IRONIES OF THE ETHIOPIAN WAR
Badoglio and Graziani, two old jackals, were sitting around in The Land Of The Dead. They chewed on some putrid bones. They rehearsed their days of power. They had done it all. They unleashed modern technology for war on a primitive people. They bombed and strafed and gassed. They massacred a people, and gleefully.
They considered their current abode to be an insult and an imposition. They thought they were simple soldiers. They had carried out the lawful orders of their master who was an associate of Anubis himself.
Bad and Graz shivered in the damp cold. They feverishly relived their moments of glory. They gnawed in hunger on some worm-infested coccyxes.
Two young jackals came prancing across the desolate plain. They stopped playfully to regard the old generals. They licked their chops with long, moist tongues as after a great gorging. Their names were Westmoreland and Creighton Abrams.
"Welcome! Welcome!" cried Badoglio and Graziani. "It is so good to see two others of our kind in this godforsaken place!"
"What," snorted Abrams, "what do you mean of your kind?"
There was silence.
Westmoreland spoke out of steely and slitted eyes. "We are hounds, hounds of heaven. We have been harrowing hell for the forces of freedom, democracy and The American Way. That is why we are scorched."
"Aaahhh---," breathed Badoglio, "I see." And the two old savvy jackals backed away.
The silence was awkward.
Then Graziani yelped out: "We won our war, you hypocritical, candy-assed whippersnappers! And we did it for an Italia Superba, an ideal of glory, brilliance and martial prowess supported by our king, pope and people!"
Westmold and Crabs looked at each other slyly. They jumped furiously to attack Badoglio and Graziani. They bit them severely in the buttocks. They drove them off with shouts of "butchers!" and "fascist buffoons!"
From a safe distance away, Badoglio cried out in a voice seemingly conciliatory but snide: "You gentlemen would do well to remember Adowa."
"You mean," sneered Crabs, "where the niggers beat the wops?"
"Yes, exactly," retorted Badoglio as he and Graziani began to lope away, "as in your Vietnam where the gooks beat you pink niggers!"
Westmold and Crabs tensed up as if to attack again. They shouted: "Get out of here, you fascist fag-pigs, before we come down there and kick your friggin' asses to Hell and gone!"
The old jackals tucked their tails between their legs and ran frantically away.
They slowed up shortly as they were not pursued. They were out of breath and panting. But they continued to retire further down into the ruination of that land.
"Ah, Badoglio," said Graziani after awhile, "they are worse than us. They deny their nature. Didn't the philosopher say, the one who ended his days peacefully in our beloved Roma, that those who do not know the past are doomed to repeat it?"
"Oh, no, no, my dear old friend," replied Badoglio, "that is not the case with such as these. They are much cleverer than that. These military men are truly educated. They are the elite of their nation. With them, the corrected epigram is: Those who know the past are enthusiastic to fulfill it!"
"Ah," sighed Graziani, "you are as cynical as ever. Let me catch a whiff of your ass in token of my appreciation." And he bent over and sniffed.
"Thank you, thank you," smiled Badoglio.
The two old jackals continued to walk down into The Land Of The Dead. It got warmer. A faint, reddish glow began to rise on the horizon before them.
"And consider this," mused Graziani, "we fought for revenge, glory and real estate. They fought to kill an idea! Can you imagine it, Bad? They thought they could kill an idea! It is a metaphysical striving worthy of our former comrades-in-arms, the Teutonic Nazis! You cannot kill an idea, not even a bad one. The mysterious stupidity of a bad idea intrigues the minds of men!"
"In your arms, not mine," laughed Badoglio nervously. He had been less enamored of the Nazis than Graziani. "But I agree. It shall be very bad for them when they return to the Orient, for Gli Stati Uniti, the so-called l'ultimo, e più meglio speranza del mondo!"
"Ha! Ha!" burst out Graziani, "and they called us egotists and megalomaniacs! Rather, theirs is The Land Of Cockaigne, or Cocaine, or whatever!"
"Haaa!" echoed Badoglio cheerfully, "that's good! Now let me smell your ass in return of respect." And he bent and smelled with delight.
