Category Archives: Current Affairs

A prisoner release in Afghanistan and American hubris

Americana, Current Affairs, Politics

Korea-0010

Last week, CNN reported  Citing a lack of evidence, Afghan authorities released from prison 65 men Thursday over strong objections from U.S. officials, who said they pose a threat to security forces and civilians.

According to the New York Times, American officials had lobbied intensely with the Afghan government, first in private and then in increasingly acrimonious terms in public, to prevent the release.   

I was stationed in Korea fifty years ago, and I still remember how superior we Americans acted. We wouldn’t allow the Koreans anywhere near the radars or missiles, relegating them to lowly jobs like dog handlers, generator operators, and of course houseboys. Let’s face it, there is no American who knows what is really going on in Afghanistan, no American who knows who is really guilty or innocent – with really being the operative word here – no American in the military, no American in the diplomatic core, no American CIA Afghan expert, no old hand who has been there for three tours, and yet, we think we can tell them what to do.

At the Foreign Policy Magazine’s website, on Tom Rick’s Blog – The Best Defense – a former soldier has a post entitled Some reflections on the Vietnam War after visiting where my battalion was cut off and surrounded near Hue during Tet ’68 in which he says, among other things, that while visiting Vietnam,  Not only are there no Americans on the roads, in the air or in the fields, doing what Americans do, the Vietnamese seem perfectly in control of their own destinies. Maybe they were then too, but we were too driven to notice. He goes on to say This makes me think about the American Way of War — maybe best expressed as “you move over, we’re taking over.

Think about it for a few seconds, think about the fact that there are damn few Americans who even know the nuances of what is going on in America. Do you think that John Boehner knows what is really going on? If he did, how did he so misjudge the government shutdown? Do you think Obama does, then why can’t he get an Immigration Bill through Congress? And, if he didn’t because getting an Immigration Bill through is impossible, why did he try? Yet, we come into a foreign country and take over, telling the natives to move out of the way, we know what to do better than they do.

As an aside, the country we knew best when we conquered it, was the South after the Civil War. We spoke the same language, had similar histories, and many of our leaders and the Southern leaders had gone to school together (including the military leaders at West Point). After the North won, we moved military and civilian administrators into the South to run the place. Most school children, especially those in the South, know how badly we bollixed that. End aside.

Sending in carpetbaggers and telling people how to run their country just doesn’t work. It didn’t work in the South, it didn’t work in Vietnam or Iraq, and it won’t work in Afghanistan. We have brought in hundreds of carpetbaggers to run Afghanistan, spent billions of dollars, and about the only thing we have changed is raising the property values in parts of Kabul. There are now so many people in Kabul telling the Afghans how to run their country, that the European-style houses – built during the time the Soviets were there – are now selling for California prices, between $350,000 to $1 million dollars (this in a country with the per capita income among the lowest in the world at about $180 to $190 US dollars). According to the owner of Wazir Akbar Khan Property Agency, Rents in Wazir Akbar Khan and adjacent Shar-i-Naw are now in the range of 3,000 to 25,000 US dollars while the same houses rented for 150 to 300 dollars before November 2001, even under the Soviets.

But if there is one area, in particular, that we shouldn’t tell people how to run their country, it is in the area of who to lock up in prison. We are crazy about putting people in prison. We have the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world – with the possible exception of North Korea – even worse, our rate is so much higher that we even have the highest actual number of people in prison. China is second with 1.5 million people in jail, but with a population of less than one-fourth of China, we have an astounding 2.2 million people behind bars and China is not even a democracy. We put people in prison for almost everything, especially if they are people of color (and, let’s face it, those 65 people in jail are people of color). As an aside, it seems that the only thing we don’t put people in prison for is shooting young black men…that is if you are white and live in Florida. End aside.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said the release of prisoners is of no concern” to the U.S, and that the prison in which they were held is a Taliban-producing factory. I suspect that he is right, but I know that I really don’t know very much about it. Lindsey Graham thinks he does, however, and he is outraged, threatening to get Congress to cut off aid. I agree with the cutting off aid part, but more importantly, I don’t think we should be telling anybody how to run their country and we certainly shouldn’t be telling them who they should put in jail.

Lip service is better than no service

Americana, Current Affairs

Street Art-

My account was hacked and I should have shown better judgement in my initial response and handling of the event. Irina Rodnina, three-time Olympic gold medal winner, five months after she tweeted a racist photograph of President Barack Obama.

When I was a kid, it was OK to be a bigot, people advertised that apartments  were restricted, meaning Jewish people couldn’t live there. In the South, under Jim Crow, African-Americans were barred from everything including drinking fountains and State Colleges.  Then it was more than fashionable to be a bigot, it was expected. All the best people were  intolerant, that was how someone could tell they were quality people.

