Counterinsurgency’s Comeback, a piece by Nasser Hussain published in the January 2010 edition of the Boston Review, discusses the effects of various counterinsurgency tactics used in Iraq and other wars in the past going back to Vietnam. Hussain also outlines the long history of counterinsurgency methods from various field manuals and publications that illustrate step by step methods for how to “win over” the “host population” in the country at hand. Such a task has proved to be nearly impossible in recent history, often due to issues of legitimacy, according to Hussain. Legitimacy is arguably the most significant reason that the majority of counterinsurgency tactics mentioned in this article have failed; they cannot win over the “host population”. Hussein mentions that almost every counterinsurgency tactic has a goal of winning the “hearts and minds” of the population, yet it is often very difficult for those in the country to see the US presence as legitimate. Why does the US fail to convince the host population that their presence is legitimate? Read the rest of this entry »
While today is a holiday, it is by no means one to rest and forget. Under the radar in recent news is the parallel policies of the Chinese and Vietnamese governments, particularly when they concern dissidents. As Google’s threat to pull the plug on its Chinese operations continues to stir conversations in Beijing and Washington, many do not know about similarities between Beijing and Hanoi.
Two days from today, Nguyen Tien Trung will face trial on charge of treason by the Vietnamese government. Trung, a French-educated pro-democracy blogger and software engineer, had first been drafted by the Vietnamese army following his return from France and arrested the day after his dishonorable discharge. He is founder of the Young Vietnamese for Democracy Association and, according to government media, a member of the banned Democratic Party of Vietnam.
Trung’s was part of a series of high-profile summer arrests that included Le Cong Dinh, Tran Huynh Duy Thuc, Nguyen Si Binh. The first is one of Vietnam’s top human rights lawyers and a former Fulbright scholar at Tulane, the second is chairman of a top Vietnamese Internet company, the third is a Vietnamese-American democracy activist. The American government, Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders have all called for their immediate release.
Government media has also been particularly preoccupied with these cases. VTV, the government’s central news channel, devoted a significant amount of prime-time to air the four’s public confessions. Similarly, many major national newspapers carried the full text of their confessions. While the Vietnamese government is no stranger to human rights-related arrests, the extent of official attention it has showered on these four is still surprising.
The spotlight is shifting away from Le Cong Dinh, the American-educated lawyer with an international reputation, towards Nguyen Tien Trung, as the latter’s trial date nears. Trung is merely 26 years old, far younger than the other three middle-aged men. Trung graduated from Le Hong Phong High School, southern Vietnam’s academic powerhouse. He then went on to graduate school in computer science in southern France, where he was an outstanding student. His profile eerily matches that of many young Vietnamese who have the opportunity to study abroad. Many will surely be watching the outcome of his trial, where he may face the death sentence.
In a recent article, the New York Times highlights the simmering tension between Google’s 80 million Chinese users and their government. At the same time, Vietnamese Facebook users have had trouble accessing the site for months and blame the government for this partial block. With a former Fulbright scholar in jail and a young blogger on trial, Hanoi’s suspicious eye on Beijing, bauxite and imperial past notwithstanding, may just relax.
I first attempted to make sense of James Wallenstein’s Fine By Me in Intro to Psych, sandwiched between a varsity beefcake and foreign cat-lady, one of those incongruous, elderly scholars that show up in my classes every so often. It was an uninspiring, inglorious setting and I am a green, relatively unread intern set to reflect on, in beefcake terms, “some really deep @*%t,” and I have no doubt the result can only be offensive, it probably already is. So let me issue a disclaimer of inadequacy, and apologize for the silly, maybe unhelpful way I would like to begin thinking about Wallenstein’s article, an eloquent and erudite piece about a brilliant mind, heady and likely to swallow me at any moment. During Psych lecture I had Geoff on the brain, and because this was Lecture Three: The Brain, I had Geoff’s brain on the brain. As Professor Knudson walked us through the anatomy of the nervous system, I began to think about the folded surface area of Geoff’s cortical lobes. I saw a swelling hippocampus, aggressively nudging the mysterious cerebellum. I saw the sensitive amygdala, especially nervous today and pulsing against the thalamus. I saw all these hyperactive and oddly personified cogs in the cranial confines that must be Dyer’s head, working together to pull at the fabric of time and space, pushing at the definitions of then and now, and reimagining the nature of art and artistic production.
Text is never separate from its context, and the historical moment of inception is every bit as important as the biography of its artist, and yet, Dyer’s writing does not just defy genre and category, it defies our standard notion of time in regards to artistic creation. In his article, Wallenstein explains Dyer’s conception of art as an act of creation reliant on previous artistic endeavor as its library, fodder and future all at once. I agree, art is always reacting to, critiquing and borrowing from its predecessors, but Dyer’s writing actively recognizes its part in this never-ending, universal dialectic, conscious of its self-reflexive relationship to what has come before it. An “organized synesthesia” and meta-layers of recognition within his writing itself lift art from our human timeline’s plotted sense of progression, as if his is a conversation between artists and art unaware of the passage of time. In many ways, Wallenstein references a sort of dissolution of temporality in Dyer’s work, works made possible by the relationship between the past and present but very good at leaving the distinction between the two blurry in its wake. Mark Twain once said about the ancient city of Varanasi, the languid destination for an ambiguous narrator in part two of Dyer’s newest novel,Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi, “Benares is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together.” Dyer’s mystical setting, ancient but suspended in time, provides an appropriate stage for both his character and the story’s introspective treatment of art.
