Fighting Words

A POSTWAR JOURNAL

BY FRANCIS DAVIS FIGHTING WORDS: dented in immediacy and unanimity. Ours, even in the fraction which has the experience at all, is essentially specialized, lonely, A POSTWAR JOURNAL bitter and sterile; our great majority will emerge from the war almost as if it had never taken place; and not all the lip-service in the world about internationalism will make that different.” James Agee, “So Proudly We Fail,” The Nation, Oct. 30, 1943

1. TOTAL WAR I hate to argue with James Agee, for whom my respect borders on hero wor- ship. He was the film critic most worth reading before Pauline Kael, who was almost certainly influenced by him (she could have been sounding her own bat- tle cry when she wrote that his “greatness” as a critic, like that of André Bazin, came from responding to movies with his “full range of intelligence and intu- ition, rather than relying on formulas”). He was right about Americans fighting in parts of the world they knew nothing about: “After this war is over, I’ll have e suffer — we vaguely to buy a map to see where I’ve been,” a weary U.S. foot soldier pushing back the r e a l i z e—a unique and constantly intensifying schizophrenia 190 W Nazis in Italy says in William Wellman’s “The Story of G.I. Joe” (1945), one of 191 which threatens no other nation involved in this war. Geography is Agee’s favorite movies and one of mine. But everything else about Agee’s assess- the core of the disease. Those Americans who are doing the fight- ment of the impact of the Second World War on life in the U.S., and on its men ing are doing it in parts of the world which seem irrelevant to them; those who are not remain untouched, virginal, prenatal, overseas, was dead wrong. while every other considerable population on earth comes of age. Writing in the fall of 1943, just after Rommel’s defeat in North Africa, Agee In every bit of information you can gather about breakdowns of could take an eventual Allied victory for granted—something no one would American troops in combat, overseas, even in the camps, a sense of have been ready to do just a year earlier: unutterable dislocation, dereliction, absence of contact, trust, wholeness, and reference, in a kind and force that no other sol- We know how it turned out, and so it is hard to imagine it might diers have to suffer, clearly works at the root of the disaster. have been different. In retrospect the American war machine Moreover, while this chasm widens and deepens daily between seems so powerful, its industrial capacity so awesome, its scientif- our fighting and civilian populations and within each mind, anoth- ic prowess so elegant, that the outcome of the war must have been er—much deeper and wider than any which geography alone a foregone conclusion. It was not so early in the war… Pearl could impose —forms and increases between this nation and the Harbor, Wake, Bataan, Corregidor, Manila and all the Philippines, other key nations of the world. Their experience of war is unprece- Singapore, the linchpin of the British Empire in Southeast Asia—

PREVIOUS SPREAD : Women working in Douglas Assembly Plant during World War II.

