Between the Scylla of dictatorship and the Charybdis of anarchy, Part II: North Korea

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North Korea is a country formed by a war that never ended.

Pacifists are fond of saying that war never solves anything. I beg to differ–war, for example, solved the problem of Adolf Hitler and German expansionist aggressiveness, although at great cost.

But that war was fought to the bitter end, unlike many subsequent ones. Revulsion at war–which I share, by the way, although my critics won’t credit that–has led to a series of unfinished, prematurely truncated wars. And like most unfinished business, there’s a tendency for these conflicts to come back to bite us.

The Korean War was the first modern “limited war,” a concept with which we’ve grown familiar. (The division of Korea was a result of the conclusion of World War II, by the way–so you might say that, if that Second World War solved the problem of Hitler, it led indirectly to the creation of the problem of Kim Jong il.)

Why was the Korean War not fought to a conclusion, but rather a stalemate? Each side wanted to unify the peninsula under its leadership, and each side failed. Each side was supported by a much larger power in its endeavors, but the larger powers were both exhausted, partly from fighting the Second World War. The US was reluctant to use the atomic bomb again, which would certainly have broken the stalemate–although MacArthur was purportedly in favor of it.

Little was accomplished by the Korean War in terms of change in the borders between the two countries, unless you consider the killing of hundreds of thousands of people an accomplishment (I don’t). The best you can say is that it kept the South from being swallowed up by the North–which, given what the North has become, is certainly a good thing.

But now the long-postponed conflict is coming to a head once again. And now North Korea is a dictatorship of such tyranny and oppression that it’s hard to find anyone who wouldn’t consider the end of such a regime to be an unequivocally good thing.

But as I wrote in yesterday’s piece, it’s not always so simple. This article by Robert Kaplan, appearing in the Atlantic, poses the question: what will happen when [and if] North Korea fails?

Answer: a potentially chaotic humanitarian and political disaster, as the tyrannical structure that holds together the failed state and its suffering people fails apart:

“It could be the mother of all humanitarian relief operations,” Army Special Forces Colonel David Maxwell told me. On one day, a semi-starving population of 23 million people would be Kim Jong Il’s responsibility; on the next, it would be the U.S. military’s, which would have to work out an arrangement with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (among others) about how to manage the crisis…

In order to prevent a debacle of the sort that occurred in Iraq””but with potentially deadlier consequences, because of the free-floating WMD””a successful relief operation would require making contacts with KFR generals and various factions of the former North Korean military, who would be vying for control in different regions. If the generals were not absorbed into the operational command structure of the occupying force, Maxwell says, they might form the basis of an insurgency. The Chinese, who have connections inside the North Korean military, would be best positioned to make these contacts””but the role of U.S. Army Special Forces in this effort might be substantial. Green Berets and the CIA would be among the first in, much like in Afghanistan in 2001.

Does this mean it’s best to keep Kim Jong il in power? Of course not. But be careful what you wish for, and be prepared–much better prepared–to deal with the consequences than you were in Iraq.

After the horrors of World War II, we faced the problem of reconstruction in Germany and in Japan, as well as most of Europe, which was in near ruins.

But, just as World War II was a total war, the reconstruction was an all-out effort as well. At the time, the US held no fear of words like “occupation” in Japan. If we were imperialist, so be it; we were out to change the country we had conquered. And change it we did, and most agree it was for the better.

Reconstructing North Korea would probably be a much more daunting task than reconstructing Japan. And all-out war, plus all-out reconstruction, doesn’t seem to be an option. But without the latter, the prospects seem grim.

Scylla and Chraybdis, indeed.

[Part I here.]

Between the Scylla of dictatorship and the Charybdis of anarchy: Russia

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I’m with Winston Churchill when he said that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others. Truly democratic states, with guarantees of human rights and freedom of speech, press, and religion, are precious and yet rare commodities.

Russia is an excellent case in point. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989-1991, the winds of freedom ushered in–what? A surprisingly chaotic and poverty-striken country, although of course in retrospect it shouldn’t have been such a surprise. However, the sorry state of the Russia that emerged from the collapse of the once-mighty USSR surprised even most experts and analysts in the field, just as the collapse itself surprised most prognosticaters.

So much for predictions. As I’ve written before, the failure of pundits to foresee events that occurred during and after the end of the Soviet Union made me realize that political soothsaying was not much more reliable than ordinary soothsaying. One of the reasons is that there are just too many unknowns that interact in mysterious ways; that’s true in all complex human endeavors. But certain general principles are clear, and one of them is that it’s not an easy task to create a functioning democratic state out of one that’s fallen on hard times and is used to despotism of one type or another.

That’s one of the messages of Dostoevsky’s “Grand Inquisitor,” in which the Inquisitor says:

In the end [the people] will lay their freedom at our feet, and say to us, “Make us your slaves, but feed us.” They will understand themselves, at last, that freedom and bread enough for all are inconceivable together, for never, never will they be able to share between them! They will be convinced, too, that they can never be free, for they are weak, vicious, worthless, and rebellious.

It’s no accident the Dostoevsky was Russian, even though he predated the Communist takeover. The problem is both a long-term Russian one and a near-universal one. It’s the tendency of the majority of states to drift to one form of tyranny or another, in order to counter the forces of civil war, anarchy, and chaos.

