Ernest Hemingway was dishing out some of those tough-to-swallow pills. It’s 11 years post-Iraq and once again the Frankenstein of a looming existential enemy has been defibrillated out of a trench, donned up with a backyard iron-lung, ready to shamelessly gatecrash another decent party. Through the aperture of the media it seems that every new conflict bears with it a kind of accepted amnesia that cherry-picks which part of a long and sordid story of middle eastern conflict we should begin to color in the black and white saga of heroes and villains. The message from politicians and news anchors alike thrives on momentum; loosely conflating domestic threats with shiny new foreign ones in rapid fire. And as viewers we’re treated like children, getting briskly dragged by the arm through a house of horrors on some oddly propped skit, denied the time to even point and ask questions. While the pay-off at the end is getting to justify our indignation because something made us feel afraid.
Nothing about this seems satisfying and I’m getting a little jaded by the usual patriot porn and Pavlovian terror warnings conscripting us to blindly lend our support to one of the most incompetent and opportunistic leaders Australia might’ve ever seen. It’s not that I don’t find ISIS appalling either, I’m just wondering if the well hasn’t run completely toxic on the type of warfare where America arms to the tits, proxy groups of thugs, to overthrow a regime that’s no longer malleable to its interest - followed by a recourse of the usual bellicose language and interventionist bombing things get out of hand.
Appearing almost by surprise, these new enemies seem to pop up every year like spring douches. I remember watching a video 8 months ago of what we referred to as ‘Syrian Rebels’, performing an execution of captured government soldiers: beginning with almost orderly point blank rounds to the heads of the first few captives - hands tied behind their backs with heads in the dirt, spouting blood like a geyser - the rebels quickly encircled the remainder like piranhas in a pool of chum, blasting shots indiscriminately into living and dead flesh, in a kind of herd mania, right before the camera switched off. It was like looking into the abyss and seeing something that dishevels you to the soul where all you want to do afterward is pull the covers over your face. But beyond that you realize that there’s absolutely no positive outcome because these rebels weren’t painted as our enemy, but rather they were a small fraction of the men who were morally charged and facilitated by the west with overthrowing a government we were told without a solid reason not to like. Russia’s 11th-hour call for disarmament stymied a possible US invasion and what became of the rebels and their capturing of assets in Iraq in the months afterward, snowballed into our new nemesis, ISIS.
This sounds all too familiar. In my opinion we need to figure out how to isolate and starve the beast of its credence rather than validating the conditions to get bogged down in something that will inevitably kill civilians, feeding the vicious cycle of discontentment. This is where ISIS has the unique advantage in recruiting, is that they’re not only immune to the bounds of citizenry and visas like a regular army, but they might’ve figured out exactly how to bugle from abroad to the cracks of our own societies, reaching out to the marginalized who dwell between the hypocritically fueled ideas of Exceptionalism and the false promises of advertising, seeing no valuable place for themselves. And ironically our own media is giving them the free air time to do it. When fearful, our governments hubris invariably tells it to respond with war, while the news, in its drooling deference, never seems to resist the urge in ratcheting up its necessity. Whether it be polemics against dole bludgers or Arabs behaving badly - paper targets are always plucked from the outskirts to fit whatever agenda seems to be the most urgent. It’s always been more convenient to preserve powerful milieu’s to keep the system chugging along, rather than admitting that capitalism just isn’t working for everyone. The arc of this story is almost a clash of civilizations between the new and the archaic. And perhaps its that repeated imagery or watching too many Christopher Hitchens debates but part of me is wary of what effect Islam will have on Australia’s culture. That part sees Muslim’s as potentially volatile in larger numbers with a knack for bending our tolerance to insulate themselves from criticism. And as much as I think the burka is oppressive and the notion that women need to be emasculated as absurd, I’m beginning to doubt in almost all cases whether Islam has the potential to simply radicalize on its own. I’ve met too many different people to believe that we’re not wired the same way.
A recent study by Political scientist Robert Papp concluded beyond question that every suicide bombing since 1980 has been motivated by politics rather than fundamentalism. In Sri Lanka this technique was pioneered by the Tamil Tigers to great effect before it was adopted by groups like the Taliban. Every bomber seemed to be characterized by the same pathology of being poor, uneducated and often preyed on for their desire to receive recognition. From almost the beginning of the 20th century western interventionism has been meddling in affairs of the middle east - mapping out new countries, drilling holes and inadvertently drawing battle lines that are periodically coming back to haunt us. So if history’s proving anything now, it’s that institutions and belief systems alike turn poisonous and sometimes fanatically inward at the assimilation of an external threat. When we see a fully kitted out burka on the street it strikes the minor chord of a cultural hijacking and the louder that sentiment gets, often the more proportionate the resolve to solidify the opposing belief can become. Not unlike a tree, sinking its roots deeper into the soil in the thick of a drought; a burka might seem almost antagonistic. But it might also be the galvanizing of an identity for someone who lacks the mobility and education to find one in a society that promotes tolerance ambivalently. Until we fully grasp this recurring fate and find a way to peacefully communicate our way out of it, we won’t have a hope in hell of fixing the problem. And I’m not talking about making concessions, I’m talking about moderating everything from Islam to the jingoism that ferments it’s extremity. The ‘fit in or fuck off' crowd will only make it worse no matter how loudly they scream about carrying our sovereignty on their shields.
And because reading this will make some people bristle, I’ll say for the record that I love Australia. It’s one of the best countries in the world. The irony is that we figure out ways to solve our internal problems peacefully without losing our cultural freedoms. This is part of the reason why I’ve always found remembrance days so trite. Not because these achievements were mediocre - but because they were so lofty should be transcended altogether. No matter the reverence that nostalgia might promote in honoring those who fought under calamity and died in the most retched places, patriotism will arrogantly muscle aside good grace to tell me that I have a stake in the glory because I happened to have been born here. When I look at the old photo’s of diggers on the Kokoda Trail, I see innocence and cockiness, brooding the melted in familiarity of friends I was lucky enough to serve with. And my younger, crazier self might’ve idealized about being right there in the thick of all that shit. But it wasn’t me and I can lay no more claim to it than inventing the guitar because I learned the chords to a Bob Dylan song. If we have one duty today as citizens it should be to diligently promote the same values overseas as we expect and promote here. Remember war, but only to the realization of a certain point so we stop canonizing the narrative that’s it’s essential to preserving the lifestyle we have now. Politicians and the media alike, exploiting our fear, have pushed this idea to its bitter edges, ramming through security legislation that slowly erodes the rights we worry so much about losing while we're looking the other way. And you can be damn sure that Tony Abbott will do the same. If history adorns us heroically for acting in good conscience, it won’t be in the books written by ourselves, but meted out in the ones written by the countries we chose not to invade because it was simply the right thing to do. Agree or disagree? I’m curious to hear anyone’s thoughts on this.
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