Iran: the proud hostage-taking tradition and the rules of engagement

The New Neo Posted on by

In taking fifteen British sailors prisoner, the Iranian government is merely following its tradition of win-win hostage-taking. When in trouble (and there is some evidence the mullahs are in a certain amount of internal political difficulty in Iran), the best course is to go with the tried and true.

The precedent is a strong one. In fact, the Iranian revolution cut its teeth on hostage-taking in 1979, initiating the famous embassy hostage crisis (approvingly called the “second revolution” by Khomeini) that lasted a photogenic 444 days and revealed the softness of the Western response to such bullying.

Initially, Ayatollah Khomeini thought it possible that the American reaction would be violent. But Jimmy Carter had no such intentions. Even a later attempt at military rescue was so poorly planned as to be ludicrous if it weren’t so tragic. The hostage crisis was milked by the mullahs for its public relations advantages, especially its internal ones in Iran, which may indeed have been the main goal of the operation:

As Ayatollah Khomeini told Iran’s president, “This action has many benefits. … This has united our people. Our opponents do not dare act against us. We can put the constitution to the people’s vote without difficulty, and carry out presidential and parliamentary elections.”

So the hostage-taking was not only an embarrassment to the Great Satan (otherwise known as the US), it afforded the nascent Khomeini regime a cover under which to consolidate power and get approval for an Islamic theocratic constitution. It also made the Iranian Left (whom one might have thought would have been against the establishment of a theocracy) very happy—yeah, let’s stick it to those US imperialist dogs!

The bracing and unifying internal effect of a good hostage-taking has thus been clearly established by precedent, and could be much needed today. Also established are the self-imposed impotence of the US and the British in such situations; is there any chance Ahmadinejad and his overseers, the mullahs, would even consider—as Khomeini did with Carter, at least momentarily—that there will be a strong military reaction by the Blair government to the current crisis?

No. Then as now, it appears that, in Khomeini’s lovely phrase, “America [read: Britain] cannot do a damn thing.”

Here’s some historical perspective:

At the time [of the 1979 hostage crisis] many in the ayatollah’s entourage believed that he was being unnecessarily provocative. Khomeini, however, was dismissive. “America, “he told his secretary, a mullah called Ansari Kermani, “may have a lot of power but lacks the courage to use it.”

According to Kermani, who wrote a hagiographical account of Khomeini’s life in 1983, the ayatollah “always counted on America’s internal divisions” to prevent the formulation and application of any serious policy on any major issue. The ayatollah believed that the American political system was clear proof of the saying attributed to Jaafar al-Sadiq, the Sixth Imam, that “God keeps the enemies of Islam fighting among themselves!”

Just so. Whether it has anything to do with the deity or not, we are certainly still fighting amongst ourselves, and they are most assuredly still counting on it.

And President Ahmadinejad doesn’t have to read history to remember, either; he himself is alleged to have played a major role in the hostage-taking (see photos, then and now):

Here’s Ahmadinejad’s bio, which makes for pleasant reading indeed. Whether or not he was one of the actual hostage-takers, there’s little doubt he was intimately involved in the event, and was actively engaged in the internal terror and executions that followed as the glorious revolution locked itself into power, a position it holds to this day.

Contrast this to the peaceful outfit the British Navy appears to have become. In this interview with British Admiral Sir Alan West (hat tip, Belmont Club) we learn that current British policy left the sailors vulnerable to being taken and used as pawns by the Iranians. The Brits—who were on small boats, away from the mother ship—were inadequately armed for defense, partly because of the way their mission has been conceptualized.

Here is Admiral West on the current rules of engagement. His statements spotlight the dual aims of the military in the area, and how those conflicting goals can lead to a situation that can be easily exploited by an Iranian government bent on thwarting them [emphasis mine]:

The rules are very much de-escalatory, because we don’t want wars starting. The reason we are there is to be a force for good.

A laudable goal, no doubt. But the military are not social workers, and pretending they are merely makes them vulnerable to this sort of attack, which ultimately benefits no one but the enemy.

Back in April of 1980, when Carter had finally gotten fed up with futile negotiations for the hostages’ release, and realized the entire episode was humiliating for his Presidency and for the US as a whole, he nevertheless tied the hands of those on the planned hostage rescue mission in advance by insisting on the following rules of engagement:

Another presidential directive concerned the use of nonlethal riot-control agents. Given that the shah’s occasionally violent riot control during the revolution was now Exhibit A in Iran’s human-rights case against the former regime and America, Carter wanted to avoid killing Iranians, so he had insisted that if a hostile crowd formed during the raid, Delta should attempt to control it without shooting people. [The mission’s leader] considered this ridiculous. He and his men were going to assault a guarded compound in the middle of a city of more than 5 million people, most of them presumed to be aggressively hostile. It was unbelievably risky; everyone on the mission knew there was a very good chance they would not get home alive. Wade Ishmoto, a Delta captain who worked with the unit’s intelligence division, had joked, “The only difference between this and the Alamo is that Davy Crockett didn’t have to fight his way in.”

