If you are on the Titanic, it doesn't matter where you sit.
In the most recent Obama administration shake up, Bob Gates will be leaving the Department of Defense, Leon Pannetta will move from the CIA to DoD, General David Petraeus will move from Afghanistan to the CIA and Ryan Crocker will move from Texas A&M (from whence came Bob Gates) to Afghanistan. As in the previous major changes in the White House staff and the economic team, competent, experienced hands are being replaced by...competent experienced hands. And so as Rahm Emanuel became Bill Daley and Larry Summers became Gene Sperling, we witness another changing of the guard designed to right the course of this haphazardly lurching administration that cannot seem to find its footing either at home or abroad.
The problem is that the root of the issue may not lie with the staff, but rather with the person doing the staffing.
Looking at this most recent reorganization, I have to ask what it will achieve? Putting partisanship aside, I do not question the competence of Panetta, Petraeus and Crocker, or their patriotism. They are all proven public servants, and certainly as qualified to hold their new positions as many who have come before them. But these appointments promise little improvement in our foreign policy and national security, which continues to be directed by a President who cannot or will not get his team moving in a coherent direction.
Mr. Obama famously campaigned on a message of change, and in general change can be good--that is if it is change with a purpose. But there is a sort of grim sameness to these changes. More "gown-ups" are being called in, more of the non-partisan career types who will make the trains run on time. But it is increasingly apparent that these trains, even if they be efficiently managed high-speed ones, have no particular destination and we are in a global situation in which a lack of policy is even worse than a bad policy.
The best hope is that the President will shake himself free from his inclination to respond to individual events based on the recommendation of the loudest voice in the room at the moment--perhaps in the hopes of silencing the ruckus--and develop a serious vision for his foreign policy team. That hope, however, may prove to be as ephemeral as Mr. Obama's campaign rhetoric. We will more likely settle for hoping Messrs. Panetta, Petraeus, and Crocker (and is it cynical to expect we are going to hear Mr. Gates' name again before January, 2012?) can hold things together in their respective fiefdoms for the next twenty months, and that we don't encounter too many icebergs in the interim.
Published at Redstate.com
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Nancy Pelosi Is Right: Elections Shouldn't Matter As Much As They do
In an ideal world, of course.
Speaking at Tufts University on April 8th, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi had one of those marvelous moments of self-revelation in which a usually polished politician speaking casually and without a script among like-minded friends says what everyone is thinking--what everyone knows to be true--in this case what is considered an unquestionable "fact" by their audience. As you can see from the video, there was not a murmur when Pelosi circled around to her punch line that "elections should not matter as much as they do." She went on to lament that the lack of "shared values" had lead to the unpleasantness of last Friday in Congress with all the shouting and staying up late and worries over who would get to keep their Blackberrys.
The thing is, Pelosi is right. Elections are burdensome things. They are expensive, intrusive and all to frequently unfair. Even when you win, the cycle of fundraising and campaigning distracts from the business at hand.
Elections are particularly burdensome when you lose. Then their inconvenience becomes glaringly apparent. New crops of politicos have to be trained over and over again to do the same tasks as their predecessors. Perfectly able, even accomplished lawmakers are routinely tossed out on their ears to make way for the ignorant and green. Majorities and minorities ebb and flow, leading to confusion over policy and priorities. Your treasured projects, nursed and nurtured in good faith, are threatened by the newcomers who do not share your values--who may in fact be devoid of values altogether and may nip those tender shoots in the bud.
Really when you look at it from Pelosi's perspective, it all seems at best counter-intuitive and at worst barely civilized.
There has been some well-founded outrage at Pelosi's apparent disdain for the democratic process stemming from post-2008 mid-term sour grapes. I suspect, however, that the root of the problem for those of us who find her remarks disturbing rather than self-evident is less the word "election" and more the word "shared"--as in the values Pelosi believes we must all have in common to achieve a utopia free from those burdensome elections.
