Well, I don't really want to know
I just hold on the best I can.
And if I fall down,
I'm gonnah get back up
It'll be all right, it'll be okay!
I'm gonnah make my world a better place..." -- Keb Mo

Rod Amis - Unbound

NEW ORLEANS - 5 October, 2002: One of my fingers is beginning to break out again, the usual symptom of my being under stress. I'm thankful it's only one hand so far, instead of both. I should have expected this, considering the harried events of the past week.

I moved again on Tuesday, deeper into the French Quarter, a quiet place where I am mostly alone. That's a good thing. I was born in the Year of the Dragon. Dragons thrive in solitude, I'm told.

This morning, before going to my shift at the bar, I'm scheduled to meet a woman, Eura, at a coffee shop to interview her. She has made it a practice of going to funerals these last four years and collecting photographs of the corpses. This kind of necrophilia fascinates me. I don't do funerals. I'm curious as to why someone would attend so many and take photos of the dead. She brought her photos to the bar during my shift last Sunday so that I could review them. There were scores of photos of Black people lying placidly in their caskets. There were old people and children, men and women. It was an odd experience for me. Eura goes to these funerals with her sister, she told me. She has done this since one of their own relatives died four years ago.

It should make sense to me that in this city of the dead someone would become fixated with them. How many other places thrive on ghost tours and bus loads of people coming to spend time walking through their cemeteries?

After spending time with Eura talking about the dead, I'll go on to the bar to minister to the walking wounded.

---

While waiting for my rendezvous at P.J.'s Coffee this morning, I availed myself of a local publication, the New Orleans Tribune. The publication featured a recent interview with New Orleans Mayor, C. Ray Nagin.

This is the week that our columnist and native New Orleanian JAMIE MENUTIS has her sit-down with the Mayor and his Chief Technology Officer as part of our on-going "Nouvelle New Orleans" series. [A transcript of the interview appears in our GLOBAL*BEAT section.] I was interested to see what tidbits the print publication could provide that might not have been part of the focus of our own research on the Mayor.

(My appointment with Eura never came off. Another example of "How to Schedule Cancellations", a course someone suggested I was qualified to offer while teaching at Santa Rosa Junior College, in California, a few years back.)

On most counts, the new Mayor has gotten high marks from the New Orleanians I've encountered, but the Tribune published a seemingly critical story regarding his initiatives in August. The interview I was reading was an opportunity for Mayor Nagin to respond to some of allegations made in that issue, entitled "Yell Fire!"

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Why must I feel this way?
Just make this go away!
Just one more peaceful day ... -- Staind

What's a break? I must accept that every silver lining that ventures my way comes with its requisite cloud.

I'm more than ready to dive back into the drowning pool of relationships. I've even made a few tentative ventures in that direction. The one I had the most hope for seems to be going acropper. Things just aren't congealing correctly. In fact they have gotten abrasive around the edges.

Meanwhile, I have been having the most sensual dreams. Every night. The situations themselves are both straight-forward and oblique. It would be interesting if I dreamed of encountering the same woman every night, but I don't. Sometimes the encounters come completely out of the blue. Last night's was particularly nice because it involved someone I know and care about. We had the most wonderful conversation. It left me feeling warm and comforted.

Those feelings are foreign to me in my waking life right now. I'm always out of sorts. I feel either cast adrift or anxious that I am not making any forward progress. I feel that I am just swirling in the Black Hole of New Orleans ...

---

8 October, 2002: Tonight I met this stupid little southern girl (cute, of course) who needed to explain to me how the United States of America is NOT a capitalist country. She really believed this. She insisted to me that she had hundreds of proofs that America was not capitalist which would refute all my arguments to the contrary.

I only said one thing: "I'm always amazed at statements by young people who grew up during the Reagan era."

I needed to leave the bar. I was more depressed than when I'd walked in.

I sincerely want to believe that there a still a few intelligent young people left in America. I do.

