Almost everything is outside of my sphere of influence. It is only in a chimerical consortium of other writers, readers, and citizens that I imagine a thought perhaps surviving beyond my own attempt to shape it into words. This is the fundamental conundrum of writing: why write. Without becoming overly existential, the answer is as Beckett’s Vladimir, in Waiting for Godot, declares, “I can’t go on. I’ll go on.” In a world that seems absurd and meaningless, it is up to the individual to create meaning. Of course, Camus took it further in his essay, The Myth of Sisyphus, who insists that it is our struggle, and Sisyphus’ struggle, that gives us meaning, that “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” His argument is,
If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take place in joy. This word is not too much. Again I fancy Sisyphus returning toward his rock, and the sorrow was in the beginning. When the images of earth cling too tightly to memory, when the call of happiness becomes too insistent, it happens that melancholy arises in man's heart: this is the rock's victory, this is the rock itself. The boundless grief is too heavy to bear. These are our nights of Gethsemane. But crushing truths perish from being acknowledged. Thus, Oedipus at the outset obeys fate without knowing it. But from the moment he knows, his tragedy begins. Yet at the same moment, blind and desperate, he realizes that the only bond linking him to the world is the cool hand of a girl. Then a tremendous remark rings out: "Despite so many ordeals, my advanced age and the nobility of my soul make me conclude that all is well." Sophocles' Oedipus, like Dostoevsky's Kirilov, thus gives the recipe for the absurd victory. Ancient wisdom confirms modern heroism.
I am not as optimistic about the struggle. The absurdity we are up against at this historical moment seems intrinsically evil, a shadow upon reality. And, reality itself seems to be under manipulation, which indicates a success for those vying for control. Salvador Dali once noted,
I believe that the moment is near when by a procedure of active paranoiac thought, it will be possible to systematize confusion and contribute to the total discrediting of the world of reality.
Indeed, trying to understand the fighting in Iraq, distinct from the arguments of why the U.S. is there in the first place, is to descend into madness, paranoid speculation, conspiracy theories, and the realization that the worst of these scenarios is actually possible. The BBC announces,
An aide to Iraqi Shia spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has been shot dead by unidentified gunmen in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.
And the possibilities begin to unfold: Sunnis instigating a civil war/the CIA instigating a civil war/al Qaeda instigating a civil war/all of the above working in collusion. Adjunct Professor of English at West Chester University, Stacy Tartar Esch draws a correlation between Beckett’s work and our current modern existence:
…we're waiting all the time, too. Think about it: aren't we waiting for the war in Iraq to end, waiting to catch Osama bin Laden, waiting to win the war on terror? We're waiting for President Bush to smoke out the evil-doers. If you're a banker or a stockbroker you might be waiting for an end to bankruptcy court or class action suits or social security or taxes. Or an end to racism….an end to poverty, drug abuse, domestic violence… Many of us are waiting for environmental disaster, the next world war, the next flu epidemic, the next school shooting, the next terror attack… we're waiting for security, good times, that great vacation, that better job, that better wardrobe, that better car, that smaller computer, smaller cell phone; we're waiting for the perfect soul mate, the perfect body, the perfect moment… we're waiting for our hopes to be heard, our prayers to be answered, our wishes to be granted… we're waiting, and meanwhile, we're….here.
Are we waiting to discover if Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was one of the leaders of radical students who seized the Tehran embassy in 1979 and held 52 American hostages for more than year? This absurdity is the template upon which I shall attempt to build a road of understanding and shall attempt also to illuminate the ineluctable reality. Or to put it more directly, allow me to cut through the massive bullshit on this issue. In the issue(s) 1/24 and 1/31/05 The New Yorker, published a piece by Seymour Hersh entitled, The Coming Wars in which he wrote:
This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush Administration is looking at this as a huge war zone,” [a] former high-level intelligence official told me. “Next, we’re going to have the Iranian campaign. We’ve declared war and the bad guys, wherever they are, are the enemy. This is the last hurrah—we’ve got four years, and want to come out of this saying we won the war on terrorism.