Variants of "share" are popular in President Obama's rhetoric as well, and I expect we will hear it several times from him this afternoon. I have noticed it as a curiously condescending word choice from a politician who is in my age group recalling what you would expect to hear from a parent or teacher, a disconnect he does not appear to see. It seems he understands the term differently. This new "sharing" is transitioning from being the free exercise of generosity--a learned trait for most humans--to being an obligatory act of subjugation to the state. You do not learn to share as a moral choice; you are told to do it. Should you attempt not to share what is yours--be it values or money--this government seems increasingly eager to put you back on the path of righteousness.
I find I am not comfortable with this obligatory sharing. I am one of those who do not consider pregnancy to be a punishment or gainful employment to be a prison. I am not eager to share my values with those who disagree on the first point or my money with those who differ on the second. As we consider the calls for us all to just get along, Nancy Pelosi's off-hand comment serves as a useful reminder of what too much compromise--too much sharing--can get us.
As unfortunate as it may seem at times, elections must continue to be our burden to bear.
Speaking at Tufts University on April 8th, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi had one of those marvelous moments of self-revelation in which a usually polished politician speaking casually and without a script among like-minded friends says what everyone is thinking--what everyone knows to be true--in this case what is considered an unquestionable "fact" by their audience. As you can see from the video, there was not a murmur when Pelosi circled around to her punch line that "elections should not matter as much as they do." She went on to lament that the lack of "shared values" had lead to the unpleasantness of last Friday in Congress with all the shouting and staying up late and worries over who would get to keep their Blackberrys.
The thing is, Pelosi is right. Elections are burdensome things. They are expensive, intrusive and all to frequently unfair. Even when you win, the cycle of fundraising and campaigning distracts from the business at hand.
Elections are particularly burdensome when you lose. Then their inconvenience becomes glaringly apparent. New crops of politicos have to be trained over and over again to do the same tasks as their predecessors. Perfectly able, even accomplished lawmakers are routinely tossed out on their ears to make way for the ignorant and green. Majorities and minorities ebb and flow, leading to confusion over policy and priorities. Your treasured projects, nursed and nurtured in good faith, are threatened by the newcomers who do not share your values--who may in fact be devoid of values altogether and may nip those tender shoots in the bud.
Really when you look at it from Pelosi's perspective, it all seems at best counter-intuitive and at worst barely civilized.
There has been some well-founded outrage at Pelosi's apparent disdain for the democratic process stemming from post-2008 mid-term sour grapes. I suspect, however, that the root of the problem for those of us who find her remarks disturbing rather than self-evident is less the word "election" and more the word "shared"--as in the values Pelosi believes we must all have in common to achieve a utopia free from those burdensome elections.
Variants of "share" are popular in President Obama's rhetoric as well, and I expect we will hear it several times from him this afternoon. I have noticed it as a curiously condescending word choice from a politician who is in my age group recalling what you would expect to hear from a parent or teacher, a disconnect he does not appear to see. It seems he understands the term differently. This new "sharing" is transitioning from being the free exercise of generosity--a learned trait for most humans--to being an obligatory act of subjugation to the state. You do not learn to share as a moral choice; you are told to do it. Should you attempt not to share what is yours--be it values or money--this government seems increasingly eager to put you back on the path of righteousness.
I find I am not comfortable with this obligatory sharing. I am one of those who do not consider pregnancy to be a punishment or gainful employment to be a prison. I am not eager to share my values with those who disagree on the first point or my money with those who differ on the second. As we consider the calls for us all to just get along, Nancy Pelosi's off-hand comment serves as a useful reminder of what too much compromise--too much sharing--can get us.
As unfortunate as it may seem at times, elections must continue to be our burden to bear.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
No Comment: Obama administration silence on the Jerusalem bombing is pathetic
Earlier today a bomb exploded on a crowded public bus outside the Jerusalem convention center, injuring more than 40 people. As Jennifer Rubin reports via Hareetz, this is the worst terrorist attack in the city in seven years, and given recent terrorist aggression against Israel out of Gaza, particularly disturbing.
The Obama administration response to this atrocity is stunning silence. Rubin also reports that no one has bothered to make contact with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The most recent messages on the State Department home page address World Water Day and Ending Violence Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity.
Gene Simmons is doing a better job of standing with Israel these days than the United States is. It is just pathetic.
