#American Cynicism Vietnam | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mariacallous · 8 months ago

Text

“How much evil we must do in order to do good,” the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote in 1946. “This, I think, is a very succinct statement of the human situation.” Niebuhr was writing after one global war had forced the victors to do great evil to prevent the incalculably greater evil of a world ruled by its most aggressive regimes. He was witnessing the onset of another global conflict in which the United States would periodically transgress its own values in order to defend them. But the fundamental question Niebuhr raised—how liberal states can reconcile worthy ends with the unsavory means needed to attain them—is timeless. It is among the most vexing dilemmas facing the United States today.

U.S. President Joe Biden took office pledging to wage a fateful contest between democracy and autocracy. After Russia invaded Ukraine, he summoned like-minded nations to a struggle “between liberty and repression, between a rules-based order and one governed by brute force.” Biden’s team has indeed made big moves in its contest with China and Russia, strengthening solidarity among advanced democracies that want to protect freedom by keeping powerful tyrannies in check. But even before the war between Hamas and Israel presented its own thicket of problems, an administration that has emphasized the ideological nature of great-power rivalry was finding itself ensnared by a morally ambiguous world.

In Asia, Biden has bent over backward to woo a backsliding India, a communist Vietnam, and other not so liberal states. In Europe, wartime exigencies have muted concerns about creeping authoritarianism on NATO’s eastern and southern fronts. In the Middle East, Biden has concluded that Arab dictators are not pariahs but vital partners. Defending a threatened order involves reviving the free-world community. It also, apparently, entails buttressing an arc of imperfect democracies and outright autocracies across much of the globe.

Biden’s conflicted strategy reflects the realities of contemporary coalition building: when it comes to countering China and Russia, democratic alliances go only so far. Biden’s approach also reflects a deeper, more enduring tension. American interests are inextricably tied to American values: the United States typically enters into great-power competition because it fears mighty autocracies will otherwise make the world unsafe for democracy. But an age of conflict invariably becomes, to some degree, an age of amorality because the only way to protect a world fit for freedom is to court impure partners and engage in impure acts.

Expect more of this. If the stakes of today’s rivalries are as high as Biden claims, Washington will engage in some breathtakingly cynical behavior to keep its foes contained. Yet an ethos of pure expediency is fraught with dangers, from domestic disillusion to the loss of the moral asymmetry that has long amplified U.S. influence in global affairs. Strategy, for a liberal superpower, is the art of balancing power without subverting democratic purpose. The United States is about to rediscover just how hard that can be.

A DIRTY GAME

Biden has consistently been right about one thing: clashes between great powers are clashes of ideas and interests alike. In the seventeenth century, the Thirty Years’ War was fueled by doctrinal differences no less than by the struggle for European primacy. In the late eighteenth century, the politics of revolutionary France upheaved the geopolitics of the entire continent. World War II was a collision of rival political traditions—democracy and totalitarianism—as well as rival alliances. “This was no accidental war,” German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop declared in 1940, “but a question of the determination of one system to destroy the other.” When great powers fight, they do so not just over land and glory. They fight over which ideas, which values, will chart humanity’s course.

In this sense, U.S. competition with China and Russia is the latest round in a long struggle over whether the world will be shaped by liberal democracies or their autocratic enemies. In World War I, World War II, and the Cold War, autocracies in Eurasia sought global primacy by achieving preeminence within that central landmass. Three times, the United States intervened, not just to ensure its security but also to preserve a balance of power that permitted the survival and expansion of liberalism—to “make the world safe for democracy,” in U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s words. President Franklin Roosevelt made a similar point in 1939, saying, “There comes a time in the affairs of men when they must prepare to defend, not their homes alone, but the tenets of faith and humanity on which their churches, their governments, and their very civilization are founded.” Yet as Roosevelt understood, balancing power is a dirty game.

Western democracies prevailed in World War II only by helping an awful tyrant, Joseph Stalin, crush an even more awful foe, Adolf Hitler. They used tactics, such as fire-bombing and atomic-bombing enemy cities, that would have been abhorrent in less desperate times. The United States then waged the Cold War out of conviction, as President Harry Truman declared, that it was a conflict “between alternative ways of life”; the closest U.S. allies were fellow democracies that made up the Western world. Yet holding the line in a high-stakes struggle also involved some deeply questionable, even undemocratic, acts.

In a Third World convulsed by instability, the United States employed right-wing tyrants as proxies; it suppressed communist influence through coups, covert and overt interventions, and counterinsurgencies with staggering death tolls. To deter aggression along a global perimeter, the Pentagon relied on the threat of using nuclear weapons so destructive that their actual employment could serve no constructive end. To close the ring around the Soviet Union, Washington eventually partnered with another homicidal communist, the Chinese leader Mao Zedong. And to ease the politics of containment, U.S. officials sometimes exaggerated the Soviet threat or simply deceived the American people about policies carried out in their name.

Strategy involves setting priorities, and U.S. officials believed that lesser evils were needed to avoid greater ones, such as communism running riot in vital regions or democracies failing to find their strength and purpose before it was too late. The eventual payoff from the U.S. victory in the Cold War—a world safer from autocratic predation, and safer for human freedom, than ever before—suggests that they were, on balance, correct. Along the way, the fact that Washington was pursuing such a worthy objective, against such an unworthy opponent, provided a certain comfort with the conflict’s ethical ambiguities. As NSC-68, the influential strategy document Truman approved in 1950, put it (quoting Alexander Hamilton), “The means to be employed must be proportioned to the extent of the mischief.” When the West was facing a totalitarian enemy determined to remake humanity in its image, some pretty ugly means could, apparently, be justified.

That comfort wasn’t infinite, however, and the Cold War saw fierce fights over whether the United States was getting its priorities right. In the 1950s, hawks took Washington to task for not doing enough to roll back communism in Eastern Europe, with the Republican Party platform of 1952 deriding containment as “negative, futile, and immoral.” In the 1960s and 1970s, an avalanche of amorality—a bloody and misbegotten war in Vietnam, support for a coterie of nasty dictators, revelations of CIA assassination plots—convinced many liberal critics that the United States was betraying the values it claimed to defend. Meanwhile, the pursuit of détente with the Soviet Union, a strategy that deemphasized ideological confrontation in search of diplomatic stability, led some conservatives to allege that Washington was abandoning the moral high ground. Throughout the 1970s and after, these debates whipsawed U.S. policy. Even in this most Manichean of contests, relating strategy to morality was a continual challenge.

In fact, Cold War misdeeds gave rise to a complex of legal and administrative constraints—from prohibitions on political assassination to requirements to notify congressional committees about covert action—that mostly remain in place today. Since the Cold War, these restrictions have been complemented by curbs on aid to coup makers who topple elected governments and to military units that engage in gross violations of human rights. Americans clearly regretted some measures they had used to win the Cold War. The question is whether they can do without them as global rivalry heats up again.

IDEAS MATTER

Threats from autocratic enemies heighten ideological impulses in U.S. policy by underscoring the clash of ideas that often drives global tensions. Since taking office, Biden has defined the threat from U.S. rivals, particularly China, in starkly ideological terms.

The world has reached an “inflection point,” Biden has repeatedly declared. In March 2021, he suggested that future historians would be studying “the issue of who succeeded: autocracy or democracy.” At root, Biden has argued, U.S.-Chinese competition is a test of which model can better meet the demands of the modern era. And if China becomes the world’s preeminent power, U.S. officials fear, it will entrench autocracy in friendly countries while coercing democratic governments in hostile ones. Just witness how Beijing has used economic leverage to punish criticism of its policies by democratic societies from Australia to Norway. In making the system safe for illiberalism, a dominant China would make it unsafe for liberalism in places near and far.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reinforced Biden’s thesis. It offered a case study in autocratic aggression and atrocity and a warning that a world led by illiberal states would be lethally violent, not least for vulnerable democracies nearby. Coming weeks after Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin had sealed a “no limits” strategic partnership, the Ukraine invasion also raised the specter of a coordinated autocratic assault on the liberal international order. Ukraine, Biden explained, was the central front in a “larger fight for . . . essential democratic principles.” So the United States would rally the free world against “democracy’s mortal foes.”

The shock of the Ukraine war, combined with the steadying hand of U.S. leadership, produced an expanded transatlantic union of democracies. Sweden and Finland sought membership in NATO; the West supported Ukraine and inflicted heavy costs on Russia. The Biden administration also sought to confine China by weaving a web of democratic ties around the country. It has upgraded bilateral alliances with the likes of Japan and Australia. It has improved the Quad (the security and diplomatic dialogue with Australia, India, and Japan) and established AUKUS (a military partnership with Australia and the United Kingdom). And it has repurposed existing multilateral bodies, such as the G-7, to meet the peril from Beijing. There are even whispers of a “three plus one” coalition—Australia, Japan, the United States, plus Taiwan—that would cooperate to defend that frontline democracy from Chinese assault.

These ties transcend regional boundaries. Ukraine is getting aid from Asian democracies, such as South Korea, that understand that their security will suffer if the liberal order is fractured. Democracies from multiple continents have come together to confront China’s economic coercion, counter its military buildup, and constrict its access to high-end semiconductors. The principal problem for the United States is a loose alliance of revisionist powers pushing outward from the core of Eurasia. Biden’s answer is a cohering global coalition of democracies, pushing back from around the margins.

Today, those advanced democracies are more unified than at any time in decades. In this respect, Biden has aligned the essential goal of U.S. strategy, defending an imperiled liberal order, with the methods and partners used to pursue it. Yet across Eurasia’s three key regions, the messier realities of rivalry are raising Niebuhr’s question anew.

