something about lending support

The woman opened the package—the Ukraine flag had arrived from Amazon. She remembered ordering it on Saturday or Sunday and was grateful that she had not picked the big one, having chosen instead the tasteful 18"x27". She still had to find a place for it outside.

The blue and yellow colors were pure and signaled to neighbors that she is informed and feels passionately about the issues—that she, too, stood with the people of Ukraine.

Some weeks later, returning from her walk, the woman paused and counted three other Ukraine flags on her block. How long, she wondered, do we keep these up?

something about Ernest Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms"

Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms looks back at a love that fought in World War I. The lovers are Frederic Henry and Catherine Barkley. Here is Fredric beginning his relationship with Catherine:

I thought she was probably a little crazy. It was all right if she was. I did not care what I was getting into. This was better than going every evening to the house for officers where the girls climbed all over you and put your cap on backward as a sign of affection between their trips upstairs with brother officers. I knew I did not love Catherine Barkley nor had any idea of loving her. This was a game, like bridge, in which you said things instead of playing cards. Like bridge, you had to pretend you were playing for money or playing for some stakes. Nobody had mentioned what the stakes were. It was all right with me.

This passage stuck with me. Through most of the novel, I wondered if Frederic and Catherine really loved each other—or, at least, whether each loved the other at the same time. I thought that maybe they were lonely and scared and just wanted to love and comfort someone. She seemed to doubt his sincerity, and he seemed to be either keeping his distance or trying to persuade himself she was something more than she was. Then, by the end, their love—which of course is borne of loneliness and fear—becomes painfully real.

Catherine may be crazy, but she is a great and complicated character. She knew all along that their relationship was doomed.

I held her close against me and could feel her heart beating and her lips opened and her head went back against my hand and then she was crying on my shoulder.

"Oh, darling," she said. "You will be good to me, won't you?"

What the hell, I thought. I stroked her hair and patted her shoulder. She was crying. "You will, won't you?" She looked up at me. "Because we're going to have a strange life."

And one of my favorite Hemingway passages is this exchange between Catherine and Frederic:

"We won't fight."

"We mustn't. Because there's only us two and in the world there's all the rest of them. If anything comes between us we're gone and then they have us." 

"They won't get us," I said. "Because you're too brave. Nothing ever happens to the brave."

"They die of course."  

"But only once." 

"I don't know. Who said that?"  

"The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one?" 

"Of course. Who said it?" 

"I don't know." 

"He was probably a coward," she said. "He knew a great deal about cowards but nothing about the brave. The brave dies perhaps two thousand deaths if he's intelligent. He simply doesn't mention them." 

 

Note:  A Farewell to Arms was published in 1929.

about zealots

Think of someone you love, whose love for you is such a given that you sometimes take them for granted.

Imagine that person far away, the hostage of a violent zealot. Imagine your loved one, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, forced to their knees. Imagine that person positioned before a high-definition camera in the desert. Imagine, dressed head to toe in black, the zealot crowding in the picture with a highly polished knife.

The zealot speaks to the camera, his hand on your loved one's shoulder, telling you there is no choice. He tells you that forces beyond all three of you have forced this moment. The zealot tells you that your loved one will die, and that, although he will slit your loved one's throat, he did not choose to.

Imagine the zealot puts the knife to the throat of your beloved and cuts through the skin, tears into the muscles, saws through the tendons, and hits bone. Imagine your loved one gurgling, blood urging out. That's how they die.

something about Ernest Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises"

Most critics recognize The Sun Also Rises as Hemingway's best work. Published in 1926, the story follows an American expatriate traveling from Paris through Spain in the company of other American and British expatriates. Literary commentary inevitably refers to how the novel captures the Lost Generation's sense of disillusionment. Sure enough, Book I of this slim novel passes time in Paris, and there we see how unbearable disillusioned people can be, conspicuously bored and uncomedically witty. But after Book I, The Sun Also Rises reveals itself to be a potent, beautifully rich novel. Even the waste and cruelties of Book I become meaningful when recast in the violence at the fiesta.

There are so many wonderful lines. Examples:

Robert Cohn was a member, through his father, of one of the richest Jewish families in New York, and through his mother of one of the oldest.

And,

"How did you go bankrupt?" Bill asked.
"Two ways," Mike said. "Gradually and then suddenly."

And that phrasing is called back later:

The bull gathered himself, then his head went forward and he went over slowly, then all over, suddenly, four feet in the air.

But maybe my favorite part is the chapter in which Jake is drunk in his hotel room, thinking through his views on life. This chapter includes the following:

Women made such swell friends. Awfully swell. In the first place, you had to be in love with a woman to have a basis of friendship. I had been having Brett for a friend. I had not been thinking about her side of it. I had been getting something for nothing. That only delayed the presentation of the bill. The bill always came. That was one of the swell things you could count on.

I thought I had paid for everything. Not like the woman pays and pays and pays. No idea of retribution or punishment. Just exchange of values. You gave up something and got something else. Or you worked for something. You paid some way for everything that was any good. I paid my way into enough things that I liked, so that I had a good time. Either you paid by learning about them, or by experience, or by taking chances, or by money. Enjoying living was learning to get your money's worth and knowing when you had it. You could get your money's worth. The world was a good place to buy in. It seemed like a fine philosophy. In five years, I thought, it will seem just as silly as all the other fine philosophies I've had.

Perhaps that wasn't true, though. Perhaps as you went along you did learn something. I did not care what it was all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it. Maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned from that what it was all about.

about being dull

 
A knifeman forces an 84-year-old priest to his knees at the altar and slits his throat. Why is it that this horrific episode did nothing for the imagination? Is it because it is situated within the shapeless war on terror instead of the short rash of violence wrought during the early Norwegian black metal scene?

about the politcal landscape after Trump's first month

Instead of building their local networks and promoting policy positions to win voters back, Democrats are banking on a Trump administration implosion. Presumption and inference will not do it, though. A Bangladeshi factory is standing by, ready for orders to produce t-shirts emblazoned with "Four More Years."

about choosing a Russia-friendly oilman for Secretary of State

Under the guise of a supercoalition, the US can outsource to Russia some of the intervention grunt work in the Middle East; this would permit more US time and resource investment in Asia. The oil-rich lands of Russia and the Middle East represent the past; Asia will be a larger part of the future. 


Note: Not the actual reasoning behind President Donald Trump's pick for Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson.

something about "Napoleon: A Life" by Andrew Roberts

The conventional title of Andrew Roberts' Napoleon: A Life underscores the unconventional greatness of its subject. Napoleon's was not just any life.

With this, Roberts takes a stab at claiming the privilege of having written the definitive Napoleon biography. And though it weighs in at 800 pages, this is an efficient document. Napoleon's rise and fall are chronicled with context. The French political landscape; the international theater; and the military maneuvers of Napoleon, his collaborators, and his adversaries--all of this is included. (The only supplemental reading I would suggest is a decent book on the entirety of the French Revolution.)

I especially enjoyed reading about Napoleon's leadership. I had always assumed that leadership was about the makeup of the leader: his charisma, confidence, courage, and competence. Napoleon had all of that in spades, to be sure. But after reading about how Napoleon treated his men, it seems clear that one can demonstrate leadership by recognizing and celebrating the personality of the team (as opposed to drawing on his own personality and character).

something about "The Great Debate" by Yuval Levin

Politics makes for especially caustic conversation in America these days. We discuss political polarization because we wonder if honest bipartisanship is dead and if we are headed for a point of no return. We sometimes seem violently rabid in our views; then we wonder if we have always been like this.

Whatever the case, Yuval Levin lays down some historical context for today's American Left-Right binary. Representing the founder of conservatism, Levin shows us Edmund Burke (1729-1797), widely credited as the founding philosophical Conservative. Levin briefly introduces the Dublin-born author, politician, and philosopher, then paraphrases Burke's political ideology, drawing largely from Burke's writings on the American and French Revolutions.

Representing the modern American Left is Thomas Paine (1737-1736). Steeped in both the American and French revolutions, the English-born Paine authored the (in)famous pamphlet "Common Sense," which, to many, inspired the rebels' declaration of independence from Britain in 1776. Levin paraphrases Paine, drawing from his American Revolution writings and his defense of the bloody French Revolution.

In The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Left and Right, Levin devotes more time to Burke, largely using Paine to further refine an explanation of Burke's views. But Levin does not misrepresent Paine, exactly, so no real harm done. And Pain's shortchange comes as no suprise--Yuval Levin is a conservative intellectual born in Israel who founded National Affairs.

