 |
Dr. Wes Browning |
We are approaching what is being
called the fifth anniversary of the Iraq
War, and my attention has been called to
that calling of it. The attention calling was
done by fellow editor, Artis “Not Just The
Spoonman” [no last name.] Every time the
subject of the Iraq War comes up in the little
editorial committee meetings we have,
Artis reminds us that “The Iraq War” has
been going on without letup at least since
the United States invaded Iraq on January
17, 1991, and therefore the anniversary we
should be recognizing is not the fifth, but
the 17th anniversary, two months ago.
It occurred to me just last night, as I
was sobering, that this is a case of “reckoning.”
I believe the word “reckoning” is
not used often enough, and this instance
demonstrates the need. Whenever someone
reckons something, it would help a
great deal if he/she would announce it
by saying, “I reckon that…,” or “The way I
reckon it is…,” or “By my reckoning…,” so
we would all be reminded it wasn’t a date
or a number or an age we just heard, but a
reckoning of one.
Reckoning can be loads of fun. For
example, you can reckon that the official
start of the War on Osama bin Laden
began the day the Saudis told him they
didn’t love him anymore. That happened
exactly when the Saudis decided to accept
non-Muslim assistance in defending
against the threat of Iraqi invasion (after
Iraq invaded Kuwait, remember?) in direct
opposition to bin Laden’s idea to kick Iraqi
butt with an all-Muslim army. (See? There
WAS a connection between bin Laden and
Iraq before 2003!)
I could reckon that the Iraq War began
at the precise beginning of history. The first
written words, I reckon, were written on a
clay tablet and inventoried bricks thrown
by people of Sumerian city-state Eridu
at people of upstart Sumerian city-state
Bad-tibira. Since then, there has always
been an Iraq War, it’s only been a question
of whose war it was. For instance, for a time
the Mongols owned the Iraq War. Later, the
Ottomans owned it for almost four centuries.
Then the British owned it for awhile.
In 1977, even the Israelis owned a piece of
it. Persians have owned it off and on, since
King Cyrus. And since 1990, at the urging
of Margaret Thatcher, the United States has
been principal proprietor.
Important: Never call your reckonings
calculations. If you call them calculations,
people will think you’re doing math. They
will then groan and shun you. Likewise,
never admit to counting anything. Always
say you’re “re-counting” it. That way it
sounds like you’re telling a story, which is a
warm fuzzy human thing to do, instead of
adding up numbers, which is a cold metallic
alien thing to do, because we all personally
know aliens who add all the time.
Incidentally, the word “reckon” originated
with Old English gerecenian, meaning “recount,”
as in “relate” or “tell a story.” So etymology
backs me up on this front.
Which brings me around to the point I
want to make. It is war, not the act of counting,
that is the exact opposite of recounting and
relating. War is organized confusion. War negates
story-telling. War kills stories. Therefore,
war kills reckoning.
Again, etymology is on my side. Of course,
just as Eskimos have no one word for “snow”,
and Bedouins have no one word for “sand”
(I’m making this up), so the ancient Germanic
peoples didn’t have a word for war per se.
But one word they used, which was the word
that comes down to us as “war,” meant “to
confuse.” They were very cognizant of the
fact that wearing a bear suit and a helmet
with horns and running through a village
shrieking and hacking at people with axes is
perplexing, even disorienting, behavior.
Conversely, if you want to fight war you
have to do it by taking back reckoning and
recounting and story-telling. |