What prompted this soliliquy of mine? The murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was a critic of Putin’s government. It’s not likely that Putin or his henchmen actually killed her, but they didn’t have to:

…even if Vladimir Putin’s associates had nothing to do with Politkovskaya being gunned down in an elevator of her apartment building in the center of Moscow, his contempt for law created the climate in which the murder was carried out. Like the murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket in his Canterbury Cathedral many centuries ago, the crime was committed in the clear belief that it would please the king.

Read the whole Ha’aretz article to get an idea of how Putin’s Russia has become, in the words of the author, a “Potemkin village,” where “the same arbitrary brutes rule” as before.

I think that’s hyperbole; no one’s alleging that the situation has gone back to anywhere near what it was under Stalin, for example. But present-day Russia is a dreadful disappointment to reformers who thought something very different was going to happen back in the heady days of the 90s.

It turns out that the author of the article has a special interest in these things. Her name immediately caught my eye: Nina Khrushcheva.

Nina Khushcheva–could it be? As a reader of countless Russian novels, I recall how those Russian names work–it’s the feminine form of Khrushchev. And of course, as a person of a certain age, I remember that Nina was the name of Khrushchev’s wife:

The present day Nina, who turns out to be their great-granddaughter, teaches at the New School in NY and is a Soviet expert. In this reminiscence, she weaves her memories of her great-grandfather Nikita with her analysis of the ebb and flow of Russian politics.

Khrushchev’s famous 1956 speech denouncing Stalin’s murders was an epochal event in the history of Communism because–as Nina well describes–it let in the first breaths of freedom and reform, even though those breaths were small and self-serving (in an amazing quote, she says that Nikita “confessed he had needed to tell the story in part because his own arms were ‘covered with blood up to the elbows'”).

Khrushchev didn’t want the USSR or Communism to fall, and neither did Gorbachev when he instituted his much broader reforms. But events always have unforeseen consequences, and reform is one of those events–it can end up causing the whole ship to founder. And then, when the dictatorship is overthrown, the country whose economy has been tanking, whose population has lost initiative, whose social ties have been shattered by decades of informing on one another, whose trust in government has devolved to the most abject cynicism possible–how does that country go about rebuilding into a functioning democracy that protects human rights, as well one that boasts a robust economy?

It’s a daunting task, and the Grand Inquisitor’s solution always beckons. Putin definitely hears its siren call. But the alternative–the realpolitik policy of leaving dictators in place–is a lousy one, as well. Therein lies the conundrum.

[Part II here.]

North Korea joins the nuclear club

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North Korea is somewhat of an informational black hole. But apparently even black holes may give off a few emissions now and then. Yesterday was one of those times for North Korea, which claims to have successfully accomplished an underground test of a nuclear weapon.

The interpretation of the event is a challenge (was it actually nuclear? how large was it?), not to mention the even greater and crucially important question of how to deal with it, and what it signifies for the future.

The UN leaped to the offense in its usual way–although with a rare unanimity of opinion–and voted to condemn the act. President Bush said, in a sentence that seems loaded with irony to me, “Once again, North Korea has defied the will of the international community and the international community will respond.”

If verbal disapproval were enough to affect North Korean policy, we’d be sitting pretty right now, because everyone who matters–including main North Korean ally and supporter China–has issued some sort of reprimand to the rogue state. But even diplomats are not naive enough to think that mere words will accomplish much; the question is what sort of teeth will go along with the tongue-clucking.

Speaking of diplomats–in a strange coincidence, this test occurs just as a South Korean is posed to become (on January first) the new Secretary-General of the UN. And in another coincidence (although a meaningless one) the new Secretary-General’s name is “Ban.” Would that he could. But he can’t; the cat is long out of that particular bag.

No one quite knows what to do to be effective, which is probably one of the reasons North Korea has done what it’s done (there’s a good roundup of a variety of opinions and articles on North Korea and the bomb test here at Pajamas Media).

Economic sanctions are possible, but they impact heavily on an already-suffering population held hostage by dictator Kim Jong-il. The EU has no plans to stop its aid (which only amounts to about twelve million dollars anyway), but South Korea is pondering an end to its engagement policy with the North, according to President Roh. Japan is considering unspecified “harsh measures,” although a statement was issued that the country is not planning to go nuclear. The US is considering some version of a naval blockade, although not to the point that it would constitute an act of war.

And China, key player as the main support of North Korea and vital to its continued existence as a minimally functioning economy, is somewhat of an enigma itself. Here’s an attempt by Joe Katzman at Winds of Change to solve the riddle of the Chinese sphinx. It’s well worth reading, although very sobering. The main thrust is the thought that, even though there are some drawbacks for China to a nuclear North Korea, there are many possible advantages that would lessen China’s motivation to really stop them:

…friction with the USA, paralysis that keeps their North Korean client safe from retaliation, and positioning Korea psychologically to be responsible for the North later (but not, for instance, for starving North Korean refugees now)… all are exactly what China’s doctor ordered from a geo-political perspective.

If Katzman’s analysis is correct (and it seems as good a one as any other I’ve read so far), perhaps the best thing to come out of the North’s nuclear test would be if South Korea drops its seeming naivete regarding its other half.

How did it come to this? Clinton played for time and helped create the monster through his own naive policies; the Bush administration was left holding the bag but never could figure out what to do with it. And the international community’s response to the lack of proof of weapons of mass destruction post-Iraqi war has shifted the burden of proof in a way that’s singularly unhelpful.

Of course, North Korea–unlike Saddam prior to the war (although it may be that his pose was just bravado), or Iran’s behavior now–isn’t trying to hide anything. On the contrary, the North is flaunting its newfound toys. But one thing is certain: the whole world is watching to see what will happen next, because how the world deals with this threat will set a tone for future threats. And future threats are bound to come in the age we appear to have entered now, that of relatively easy nuclear proliferation.