The Obama administration response to this atrocity is stunning silence. Rubin also reports that no one has bothered to make contact with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The most recent messages on the State Department home page address World Water Day and Ending Violence Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity.
Gene Simmons is doing a better job of standing with Israel these days than the United States is. It is just pathetic.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
LETTERS
The Wall Street Journal
March 22, 2011
Documentation in Rumsfeld's Memoir Is Unprecedented
Peggy Noonan's strange outburst in the Journal's March 12 edition appears to be more about Ms. Noonan's unresolved personal issues with the Bush administration than about the substance of Donald Rumsfeld's book ("The Defense Secretary Who Let Bin Laden Get Away," Declarations). Bizarrely, she rails against the documentation in "Known and Unknown," claiming that "most memos prove nothing." Since Ms. Noonan does not like what the documents say, she has attempted to discredit them. As Mr. Rumsfeld's director of research, I would like to offer another and quite different view of this material, and how it was used in the memoir.
Mr. Rumsfeld decided when he embarked on this project in 2007 that his memoir would not be a collection of personal reminiscences, but rather a more substantive undertaking that would make use of his extensive records. A defining feature of the Rumsfeld collection is the original working function of the different types of documents. They were very much of their moment, written not for some abstract future history but to contend with the issues of the day.
While it is true as Ms. Noonan notes that some of these documents suggest Mr. Rumsfeld was not exclusively culpable for everything that went wrong in American foreign policy 2001-2006, they also fill other functions—for example to record his pride at supporting the 1964 Civil Rights legislation, his concerns over President Gerald Ford's refusal to meet with Russian dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and the successful Bush administration efforts at military transformation. For those who recognize that such documents provide an important foundation for historical analysis, they play a critical—and fascinating—supporting role in this project.
Readers and other interested parties can review them by "Known and Unknown" endnotes, as well as browse more than 2,000 additional documents in the "Library" section on the website. Additional future releases are planned. The goal is to give the public the means to read the full documents—and not just those Mr. Rumsfeld cited in his book or the passages he selected for the text—to reach their own conclusions about the events he witnessed. The documents contain errors, typos and the occasional awkward observation. But Mr. Rumsfeld concluded it was worth risking possible misunderstandings to give readers the opportunity to review the same materials he did when preparing the book.
As an academic and historian, I do not find the liberal use of this material in "Known and Unknown" to be "disturbing" as Ms. Noonan does, but see it rather as an important and exciting advancement of the boundaries of archival research. External factors such as time and location have long restricted access to primary documents to specialists. Now this material can be freely shared, even though it might be unsettling to those in the media who are used to controlling the flow of information to the public. The results can be far more substantive and responsible than the emotion-driven narratives fueled by conventional wisdom that constitute many popular histories. It is to be hoped that serious readers of "Known and Unknown" will understand the Rumsfeld documents in this context.
Victoria Coates, Ph.D.
Director of Research
Office of Donald Rumsfeld
Washington
The Wall Street Journal
March 22, 2011
Documentation in Rumsfeld's Memoir Is Unprecedented
Peggy Noonan's strange outburst in the Journal's March 12 edition appears to be more about Ms. Noonan's unresolved personal issues with the Bush administration than about the substance of Donald Rumsfeld's book ("The Defense Secretary Who Let Bin Laden Get Away," Declarations). Bizarrely, she rails against the documentation in "Known and Unknown," claiming that "most memos prove nothing." Since Ms. Noonan does not like what the documents say, she has attempted to discredit them. As Mr. Rumsfeld's director of research, I would like to offer another and quite different view of this material, and how it was used in the memoir.
Mr. Rumsfeld decided when he embarked on this project in 2007 that his memoir would not be a collection of personal reminiscences, but rather a more substantive undertaking that would make use of his extensive records. A defining feature of the Rumsfeld collection is the original working function of the different types of documents. They were very much of their moment, written not for some abstract future history but to contend with the issues of the day.
While it is true as Ms. Noonan notes that some of these documents suggest Mr. Rumsfeld was not exclusively culpable for everything that went wrong in American foreign policy 2001-2006, they also fill other functions—for example to record his pride at supporting the 1964 Civil Rights legislation, his concerns over President Gerald Ford's refusal to meet with Russian dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and the successful Bush administration efforts at military transformation. For those who recognize that such documents provide an important foundation for historical analysis, they play a critical—and fascinating—supporting role in this project.
