I spent the weekend in Massachusetts with my family (and my Masshole...and my Christy, with my fairy godchild Sarol), and was therefore blessedly without reliable access to a computer for several days. I did not think about you, about blogging, or really much of anything except trailing behind the dogs to Oxi-clean the heck out of the carpets they kept piddling on.
It was a given, but yes, my mother's dogs hate all of dog-kind and kept picking fights with Grace. It was a proud yet humbling moment for Anthony and I when Grace was finally prodded into defending herself. She has one hell of a growl, I'll tell you.
At the same time, we really didn't want her to kill little Napoleanic Tessa. What a stupid little dog! But she is not particularly socialized and we didn't help matters by buying a big old bone for just Grace to tease tubby-Tessa with. (Oh yes, the masochistic gene is in the whole line of women in my family!)
We also learned that Grace should never be off a leash. Number one because she ran over and jumped on some little old man who lives three houses down from my mother. Number two because she "discovered" a 4-6' black snake at the top of the hill and decided that pursuit was the best option. Note to all doggies: pursuing an angry snake is only a good idea if your idea of a good time is giving your mommy a heart attack. And then quickly following that up by a mad dash to the veterinary ER for snake bite treatment.
On Sunday, Anthony and I tag-teamed Andrew in mini golf and I still lost. What a surprise. But there was much celebratory Dairy Queen to share (Andrew's food intake for the day: my mother's home-made pizelles, a large Reese Peanutbutter Cup Blizzard, and the chicken finger platter at Strand Theatre. Mmm-mmm, good). Then there was farting around and Ice Age 2 at the local theatre.
There was also much shopping (shoes, clothes, clippers, scrapbooking supplies, Napolean Dynamite memorabilia...), catching up, Corona, and there were even multiple sightings of my brother. He does indeed exist.
Oooh, I'm experiencing a temporary brain failure. Must go recharge...
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
UPenis Saturday and Sunday
Ryan & Mel
Originally uploaded by Pookah.
This post just never ends, does it? Much like everything else in my life these days, I am falling behind in reporting to you. My college reuion lasted forever, it seems.
In laymen's terms that means that it went on for four days, and still nothing of note was accomplished.
Therefore, I am going to give you the abridged version of all that came to pass on May 13th & 14th.
Most importantly? The meals. Michelle and I had Koch's for lunch on Saturday. Koch's is under new management, but the staff is still friendly and they even offer outdoor seating these days. If you ever get the chance, go for it! They will deliver the food to your table, and split it between two plates - or cups! - if you are sharing with someone else (god knows I can't finish a whole sandwich by myself!). The staff also still hands out free deli samples while you wait in line, and the line, no matter how many people are in it, still takes about an hour to navigate. Ahhhh, comfort food.
Then there were the oatmeal cookies under the Class of 2001 tent. It poured for about an hour and we took refuge while pretending to look for people we cared about who attended Penn. There was a small sort of UTV-13 reunion, with additions from Connecticutt and New Jersey (Steve and Kara - you rock!).
Then there was the vagina dinner, as Jeff likes to call it. Michelle faked a penis for the evening and uninvited herself, but the rest of the lovely Melslist ladies were present. Mr. Martino's Trattoria was the place to be at 8PM, and even Hadar had a brilliant time. Most importantly, I had a chance to catch up with Yael, Mel, Martha, and Estee (while Nicole, Melanie and Lisa took glamour shots of themselves and giggled into their wine).
We tried out Penske's open-bar theory, but Mel and I were totally pissed by the time we had to suck up to Jay to get inside (something about a limit imposed by the fire department). Hey man, I had to HUG Jay Penske (wait, can you believe he's actually listed on Wikipedia?)! I probably got some cooties from Lara Flynn Boyle or something. God, I am such a bad networker (you would never catch Andrew badmouthing someone who had opened up the bar for a night and gave him free drinks).
Needless to say, I was in line for far too long, and these bitches tried to cut me. I tried to start a fight, and Mel tried to finish it. But before long, here comes Andrew with wristbands for all, and total death and distruction was averted.
I got one drink from the pissy bartender while some guy grabbed my ass, and then I was DONE. The Class of 2001 events finally sealed the fate of Penn for me - I will not be back for future alumni events. Other than Melslist (and a few sorted others), UPenn's Class of 2001 is a bunch of shitheads. There, I've said it.
Sunday morning found us at the mecca of all brunch palaces, Sabrina's Cafe. There was much baby-passing to be had, including a new sideways-holding move by Ben, and altogether too many pictures. Nishchay threatened to steal some tattoed guy's meal and then ask for an order of coffee, but we were seated relatively quickly and with little complaint.
All too soon my stuffed pancakes were consumed and I begged a ride of Nishchay to 30th Street Station. When I returned to DC, somehow it seemed that there simply wasn't enough time with my friends. And how on earth had I become so tired?! I am nothing but an old fart, and I miss Melslist already...
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Shiny, happy people (college reunion part II)
Yael & Estee
Originally uploaded by Pookah.
So I managed to leave you at breakfast on Friday, May 12th. I know how you hang on to my every word, so you must be hyperventilating by now, panting out, "Must read blog entry, must have more...!"
So outside of my little dream world... That Friday was very unproductive. I drank a lot of coffee, and did all those mandatory visits. The Committee of Seventy still functions without me, and Tyler still manages to flake out on his appointments. Vince was a no-show, and the visit with the Archives staff was short. All in all, I was able to say hello to almost everyone I wanted to see, and that was important and gratifying.
Yet the highlight of the afternoon was lunch at The Magic Carpet food truck in that little food truck haven on 34th & Walnut Streets. If you haven't gone yet, and you live in the Philadelphia area, GO NOW. I am dead serious. Put down whatever you are doing, get in your car, step onto SEPTA, do whatever it takes to get your overworked butt to that food truck - it is absolutely worth it!
It was a beautiful day (despite all the forecasts for rain), and Michelle and I hosied a bench by the button. Working in a cubicle for eight hours a day really makes you appreciate those moments you get in the sun (literally!), even if a tribe of bumble bees accosts you for your (damn fine) lunch.
Which is exactly what happened. Michelle must have jumped off the bench at least five times, but I was so happy with my meal that I barely noticed. Hey man, you have to have priorities.
It was GLORIOUS.
After the jumping/eating (depending on which of us you are identifying with), we wished Ann Marie and Loretta a happy Mother's Day with a bouquet of flowers and took the self-guided tour of the new and improved Bennett Hall. All graduates of Penn should really take a walk through there - there is so much more history in that building than in that new Wharton bohemoth, not to mention style and character. They totally revamped the 4th floor into a beautiful music department, and there is equipment there that the UTV-staffers should seriously consider stealing.
While there, we even stopped by to harass good old Professor Conn, who was kind enough to be in his office. That and he wrote me a recommendation for the Peace Corps so I can't sing his praises highly enough.
Done entertaining ourselves in Bennett Hall, we picked up Ann Marie and Loretta for our ladies-only luncheon at The New Deck Tavern. Having already experienced the bliss that is The Magic Carpet, I only ordered a Bailey's Irish Coffee, which sounded like a good idea at the time. (Yeah, because full-on body shakes sounded like a good idea at the time - gotta love the effect caffeine has on me.)
