A Prescient Book on Afghan Conflict 10/22/2009
Posted by Vaughn in Conflict, Defense, Global, Mass Media, Politics.comments closed
WITH PRESIDENT Obama in the greatest of pickles, politically, concerning the war in Afghanistan; to the point that the core cogs of the administration are regularly engaged in three-hour long strategy and information sessions that intend to clear up the debacle’s fog machine and help develop a decisive strategy and endgame; And with that war’s own, General Stanley McChrystal’s, confidential report to the president leaking to the Washington Post, and him then later upping the ante by publicly recommending more drains on treasure and more soldiers; to implement what he believes to be a winning, nation-building counter-insurgent strategy, far before any decision has been rendered by the president; Obama is now at the crucial crossroads of his still-nascent presidency. With the news that Hamid Karzai, the current Afghan president, who is accused of stealing August’s pivotal election, agreeing to a runoff after some cajoling by high-level envoys — including Senator John Kerry — there are just too many moving parts for the president to make a decision, right now; who is viewed by some to be dragging his feet on the matter.
But Karzai’s decision to a runoff makes some things easier: for one, any decision by the president on the war will require a legitimate partner in Afghanistan, and August’s disputed election would not allow for it. Karzai’s agreeing to a runoff relieves some of the questions inside Afghanistan (and internationally) about a potentially U.S.-backed illegitimate regime. And two, the runoff buys Obama more time — time which he needs. The Afghanistan decision may determine the bulk of his remaining years in office and what he can accomplish, especially if the war appears more and more like the failing enterprise with no means of escape, that many want to paint it to be, and it drains his political capital. (Especially with Republicans shooting at a larger target.)
All this necessary hand-wringing does not mention the still very hot home-front issues, and the debate concerning the potential governmental run health care system, and an economy that might as well be in “false recovery.” (Especially if you pose the question to Joe and Jane Q. Public: “Whether or not the recession is over?” ) Also, there is the other problem of his own left-wing constituency’s expectations; looking for him to create what they believe to be real “change” — a somewhat personally arbitrary qualitative assessment – which in their mind was to happen from day one, minute one, all based on the hopes that they had pinned to the marketing and imagery of a man who may or may not be the picture of progressive idealism. (War to many of these folks, no matter what kind of war — and how different the objectives — is not change. Despite Obama basically saying throughout the campaigning season that: “Afghanistan is the good war,” and up until recently most Americans had shown that they agreed, in electing him.)
But unintended changes have occurred. Within Obama’s own party and the larger left-wing, support for the war is eroding. August brought the bloodiest month in the Afghanistan War’s history and the conflict hit the eight-year mark post-9/11. Palpable fatigue has begun to set-in. Now no one envies the decisions Obama faces. No one. Even as he is a great student of history, the situation lined-up before him has to be some of the worst set of conditions a newly inaugurated president has ever faced. The history-nut in him has to think that much of this “President thing” is now a fool’s errand at best.
Any information President Obama can leverage to navigate through the labyrinthine dilemmas he faces, he now most likely exploits. Therefore I expect that William Maley’s The Afghanistan Wars has been part of the Obama team’s internal dialogue in the strategy sessions, and in the president’s own facile mind. While intelligence of the here and now matters and emissaries and commanders on the ground play a vital role in painting the picture, there is the needed element of history. (As Obama pointed out yesterday in a White House lawn speech honoring Vietnam veterans and making a comment about lessons from “that day in the jungle.” Though the overall Vietnam-Afghanistan media-favored parallel is a bit off, aside from the asymmetry of the conflict, and the drain both wars became.) Since fighting a war where you know very little of the complicated nature of the people, their history and their general patterns of behavior, is equivalent to going into a boxing ring never knowing anything other than your opponent’s physical characteristics. It’s plain dumb and will — if the opponent is aptly skilled — lead to quick-work on their part. Seeing as the last administration took their attention off of the golden egg once it was found — that being a swift victory in the nation — toppling the Taliban in days, the lessons of Afghanistan’s wars of the past now becomes crucial as the pattern of long-drawn, insurgent conflict that is so particularly pathological to the nation reshuffled the deck and made for a new game in 2003.
The Afghanistan Wars is one of a cornucopia of critical texts concerning Afghanistan, and for those interested in foreign policy, considering our last twenty-five plus years in the region and the more recent bloody eight, it should be a very good primer. I, myself, am just now beginning to read it. What’s important to note in all of this debate, and the problem for the Obama administration, is the conception of “Afghanistan is a backwards doomed to Hell country, that has always been at war.” That’s not really true. In fact, during King Mohammed Zahir Shah’s reign from 1933-1973, Afghanistan was a fairly moderate nation that had a parliament, free elections, was a member of the forerunner to the United Nations, the League of Nations, allowed women to vote, and it was actually quite governable. While the nation was never on the level of the developed-world and Western scale, its more moderate Taliban-less time is a far cry from the Afghanistan we now know and the draconian state of “Talib” rule. And while that may or may have no bearing to the present, this should be noted. As a recent discussion in the New York Times has also mentioned, [this is unsourced for now, until the article can be searched for]: if Afghanistan is not able to be governed, then what exactly has the Taliban been trying to do? They certainly believe that it can be governed and would like to install Sharia throughout the land.
