BAD TO WORSE

The author William S. Burroughs used to say that nothing happens in reality unless a writer writes it first. I take his meaning in a metaphorical sense, but he was speaking more or less literally. So was the poet Wallace Stevens in a signature poem, "The Idea of Order in Key West":

And when she sang, the sea,
Whatever self it had, became the self
That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,
As we beheld her striding there alone,
Knew that there never was a world for her
Except the one she sang and, singing, made.

The composer William Osborne believes in the literal meaning as well. "We write (or sing) our world into being," he says, noting that it is the theme of "Cybeline," his music theater collaboration with Abbie Conant, presented six weeks ago at the Walt Disney Hall music complex in Los Angeles.

Why bring this up now? Because the horrific news from Iraq about American and British soldiers torturing prisoners -- as reported Sunday by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker and by The Mirror in London -- was prefigured in the 1982 play "Catastrophe," which Samuel Beckett wrote in honor of Vaclav Havel about the interrogation of a dissident. There's a remarkable equivalence between the torture photos from Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad and scenes in the play. The equivalence (of abuse and humiliation) does not have pictorial exactness. But the meaning is scarcely different.

In one of the play's scenes "a theatre director and his assistant arrange a protagonist, who stands on a black block submitting to their direction. 'D', the director, wears a fur coat and matching toque (a kind of hat) and smokes a fat cigar." Think of the horseplay of the smiling U.S. soldiers as they posed their abused prisoners for photos. These two photos from a production of "Catastrophe" -- here and here -- are less graphic than the "sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses" revealed in Major General Antonio M. Taguba's Army report, which Hersh obtained, but the intended goal of abject human degradation is the same.

"Cybeline" took the issue a step further. Osborne's program notes explain that "under the social engineering of the military," exemplified "with special clarity" by the "history of 20th century Germany," a human being can become "a consciously programmed construct, or cyborg. As such, humans are not served by the media but are part of its apparatus, cyberbia." It reaches the point where "society itself becomes a programmable cyborg." He writes:

This is the fascistic reduction of human society, the mass programming of a culture, to simplistic ideals generally formulating social identity based on slogans and the unifying forces of hatred. Strength through joy, Blut und Boden, and Lebensraum were common slogans during the Third Reich, but ultimately, media sound bites such as Weapons of Mass Destruction, Liberation, Support Our Troops, and War On Terrorism could have a similarly reductive and imperialistic effect.

America's all-volunteer military had to embrace advertising since it needed to compete for human resources in a free market. It also has to manipulate the media to win propaganda wars. The military has thus entered the cultural wars of society. Since the military's resources are unparalleled, its ability to conduct a cultural war on its own people is without comparison. Be all that you can be. An Army of One. A few good men. Join the navy and see the world. Under the military-industrial complex's massive social engineering, war has become the unifying force of American society. (Italics added.)

This U.S. Army Web site gives a hint of what Osborne means. The section on "Jobs" is especially telling. For example, SPC Christopher Bashaw, describes his satisfaction with a Land Warrior Program he's in, which tests the Army's latest technology and "makes every soldier wearing it a part of a mobile computer network."

As U.S. Senator Robert Byrd said in "Mission Not Accomplished in Iraq," a speech he gave last week to mark the anniversary of the Maximum Leader's triumphal made-for-television landing aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln to declare the end of major combat operations:

Since that time, Iraq has become a veritable shooting gallery. This April has been the bloodiest month of the entire war. ... Young lives cut short in a pointless conflict and all the President can say is that it "has been a tough couple of weeks." A tough couple of weeks, indeed.

Plans have obviously gone tragically awry. But the President has, so far, only managed to mutter that we must "stay the course." But what course is there to keep when our ship of state is being tossed like a dinghy in a storm of Middle East politics? If the course is to end in the liberation of Iraq and bring a definitive end to the war against Saddam Hussein, one must conclude, mission not accomplished, Mr. President.

The mission, it has turned out, is not only not accomplished. It has, with the latest revelations, turned into a moral defeat so shattering that the political and military nightmare (still brewing, with worse to come) may one day seem to have been pre-ordained.

Correction: The photos in the London newspaper The Mirror referred to above as showing British troops torturing Iraqi prisoners have since been exposed as fakes.