It never came to that, as it turns out; the mission foundered before getting to Tehran.

But the dilemma remains: how to fight a military action, or an entire war, in which part of the goal is to win the hearts and minds of a population that—in rhetorically simpler times—used to be known as “the enemy?” Until Vietnam we dealt with this problem by compartmentalizing it: the gloves were off during the actual war, and afterwards was the time for the social work and reconstruction.

Since Vietnam the situation is murkier because many conflicts (such as the present one) are not wars at all, although in earlier times such acts as that of Iran’s seizing of the sailors would be considered a casus belli. Now, as Admiral West says, we are reluctant to “escalate” to military action for fear of causing a larger war—and our opponents are not reluctant to provoke us because they know that. Paradoxically, our respect for civilian life is being used against us by an enemy that does not share it.

Tony Blair, the West, and the big “easy”

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If you’ve ever had a bad back you know the drill: the doctor places your legs and feet in various positions, takes his hands and pushes in various ways, and asks you to push back each time.

What’s he doing? It’s a crude measurement of strength, because back problems can cause nerve injuries that not only can cause pain but can damage motor neurons. The best and easiest way to test motor strength is to push and see whether the patient can push back, and, if so, how forcibly.

Testing our strength isn’t all Iran is doing right now in its capture of fifteen British sailors, who are seemingly about to be used as bargaining chips in a game of “free the prisoners.” But it certainly seem to be a big part of it.

Just as Hitler was testing the waters of Allied determination in Munich and finding them surprisingly warm and pleasant, Iran has been testing the waters of the West since the overthrow of the Shah in 1979, and swimming quite comfortably there. In fact, one of the earliest acts under Khomeini’s regime was to precipitate the extraordinarily lengthy embassy hostage crisis, which gave the mullahs the idea that the West lacked a certain vigor in its response and its will to win.

In the present situation, Prime Minister Tony Blair says that the captured sailors and marines were not in Iranian territorial waters when seized. No surprise there. He also says that Britain considers their fate a “fundamental” issue. Good.

However, in the same sentence, Blair adds, “I want to get it resolved in as easy and diplomatic a way as possible.”

Of course diplomacy has to be tried here. So I don’t really have a quarrel with Blair mentioning it. It’s the word “easy” that sends just the wrong note of weakness to the Iranians, revealing what I’ve come to think is the true mindset of much of the West, and certainly of Europe: we’re psychologically unready for this fight.

Is there any sane person who thought that dealing with Iran was going to be “easy?” Is there anyone who thinks it wise to convey to the Iranians that we even want it to be “easy?”

Blair, of course, is speaking here at least partly to his own people, reassuring them that the result of this particular hostage-taking is not going to be another highly unpopular war like that in Iraq. In so doing, he reassures Iran that he’s not going to push all that hard against their own push.

When we study the events of Munich in September of 1938, it’s easy to forget one important aspect: Chamberlain’s actions were highly popular with British subjects. When he returned waving that piece of paper and speaking of “Peace for our time,” their reaction is described as having been “ecstatic.”

One can hardly blame the British of the time. It was only twenty years after the end of World War I, fought against the same country, Germany, and causing such widespread loss of life that an entire generation of England’s best and brightest had been literally decimated.

And I mean the word “literally”–well, literally. Take a look. Of about 5,400,000 mobilized, 703,000 were killed and over a million and a half wounded. The death rate therefore was around thirteen percent, well over the ten percent that constitutes the definition of the word “decimate.” And the casualty rate of the British in that war was forty-four percent. One can forgive them for being war weary, after what they’d been through.

When criticizing Chamberlain, it’s also easy to forget that he wised up pretty quickly, although it was tragically too late. In the spring of 1939, less than six months after Munich, Hitler broke the pact and invaded Czechoslovakia. To his credit, Chamberlain realized that this constituted a betrayal, and started to mobilize Britain for the inevitable war to follow.

When Hitler invaded Poland a few months later, Chamberlain had this to say:

The time has come when action rather than speech is required…No man can say that the Government could have done more to try to keep open the way for an honorable and equitable settlement of the dispute between Germany and Poland. Nor have we neglected any means of making it crystal clear to the German Government that if they insisted on using force again in the manner in which they had used it in the past we were resolved to oppose them by force.

So, at least Chamberlain felt that he had previously conveyed to Hitler that, if Hitler went too far, Britain would go to war. My guess is that Chamberlain may have mouthed some words to that effect, but Hitler took the measure of the man and didn’t quite believe them. Or perhaps he did, and didn’t much care; Hitler may have been playing for more time, trying to get what he could “easily,” without fighting for it. In this, the Chamberlain government initially cooperated.

Hitler apparently had contempt for Chamberlain after Munich, in the way that bullies often size up their opponents and seize on those they perceive as weak. “If ever that silly old man comes interfering here again with his umbrella, I’ll kick him downstairs and jump on his stomach in front of the photographers” Hitler is quoted as having said.