The extremely detailed article goes into the intricate maneuverings of Rumsfeld, who is authorized by President Bush to conduct this campaign, and the “war on terror” in general, “off the books”,
…free from legal restrictions imposed on the C.I.A. Under current law, all C.I.A. covert activities overseas must be authorized by a Presidential finding and reported to the Senate and House intelligence committees. (The laws were enacted after a series of scandals in the nineteen-seventies involving C.I.A. domestic spying and attempted assassinations of foreign leaders.) “The Pentagon doesn’t feel obligated to report any of this to Congress,” the former high-level intelligence official said. “They don’t even call it ‘covert ops’—it’s too close to the C.I.A. phrase. In their view, it’s ‘black reconnaissance.’ They’re not even going to tell the CINCs”—the regional American military commanders-in-chief.
Hersh continues to delineate how the Bush administration has consolidated power through secrecy and behind-the-scenes machinations to achieve the goal of being beyond the reach of the intelligence community and the congress. Mr. Hersh reveals that,
The Administration has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran at least since last summer. Much of the focus is on the accumulation of intelligence and targeting information on Iranian nuclear, chemical, and missile sites, both declared and suspected. The goal is to identify and isolate three dozen, and perhaps more, such targets that could be destroyed by precision strikes and short-term commando raids. “The civilians in the Pentagon want to go into Iran and destroy as much of the military infrastructure as possible,” the government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon told me.
As a reader, one must decide to believe or remain skeptical about such reporting. (As a disclaimer, this reader has found the work of Seymour Hersh to be dead on and nothing short of amazing in its veracity.) Nevertheless, it is obvious that the Cheney Administration has designs upon Iran. I recommend the following articles as a place to begin, if you need to placate a nagging skepticism:
• Onward to Iran, by Richard Heinberg
• The U.S. War with Iran Has Already Begun, by Scott Ritter
• Archived Articles on the Threat of US Intervention in Iran (from the global Policy Forum)
Then there is the historical relationship over the years from 1953 on between the U.S. and Iran to consider. In 1953 the CIA engineered a coup to take out the Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh and reinstall the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. In reality this was the first U.S.-British engineered regime change, and can be researched further here. The CIA enlisted Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf in the coup campaign. General Schwarzkopf, the father of the Persian Gulf War commander, had befriended the shah a decade earlier while leading the United States military mission to Iran. This inauspicious meddling in Iranian affairs by the U.S. and Britain can further succinctly be referenced here and here.
The cozy relationship between the Shah of Iran and the U.S. would come to an end in with the Islamic Revolution that began in 1978. The U.S. would turn its back on the shah and lend tepid support to the Islamists, but too little, too late. On November 4, 1979, Iranian activists seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took those inside as hostages. Any scrutiny of this period will reveal that this hostage crisis ended the re-election hopes of President Jimmy Carter. This is where the behind-the-scenes maneuvering of Reagan’s campaign director (and future CIA Director) William J. Casey and Reagan’s running mate, George Herbert Walker Bush (and former CIA Director, 1976-1977) thicken the plot, as they say. The allegations, vehemently denied by G.H.W. Bush, are that Bush, Casey, et al, met with Iranian agents in Madrid and Paris and brokered a deal to have the hostages held through October, until Reagan could defeat Carter in early November, and then be released. The hostages were in fact released on the very day of Reagan's inauguration, twenty minutes after his inaugural address.