Readers and other interested parties can review them by "Known and Unknown" endnotes, as well as browse more than 2,000 additional documents in the "Library" section on the website. Additional future releases are planned. The goal is to give the public the means to read the full documents—and not just those Mr. Rumsfeld cited in his book or the passages he selected for the text—to reach their own conclusions about the events he witnessed. The documents contain errors, typos and the occasional awkward observation. But Mr. Rumsfeld concluded it was worth risking possible misunderstandings to give readers the opportunity to review the same materials he did when preparing the book.
As an academic and historian, I do not find the liberal use of this material in "Known and Unknown" to be "disturbing" as Ms. Noonan does, but see it rather as an important and exciting advancement of the boundaries of archival research. External factors such as time and location have long restricted access to primary documents to specialists. Now this material can be freely shared, even though it might be unsettling to those in the media who are used to controlling the flow of information to the public. The results can be far more substantive and responsible than the emotion-driven narratives fueled by conventional wisdom that constitute many popular histories. It is to be hoped that serious readers of "Known and Unknown" will understand the Rumsfeld documents in this context.
Victoria Coates, Ph.D.
Director of Research
Office of Donald Rumsfeld
Washington
Friday, March 11, 2011
Bidding A Sad Farewell to Peggy Noonan
I have a few sad thoughts to add to this more thorough, magisterial deconstruction of Peggy Noonan’s column today on Donald Rumsfeld’s Known and Unknown.
Through the years I have tried to like Noonan, primarily because there are so few prominent female writers on major editorial pages, and even fewer conservatives. Also, as she frequently reminds us, she worked for Ronald Reagan and what is not to like about that?
Unfortunately, today's column is so far beyond the pale that even these powerful attractions cannot redeem her in my eyes. Noonan goes after Rumsfeld, who she declares devoid of "guts" and "brains," and his “stupid little” book too (I hope that "little" book didn't make too big of a hole in her plaster when she threw it at the wall, but I digress). Her main beef is that Rumsfeld failed both to capture Osama Bin Laden and to understand how the American psyche needed his capture after 9/11. Since as she again likes to remind us Noonan was in Manhattan on 9/11, she has claimed the mantle of Everyvictim and knows what all of us need, much more than Rumsfeld who after all was only in the Pentagon that day. We are treated to Noonan's OBL revenge fantasies, which involve scatological imagery and decapitation, and to her fury that Rumsfeld has not facilitated their satisfaction.
Noonan reserves, bizarrely, special vitriol for the documentation of Known and Unknown, and I may well take this part of the review personally since I have labored for some years in that particular salt mine. Noonan seems terribly put out that Rumsfeld has used a rich archive going back seven decades to document his book. She mocks and caricatures the effort--and darkly hints the memos might be falsified. She laments that "so many" Bush administration memoirs depend on primary documents (I can't think of another with even remotely comparable documentation--certainly not one that offers the reader the opportunity to freely consult the documents--but again, I digress). In the end she finds their presence so odious that she wants to physically dismember the book--to literally break its spine--for so oppressing her. These memos, she rages, "prove nothing."
I find all of this startling, since I generally consider it a good and useful exercise to go back to the original documents in order to build up thorough historical analysis. My complaints are reserved for those who selectively quote documents and then withhold the originals, so readers are forced to accept the writer's conclusions. Given the advances in digital technology, Rumsfeld has decided to challenge this construct and not only quote and cite the memos in his book, but also release thousands of them on a free-access website where they are available to readers made of sterner stuff than Noonan as links in a facsimile of the endnotes while the larger collection is browsable in a library-style section.
What is so gob-smackingly awful about this? Why ferociously attack an effort at rigorous scholarship and documentary transparency? Who does it hurt?
Upon reflection, it occurred to me that it hurts Peggy Noonan, who has been trading on her "insider" status in the Reagan administration for decades now. She is the source, in her parlance the witness, and if people take to releasing the actual documents, her fly-on-the-wall reminiscences drop precipitously in value, especially if God forbid the two conflict.
