Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
> it's easier for anti-Bushniks to swap tales about the ogre
> than to take a few hard steps toward ending the war

I completely agree, Carol. I spent the last four years preaching
earnestly to my already-converted friends about the horrors of this
administration and the general direction of American society and
culture, getting off my butt only for the last couple days of the
election. I think there are a lot of people like me who are now scared
enough to be determined to make real efforts -- if we can only figure
out what to do. We just hosted a "Future of MoveOn" party here where 30
similarly alarmed progressives tried to identify the most pressing
issues and the most important strategies. I'm not sure we accomplished
much more than some community-building among ourselves -- which I now
believe is a critical goal in itself. But the question remains:  What
are those "hard steps" we should be taking?
  

    
I don't mean to be sceptical, but I do think some kind of structural
examination of message and medium needs to be on the agenda. For one
thing, the past 16 years have seen systematic demonization of all
labels to the left of the center, liberal and progressive.   What's
been missing -- and still is -- is a counterlabel with some deep
popular resonance that provides a wide-scale point of attack; plus
additionally a new label for those opposed.  

What irritating about this is the fact that culturally, the left does
own the field.  That's been shortcircuited by the Big Lie, more and
more skillfully applied. 
  

    
Someting I find interesting about Bush from several supporters I spoke with
pre and then post election is that befroe this last election - those
supporters were talking about the grand way Bush has led the country - post-
election, these same Bush supporters talk of how every president lies...
I think there is some kind of withdrawal hapening even from his supporters
regarding how far they have been snookered even if it is shallow acceptance
of those lies...

This quote in the book seems to come right out of the present day republican
adgenda and the ever expanding Americanization of the rest of the world - I
guess Americanization is the populist view of America's from of imperialism.

"Let every nation know, wheather it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay
any price, bear any burdon, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose
any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty."

I grew up idolizing JFK, but the more I read of him, the more I wonder just
how much a democrat he was, instead of accepting that he was backed into
Vietnam and Cuba's assault at Bay of Pigs - which I see similar to the Gulf1
conflict including the call to rise up and the failed support...
  

    
Years ago, on the occasion of a Kennedy biopic I wrote a review called
"Kennedy without Tears." Sympathetic biographers say he'd have found a
way backward out of Vietnam, but I'm not so sure. 

But to return to the subject of Carol's book, rather than gloomy
doomsaying (mea culpa!!) -- Carol, in one of your most analytical
chapters, "The Political Economy of Death," you talk about something
becyond a "military industrial complex" -- you talk about what seems
more like a cancerous growth of publically funded/privately profiting
companies. Can you talk about what's changed since Vietnam -- what's
involved in carrying on an aggressive, militariest foreign policy
without a mass army of draftees?
  

    
Good question (again). But I'm reading all the messages I missed while
I went to a family thanksgiving on the Cape. Am only back now Saturday
eve, very embarrassed that I missed so much... Eric, I talk in the
book about the military/industrial/congressional complex, and one
difference is that the military appropriations are more directly aimed
at individual congressmen and their `markets,' i.e. constituents. The
latest are 16 multibillion dollar `weapons systems,' and most are
unrelated to the assymetric war we're fighting now. Many are right out
of Star Wars, the sort of systems you see in the movies, and some--like
the `net-centric' intelligence system presented in the newspapers two
weeks ago, "giving a `God's eye view' of the battlefied to every
soldier," are so dependent on satellites as to be unimaginable.. None
of them have much to do with Iraq, and while they may keep certain
countries believing in the myth of American military hegemony, they
certainly do not favor a victory in the war right in front of us.

David: a quick reference for you. George Lakoff's Don't Think of an
Elephant! It's supported by the MoveOn folk and Soros and Howard Dean,
etc. One of many books by a cognitive scientist about "framing," and
how it may not matter what facts you present someone if they have a
deeply held frame that contradicts them. Like gazor.. said his opinion
of JFK was shifting, and he wasn't a democrat, is saying that his frame
about JFK is changing. And I have a feeling that "take back America
from Bush" (which you said) is another frame--I don't know what it
means--which somehow made it hard for you to hear the antiwar
proposals...   
  

