Chasing the Flame: One Man's Fight to Save the World by Samantha Powers

      Throughout his entire life, Sergio Vieira de Mello led a peripatetic existence, first as the son of a Brazilian diplomat and then during his 35-year long career at the UN, during which time he was posted to almost every conflict zone in the world.  In the summer of 2003, as the senior-most UN official in Iraq, Sergio died in the notorious bombing of the UN offices at the Canal Hotel in Baghdad carried out by al-Qaeda.

In many ways, Sergio Vieira de Mello’s story is the story of the UN and a history inside most of the major conflict of the past 35 years – a story of tough choices made in a politically charged, often dysfunctional organization called upon to mend irreparable divisions in a splintered world.  Samantha Powers pulls no punches, rendering both the man and the organization in a direct, straightforward style that elicits equal measures of frustration borne of perfect hindsight, anger, sympathy and some profound insights into the inner workings of this under-appreciated organization.  Powers delivers not a hero or a myth but a conscientious, flawed man struggling to reconcile his education as a philosopher with rapidly unfolding events as he experiences them.  You cannot complete this book without feeling loss – loss for Sergio, for the UN and for the many thousands of people touched by this imperfect, thoughtful leader.  Called upon to make spur-of-the-moment decisions of tremendous human import under extreme pressure, most men would be lost in the sea of recriminations that inevitably followed.  Sergio cared only about how what he had learned could be applied to the next crisis that would inevitably follow. In human affairs, chaos is the status quo.  Nobody gets credit for making things “less bad”.

During his 35-year career as a UN official, Sergio emerged to become the UN’s most valuable, pragmatic leader; respected inside and outside the UN as a nation-builder, mediator and problem solver.  Thought by many to be a likely future UN Secretary-General, one can’t help but wonder how his 35-plus years of field experience on the frontlines might have influenced decisions he would have made later on, and to what degree they might have resulted in fundamental restructuring of the UN itself.  Painfully aware of the disconnect between policies propagated in NYC and the artificial constraints they placed on those in the field, Sergio’s experience was unlike any of the S-G that have led the UN so far.  Sadly, for the UN and perhaps the world, we’ll never know.  But, as a loyal “company man”, Sergio, the pragmatist, would be quick to remind us that, with all its failings, who can say how much worse off the world if the UN didn’t exist?

A son of a Brazilian diplomat and sometime-historian, Sergio Vieira de Mello was educated in Rio de Janeiro, Genoa, Milan, and Rome (in French schools,) Beirut, Lebanon, the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) and the Sorbonne in Paris.  Introduced to leftist writers during a period of protest against the Vietnam war, it was in Paris that he became radicalized and participated in the tumultuous street protests of 1968, in which he was badly beaten by police. 

After graduating from the Sorbonne, Sergio joined the UN High commission for Refugees with headquarters in Geneva and, while there earned a doctorate in Philosophy at the Sorbonne.  His first posting was to Bangladesh, followed by postings in the Sudan, Cyprus, Mozambique, Peru, Lebanon, Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Congo, Kosovo, East Timor, and, tragically, his last, intended to be for just 4 months, Iraq.  As the years passed, Vieira de Mello matured and shed his leftist views in favor of a more pragmatic humanistic worldview.  When faced with human suffering, ideology was a luxury he came to distain.

The best vantage point from which to understand international conflict is from the inside, in the teeth of conflict, as was the case in Bosnia and Iraq, or cleaning up after its devastation, as in Cambodia, Rwanda, Kosovo and East Timor.  By virtue of his willingness to go anywhere, anytime – his family life took a backseat – Sergio was the rare UN official that the S-G could rely on to assemble a team and be on his way to a conflict zone within hours.  Ironically, his final posting to Iraq came over his own objections at a point in his life in which he was planning to retreat from the field.  In all likelihood, with just a month and a half to go, Iraq would have been Sergio’s last field assignment.

More than any other organization, the UN staff – as opposed to the Security Council – has to face many of the most challenging moral questions of war and peace.  As peacekeepers, their decisions often have life and death consequences, and it was impossible to know beforehand, absolutely, which direction would yield less suffering and death.  We, the public, can make a pretense of taking the high road and glibly hide behind ideology and second-guessing; officials caught in the fog of war or its aftermath don’t have that choice.

What should the role of the UN be?  Are there limits to the UN’s neutrality?  What limits should be placed on the “blue helmets” – international UN peacekeepers?  At what point should peacekeepers use deadly force?   At what point does the population view an occupying force or UN peacekeepers as legitimate?   What is the best response to “spoilers, rogue states and non-state militants?” 