Perhaps not coincidentally, another potential victim of Rumsfeld's memo offensive is Noonan's fellow perennial insider, Bob Woodward, whose stock in trade is giving the impression of witnessing what should be hidden--accounts that generally confirm readers' vague suspicions about what must be going on in government--thus making the reader feel smart and in the know, and making Woodward's books sell.
Woodward, like Noonan, seems to feel threatened by Known and Unknown, and went after the book last week, calling Rumsfeld a liar for writing in Chapter 31 about a meeting with President Bush on September 26, 2001, in which Bush asked Rumsfeld to review the Iraq war plan then on the Pentagon shelf. Woodward's beef appears to be not with the wisdom of this order, but rather with the problematic fact that no account of it appears in Woodward's books on the Bush administration, and he had made a great show of re-tracing the definitive Iraq timeline. Ergo, the meeting did not happen, and even if it did, Iraq was not discussed.
Unfortunately for Woodward, Rumsfeld had made a handwritten note about the substance of his meeting on his calendar for that day, which he promptly released. It matches in all details the account in Known and Unknown. Woodward appeared to have given up this line of attack--wisely, for what else is there to say?--until the Noonan column appeared today to denigrate and dismiss Rumsfeld's documentation explicitly, and so to defend Woodward implicitly.
I have no insider information on a particular friendship between Noonan and Woodward, although she has been know to give Woodward's books pretty fulsome praise. All I have is the widely-available public knowledge that Noonan and Woodward are regular co-panelists on "Meet the Press." In late December, 2010, for example, they were on to discuss the general distastefulness that is Sarah Palin. Noonan had recently called Palin "ignorant" and a "nincompoop" for daring to tread where only Noonan is privileged to go--that is to discuss Ronald Reagan. Noonan could therefore be trusted to toe the MTP line, and she obligingly if revealingly referred to herself and her fellow panelists (Doris Kerns Goodwin, Tom Brokaw and Woodward) as people like us--people who are sophisticated enough to recognize Palin for what she is--while the rest of America who either admire her or don't care much either way are them.
So for Noonan, Woodward is "people like us," the special few who have the exclusive right to tell the rest of us what is really going on unhampered by things like proper documentation. In this context, no wonder she finds Rumsfeld's archive so distressing. It hits her where she lives, threatening to reveal that her shtick, like Woodward’s, is based on self-serving, selective and unsubstantiated memories and, even worse, forcing her to do her homework if she wants to be considered in the same league.
True, documentary research is hard. It involves tedious work sifting through many, many irrelevant documents to find the few of importance. It requires you to check your cherished preconceived notions at the door and let the information in the documents guide your analysis, even if you uncover things you do not expect--or want--to find. And it forces you to admit, as Rumsfeld has so famously done, that there are things you did not know. But as difficult as the exercise might be, the end goal of trying to pass on to future generations direct observations of historical events accompanied by relevant primary documentation is in my opinion a noble one and well worth the effort. I don't think I want to read anything else by someone so determined to discredit the attempt.
Good bye, Ms. Noonan, and good luck to you in this brave new world of history.
Through the years I have tried to like Noonan, primarily because there are so few prominent female writers on major editorial pages, and even fewer conservatives. Also, as she frequently reminds us, she worked for Ronald Reagan and what is not to like about that?
Unfortunately, today's column is so far beyond the pale that even these powerful attractions cannot redeem her in my eyes. Noonan goes after Rumsfeld, who she declares devoid of "guts" and "brains," and his “stupid little” book too (I hope that "little" book didn't make too big of a hole in her plaster when she threw it at the wall, but I digress). Her main beef is that Rumsfeld failed both to capture Osama Bin Laden and to understand how the American psyche needed his capture after 9/11. Since as she again likes to remind us Noonan was in Manhattan on 9/11, she has claimed the mantle of Everyvictim and knows what all of us need, much more than Rumsfeld who after all was only in the Pentagon that day. We are treated to Noonan's OBL revenge fantasies, which involve scatological imagery and decapitation, and to her fury that Rumsfeld has not facilitated their satisfaction.
