on the nation that Stalin would have envied and Nixon (privately, of course) admired. But stability it was, and as such, met the requirements divinely inspired from the north, and so more money came, and more power, more arms and more dying. The dead, it seems, are ultimately stable—but they are not economically viable—so, per instructions implicitly declared en Anglais, the populace was kept at a happy medium. The suffering of the people of Nicaragua was considered secondary to the ultimate political and economic interests of the cold-war-era United States. The stability of the right-wing regime there was considered an advantage in the on-going fight against the possibility of Cuba exporting Soviet-style communism to the region; many of the Cubans who participated in the Bay of Pigs invasion were trained in Nicaragua with the full knowledge of President Kennedy, a liberal and a democrat—go figure. Cute little phrases came out of that: Alliance for Progress. We failed to see Alliance meant really Alignment (ours behind yours), for your progress. Of course, Americans justified this by the use of the eternal trickle-down economics: the ever-better scraps you threw our way should justify the rape of our country’s natural resources—and, to forestall those who’d chastise my use of the word “rape” as a leftist exaggeration, I’d like to beg that if you have not walked on the dead, eroded sands of what once was verdant, life-giving jungle but turns into a post-apocalyptic, war-torn moonscape after American-style deforestation seeking more wood or to drive out “insurgents”, it would be best to avoid commenting on the subject. The killing fields belong only to the dead. The living’s job is to prevent the next ones.

Americans get so wrapped up in their political dichotomy they fail to see the rest of the world can’t tell the difference between Democrats and Republicans once one starts talking Dollars.

Shortly after the revolution, the United States did to Nicaragua what it had done to Cuba, apparently ignoring the lesson of the past, and thereby dooming itself to the same results: economic sanctions practically drove the fledgling democracy into the hands of the Cubas, Chinas, East Germanies and Soviet Unions of the world. But the fault, you see, was with Nicaragua. Remember the three armies? The one that had won was the middle one, the one that wanted to build an independent country from any external power. But the United States demands immediate and unfailing allegiance, an oath of fealty a new democracy just now exercising the muscles of its sovereignty would never want. Ronald Reagan could not have wrapped the gift with a nicer, bigger, redder bow. Nicaragua needed money and the United States did not want to help. But Russia was all about helping us—so very friendly, so very accommodating, so very un-demanding of any subservience, at first.

And then, when the other two armies saw the failure of the third, the one that had won at first, they took over. Thus came the communists to power, not with the revolution, but after the Americans stopped sending help to Nicaragua.

Seeing the incredible oppression the new regime was bringing to the people, and the very real possibility of the exportation of soviet-styled communism to El Salvador and Honduras, and possibly to Colombia and maybe Panama, the United States took immediate, if not overt, action against the Nicaraguan government. Most of this was later celebrated in the Iran-Contra hearings, but I get ahead of myself. Remember I just got back to school after two years of forced and not-terribly-appreciated vacation.

It was a nice, private school. We were of the newly-formed upper class. Dedicated revolutionaries against the Somozas, we (as a family) landed nice positions in the new government. Suddenly, we were hot. The new equality brought a redistribution of wealth which, if not necessarily equitable, was somewhat just. After all, what do the victors get if not the spoils? My dad had a friend who ran a hospital. The school required “community service” hours before graduation. My brother and I went a couple of hours to the hospital and helped clean out some trash, file some papers, push wheel chairs around, all for credit. This was to teach us the value of social responsibility. This is the lesson that I learned.

Shortly after we started, the United States’ supported contras, with arms provided by the CIA, bought with money from Iran, bombed the primary port in Managua. A tanker that was waiting to be unloaded exploded; the line that connected it to the gigantic oil-tanks on the port caught fire. Fifty-thousand gallons of refined gasoline make for a hell of a cherry bomb. I never knew how many died—I did not want to know. I avoided the news. I was, you see, in the thick of things: I was at the hospital when they brought the burn victims in. Most were missing pieces, neatly cleaned and dressed to avoid infection. We kids were kept away from most of them—we were there to file, to push, to clean, not to deal with death and dismemberment.

We were specifically forbidden to go into the small room in the back of the burn unit, which made it most appealing. One day, we snuck in. The room was clean and white, every surface kept sterile to avoid any possibility of infection. There were three beds, each cocooned inside a plastic tent, oxygen running to them all the time; each bed pristine, the lights bright, the air cool and constantly running, like a soft breeze, with a slight disinfectant smell. On each bed there was a body. There were two women and one child, at some point, but when I went in, there was only a woman there—at least they told me later it was a woman. Looking through the plastic, I could hardly tell the mess of charcoal and blood on the bed was even human. She felt no pain, they told me when I ran out crying—so much of heir flesh was gone…and bone can’t feel the burn. They did not know why she wouldn’t just die. She had no name. She was just a body they brought in to the morgue, only to realize at the last moment she was still breathing, if only barely. I hope to God she died quickly.