The Sanity Squad goes to Washington

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Another week, another podcast. This time the Sanity Squad takes on Congress, in particular the Foley scandal, and the Squad doth not its punches pull.

(And if I sound a bit disconnected on this podcast, let me just drop the following hint as to what may have happened: Frank, the technical wizard at Pajamas, was far more successful than all the king’s horses and all the king’s men at putting the Skype-betrayed Humpty’s words together again.)

Subways: a token

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I’m in New York City for the weekend, the town where I was born and raised but don’t visit all that much any more.

It seems to me there are more people here than ever. Whether that’s true or just my perception, they certainly sport more iPods than ever. Subway riders are more subdued than they used to be, dreamily lost in contemplation of their musical selections, bereft of the otherwise ubiquitous cell phones that don’t seem to function deep in the bowels of the stations.

This latter fact poses a dilemma, of course, when one is rushing to a meeting, as I was yesterday. Now, those who know me are aware that I tend at times to run just a tad late, but yesterday my tardiness was enhanced by the fact that I had to buy a subway card (the subway tokens of my youth long gone, along with the fifteen-cent fare).

The man in the booth–and they still do have a man in the booth, and I thought dealing with him would be faster than trying to relearn how to operate the automatic card machines–was relatively laconic about how the whole thing worked, however. Unlike most New Yorkers, he seemed to savor the slowness. By the time I managed to purchase the card (“I’d like one ride;” “I can’t sell you one ride;” “What’s the smallest number of rides I have to buy?” “Two;” “How much will that cost?” “Four dollars”) and put it in the turnstile slot and then step up to the train–my train, serendipitously arrived at the station while he and I were having it out–the subway doors slammed shut.

The wait for the next one was uncharacteristically long. And I was surprised at how antsy the lack of phone coverage made me. Apparently the cell phone has become such a regular part of my life that I take it for granted, although I’m not one of those people who walks around the city streets habitually jabbering on one. But they are incredibly useful items for just this very purpose: to say I’ll be a few minutes late; to say “Where are you?” when I’m meeting people in a public place and can’t find them.

The train did eventually come, as trains eventually do. Despite what I’d imagine would (and should and could) be major advances in technology, the guy who announces each station (at least, that’s what I think he does) is just as unintelligible as he was back in the days when Saturday Night Live made fun of him. The young lovers still smooch. The remnants of my high school Spanish are still such that I can understand all the ads in that language (“Learn English to become more independent”). New York is still the quintessential melting pot. People-watching is still a great sport here.

A few snapshots: an elegant and worried-looking person with profound cheekbones, so tall and thin and hawk-nosed, and with such a severely short haircut that it took me a while to ascertain she was in fact a woman, holds a dog carrier of a size that could only contain something tiny and yippy and frivolous, like a Yorkie. An Afro-American woman looks for all the world like Cleopatra, ancient and mysterious. The young man standing in front of me and holding onto the bar exudes a Brando-esque smolder (the young Brando of “Streetcar,” that is, not his nearly unrecognizable older manifestation).

Emerging at Times Square and walking to my destination–a hotel there, to meet some friends–it strikes me that this is not the Times Square of my youth. And I spent a great deal of that youth in this general area, because that’s where so many ballet studios were clustered, including the one where I spent several formative years, at the old Metropolitan Opera House.

At ten and eleven and twelve and thirteen and fourteen I rode the subway there and walked through a small part of what was then a sleazy and not-all-that-inhabited Times Square, keeping my head down, not wanting to make eye contact with the drunks and the perverts who seemed to be its main inhabitants. But yesterday (and every day these days, or so I hear) it brimmed with vast crowds of the mostly young to middle-aged, mostly upbeat and on the move. The signs are brighter and more numerous (although I miss–oh, how I miss–that old Camel smoking sign). And I, no longer a dancer or even young, moved among them, somewhat of a tourist in the city I once knew so well.

Steve Beren, changer extraordinaire: Part II

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[Part I of my interview with McDermott challenger Steve Beren can be found here. We take up the second half of the interview shortly after 9/11, when Beren had become convinced that the unity the country faced was temporary and was bound to be disrupted by an antiwar movement.]

[B]: Events early in 2002 justified my thought there would be a large antiwar movement. I’d said it on Oct 31, 2001””and it was brewing on campuses already. Far left groups were already doing their spadework.

[N]: Your background as an activist seems to have given you insight as to how this was going to go down on the left. I was curious–what do you think it was about your experience that gave you this ability?

[B]: I was not only an antiwar activist. I was a trained Socialist in the antiwar movement. We had to study not only Marxist thought, but the tactics and strategies of past antiwar movements. I took that to heart. It had previously not occurred to me that all wars had antiwar movements””there was a small one during World War II but a big one before it actually began, and I took a special interest in those who remained antiwar throughout World War II such as the Nation of Islam, Quakers, etc.

[N]: So you were a historian of antiwar movements–

[B]: And antiwar strategy and tactics. And I was a participant in the Vietnam antiwar movement. I’ve written and spoken about Kerry’s involvement. There’s a plan: always bring religious people in, plus some disgruntled soldiers, and racial minorities saying there is injustice (for instance, the Nation of Islam in World War II didn’t want to fight against what they referred to as another colored race, meaning Japan). That combination appealed to a broad spectrum.