CONTROVERSIAL FRIENDS

Consider the situation in Europe. NATO is mostly an alliance of democracies. But holding that pact together during the Ukraine war has required Biden to downplay the illiberal tendencies of a Polish government that—until its electoral defeat in October—was systematically eroding checks and balances. Securing its northern flank, by welcoming Finland and Sweden, has involved diplomatic horse-trading with Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who, in addition to frequently undercutting U.S. interests, has been steering his country toward autocratic rule.

In Asia, the administration spent much of 2021 and 2022 carefully preserving U.S. ties to the Philippines, at the time led by Rodrigo Duterte, a man whose drug war had killed thousands. Biden has assiduously courted India as a bulwark against China, even though the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has curbed speech, harassed opposition leaders, fanned religious grievances, and allegedly killed dissidents abroad. And after visiting New Delhi in September 2023, Biden traveled to Hanoi to sign a “comprehensive strategic partnership” with Vietnam’s one-party regime. Once again, the United States is using some communists to contain others.

Then there is the Middle East, where Biden’s “free world” coalition is quite the motley crew. In 2020, Biden threatened to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” over the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi. By 2023, his administration—panicked by Chinese inroads and rising gas prices—was trying to make that country Washington’s newest treaty ally instead. That initiative, moreover, was part of a concept, inherited from the Trump administration, in which regional stability would rest on rapprochement between Arab autocracies and an Israeli government with its own illiberal tendencies, while Palestinian aspirations were mostly pushed to the side. Not surprisingly, then, human rights and political freedoms receded in relations with countries from Egypt to the United Arab Emirates. Biden also did little to halt the strangulation of democracy in Tunisia—just as he had decided, effectively, to abandon Afghanistan’s endangered democracy in 2021.

Indeed, if 2022 was a year of soaring rhetoric, 2023 was a year of awkward accommodation. References to the “battle between democracy and autocracy” became scarcer in Biden’s speeches, as the administration made big plays that defied that description of the world. Key human rights–related positions at the White House and the State Department sat vacant. The administration rolled back sanctions on Venezuela—an initiative described publicly as a bid to secure freer and fairer elections, but one that was mostly an effort to get an oppressive regime to stop exporting refugees and start exporting more oil. And when a junta toppled the elected government of Niger, U.S. officials waited for more than two months to call the coup a coup, for fear of triggering the cutoff of U.S. aid and thereby pushing the new regime into Moscow’s arms. Such compromises have always been part of foreign policy. But today, they testify to key dynamics U.S. officials must confront.

THE DECISIVE DECADE

First is the cruel math of Eurasian geopolitics. Advanced democracies possess a preponderance of power globally, but in every critical region, holding the frontline requires a more eclectic ensemble.

Poland has had its domestic problems; it is also the logistical linchpin of the coalition backing Ukraine. Turkey is politically illiberal and, often, unhelpful; nonetheless, it holds the intersection of two continents and two seas. In South and Southeast Asia, the primary barrier to Chinese hegemony is a line of less-than-ideal partners running from India to Indonesia. In the Middle East, a picky superpower will be a lonely superpower. Democratic solidarity is great, but geography is stubborn. Across Eurasia, Washington needs illiberal friends to confine its illiberal foes.

The ideological battlefield has also shifted in adverse ways. During the Cold War, anticommunism served as ideological glue between a democratic superpower and its autocratic allies, because the latter knew they were finished if the Soviet Union ever triumphed. Now, however, U.S. enemies feature a form of autocracy less existentially threatening to other nondemocracies: strongmen in the Persian Gulf, or in Hungary and Turkey, arguably have more in common with Xi and Putin than they do with Biden. The gap between “good” and “bad” authoritarians is narrower than it once was—which makes the United States work harder, and pay more, to keep illiberal partners imperfectly onside.

Desperate times also call for morally dexterous measures. When Washington faced no serious strategic challengers after the Cold War, it paid a smaller penalty for foregrounding its values. As the margin of safety shrinks, the tradeoffs between power and principle grow. Right now, war—or the threat of it—menaces East Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Biden says the 2020s will be the “decisive decade” for the world. As Winston Churchill quipped in 1941, “If Hitler invaded Hell, I would at least make a favorable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.” When threats are dire, democracies will do what it takes to rally coalitions and keep the enemy from breaking through. Thus, a central irony of Washington’s approach to competition is that the same challenges that activate its ideological energy make it harder to keep U.S. diplomacy pure.

So far, the moral compromises of U.S. policy today are modest compared with those of World War II or the Cold War, in part because the constraints on unsavory methods are stronger than they were when Hitler and Stalin stalked the earth. But rules and norms can change as a country’s circumstances do. So Biden and his successors may soon face a daunting reality: high-stakes rivalries carry countries, and leaders, to places they never sought to go.

When the Cold War started, few officials imagined that Washington would conduct covert interventions from Afghanistan to Angola. Just three years ago, hardly anyone predicted that the United States would soon fight a proxy war meant to bleed Putin’s army to death in Ukraine. As the present competitions intensify, the tactics used to wage them could become more extreme.

Washington could find itself covertly trying to tip the balance in elections in some crucial swing state if the alternative is seeing that country shift hard toward Moscow or Beijing. It could use coercion to keep Latin America’s military facilities and other critical infrastructure out of Chinese hands. And if the United States is already ambivalent about acknowledging coups in out-of-the-way countries, perhaps it would excuse far greater atrocities committed by a more important partner in a more important place.

Those who doubt that Washington will resort to dirty tricks have short memories and limited imaginations. If today’s competitions will truly shape the fate of humanity, why wouldn’t a vigilant superpower do almost anything to come out on top?

DON’T LOSE YOURSELF

There’s no reason to be unduly embarrassed about this. A country that lacks the self-confidence to defend its interests will lack the power to achieve any great purpose in global affairs. Put differently, the damage the United States does to its values by engaging dubious allies, and engaging in dubious behavior, is surely less than the damage that would be done if a hyperaggressive Russia or neototalitarian China spread its influence across Eurasia and beyond. As during the Cold War, the United States can eventually repay the moral debts it incurs in a lengthy struggle—if it successfully sustains a system in which democracy thrives because its fiercest enemies are suppressed.

It would be dangerous to adopt a pure end-justifies-the-means mentality, however, because there is always a point at which foul means corrupt fair ends. Even short of that, serial amorality will prove politically corrosive: a country whose population has rallied to defend its values as well as its interests will not forever support a strategy that seems to cast those values aside. And ultimately, the greatest flaw of such a strategy is that it forfeits a potent U.S. advantage.

During World War II, as the historian Richard Overy has argued, the Allied cause was widely seen to be more just and humane than the Axis cause, which is one reason the former alliance attracted so many more countries than the latter. In the Cold War, the sense that the United States stood, however imperfectly, for fundamental rights and liberties the Kremlin suppressed helped Washington appeal to other democratic societies—and even to dissidents within the Soviet bloc. The tactics of great-power competition must not obscure the central issue of that competition. If the world comes to see today’s rivalries as slugfests devoid of larger moral meaning, the United States will lose the asymmetry of legitimacy that has served it well.

This is not some hypothetical dilemma. Since October 2023, Biden has rightly framed the Israel-Hamas war as a struggle between a flawed democracy and a tyrannical enemy seeking its destruction. There is strong justification, moral and strategic, for backing a U.S. ally against a vicious proxy of a U.S. enemy, Iran. Moreover, there is no serious ethical comparison between a terrorist group that rapes, tortures, kidnaps, and kills civilians and a country that mostly tries, within the limits war imposes, to protect them.

Yet rightly or wrongly, large swaths of the global South view the war as a testament to American double standards: opposing occupation and appropriation of foreign territory by Russia but not by Israel, valuing the lives and liberties of some victims more than those of others. Russian and Chinese propagandists are amplifying these messages to drive a wedge between Washington and the developing world. This is why the Biden administration has tried, and sometimes struggled, to balance support for Israel with efforts to mitigate the harm the conflict brings—and why the war may presage renewed U.S. focus on the peace process with the Palestinians, as unpromising as that currently seems. The lesson here is that the merits of an issue may be disputed, but for a superpower that wears its values on its sleeve, the costs of perceivedhypocrisy are very real.

RULES FOR RIVALRY

Succeeding in this round of rivalry will thus require calibrating the moral compromises inherent in foreign policy by finding an ethos that is sufficiently ruthless and realistic at the same time. Although there is no precise formula for this—the appropriateness of any action depends on its context—some guiding principles can help.

First, morality is a compass, not a straitjacket. For political sustainability and strategic self-interest, American statecraft should point toward a world consistent with its values. But the United States cannot paralyze itself by trying to fully embody those values in every tactical decision. Nor—even at a moment when its own democracy faces internal threats—should it insist on purifying itself at home before exerting constructive influence abroad. If it does so, the system will be shaped by regimes that are more ruthless—and less shackled by their own imperfections.

The United States should also avoid the fallacy of the false alternative. It must evaluate choices, and partners, against the plausible possibilities, not against the utopian ideal. The realistic alternative to maintaining ties to a military regime in Africa may be watching as murderous Russian mercenaries fill the void. The realistic alternative to engaging Modi’s India may be seeing South Asia fall further under the shadow of a China that assiduously exports illiberalism. Similarly, proximity to a Saudi regime that carves up its critics is deeply uncomfortable. But the realistic alternative to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is probably a regime that remains quite repressive—and is far less committed to empowering women, curbing religious zealots, and otherwise making the country a more open, tolerant place. In a world of lousy options, the crucial question is often: Lousy compared with what?

