Caputo: A Familiar Stench
From author Phillip Caputo’s excellent piece in today’s LA Times: The smell of war:
I wish it could be bottled and the bottles placed on desks in the White House, the Capitol, the Washington think tanks, the editorial board rooms of magazines and newspapers whose cheerleaders called for war with Iraq, and the studios of the talk-radio hosts fulminating about French quislings and unpatriotic antiwar protesters.
Just when they were at their saber-rattling worst, I would uncork the bottles and make them sit there and inhale that hideous perfume. As a combat veteran of Vietnam and a war correspondent who covered the fall of Saigon, the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the October War in the Middle East, the Eritrean rebellion in Ethiopia, the Sudanese civil war and the Lebanese civil war (in which I was wounded in both legs), I have been appalled to see such zest for war exhibited by people who don’t know the first thing about it. If they did know, they wouldn’t be so enthusiastic.
March 15th, 2004 at 12:08 pm
Excellent! Words from someone who knows. Why is it that politicians and the like confuse the smell of war to roses? Perhaps the smell of war should be bottled and set to rest on those desks–the desks of those who because they’ve never seen war do not know the difference. They NEED TO KNOW the difference.
May 1st, 2004 at 10:30 pm
This piece was quite a prompt for me in my recent English 5 class. “The Smell of War” does not move Mr.Cheney like it does the rest of us. Imagine what it must be like for Phil Caputo who was on scene in the Golan Heights and to have to “burn his clothes” in the Hotel Incinerator. mr Caputo’s casualty projection is almost half realized thoughonly a year off. This remarkeable been there,done that man has discovered Lions, a species that kills for a reason without the complex rationale that the War Profiteers who reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. At least Lions do their own killing. Sincerely James Waldrop
May 1st, 2004 at 10:30 pm
This piece was quite a prompt for me in my recent English 5 class. “The Smell of War” does not move Mr.Cheney like it does the rest of us. Imagine what it must be like for Phil Caputo who was on scene in the Golan Heights and to have to “burn his clothes” in the Hotel Incinerator. mr Caputo’s casualty projection is almost half realized thoughonly a year off. This remarkeable been there,done that man has discovered Lions, a species that kills for a reason without the complex rationale that the War Profiteers who reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. At least Lions do their own killing. Sincerely James Waldrop
August 1st, 2004 at 9:33 am
Hey, can you send me the whole article of Phillip Caputo? The link is broken and hwne I accesed the newpaper homepage the “search” mode said it hasn’t it in the database, as it was never published (?) Could you send it to me? Thanks a lot!
January 24th, 2005 at 9:46 pm
I’m quite interested in what Mr Caputo would say about the latest Middle east peace plan, or if he would see it as one of the “when all hell freezes over” ideas. I’m just interested in his point of view seening as he’s had so much experience in the middle east as a war correspondant and has spent substantial time with both Palastinians and Isrealies alike.