Politik Chik: Poets Against War!

By Tanya Mueller

*Author’s note – portions of this article may be out of date due to rapidly changing world events and President Bush’s ability to turn issues at lightening speed.
[Editors note - Article submitted and launched on 2/12/03.]

First Lady, Laura Bush, had planned for a pleasant symposium, “Poetry and the American Voice” featuring the poetry of Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson and Langston Hughes at the White House on February 12, 2003. After poets Rita Dove and Stanley Kunitz declined to attend the event in protest to President Bush’s actions in the Middle East, poet Sam Hamill took a different route and solicited fellow poets to contribute pieces expressing their discontent with President Bush’s actions. Hamill’s request produced over 5000 responses. Once news of Hamill’s actions spread the American Voice was left mute.

The official statement of the White House was “While Mrs. Bush understands the right of all Americans to express their political views, this event was designed to celebrate poetry.”

Mrs. Bush’s actions are not necessarily an infringement of First Amendment rights but they are undoubtedly inappropriate. The first thing that came to mind after learning of this controversy was the feminist battle cry “The personal is political”. How is something as personal as poetry, an observation of inter-human communication, not inherently political? Is the suffering of the heart after unrequited love any different to the suffering of a family that has lost their child to a landmine? Mrs. Bush is implying that its ok to write poetry as long as its about puppies and kittens and we all sing Kumbaya afterwards.

I hope I am inflicting a bit of dejavu in all you old punks. Weren’t you also told that punk wasn’t really music and you should just give it up? But there was a message you had to get out. The message was more than the music. And so a movement began.

The anti-war movement has been marginalized, much like the punk movement once was, to be a fringe group of radicals that don’t seem to want to get with the program of regime change in Iraq, or maybe it was disarmament. I get confused since the program changes almost everyday. Mr. Bush if you want me to jump on your bandwagon you need to stick to one story. Remember I’m part of the MTV generation and I don’t have an attention span. I even forgot that not one single Iraqi was part of the September 11 attacks and that a few people Colin Powell named in his list of known terrorists in Iraq were actually people Donald Rumsfeld listed as Iranian terrorists. They’re all Arabs so what do we care right?

Now what about those pesky North Koreans. Pyongyang is unabashedly in pursuit of nuclear energy and has gone to the extent of throwing out UN nuclear energy commissioners in order to fire up nuclear facilities at Yongbyon. The guise given by North Korean PR is they want nuclear power because the US promised them electric energy over 10 years ago but backed out of the deal in 1995 and without US energy the people are starving and freezing to death. The sentiment thrown out by Pyongyang is the US is evil and he will strike if the US invades Iraq. Does the US threaten force on North Korea? No, instead the US sends aid in the form of food rations. Double standard in policy? Why are we not lifting sanctions on Iraq just as we are sending aid to Korea?

The war on Iraq will cost tax payers an estimated $80 Billion dollars. Yes that was Billion – with a B, and that’s just for a short war. $80 Billion dollars could fund health care for every citizen in America. The Gulf War sent home 60,000 American military with Gulf War Syndrome, which would inevitably kill them prematurely. Too bad they didn’t have good health care.

In the 1950s the Atomic Energy Commission began testing nuclear weapons in the Shoshone lands of the Nevada desert. Preliminary reports by the AEC stated the reason Truman selected these lands was its remote location. What Congress revealed in 1997 was the AEC would not conduct testing on days where winds were heading towards Los Angeles because radiation poisoning would harm the large population of the metropolis. Instead the AEC specifically chose to detonate nuclear bombs on days where the winds directed themselves toward Utah and other Nevada towns inhabited mostly by Mormons. Towns in the surrounding areas have reported significantly higher rates of autism, leukemia and other cancers, birth defects and to top it off over 17,000 deaths can be linked directly to high levels of radiation in those areas.

Now our government doesn’t hate Mormons, its quite the contrary. Our government chose town with high Mormon populations because of their devout patriotism. The AEC knew the Mormon towns would not question the testing going on in the Shoshone lands. Patriots don’t question their government’s actions. Just as Ron Kovic, longtime peace activist and Vietnam Vet said, “I am sick and tired of being told I’m unpatriotic.”

Sam Hamill and the Poets Against the War have decided to mount actions all across the United States on February 12 in spite of Mrs. Bush’s cancellation of the symposium. Poets will be reciting poetry at bookstores and coffeehouses all over the country. I am now inspired to call upon my talents to join the Poets Against the War and to forward the call for artists of all genres to start exercising their First Amendment rights.

I could submit my haiku:

No war on Iraq
Peace is real diplomacy
No blood for oil