“…but I think it’s almost impossible to underestimate the importance of the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 90s when trying to account for the changed (and changing) public perceptions and opinions about homosexuality. By the thousands, gay men from New York, San Francisco and other big cities went “home” to small towns all across America to die (”home” in quotation marks because they often had fled those towns because they were made to feel unwelcome). The rippling effects of those journeys and those deaths are, I believe, still with us today.

For example, the devout, socially conservative, working-class Franco-American Catholics in the New England mill town I grew up in did what they’ve always done when tragedy strikes one of their own: they baked casseroles for the afflicted families, visited and ran errands, offered novenas and Masses, and helped the families bury their dead. Homosexual acts may be sinful, as the Church teaches, but no young person deserves to die like that was the (sometimes unspoken, but sometimes not) conclusion that many came to.

Also, it’s one thing when watching a story on the evening news about the hundreds of anonymous men in the bath houses of the Castro or Greenwich Village. It’s another thing when someone you watched grow up, went to school with, went to church with, someone you knew and perhaps liked or even loved, is dead or dying. I suspect that this type of lived experience has had a powerful effect on the “sense of the faithful” (but I would defer to the more theologically astute).”

Defenders of traditional marriage have fallen into the trap of demonization and denouncement, antagonizing the people in the middle and even some on their own side who refuse to accept caricatures and the cleaving of the Gospel’s message. More broadly, all too often people merely focused on the politics or faith interplay surrounding a controversial social issue and ignored the “social” altogether, missing the critical evolution in viewpoints that was underway.

A personal aside in support of this: DADT never mattered to me until I came to know a gay sailor who had to hide the grief he was experiencing after his boyfriend of nine years died in a car crash while he was on deployment. He had nowhere and no one to confide in, fearful of being kicked out of the Navy he loved and flourished in if he confided in a Chaplain. When I learned of his plight from his supervisor who had finally gotten the truth out of him after a week of earnest effort, it humanized DADT to an extent no news report, book or documentary could ever have.

When the historian Robert Conquest was asked to provide a subtitle for a new, post-Cold War edition of his book on Stalin’s purges, he suggested, “I told you so, you fucking fools.”
The anecdote is joined to praise of the book “Bloodlands”, a chilling and exhaustive look at the space between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, including Poland and the Ukraine,  between 1929-1945.

I will also praise Timothy Snyder’s “Bloodlands”, though it is certainly not for the squeamish. Snyder holds nothing back in describing the horrific rapine, famine, torture and slaughter endemic in this area.

Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper mightily contribute to a better, more complete understanding of post-war Asia, especially the geographic area they denote as “…the crescent of land that stretched from Bengal, through Burma, the southern borderlands of Thailand, down the Malay peninsula to Singapore island”, a crucial zone of interest for the fading British Empire (8). They achieve this not just through an authoritative, chronological overview of key countries (Malaya, Indonesia, India, Burma, Vietnam) in that crescent for the first few critical post-Japanese war years, but with a powerful introduction that I will here borrow generously from.

This zone was one of “…the great frontiers of modern history. For centuries it had drawn in millions of people in search of a livelihood, particularly from the ancient agrarian civilizations that bordered it. the advent of the imperial economy had created new opportunities” (8). Bayly and Harper place this brief (in some cases non-existent) ceasefire necessitated by the Japanese cessation of hostilities as the midpoint in a “Great Asian War” that had been ongoing since 1931 and “…was a connected arc of conflict that claimed around 24 million lives in lands occupied by Japan; the lives of 3 million Japanese, and 3.5 million more in India through war-related famine” (7).

The GAW “…was the most general conflict in SE Asia since the Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century, and the most intense since the great struggles for primacy on the mainland of Asia in the seventeenth century. And it had its serial holocausts, in the extermination of civilians, the coercion of slave labor, and mass rape” (7). It was longer than any other “hot” conflict of this century, even as violence jumped from country to country for a nearly 50 year period from 1931 to 1979.

The authors emphasize that nothing was resolved by the war, a reality not fully appreciated in some capitals across the world who discounted efforts to stabilize the numerous situations amid an understandable fixation on post-war Europe. Their description of this mother of all post-conflict arenas is searing and unforgettable:

“None of the fundamental causes of the Great Asian War had been eradicated. Imperialism, grinding poverty, and ideological, ethnic and religious conflict continued to stalk the land. In many ways they had been strengthened by the destruction and butchery of combat. It was plain to see that the war was continuing under another guise. Those huge forgotten armies of malnourished soldiers, prisoners of war, guerrilla bands, coolie laborers, sex slaves, and carpetbaggers were still on the march. They were to march on for decades more as the British Empire dissolved and new nations were born amid racial and religious strife.” (8)

The latter condition is where the authors shine brightest, ably filing in gaps and misconceptions about ethnic and religious strife and its role in poisoning early attempts at successful independence governments and equitable social relations amongst often opposed groups within the countries they examine. These embryonic failures in the womb of nationhood spawn serious headaches and spasms of violence even to this day.