Today, that is not the case. I don’t mean that there aren’t bigots around anymore, but it is no longer socially acceptable. Today, when someone, like Irina Rodnina, says something intolerant, the world treats them as if they are small and stupid. I know that some of those people attacking Rodnina are just covering up their own intolerance, but that is still much better than climbing on her bandwagon.

Today, it is no longer fashionable to be a bigot or a racist or intolerant. There may be apartments that still will not rent to Jewish people, but nobody is advertising it. Sure, part of the reason is because it is against the law, but a big part of the reason is that it is no longer a popular thing to do. Is that great? No, but it is much better than it was.

“News has to be new” deteriorating into a ramble on the AK-47

Current Affairs

A Syrian military soldier holds his Ak-47 with a sticker of SyriWhen I turned my computer on this morning, to check the news, the headline on my Google News Page was Ever defiant, freed Pussy Riot members slam Putin’s amnesty from The Christian Science Monitor. In the back of my mind, the thought, Almost Christmas, not much is happening, rattled around. Intellectually, I know that stuff is happening all over the world, but lots of people are off for the holidays so stuff like Benghazi suicide bomb kills 14 just sort of disappears.

After I read my morning Doonesbury and Calvin and Hobbes, I went back to read the morning paper in a little more detail. Now the headline was Mikhail Kalashnikov, Creator of AK-47, Dies at 94. I found it a little sad that Pussy Riot got bumped by the death of the guy who invented the most ubiquitous killing machine in history. But the Pussy Riot piece was just a filler , we all knew they would remain defiant, we didn’t know that Kalashnikov was even still alive. As an aside, Why are so many brave people  young women? Shit! we men seem to only get Mr. Duck-breath and Kalashnikov; the women get Malala Yousafzai and Pussy Riot. And as an aside to the aside, Did Putin have any idea he was releasing  Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina, of Pussy Riot, on the anniversary of Andrei Sakharov’s release from the gulag? End asides.

But, the essential ingredient of The News is that it is out of the ordinary and new (although nothing is more fun than reading about news we have witnessed, that is why it is so fun to watch a game our team won and then read about it).  So, last week, Mikhail Kalashnikov, Creator of AK-47 is still alive, would be down in human interest somewhere. Mikhail Kalashnikov, Creator of AK-47, Dies at 74 is interesting because it is new, change, a milestone.

The AK-47 was a brilliant idea with a brilliant execution. There had been handheld automatic weapons before but they all used pistol bullets, think of the Tommy Gun – M1921 Thompson Submachine Gun to the military, Tommy gun to Chicago mobsters – or the M3A1 “grease gun” used by American tankers. The problem is, that because they used pistol bullets, they were not very accurate and did not carry enough punching power. Automatic rifles wouldn’t work because the large, rifle, ammunition made them too hard to handle. Kalashnikov came up with the simple – but out of the box – idea of making the ammunition bigger than pistol ammunition but smaller than that used in regular rifles.

Regular rifles are still more accurate, but the AK-47 makes up for that it is easy to carry and has a high rate of fire. The genius of the AK-47 is that because it is not accurate in the first place, it can be made with loose-fitting parts, like the old, cheap, Timex watch that took a beating and kept on ticking. It was designed to be reliable when used by people who were not very well-trained and did not have a history of using and maintaining mechanical devices. That is not a easy thing to do. It is easier to use and cheaper to make, but the AK-47 was harder to design.

The American equivalent assault rifle, the M16A1 is a better weapon but much more complex, takes more maintenance, and is much more expensive (about $150 vs. $670). Ironically enough, when we wanted to arm militias in Afghanistan and Iraq, we ran up against the problem that the militias were not composed of mechanically sophisticated troops, so we supplied them with AK-47’s. Whom we bought them from, I don’t know. As an aside, I am reminded of a story that was going around when we were in the Space Race with the Soviets. NASA spent something like 30 Million dollars developing a ballpoint pen that could write in zero-gravity; the Soviets used a pencil. End aside.

Anyway, Mikhail Kalashnikov is dead and the AK-47 lives on with over 100,000,000 out there.

 

I love these pictures

Current Affairs

Jang Song-thaek

I want to start by saying that I apologize for the picture being so small, a picture this good should be larger – the size of the screen in the Apple Superbowl Ad – but, I guess, North Korean cameras max out at about two mega-pixels. This is a picture of a Jang Song-thaek being dragged to his death, so maybe saying I love this picture, is unseemly, still…I love the identically dressed guys receding all the way back to the horizon, I love the North Korean military hats and the generals with all the ribbons, I love that nobody seems to be moving a muscle. It is like a scene from 1984 or the Apple Ad.

