Link Banana

Dexter Filkens, who covered Iraq from 2003 to 2006, has a rather good piece about its impact on him in this week’s New York Times Magazine.

For me, the war sort of flattened things out, flattened things out here and flattened them out there too. Toward the end, when I was still there, so many bombs had gone off so many times that they no longer shocked or even roused; the people screamed in silence and in slow motion. And then I got back to the world, and the weddings and the picnics were the same as everything had been in Iraq, silent and slow and heavy and dead.

It’s worth considering the fact that Paul Krugman is wrong. But it’s also worth considering his point that the Georgia-Russia conflict may be the dawn of a new era:

But as I was reading the latest bad news, I found myself wondering whether this war is an omen — a sign that the second great age of globalization may share the fate of the first.

William Saletan sees the impersonality of killing with aerial drones — now made more videogame-like by Raytheon — as a bad thing:

Is the “synthetic environment” real? That depends on which end of the missile you’re looking at. In the targeted car, it’s as real as death. But from the console, it looks more like virtual reality. If the drone goes down, you’re not in it. The environment you actually inhabit is pretty nice. To enhance “operator comfort,” Raytheon offers “ergonomic, memory seating,” “ergonomically-correct displays,” and “adjustable hand and foot positions.” According to the Associated Press, “The leather chair is adaptable to individual users, who can also control a heating and cooling duct above their head at the touch of a switch.”

If you’ve seen combat in the flesh, you know what the fireball on the screen means to the people in the car. But to a teenager raised on Doom and Halo, it looks like just another score. He can’t feel or smell the explosion. He isn’t even there. The eeriest thing in the demo video is the total silence that accompanies the car’s destruction. The only sound that follows is the pilot’s triumphant verdict: “Excellent job.” It’s like something you’d read on the screen after getting a high score at an arcade.

Though they’re mostly small, The Economist makes the interesting point that there are actually a relatively high number of land-locked countries with navies.

Daniel Bergner’s profile of Shurvon Phillip, a man struggling against his body since he sustained a brain injury in Iraq, is a sometimes difficult read. The conclusion:

And sometimes impossible to overcome, too, was the idea that Shurvon’s life might not be worth living; that I, in his place, would rather stop breathing, cease thinking, that I would prefer to die.

Whenever this idea took hold, I recalled a medical ethicist at R.I.C. telling me about studies showing that doctors and nurses tend to rate the quality of life of severely impaired patients to be far lower than the patients do themselves. The ethicist had spoken, then, about the ways that a life acquires meaning. And I thought about Malik scrambling onto Shurvon’s bed to show him pictures, and about Malik and Kyla curled and comforted on the floor below him. I thought, too, about a kind of exercise that Shurvon’s family discovered recently by chance and that Gail described: with Shurvon sitting in a wheelchair in the driveway, his nieces and nephews tossed inflatable beach balls, one pink and another blue, softly toward him, and he tried to move his arms to bat them back. “They were cheering like at a baseball game,” Gail said, remembering the first time the children did this. “ ‘Yeah! Go on Ya-Ya!’ ” Beach balls and high voices of excitement floated in the air around him.

It’s not surprising that Israel’s 60th anniversary has gotten a lot more ink than the 60th anniversary of the coincident nabka (catastrophe). Yesterday, Elias Khoury wrote an Op-Ed adressing the latter.

Israel has depicted the problem as rooted in the Arab world’s refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist. But even after the majority of Arab states demonstrated their recognition of this right by supporting the Saudi peace initiative of 2002, nothing changed; in fact, things became worse. To Palestinians, the true problem lies in Israel’s rejection of the Palestinian right to an independent state, and in the prevailing Israeli culture’s refusal to recognize that Palestinians were themselves victims of forced expulsion from their lands.

Recognizing the sufferings of the victim, even if they are of the victim of a victim, is the necessary condition for an exit from this long and tragic tunnel. However, as the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci suggests, it is difficult to maintain the optimism of the will in the face of the pessimism of the intellect.

Pessimism of the will is what we are living today in the Middle East. It is a pessimism that warns not only of the danger of recurring episodes of catastrophe as Arab societies break apart, but of the dismal prospect of an endless war that will provoke future tragedies in the 21st century.

