Before the "dark side" revision of modes in warmaking by the United States, Topic A in our commando training, now only too infamously unsecret, might have been lifted out of the Iliad.
What did we inculcate in ourselves, as policy, even before gastronomy?
Possibly, who writes the war, writes the training, is not so far from who wills the end, wills the means.
Who knows, the war to mean well might be no better than the usual kind, and possibly our soccer moms are right: better to destroy before any risk of danger.
Such are the new American Studies, the droning undertones that reinscribe Ernest Hemingway's constant, bullying, murderous, slovenly crime of war as chaste precipitations of fastidious machines.
Once, even survival psychology
knew its place, not one generation distant from thanksgiving's table,
in deference to its honour.
knew its place, not one generation distant from thanksgiving's table,
in deference to its honour.
Thibault Oberlin
Records of a U.S. Naval Officer, 1968
Santorini caldera
Tines
Ernest Hemingway
A Farewell to Arms
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1929©
Hemingway Library Edition
Scribner, 2012©
No comments:
Post a Comment