Six months before the Iraq war, Vieira de Mello became High Commissioner for Human Rights.  He quickly concluded that “Dignity is the cornerstone of order,” and without security, human rights were unachievable.  “Outsiders” – meaning the UN itself – “must bring humility and patience to its dealings in foreign lands.” 

In its involvement in the most intractable international struggles, even when the UN fails – and success is allusive and virtually impossible to define – the UN and its permanent staff deserve immeasurable respect.  This important book educates and inspires that respect – for Vieira de Mello and the UN.

 

Merry Christmas 2009

As Fridays tick by like the beat of a metronome – click, it’s Friday! Click, it’s Friday again? – you know you’re getting older.  How do you slow down the click of the metronome?  Sometimes I’m not even sure what day it is… “Fat paper, hum, must be Sunday” hardly works any more.  Any suggestions?

Quote of the year:

Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi, labeled Goldman Sachs “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money."  That sums up 2009 quite nicely, don’t you think?

Now, news closer to home… like Bangkok

Jenn, on temporary assignment to Bangkok last year, got a promotion that requires that she remain for 2-3 years.  So, in February, Roy and Jenn gave up their apartment in Arlington along with Roy’s job at Search for Common Ground and moved to Bangkok.  After helping Roy pack and move stuff to storage, he and I rented a car and drove across country with their dog, Suki.  Then Roy and Suki flew to Bangkok, via Tokyo.  (I worried more about the Dog’s hydration during the flight than I did Roy.)  Living in Bangkok and traveling in Thailand, with side trips to Manila, have been an adventure – they are fast becoming citizens of the world, even Suki.

In April, Joan and I went to Italy for a too-short, two-weeks vacation.  After visiting friends Sheila and Alan in London, we spent a few days in Rome and the rest of our time in Perugia, Umbria, 100-miles north of Rome.  Like many ancient Etruscan cities, Perugia sits atop a hill with spectacular 360-degree views.  We could take 5 escalators up through centuries of history, literally, from our hotel to the piazza, on the central plateau.  Of course, we walked… Much less touristy then Rome or Tuscany to the west, Umbria struck us as much friendlier – patient with our imperfect, halting Italian.  One waiter joked good-naturedly, “Lei parla un poco, poco l’italiano, si?”  (… a little, little Italian)  We laughed, “Si, parlo l’italiano molto male!”  (Yes … very badly!)  This was the linguistic high point of the trip; unlike our experiences in Rome and Florence, where natives switch to English as soon as they get sight of you.  (Must be our Land’s End wardrobe…)

Roy returned to NH at the end of June for a planned family vacation at Silver Bay.  Unfortunately, Jenn couldn’t make it – Suki got [extremely] ill and Jenn didn’t want to leave her.  (The good news is, Suki recovered and both Jenn and Roy will be here for Christmas.)

In mid-October, Joan and I spent a few days in the White Mountains hiking in early snow – what were we thinking! – and then ... Wow!  Roy made another 10-day trip home – to surprise Joan on her NNth birthday (I’ve lost count, but I never thought I’d be married to a 66 year old woman… ops!)  And, yes, she was surprised!  Jess and her highly-significant one, Brendan, came up from Boston for the celebration.

And, yes, our favorite daughter Jess is doing very well; three-fifths of the way through a 5-year program at Boston Architectural College and, in June, promoted to an interior design position at her company, Architectural Resources Cambridge (fortunately, they’ve been hiring while other firms are firing.)  Brendan headed out on his own this year as “Brendan Haley Design/Build” and, even in this difficult economy, he’s doing great, a testimony to his skill and business acumen. Anyway, we’re proud of both of them. 

Roy spent most of the year in Bangkok freelancing and doing volunteer work while searching for a job, which he landed this month at the Freeland Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to the prevention of wildlife trafficking.  He’ll be doing communications and grants writing.  (He says that Freeland will be featured in the next issue of National Geographic.)

My father, Ernie, is going strong in NJ at 94½, enjoying working in the yard and keeping up with world events – he loves CSPAN; “history in the making”, he says.  My response is, “So is grass growing…” Anyway, I’m helping him edit his energy book, which he drafted a few years ago and is now revising.  That will occupy most of his time during the winter months.  I fly down to visit once every few months.

OK, wrapping up… This year has been the best (Obama) and worst of times (the Party of “No”), calling for patience and active participation, in equal measure.  I won’t list the issues that occupy my thoughts, they’re probably the same that occupy yours, and I’m already out of room, because …

This was a lot more than I intended to write – and more than I can expect anyone to read. 

Or, maybe, sensibly, you just skipped ahead to these words…

Merry Christmas.  Happy New Year.  Stay well.

