RIP Robert S. McNamara

“We burned to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo — men, women and children. LeMay said, ‘If we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals.’ And I think he’s right. He — and I’d say I — were behaving as war criminals. What makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?” - Robert S. McNamara

Robert McNamara seemed a tortured soul towards the end of his life. Errol Morris's compelling 2003 documentary, The Fog of War, found him apologetic, even haunted. Can we imagine Donald Rumsfeld, who served in the same position, Secretary of Defense, as McNamara, similarly apologetic some time into the future? Or Bush? Or Cheney? It's hard to imagine. But I suppose it's possible.

More: McNamara writing in Foreign policy in May/June 2005 on the dangers of nuclear proliferation

Nina Berman - Homeland

Border Watcher with Dogs, Arizona and Mexico border, 2008 - Nina Berman

If you're dawdling around Spring Street in NoLIta any time soon, drop into the Jen Bekman Gallery at 6 Spring and check out exhibit by documentary photographer, Nina Berman. It showcases 14 photos from her newly published monograph, Homeland. In her artist's statement, Berman describes the theme of her exhibit:

I came to this series after having spent the last few years photographing very graphic examples of the human cost of war. Many of the subjects I photographed said they grew up thinking war would be “fun.” Many watched the first Gulf War on TV and thought it was "awesome." Several said that becoming a soldier meant they would finally do something good in life.

Rather than continuing to show evidence of war, it seems appropriate for me to show the fantasies of war, the selling of war, the institutions of war, the culture of war and with it the militarization of American life.

Berman's photographs are matter-of-fact, even sterile sometimes, which only adds to their impact. The resulting conflation of the military industrial complex with ordinary American life - often including small children - is all the more haunting. I recently wrote about Berman's moving set of photos depicting Iraq veteran Ty Ziegel and his girlfriend. None of those pictures are on display, but may appear in the book.

More images from the exhibit
Nina Berman's Web site

The Grave of Specialist Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan

Elsheba Khan at the grave of her son, Specialist Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan.

Bronze Star. Purple Heart.

Operation Iraqi Freedom

Photo for The New Yorker by Platon

Regarding the Pain of Others

Over a passage of time, this series of photos by Nina Berman depicts Iraq veteran Ty Ziegel and his girlfriend. Berman captures the couple before Ziegel went to war, Ziegel as a handsome soldier serving overseas, Ziegel disfigured by a horrible accident on the battlefield, Ziegel and Kline on their wedding day, and Ziegel alone, after the couple separated and eventually divorced three months after their marriage. It's not my intention to sensationalize those events in a young man's life, only to point out the power of photography to place his story before us. We know war is hell, but we're seldom confronted with its consequences. I don't think I'm politicizing Ziegel's story if I say, we this series of images serves as a pointed reminder that we should be damn sure we're initiating a war for good reasons before sending our young men and women over there, the length of their lives stretched out before them. I have to note that I feel somewhat trite even writing the preceding, since the point seems obvious. If only we'd adhered to the principle.

The photography blog BagNewsNotes posted an image from this series in early 2007. Reading the comments on that post, it's both poignant and shocking to see how they encapsulate hope and well wishes upon Ziegel's marriage. Yet the full photo series tell a different story. Kudo to Ziegel for allowing the entire story to be told.

Regarding the Pain of Others is, of course, the title of Susan Sontag's book on the impact of photography's depictions of violence and atrocities.

OilBowl

My brother's latest project is this extraordinary sculpture he created from melted plastic soldiers he then painted blood red and oil black. He details the precise way he made this extraordinary statement, including how he melted each single soldier together with a heat gun. It's quite a powerful, visceral statement against the war in Iraq.

Strangelove Watch

A new feature wherein we draw attention to conservatives* salivating over the prospect of preemptive missile strikes against Iran. Let's begin with not one, but two recent contributions:

All the damaging consequences of all the blunders the President has committed to date in Iraq are reversible in 48 to 72 hours - the time it will take to destroy Iran's fragile nuclear supply chain from the air. And since the job gets done using mostly stand-off weapons and stealth bombers, not one American soldier, sailor or airman need suffer as much as a bruised foot. - Dan Friedman on American Thinker (Via Andrew Sullivan)

If we were to bomb the Iranians as I hope and pray we will, we’ll unleash a wave of anti-Americanism all over the world that will make the anti-Americanism we’ve experienced so far look like a lovefest. - Norman Podhoretz

Thank God these guys aren't running the country, right? Oh, right, Podhoretz is an advisor to Bush and senior foreign policy advisor to Rudy Giuliani.

*happy to throw in any moderates or liberals who fit the profile, too

Shock Treatment

Every now and then, somebody writes a book, which really pinpoints some principle effectively. The writer (or writers) haven't invetned the principle per se; they've just codified it. Gladwell's Tipping Point is certainly an example, but it seems a terribly obvious discovery. Besides, he just populairzed the idea, which had been described in the '60s. Herman and Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent is a better example. Whether you like Chomsky or not, you'd have to admit that the idea of manufactured consent is readily verifiable. If you hadn't noticed it yourself, as soon as it's explained to you, you can seize upon it and recognize it unfolding around you. Unfortunately, recognition of this particular principle may be accompanied by a chill or two (or probably should be), as you recognize the deleterious impact of this principle reverberating through our society on any given day. Just go check out the home page of CNN right now if you like.