    
Carol, what do you think of the creation of a parallel private
military, mercenaries recruited out of our (and other) armies and
working for contracters that have popped out of nowhere. If they were a
country, they'd be (I believe) the second largest force in Iraq. It's
new: nothing like this happened in Vietnam or elsewhere, though the CIA
made use of cutouts and institutions like Air America. 
  

    
well, there were too many snags for them to work out in Iraq, and you
almost never hear of them now. When I wrote the book there were over
20,000 working in Iraq, employees of private military
companies--pmc's--not all involved in combat. It's another private
asset of Rumsfeld's Pentagon that bit the dust. The real armies were
uneasy with them. They weren't accountable to the same rules and were
being paid astronomical salaries. Also they were exposed in a way the
armed services never are, like the four "contractors" who were captured
and strung up by their heels in Falluja in April, with dire
consequences which are still being played out by US forces... Up until
recently over 10,000 men were employed by the British company Eryines
to protect oil fields. You don't hear about them any more either, but
then you don't hear about Iraqi oil wells, which have been shut down
under pressure of constant sabotage. The only pmc employess who remain
are mostly sequestered inside the Green Zone as guards for the many US
Embassy employes, three of whom (Brits) were killed by mortars two
weeks ago.     
  

    
>structural examination of message and medium

I'm sure that Lakoff's ideas will provide a worthwhile point
of departure in revisiting how we think about our goals and
how we present them.

The next step will be difficult, too: getting the message out.
In 1970 it was possible to get free publicity by engaging
in civil disobedience or by assembling a large group of people.
The rules of the game have been changed to make that much
more difficult, both by the news outlets and by press managers
who exert much more control than they did then.
  

    
Interesting, my "frame" then was not that you got "free publicity" by
engaging in civil disobedience, but that the engagement was itself news
and newsworthy. The reason for assembling the people, that is.  So I
guess that makes the next step that much more difficulty. What would
you say the new "rules of the game" are?
  

    
New media, better use of, and, top priority, establish  position in
radio. Lefties are funny, That will be difference. But they have to be
on the air to be funny, in drive time. They aren't. The result is you
get solemn lugubriousness from NPR, or foamies. Jon Stewart sensibility
can work in drive time, and I think talent could be found to make it
work.
  

    
And on the other thread -- if the merc option has crashed and burned
(a story that hasn't surfaced yet in the NY Times or elsehwere, but
should) what does this portend for a activist, interventionist US
foreign policy?
  

    
The draft that both parties promised wasn't going to happen.
  

    
wait a minute--not sure what eric's "other thread" is, or how the merc
option affects an activist US foreign policy...?
As for the draft, it's the biggie that Vietnam had and Iraq doesn't.
So far it's all backwards, roping in the National Guard and Reserves
and the Individual Ready Force (or whatever), and shows that the US is
not really serious about the war, not in Afghanistan and not in Iraq
either. Now Iraq is getting really ugly but Bush still wants to start
pulling out troops after elections which can only succeed in bringing
in Shi'ites, and therefore Iran.  
  

    
I find myself wondering what will happen when people who voted for
Bush, because he is "one of them" begin to realize that he may very
well bring about armageddon, but that they won't, in fact, be being
whisked off to  heaven first.
  

    
My attitude toward the newsworthiness of demonstrations changed
during the 1972 Presidential campaign.  Several hundred of us
greeted Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan with signs, chants, and
shouts when they arrived at the San Jose airport.  The news coverage
was of an angry mob menacing the President and the Governor.  A
week later Newsweek ran a story about how the Republicans had shaped
the news, quoting Reagan's gloating about having provoked the
crowd by flashing a peace sign at us.
  

    
nice memory, even if memory not nice. The shift did begin way back
then, which was when a lot of us retreated to bringing up baby or jobs,
though many of our thoughts didn't change. And the right came out of
their caves shaking their fists over what a near miss the country had
with chaos, or with how much really had been lost--re abortion rights,
civil rights, an antiwar movement that got the last word over VN--and
they're now moving into position to reverse all that. After decades of
working through the media, think tanks, and magazines to lay the
groundwork. What were we doing? What are we doing? What are we going to
do?
  