Love and Best Wishes,

Joan and Paul

Worst Christmas

Here is a link to story I wrote for the Holidays. Best if read aloud. Enjoy! And Have a Merry Christmas!
>>Worst Christmas

Coal Black Horse by Robert Olmstead

I suppose there are more stories and histories of the Civil War than any other. Wars provide an endless tableau of lives lived in the extreme, facing moral choices that those of us living a relative peaceful existence never have to face, except through our imaginations. Only if we are brutally honest with ourselves, can we imagine ourselves facing the horrors of war and coming out unscathed, with our sanity intact; knowing, as Coal Black Horse vividly illustrates, that, to have survived at all would depend on luck at having avoided truly brutalizing conditions of war rather than as a confirmation of virtue or inner-strength that has withstood the flames.

A mother, Hettie Childs, sends her young 14-year-old son, Robey, from his home in what I believe to be the Shenandoah Mountains, to search for and bring home his father, who has gone off to fight in the Civil War. Hettie has a premonition that he has been killed in battle. She instructs Robey “to be safe, take no help from anyone” and “don’t trust anyone, not man, nor woman, nor child.”

Robey rides off on the back of their “cobby horse”, which grows lame shortly after he leaves home. He stops at a mercantile – the last familiar place in his universe, so far – where the proprietor, Mister Morphew, loans him a magnificent horse, the coal black horse that belonged to a man who had recently died while stopping there. Obeying his mother’s admonition, at first he declined Morphew’s offer, but Morphew persuaded him that it was the only way he would survive.

Robey departs and has many encounters with death, including one with a “goose woman”, a small, lice-infested man, a northern spy, dressed up as a woman surrounded by geese, who tricks Robey with food, then shoots him, almost killing him, and steals the coal black horse. Robey recovers from his wound, a nearly fatal crease to his scalp, and steals a succession of horses, guns and supplies, and witnesses many horrific scenes of war.

At one point, Olmstead declares, “When men go war, war wins”. He goes on to illustrate his point in evocative detail with some of the most vivid descriptions of war I have ever read. He asserts that in war, there are two wars; the one at the front and the one waged by the lawless, marauding profiteers, bounty hunter, battlefield scavengers and spies, like the spy who nearly killed Robey.

After weeks or perhaps months of wandering and searching, Robey finally tracks his father’s unit to Gettysburg and arrives just after that seminal battle is over, wandering amidst its carnage. “Sticking among the rocks and against trunks of trees were hair, brains, entrails, and shreds cooking black in the sun.”

After being attacked by a crazed, mortally wounded soldier, who he had to kick in the head to free himself, Robey realizes that “In war, even the dead will kill you.”

Olmstead’s descriptions of the survivors streaming south and the carnage of the battlefield itself are incredibly vivid, rich with indelible detail; details of the surrounding countryside and its inhabitants that paint a bleak picture of war and those who would profit by it. Chapters 9 and 10 are worth reading several times.

In a central event occurring along the way, well before reaching Gettysburg, Robey witnesses, and feels powerless to stop, a rape of Rachael, a girl just a year older than he is, by her guardian, a itinerant preacher. Rachael missionary parents have gone to Africa where they were killed by lions. During their absence, she was delivered to the care of the preacher and his blind, now pregnant and defenseless wife.

Rachael appears a second time at a Union Army depot-town where Robey is briefly detained by the Union Army as a spy, and again at Gettysburg, where he finds his dying father among the thousands dead and dying. In the interim, of necessity, Robey has been transformed by events into a man – or, at least, a boy with the lethal survival instincts of a man.

Too severely injured to be moved, Robey nurses his dying father on the field of Gettysburg. After several days of suffering, his father dies and Robey departs, but not before killing one of a pair of scavengers, who roam the battlefield extracting gold from the dead and dying; cutting off fingers for their rings, extracting gold fillings from teeth even from the living by hacking the jaws with a hatchet, and slitting pockets with razors to quickly extract their contents. I will always remember this sentence: They moved “like crows in the garden, skipping from one dead body to the next.”

He rescues Rachael from her tormentor and they make their way to his home in the Shenandoah, traveling at night for safety.

About the horse: The coal black horse rescues Robey from many encounters. It possesses a keen sense of danger before Robey does; and it is swifter and stronger than any other horse. Does it kill the spy who has stolen him, the “goose woman”, by running through woods to hang him up in the fork of a tree? Does the horse’s disapproval and then apparent forgiveness in the wake of Robey’s own brutality signify the response of a forgiving god? I don’t know. One reviewer describes this story as a fable. A horse, with an super acuity for sensing danger before it is apparent to its rider, saving him from death on several occasions, and the improbability of Robey having survived and returned home, as well as the many mythological and biblical references which, to be honest, I don’t recognize – as long as a label doesn’t diminish its effect, “fable” is as good as any; a tale rich in authentic detail and moral force.