One wonders what Ahmadinejad and his superiors, the mullahs, are saying about Tony Blair right now. One wonders what they (and their predecessors) said about Jimmy Carter way back when.

It appears at this moment that Western muscles have become rather flaccid, even though the tools they could manipulate with those weakened muscles are highly powerful. The Iranians, of course, seek control of some of those fancy tools themselves. When they obtain them, perhaps they won’t lack the muscle–both mental and physical–to use them.

Churchill, Chamberlain’s successor, never talked about what was easy. He may have hoped that it would be easy or prayed that it would be easy, but to the British people (and to the listening enemy) he conveyed a very different idea.

On first taking office in May of 1940, many Conservatives still wanted Chamberlain. Churchill himself knew he had a tough message; he confided in a general, “Poor people, poor people. They trust me, and I can give them nothing but disaster for quite a long time.”

In his first speech to Parliament, Churchill made this clear, saying the famous words, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.” Later in the speech he conveyed—to Britain, its allies, and to Hitler—what else he had to offer: resolve and hope.

You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.

No, the situations are not parallel. The seizure of the sailors and marines by Iran is not tantamount to a declaration of war, and war is not a proper response at this time. My point, however, is that rhetoric is not irrelevant, nor is it empty. How can we convey actual resolve to the Iranians if we don’t even speak as though we have it?

Nature: red—and compassionate—in tooth and claw

The New Neo Posted on by

Animals living in groups, such as the very social homo sapiens and certain other primates such as chimpanzees, must find ways to get along. We all know that this “getting along” is a relatively flawed and halting proposition. But still,there must be some basic sense of cooperation within the group for such primates to have evolved and prospered at all.

Some intriguing research on primate behavior indicates that some of the roots of compassion for others are present in those animals. The New York Times reports on the work of primatologist Frans de Waal, whose controversial assertion is that animals share with humans some rudimentary ethical behaviors that may be hardwired.

Reading the article, it’s not clear to me that the behaviors described by de Waal are actually genetic; we know that primates have traditions and ways that are passed down through example and teaching. Nor does he assert that chimps actually have ethics itself. What he does say is that “human morality would be impossible without certain emotional building blocks that are clearly at work in chimp and monkey societies.”

De Waal’s descriptions of chimp behavior are touching. He noticed years ago that, after fights, other chimps would console the loser in the battle. This behavior wasn’t present in monkeys; it seemed to be an ape thing. But the emotion that could be described as compassion is even exhibited by some monkeys, it seems:

Chimpanzees, who cannot swim, have drowned in zoo moats trying to save others. Given the chance to get food by pulling a chain that would also deliver an electric shock to a companion, rhesus monkeys will starve themselves for several days.

The latter observation made me think of the famous Milgram “obedience to authority” experiments, in which human subjects were surprisingly willing to be talked into giving what they thought were very painful electric shocks to a total stranger (turns out the stranger was actually an actor and confederate of the researcher, but the subjects didn’t know that). The Milgram experiments demonstrated that whatever natural compassion exists in people can all too often be overridden by an appeal from an authority figure who says it’s all okay.

Other primates, being nonverbal, are unlikely to be as amenable to such appeals. It is one of the triumphs of human civilization and one of its drawbacks that human beings can be reasoned into doing something against their natural instincts, both for better and for worse. A doctor cuts into a patient’s flesh in order to heal the sufferer. A soldier fires a weapon in order to defend against those who would destroy a society or cause greater harm to innocent people.

And a murderer kills for any number of reasons: power, money, rage. A terrorist believes he’s doing the work of God when he blows a bunch of women and children into a thousand pieces.

Research indicates that all primate societies have evolved the following characteristics in order to survive: empathy, the ability to learn and follow social rules, reciprocity and peacemaking. These elements are present at least within the small groups in which primates live, but in these groups all is not lightness and love. Far from it; there’s tough love as well:

Young rhesus monkeys learn quickly how to behave, and occasionally get a finger or toe bitten off as punishment.

In human society that would be considered child abuse; to rhesus monkeys it’s apparently a “spare the finger and spoil the child” philosophy.

And that is by no means the worst of it. The work of Jane Goodall, who lived among chimpanzees and studied them for decades, shows that they exhibit a surprising and extraordinary amount of violence both within and without the group.

It used to be thought that humans were the only species that warred on itself. This is untrue. Chimp violence certainly hasn’t reached the levels of human violence, but that’s apparently only through lack of technological advances. The phenomenon of inter-chimp violence is relatively newly discovered and poorly understood, but chimps seem to defend territory aggressively:

It was hard for the researchers to reconcile these episodes [of violence] with the opposite but equally accurate observations of adult males sharing friendship and generosity and fun: lolling against each other on sleepy afternoons, laughing together in childish play, romping around a tree trunk while batting at each other’s feet, offering a handful of prized meat, making up after a squabble, grooming for long hours, staying with a sick friend. The new contrary episodes of violence bespoke huge emotions normally hidden, social attitudes that could switch with extraordinary and repulsive ease. We all found ourselves surprised, fascinated, and angry as the number of cases mounted. How could they kill their former friends like that?

