Thursday 15 June 2006

We've lost intelligence

The Satire of Expletives

Over a year ago, I was well and truly entertained watching a film TEAM America: World Police. The language in the film was ripe with expletives and hardly the kind of talk one would find in decent company, but it did not take away from the entertainment value.

Besides, it was one of those meetings with ex-colleagues, which had become a routine of spending the best part of 4 weeks trying to get everyone together to watch something of interest.

The theme songs were beyond the pale covering every serious issue of the day, like Everyone Has AIDS, which would make puritans rail abuse at the slightest opportunity.

Destroying to save

The team comprised mercenary type gung-ho personnel who with the help of technology and artistic flair would enter any situation and resolve the problem leaving behind a calling card of utter destruction like the destruction of the Eiffel Tower in the process of eliminating terrorists.

The mainframe system that handled all their data and control systems was called I.N.T.E.L.L.I.G.E.N.C.E., it had every data-mining capability hooking into news wires, satellite links and any communication system in the globe.

As the plot thickened, the team's headquarters concealed in Mount Rushmore was attached and almost completely destroyed and the travail that went up on that destruction was phrased in the line - "We've lost I.N.T.E.L.L.I.G.E.N.C.E! I repeat, we have no I.N.T.E.L.L.I.G.E.N.C.E"

Inappropriate there, disdainful here

So, when I read that a completely distasteful song appeared on the Internet called Hadji Girl sung to a tune within Team America by a US Marine in Iraq - not only was intelligence lost, the 23 year old boy probably never had any.

As usual, the stiffest condemnation of that insensitive and uncompassionate song comes from the Marines codified in the word "inappropriate".

Inappropriate is probably the highest level of condemnation that can be mustered by the Bush regime against friends like Pat Robertson when he called for the assassination of Hugo Chavez.

Also the comments of the former Education Secretary William Bennett when he surmised about aborting black babies was not appropriate.

The appropriateness of the inappropriate responses to inappropriate outrages is questionable at times when they should appropriately appropriate the situation for the decency and candour; this is a misappropriation of privilege and opportunity.

The Iraqi Joke

The joke - as the marine indicated about his song - that Iraq has become which is a narrative of the blood and guts of a young girl written up by no great a buffoon; a representative of the insensitivity that flows down from the higher echelons of the Bush military machine is no surprise.

Pitifully, the people would won the war to win the peace create greater obstacles to peace than the insurgents can muster, by their inability to consider the consequences of their actions.

If anyone could just tell us where intelligence can be found; because it is not in the heads of the belligerents, we might just begin to make some progress in all the wars we are fighting.

Meanwhile as we sing an inappropriate sung lacking every sense of intelligence to the refrain of Tina Turner's "Burn Baby Burn", we might just find ourselves so sorry for lacking the intelligence to prevent the inappropriate.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Comments are accepted if in context are polite and hopefully without expletives and should show a name, anonymous, would not do. Thanks.