Epic Temptations (On an Unwritten Poem)

In late December 1990 I called the cable company and canceled my subscription. In previous months I caught myself too frequently watching until the same infomercial was broadcast simultaneously on three channels. I was developing an addiction, an overwhelming desire to keep up with the news of the upcoming war. Though the infomer cials were a kind of antidote to Ted Koppel's blatant anti-Arab postur ing, Carson's Sodom/Saddam one liners, and the general approval—from Bob Hope to Bob Dylan—of the establishment's version of what needed to be done to Iraq, I knew I needed to give up television altogether, at least until the war ended, and the subse quent media blitzes passed on. I was in Cairo when Iraqi troops invaded Kuwait. Like most people on the streets there, I accepted the "U.N." effort and the strong international response. I knew the West acted quickly only because Kuwait has important oil reserves (because Kuwait is not Cambodia or East Timor), but also knew that Saddam Hussein was a vicious man and the idea of the world gathering strength to squash his totalitarian regime appealed to me and gave me some hope. My sense of hope, though, was ironic. I was counting on people's inability to contain the repercussions of their actions. Months before the invasion of Kuwait, we witnessed, on television, how a crowd at the West German con sulate in Vienna triggered the collapse of the Soviet Bloc. Maybe the same could happen in the Middle East, I thought. Maybe the Kuwait war would expose the brutal nature of all the Middle East regimes and the tremendous oppression under which millions of people existed. My assessment of the events in Kuwait changed within weeks of my return to the U.S. On the radio and television reporters did not