I happen to think that “no more war” is good policy almost all of the time, but Afghanistan sits in a very delicate region, in a very delicate time, with heightening global tensions and an inequality that breeds exploitable discontent among its young, hungry and poor — and I don’t know what we should do. What is the right answer? Do we double-down at the poker table and lose more kids to recreate King Mohammed Zahir Shah’s Afghanistan? Or do we just leave now?
It is argued by many, that us doing nothing there to support a moderate political climate, is what has led us here, making the country a safe-haven and fertile soil for Jihadist recruitment and training. Therefore, so goes the argument for fighting, if we can educate the population and especially the girls and women — in order for them to be personal firewalls against extremism within their family units — and provide opportunities besides narco-trafficking, save the locals from the nasty rule of the Taliban while rooting most of them out, we’d be on our way to success. Except that sounds arduous and costly, especially when factoring in that this has been an eight year struggle. As many note, this is going to have to be Obama’s war, good or bad, when many of this operation’s problems lay in Bush no. 43, and how he didn’t finish the fight: not providing enough troops to hold the nation’s security for the time of the Taliban’s eventual re-grouping and recruitment of soldiers, and for the locals themselves who should be free from fear of the Taliban.
The already-won-but-now-have-to-win-again state of this war is just another indictment of the last administration. It truly appears that the entire cabinet had no understanding of the globe and history. They were a hammer when a “War on Terror” — a tactic, mind you; not an enemy — needed a surgical scalpel, and perhaps the information in The Afghanistan Wars , along with some critical thinking and dot-connecting. For President Obama, however, in hoping to fix this mess and restoring an Afghanistan that once was, the path to Hell may be filled with good intentions.
Limited preview of William Maley’s The Afghanistan Wars at Google Books [Here]
Jordan’s Skyline Story 10/16/2009
Posted by Vaughn in Journals, Marketing, Random Card Scans.comments closed
Card Vitals:
Michael Jordan
1991-92 SkyBox, “SkyMaster,” # 253
I WAS in love with this card from the moment I saw it. It was just so Jordan, so very much how he played, above the skyline and player crowd — above the fray of mortal, earthly-bound men. It was the perfect synchronization of the shared early-Jordan experience and the understanding he had with his fans: He was to be a Concorde or a classic fighter jet, cutting through the sky, and in return, his fans would champion him, even as he was struggling to find his way to a championship. (Pardon the corny pun.) What’s important is that the photograph isn’t even of him stuffing a shot down the cup after a whirl of zig-zags and his barreling down the lane. And I actually believe I recognize the play in this photograph: it was an in-bounds save, I think. I can even see the frame’s following sequences: of his giant hand actually stopping the ball’s rotation mid-flight, with his legs churning for a second, for him to extract just a couple more milliseconds of hang-time, then spot a receiver and deliver the subsequent pass.
This is the effect of watching so many games, checking the press clippings the next day from all the various newspapers and then later, catching either the WGN highlights packages on the Chicagoland 10 pm broadcast, which aired at 8 p.m. for me since I lived in California, watching Sports Center and reading the Sports Illustrated, The Sporting News or Sport magazine’s of the month. When one gets into a pattern of that kind of barrage of information, they start to see that the same shots from the same people tend to be sourced, whether by NBA Entertainment — who would use full-video of the same play– and/or a recycled still image from one of those print outlets.
And so many times for me, the images became recognizable, and were tracked to individual games. Those images still stay with me now, from video of his hanging turnaround fall-aways with him landing out-of-bounds after being raked across the arms — and this is far before he became known for the fall-away that became his piece de resistance late-game weapon — to just the less-memorable lay- ins. These still images always seem to match to the video of the moment in the mind’s eye and or the corollary: the video assisting me to help remember the image and the memory attached to it. Media exposure reinforcement. (My term.)