In the beginning of the Afghanistan war, there were rumblings in the media: there were rocky mountains, the British had failed there, the weather would be bad, this could be trouble. And back when John Kennedy had sent troops at the beginning of Vietnam the antiwar movement did it this way (in Vietnam, the Socialists supported the Communist takeover””but you don’t put that on a flyer, do you?) During the Cuban missile crisis what you’d say is that Kennedy is all concerned about Cuba, but he’s ignoring what’s happening in Vietnam. Or in Berlin. Then when he’s in Vietnam, you talk about how he’s ignoring Cuba. Ted Kennedy now talks about North Korea.

[N]: So these are strategies for all situations.

[B]: Yes, it’s a rhetorical device. You go from one thing to another, to add negativity to the media and the academic world. Regular people don’t like war””who does?–we all hope a rumor of war is not true. And if we start hearing things to discourage us it feeds on that: “we can’t win anyway, and we should be doing something else that’s more important.”

[N]: So, what’s your strategy for your Congressional campaign?

[B]: I’m running in a very liberal area in general. There’s an 80% Democratic district, and a 75% Democratic district. McDermott has gotten between 71 and 86 percent of the vote when he’s run [7th District].

But we’re gonna get way more votes than usual. In recent years the Republican party hasn’t even run an active campaign here; we’d announce we’re not contesting it””the last time they did was 1980; we got 40 percent of the votes against McDermott’s predecessor.

We decided to do it differently this time. We met with various Washington Republicans–eastern Washington is Republican, and you need better than usual Republican turnout in Seattle to win the state. I applied the Bush re-election strategy to the local election””which is to increase Republican turnout. I said, “What if we run an aggressive campaign, not a token? Start early and hit McDermott hard, play to win. Probably McDermott won’t lose but–but what if we got 30, 35 percent of the vote? It will help the statewide Republican candidates and generate enthusiasm for the other Republican candidates.”

I’ve appealed to Republican activists and they are very excited about my campaign, the goal of which is to help Republican candidates statewide, and to grow the Republican Party in Seattle of all places. I want to take my expertise on war and foreign politcy, take on McDermott on his territory in Seattle, and have more people here change their minds on the war on terrorism, decrease the number of people in denial in Seattle, and realize it’s not a “so-called” war. I’ve gotten exceptional coverage in the major dailies here.

[N]: You’re bringing a lot of energy, motivation, and optimism to your campaign.

I want to go back to something–in my change process, reading was enormously influential””especially on the internet; reading a variety of sources. One thing I thought interesting in your story was the incredibly important role reading 1984 had when you were young””was reading a part of your later change experience?

[B]: To this day I deliberately look at Democrat and Socialist websites. I find it fascinating to see how people are thinking””you have to know what the other side says if you want to change minds.

I learned to read at age two. My father would deliberately bring me books on subjects I wasn’t interested in. If I was reading all about dinosaurs, he said I should stop reading about dinosaurs and he’d bring me books about airplanes, or baseball, and said, “You must expand your horizons.” He was not an educated man, but at a very young age””I might have been ten””we were talking about Mein Kampf. He thought it was important to read it because you should expose yourself to views you find distasteful and don’t agree with–there’s something important about that.

That was my father’s way–he taught me to read and encouraged me to deliberately look at opposing views.

[N]: An important part of keeping your mind open so change could occur.

[B]: And it was annoying to fellow Socialists. I wasn’t just reading the other side in order to plan strategy but wondering “is that true?” And “what did newspapers say about it at that time?”

[N]: I have an idea that people who are able to change have always been critical thinkers in some way. That’s probably true of you. Even when you were toeing the party line you were more of a critical thinker than many who were in there with you.

[B]: Nevertheless I remained a Socialist for 20 or so years, with a long slow evolution away from it.

That was the conclusion of the Beren interview. I found the last exchange especially telling and even moving–the description of Beren’s father, encouraging (practically ordering) the boy to look at all sides, even those with which he disagreed. It was a foundation that allowed Beren to be a maverick who embraced Socialism and made it his life’s work, but that same attitude kept his questioning mind open to other points of view.

Now Beren is throwing himself into his present campaign with the same vigor that marked his earlier dedication to the cause of Socialism. If the old saying (often attributed–perhaps erroneously–to Churchill) that anyone who’s not a liberal at twenty has no heart and who’s not a conservative at forty has no brain, then we can safely say that Steve Beren is a man with both heart and brain.

Steve Beren, changer extraordinaire: from Socialist to Republican

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When I read that ultraliberal Jim McDermott‘s eminently safe seat in the mostly-Seattle 7th District of Washington was being challenged by a Republican who was actually attempting to mount some sort of viable campaign, I was intrigued. And I was further intrigued when I learned that the challenger, Steve Beren, is no ordinary Republican.

McDermott, one of the most antiwar and far Left members of Congress, has got himself quite an opponent, one who is aware of the steeply uphill battle he faces and but is nonetheless uniquely equipped to fight it with vigor. And that is because Beren himself is no stranger to the far Left. In fact, he was a card-carrying member of it–and I mean that quite literally.

I wondered how this former Marxist, former atheist, and former antiwar activist ended up a hawkish Republican as well as a self-described patriot and Christian. I decided to interview Mr. Beren, who graciously consented to allow himself to be recorded. Here is an approximate transcript of the first portion of that interview (the second will follow tomorrow).

My emphasis was less on the Congressional campaign itself–although you can (and should! Beren for Congress!!!) follow the Beren link and read all about it–than on Beren’s remarkable process of change, both political and personal.

