Iraq war

Dang, scribblers!

The days of late have been filled with UO MFA grads getting themselves all published on the interwebs and such (oh, and one in the little-known publication called The New York Times).

Could I get a shout-out from some LNF grads, plz?

Anyway, congrats to these folks:

1. Elyse Fenton, whose gorgeous poem "Planting, Hayhurst Farm" provided some quiet contemplation and a turning point in February's student veteran play, Telling (cover story about that here), had a lovely essay about being a modern war bride in the NYT's "Modern Love" section on Sunday.

2. Heather Ryan, whose also lovely essay about using FOOD for Lane County's Dining Room (*about which there is art up at DIVA right now!*), appeared on Salon.com Tuesday. That link is here. Warning: If you're not a Salon premium subscriber, you may need to watch a short ad. (I dunno, I paid up cuz I got sick of the ads in February or so.) Also! Heather Ryan blogs here, at Terrible Mother. (This has almost spawned an entire post of mine talking about my annoyance/understanding/annoyance cycle with bloggers speaking of their partners as "Mrs or Mr B" and their children as "Thing One" or "Youngest" or whatever, but that can wait. I come to celebrate UO writers, not go off on them.)

3. Michael Copperman, whose mean-spirited letter to the editor back in 2006 somehow didn't prevent us from publishing his lament for men's wrestling at the UO this year, publishes his blog at Open Salon. Check it out here..

I heard a rumor that Jonathan Wei and Max Rayneard, writers of the aforementioned Telling, may have a portion of the play published in an upcoming issue of the groaningly prestigious Iowa Review. So, boyos, fess up and let me know the linkage when it occurs.

Congrats to all of you! More shout-outs? Speak to me, UO grads! You're kicking ass on the interwebs this week!

For more information on today's cover story (EW 5/22, "Back to Iraq?" contact James Burmeister's father at letjamesbefree@gmail.com .

"Courage to Resist" provides updates on Burmeister, Ehren Watada, Suzanne Swift and other war resisters.

Exhausted, Jenny Sutter (Gwendolyn Mulamba) falls asleep on the ground at Slab City. Photo by Jenny Graham.

If you aren't in the habit of scanning the Christian Science Monitor for info, you probably missed this superb article about one of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's new plays, Welcome Home, Jenny Sutter.

When freelance theater critic Anna Grace and I saw the play, we disagreed about its quality and impact. (Those reviews are here, and you can read our disagreement in the review itself.) Then I wrote about Jenny Sutter and the UO student veterans' play Telling (about which I wrote in February) for a national arts blog — you can read that post here.

I think the CSM article has several strengths, one of which is that it shows playwright Julie Marie Myatt's and the OSF's commitment to getting it right. In their writing of Telling, playwrights Max Rayneard and Jonathan Wei, along with director John Schmor, also did a lot of work in order to get it right. The difference was that in the latter case, they had more than one consultant from the Iraq War; the words themselves came from veterans who also did the acting and gave a lot of feedback throughout the entire process. That certainly had advantages!

But it was super to read what the OSF actors did to learn more and how much care the OSF took with area veterans.

I keep writing about this because I'm interested in the ways that my experience of Jenny Sutter was changed by watching Telling first, but also because the CSM article brings up issues about theater and catharsis, theater and healing, etc. — issues that the playwrights and actors of Telling were explicitly trying to address with the entire project (and that they hope will be exported to other campuses and other veterans' groups as well).

Last year's theater season in Eugene had The Trojan Women and Mother Courage for war allegories/tales. I wonder what next season will bring and how we will deal with — expect? hope for? dislike? — more war stories.

Seriously. Everyone who doesn't have the patent drive to get up from her computer desk and go to her local movie rental store to rent No End in Sight, or the patent patience required of Netflix, I suggest the entirely free, fast and easy way:

PBS' two-part Frontline program: "Bush's War"

Should you have a slow Internet connection, the program will be rebroadcast on channel 28 (bunny ears) or channel 10 (cable) the following days:

Thursday, March 27 at 8 am (Part 1)
Friday March 28 at 9 am (Part 2)

I don't have cable at my house, but I do pick up a pretty solid PBS signal thanks to "viewers like you," and so found myself watching this program the past two nights. I haven't seen No End in Sight yet (I'm one of the patently drive-less & impatient citizens of this modern democracy) but "Bush's War" pretty much spells it all out, clear as day, even interviewing many of the same top officials. There's less focus on what the troops go through and more focus on the inter- and intra-departmental squabbles. Squabbles that led to a botched job. And props to PBS for telling it like it is: It's not the Iraq war, it's Bush's War. Time for the news to start calling it that.

A few points:

• While Rumsfeld held the ropes, there was no other strategy in Iraq other than to keep troops mostly on the bases and the politicians in the Green Zone and to let Iraqis keep on insurgin'.

• Once Bush lied to the American people about "never firing Rumsfeld" and then firing him the day after the mid-term elections of 2006, thus hiring on Gates, the strategy became: provide some effing security to the "good" Iraqis so they don't give up hope and join the sectarian war.

• We must stay in Iraq until there is reasonable security. The U.S. owes it to Iraq. While the anti-war establishment was busy shouting "Hell No We Won't Surge" last year, it was more of a rebuke to Bush's failed policy of the past five years, rightfully dubbing it "too little, too late," than an actual plea for immediate withdrawal (which would be akin to standing back and letting genocide follow its inevitable course ... which is what we've done pretty much everywhere else in the world, but that's beside the point). But it's never too late to do some right after five years of mostly wrong. Of course, any truce agreement and security situation will be as shaky as any Palestinian-Israeli "pact," but at least we'll be able to withdraw and let the U.N. provide peacekeeping. As it stands right now, the U.N. should not have to deal with our shit.

• The grounds for Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld's immediate prosecution for numerous crimes following Bush's exit from office could never be stronger. But it will probably take a pretty gutsy (Democratic) Attorney General. Edwards?

The NY Times has a link up where you can see the faces of the U.S. military dead.

Here it is. If you wish, you can sort by state or hometown.

I've taught at least one veteran in every course I've had at Linn-Benton Community College in the past two years. Marines, Army, National Guard. Don't believe I had an vets in my UO class last spring. Will be interested to see if I have any this spring.

Not that I think there's a class background difference in people signing up for military service or anything. No, that wouldn't be American of me. Anyway. As far as I know, none of my current or previous students (and we're spanning many a year here) has been killed in Iraq or Afghanistan. I hope it stays that way.

Wishing for peace and justice. I believe they can coexist.