The Cherry Orchard

Here’s White House press spokesperson Dana Perino trying to justify the latest evidence that the United States currently tortures prisoners to obtain information, supposedly to protect America’s safety. This doesn’t make me feel safe.

I really appreciate Alessandra Stanley’s New York Times article about The War, the latest PBS series by Ken Burns. It takes a brave critic to say what many of us have felt about the increasing mythologizing of America’s participation in the Second World War. Yes, of course heroism should be celebrated. Yes, of course we as Americans are proud to have fought so resolutely against utter evil. But this was a world war, not just an American war, and to those of us who would like to stand proudly not just as Americans but as citizens of the world it’s disappointing to hear that Ken Burns series tells us nothing new about the broad, complex realities of the global conflict, but instead focuses on the American experience alone. Why tell us yet again about what we’ve already heard so many times before?

Here’s how Stanley puts it:

World War II didn’t happen just to us.

The war was necessary, but is this approach?

She also writes, bravely:

World War II is as fascinating and terrible a subject as we have, but America’s role in defeating Germany and Japan has not been underestimated in this country. And it can hardly be argued that the heroes of Guadalcanal and D-Day remain unheralded.

I recently read Herbert Bix’s Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan in a desparate attempt to understand World War II in a different historical context. It’s a fascinating book, and as all good history books do, it left me hungry to understand more alternative global perspectives on this horrific period. I do understand that Ken Burns specializes in American culture, but it’s still disappointing to hear that this new series stays tight in the pocket of warm, cozy World War II nostalgia and doesn’t attempt to challenge the mythology of angelic America fighting demonic evil in Germany and Japan. Yes, Germany and Japan were evil, but we’ve already heard the bedtime story over and over. Now let’s reach for greater understanding of all the complex issues involved.

The hyperbole that surrounds America’s glory in World War II was really made clear to me when I was recently arguing with a friend about why I should love the American military unquestioningly. “The American military saved your ass in World War II!” he said. “The Jews would have been slaughtered if it wasn’t for us!”

I had to remind him that actually the Jews were slaughtered.

So Alberto Gonzales has resigned. Are Americans satisfied? Hell no. As has been remarked earlier in these pages, we always suspected that the White House was keeping the embattled Attorney General in office not to promote the work this Attorney General could do, but as a bulwark against the work a new Attorney General could do (and will have to do) in furthering investigations that could harm the Bush/Cheney administration.

This has always seemed the obvious explanation for Gonzales’s stubborn refusal to resign, and I still find it amazing when news outlets would report that “George Bush is standing by Gonzales” and discuss “Bush’s loyalty” in keeping Gonzales in office. Since the Attorney General was having a rough ride of historic proportions in the press and on Capitol Hill, it’s impossible to imagine that Gonzales wanted to stay in office. Clearly, it was Gonzales who was standing by Bush, and not the other way around.

It’s also obvious that the White House was calling the shots on how long Alberto Gonzales would stay and when he would resign. It’s all about strategy, and this latest move is just another play in the long, sad game known as the George W. Bush presidency. Next up, the US Senate will reconvene, and I trust they’re planning to keep turning up the heat.

I’ve tried to resist getting too drawn in to the 2008 Presidential Election drama. Give me Hillary, give me Obama, give me John Edwards — any of them will feel like life-saving medicine after 7 years of what’s-his-name. I have been following the debates and the soundbites, but I start to feel disgusted as soon as it all starts to seem like a sporting event. Just give me a President who seems to have the basic skills for the job and who doesn’t lie to me every single day, and I’ll feel a lot better than I feel right now.

So I’m not getting too wrapped up in the Barack vs. Hillary headlines of the last two weeks, but I do want to say that Barack Obama is starting to win me over. I understood both sides of the argument over whether or not a US President should agree to meet and negotiate with a wide range of foreign leaders unconditionally (as Barack says) or whether we should maximize our advantage by seeking helpful preconditions in some cases (as Clinton says). I don’t mind the fact that Clinton chooses to emphasize the importance of pressing for advantage, but I do like it very much that Obama is articulating a larger principle: a simple, honest and open approach to foreign policy expresses America’s ideals best. I like it that Obama risked (and withstood) the criticism of other politicians in order to make this point.