We chatted, caught up on life, and basically made our lovely English Department ladies late to leave for home. It is SO GOOD to see them after all this time and be able to hear how good life is to them these days.
(I forgot to mention registering for the reunion events with Andrew. The only things to note here are 1) I refused the "free" tote bag. I refuse to expend the energy to throw away something as heinous as that. 2) Andrew gave me a card for absolutely no reason. I love that boy, but sometimes he is very, very strange. Not to mention OCD.)
Before I knew it, it was time for dinner. Once again, food was to be had from one of the finest culinary establishments in town: Trattoria Primadonna. Owned by Giancarlo, and introduced to me by my friend Phil, this place boasts the best Fetuccine Alfredo I have ever consumed. At this family-owned and -run restaurant, all the food is made from scratch and you should order the chocolate tiramisu if ever you get the chance.
In any case, there is not a cab to be found in the UPenn neighborhood during graduation weekend. I don't know if the cab drivers go on strike that weekend, or simply refuse to cowtow to The Man (which, if it is the case, I don't entirely blame them), but either way I hoofed it in heels for about 10-15 blocks before I caught a SEPTA bus. I still had to walk about 7 blocks when I got off, but it was a far sight better than walking the whole way from 46th & Locust to 16th & Spruce.
Needless to say, I was the third-from-last to arrive. Which meant I was stuck in the kiddie corner, as I like to call it. That basically means I sat near Eric, who likes to talk inappropriately all through dinner (or drinks, or basically whatever/whenever/etc.).
It was a wonderful meal (did I mention the fetuccine alfredo?), but I will complain that three hours certainly doesn't seem like enough time for nearly a dozen people to catch up on life. I got to hear all about Melanie's new boyfriend (right down to his penis size!...okay, maybe not), Ben's Mom (guess from who), and Jeff's laser beams. Occassionally, I wandered and was able to hold Hadar (very much in-demand all weekend long) and give Yael a big ol' head rub. Hugs were had all around, but I managed to keep my hands mostly to myself. (A big bonus for all of you who don't like to have your crotches or boobies grabbed. Tee-hee...)
After hanging on to all these mementos and photos from our four years of college, I was also able to final bring my yearbook plan to fruition. Before dinner really got underway, I handed out CDs containing a personalized Class of 2001 yearbook for Melslist (amidst much knee-knocking and hand tremors caused by the overconsumption of caffeinated products). Melanie kept repeating how she didn't think any of us changed in the past five years, but it is simply amazing to go back and look through the photos. Having worked on this project on and off for the past five years, and kept in touch with everyone through Melslist, I am infinitely familiar with all the stages of our development. We were just kids back then, and I am so proud to see how everyone is blossoming...just thinking about everyone's accomplishments makes me get all verklempt. These Melslist members are the best group of friends a girl could have, and they are so friggin' amazing. I won't even go into all the details of their successes, but just suffice to know that they are highly successful, highly motivated, massively intelligent people (how do you like that for ego stroking?).
In any case, I probably said it best in my intro to the yearbook.
So yeah, hugs, talking over one another, Ben's Mom, yadda, yadda, yadda, Class of 2001 party. The Class of 2001 party was held in the Pottruck Center. Which is a fancy way of saying, "We will treat you like middle schoolers and make you have your little dance in the gym." At midnight-fifteen, they even had the chutzpah to turn on all the lights and tell everyone to go home.
You might be able to discern that I was a little disappointed with their arrangements. And then there was the DJ, whose sound system was tuned so loud that you had to stand nose-to-nose and scream just to be heard. What a way to catch up with fellow Penn grads.
The good news was that there was no one there that I really wanted to see (that I didn't know was coming anyway). Like I have always known about myself, I'm not really a school spirit kind of a girl. If it weren't for the fact that my bestest friends in the whole wide world were all willing to travel for this reunion crap, I wouldn't have been there. But as it was, we convinced David to travel from Germany, Yael to fly from Israel, and all the rest of the West coast gang to live through red-eye flights and bad airplane food.
The fun stuff? Watching Eric be the only person to attempt the rock wall, and with a drink in hand no less. Melanie's dedication to Eric ("Sometimes words just aren't enough. Eric Gordon, this song is for you."). Blue and red drinkies. Pretending to be a functional human being at Nishchay's house by eating Oreos and watching Michelle smile in her sleep. Hearing about Pete stealing a golf cart.
The not so fun stuff? Losing my voice and having swollen lymph nodes for a week. Nishchay dropping a glass of red wine on my jacket and staying up late to attempt to wash it off. The loud music. Not recognizing most of the people there (did they all really attend Penn? Who knew?!).
When the jacket was as clean as it was going to get, Nishchay made me nauseous by driving us home to the Pete n' Mumbles B&B. Passing out was instantaneous.
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
My college reunion, a.k.a. how I ate my way through Philadelphia
Hadar
Originally uploaded by Pookah.
First and foremost: the picture of Hadar relates in no way to eating my way through Philadelphia. She made it through the weekend safely, with only mental scars to haunt her for the rest of her life.
In any case, I'm a good week and then some late on making this post. I had promised you all guilt or co-conspiracy in the last blog entry, and I have held out for as long as I could. Actually, if it were up to the one remaining brain cell of mine that is functional, I would not be sitting here right now, broadcasting to the world...
So a week (and change) ago Thursday, I took the train up to Philly. Luckily, after staying up all night ripping CDs of our Class of 2001 personalized yearbooks (go me! Waay to procrastinate), I woke up just in time to depart in the city of Brotherly love.
My first order of business was to get me some Monk's food and libations, and yeah, Nishchay was there too. I would have taken pictures had I not been so busy shoving food into my face.
As you can see from my sidebar (see righthand side of my blog), I am a big proponent of Monk's so don't take this next criticism too seriously (i.e. I will be back). I ordered the mussels and it felt like I was eating sandpaper. NOT the way I wanted to start out my culinary trek through Philadlephia. The good news is that you can't screw up a rasberry lambic - as Anthony says, it will always taste like Robitussin. So I had two, just to keep the doctors away.
The waitress was wonderful, however, and offered us free dessert, which Nishchay happily ordered (you little glutton you!).
Next up: tracking down one Mr. Christopher Kessler (my god! He DOES have a first name!), my host-with-the-most for the weekend. He warned me that the Pete n' Mumbles B&B was formerly a fraternity house so I should not be fooled by the very grown-up looking living room and kitchen area.
He was right. I pulled a mattress out of a stack on the wall of this room with water stained and peeling walls. The furniture may well have been left over from previous tenants, and there was an adorable coloring book picture of a hippo by the mirror which said, "To Tom Love Athena." The boys thought it was cute so they never took it down when they moved in.
I know I definitely got clean sheets, but the blanket was in a pile already in the room. Of course, the other choice was one that even Mumbles said, "I wouldn't use that one. It was here when we moved in." Clearly that translates into: "we have never washed it so use that blanket at your own risk." I heeded the warning and pretended my own blanket choice was clean. (Needless to say, I slept fully clothed at night.)