---

THE CONQUEST OF IRAQ seems to be the topic on everyone's lips these days. I stumble onto it whether I wish to or not. We have always taken the position at The World's Magazine that an American war in Iraq is inevitable. The implicit agenda of the Bush regime has always been, in our view, to complete the unfinished work of The New World Order begun under this President's father. The conquest of Iraq is, thus, a necessity for Mr. Bush.

If the national debate should be about anything, it should be about what happens once the war begins and ends. Debating whether or not there will be a war is a waste of breath.

Because wars set unpredictable forces in motion -- I'm thinking here of Turkey deciding to "solve" its Kurdish problem by entering northern Iraq or Israel feeling that it also needs to make a pre-emptive strike because Iraq sent its Scud missiles there during the Gulf War and would likely do so again this time -- our national dialogue should focus on how best to contain the violence we are about to start and how we plan to administer the country once we have conquered it.

These are all arguments of empire. But we've also maintained in this space, for months now, that America has taken the road of an imperial nation. All the evidence is there whether the citizenry is willing to read the Mesopotamian handwriting on the walls or not. The thoughts and ruminations being made by the war party in this country are those one might expect to have heard from Scipio or Lord Mountbatten, not from Jefferson or Jackson. So let's be clear about what and who we are. America is an empire bent on conquest and we are, therefore, imperialists.

Our legions will shortly be dispatched to bring Saddam Hussein back in chains and to sow the city of Bhagdad with salt.

As a practical matter, our dialogue should be about issues like force levels. We know that our volunteer army is being deployed around the globe, from Afghanistan to Kosovo to South Korea, in so many places already that force levels are being strained. Almost all reservists are being required to report in one capacity or another and this war will mean dipping into that pool, if for no other reason than policing the Iraqi populace in the conquered territories. Thus, we should seriously consider the prospect of reinstating conscription, that is, the draft.

No one has brought up that chilling word, but the practical necessity now presents itself.

Now that we have taken the road of agressor, we must step up and consider all of its implications, my friends. One of those implications is that your son or daughter will be compelled to step into harm's way to support your privileged lifestyle -- not someone else's. That is what your patriotism and freedom are all about, yes?

I am obviously taking exception with those who think, simplistically, that this war will be a repeat of the war in Afghanistan. It will not. In Afghanistan there was an opposition force on the ground that we could employ as surrogates, minimizing the number of actual U.S. ground forces needed. There is no standing opposition in Iraq unless one considers the Kurdish warlords, who are in no position and have no inclination to administer the entire country for us.

Someone will have to do the policing and maintain the territorial borders of a conquered Iraq. That means hospitals, re-establishing police and fire personnel, dealing with refugees, rebuilding roads and bridges and other infrastructure. That someone is us. That means governing the 23 million people of that nation until we can identify a suitable party to do so for us. Occupying a nation the size of Iraq has been estimated to require in excess of 50,000 troops. It would be helpful if more of our troops spoke the language or if we could depend upon some Arab ally to assist with its own soldiers. Try naming one Arab country that would be willing to take on that role today.

Those are only a few of the concerns we must now take seriously on this road of conquest.

After Turkey, the other nations bordering our new conquest would be Iran, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

Iran would be the most problematic of these "neighbors" both because of our spotted history with that country and the fact that it fought a protracted war with Saddam's Iraq for a decade -- a war which the United States actively supported. (By dint of being the world's foremost arms supplier, we are constantly stepping over our own shadow.)

Very obviously we would want to put the best face on our new conquest with all of these new neighbors while undergoing the transition to the "fabulous" new democratic government of Iraq that Secretary Rumsfeld predicted before Congress last month. What Secretary Rumsfeld did not have the temerity to predict was how long it might take to establish this new democracy in the Arab world of which he dreams.

Let us be charitable and speculate that it would take approximately six months to a year to establish some form of reliable self-government for Iraq after the war. (Unlike Mr. Rumsfeld, I'm not confident of a democracy being put in place there. That is unlike our pattern in other circumstances, where a "stable" despotism seems to serve U.S. interests best.)

("You're making my brain hurt!" my former roommate, Shawn, used to exclaim when I would consider issues in this vein. I hope I'm not making your brain hurt right now.)