Another guiding principle: good things don’t all come at once. Cold War policymakers sometimes justified coup making and support for repressive regimes on grounds that preventing Third World countries from going communist then preserved the possibility that they might go democratic later. That logic was suspiciously convenient—and, in many cases, correct. Countries in Latin America and other developing regions did eventually experience political openings as they reached higher levels of development, and democratic values radiated outward from the West.

Today, unseemly bargains can sometimes lead to better outcomes. By not breaking the U.S.-Philippine alliance during Duterte’s drug war, Washington sustained the relationship until a more cooperative, less draconian government emerged. By staying close to a Polish government with some worrying tendencies, the United States bought time until, late last year, that country’s voters elected a coalition promising to strengthen its democratic institutions. The same argument could be made for staying engaged with other democracies where autocratic tendencies are pronounced but electoral mechanisms remain intact—Hungary, India, and Turkey, to name a few. More broadly, liberalism is most likely to flourish in a system led by a democracy. So simply forestalling the ascent of powerful autocracies may eventually help democratic values spread into once inhospitable places.

Similarly, the United States should remember that taking the broad view is as vital as taking the long view. Support for democracy and human rights is not an all-or-nothing proposition. As Biden’s statecraft has shown, transactional deals with dictators can complement a strategy that stresses democratic cooperation at its core. Honoring American values, moreover, is more than a matter of hectoring repressive regimes. A foreign policy that raises international living standards through trade, addresses global problems such as food insecurity, and holds the line against great-power war serves the cause of human dignity very well. A strategy that emphasizes such efforts may actually be more appealing to countries, including developing democracies from Brazil to Indonesia, that resist democracy-versus-autocracy framing because they don’t want any part of a Manichean fight.

Of course, these principles can seem like a recipe for rationalization—a way of excusing the grossest behavior by claiming it serves a greater cause. Another important principle, then, revives Hamilton’s dictum that the means must be proportioned to the mischief. The greater the compromise, the greater the payoff it provides—or the damage it avoids—must be.

By this standard, the case for cooperation with an India or a Poland is clear-cut. These countries are troubled but mostly admirable democracies that play critical roles in raging competitions. Until the world contains only liberal democracies, Washington can hardly avoid seeking blemished friends.

The United States should, however, be more cautious about courting countries that regularly engage in the very practices it deems most corrosive to the liberal order: systematic torture or murder of their people, coercion of their neighbors, or export of repression across borders, to name a few. A Saudi Arabia, for instance, that periodically engages in some of these practices is a troublesome partner. A Saudi Arabia that flagrantly and consistently commits such acts risks destroying the moral and diplomatic basis of its relationship with the United States. American officials should be more hesitant still to distort or destabilize the politics of other countries, especially other democracies, for strategic gain. If Washington is going to get back into the coup business in Latin America or Southeast Asia, the bad outcomes to be prevented must be truly severe—a major, potentially lasting shift in a key regional balance of power, perhaps—to justify policies so manifestly in tension with the causes the United States claims to defend.

Mitigating the harm to those causes means heeding a further principle: marginal improvement matters. Washington will not convince leaders in Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, or Vietnam to commit political suicide by abandoning their domestic model. But leverage works both ways in these relationships. Countries on the firing line need a superpower patron just as much as it needs them. U.S. officials can use that leverage to discourage extraterritorial repression, seek the release of political prisoners, make elections a bit freer and fairer, or otherwise obtain modest but meaningful changes. Doing so may be the price of keeping these relationships intact, by convincing proponents of human rights and democracy in Congress that the White House has not forgotten such issues altogether.

This relates to an additional principle: the United States must be scrupulously honest with itself. American officials need to recognize that illiberal allies will be selective or unreliable allies because their domestic models put them at odds with important norms of the liberal order—and because they tend to generate resentment that may eventually cause an explosion. In the same vein, the problem with laws that mandate aid cutoffs to coup plotters is that they encourage self-deception. In cases in which Washington fears the strategic fallout from a break in relations, U.S. officials are motivated to pretend that a coup has not occurred. The better approach, in line with reforms approved by Congress in December 2022, is a framework that allows presidents to waive such cutoffs on national security grounds—but forces them to acknowledge and justify that choice. The work of making moral tradeoffs in foreign policy begins with admitting those tradeoffs exist.

Some of these principles are in tension with others, which means their application in specific cases must always be a matter of judgment. But the issue of reconciling opposites relates to a final principle: soaring idealism and brutal realism can coexist. During the 1970s, moral debates ruptured the Cold War consensus. During the 1980s, U.S. President Ronald Reagan adequately repaired—but never fully restored—that consensus by combining flexibility of tactics with clarity of purpose.

Reagan supported awful dictators, murderous militaries, and thuggish “freedom fighters” in the Third World, sometimes through ploys—such as the Iran-contra scandal—that were dodgy or simply illegal. Yet he also backed democratic movements from Chile to South Korea; he paired rhetorical condemnations of the Kremlin with ringing affirmations of Western ideals. The takeaway is that rough measures may be more tolerable if they are part of a larger package that emphasizes, in word and deed, the values that must anchor the United States’ approach to the world. Some will see this as heightening the hypocrisy. In reality, it is the best way to preserve the balance—political, moral, and strategic—that a democratic superpower requires.

43 notes · View notes

socialistsephardi · 3 months ago

Text

Another refrain I’ve been hearing repeatedly is the critique that protesting at the DNC “will only help Trump.” Harris herself leveled this argument at a campaign rally in Detroit when she sternly admonished pro-Palestinian protesters: “If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.” To be sure, it was an astonishingly tone-deaf and dismissive response to make in Michigan, the very birthplace of the Uncommitted Campaign. But on a more fundamental level, Harris’s response denied the very real impact of her own administration��s policies. As one of the protesters later put it, “When people are demanding a ceasefire and arms embargo and an end to the genocide and you say that we want Donald Trump to step in—it just shows a lack of accountability. It shows a lack of leadership, a lack of responsibility and a lack of ownership.”

In essence, Harris’s comment was just the latest version of the “shut up and vote” message that the Democratic party routinely sends progressives during every election cycle. In an age of US-supported genocide, however, the cynical emptiness of this message has become patently, painfully obvious. As journalist Masha Gessen has rightly pointed out. “These voters are not choosing between Harris and Trump. They are choosing between their sense of themselves as moral beings if they vote for Harris and their sense of themselves if they vote for a third-party candidate or for no one at all.”

Of course those who will be protesting at the DNC next week do not want to see Trump elected in November. But even from a purely strategic point of view, what has a better chance of helping the Democrats fortunes in November? We know that a strong majority of American voters across the political spectrum support a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. What would be the more winning strategy: telling those who want to end a genocide to shut up, or exert real leadership that will bring about a ceasefire and an end to the threat of a devastating regional war?

…

Protest organizers have no illusions about the overwhelming militarized presence that will greet us when we gather next week. Federal authorities have divided the area surrounding the United Center, where the main speaking events of the convention will take place, into “soft” and “hard” zones – the latter being off limits to cars and non-credentialled delegates. But even in the soft zones, movement has been heavily restricted. The main protests have been given approved routes far from the convention site, and at one point goes through narrow residential side streets, that will be completely inadequate to handle thousands of protesters. While organizers have appealed the march route, as of this writing there has been no response from the city of Chicago.

When we talk about the potential for police violence next week, of course, the specter of the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago looms very large. A great deal of ink has been spilled analyzing the differences and similarities between Chicago 1968 and Chicago 2024 – and while I’m loath to venture too far into this rabbit hole, there is one point of commonality I believe bears noting. In general, the mythos around the 1968 DNC protests tend to lay the blame for the Democrats’ defeat on the protest movement that “divided the party.” Often lost in this discussion is the fact that in 1968, those protests were directed toward a political party that had been prosecuting an increasingly unpopular war in Vietnam. Today, as then, I find it deeply misguided to blame protesters and not the immoral policies of the Democratic party itself.

#antizionism #antizionist Jews #Chicago #dnc convention #rabbi brant #uspol

7 notes · View notes

sepublic · 6 months ago

Text

Also what the hell is Anna's story. Her presence in the communist camp, plus her immediate hostility towards our American protagonists, seems to indicate that she's a communist and was in fact allied with the Russians there as a local guide. I'd like to know more about that, and how she navigated being rescued by an American chopper; Did she get back home or not? She might respect Dutch and his comrades posthumously, a bit more if she learns they were duped and were otherwise disapproving of the U.S.’s interventionism. But it wouldn’t exactly work out in the long run given their conflicting politics.

For all their macho bravado that is itself deconstructed, Dutch's squad seems to have an implied backstory of their own as well; Dillon alludes to him and Dutch being veterans of Vietnam when he mentions Hue, not to mention Mac's recollection of his past with Blain. And the obvious callbacks to the Vietnam war with the jungle setting, Cold War U.S.-interventionism, an unseen threat that lacks numbers but manages to win by hiding in the trees and ambushing our protagonists this way. The triumph of 'primitive' traps made from the local environment, over advanced machinery and guns.

Dutch doing a caveman yell to summon the Predator in the film's climax seems a bit of a nod to the "savage" being the one who wins out over the "civilized" one. But for all the Predator's advanced technology, it is arguably more "savage," because what defines "savage," especially when you think of how the ‘first world’ U.S. killed so many on such a vast scale?

And that gets me to my point; Dutch insisting to Dillon that he and his team are not "assassins" has its connotations. Even when Dillon claims the group prevented a communist invasion, it's clear that Dutch's sympathies vanished when he found out the hostages weren't civilian politicians but CIA operatives who fucked around and found out. There's definitely a clear skepticism towards U.S. interventionism, and I feel it's implied that everyone in Dutch's squad became cynical of such things after participating in the Vietnam War and witnessing atrocities committed towards the locals.