All this makes me sound ungrateful, but it was the true reunion experience. It totally brought me back to my good old days at Penn when I used to party at PiLam with Mumbles and the rest of the party crew. The bathrooms were so sketchy that I even piddled on their neighbors roof one time. Ahhh, memories...
That L.A. whore Erin joined us at the castle o' fraternity love and at 9PM sharp, Mumbles, Pete and I traipsed with her to Bluegrass night (Flat Possum Boys - can't find their website). If I were at all the observant girl you've all pretended I am, I would be able to tell you what bar we went to, but I'm afraid that, sober as I was, I have zero clue. All I know is that there is Ethiopian food somewhere nearby, and it's only a block or so from 46th & Locust.
The creepy thing is that the bar is built in an old row-home. When you walk in, you feel like you've just broken into and entered someone's house.
Needless to say, we were amongst the first arrivals. And what, to our wondering eyes, did appear? No, no, not Santa and his eight little reindeer, but rather one rather infamous JJ. Granted, he lives only three blocks away from the unknown bar, but it is astounding how many times I run into this boy. He certainly gets around.
Well, I took some very interesting photos of the bluegrass crew, and it's the sober pictures that make us look most hammered. Such a credit to my mad photography skills. (Speaking of which, I SO want to steal Mumbles' new Nikon D-50 camera! What an absolute dream...!)
The bluegrass band was pretty amazing and so was the Dogfish Aprihop. In other news, the Yuengling bottles really wet Erin's whistle (something about the ten frames I have of her deep-throating the neck of the bottle).
I kept doing a double-take at one of the bar staff because he looks like a body double for Daniel Day Lewis, and the band kept threatening to stop playing for us because we were getting too loud. I figured all they had to do was invest in one simple microphone and the world would be all glorious again, but they seem to like telling the 40 drunk people in a 12'X12' room to shut the hell up. Oh, and the lead singer (who incidentally also owns the bar) was randomly doing shots of high-grade tequila while he was singing.
After many shout-outs to our favorite word (PENIS!), Erin was escorted home by her friend from AmeriCorps. I was told that Erin had a minor accident with her dad's car when she tried to return it by 5AM on Friday morning. Don't worry, folks, she lived - if only to be out-gangstered by Pete the next evening.
I was probably in bed by 1AM, but any of you who know the post-Penn Ryan realize that 1AM is a good three or four hours past my bedtime so I was pretty pooped. Yet my damn internal clock woke me by 6:30AM. The only plus side to this scenario is that Michelle's red-eye was due in by ass-early that morning too.
Eventually I found her at the new coffee shop on Penn's campus, Gia Pronto (NOTE to current Penn students - excellent friggin' coffee!). She represented all that is L.A. by scarfing down a huge coffee and a bag of apple slices. And I, like the happy morning person I am, slathered a bagel in way too much cream cheese and happily inhaled my own coffee - did I mention how good the coffee is?
We got back to the B&B before Mumbles left for work and installed Michelle on the left half of the mattress in the scary "guest room." We chatted so long that Mumbles was late for work and had to take a cab. Ha ha.
Okay, I need a break...
Thursday, May 11, 2006
Apologies, a.k.a. excuses
I haven't had a lot of time to write lately (something about my job actually becoming a "job") and I've been preparing a bit for my first 5-year reunion at Penn, which happens this weekend in Philly. I will be out of town starting this afternoon, so if you really can't live another day without an update, I'm afraid you are out of luck.
However, when I return, I will try to post some pictures and make you all feel a) tickled pink for having been included in the festivities, or b) totally jealous that you didn't have as great a weekend as I did.
Until then, my pretties...
However, when I return, I will try to post some pictures and make you all feel a) tickled pink for having been included in the festivities, or b) totally jealous that you didn't have as great a weekend as I did.
Until then, my pretties...
Friday, May 05, 2006
Fun for eggheads
Have you ever read the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty? I swear, this reminds me of those two years in college when I discovered and participated in the craze that is Model United Nations.
In any case, you should give it a read if you haven't yet done so. It may help you form really great arguments regarding this latest pissing contest between Iran and the United States.
Fascinating stuff.
In any case, you should give it a read if you haven't yet done so. It may help you form really great arguments regarding this latest pissing contest between Iran and the United States.
Fascinating stuff.
Food for thought
I love reading Orson Scott Card's posts on The Ornery American. Even if you don't agree with everything he says, he expresses his point so logically that it is hard to think otherwise. In any case, I really respect his being so well-read and self-informed. Here is his latest ornery article:
American Soldiers and How We Use Them
When our young men (and women) volunteer to serve in our military, it is usually with an eye to serving their country, even at the risk of their own lives.
In the process of their service, they will take orders, constantly. Sometimes those orders will come from people they respect -- even love. Sometimes, though, the orders will come from people they dislike, or disdain, or fear, or hate.
Yet the ones who last in the military learn to submerge their own will and keep silent, except when some truly outrageous or dangerous or illegal order is given -- whereupon they either disregard it or make formal protest. These are, after all, Americans. Citizens first, citizens always, though they willingly surrender some of their rights during the duration of their service.
That is why they have such respect for the principle of civilian oversight and control over the military. In America, despite the fantasies of some writers, there is scant danger of a military coup, because few are the soldiers who would cooperate in setting military authority above civilian.
Self-Control of Our Soldiers
I have sat in conferences and seminars where civilian experts (plus me -- I'm not an expert on anything) offer their counsel on issues that will matter to those making decisions concerning our military's future. The civilians are at the table; an officer moderates but takes no sides.
And lining the walls are officers in uniform, who say absolutely nothing except when asked to provide some bit of information. They listen. They take notes. They never, never contradict anybody.
Now, this would be impossible to me. Bereft as I am of expertise, I do have a full raft of doubts and questions and make myself quite irritating to some of the experts -- even as I eagerly learn from them.
I remember being at one seminar a year or so before the election of 2004. The experts were, with perhaps one exception, all contemptuous of Bush and his administration, and some of them repeatedly spoke as if everyone knew that Bush would be turned out of office in the upcoming election.
Finally I had to speak up and point out that it was highly unlikely that Bush would be defeated. "Americans don't turn out their presidents in the middle of a war. Even a bloody, unpopular war like the Civil War -- we kept Lincoln. Don't bet on Bush being thrown out."
Afterward, one officer took me aside and quietly said, "Thank you." For which bit of "wisdom" that I said he was thanking me, I could only guess. Perhaps that comment about President Bush and his chances of reelection.
Only the Retired Can Speak
Our soldiers silence their own voices while they're in service, so that no matter what party is in control, they can serve with their civilian leaders' full trust that they will carry out their orders.
Only when a soldier leaves the military is he free to speak his mind. And boy, are they ready to do it -- at least some of them.
Which brings us to the recent tempest in a teapot over the retired generals who, apparently, held a club meeting and agreed that Donald Rumsfeld was just awful and had to go.
As a result, we had all kinds of sober, head-shaking editorials in the local Democratic Party paper, assuring us that the wisdom of these retired generals absolutely must be heeded. Nothing for it but to have Mr. Rumsfeld's head on a pike.
This was silly, for any of us with a memory. There were plenty of retired generals during the Clinton administration who warned about the danger of our depleted military stores and the inappropriate use of our military -- but the Democratic Party newspapers throughout America (which is, of course, most of them) paid scant attention, swatting these retired generals aside.
