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April/May 2003
by Samuel R. Smith, Ph.D.
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Bushites,
Tricky Dick, and the Reichstag
Jim Booth
05.22.03, 4:50 pm |
Great rant, Sam.
Here's my own:
For my part, I'm taken
back to the days of the Nixon administration just before
Watergate broke when it seemed that all people were struggling
for in the '60s was going to get crushed by RMN and his
"silent majority." That silent majority
didn't have to sit in the back of the bus, fight the stupid
fucking Vietnam War or go to jail for protesting against
those injustices.
That silent majority also
represented a generation gap. Those were my parents,
and Steve's parents, and your parents and grandparents,
Sam. People we could talk to in that intimate way
that families relate and sometimes even bring to a modified
POV.
This crowd - these Bushites
– who represent less than half the population (for
those who keep forgetting that Gore won the popular vote)
are like nothing so much as like the Nazis – once power
of any sort is ceded to them, they use it in as vicious
a way as possible to consolidate their positions and ride
down any opposition.
Ultimately, it has the
chilling effect of making 9/11 look not like Pearl Harbor
but like the burning of the Reichstag.
My freshman year in college
I took a great little English course in which a professor
talked about bifurcative propaganda: "If you're not
with us, you're against us." He used the Nixon
strategy of the silent majority as his proof.
Now we have Fox News and
other hegemonic forces aligned in ways that Tricky Dick
could only dream of.
God help us. And
God help this country.
:comments?
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Shut
Up and Think
Sam Smith
05.22.03, 4:50 pm |
Steve Reynolds, friend of the Pit, sent me today's
NY
Times op-ed by Bob Herbert, and it just
set me off on some things I've been meaning to say lately.
So I said them. Have a look at the op-ed first, though.
Sorry
folks, but this little editorial just caught me wrong.
The ultimate irony is the nature of who’s doing
the yelling and why. The semi-literate yahoos calling
for Natalie Maines’ head are also the people who stand,
every 4th of July, and sing Lee Greenwood's famous patriotic
anthem at the top of their goddamned lungs, because, you
know, "I'm proud to be an American, where at least
I know I'm free." Free to do anything except disagree
with popular opinion, that is, because, see, that’s what
we really mean when we talk about freedom in the US –
we’re talking about your freedom to think what gummint
and big corporations want you to think.
Meanwhile, these same folks convince themselves, when
they step into the voting booth, that a vote for a rich,
privileged son of the nation's power elite is a vote for
somebody that by god represents the way they think. Oddly,
many of these regular folks know people who were born
into the right families, and they know from ugly experience
that the silver-spoon crowd feels it’s too good to associate
with the NASCAR crowd. And the NASCAR crowd hates these
spoiled rich mothers, especially when they have to deal
with them more or less directly (which happens damned
near daily, because they all work their asses off for
not a lot of money in companies owned by people like Vice
President Dick Halliburton, err, Cheney, and King Dubya).
I'm sick of the stupidity. Dammit, I grew up working class
in the South, and I’m describing an indisputable reality.
(Note that while I’m mad, I’m not surprised. Stupidity
isn’t a recent invention, exactly.) Still, I have to say
that the first couple years of the reign of George II
have accomplished two things very clearly:
1: They have empowered an extended public display of unthinking
dimwittedness the like of which I don't think I've seen
in my lifetime (although those who lived through McCarthyism
may have seen as bad, or worse).
2: They have exhausted my patience with said dimwits.
I'm not always right, and there are plenty of smart people
who disagree with me on various points, and hell, one
of the things I love most about life is the possibility
that each day I might encounter somebody who can show
me where I'm wrong about something, and hence, provide
me with an avenue toward improving myself. But I'm sick
and tired and over people who disagree with me
for stupid reasons (and the same goes for people
who agree with me for stupid reasons, too).
The
world stands at a dangerous crossroads, and there's a
very real possibility that the millennia-old conflict
between progress and fundamentalism could erupt into full-scale
war. At times like this, ignorance and hypocrisy are the
biggest threats we face.
So let’s catch a deep breath and remember what George
Clinton said: “Think – it ain’t illegal yet.”
Oh,
one more thing: god bless the Dixie Chicks and our troops.
:comments?
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Live
From Baghdad
Bernard M. Timberg
05.22.03, 4:50 pm |
Bernard
Timberg was the chair of the Communication Arts Department
and director of the telecommunications internship program
at Johnson C. Smith University from 1998-2001. He has
recently completed a book on the history of the television
talk show, Television Talk, which looks at the
role of television in American culture and public opinion.