Because the word "assassin" pretty clearly paints them as murderers, people who go after innocents; It's not just that they don't want to die in the grinder for people who don't care. It's that they don't want to kill either, not for an unjustified cause. Dutch's team obviously has their internalized biases and they did still quip as they slaughtered an entire camp, but I think it's worth considering that people like Mac and Blain probably left the military out of a moral stance against war crimes towards civilians. Plus Billy is Sioux, which should also be taken into account regarding his views on the U.S. and its military actions during the Cold War.

In the end though, all of the characters are tricked into killing communists in a jungle for U.S. Cold War interests, and die because of it. They are picked off by someone who hides in the trees and uses ambush to take them out; It's the Vietnam War all over again. The general who orchestrated all this appears at the end in the chopper, to remind you that like in real life he gets off scot-free because the incident with the Yautja and its murders doesn’t matter so long as those communists are dead; He is the real winner* when everyone else loses, and he sat away from the action all soft and cushy. So despite a lack of explicit references to it, you can really tell how the specter of Vietnam, and the public's skepticism towards the nation's global interests, hangs over the entire story.

*That is unless Anna shoved the prick out of the helicopter and to his death once the credits rolled.

#predator #predator 1987 #anna gonsalves #dutch schaefer #analysis

11 notes · View notes

pyramidslayer · 6 months ago

Text

just watched the first two episodes of "the sympathizer" on hbo. park chan-wook's doing the teleplay and directing the first three episodes, and if you've seen any of his movies you know why this material spoke to him. this show is probably not going to be seen by many americans because so much of it is in vietnamese, but please check it out. it's cynically funny and desperately sad. the moment that most stuck out to me in the first episode was the scene where the main character is told that he won't be allowed to live in a united vietnam because the north needs him to keep spying in the USA. you can viscerally feel the heartbreak of the character losing the hope that he'll get to build communism in his homeland. the moment that stuck out to me the most in the second episode was the epic masturbation fail

11 notes · View notes

never-was-has-been · 5 months ago

Text

Memorial Day

Memorial Day is a tough time for me, on many levels and for many people that I have loved and am still thankful that I knew them. I remember my mother's passing in 1964. I remember my father's passing in 1999. I remember my father's story about my uncle Lester who I never met, being killed in WWII during the Normandy invasion 2 months after they landed (Uncle Lester was an ANTIFA, version 1944). I remember Gary Jameson, a guy I grew up with on the south side of Binghamton in the 1950's, getting killed in Vietnam, in 1969. I remember all the true patriotism of the 1950's, in honor of the men that served and died in WWII and the Korean War. To me, the phrase "fighting for freedom" made perfect sense…..then. However, after President Kennedy was murdered and we entered the Vietnam War, I began to see the different kind of country America was becoming. A corporate-interested War machine, hatched by the Military Industrial Complex (Pentagon)--- you know, the one that President Eisenhower warned us about on National TV during his "exit interview" on January 17th 1961. Since then I find the phrase "fighting for freedom" a bit ironic and even cynical. Especially when I think of ALL the servicemen and women's lives that were lost, broken and gradually destroyed in the name of global Corporation's business interests. For over 74 years I've had a twisted knot in my stomach when I see or hear about American men and women sacrificing their lives and limbs for a cause that never crosses their minds: Big Business. Global Business. War is Big Business--just like Pope Francis once said. And like many others before him, priests and lay people alike, the Pope was ridiculed and dismissed by the people that don't understand and never have understood the reason that 234 years out of 248 years, the USA has been at war, either here on our own soil or somewhere in someone else's sovereign country. It's business, Not patriotism. …..And I weep inside my soul for those that willingly gave their lives for such a cause. 😥 But…I still and will always remember them and honor them, just the same. A good thoughtful Memorial Day to you all. ~originally posted May 2015~

#war is business #War is Global Business #your tags here

5 notes · View notes

1andxrea1tge1bisexual1here1 · 11 months ago

Text

HEADCANONS FOR TAKEO X LOONA and for @supersonictalan

1. Takeo Masaki and Loona often share quiet moments of reflection, bonding over their unique backgrounds and finding solace in each other's company.

2. Loona, the hellhound gf, secretly enjoys Takeo's serious and disciplined nature, finding a sense of stability in his honorable character.

3. Loona's sarcastic commentary lightens Takeo's demeanor, creating a balance between the serious warrior and the cynical hellhound.

4. Takeo is surprisingly sentimental, cherishing the moments Loona reveals a softer side. He treasures the vulnerability she shows, especially when looking at his childhood photos.

5. Loona, despite her tough exterior, has a weakness for Takeo's genuine kindness, and she secretly adores cuddling with him during quiet evenings.

6. Takeo, being susceptible to illness, often finds comfort in Loona's company when he's under the weather, and her sarcastic comments turn surprisingly caring.

7. Loona has a knack for bringing a smile to Takeo's face, even in the intense world of the IMP agency. He appreciates her ability to inject humor into their lives.

8. Takeo and Loona's relationship becomes an anchor for both, providing stability and warmth amidst the chaos of their respective roles at the agency.

9. The IMP agency becomes witness to the heartwarming dynamic between Takeo and Loona, as they bring a touch of love and humanity to their unconventional workplace.

10. The couple's discreet moments of affection, like making out on Edward Richtofen or Tank Dempsey's backs, become their playful way of defying the seriousness of their missions.

INCORRECT QUOTES

Takeo: I was going to suggest we do Marilyn Monroe and JFK roleplay, but I’d get way too into it.

Loona: What- how?

Takeo: You’d be like “come to bed … Mr. President” and I’d be like, “I need to increase the amount of American military advisors in South Vietnam by a factor of 18.”

Loona: Look, last night was a mistake.

Takeo: A sexy mistake.

Loona: No, just a regular mistake.

Takeo: There are 20 letters in the alphabet, right?

Loona: Nope, there's 26.

Takeo: Ah, I must have forgotten U, R, A, Q, T.

Loona: Aww, that's cute, but you're still missing one.

Takeo: You'll get the D later ;).

Dempseys reaction to Takeo and Loona making out on his back

#edward richtofen #tank dempsey #takeo maskai #loona helluva boss #Takeo x Loona

4 notes · View notes

steampunkforever · 1 year ago

Text

In January of 2021, upon Trump's removal, several US generals bragged about having lied to the former president on how many soldiers were actually stationed in Afghanistan, having assured Trump that the US had minimal personnel over there and therefore he didn't need to shake things up with his foreign military policy. That summer, the Biden administration, resolved to pull out before the 20 year mark, absolutely botched the entire operation, not only leading to civilian and American deaths, but to the handover of millions of dollars of US military hardware and surrender of the entire country to the Taliban.

The last significant disaster of imperial warfare anywhere near the complete fiasco of Biden's Afghanistan pullout was the evacuation of Vietnam, and even then the last helicopter off the roof of the embassy was nowhere near as disastrous as the live footage we saw of desperate Afghans losing their grips on the side of US Army planes and plummeting to their deaths on the runway below.

Nor did the Ford administration's Vietnam pullout betray as many local US allies and their families as the Afghan pullout left high and dry, which is in part what Guy Ritchie's "The Covenant" is about.

This entire section of military history is rich with drama, despair, conflict, and tragedy. Even as footage of Taliban fighters using US weapons to threaten schoolgirls hit the internet, cynical commentators placed bets that a Hollywood cash grab was already in the works. Enter Guy Ritchie's "The Covenant," a movie that isn't about any of this.

The Covenant, a movie with a title so bland they had to make sure to stick the director's name in front of it so you'd go watch it, isn't a bad movie as much as an underwhelming one. The action is more or less solid, unrealistic enough that you know what'll happen next but grounded enough to remind you not to have too much fun. Give this a more engaging cast and some zany plotlines and you'd have a solid film to turn your brain off for. Except this is supposed to be emotional.

The basis of the film is pretty straightforward: a squad of US soldiers tasked with tracking down Taliban IED factories gets a new street-smart Afghan interpreter. After a firefight at a hidden bomb shop, all the squad is killed except for the squad leader and the interpreter. After the squad leader, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, is shot repeatedly, the interpreter (played by the charismatic Dar Salim) drags him the countless miles back to base, dodging Taliban patrols as he tries to keep the two of them alive.

Once rescued, Gyllenhaal's character gets back to the US where he's greeted with the news that the government won't give the interpreter and his family the visas they were promised until they are present for the process, an impossibility due to the interpreter's rescue of Gyllenhaal serving to paint a target on his back and drive his family into hiding. The rest of the film hinges on Gyllenhaal, wracked with guilt at his debt to the interpreter, seeking to find a way to rescue the family and repay his life debt.

This film is liminal, inasmuch as we the audience can clearly see it hanging between two stories. It badly wants to be the gratifying military thriller about two men with different outlooks on life bound together by a bond (Covenant) of iron, their story ending as they're rescued from a horde of oncoming enemies by attack helicopters and a big plane with lots of guns. Yet above its head, much like a predator drone, hangs the fact that this film could've been about so much more.

This is a movie that knows it should be about more than a single hypothetical instance where the government took too long to get an interpreter his visa. It desperately WANTS to be about how the US government betrayed its promise of help for thousands of individuals who were relying on those visas and evacuation to save them from violent reprisal at the hands of the Taliban.

The end credits even confirm this. As the movie closes with a postscript on how many interpreters and other support staff the US abandoned in the summer of 2021, a selection of photos of real interpreters alongside the units they worked with scrolls alongside the credits in what is easily the most powerful segment of the film.