Before the social fabric of these budding nations could be torn apart, the authors zoom in on a reality of governance and daily life the Europeans and Japanese never appreciated.

“The main points of arrival for most of these pioneers were the great port cities such as Rangoon and Singapore: dynamic and diverse, they were built for play as much as trade or gov’t, and the citizens were obsessed by their own modernity. They were glittering out posts of the West, where the colonial elite enjoyed a lifestyle they could never aspire to at home. Yet the lives of the Europeans, contained by their gross obsessions with race and hierarchy, barely touched the complex Asian worlds around them. The cosmopolitanism of a place like Singapore, for example, was built by Chinese, Indian, Arab, Armenian and Jewish merchants and professionals, many of whose own businesses were now regional in scope. Not least among them, and concentrated in new ‘modern’ sectors, were the Japanse: as dentists, photographers, and shopkeepers.” (9)

The authors’ insight into the British failure to understand how things had changed in four years of Japanese occupation and exploitation could be extended to all the European imperial powers.

“What the British did not immediately appreciate was the extent to which Asian nationalism had been transformed by the war.”

“The Japanese war, however, had given nationalism a new face–a youthful, militaristic one. “

(16)

This absence of sophisticated cultural awareness and perception would prove fatal to European efforts to retain their colonies and (later) to help them achieve a successful transition from colonized subjects to independent partners. Malaya exists as a lone exception, primarily because the British revolutionized their colonial program in the fading light of their empire (more on this in the next post about the rest of the book).

They also failed (as did the USG aside from a few highly perceptive OSS operatives in country) to comprehend what the GAW’s  Japanese phase had changed about nearly every ethnic and religious group in the region. A great awakening had come to pass, with ominous implications for decades to come.

“Alongside these big nationalisms- Indian, Malay and Burmese- the war had mobilized and militarized a host of minority peoples across the vast swathe of South and Southeast Asia. It was not only the leaderships of easily recognizable minority groups, such as the Karen of Burma, who were asserting their claims to autonomy in the autumn of 1945. Other older and more shadowy entities seemed to be rising from the grave of history to plague both the would-be new imperialists and the new nationalists who were on the point of grasping independence.” (23)

The British had a date with history, whether they fully comprehended what was about to be undertaken or not. It began with a renewed push for empire and stability.

“The great crescent was to be forged anew. The instrument for this was South East Asia Command (SEAC), and the tribune of the new imperial vision was its supremo, Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten…(12)”

Bing West’s “The Village” is an incredible masterwork of war reporting and narrative from the ground-level, eyewitness perspective. Its not scholarly, but it remains deeply informative of the human experience for Marines fighting a very different kind of war from most of their counterparts on their own side and across enemy lines, as well as some fascinating impressions of Vietnamese life at the village level, especially how police work, schools, and political leadership were experienced by the people.

West relates the story of a Marine Combined Action Platoon (CAP), a Marine innovation for the Vietnam War that sharply contrasted with the top-down, impersonal, highly destructive tactics deployed by the Army. A Marine infantry squad (around a dozen or so) would live among the Vietnamese in a given village, patrolling with local militia units also from the village known as PF’s (Popular Forces). Early on, the Marines of this village called in artillery support after making contact with VC (CAP Marines patrolled every night and usually experienced contact with the enemy every other time, a far more active combat experience than the rest of the military), leading to a tragic accident that killed several villagers and burned down several huts. From that moment on, they realized such mistakes could not be repeated and strove to rely on their own evolving wits and training rather than the potentially costly  crutch of air and artillery support (aside from Medivacs and illumination).

Relationships develop between the Marines (around 15 of whom are profiled in unsentimental but compelling details) and the villagers, from the PFs themselves who must overcome barriers of trust and pride to families who have to weigh the consequences of choosing a side by inviting the Marines into their lives. Marines kill and are killed, amid accounts of unsparing heroism and sacrifice by them and some of their Vietnamese brothers in arms. The biggest battle they fight is one without physical violence but instead a moment of grave danger as an enemy battalion is prepared to wipe out the CAP fort and reassume control of the village. Finding the Marines there intend to fight it out rather than flee, their attack is foiled and most importantly, the entire village knows the Marines stood their ground against the VC. Local allegiances then shift appropriately.

