PJ Evans -
I first read Drake's Hammer Slammers in paperback ca 1980, when I was under 18, and the draft was just about to be re-instated.
His Omni story (Men Like Us) from around then was also quite good.
But since then, I've grown up a bit, and discovered he wasn't actually all that interested in warning people about the evils of war, or what war does to a person, as a way to stop war.
He seems to care more about selling his books, which is fair enough of an author, and complaining about the recognition he hasn't received because he tells things like they are in war.
But as we share a taste for riding older BMW twins, much of his perspective makes complete sense to me. Riding is also something which encourages an appreciation of reality.
Lizzy L -
oh, sure, call me as you wish - here I am actually trying to get people to look beyond the taunting of kids which their tax dollars pay for to actually look at what their money buys, which is the sort of thing a twit would do, as there is no way to have any hope of success.
As for blanket judgments about Americans - well, the whole world has been making them for the last few years (Katrina certainly was an eye opener for them about how Americans feel about their fellow citizens, especially if they are poor and/or black), and being American myself, it certainly has been entertaining to watch the contrast between what Americans think about themselves and what the rest of the world does. A quote from the end of a New York Review of Books article (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19657) -
'And then there was Iraq. There is much to say about America's most disastrous folly since Vietnam, but in some ways the most telling indictment is the response of ordinary Iraqis. As Richardson explains:
They find the claims that the United States is occupying Iraq to defend New York and deploying an army to import democracy to be so implausible that they do not believe them. Instead, they believe the claims of those who say the US Army is a self-interested army of occupation interested only in dominating the region and exploiting its oil wealth.
"In effect," she concludes, "they find al-Qaeda's propaganda more credible than ours."'
Whose propaganda do you believe, I wonder? Iraqis have already made up their minds about Americans, and quite honestly, they don't care a whit about the fine distinctions you seem to feel so important.
But then, as you mentioned, I'm a twit in your eyes, so please, go about your life unconcerned about my bitter comments.
Especially since your comments seem to imply you would be able to cast the first stone.
Aconite-
'Personally, I'm relieved that there is still enough decency in enough people that this sort of behavior is considered appalling, and we don't have to reserve outrage for human ovens.
You think we're wimps for considering this disgusting and utterly unacceptable? I think you're hard-hearted to rule it minor because it could be worse, and I hope we never become so cold.'
Still paying your taxes to the American government? I don't, though in this case, it is legal, since as an American citizen living overseas, my income is not taxed under $70,000 or so (no interest in checking the latest limit - I don't earn that much anyways). I'm not that good of American, you know, that old love it or leave it thing.
I find it fascinating that people who do not seem to be taking any concrete actions to stop the evil going on through their nation's actions get so worked up about trivial things. Let me try again - let's just say those kids were Sunnis - do you think they worry much about being taunted at a Shia checkpoint? Or do they worry more about being handcuffed and having a hole drilled in their head, like has problably happened to a relative or two? Or do they worry more about a car bomb at a market, or perhaps a few mortar rounds landing, or ... oh wait, getting taunted is so horrible, that it is good that people still get worked up about that, since it means we can show how decent we are while doing nothing that costs us anything concrete to stop what we caused.
And as a side note - if we hadn't invaded, maybe those kids would have been taunted by Saddam's goons, and maybe they would have known a relative in a mass grave, and another who was raped. The world is not a Hollywood script.
As I have said, Iraq has a completely different standard of suffering, and quite honestly, this still doesn't rate. As most people who aren't American notice, Americans seem utterly incapable of imagining anything outside of themselves - for example, let me introduce the idea (read around the Internets, though if you wish, ask somebody who is Arab - don't know any? Hmmm.) that male Iraqis hate us a lot more for our breaking into their family houses at night without taking our shoes off - and they respond in turn to such barbaric behavior through gentle teaching methods like AK-47 rounds and RPGs - since they don't own any attack helicopters or bombers.
P J Evans and Terry Karney-
Oh, Ringo is certainly worse, but unlike Drake, he has absolutely no excuse, and he is much more in love with his various fetishes - Drake at least seems to write something which can you imagine applying to some of the people currently making decent money in Iraq, and their experience - for example, Drake probably could write a competent scene of where an explosion goes off in a crowded market, and the soldiers/'contractors' gun down small children, run over a family with their Bradley, pop a few grenades which tear apart the teahouse, and on, and on - sickening, but also real - it is your tax dollars at work, after all. That is why I explicitly picked David Drake, who has been writing this stuff since returning from Vietnam, after all.
Baen also has performed a rare feat - they published a book where the 'true' SS defends humanity, while portraying the German Greens and Socialists as traitors to the race (just like the Nazis accused the Socialists then - no irony in Ringo et al, none at all) - this book would be banned here, because glorifying the SS is illegal, to put it mildly, especially since people here do know what the 'true' SS did. Though I am very much a 1st Amendment absolutist, I'll grant the Germans a certain leeway in terms of trying to use any reasonable method to ensure that what they did in the past will not be repeated. In other words, Germany is not a slippery slope case.
As another aside, the only source I have of people who find Drake unacceptable is from Drake himself - he seems to write tirelessly about how his career would be awe-inspiring if he hadn't written such 'real' things as the Slammers series, and then faced problems from people who don't know what it is like at the sharp end of the stick, point of the spear, or whatever.
