letters
J. Speer
My mother saved all my letters and when she was at home dying of cancer, I typeset them on a manual machine, no electric connection needed. We listened to records I checked out of the public library: Pete Fountain, “Fountain in the Rain” and Duke Ellington, “The Cotton Club Stomp”. I dedicated a self published chap to her and picked up the books from the copy service the same day we lowered her into the ground. She is buried in Nashville in the military cemetery.
Dear Maria:
It started somewhere, for a point of reference, let’s say it started in the ‘30’s, during the Great Depression, when getting job was more important than remembering the wife’s birthday. No self respecting man could support his family by selling apples or pencils on a street corner. Salvation came, not in the form of sweet Jesus riding a lamb and turning swords into pruning hooks and ploughshares, but in WAR. America’s major industry became the production of munitions. War created jobs for everyone: young men became soldiers, older men sold bonds for the war effort, pasted up patriotic signs that Uncle Sam Wants You, women worked in factories or as nurses patching up the mangled remains of men, boys sold newspapers of all the exciting events.
And what a perfect location for war: overseas. We didn’t have to bomb our cities or make refugees out of our people. We armed every nation we could, supplying weapons to the Russians to fight the Germans, helping Finland to fight Russia. We punched east and west with our righteous fists because we had “God on our die” (Masters of War).
The world cheered and danced when the armistice was signed, but we were now in the business of making war supplies. What about the production line and the jobs? We had to find another war. General Eisenhower became a two term President. Korea provided the next battle ground. Of curse we had to have a cause, a reason. Yes, to stop the noxious spread of reds. In three years of fighting a limited war, U.S. casualties numbered 33,729 dead with 103,284 wounded. But in the machinations of world leaders, young men are expendable, there will be a new crop for the next war, only ten years later and near the previous killing fields. The same pretext was used, we had to help a defenseless people against the brutal invaders from the north, plus insure our security that was somehow threatened. The falsehood of our purpose and stupidity of our situation became so obvious that the U.S. had to withdraw. In 1975, the North Vietnamese received South Vietnam’s unconditional surrender, thus negating anything and everything (except the dead and destruction the American soldiers left behind) the U.S. said it wanted to do there.
America takes interest in the on-going wars of other nations. The U.S. has the Israel Arab League conflict to fuel, selling arms to both sides, every year the latest developments in death machines, a rocket system to the Arabs, an anti-rocket system to the Jews.
Central America provides a convenient combat zone. The countries are weak, small, and close to home, a chance for America to undo its shameful performance in Asia by making sure the “guerrilla terrorists” are zapped out of existence.
History is a nightmare form which I am trying to awake.