Wouldas, couldas, and shouldas can abound after reading The Village. In the end, Gen. Westmoreland’s common view of Orientals having a cheaper conception of life than Americans won the day (one foolishly held in some variant by generations of colonial and occupying powers across continents, usually to their eventual disaster), and a rich opportunity for a potentially better way to fight the war was cast off in the grand scheme of things.  The understanding by the Marines that they eventually became “of the people” rather than “among” or “around” the people was not only a testament to their professionalism and superior execution but a tremendous achievement most counter-insurgents could only dream of attaining. (More on this in a subsequent post…)

*West, a Marine officer, patrolled with the unit for a time (though in practice a junior NCO typically led operations in the long term, leading to some memorable moments of command friction and general stupidity by people not on the ground with the CAP Marines) and then was reassigned back to interview the Marines and provide a lessons learned overview for his commanders.

Tragically for the under served children of DC’s poor and lower middle class communities, racial solidarity and union comfort turned out to be more important than their futures. DC Democratic voters rejected Rhee’s enabler and boss, successful mayor Adrian Fenty, in favor of a veteran city councilman who’s explicitly out to fight the gentrification (itself the best thing that could happen to the city) that is inevitable, even with failing schools, and that will find the city’s much vaunted status as the “Chocolate City” revoked as early as 2015 once the black community is no longer the majority racial group in residence. In essence, DC voters voted for a return to a mythic past and racial comforts on their terms.

The children will be left behind, as Rhee (who will resign or be fired) and the deep pocketed benefactors will depart the scene and the teachers’ unions and racial grievance politicians will resume control of the chaotic, failed DC schools system. The effects will likely ripple beyond the DC school system, since Rhee was one of the more daring and effective reformers on the national stage. Lessons will be learned about her experience, and likely some of them will be the wrong kind. Reform by its very nature must rock the boat, especially in dealing with racial grievances and teachers unions, and thus reformers who take from Rhee’s experience the lesson that everyone must be made happy and no group can go home unsatisfied will utterly fail, as the track record of education reform has proven time and again over the past 5 decades.

For an entirely different viewpoint that nevertheless is excellent in at least pinpointing how Rhee failed, see Natalie Hopkinson at the Atlantic.

As for Fenty and his successful predecessor Anthony Williams (whose accomplishments Fenty largely coasted on for the first half of his term before enjoying some policy successes of his own), see Dave Weigel’s succinct summation of Fenty’s loss last night:
“So maybe if the next mayor drives up crime and lowers test scores he’ll win? Because the opposite doesn’t work.”

This is by no means a guaranteed outcome, especially considering demography (informed by both cultural and economic factors that strengthen a case for significant declines in fertility rates and young worker availability) and warranted skepticism about the long-term governance abilities of key countries making the greatest leap who are earmarked for leadership (China, India, and Indonesia). They each have incredible balancing acts to master, some universal in affliction (massive income gaps) and others unique (Islamic radicalization in Indonesia, extreme Hindu nationalism and incredible rural poverty in India).
However, considering how far each of them (and most of their neighbors) has travelled from the depths of war, devastation and endemic disunity is to generate justifiable optimism.
This is a reflection enlivened by two books (of the many I read, something I’m not bragging about as I panic over how many booknotes are left to type/write) I read this summer, “In The Ruins of Empire: The Japanese Surrender and the Battle for Postwar Asia”and “Forgotten Wars: Freedom and Revolution in Southeast Asia”. Filling in substantial details about the complete mess British Asia, Southeast Asia at large and the whole of Asia was at the end of the war, the two are not equal in quality or effectiveness but are still well-worth reading from your local library.

“I view Asia as an enormous pot, seething and boiling,” wrote General Wedemeyer on the day after Japan’s surrender.
21, In The Ruins of Empire

Of the two, “In The Ruins” is the more friendly and swift read, adopting a tight narrative format that includes overviews and brief backstories of five key areas in Asia where to some extent the soon to be NATO Allies, the Soviets, the Chinese, the Japanese and the rebuilding, nervous and anxious local populations interacted: Korea, China (largely Manchuria), Vietnam, Indonesia, and the then-colony of Malaya. The author, Ronald Spector, emphasizes the struggles at hand with a clarity uncommon in many histories of this period which focus too narrowly on one or a few aspects of contention, crisis and opportunity.