An "Independent" State of Mind

In keeping with the spirit of this blog, here are some really random thoughts I’ve been musing over recently. If you, my vast audience of one (or maybe two) have anything to add, please do…

Independent … of What?
What accounts for the increase in the number of self-declared “independent” voters in recent years?

Are they truly independent thinkers or simply too confused by the constant noise that passes for information to have an opinion to call their own?
Some say they vote for the man, not the party. But what does that mean? I like the candidate’s looks? He/she seems like a regular guy? She visited our town and I shook her hand?

When someone votes for a candidate one year and for his political opposite the next, one has to wonder; what are they thinking?

Some people may be apolitical or indifferent to what’s happening in the world, more likely to read the sports section than the front page. One friend told me “the front section is there to keep the sports section dry”. (I hope he was joking, but I have my doubts.)

Certainly many people are just too busy earning a living and don’t have time to inform themselves. I’ve been in this position myself. I always felt uncomfortable, exposed even, taking a stand knowing how little I really knew, especially when the issue was complex, requiring serious study-time to digest; time I just didn’t have.

Does the ‘independent’ label inoculate people from having to take a side, or even think? Is it a declaration that says ‘I really am an independent, thoughtful person … really!’ But, it’s so much more entertaining to watch TV, and what’s the point, anyway? I can’t do anything about it.

Some self-declared independents may be trying to project an image of “rugged individualists”, although I suspect many of this group would be as likely to think of themselves as libertarians.

It is reported that, demographically, disaffected Republicans account for the growth of independence voters, but my guess is that a good portion are former Democrats, as well.

Certainly, among their number, there are many thoughtful people who are truly uncomfortable with the extremes of either party; distressed with the idea of being associated with those whose ideologies leave little room for compromise or civil discourse. Although I think of myself as a liberal, I am frequently put off and embarrassed by assumptions or positions of other liberals, or by a particularly strident opinion about a subject that, from my perspective, is far from easy to digest.

So, what do you make of reports that show independents who voted overwhelmingly for President Obama abandoning him just ten months into his administration? Are they just empty windsocks, blown one way, then another, by blowhards like Rush, Beck, Hannity and O’Reilly? Are they free thinkers or just free of thoughts? Is independent just another work for fickle?

Venting Our Frustration
I’ve noticed (or strongly suspect) that the less someone knows, the more emotional he or she become when discussing an issue like, say, the war in Iraq or the financial and banking system. Is this a manifestation of frustration at not knowing, not having time to become informed, or a combination of both? (Or is there another explanation?) We become frustrated when events fail to conform to our preconceptions. No one is comfortable with chaos. It’s human to want to simplify the world to make it comprehensible – and frustrating as hell when we discover we’ve organized our worldview around faulty assumptions or beliefs.

Intellectual honesty is not the fashion. When was the last time you heard anyone say, ‘Oh, that’s interesting. I’ll have to rethink my position?’

Today’s media climate gives license to venting one’s frustration rather than admitting we had it all wrong to begin with and taking the time to digest new information. This is all the more difficult when our foundation knowledge is based on parental imprinting.

We’re more likely to cast blame than grapple with complex explanations. It feels so good to vent about greedy bankers or corrupt politicians. In today’s media climate, we’re less likely to listen to contrary views, much less empathize.

Speaking of the Financial Crisis
Many have expressed outrage about the bank bailout and the way the administration handled GM and Chrysler, but few have spent much time imagining what would have happened if the government had failed to act. What would a complete collapse of the banking and financial system have looked like? If this is the “Great Recession”, what would we have called it if the world economy had collapsed completely?

As we dig ourselves out of recession, this is a critical point the administration needs to explain clearly. Otherwise, criticism of how the financial crisis was handled will snuff out the nations memory of the events that lead up to the financial imbroglio, and what the consequences would have been. As Barney Frank put it, “no one ever gets credit for making a situation less bad”.

As justifiably angry as we are at having to throw billions of dollars at the problem and at the outrageous Wall Street pay packages, we forget or fail to imagine what would have happened if the banking and financial system had failed completely, as it surely would have if the Federal Reserve and Administration had failed to act.

