On Coping
I recently traveled to New Orleans, my first visit to the Crescent City in more than thirty years. Although I was there to give a talk, the occasion provided an opportunity to assess (however belatedly) the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina nearly five years ago. With that in mind, my host generously offered to give me a guided tour through some of the city’s worst-hit precincts.
Recovery remains a work in progress, with much accomplished and much more remaining to be done. In affluent neighborhoods like the Garden District or at Tulane University where I spoke, evidence of the hurricane’s passing is conspicuous by its absence. In poorer neighborhoods, the scars are omnipresent and raw.
Yet even in places like the impoverished Lower Ninth Ward, heartening signs of renewal are everywhere visible—businesses and schools reopened, homes being rebuilt or built anew from scratch. Federal money is making a difference not only in fixing residential neighborhoods, but in funding major improvements to hospitals and schools. Private initiatives by churches or charitable organizations are also contributing. Although I’m not a particular fan of the actor Brad Pitt, his Make It Right project has erected more than two dozen new homes that are striking in appearance, while also being environmentally hip. More such houses are to come. Make It Right is making a difference.
That said, there are still countless buildings that stand abandoned, their roofs caved in, windows covered with plywood, entire structures gradually being enveloped by the local flora. Concrete slabs, stripped bare and surrounded by weeds, litter the landscape. They exist in the thousands. Some number will no doubt eventually serve as foundations for new residences; one guesses that more than a few will simply remain as they are, offering mute testimony to what was once a flourishing community—a sort of twenty-first century American version of Pompeii.
To an outsider, the overall mood is one of sturdy, matter-of-fact, un-heroic heroism. The truth is that however much the plight of those caught in Katrina’s path elicited concern and sympathy back in 2005, most of us have long since moved on. The people of New Orleans are on their own. Whether the Big Easy finally emerges from this epic disaster better or worse, bigger or smaller, richer or poorer, its culture intact or fatally compromised will be for those who live there to decide.
On a day-to-day basis, living in New Orleans—especially in the blighted quarters—translates into learning how to cope or make do. Coping is a predicate for survival.
Not that this is somehow unique to post-Katrina New Orleans. Coping may be the chief response, individual or collective, to the difficulties inherent in the human condition.
One of the reasons that most of us have more or less forgotten Katrina is that the world has experienced a non-stop succession of other natural disasters since. Recent months alone have seen massively destructive earthquakes in Haiti and Chile and China. In Iceland, a volcano erupts, wreaking havoc across much of Europe. Famines ravage populations. The prospect of some new epidemic scares the hell out of us. Floods, droughts, forest fires, tsunamis, melting ice caps: it’s one damn thing after another.
And even if your community has been spared such disasters, it’s unlikely that your family has escaped unscathed. Unexpected death, crippling sickness, the loss of a job, the rupture of intimate relationships: when these things befall us, we cope.
Governments (or in the case of personal loss, friends) do their best to help out, of course. Yet at the end of the day those directly affected have to figure things out. We have no alternative. So we make the best of things. We put our lives back together. That accomplished, we wait for the next bit of misfortune to come along, as it inevitably does. Then we cope with that one too.
Forget about world peace, spreading freedom and democracy around the world, and finding true love and happiness. If as nations and individuals we can cope with the hand that fate deals us, we’re doing all that can be expected.
Remembering Iraq
The violence unleashed by the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 persists, but Americans, from Barack Obama on down, are eager to declare the Iraq War at an end. Apart from a few diehard neoconservatives still keen to use Mesopotamia as a springboard for the pursuit of imperial fantasies, Americans can’t wait to shake the dust of Iraq from their feet and be done with the place.
Yet even as we leave, we should not forget. Common decency demands that we honor the service and sacrifice of those who bore the burden of waging that war. No doubt some committee will soon start lobbying for the construction of an Iraq War Memorial to be erected on the Mall in Washington. That effort deserves to succeed.
My own view is that every American war, large or small, ought to be commemorated smack dab in the middle of the nation’s capital. Crowding every inch of the Mall with granite and marble war memorials—the bigger the better—just might help deflate the continuing American illusion that we are a peaceful people desirous of nothing except to be left alone. It might help us see ourselves as we really are.
Yet the commemoration of the Iraq War ought to have a second component: American soldiers and American citizens are owed an accounting of exactly what this war was about. Who devised it? What was its actual purpose? What did it achieve and at what cost? Why did so much go so wrong for so long? Who should be held accountable?
As the U.S. military misadventure in Iraq approaches its conclusion, loose ends abound. We need to tie up as many of those loose ends as we possibly can—not too settle scores or engage in partisan posturing, but to get to the bottom of things.