NEO (N): What influenced the formation of your early political opinions?

BEREN (B): I was a high school junior and senior in 1967-1968, and the Vietnam War was the main political issue of the day, bar none. At that time I was–not unlike most members of my generation–near draft age, and vulnerable to pacifist arguments that war was unjustified. Around that time I also read Orwell’s 1984””which of course is a critique of dictatorships, but also of any government, the false intentions of government, and the misuse of language by government.

Lyndon Johnson’s government was under a barrage of criticism for the war, and that book made me susceptible to arguments that our government had bad intent. I took part in demonstrations in high school, and I witnessed clashes with police. The demonstrators may have purposely clashed with them, but that wasn’t apparent to me as a participant””-and so the accusations that fascism was around us seemed true. Then I got on a lot of committees, including the Peace and Freedom Party, and eventually I joined the Young Socialist Alliance in 1968, my freshman year at City College of New York. I was ready for far Left activity and I stayed committed to that for a goodly amount of time.

[N]: Do you think you were rebelling against your family? Or were you raised in this sort of political atmosphere?

[B]: My own family were Democrats; a little bit antiwar, but not activists of any sort. Initially, at 12 or 14 I’d supported the war, back when Johnson was first sending more troops. I remember having a discussion with my mother in the 1964 campaign–she supported Johnson because she thought Goldwater was going to send troops. But I told her Johnson was likely to do the same thing.

[N}: So it turned out you were a good prognosticator, even at that age. When did your change happen, and why?

[B]: Well, I was a Young Socialist, as I said””-obviously, I didn’t remain a young Socialist””but I joined the Socialist Party in 1970. And I was a supporter till early 1991. In December of 1990 I resigned, stating I hadn’t changed my mind–I was still a committed Socialist, I’ve been doing this 22 years. But now I’ll do it from the sidelines and be an active supporter, but not a member anymore.

[N]: So your fling with Socialism wasn’t just a youthful flirtation–you were in for the long haul.

[B]: You know, when you go to college campuses these days, you’d think the Greens were the future of the electorate. Well, when I joined the Socialists, you’d think the same thing. It was the heyday of Cleaver and the Black Panthers and you’d wonder–is that the future of the country? The answer is yes, unless they change their minds and vote for Reagan twice. Most people change their minds.

A lot of people went from Socialism to left liberalism, and those people went into Hollywood, or teaching, or social work, for example. But some continued their activities. In my case, I had no other career. I didn’t do what normal people do—have a career, a family, establish oneself. Most people may have political views, but they’re a human being first. But I was a Socialist organizer first””

[N]: So you were a true believer–

[B]: Yes, an activist and a believer.

1990 was the year that Socialism was failing all over world. I didn’t think that way, but in retrospect it affected me, as great events do. So I finally did what most people do when they graduate college—got a middle class job, saved money, and I found out I was good at it. I was making the transition most people make after college.

1n 1992 I still thought about voting Socialist””but I voted for Clinton. I became a Democrat almost out of reflex. Around 1993 I did another thing (at 40) that most people do when younger—I examined spirituality, thought about religion, read about religion. 1993-1995 was a very heavy transition period for me, and in 1995 I became evangelical, and I started attending church.

My career advanced and my Christianity advanced. Over the next few years I considered myself no longer a Socialist, I was a patriot, pro-military. I considered this compatible with liberalism, and I described myself as a liberal Democrat. I was also a managerial worker. My ex-Socialist friends broke off relationships with me””-you didn’t get that sort of job unless you were undercover.

[N]: To your friends you’d already gone over to the dark side. But it seems your change process happened fairly slowly.

[B]: Yes. Some say it was like Paul on the road to Damascus, but it took much longer.

[N]: It was a long and winding road to Damascus.

[B]: When I speak from knowledge on my tour, as an insider, people say, “Oh great, 180-degree turn overnight.” But it wasn’t; it was a slow and gradual turn. I didn’t become a Republican till the Bush reelection campaign in ’04.

[N]: That turn—liberal Democrat to Republican Bush-supporter—was almost as big a turn as the other, Socialist to liberal Democrat. How did the recent one come about?

[B]: We all were traumatized by 9/11. I’m a native New Yorker who’s lived in Seattle since 1987. I knew people who died at the WTC. It was impossible to believe, shocking. The difference between 9/11 and 12/7/41 [Pearl Harbor] is that with 9/11 some people went into denial, and therein lies our disunity.

After 9/11, I was thinking “I’m a patriot.” To me it was a December 7th moment. But I knew there was an antiwar movement waiting in the wings, who would seek to disrupt the unity. When I mentioned that fact back then, everyone was shocked. It was thought to be a quirky point of view. I called up Barry Farber, a New York talk show host from the past whose show I’d appeared on before. He’d been the voice of New York talk radio for conservatives in the 60s, 70s, and 80s.

I called him—he was elderly now—and asked, “Do you remember me?” I’d been on his show a lot in the past as a Socialist, a union guy. I said I want to speak as a former antiwar person on why I support this war, and against disunity. That started to lead to my transition. At that time everyone was still agreeing. But soon the antiwar movement grew and disunity began.

I contacted every blogger and talk show I knew of, and Young Democrat and Young Republican chapters, saying, “Here’s my bio, here’s my website, I want to come to your campus and speak.” And already, at that early time, I got lots of hate mail from the Young Democrats: don’t send me that, you’re a traitor.