Human morality is not simple, and the same appears to be true of the roots of that morality in primates. But human behavior is mediated by the ability to verbalize and to reason at a far higher level than that available to any other primate. This results in (among other things) the development of tools to extend both the healing power of compassion and the lethal power of war—although in most cases, of course, the tools are not the same.

These issues about human and animal behavior and morality cut across several disciplines: philosophy, psychology, biology, sociology. And you can bet that there’s a lot of disagreement among them over how it all works:

The impartial element of morality comes from a capacity to reason, writes Peter Singer, a moral philosopher at Princeton, in “Primates and Philosophers.” He says, “Reason is like an escalator ”” once we step on it, we cannot get off until we have gone where it takes us.”

That was the view of Immanuel Kant, Dr. Singer noted, who believed morality must be based on reason, whereas the Scottish philosopher David Hume, followed by Dr. de Waal, argued that moral judgments proceed from the emotions.

But biologists like Dr. de Waal believe reason is generally brought to bear only after a moral decision has been reached. They argue that morality evolved at a time when people lived in small foraging societies and often had to make instant life-or-death decisions, with no time for conscious evaluation of moral choices.

I’m not sure what good such “which came first, the chicken or the egg” discussions do, other than provide a living for academics. But I believe it makes sense that societies must have evolved some sort of altruism, if only in the group, in order to function successfully and to continue to exist. It also makes sense that this fact does not preclude violence, both in order to defend that group and for other less functional reasons as well.

Those who think that compassion can be extended to all peoples and all circumstances, and that violence can be eradicated from the human heart and mind, are seriously deluded. And they can become dangerous if they make decisions about the world based on those assumptions.

I once heard a story about the Jewish attitude toward what we are describing here, the element of human and animal nature known in Hebrew as the yetzer ra, or the “evil impulse.” It’s the source of violence and selfish drives, and in the legend the evil impulse is held captive by the people for three days. At the outset, the yetzer ra utters a foreboding warning:

Realize that if you kill me, the world is finished.

The world is finished? Whatever could this mean? The people found out soon enough. With the evil inclination out of commission, the hens stopped laying. It was discovered that the impulse was what gave the drive to life itself: desire, striving, commerce, sex, all sorts of things that are necessary for life to have any vitality at all.

It can’t be eradicated, nor should one wish to do so. It can only be tamed and harnessed at times in a more positive direction.

Here’s another parable about the paradox of good and evil in the world of living things, this one based on the story of Genesis:

And God saw all that He had made, and found it very good”¦vehinei tov zeh yetzer hatov, vehinei tov me’od zeh yetzer hara—“good” refers to the Good Inclination but “very good” refers to the Evil Inclination. Why? Because were it not for the Yetzer ha-Ra no one would build a house, take a wife, give birth, or engage in commerce.

I can think of no better way to close than with the poet Yeats’s “Crazy Jane Talks With the Bishop, which comes at the same idea from another direction:”

I met the Bishop on the road
And much said he and I.
‘Those breasts are flat and fallen now,
Those veins must soon be dry;
Live in a heavenly mansion,
Not in some foul sty.’

‘Fair and foul are near of kin,
And fair needs foul,’ I cried.
‘My friends are gone, but that’s a truth
Nor grave nor bed denied,
Learned in bodily lowliness
And in the heart’s pride.

‘A woman can be proud and stiff
When on love intent;
But Love has pitched his mansion in
The place of excrement;
For nothing can be sole or whole
That has not been rent.’

The ivory tower: clean hands and leading by example

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I happened across the February 19th issue of Newsweek at the home of friends with whom I’m staying. Picking it up and thumbing through it (and how odd it seems to me nowadays to see a hard copy of a periodical anywhere outside of the doctor’s office) I saw a letter to the editors written in response to a review of Dinesh D’Souza’s new book The Enemy at Home.

I haven’t read D’Souza’s book, but apparently it has the singular distinction of having been panned by both left and right. So I’m not planning to discuss or defend it; what caught my eye was the text of the letter, which expresses quite well the abstractly idealistic point of view of many, if not most, of the liberals I know:

Taking a stand against torture, no matter the perpetrator; fighting for a belief in human rights and dignity for all, including women, homosexuals and others who are mistreated simply for how they were born; nurturing a hope that America will unswervingly uphold the principles of democracy and justice that it preaches to the rest of the world; tell Dinesh D’Souza I’m proud to belong to the “domestic insurgency” that holds these “decadent moral values.” Continue reading →

Crossing the country: night flight

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Yesterday I flew on Jet Blue from Boston to Los Angeles.