This comes at the price of often valuable details, such as when he sells short better explanations for the Chinese behavior and attitudes in Malaya or the effects the British counterinsurgency campaign, especially the creation of controlled camp towns, had on eviscerating the livelihoods and futures of native peoples. Spector’s style here is to cycle through the five regions and recycle through them as time passes from the Japanese surrender into just a year or so afterward.
He nails head-on the true legacies of this vital time; the delays in Allied occupation that provided invaluable operating and execution breathing room for independence movements, the brutal gap between what they needed to know about local cultural, economic, and political features and what the typically barebones Allied forces actually knew, and the oft violent, bitter and delusional behavior of European colonials who could not reconcile the reality of their humiliating loss of racial superiority at the hands of the Japanese with their idealistic view of what racial exceptionalism and gratuitous violence could provide for them post-war.
Next: Forgotten Wars Review & A Close Look at SEAC (South East Asia Command, or as Americans sometimes called it, “Save England’s Asian Colonies”).

There are a litany of possibilities for events or outcomes in the world that would dramatically harm the American way of life (especially the still suffering economy). If we were to inventory and rank these, presumably the top three would be a collapse of the Mexican state in the midst of a multi-faceted cartel conflict, a successful Pakistani terrorist attack on American soil with a significant casualty count and a bomber with evident ties to the current government, and an Israeli or US attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Of these and the other possibilities, I consider the prospect of an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities the most likely to irrevocably alter the worldview of many Americans. Perhaps polling should be conducted that asks Americans if they would be willing to endure $5-7 gallon gas prices and potentially the deaths of hundreds, even thousands, of American soldiers in a possible Iranian counterattack, all to defend Israel’s security and uphold its deterrent as the singular nuclear power in the Middle East. How many jobs would be lost as a result of these higher energy prices? How much worse would government budget cuts or tax hikes become in the midst of skyrocketing fuel costs? How much money would it cost to support those newly unemployed and destitute from falling completely through the cracks? These are questions rarely considered by policy makers when they debate foreign policy. Its apparent that in their minds citizens will just accept what their government’s policy decisions have inflicted upon them, apparently because these affected citizens are to have no agency in this matter.

I find this prospect of inaction dubious. Popular anger in the 1920′s at our erstwhile European allies from WW1 stemmed from a sense of great sacrifice that came amidst Allied deception and imperial greed. This contributed mightily to the growing disconnect between Americans and the rest of the world that lasted until WW2, a two-decade period where the American public wanted disengagement from and a very narrow application of its national interests to the rest of the world (which obviously did not stop the Marines’ Latin American adventures in regime change and reinstating order for US industries). To some degree the USG’s actions in triggering the OPEC attack on American interests of the 1970′s was overlooked. Sky-high energy prices resulting from the US or Israel attacking Iran would be a much more obvious connection.

It is very debatable whether an Iranian nuclear program is a clear and present danger to American security but its clear as day that it represents an existential threat to Israel. Is that enough for America to risk a very costly regional war that would seriously harm the US economy? If war did occur or at the very least Iranian activity helped spook the oil markets and drive prices up substantially, would there be a backlash from below in the US?

If we are to rethink these United States, we must begin with the notion that the American people are wiling to shoulder a heavy burden for the benefit of others. In these times, that may simply not be the case. If it is not, the very nature of our national security state may then be called into question over time.

As ethnographies go, this is one of the best I have yet read, doubly so because it is assigned reading for a class this fall.

Elizabeth Warnock Fernea married her anthropologist husband  and moved with him to the small Southern Iraqi village of El Nahra in 1956 so that he could conduct fieldwork and finish his doctorate. With initially limited Arabic, she entered the sequestered world of village women at her husband’s request and her own curiosity since he is unable to even consider observing the daily lives of women due to their highly sequestered nature in the conservative , rural Shia Muslim society.

Fernea finds the going rough at first, largely because of that poor Arabic . She is unhappy about it but adopts the full-body abayah cover and veil that the women wear, along with other social mores she swiftly becomes cognizant of (including the danger of walking alone, because this would give her a bad reputation and embarrass her husband among the villagers, hampering his fieldwork). The women initially treat her as an oddity to be toyed with or barely tolerated, though in time even potential friends (a term fraught with meaning in a society where men cannot be companions and women depend upon true friends especially) feel burdened and uncomfortable having to constantly stop to translate for her. Her habit of smiling and laughing as women talk about or make fun of her (imparting upon some of the women the impression that she is stupid or daft) fades as she is able to respond in kind to teasing or contribute her own viewpoints.

Early on, she swings at times between impotent rage with being treated poorly by some of the “illiterate, poor” village women and genuine dismay at how different their cultures are and how this shapes the womens’ expectations of education, relationships, and role within society at large. As her Arabic improves, so does her position among the women. She can banter with, probe, and even engage in in-depth conversations that are of enormous value for her understanding of the womens’ lives. She understands the complex emotional and social interactions and interdependencies of the women in the harem resigned to a polygamous life. She witnesses how central to the success of reform respecting tradition as much as possible is. Female teachers sent from Baghdad to staff burgeoning girls’ schools can thrive if they show their respect for tribal and Islamic traditions while gently impressing upon families the importance of education for their children. The society places a significant impetus on a woman bearing her husband a son, yet still values the role daughters can play in supporting the family, especially the elderly.