In Great Britain, the controversies provoked by the Iraq War produced an official investigation—a truth commission, of sorts. Inevitably, the Chilcot Inquiry didn’t satisfy everyone and didn’t answer every question. But it was an honorable and worthy effort, a tribute to British democracy.
Any effort to remember the Iraq War on this side of the water ought to include a similar undertaking. Congress should create and fund a nonpartisan commission of scholars and Iraq War veterans—no politicians and no generals—to investigate the war’s origins, conduct, and outcome.
Where is the member of Congress who will champion this cause? Don’t hold your breath waiting for volunteers.
Surprise!
The Information Age has spawned two insidious clichés. The one relates to speed, the other to distance, with the first reinforcing the second.
According to the first cliché, the very tempo of human existence is rapidly accelerating. We live today in a “fast” world. Change is omnipresent. Success—even survival—requires that people and institutions be quick, nimble, and responsive. To stand still is to be left behind.
According to the second cliché, distances are collapsing. Oceans have been reduced to puddles, mountain ranges into minor inconveniences. Day by day, the world is shrinking and becoming ever more interconnected.
Now many clichés contain elements of wisdom. John F. Kennedy had it exactly right: Life is unfair. The same with Charles de Gaulle: Old age is a shipwreck.
The problem with the clichés of the Information Age is that they are entirely bogus. Worse than bogus: They are pernicious.
All the yapping about our supposedly fast, flat, and wired world fosters bizarre expectations. Computers, we are told, possess and confer power. Out of power comes mastery.
Don’t believe it. The fact of the matter is this: We live in a world characterized not by ever-greater speed but by never-ending surprise. No one—not the pope, the president, or even a fast-world guru like Thomas Friedman—knows what’s going to happen next. Those who pretend otherwise are frauds.
The Information Age has not notably enhanced our ability either to anticipate the future or to respond to the problems that catch us when we are looking the other way.
What prompts these thoughts is the ongoing, slow-motion environmental catastrophe unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico. On April 20, an oil platform located 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana exploded, burned, and collapsed, killing 11 and injuring many more. As a consequence, according to The New York Times, crude oil is now spilling into the Gulf at an estimated rate of 5,000 barrels per day. Meanwhile, nine days later—that’s nine days, folks—U.S. government agencies along with BP, the rig’s owner and operator, are still trying to figure out what to do.
Distance doesn’t matter? Heck, the pipe that’s gushing crude is only 5,000 feet under water—less than a mile. In this case, of course, it might just as well be 5,000 miles. Current estimates say that it may take 90 days to plug the leak. So much for “fast.”
Yet if we consider the disasters of the last decade, the Gulf oil spill doesn’t even make it into the front rank. Crowding it out for top honors are the 9/11 attacks and the mismanagement of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars; the collapse of Enron, the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme, the global economic implosion of 2008; and the oh-so-ponderous response to natural disasters such as the hurricanes that devastated New Orleans and Haiti.
The future is opaque. Whatever is coming will contain much that is bad along with some that is good. All the iPods, iPhones, and iPads in the world won’t change the proportion between the two.
Buckle up.
The Cakewalk, Seven Years On
Remember Iraq? Most Americans are doing their darnedest to forget the invasion and occupation that began seven years ago this past week. Iraq has become our new “forgotten war.” It wrests that title from Afghanistan, which had languished for years as George W. Bush’s “forgotten war,” until rediscovered and revived by Barack Obama. Such are the ironies of history.
In a recent interview with The New York Times, General Ray Odierno, latest in a long line of U.S. commanders in Baghdad, opined that “People have to get past why we came here.” From the general’s lips to God’s ears: Americans have already dumped from their memory bank the reasons offered up to justify the Iraq war in the first place.
A bristling arsenal of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction? Saddam Hussein’s ties to violent jihadists? The liberation of Iraq paving the way for a democratic transformation across the Greater Middle East? The road to peace in Jerusalem found in downtown Baghdad? A demonstration of American military might settling once and for all the question of who is the “stronger horse”? Fahgettaboudit.
So instead of talking about why we opted in invade Iraq, let’s talk about consequences. This, as it happens, is the subject of a just-published study completed for the Air Force by the RAND Corporation.
Here, according to RAND, is what we got for our trillion or so dollars. (And, yes, the meter is still running.)
1). The regional balance of power has tilted in favor of Iran, “creating the impression among Arab publics that Iran–and by extension Shi’ism–was now the ‘winning’ side.”
2). With a series of blunders having raised doubts about U.S. competence and capabilities, Arab nations are increasingly looking to Russia and China for patronage, protection, and support.
3). Rather than advancing the cause of democracy, “the war has stalled or reversed the momentum of Arab political reform”; in countries throughout the Middle East, counterterrorism has provided a pretext to suppress movements supporting liberalism and adherence to the rule of law.