This movie WANTS to be about Task Force Pineapple. It wants so badly to be a tense thriller about a fictional rescue from occupied Taliban territory. It would frankly be more fun that way if we're being honest with ourselves here. But it isn't, instead choosing to walk the fine line between somber reminder that we've still got people who need help over there and the fact that Guy Ritchie mostly just does fun action.

Jake Gyllenhaal is of course a great actor and Dar Salim's charisma does an equally impressive job in this film as they prop up an overall weak plot. This movie would otherwise just be a direct-to-streaming army film your uncle mentions once and then forgets, but Salim and Gyllenhaal give it heart that it needs but is too scared to execute.

As a film this isn't necessarily a bad movie. If formulaic and predictable with the uninteresting action and basic plot, it executes the story in a way that I would say is overall a net positive. Guy Ritchie might be phoning it in, but he's still Guy Ritchie. The main problem with the film is that it clearly is reaching towards grander goals than what it's being allowed.

At least they didn't get Clint Eastwood to direct it.

#filmposting #the covenant #guy ritchie's the covenant #film #jake gyllenhaal

2 notes · View notes

merrilark · 2 years ago

Text

I can’t exactly explain why or how, because ten year old me living in the very early 2000s didn’t know anything about the Vietnam War, let alone any of the politics surrounding it, but something about seeing Bernie Boston’s “Flower Power” photograph then deeply affected me to the point that I think I can say it is almost single-handedly responsible for my fascination with the ‘60s today.

For those who aren’t familiar with the photo, it was taken in 1967 during the March on the Pentagon to protest the Vietnam War. Fifty-thousand anti-war activists marched from the Lincoln Memorial to the Pentagon which naturally caused a confrontation between the protestors and guarding paratroopers. One protestor, 18 year old George Edgerly Harris III, responded by sliding carnations into the barrels of paratrooper rifles.

I dunno, I dunno. It’s just beautiful and fascinating to me. It’s pretty incredible too, just as a side note, how polarizing the Vietnam War was for Americans. It became the spark that set off a wave of anti-authoritarianism and cynicism that shifted America’s culture forever, affecting not just politics but entertainment as well.

And as a side note to the side note... it’s kind of hilarious in a “wow that’s interesting” way that the colorful image of the hippie from the ‘60s and ‘70s is directly related to the dark, daring image of the punk from the ‘80s onward. I just love learning about how and why culture evolves, especially when that evolution comes from the young and marginalized desiring change, and challenging the norm for the sake of a better future.

(Side note to the side note to the side note... While doing a little research for this post, I learned that Harris was an actor, who eventually came out of the closet, changed his name to Hibiscus, and helped found The Cockettes, an avant garde psychedelic drag troupe. They were key to pioneering the drag scene, predating The Rocky Horror Picture Show (!) by 6 years. There’s just so many layers to this photo and I love it.)

#merri mumbles #actually #merri rambles #it's just!!!!! so cool!!!#things my history and art classes did not teach me but i wish they had.#this isn't eloquent at all i'm just keysmashing my thoughts. 1960s fascination brain go brrrr.#not fandom #history #1960s history

10 notes · View notes

aresmarked · 2 years ago

Text

while we don’t often explicitly get into it at home because i get cynical and my parents are folk who do try to live up to the faith as they learned it (ma went to a cath school during the vietnam war, da converted after meeting ma), we do often talk about how white american christians are their own thing at times

#ma's disgusted often by how folk support trmp #and i just have to tell her 'yea white evangelicals are like that ma'#the whole idea of forced conversion too just feels antithetical too? like #it don't mean anything if it's not done with maximal understanding bruv. if anything it means less #that's the whole idea behind Confirmation as a sacrament #warproduct rambles

4 notes · View notes

neutralgray · 4 months ago

Text

A Synthesized History: An Amateur Comparison of the Perspectives between the "Patriot's," the "People's," & The "True" History of the United States - Part 17

Full Essay Guide link: XX

(Patriot - Chapter 20 | People - Chapter 20-22 | True - Chapter 32-34)

The Conservative Renaissance

American opinions on their own government were at an all-time low. The national embarrassment of the Vietnam War coupled with Nixon's political scandals generated waves of cynicism that could be measured in American sentiment. The Harris Poll (an analytics company that has tracked opinions among Americans since 1963) demonstrated that between 1966 and 1975, confidence in the president and Congress dropped from 42% to 13%, confidence in the military from 62% to 29%, and confidence in business from 55% to 19%. The Survey Research Center of the University of Michigan posed this question: "is the government run by a few big interests looking out for themselves." In 1964 the response to that question was met with only 26% saying "yes." In 1972, 53% of poll-takers felt that was the case. When it came time to elect another national leader, voter turnout dropped significantly, from 63% to 53%. The message was clear: people did not trust the government.

James Earl Carter Jr (Jimmy Carter) was elected the next president of the United States. Carter was a democrat and was likely voted in less on his own merits, and instead simply because he wasn't a Republican like Nixon. When he entered office, the United States was suffering from overspending in Vietnam and embargoes from middle eastern nations due the United States' continued support of Israel (a middle eastern Jewish state that was founded after WWII with support from many prominent members of the United Nations).

Carter demonstrated a pessimistic mistrust of the government he was elected to run, but used his presidential powers to enact the policies he felt were best. On his second day in office, he pardoned all draft dodgers of the Vietnam War, likely in an attempt to have the nation move on from the debacle. One of his biggest political motives was tackling energy usage, wanting to move away from fossil fuel dependency and embrace alternative forms of energy. Some of his policies and their political implications were inconsistent, though. Initially, Carter attempted to help the economy with stimulus spending, but when that did not achieve any short-term measurable results, he shifted to cuts and tighter budgets. This was reminiscent of FDR, who often probed at the economy with experimental and inconsistent policies.

Big industries were beginning to leave the United States behind. Regulations from OSHA, the EPA, and the Consumer Products Safety Commission restricted what companies could do. In response, companies spent more on legal teams and lobbyists, while passing the new regulatory expenses onto the consumer rather than take a cut to their bottom dollar. Cheaper labor and fewer regulations across the ocean were naturally exploited by these companies, often returning much more significant profits over their investments. Between 1950 and 1965, $8.1 billion dollars were invested in American-owned European factories for a profit margin of $5.5 billion dollars. Compare that metric to the investments and profits made in Latin America and Africa. In Latin American countries, a $3.8 billion investment netted $11.2 billion in profits, and in Africa a $5.2 billion investment netted $14.2 billion in profit. These American companies, and the country by extension, came to rely on these poorer countries for assets such as diamonds, coffee, platinum, mercury, cobalt, rubber, manganese, chrome, and aluminum. As manufacturing jobs continued to leave the country, the average salary of company CEO's rose while working class wages decreased. Japanese and European manufacturers were also gaining stronger international footholds in the world market, indicating an economic shift in the power of the United States. As companies were leaving the U.S., more of the country's wealth became tied to international affairs.

By 1960, only 8 U.S. banks had foreign branches, holding assets worth $3.5 billion. By the mid-1970's, over 120+ banks had foreign branches with assets up to $155 billion. The Arabian-American Oil Corporation (ARAMCO) was a major source of profit, with the United States owning 75% of the company's stock. In 1973 ARAMCO made a profit of $1.00 per barrel. By 1974 it had increased to $4.50 a barrel. This control of oil was so important to American profit interests that Carter based his foreign policy doctrine on it. The Carter Doctrine was the foreign policy to use military force to oppose any threat to middle eastern oil in the Persian Gulf, particularly if it was to rebuff Soviet threats.

Outside of oil interests, however, Carter did achieve some human rights based foreign policy decisions. Under his presidency, the SALT II treaty was negotiated with the Soviets. This was an extension of the original Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT 1), which froze the number of strategic missile launchers to existing levels and provided stipulations requiring the dismantling of some ICBM and SLBM launchers. The SALT II treaty limited new missile programs, forced both sides to limit the amount of new strategic missile types were in research/development, and limited the development of fixed ICBM launchers. Carter also helped negotiate the Camp David Accords, which established a framework for peace in an ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict while also promising them American financial aid and military airfields for Israel. Carter's administration also put national pressure on some South African countries, which were engaged in significant racial oppression. This pressure did not inherently change the systems of power in those countries but it did put an international spotlight on human rights violations.

Carter also had many failings in his international endeavors. Despite campaign promises to stop selling weapons to repressive foreign regimes, most sales continued. By 1975, the U.S had exported $9.1 billion dollars in arms to foreign bodies. Worse than a broken promise, however, was the continued active engagement of the CIA in disrupting and destabilizing foreign countries. The CIA funded Islamic rebels in hopes of overturning the Afghani government. When Soviets put troops in Afghanistan it prompted Carter's administration to embargo grain to Russia and called for a boycott of the 1980 Olympic games, which was taking place in Moscow, Russia. The CIA also supported the dictatorial regime in Iran. According to Sjursen, CIA support and influence was in response to Iran planning to nationalize their oil.

In 1979, the Iranian Islamic Revolution occurred, which overthrew the U.S. supported governing body of Iran. The ousted leader, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi (often called "The Shah"), fled and was offered asylum by the United States. This action infuriated Iranian revolutionaries, who then responded by storming the U.S. embassy in Tehran and taking over 50 American hostages. They demanded the return of the Shah, so that he may face their brand of justice. A rescue (Operation Eagle Claw) was attempted, but ultimately failed when a U.S. helicopter crashed into another aircraft, which contained jet fuel. The fireball explosion killed 8 servicemen. This complete disaster coupled with failed negotiations for over a year undermined Carter's presidential image. When it came to time vote again, Carter became one of the few one-term presidents of the United States.

