In the last 15 years I have had lots of time alone to think; time to think about the world, time to think about my life and time to think about my thinking or lack of thinking. Fifteen years ago, I got a divorce and started to live alone for the first time in over 25 years. I was without constant companionship and television, just me and my thoughts. The first order of business that first summer as I walked the streets of Reno after dark was to think about my failed marriage and the events and precedents in my life that led to me, a 54 years old, living in a tiny apartment in an alley. I discovered, much to my discomfort and embarrassment, that I had not thought about some of the most important things in my life.
For example, I had never thought about the marriage vows or what they implied about my behavior and I had never really thought about commitment in any sense. It is not surprising that I was not able to maintain a marriage, I had never read the contract and did not know what was required or expected of me. Possibly an even more important realization came after my father’s sister died.
My Aunt Margaret was a hoarder, she saved virtually everything that passed through her fingers, including a packet of letter my mother had written to my father during the last six months of their marriage. I found the letters when we were cleaning the house my grandfather had built and the house that had been my aunt’s home her entire life. When I finished reading them I realized that I had been mad at my father for 50 years – I was angry because he did not come home to me after the war. In 50 years I had never really thought about my feelings toward my father, I reacted to them, but never examined them. How is that possible? It is just as possible as it was to be married for 25 years and never think about the vows.
Today, another of those things surfaced that I did not think about; it had nothing to do with family or marriage; or rather not with conventional family and marriage. It had to do with Iraq and nationalism, which I suppose in a way is both family and marriage. My nation and I are of one family and we are combined as if in marriage. During the run-up to the attack on Iraq I was very much against any military action and very skeptical of the “facts’ being presented my the Bush administration. But once the war started an odd thing happened – the values of my youth and military experience jumped up and took over. It was my country right or wrong. When the 49ers or the Giants play, I don’t wonder about the moral values of the battle, the other team is simply the enemy and must be crushed, destroyed, dispatched to the bottom of the heap. And that is the way I thought or did not think about Iraq.
Strangely, in the last 10 years I have spent most of my non-work time studying Islam and the Middle East, but not Iraq – it is almost an empty space – much like the unmapped and un-mappable Empty Quarter in Saudi Arabia. There are no lines, no cities and no history on my mental map of Iraq. So, I was not prepared for the flood of emotions and questions that rushed at me listening to the speeches and commentaries on the “Iraq War.” My first thought was: “How could we possibly have invaded a sovereign nation, destroyed its military and corrupted its society?” And now, we are spinning the nine years as a moral victory, a step forward for democracy – really, how is that?
Only, I really cannot own those opinions, not after 9 years of ignoring everything while I silently cheered for our team to beat “that” team, the enemy; a term that I also obviously failed to think about. Just who were the enemies in that war? I am still uncomfortable and embarrassed by the non-thinking in my life, all of it, including Iraq. The question about Iraq is not how could we – but rather how could I? For you see, I am really the person responsible for the crimes in Iraq because I sat by silently and watched without even bothering to think about it.
Ken Adams
RexDStock
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