Eloquent? You mean like your line, "the tripe you spout, full of grins and meaningless shuffling..."? GST, metaphors are meant to evoke an image that helps the reader to understand the point you are making. Meaningless, nonsensical metaphors do little more than convey your own lack of creativity. How does one spout tripe and how can tripe be full of grins?
As for Mr. Hedges, here are some fine examples of his "eloquence":
Although blood will continue to spill -- theirs and ours -- be prepared for this.
Although blood will spill, be prepared for this. Be prepared for what? This next sentence?
For we are embarking on an occupation that, if history is any guide, will be as damaging to our souls as it will be to our prestige, power, and security.
So, if it is not damaging to our prestige, power, etc., it won't damage our souls either? That's good.
The censure and perhaps the rage of much of the world, certainly one-fifth of the world's population which is Muslim, most of whom I'll remind you are not Arab, is upon us. Look today at the 14 people killed last night in several explosions in Casablanca. And this rage in a world where almost 50 percent of the planet struggles on less than two dollars a day will see us targeted.
Gosh! Such eloquence. I can picture the rage of the 14 people now. But that last sentence is giving me trouble - is it the rage, the world or the 50% that "will see us targeted"?
The circle of violence is a death spiral; no one escapes. We are spinning at a speed that we may not be able to hold.
If we can't hold it, will we break out of the spiral from centrifugal force?
"Modern western civilization may perish," the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr warned, "because it falsely worshiped technology as a final good."
Is there any connection at all between this quote and the text that surrounds it?
The real injustices ... will mean that we will not rid the extremists who hate us with bombs.
OK, they "hate us with bombs," but of what will we not rid them?
Iraq was a cesspool for the British when they occupied it in 1917; it will be a cesspool for us as well. The curfews, the armed clashes with angry crowds that leave scores of Iraqi dead, the military governor, the Christian Evangelical groups who are being allowed to follow on the heels ...
A cesspool metaphor doesn't quite fit here - maybe he meant to say "quagmire"? That's certainly a widely used one. Even so, I'm not sure how that image - cesspool or quagmire - relates to "armed clashes" and "Christian Evangelical groups." Besides, the only "scores of dead" since the actual war ended have been those found in mass graves, tortured and killed by Saddam. The mass demonstrations have been generally peaceful. Also, since the State Department has just now lifted travel restrictions enough so that member of congress could go to Iraq, I doubt there are significant numbers of American evangelicals trying to convert Iraqis.
The occupation of the oil fields, the notion of the Kurds and the Shiites will listen to the demands of a centralized government in Baghdad, the same Kurds and Shiites who died by the tens of thousands in defiance of Sadaam Hussein, a man who happily butchered all of those who challenged him, and this ethnic rivalry has not gone away.
Huh? Is there a sentence in there?
As William Butler Yeats wrote in "Meditations in Times Of Civil War," "We had fed the heart on fantasies / the hearts grown brutal from the fair."
Same question as on the Niebuhr quote above.
We will pay for this, but what saddens me most is that those who will by and large pay the highest price are poor kids from Mississippi or Alabama or Texas who could not get a decent job or health insurance and joined the army because it was all we offered them. For war in the end is always about betrayal, betrayal of the young by the old, of soldiers by politicians, and of idealists by cynics.
Let's see - an indictment of our economic system, of the military as a career choice, of the old, of politicians, and of cynics. Did he miss anyone?
We no longer understand that war begins by calling for the annihilation of others but ends if we do not know when to make or maintain peace with self-annihilation.
How do you "make peace with self-annihilation"?
I could go on, but I've gotta run. I think it should be clear, though, that flowery words designed to elicit emotion, but completely lacking in either clarity of meaning or a factual basis may sound "eloquent" to you, but is really just emotional tripe.
BTW, "tripe" is a meaningful metaphor all by itself, when used properly. |