There is much more to learn about what it means to live as a woman in such a society. While the world has moved on impressively in most locations in terms of gender relations and social standing of independent women, hundreds of millions of women live in a similar state to that of the women profiled by Fernea in 1956-57, especially in areas where the US military is operating. A fast but detailed read, “Guests of the Sheik” promises to be of value for those in development organizations as well working in societies with similar social and familial environments.

Planning decisions in New York neighborhoods are nearly impossible to obtain with nearly unanimous votes. The Islamic Community Center in Lower Manhattan won approval by three such nearly unanimous votes. It had the overwhelming support of the people in the neighborhood it was being proposed for (and the clear majority support of Manhattan residents). It passed with flying colors two separate challenges to its commencement via attempts to have the building it was replacing granted historical landmark status.

Opposition to it was on no legal ground whatsoever. Democratic planning processes set out in law had been followed to the letter. Property rights had been asserted by the purchase of the land by the developer. The community had spoken out in its support and its representatives on public planning boards met in public and voted in public in support. A federal law, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000, passed a decade earlier at the behest of Christian groups rightfully angered and aggrieved by corrupt planning practices that often conspired to deprive churches of their property rights and religious freedoms, would have been violated had the city chosen to give into pressure from certain political and religious groups to deny religious freedoms and property rights to the Islamic Community Center.

Still… some said none of that mattered. They ignored the inconvenient truth that the rule of law would be shuttered in the face of popular opposition. They overlooked or did not care that Al-Qaeda and America’s enemies in the Islamic world would be handed a first-rate propaganda victory as law-abiding American citizens were denied their Constitutional rights simply because they were Muslim. They denied the reality that to treat Muslims differently from other Americans when it came to these Constitutional rights would be anything but a public intentional and willful disregard for the law.

Much of this was whipped up by inaccurate reporting (focusing wrongly on accusations it was at Ground Zero or that it was overlooking Ground Zero, two geographic relationships it does not have) and hysteric claims of it being a terrorist victory memorial that was funded by terrorist financing (does anyone really believe the NYPD, arguably the most effective counter-terror force in the world, would have not checked that out already?).

Indeed, in insisting on reporting it as a mosque, news services and many of its opponents were being blatantly dishonest. It is a  community center modeled after Jewish centers and the Christian YMCA in New York City that was going to feature a prayer room in one section of one of its floors (no muezzins or loud calls to prayer from it would ever emanate onto city streets or near Ground Zero). 95% of the space use in the center would be devoted to a gym, pool, meeting centers, kitchens, classrooms, etc. However, if one wanted to insist that a place where Muslims could pray was a mosque, Ground Zero itself would today be a mosque site. That is because the families of the nearly hundred Muslim Americans killed on 9/11 gather often to pray for their murdered loved ones and some even do so audibly, spreading their Muslim faith all over Ground Zero.

The law must be upheld, especially the Constitution, no matter the popular outrage. Even more so, the lawful and democratic wishes expressed by a local community must be respected. Opponents of the Islamic Community Center in Lower Manhattan seemed to forget that, whether they did so out of true outrage and disgust (some of it understandable, some of it not) or because of political opportunism.

Here is Mayor Bloomberg’s speech today on this matter. Note three particular passages that most strongly lay out the main issues at hand.

“The government has no right whatsoever to deny that right – and if it were tried, the courts would almost certainly strike it down as a violation of the U.S. Constitution. Whatever you may think of the proposed mosque and community center, lost in the heat of the debate has been a basic question – should government attempt to deny private citizens the right to build a house of worship on private property based on their particular religion? That may happen in other countries, but we should never allow it to happen here. This nation was founded on the principle that the government must never choose between religions, or favor one over another.”

“Let us not forget that Muslims were among those murdered on 9/11 and that our Muslim neighbors grieved with us as New Yorkers and as Americans. We would betray our values – and play into our enemies’ hands – if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else. In fact, to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists – and we should not stand for that.”

“The attack was an act of war – and our first responders defended not only our City but also our country and our Constitution. We do not honor their lives by denying the very Constitutional rights they died protecting. We honor their lives by defending those rights – and the freedoms that the terrorists attacked.”

