17 October 2006
Cut & Run (and hurry the fuck up already)
Apparently this passed the Censor of The Daily/Sunday Telegraph (Murdoch/Australia) and appeared on their feedback website, because another writer, an Australian, said something nice about it. I just couldn't find my rant; if you can, please send URL.
The political buzzword about Iraq at this moment in Australia is "Cut and Run," which Prime Minister John Howard is loudly proclaiming Australia will never do.
This winter's first night for cooking for 20 homeless guests -- Prominently Featuring United States Military Veterans of a variety of past wars -- will be 24 November. I'll let you know if the Team Leader lets me cook my Famous Tomato-Free Sausage Stew. I'll post the recipe in case you have to cook for 20 people, whether they're Homeless, or Royalty, or just your relatives. I invented this dish and it's equally delicious no matter who gets to eat it. The idea is to use all kinds and ethnicities of Sausages, so each guest is certain to pull up a sausage like the sausage Grandma used to cook.
I'll also let you know if vets from Iraq-2 wander in.
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I'm a US Army veteran, the last of the Vietnam War draftees/conscripts. Washington DC is my hometown, but I've never had the nerve to visit the Vietnam War Memorial to my 52,000 brothers and sisters.
It's a memorial to what happens when politicians addict themselves to a military victory which was always a fantasy and a hallucination.
It's a memorial to politicians who can't summon the political courage to cut and run.
On Halloween my town's church-alliance emergency homeless cot shelter will re-open to provide warmth, food and safety each night through our brutal winter. I've volunteered for many years. We serve all the homeless.
But most nights our guests might just as well be a Veterans' Reunion.
When the shelter opened, our guests were old movie-stereotyped Vietnam vets. But a few years later, vets from the first Iraq War -- Desert Storm -- began wandering in.
In two weeks I'm preparing myself for the inevitable: The shattered and addicted wrecks from this grotesque war, which grinds on in pursuit of its hallucinatory Victory. Bush and Rumsfeld, with John Howard's and Tony Blair's help, will have done their worst to them.
I'll serve them hot stew.
The debate over "Cut and Run" fixates on this moment's headline-grabbing crisis, and flourishes in an environment of voters with short memories. To many voters, events from 1968 are Prehistoric -- things lost in the past's haze that may as well have never happened.
But my wonderful visit to Australia taught me what happened to Australia's Vietnam War soldiers after they returned home -- the future for our veterans that dare not speak its name.
There is no Victory ahead for Coalition forces in Iraq. In lieu of a great and proud Victory, there will be only suffering and torment, addiction, alcoholism, post-traumatic stress disorder, the shattering of marriages and families, and homelessness, for decades to come.
What politicians are speaking of the future Australians will shape for their troops now serving in Iraq?
On the battlefield, Iraq's impossibility of Victory mirrors Vietnam's.
When the survivors of the Iraq War finally march home, their plight, for decades to come, will mirror the plight that greeted their fathers and uncles in uniform.
The Welcome Home for these brave soldiers will be sweetest if it comes soonest. The lifelong damage for Australia's veterans, and the shame Australians will feel, will be least if they come home soonest.
How well they are healed and re-integrated into the Australian community that sent them to war will fall to politicians not yet in office. How badly they suffer, and die before their time, will not concern John Howard, who will make thrilling dinner speeches in his retirement about Australia's great, patriotic sacrifice in Iraq.
Those who actually made the sacrifice will be eating stew in church homeless shelters.
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2 comments:
Let me know if you need help serving it up nicely.
yeah yeah yeah you always did attend to presentation
i don't reject professional restaurant presentation. i just think sometimes what the folks are really hungry for is a couple of big PLOPs on their plate.
that recipe was one of my very first Vleeptron posts. shouldn't be hard to find. but Sausage Stew is so easy, if I have to re-invent the recipe for another post, that will make me Happy.
you know? or not know? well anyway ... the war between the followers of Jesus and the followers of ServiceNet has mellowed a bit, or declared a bit of a truce. The shelter is in about as Permanent a site as could be ... well, its Permanence Track Record now equals the Permanence Track Record of your average store or restaurant on Main Street. The shelter's in the first floor of the old Elks Club building across the police parking lot from the police station, which Friends Meeting bought as its Meeting House. Top 2 or 3 floors are condos or apartments.
The ServiceNet staff doesn't bully its way around the operation anymore. They supply support (and write grants and do Shelter Sunday), but they've stopped acting like The Borg, Prepare to be Assimilated, Resistance Is Futile.
I can't imagine this came naturally for them. A lot of people after my day must have screamed at them and told them, in the name of the Lord, to go screw themselves.
Also they have "assimilated" a number of former homeless and clients, recycled into the better and more understanding class of ServiceNet staff.
Covered over by the skirts of the Quakers, and next door to the Police Station, have taken the shelter out of the realm of political controversy and removed it from NIMBY. Its seeming Permanence in that location removes temptation from erratic city councilpersons to think they can make enough nasty noise to make the shelter run away to somewhere else again.
There's an even nicer, prettier story associated with the shelter's semipermanent home in the old Elk's Lodge. Remind me next time we meet in RealityLand and I'll tell it to you.
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