I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight (4 page)

Is it a democracy anymore? Is there hope anymore? Is there even fucking going to be an America the Beautiful after this reign of error? Are we talking prequel, sequel or epilogue? It seems like only one thing to me: a eulogy.

indignant, ignant rumsfeld

W
henever I watch Rumsfeld's live press conferences on CNN, it's really, really scary. He totally discarded the prison abuse scandal, and eviscerated the press for focusing on it, as if the stories weren't true and the media was making a big deal out of nothing, and, in doing so, worsening the situation in Iraq. He goes on about how because of our takeover of Afghanistan, women there are now able to vote where before they couldn't. They can even wear "gray" shoes. What? Like he's wearing a
THIS IS WHAT A FEMINIST LOOKS LIKE
T-shirt under his suit.

He consistently and completely glosses over the issue at hand. His technique is "indignant and ignant," and he employs it with a lot of flair. Rumsfeld takes the podium like he is already put out by people daring to have him explain his actions, then he expounds on his indignity, and then he says he doesn't know. He makes a lot of quotable indignation faux pas about how there were no high-ranking officers involved in endangering the lives of prisoners, and makes a mad owl face that says, "Give a hoot! Don't pollute!" Then he just exits the room of hotly simmering journalists to percolate with unanswered questions about the 9/11 tapes, brushing them off with a wave of his hand like they don't have the right to ask him about that, like they're pesky flies or something.

When do we get to ask those questions? Is there going to have
to be another investigation? Yet another panel, or series of panels, to identify once again what went wrong? It's depressing. Hope dries up in this first summer heat and evaporates along with good grooming and patience. Everybody's hair is frizzy or flat, and we have no idea what our nation is doing in our name. I don't want to be anyone's captor, anyone's torturer.

It's unacceptable to me, both as an American and as a human being. I wish I could be ignantly indignant, but I actually care too much about life. When I see people, I know that they are for real, that they are people, that there's somebody behind those eyes, that they are dads and grads, and moms and sisters—and scapegoats—both Iraqi and American, military and civilian, and they feel just like I would feel. It sounds simple and yet it's incredibly complex. Like that R.E.M. song "Everybody Hurts." The fact is poignant, and especially difficult to bear if you believe it in your heart, when you survey all the crimes committed in our name in the War on Terror.

As Americans, to what extent are we accountable for these detestable acts? I don't know. I feel one hundred percent responsible, even though there's nothing I could do to prevent it. What good is my guilt if it's not felt by those supposedly in charge? How do I spread my guilt around so that it will negatively affect those who are truly guilty, and threaten their sanity instead of mine?

cat stevens

I'm being followed by an air marshal, air marshal, air marshal
.

I
still can't believe that Cat Stevens was taken off a flight to the U.S. and sent back overseas because he is on a "watch list." What did he do? He's Cat Stevens!!!

Okay, he's Yusuf Islam. But still, he's always and forever the Cat in my book.

Who doesn't love
Tea for the Tillerman?
What treacherous act of terrorism is he so capable of? Did the FBI log on to his Web site and see him beheading Christopher Cross? Was he declaring a holy war on all the hits of the '70s, '80s and '90s? This is just lunacy, pure and simple.

The facts remain hazy. The discovery of Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam on the watch list prompted officials to emergency-land the plane to let the legendary singer/songwriter off. He was not detained, as far as I know, and was sent back to London. Was it because he's a prominent Muslim, and the government is trying to send a message to Islam that Muslims are not welcome here? Doesn't that violate the Constitution?

It was a heavy, emotional week, with the horrible, tragic deaths of the two American hostages at the hands of extremists, and American confidence in our security is waning. Although I'm infuriated by the
war in Iraq, the incredibly barbaric and grisly killings of the two men fills me with murderous rage against the perpetrators. Of course, America is responsible for the total body count. We started it, we own it, we sow, we reap, but we are also disconnected from the responsibility of our own dirty acts of war. We don't see what we've done.

The militants post their vengeance on Web sites, and seek publicity for their displays of inhumanity. They want us to feel the loss of life as keenly as possible. It may be difficult to comprehend, but their violent exhibitionism points to the fact that they
do
value life. They knew the lives of the hostages were precious to the world. If not, then why would the world be watching, in outrage and grief?

How many American lives have been lost in this brutal and needless war? How many Iraqi? How many names do we know on either side?

It still makes me sick to see the last moments of the hostages' hideous ordeal, and I am blind with anger toward all the "zealous sons." I look at their ringleader, Zarqawi, and I think about how he's younger than me. He was in the fourth grade when I was starting high school. I humanize him because his actions are incomprehensibly inhuman. Is he any more a villain than the American soldier who picks off dozens of Iraqis with his assault rifle, or tortures prisoners at Abu Ghraib? We justify those atrocities because, well, they're doing their best for their country, but, then again, that is exactly what the hooded executioners of Tawid and Jihad are doing. The slayings of the hostages were gruesome and horrific, but what is also terrible and sad is it feeds the unquenchable thirst for American-style revenge. We
see the beheadings and we think," Kill 'em all! Let God sort it out!" It becomes a grudge match, but without the spandex and mullets.