Negotiations continued and the hostages were finally released on the inauguration day of the next president: Ronald Reagan. Reagan was once an actor before shifting to a political career that was characterized by anti-communist stances. Reagan appealed to Southern voters with his emphasis on states' rights, cementing the Republican transformation of the South that Nixon started. He was also endorsed and supported by groups such as the Moral Majority, a right-wing Christian group that helped mobilize conservative Christians as an active political force.

As with any president, Reagan naturally had people opposed to his being elected but a vast majority of Americans seemed in support of him. With an acting career behind him, Reagan already had some charismatic sway with his voter base, and his down-to-earth style of speaking coupled with his generally optimistic demeanor made him appealing to many. After surviving an assassination attempt on March 30th, 1981, and returning to work as quickly as possible, Reagan's popularity exploded. If the man was liked before, he was beloved after.

Ronald Reagan's presidential era was largely characterized by his de-regulation policies and his ideas on economics. He believed in the concept of "supply side economics." Supply-side economics is the theory that economy growth can be achieved through reduced taxation, fewer regulations, and free trade. Reagan applied his economic theory through his policies, which had 3 main points:

Increased military spending

Lower overall income tax, especially on wealthier tax brackets

Deregulation of financial systems and other facets of bureaucracy

The term "Reaganomics" caught on as a way of describing Reagan's economic policies.

Under Reagan's America, top tax income brackets reduced from a 70% tax to a 28% tax. The idea was that with more money in the hands of the rich, the more that money could be invested directly back into the economy. The reduced federal regulations would also encourage the creation and growth of new and expanding businesses.

Ronald Reagan did not just permit businesses to exponentially grow. He also slashed budgets from any government agency deemed unessential. Research on renewable and alternate energy was cut by 90%. Agencies were taken over by Reagan appointees who seemed actively hostile to the organizations they were put in control of. Thorne Auchter, new head of OSHA, ran multiple Florida businesses which had been fined multiple times for failing to adhere to OSHA standards. Lee Thomas, Reagan's EPA administrator, believed the organization was "too aggressive" on companies.

The immediate effects of Reagan's economic policies did reduce inflation, easing the minds of Americans when buying necessities. Long-term effects were also taking root, however. The salaries of CEOs continued to increase (sometimes quadrupling between 1980-88) while low-class wages were on a steady decrease. Executives with powerful lobbyists showed their appreciation for these economic policies by financially supporting the Reagan administration and the federal government-- an option simply not available to the "little guy."

When it came to foreign affairs, Reagan's doctrine was that the United States would support anti-communist insurgencies. Reagan had no interest in maintaining the decades old NATO policy of "boxing in" the Soviet Union. He wanted to strip the USSR's grasp on world affairs and forcibly reduce their territory. Military spending, which had steadily been increasing since WWII, blew up under Reagan. His administration aided in overthrowing the government in Grenada, funding death squads in Nicaragua, and backing a right-wing government in El Salvador. This practice of openly aiding insurgent forces would lead to Reagan's greatest political controversy: The Iran-Contra Affair.

In the country of Nicaragua, a political revolution had occurred which overturned the standing government. The country's revolution was at the hands of the USSR supported Sandinista National Liberation Front, which was named after Augusto César Sandino, the leader of the Nicaraguan resistance to U.S. occupation during the 1930's. Ronald Reagan funded a counter-force known as the Contras. The Contras were largely made up of the country's previous national guard, now organized and aided by the CIA. Congress moved against the president in this matter, making it illegal to support the Contras, citing the group's cocaine trade funds. In response, Reagan and his team would utilize "3rd party support," so to speak. The United States sold weapons to Iran (enemy of their political ally, Iraq) with Israel serving as a broker. The official reason for this exchange was for the negotiated release of American hostages in Lebanon, but the profits of the sale went to fund the Contras. Arabian money, arms transport through Guatemala, and a collaborative Israel served as the perfect workaround to the Congress ban.

When this scandal leaked to the press and the public at large, the Reagan administration came under fire. Reagan, Vice President George H.W. Bush, and collaborative Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North came under fire. In legal proceedings that followed, Oliver North took most of the blame. The president and vice president seemed to sit behind a wall of plausible deniability, though testimonial evidence from involved staff generally state the Commander-in-chief knew and collaborated in the scheme.

Another unpopular move from Reagan was vetoing a bill passed through Congress which called to impose heavy sanctions on South African countries utilizing an imposed racial segregation system described as "apartheid." Apartheid governments had laws that imposed differing rights and restrictions based solely on race, and prevented race mixing. Congress overrode the president's veto, but the veto itself damaged Reagan's reputation in the black community. According to a 1983 poll, only 17% of black Americans felt the economy was improving compared to 43% of white Americans. Many black Americans already felt unseen by the 80's administration, but that presidential veto cemented the sentiment.

Another controversy of Reagan's legacy was his slow response to the AIDS epidemic. Auto-Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) spread across the nation, but as it was a largely sexually transmitted disease, it carried a stigma of moral/cultural shame. AIDS also largely ravaged the gay community, which was not held in high regard by conservative religious groups like the Moral Majority. Despite thousands of deaths, Reagan made no obvious moves to respond to the epidemic or even acknowledge it. The president did not publicly acknowledge the crisis until 1985 (following the AIDS-related death of famous actor Rock Hudson) and would not deliver a formal address on it until 1987. The epidemic shook the foundations of the prominent gay community that emerged in the 70's, with almost everyone in that community knowing at least one person affected by the virus.

One of Reagan's biggest successes was the progress made in the Cold War. Mikhail Gorbachev became the leading commander of the USSR in 1985. Gorbachev was more willing to negotiate with the United States than any other leader seemingly was before. Thanks to ongoing discussions between the two world leaders, Cold War tensions were eased and nuclear stockpiles were reduced. The one point Reagan would not compromise on abandoning was his infamous Strategic Defense Initiative, nicknamed the "Star Wars Program." The SDI was a research and development project intended to create a defense system against potential nuclear missile attacks. The program was often criticized for its "science fiction" premise, but the president's commitment to the program coupled with his aggressive anti-Soviet policies likely kept the USSR afraid of U.S. capability and (potentially) more willing to negotiate than the USSR might have otherwise been.

Following Reagan's presidency, George H. W. Bush was elected to the office. During his election campaign, he showed a willingness to play "dirty," with many of his ad campaigns being targeted take-downs of his political rivals. Once in office, Bush was largely accepted as the natural choice since he was the vice president of the previously adored Reagan. He also carried over Reagan's appeal to Evangelicals by selecting senator J. Danforth Quayle (a fundamentalist Christian) as his vice president. Potentially appealing to that right-wing voter base, Bush also shifted opinions on issues he was initially a moderate on, such as abortion and new equal rights amendments for women. Due to these factors, Bush's presidency has sometimes been quipped as "Reagan's 3rd term."

During Bush's only presidential term, the United States engaged in two major military conflicts. The first was an invasion of the small country of Panama to depose the de facto ruler, General Manuel Noriega, who was wanted for drug trafficking and racketeering. The Panama forces were quickly overwhelmed, with the invasion being a decisive American victory. Despite the victory, little changed overall in the international drug trade.

The second military conflict was the invasion of Iraq following their invasion of the neighboring country of Kuwait. Iraq, led by Saddam Hussein, was previously a U.S. ally but the invasion of Kuwait threatened the oil reserves, ergo it threatened national interests. The "official" reason was to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi control, but the U.S. did not generally get directly involved in middle eastern conflicts like this.

Propaganda used for this conflict painted Hussein as another "Hitler," emphasizing the imperative to stop him. Despite this propaganda tactic, when the troops were deployed their objective was limited to only removing the Iraqi army from Kuwait. More war propaganda was the supposed use of "smart bombs," which was purported to limit civilian casualties with their more strategic explosive use. The invasion lasted approximately 6 weeks, with the Iraqi forces being completely crushed and most modern infrastructure being destroyed. Hussein was not removed from power, even though the U.S. victory demonstrated that they could accomplish that objective had they pushed further. Hussein continued to oppress his own countrymen, killing Shiites and Kurds in genocidal sweeps. Some war hawks believed that Bush hadn't done enough to "finish the job."

These military engagements had two primary outcomes:

The Panama and Iraq conflicts being such overwhelming victories helped remove the cultural "shame" left over from the failure of the Vietnam War.

The Iraq conflict helped justify the continuance of the United States' massive military budget even after their Cold War enemy, the USSR, collapsed in 1991.

The first point is highlighted by a direct quote from H.W. Bush about the War in the Gulf as it was coming to a close: "The specter of Vietnam has been buried forever in the desert sands of the Arabian peninsula." Reporters in Iraq were also subject to censorship restrictions that reporters in Vietnam did not contend with. The administration likely learned from the public response to Vietnam and wanted to avoid massive public outcries. Their efforts were a success. Newspapers and news media that once decried the Vietnam War now sang praises on the effectiveness, swiftness, and strength displayed by the mighty U.S. military over Panama and later Iraq.

To the second point: the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics dissolved in 1991, following democratic policy changes enacted by Gorbachev, a weakened military force, and decades of economic stagnation. In the decades following WWII, the Soviet Union was almost always the reason the U.S. was "justified" in growing their empire, stockpiling their nuclear arms, and expanding their military might. With the USSR just gone, that justification was no longer there. The military budget was reduced for a time, but it never returned to anything closely comparable to the pre-Soviet era, and the U.S. still continued to spend more on their military than most other 1st world countries combined. The solution was to continue suppressing instances of independent nationalism that threatened to upset the economic and political power balance of the current world, just like the war with Hussein's forces.