What the Establishment Wants
Because, of course, the academic-intellectual-media Establishment of America has nothing but contempt, in the main, for our military. The Establishment regards itself as the heirs of the Vietnam anti-war protestors (which is why they just hate it when I call them, accurately, the Establishment), and their attitude toward the military ranges from suspicion to hostility.
They assume that anyone who enters the military must be a murderer at heart, who can't wait for a chance to torture people or club babies to death. Or at least turn their backs while other soldiers behave that way.
These are the people who think John Kerry was not a liar or a stooge when he accused the U.S. military in Vietnam of committing atrocities as a matter of policy. It was because of this attitude that so many of our embedded reporters were stunned to discover that the soldiers among whom they serve were actually decent, regular guys -- except that they were in really, really good physical shape and generally knew what they were doing in the face of the enemy.
The Establishment does not care one whit what generals have to say about anything. As a general rule, whatever the generals and admirals want, the Establishment assumes must be a boondoggle or a murderous plot against civilization.
But when you can find retired generals who want to say something bad about the Devil (i.e., anyone in the Bush administration who seems to be effective), then the Establishment is all ears. Oh, yes, we must listen to these wise, experienced public servants.
Why Some Generals Might Hate Rumsfeld
But let's remember some recent history. As soon as the Bush administration took office, they started rebuilding military stocks and stopped misusing our military on fools' errands. The generals rejoiced -- somebody cared about national defense again!
But the rejoicing soon slackened, because the Bush administration wasn't just listening -- it was talking.
Donald Rumsfeld did not go down to the Pentagon with a blank purchase order on which the generals could write down their wishes, which it would be Rumsfeld's job to grant.
Instead, he went there as one of the most accomplished and conniving bureaucratic maneuverers ever to work in Washington -- and that's saying something.
Rumsfeld had an agenda, partly derived from President Bush and partly from his own experience in the past. Rumsfeld knew that the military, if left to itself, would choke on its own institutional debris.
For all fulltime professional military cultures share some common traits. For one thing, during peacetime, it is not the great military leaders who rise, it is the conniving bureaucratic generals. As a conniving bureaucrat himself, Rumsfeld knew exactly whom he was dealing with, and he was better at the game. (Plus, he had the ear of the Commander-in-Chief, and he was a civilian.)
So all the standard means by which a Washington bureaucracy captures and coopts its politically-appointed "leaders" simply did not work on Rumsfeld. They could not get around him. They could not delay and obfuscate and bloviate until he went away. When he said "hop," he kept watching until he saw some hopping behavior.
Now, Rumsfeld is no fool. His agenda was to remake the military into a force that could deal with modern asymmetrical warfare -- where a big country (us) must deal with a teeny-weeny country or a nontraditional military.
And there were people already in the military who knew exactly how to do the job. How to create a highly mobile, effective force that could, openly or clandestinely, counter terrorism, insurgency, guerrilla warfare, warlords, or rogue states.
Rumsfeld found those people. Rumsfeld made sure they were listened to.
Some of them had been struggling for years to get the bureaucratic generals to listen to them. But the old ways of warfare were so thoroughly intrenched that they could barely be budged.
Rumsfeld budged them.
The result was a general change in doctrine and organization that required, for instance, Navy and Air Force pilots to be in direct contact with ground troops -- not with generals, but with captains and lieutenants and squad leaders on the ground.
Small groups of highly-trained soldiers were inserted into remote areas where they became friends with the local citizens and earned their trust, until the locals began to tell them where the guerrillas or terrorists were hiding and what the best way was to get to them.
As a result, they stopped preparing for the last war and actually began to prepare for the war that they were soon called upon to fight in Afghanistan and, after the initial conquest, in Iraq.
Oh, that conquest of Iraq -- that was traditional warfare. That's what these generals were trained to fight. But they hated Rumsfeld's meddling. They knew how to do this.
It was only after that war ended, and the occupation began, that we began to see what had already been amply demonstrated in Afghanistan, if anyone had cared to notice:
In asymmetrical warfare, you cannot win until and unless you have allies, small and large, among the locals. There is no quantity or strength or targeting of cruise missiles that will accomplish anything compared to what you can do with a couple of Farsi-speaking Special Ops soldiers who have earned the respect and trust of villagers. When those villagers believe that they will be protected from reprisals and that these soldiers don't mean to rule over them, then they will help.
The war in Afghanistan was fought (and continues to be fought) through the use of U.S. soldiers of many different ranks who know and care about the people they're working with, and can help them fight their own war for civilization and against the forces of tyranny or anarchy.
But that kind of war has no glory in it ... at least not for generals.
Think of what happened to these recently retired generals. They kept their mouths shut and took orders and survived all the bureaucratic maneuvering and all the promotion boards to finally get to a position of real authority in the military. To be a general was like being king. You could make stuff happen!
And suddenly, because of Donald Rumsfeld, they found that most of the interesting work was being done by small groups who were trained by remote and obscure branches of the service. You went to Baghdad and sat in an office and gradually realized that you were almost completely interchangeable with any other general officer, because it was at much lower levels that the interesting and important decisions were being made and actions were being taken.
They couldn't blame Bush. But they could blame Rumsfeld. After all, he was the one they could see. They heard rumors about how generals withered under his scorn. How he not only gave orders, but also checked up on compliance and made life hell for people who resisted him on issues he cared about (which are, of course, all of them).
Where Are the Pro-Rumsfeld Generals?
Not all generals responded this way, of course. In fact, most of them recognized that what they were seeing was a revolutionary change, mostly for the better.
Not entirely. We still have an Air Force that is being pressed by Congress into buying an airplane that is too expensive to be usable in battle; but that's not Rumsfeld's fault, and they know it.
No, I daresay that most officers, while they might disagree with this or that idea of Rumsfeld's (or Bush's!), recognize that this is the best civilian leadership the military has had since Eisenhower was President.
But somehow the Establishment isn't quoting any of them.
Partly, I suspect, because the officers who respect Rumsfeld and recognize the greatness of his achievement -- moving the military to change itself! -- are still in service or, having retired, have no motivation at all to pick up the phone and call a reporter.
What would they say? "Oh, Mr. New York Times Reporter, I want to tell you how great a job I think Mr. Rumsfeld is doing and how well I think the war is going in Iraq."
They couldn't even finish that sentence before they heard the dial tone again. Remember, the press hates the military -- they just hate Bush and his administration more.
How Much Do They Hate Our Soldiers?
It isn't just the press, of course. It's the entertainment media -- just as much a part of the Establishment, and thrilled to take opportunities to spread anti-Bush propaganda.
Of course, the obvious ones, like David E. Kelley with his endless, unfunny, and lying attacks on the Bush administration in Boston Legal, are not terribly effective.
There is, however, a much subtler campaign going on -- which may, in fact, not be a campaign at all, but simply a natural response to the extreme leftist and anti-American culture that permeates the Establishment in Hollywood.
Here's where it shows up:
On Prison Break (a terrific show, by the way), one of the prisoners was a soldier in Iraq, where he was an expert at "getting" stuff that superior officers wanted -- good liquor, for instance. Black marketeering, technically -- but a time-honored tradition in all military organizations.