During
the war in Iraq we got used to the blaring headlines and
adrenaline-stirring fanfares of FOX News, CNN and the
24/7 News Channels. Recently, in a small university town
of 7,000 some 20 minutes north of Charlotte, another kind
of television history was quietly being made.
One
hundred fifty Davidson College students filed into the
student union auditorium while an ocean and a continent
away, 100 Iraqis gathered in a lecture hall in Baghdad.
For two hours, Davidson students talked to knowledgeable
and articulate Iraqi citizens, each side confronting and
dispelling myths and overcoming cultural, political and
physical barriers.
The
event was arranged by Professor James Zogby, a visiting
faculty member and the director of the Arab American Institute
in Washington. His counterpart in Baghdad was Jaber Obaid,
the "Tom Brokaw" of Abu Dhabi Television, as
Zogby explained.
The
Davidson students asked the Iraqis: What was it like living
in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq? The answers were disturbing,
sobering and disillusioning. Did the Iraqis see the US
in Iraq as "liberators" or "occupiers,"
Zogby asked. Of the more than 100 Iraqis assembled in
the hall, only five or six raised their hands at the term
"liberators." The other 95 percent of the Iraqi
panel, which included Shiites, Kurds, and Sunnis from
all parts of the country, viewed the Americas as occupiers
pure and simple. If they had had any doubts about it at
the beginning, the exclusive protection of the oil fields
to the neglect of other vital sites – hospitals, educational
facilities, the National Museum with its irreplaceable
collection of historical and cultural treasures – convinced
them.
Speaker
after speaker said the American government had clearly
lied to them and the rest of the world, that all the talk
about "freedom" and "self-government"
was, as far as they were concerned, mere window-dressing.
More
than simple callousness or lack of planning, the speakers
felt there was a coordinated effort at the highest levels
of American policy to allow the conditions of chaos, looting,
and devastation – what better way to insure Washington's
continued presence in the country and the construction
of a puppet government under its domination. They wanted
the US out now, and they themselves would deal with the
consequences of reconstruction – the US was doing more
harm than good and its motives for the future, for the
oil industry in Iraq, only boded more disillusionment,
more suffering, more looting of the country and its resources.
The
Davidson students were clearly taken aback, but for the
most part listened respectfully, wanting to hear what
the Iraqis had to say. They began to dispute among themselves.
One student, John, was particularly articulate in presenting
the Bush Administration position. He told the Iraqis to
have patience – that it took time to instill democratic
institutions and values.
Another
student, his cap jammed down over his head and his long
lanky body sprawled out in a lounge-chair position, suddenly
sat up. He turned to the speaker: "John, you're asking
these Iraqis to have patience in what is for them desperate
circumstances. Where was your 'patience' in the days before
the war? Where was your willingness to play out all options
before sailing in and bombing the country into oblivion?"
And
so it went. American students talking to each other, and
to Iraqi citizens – directly. It was a remarkable experience.
The intensity in the room was palpable, relieved only
during breaks by Zogby's best efforts to cut the tension
with jokes as technicians scrambled on either side to
maintain or resume connections. There was a strange, rough
quality to the broadcast, with a several-second delay
between questions and answers. The video/sound signals
were bouncing by satellite to London, and then by satellite
relay on to Baghdad, but then returning to Davidson, also
by satellite – four bounces, adding up to the long delay.
Occasionally the satellites would be lost over the horizon
due to a mountain range or other interference and the
connection would be lost entirely. The Adu Dhabi technicians
had to re-shoot the coordinates to resume. At these times
the satellite image would freeze, turned to checkers and
then degenerate on the screen. But these "glitches"
only added to the excitement.
The
idea wasn't new. Edward R. Murrow used film cameras and
telephone lines for continent and ocean-spanning, and
mind-expanding, dialogues in the late 1950s on his program
Small World. Phil Donahue's "space bridge"
with Russian journalist Vladimir Posner promoted détente
in the mid-1980s. And several weeks before the war in
Iraq, the Global Nomad Media group had reached several
thousand high school students with a videoconference to
Baghdad. George Mason University's Center for Global Education
experiment launched a similar experiment, this one in
association Al Jazeera Television.
Approximately
35 million people – about the same number as watched the
final episode of Joe Millionaire – viewed this
frank exchange between the Davidson and the Arab world.
But relatively few Americans saw the dialogue unless they
happened to have Worldlink TV.
There
was more drama, more true reality, more suspense in this
simple scoop-to-scoop television experiment from Davidson,
NC than in all the Hollywoodized 24/7 coverage on all
the news channels put together.
It
hadn't cost that much – nothing in comparison to the technology
and deployment of reporters and "experts" on
the cable news channels. Hopefully, direct, televised
dialogues between citizens of different countries will
become more commonplace.