Many millions of Americans have investments and depend on them for their retirement. At one point, the stock market was down to less than half of what it had been at its peak and even money market funds – which most people consider as secure as checking account – were on the verge of ‘breaking the buck”, or loosing money. What would the world look like if the stock market had declined half-again, continuing its slide to, say, a DOW index of 3000 – and the buck had been broken, now worth 90 cents or less? How many people would have had to defer retirement or come out of retirement? Money market funds are uninsured; there is no equivalent to the FDIC for mutual funds. There would have been a run on money market funds akin to the bank runs of 1929 (this almost happened when one fund briefly sunk to $.97). What would the social and political consequences have been? Aside from the affects that the freezing of capital – the complete unavailability of loans from any quarter to anybody – would have had, many more businesses and the people they employ would have been hurt. The failure of Wall Street would have bulldozed Main Street. Today, we have an official unemployment rate of 10.2%, and an unofficial rate of 17-18%, if you count those who have given up looking for work. What would an official unemployment rate of 25-30% look like? We know what 25% it looked like in 1932; it was a very dismal time. Put simply, people suffered.

OK, not everyone has investments or a money market fund. But one investment most Americans do have is their home. Home prices have declined by 15% and in some regions, much more. If money had dried up completely, how far would prices have fallen? 40%? 50%? More? What would the effect have been? Renters too have suffered, surprised when their rental property is suddenly foreclosed, forcing them to relocate quickly.

We hear of people who are “underwater”, with houses worth less than what they owe. Fortunately, only a small percentage have walked away from those homes or defaulted. But, if unemployment climbed to 25%, you are looking at a yawning downward spiral of frightening proportions. Millions of families on the streets, political chaos, perhaps even revolution. (There’s a lot more guns around now than there was in 1929, and they’re a lot more lethal.)

I haven’t even mentioned the effects on the international financial system, and the chaos a failure would have there, but it’s easy to imagine, in an age when communications are instantaneous, that a financial collapse would have lead to an immediate decline worldwide – deeper and more rapid than the crash of 1929; a crash that really occurred in slow-motion, over three years.

But all of this is abstract and speculative. As in the run up to the current recession and its aftermath, there will be many opinions from experts to the contrary, experts whose historical perspective is 30 years, or who can point out myriad reasons why this is unlike 1929. My answer is, you’re right, it would probably have been worse. The press towards easy answers – and the hunt for scapegoats like the trial of the two hedge fund managers recently concluding with acquittals in Brooklyn – will continue.

The difficulty in explaining how bad it could have been is that you quickly get into a web if speculative cause and effect that can’t be explained in simple linear fashion. Stocks and bonds collapse, capital freezes, runs on banks and mutual funds, job layoffs, price deflation … and more of the same, again and again – they all have feedback loops whose ripples adversely affect everything else. Our brains just don’t work like that.

For a view of what might have been (or might happen yet), I recommend John Kenneth Galbraith’s elegant, short book, The Great Crash 1929, published in 1955. Unfortunately, he took 26 years to come up with an explanation of what went wrong. Sadly, it will probably take as long this time too.

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So, depending on what kind of “independent” thinker you are – and who doesn’t think he/she is – you either take the time to learn as much as you can or you place your trust in someone else you like, and parrot whatever they say, like a ditto-head.

Brandenburg Gate by Henry Porter

Occurring in the final months of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), known in the West as East Germany, just before the wall came down, Henry Porter recreates the conditions in a failed, delusional, paranoid police state dominated by the “state within a state” know as the Stasi (the German secret police); that most feared instrument of repression that numbered 81,000 agents and 1.5 million informers, in a country with a population of 17 million. This is a terrific historic novel that shifts between east and west, with a credible and lengthy cast of characters from the Stasi (variously “inspired”), the CIA, MI6, KGB – even a fictional Putin puts in an appearance – the GDR resistance and, inescapably given the historic landscape, the Nazi party. Be prepared to make a list of characters as they make their entrance – I wrote their names and the page number on which they first appear on the back cover, which was a great help in keeping them straight. Not that this is a difficult mystery to follow – far from it; it’s nearly impossible to put down.

Rudi Rosenharte, a 50-year-old unmarried, former Stasi agent who has been teaching art history in a Dresden university, and occasional in Leipzig, is reactivated, under duress, as a Stasi agent after a hiatus of 15 years to meet a former English spy and lover, who now wants to pass NATO’s highly prized secrets to the GDR. The catch is that as far as Rudi knows, she committed suicide in Geneva fifteen years earlier, in 1974. Rudi’s twin brother, Konrad, a filmmaker of subtly subversion movies viewed by virtually no one (Kafka-esk to be sure), has been jailed in a notorious East German prison and “interrogation” center, Konrad’s wife has been jailed, and their two children taken from them; all to insure against Rudi’s defection during a brief assignment in Trieste.

