The Language of War

also in this post:

Britain & Global Warming
Men, Women and Cars
A Night of Noir

Sometimes, when you’re listening to the news, or a radio program, TV show or film, someone says something and it immediately catches you, and you want to save that sentence, that gathering together of words, forever. If you’re like me, you’re driving when it happens, and there you go, groping around for a pen to scribble the words down on the back of an old receipt. I’ve been in the movie theater when my ears have been teased by dialogue in a film, and there I’ll be, nudging my husband and whispering, “Got a pen?” having just heard that must-save phrase.

Just a few weeks ago, we were watching the BBC news, and the anchor, Katty Kay, was interviewing Darfur’s foreign minister. She was pushing him, in her very clipped, incisive manner (those eyes flashing as she pressed her point), because she wanted him to say out loud why the carnage was still going on, why the government was supporting the militia, when he said – out of the blue – “No-one is clean in Africa.” My husband and I looked at each other, and I said, “Did he just say what I think he said?” Yes. No-one is clean in Africa.

It’s not that we didn’t already know that, if we’ve been paying attention, but those kinds of comments aren’t often said out loud by a person in a politically privileged position.


The same thing happened yesterday, as I was listening to the news that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, having admitted to planning the 9-11 attacks and to killing journalist Daniel Pearl, had said, “The language of war is its victims.” It brought up, once again, so much of what we have written about here at nakedauthors.com, and I think it will bear a few more reflections before we’ve done chewing on that particular bone. The thing is that the comment came hot on the heels of a book I’d just finished reading - actually, it’s not been published yet, I was reading an advance review copy. The book is called, “Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance,” by Atul Gawande, a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a terrific writer – you may have read his essays in the New Yorker. Essentially, the book came out of his personal quest to be better at what he does, and to that end, he looked at medicine in different situations, countries, etc – and not only in the best hospitals, either, but in shabby run-down centers in rural India, for example. In one chapter, he looks at the challenges facing doctors in war zones, and the feats they pull off every single day to save lives. And he gives examples of the patients. At the end of the chapter entitled “Casualties of War,” he writes: “But if mortality is low, the human cost remains high. The airman lost one leg above the knee, the other at the hip, his right hand, and part of his face. When I met him, he was insistently upbeat. ‘I’m doing well, sir,’ he said. How he and others like him will be able to live and function remains an open question, however. His abdominal injuries prevented him from being able to lift himself out of bed or into a wheelchair. With only one hand, he could not manage his colostomy. We have never faced having to rehabilitate people with such extensive wounds. We are only beginning to learn what to do to make a life worth living possible for them.”

The language of war is its victims. Here are a few more sentences in that language.

The men, women and children killed and maimed in Iraq.
The children around the world crippled by land mines.
Those who are terribly wounded in terrorist attacks in Spain, in London, or those caught up in fighting in Lebanon, in Gaza, in Israel.
The child soldiers in Africa who are drugged up to kill, and kill again. No one is clean in Africa.


“The language of war is its victims.” That one will stay with me for a long time.

The Brits and Global Warming: And now something to celebrate. The government of the British Isles – a landmass responsible for 2% of carbon emissions worldwide – has gone out on a limb and said that it will cut carbon emissions by 60% by 2050, with many initiatives taking effect almost immediately. Every aspect of life in the UK will be impacted, from the way houses are built and remodeled, to recreation, driving – the list goes on. They underlined this “push” by saying that they want to set an example to the rest of the world, particularly the biggest offenders and most significant contributors to global warming, the USA and China. Interesting – to me anyway – was footage of a “captain of industry” being interviewed on TV about the measures. There he was, standing in front of a huge photograph of a melting glacier, and he says, “Well, we’ll have to see what impact all this is going to have.” The unspoken tail of that comment was, “on industry.” As we are known to say in Britain, “What a plonker.”

Men, Women and Cars: When I was single, and my car needed to go in for repair, I’d call my friend, Kas, who would follow me down to the shop, wait while I checked my car in, then she’d give me a ride home. And later on in the day, she’d take me down there to pick up my car when it was finished. And I would do the same for her. Never, in all the times we did this favor for each other, did one of us turn to the other and say, “So, what makes you think you need new brakes?” Or, “Don’t let them sell you an air-filter, they always want to do that, so you just tell them, you only want the oil change.” Or even, “And who reckons it’s an oxy-sensor? Are you sure that’s what it is?”

That is the sort of conversation I have with my husband. And it’s not as if I am some klutz with a car – I am pretty good at problem diagnosis, which is to be expected after over thirty years of car ownership. This was brought home to me on Wednesday. I was driving up to the Bay Area, my trusty Volvo loaded up with my bag, my senior citizen dog and various bits and pieces I needed with me for the week, and (at 80 mph, I might add) one of my tires shredded. So, I pulled over to the side of the road, fortunately it happened just limping distance from an exit ramp in Santa Maria, and I called AAA. I can change a tire, but I had the dog with me and I wanted to keep an eye on her seeing as we were right next to very busy traffic, and what the heck do I pay AAA for anyway, if I have to change my own tire at the side of the road? So, the tow truck arrived and my spare tire was put on the car, and I asked where the nearest tire dealer was so that I could get a new tire on the wheel and get that silly looking little mint-sized spare tire off my car and back into its cave underneath the dog’s bed.

On the way to Wayne’s Tires, I called my husband. Big mistake. Should have called afterwards. You’d have thought I had never bought a tire before. “Don’t let them rip you off, you don’t need an alignment and all that stuff, and they’ll try to sell it to you, so you just tell them all you need is a tire.” Don’t worry, hon, I know what I’m doing. If I don’t want an alignment, believe me, I will not get one.

So, guys, this is just to let you know that womenfolk, in general, are just as savvy around automobiles as men. And there are a lot of clueless men out there, when it comes to the inner workings of the internal combustion engine, and don’t we all know it!


And moving on, for anyone in the Bay Area this evening, I’ll be at the Mechanics Institute (how apt) in San Francisco (50 Post Street) where Eddie Muller – SF’s “Czar of Noir” – will be introducing the 1947 British noir classic, “They Made Me A Fugitive,” after which I will be joining Eddie and my good friend, Tony Broadbent (the Cary Grant of mystery, who wrote The Smoke and Specters in the Smoke, set in WW2 London), in a panel discussion. It should be great fun. More info at: http://www.eddiemuller.com/atlarge.html


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