As a reward, he is given a cushy, you-won't-get-killed assignment as a guard over prisoners of war. But he overhears some American officer torturing somebody, and he reports it.
When he refuses to recant, he is arrested and given a dishonorable discharge for black marketeering -- by the very officer who asked him to get him stuff. Why? To silence him and stop him from exposing the systematic torture going on in the military prison.
Now, to anyone who gives this a moment's thought, this is a silly idea. If our military were really carrying out systematic torture, then (1) they would not assign an untrusted person to be within earshot of it; (2) if someone did discover it, they would (being brutal and immoral) kill him -- nothing is simpler than killing somebody in war and claiming it was enemy action that got him; and (3) they would never give him a dishonorable discharge, since that would send him home to where he would have no trouble at all getting the academic-intellectual-media Establishment to listen to his charges and publish them.
But quite apart from the absurdity of this, here is the real damage: Prison Break doesn't make a big deal about the use of torture. It takes it for granted that of course our military is torturing people.
Now take Lost -- one of the best shows in the history of television. They have the character Sayid Jarrah (Naveen Andrews), who was a torturer in the Iraqi military. So far so good -- he's a fascinating, complicated, tormented character because he managed to keep his conscience but can't get rid of his memories.
But apparently somebody said something scornful to a Lost writer about how they must have been pressured by the government not to tell the "truth." Yeah, they said, you can show Iraqi torturers, but nothing about American torturers.
So, to be fair and evenhanded (they suppose), they do another flashback episode in Sayid's story in which his first experience as a torturer is actually under the direction of Americans who captured him during the Gulf War back in 1991.
In other words, the Iraqi torturer learned torture from American soldiers.
Again, there is no open outrage about this -- these are not shallow propagandists like David E. Kelley. They just take it for granted that American soldiers torture people.
A third example: 24. Again, a brilliantly effective show. They show a Counter-Terrorism Unit (CTU) that has a torturer on staff, ready, by the use of drugs or brutality, to extract needed information on an emergency basis -- from anyone, including American citizens.
Moreover, the leading character, Jack, does his own ad hoc torture -- "off the books" -- in order to get results. Totally justified, because of course there's such time pressure to finish the whole thing in twenty-four one-hour episodes.
Ostensibly, 24 doesn't even seem to be against the use of torture. But they show it as a routine policy instrument of the U.S. government.
Here's the truth: Torture, per se, doesn't work. When you inflict enough pain, most people say whatever they need to say in order to make it stop. While those strong enough to resist it, die without telling anything true.
And if you use drugs, what you get are fantasy answers -- in the dream-state of drugs, the answers you get aren't particularly reliable.
In short, torture doesn't work.
What does work is deception -- threats, yes, but also reframing the world of the prisoner being interrogated so that telling you what you need to know comes to make perfect sense.
It's like the old myth that you can't hypnotize anyone to do something he doesn't want to do. For instance, you can't tell a hypnosis patient to take of her clothes in front of a room full of people. True enough -- but you can tell her that she is coming home from a hot day of outdoor activities and she can't wait to get into the shower, and here's the shower, and ... and the clothes come right off, if the trance is deep enough.
Reframing is not torture. Lying is not torture. They are legitimate means of gaining urgently needed true information from the people who have it.
A Climate of Loathing
It is arguable that 24 is pro-military and pro-American. But the effect of these three shows is to plant and reinforce the idea in the minds of the viewers of the program that the American government and the American military torture prisoners whenever they need to. And if the namby-pamby higherups won't authorize it, the guys in the field will do it themselves, without authority, in order to save America.
What are the consequences of making this belief "common knowledge"?
1. People who have fantasies of torturing people will be more likely to join the military and law enforcement organizations than they already are, thinking that the torture they long to inflict will be excused or even authorized. As a result, our soldiers and police have to serve alongside an increasing percentage of dangerous wackos.
2. Americans learn to think of our own soldiers with a kind of sick dread -- did you have to torture anybody when you were in the military? And when the soldier looks at them like they're insane and says, "No, of course not, I killed them directly, in battle, you idiot, because they were shooting at me," the person pats his hand and says, "I understand, you can't talk about it."
3. These TV shows are picked up and shown in foreign countries, where anti-American sentiments are fueled by the fact that even American shows depict American soldiers as torturers -- so who can doubt it now? Therefore, if an American soldier is captured, his captors will be perfectly justified in torturing him, won't they?
This might be justified if, in fact, there were any evidence that American soldiers or police used torture as an instrument of policy -- i.e., that people with legitimate authority use torture.
There are rumors that the CIA has used client states that do torture in order to get around U.S. prohibitions; but what the people who spread this belief forget is that these soldiers -- and CIA agents -- are Americans.
What American Soldiers Do
In the real world, not the paranoid fantasies of anti-Patriot-Act mouth-frothers, there is not a shred of evidence that America is using torture anywhere. Not even in Guantanamo.
And if we learn anything from the aberrant events at Abu Ghraib, it's this: If wacko mistreatment of prisoners is going on, it can't be kept secret.
American soldiers are not perfect. In the heat of battle, terrible things are done. There really is such a thing as blood-lust, the berserker mentality in which adrenalin-charged people carry out appalling acts of slaughter, and Americans are not immune to it.
There are also sick or evil people who use war as an excuse to indulge their immoral desires.
These things happen in all armies, throughout all of history. And in many cultures, such acts are institutionalized. Many American Indian tribes routinely tortured prisoners; the Spanish Inquisition really happened.
What is remarkable about American soldiers is that, on average, there has never been a more humane group of soldiers in the history of the world. Sure, Yanks have been resented as occupiers or conquerors -- what occupiers or conquerors have not been?
But our soldiers are far more often cheered as liberators or at least tolerated as decent guys trying to do their jobs well. Even in Iraq, though the mainstream media do their best to pretend these things don't happen, there are countless incidents that show that many, perhaps most, Iraqis and Afghanis are grateful for the presence of American soldiers.
American soldiers have died or risked death to save civilian lives. They have also served the civilian population in many other highly visible ways. Many Iraqis -- perhaps most -- trust an American soldier more than any other figure in their country right now.
Yet somehow most charges of widespread torture by Americans in Iraq come from insane anti-American Americans, like Ramsey Clark and his ilk. Most Iraqis know they have been liberated from a terror state, not had a new one imposed on them.
With our highly targetable weaponry, America has virtually renounced damage to civilians as a method of war. In our ground engagements, our soldiers are able to be far more selective in targeting than any army in history.
No army has ever been as self-restrained as our army is today. And that is not because of pressure from the Left. It's because our soldiers are decent American citizens who are serving their country, not getting vengeance or indulging authority fantasies.
So these charges of torture, so carelessly and negligently made by our leading television writers, are being applied to Americans who are innocent of such offenses.
Yet foreigners are being convinced that Americans are all torturers, because our own TV shows admit it; and it is hardly far-fetched to say that this creates part of the climate from which our terrorist enemies recruit their bombers. Indeed, I think it is fair to say that there will be an undeniable causal chain from these charges of torture to dead American, military and otherwise.
Who Are the Sellouts?