Combining the theme of the last two posts: a lot of pundits are saying it’s a good idea to invade Burma to provide humanitarian relief. (If you don’t believe me, sample the sources cited in this UN Dispatch post.) I think Mr. Yglesias offers an interesting explanation of the trend:

The thing you have to understand about the surge of pundits wanting to invade Burma is that it’s the very absurdity of the idea that makes it such an appealing op-ed thesis. It’s self-righteousness without responsibility. Advocate an invasion of a country you don’t know anything about and have it happen and, well, all kinds of things might go awry in a way that’s embarasing. But since everyone knows there’s not going to be an invasion of Burma, you can say there ought to be one and then make up a nice story about how well it hypothetically went. You can even show your thoughtful seriousness about matters of war and peace by chalking up the tragic failure to invade as yet another disastrous consequence of the war in Iraq.

Matt Bai has an artful examination of John McCain’s evolving view of American foreign policy in the forthcoming New York Times Magazine. His basic conclusion:

Undaunted, McCain soldiers on toward November and what could be his final campaign. When he ran in 2000, his philosophy of national greatness — the importance, as he always puts it, of “serving a cause greater than one’s self” — found its expression in ideas like national service and campaign reform, proposals that independents and even many liberals could embrace. For a time then, McCain, adrift within his own party, was almost certainly the most popular politician in America. This time, his theme of selflessness is bound up, irrevocably, with Bush’s unpopular war. Democrats, alarmed over their own disunity, can hardly wait to start pummeling McCain with Iraq. While I was working on this article, the Center for American Progress, the left’s leading policy center in Washington, took the liberty of sending over a 10-page litany of McCain’s selected comments on Iraq since 2002, delineated by helpful subheadings like “The War Begins — Rosy Outlook” and “The Critical Time Is Always Right Around the Corner.”

Also of note (and from the Times Magazine, tangentially related to Vietnam): an interesting/troubling examination of the charges of conspiracy the US is bringing against Hmong leader — and former US ally — Vang Pao.

Sue Halpern wrote a long but rather good exploration of the use of virtual reality as a way to treat American soldiers with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. This paragraph caught my eye (and made my think about the paralyzing cult of manliness):

When Travis Boyd was first asked to consider enrolling in the Virtual Iraq clinical trial, he was hesitant. He had already decided not to talk to his division therapist, because “I didn’t want to have it on my military record that I was crazy,” he said. And he was a marine. “Infantry is supposed to be the toughest of the tough. Even though there was no punishment for going to therapy, it was looked down upon and seen as weak. But V.R. sounded pretty cool. They hook you up to a machine and you play around like a video game.” Telling his buddies that he was going off to do V.R. was a lot easier than telling them he was seeing a shrink.

I’m not quite sure how to react to these photos from Lebanon.

There’s some fascinating stuff in Peter Carlson’s story about the non-governmental National Security Archive. Like this brief list of things they retrieved through Freedom of Information Act requests:

A CIA guidebook called “A Study of Assassination,” which advised right-wing Latin Americans on the most effective ways to bludgeon, stab and shoot their enemies.

A National Security Agency study revealing that the agency “deliberately skewed” its account of the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, which led to the escalation of the Vietnam War.

A 2002 Pentagon PowerPoint briefing on plans for the upcoming invasion of Iraq — code name “Polo Step” — that assumed that only 5,000 American troops would remain in Iraq by the end of 2006.

Perhaps the most famous documents obtained by the archive were the CIA’s so-called “Family Jewels,” which detailed the agency’s illegal wiretaps and attempts to assassinate foreign leaders. The archive filed its FOIA request for the “Family Jewels” in 1992. Fifteen years later, in 2007, the CIA finally released them, and they made headlines around the world.

(via brijit)

This is an interesting one:

Stephen Phillips, 22, was fighting insurgents when his mobile phone was pressed, causing it to dial his parent’s number in Otis, Oregon.

Most of the sounds were gunfire, but swearing and shouts of “more ammo!” and “incoming!” could also be heard.

Nobody was wounded or killed in Mr Phillips’ unit during the battle.