Nonetheless, what puts him into his own category, I find, is that his perspective of violence/war at least is grounded in something approaching reality - I can't imagine that, if talking about Dickson's Dorsai. And the fact that he started writing such things in the immediate post-Vietnam era also adds a certain complexity - he was describing, in a certain sense, what we had been doing in Vietnam, and in his opinion, what human beings will always do. Take that as you wish - realistic appraisal of the human condition, or cheap excuse to justify the evil he was involved in, at least as part of the machinery, if not through direct personal actions.
I guess part of the debate comes down into whether you find what he writes to be an exhortation or a warning - I find it a warning (but then, I grew up during the Vietnam war) which is utterly ignored anyways, especially by such people as Gingrich & Co. - why Drake isn't disgusted by chickenhawks is one of my open questions about him and his 'demons' - knowing that your work is admired by the cowards that are responsible in causing war must be hard to live with, I'm sure. This is also why I describe him as amoral - I read what he writes without finding any way to actually determine a consistent moral position at all - unlike Ringo, for example.
Terry Karney -
I have a problem finding the right term for much of the sort of fiction which Baen prints in such abundance over the last decade or two. Basically, it is a form of non-sexual vicarious excitement in the name of 'honesty' or 'reality' - you know, if it wasn't for the soldiers killing people, the world would be faced with catastrophe. This belief has spread deeply throughout American society - and isn't really understandable to people who have some understanding that war is not protection, it is death, maiming, and destruction - like those old Europeans who destroyed Old Europe. This also puts Drake into a special case - his military fiction is quite amoral, which is appropriate in this context.
Realism is one thing, and dealing with a brutal subject honestly certainly opens one up to various charges. On the other hand, an obsession with showing how soldiers are honorable killers playing by honest rules is not quite the same thing, especially in the Slammers series.
Nonetheless, his writing comes a lot closer to bringing the discussion into the real world than much of the moral outrage about despicable soldiers - most of those writers seem to have no clue at all what happens in Iraq on a daily basis, and no, jerking kids around doesn't even rate mention. Unless you cannot imagine that every single day, children in Iraq are being killed, maimed, burned, while watching other people being killed, maimed, and burned. Every single day. And it is getting worse while Americans argue about things those children could not comprehend.
To go through top to bottom -
Dave Bell -
'Calling the Slammers stories "war pornography" is controversial. Drake was there, and people who have been in war reckon he gets it right.' Well, if you mean using fusion powered tanks that char bodies into carbon, no, he hasn't been there. If you mean that he has some idea of what it is like to shoot up a bunch of human beings for stated reasons the soldiers could care less about, sure. And as for pornography? Pornography is meant to be arousing - commercial pornography, especially the mutilated breasts, is anything but. However, you do know that there are a number of people who aren't acting - check out those internets, though if you have to pay money, you are already in the wrong part.
little light-
'cya, dicking around with kids like this is morally bankrupt, and it is something we'll be remembered for, and it is part of the same pattern as all those rapes and murders and maimings.
It's a difference of degree, not kind.'
Really - you think some smoldering corpse is just a difference of degree? I don't, but then, I did go to an American high school. To get morally outraged about some soldiers taunting some kids is to really not see what is going on - and no, the death squads romping around implementing that tried and true Salvador option (after all, America war in Central American, even if the occasional bishop, priest, or nun got gunned down), are not a difference of degree either.
Greta Christina-
'Is there worse in war than taunting poor children in a hot, war-devastated country by dangling water in front of them? Yes, of course.
But that's not the point. There's something extra-despicable going on here.'
No there's not - I live in Germany, and trust me, one reason the Germans are opposed to war is that they have some idea of what extra despicable means. This doesn't even begin to register on their scale - and the babies and grandparents which we keep accidentally killing? Well, what do you think war is about? Freedom, democracy, liberation? No - it is about the dead, the maimed, and the destroyed. Ask any European over the age of 65 or so.
I guess you people didn't see the German soldiers in Afghanistan jacking off with skulls, did you? To be honest, most people here were disgusted, but not really all that surprised - welcome to war, and what it does to people - or what it allows some people to do. A good reason to avoid it, actually, but then, that is just old Europe for you.
We do see pictures here in the 'anti-American' press of what all that collateral damage looks like - the images that are considered too tasteless to expose people to in America, since they are so shocking, and could cause problems for people who shouldn't see what the reality of their tax dollars at work looks like.
And I wondered when someone would mention that video of someone shooting from a car randomly in Iraq, several times, just playing a video game with real people? You know, we will be remembered forever for that one too - except, strangely, no one seems to remember it now.
Well, so you think some soldiers jerking around with kids is somehow morally bankrupt, and it will be what America is remembered for?
You know, I hate to write this, but maybe some of you should read some of David Drake's Slammer's war pornography, and then really think about what you aren't really seeing, even while it is right in front of all us.
Imagine the soldiers gunning down the kids for a start - then take it from there. How would a grenade or two look, for example? Or maybe testing out some new equipment - how does a hyperbaric warhead work in a crowd?
Sometimes, the lack of reality in America is scary - and this is an example. The Iraqis hate us for the dead, the maimed, and the destroyed. Quite honestly, they are used to a much higher standard of suffering, and this is just another tiny window into how far we seem to be from what we are really doing in Iraq, or what is really happening there.
If you want outrage, think of how many babies have been burnt to death over the last week, or how many mothers were raped by various 'militias,' or how many fathers have holes drilled into their skulls - but somehow, describing what has been going on for months in Iraq just doesn't encapsulate our 'evilness' as well as something which comes a lot closer to a Hollywood morality play.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2006 | 7 |
Total: 7 comments. View all these comments on a single page.
The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by cya:
Show all comments by cya.