With Osama bin Laden's death, we see the return of militaristic and nationalistic celebrations of a kind and scale that haven't occurred much since the beginning of the Second Iraq War. While public opinion has turned against the cost (both human and monetary) of our endless foreign wars, the recent jubilation over the killing of bin Laden shows how close the flash point of American triumphalism lies to the surface of our psyches. In "What I Will" Suheir Hammad -- writing against the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and U.S. support for Israel's occupation of Palestine -- states her refusal to be complicit in the narrow-minded jingoism that powers our nation's war machine. At this moment in history, when we have witnessed the destruction that our wars have inflicted -- on the countries we have occupied and on our own country -- its important to remember that killing one person (or any number of people) won't stop the waning of our empire or end the cycles of violence that brought us to this point.
What I Will by Suheir Hammad:
I will not
dance to your war
drum. I will
not lend my soul nor
my bones to your war
drum. I will
not dance to your
beating. I know that beat.
It is lifeless. I know
intimately that skin
you are hitting. It
was alive once
hunted stolen
stretched. I will
not dance to your drummed
up war. I will not pop
spin beak for you. I
will not hate for you or
even hate you. I will
not kill for you. Especially
I will not die
for you. I will not mourn
the dead with murder nor
suicide. I will not side
with you nor dance to bombs
because everyone else is
dancing. Everyone can be
wrong. Life is a right not
collateral or casual. I
will not forget where
I come from. I
will craft my own drum. Gather my beloved
near and our chanting
will be dancing. Our
humming will be drumming. I
will not be played. I
will not lend my name
nor my rhythm to your
beat. I will dance
and resist and dance and
persist and dance. This heartbeat is louder than
death. Your war drum ain’t
louder than this breath.
-- Isaac Miller, Spoken Word Editor for The Progressive