The old generals plodded into the plain. They were ecstatic at their own wit. Presently, Badoglio paused to rest. He noticed the rising red glow on the horizon. "But forget all that unpleasantness," he said. "For now I think it is time for us to seek our final reward and resting place. What do you think, eh Graz? They would have forgotten about us by now? After World War II, Korea, and especially the pyre of Vietnam, to say nothing of Lebanon, El Salvador and the Russkies in Afghanistan, and Rwanda, the horrors of the country formerly known as Yugoslavia, Darfur and not to forget the events of 9/11 in America, our sins are those of naughty children,”---and he gasped for breath. “We shall pass, I tell you! We shall make Paradise! What do you think our chances are?"
"Yes, yes!" grinned Graziani, "but let's not forget ourselves. It is enough if we catch an edge of purgatorio for we shall make heaven eventually. For my part, I have always believed in God and in our great and merciful Savior, Jesus Christ!"
"And me, too," Badoglio interrupted. He hurriedly crossed himself and kissed the tip of his thumb superstitiously.
“But yes," continued Graziani pompously, "I believe my strategy is operative. We waited them out in this abomination and the world got worse. After la bomba nucleare, after brain-washing, after Agent Orange and the euphemisms of interrogation in Vietnam, after Sabra and Shatila, after that horrendous attack on the Twin Towers in the bosom of capitalism, and in view of the recalcitrance of Third World peoples, we must admit that Hitler and Mussolini are looking better every day!"
"My strategy," snarled Badoglio under his breath. He did not want to create a dispute at this crux of their lives. They continued to pace into the rising and warming red glow.
But soon, not wanting to be outdone in sardonic wit, Badoglio added aloud: "I believe the world has devolved into an opera buffa. It is an invention of our own beloved Italia. Consider The Falklands Caper. Consider the irony of the murders by death squads in the country named The Savior. And contemplate the extraordinary realignment of the world from our day! Can you believe it, Graz, truly? Germany and Japan are bulwarks of the West! They are parliamentary democracies! Spain, where we squandered our strength for generalissimo Franco, is a Social Democracy! And Russia, ah, horror of horrors: It was an ally of the West and bore the brunt of fighting in World War II. Then it propagandized itself as the social reformer of the world. It became the Evil Empire, the bogeyman to bourgeois democracy. And now it comes to beg for capitalist expertise to feed itself, ---and we give it to them in exorbitant energy prices! It snatches my very breath away. And there's more! The Jews have developed from victims to despoilers even despite themselves! Now they understand how the weak invite their own exploitation. There are even calls among some of them for genocide on the Palestinian Arabs! Zionism, the oldest national reactionary movement in the world, triumphs, as bankrolled by America. It beats that of our own beloved Benito for the restoration of the Roman Empire. What could possibly be next?"
At this point in his tirade, Badoglio abruptly farted. Graziani grinned hugely.
"Ah, my passionate friend," he said, "your rhetoric got away from you. Let me inspire deeply of your wit and wisdom." And he paused and sniffed to his satisfaction.
But Badoglio spoke on with aplomb. "Can you really believe it all, Graz? The recitation of these political conundrums stupefies me! Our own dear Italia has become a parliamentary democracy, too. It had an economy equivalent to that of Britain, though it is a mixed case, as that buffoon Berlusconi ruined it." And he sighed, "Italia is always a mixed case. But if you added together the financial might of Japan, Germany and Italy, the former so-called Axis Powers, it would equal that of the U.S. of A.! Surely these are stupendous events! What did we all fight for? Ah, the Anglos are fooled with an ideological form. It is their flaw. They shall be nostalgic for Hit and Muss, yet! Yes, ah, yes, the world is an opera buffa where farce rules. All will be forgiven us in an orgy of cynical laughter!"
"Ha-haa! You are right!" laughed Graziani. "You have summarized the recent history of the West magnificently. But you have forgotten Ethiopia, the site of our own glorious victories. After the pitiful reign of Haile Selassie, they connived at their own famine under the rule of brutal egotists who cannot tell their own assholes from a 90MM tank muzzle, let alone from the Marxism in which they professed to believe. I laugh up my own asshole at both the democracies and the Soviets. If they call us butchers of that country what should we call them since millions of Ethiopians had starved through the benign neglect of the Anglos and the incompetent intervention of the Russkies? They despise them as much as we did. Nor would we even have won without the British, our fellow colonialists under the sheets, who kept the Suez open to our supply ships and provided us with oil. If they would have cut off our oil, the Americans would have provided it, and the Brits would have had the option of firing on American ships! If we would have remained as conquerors in Ethiopia it could not have been worse! Oh, my! Heraclitus, I now recall, a philosopher of our ancient tradition, hypothesized what he termed enantiodromia, which means that everything tends, sooner or later, to go over into its opposite. He knew better than we thought. History is a junkheap with justice as shards of broken glass in it. What does it matter what we do? All is class and power. We shall pass into heaven to a chorus of obscene giggles accompanied by the swished hands of the intellectual aesthetes!"