“Something is rotten in the state of banking.” Alright, that isn’t quite how the Bard put it, but you take my point. Our nation’s ongoing financial crisis – just shy of a year in the making – is far from over. Indeed, with unemployment and budget deficits at record highs (the ‘worst since the Great Depression’, as the official administration line goes) it seems like we’ve just skimmed the surface and Americans are madder than they’ve ever been – a point about which congressional Democrats, with eyes fixed on 2010, are rightfully nervous. But even as populist anger has surged in the months since the first bank bailouts, there is scarcely a consensus about how lawmakers ought to proceed – that is, to curtail the excesses of the banking industry and its ability to send shockwaves through the larger economy. Of course, there are some (particularly on the right) who would take issue with the problem, stated as such, but as the evidence mounts it’s becoming harder to ignore the implications – that, as Dean Baker concludes in his recent piece, “The Big Bank Theory”, the complicity of the banking industry is incontrovertible and regulation is not merely prudent, but necessary.
In the current issue of the Boston Review, Nir Rosen argues that the counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy in Afghanistan is misguided and likely to fail. Several respondents have varying analyses of Rosen’s piece: some agree with his conclusion but thinks he misses a few points; others claim that he is too pessimistic. Aziz Hakimi thinks Rosen is right to doubt the success of an American-lead COIN operation in Afghanistan, but claims that Rosen is wrong in marking Karzai’s government as illegitimate—there is hope for politics in Afghanistan, says Hakimi, as long as the central government devolves power to local officials. Hakimi, however, is not clear about what responsibilities the United States has in Afghanistan, if any. This omission clouds the discussion of what the United States should expect to accomplish in Afghanistan.
As I prepare to bid this internship adieu, I leave you with a disturbing image: the National Counterterrorism Center, a U.S. government agency, has a website designed specifically for children. Not only that, but it provides links to kids’ pages from other agencies, such as the FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Administration. With the aid of the cartoon characters Little Lady Liberty and Beaker the Eagle, the Counterterrorism page explains–not in kid-friendly language, mind you–the mission and history of U.S. counterterrorism. Consider the following gem:
The story of NCTC began on January 28, 2003. During his State of the Union address to the country, President George W. Bush directed that the Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC) be created. All terrorist threat information analysis was to be merged into one center using the resources from many organizations. On May 1 of the same year TTIC was formally stood up and became the central hub for terrorist threat related information.
Instead of encouraging kids to “say something” if they “see something,” the only activity on the website is coloring in line drawings of Beaker and Lady Liberty. For this I am a bit relieved, but still, if the government is going to the trouble of providing propaganda for kids, shouldn’t they consult childhood educators and create it in language kids can understand?
To this end the FBI does a much better job, with age-appropriate links on its similarly cartoonish home page. However, the (illustrated) Special Agents all appear to be white–which I suppose they were in 1908, but as I was momentarily confused (and this is meant for K-5th graders who may not pause to read the text), the illustration seems misleading. Click over to the easily-accessible “adult” links, and the “Quick Facts” page features a photograph of a SWAT team marching through a leaf-strewn neighborhood in New Orleans while carrying large guns. The caption explains that the FBI SWAT team is helping local law enforcement following Hurricane Katrina. I am tongue-tied. The image is frightening and, provided the context, outrageous. Does this help our kids feel safe?
I encourage you to explore these pages on your own, but in sum, the Defense Intelligence Agency greets visitors with a male soldier in camo, standing at ease, next to links to “Missions” such as Hangman and Air Combat with a promise of “More to come!” Finally, the NSA page, titled “CryptoKids,” encourages “future codemakers and codebreakers” to make their own secret code. The gender-specific CryptoCat (a tiny, navel-baring kitten) and Decipher Dog (a much taller, burly pooch) are statements in themselves.
It would be interesting to look at statistics for how many visits these sites receive, and to find out whether any schools utilize the provided curriculum. Short of a complete overhaul, it would be nice if the government would at least update biased language; consider the following from the FBI page about bomb-sniffing dogs:
You ask, “What is a working dog?” “Is it a dog that does more than hang out at the house all day and bark at the mailman?” “Is it a dog that gets in the car like Mom and Dad and goes to the office?”
Whatever happened to women mail carriers, or all the kids from single-parent families, or with same-sex parents? As with much in life–especially pertaining to government–I am not surprised, merely disappointed.
In reading A Distant Pleasure, Keith Taylor’s discussion of Daniel Mendelsohn’s new translations of the poems of C.P. Cavafy, one is reminded that every translated poem is always largely a novel construction. A good translator must be almost impossibly nuanced in her attempt to faithfully translate a poem, delicately balancing her consideration for rhythm, meaning, connotation, and many other elements. For the famous modern Greek poet who put so much of his own desire into his poetry that he prompted fellow poet Goerge Seferis to remark that “outside his poems Cavafy does not exist,” the question of translation seems particularly pertinant.