There are too many characters and details to relate here; suffice it to say, you will be convincingly immersed in the paranoid world that was the GDR in the fall of 1989; with all the dissembling, fear and torture (or worse) that accompanied one of most suppressive police states ever to have existed. Although it opens in Trieste, most of the action takes place in the triangle of Dresden, Berlin and Leipzig. If the measure of a successful novel – almost all novels a historic to some degree – is to come away with a more profound understanding of those remarkable events of 1989 and an admiration for the people who survived, Brandenburg Gate succeeds remarkable well. I only wish I had read this before I traveled in the east with my father, in 2005. Reading this now, at the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, made me want to return to view the landscape and people with renewed appreciation and historic perspective.

The White Tiger by Arivind Adiga

The narrator, Balram, being exceptionally inquisitive and resourceful, is The White Tiger. It is a title bestowed on him by a rural schoolmaster early on, and like all names in India, it defines and shapes his destiny. Having broken the chains of caste and poverty, Balram has emerged from India’s rural “darkness”, and over the course of seven nights, tells his story in a series of letters to Wen Jiabao, the premier of China.

India is the world compressed; its contradictions and contrasts, hypocrisy and brutality, corruption and greed, sit close to the surface, causing an outside observer to recoil, while most Indians themselves adapt and readapt to their condition.

Is it cynical to view the world – in this case Indian society – as corrupt, dysfunctional and intractable, the scoffing destroyer of idealism and good intentions – or is it simply a realistic, honest portrayal? And is it only India being portrayed here? Or is India simply the world compressed, where an interdependent “darkness” and “light” intermingle, casting shadows of moral complicity in every direction?

Avavind Adiga’s portrays two Indias; rural, dark-skinned poverty and subservience, on the one hand, and a wealthy ruling-class intent on maintaining itself through intimidation, violence and systemic corruption, on the other. India is nothing if not a world within a larger world, like Russian nesting dolls. Like so many great novels, The White Tigers characters inhabit the cusp between two grinding, stark realities.

In India your name defines your caste; it confers on its bearer a lifelong role, as a house servant, a teashop worker (as is the case with Balram, our narrator), a rickshaw driver (his father) or any number of other impoverished, subservient lifelong roles.

In form, The White Tiger appears as a series of audacious letters written over the course of seven nights by a young “entrepreneur”, Balram, to the Chinese Prime Minister, Wen Jiabao, prior to Jiabao’s announced state visit to India.

I’m not giving anything away to say that, at the outset, Balram discloses he has murdered his employer, Mr. Askok, in Delhi and has stolen money that he then uses to establish a business far to the south in Bangalore. The letters, in effect his autobiography, tell his life story as he moves from tea server in rural India, to driver for Mr. Askok, the son of a rural mine owner, to their life in Delhi and Balram’s subsequent disillusionment, awakening, and crime; justified in his mind by unfolding events, and his employers’ willingness to pin on him blame for a hit-and-run accident committed by his employer’s drunken wife. Balram is the White Tiger. He listens, he learns. As Balram wanders among the market in the “darkness” of Delhi’s slums, he observes caged roosters, packed so tightly they “peck and shit on each other;” a metaphor for the poor of India who are themselves enforcer of the very caste system in which they are imprisoned. So corrosive is Indian society, that even his boss, Mr. Askok, who has been educated in America and arrives home with his Indian-American wife for “just a few months”, exuding superficial compassion for his servants, is eventually subjugated by his own corrupt family to a life in a sterile Delhi high-rise, to be driven (by Balram) from ATM to ATM, collecting cash with which to bribe officials to ensure of the survival of his family’s coal mining enterprise. It is dark comedy indeed.

Later in the story, Balram recites these lines of poetry: “I was looking for the keys for years, but the door was always open.” For those born in the darkness, passing through the door is not without its consequences. It required Balram to turn his back on his past and it’s inhabitants forever; to abandon his family with the certain knowledge that they will suffer -- likely killed -- by the feudal lords (local rural politicians), as a lesson to others who contemplate passing through the “open door” themselves.

As a series of letters, Balram purports to inform China’s Prime Minister, Wen Jiabao, of how it is that India has become the center of entrepreneurial enterprise; lessons that can be applied to China. But it tells instead the story of two Indias and one dysfunctional, corrupt “democracy” driven by the pursuit of profits without investing in even the most basic infrastructure; of two peoples; masters and servants, enslaved in one emerging, high-tech, feudal system. He admires China for at least having “ring roads and sewers,” infrastructure sadly missing in India. What does Balram’s story foretell? Are India’s poor on the verge of walking through the open doors? Why does Balram decide to write Premier Wen Jiaboa? I haven’t quite worked out why the author chooses this literary technique – casting his protagonist as so presumptuous as to write the prime minister of China – but it is affective. Perhaps it conveys the sense that, in his own mind at least, he has emerged as a man without caste on equal terms even with Wen Jiaboa; that caste is just a frame of mind.