After all, watching glamorous actors smoke leads people to smoke -- we know it happened. The stories we share as entertainment play an enormous role in shaping the moral worldview of our own culture -- and any other culture that receives our entertainment media.
So when the Establishment slanders these American soldiers, exposing them to greater risk of death or betrayal or, if captured, torture, it is not just "entertainment." It is a gross evil being perpetrated against those who are risking most in defense of our civilization.
How long would these television writers last -- as writers, anyway -- under a government led by a Saddam or an Osama or the Taliban? They can only write such slanders against their own nation's troops in a free country defended by soldiers like ours.
There are consequences to the things that writers write and actors portray. Yet so anti-American has the culture of Hollywood become that apparently nobody on the set, nobody in the production company, nobody in the networks challenged these episodes that clearly and obviously will lead to people feeling justified in the torture or murder of some (or many) American soldiers?
Propaganda works. Lies, repeated often enough, are perceived as truth. That's why we have an American populace right now that truly believes we are losing one of the best-fought and successful military actions in history. And that's why we will soon live in a world where everyone believes that the best, most self-restrained and decent soldiers in history are the opposite.
And all because, in Hollywood, anyone who makes a tv show that looks too pro-American will be despised for having sold out to "the establishment." That's because, inside the Establishment, the myth persists that the "establishment" is the government and traditional-values Americans.
But this is not so. Traditional-values Americans are despised in Hollywood -- and in Hollywood's work-product -- as religious wackos, or as soldiers who torture, or as rightwing presidents who conspire to take over a country they already run. In doing this, Hollywood merely follows along with the Media Establishment, who are in lockstep with the Academic Establishment that gave them their college degrees in journalism or English.
That is the Establishment to which these writers have completely sold out, having replaced facts and logic with the "common knowledge" of those who shape the opinions of the elite.
And as these false charges of routine, government-sanctioned torture begin to have their effects in the real world, these are the people who will have the blood of our soldiers on their hands. Why? Because they put the good opinion of the Establishment ahead of the lives and safety of our soldiers.
"But we were just writing a TV episode!"
That's right. Just typing. How easily the terrible lies slip out through the fingers onto the page; how noiselessly they slip into the public mind.
Copyright © 2006 by Orson Scott Card.
American Soldiers and How We Use Them
When our young men (and women) volunteer to serve in our military, it is usually with an eye to serving their country, even at the risk of their own lives.
In the process of their service, they will take orders, constantly. Sometimes those orders will come from people they respect -- even love. Sometimes, though, the orders will come from people they dislike, or disdain, or fear, or hate.
Yet the ones who last in the military learn to submerge their own will and keep silent, except when some truly outrageous or dangerous or illegal order is given -- whereupon they either disregard it or make formal protest. These are, after all, Americans. Citizens first, citizens always, though they willingly surrender some of their rights during the duration of their service.
That is why they have such respect for the principle of civilian oversight and control over the military. In America, despite the fantasies of some writers, there is scant danger of a military coup, because few are the soldiers who would cooperate in setting military authority above civilian.
Self-Control of Our Soldiers
I have sat in conferences and seminars where civilian experts (plus me -- I'm not an expert on anything) offer their counsel on issues that will matter to those making decisions concerning our military's future. The civilians are at the table; an officer moderates but takes no sides.
And lining the walls are officers in uniform, who say absolutely nothing except when asked to provide some bit of information. They listen. They take notes. They never, never contradict anybody.
Now, this would be impossible to me. Bereft as I am of expertise, I do have a full raft of doubts and questions and make myself quite irritating to some of the experts -- even as I eagerly learn from them.
I remember being at one seminar a year or so before the election of 2004. The experts were, with perhaps one exception, all contemptuous of Bush and his administration, and some of them repeatedly spoke as if everyone knew that Bush would be turned out of office in the upcoming election.
Finally I had to speak up and point out that it was highly unlikely that Bush would be defeated. "Americans don't turn out their presidents in the middle of a war. Even a bloody, unpopular war like the Civil War -- we kept Lincoln. Don't bet on Bush being thrown out."
Afterward, one officer took me aside and quietly said, "Thank you." For which bit of "wisdom" that I said he was thanking me, I could only guess. Perhaps that comment about President Bush and his chances of reelection.
Only the Retired Can Speak
Our soldiers silence their own voices while they're in service, so that no matter what party is in control, they can serve with their civilian leaders' full trust that they will carry out their orders.
Only when a soldier leaves the military is he free to speak his mind. And boy, are they ready to do it -- at least some of them.
Which brings us to the recent tempest in a teapot over the retired generals who, apparently, held a club meeting and agreed that Donald Rumsfeld was just awful and had to go.
As a result, we had all kinds of sober, head-shaking editorials in the local Democratic Party paper, assuring us that the wisdom of these retired generals absolutely must be heeded. Nothing for it but to have Mr. Rumsfeld's head on a pike.
This was silly, for any of us with a memory. There were plenty of retired generals during the Clinton administration who warned about the danger of our depleted military stores and the inappropriate use of our military -- but the Democratic Party newspapers throughout America (which is, of course, most of them) paid scant attention, swatting these retired generals aside.
What the Establishment Wants
Because, of course, the academic-intellectual-media Establishment of America has nothing but contempt, in the main, for our military. The Establishment regards itself as the heirs of the Vietnam anti-war protestors (which is why they just hate it when I call them, accurately, the Establishment), and their attitude toward the military ranges from suspicion to hostility.
They assume that anyone who enters the military must be a murderer at heart, who can't wait for a chance to torture people or club babies to death. Or at least turn their backs while other soldiers behave that way.
These are the people who think John Kerry was not a liar or a stooge when he accused the U.S. military in Vietnam of committing atrocities as a matter of policy. It was because of this attitude that so many of our embedded reporters were stunned to discover that the soldiers among whom they serve were actually decent, regular guys -- except that they were in really, really good physical shape and generally knew what they were doing in the face of the enemy.
The Establishment does not care one whit what generals have to say about anything. As a general rule, whatever the generals and admirals want, the Establishment assumes must be a boondoggle or a murderous plot against civilization.
But when you can find retired generals who want to say something bad about the Devil (i.e., anyone in the Bush administration who seems to be effective), then the Establishment is all ears. Oh, yes, we must listen to these wise, experienced public servants.
Why Some Generals Might Hate Rumsfeld
But let's remember some recent history. As soon as the Bush administration took office, they started rebuilding military stocks and stopped misusing our military on fools' errands. The generals rejoiced -- somebody cared about national defense again!
But the rejoicing soon slackened, because the Bush administration wasn't just listening -- it was talking.
Donald Rumsfeld did not go down to the Pentagon with a blank purchase order on which the generals could write down their wishes, which it would be Rumsfeld's job to grant.
Instead, he went there as one of the most accomplished and conniving bureaucratic maneuverers ever to work in Washington -- and that's saying something.
Rumsfeld had an agenda, partly derived from President Bush and partly from his own experience in the past. Rumsfeld knew that the military, if left to itself, would choke on its own institutional debris.
For all fulltime professional military cultures share some common traits. For one thing, during peacetime, it is not the great military leaders who rise, it is the conniving bureaucratic generals. As a conniving bureaucrat himself, Rumsfeld knew exactly whom he was dealing with, and he was better at the game. (Plus, he had the ear of the Commander-in-Chief, and he was a civilian.)