    
The two threads -- worth distinguishing, in my opinion -- are:

1. what's being done.

2. what we can do about it.

On the first thread, Carol's thoughts about the crash-and-burn of the
mercenary effort seem to me important and unreported. Again, what do
they mean for further adventures (i.e., Iran or N. Korea, both much
harder military nuts than Iraq). 
  

    
Eric is dead on with myu concern as well. the hired forces are taking the
place fo the draft and the cost analysys seems to be palatable to the
American people.  well paid contractors can get shot and killed so long as
there isn't a draft.
  

    
gazor... you missed my earlier post to eric. Hired forces are not by
and large combat soldiers, but guards, though the distinctions may not
be so clear, and we woulnd't know about them in any case. But they
didn't work in Afghanistan or Iraq on a large scale, and when they went
down, as in Fallujah in April when four "contractors" were strung up
on the bridge, they went down in a blaze of defeat.. The mercenaries
are central to Rumsfelds vision of privatizing the military, but
anathema to the military.
  

    

From what I hear, the real military people are not happy w/ all these
"contractors," nor do they relish the idea of a draft.

Why iis it that there are apparently no constraints on war spending from
these nominally fically-conservative "leaders"?
  

    
I'd imagine that thousands of heavily armed highly paid men working
outside the military chain of command in a theater of operations would
drive the military crazy. But aren't they still there -- are the
numbers going up or down?
  

    
The numbers have gone way down. They're mostly ex-solders, mostly
special forces, hungry for more money and less supervision. But no more
match for the iraqi insurgents than the marines. But like I say, they
remain mainly as guards.

David: the war spending is two kinds: the 200 billion dollar Iraqi
war, which is paid out as "supplementals" by Congress, and Congress
(conservative or liberal) has never voted down a war.. And second are
approriations for "war systems," like the near 500 billion dollar
congressional appropriations in 2004 for Lockheed-Martin,
Northrup-Grumman, etc. who used to be "airplane companies" and now call
themselves "warfare companies." It's so basic to what it means to
represent your constituents in this state or that, that it's hard to
imagine anymone standing up to oppose them. Of course they have
precious little to do with asymmetric warfare in Middle East.
  

    
This story in today's Washington Post struck me:

BAGHDAD, Dec. 2 -- Citing security concerns, the U.S. Embassy on
Thursday banned its employees from using the highway linking the
embassy area to the international airport, a 10-mile stretch of road
plagued by frequent suicide car-bomb attacks.

The move, which followed similar action by the British this week,
reflected the growing difficulty that U.S. forces are having ensuring
safe passage along the high-profile route. Precisely because of the
road's importance, insurgents have shown increasing boldness and
ferocity in targeting vehicles used by U.S. military personnel and
civilian contractors.

A large armored bus, nicknamed the Rhino, had been carrying passengers
to and from the airport. But it stopped operating last week after
being struck by a car bomb. No one on the bus was injured, but its
engine was damaged.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29731-2004Dec2.htm

If we can't secure the road to the airport  what does that say about
our hold on the rest of the country?
  

    
Last week also announced the largest contingent of US forces 150k in Iraq,
and todays Chicago Tribune noted that bed space is at a premium for solders
in Iraq because of the longer tours that wear heavily on the soldiers...

I'm wondering about Vietnam and the soliders that would do multiple back to
back tours - do you think it was a sense of obligation, fear of coming home,
self-served attitude?  More to the point, Carol, and I have a bunch more
quesitons about yoru book, it's wonderfully imformative, but I digress - Can
you share with us your thoughts on the effects of soldiers in an occupied
land and time in country - longer tours, breaks from combat, etc?
  

    

Our next interview has taken center stage, but there's no reason why this one
has to stop.  Carol and Eric, thank you for doing this, and please carry on!