Like any really good literature, one could examine every facet of this book and analyze it for days on end. It has the power to inhabit your dreams for months.

A Case for Withdrawal: Police, Not War

Wars are like swimming pools with very high sides and no ladder. It’s easy to jump in, but nearly impossible to climb out. People watch you flounder – some even enjoy the spectacle – but few are eager to come to your aid.

The author, Robert Olmstead[1] wrote this: “When men go to war, war wins.”

Which brings us to Afghanistan.

Our response to 9/11 was natural and characteristically American; simultaneously honorable, shortsighted, and hubristic; and certainly blind to the traps we were setting for ourselves. On the whole, our response felt right at the time. With our national pride bruised, and without much thought, we committed billions of dollars and thousands of lives … to do exactly what?

Belatedly, after eight frustrating years, that question is just starting to be addressed in earnest.

What brought us to Afghanistan was our pursuit of al Qaeda. With the rout of its hosts, the Taliban, the war quickly morphed into a permanent war against the Taliban with the justification to deny Al Qaeda safe haven.

Al Qaeda is not the Taliban. Al Qaeda is an amorphous organization born of powerlessness and resentment. Like the Whac-A-Mole game, it can pop up anywhere, anytime; and it has. They retreated from Afghanistan into the mountainous region of Pakistan in the early years of the war, leaving us behind to become mired in a war to which few of us gave much thought, shadowed as it was by our invasion of Iraq. In the meantime, inspired by Bin Laden’s dramatic successes, dozens of terrorist cells sprang up across the globe. Al Qaeda is not a state, it is a state-of-mind that has infected young radicals in the UK, Germany, Spain, Pakistan, and Indonesia, and finds especially fertile ground in failed states like Somalia. Our efforts have served to swell their ranks.

If Al Qaeda pulled up stakes and moved on, why did we remain behind? There are only two reasons; to save face and out of a sense of obligation. Consequently, we now “own” Afghanistan’s problems.

One can predict the arguments against withdrawal from Afghanistan. We’ve heard them all before. Soldiers’ lives ‘lost in vain’; we can’t let the (Afghan) people down, again; we can win if we just send more troops; if we fail, the Afghans will retreat back into tribalism and oppression; an emboldened Taliban, now with world ambitions, would return to power, and al Qaeda would return with them. And the opposition would quickly play the blame game – “Obama lost the Afghan war.”

The longer we stay the harder withdrawal becomes. Every day there are stories of millennium-old tribal practices that shock our western sensibilities. Women required to wear burqas and forced to remain in their homes; girls denied even a rudimentary education; young boys enslaved as dancers – or worse – for the pleasure of senior tribal leaders; acid thrown in the faces of schoolgirls and their teachers. Even its climate and poverty can seem like an affront. Brutal and distressing as these stories are, they only serve to strengthen our resolve to stay, reinforcing the illusion that we can actually affect a cultural transformation and cure Afghans of its poverty and these brutal practices. But, by introducing a perplexing moral dimension, these stories serve to make our retreat all the more difficult – even dishonorable in our own eyes. Hence, quagmire and confusion. In war, we end up taking ownership of conditions that have existed for centuries; conditions we could not have imagined beforehand.

What should our response to 9/11 have been? In my view, renewed, sustained vigilance –tighten our border, airports and ports; improve our internal police effectiveness and information sharing; foster international cooperation to hunt down and disrupt Al Qaeda cells; all with a careful eye to preserving our own liberties.

If our response had been ‘vigilance’, it could have been quietly tailored to adapt rapidly to changes in Al Qaeda’s tactics; with the mobility to follow the enemy wherever it went. There would have been the added advantage of not arousing international enmity, which only has served Al Qaeda’s interests, flooding them with willing recruits and suicide bombers from all over the globe. Remember the outpouring of international support we enjoyed after 9/11? Think about how much easier it would have been to attract and maintain international cooperation then, than it is now. We squandered that good will and the opportunity that went with it.

But it’s not too late. A highly adaptive, international police action is where our strategy needs to be redirected.

I have read General McChrystal's report. His analysis of conditions there is first-rate. But General McChrystal has been handed a limited writ; the war in Afghanistan. He has not been asked to solve the myriad problems beyond its boarders; just win the war in Afghanistan, whatever that means. So, of course, he will present a “new” strategy and ask for more troops. But what size force would he need, and for how long? 50, 100, 200 thousand? Some estimates put the number at over 420,000 for an indeterminate number of years. Clearly, even if we instituted a draft, that will never happen.