Another problem that has not gotten its deserved attention in our national dialogue about the conquest of Iraq is that of oil. It should. Our major oil firms will most likely rush in to secure the wells not destroyed by Saddam on his way down. It is believed that Iraq contains one of the largest reserves of oil in the region, if for no other reason than that the sanctions have caused it pump only a fraction of the barrels produced by its neighbor Saudi Arabia. After the conquest and reconstruction, these reserves will be available to us. This latter must certainly provoke some cynicism among the Arabs as they listen to Mr. Bush's explanation of why Iraq must be conquered.

If I were a member of the royal house of Saud, I'd certainly look at my "friend" from Texas askance.

The best palliative that comes to mind in the case of the Saudis, in compensation for becoming their competitors, is removing American forces from their soil. The natural place to move those forces would be ... the newly conquered Iraq.

Reading the foregoing, one might think these are unusual ruminations for a dissident, a pacifist and a socialist. I would respond, to the contrary, that these are exactly the type of thoughts we should be having when facing the prospect of a new war. The generations alive today, like none other since those around at the first third of the last century, are living under the curse of interesting times. These times require us to be more willing, not less, to delve beneath the surface of things when making decisions.

The decision in this quarter has been that, since the Bush regime is intent upon the war, and has been from the start, it is our civic duty to look at the decisions which must to be taken during the war in the interests of humanity. One thing is certain, this administration has only two modes of dealing with disagreement and opposition:

1. They belittle or shrug it off -- as with the Kyoto Treaty, the International Court of Justice and the European Union, or
2. They crush it by any means necessary -- as with Al Gore, Black voters in Florida and Afghanistan.

It is our duty and responsibility, therefore, to think further ahead into the game that is afoot. To choose our battles well and develop efforts that will lessen the brutality of this ruthless approach by wise interventions.

What I Need This Week

1. More shifts at the Cat or another part-time bartending job so I can afford my own garret VERY SOON.

2. A time of peace and planning.

3. Money.

---

Thanks for coming back this week.

"Work like you don't need the money,
"Love like you've never been hurt,
"Dance like no one is watching..."
Rod

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ROD AMIS has published this magazine since 1990. It first appeared as a hardcopy 'Zine. In March, 1996, he launched it here on the Web. Rod was a Contributing Editor at Suite101.com, where he wrote the " 'Net Publishing" feature. His work has been featured in the San Francisco Bay Guardian Online, NRV8, and at WebLab's Reality Check site. Rod was also a contributing writer on technology for Faulkner Information Services. He wrote Web issues for MethodFive.com's Hyper newsletter.

Rod was a columnist for the Andover News Network, where he wrote over two hundred articles on web design and development issues. He was also principal writer and Editor for IT Manager's Journal, where he reviewed technology issues weekly, producing 383 editorials. He became the Managing Editor for Electronic Mail/Newsletter Publications at Andover.net at the end of February, 2000, and left in September of the same year. He was a contributing writer for ACCESS magazine, which appeared both on- and offline for 10 million readers in 100 newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle, New York Post, Boston Herald, Austin American-Statesman, Denver Post and Orlando Sentinel, among others. Rod was the US reporter for Silicon.com, a division of Network Multimedia Television in London, UK, reaching 3.5 million European readers, until May, 2001.

This year he worked as Assistant to the General Manager of a Big Easy company that does restaurants and nightclubs. (Think: The Boy.) Oh yeah, Rod's had Day Jobs working construction. Mostly renovations of old New Orleans structures, houses and a bar. Sometimes he designs Web sites for other people so that he can get his creative juices flowing the way he can't at a staid publication like this one. And he's been the instructor in Editing for Internet Publications at the Novi Sad School of Journalism in Yugoslavia. Right now our Resident Philosopher has joined the pantheon of New Orleans bartenders, works construction when he can find the right fit and still doesn't know when he'll have a "permanent residence" that he likes.. In his spare time, he chases women in the manner that a fly pursues a spider.

Rod lives in New Orleans, Louisiana. This town is eroding his normal sense of driven purpose. He wants to live somewhere civilized when he grows up. Wish him Luck.

He continues to be committed to integrity, chastity and a dose of humility.

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