And the picture so fits the crimes, among other things Mr. Jang, who is a despicable human scum Jang and who was worse than a dog, engaged in  acts such as dreaming different dreams and half-heartedly clapping. He also  perpetrated thrice-cursed acts of treachery in betrayal of such profound trust and warmest paternal love shown by the party and the leader for him. It does seem vaguely similar to three strikes and you’re out, only thrice-cursed acts of treachery and you are really out.

12 Years a Slave

Current Affairs, Film

Plantation-2

We saw 12 Years a Slave the other night, finally. I have been avoiding it for a month and a half. I am not so sure that I actually did see it, I know I was in the theater but I may have been too guarded to really let all the movie in. I probably would be useful to see it again. Nevertheless, what did come across was the utter helplessness and almost utter hopelessness of Solomon Northup – stunningly played by Chiwetel Ejiofor – once he was shipped south; the utter helplessness and hopelessness of being a slave in 1841, in the United States. Moreover, the word slave doesn’t approach the horror of the reality; to be owned by another human being, as Frederick Douglas said, for twelve years a thing…classed with mules and horses.

The movie makes it clear that the South – and, in many ways, most of the United States – was a slave society. It wasn’t just that a couple of people owned slaves and, if the slave could escape them, they would be free; everything revolved around slavery (Northup’s father was owned by a white man in Rhode Island). The Constitution was written to protect slavery. As James McPherson points out During forty-nine of the seventy-two years from 1789 to 1861, the presidents of the United States were Southerners–all of them slaveholders. The only presidents to be reelected were slaveholders. Two-thirds of the Speakers of the House, chairmen of the House Ways and Means Committee, and presidents pro tem of the Senate were Southerners. At all times before 1861, a majority of Supreme Court justices were Southerners.

As I thought about the movie the next day, several things bothered me and I began to wonder if the book was real. I have since read that they were not in the book but added to the movie for reasons I don’t understand, taking them out does make the book believable. Frederick Douglas believed it, as did Harriet Beecher Stowe, so who am I to doubt?

What also comes across in the movie is that the slave system was a means of social organization and control that extended way past the plantation. And the plantations! In our national mythology, they are peopled by Thomas Jeffersons and Vivien Leighs along with some happy dark people. In 12 Years a Slave, the closest we get to Jefferson is Mr. Ford – played by Benedict Cumberbatch – and, actually, he is pretty close. Like Jefferson, Ford spouts pieties while worrying how much his slaves are costing him or making for him. For Vivien Leigh we get Mistress Ford who confronts the problem of a Eliza, a black woman, having her children stolen from her, with, Some food and some rest, your children will soon be forgotten. When the Eliza doesn’t stop crying after a couple of days, the problem is solved by selling her.

Think about that for a second, these are human beings who are bought and sold. Ford bought Eliza without her kids because he couldn’t afford the whole package, so, What the hell, just buy the mother. He payed a $1,000 for Solomon – who even has his name taken away – and when Solomon becomes a problem, he is sold because Ford doesn’t want to incur the loss.

Nevertheless, the women are both the biggest heavys – and the biggest victims – in 12 Years a Slave. At first look, it seems like the brutal and insane slave breaker, Mr. Epps, is the worst human being in the movie – a movie filled with despicable human beings – but he is nowhere near as bad as his wife. Her cruelty out of jealousy because her husband is serial rapeing Patsy seems to have no gain except satisfaction in seeing somebody suffer.

Even before I saw this movie, even before I saw Django Unchained, I started having the feeling that a good part of America is ready to face our racist Past and, by extrapolation, our racist present. Not all of it, not everybody, not even everybody I know. I don’t think that makes us post racial as a country. I do think that makes us increasingly able to talk about race and talk about it more objectively.

Obama is part of it, no doubt, but so is the fact that  this NFL season started with nine African-American quarterbacks (in the 80’s or 90’s they would have been diverted to play receiver or cornerback). Lewis Hamilton and Oprah are part of it, but so is Django and Morpheus. Each time we see people of color exell, it moves the public expectation just a little bit. Much of the right expected Obama to lose to Romney because of their expectations – Romney is white and smart and successful and all Obama ever did was go up against an old man – they also thought Congress could outplay him. I think that those are mistakes that are less likely to be made in the future.

One hundred fifty years after the Civil War, forty five years after Tommie Smith and John Carlos stood proudly on the winner’s platform in Mexico City, it is about time.