So all the standard means by which a Washington bureaucracy captures and coopts its politically-appointed "leaders" simply did not work on Rumsfeld. They could not get around him. They could not delay and obfuscate and bloviate until he went away. When he said "hop," he kept watching until he saw some hopping behavior.
Now, Rumsfeld is no fool. His agenda was to remake the military into a force that could deal with modern asymmetrical warfare -- where a big country (us) must deal with a teeny-weeny country or a nontraditional military.
And there were people already in the military who knew exactly how to do the job. How to create a highly mobile, effective force that could, openly or clandestinely, counter terrorism, insurgency, guerrilla warfare, warlords, or rogue states.
Rumsfeld found those people. Rumsfeld made sure they were listened to.
Some of them had been struggling for years to get the bureaucratic generals to listen to them. But the old ways of warfare were so thoroughly intrenched that they could barely be budged.
Rumsfeld budged them.
The result was a general change in doctrine and organization that required, for instance, Navy and Air Force pilots to be in direct contact with ground troops -- not with generals, but with captains and lieutenants and squad leaders on the ground.
Small groups of highly-trained soldiers were inserted into remote areas where they became friends with the local citizens and earned their trust, until the locals began to tell them where the guerrillas or terrorists were hiding and what the best way was to get to them.
As a result, they stopped preparing for the last war and actually began to prepare for the war that they were soon called upon to fight in Afghanistan and, after the initial conquest, in Iraq.
Oh, that conquest of Iraq -- that was traditional warfare. That's what these generals were trained to fight. But they hated Rumsfeld's meddling. They knew how to do this.
It was only after that war ended, and the occupation began, that we began to see what had already been amply demonstrated in Afghanistan, if anyone had cared to notice:
In asymmetrical warfare, you cannot win until and unless you have allies, small and large, among the locals. There is no quantity or strength or targeting of cruise missiles that will accomplish anything compared to what you can do with a couple of Farsi-speaking Special Ops soldiers who have earned the respect and trust of villagers. When those villagers believe that they will be protected from reprisals and that these soldiers don't mean to rule over them, then they will help.
The war in Afghanistan was fought (and continues to be fought) through the use of U.S. soldiers of many different ranks who know and care about the people they're working with, and can help them fight their own war for civilization and against the forces of tyranny or anarchy.
But that kind of war has no glory in it ... at least not for generals.
Think of what happened to these recently retired generals. They kept their mouths shut and took orders and survived all the bureaucratic maneuvering and all the promotion boards to finally get to a position of real authority in the military. To be a general was like being king. You could make stuff happen!
And suddenly, because of Donald Rumsfeld, they found that most of the interesting work was being done by small groups who were trained by remote and obscure branches of the service. You went to Baghdad and sat in an office and gradually realized that you were almost completely interchangeable with any other general officer, because it was at much lower levels that the interesting and important decisions were being made and actions were being taken.
They couldn't blame Bush. But they could blame Rumsfeld. After all, he was the one they could see. They heard rumors about how generals withered under his scorn. How he not only gave orders, but also checked up on compliance and made life hell for people who resisted him on issues he cared about (which are, of course, all of them).
Where Are the Pro-Rumsfeld Generals?
Not all generals responded this way, of course. In fact, most of them recognized that what they were seeing was a revolutionary change, mostly for the better.
Not entirely. We still have an Air Force that is being pressed by Congress into buying an airplane that is too expensive to be usable in battle; but that's not Rumsfeld's fault, and they know it.
No, I daresay that most officers, while they might disagree with this or that idea of Rumsfeld's (or Bush's!), recognize that this is the best civilian leadership the military has had since Eisenhower was President.
But somehow the Establishment isn't quoting any of them.
Partly, I suspect, because the officers who respect Rumsfeld and recognize the greatness of his achievement -- moving the military to change itself! -- are still in service or, having retired, have no motivation at all to pick up the phone and call a reporter.
What would they say? "Oh, Mr. New York Times Reporter, I want to tell you how great a job I think Mr. Rumsfeld is doing and how well I think the war is going in Iraq."
They couldn't even finish that sentence before they heard the dial tone again. Remember, the press hates the military -- they just hate Bush and his administration more.
How Much Do They Hate Our Soldiers?
It isn't just the press, of course. It's the entertainment media -- just as much a part of the Establishment, and thrilled to take opportunities to spread anti-Bush propaganda.
Of course, the obvious ones, like David E. Kelley with his endless, unfunny, and lying attacks on the Bush administration in Boston Legal, are not terribly effective.
There is, however, a much subtler campaign going on -- which may, in fact, not be a campaign at all, but simply a natural response to the extreme leftist and anti-American culture that permeates the Establishment in Hollywood.
Here's where it shows up:
On Prison Break (a terrific show, by the way), one of the prisoners was a soldier in Iraq, where he was an expert at "getting" stuff that superior officers wanted -- good liquor, for instance. Black marketeering, technically -- but a time-honored tradition in all military organizations.
As a reward, he is given a cushy, you-won't-get-killed assignment as a guard over prisoners of war. But he overhears some American officer torturing somebody, and he reports it.
When he refuses to recant, he is arrested and given a dishonorable discharge for black marketeering -- by the very officer who asked him to get him stuff. Why? To silence him and stop him from exposing the systematic torture going on in the military prison.
Now, to anyone who gives this a moment's thought, this is a silly idea. If our military were really carrying out systematic torture, then (1) they would not assign an untrusted person to be within earshot of it; (2) if someone did discover it, they would (being brutal and immoral) kill him -- nothing is simpler than killing somebody in war and claiming it was enemy action that got him; and (3) they would never give him a dishonorable discharge, since that would send him home to where he would have no trouble at all getting the academic-intellectual-media Establishment to listen to his charges and publish them.
But quite apart from the absurdity of this, here is the real damage: Prison Break doesn't make a big deal about the use of torture. It takes it for granted that of course our military is torturing people.
Now take Lost -- one of the best shows in the history of television. They have the character Sayid Jarrah (Naveen Andrews), who was a torturer in the Iraqi military. So far so good -- he's a fascinating, complicated, tormented character because he managed to keep his conscience but can't get rid of his memories.
But apparently somebody said something scornful to a Lost writer about how they must have been pressured by the government not to tell the "truth." Yeah, they said, you can show Iraqi torturers, but nothing about American torturers.
So, to be fair and evenhanded (they suppose), they do another flashback episode in Sayid's story in which his first experience as a torturer is actually under the direction of Americans who captured him during the Gulf War back in 1991.
In other words, the Iraqi torturer learned torture from American soldiers.
Again, there is no open outrage about this -- these are not shallow propagandists like David E. Kelley. They just take it for granted that American soldiers torture people.
A third example: 24. Again, a brilliantly effective show. They show a Counter-Terrorism Unit (CTU) that has a torturer on staff, ready, by the use of drugs or brutality, to extract needed information on an emergency basis -- from anyone, including American citizens.
Moreover, the leading character, Jack, does his own ad hoc torture -- "off the books" -- in order to get results. Totally justified, because of course there's such time pressure to finish the whole thing in twenty-four one-hour episodes.