And he risked and is currently withstanding even more criticism for his recent remark about renewing the battle against Al Qaeda — the original Al Qaeda, the one led by Osama Bin Laden, not the separate group that has now settled in George Bush’s Iraq — even if this means violating the borders of Pakistan.

Some find it hypocritical that a candidate who generally stands for diplomacy over war would suggest what could amount to “a war with Pakistan”. Nobody wants war with Pakistan and it’s very difficult to imagine that Barack Obama would act impulsively or recklessly against any other nation. But Obama is reminding us of a simple and important fact: our current administration has failed to weaken the organization that attacked us in 2001 and has credibly pledged to attack us again. Why shouldn’t our next President do what our current President has failed to do and defend ourselves against the group that threatens us the most?

It’s amazing how much criticism a politician has to take for speaking the plain and simple truth. Nobody wants war with Pakistan. But we remain “at war” with Al Qaeda — again, the real Al Qaeda, the first Al Qaeda — and it’s clear that Bush and Cheney, for all their bluster and military posturing, have no idea how to fight that war. I’m glad Barack Obama can recognize a real enemy when he sees one, and I’m encouraged that he can see through all the surreal nonsense of the last six years and talk about the possibility of taking action.

Now that several leading Republican politicians (and many more smart Republican voters) have abandoned the inane Bush/Cheney position that USA troops must stay the course in Iraq, it seems likely that American forces will begin pulling out soon (how soon? I wish I knew). This is far the end of our troubles in Iraq, or Iraq’s troubles. The hard work will get harder before it gets easier, and some frightening issues loom. We must pull out without leaving causing a massive refugee crisis that could lead to further horrors, privations and invitations to genocide.

As we’ve observed elsewhere on this site, major historical acts of genocide from Turkey to the Ukraine to Nazi Germany to the Chinese heartland to Rwanda have almost always been politically motivated. The “madman” theories that blame past disasters on obsessive politicians (Hitler) or mindless marauding gangs (Rwanda) invariably miss their mark. Genocides happen, sadly enough, because they benefit the governments that support them (I don’t want to repeat my past writings on this topic here, but if you find this formulation unconvincing please visit the articles in the “genocide” category here, where I explore this in more detail).

Here’s why this is relevant now: the territorial and economic battles between Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish factions over control of Iraq (and Iraq’s oil wealth) will probably result in some type of either formal or (more likely) de facto partition. A national partition will quickly lead to a refugee crisis (as it did in, say, the creation of Pakistan from the partition of India). A refugee crisis invariably involves the type of chaos that can lead to genocide. It’s all too easy to see the worst-case scenarios that could emerge in Iraq in the next couple of years, and it is the entire world’s responsibility — not just the USA’s, and not just Iraq’s — to make sure this doesn’t happen.

What can we do to help? As I’ve said so often in these pages before, we can begin by improving the quality of our national debate on the future of Iraq. This Huffington Post article by Thomas de Zengotita helps by pointing out the flaw in the oft-spoken Bush-Cheney line that the current Iraqi government needs to “step up” to solve the country’s problems. The condescending idea that Iraq’s inability to govern itself is due to a lack of national character or organization is pure fiction. Iraq can’t govern itself because its people are allied along Shiite/Sunni/Kurdish lines rather than national lines (and have always been) and will choose to fight for the sectarian causes they have been raised to believe in rather than for a “unity government” that they do not trust.

Unfortunately, not many people will read or understand articles like Thomas de Zengotita’s, and the idea that we can allow “nature to take its course” in Iraq while they “figure out how to govern themselves” is all too widely believed.

I don’t know how we can avoid a vicious refugee crisis in a post-USA Iraq, but this is the question we all need to ask, and we need to ask it now. And let’s just skip the simplistic answers, because they are not going to help.

I’m with Sully, and everybody else. What are we waiting for?

But I also wanted to post my promise that I will get back into writing more substantial and wide-ranging posts here. I’ve just been too busy to think straight, but you (my loyal readers) deserve more than quickie news blurbs here, and I intend to get this blog back on track starting, like, real soon.

I thought Kevin Wall, Al Gore and friends did a great job putting together the Live Earth concert. Musically, the highlights of the TV broadcast included the Beastie Boys, Madonna (a killer set), UB40, Linkin Park, Macy Gray, Roger Waters and his flying pig, Melissa Etheridge, the Police with Kanye West, and Yusuf Islam singing “Peace Train”.