For me this involves not enough sleep the night before as I pack and suddenly realize in the wee hours of the morning that I can’t take half of what I’d planned to, and that even the remaining half is way too much. It also involves a lengthy drive to Boston itself, and the need to be there an hour or two ahead of time to deal with security; a stop in New York to change planes; and then the cross-country flight to a place that is about as different from New England as you can get and still speak the same language and be part of the same country.

In my youth I often used to do the cross-country drive—with companion, of course. Many, many times. So I know what it’s like to drive through the plains, to traverse the mountains and the deserts, to go the northern route and the southern route and the in-between route, back when motels cost about twenty-five dollars and many of them were one-of-a-kind rather than chains.

I even remember traveling with my family before some of the major highways were built. With great regularity, our car’s progress was slowed by the need to pass through a town. Many of them had a main street called “Main Street,” which amazed me at the time; I’d never seen that in New York.

And even those meandering journeys were stupendously quick compared to the way it was back when the western part of the nation was first settled. Covered wagons and real danger. And, before that, there were Lewis and Clark and earlier explorers. And before that….

But back to Jet Blue. They’ve got a system whereby they don’t serve those little airplane meals on board. Instead, the airport waiting areas have been turned into food courts worthy of the most upscale malls. Organic? Kosher? Soba with seaweed? Imported chocolate bar? Wasabi peas? Or chicken sandwich with apples and brie, my somewhat more pedestrian selection? You can get it all at the counters at Kennedy Airport while you wait.

My plane left Kennedy about forty five minutes late. This was cause for concern because I had a car rental waiting for me in Burbank, and the counter was due to close only a few minutes after my flight was scheduled to arrive there.

Once on the plane, time flies as the plane flies, thanks to those little TVs Jet Blue has kindly provided. I settle in with “American Idol” (the first time I’d watched it this season; it seems the women are much stronger than the men). On another channel, Jet Blue has a screen whereby you can simply watch a map of the US, showing where the plane is at the moment, as well as its speed and altitude. This graphic demonstration of the way airplane travel has collapsed the extraordinary distances involved continues to astonish me; we have barely left Kennedy and we are looking at Philadelphia, and then halfway across Pennsylvania.

It’s nighttime and dark now. We fly over cities near where friends I hardly ever get to see anymore live—Cincinnati, Wichita—and I have to repress the urge to wave to them below. We fly over places I’ve never been—Hoover Dam, for example. We fly over places I have, both from the ground and the air—the Grand Canyon. It’s invisible, nothing like the spectacular view that was spread out under me once on a clear day from another airplane in another time, a view that showed the vast extent of that wondrous cleft in the world and actually brought tears to my eyes.

But now it’s pitch black; the Grand Canyon I pass over is a Canyon of imagination and memory only. But I know it’s there.

And soon—much sooner than expected—we are in Los Angeles. And, wonder of wonders (although not a wonder on the scale of the Grand Canyon), the pilot has made up all the time in the air and the Alamo rental counter is still open. I’m given the keys to a shiny new car and I drive off in a soft night rain, onto the well-lit freeways that only moments before had sparkled below me.

Cathy Seipp’s world

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I had heard that blogger Cathy Seipp had been illl and that the prognosis was poor, so this news shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

But it did. Someone so young and full of life shouldn’t be dying, we think, even though we know it happens far too frequently.

I didn’t know Cathy Seipp personally. I had met her so briefly at the PJ launch back in November of 2005 that we barely exchanged more than a “hello.” But there was no mistaking her syle, flair, wit, and penetrating intelligence, even in those few seconds.

And no one reading her articles or her blog could fail to notice that she had one of the most distinctive voices in journalism. Hard-hitting but never bombastic, with a tone that seemed casual and yet was extraordinarily clever, she made it clear she didn’t suffer fools gladly. And almost everything she wrote was laced with graceful humor.

She made it look easy. It’s not.

Cathy Seipp’s blog was (is) called “Cathy’s World.” Like most bloggers, she wrote about whatever she felt like writing about; that’s the special joy of a blog for a professional journalist like Cathy. As she said in her normblog profile back in Novermber of 2004:

For many years as a journalist who spent a lot of time interviewing people, I imagined writing a book or column called What About ME and MY Feelings?!?. But now that I have a blog, that’s handled.

Here are a few more quotes from the profile that might give you a small taste of the special flavor of Cathy’s wit and thought:

What philosophical thesis do you think it most important to disseminate? > That just because nice people believe something doesn’t mean it’s true….

If you could effect one major policy change in the governing of your country, what would it be? > More funding and support for the military. Those ‘Support Our Troops – Bring Them Home’ protest signs from the left don’t count as support. That’s like demonstrating outside a burning building, screaming at the firemen running in that for God’s sake they should turn around and run back out.

What would be your most important piece of advice about life? > I’ve always been a big believer in the importance of kicking your own ass. That is, forcing yourself to do what you don’t necessarily feel like doing at the time.