[In Part II, Beren describes his post-9/11 activities and further change experience, and how his knowledge of thinking and strategies on the Left—gleaned from two decades of his own intense Leftist activism and study—gives him a special knowledge of the tactics, goals, and arguments on the Left.]

One small step for Neil Armstrong: the wheels of justice grind slow, but they grind exceedingly fine

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It’s been a long time coming, but vindication is finally here for astronaut Neil Armstrong.

That’s actually–ahem–Neil A. Armstrong. Don’t forget that A, like Armstrong did! Except it turns out he didn’t forget it, he just spoke it too quickly for the human ear and brain to record.

But not too quickly for the machine, apparently. Now technology has finally caught up with his fleeting but all-important article, the word “a,” thanks to Peter Shann Ford, an Australian computer programmer whose software analysis of Armstrong’s “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind” has found the missing word Armstrong had always insisted was there (hat tip: Austin Bay).

Somehow the news is very satisfying to me, although it hardly qualifies as earth- (or moon-) shattering. But that misquote had always grated. It made no sense even when I first heard it, which was when it was originally transmitted and televised in July of 1969. The black-and-white images were grainy and blurred, something like the primitive ultrasound by which I first was able to view the outlines of my son’s tiny form in utero many long years later (or actually, not so very many, come to think of it).

But it still seemed wondrous–men on the moon! Walking and talking! And when Armstrong said what sounded to me and to everyone else like, “One small step for man, one giant step for mankind,” the reaction was “Waah? What’d he say?”

It made no sense, and the grammarians among us have been ever-so-vaguely annoyed by that ever since. But not nearly so much as Armstrong himself. I’m glad he’s still alive to see the record set straight.

[NOTE: Some comments to this post focused on the idea that Armstrong had been perceived as making a grammatical error. My response is that it wasn’t about grammar, actually. Both sentences are perfectly grammatical, as far as I can see.

For me and most others, it was about meaning. The sentence was meant to go from the tiny to the large, in a sort of poetry. To me, it should have conveyed: “I’m only one man taking a step at this moment, but I represent the hopes and dreams and efforts of all humankind.” When Armstrong said “man” instead of “a man,” I felt that contrast between the small individual and the aggregate group was lost.]

Clash of civilizations: the modern world comes to the Amish

The New Neo Posted on by

The headlines that announced the killings of five young girls in an Amish school (“Amish School Shootings”) seemed more than oxymorons. It seemed as though matter was colliding with antimatter in a meeting of opposites that shouldn’t have been able to even exist in the same dimension. The killings appeared–for the first moment at least–quite literally, impossible. But in retrospect, why should they be?

When I was a child, a mass murder in a school–any school–seemed just as incomprehensible. But recent decades have erased that perception, and now schools are relatively commonplace settings for shootouts, so much so that security measures are also commonplace.

But in Amish country? Among the most peaceloving and pacifist people in the US, perhaps the world?

The gunman was not Amish; that was somehow a relief to hear. But it seems his life until the last few months gave no hint of what was to come: a pleasant family man, a good father and husband, who had nevertheless secretly been building up a stockpile of armaments and ammunition, waiting and planning carefully for this day.

The human heart can be a dark, unknown, and unknowable place, the human mind likewise. I would not be surprised if an autopsy of the killer were to reveal some organic lesion such as a brain tumor in a vital area connected with judgment and aggression. Or perhaps that’s just what I want to believe, because it would appear to provide a neat explanation when in fact there can be no neat explanations for such an outrage.

The killer selected his victims carefully. All were female children, the most vulnerable-seeming of the already vulnerable. And why the Amish? They were nearby. But perhaps there was more. If part of the gunman’s aim was to shock as well as kill, to commit an act especially outrageous in its targeting of those ordinarily most removed from violence, he certainly succeeded.

But the same thing that made the choice of victims so shocking makes them especially logical, because those who are particularly defenseless make the best victims of all. The Amish are pacifists and are committed to nonviolence; they don’t believe in having guns, and there was no security at the school.

Crime was not a total stranger to the Amish, even before this particular event:

Crime among the Amish is rare, but not unheard of. Almost always, it is an outsider who takes advantage of a Amish hospitality, naé¯ve by modern standards, to steal and even murder.

Amish schools are similar to many country schools of old:

School doors are commonly unlocked during the school day…The schools themselves are one-room affairs with outdoor bathrooms, and have many windows to let in the sunlight since there is no electricity. There is usually just one teacher – most often a young, single, Amish woman – who sometimes has a helper..There are no guards.

The dedication of the Amish to nonviolence and pacifism is long and deep. The original Amish emigrees to this country were motivated, among other things, by their refusal to serve in the military of their native Switzerland. Another anti-military detail is their refusal to this day to wear buttons, associated in their eyes with military uniforms:

[The Amish’s] pacifism and social conscience cause some of them to be drawn to left-of-center politics, while their generally conservative outlook causes others to favor the right wing. They are nonresistant and rarely defend themselves physically or even in court; in wartime, they take conscientious objector status; their own folk-history contains tales of heroic nonresistance.

Heroice nonresistance is wonderful, but it has its limitations against a crazed gunman. I want to make one thing very clear, however: by discussing the pacifism of the Amish, I am not suggesting for a moment that their nonviolence caused this attack. And security precautions might not have prevented it, either. But as a sometimes student of the phenomenon of pacifism (see this), I’ve puzzled over the dilemmas it presents.

