“Gulf War (5): How to
Love an Arab”
Leonard’s stream of consciousness piece about the banality
of his life as it is disrupted by the start of the war. He laments about being
duped into thinking that the war might not happen when he finds out that the
decision had been made two weeks before the “deadline.” It’s piece of
exasperation about a society that turned the war into “The action adventure!
The adrenaline overload!” with no time or proclivity to really think and form
opinions about anything.
The title is a reference to his closing thoughts about
America’s tendency to conquer and then “fall in love with the culture we’ve
just disposed.” It’s a stretch but he had just seen Dancing with Wolves. His closing for the essay is, “We’ll probably
love the idea of Arabs once we’ve
killed enough of them.”
New name: Tariq Aziz = Saddam Hussein’s Deputy prime
Minister, the guy with the cigar. Right out of Duck Soup.
New
learning: WW I broke out after Serbia accepted all of Austria’s conditions –
except one: that Austria be allowed to conduct it’s own investigation into the
assassination of the Arch Duke on Serbian soil.
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