Noonan reserves, bizarrely, special vitriol for the documentation of Known and Unknown, and I may well take this part of the review personally since I have labored for some years in that particular salt mine. Noonan seems terribly put out that Rumsfeld has used a rich archive going back seven decades to document his book. She mocks and caricatures the effort--and darkly hints the memos might be falsified. She laments that "so many" Bush administration memoirs depend on primary documents (I can't think of another with even remotely comparable documentation--certainly not one that offers the reader the opportunity to freely consult the documents--but again, I digress). In the end she finds their presence so odious that she wants to physically dismember the book--to literally break its spine--for so oppressing her. These memos, she rages, "prove nothing."
I find all of this startling, since I generally consider it a good and useful exercise to go back to the original documents in order to build up thorough historical analysis. My complaints are reserved for those who selectively quote documents and then withhold the originals, so readers are forced to accept the writer's conclusions. Given the advances in digital technology, Rumsfeld has decided to challenge this construct and not only quote and cite the memos in his book, but also release thousands of them on a free-access website where they are available to readers made of sterner stuff than Noonan as links in a facsimile of the endnotes while the larger collection is browsable in a library-style section.
What is so gob-smackingly awful about this? Why ferociously attack an effort at rigorous scholarship and documentary transparency? Who does it hurt?
Upon reflection, it occurred to me that it hurts Peggy Noonan, who has been trading on her "insider" status in the Reagan administration for decades now. She is the source, in her parlance the witness, and if people take to releasing the actual documents, her fly-on-the-wall reminiscences drop precipitously in value, especially if God forbid the two conflict.
Perhaps not coincidentally, another potential victim of Rumsfeld's memo offensive is Noonan's fellow perennial insider, Bob Woodward, whose stock in trade is giving the impression of witnessing what should be hidden--accounts that generally confirm readers' vague suspicions about what must be going on in government--thus making the reader feel smart and in the know, and making Woodward's books sell.
Woodward, like Noonan, seems to feel threatened by Known and Unknown, and went after the book last week, calling Rumsfeld a liar for writing in Chapter 31 about a meeting with President Bush on September 26, 2001, in which Bush asked Rumsfeld to review the Iraq war plan then on the Pentagon shelf. Woodward's beef appears to be not with the wisdom of this order, but rather with the problematic fact that no account of it appears in Woodward's books on the Bush administration, and he had made a great show of re-tracing the definitive Iraq timeline. Ergo, the meeting did not happen, and even if it did, Iraq was not discussed.
Unfortunately for Woodward, Rumsfeld had made a handwritten note about the substance of his meeting on his calendar for that day, which he promptly released. It matches in all details the account in Known and Unknown. Woodward appeared to have given up this line of attack--wisely, for what else is there to say?--until the Noonan column appeared today to denigrate and dismiss Rumsfeld's documentation explicitly, and so to defend Woodward implicitly.
I have no insider information on a particular friendship between Noonan and Woodward, although she has been know to give Woodward's books pretty fulsome praise. All I have is the widely-available public knowledge that Noonan and Woodward are regular co-panelists on "Meet the Press." In late December, 2010, for example, they were on to discuss the general distastefulness that is Sarah Palin. Noonan had recently called Palin "ignorant" and a "nincompoop" for daring to tread where only Noonan is privileged to go--that is to discuss Ronald Reagan. Noonan could therefore be trusted to toe the MTP line, and she obligingly if revealingly referred to herself and her fellow panelists (Doris Kerns Goodwin, Tom Brokaw and Woodward) as people like us--people who are sophisticated enough to recognize Palin for what she is--while the rest of America who either admire her or don't care much either way are them.
So for Noonan, Woodward is "people like us," the special few who have the exclusive right to tell the rest of us what is really going on unhampered by things like proper documentation. In this context, no wonder she finds Rumsfeld's archive so distressing. It hits her where she lives, threatening to reveal that her shtick, like Woodward’s, is based on self-serving, selective and unsubstantiated memories and, even worse, forcing her to do her homework if she wants to be considered in the same league.