That is how the United States exports democracy. Whatever else you may say on the matter, as of this writing 1400 human voices have been forever silenced just on the American side in Iraq. That is an irrefutable number that must be considered. I make no judgment on the political, economic and humanitarian motives that lead to their deaths, but add to these the countless deaths of those on the other side. Those 1400 bear no guilt, but those on the other side perhaps do, and so we sleep better at night knowing our boys and girls are there doing the right thing. But I have seen the wrong thing done in the name of right. Sometimes, I see it still. So do not dare to tell me that I don’t know why I speak when I speak strongly against any kind of military action. Somebody must. This is not to say that such an action may from time to time be necessary, but rather that it must be taken with full knowledge of the price to pay. Anything less than absolute torture over the decision is inhuman. Those making the decision must be held accountable for that decision every step of the way. The righteous do not mind to die for the cause of righteousness. They welcome sharing in the ultimate price they ask of all those others. It is only the cowards that try to hide behind lies and excuses.

It is irresponsible to dismiss the opposing view by merely exaggerating its points into their most ridiculous worst-case scenarios and thus attempt to call such a view equally ridiculous. Speaking of the anti-war movement as though it were an oily blob crawling its way up from the theatre screen to consume all foolish enough to try to stand their ground, seeks to dismiss the richness of individual experiences. It is not a movement, but a shifting coalition—and often only accidental association of those who for one reason or another feel this country’s interests could be best served by alternative courses of action.

The war in Viet-Nam was not ended by the anti-war movement. The insane numbers of American dead ended that war. The eternally missed goals ended that war. Why do we call the prolonged and bloody debacle of the soviets in Afghanistan a victory for democratic forces everywhere, but Viet-Nam is the failure of the “anti-war movement”? It is all a question of perspective, a fairy tale where we as Americans can do no wrong. The Soviets left and the Taliban moved in. Who wins? If there is a political aspect to American democracy that attracts the persecuted intellectuals of the rest of the world, it is that it welcomes individualism, and thus dissent. It is ultimately patriotic to question the motives of the government: keeping it honest. Questioning or outright opposing those motives is not irresponsible, weak, or pandering to the interest of terrorists. That some seek to silence the healthy debate reminds me how it feels to live under tyranny.

Any global action taken by a superpower like the United States will have both positive and negative effects—regardless of the original causes. Even the most selfish act may benefit others accidentally or deliberately in the accomplishment of the selfish goal. To try to justify the original intent by the ultimate effect is like saying “look at the Japanese economy of the 70’s and 80’s! It’s ok we dropped two nuclear bombs on them.” Any action must bear immediate justification, or it quickly turns into allowing the end to justify the means.

I, and many like me, admire and respect many who propose the opposing view, but I am getting sick and tired of being called weak, afraid, traitor simply because I don’t fall in line immediately behind them. Nothing could insult them more than my having a mind of my own. It is really a shame that their version of democratic discourse is limited to total, unconditional agreement to their views alone. They equate disagreement with hatred for this country. How incredibly irresponsible is that!? This country, born out of argument and debate, that fought to gain its voice from under the tyrannical dictum of the British Empire, where heroes gave their lives so the critical decisions could be made here—here being where every citizen is—now sees this fundamental right brought into question by those who fear dissention. What’s worse, they are now insulting those who have kept an open mind, calling them complacent, slow to act, sheep-like simply because they didn’t fall in line right behind them.

I find it very amusing how they deny the existence of a “vast, right-wing conspiracy” even as they accuse all who oppose them of being on-message, falling in line, being complacent. They don’t associate for the sake of unifying their voice and clarifying their views; they don’t need to! Their point is so patently clear and right that any non-fascist, non-terrorist, non-communist, red-blooded American would just know it to be true—the rest of us are just insane.

I am sincerely disturbed by the nature of the words many who oppose the war are saying. It is true that our troops deserve our support and every effort must be made to eliminate the dangers to which they can be exposed while there. Nothing should be said to endanger them. However, to equate any disagreement with a death wish on our children, our friends in Iraq, Afghanistan and other such places is sheer stupidity. But is not enough that there are destructive demagogues out there taking advantage of the situation to bring attention to themselves (on both sides of this argument) to translate dissent to lunacy. This country’s democracy demands dialog, and those who wish to live under dictatorial, tyrannical, overpowering forces are certainly welcome to move to China. God knows there’s plenty of work there.

Iraq is nothing like Viet-Nam. Viet-Nam is already lost. We can still win in Iraq. Let us, however, as responsible Americans, bring out into the open all our motives and democratically discuss what course of action will accomplish our humanitarian goals while minimizing deaths.

Dissent is difficult; it is often seen as unpatriotic, and those who don’t like it often bring out entire libraries of patriotic talk about falling in line behind the leader to bring about peace. But I have lived under tyranny, both communist and not. I have seen my friends and my parents’ friends die fighting for freedom. Many in my family died to free our land. I have lived through a war and know how necessary it can be. Some things are worth one’s life. One of these things is the freedom to dissent, to vote, to matter in a democracy.

Anything else is Un-American.