Letter from Slim Wolfe
War on terrorism – March 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
Martha Q.,
By golly Martha, you’re absolutely right. What else can we do but have ourselves another little war? We are human, after all, and it’s our duty to be more destructive than Kudzu. Does it matter that a terrorist can slip over into Siberia and set up housekeeping, doesn’t really need a large facility for making bombs and Anthrax, just a couple of rooms and some communications equipment to train suicide squads, not even a pistol?
No, it doesn’t matter, we got to make a big bang and save face here. Does it matter that there might be a team of zoologists up in the Afghan wastes spending a lifetime trying to reintroduce some butterfly whose wings are more brilliant than the most brilliant Chopin nocturne, hell, blow ’em all to kingdom come.
Does it matter that the World Trade Center was ugly as sin, and Tower of Babel arrogant? By golly it was ours, and what else can we do but have vengeance?
Does it matter that a hundred thousand Americans and more are killed each year by Americans, from shoddy vehicles and airplanes, shoddy food processing, and shoddy medical care?
Does that tell us there’s a “what else we could do” here that doesn’t require heating up the ionosphere with more bombs and more petrol? Is there a whole list of “what else we could do” that we’re too weak-minded to think about? Like quit trying to be the Roman Empire and depending on a subjugated and subservient world for our consumer goods?
Would we then maybe not have so many enemies and not get boxed into a corner where it seems the only solution is military? Isn’t there a what else that has to do with not setting ourselves up to fail? Is there a kind of diversity which says it’s OK if somewhere in the world they have a different take on the male-female thing, and on God and government and Taco-Bell?
Hell no, you say, blow ’em all up. Spend a hundred billion on a system to defend against bare hands. Well, I’ve got only one hope remaining for the human species. And when that intergalactic peacekeeping force finally starts fanning out from that beachhead over by Crestone, and starts pushing the empire back into its old confines, like 50 states, I for one will be able to say, I did not collaborate with the goons of America.
What you’re asking for is dialogue, but you can’t converse with a bomb. What you’re asking for is a bunch of peaceniks to go out and demonstrate (and likely get gassed and beaten and need bail and lawyers). So you can convince yourself that this really is a free country and therefore this dirty little war to install one more puppet government in one more strategic corner is really a war about freedom.
Sounds like the scenario from some crazy comic operetta or maybe an I Love Lucy hare-brained scheme, but unfortunately the Republicans are in power, which means the economy is gone to hell as usual, and nobody has extra cash to put in that peacenik defense fund, so I think I won’t volunteer to march in the streets to give you that ambiance of living in a just society.
So sorry. If you’re lucky you might find yourself a nice chatroom on the internet where people who express noble sentiments are monitored by the thought police computer down at Homeland Security. Personally I think it’s time the whole human race did the honorable thing and jumped hand in hand into Mt. Fuji volcano. Once there was real creative artistry in the space between the cannonballs. Now there’s shiny cars and rock stars. The hell with it.
Slim Wolfe
Villa Grove