Books reviews, current events, and other musings

In A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America, UC Berkeley professor Ronald Takaki describes the experiences of the major ethnic groups in America. Though I was familiar with what Blacks, Native Americans, and Jews went through, he provides a lot of details I hadn't seen. On the other hand, the stories of Chinese, Japanese, Irish, and Mexican immigrants were totally new to me. For each group, Takaki covers the circumstances in the home country that inspired the migration to America, the kind of people who arrived, their experiences, their children's experiences, and how other Americans treated them. The narrative gets depressing at times, as you hear the hardships that each ethnicity faced. Overall, A Different Mirror is an important alternate viewpoint to the traditional history we learned in school.

posted by Julian at 9:55PM

Eric Alterman suggests a tantalizing possibility.

One good reason for progressives to work for President Kerry: “Senator Barney Frank.” (That’s the word in the Massachusetts delegation).

Wouldn't that piss off the right-wing homophobes?

Many of the political cartoons about the Dean Iowa speech are downright nasty (from Counterspin Special). It's disgusting how the media has overplayed something so insignificant. This cartoon captures my perspective on it all.


posted by Julian at 9:25PM

The ineptitude of the administration's planning for post-war Iraq is shocking (from Eschaton).

• Twice -- in May of 2002 and January of 2003 -- the CIA held war game exercises designed to plan for postwar problems. Pentagon officials attended the early sessions but then their superiors in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) ordered them to stop going.
"Their displeasure over the CIA exercise," Fallows writes, "was an early illustration of a view that became stronger throughout 2002: that post-war planning was an impediment to war."

• In 2002, Congress appropriated $5 million to fund the "Future of Iraq" project, headed by State Department veteran Thomas Warrick and designed to plan for the aftermath of war. Gathering Iraq experts and Iraqi exiles into 17 working groups, the project issued 13 reports, each addressing a potential postwar problem. But when former general Jay Garner was named to run postwar Iraq, Rumsfeld told him not to bother reading the project's recommendations and ordered him to fire Warrick.

• The Future of Iraq project warned that one potentially devastating postwar problem would be looting. International relief agencies, experienced in Third World wars, agreed. So did the U.S. Army, which recommended sending 400,000 troops to pacify Iraq. Rumsfeld whittled that number down to 200,000.

How could they lead the nation into war while blatantly ignoring all the expert advice that was being offered to them? Idiots.

Of course, the big story of the day is the New Hampshire primary. Kerry, with two big wins under his belt, is the clear frontrunner. I was puzzling over my indifference towards Kerry, until I came across Jack Beatty's article in The Atlantic contrasting Kerry and Edwards.

Kerry, who buried his applause lines in the gray lava of his monotone, got his loudest cheers when he entered the room. Once he opened his mouth the energy began to seep away — at any rate, in the "overflow" room from where we watched Kerry on a giant screen. Listening to him, I saw a long line of Democratic bores — Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Bradley, Gore — who lost because people could not bear listening to them. John Kerry belongs in their dreary company.
...
Presidential politics turns on personality. Kerry — haggard, a knight of the woeful countenance — lacks vitality, the aura of promise.

Personality is the crucial factor in this race, since the policy views of the top Democratic hopefuls aren't that different. Dean's attitude and statements are the main reasons I'm supporting him. However, that same Dean personality that attracted such a strong grass-roots movement alienates lots of voters, leading to higher unfavorable ratings and his second or third place finish in New Hampshire and Iowa.

Other factors also contributed to Dean's fall. Many Democrats are afraid that he will have a tough time beating George Bush. Media coverage of Dean has been quite negative, culminating in the portrayal of his Iowa scream speech as a massively significant character flaw. In light of all that, coming in a strong second is reasonable.

This is shaping up to be an odd race. Kerry won both primaries and has the best resume but tends to be an uninspiring speaker. Dean discovered the winning theme, aggressively attacking Bush and putting forth his own vision, which the other candidates have co-opted. Dean built up a strong organization and raised significant funds, but electability concerns and misgivings about his personality have kept him from winning any primaries. Edwards is a fantastic speaker and has remained positive, but doesn't have much experience, money, or organization. The way things are going, it's entirely possible that none of them will receive a majority of the delegates.

posted by Julian at 9:40PM

Bill Clinton had a great line about the deficit (from Counterspin Central).

Clinton added, 'People ask me what great new ideas did you bring to Washington. I say, `Arithmetic.' '' Again, he paused. ``You know, when practical people find themselves in a hole, they stop digging.''

Too bad the Bush administration lacks any sense of practicality.

There's an amusing online text adventure in which you play Hamlet (from Ghost in the Machine). It's a nostalgic reminder of the Infocom and Scott Adams adventures that I used to enjoy as a teenager.

I'm curious what will happen in New Hampshire tomorrow. It looks like Kerry will win and Dean will be a close second, though the polls have been totally unreliable lately. We'll see how voters weigh Dean's excitement compared to Dean's electability.

posted by Julian at 8:10PM

In A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis, journalist David Rieff provides a moral critique of the agencies that attempt to alleviate the human suffering arising from war, famine, and other disasters. Rieff's writing is unclear despite being repetitious, making it difficult to comprehend his concerns about the humanitarian enterprise or what he envisions as an alternative. A strong familiarity with the humanitarian organizations and their activities would have made his treatment a lot more accessible.

Every movement has flaws at least as significant as those Rieff finds in humanitarianism. Rieff points out that Western governments use humanitarian activity to claim they're doing something, while they avoid challenging the regimes guilty of atrocities. Still, it's not clear what the humanitarian agencies could do differently, or that the humanitarian angle makes the West less likely to intervene. Rieff worries about how humanitarian organizations are relying increasingly on government support, reducing their ability to act independently. He seems most concerned about the way humanitarian NGOs advocate human rights and political stances, conflicting with their original philosophy of helping anyone in need and staying out of the political struggles.

The book has a very specific focus, and I found myself more curious about topics that were outside its scope. Samantha Power's "A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide, which I plan to read at some point, should provide some much-needed background about the horrible events of recent years and the limited US response to them. I also wondered what the humanitarian agencies did in the field, along with the immediate and longer term effects of their actions. In general, I prefer books that are mostly facts with a little analysis, but A Bed for the Night has the opposite ratio. For almost half of the book, Rieff explored the humanitarian dilemmas in Bosnia, Rwanda, Kosovo, and Afghanistan; those analyses held my attention much more than the general discussion did.

Rieff mentioned some morally ambiguously humanitarian situations that were more compelling than his main points were. During World War II, the Red Cross was aware of the Nazi death camps but kept silent about them so they could keep providing assistance people in German-occupied territory. Hutus from Rwanda, many of them guilty of the genocide against the Tutsis, subsequently fled to refugee camps in Congo; how should they be handled? NGOs in Afghanistan under the Taliban were severely limited in the services they could offer to Afghan women, but the Afghan people would be worse off if the NGOs left. An exploration of those cases could be quite interesting.

A Bed for the Night raised some valid concerns about an area I hadn't considered before. Still, with all of the first-rate books out there, only people with a strong interest in humanitarianism should spend time reading it.

posted by Julian at 6:35PM