By the end of The Great Debate, Burke's and Paine's stances were so qualified, excepted, and nuanced as to be ripe for accusations of inconsistency and flip-flopping. Same old, same old.

Think of someone you love. Someone who is so essential that you forget they live. Whose presence looms so large in your life that you take them for granted. Someone who, it's only when they're gone, that you really understand what they mean to you.

Imagine that person far away. Imagine that person being told to wear an orange jumpsuit. Imagine that person positioned before a high-definition camera in the desert. Then imagine that person forced to their knees. Imagine, dressed head to toe in black, a zealot with a bright knife. The zealot, with a hand on your loved one's shoulder, speaks to the camera and says he has no choice. Your loved one will die and no one will be responsible and no one could have done anything differently.

Imagine the zealot puts the knife to the throat of your beloved and cuts through the skin, tears into the muscles, saws through the tendons, and hits bone. Imagine your loved one gurgling, blood urging out. That's how they die.

something about "The Trial of Henry Kissinger" by Christopher Hitchens

British-American author, intellectual, and journalist Christopher Hitchens spent most of his political life on the left, but spent much of his later years defending neoconservatives. Ideologically he seemed to move from socialist to constitutional republican with Marxist sympathies. Despite this shift, Hitchens consistently attacked abuses of power. One great abuser, in Hitchens' view, was Henry Kissinger.

Kissinger served as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. For Hitchens, Kissinger's Realpolitik approach to foreign policy led him eventually to violate international human rights law, the law of armed conflict, international criminal law, and US domestic law. In The Trial of Henry Kissinger, Hitchens seeks an indictment; in fact, he expects it.

Hitchens organizes his case against Kissinger neatly, addressing each crime separately, giving crisp narratives describing the immediate contexts, characters, and instances of moral failings for which Kissinger should be held accountable. Kissinger's six worst crimes as detailed by Hitchens: mass killings in Indochina (Vietnam and places nearby), killings and assassination in Bangladesh, coup and killings in Chile, coup and violence in Cyprus, genocide in East Timor, plotting to kidnap and/or kill a journalist in DC. Hitchens thinks Kissinger guilty of all this (and more) via his complicity or direct responsibility, depending on the case and how much we feel comfortable deducing from the evidence.

Before reaching a verdict about Kissinger's guilt, I'd argue a jurist would need at least two things: (1) an understanding of Realpolitik in light of American foreign policy, and (2) a briefing on the broader Cold War context in which much of these events occurred. But Hitchens doesn't give us this context; for him, this has nothing to do with either. This a time to exact punishment on a man who acted out of pure, cold ambition.

This is a short, fast read, and Hitchens' style goes down smoothly. A good read for a quick primer on some very dirty politics.

about the book "Suite française" by Irène Némirovsky

Suite française pushes us gently, more or less, into Occupied France, 1940. We shuffle around with members of the upper, middle, and lower classes trying to escape and then settle under the Germans.

This book--alternatively titled Dolce and Captivité--is an incomplete draft of two parts of a war-time epic that the author, Irène Némirovsky, wanted to write. She would never finish.

Born in 1903 in the Russian Empire, Némirovsky fled the Russian Revolution in 1917 and eventually settled in Paris, France. She soon began writing, published a couple books, and achieved wide recognition as an author. But her Jewish ancestry remained an issue--enough so that French citizenship was denied the Némirovskys in 1938. Némirovsky, born Russian-Jewish,  converted to Catholicism in 1939; with the pressure on, she wrote for Candide and Gringoire, two magazines with antisemitic tendencies.

Nevertheless, by 1940, Némirovsky's books could no longer be published under the spreading occupation. She fled with her husband and two daughters to Burgundy; but in July 1942, Némirovsky, then 39, was arrested by French police under German authority. She ended up in Auschwitz and died a month later of typhus. Later that year, her husband, Michel Epstein, was gassed at Auschwitz.

So, given this backstory, the flaws in the draft Suite française are unimportant. I enjoyed most the domestic drama between a formidable woman named Madame Angellier, a young maiden, Lucile, and Bruno, a German soldier bunking with the women. This is the most developed thread of multiple story lines that Némirovsky never got to tie together. Lucile and the soldier kindle a romance that disgusts Madame Angellier, a proud woman already embittered by loss of family and national pride. In the final pages, the soldier bids the women adieu as he and the other occupying German soldiers are called away to the horrible war on the Eastern Front. Lucile makes her last pathetic request of the soldier:

"... I'm asking you, if you have any feelings for me, to be as careful as possible with your life."
"Because it is precious to you?" he asked nervously.
"Yes, Because it is precious to me."