4). The two million Iraqis who fled their country to escape war–according to RAND, “the largest refugee crisis in the Middle East since the 1948 Arab-Israeli War”–threaten to destabilize neighboring countries such as Jordan and Syria; Iraqi refugee camps serve as incubators for prostitution, female trafficking, and political radicalism.
5). Tactics and techniques developed to fight the Americans in Iraq have found their way to groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah, so that the long conflict in Iraq has enhanced insurgent capabilities across the region.
Good news out of all this? The wonks at RAND couldn’t find any.
It’s no wonder that all the smart people in Washington, civilians and soldiers alike, are so keen to change the subject. Let’s talk about fixing Afghanistan or Pakistan. Let’s wring our hands about how to save the day in Yemen or Somalia. Let’s talk about anything except the mess made as a consequence of Washington’s own recklessness and folly.
The real disgrace is that we let them get away with it.
DADT: Finis
I don’t go to bed at night worrying about gay rights. Chalk it up to the provincialism of growing up Hoosier during the Cold War or perhaps to all those years in Catholic schools. Or blame it on a lack of empathy. Whatever.
Don’t get me wrong: I don’t oppose gay rights. I believe in equality. Indeed, I fervently hope that my dealings with others do not betray whatever lingering homophobic (not to mention sexist or racist) inclinations still fester in my sinful soul. That said, advancing the cause of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered Americans is just not one of my core issues.
Still, I find myself increasingly irked by the way senior military leaders are responding to this whole “don’t ask, don’t tell” business. Above all, what irks me is their shilly-shallying. Forgive me for being harsh: But the appropriate word is “gutless.”
Here’s army chief of staff General George Casey testifying before a Senate committee on the question of whether gays should be allowed to serve openly: “I do have serious concerns about the impact of repeal of the law on a force that is fully engaged in two wars and has been at war for 8 1/2 years,” Casey said. “We just don’t know the impacts on readiness and military effectiveness.”
For DADT or against it? The chief of staff of the whole United States Army is not prepared to say: He just has “concerns.” Casey has been out taking the temperature of the troops. “There is apprehension. There is uncertainty, and that is why it is so important to study this.”
Here is air force chief of staff General Norton Schwartz on the same subject: “This is not the time to perturb the force that is, at the moment, stretched by demands in Iraq and Afghanistan….”
If General Casey really cared all that much about readiness (not to mention the effects of uncertainty) and if General Schwartz wanted to avoid perturbing the force, perhaps they should reflect on the implications of perpetual war. But no: It’s the prospect of gays serving openly that has them wringing their hands. State a principled position? Not a chance. What they propose to do is to study the problem—the standard response of bureaucrats looking for ways to stall.
There are three points to be made here:
First, we’ve got too much war and too few troops to fight them. With even President Obama now committed to more war not less, one way to close the gap is to maximize the pool of Americans deemed eligible to serve. To make sexual orientation a bar from service shrinks the pool of eligibles (and also creates a convenient “Get out of khaki” card for those already in uniform, but having second thoughts). With open-ended war now a core principle of U.S. national security policy, DADT makes about as much sense as declaring people ineligible for military service just because they have tattoos.
Second, rather than providing a rationale for inaction, war demands the swift elimination of dumb-ass policies. History provides ample precedent for this. When President Harry Truman ordered the military to desegregate in 1948, the armed forces (the Air Force partially excepted) dragged their feet. As a consequences, when General Matthew Ridgway took command of U.S. forces fighting in Korea at the end of 1950, he found himself with an army that still consisted of white units and black units. Fending off the Chinese made Ridgway’s life complicated enough without having to worry about the prospect of a white rifleman being assigned to a black unit or a black truck driver ending up in a white transportation outfit. Segregation was interfering with the effective conduct of the war, so Ridgway ordered 8th U.S. Army to integrate forthwith—without asking the troops if the results might “perturb” them.
Third, and perhaps most important, is this: Our culture is in the midst of a vast historical revolution that is transforming American attitudes on anything that touches on gender, sex, and family. The revolution began in the 1920s, really picked up steam in the 1960s, and shows no sign of stopping any time soon. Whether its effects are good or bad is beside the point. What is undeniable is that those effects are massive and irreversible.
Now individual Americans retain the right to opt out of that revolution: In their own thinking and behavior they can choose to remain fixed in the ostensibly idyllic world of Ozzie and Harriet. Yet large institutions such as the armed forces do not have that luxury. In a narrow sense, the military can and should seek to preserve a distinctive value set, cultivating virtues such as discipline, self-sacrifice, and esprit d’corps. Yet in a broader sense, the military that relies on willing recruits to fill its ranks cannot long stand against the prevailing cultural winds. To do so is to put yourself out of business. And that applies today to the issue of gays serving in uniform.