Whatever else may be said of Mayor Bloomberg’s stormy tenure (for one his views on the 2nd Amendment rival Mayor Daley of Chicago in its blatant disregard), he did the right thing here. Not only did he do that, he did it in the face of a near perfect storm of rage against his support of the rule of law from across the country by Americans fed half-accurate information and whipped into a frenzy by people who seem to have lost their bearings as public servants. The Constitution was upheld today. That is something to celebrate.

Conversations with shipmates usually didn’t exactly broach these topics and I found an outlet in blogging basically half-baked opinions about politics, foreign policy, the fate of hundreds of thousands of Africans on the wrong side of the ruling clique in Sudan and the Navy.

After interacting with a number of bloggers and discovering some excellent blogs that rekindled a love for examining geography and studying culture, I embraced the niche as a “milblogger” and mixed a bit of elementary Navy life writing with my uninformed policy analysis, discussions with more mature and thoughtful bloggers that usually devolved into useless arguments egged on by me, petty nitpicking by me, and empty shows of support and appreciation by myself for ideas and viewpoints advanced by those bloggers who were much abler than I was at the time or even now am. Oh yes, and those damn Africans in Sudan still captured my attention and a fair amount of the focus of my usual emotional blogging (done often in the free time on the night shift on at-sea internet connections that were less than 14K).

Along the way, I fell in love, read a bunch of books I did not take nearly enough notes on or write insightfully enough about, and got chewed out memorably for posting commentary (Thank God I didn’t add in the comments of others and fail to quickly delete the comments from shipmates who went after certain officers on my posts!) I probably should not have about the murder of a Japanese National by an American sailor on my ship and the ensuing “free time” crackdown by the chain of command that was largely justified considering the alcohol abuse issues of more than enough sailors.

Friends serving in Iraq communicated their displeasure with the chain of command’s leadership, the realization by one that torture and abuse by US forces was getting other soldiers attacked and killed, and all in all the general incompetence of the entire operation that has been amply demonstrated and documented in countless books and reports. I became angrier and the writing typically suffered. I cringe reading some of it now. The bottom fell out when one of those friends was killed in an IED attack. The torture issue consumed me, leading to more pathetic arguments and half-assed reasoning and moralizing that accomplished little but embarrass me in front of bloggers I had learned to respect.

Moving to Washington state for my last year in the Navy, I abandoned my mil-blogger niche and tried to focus on creating my own trivial ideas for analysis of certain issues or grafting the ideas of others onto my own via another blog. Frankenstein-esque thinking ensued, with somewhat better writing and value, but not of the caliber or variety I had hoped for. More books were read and more this time were reviewed and ruminated upon. Oh, and the Africans in Sudan continued to be on the wrong side of the ruling clique, with US policy playing a limited role in a shifting global environment that left screechers like me with far less ground to stand on when criticizing America’s leadership or lack thereof.

Even with the new blog, things did not come together as I had hoped. My blogging time was crimped first by my position as a supervisor on my second ship (time demands increased exponentially) and then a variety of transition issues related to my transition from active duty into a GI Bill student. Working full-time, going to school full-time and being newly married shortly thereafter rendered blogging nearly an impossible event on my schedule. My years-long itch to write (frankly not that well) that had been previously satiated by blogging was instead fulfilled in multiple ten-plus page reports and essays for different classes.

Now, I have an expressed purpose for trying to blog again and am ready to try again because:

-My writing has suffered when I am not regularly engaged in a thoughtful consideration of material and ideas, something I cannot always do every week in class or elsewhere.

- I have learned a great deal already in my newfound role as a student of both geography and anthropology and thus a fear has emerged (not so unfounded) that I will not retain as much of the lecture and rigorous discussion material as I would like once various semesters have finished, necessitating some type of forum for me to reflect on the more influential or important moments in academia.

- I miss the interactions with fellow bloggers, valuable moments in time which I have tried and rarely been able to replicate with fellow students. As I realized shortly after I finished my three years on my first ship, there are often environments with some incredible people that you will miss tremendously once you leave, casting aside whatever problems and disappointments that may have occurred during your time with them.

- Above all else, if I am going to read books (as I love to do) I must proactively engage with them in a way more useful than merely taking notes.

Thus my latest attempt to blog (I average about 18 months per burnout) will emphasize book reviews, discussions and the occasional foray into geography, urban planning, anthropology, sociology, gerontology, and a few other subjects which I have and will be busily examining as I transition into graduate school and naively try to synthesize as much as possible.

Outrages of the day will be limited. Whatever else can be said about America, it still arguably has the brightest future of any major country ( a perhaps specious claim worth a fair number of posts in itself), largely irrespective of a policy choice made by George Bush, Barack Obama, or Sarah Palin. Thus my commenting on their latest transgression or triumph appears pointless and merely stroking of the ego or satisfying emotional impulses.
Red lines will be observed though, as when someone advocates for the Constitution to be ignored.