I also just happen to love this card’s front image, because it was Jordan in the white home jersey, which was still somewhat rare in his cards from the early ’90s. The traditional Bulls’ red road uniform is how most remember Jordan personally and it has been transferred to most of his hoops media fare, but not me. While I watched many a Bulls’ game either on the-then enormously packed-to-the-gills CBS, NBC, TNT and TBS NBA schedule, it seemed that the real totemic Bulls’ fan cathode ray tube experience was WGN’s home games with that raucous Chicago Stadium crowd chanting and gasping, yelling “threeeee!” as Jordan or Pippen drove and kicked to Hodges, Armstrong or Paxson in the corners or at the top of the key, and Bulls color man, Johnny Kerr, being such an unabashed “homer.” (Kerr was such a home team guy that even Johnny Most would probably be embarrassed with “Red” Kerr’s unseemly rooting for them Chicago boys.)
Also, there was this kind of complimentary piece that I attached this card to. It was a poster of Michael in the Chicago sky at night, with the original image of the “canvas rotated” 90 degrees — to borrow an Adobe Creative Suite term — to make Jordan appear to be flying horizontal like Superman. It just seemed to be from the same school of thought and even graphic designer. The poster’s publisher, Costacos Brothers, even printed that poster during roughly the same year, just eight or nine months later. When I used to burn notebook and blank-white computer paper with my mechanical pencil drawings, with no regard for our rain forests, I would often try to draw the above image of Jordan from the backside of the card: with him hanging almost near-sideways attempting to get that jumper off.
B-More’s Growing Art Identity 10/14/2009
Posted by Vaughn in Art, Mass Media, Street Culture.comments closed
I WAS back East a couple of weeks ago, and I overheard a conversation about Baltimore by some run-of-the-mill white-flight types, and invariably once I heard the “Charm City” come up, I knew what was to follow based on my own admitted assumptions: A kind of city-oriented ethnophaulism about B-More’s blighted homes and denizens of a stripe unlike the conversation holders’ own. The subtextual ciphers of the dialogue being replications of the stereotyping of unnamed “chocolate-cities” and the black underclass elements that translate to Avon Barksdale and the stories in David Simon’s work such as The Wire. And that is actually what happened. Sadly, that is Baltimore’s legacy to most who know little of the DC, Maryland, Virginia area known as the “DMV.” (An area I admit I am only somewhat familiar with, myself, having friends who hail from the region, and my father who used to deliver mail on its mean streets.)
But Baltimore is so much more than Simon’s depressing but brilliantly drawn city and the portrayal of an institutional framework of failing schools, hard-boiled childhoods, dubious political machinery and struggling informational outlets. And because just a few could see the city’s diamond in the rough qualities and promise, it has recently begun to see the edges of a rebirth, perhaps not in spite of, but in fact because of, the Simon-sketched image in the popular mind: Since artists tend to not be afraid of such waywardly defined lives and “close to the bone” existence in towns such as those portrayed in the city’s signature show. It’s also important to note that this ruggedly urban idea of Baltimore existed far before The Wire; seeing its foundation in Simon’s early to late ’90s critically-acclaimed crime drama, Homocide: Life on the Street (which was based on his book Homocide: A Year on the Killing Streets), and another earlier Simon work of the same time: The Corner.
But even more so than the entwine of Homocide, The Corner and The Wire, there may be another more traditional artistic media element involved in Baltimore’s growing embrace among some sectors; John Waters and his films. It was Waters who first told of Baltimore’s strangeness and especially odd circumstances. He did so in Pink Flamingos, Hairspray, Cry-Baby and Cecil B. Demented, making off-beat and camp a part of Baltimore’s softer, quirky side that rarely gets mass media run.
But now it seems the cultural cognoscenti are coming back to Baltimore for affordable spaces to make their art or write or design. So much so, that a recent New York Times‘ travel article on spending a weekend in Baltimore cements the city’s growing artsy identity in the mind. As of last week the Times‘ “36 Hours in Baltimore” was the most E-mailed article in the travel section. So Baltimore is in fact, to now use a morphing-to-derisive term, being “gentrified.”
And while I generally have a cynicism towards the social phenomena of white upwardly mobiles and those either from upper middle class stratas, or soon to be, coming into the “hood” to slum it up and bolster their bohemian image or prove something to themselves about their authenticity, social understanding and privilege, this is the glowing upside of gentrification; cities are given a new lease on life. Their downtowns are made vibrant again, over time, and while some lower-income or sometimes many lower-income folk who called these hard luck areas home for years or decades are displaced by the rising rents determined by realtors who hype the new, aesthetically friendlier clientele, the city itself attracts more opportunities and business because of its newfound magnetism. According to the Times:
Once rough neighborhoods like Hampden and Highlandtown have been taken over in recent years by studios, galleries and performance spaces. Crab joints and sports bars now share the cobblestone streets with fancy cafes and tapas restaurants. But against this backdrop, there are still the beehive hairdos and wacky museums that give so-called Charm City its nickname.
Read the NY Times’ “36 Hours in Baltimore” [Here]
Visit the article’s media supplement [Here]