FIGHTING WORDS FRANCIS DAVIS outpost after outpost fell, and it was even feared for a time that Look what happened in the midterm elections in 1942. Roosevelt General MacArthur had been captured. was still very popular, but there was a lot of dissatisfaction with Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D. Black, the war. We hadn’t struck out at Germany yet. And there were “Hollywood Goes to War” huge grievances at home. People couldn’t drive their private cars, because gasoline was being rationed. And the worst thing that The late summer of 1942 was perhaps the darkest period of the happened was three days before the midterm election, the coffee war for the Allies. In North Africa, the Axis forces under Field administrator announced only one cup of coffee a day. Well, to a Marshal Rommel were sweeping into Egypt; in Russia, they had coffee-drinking public, that was it. penetrated the Caucasus and launched a gigantic offensive against Doris Kearns Goodwin Stalingrad. In the Atlantic, even to the shores of the United States on “Meet the Press,” May 26, 2001 and in the Gulf of Mexico, German submarines were sinking Allied ships at an unprecedented rate. (The loss of 50 Democratic seats in the House and eight in the Senate The Columbia Encyclopedia, Fifth Edition doomed the passage of any more New Deal legislation and set the stage for the postwar Congressional witch hunts.) The war touched all Americans, and some of its effects were pro- The Continental U.S. wasn’t bombed, and with the shameful exception of found. Nearly 10 percent of the country’s population served in the those Japanese-Americans whose loyalty was called into question and who were armed forces. For them, and for their loved ones, the threat of sent to internment camps, no one was driven from his home. But this was total 192 death was a harrowing reality. But the war was omnipresent in 193 lesser ways too…. Even the mundane aspects of daily consumption war, one in which Roosevelt had called for civilian involvement. There were no reminded one of the pervasive effects of the war: spreading oleo American war refugees. But there were massive population shifts, and the instead of butter on your morning toast, carpooling and using pub- dynamics of American life were never the same. lic transportation because of rationed tires and nonexistent new cars [Detroit’s assembly lines had been diverted to the production Even as World War II was transforming Detroit into the Arsenal of of tanks and bombers and PT boats], riding all night sitting on your Democracy, cultural and social upheavals brought about by the suitcase because the train was overcrowded [with seating priority need for workers to man the bustling factories threatened to turn being given to servicemen going on leave or returning from one], the city into a domestic battleground. relatives saving sugar for weeks so Dick and Mary could have a Recruiters toured the South convincing white and blacks wedding cake. Of course the war’s disruptions in the Continental to head north with promises of high wages in the new war facto- United States paled by comparison with the death and devastation ries. They arrived in such numbers that it was impossible to house endured by millions of Europeans and Asians. Nonetheless, to the them all. stock line “Don’t you know there’s a war going on,” changes both Blacks who believed they were heading to a promised land large and small provided a ready answer. found a northern bigotry as pervasive and virulent as what they Koppes and Black thought they had left behind in the Deep South. And southern whites brought their own traditional prejudices with them as both races migrated northward.

FIGHTING WORDS FRANCIS DAVIS The influx of newcomers strained not only housing, but trans- Returning home was an improbable option, with all the messy portation, education and recreational facilities as well. Wartime questions it would raise. Most of the men discharged from the residents of Detroit endured long lines everywhere, at bus stops, Pacific Theater were processed out in San Francisco, and that’s grocery stores, and even newsstands where they hoped for the where they stayed. By the end of World War II, the military chance to be first answering classified ads offering rooms for rent. establishment had given San Francisco a disproportionately large Even though the city enjoyed full employment, it suffered the number of identified gays. many discomforts of wartime rationing. Child-care programs were Randy Shilts, “The Mayor of Castro Street: nonexistent, with grandma the only hope—provided she wasn’t The Life & Times of Harvey Milk,” 1982 already working at a defense plant. Vivian M. Baulch and Patricia Zacharias, Though reliable statistics are difficult to come by, there was a notable The Detroit News (from the paper’s web site) increase in juvenile delinquency during the war—not surprising, given the number of homes that were now fatherless, at least temporarily. (Sixteen mil- The black population of Detroit doubled to 200,000 between 1940 and lion American men served in the Armed Forces during the war, and because the 1943. There were race riots there and in New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, draft took men up to the age of 35, many of them had already started families.) St. Louis, Baltimore, Indianapolis, Mobile, Beaumont, Texas and Washington, With so many men in uniform on the prowl while they waited to be shipped out, D.C., in the summer of 1943. There were other changes, some of them not there was also an increase in teenage prostitution. Those underage hookers who

194 so obvious. were especially patriotic called themselves “victory girls.” Their customers 195 included young men not much older than themselves who were desperate to The military speeded San Francisco’s growth into a gay center. The lose their virginity before risking their lives in a foreign land. Second World War marked the first conflict in which the armed services tried to systematically identify and then exclude homo- 2. WAR BABY sexuals. In the process of examining the nearly 36 million men eligible for service, thousands were found to be homosexual and classified as such by the draft boards. The tens of thousands more I don’t want to sentimentalize the “greatest generation” more than Tom who escaped this early classification faced a tougher fate in the Brokaw and Steven Spielberg already have. The generation that grew up during service. Purge after purge of gays in various branches condemned the Great Depression and reached maturity in time to fight the last unambigu- thousands to the “blue discharge,” named for the blue paper upon ous war was also the first generation to buy homes and attend college on the G.I. which homosexual discharges were written. The discharge was Bill, the first (and possibly the last) to be guaranteed of collecting Social Security stamped with a large H and guaranteed the bearer the status of when they retired from their jobs, and the first to enjoy an extended lifespan as persona non grata, especially during the patriotic war years. The a result of advances in medical science. Hey, nobody has it easy: The next gen- Department of Defense still refuses to say how many thousands eration (mine) was the first to grow up with the threat of nuclear annihilation. were subjected to this ignominy. The action, however, created an entire class of social outcasts who were public homosexuals. Some The men from the generation that fought in the Second World War who rose to committed suicide, but most tried to start quiet new lives. high positions in business and their communities didn’t have to compete with

