| 31 July 2006 Special English I first ran into Special English in East Africa. It is a dialect of our mother tongue, used mostly by the Voice of America to spread the message of truth and justice to those for whom English is not a first language. It is sort of elegant, once you get used to slowing down to three-quarter speed on your diction, and restrain the palatte of vocabulary to 1,500 words and select short phrases. I listened to VoA on the shortwave because the alternative in English was All-India radio, which at the time, appeared to be a sing-song science fiction parody of the courtly BBC. I happened to be in the neighborhood then because of the Iranians, and the fall of the Peacock throne and the rise of militant fundamentalists. We were not bombing them, since we had recently completed an unsuccessful attempt to persuade the North Vietnamese in blunt English to cease and desist from their nationalist adventures. The wily Vietnamese did not follow the rules, and the Iranians seemed to have taken a leaf from their playbook. They had seized the American Embassy, sovereign soil, in clear violation of the rules of civilized conduct. No one quite knew what to do about it. By the time we did, in a sort of Special English spoken by the Special Operations Command, a path was taken that led to the future, where we all live now. This future is not at all what I would have thought, listening to the static on the short-wave long ago. This is the last day that I can pretend that it is high summer. We are well past the tipping point. The kids will be back in high school in a little over three weeks, and my younger boy will decamp to prepare the ground for what I fervently hope is his last year of college in four days. They are saying it will be hot this week, triple digits across the vast heartland and right here to the Atlantic frontier. With so much to distract, it should be simple enough to put the bad news out of mind, slow things down to three-quarter speed. We have done it with Iraq. The new Prime Minister was here last week and it was as though it passed without comment. People don't like bad news, that is plain enough, and news about the war is now below the fold in the paper, and squeezed to the end of the national news. I remember Milton Berle, the wise old comic, and what he said about the war in Vietnam: “Put it on ABC, and they will cancel it.” The latest stomach-churning event was yesterday. The Israelis hit a target and knocked down a building. In the process, they killed a bunch of children. Dozens of them, their once rosy cheeks now gray, and their limbs dusty and dangling akimbo in the arms of the rescue workers. CNN was there, of course, and the images didn't need any words. They were powerful enough without the sound, which is just blather. I turned it off, since it would have been more effective in Special English. The correspondents don't know the circumstance, or are making guesses based on various degrees of experience. I know how the system is feeling. I came into work one morning in another war and discovered that the target we had been working for weeks had some problems. The al Firdos District Bunker in Baghdad was probably a node in the Iraqi communications system, and I am serene in the confidence that important government business had been conducted there. It was, after all, a virtually impregnable facility. Unfortunately, at the moment of truth, it was filled with women and children. Some still remember that morning, despite all that has happened since. The moment will sear its way into some of those who saw it, and they will never forget. Never, ever. It does not matter how it came to pass, or if it was provoked. It was the murder of children, and it cannot be forgiven. Only overwhelmed by the next round of horrors. I do not apologize for my role in a moment of intentional brute force, which unintended consequences. Nor would I expect the people who authorized weapons release on the buildings at Cana. I do not know if the Hezballah rocketeers deliberately invited the response by firing from there. I do know that there has been a pattern of using civilian facilities as launch points, since that is a time-honored win-win tactic in asymmetric warfare. The Vietnamese did it, the Serbs did it, and the Iraqis did it. It is foolish to confront an immeasurably superior opponent hamstrung by the “rules of war.” In a struggle against overwhelming force, the only rule that remains is “do not lose.” The strike has prompted the Secretary of State to return from her peace mission, and the Israelis to implement a 48-hour pause in the bombing campaign. Hezballah is riding high, and the diverse population of Lebanon is rallying behind them, as is sentiment across the Islamic world. The killing of children really wasn't even required for that. Of course, the IDF is reserving the right to conduct operations as required, since they, like Hezballah, are conducting this struggle under Rule One of real laws of war. You don't have to say it in Special English to understand that. Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra |