The Climate Change Deniers 11/12/2010
Posted by Vaughn in Conflict, Global, Media, Policy, Politics.add a comment
THE CLIMATIC RESEARCH UNIT EMAIL fiasco of last year, spurred on by The Telegraph‘s James Delingpole, at his blog, as well as a small sector of the scientific community, a number of less-than-credible politicians and (only God knows why) even lesser-trained media folk — who oddly believe that they can suitably speak on it — have brought climate change skepticism to an increasing relevance. These are curious media-friendly figures who believe that man’s influencing of climate change is either obviously or somewhat negligible, based on marginal evidence and arguments which are put out primarily by oil companies and only a handful of contrarian scientists. Most of this high-profile anti-climate change phalanx argue that changes on the climate front are just a random trend that go on as a part of Earth’s processes, and are isolated from human activity: Or that the sample set to determine whether or not man has an influence upon the climate is far too narrow, considering it is based only on the recent distribution of temperature, and does not factor in the distribution of temperatures over the Earth’s 5 million years, along with the amount of data we have on climate change since industrialization.
These notions often make me wonder why then the argument from these folk — regardless of any evidence that is pro or con to the issue — is that nothing should be done in regards to impacting the possible influences of man on our climate? Why is this line of thinking logical to them? Why is it because they believe climate science is largely unproven; that nothing should be done to thwart its potential catastrophe? Why not err on the side of caution? Ironically, climate skeptics argue “climate science” to be largely uncertain, and yet their response to its “uncertainty” is to be very unapologetically certain? Moreover, they are just so certain in their idea that not doing a thing in regards to our influence on climate, is quite reasonable? (Other than continue to study it, if they are a politician.)
And so I am befuddled as to why rarely to never, in these media debates that have played out over time, is that the obvious counter argument to their notion, brought up: That regardless of political and philosophical positions, it would still be prudent and greatly beneficial on many levels, and even for human technological progress — despite the jury being out on the science behind climate change [so the opposition's argument goes], since fossil fuels are a limited resource that has been consumed for 100-plus years — for all of the nations of the world to still look to address the possible impact of climate change; even if the evidence is causal or even cooked? (As many climate change skeptics wanted to argue because of the email controversy.) Is this not smart, since the consequences of our influence on climate change, and its possibility to become catastrophic, would be absolute murder to almost all life on the planet?
Currently it is but a small number of scientists, relative to the overwhelming majority, who believe that climate change is merely a part of a normal temperature ebb and flow pattern on Earth, or some variation of that theory. According to a Pew Research poll taken in 2009, 84% of all scientists believed in climate change. That figure for scientists who believe in climate change theory should be overwhelming evidence in and of itself, considering the supposed controversy behind the issue, yet the specter of climate change being caused by industrialization also being a great threat to humanity, national security, global security and such, still apparently does not trump the extremely poor rationale of those who are not open to looking into addressing the externalities’ problem of burning of fossil fuels, when they are not proven to them to have an adverse effect on the ecology, and would hurt business interests and (their scare tactic) employment of “the little guy.”
The Guardian‘s resident environmental writer, George Monibot, has, because of this growing cadre of high-profile climate change deniers who ultimately threaten the future of humanity with their rhetoric (overly-dramatic as this statement seems), compiled a short list in 2009 of the top offenders in the climate change front during the highly-questionable Heartland Institute‘s “International Conference on Climate Change“; and the list is an excellent shorthand for the “who, what and for whom” of the figures who shill for what would be a losing future for us all, if they ever gain true traction.
Read George Monibot’s “The Top 10 Climate Change Deniers” [Here]
The New, Stealthy, Killer: Drones 08/17/2010
Posted by Vaughn in Aviation, Conflict, Global, Technology.add a comment
Photo Credit: Danger Room
I REPORTED on the RQ-170 Sentinel a while back, here, noting that it was the first time we’ve ever seen an operational drone of its kind: implying stealth capabilities. (There isn’t an answer to whether it is, officially, as far as I can tell. It certainly looks as though it is a low-observable “unmanned.”) Whether or not the Sentinel is a stealthy, radar and infrared detection avoider, the coming wave of unmanned aerial vehicles (U.A.V.) and unmanned combat aerial vehicles (U.C.A.V.) set to come on-line will certainly be stealthy platforms. Tasked with offensive missions, it is simply a necessity for these aircraft to be outfitted with defensive measures, as the desire to knock them out of the sky by their adversaries will only increase.
As well-known and written about in-depth in The New Yorker in Jane Mayer’s “The Predator War,” drones have been performing quite a bit of the heavy lifting in the airpower display in the AfPak sky, and time will only make it more apparent that this war will do for the U.A.V.s and U.C.A.V.s , what Vietnam did for rotary-wing (helicopter) operations in military circles, with them developing a currency and transforming from an alternative to a preferred means, perhaps, to manned aircraft missions and also, my speculation, cruise missile strikes. Not only will these new drones be stealthy, they will be more powerful and fly higher than their current counterparts, further improving their strike efficacy.
Danger Room, Wired‘s outstanding defense blog, has a short breakdown of the newest crop of some known drone systems on the way: From the British B.A.E. Systems’s offering to General Atomics’s, a nuclear physics company which also develops radar systems (and U.A.V.s for both civilian and military use), headquartered in Poway, California; quickly becoming the prime supplier of unmanned aircraft to the American government. General Atomics was also found to be the largest underwriter of travel getaways for members of Congress, according to a 2006 report and a 2006 San Diego Tribune article:
San Diego’s General Atomics, a government contractor, was the biggest corporate underwriter, according to the report. Privately held General Atomics spent more than $660,000 on 86 trips taken by members of Congress, their aides and families between January 2000 and June 2005. Most of that was spent on overseas travel related to the unmanned Predator spy plane made by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, an affiliated company.
General Atomics’s Web site explains the company’s profile in the U.A.V. game:
The business of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) is the development of transformational technologies that deliver paradigm-changing results. An affiliate of privately held General Atomics, GA-ASI is a world leader in proven, reliable unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) and tactical reconnaissance radars, as well as advanced high-resolution surveillance systems. The company is dedicated to providing long-endurance, mission-capable aircraft with the integrated sensor and data link systems required to deliver persistent situational awareness and rapid strike capabilities.
Read Danger Room’s “Killer Drones Get Stealthy” [Here]
The Meaning of McChrystal 07/11/2010
Posted by Vaughn in Conflict, Defense, Global, Politics.add a comment
THE national security adviser of the world’s greatest superpower is a ‘clown,’ its vice-president a nobody and its president ‘uncomfortable and intimidated.’ With those words the officers around General Stanley McChrystal, the American commander in Afghanistan, engulfed America in a storm as damaging to its war effort as any Taliban raid. America rightly sets great store by civilian control of its armed forces and on June 23rd a distinctly unintimidated President Barack Obama made General McChrystal pay for his insubordination with his job. But presidential decisiveness cannot conceal a deeper truth. America and its allies are losing in Afghanistan.
“After McChrystal,” The Economist
WHEN General Stanley McChrystal, President Obama’s own appointed top soldier in Afghanistan, and the new face of the “good war” that we were knee-deep in losing — after we’d essentially won it almost nine years ago — talked brashly and undiplomatically in the company of a Rolling Stone reporter, embedded with the general and his staff, something was very wrong. McChrystal, a veteran of the American special operations community, and a beloved leader because of his successful service in that rarefied realm, certainly wasn’t a lightweight; either politically nor mentally.
It is unlikely then, that he was unaware of the effect that his actions would have and the consequences they would carry with his new boss back in Washington. (And just a short time before his civilian-leadership-be-damned interview, he may have also created a stir when his anticipated report on Afghanistan, meant only for the president, leaked to the press, and more specifically, Bob Woodward. It is something that still remains unanswered: Who leaked the report?) What the general’s out-and-out disregard implies is that we’re not only losing, but the military brass and the civilian leadership of this country do not see the war in anywhere close to the same way. McChrystal’s actions implied that he had lost all faith in his higher-ups.
General McChrystal oversaw Joint Special Operations Command (J.S.O.C.) — home of the military’s most specialized, most secretive elements — prior to his appointment to the head of International Security Forces Afghanistan (I.S.A.F.). Under his watch as J.S.O.C. commander, his teams were credited with the killing of the al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, Abu Masab al-Zarqawi. McChrystal’s methods are unorthodox. He is a supporter of counter-insurgency strategy (known as “COIN” to insiders), it is the war fighting philosophy that he’d ultimately look to institute in Afghanistan, before his recent dismissal, which promotes the protection of the civilian population, and a longterm building of trust between it and the military.
Hopes were high for McChyrstal and the potential for him to bring in his expertise in unconventional wars and an experience dealing with a similarly insurgent conflict in Iraq, with a record of success behind him. (Though, as J.S.O.C.’s top man, most of that record is highly classified.) But being from the special operations world, McChrystal’s personality wasn’t as purposefully polished as those Pentagon generals who say the right thing all the time; the vanilla thing, perhaps, rarely rankling feathers. Even, though, McChrystal is well-known as a warrior-scholar who can be as comfortable with politicians and academics, as he is with his own soldiers. But his time was spent on the ground, and not in an air-conditioned rooms back stateside, and so perhaps those more amiable traits had ceded a bit to his current reality; a man entrenched in a war, every day.
McChrystal is typically what a soldier would want and a what politician would want: a general who is connected to the struggles of his men and women. While those are on-paper positives, McChrystal’s approach is undeniably new school, but not always in the positive way; from his strategy to fight this version of the Afghan War (a positive), that could have been considered a “hippie approach” by those on the right — if they had no idea of the man’s background or the ground truths of the conflict — to more importantly, his not-as-apparent respect for the civilian rule of the armed services (a negative). These are two tremendously “new school” positions that diverge from mainline military thinking.
It has long been a standing internal military practice to discourage officers, especially, those generals who are prosecuting the war and are working-hand-in-hand with the policymakers (and even enlisted men), from publicly voicing their dissent. That is left to the private communications between them and their bosses. And as a graduate of West Point, the apotheosis of a finishing school for many military leaders, and a man who has also held a post with the Council on Foreign Relations and at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, McChrystal knows that such displays of public dissent by military personnel implies a disunion between the executive branch and its military apparatus.
So this practice wasn’t ever lost on McChrystal, unless he wanted it to be. The policy of serving members in the armed services not speaking out against the politicians that make decisions on how to use the military and when, is further to ensure the preeminence of the civilian leadership in the political system over that of the military’s, as well as to discourage the idea of potential political coup’detats. (Though, that is a far-fetched point from here, that is the very principle involved: If soldiers routinely speak out against their civilian leaders, publicly, we are essentially halfway there.)
But insubordination, especially this kind of public insubordination, even if it is not premeditated, and especially because it is not tolerated in the least, says something about an effort like the one ongoing in Afghanistan. McChrystal’s actions hold meaning and imply that the top soldiers in charge do not believe that the politicians they work for are willing to do what it takes to win. (And could you blame Obama if he feels this way, after inheriting the helm of a country that was eight years in and losing?) It may also mean that there is a disconnect between the military, with McChrystal representative of it, and the policy-makers and the president. While tensions are somewhat to be expected, as it would be in any working situation, the egregious disregard shown by the general is startling.
McChrystal’s distaste seems to touch everyone directly involved with the Afghanistan War on the civilian side. In the Rolling Stone profile that led to his dismissal, reporter Michael Hastings’s version of McChrystal’s tough-guy, “spec-ops-warrior” personality shone through quite visibly. The war’s top general arrogantly sized-up guys in a room for no good reason, bragging about his ability to apply physical force, according to Hastings, who was recounting the time of a N.A.T.O. dinner function that McChrystal did not in the slightest want to attend:
‘I’d rather have my ass kicked by a roomful of people than go out to this dinner,’ McChrystal says. He pauses a beat. Unfortunately, he adds, ‘no one in this room could do it.’
While that quote wasn’t so bad, and it is particularly representative of the kind of attitude you’d want and expect from a soldier, it was unbecoming for the commander of America’s most crucial war-front, and the world’s foremost military. But it was McChrystal’s undermining of Vice President, Joe Biden, and others who are intregal to the Afghan mission — though judging from his actions, he would debate their importance — that made his dismissal from his post, all but a fait accompli. The standout situation occurred when an aide asked the general during his prep period for his speaking engagement at that same N.A.T.O. dinner he was reticent to attend, what he’d say about Biden if he were asked by the dinner’s attendees, to which McChrystal responded by saying:
Who’s that?
Did you say: Bite Me?
What is especially surprising and telling is that McChrystal opted to show this level of open insubordination to a writer he granted permission to allow follow him, and who he possibly became oblivious of; a reporter whose job it was to report such things for a magazine known for stirring political controversy. It seems that the general was very blase about his decorum and his staff’s decorum throughout the embedded reporter’s, Michael Hastings, trailing of him for the story. And McChrystal apparently expressed no objections to the article when it was sent to him for vetting prior to its publishing, according to Politico‘s Andy Barr:
Eric Bates, the magazine’s editor, said during an interview on M.S.N.B.C.’s Morning Joe that McChrystal was informed of the quotes prior to its publication as part of Rolling Stone‘s standard fact-checking process — and that the general did not object to or dispute any of the reporting.
While we can’t ever know if McChrystal’s poor attitude towards the civilian leadership may have been influenced by his first meeting with Obama and his impressions of the commander-in-chief one-on-one, or if it was just a coping mechanism for him and his men handling an ever increasingly dire war, unless he says so, Obama had to take the Rolling Stone profile and what it displayed at face value.
In the profile, one gets to see that the general’s attitude may have been shaped (although, perhaps, wrongly) by the first meeting between he and the the president, as according to sources close to him, McChrystal sensed that Obama was “intimidated” in the first meeting between the president and his top generals, at the Pentagon, just following his inauguration. McChrystal’s opinion about his boss only continued to dip after that, when he and President Obama met face-to-face alone for the first time. The nail in the coffin in McChrystal’s mind was most likely that moment — note: this is conjecture, based on the article — where McChrystal believed that the president was quote: “unprepared,” for their meeting on the war, four months into his role as commander-in-chief.
[In Obama's defense, "unprepared" is a tough metric to gauge, particularly since this is according to sources who are unnamed, but are reportedly close to McChrystal. And we have no way to divine what "prepared" versus "unprepared" would mean, even if the standard were reasonable, especially when comparing it to a man like General McChrystal, who reportedly holds an encyclopedic knowledge of al-Qaeda and whose sole focus is the war that he has served in, and is the now the commander of. This inability to measure what is meant by "unprepared" is particularly even more true, when McChrystal's knowledge is compared to a civilian president who is just a couple of months into a job that left him with myriad domestic issues and international issues, that nearly produced a second Great Depression, globally. Perhaps, Obama's plate was so full that he couldn't retain all of the Afghanistan briefing information, in light of everything else. There are only, after all, so many hours in the day for him to be briefed on all matters.] Here is the exact reporting from Rolling Stone concerning the two crucial meetings that may have injured the Obama-McChrystal partnership:
Even though he had voted for Obama, McChrystal and his new commander in chief failed from the outset to connect. The general first encountered Obama a week after he took office, when the president met with a dozen senior military officials in a room at the Pentagon known as the Tank. According to sources familiar with the meeting, McChrystal thought Obama looked ‘uncomfortable and intimidated’ by the roomful of military brass. Their first one-on-one meeting took place in the Oval Office four months later, after McChrystal got the Afghanistan job, and it didn’t go much better. ‘It was a 10-minute photo op,’ says an adviser to McChrystal. ‘Obama clearly didn’t know anything about him, who he was. Here’s the guy who’s going to run his [expletive] war, but he didn’t seem very engaged. The Boss was pretty disappointed.’
With this cascade of evidence implying a losing American enterprise in the Afghan war, and a visible disjunction between the military’s top-general (formerly) handling it, what does this mean for the war? Well, with the appointment of General David Patreus, it could turn out a bit more positive, for one. While it is likely that it won’t end in an all-out, hands-down victory, it may now end sooner by way of negotiations, because we are all rightfully losing our stomach to go on any longer, and counter-insurgent strategy takes far too much time to develop a winning result. Patreus will be keeping the plan laid out by his predecessor, however.
And McChrystal’s plan is one that is believed to be a good one: since it clears up the prior murky policy goal in Afghanistan, to secure the entire nation, and it truly looks to place a stop on our giving the enemy fodder, through the production of more and more anti-Americanism, in the region, by way of obviously unintended civilian casualties.
Because McChrystal’s counter-insurgency strategy would take much longer than anyone would like to spend now and cost more soldiers, it was perhaps better for McChrystal to step-down or, unfortunately, be dismissed. And while McChrystal was loved in Afghanistan among his troops, Patreus is more universally respected and more powerful in Washington, and the policy circles, than McChrystal, most likely because of his ability to connect with the civilian leadership. This means a once-again united front, and possibly a clear end on the horizon to this nearing-decade-long saga.
Read The Economist‘s “After McChrystal” [Here]
Read The Economist‘s “More Than a One-man Problem [Here]
The Once-Future Front; Now Actual 04/15/2010
Posted by Vaughn in Conflict, Defense, Global, Journalism, Policy, Politics, Technology, Web.comments closed
WHEN the cult hit WarGames was released in 1983, a film about a high school hacker and his friend using their idle time to play with N.O.R.A.D.‘s networks, the future of unconventional war was on display, before anyone truly knew it. I suspect that many at the Pentagon did, as any omen in a movie would have already been dreamed up in their analysts’ forecasts, particularly since it is well-known that any communication network that transmits information is especially vulnerable to the outside, by virtue of its architecture; but still, they couldn’t have seen all of this, and certainly not to this degree: with the increasing dominance of robotic, remote combat, the rise of virtual wars in cyberspace that take place every minute of every day, between nation-states, non-state actors, and plain, old, curious individuals.
Just 20 years ago, around the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall, combat, both future and present, in military circles, still seemed to be centered around big, swirling battles on multiple fronts, like that of W.W.II. The idea then was that war would still be largely conventional, and the defense industry was to prepare for it. What is known as low intensity operations — or low intensity conflict, the kind of conflicts we tend to see now, that are smaller in scale — were still viewed as an exception to the established doctrine, as opposed to the norm it seems likely to be for some time, due to the interconnections of a global market economy making war of any other kind very dicey without alliances for trade goods. But since Vietnam, the old doctrine doesn’t appear to hold water at all, and it seems every major war since then involving nation-states has been what is known as “asymmetric.” (And Vietnam was actually asymmetric.) The term refers to the balance of power in a conflict. Typically, in asymmetric warfare one actor is a powerful nation — both in treasure and military might — and the other isn’t, and so the lesser powered nation (or combatant) is forced to use a strategy that levels the playing field through methods such as decentralization of its forces, guerrilla tactics, surprise attacks and terror.
With the dawn of the Internet Age in the early ’90s to mid ’90s, it became alluring to those with know-how but little resources, to begin to experiment with and penetrate the connectivity of the world’s dominant powers. Because in the virtual world, decentralization is the prevailing norm, it was further to their advantage. There isn’t just one network, there are several networks; to jump in and out of, to hide in, to use as a mask and conduct similar operations as that of traditional, real-world asymmetric wars, except now there is (maybe) less blood and an almost limitless impact, because everything about our lives and our governments, is online, mostly.
Recently National Public Radio (N.P.R.) aired a segment on the new battlefield existing at the tip of the fingers and on nothing more than our laptops and airwaves and server rooms. The threat is very real, and it seems many governments including ours are vastly preparing for it, somewhat. Richard Clarke, the counterterrorism adviser for Presidents Bill Clinton and Bush No.43, spoke of the threat on N.P.R.’s Fresh Air program, promoting his new book Cyber War. In Clarke’s analysis, while the American government is leaving no stone unturned to protect itself and its critical defense infrastructure, there is just not enough of a priority as of right now, on the private sector; who are as vital as government related operations. Clarke’s findings as told to N.P.R.:
“A cyberattack could disable trains all over the country,” he tells Fresh Air host Terry Gross. “It could blow up pipelines. It could cause blackouts and damage electrical power grids so that the blackouts would go on for a long time. It could wipe out and confuse financial records, so that we would not know who owned what, and the financial system would be badly damaged. It could do things like disrupt traffic in urban areas by knocking out control computers. It could, in nefarious ways, do things like wipe out medical records.”
[...]
“The Pentagon is all over this,” he says. “The Pentagon has created a four-star general command called Cyber Command, which is a military organization with thousands of people in it to go to war using these [cyber]weapons. And also, Cyber Command’s job is to defend the Pentagon. Now, who’s defending us? Who’s defending those pipelines and the railroads and the banks? The Obama administration’s answer is pretty much, ‘You’re on your own,’ that Cyber Command will defend our military, Homeland Security will someday have the capability to defend the rest of the civilian government — it doesn’t today — but everybody else will have to do their own defense. That is a formula that will not work in the face of sophisticated threats.”
Listen to Clarke’s full interview (along with a book excerpt) [Here]
‘The Book’ on Afghan Conflict 10/22/2009
Posted by Vaughn in Conflict, Editorial, Global, Politics.comments closed
WITH President Obama in the greatest of pickles, politically, concerning the war in Afghanistan; to the point that the core cogs of the administration are regularly engaged in three-hour long strategy and information sessions that intend to clear up the debacle’s fog machine and help develop a decisive strategy and endgame; And with that war’s own, General Stanley McChrystal’s, confidential report to the president leaking to the Washington Post, and him then later upping the ante by publicly recommending more drains on treasure and more soldiers; to implement what he believes to be a winning, nation-building counter-insurgent strategy, far before any decision has been rendered by the president; Predident Obama is now at the crucial crossroads of his still-nascent presidency.
Add to all of this the news that Hamid Karzai, the current Afghan president, who is accused of stealing August’s pivotal election, agreeing to a runoff after some cajoling by high-level envoys — including Senator John Kerry — there are just too many moving parts for the president to make a decision, right now; who is viewed by some to be dragging his feet on the matter. But Karzai’s decision to a runoff makes some things easier: for one, any decision by the president on the war will need a legitimate partner in Afghanistan, and August’s disputed election would not allow for it. Karzai’s agreeing to a runoff relieves some of the questions inside Afghanistan (and internationally) about a potentially U.S.-backed illegitimate regime. And two, the runoff buys Obama more time, time which he needs. The Afghanistan decision may determine the bulk of his remaining years in office and what he can accomplish, especially if the war appears more and more like the failing enterprise with no means of escape, that many want to paint it to be, and it drains his political capital. (Especially with Republicans shooting at a larger target.)
All this necessary hand-wringing does not mention the still very hot domestic issues, and the debate concerning the potential government-run health care system, and an economy that might as well be in a “false recovery.” (Especially if you pose the question to Joe and Jane Q. Public: “Whether or not the recession is over?” ) There is also the other problem of his own left-wing constituency’s expectations; looking for him to create what they believe to be real “change” — a somewhat personally arbitrary qualitative assessment — which in their mind was to happen from day one, minute one, all based on the hopes that they had pinned to the marketing and imagery of a man who may or may not be the picture of progressive idealism. (War to many of these folks, no matter what kind of war — and how different the objectives — is not change. Despite Obama basically saying throughout the campaigning season that: “Afghanistan is the good war,” and up until recently most Americans had shown that they agreed, in electing him.)
But unintended changes have occurred. Within Obama’s own party and the larger left-wing, support for the war is eroding. August brought the bloodiest month in the Afghanistan War’s history, and the conflict hit the eight-year mark post-9/11. A palpable fatigue has begun to set-in. Now, no one envies the decisions Obama faces. No one. Even as he is a great student of history, the situation lined-up before him has to be some of the worst set of conditions a newly inaugurated president has ever faced. The history-nut in him has to think that much of this “President thing” is now a fool’s errand at best. Any information President Obama can leverage to navigate through the labyrinthine dilemmas he faces, he now most likely exploits.
Therefore I expect that William Maley’s The Afghanistan Wars has been part of the Obama team’s internal dialogue in the strategy sessions, and in the president’s own facile mind. While intelligence of the here and now matters, and emissaries and commanders on the ground play a vital role in painting the picture, there is the needed element of history. (As Obama pointed out yesterday in a White House lawn speech honoring Vietnam veterans, and making a comment about lessons from “that day in the jungle.” Though the overall Vietnam-Afghanistan media-favored parallel is a bit off, aside from the asymmetry of the conflict, and the drain both wars became.) Since fighting a war where you know very little of the complicated nature of the people, their history and their general patterns of behavior, is equivalent to going into a boxing ring never knowing anything other than your opponent’s physical characteristics. It’s plain dumb and will — if the opponent is aptly skilled — lead to quick-work on their part. Seeing as the last administration took their attention off of the golden egg once it was found — that being a swift victory in the nation — toppling the Taliban in days, the lessons of Afghanistan’s wars of the past now becomes crucial as the pattern of long-drawn, insurgent conflict that is so particularly pathological to the nation reshuffled the deck, and made for a new game in 2003.
The Afghanistan Wars is one of a cornucopia of critical texts concerning Afghanistan, and for those interested in foreign policy, considering our last 25-plus years in the region and the more recent bloody eight, it should be a very good primer. I, myself, am just now beginning to read it. What’s important to note in all of this debate, and the problem for the Obama administration, is the concept of: “Afghanistan is a backwards doomed to hell country, that has always been at war.” That’s not really true. In fact, during King Mohammed Zahir Shah‘s reign from 1933-1973, Afghanistan was a fairly moderate nation that had a parliament, free elections, was a member of the forerunner to the United Nations, the League of Nations, it allowed women to vote, and was actually quite governable. While the nation was never on the level of the developed-world and Western scale, its more moderate Taliban-less time is a far cry from the Afghanistan we now know and the draconian state of “Talib” rule. And while that may or may have no bearing to the present, this should be noted. As a recent discussion in the New York Times has also mentioned, [this is unsourced for now, until the article can be searched for]: if Afghanistan is not able to be governed, then what exactly has the Taliban been trying to do? They certainly believe that it can be governed, and they would like to install Sharia throughout the land.
I happen to think that “no more war” is good policy almost all of the time, but Afghanistan sits in a very delicate region, in a very delicate time, with heightening global tensions and an inequality that breeds exploitable discontent among its young, hungry and poor; and I don’t know what we should do. What is the right answer? Do we double-down at the poker table and lose more kids to recreate King Mohammed Zahir Shah’s Afghanistan? Or do we just leave now? It is argued by many, that us doing nothing there to support a moderate political climate, is what has led us here, making the country a safe-haven and fertile soil for jihadist recruitment and training. Therefore, so goes the argument for fighting, if we can educate the population and especially the girls and women — in order for them to be personal firewalls against extremism within their family units — and provide opportunities besides narco-trafficking, save the locals from the nasty rule of the Taliban while rooting most of them out, we’d be on our way to success.
Except all that sounds arduous and costly, especially when factoring in that this has been an eight year struggle. As many note, this is going to have to be Obama’s war, good or bad, when many of this operation’s problems lay in Bush no. 43, and how he didn’t finish the fight: not providing enough troops to hold the nation’s security for the time of the Taliban’s eventual re-grouping and recruitment of soldiers, and for the locals themselves who should be free from fear of the Taliban. The already-won-but-now-have-to-win-again state of this war is just another indictment of the last administration. It truly appears that the entire cabinet had no understanding of the globe and history. They were a hammer when a “War on Terror” — a tactic, mind you, not an enemy — needed a surgical scalpel, and perhaps the information in The Afghanistan Wars , along with some critical thinking and dot-connecting. For President Obama, however, in hoping to fix this mess and restoring Afghanistan to the moderate nation that it once was, the path to hell may be filled with good intentions.
Limited preview of William Maley’s The Afghanistan Wars at Google Books [Here]
‘A Letter to My Grandfather’ 01/31/2009
Posted by Vaughn in Conflict, Editorial, Journal.comments closed
Editor’s Note:
I never had the chance to meet either of my grandfathers; both passed before I was born. And so what is left of them are the stories: What I know of my father’s father is that before he passed, he advised his son to join the Air Force. At the time, the Second Indochina War — the “Vietnam Conflict” — raged in the jungles of Southeast Asia, worlds away from the Virginia earth he farmed and raised six other kids on, with my grandmother. My father, the eldest male, enlisted in the Air Force, just after his father’s death, upon his urging, since sticking around with the primary bread-winner gone and six mouths besides himself to feed, was tantamount to a catastrophic idea. It was a move that would have him avoid the fate of conscription and becoming the victim-of-circumstance-dodging, perilous drudgery of a soldier’s life beneath the sweltering jungle canopy. For my father, ducking out for a couple of years or going to college, was financially out of the question, and his enlistment meant that Uncle Sam would pay for his further education; college, after all, is for the kids who have money. Kids like me. That discussion my grandfather had with his son, led to me and the fortuitous life I’ve been given. And so, beyond the obvious case of my birth, I am forever indebted because of the quality of my life and opportunities; in no small part, because of him.
He grew up very different from his grandson. His world never entertained the idea of a black American president, when for the majority of his time black people were “discouraged” from voting. This is to say that the idea of a black president wasn’t even a challenge to orthodoxy, it was an upending of fundamental human laws here for him; it was denying the rule of gravity. As far as his generation were concerned, black people were earth-bound, if not inhabiting the places beneath, because for all the ideals and high-reaching principles embedded in our founding documents, blacks were still a people apart; apart from the society and even much of the American story and experience, with some exceptions. While that can still be argued, one would be remiss in thinking that things haven’t moved forward toward the positive.
Lawyers, doctors, pilots, President of the United States of America: if you were to name any prestigious occupation (outside of entertainment or sports) and theoretically placed a black person in it, it was more or less a fairy tale. That was the world he was from, and the world he understood. Those occupations were false-hoped dreams, the equivalent of the poor child in the central-city hoping for the rarity of the moment where his jumpshot delivers him from squalor. When he was in the Army, black men, for the most part, couldn’t even fight in combat. There were the Tuskegee Airmen and a black infantry division or two, but the fight for “freedom” was mainly a white man’s duty, and so white men fought the wars and black men cooked, cleaned and drove trucks. My grandpa drove trucks. But I lived to see another America. An America still shabby in certain areas, but closing in on the “more perfect union.”
HEY Grandpa,
I know that we hardly ever talk, but something big happened, and I wished you were here to witness it; just for you to know that this place isn’t as bad as it treated you, but I think you already know that. And honestly, the last time we talked was so brief, and that small sheet of paper may have failed to stay at your grave long enough for you to see it. I’m so sorry it had to have come on the day that we put your middle son into the earth. In it, I told you that I graduated school finally, and that it was an “elite” one. However, I didn’t tell you where, but maybe you watched me; Jackie Robinson had gone there too. It was like a dream when they called to tell me I was accepted. Me and Dad cried. The call, it was before the package even came in the mail. And the school, it was the same, in some ways, as Jackie’s day. I ran into a man at my work who was one of the first of us to attended, when I was in my last year in school, he was about seventy-years-old. The things he asked me about: “Do they still ask if you’re an athlete?”, “Are the numbers similar?”, made it sound the same, at least. There just weren’t a lot of us. Black enrollment was so down from their already small size, those years I attended, because of policies that looked to help minorities — enacted after you left — being repealed. The people in California voted and said it was “unfair” to have such social mobility measures. It was “reverse discrimination” they cried, and in some sense, it was a measure of how far we had come; that many could and would argue something like that. In fact, the man who was partly responsible for that ballot initiative, is black. Still I don’t buy the idea that anyone was being discriminated against. It just didn’t bear out; their view of injustice. And still that college and most colleges are for the rich primarily. Most of the kids were headed there or somewhere else, somewhere even better, far before they applied.
Robinson’s memory made me feel like there was so much pressure on me to succeed, and there was this other man, Ralph Bunche, a black diplomat and Nobel Prize winner, whose name on the main building for my major and his bust in its hallway acted as weighty reminders. It made me feel like I was to be a credit to the race every day. It made me feel as though I had to compete with their ghosts. It was hard and for a time during my first year and change, I might’ve buckled under it. I wouldn’t have thought so, so many years after they walked those halls, but my skin never felt so dark. The scientists who study this kind of thing have begun to call it stereotype-threat and I don’t think I was affected by it, but I really felt alone. I got a lot out of the experience, but I could have and should have been better. I know that, now. I worked hard in most of my classes. I did take one or two where I really slacked, but it’s all somewhat forgotten now. I earned my degree is what matters, but I understand that you would be disappointed that I had wasted an ounce of my time there, being that we weren’t really ever afforded the opportunity to attend once such hallowed grounds unless we ran track, played basketball or football. I will earn another degree, however, so I actually have a second chance at being near-perfect, or at least, being better; to do you proud, and to negotiate an even greater life. I worry that you look down from the heavens and think that I waste a lot of opportunities and that I should be even more for our community. I just haven’t figured enough of me out yet, but that shouldn’t ever be my excuse. I know that I don’t need all of the answers, but right now, I feel like I have so few.
You should also know that I’m going to be fine, no matter what, and that Pops is sick again. Me and Mom are hopeful and believe that the technology and health care facilities around us will allow him to get better quickly and have him live long enough to see a grandchild, I hope. Like cousin Karen said: “Shirley men don’t live long.” And so I feel this bears repeating: your son has done his best to understand me and he has given me so much to be able to compete. I’m happy to report that my world is so very different from yours and his. I’ve only been called a “nigger” twice to my face, and no one could ever stop me from doing something I wanted to do. I’ve had some minor run-ins, but my stories are different and digestible, with little pain. There is not a law or known practice that has kept me from achieving all that I have set out to do, or will keep me from achieving those things. It is actually quite different, I’d say. Everything I’ve ever wanted I have received, and I’m very lucky. I am aware of that. People may think that I am not, but I am. Whatever I am or whatever I am not, I will have no one to blame but me. For now, I write, report and read a lot. It’s my job and who I am, I think: my “calling.” (I never have to really lift anything heavy or fight for my dignity and respect.)
I should also tell you that my generation is looking to fix some things: Things that recently came about and things that have always been. We want to address the wrongs of your life and our lives, Gramps. And I feel like I’m a vocal and demonstrative part of that. It’s really so very different for guys like me, because of your generation and Pop’s. Now those of us who are given a decent shot, we can actually be anybody we choose with some help. Our color means less, but generally one has to have to come from the middle class. I think we have so much more power than we understand or even tap into, now. We have higher rates of community involvement and university attendance when coming from economically and socially similar backgrounds as white kids*. And the world has opened even more recently, it’s like much of the sky was clear, and the last patches of clouds drifted away, in some sense. We don’t have to be entertainers or athletes anymore, to really have a nice life. That big thing that I was talking about that happened last week? We now have a president who is black. He was sworn in January 20, 2009 . The country for all of her warts, consternation and unhealed, gaping, festering racial wounds, put a guy that looks like us into the highest office. He’s the President of the United States, and he’s black. It’s so unbelievable, that it seems like a movie. His election was a collective exhale from the weary heart of the struggle and the depths of our pained, bullet-riddled ghettos. I followed him for two years, I watched him run like he knew that the future of us and our country depended on it, as though America itself needed him to be a vessel for national redemption and a national resurrection.
I know that you saw bad times, but America has hit a really rough patch. And we might have been and may be still are on a down slope, if we aren’t mindful. Our national banking system has been under attack by greed, and now my generation is facing the prospect of having a life lesser than our parents’, and it’s scary. Also, after communism fell (yeah, that happened too) there was another threat to our securtiy, and it wasn’t another nation, but a small group of people who perverted Islam and mobilized global economic injustice for bad. This new guy, our president, he understands a lot of things about this, though. Unlike others before him, he seems to understand that the diminishing of that threat will not just happen on the battlefield, but will have to incorporate communication and the building of lost American goodwill around the globe, and the amelioration of some of those injustices used against us and specifically the ones we created. I wish and hope that you can see him from up there, because he’s special. I watched him for the whole two years, pleading for him to run, hoping to God he would run. I blogged — it’s like typing on a typewriter without paper and pen — about him so much, and I told anyone that would ask me that he was different and better than almost all of these other guys that ran before him and he was in the field against. And I talked to not just the black ones who asked, but the white ones too. And my “case” for him, wasn’t ever about race. He ran as a legitimate candidate: the best, most prepared person, for an increasingly tough world. His run was about all of us now, all of the kids who take his place afterward. He’s trying to make a new, better America.
I was always into politics, but I was so invested in him compared to the others before. And I was really invested in the others. I lived his campaign, and just when I thought he couldn’t do anything else to surprise me, he went even beyond my expectations. He was like Jackie Robinson out there or Jesse Owens or Joe Louis or Cassius Clay, he was just perfect for my time. And I know you weren’t here when America lost all faith in politicians, but he’s bringing some modicum of trust back. He tells the truth more than the other guys, he’s a bit like this other guy, Carter, in that way. But even with his small missteps, he finds his way out of a pickle, just like Jackie would, eventually sliding into home plate. It was like how they’d try to trap him, and he’d go the opposite way and find a safe space. His wife and family are beautiful too, it’s the most positive image of us I’ve seen in a while. I think there would have been many moments that would have had you weeping. I actually saw Dad wipe a tear or two during his Denver speech. They say he speaks with the power of Abraham Lincoln, Dr. King, John Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy.