FIGHTING WORDS FRANCIS DAVIS women, blacks and the 290,000 other men who died in Europe and the Pacific. We lived with my grandmother, and whenever the song “I’ll Be Seeing You” Still—290,000 dead: a blood sacrifice the likes of which no subsequent came on the radio, my mother or grandmother would turn it off, because it made generation has been forced to make. (It’s front page news today when even one them miss my Uncle Francis. Since he was reported as missing in action for a American is killed by enemy fire or a terrorist bomb in the Middle East, as it month before being declared dead, I think my grandmother still expected him to should be. But 150 American sailors and Merchant Marines serving on convoys turn up at our front door some day, laughing at the gruesome mistake the Army escorting British supply ships in the Mid-Atlantic were killed in attacks by had made. Maybe my mother expected my father to show up at the door too, German U-boats even before Pearl Harbor and our official entry into the war.) begging forgiveness for his mistake. One of the men lost was my uncle and namesake Francis McCartney, who was While going through my mother’s effects following her death in the spring killed by German bazooka fire in France on Aug. 15, 1944—Ascension Day. Not of 2001, I came across a newspaper clipping of her wedding picture. I also came enough of his remains were recovered to be shipped home for burial. My grand- across the Purple Hearts awarded to each of her brothers, and an Iron Cross mother received a package with his dogtags and a wallet, which she later gave apparently taken by one of them as a souvenir from a dead Nazi hero. It was a to me. Carefully tucked away in the wallet, I found a lock of his estranged wife’s reminder that mortal courage doesn’t necessarily require a just cause—some- hair. It was then that I realized that the slight discolorations in the leather were thing I thought of again following the suicide attacks on Sept. 11, even before probably dried blood. My uncle was 29 when he died, and my mother used to Susan Sontag and Dinesh D’Souza got in trouble for sensibly pointing out more say I had his poor posture and his sudden Irish temper. Maybe I took after him or less the same thing.

196 in other ways. He was a high school graduate, which was like being a MacArthur 197 Fellow in my working-class family, and because he was smart, I was expected to 3. “DON’T THEY KNOW THERE’S A WAR GOING ON” be. In the eyes of my grandmother, and those of my mother, who was especially close to my uncle, I was his replacement. Mohammed Atta, one of the key organizers among the 19 suspect- Although I was born in 1946, I never thought of myself as a baby boomer. I ed hijackers who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks, left behind a thought of myself as a war baby. If not for the war, I might never have been con- five-page handwritten document in Arabic that includes Islamic prayers, instructions for a last night of life and practical reminders ceived. My mother, who briefly worked during the war as a gas station attendant to bring “knives, your will, IDs, your passport” and finally, “to and as a welder, was a beauty-pageant contestant with poor self-esteem and sex- make sure that nobody is following you.” FBI investigators, who ual inhibitions worthy of a nun. Her marriage, to a paratrooper from California found the writings in Atta’s luggage, which did not make it onto in 1943, was quickly annulled, possibly without being consummated. My father the flight, are not sure of the author’s identity—whether it was was a flier she’d had a crush on since they were in grade school together, though Atta, another hijacker or someone else. she said she was too skinny for him to notice her. He must have noticed her at Bob Woodward, The Washington Post, Sept. 28, 2001. least once in the fall of 1945, when he was parading around in his uniform after his discharge from the service, and it broke her heart when he married someone Oh, the trivial things we air travelers bitched about before Sept. 11, and else a few months after I was born. My mother never dated anyone else serious- never mind that Atta’s misplaced luggage was symptomatic of the same incom- ly, though she had plenty of neighborhood suitors who would have been willing petence that allowed him and the other known terrorists to clear security. to raise me as their own.