Well, darned if Naomi Klein hasn't hit on a doozy. It's every bit as chill-worthy as the principle of manufactured consent and just as readily identifiable. For a quick introduction, check out this Alfonso Cuarón-directed video promoting Klein's new book The Shock Doctrine. The New York Times describes her thesis thusly: "That unconstrained free-market policies go hand in hand with undemocratic political policies."

In her book she argues that the shock therapy prescribed by Western economists during the last 30 years could not have been imposed without political shock therapy, namely brutal repression and a suspension of democratic rights. Western countries, along with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, essentially exploited disasters — hyperinflation, the tsunami, the war in Iraq — to force through radical changes like privatization, deregulation and severe cuts in social spending. These policies, imposed by foreign and American disciples of the laissez-faire economist Milton Friedman, she maintains, caused grinding poverty and hardship for millions while often permitting multinationals to buy up a country’s most valuable assets for going-out-of-business prices.

Even the shock of 9/11, she said in an interview, was “harnessed by leaders to end the discussion of global justice.”

In short then, political leaders either incite shocking events or take advantage of them to defeat ideas and to install the policies they wish to. Blindingly obvious in a way, isn't it? Lest anyone it, though, Klein quotes thought leaders, who have been quite explicit in prescribing this modus operandi.

Economist John Williamson in 1993: “One will have to ask whether it could conceivably make sense to think of deliberately provoking a crisis so as to remove the political logjam to reform.”

But the most damning quote comes in the video and it's from that darling of the conservatives, Milton Friedman. She describes his advice of advancing economic policy while people were still reeling from a disaster, a method he himself called "economic shock treatment." Says Friedman, "Only a crisis actual or perceived produces real change."

The video explicitly details some of the changes, which have been implemented immediately following various recent crises. Consider also, of course, more broadly, this principle, aside from economics: the U.S. doctrine of pre-emptive strikes, which has been incorporated post-9/11, as well as the creation of the Office of Homeland Security, the Patriot Act. As Klein says,

A terrorist attack puts us all into a state of shock. And in the aftermath, like the prisoner in the interrogation chamber, we too become childlike, more inclined to follow leaders who claim to protect us.

It's what many of us have thought since 9/11. How the Bush administration has taken advantage of our national shock treatment. Klein's pretty effectively codified it here. Depressing, huh?

She does end the video with some hope:

Shock wares off. It is by definition a temporary state. And the best way to stay oriented, to resist shock, is to know what is happening to you and why.

Amen, sister.

Excerpts from her book on the Guardian's site

Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying & Love the Civil War

New and extraordinary evidence that Donald Rumsfeld was pushing to tie Iraq to 9/11 immediately after the event - whether such ties existed or not. Department of Defense staffer Stephen Cambone took notes during meetings with Rumsfeld on the afternoon of September 11, 2001. Here's some of what he wrote:

"[b]est info fast . . . judge whether good enough [to] hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] at same time - not only UBL [Usama Bin Laden]"

"Go massive . . . Sweep it all up. Things related and not."

"Hard to get a good case."

No shit, Sherlock.

Anyone still doubting this administration manufactured consent for the war?

(Via the the inimitable Andrew Sullivan)

Elsewhere, National Review founder William F. Buckley bluntly declares "One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed."

Nothing but utter silence in response from the folks now running the Review.

Update: And let's not forget Francis Fukuyama, who now says:

As we approach the third anniversary of the onset of the Iraq war, it seems very unlikely that history will judge either the intervention itself or the ideas animating it kindly. By invading Iraq, the Bush administration created a self-fulfilling prophecy: Iraq has now replaced Afghanistan as a magnet, a training ground and an operational base for jihadist terrorists, with plenty of American targets to shoot at. The United States still has a chance of creating a Shiite-dominated democratic Iraq, but the new government will be very weak for years to come; the resulting power vacuum will invite outside influence from all of Iraq's neighbors, including Iran. There are clear benefits to the Iraqi people from the removal of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship, and perhaps some positive spillover effects in Lebanon and Syria. But it is very hard to see how these developments in themselves justify the blood and treasure that the United States has spent on the project to this point.

He concludes with words I agree with almost completely:

Neoconservatism, whatever its complex roots, has become indelibly associated with concepts like coercive regime change, unilateralism and American hegemony. What is needed now are new ideas, neither neoconservative nor realist, for how America is to relate to the rest of the world — ideas that retain the neoconservative belief in the universality of human rights, but without its illusions about the efficacy of American power and hegemony to bring these ends about.

I would make this point though: a belief in "the universality of human rights" is hardly unique to any strain of the conservative movement. Human rights shouldn't be a left/right issue, even if in practical terms they often are. Having said that, when conservatives finally and unequivocally accept that gays rights are human rights, too, I'll probably find the idea of a neoconservative belief in "the universality of human rights" a little more feasible.

Reuters reports that "US Pilots 'Bask in the Glory' of Bombing Baghdad."

"It was exhilarating," Commander Jeff Penfield said after returning from a bombing run. He and two other pilots dropped 1,000-pound laser-guided bombs on mobile targets near Baghdad. "I can't sleep yet,' he said. "I'll go down and get something to eat, unwind, bask in the glory a little bit."

Yippee! I'm reminded of Slim Pickens riding the atom bomb like a bucking bronco in Dr. Strangelove.