I don’t know much about the deepest philosophical underpinnings of Amish thought, but my hunch is that this incident will not cause them to change their ways. Nor should it. Nonviolence is at the heart of the belief system of these strong people, and their society will absorb this blow.

The existence of a pacifistic culture is only possible, however, under two conditions: if all societies were pacifist, or if the pacifists live under the umbrella of another society that does have a police force and army and other protections against violent predators and attacks.

Those protections are far from perfect, of course. And the very society that is not pacifist–and that therefore needs a police force–is the same society that is generating the violence from which we (and the Amish) need protection.

But until the day the lion lies down with the lamb, an event I don’t see on the horizon–or any horizon that involves human beings–how do we best protect ourselves? And what is the price of such protection, in the psychological and spiritual sense?

These are questions the Amish may be facing today, or perhaps tomorrow. They are questions they’ve faced before, no doubt, when they made the decision to be pacifists and to shun much of modern life. The latter was probably thought to be protective, and for quite a while it was.

The Amish not only do not believe in violence, they do not believe in anger or recrimination, not even now:

“It’s just not the way we think. There is no sense in getting angry,” said Henry Fisher, 62, a retired farmer…He also said he did not expect additional security such as locks on schools because this was a “freak accident…”

A 25-year-old Amish man who declined to give his name said he lost his 13-year-old niece in the shooting and another niece aged 11 was in stable condition in a Philadelphia hospital.

He expressed resignation rather than anger. “I think it was going to happen. God has his hand in it,” he said….

There’s a limit to how much any of us can protect ourselves, or our children. The Amish have an especially restrictive code about this, and are highly unlikely to compromise a stable way of life because of this “freak accident.”

And the rest of us continue to make our own individual decisions about how much worry is too much, and what measures to take to keep ourselves as safe as possible without making it an obsession. Buy a gun? Learn karate? Carry mace? Move to the country? Barricade your kids in the house? Let them ride the subway? Security alarms? What sort of lock is best?

We make our own decisions knowing that ultimate safety is impossible. And the Amish make theirs, knowing the same. The answers are different, the dilemma universal.

As Bob Woodward morphs into Kitty Kelly, Vietnam’s shadow hovers over us all

The New Neo Posted on by

Bob Woodward has done an about-face from the relatively Bush-approving stance of his last two books on the administration. The present one, State of Denial, is by all accounts a description of a quarrelsome and conflict-ridden administration, with Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Kissinger as the main sources of trouble.

Woodward, of course, had his glory hour during Watergate, when he and Carl Bernstein slayed the Nixonian dragon, if not quite single-handedly or even quadruple-handedly. With the help of long-anonymous informant Deep Throat (recently revealed to be the FBI’s Mark Felt), Woodward and Bernstein not only were instrumental in publicizing and explaining the Watergate scandal, but became heroes of a movie, in which their roles were played by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman.

It turns out that informer Felt had an agenda. But then, who doesn’t?

That’s the problem with this sort of journalism, both then and now. It requires scrupulous fact-checking and source-checking by the authors, to make sure what they are printing is the truth, because the reader lacks even the usual ability to do so afforded by knowing the name and exact position of the source.

Even history-writing is difficult to get right; witness the David Irving trial (and see this post of mine for a discussion of some of the issues involved in the writing of accurate history). Historians use sources and documents that are named and ordinarily available to other scholars for cross-checking, and even then there are arguments. But a book that relies on secret sources for nearly all of its information–as Woodward’s apparently does–is especially suspect. And this is true whether it supports some point of view I happen to agree with, or not.

So, what do you do when all of the people Woodward is talking about say he’s–to put it rather more kindly than one otherwise might–talking out of his hat? If the picture Woodward paints of the Bush White House is one that’s copasetic with yours, you might be likely to say “Of course they’re saying he’s lying; they’re all liars anyway, and they’re trying to protect Bush and themselves.” If you’re on the other side, you might be more inclined to wonder if Woodward’s sources have gotten things a tad wrong, for one reason or another.

At least when Laura Bush and General Abizaid deny Woodward’s allegations that they asked for Rumsfeld’s resignation, we know who they are, and we can try to evaluate what they’re saying and why. Not so for Woodward’s sources; we simply have to trust him and evaluate him.

That’s just not possible, I’m afraid. Not just for Woodward, but for anyone who relies on this “reliable-but-unnamed-sources-tell-all” method. Whether the author be Woodward, Sy Hersh, or Kitty Kelly, it’s a titillating but ultimately unsatisfying experience.

As for Woodward, who knows? But he does have his own history, biases, and motivations. As a member of the increasingly tiresome boomer generation in which I must plead inclusion myself, his formative political experience was Vietnam and Watergate. As a major player in the latter, his investment is particularly keen, and the tendency to compare (or even equate) Iraq with the former and the Bush administration with the latter might be hard to resist.

When I read this recent Washington Post article, the following passage leapt out at me:

Woodward also tells Wallace that aged Republican war-horse Henry Kissinger is closely advising Bush, telling him there is no exit strategy other than victory.

“Woodward adds. ‘This is so fascinating. Kissinger’s fighting the Vietnam War again because, in his view, the problem in Vietnam was we lost our will.’ . . .

There were many problems in Vietnam, and I think analogies to the Iraq war are facile and mostly incorrect. However, there are certain general principles that apply to both, and surely “losing our will” is one. It’s a danger of all such conflicts–especially with much of the press doing its utmost to make sure that happens. I’ve written before about Vietnam, and at great length (see this, for example), and there is a decent argument to be made for the fact that Vietnamization was working far better than we knew in the early seventies, and loss of will caused Congress to abandon the ARVN when it actually had some chance of winning.