And Suite française's narration considers,

How many Germans in the village--in cafés, in the comfortable houses they had occupied--were now writing to their wives, their fiancée's, leaving behind their worldly possessions, as if they were about to die?

In two appendices full of the author's notes and letters from various others in her life at the time, Némirovsky reveals herself to be a very complicated person, veering between philosophical musings, harsh political judgements, vain self-assessments, and composed fear. Némirovsky perhaps intended to indict the French for their lack of answers to the occupation, but what I read is far less localized, and quietly emotes on several universal themes. This is a worthy read.

Warfighter

Warfighter. What does it mean? Who is a warfighter? What is a warfighter?

Circa WWII America, people often spoke of soldiers with admiration, depicting competent men of bravery, or, alternately, innocent sons away in foreign lands. Then, during early 1990's military campaigns in the Persian Gulf, speakers urged the public to "Support our troops". Now, the US Department of Defense introduced into use the term warfighter.

Using the term warfighter shifts the emphasis from the soldier's service to his time in combat. So a veteran is not a warfighter; a soldier is not necessarily a warfighter; and a warfighter is not necessarily a soldier from one of the branches of the US armed forces.

Soldiers have already become somewhat ubiquitous--we see them honored routinely on television and at sporting and political events. Finding yourself in public in the presence of a soldier in uniform is not unusual. Using the term warfighter takes that a step further; it normalizes the condition of war. If a soldier (or contractor) is overseas, he is at war. His presence is war. He is present in war. He is war.



 

In trial's coverage, large issues are ignored

Today The Washington Post included the Associated Press article "Army private’s defense team to make its case over leaked trove of government materials" which briefly sets the stage for the defense team's argument in the military trial of Pfc. Bradley Manning, accused of "releasing a trove of secret information to the WikiLeaks website" and facing 21 charges, including aiding the enemy.

Based on early trial statements, the article says the defense will argue that (1) Manning was of unsound mind and (2) other personnel had access to the machine(s) on which the alleged crimes were committed. Then, later, a contrast within the gallery is made:

A half-dozen buttoned-down, mostly young men and women favoring charcoal-colored suits have come and gone from gallery seats behind the prosecutor’s table, declining to identify themselves to journalists but apparently representing the Justice Department, the CIA or other government agencies. 

Across the room are Manning’s supporters, including a long-haired young man from the Occupy Wall Street movement and a pony-tailed, elderly military veteran wearing a “Free Bradley Manning” T-shirt.

Why does Manning have supporters? And what does the Occupy "movement" have to do with it? Some explanation would have been beneficial; these are not fans of insanity defenses and arguments of reasonable doubt. No, these supporters presumably value transparency and whistleblowing (nevermind whether Manning embodies either). But as such, the story is incomplete. Furthermore, by focusing on the contrast between the suits and long hair, the article gives the impression that Manning's supporters are unserious. Were any of his supporters in suits? Did any of them not have long hair?

The Sun Also Rises

Robert Jordan aims to destroy a bridge nested in the hills of Spain. He's fighting fascists in the Spanish Civil War, and for this mission he has embedded himself within a group of cave squatting peasants who casually identify as Communist Republican guerrillas. Jordan's new local comrades are a motley bunch that includes a modestly perfect old man, a couple gypsies, a once-ruthless but now shelled guerrilla hero, their hard boiled matron, and a victimized young beauty Robert takes for a lover. All of them are on his mission now, and to varying degrees each of them knows it will bring death.

Hemingway's protagonist fights the fascists but much of the action in For Whom the Bell Tolls unfolds in Robert's thoughts. It is there a quiet battle burns between cynicism and idealism, drafting in its duration his politics, his humanity, values, lineage, and his identity. The conclusion is appropriately unresolved, situated somewhere between an existentialist's consignment and a young boy's pretending.

Hemingway's pacing can put the reader to work, but this work brings satisfaction when it's done.

National myth

Most cultures and countries have their national myths. The myth serves many functions: They create and enable shared experiences, solidify a national identity, and promote values, just to name a few.

In America, myths about the Founding Fathers abound. America also has many myths about its soldiers. A primary myth revolves around the story of the young soldier--a boy, really--who goes off to war and returns a man, stronger than he was when he left.