"A-hummm," pondered Badoglio in envy at Graziani's words, "I did not appreciate fully your studiousness. Let me honor you in turn once more." And he poked his nose between Graziani's legs in a way that gave basic meaning to the concept of cocktail!
Abruptly, Bad and Graz jerked upright and stared hard into each other’s eyes with disbelief to shout in synch: “The Pope Benedict XVI was in the Nazi Youth!”
As they walked off into the brightening red glow, they raised their paws in the fascist salute and shouted a slogan that was a favorite of their master: "Seguitemi al destino!"
Now the two old, louse-ridden generals paced impatiently into the warming red glow now high on the horizon. They thought it was the East and Paradise. It appeared cozy and warm against the dull desolation of The Land Of The Dead. But they were mistaken in this as they were in so much else. The red glow represented another direction and a nether region. It was a place far warmer than they imagined.
"It's Paradise," they both cried out as they passed the point of no return: "Seguitemi al destino!"
Out on the plain of The Land Of The Dead, in that abomination of desolation, Westmoreland and Abrams, those two ingenious jackals, were reclining at their ease. The cold did not bother them. They wore American army parkas lined with wolf fur. They lay on broken and blasted tree stumps. They were greedily sucking on some bones still dripping with blood. They plucked them from duffel bags. They were each enthralled in a weighty tome of Arnold Toynbee's.
"The nerve," said Crabs glancing up, "comparing us with them! We are simple and obedient soldiers. We only follow orders."
"Forget them," snickered Westmold, "everyone else has. They are dirty, dago, incompetent fascist fag-pigs. Their king, pope and people never really supported them. They betrayed them when they lost. We have truth and justice on our side, and beauty and goodness, too. We had all the institutions of our country behind us for 10 years. They only lost their nerve for a while, those weak politicians and ignorant people, so easily swayed by the media and by the fear of taxes. They get frightened by noise and a little blood. After all, they promoted us."
"Look how they rallied to the colors over the Iranian hostages, and in Lebanon and Grenada," Westmold blurted out! “There was an orgy of patriotism after nine eleven. And in that ludicrous vacillating dance of the Congress we are getting into El Salvador, Nicaragua and all of Central America, and especially now Colombia. They will recall us soon from this exile to our natural duty. President Reagan had sown a miracle of patriotism with depression, repression and tough talk against the Russkies. Now President Bush reaps a malevolent harvest. It doesn't matter what they say or do, they are still our enemies, and the Chinks, too. It's not over yet, there, even if Gorby did kiss the pope, and whatever the annual market increase of a capitalist-or-whatever China!"
"So they will, old buddy," chimed in Crabs, not wanting to be dominated by Westmold's impassioned outburst. "There's nothing like a little hunger and insecurity to make people want to take it out on others, on anyone else. It is the theme of history itself and the reason for our honorable occupation. There is no history without the army. I could hardly wait until they ordered us out into another foray for freedom, democracy and the free market system, and now that have with Iraq. There will always be an enemy! There must be an enemy! The Islamo-Fascists are a godsend!"
Now Crabs looked at Westmold who was suddenly engrossed with a delicacy he had found in his duffel bag. "What's that you've got?"
"Hummm," replied Westmold, "it's a tiny heart. I think it's from My Lai."
"Lucky you!" said Crabs enviously. He rummaged in his duffel bag. "I understand the pigs of Vietnam had a great feast of roast people from napalm. It's wasted on them. They have no taste. This is prime cut, lean and firm. I don't care if it is dark meat."
The two jackals gorged in silence for a while, their mouths too stuffed to speak.
"I hear there are already Special Forces again in the Far East," slobbered Westmold. Blood and gristle ran down his chin. "Afghanistan and Iraq are a step in the right direction. Our return to Southeast Asia will be with the full support of the American people. All they need is a little straight talk! Wait until the slopes feel our vengeance. Peace through strength!" he ejaculated, and surprised himself with it. He knew he had heard that phrase some place and time before. Ah, yes, he remembered, it was a phrase of the Nazis echoed by Ronald Reagan, faintly by Rummy Rumsfeld throughout two separate administrations.
