Enemies don’t have cultures. They have leaders, usually tyrants. They have armies, usually large and menacing. They have propaganda, usually dull and artless. Enemies are not civilized enough to have culture. Culture humanizes, and humanity is the last thing you want in an enemy. It might mess up your aim.
There are few areas in the world more entangled in historical deceit and betrayal than northern Iraq, where the British, the Ottomans, and the Americans have played a deadly game of political chess at the expense of the local Kurds. And now, because of a volatile brew of internal Iraqi and Turkish politics, coupled with the Bush administration’s clandestine war to destabilize and overthrow the Iranian government, the region threatens to explode into a full-scale regional war.
Film poster for A Schoolgirl’s Diary. Photo by Nicholas Bonner.
Every so often the Bush administration rediscovers realism. Last week Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a pitch for her own doctrine under the name of “American realism.” She told an audience that “American realism deals with the world as it is but strives to make the world better than it is.” It is amazing that she can stand up in front of audiences and say such things with a straight face. Did the Bush administration deal with Iraq as it was and leave it better off? What about global warming? Relations with Russia? Iran?
In a flagrant attack on the longstanding international legal principle that it is illegitimate for any country to expand its territory by military means, the U.S. House of Representatives, by an overwhelming bipartisan majority, passed House Concurrent Resolution 152 congratulating Israel for its forcible “reunification of Jerusalem” and its victory in the June 1967 war.
The brim of a young hip-hop artist’s beige beanie hides a quarter of his face as his peers observe cross-legged from the concrete below. His cheek and lips grip the microphone intensely. The timid posture of his thinly adolescent frame can barely contain the newly found power and energy budding from each stomp he plants on the rickety stage in a weedy university parking lot in Mérida, Venezuela.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Sometimes this is a good thing. Sometimes it is not.
In a short period of time, Beijing has proven that it can shift its foreign policy quickly and woo the world, often focusing on countries America has alienated. China has drastically changed its image in many parts of the world from dangerous to benign. It may already be the preeminent power in parts of Asia, and it could develop China-centered spheres of influence in other parts of the globe, like Central Asia or Africa. Even longtime American allies like Australia have moved closer to Beijing.
On the island of Okinawa is a very unusual war memorial. The Cornerstone of Peace resembles the Vietnam War memorial in certain respects: large black walls inscribed with names. But the Cornerstone of Peace has a different shape: curved, concentric walls rather than an angled slash. More importantly, the Okinawa memorial lists all of those who died in the World War II Battle of Okinawa: Americans, Japanese, Okinawans, Koreans, and others.
I’m from Jersey. So whenever the Boss sings, I listen. He’s always sticking up for the little guy, the Tom Joads, the downsized, and the downtrodden. He’s patriotic, but it’s a bittersweet patriotism. You remember: when the Reagan campaign in 1984 and then the Dole campaign in 1996 wanted to use the song "Born in the USA," Springsteen said no. When Lee Iacocca wanted to use the song to sell Chrysler cars, Springsteen again said no. Didn’t they listen to the lyrics of the song? It’s all about the plight of Vietnam vets: "Got in a little hometown jam/so they put a rifle in my hand/sent me off to a foreign land/to go and kill the yellow man." It’s hard to imagine those lyrics in a car commercial.