What do you consider the most important personal quality? > A certain large-mindedness, or generosity of spirit – because this encompasses not only extending yourself for others, but other qualities like courage, and having friends who disagree with you politically, and not constantly worrying about what other people think. …

What is your most treasured possession? > My house, which I bought when the LA real estate market bottomed out 10 years ago. I wouldn’t want a different house even if I had a zillion dollars – which, come to think of it, is practically what it’s worth now.

If you had to change your first name, what would you change it to? > Now that’s a sore subject, because when I was a teenager I really hated my boring name. I would doodle idiotic alternatives like Olwyn Sayre or Chelseureka Paprika in my school notebooks, and regularly pestered my mother to tell me other names she’d considered, but the only one she ever came up with was Nancy, which obviously is just as plain. How could she have been so unimaginative?! So then I’d ask about my younger sister, who got the slightly more exotic name of Michele. Didn’t she at least consider another name when she was pregnant that time? ‘Well, I always liked Nancy…’ Hopeless. I still don’t think Cathy is a particularly fine name, but by now I’m used to it.

There’s an ancient Talmudic saying that when anyone saves a single life it is as though he saves a world. The reverse seems true as well: that whenever anyone departs from this life, it is as though we lose a world.

And now, sadly and way too soon, we are about to lose the funny, wise, idiosyncratic, never-to-be-duplicated world of Cathy Seipp.

Please send your hopes and prayers to Cathy Seipp and her family and friends.

Escaping the mud

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Right now even though it’s almost April, and technically the last day of winter, there are huge mounds of snow here, as well as the occasional sidewalk of ice. Soon that will be followed by what’s known as mud season. It looks exactly like it sounds; brown and mushy, no green leaves or new grass in sight.

But today’s a travel day. I’m on a trip to warmer climes to see family and friends: Los Angeles, for starters. I’ve got my laptop and my headset, and my plan is that the blog posts and podcasts continue relatively uninterrupted.

Those were the days, my friend: Vietnam and Iraq protests, protesters, and nostalgia

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A succinct headline in the Washington Times summed it up nicely: “Anti-war protesters echo Vietnam.” The accent is on the word “echo”—as in “a distant, fainter, repetition.”

The anti-Iraq War demonstrations in DC over this weekend were self-consciously and purposefully designed to mimic the protests of yesteryear. But like all retro fashions, they didn’t quite resemble the originals.

Approximately forty years ago, on October 21, 1967, before Tet and before Nixon, the first mammoth Vietnam antiwar demonstration was held. Participation was estimated at 100,000 plus, and clashes with police resulted in 600 arrested.

I wasn’t at that one—and I wasn’t at Woodstock either, although most people my age claim they were. But I was there for the next big one, on the cold clear day of November 15, 1969, along with what are estimated to have been between 250,000 and 500,000 of my peers.

It was a group event all the way; I drove down from Boston with a carful of housemates and their boyfriends, including mine. I recall the sky in DC that day as being a deep and startlingly clear blue–almost as blue as the bluest sky I’ve ever seen, on a certain sad day in September almost thirty-two years later.

Back in DC in 1969, the crowd was very calm:

…the government had figured out how to handle the huge crowds, monitoring the demonstration with 3,000 police officers, 9,000 Army troops (who were kept out of sight in reserve), 200 lawyers and 75 clergymen. The New Mobe [the group organizing the event] had recruited thousands of its own armband-wearing “parade marshals” to help keep order.

By November of 1969 major US involvement in the Vietnam War had gone on for about five years and caused approximately 22,000 US deaths. The draft was still very much in operation, and it’s no coincidence that the demonstrators were mostly of college age; the immediacy of the draft fueled the size of the protests.

What did we expect as a result of our efforts? Demonstrations always have an element of self-indulgent theater, it’s true. But I believe many of us did think we’d actually make a difference. Our own template may have been the Martin Luther King Civil Rights march of 1963, which predated the passage of the historic Civil Rights legislation of the mid-60s, even though there was no simple one-on-one cause and effect involved.

I’ve already written at length about the 60s, Vietnam, and my own small participation in the antiwar effort, in the multi-part Section 4 (it starts here) of my “A mind is a difficult thing to change” series. So I’m not going to go into depth about that right now. Suffice to say I’ve rethought the entire era and come to different conclusions.

Some, of course, have not. And some have, but have moved in a different direction. An example is good old Ramsey Clark, who was at this weekend’s festivities, fresh from his failed attempt to save Saddam Hussein from the noose. It’s been almost forty years since that 1967 march, an event Clark feels was the turning point in rallying sentiment against the Vietnam War. Clark, of course, was on the other side of the barricades back then (literally) as Lyndon Johnson’s Attorney General, engaged in some of the administration’s preparations to deal with the march.

But it just ain’t like it used to be. You can’t go home again, according to Clark. “I can’t tell you that we have the depth of passion or breadth of commitment today that we had then,” he said (although the “we” back then to whom Clark refers remains a bit obscure, given his position at the time).