Ostensibly, 24 doesn't even seem to be against the use of torture. But they show it as a routine policy instrument of the U.S. government.
Here's the truth: Torture, per se, doesn't work. When you inflict enough pain, most people say whatever they need to say in order to make it stop. While those strong enough to resist it, die without telling anything true.
And if you use drugs, what you get are fantasy answers -- in the dream-state of drugs, the answers you get aren't particularly reliable.
In short, torture doesn't work.
What does work is deception -- threats, yes, but also reframing the world of the prisoner being interrogated so that telling you what you need to know comes to make perfect sense.
It's like the old myth that you can't hypnotize anyone to do something he doesn't want to do. For instance, you can't tell a hypnosis patient to take of her clothes in front of a room full of people. True enough -- but you can tell her that she is coming home from a hot day of outdoor activities and she can't wait to get into the shower, and here's the shower, and ... and the clothes come right off, if the trance is deep enough.
Reframing is not torture. Lying is not torture. They are legitimate means of gaining urgently needed true information from the people who have it.
A Climate of Loathing
It is arguable that 24 is pro-military and pro-American. But the effect of these three shows is to plant and reinforce the idea in the minds of the viewers of the program that the American government and the American military torture prisoners whenever they need to. And if the namby-pamby higherups won't authorize it, the guys in the field will do it themselves, without authority, in order to save America.
What are the consequences of making this belief "common knowledge"?
1. People who have fantasies of torturing people will be more likely to join the military and law enforcement organizations than they already are, thinking that the torture they long to inflict will be excused or even authorized. As a result, our soldiers and police have to serve alongside an increasing percentage of dangerous wackos.
2. Americans learn to think of our own soldiers with a kind of sick dread -- did you have to torture anybody when you were in the military? And when the soldier looks at them like they're insane and says, "No, of course not, I killed them directly, in battle, you idiot, because they were shooting at me," the person pats his hand and says, "I understand, you can't talk about it."
3. These TV shows are picked up and shown in foreign countries, where anti-American sentiments are fueled by the fact that even American shows depict American soldiers as torturers -- so who can doubt it now? Therefore, if an American soldier is captured, his captors will be perfectly justified in torturing him, won't they?
This might be justified if, in fact, there were any evidence that American soldiers or police used torture as an instrument of policy -- i.e., that people with legitimate authority use torture.
There are rumors that the CIA has used client states that do torture in order to get around U.S. prohibitions; but what the people who spread this belief forget is that these soldiers -- and CIA agents -- are Americans.
What American Soldiers Do
In the real world, not the paranoid fantasies of anti-Patriot-Act mouth-frothers, there is not a shred of evidence that America is using torture anywhere. Not even in Guantanamo.
And if we learn anything from the aberrant events at Abu Ghraib, it's this: If wacko mistreatment of prisoners is going on, it can't be kept secret.
American soldiers are not perfect. In the heat of battle, terrible things are done. There really is such a thing as blood-lust, the berserker mentality in which adrenalin-charged people carry out appalling acts of slaughter, and Americans are not immune to it.
There are also sick or evil people who use war as an excuse to indulge their immoral desires.
These things happen in all armies, throughout all of history. And in many cultures, such acts are institutionalized. Many American Indian tribes routinely tortured prisoners; the Spanish Inquisition really happened.
What is remarkable about American soldiers is that, on average, there has never been a more humane group of soldiers in the history of the world. Sure, Yanks have been resented as occupiers or conquerors -- what occupiers or conquerors have not been?
But our soldiers are far more often cheered as liberators or at least tolerated as decent guys trying to do their jobs well. Even in Iraq, though the mainstream media do their best to pretend these things don't happen, there are countless incidents that show that many, perhaps most, Iraqis and Afghanis are grateful for the presence of American soldiers.
American soldiers have died or risked death to save civilian lives. They have also served the civilian population in many other highly visible ways. Many Iraqis -- perhaps most -- trust an American soldier more than any other figure in their country right now.
Yet somehow most charges of widespread torture by Americans in Iraq come from insane anti-American Americans, like Ramsey Clark and his ilk. Most Iraqis know they have been liberated from a terror state, not had a new one imposed on them.
With our highly targetable weaponry, America has virtually renounced damage to civilians as a method of war. In our ground engagements, our soldiers are able to be far more selective in targeting than any army in history.
No army has ever been as self-restrained as our army is today. And that is not because of pressure from the Left. It's because our soldiers are decent American citizens who are serving their country, not getting vengeance or indulging authority fantasies.
So these charges of torture, so carelessly and negligently made by our leading television writers, are being applied to Americans who are innocent of such offenses.
Yet foreigners are being convinced that Americans are all torturers, because our own TV shows admit it; and it is hardly far-fetched to say that this creates part of the climate from which our terrorist enemies recruit their bombers. Indeed, I think it is fair to say that there will be an undeniable causal chain from these charges of torture to dead American, military and otherwise.
Who Are the Sellouts?
After all, watching glamorous actors smoke leads people to smoke -- we know it happened. The stories we share as entertainment play an enormous role in shaping the moral worldview of our own culture -- and any other culture that receives our entertainment media.
So when the Establishment slanders these American soldiers, exposing them to greater risk of death or betrayal or, if captured, torture, it is not just "entertainment." It is a gross evil being perpetrated against those who are risking most in defense of our civilization.
How long would these television writers last -- as writers, anyway -- under a government led by a Saddam or an Osama or the Taliban? They can only write such slanders against their own nation's troops in a free country defended by soldiers like ours.
There are consequences to the things that writers write and actors portray. Yet so anti-American has the culture of Hollywood become that apparently nobody on the set, nobody in the production company, nobody in the networks challenged these episodes that clearly and obviously will lead to people feeling justified in the torture or murder of some (or many) American soldiers?
Propaganda works. Lies, repeated often enough, are perceived as truth. That's why we have an American populace right now that truly believes we are losing one of the best-fought and successful military actions in history. And that's why we will soon live in a world where everyone believes that the best, most self-restrained and decent soldiers in history are the opposite.
And all because, in Hollywood, anyone who makes a tv show that looks too pro-American will be despised for having sold out to "the establishment." That's because, inside the Establishment, the myth persists that the "establishment" is the government and traditional-values Americans.
But this is not so. Traditional-values Americans are despised in Hollywood -- and in Hollywood's work-product -- as religious wackos, or as soldiers who torture, or as rightwing presidents who conspire to take over a country they already run. In doing this, Hollywood merely follows along with the Media Establishment, who are in lockstep with the Academic Establishment that gave them their college degrees in journalism or English.
That is the Establishment to which these writers have completely sold out, having replaced facts and logic with the "common knowledge" of those who shape the opinions of the elite.
And as these false charges of routine, government-sanctioned torture begin to have their effects in the real world, these are the people who will have the blood of our soldiers on their hands. Why? Because they put the good opinion of the Establishment ahead of the lives and safety of our soldiers.
"But we were just writing a TV episode!"
That's right. Just typing. How easily the terrible lies slip out through the fingers onto the page; how noiselessly they slip into the public mind.
Copyright © 2006 by Orson Scott Card.
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