Time to Recount

We are approaching what is being called the 5th anniversary of the Iraq War, and my attention has been called to that calling of it. The attention calling was done by fellow editor Artis "Not Just The Spoonman" [no last name.] Every time the subject of the Iraq War comes up in the little editorial committee meetings we have, Artis reminds us that "The Iraq War" has been going on without letup at least since the United States invaded Iraq on January 17, 1991, and therefore the anniversary we should have recognized was not the 5th but the 17th Anniversary, two months ago.

It occurred to me just last night, as I was sobering, that this is a case of "reckoning." I believe the word "reckoning" is not used often enough, and this instance demonstrates the need. Whenever someone reckons something, it would help a great deal if he/she would announce it by saying, "I reckon that... ", or, "The way I reckon it is... ", or, "By my reckoning... ", so we would all be reminded it wasn't a date or a number or an age we just heard, but a reckoning of one.

Reckoning can be loads of fun. For example, you can reckon that the official start of the War on Osama bin Laden began the day the Saudis told him they didn't love him anymore. That happened exactly when the Saudis decided to accept non-Muslim assistance in defending against the threat of Iraqi invasion (after Iraq invaded Kuwait, remember?) in direct opposition to bin Laden's idea to kick Iraqi butt with an all-Muslim army. (See? There WAS a connection between bin Laden and Iraq, before 2003!)


I could reckon that the Iraq War began at the precise beginning of history. The first written words, I reckon, were written on a clay tablet and inventoried bricks thrown by people of Sumerian city-state Eridu at people of upstart Sumerian city-state Bad-tibira. Since then there has always been an Iraq War, it's only been a question of whose war it was. For instance, for a time the Mongols owned the Iraq War. Later, the Ottomans owned it for almost 4 centuries. Then the British owned it for awhile. In 1977 even the Israelis owned a piece of it. Persians have owned it off and on, since King Cyrus. And since 1990, at the urging of Margaret Thatcher, the United States has been principal proprietor.

[Above Right: A crude facsimile of a Sumerian tablet bemoaning the fact that war only benefits brick-makers. Below: The terrible consequences of uncontrolled brick-proliferation.]

Important: Never call your reckonings calculations. If you call them calculations, people will think you're doing math. They will then groan and shun you. Likewise, never admit to counting anything. Always say you're "re-counting" it. That way it sounds like you're telling a story, which is a warm fuzzy human thing to do, instead of adding up numbers, which is a cold metallic alien thing to do, because we all personally know aliens who add all the time.

Incidentally, the word "reckon" originated with Old English "gerecenian" meaning "recount' as in "relate" or "tell a story." So etymology backs me up on this front.

[Left: What a difference an extra "E" makes!]

Which brings me around to the point I want to make. It is war, not the act of counting, that is the exact opposite of recounting and relating. War is organized confusion. War negates story telling. War kills stories. Therefore war kills reckoning.

Again, etymology is on my side. Of course, just as Eskimos have no one word for "snow", and Bedouins have no one word for "sand" (I'm making this up), so the ancient Germanic peoples didn't have a word for war per se. But one word they used, which was the word that comes down to us as "war", meant "to confuse." They were very cognizant of the fact that wearing a bear suit and a helmet with horns and running through a village shrieking and hacking at people with axes is perplexing, even disorienting, behavior.

Conversely, if you want to fight war you have to do it by taking back reckoning and recounting and story telling.