If I have 25 subscribers and a few commenters a month who keep me honest, I think this may actually not be a total failure of an endeavor. Otherwise, its at least a better version of a Google Sites/Wikipedia project.

Much of the time I no longer feel comfortable spending a fair amount of time offering relatively uninformed opinions on current topics that I don’t have a formal training in or firsthand experience of.

So much of the blogosphere is a well-meaning bout of “I don’t really know but let me throw this out here for you all” type of conversation. Its good 10% of the time for fostering ideas, challenging a prevailing narrative, etc. but you still have that 90% that is pure cotton candy.

People die as a result of such short-sighted decisions, and the FAA and others do very little about it in this industry. Maybe, maybe that will change, as this article seems to imply.

In my time in the Navy, my convictions about the need for stringent aviation regulation for carriers and providers serving the public was reinforced by the instances of “gundecking” (falsification of maintenance documents) that seemed to happen every month on the ship, sometimes leading to terrible near or actual mishaps. Always, the sailor responsible was held to account in a manner which was highly detrimental to their immediate finances, reputation among the crew and career. Yet, many of these instances were people who just “didn’t feel like doing it” or who “got in too deep and didn’t ask for help”.

Now, if sailors are willing to risk literally everything (from money to career) for mundane reasons, I am supposed to believe ardent de-regulators and reflexively anti-government forces that the FAA and assorted regulations are unnecessary or too powerful?  There may be a good rationale for de-regulation in other industries, but we need a much, much more powerful FAA or a private organization replacing it in the future with incentives to harshly police the aviation industry on such matters.

Arguing that DNA and forensic evidence points to a prison inmate who has confessed as the sole perpetrator of the crimes, they called on Gov. Tim Kaine to pardon the sailors.

“After careful review of the evidence we have arrived at one unequivocal conclusion: The Norfolk Four are innocent,” said Jay Cochran, a former assistant director of the F.B.I. and former special agent who served at the bureau for 27 years. “We believe a tragic mistake has occurred in the case of these four Navy men, and we are calling on Governor Kaine to grant them immediate pardons.”

The former agents join a long list of unusual supporters, including four former Virginia attorneys general; 12 former state and federal judges and prosecutors; and a past president of the Virginia Bar Association, who have called for the men to be pardoned.

In January 2006, 13 jurors from two of the sailors’ trials signed letters and affidavits saying they now believed the men were innocent.

Governor Kaine concedes the evidence against three Norfolk sailors convicted of rape and murder was sorely lacking and has conditionally pardoned them today.
Thank God. The Norfolk Four are now free.

James Scott writes a painfully vivid account of what is now known about the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty in 1967. I emphasize the word “attack” because “friendly fire” incidents don’t occur over an hour with rockets, napalm, and cannon on a lightly defended ship with an American ensign waving in the afternoon sky.

The heroism of the crew is rightly legendary, if not highlighted in American naval history in the manner the bravery and ingenuity of other recent crews on the USS Cole & USS Stark has been considered. Scott handles these particulars as well as he unfolds the aftermath, weaving together opinions from the Israeli Ambassador to the US about the need for accountability and apology to the sailors and their families and the stifled indignation of many an American government official of the time at soft-pedaling Israel’s responsibility and never letting the truth put the issue to rest.

Scott steps into a minefield of lies, distortions and murky agendas without falling prey to undue recriminations or relatively baseless accusations. He lays calm, clear fire at several people in the government who (given the evidence available now after several vital pieces of evidence were declassified) appear to be the most culpable in hiding the truth both from the public and the sailors whose lives were irrecoverably changed on that dark day.

In an era where an Israeli attack on Iran’s hostile nuclear sites could provoke a lethal response from the Islamic Republic and its proxies that take the lives of hundreds of Americans in the days and weeks afterward, clearing up the USS Liberty attack via an investigation by an independent commission empowered by the government to view all relevant evidence and clear up this the lies and deceptions inherent in the official account of the murder of dozens of US sailors by our ally.

A few links help answer the following questions or points raised in response to discussion of the attack:
(A) this is all in the past, why bring it up? (B) its only fodder for anti-Semites and other opponents (C) this will further imperil US-Israeli relations

James Scott responds to letter-writers in the Washington Post:

Recent revelations find USS Liberty survivors speaking out:

In 2008, the VFW has passed a resolution demanding an official inquiry into the attack.