"Yes," aped Crabs in reply. "We shall return to the Orient after we teach the spics and greasers a lesson again as we have done so many times in the past. The Pacific is ours, too, and the Red Sea, besides South America and Mesopotamia!"
"I agree of course," asserted Westmold. "It's for their own good, for peace and freedom, for democracy and the American Way, for mom and apple pie and the flag. Who could resist it? Why should they resist it? They could all be little, brown Americans if only they knew it! We shall teach them!"
"Yes, yes," blubbered Crabs getting carried away with himself. Human grease spattered on his stars. "And you can kill an idea! It's a simple matter of killing enough people! We have the weaponry to do it! The American people with their hard-earned cash and native, technological know-how provide it to us! And it is now made available to us by Ronald Reagan, The Great Communicator Of Our Values, and by his intellectual and spiritual heir, Dubya!"
"And we have the resolve," burst in Westmold. "We must remember the words engraved over the gate of the War College: L'AUDACE, L'AUDACE, TOUJOURS L'AUDACE!"
"LeMay had the right idea," added Crabs. "We shall blast all of them back into the Paleozoic!"
"MacArthur was right, too," stated Westmold. "He told me that we could only win in Asia with a scorched earth policy, ----- on those arrogant little yellow bastards who won't see things our way---extermination!"
And aroused by their own fevered words and the prospect of war, Westmold and Crabs got into a frenzy of mutual sniffing of assholes.
"Soon, soon," moaned Westmold with satisfaction, as he ate a particularly delicious piece of infantile cortex for dessert. "And not only all that! Our place in heaven is as assured as is our place in the Defense Establishment of the United States of America. God is on our side! He has always been! I believe in Him fervently! He believes in us with all the might of America!
And Jesus loves us!"
Now Crabs chorused in on cue: "There is nothing to forgive!" Abruptly, Crabs and Westmold stood up and saluted each other to a chorus of farts. As they held their salute and the stink rose around them, over the horizon from the East faintly but in agony wafted the puerile slogan of Mussolini: “Sequitemi al destino!”
NOTES
► The war is that of the invasion of Ethiopia by the Italian Fascists under Mussolini in 1935. The chief generals of that war were Pietro Badoglio and Rodolfo Graziani. The Italian fascists won the war and Ethiopia was incorporated into Italy in 1941. The Italian fascists mimicked the colonial ambitions of the major European powers. In 1943, in defeat, Italy lost Ethiopia.
► The chief American generals in Vietnam were William C. Westmoreland and Creighton W. Abrams.
► Superba. This word from Latin means not only “great,” “proud,” and “superb,” but also “arrogant,” “conceited,” “haughty,” and “contemptuous”.
► Aduwa (or Adawa) was the site in Ethiopia of the defeat of an Italian Expeditionary Force in 1896 by the Ethiopians.
► The philosopher who ended his days peacefully in Rome was George Santayana. It was he who first made the statement endlessly quoted: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to fulfill it.”
► Gli Stati Uniti is how “The United States” is written in Italian. “Gli” is a masculine plural article.
► L’ultimo, e piu meglio speranza del mondo. This is a translation into Italian of Abraham Lincoln’s phrase, often quoted: “America is the last best hope on earth.”
► Opera Buffa is Italian comic opera of the 18th century.
► Enantiodromia is a word from Greek meaning, literally, “running the other way.” It was used by the ancient Ionian philosopher Heraclitus to express the perception that, over time, all things change into their opposite.
► Sequitemi al destino. It means “follow me into destiny,” and was one of Mussolini’s vapid slogans.
► My Lai is the name of a village in Vietnam where more than 300 civilians, including women and children, were massacred by US forces led primarily by Lt. William J. Calley. (Actually, the massacre was at a different village, but the point is valid.)
► Peace Through Strength. Slogan used by Sun Tzu, the German Nazis, and by the US military starting in the Cold War, and ever since. It appears on the Seal of the state of Texas.
► L’Audace! L’Audace! Toujours L’Audace! It is from French and means: Audacity (boldness, daring) forever. It is a statement of extreme aggressiveness.
(TRC 09-20-09)