FIGHTING WORDS FRANCIS DAVIS Something else we had been foolish for going on and on about, supposedly, was at churches, synagogues, mosques, [and] other places of their choosing to pray George W. Bush’s qualifications for the presidency and whether he was actually for our families [and] for the families of those who were victimized by this act of the victor in the 2000 election. terrorism.” Sarah Blustain, writing in The New Republic, put it perfectly: “The president decentralized our grief, a distinctively Republican solution, and sent it Yesterday, as he finished a speech at the Labor Department, the back to local programs of faith. He told us, in effect, that he could lead military president said Americans would be resolute to defeat terrorism. action and inspire rescue teams; but for words to ease our national depression, “And there is no doubt in my mind, not one doubt that we will fail.” we would have to see our rabbi.” “War News,” Philadelphia Daily News, Oct. 5, 2001 I saw a movie that afternoon (for me, not as sacrilegious an activity as it sounds), after enduring as much as I could stand of the televised Service on the America surrenders! Of course, the problem with dwelling on Bush’s mala- Mall. I didn’t want to hear the insufferable Denyce Graves singing spirituals and props, as the late-night comedians eventually began doing again when they patriotic anthems as though they were European art songs, and I didn’t need returned to TV the week after the attacks, is that this allows his other inadequa- homilies from Billy Graham or some black preacher sent from central casting (or cies to go unnoticed. the Republican National Convention). I wanted to hear… oh, I don’t know, Ray Charles singing “New York’s My Home”; Johnny Cash singing anything; Sonny Osama bin Laden’s inherited wealth comes from a Saudi construc- tion family that made its fortune in the Arab oil boom. He is also Rollins playing “The House I Live In” in place of Frank Sinatra. 198 believed to receive donations from Saudis who grew rich from Across the country, people were still lining up to donate blood for the vic- 199 petroleum leases. If Saddam Hussein assisted in the attack, then tims in New York, despite announcements that no more blood was needed and oil money may have flowed to the butchers. intimations that almost no more survivors would be found. People were desper- Americans burn 875 gallons per year per licensed driver, and of ate to pitch in so as not to feel completely helpless, and donating blood was at that about 100 gallons come from the Persian Gulf. This works out least doing something. Blood drives were a custom that had started during to about $75 per year transferred from the typical American driver World War II, the last conflict from which the U.S. emerged feeling good about to Saddam and the desert princes who smile as their allies chant itself. Vietnam had divided this country, opening wounds that still hadn’t “Death to America.” healed. The only war that the young men and women who might be called on to Gregg Easterbrook, The New Republic, Oct. 8, 2001 fight this new one had any real memory of was the Gulf War, which most of us experienced as a nightly network miniseries starring Arthur Kent as the “Scud Yet instead of urging us to conserve oil and supporting badly needed fund- Stud.” We needed a blueprint for how to act now that we were under attack and ing for public transportation, the White House (whose current occupants also might soon be on the attack. Such a blueprint was available, but the president made their fortunes from oil) tried to make the war on terror a second front in blew an opportunity to link the current crisis with the Second World War in the the war on drugs, with a series of ineffective TV spots presumably meant to most meaningful way possible by evoking the one thing that soldiers and civil- appeal to the patriotism of heroin addicts and crackheads. ians had shared during that long-ago war: that era’s popular culture. I guess Declaring Friday, Sept. 14 “a day of prayer and remembrance,” the what I most wanted to hear at the Service on the Mall was Rosemary Clooney (or president urged Americans to take their lunch hours to “attend prayer services