Our sailors richly deserve for the government to stop lying to them. The dead are entitled to be honored for valor in combat, not in a “friendly fire” accident. The nation deserves to have justice for the needless shedding of its defenders’ blood, in the form of at least an official accounting and apology from the Israeli government as well as our own. To do otherwise in the face of mounting evidence is to disgrace the sailors who endured an unwarranted assault and saved their ship with as many of  their shipmates as possible.

“The Ayatollah Begs To Differ”:

Have the recent events in Iran rendered much of the insight and analysis in Hooman Maid’s journey through Iranian society and political arena? After a second cursory follow through from a first read in May, I don’t think that is the case.

Maid has a pedigree and appearance that seems to have helped open more doors for him than the typical writer about Iran has available, while retaining an affinity with the lower classes and wealthy alike. He’s the grandson of an ayatollah and has the beard of a religious man, though he has close ties to former President and reformer Mohammad Khatami. He is remarkably evenhanded in his approach towards Ahmadinejad, which is beneficial because it fosters a pragmatic appraisal of one of the more important faces of the new Iranian junta post 6/12.

Scattered throughout his peeks into Iranian society are a few fascinating points and arguments worth sharing:

- Ahmadinejad engages in Holocaust denials as a means to humiliate the Europeans by forcing them to admit to their barbarism (“How could such a great civilization do such a thing? Surely you’re not monsters?)and acknowledge their fathers were mass murderers, reminding Iranians and Arabs alike of who the real monsters in history have been. (43)
- After the Shah’s fall, the typical urban gangs were co-opted by clerical backed paramilitary committees (Komiteh). (25)
- The providing of free education to the children of Basiji establishes a powerful relationship between the regime and its violent legions. (29) Also, programs to populate the universities with the poor, the deeply religious and the underprivileged are changing the character of the educated classes (114).
- The more literal interpretation of Shia mythology observed in deeply religious families is a new concept in Iranian history and culture. (85)
- The hardliners introduced into government by Ahmadinejad since 2005 will likely be a fixture long after he has left the scene. (103)
- The question of rights, fundamental to Shia Islam, is explosive in the sense that attempts to deprive Iranians of them (besides alleged token few like clothing choices) can backfire on the regime in power. (118)
- “… the most moderate, and even the most liberal reformist clerics are united in their firm belief that the revolution was pure, that Khomeini’s views on a political system were sound, and that any democracy in Iran will always be an Islamic one.” (158)
- (Before 6/12), The Abu Ghraib scandal, CIA rendition cases, and the Guantanamo detention facility gave Iran, but also its prisoners, an unexpected boost in the years after 9/11 in that Iran, in order to show its moral superiority, continually trumpets the treatment of its prisoners as comparing most favorably to those in American hands. (184)
- Khatami’s failure was to not promote a single successor. (195)
- Shias have long been taught to not provoke their enemies, who in olden days were the Sunni majority surrounding them…. Shia concerns with avoiding conflict that could mean the annihilation of the minority sect(233).
- Iranians are often adroitly reminded by their leaders that when their soon to be deposed prime minister Mossadeq nationalized the Iranian oil industry, in effect demanding their right to the profits from their own oil, the British responded publicly, and at the UN no less, that Iran’s exercise of its right was a “threat to the security of the world,” words that have been repeated by the US in response to Iran exercising its right, haq, as far as Iranians are concerned, to produce nuclear fuel. (235)
- US attempt to pinpoint Iranian machinations behind insurgency foiled by (a) little proof being offered to back up claims and (b) unexploded bombs and shells were displayed with markings, in a perfect English lacking even on unfortunate Iranian road signs (c) dates of manufacture stenciled onto the bombs were not only in English but in the American form (that is month, day, year) rather than in the Iranian (and rest of the world’s) standard format. (236)

All points being debatable, Maid nevertheless leaves the reader with food for thought given potential US approaches towards Iran post 6/12 and how internal events might proceed. The loss of legitimacy by the Ayatollah and the Revolutionary Guard junta that seems to have co-opted other elements into a seizure of power may yet have dramatic negative consequences if the narrative of the reformers begins to appeal to a wider section of society that feels for religious, nationalist and business reasons the regime can no longer enjoy their support. A multi-pronged message will need to be crafted (as it appears is the case) with a patient investment in resources to begin to sour the population on the regime much as Ayatollah Khomeni sapped the strength of the Shah over more than a year.

The book has one notable weakness that should not deflect the reader from at least considering a library check-out:
- it lacks much insight (or giving a voice to) regarding Iranian women, who by most available measures in the post 6/12 world seem to be playing a much greater role in events than previously considered

Post 6/12, this is still a good read on Iranian society and politics.
B+