I want to scream and shout, "Stop! We are all human beings! Stop!!! We are all people!!!," but I don't think anybody will hear it. Or that anybody will care, anyway.

What does any of this have to do with Cat Stevens? Give him back his acoustic guitar, and his freedom. Just let him ride that peace train.

good-bye

T
hink of all the people you love. Think about how hard it would be to never see them again. Maybe think just about one person. What if you didn't get to say good-bye? What if you didn't get to tell him or her the most important thing, something that you had meant to tell them but kept putting it off, procrastinating, then forgetting, and then you suddenly found out that you would never be able to do it because he or she was gone, forever. You'd lost this person you loved, forever. How would you feel?

What if what you had to say was, "I love you"? What if this was your lover, boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife? You would never hold them again, never again feel them next to you, be secure in the love you have. You would never think about the future, plan what you both would do the next time you have time to take a vacation together, wonder if the Yucatan or the Amazon is a romantic or scary
adventure, because you share a fear of certain insects and tree frogs. Or if Paris is just too expensive. You wouldn't wonder if waterparks are too cold in the fall and you'd have to wait until summer. There would be no more summers together, because the time has been snatched away from you.

You will never make love, laugh, fight, eat, go to the movies, kiss, smile, dance, sing, run, skate, play the piano, swim, buy candy for, argue jokingly, tell stories, look longingly at, jump on the bed with, pet the dogs with your faces, sing along with the song in the car and get the words wrong, share a secret, gossip, cop a feel, go hear a band you both love, share a really good meal, carpool with people you don't like and make fun of them secretly later, cry, comfort, scratch backs, insist on pizza, catch them staring at you, put your arms around them, stay up too late, lean against warm bodies, feel safe with their feet sliding next to yours in bed, raise your children, go to boring dinner parties and get too drunk to drive home so you sleep in the car, spend alternate holidays with each other's families, have uncontrollable lust with, followed by mind-blowing fuck sessions lasting for hours and hours at a time, take a bath so hot one of you has to get out, all naked and wet and red and dizzy but not embarrassed because this is who you love and rarely are you shy with them, watch a TV show you both hate because the remote control is broken—merely happily, and maybe sometimes unhappily, share your life, and be with them, but you can't, because they're dead. Suddenly, unjustly, untimely, irretrievably—unconscionably dead.

As of today, one thousand eight hundred and fifty-eight U.S. sol
diers dead. They could be you; they could be me. They are unavoidably us. We lose more of us every day. This list grows with each minute, each hour, each day. Look at their names, their hometowns, how young they are. Think about the heartache, the sadness, the sleepless nights because now the bed feels so very cold. Stop and really think about the war, the ludicrous, needless loss of life, the apathy of the government, the fact that Bush has yet to attend a single funeral for one of these fallen heroes, the political nightmare of these power-hungry despots using this tragedy to ratchet their careers up a notch, the nonstop talking heads on the news, the pre-9/11 investigations, the truths they've withheld, the lies we've been told.

Most of all think about each and every one of these brave men and women, some of them mere teenagers, whose first ventures out of their parents' homes and into their own lives result in their deaths. As you read their names, imagine who they loved, who loved them, and how those left behind cope now without them. Think about how we will cope without them. They're never coming home. Never. They bring back bodies, hidden beneath flags, pictures of which the government doesn't want us to see, but it's not them, anyway. They are gone, far away from this world, to heaven, I suppose, and, for their sake, I hope there is one, because here on earth it's fucking hell.

RACE IN AMERICA

"in the darkest reaches of
my imagination, it occurs to
me that we are the heirs to
the aftermath, we are the
scavenger minority, picking
at the carcass of civil rights,
trying to get our measly
share, so very far removed
from the idea of fair . . ."

I
n the darkest reaches
of my imagination, it occurs to me that we are the heirs to the aftermath. We are the scavenger minority, picking at the carcass of civil rights, trying to get our measly share, so very far removed from the idea of fair, but what do you expect? Being the bottom-feeders of a multicultural fish tank, we get pushed to the back of the bus by more vocal minorities that have been there and don't want to return.

I don't know how to find our voice. It catches in my throat whenever I try to use it. If I do manage to get something out, it's met with very vocal opposition from all kinds of surprising sources. When I first started, a lot of conservative Koreans would look at me and say, "She bring shame upon us." Like I wore a blazing scarlet dress to their bleached white cotillion. Whenever I speak, I know I have to be responsible because I am speaking not only for myself but for all Asian Americans, and the weight of that responsibility is too much to
bear. I am too proud of my embarrassing nature. I feel like an ambassador addressing the public with four feet of wadded-up toilet paper trailing out the back of my pants.

Whenever I get hate mail, the verbal assault is always racial. People are surprised at the depth of resentment there is against Asian Americans, but it never shocks me. We are the object of hatred not only for the things we do but just for being who we are, ching-chong chinamen. Racism is one of the biggest taboos in our culture, yet most discrimination against Asian Americans goes largely unnoticed, and if it is picked up by an Asian media watch group or similar organization it's blown off by the rest of the media as a joke, as in, "Look at them. They get all up in arms over nothing."