pynchon-l-digest V2 #2191

[Doug Millison]

rj/rjackson/jbor/?
>Did you actually read what those leaflets which the U.S. planes dropped were
>saying to the Afghani people? We're on their side.

I guess the people believe the bombs, not the leaflets. If we're on their
side,  why are we killing them and pursuing a policy that will -- according
to the UN and all relevant international aid agencies -- result in starving
millions of refugees to death?  With friends like that, who needs enemies?
This is a wicked policy -- burn the village to save it, rightly condemned
as criminal in Vietnam and everywhere else this sort of total war has been
pursued.  Credible reports from journalists and other observers in
Afghanistan and nearby -- as reported by a broad range of mainstream
newspapers and news agencies around the world -- tell us that the Afghan
people are terrified and bewildered beneath the US attack that is
destroying their country and killing their wives, children, parents --
people who are dying as the result of bombs and missiles and bullets bought
and paid for by the American people.  It's possible that some of those
people might have died as the result of Taliban actions, but we can't know
that for sure-- on the other hand it's an absolute certainty that the US
attack (backed by the UK, the rest of NATO and coalition partners) has in
fact killed these individuals and has continued the destruction begun by
the Russians, continued by the civil war, and now completed by us.  A cry
went up around the world in the wake of September 11, begging the US not to
pursue this kind of attack, given the fact that Afghanistan, one of the
world's poorest countries, had already been devastated by more than two
decades of war -- but Bush and his backers have persisted.  It's been a
tragedywith, so far, no apparent military effect; the Taliban are fighting
back and, according to a BBC report yesterday, actually on the attack
against the so-called "Northern Alliance, while that pack of corrupt and
cruel partisan foes of Taliban have yet to make a move; and there's
certainly been no reduction in the terror here at home.  Watching the news
on the Tube yesterday, it's obvious that confidence in this military
adventure has been shaken at the highest level.  One of the most powerful
Senators, Joe Biden, spoke one of the first truthful sentences I've heard
recently, saying that the U.S. is beginning to look like a high-tech bully
with this air attack.

rj/rjackson/jbor/?
>No-one wants Afghani refugees to starve this winter: that's not the
>intention. It hasn't happened, it isn't likely to happen, and it's
>ridiculous to argue as if it has happened.

If it's so ridiculous, why are the UN and other international aid
organizations arguing so strenuously for a halt to the attack so they can
get in and prevent it by beginning the aid shipments that the US attack on
Afghanistan has halted or impeded? I suggest it's because they, far closer
to the situation than any of us here, know what's happening and know what's
needed to prevent this tragedy.

Here's a more humane solution:  stop the bombing, start trucking in the aid
in amounts that will prevent the humanitarian tragedy that is now in the
making, send in peace-keepers as necessary to protect the refugees, foster
a dialogue between the various parties in Afghanistan that want to form a
new government, continue investigation and police action as necessary to
bring to justice (and not the summary execution in the field that the Bush
Administration is said to favor) the perpetrators of the Sep 11 attacks and
the perpetrators of the anthrax terrorism.


I said:
> Does Pynchon never answer the questions he raises?
> Seems to me he affirms a small set of positives again and again
> in his writing:  love, community, family, respect for the Earth,
> the continuity of life after death.

Otto:
> Ah, the last point . . . is said by the cynical Wernher von Braun as the
> opening quote of GR and I don't believe that this is meant to be seen in any
> way as the opinion of the author of the novel.

Good point, but the continuity of life after death is seen throughout P's
work -- Mason communing with the spirit of his dead wife in M&D;  the
Thanatoids in Vineland and the transition, at the end of the novel, of
Brock Vond to the after-life; the seance in GR. I don't have any idea what
Pynchon's personal ideas on the subject might be, but the cosmology present
in his novels includes existence on both sides of the life/death interface.


Cordially,
Doug





Doug Millison - Writer/Editor/Web Editorial Consultant
millison at online-journalist.com
www.Online-Journalist.com