In the middle of Bush's only presidential term, the economy went through a recession that led to 7.9% unemployment. The recession was likely the fallout of Reagan and Bush's high-deficit, low tax, high military expense economy model. Massive companies like AT&T and General Motors laid off thousands of employees. Manufacturing jobs continued to dry up in the states as industries looked for cheaper exploitable labor. Japanese companies were also buying up American businesses, taking larger chunks of the world's shared economic web from the United States.

In order to combat the recession, Bush increased domestic spending with a stimulus package plan and he rescinded his campaign promise of "no new taxes." He also supported the Cap and Trade Compromise, which was a proposed policy to "cap" carbon emissions with a hard limit every year while the limit was reduced over time. Companies would receive permits for their allowed pollution cap, but could sell their permits to other companies. Bush also passed the Clean Air Act of 1990, which aimed at reducing acid rain and toxic pollutants. These acts alienated Bush from his more radical conservative peers.

The era of Carter, Reagan, and H. W. Bush pushed the United States to a more far right political landscape than it had possibly ever been. Deregulation and tax cuts on the rich started with the democrats but continued strong under Reagan and Bush's Republican political campaign. Despite the 1970's being a predominantly liberal cultural period, the time that followed it grew increasingly politically conservative.

On a cultural level, the 70's hippie became the 80's "yuppie," a slang term for a young and fashionable middle-class person with a well paid job. Consumerism was encouraged by Reagan's administration, with a plethora of goods and novelties being available through the 1980's. This mass consumerism fed into the economy and is also likely why the 1980's continues to endure as such a standout decade in pop culture. Despite this consumerism, this era also led to massive national debt increases, larger overall income inequality between upper and lower-class citizens, and a significant amount of proxy wars.

This period was also an era of attempted information control. Following the embarrassment of Vietnam, the buzzwords "national security" got thrown around a lot to justify the censorship and withholding of any findings that came about from government investigations into its many bureaucratic systems. One publicly known finding was discovered by the Church Committee, which was an organized investigative Senate group, which uncovered that that CIA dispatched operatives in academic settings for the express purpose of propaganda and population manipulation.

Other cultural changes from the 1970's to the 80's included decisions by the Supreme Court and new international dialogues. In the 70's, the death penalty was declared unconstitutional but it was restored in the following decade. Aspects of the landmark Roe v Wade case on abortion rights were weakened, and federally funded clinics were prevented from informing patients of abortion options. During international summits, new important topics of conversation included global warming and environmental protection. The United States generally always picked their economic engine over any environmental concern, but these discussions happening at all meant these problems were being identified on global scale.

Despite the potential of nuclear power as a solution to Carter's feared energy crisis and as a means to move away from fossil fuels, disasters such as the nuclear meltdown in Russia's Chernobyl power plant coupled with general fear over nuclear arms meant that the public was wary of nuclear power as a solution. Protestors opposed the use of nuclear energy and the issue became yet another partisan party schism.

The spirit of protest continued throughout the 1980's. In response to federal cutbacks on public services such as fire emergency, education, and policing, many middle-class "average" citizens who had never protested before now protested government action. Anti-war protests happened across the country in response to Reagan and Bush's proxy wars, but these conflicts were so quick that any potential grassroots movements were snuffed out before they ever got too far. Black Americans also protested against Reagan's presidency, outraged that in response to mass black unemployment Reagan's only response was to build more jails and be "hard" on crime-- crime that was likely directly influenced by the community's unemployment crisis.

Native American communities continued to advocate for themselves. As the era rolled into the early 1990's, Native Americans began to protest the celebration of Columbus Day, a federal holiday, in which the supposed "discoverer" of North America was honored. Natives pointed out the absurdity of discovering a land which was already occupied by other people, and that the treatment Columbus issued to the Natives was morally unacceptable to celebrate. This cause expanded on other Native American advocacy points such as their efforts to educate Americans on their true cultures, customs, and history. Some groups fought against this Native American cause, citing that the story of "western civilization" was the story of man's growth of higher ideas, with the United States being the supposed pinnacle of that "higher" Western philosophy. Most would not dare argue that the violence committed on early North American Natives was not abhorrent, but that it was inconsequential to the symbolic celebration of what Columbus Day represented.

Access to birth control medication made it easier for women to find and maintain work. Access to this medication also reduced the worry of unwanted pregnancy from sex, allowing couples to more freely engage in physical intimacy. Despite birth control giving women more bodily autonomy and women continuing to enter the job market, the expected cultural gender norms arguably did not shift much. Women with full-time jobs and careers were implicitly expected to continue being the "homemaker" in the standard nuclear family, even with their new demands making that much more difficult.

Televangelism was another practice that took off during this era. Televangelists were Christian ministers who derived their ministry from television broadcasting. This practice appealed to evangelical fundamentalist Christians, whom had become a prominent political force under the Reagan presidency and the organization of groups such as the Moral Majority. Televangelism also likely contributed to the infamous "Satanic Panic" of the 80's, which was a period of moral upset wherein many unsubstantiated claims of satanic ritual abuse were reported by fearful Americans who were likely just scared of the changing world and a perceived moral decay.

As "old school" manufacturing jobs like steel and auto industries continued to leave the United States, a new industry began to thrive-- "Silicon Valley." Silicon Valley refers to a region in Northern California where "high-tech" industries began to take off, but also generally refers to the emergent computer technology industry. Computer manufacturing and software development grew with major companies such as Microsoft and Apple leading the helm. While the technology was not accessible to the average consumer yet, it was quickly heading in that direction.

These events all unfolded during a conservative renaissance, in which liberal culture was tempered by conservative politics. In order to regain their foothold, Democrats would rebrand into the "New Democrat" to defeat this Republican upsurge. The "new" democrat would sometimes show more open sympathy to cultural issues but demonstrated greater fiscal conservatism and a "tough on crime" stance that made them nearly identical to the Republican party they were trying to usurp. Democrats wanted to appeal to this perceived prominent conservative voter base, and in doing so the parties really began to look like ever-so-slightly different but largely identical conglomerates of people whose biggest differences were simply the party label.

Final Thoughts:

I took less away from Schweikart and Allen's writings this time compared to usual, and the few points I felt were relevant were typically stated as a "good" in their text whereas my inherent beliefs could not mesh well with their version of what certain events meant for the country. That said, I did not find the writing on Reagan to be as insufferable as I feared it would be. The authors clearly admired him, but they do well presenting baseline facts when they are not asserting their economic opinions as those "facts." Far be it from me to pretend I likely haven't done the same in these essays, however. I did find it a little curious, that Schweikart and Allen quickly brush over the Iran-Contra affair, as if it wasn't Reagan's most notorious and controversial scandal.

Sjursen's A True History was definitely the most useful in building the descriptive narrative of this time period, coupled with facts and additional information from A People's History and A Patriot's History.

Due to my long standing leftist tendencies, I am not fond of Reagan as a president and do hold his extensive de-regulation policies as a significant factor in current economic crises. That said, I think reading about this period in history helped me contextualize why he was so popular at the time of his election. From the opening paragraph, it's established that the shadows cast from the Vietnam failure and Nixon's Watergate scandal completely broke the average American's trust in the government. Then comes Reagan who addresses the people in his inaugural speech with these famous words: "government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem." Many American people felt heard. They saw an optimist who believed in the capacity for the United States to achieve great things if it was simply given the freedom to do so. Whatever the long-term legacy of his decisions, it's easy to see why Reagan was beloved at a time where Americans had never been so openly cynical of the government.

This was admittedly not my favorite era to write about, but the point of these essays is largely to help me learn the complete history of my country, be informed, and have a reference point I can revisit if I need to brush up on any particular era of American history. This era was extremely important in getting a more complete picture of the shadows still being cast on today's modern political landscape.

My true final thought on this period of time coincides with some of my thoughts reflected in the previous essay. Those thoughts are merely the continued observation of frightening parallels between this time period and the period we live in right now. Just like the 70's, we live in an age where socially progressive causes have become a staple of cultural shifts and political talking points. Just like the 80's, the response to this cultural shift has been met with outright political hostility and political conservatism in favor of enforcing "traditional" morals.

Talk about being doomed to repeat history if you don't learn from it the first time.

#American History #A Patriot's History #A People's History #A True History #Howard Zinn #Larry Schweikart #Michael Allen #Daniel A Sjursen #History #Educational #A Synthesized History

0 notes

world-cinema-research · 4 months ago

Text

How Cinema Has Changed Since 1965 (Final Analytic Essay) Pt. 2

Carly Leavitt-Hullana

youtube

Above is the official movie trailer for Forrest Gump which gives and overview of what the film is about as well as the style, look, and feel of the film.

Moving on to one of America’s favorite films, Forrest Gump (1994), is where you start to see the fundamentals shift from completely unconventional and unrepeatable to somewhat unconventional and a bit more unoriginal. We see this in Forrest Gump as although it is a one of a kind film that touches on possible sensitive subjects such as the Vietnam war and the fact that Forrest is a mentally challenged man, it holds that safety net for a successful performance as it stars well-known actors like Tom Hanks (Forrest Gump), Robin Wright (Jenny), Sally Field (Ms. Gump), and Gary Sinise (Lieutenant Dan). As well as was produced by a previously well-known and reputable production and distribution company, Paramount Pictures. Both of these factors did in fact provide an equation for success as this film is widely known and loved, is highly quoted, and won multiple cinematic awards, which Everett Hunt dives deeper into and the impact of the film in his own analytic essay (Forrest Gump (1994) short essay By Everett Hunt).

Above is a still image from one of the scenes with a more complex message underneath where Forrest shares his thoughts about the the US in Vietnam and reunites with Jenny who was currently advocating against the war.