The numbers this past weekend? Estimated at between 10,000 and 20,000, with counterprotesters—many of them, interestingly enough, Vietnam vets—numbering “in the thousands,” as well. The Vietnam vets were on both sides of this demonstration, of course, as would be expected.

Differences are vast between these two wars. There is no draft now, for one thing. For another, the number of US casualties in this war is significantly less. I can’t speak for everyone, of course, but to us back in 1967-1969 a US win in Vietnam seemed (rightly or wrongly) to be of more marginal importance, the consequences of withdrawal less grave. And remember, we did not have the example of what happened in 1975 and afterwards in South Vietnam before our eyes; it hadn’t happened yet (see this and this for my more recent thoughts on the end of the Vietnam War and its aftermath).

This is not true of today’s protesters, who should at least be aware of that history, however they may interpret it. Some of them, such as 36-year-old Maggie Johnson, show an astounding inability to understand differences in scale when making historical comparisons. This quote from her referring to World War II is a good example:

We’ve been in Iraq longer than we were in World War II and we’ve accomplished a heck of a lot less. It’s time we wrap it up.

Does this woman understand how many men fought in World War II? How many died to achieve what was accomplished then? Would she for a single moment have stood for such numbers?

Here are the figures: the estimates are that between thirteen and sixteen million Americans fought in that war. About 311,000 were killed. Many millions more died all over the world; here are some figures to ponder. The numbers are staggering, and these are just the military deaths, although during WWII civilians in Europe and Asia suffered and died almost as readily.

Ms. Johnson is making some other errors of comparison. Because the length of World War II to which she refers was the length of the “hot” war, the one that in Iraq lasted a matter of mere weeks. World War II was followed by lengthy occupations and rebuildings of both Germany and Japan before it was over and its “accomplishments” solidified.

Apparently, people were more patient then. Here’s a quote on the subject from General Abizaid, due to retire soon as Centcom commander:

How do you win a “long war” against Islamic extremism if your country has a short attention span? That’s an overarching concern for Abizaid in a conflict where time — not troops, not tactics — is the true strategic resource. “The biggest problem we’ve got is lack of patience,” he says. “When we take upon ourselves the task of rebuilding shattered societies, we need not to be in a hurry. We need to be patient, but our patience is limited. That makes it difficult to accomplish our purposes.”

The protesters are nostalgic for the heady days of the 60s, when hundreds of thousands could be mobilized for the street theater of the time. They may forget that, when the draft ended, so did most of the protests. Or perhaps they don’t; maybe that’s what’s behind the call by some of them to resume the draft.

Ah, nostalgia; ain’t it wonderful? They’re nostalgic for the good old days of the mega-demonstrations. I’m nostalgic for the days when the American public had more patience for the fight against an evil that they seemed to see more clearly, and the endurance for the long hard slog of rebuilding a broken country afterwards.

You heard it here first: decline in divorce rate predicted

The New Neo Posted on by

Confession: now that I’m the proud owner of an ipod, I’ve been buying headsets like Imelda Marcos bought shoes. It’s a futile search for listening perfection of the noise-cancelling variety.

But I’m different from Imelda; I return all the pairs I don’t use.

And so I happened to find myself in Radio Shack the other day returning a headset. As I was leaving, a display of GPS navigators caught my eye. They were pricey although pretty tempting, so I’m happy to say I resisted.

It occurs to me that, once GPS systems become a commonplace technology in every car, you can expect the divorce rate to plummet. It will be the merciful end of those fascinating arguments about whether to stop for directions, or whose turn it might be to ask for them.

Remember, you heard it here first.

Blog Week in Review

The New Neo Posted on by

This week was a two-podcaster for me. I was kindly invited by writer, Colonel, and all-around Renaissance man Austin Bay to be on the Blog Week in Review along with the insightful and articulate Jeff Goldstein of Protein Wisdom (yes, Jeff, you’re a Renaissance man, too, and yes, Austin, you are insightful and articulate!).

We talked about identitarianism, otherwise known as identity politics, as well as how the truth in the Wilson/Plame/Libby case looks quite different to people on opposite sides of the political spectrum. Twas ever thus.

Twanging, from Homer to Cohen and back: music and poetry

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I’m still on a bit of a Leonard Cohen kick, as well as a YouTube fling.

Stay with me here, though; this isn’t just about Cohen.

As Gerard Vanderleun has noted, Cohen has an even darker side than the one I pointed out—which was already dark enough, to be sure, but with its redemptive qualities.

Follow the above link to a video of Cohen performing his very disturbing song “The Future.” While pondering its bleak vision of violence and anarchy, consider the fact that it was written around 1992 (although probably started years before; Cohen is on record as saying in interviews that it usually takes him years, if not decades, to write each song).

Cohen doesn’t turn to political matters often, but when he does, he has been known to demonstrate a certain prescience. Could it be that poets can sometimes sense things before others can? At least, certain poets. Then again, it may just be blowin’ in the wind.

In this interview on the subject of the song “The Future” back in 1992, Cohen says:

That’s a terrible song…It’s a grim vision, I think I left my anti-depressant pills at home.

