Adam Cohen reminds us today that Wilfred Owen, the great British poet, died in battle 85
\nyears ago this week. You can disagree with his claim that Owen is wrongly portrayed as antiwar
\n— “[H]e was not,” Cohen writes. “What he stood for was seeing war clearly” — but Cohen’s
\nlarger point that George W. Bush has dishonored the dead and wounded of his administration’s
\nIraq war is incontrovertible.<\/P>
\n
The headline on today’s piece puts the issue in literary terms: This is the same gung-ho president, of course, who was only too willing to burnish his TV Last December in the runup to the invasion of Iraq, I wrote: “People who argue for going to If in smothering dreams you too could pace It’s a side issue, but can anyone still believe that Owen was not antiwar after reading this Adam Cohen reminds us today that Wilfred Owen, the great British poet, died in battle 85 years ago this week. You can disagree with his claim that Owen is wrongly portrayed as antiwar — “[H]e was not,” Cohen writes. “What he stood for was seeing war clearly” — but Cohen’s larger point that George W. Bush […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-445","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-7b","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nDead.”<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A> But make no mistake: It’s an indictment. To spin the news and
\nobscure reality, “President Bush is not attending soldier funerals, as previous presidents have,”
\nCohen writes, “avoiding a television image that could sow doubts in viewers’ minds. He avoids
\nmentioning the American dead — and the injured, who are seven times as numerous.” <\/P>
\n
\nimage by dressing up in pilot’s gear and landing by jet on an aircraft carrier returning from war
\nduty in the Gulf. Meantime, the Pentagon prohibits photos and TV shots of coffins returning from
\nthe Iraqi war zone.<\/P>
\n
\nwar — any war — ought to read the poetry of Wilfred Owen. Let them read war reporter
\nHedges<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A>‘ just-published
\nMeaning,”<\/EM><\/FONT><\/B><\/A> an antiwar cry from the heart that invokes these
\nlines from Owen’s World War I poem,
\nDecorum est,’<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A> on the death of a soldier in a gas attack”: <\/P>
\n
Behind the wagon that we flung him
\nin,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of
\nsin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted
\nlungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent
\ntongues, —
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for
\nsome desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro Patria mori.<\/I><\/P>
\n
\nrebuttal of the poet Horace’s lines: “Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori” (It is sweet and right
\nto die for one’s country)?<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"