I thought the interspersed short films were quite good as well. I know it’s fashionable to scoff at these concerts (it’s probably even more fashionable to scoff at them than it is to attend them) but I bet a lot of people learned new things about environmental issues yesterday.

I’m trying to keep a level head about the commutation of Scooter Libby’s jail sentence. Doesn’t seem fair to me. But I guess it’s Libby’s former boss, not Libby himself, who should be in jail.

This week brought encouraging news for Americans eager to end our military commitment in Iraq. Two Republican senators who have previously supported the Bush position, Richard Lugar of Indiana and George Voinovich of Ohio, have bravely spoken up in favor of a more realistic future strategy. With mainstream Republican support for the Bush position fading, the USA’s inevitable withdrawal will be hastened. The big debate is drawing to a close — in fact, it’s all over but the spinning. So what will happen in Iraq once coalition forces step away?

Nobody knows how events will unfold, but one result seems highly likely: Maliki’s central government will dissolve — perhaps quickly, perhaps slowly and painfully — and a Shi’a-dominated government will prevail in the majority of the country. But the Sunni and Kurd strongholds are too well-entrenched and well-organized to yield, so Iraq will exist for the near future as three nations.

Is this a good or desirable outcome? Well, not really, but since peaceful happy coexistence doesn’t seem to be gaining ground, it’s better than the alternative (subjugation and military oppression of the minority by the majority, or, as in the Saddam days, subjugation and military oppression of the majority by the minority). Here’s the Middle East for the foreseeable future: two Palestines and three Iraqs. Since the Middle East’s national boundaries are largely artificial lines drawn by imperial fiat after the fall of the Ottoman empire anyway, it’s hard to say how offensive or destabilizing this de-nationalizing will feel to the people of these lands. I really don’t know.

But I’m glad these Republican senators are delivering their sane messages to confused Americans eager for any type of future direction. It’s the right step forward.

I don’t usually read Harper’s Magazine (though I usually mean to) but I was attracted to the June cover, which asks the question “How to Repair Eight Years of Sabotage, Bungling and Neglect?” under a photo of a smiling George W. Bush.

Since I tend to walk down the street pondering the exact same question these days, I picked up this magazine and was pleased to find a broad and well-considered set of essays on this question, including the following topics by the following authors: The Constitution by David Cole, The Courts by Dahlia Lithwick, The Environment by Bill McKibben, The Marketplace of Ideas by Jack Hitt and The Military by Edward Luttwak. Being generally a foreign policy minded kind of guy, I was most interested in Anne Marie Slaughter’s suggestions on Diplomacy.

How are we going to handle diplomacy after the failure known as George W. Bush waves his last goodbye? It’s a question every 2008 presidential candidate should be able to answer, for one thing, and voters are going to demand something more than the candy-coated sugar language most of the candidates have been delivering on this topic. In her Harper’s article Slaughter wisely sticks to specific instructions: close Guantanamo, get serious about nuclear disarmament, join the International Criminal Court, get serious about the United Nations, and get serious about fighting global warming.

I think these are all important suggestions, though I’d add one more and put it at the very top of the list: renounce torture as an intelligence-gathering technique (that is to say, renounce torture).

I’m less impressed with Earl Shorris on The National Character. Where Slaughter’s prescriptions are based on the existence of concrete objects (Gitmo, the United Nations), Shorris puts too much faith into the meanings of terms like “virtue”, “evil”, “courage”, “fear”. He quotes Immanuel Kant, but he needs to be doused with a bucket of Ludwig Wittgenstein, who would have reminded him that all of these words are ultimately chimeral entities, and really aren’t likely to serve any useful purposes in any discussions, debates or exchanges of ideas, because they are too easily co-opted by alternative meanings or willful misinterpretations.

But Harper’s has put together a good essay series overall, and I’m glad it hammers home the point that those of us who really can’t stand the sight of George W. Bush anymore aren’t necessarily obsessive Bush-haters, and are really not motivated by emotion or anger when we talk about him incessantly. The problem is rather that we feel a desperate need to begin recovering from George W. Bush … and it doesn’t help that this walking disaster is still in office. In other words, it really isn’t about George W. Bush at all. It’s about how the hell we’re going to clean up the mess this moron made, and how we’re going to save our great country once he’s gone.