my head is killing me and i am coughing up bright green phlegm cause of a sinus infection.
and i quit my job, today.
but, i did buy the new issue of Adbusters and it is really good.
One time I saw a former rebel cry. We drank green tea in his bungalow on a shaded lane in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
It was the middle of the afternoon, a drowsy insect whine came through the screen door, and our conversation drifted to his past.
When he was a medical student in university back in 1988, he had marched for democracyon the streets of Rangoon.
The soldiers in the Burmese army "targeted our heads and our hearts," he said, and after seeing one of his friends killed,
his skull blown apart, there was no going back. To continue the fight he fled with 1,000s of fellow students to the borderlands between Burma
(now Myanmar) and Thailand.
In the jungle the student rebels scavenged for food, drank stagnant water, shared a few old rifles, and succumbed to malaria and dysentry.
He watched friends die of disease, and, more rarely, from artillery attacks by the Burmese army. "These city boys fighting in a jungle,"
he said,incredulous and proud, "we thought we could do anything. We thought we could move a big mountain!"
"You wouldn't believe the energy you can get from your friends when every day you trust your life to them," he added, no longer looking at me,
memories returning.
But what brought tears to his eyes was his decision to put down his gun.
"We knew, I knew, that if we kept fighting all we would accompolish was to die, and for our younger activists to die. But i worried that we may be
disloyal to our colleagues who sacrficed their lives and..." he had to stop, and swallow, and start again.
"I wish I could explain to my friends who died. They did not do this for nothing."
A year later I heard an echo of his words in an interview with a young reservist from Arkansas. A gawky young man with a thin neck and thick glasses,
he confessed to the reporter that he had not wanted to come to Iraq, and that he did not see a real connection between this fight and the smoking ruins
of the Trade Towers. But then, on one of their patrols, a homemade bomb unit killed one of his "brothers" in the unit.
"I'm going to stay here until we get this job done, because if we dont," he said, his eyes shining at his friend's memory,
"if we don't, he just died for nothing."
It is a cliche: the most profound friendships are made during war. While men tear apart the lives of civilians, while they willfully forget the humanity
of their opponents, they live together in a state of great intimacy with their fellow soldiers. They learn how another man smells when he is scared, whom he
thinks about at home, the sound he makes when he is in pain, and the dreams he has to offer for after the war's end.
To lose one of these comrades is terrible. And then to hear "we made a mistake" or "the politicians were wrong," or "we must accept the defeat,"
is to dig them up, bring them back to life, and then murder them again.
Chris Tenove
and i quit my job, today.
but, i did buy the new issue of Adbusters and it is really good.
One time I saw a former rebel cry. We drank green tea in his bungalow on a shaded lane in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
It was the middle of the afternoon, a drowsy insect whine came through the screen door, and our conversation drifted to his past.
When he was a medical student in university back in 1988, he had marched for democracyon the streets of Rangoon.
The soldiers in the Burmese army "targeted our heads and our hearts," he said, and after seeing one of his friends killed,
his skull blown apart, there was no going back. To continue the fight he fled with 1,000s of fellow students to the borderlands between Burma
(now Myanmar) and Thailand.
In the jungle the student rebels scavenged for food, drank stagnant water, shared a few old rifles, and succumbed to malaria and dysentry.
He watched friends die of disease, and, more rarely, from artillery attacks by the Burmese army. "These city boys fighting in a jungle,"
he said,incredulous and proud, "we thought we could do anything. We thought we could move a big mountain!"
"You wouldn't believe the energy you can get from your friends when every day you trust your life to them," he added, no longer looking at me,
memories returning.
But what brought tears to his eyes was his decision to put down his gun.
"We knew, I knew, that if we kept fighting all we would accompolish was to die, and for our younger activists to die. But i worried that we may be
disloyal to our colleagues who sacrficed their lives and..." he had to stop, and swallow, and start again.
"I wish I could explain to my friends who died. They did not do this for nothing."
A year later I heard an echo of his words in an interview with a young reservist from Arkansas. A gawky young man with a thin neck and thick glasses,
he confessed to the reporter that he had not wanted to come to Iraq, and that he did not see a real connection between this fight and the smoking ruins
of the Trade Towers. But then, on one of their patrols, a homemade bomb unit killed one of his "brothers" in the unit.
"I'm going to stay here until we get this job done, because if we dont," he said, his eyes shining at his friend's memory,
"if we don't, he just died for nothing."
It is a cliche: the most profound friendships are made during war. While men tear apart the lives of civilians, while they willfully forget the humanity
of their opponents, they live together in a state of great intimacy with their fellow soldiers. They learn how another man smells when he is scared, whom he
thinks about at home, the sound he makes when he is in pain, and the dreams he has to offer for after the war's end.
To lose one of these comrades is terrible. And then to hear "we made a mistake" or "the politicians were wrong," or "we must accept the defeat,"
is to dig them up, bring them back to life, and then murder them again.
Chris Tenove