FIGHTING WORDS FRANCIS DAVIS anybody, really) singing “I’ll Be Seeing You,” a song whose lyrics would have As opposed to “homeland,” with its troubling echoes of apartheid and the expressed our national sense of loss while reminding us that we had suffered Bund. We are a nation of hyphenates who use “homeland” to describe the coun- losses before and somehow found it within ourselves to go on. try that one’s ancestors came here from. But this administration is tone deaf to In the months that followed, the Bush administration generally reminded us the connotations of language (admittedly, the least of its problems). Infinite that we were at war only when it was politically expedient for it to do so: Justice? Something from the Koran or the latest Schwarzenegger? Enduring Freedom is better, but only if used to describe—in light of Operation T.I.P.S., Growing furor in Congress over the FBI’s failure to respond to early which would deputize as spies pizza deliverymen and cable-company employ- alarms left the administration with two choices: counter convinc- ees—the Attorney General’s position on the Bill of Rights. ingly or thunder more loudly. Then on Saturday, May 19, Cheney announced that more attacks in this country are “almost a certain- 4. CULTURE WARS ty.” The next day, FBI chief Robert Mueller said suicide bombings here are “inevitable.” On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld put in his two cents with the dire warning that the ter- Everything was supposed to change after Sept. 11, but for most of us, noth- rorists “inevitably will get their hands on nuclear, chemical and ing has—we haven’t. After an appropriate period of mourning (and sometimes biological weapons.” not even that), our pundits resumed their own petty battles. James Ridgeway, “Mondo Washington,” The Village Voice, June 4, 2002 I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the fem- 200 201 inists, and the gays and lesbians who are actively trying to make I think the real problem for this administration is that when they that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American warn people like this—and they were high-level warnings that Way—all of them who have tried to secularize America—I point people had to feel anxiety about—then there’s nothing that people the finger in their face and say, “You helped this happen.” themselves can do to allay their fears. It’s like they’re set in a pas- Rev. Jerry Falwell on “The 700 Club,” Sept. 13, 2001 sive state, just waiting for something to happen. In World War II, when we were under attack, there were a million things you could The “Blame America First” Club welcomes a distinguished new recruit! do. You could join the Army —10 million did. You could work in a factory. You could buy war bonds. You could collect aluminum. On the eve of our great national birthday party and in the after- You could give up your rubber girdles. I mean, there were a million math of Sept. 11, when millions of us turned to God and prayed for things you could do and you felt like you were actively helping to forgiveness of individual and corporate sins and asked for His pro- make the situation better. tection against future attacks, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Doris Kearns Goodwin on “Meet the Press” San Francisco [by ruling the clause “one nation, under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional] has inflicted on this nation Home Front: The civilian sector remaining within the continental what many will conclude is a greater injury than that caused by the boundaries of a nation at war when its armed forces are in combat terrorists. overseas… Cal Thomas in his syndicated column, June 28, 2002 The Random House Dictionary of the English Language

FIGHTING WORDS FRANCIS DAVIS “Corporate” sins? I always thought there were only two kinds, mortal and venial. But what did the Roman Catholic priests and nuns who taught me about such things know? The Roman Catholic Church only invented the concept of sin. can heal, And when did the Fourth of July become a day for prayer and reflection? I Art thought it was about picnics and firecrackers. Never mind. The point here is the short shelf-life of tragedy, how quickly it sours into analogy. but it cannot be asked to. But the lunacy hasn’t been confined to the religious right, which can regu- larly be counted on for it. Just take a glance at Noam Chomsky’s book “9-11,” which reprints interviews he did in the weeks after the attacks. Asked by an unidentified interviewer (probably some alternative-press lackey) to comment place in American life was sarcasm, but no matter. Before much time had on the threat posed to Western democracy by Muslim fundamentalism, passed, he and others in the celebrity press apparently came to their senses and Chomsky replied glibly: realized that if they stopped making fun of people much less fabulous than