We truly needed him. It’s hard for me to say this, but I think our people lost our way for a while. They especially needed him in the cities, Gramps. They needed him in South Central, down by where Pop works. It’s as though, after you left, we had all become so anti-establishment and disenchanted, that it hurt our cause. We didn’t believe in government; didn’t participate, after our rights were soaked in your generation’s blood. We took pride in being marginalized, just as they designed. And now, in some ways, being black and poor is worse than the Jim Crow days. It was like the struggle to vote and to live with the same rights as everybody never happened; as if we didn’t fight to have the same opportunities. And because a lot of our schools failed us, we would chant these things like “keep it real” when negative images of us were portrayed, we used it as an elevator, and we vaunted those images. It was the height of our pop-cultural identity, in fact. We became confused and thought that the epitome of being “black” was being uneducated. This guy is going to change some of those things, he’s a return to excellence as the standard. It’s hard to explain and even harder for you to understand probably, because you might have never seen him, but he’s the kind of excellence that represents all of Humankind. He makes mistakes, but its usually from trying to be so good, and trying to get it so very right.
Grampa, he is the apex of every theory they taught me at that fancy school. He understands things about how the system is supposed to work, and that there are so many different kinds of people here that need to be loved and acknowledged and brought in, and he trusts in government more so than anybody else it seems. On Inauguration Day he spoke in this bone-chilling cold, speaking so resolute about an America that has bowed to the forces that, for a time, have become greater than it, and still a warmth seemed to radiate. This is despite him saying we had some of our very toughest times ahead. He’s just a sensitive and fair, worldly man. You may not understand, Grandpa, but our last guy wasn’t about the world. He was about his friends, and the rich. And it hurt us in the ghetto and especially in New Orleans: The city became flooded after a levee broke, and because that last man hated government and didn’t believe in it, he left us unprotected. Him and his cabinet people believed that less government allowed for a better place, and so he took agencies designed to protect us for granted.
The images from that time would have turned your soul inside out. We were wading in disease filled waters, swimming with dogs, there were these poor black corpses lying in the street, swollen from water, and people reaching for news helicopters that filmed us as desperate people, grasping from on top of homes’ roofs, hoping for anyone to pull us out. He didn’t care. This new guy cares about us, and also everybody else. I imagine he’s like you, in that way. You probably know how I like planes so, the best I could describe it is: it’s like he’s a pilot and everyone’s telling him the plane is going down, but he doesn’t believe them and he says, “Trust me, I wouldn’t let anything bad happen, I’m on this plane too; with my kids and wife.” And because of it, I think we’re going to be okay. It’s scary now, everywhere, but we’re going to be fine. We are doing some things right, Grandpa, and you can rest now. You can really rest.
Love,
Vaughn Jr.
* Statement based on Derek Bok and William G. Bowen, The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions [Here]
Dexter Filkins’ ‘My Long War’ 09/06/2008
Posted by Vaughn in Conflict, Editorial, Essay, Global, Politics.comments closed
THERE’S nothing more maddening than war. Having never personally experienced it, but being constantly surrounded by its mindset while growing up, I have realized that there is a built-in insanity clause to it like that scene in Catch-22 where the novels hero, Yossarian, talks to the flight surgeon in the hopes of being grounded from bombing missions and avoiding his own possible death. His reason, given to the flight surgeon? Being afraid to die.
Yossarian is told that to be grounded he only needs to ask, but he also must be deemed “crazy.” However, being crazy according to the Army Air Force guidelines is not in fact crazy: since him admitting that he is crazy or agreeing to the diagnosis, for fear of dying in combat, is quite rational. (Who isn’t afraid of dying in war? Crazy people.) And so Yossarian claiming to be crazy and acknowledging that he is, would in fact, mean that he is not crazy and perfectly fit to fly. Hence the introduction of the idea of a “Catch-22″ into the American lexicon.
Reading the first excerpts of Dexter Filkins’ The Forever War, brings about the same feelings of a Catch-22. Poring over the work, I wonder why is this madness happening? Why is life being treated so disposably? I ask if the cost of military and civilian lives since 9/11, on all sides of the battle, has ever been worth it? The Forever War tells of Filkins’ experience in Afghanistan and Iraq working for the New York Times covering the Global War on Terror which has spiraled into a nebulous battle of asymmetry, between the world’s most powerful nation and an assortment of disparate groupings, (some of which are only fighting for their nation’s freedom from occupation), and have an advantage because of the very fact that they are in essence organized chaos.
Ironically, that is how Filkins’ book seems to brilliantly work. It goes from one scene to another, not following a logic, but it is so fitting because nothing seems logical in Filkins’ experience. It’s all tragic insanity from the little girl who has already seen too much, to the young Marine who dies while escorting him and his photographer into an insurgent trap: a spiraling 100-foot nautilus where Jihadis perched, waiting and ready to pick him or any American off.
Insanity is that Marine’s parents’ extraordinarily warm and understanding and kind reaction to Filkins as he visited them after their son’s death, following the funeral, all the while, knowing that their son had died not on a mission fighting Jihadist “over there” (as Bush once famously said, claiming that he made an away game for the US military, in order to avoid a “terrorism home game” on our soil), but on a mission to get a journalist for the N.Y. Times a picture. A fucking picture? A, at the time, needed still image of a dead body to be more exact, for an assignment, that was ironically exchanged for their son’s own life. And Filkins, himself, was befuddled and frustrated by the parents’ reaction, it seems as if he would rather have them belligerent towards him like the father of a woman who was murdered in Palm Bay, Florida. One that he “hadn’t even gotten [...] killed,” he wrote. It made no sense, the parents’ reaction.
I saw a picture of a Marine at his base camp recently. He was in the background unarmed; nothing, no helmet, just him, passing through a corridor. In the foreground, closer to the photographer, was a white dry-erase board. On that white dry-erase board it said in green marker: “The Marines are at war, America is at the mall.” There are those kind of moments in Filkins’ excerpted piece from The Forever War, published in the August 22nd edition of the New York Times Magazine.
Filkins comes home to Cambridge and runs, just as he did in Baghdad, only in the safe bounds of the surrounding Harvard environs, where he is fascinated by a skunk and no longer petrified by vicious wild dogs or the possibility of being kidnapped, or accidentally shot by shaky Iraqi police forces in the dead of night. It is the moment you realize just how much is at stake when we fight wars.
Right now the battlefield is “over there” and we are blind, almost immune. Most people I know, most of them young, most of them do not think about the war, while our generational cohort is dying and losing limbs, friends and their sanity. But the longer it goes, the more are affected, and soon our peace will have to cease as well. Read Dexter Filkins’ “My Long War” and The Forever War when it releases September 16. The book might be the most honest account of this war yet.