Taylor traces his own beloved relationship with Cavafy’s poems. He expresses admiration for Mendelsohn’s new translation of both Cavafy’s completed works and recently-found unfinished ones, appreciating how Mendelsohn conveys the rhythmic cadences absent in previous translations. Taylor both compliments and criticizes Mendelsohn’s attempt to reflect Cavafy’s interplay of vernacular Greek diction with “high” official language imposed on the populace after the collapse of Ottoman rule, reinforcing how translation is endlessly political because languages are so invariably wedded to history. Most of all though, what A Distant Pleasure conveys is how a new translation of a poet’s work can can help the reader approach the poet’s original intentions, imbuing old and beloved poems with new meaning that at once strengthens old affections and offers novel perspectives. As James Longenbach suggests in his own laudatory review in the Times Sunday Book Review, Mendelsohn seems to possess a profound understanding of the essence of Cavafy’s work and to have distilled this essence in his translations.
In the second of his two recent contributions to the Boston Review, Nir Rosen describes his experiences following a team of marines in Afghanistan who trained and fought alongside a force of Afghans. For most of the article, Rosen sticks to the facts and avoids drawing many explicit conclusions. However, it is reasonably clear that Rosen is skeptical of the ability of the US to succeed in Afghanistan, and he suggests several views in the article: first, it is misguided to optimistically compare the counterinsurgency (COIN) efforts in Afghanistan’s to those in Iraq, second, the state of Afghanistan’s police and armed forces is very poor, and third, the military does not fully support COIN. This last suggestion is unfair.
In a highly anticipated news conference on Friday, November 13th, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed – 9/11 mastermind – along with four of his co-conspirators, would be tried in a federal courtroom in Manhattan, mere blocks from Ground Zero and nearly eight years after the deaths of his some 3,000 victims. Although a recent Marist poll of native New Yorkers puts approval for the venue at 45%, with disapproval at 41%, the announcement has drawn fire from both sides of the isle, with Republican leadership accusing the President and AG Holder of playing into the hands of “liberal special interest groups” at the expense of the American people, unnecessarily placing them in harm’s way while potentially exonerating the defendants, as well as critics on the left who lament the continued use of ‘modified’ military commissions for an additional five detainees. The caucus’ more conservative members, like Senator Jim Webb (D-WV), fear the trials will invite untoward disclosure of privileged information. Despite assurances from Holder that the administration will have sufficient authority to keep state secrets classified, critics remain unconvinced. Read the rest of this entry »
In his article, Last Wishes, Leland de la Durantaye considers the controversial publication of Vladimir Nabokov’s final unfinished novel, The Original of Laura. While the article offers literary critique of the fragmented notes, Durantaye’s most provocative point concerns the ethics of their publication. While tracing the echo of Lolita and Ada in the repackaged scraps of Nabokov’s imagination, we are also forced to recognize that the painstaking writer and editor never wanted us to read the novel. The questionable circumstance of the book’s birth prompts a moral and philosophical reflection upon the nature of intellectual property; how much of The Original of Laura really belongs to the deceased Nabokov, or does it at all?
In a radio interview with Brian Boyd, Nabokov’s biographer, de la Durantaye admits that left to him, The Original of Laura would have burnt per Nabokov’s request, but at no point in his article does he impose some sweeping, moral verdict in regards to its publication. In fact, he almost undermines the contention of Dmitri Nabokov’s decision to publish his father’s work, claiming that the edited compilation of notes will neither tarnish the writer’s name nor bring new meaning to what he has written before. Tom Roberge comes to the same sort of unsatisfying conclusion in his article on The Original of Laura for Boldtype Magazine, writing, “dead men make no complaints.” While I do not share Dmitri’s “supernatural connection” with the shade of his father, nor do I envision some tormented, ghostly Nabokov wringing his hands beyond the grave, I still wish de la Durantaye had taken a subjective moment to say, “This is wrong.” So why am I offended? As the daughter of an intellectual property rights attorney, I accept the legality of Dmitri’s inherited possession and his decision to publish. And yet, I can’t help but feel that despite Nabokov’s inability to teach at Cornell or eat a ham sandwich, his creative undertakings are still his. Having said this, artistic creation is always at the mercy of whomever it comes into contact with – words inevitably lend themselves to gray areas and interpretative freedom. In writing something, you somehow relinquish control over both its meaning and its fate, and regardless of the “should” or “should nots,” nothing ever belongs to its artist alone. While I find the publication disquieting, I am also disturbed by the thought of such rich, if not polished, material sitting in a Swiss deposit box somewhere or burning into tiny particles of nothing. Perhaps The Original of Laura was no one but Nabokov’s to give, but it is now ours for the taking. Here it is, an author’s involuntary gift and our public domain, and the least we can do is read into a writer’s need to destroy drafts and his contemplation of intellectual effacement with the delicacy such a tantalizing parallel deserves.
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