“First of all, no one with even a shred of rationality defines Arabs themselves, those Arab bastards will have won. Charlie Daniels, washed-up as a as ‘fundamentalists.’ Secondly, the U.S. and the West generally rock-and-roller and trying to trash-talk his way into favor with country music have no objection to religious fundamentalism as such. The U.S., fans, recorded a bellicose little ditty called “This Ain’t No Rag, It’s a Flag.” 202 203 in fact, is one of the most extreme fundamentalist cultures in the (Unless, of course, it’s a biker or gangbanger’s do-rag, in which case it’s both.) world, not the state, but the popular culture.” Then there was “Let’s Roll,” Neil Young’s tribute to the passengers on Flight 93, which crash-landed in Pennsylvania after they fought their hijackers. Let’s roll? Our popular culture is staked to religious fundamentalism? Sure. That’s why Without disputing the bravery displayed on Flight 93, I say let’s not. We we love Britney Spears, “The Osbournes,” and downloading Internet porn. shouldn’t be encouraging vigilantism, nor should we expect civilians to perform In a book called “The Dreadful Imposture,” which topped the best-seller lists the duties of federal sky marshals who would presumably be trained to deal with in France this spring, the left-wing activist Thierry Meyssan revealed that bin such situations—and hopefully not likely to jump to conclusions based solely on Laden was a CIA stooge, that no hijacked plane had crashed into the Pentagon ethnic prejudice. (the damage was done by a truck bomb planted by the U.S. military), and that the planes that killed thousands in New York were guided by lights atop the An Indian movie actress [Samyuktha Verma, 20, described as “the Twin Towers—all of this to justify increased military spending and an invasion Julia Roberts of Bollywood musicals”] and her family, flying to of Afghanistan. After Sept. 11, there was also a recrudescence of European anti- New York for the first time, were thrilled by the city skyline, Semitism, a sport second in popularity only to soccer over there. Graydon switching seats and pointing fingers. But their actions made anoth- er passenger nervous, and suddenly two F-16s were escorting the Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair, was widely quoted for declaring Sept. 11 “the Boeing 707 to the runway. end of the age of irony.” I think what he was actually saying no longer had a The Associated Press, July 19, 2002

FIGHTING WORDS FRANCIS DAVIS Artists were implored to create works in response to the attacks. But what a concept, each elusive. We weren’t asked to sacrifice, but to spend, which may were they supposed to put us in touch with? Grief, horror, outrage? These were have been sensible advice under the circumstances, but hardly inspiring. The emotions we felt already. Social relevance can be a bid to critic-proof an artist’s two world wars of the last century confirmed our emergence as an internation- work, and the last thing that anybody needed was any more self-absorbed al power, but now we suspect that history is moving against us. The conflicts in performers striking a righteous pose in the general vicinity of tragedy—we’ve the Middle East aren’t irrelevant to us; it’s we who feel irrelevant. Despite con- had enough of that already, in supposed response to AIDS. Art can heal, but it tinued reports of our imminent invasion of Iraq, it isn’t just the idealist in me cannot be asked to. Sometimes its job is to distance us from the unbearable. who doubts that we will ever again see a mass mobilization on the scale of the Besides, what art could compete with the credit cards and bone fragments found Second World War, but the cynic—our present economy is dependent on mak- in the Trade Center rubble at Fresh Kills on Staten Island, or with the pictures of ing the world safe for demography, and a mass deployment of troops would missing loved ones that for weeks turned New York’s subway platforms into deplete the consumer group advertisers most covet, young men in their late haunted subterranean galleries? Waiting for a local with a small crowd in the teens and early twenties. middle of the afternoon well into October, you had the sensation of moving I was going to end by reprising the quote from James Agee, whose false among the dead in their own space. impression of wartime America from almost 60 years ago has taken on an eerie truth today. But I don’t have to.

5. WARS AND RUMORS OF WARS The general reaction of Americans to this news [a New York Times 205 In terms of punishing the military or economic power of the United report that the U.S. was planning an attack on Iraq] was even more States, [Sept. 11] was barely a pinprick. Psychologically, and as amazing. Basically, there was no reaction. We seem to be distant spectacle, it was amazing. But what they actually achieved, apart observers of our own nation’s preparation for war, watching with from changing the landscape of New York, was not very much in horror or approval or indifference a process we have nothing to do my opinion. The Muslims don’t like this kind of talk. They think it with and cannot affect. was a big hit. Michael Kinsley, The Washington Post, July 12, 2002 Tarik Ali, the Pakistani-born editor of London’s New Left Review, to John Strausbaugh in The New York Press, April 10-16, 2002

And you shall hear of wars and rumors of wars. Matthew 24:6

Despite being the first of our modern armed conflicts to claim a greater number of civilian than military casualties, the war on terror is still a rumor for most of us. Our government first swore vengeance on an individual and then on

FRANCIS DAVIS after