Finally, for the purpose of this synopsis, came the ignominious Iran-Contra Affair. The Reagan Administration engaged in selling arms to Iran (the proceeds of which were diverted to the Nicaraguan Contras who were fighting the leftist Sandanistas) at a time when Iran was engaged in a bloody war with Iraq. Along with supplying money to the Contras, the purpose of these arms sales was to placate and appease the Iranians. However, later, when it looked as though the Iranians may actually win the conflict with Iraq, the U.S. began supplying Saddam Hussein with weaponry, as accounted here. The Iran/Iraq conflict served U.S. interests in truly Machiavellian ways. Not only was Bush, Sr. involved in all of this, but Reagan sent (present U.S. Secretary of Defense) Donald Rumsfeld to negotiate the deal with Hussein in 1983. All of this (almost) unfathomable espionage, counter-espionage, playing Islamic countries against each other for U.S. “interests” has been de rigueur for at least 52 years. The Middle East, for the obvious reasons of its being the major source of our oil and its strategic location to Israel (and now Afghanistan) is of such crucial importance to the U.S. and our foreign policy, as evidenced by our current conflict in Iraq, that the focus of our intelligence organizations on all of these countries, i.e. Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Egypt, and Iran is ubiquitous and intense. It is, therefore, with absolute incredulity that I watch the U.S. National Security Advisor, Stephen Hadley stand before the press corps and state that he does not know whether or not Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was one of the leaders of radical students who seized the Tehran embassy in 1979 and held 52 American hostages for more than year.
To exacerbate the political advantages of such a stance, President Bush has weighed in with his comments saying he has "no information, but obviously his involvement raises many questions." Are these guys kidding? Any cursory look at the photographs that are being compared reveal a discrepancy in the eyes, the beard, the nose, the hair, the chin, the mouth, the whole damn head. Moreover, are we to believe that a candidate (now elected) for the Iranian presidency does not have a massive dossier with the U.S. intelligence community? I would be amazed if they did not know Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s favorite vegetable, song, color, and sex position. So what is the purpose of feigning ignorance in this matter, and who are the Americans who would believe such a farcical posture? This brings the matter back to the themes of absurdity and nihilism in Waiting for Godot. Is writing this action or inaction? Is there any modicum of influence the individual can exercise over the insane, immoral, incongruous, and existentially dangerous policies of the United States in the world?
American support for the current war in Iraq, if you believe the polls, is waning rapidly. That we are there in the first place is beyond belief to many of us. Historically wars have been waged for reasons that, when placed under scrutiny, reveal delusions of grandeur, personal hatreds, imperialistic designs, tribal or regional conflicts, and any number of irrational motives. However, leaders have always used defense of country and honor as the primary motivational propaganda to rally the actual armies. The ultimate outcome has always been, is, and will always be death. The Bush Administration stands before us daily speaking to us as if we are absolutely stupid. Unfortunately, they are often correct in this assumption. CNN offers us politicians talking about “staying the course” (in Iraq), with varying ideas of what that means. What it means is a lot more deaths of American military. What it means is innumerable Iraqi deaths and the breeding of hatred that will last for decades or until total annihilation is achieved. And the designs upon Iran are obvious. There is an impending, and if we as individuals continue to “wait”, inevitable war with Iran looming. Are the decisions already made? Is the dynamic immutable and unstoppable? Does writing about this make any difference, or is our destiny out of our “sphere of influence”?
Camus begins his essay, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, with the sentence,
There is only one really serious philosophical question, and that is suicide. Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy. All other questions follow from that.
He compares the absurdity of the existence of humanity to the labors of the mythical character Sisyphus, who was condemned through all eternity to push a boulder to the top of a hill and watch helplessly as it rolled down again. Camus takes the nonexistence of God for granted and finds meaning in the struggle itself. The individual in this absurd existence, Camus postulates, ultimately rejects suicide and declares that the only courageous and morally valid response to the Absurd is to continue living. “Suicide is not an option.” Further, Camus states that it is the responsibility of the individual to revolt, which is defined as a spirit of opposition against any perceived unfairness, oppression, or indignity in the human condition. I write to say, “I can’t go on. I’ll go on.” And, I write, while knowing that I may have a negligible “sphere of influence”, as an act of rebellion.
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