You
had to wonder: if more people were seeing these kinds
of dialogues instead of the self-serving platitudes of
the news channels, how would it influence them when they
went into that booth and pulled the voting machine lever
next November?
:comments?
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How
Many US Soldiers Has Rumsfeld Killed?
Sam Smith
04.09.03, 3:59 pm |
A
couple interesting links forwarded to me by a co-worker:
The
first is a good analysis of the planning leading up to the
war, while the second speculates on why Rumsfeld has
been so insistent on a policy that stretches US forces so
thinly. The reasoning seems plausible enough to me, although
I can see other explanations working just as well. But the
articles taken together set me to thinking.
A
couple weeks ago I'd have looked at the clash between Rumsfeld
and the Pentagon and focused primarily on what strikes me
as basic corporate CEO-style arrogance on Rummy's part. Lord
knows we've seen enough over-blown boardroom jackasses in
the last couple years that we aren't surprised when a man
with that kind of background becomes one with his own hype,
and the reality is that you don't become a big time corporate
player if you don't think you have a better idea and the ego
to insist on its adoption. But Rumsfeld is, like everybody
else on the Bush team except Powell, a chicken-hawk, and while
his refusal to listen to people who actually know about
war is probably not surprising, it is most definitely distressing.
We aren't playing with stock options and trophy wives here,
we're playing with human lives, the lives of American soldiers
and the thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens we're ostensibly
out to liberate. More importantly, we're playing literally
with the geopolitical future of the globe. Thank you very
much, but I want the most qualified driver behind the wheel,
and I don't much care about his political affiliation.
So
I read this stuff this morning, and then think how many references
I have seen since the war started to how thinly stretched
our troops are, to insufficient supply lines, and so forth.
To units having to advance through areas that we have not
been able to adequately secure because we lack the necessary
footprint on the ground. And I start wondering how many of
the dead and wounded and captured and missing might not be
dead and wounded and captured and missing if our damned SecDef
were willing to listen to the experts who work for
him. I'm always a big fan of innovation, of new ideas, and
am not impressed by "this is how we've always done it
before," so I am not conferring any sort of ex cathedra
status on the "tip-fiddle" (which is explained in
the New Yorker article). But I am saying that in this
case, Rummy's attitude-to-substance (A:S) ratio is tipped
in the wrong direction, with A > S. (This is one of my
little laws for succeeding in the world – attitude is fine,
but your level of attitude should never exceed your level
of knowledge and substance, so A should always be < or
= S; if A > S, decisions are being made not by intelligence,
but by ego, which leads us frequently to D – disaster.)
If
you've been reading the Pit blog regularly, you know that
one of my chief worries as this war thing ramped up was the
ineptitude of our leadership – mostly Bush, but also his close
circle of advisers, of whom only Powell has ever been closer
to a real shooting war than, say, the verandah at the Country
Club (see "Who
Will Lead Us"). And while I have been vocally opposed
to starting this war, it has also been paramount to me that
once we launched we needed to win it as quickly and effectively
as possible. That means as few deaths, especially among American
forces and the aforementioned liberatees as possible.
I
begin to wonder to what degree my fears were realized, even
as this morning's news is plastered with images of victory
– American Marines helping Iraqis topple a bronze statue of
Saddam, an old man using his shoe to pound a poster featuring
the face of Saddam, celebrations in the streets, as the people
finally begin to believe that maybe, just maybe, Saddam and
his Baath thugs can no longer hurt them.... The war isn't
over, but the outcome is decided, and it doesn't look at this
point as though the worst-case scenarios are coming to pass,
thanks in large part I suspect to the sheer irrationality
of Hussein's ego. It could have been worse – a lot
worse, and we can all be grateful that the dictator was blinded
by his machismo.
Still,
despite the apparent good news, how many people now lie dead
who'd be alive and more or less well had Bush and his cronies
let our highly trained military do its job? And if the speculation
in the Slate piece proves accurate, how many more US
troops will be sacrificed on the altar of Rumsfeld's self-importance
as the drive to Empire continues?
:comments?
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Slaughter
at the Bridge of Death
Paul Barrow, Jay DeFrank, Sam Smith
04.02.03, 8:30 pm |
It
began last night when Aaron Butler sent me Mark Franchetti's
recent piece for the London Times, "Slaughter
at the Bridge of Death: US Marines Fire on Civilians."
Brutal, ugly, horrific – this was war at its most disturbing.