Ultimately, McCrystal’s capture-and-hold strategy, one whose primary objective is to protect the population, is not a military strategy; its goal is the political and cultural transformation of Afghanistan; in short, nation building. What would it take to capture the hearts and minds of a proud and ancient people; to win their trust and admiration; to achieve political and cultural transformation; and to transform Afghanistan into a stable democracy and reliable ally? That’s the goal to which such a strategy aspires. What are the odds that this strategy has any better chance of success than would a Taliban brigade plunked down in the heart of Texas?

If the enemy were the Taliban and our national security truly depended on its defeat – if that were possible – General McChrystal’s strategy might make sense, and we should give him everything he asks for, and more, including mobilizing the entire country.

But the enemy is al Qaeda, and they have left the field of battle.

As a nation, we need to think beyond Afghanistan’s borders, and, with the help of our allies, pursue Al Qaeda, wherever they pop up.

Where to go from here? If our initial response should have been, at its heart, an internationally coordinated police action, why isn’t that the right strategy now? (In fact, as we believe, al Qaeda is weakened to the point that even Muslim’s are starting to fight back against its excesses, wouldn’t it be easier now?) How do we get from where we are, quagmire, to where we need to be; renewed, sustained vigilance?

Of course, by their very nature, quagmires cannot be ignored. We’re stuck in this one and no one’s there to throw us a lifeline. However, if, as part of NATO, we declare our intention to extricate ourselves from Iraq and Afghanistan and adopt a completely new strategy – and if we encouraged other nations to share equally in this decision – we could start to extricate ourselves tomorrow.

Yes, we need to train – and fund – Afghan police and armed forces. That will be the price of our folly. But those costs can be shared and, if adequately funded, successful. If the Taliban and its allies can spend what is estimated to be $300 a month to enlist an Afghan peasant to its side, why can’t we do better? At $500 dollars a month, we could fund a force of 600,000 Afghan police and armed forces for $3.6 billion a year. Considering what we’re spending now, that would be a bargain. Yes, there are other costs, but in time, the Afghans themselves should be able pick up the tab and keep al Qaeda at bay.

What do the Afghans need more, training or funding? They’ve already proven they know how to fight; they’re just fighting on the wrong side.

If we don’t adopt a new strategy soon, while the international and domestic climate is receptive, we will never be able to extricate ourselves; and that would be our ruin. In comparison, we will end up looking back fondly on Vietnam as “that quaint little war”.

Once we’re committed to war, there’s everything to learn and no easy way out. After eight long years, I hope the lesson is that we need to be sure we know why we’re there, and why we remain. President Obama needs the political will to ask tough questions and seek answers that run counter to those interests vested in the answer left to him by the Bush administration – an answer that was really no answer at all.

[1] The historical novel “Coal Black Horse”

A Cowboy Once

I wore a cowboy hat once

with a string cinched tightly round my chin, Gene Autry style,

And chaps, and silver pistols in black Hopalong Cassidy holsters.

I hid behind a fence ‘til the milk truck came, driven by Black Bart,

Who wrestles the drums of milk into the truck

from the transfer stage at the edge of our farm

where dairy farmers left the day’s milk

too early even for this five-year old cowboy.

And I level the silver pistols and “bang bang!” I said (we weren’t allowed caps back then),

And quickly, well-rehearsed, Bart returns fire,

finger-barrel pointing, thumb-hammer clicking off the rounds, one by one, “bang bang!”

sending me scurrying for cover, sometimes wounded, sometimes not –

even a five year old cowboy know the rules demand you fall dead once in a while –

taking your turn as mortal cowboy,

and like Gabby Hayes, dying in Roy Roger’s arms, like this…[slump]

only to appear again firing “bang bang” the very next day.

Today’s guns fire real 9mm caliber ammo

and gun-child’s mind’s eye sees clearly the projectile

twisting down a finely rifled barrel at explosive, ballistic speeds,

but in slow motion as in a hundred Matrix-like movies, for dramatic effect,

splitting the air and tearing one jagged hole, never to be closed,

in a pulsing chest or perhaps a forehead of a young merchant –

or perhaps a father or teacher or teen-aged mother –

and brings to life the fantasy that renders death effortless,

so cool and casual,

with less feeling than a thousand TV deaths

that never show the families torn apart forever –grieving forever, sad, forever, forever betrayed.

Is rage and fantasy in both our hearts?

Are we separated only by time –Cowboy and Gun-child?

Welcome to Synaptia

This is a blog of random thought, book & movie reviews, poems, stories, cartoons and short essays. It is probably the closest thing I'll ever have to a journal or dairy. The idea of recording everything I do, every day would make for pretty dull reading. My hope is that it will be a useful way of developing and holding onto my thoughts about what's going on in the world. This is all I have to say right now.