Read Dexter Filkins’ “My Long War”, excerpted from The Forever War [Here]*
HBO's Cohort Story: 'Generation Kill' 06/04/2008
Posted by Vaughn in Conflict, Editorial, Global, Media, Television.comments closed
THE sociopsychological dissection of this newest generation of American soldier, and their experience in the War on Terror has just begun (in cultural productions), and while we may not see the most incisive examinations come to the fore for some time, the very first salvos are beginning to air. Generation Kill is the first of such offerings focusing on the second Iraq War. The HBO original program, set to air in July, is produced by a group that perhaps understands this (working-class) war generation’s world and their problems more than any creative group to date — as proven through their critically acclaimed series The Wire, which skillfully exposed the myriad problems underlying urban crime and blight, and inadequate school systems populated with students from streets at odds with their educational goals.
Finding its origin in a series of essays featured in Rolling Stone that later became a book, Generation Kill is the work of journalist Evan Wright — written during his stint as an embedded member of the Marines’ First Reconnaissance Battalion. Wright’s Generation Kill is the first glimpse at a cohort raised on a palpable culture of violence (slickly produced war movies, gangster-rap and harder edged rock, in particular), who are street-savvy beyond any generation of soldiers prior, and how they deal with the disjunction between Hollywood war and actual war, their biographical influences and military bureaucracy. What The Wire had so successfully done in popular culture by producing a deft treatise on poor urban life and its obstacles, Generation Kill may just be able to do with popular conceptions of modern warfare. Generation Kill begins airing on HBO July 15.
Bike Bombs; Jaipur’s Unlikely Terrorism 05/22/2008
Posted by Vaughn in Conflict, Global, Politics.comments closed
I remember the frequent incidents in Belfast and the big “wake-up” that was Pan Am Flight 103 in Lockerbee, Scotland from the news. I was an information junkie even then, only in elementary school. My dad sometimes tells the story of him walking into the house from a long day that probably began before the sun rose and me not being even 4-years-old exclaiming distressed: “Dad! Dad! They killed Marines in Beirut,” and then me sulking off into a corner and being saddened by it. I unfortunately knew about terrorism while growing up. All of the bases I lived on were barbed wired, then concertina wired at the perimeters. (Which isn’t a surprise, but I think through the prism of a world where bases were sometimes in lands where protest of American presence meant bombings, it symbolized terrorism’s effect.)
I even worried about terrorism. In the Philippines there was a small but vocal part of the population who did not approve of an American military presence, and the civil insurrections always made that clear as the base’s atmosphere quickly went into a deeper lock-down mode in order minimize threats of violent demonstration. Now nearly 10 years into a “War on Terror,” my antenna has been on high for events across the world, as my own mother’s native land has been at times the center of a “quiet war” involving American special operations teams looking to thwart terrorism’s spread in the region. (That is the most recent article that I could find in a pinch.)
Last Tuesday, eight bombs killed at least 69 people in Jaipur, India. The weapon of choice? The car bomb, maybe? No. Pipe bomb, perhaps? Nope. The weapons were bikes. I read about the use of bikes as bombs, historically, by the Tamil Tigers and saw M.I.A. (the daughter of a Tiger herself) in an interview on M.T.V.2 (I think), a while back, with her explaining why bikes had been outlawed — or that young Tamil riders are met with suspicion by authorities? — in her father’s homeland of Sri Lanka, for that very reason of them being “weaponized.” Now, it seems that the deadly ingenuity of the Tamil Tigers has spread to other groups:
Jaipur, where buildings are washed salmon pink, the colour of hospitality, is a stranger to terrorism. It is the gateway to a state of amber forts and lake palaces that attracts about 10% of India’s foreign tourists. But if terrorism is new to Jaipur, it has become depressingly familiar to India. Similar attacks struck other parts of the country in May, August, October and November last year.
Read The Economist‘s dispatch [Here]
‘Human Smoke,’ and a Just War? 05/21/2008
Posted by Vaughn in Conflict, Global, Media, Politics.comments closed
For a long time I have operated under the idea that there are “good wars.” That there are essentially Good versus Evil battles which, if lost, have the capacity to drop humanity into the depths of hell, if not given a helping hand out, by way of force. Genocide being the main glaring example. I wrote a paper, as a hyper- idealistic college freshman, in defense of military action in Kossovo on humanitarian grounds, and I was summarily picked apart point-by-point by a professor and later a student in peer review, for my logic.
In philosophy the notion is called jus ad bellum — “justice to war” — and there are many hawks and some doves who believe in it. I am a dove. (Or perhaps a realist?) I believe in peace and that diplomacy should be exhausted before the committing of any blood and treasure, and then so, only with great hand-wringing. (Personally, I want to try to be a pacifist.) Still, there are these moments that I cannot turn my head from: the obvious and egregious wrong. That was what prompted W.W.II, I think. And that is what years of history classes have taught me. But is this true? Or am I flawed in my thinking that war is not only called for at times, but it is demanded morally when all else fails in situations where not just nation states, but humanity rests in the crosshairs?
A new book titled Human Smoke, by Nicholson Baker, asks this question. Looking at the figures behind the run-up to W.W.II, and the events and circumstances that shaped the second half of the 20th century in a “revisionist way” (for lack of a better term), I am beginning to examine my own beliefs and understandings of that war more deeply.
Though I’ve yet to read the book, the central thesis outlined in the various reviews I have culled, imply that Baker argues that W.W.II was not an inevitability, and that the Nazi party was less feared than Fascism by the world leaders involved, and so that argument for going to war was a ploy essentially. After all, American, French and British companies were all in bed with the Nazi party. The real reason for the “greatest war,” as can be drawn from Baker’s work, were the influences of big business and itchy trigger fingers. And Baker supports this claim with facts and documented statements, used as evidence to explain his argument. As the recent review in the L.A. Times said:
People are going to get really angry at Baker for criticizing their favorite war. But he hasn’t fashioned his tale from gossip. It is documented, with copious notes and attributions. The grace of these well-ordered snapshots is that there is no diatribe; you are left to put things together yourself. Read “Human Smoke.” It may be one of the most important books you will ever read. It could help the world to understand that there is no Just War, there is just war — and that wars are not caused by isolationists and peaceniks but by the promoters of warfare.
Read the Nicholson Baker L.A. Times‘ interview [Here]