However, a more indepth look into Forrest Gump reveals more complexity of the film and the director's message. Critically acclaimed film critic Roger Ebert skims the surface when he says, “And yet this is not a heartwarming story about a mentally challenged man. That cubbyhole is much too small and limiting for Forrest Gump. The movie is more of a meditation on our times, as seen through the eyes of a man who lacks cynicism and takes things for exactly what they are” (Forrest Gump via Roger Ebert). An academic article, written by Yunling Zhang, takes it a step further when he states, “It analyzes the plots related to social, political and cultural context and discusses main themes reflected in the work, namely anti-war ideas, anti-racism and the realization American dream” (A New Historicist Interpretation of Forrest Gump via Universe Scientific Publishing). Even so, subplots within the film follow popular movie cliches and tropes pushing Forrest Gump slightly towards unconventional yet unoriginal change in cinema.

This is one of the official movie posters for the film which showcases the advanced technology and great editing that we have in cinema today.

Continuing to the last film I will be discussing, Inception (2010), which is yet another film on the eccentric side as its one of few that plays with the idea of entering, building, and controlling dreams. However, it has many highly conventional aspects of starring well-known actors such as Leonardo DiCaprio (Cobb), Elliot Page (formerly Ellen Page as Ariadne), Cillian Murphy (Fischer), Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Arthur), Tom Hardy (Eames), and Ken Watanabe (Saito). Along with the film being produced by the well-known and followed director Christopher Nolan, released by a highly acclaimed distribution company Warner Bros, has the common storyline of running into an issue that is resolved at the end, and has the safety net of the typical unoriginal action/suspense trope. One could even argue that it retains another common theme of the main character being haunted by the memory and trauma of a deceased significant other, which plays a large part in Inception.

youtube

This scene shows off some of the great visuals and tech that the movie has that I discuss below.

Regardless, I greatly enjoyed watching Inception as it is a great action-packed, suspenseful film that truly does keep you on the edge-of your seat guessing. However, it is not the best film I have seen and can agree with film critic Peter Bradshaw when he says, “Well, Inception is still very impressive; looking back, I see that I found its tech and technique dazzling, but the narrative inert. Yet maybe that was not doing justice to how staggering its fantasy set pieces were” (Inception review – the virtual reinvention of virtual reality via The Guardian). Even so, further in his article he applauds Nolan on the uniqueness of this film as well as the brilliant creation of the dream scenes throughout the film, where I also argue Nolan’s focus of the film was prioritized. Other experienced critics and viewers acknowledge the interesting and distinctive style in the dream scenes, however find the plot and entirety of the film lacking a purpose, unoriginal and insufficient of the unprecedented films released closer to 1965.

Throughout the process of coming to this conclusion, that films have changed from unparalleled and truly unconventional to somewhat original and conventional since 1965, main dimensions that created this perspective were periodically occurring social, political, economic, cultural, and artistic dimensions. Which are all connected as films created closer to 1965 appeared to pay little attention to how a film would sit with an audience as they were very unique, had a high possibility of being offensive, and were highly unconventional for a multitude of reasons discussed throughout the essay. Generally, films released closer to 1965 gave the impression of having more artistic freedom with the ability to produce whatever they felt the need to produce. All of which effect the art, culture, and economic effects and perception of each films’ performance, which filmmakers and films released closer to the present are straying from by releasing films more for a profit and audience reception rather than relaying a desired message or having a specific purpose.

#Youtube

0 notes

fairfieldthinkspace · 5 months ago

Text

What Do I Owe the Dead of My Generation’s Mismanaged Wars?

The New York Times Opinion Guest Essay, published May 26, 2024

By Phil Klay

Fairfield University MFA Professor

Mr. Klay is a novelist and a Marine Corps veteran of the Iraq War. His most recent book is the essay collection “Uncertain Ground: Citizenship in an Age of Endless, Invisible War.”

About 10 years ago, as the war in Afghanistan was slowly, painfully winding down, I walked through Arlington National Cemetery with a fellow Marine veteran and a relative of mine visiting from Ireland. We passed row after row of pristine white tombs, the dead of all the just wars and unjust wars that made and remade this country, and my relative told us he found it quite moving; he hadn’t been expecting that. Perhaps he thought it’d be more bombastic, or obviously militaristic, and he was taken by the beauty and serenity and quiet dignity of the place.

So we brought him to Section 60 to see some of the newest graves, of kids born in the ’90s, and I told him the sight filled me with rage, these young lives thrown into a mismanaged war, where even their deaths, at that late stage, were mostly ignored. Just the background hum of a global superpower.

A couple of years later, in 2021, the Afghan war finally ended, taking with it a few American children of the 2000s, and, in a moral failure laid on top of the military failure, leaving tens of thousands of Afghans who worked with us at risk in the now completely Taliban-controlled country. The last Marines to fall died in a suicide bombing at a gate to Kabul’s airport, a blast that killed 11 Marines, one Navy medic, one soldier and about 170 Afghan civilians. The Marines were trying to manage the chaos of the poorly planned evacuation of Afghans from Kabul — a humanitarian mission at heart, trying to help those we were abandoning. A week before she died, one of the Marines, Sgt. Nicole Gee, posted a photo of her cradling a baby in Kabul and captioned it, “I love my job.”

America responded to those deaths with a drone strike against a Kabul vehicle the military claimed was transporting ISIS members who were about to carry out another attack, but that, in a twist that felt grotesquely emblematic of so many of our failures, turned out to carry an Afghan aid worker. The blast killed the aid worker and his relatives, seven of whom were children. The sort of people those Marines died trying to help.

How do you memorialize the dead of a failed war? At Arlington, it’s easy to let your heart swell with pride as you pass certain graves. Here are the heroes that ended slavery. Here are the patriots who defeated fascism. We think of them as inextricably bound up with the cause they gave their life to. The same can’t be said for more morally troubling wars, from the Philippines to Vietnam. And for the dead of my generation’s wars, for the dead I knew, the reasons they died sit awkwardly alongside the honor I owe them.

I watched a lot of Marines go off to Afghanistan, a war that I could have gone to but that I chose to avoid. Mostly, they were young. That’s the thing Hollywood most often gets wrong about war when they cast grown men to portray America’s finest killers. Look at a Marine infantry platoon, so many of whose members joined at 17 or 18, and you see boys. Boys who haven’t grown into cynicism yet. Some find it in the middle of their tours. Some keep that idealistic flame burning through multiple deployments. And some die before it can be extinguished.

For so many of the kids I saw, their mission mattered to them, and so their mission should matter to all of us when we remember their deaths. And the mission was a catastrophe. Memorial Day should come with sorrow and patriotic pride, yes, but also with a sense of shame. And, though it has faded for me over the years, with anger.

A few months after Kabul fell I went to the Bronx to see a war photographer I admire, Peter van Agtmael, taking a group of adult learners through a display of his photography from 9/11 to the present at the Bronx Documentary Center, photographs now collected in the book “Look at the U.S.A.”

“I just got back from Afghanistan, and it’s controversial to say, but it’s beautiful,” he told the group. “It’s beautiful to see Afghanistan at peace.”

Beautiful. I thought of a Marine in 2009, just back from Afghanistan, hollow-eyed, telling us in a monotone about his best friend taking a bullet to the head in these beautiful regions of the country, now at peace. What would he make of such a claim? Around me on the walls I saw a burned soldier in a combat hospital, the arm of a Trump supporter climbing over a wall by the Capitol on Jan. 6, the dust cloud of an improvised bomb detonation in Iraq.

Toward the end of the gallery, there was a huge print hung high up. You craned your neck and saw a homeless encampment in Las Vegas, and then, craning further, you saw an F-16 fighter jet, an aircraft that costs tens of millions of dollars, flying above. Amid our national forgetting of the wars, there was something powerful about seeing this accounting of America in the South Bronx, in a community whose struggles have so often been subject to forgetting, effacing, indifference. And, God, it was painful.

In the past when I’ve thought about the recent dead, I’ve told myself that service to country, service unto the point of death, is a momentous enough sacrifice to overshadow all other questions. The cause doesn’t matter so much if the fallen I knew served courageously, looked after their fellow Marines and kept their honor clean. But I’ve come to feel that airbrushing out the complexities of their wars is, ultimately, disrespectful to the dead. We owe it to the dead to remember what mattered to them, the ideals they held, as well as how those ideals were betrayed or failed to match reality.

This Memorial Day, as I get ready to take my sons to march in our local Memorial Day parade, our country is in the midst of the most divisive antiwar protests since the early days of the Iraq war, protests my friends characterize as either “objectively pro-Hamas” or as “opposing undeniable genocide.” Questions long dormant, about how we use our might and whom we help kill, feel like live political questions once again (even if we’re not talking much about actual American military deployments, or the troops who have most recently died at the hands of Iranian proxies). The debate is raw and angry.

Good. What a good, uncomfortable, painful national mood for remembering the dead. This year, when I remember them, I will not just remember who they were, the shreds of memory dredged up from past decades. I will remember why they died. All the reasons they died. Because they believed in America. Because America forgot about them. Because they were trying to force-feed a different way of life to people from a different country and culture. Because they wanted to look after their Marines. Because the mission was always hopeless. Because America could be a force for good in the world. Because Presidents Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden didn’t have much of a plan. Because it’s a dangerous world, and somebody’s got to do the killing. Because of college money. Because the Marine Corps is cool as hell. Because they saw “Full Metal Jacket” and wanted to be Joker. Or Animal Mother. Because the war might offer a new hope for Iraq, for Afghanistan. Because we earned others’ hatred, with our cruelty and indifference and carelessness and hubris. Because America was still worth dying for.

#Phil Klay #Arlington National Cemetery #Afghanistan #Vietnam #Memorial Day

1 note · View note