Is Kissinger still fighting Vietnam? Or is he simply standing for a basic principle of winning wars against insurgencies and terrorists?

There’s no doubt that many people in this country are still fighting the Vietnam war–just take a look at the enormous number of comments on my “A mind is a difficult thing to change” posts about Vietnam, for starters.

And it would be foolish to think that Woodward isn’t still fighting the Vietnam War, as well.

At the hospital: waiting it out

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday morning I was awakened by a phone call from my mother’s caretaker, the sort of phone call no one likes to get. She said my mother was having tingling and numbness in her left arm and left leg, which happens to be the distribution of the stroke she had last summer.

And everything had been going so well recently with her. Things had stabilized to the point where she was comfortable and relatively content, if not happy. I reminded myself that there was no reason to imagine they wouldn’t continue to go well. This event could be big, even the Big One; or it could be nothing at all, or next to nothing at all.

I felt a strange calm above the eerie fluttering in my gut as I drove to the hospital and met them there. My mother was already in a hospital bed, looking unfrail and quite herself (she’s one of the few ninety-two-year olds I’ve ever seen with a full head of thick hair, albeit white). Her nervousness was palpable, and she’s a lousy reporter–“when did it start?” “Are you having any weakness?” “Is it worse now, or before?” are all challenging and perhaps unanswerable questions for her at this point.

So we played the waiting game. The man in the next bed had a prostate operation gone bad, a painful infection. This is the sort of thing one cannot help overhearing. The flimsy curtain does almost nothing to hide the anguish and turmoil and the small and large humiliations of the emergency room vigil, both for the patient and the furrow-browed relatives. It works only marginally better than the hospital gown serves to guard the privacy of the body, slipping and sliding and riding up, exposing this and that at intervals.

Intervals. Why are there no clocks in these waiting rooms? Because if there were, time might be seen to pass in excruciatingly slow increments. Because when the doctor says “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” it’s not really a good idea to count those minutes too closely.

So one waits. One waits to hear news that will either change a life, or let it go on much as before. One waits to see whether the numbness will progress to weakness and then to virtual paralysis–as it did last time–or even worse. One waits to see whether this particular precious life will turn more tragic, or stay its fairly decent course a while longer.

It’s not really so different from any other day, any other moment in which life can change in an instant. The only real difference is that in the hospital waiting room that fact is highlighted with sudden sharpness.

And there’s the illusion that it’s time-limited, as well. We’ll learn her fate in “a few minutes.” But the fate we learn is only today’s fate and that minute’s fate, and that’s all we ever know.

The results of the CAT scan were excellent. No new damage. The symptoms began to resolve. My mother began to smile. She ate a turkey sandwich and had a ginger ale. The doctors told her the provisional diagnoses, just guesses on their part: a TIA, or a complex migraine. Go home, relax, go about your business.

So we did. And so we do.

Krauthammer’s Law extended: we are all Jews now

The New Neo Posted on by

Charles Krauthammer’s column “Turning up Jewish” is both funny and serious. Funny because his thesis–that, scratch a politician these days, and you get a Jewish ancestor–though hyperbolic, is based on the odd but true fact that it’s now a campaign plus to talk about Jewish roots, and such roots seem to turn up in the most unlikely of places. Serious because it reflects on two controversial points: the fact that Jews are high-achievers, overrepresented and illustrious in so many fields; and the phenomenon of the Jew who keeps the fact of his/her Jewishness (or Jewish birth) a secret, even from his/her children.

The last two points would each require a book–or a thousand books–to explain, or to attempt to explain. I’m not going to tackle them right now. But what of all those Jewish ancestors? I don’t know what’s made it something politicians want to talk about lately. But, given that they do, I don’t think it’s so very strange that so many are popping up. The fact is that most of us have far more variety in our ancestry that we believe. So if you’re looking for such a thing, it’s not all that hard to find.

Krauthammer states his law as follows: Everyone is Jewish until proven otherwise. He’s talking about politicians, and he’s exaggerating to make a joke. And the politicians of whom he speaks are mostly rather closely related to their secret Jewish ancestors, as it turns out. But if you go back in time long enough, perhaps everybody is Jewish. In fact, perhaps everybody is everything, or a tiny little bit of everything.

Go back only two generations and each person has four grandparents; one step further gives eight grandparents. Mathematically speaking, it doesn’t take all that long to hit the big big numbers. In fact, I read a book ages ago (I recall it as The Tower of Names, although my efforts to look it up right now have failed me–both Google and Amazon have drawn an uncharacteristic blank) that asserted one only has to go back a surprisingly small number of generations and we all are related, because the number of ancestors expands and interrelates in some elegant mathematical fashion I no longer remember.

If any person looking for a single Jewish ancestor is willing to go back far enough, one wouldn’t be all that hard to find, even though Jews themselves are surprisingly scarce, given their enormous visibility and the amount of hatred directed their way.

Geneology buffs–and I’m not one of them–are a bit like those who believe in past lives. That is, they tend to pick and choose among ancestors. Whoever talks about the ancestor who went to debtors’ prison, or the past life in which one was a ragpicker? It’s the illustrious or royal ancestors or lives we prefer to talk about. For geneologists, they are probably also the easiest to research, as well. But they are the tip of the iceberg.

The bottom of that iceberg is the far larger number of unknown and inglorious progenitors, and those of different ethnic origins. So if it’s Jews you’re looking for, you can probably find them.