Lurching ahead for meaning, marching backwards for truth. Who is willing, who is not? We search for answers; we wobble with questions.
Let us end and begin with the tenth of March.
On March 10, 1876 in Boston, Massachusetts, Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. Hello, goodbye: according to Mary Bellis, Bell‘s invention “marked not only the birth of the telephone but the death of the multiple telegraph as well.”
Let freedom ring!
“American imperialism invokes the national prestige and honor, the mission of civilization and other phrases of the same kind to convince the nation of Washington and Franklin that it is indispensable for them to annex the Philippine Islands,” wrote the sharp-eyed Ferdinand Blumentritt in the Washington Sentinel on March 10, 1900. No Filipino, “not one of them, would have taken up arms against Spain, if the object of those slaughters had been to implant the Starry flag instead of the Spanish banner.” Flawless logic.
US Private Louis Gedeon received his starry Medal of Honor on March 10, 1902. Gedeon was given America‘s highest military award for defending “his mortally wounded captain from an overwhelming force of the enemy.”
Define overwhelming: Filipino pride. Describe enemy: an occupied nation.
Theodore Roosevelt, president of the mighty and valiant United States, performed his duty on March 10, 1906 when he wrote and sent his felicitations to the fine troops of Gen. Leonard Wood, commander of American troops in the Philippines. Five days earlier, with gallant artillery support, rifles and Gatling guns, Wood’s troops achieved (in Roosevelt’s words) “the brilliant feat” of annihilating 1,000 Filipino Muslims armed mostly with swords and spears who had taken refuge in the crater of an extinct volcano in Jolo, Sulu in southern Philippines.
Only six Muslims survive the carnage. Many of the dead were inflicted with as many a fifty wounds. Many of those killed were women and children — members of a community which “refused to submit to American governance.”
On March 10 in 1913, escaped American slave and subterranean railways conductor Harriet Tubman passed away. “Every great dream begins with a dreamer,” said Tubman, a slave who liberated herself when she ran away from a plantation in 1849 and freed herself some more by returning to rescue hundreds of other slaves via the Underground Railroad — “a network of paths through the woods and fields, river crossings, boats and ships, trains and wagons, all haunted by the specter of recapture.”
On March 10 in 1945, the US abandons “the last rules of warfare against civilians when over 300 B-29 bombers “drop close to half a million incendiary bombs on sleeping Tokyo.” Around 100,000 people are “scorched, boiled and baked to death,” according to the attack’s architect, Gen. Curtis LeMay. The attack was “the single largest mass killing of World War II, dwarfing even the destruction of the German city of Dresden on Feb. 13, 1045.”
Author Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, wife of acclaimed writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, died on March 10, 1948. “I don’t want to live. I want to love first, and live incidentally,” said Zelda, who perished in a sanitarium fire in Asheville, North Carolina.
“I drive with my knees. Otherwise, how can I put on my lipstick and talk on my phone?” said popular American actress Sharon Stone, who was born on this day in 1958. The day after the birth of Ms Stone, who attained Hollywood icon status with the smash movie Basic Instinct, a B-47 bomber “accidentally drops a nuclear weapon over Mars Bluff, South Carolina. The conventional explosive trigger detonates, leaving a crater 75 feet wide and 35 feet deep.”
Why was the imperial plane carrying a weapon of mass destruction? Basic instinct? Define instinct: “an inborn pattern of behavior that is characteristic of a species” (genus warmonger?) and “is often a response to specific environmental stimuli.” Such as peace?
On March 10, 1966 Wally Schirra and Frank Borman are presented with the Philippine Air Force Aviation Badge by Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos. The US two astronauts had just conducted on board orbiting space vessels maneuvers “crucial to the planning of an Apollo lunar mission.” Far out!
Two years later on the same day, stellar guitarist Jimi Hendrix performs at the Washington Ballroom in Washington DC. “Will the wind ever remember the names it has blown in the past?” wailed Jimi’s guitar.
“With its crutch, its old age and its wisdom, it whispers ‘no, this will be the last’.”
Does war ever last? Interesting question.
Until his surrender on March 10, 1974, Japanese Imperial Army Lt. Hiroo Onoda thought he was still fighting World War II — from his redoubt in Mindoro, Philippines. “For 29 years, he refused to surrender, dismissing every attempt to convince him that the war was over as a ruse.” He was even declared legally dead in Japan. “In his dress uniform and sword, his rifle still in operating condition with 500 rounds of ammunition and several hand grenades,” Onoda emerged from his Mindoro hideout, laid down his arms after his commanding officer met the war straggler face to face and informed him of Japan‘s defeat.
We don’t need to wait too long to declare the end of war. March 10 in 1987 was a day when refusal became universal — universally enshrined, that is, when the United Nations recognized conscientious objection to military service as “a human right.” Just say no; have no fear.
The US government invited five engineering companies on March 10, 2003 “to submit bids for a contract to do reconstruction work in Iraq.” Among the groups invited to bid is a profiteering firm called Dick Cheney, also known as Halliburton. Asked about the secrecy surrounding the narrow selection of invited firms, a US official explains “These are not companies which are new to this type of work.” Right. The deal is simple: after the US military destroys Iraq‘s health institutions, ports, airports, and schools, the company that wins the reconstruction tender will get $900 million “to repair Iraqi health services, ports and airports, and schools and other educational institutions.”
On March 10, 2003 White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer makes a diplomatic announcement: “[T]here’s an important phase of diplomacy underway as we speak. That diplomacy is marked by some level of flexibility within the diplomacy. But the bottom line remains the same … it’s part of the diplomatic process about when the diplomacy will be brought to an end.”
On the same day Lucid Ari was talking about diplomacy, international media announced the resignation of US diplomat John H. Brown in protest at the Bush administration’s preparations to attack Iraq. “Throughout the globe the United States is becoming associated with the unjustified use of force,” said Brown who added that Bush’s “disregard for views in other nations, borne out by his neglect of public diplomacy, is giving birth to an anti-American century.” So, what do we call the previous one hundred years?
“I have watched soldiers in my task force get overlooked for very courageous actions while forward operating base dwellers go back to the States looking like war heroes,” wrote Sgt. Justin Chestnut from Baghdad in a letter published by Stars and Stripes on March 10, 2005. And what about the courageous actions of forward operating Empire dwellers in the States who continue to protest? Good question.
On the same day of the same year, the appropriately named American community website, Common Dreams, publishes a call by Amy Quinn reminding readers that there is no choice but action. In her missive, Quinn quotes Martin Luther King who, from a church in 1967, opened his famed speech linking poverty, racism and the Vietnam War: ‘I come to this house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice.’
God bless the tenth of March; on this day, we remember, we refuse, we resist.
From the forthcoming book The Poverty of Memory: Essays on History and Empire (CFNS, 2006). The author can be reached via [email protected].
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