4.15.06: Military revolt, back pages

The Armed forces' revolt against the Bush administration proceeds. A whole raft of generals, most of them recently retired, but having served in Iraq, now call for Rummy to step down. Other generals, not named and still serving in Iraq, join the chorus. The military doesn’t dispute the war — that may come later — but its execution, which anyone with eyes can see was not planned, thought out or performed with any competence whatsoever. The Army’s first duty is self-preservation — save the boys — and when they see arrogant incompetents putting the boys in harm’s way unnecessarily, they eventually rebel.

It was Army defections that dethroned Marcos in the Philippines.

I’m not a big supporter of the military or the military mindset, but they can at least be viewed as attempting to be professional about their job. And respected from that point of view. You may not want Dirty Harry to make a nation’s foreign policy decisions, but he or some other thin-lipped hero is who you want at your back when things get crazy. Not Rumsfeld, or Bush — the latter hasn’t succeeded in a single business he’s been handed on a platter his whole life.

My Back Pages

When I first moved to NY in the mid 70s I stayed with the painter Jamie Dalglish. In return for room and board I helped him sand the floors and renovate his loft on Bond Street — a stone's throw from CBGB as fate would have it.

I was a peculiar young man — borderline Asperger's, I would guess. Jamie occasionally made large abstract paintings and I wrote what later became Talking Heads songs.  At one point Jamie decided to borrow some of the B&W video decks that were around at the time and do a kind of art talk show video — an artist and I would talk, but the camera would never show me. Here is the artist who later became Jeff Koons. I don’t recall ever seeing all of these — there are 7 hours’ worth!