In addition to getting a new president today, more than a few people are beginning to fear that Russia planning to go to war with Georgia. Passport quotes a Russian journalist saying:

Nobody wants war, but both sides are doing everything to spark a military conflict. This is not the first time this situation has arisen. Recall how World War I began. States wanted only to protect their national pride and frighten their opponents. But at some point, the tensions escalated sharply and, coupled with mass mobilizations of their armies, the conflict in the Balkans spun out of control with tragic consequences for the entire world. This scenario could be repeated in the Caucasus.

For Slate, Anne Applebaum said roughly the same thing.

The CS Monitor reports on a debate in Qatar that made this oft ignored point:

“The media listens to people on [the far] sides of the equation,” he says.

The repeated airing of such extremist opinions has helped mold Western attitudes about Islam that, Hellyer argues, are a distortion of the reality.

It is a sentiment shared by Qazwini, who argues that there is no conflict between Sunnis and Shiites, only between extremist Sunnis and Shiites “who represent 1 percent of Muslims at best.”

A BBC corespondent recently visited Chechnya (the site of a long-time separatist war against controlling Russia) and made an eerily familiar conclusion:

“The locals are idiots,” fumed one Muscovite as the spring sun became comfortably warm and the delay continued. He did not know that the Chechen next to him had just said the same to me about Russians.

I did not feel that the north Caucasus was about to explode again. People are exhausted and the rebels are now thought to number only a few hundred.

But the missing and the dead have relatives and Chechnya has a long tradition of blood feuds.

There are countless unemployed young men.

Moscow must persuade them and their younger brothers that they have a future. If not, joining the militants may appeal more than joining the police.

A new generation of fighters may yet challenge the Kremlin’s control over Russia’s southern edge.

(via Passport)

Pretty interesting review of two books about the Civil War over at The New Republic. Of all the interesting bits though, this still seemed the most important:

The American government has learned, sometimes in fits and starts, to “manage” the problem of its troop casualties much as early nineteenth-century reformers learned to “manage” the punishment of social deviants: remove them from public view and institutionalize their recognition. As early as World War II, a major effort was made to keep photographs of dead and wounded American soldiers out of the media, and after televised newsreporting brought the Vietnam War “home” each night and helped to turn the American public against it, a dramatically different protocol was put in place for the first Gulf war and now for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. No battle footage, bleeding soldiers, or flag-draped coffins are to be seen. Remembrances are consigned instead to the dry print and official wordings of interior newspaper pages, and assimilated to the formal occasions marking collective sacrifice: Armistice Day, Memorial Day, the Fourth of July. It was remarkable, and telling, that well- placed commentators could regard the attacks of September 11 as heralding an end of American “innocence.”

(via brijit)

Kevin Drum explains, and also has an qulickly-understood chart:

Asked what would happen if the U.S. “quickly” withdraws from Iraq, hardly anyone thinks the Iraqi civil war will expand. The percentage who think “Iraqis will find a way to bridge their differences” grew from 44% two years ago to 61% this year. What’s more, the most optimistic countries tended to be the ones closest to Iraq (Jordan, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia). Obviously the Arab public could be wrong about this, but this strikes me as a mostly pragmatic question, not the kind of thing driven either by dislike of the U.S. or weird conspiracy mongering. Given that, it’s perhaps telling that the opinions of ordinary Arabs who are close to the scene (and who would bear the brunt of a widened civil war if it happened) are so at odds with the nearly unanimous opinion of U.S. foreign policy opinion leaders.

I’ll let Joshua Keating explain:

Uganda is being held in suspense right now as Lord’s Resistance Army commander Joseph Kony continues to delay signing a peace agreement that would bring an end to one of the world’s longest-running conflicts.

Current TV just put up an amazing short documentary on the conflict that includes an interview with a former top LRA commander who says he has no regrets about his actions

I’ve recently been remiss both about watching Charlie Rose and the news from Iraq. I just did a little of both by watching the conversation between Charlie, John Burns, and Dexter Filkins. It’s a good exercise in moderation and even-handedness on what has become a thoroughly political story.

I generally find political cartoons to be a hit-or-miss diversion that I don’t bother following. But I really enjoyed this one.