Rows of white granite markers drop away and then ripple up the far grassy hill and go on forever across flat green lawns. Arlington Cemetery. It looks like a thousand little scabs trying to heal one big wound.
War is about holes. Colin Powell planted the seeds for war with a story that had an integrity-hole big enough to drive a WMD mobile-lab truck through. Donald Rumsfeld now tills the book-sales circuit as he works to bury truth down the memory hole. The corporate media cultivated and nurtured the lies of Curveball even as they knew there was doubt. They all dug a deep and deadly hole and now scramble to backfill and cover it over.
War is about holes. The definition of what is a good or bad war; all the patriotic rationalizations and reasons for war, all the war movies and war stories are nothing more than the dirt we shovel in to fill up the holes. Powell and Rumsfeld and the corporate media are all shoveling as fast as they can right now.
War is about holes. Foxholes. Bullet holes. Fire-in-the hole! Bomb craters. Caves and graves. Whether Grunt, Fobbit or REMF, a combat tour is all about holes. Holes you jump into for survival when the shooting starts, and the constant hope and prayer you don’t end up in a hole for good.
A mother often describes the arrival of the uniformed messengers of death on her front porch as the moment she felt as if she had suddenly fallen into a deep, dark hole. There is a hole in New York City. Some say that hole started the war. Some say the war started long before the hole. And there are fights about what should go into or who should be allowed anywhere around that hole.
In the controversy surrounding the creation of the national Vietnam Memorial was the issue of the design. Critics said it looked like a long gash in the earth, like a wound or a scar. It was a hole you had to descend into as the black Wall towered over you. And that is exactly what happens when you walk the memorial. You descend into the hole of war and stare at the names behind your own reflection and the reflection of the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. It is a powerful, overwhelming experience.
I guess we forget sometimes that we can use holes to plant life, to plant the seeds of hope or the saplings of peace. Not too deep lest we smother the plantings. Not too shallow or we risk it being easily uprooted. But we must be constant gardeners and prevent the weeds of war from spreading and strangling the roots of peace and hope. We must tend to the garden for all our sakes, and for the sake of those lost in the holes of war, and those who stare back and ask: Why?
War is about holes. Peace is about what we put in those holes.