Indeed. Here are just a few of the lyrics:

There’ll be the breaking of the ancient
western code
Your private life will suddenly explode
There’ll be phantoms
There’ll be fires on the road
and the white man dancing
You’ll see a woman
hanging upside down
her features covered by her fallen gown…

Cohen has said (scroll down to the last article) that the impetus for this song was the fall of the Berlin Wall, “which all my friends rejoiced about. I was the only dour person at the party, saying, ‘This isn’t that good news. This is going to produce a great deal of suffering. You’re going to settle for the Berlin wall when you see what’s coming next.'”

Well, it might be some type of foresight into the twenty-first century. Then again, it just might be Cohen seeing the always-half-empty glass; he is a pretty gloomy guy. But there’s an even more strangely disturbing foreshadowing song Cohen wrote, entitled “First We Take Manhattan.”

Here are some lyrics from that little ditty, published in 1988 on the album “I’m Your Man” [emphasis mine]:

I’m guided by a signal in the heavens
I’m guided by this birthmark on my skin
I’m guided by the beauty of our weapons
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin…

Ah you loved me as a loser, but now you’re worried that I just might win
You know the way to stop me, but you don’t have the discipline
How many nights I prayed for this, to let my work begin
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin…

(If you want to watch Cohen performing it, go here.)

Another fact about Cohen I learned from that interview is that—at least in 1992—he thought Hillary Clinton to be “immensely attractive.” Make of that what you will; after all, Cohen is a self-described “Ladies’ Man” (and please note the plural possessive).

But why am I going into all of this? Aside from the fact that Cohen’s songs, listened to with regularity, create some rather spectacularly tenacious earworms in the listener (although, to be sure, they are mercifully tuneful ones, unlike the notorious “It’s a Small World After All”)?

A while back I wrote about how poetry insinuates itself into our brains—or at least it used to, back when it rhymed. And about how modern poetry, with its general lack of rhyme or meter, has no such qualities. It’s difficult to memorize and eminently forgettable, even if enjoyed at first reading; it doesn’t create the poetic equivalent of earworms.

Relatively few poets today write what’s called formal poetry; that is, with rhyme and meter, or even simply with meter. True, there has been a small revival of forms, called—appropriately enough–the “new formalism,” somewhat analogous to a recent revival of representative art. Neo-neocon that I am, I’ve always been attracted to forms in poetry—and, in recent years, even before my political conversion, have written in forms. In some ways, my attraction to forms in writing (sonnets, for example, or villanelles, or terza rima), and in dancing (ballet), may have foreshadowed my later political changes—a closet conservative all the time, no doubt, despite my artsy-fartsy ways.

All of this is a lengthy means of coming around to saying that Cohen, as a poet, may have been drawn to songwriting partly because it afforded him the opportunity to use those archaic things known as rhyme and meter without running the risk of being called old-fashioned. No doubt there were plenty of other reasons—from his interviews, I’d say the man is pretty driven—but my guess is that this was one of them.

In my thread about rhyme and remembering poetry, many of the commenters wrote that in some ways songwriting has filled in the slack taken by the departure of forms in poetry. It’s true that there’s always been quite a bit of overlap, at least historically; “minstrels.” for example.

Homer, one of the earliest poets of whom we’re aware, is known to have used a lyre when he recited. But, apparently, he didn’t actually sing of Troy; he accompanied himself on the lyre in a sort of hybrid:

Homer not only recited his poems but used a κίθαρις, a sort of stringed instrument similar to a lyre. Homer did not sing his poems however, but he used the κίθαρις to mark rhythm, to play a musical interlude while he was thinking of something (let us not forget there was a certain amount of improvisation involved) and to indicate tone, pitch, and even mood (playing in a major chord to begin a thought, heightening it to a minor as the action or suspense rises, and resolving into major after some climax.) This musical accompaniment was indispensable to Homer and his contemporaries.

And then there was David, author of the psalms, and inspiration for many of the lyrics in Cohen’s much-beloved work, “Hallelujah” (“I’ve heard there was a secret chord/That David played, and it pleased the Lord”). The very word “psalm” means “songs sung to a harp.” Their longevity and memorizability, even in translation, are legendary. My understanding is that although they do not rhyme in the original, but rely on a sort of echoing quality of repetition of similar thoughts expressed in different words, their musicality is profound.

Poetry occupies some hybrid ground between words and music, but is neither. As I quoted Frost not long ago:

I have a tune [when writing poetry], but it’s a tune of the blend of [meter and rhythm]. Something rises–it’s neither one of those things. It’s neither the meter nor the rhythm,; it’s a tune arising from the stress on those–same as your fingers on the strings, you know. The twang!

Both poetry and song speak to arenas of the soul that prose can rarely reach. Poetry and song are linked to each other, and both are linked to the deepest wellsprings of human feeling. Both can descend into doggerel, but both can reach that height known as art—and, when they do, they can last for millenia.