So I sent the URL around and encouraged people to read it,
noting that we weren't seeing stories like this from our
press. The article provoked a reply from Paul Barrow (Paul
is a former colleague from my Boston days, and a native
Brit, which explains his familiarity with the Times), upon
which I commented, and that elicited a commentary from Col.
Jay DeFrank, who heads up PR for the Dept. of Defense at
the Pentagon. So here's what passed back and forth via e-mail,
more or less.
Paul:
This piece was so sensationalist I had difficulty believing
it could be attributed to the Times. But a Google search
revealed that Mark Franchetti's by-lines during his time as
a correspondent in Germany and Russia have included such examples
of high-minded journalism as:
- "German
Young Find Solace in Satanism"
- "Stalin's
Secret Son by Girl, 14"
- "Hitler's
Burnt Bones Tipped Into Sewer"
- "'Imperfect'
Children Left to Die"
- "Pilots
flew into A-bomb Blasts"
- "Europe's
Roaring Trade in Sex Slaves"
You
are seeing stories like this from the American press.
Luckily, they tend to be restricted to the supermarket tabloids.
Franchetti seems to have honed his "charred and mangled
bodies" left by "haggard, heavily armed US soldiers"
schtick during a brief assignment in Afghanistan. He then
gained a certain degree of credibility in October 2002 when
he obtained an exclusive interview with the Chechen guerillas
inside the Moscow theater, which might explain how he got
himself such a prime gig embedded with the Marines. But "Slaughter
at the Bridge of Death" is hyperbolic even for him, and
given that the story is already flying like a blood-soaked
white flag on dozens of anti-war sites across the web, I suspect
we'll see him swiftly become persona non grata with
the Pentagon. If the grunts don't frag him first...
Sam:
It was an odd piece, I thought. The first few paragraphs were
so sensationalist, so intentionally built around an attempt
to horrify, that I almost quit reading. But then he settled
down and simply started telling the story, and it was at this
point that I felt like he started to earn his keep.
Like
many people, I really revolt when I feel an attempt is being
made to manipulate me. This isn't the same as coming at me
with an agenda, which I'm cool with so long as you aren't
trying to hide the agenda. But when I feel you trying
to emotionally herd me, it's like you don't trust me to be
smart enough to know what to do with the fact. It's arrogant
and condescending, and one of the true hallmarks of bad writing.
And
that's where the article spends the first few paragraphs.
Too much of the "she could have been the mother"
crap.
But
then he turns into a good reporter, with almost no warning.
Interesting.
Jay:
Here's the thing – combat is sensational. One of the reasons
many military people like having reporters with them in combat
is that they are asked to do things so extraordinary, in the
truest sense of the word, that they often feel no one but
those there with them will ever know, or ever understand what
was asked of them, what they endured, or what they accomplished.
If you "desensationalized" a story like Franchetti's
you'd sanitize and sterilize it thereby grossly distorting
it in a dangerous way. There is a good reason war should
be a last resort. You can accomplish a positive end with
warfare, but it comes at a terrible price. Sanitize and sterilize
the picture and you misrepresent the price. History is replete
with examples of exactly this being done.
I
am reminded of how the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, Gen
John Jumper, has introduced himself in public forums before:
"My name is Johnny Jumper. I am an airman. My job is
to kill people and destroy things." In your face? I
don't think so any more than is necessary to make sure that
what the application of military force is all about is clearly
understood up-front. Too often the military is portrayed
from the human interest side as great kids and family people,
the coolest technology, humanitarian missions, peacekeeping
– anything but killing and destroying. It is all of those
things, but the two very things that entirely undergird military
power are the ability to kill and destroy at an unacceptable
cost to your adversary, but at a cost you can bear. Without
the effectiveness of those two things all you have for a military
is tinsel on the tree.
I'll
go out on a limb here – I do think Franchetti's copy was sensational.
Appropriately so for the material. It felt voyeuristic, painful
and, in places, almost obscene to read. I felt wrung-out
when I finished it. Our guys getting killed and mutilated
in combat is a horrible tragedy, but, very coldly, it is not
unexpected of warriors. However, after very publicly stating
that we don't deliberately target innocent civilians, the
deaths of many of them is shocking because neither as a nation,
nor as individuals, do we want to do that, or even want to
accept that good people do these things (including the military
people in combat). Franchetti led with what would be the
most troubling news and made you feel the disgust up-front
and sensationally – with impact. Then he told the soldiers'
story so that by the time he finished you had a complex, nuanced
feeling and understanding of the story as he saw it. I'm
sure it's not the whole story – I'm sure there are probably
alternate accounts and inaccuracies. But he appropriately
summoned emotions for impact to lead to an understanding that
no cold, sanitized account of this engagement could adequately
convey.
:comments?
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