Ideally, some young woman waits for him. This is the story of the journey, but focused and particular to the American soldier. These myths come to life in movies, books, and video games. But they take deep root in the public psyche when perpetuated through news media. The media's promotion and America's subsequent embrace of the so-called "Greatest Generation" exemplifies many of our military myths, including this one. Military sacrifice thus becomes the highest honor affordable to the middle and lower classes.

That returning soldiers often face unemployment, alcoholism and addiction, shrinking benefits, and physical and mental trauma goes unmentioned.

NPR is engaging in some myth making with their series "Who Serves". Here is an exemplary installment: "For Some, The Decision To Enlist Offers Direction"

Lack of opportunity

One oft-used phrase by government administration officials and therefore journalists and pundits is "lack of opportunity". A quick Google search suggests the phrase comes most readily when writing about US domestic issues, but it also comes in handy for international discussions. NPR recorded a prime example last month when quoting a nameless official during coverage of President Obama's latest address to Muslims of the Middle East and North Africa:

It's important to note that the political movements we've seen are rooted in part in a lack of opportunity in the region ... We see this as a critical window of time to take some concrete actions.

A people who lack opportunity to this degree may trend toward revolution. Power voids abound in such an environment, potentially opening the door for enemies of elite US interests to seize control.

Now, less than a month after that speech we discover a rigorous but unofficial US military campaign to squash a popular uprising in Yemen. This episode, for some reason, is different from the war in Libya: It is Rebels who uprise in Libya; only "militants linked to Al Qaeda" uprise in Yemen.

Yemen has been governed by Ali Abdullah Saleh since 1978. That's 32 years of autocratic rule. Earlier this year mass protests began targeting unemployment, poverty, and government corruption. Saleh refused to step down. Embattled now, his regime remains tenuously in power thanks to the State Department, whose spokesman Mark Toner is quoted in The New York Times as saying,

With Saleh’s departure for Saudi Arabia, where he continues to receive medical treatment, this isn’t a time for inaction.  There is a government that remains in place there, and they need to seize the moment and move forward.

So, our government supports an authoritarian regime that presides over poverty, unemployment, and corruption--a lack of opportunity--in turn creating a power vacuum which opens the door for enemies of elite US interests to seize control. If the elite in this country perceive a threat to their interest from abroad, it seems they are creating the bed in which they lie.

The official story

I watched President Obama's speech on Libya last night. On ABC, Stephanopoulos et al. claimed the major theme was success. I thought it was that due process had been followed, and I felt this message was aimed at the critics who charged that he'd acted without the consent of Congress. In his response he announced that " ... nine days ago, after consulting the bipartisan leadership of Congress, I authorized military action ... ". This was where the speech got rolling.

Now, Yes, his response was aimed at critics, but not only the Conservative and Progressive leadership who pitch sound bytes all week; he was also addressing a voiceless group with no articulated criticism to offer: The American public confronted with foreign events that are too ambiguous and dynamic to reach conclusions about.

Of course, most Presidential speeches of this sort address the public, and the public is typically composed of critics, both approving and disapproving. But in this case the public's role as critic is highly unusual. We ordinarily have our minds made up about things; not this time.

I think that, as a collective, people are not sure who our allies are right now, not sure democracy is for everyone, not sure what our country's role should be, given our problems at home and ongoing engagements abroad. Mainstream media has done a fine job portraying dissidents in Libya as victims, and the violence as one-sided. But the air of civil war hangs over this story, and the ink from Sunday's paper hasn't covered that smell completely. Large swaths of the public feel ambivalent about populations in other countries, especially the Middle East and Africa. So, last night, for the first time in a long time, the American President faced a population of critics with more questions than preformed opinions. His strategy?: Frame events within our claimed value system, and tell us how the winners will write history.

Framed!

This blog/editorial posted on The Economist web site discusses the framing of current violence in Libya and the subsequent US/UN response. The author argues that the violence is in fact a civil war and not merely a popular uprising; furthermore, the implication of this, he writes, is that the US/UN intervention is the deciding of a civil war and not an attempt to protect innocents from violence. The latter, however, is how the media and US government have portrayed the matter.

But when the author guesses the media's motivations for framing events as such, I can't tell if he's being sincere or sarcastic. Probably the former, I'm afraid.

The Economist blog/editorial: http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/03/rhetoric_intervention