The author William S. Burroughs used to say that nothing happens in reality unless a writer
writes it first. I take his meaning in a metaphorical sense, but he was speaking more or less
literally. So was the poet Wallace Stevens in a signature poem, “The Idea of Order in Key West”:
And when she sang, the sea,
Whatever self it had, became the self
That was her
song, for she was the maker. Then we,
As we beheld her striding there alone,
Knew
that there never was a world for her
Except the one she sang and, singing, made.
The composer William Osborne believes in the literal meaning as well. “We write (or sing)
our world into being,” he says, noting that it is the theme of “Cybeline,” his music theater collaboration with
Abbie Conant, presented six weeks ago at the Walt Disney Hall music complex in Los
Angeles.
Why bring this up now? Because the horrific news from Iraq about American and British
soldiers torturing prisoners — as reported Sunday by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker and by
in the 1982 play
“Catastrophe,” which Samuel
Beckett wrote in honor of Vaclav Havel about the interrogation of a dissident. There’s a
remarkable equivalence between the torture
and scenes in the play. The equivalence (of abuse and humiliation) does not have pictorial
exactness. But the meaning is scarcely different.
In one of the play’s scenes “a theatre director and his assistant arrange a protagonist, who
stands on a black block submitting to their direction. ‘D’, the director, wears a fur coat and
matching toque (a kind of hat) and smokes a fat cigar.” Think of the horseplay of the
smiling U.S. soldiers as they posed their abused prisoners for photos. These two photos from a
production of “Catastrophe” — here and here — are less graphic than the
revealed in Major General Antonio M. Taguba’s Army report, which Hersh obtained, but the
intended goal of abject human degradation is the same.
“Cybeline” took the issue a step further. Osborne’s program notes explain that “under
the social engineering of the military,” exemplified “with special clarity” by the “history of 20th
century Germany,” a human being can become “a consciously programmed construct, or cyborg.
As such, humans are not served by the media but are part of its apparatus, cyberbia.” It reaches
the point where “society itself becomes a programmable cyborg.” He writes:
This is the fascistic reduction of human society, the mass programming of a
culture, to simplistic ideals generally formulating social identity based on slogans and the unifying
forces of hatred. Strength through joy, Blut und Boden, and Lebensraum were
common slogans during the Third Reich, but ultimately, media sound bites such as Weapons
of Mass Destruction, Liberation, Support Our Troops, and War On Terrorism could
have a similarly reductive and imperialistic effect.
America’s all-volunteer military had to embrace advertising since it needed to compete for
human resources in a free market. It also has to manipulate the media to win propaganda wars.
The military has thus entered the cultural wars of society. Since the military’s resources are
unparalleled, its ability to conduct a cultural war on its own people is without comparison. Be
all that you can be. An Army of One. A few good men. Join the navy and see the world.
Under the military-industrial complex’s massive social engineering, war has become the unifying
force of American society. (Italics added.)
This U.S. Army Web site gives a hint of what Osborne
means. The section on “Jobs” is especially telling. For example, SPC
Christopher Bashaw, describes his satisfaction with a Land Warrior
Program he’s in, which tests the Army’s latest technology and “makes every soldier wearing it a
part of a mobile computer network.”
As U.S. Senator Robert Byrd said in “Mission Not
Accomplished in Iraq,” a speech he gave last week to mark the
anniversary of the Maximum Leader’s triumphal made-for-television landing aboard the USS
Abraham Lincoln to declare the end of major combat operations:
Since that time, Iraq has become a veritable shooting gallery. This April has
been the bloodiest month of the entire war. … Young lives cut short in a pointless conflict and all
the President can say is that it “has been a tough couple of weeks.” A tough couple of weeks,
indeed.
Plans have obviously gone tragically awry. But the President has, so far, only managed to
mutter that we must “stay the course.” But what course is there to keep when our ship of state is
being tossed like a dinghy in a storm of Middle East politics? If the course is to end in the
liberation of Iraq and bring a definitive end to the war against Saddam Hussein, one must
conclude, mission not accomplished, Mr. President.
The mission, it has turned out, is not only not accomplished. It has, with the latest revelations,
turned into a moral defeat so shattering that the political and military nightmare (still brewing,
with worse to come) may one day seem to have been pre-ordained.
Correction: The photos in the London newspaper The Mirror
referred to above as showing British troops torturing Iraqi prisoners have since been exposed as
fakes.
