3 May 04
Gone, Gone, Gone Beyond
Unlike American college students, it was considered unusual for British university students to get summer jobs, and almost unheard of for us to get jobs while we were in session. Nevertheless, I landed, in the summer of my second year at the University of Birmingham, a killer lucrative summer job.
I was interpreting for a company that had contracted with the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture on a project of hail suppression in Albacete, about 250 kilometers southeast of Madrid. The Spanish company retained the services of an American outfit. These guys were supposed to fly planes into towering, unstable cumulonimbus clouds and seed them with silver iodide, which supposedly turned the threatening hail into harmless rain.
The “guys” were a motley crew of mostly ex-military, pleasant enough, though their marriages seemed to be in none good shape, those of them who had marriages. They were led by Larry, a jovial Colorado businessman with a drinking problem. And in the middle of them all was “Ron.”
Ron wasn’t American, he was Rhodesian. (He certainly wasn’t married.) Not, you understand, Zimbabwean. Rhodesian. He knew his way around combat helicopters, around sub-machine guns. He had, according to him, killed HUNDREDS of “blecks.” With him, “killing blecks” was a refrain; he trotted it out at EVERY available opportunity. Only, the Rhodesians had lost, and here he was fetched up in the least desirable part of the least desirable country in Europe (the Spanish say “Albacete, caga y vete”—hardly a strong selling point to tourists). There were no “blecks” to kill, just black clouds. Hardly a compensation.
I was nineteen. I had grown up in Franco’s Spain, mostly shielded from its excesses as a foreigner and as a child; I had never heard muffled screams in provincial “cuarteles” where police interrogated dissidents. Ron terrified me. He was utterly deranged; it was clear he should be in an institution, but everyone just smiled benignly-oh that’s just Ron-and got on with the tedious business of waiting for the next thunderstorm to roll in.
The American military had an air base near Madrid, the source of American candy, Thanksgiving dinners, and lots of kids my age who never, ever interacted with anyone Spanish. The Cold War happened within the confines of that base. We were oblivious.
I grew up believing the American military to be the strongest in the world; to have the worst haircuts; to contain recruits who didn’t really know any better, for whom two years of service meant a paid-for college degree, which I managed to get because my father could afford it. I didn’t really know much about what was happening in Vietnam-we heard a lot more about the rioting in the U.S. than about the specifics of the war, through the BBCbut on the whole the American military seemed overstrong, a bit clueless, and generally a bit misguided-yet not really EVIL. There was certainly no place for the likes of Ron the Deranged in the American military.
Well, it turns out there is. We’ve seen it. It’s here. I suspect it’s been there all along. And I wince at my failure to have seen it earlier. You see, I’ve been secretly hoping-against hope, against reasonthat someone would prove beyond all doubt that this war with Iraq was somehownot good, war’s never good-but at least somehow not utterly bonkers.
Wake up and smell the coffee, Pica. It smells of burned flesh and cinders. It sizzles with electrodes. Welcome to the World At War.
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ever since 1969 when a minor CIA operative fetched up in Madrid and my brother guess pretty quickly what he wasas a bumbling, evil bully, covertly installing and maintaining dictatorships all over creation. But the military had always seemed just to be full of guys whose job it was to obey orders, and to do it well. It’s almost as though this behavior is outside the bureaucratic framework. Of course it is, and of course this is what war does-but it’s still been a shock.Doris Lessing wrote a powerful book about the psychology of war and the world’s need for violence and dominance. It is called “Prisons We Choose to Live Inside”. It’s a slim book but has left a searing mark in my mind.
The images of the Iraqi prisoners have also left a searing mark in my mind that will never leave for the rest of my life. There have been only a few other such images in my life that have had such a lasting effect, such as: seeing a black man get beaten to the ground by a policeman on the street in Boston; seeing the scene from a preview of what I didn’t know until the middle of it was a snuff film (they were very popular here in Japan during the 1970’s), of a naked woman being led across a bridge and then shot in the head (I was so sick when I realized what it was that I was watching that I vomited onto the floor and left the theatre, while my so-called high school friends laughed); and the endlessly repeated images of the planes flying into the World Trade Center.
Something crossed an invisible line when those pictures appeared. I can’t imagine what Arabs and Muslims must feel. I’m pretty sure hatred has been inflated to epic proportions. Will everyone now step back, evaluate the situation, and make an attempt at peaceful, reconciliatory talks? No, probably not. Too many egos in the way.
Alison, I just realized it’s been one year since i first found Feathers of Hope and met you and Allan.. :-)
There is a litte surprise at my link! ;-)
hugs!