True, documentary research is hard. It involves tedious work sifting through many, many irrelevant documents to find the few of importance. It requires you to check your cherished preconceived notions at the door and let the information in the documents guide your analysis, even if you uncover things you do not expect--or want--to find. And it forces you to admit, as Rumsfeld has so famously done, that there are things you did not know. But as difficult as the exercise might be, the end goal of trying to pass on to future generations direct observations of historical events accompanied by relevant primary documentation is in my opinion a noble one and well worth the effort. I don't think I want to read anything else by someone so determined to discredit the attempt.
Good bye, Ms. Noonan, and good luck to you in this brave new world of history.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
A box is in the eye of the beholder
On December 11, 2005 former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright went on "Meet the Press" to opine that the Iraq war had been a mistake--worse than that it had de-railed the successful pre-war program of sanctions and a no-fly zone, which had contained the paper tiger:
"It worked." And so, we can assume, it would have kept on working had the Bush administration only had the wisdom to continue the Clintonian policy of containment.
Of course what Secretary Albright failed to mention was the terrible price Saddam's people paid since they shared that box with him--especially those who almost exactly 20 years ago were being slaughtered by his henchmen in the months before the no-fly zone was established. We did nothing to help them when they attempted to rise up and claim their freedom, an inertia that cost many thousands of lives and resulted in the ecological and humanitarian catastrophe that was the draining of the Iraqi marshes--not to mention the subsequent no-fly zone stalemate that resulted in the second war.
Two decades later we are watching the same tragedy play over in slow motion. In Libya a disenfranchised, oppressed generation has rebelled against their obviously unstable and tyrannical dictator and enjoyed some success. Encouraging words have come from the west, but precious little has been forthcoming in terms of actual support. A no-fly zone has been proposed to at least make a token effort at stopping Gadhafi from mowing these people down from the skies.
But this time the Democrat Secretary of State says not so fast. Hillary Clinton spoke out today against a no-fly zone in congressional testimony:
This from a woman who has been staunch in her opposition to the Iraq war ever since she voted to authorize it, and whose husband was Commander in Chief for eight years of that no-good no-fly zone.
I have a theory to suggest that might help clear up the confusion between Secretary Albright and her "partner" Secretary Clinton regarding the efficacy of the Iraqi no-fly zone, and help us as we plot a path ahead with Libya. No-fly zones and sanctions, be they smart or otherwise, are not a solution in themselves in perpetuity after a popular uprising has failed. They can however be strategically deployed to hamper and harass a dictator when he is back on his heels, giving opposition forces the actual support--not just the encouragement--that they need.
If Gadhafi does indeed turn the tables on the Libyan insurgents over the next days and weeks, it seems unlikely he will be any more gentle with the rebels than Saddam was. In short, I wonder if 20 years from now we will be looking back at March, 2011 the way we look back at March, 1991 and shake our heads over how much trouble we could have saved--with perhaps as little as one of Secretary Albright's no-fly zones.
And what we did was to keep Saddam Hussein in a box by using diplomacy, sanctions and force, with bombing in the no-fly zone. It worked. And what is evident from the CIA reports is that it did work. The sanctions worked.
"It worked." And so, we can assume, it would have kept on working had the Bush administration only had the wisdom to continue the Clintonian policy of containment.
Of course what Secretary Albright failed to mention was the terrible price Saddam's people paid since they shared that box with him--especially those who almost exactly 20 years ago were being slaughtered by his henchmen in the months before the no-fly zone was established. We did nothing to help them when they attempted to rise up and claim their freedom, an inertia that cost many thousands of lives and resulted in the ecological and humanitarian catastrophe that was the draining of the Iraqi marshes--not to mention the subsequent no-fly zone stalemate that resulted in the second war.
Two decades later we are watching the same tragedy play over in slow motion. In Libya a disenfranchised, oppressed generation has rebelled against their obviously unstable and tyrannical dictator and enjoyed some success. Encouraging words have come from the west, but precious little has been forthcoming in terms of actual support. A no-fly zone has been proposed to at least make a token effort at stopping Gadhafi from mowing these people down from the skies.
But this time the Democrat Secretary of State says not so fast. Hillary Clinton spoke out today against a no-fly zone in congressional testimony:
I want to remind people that, you know, we had a no-fly zone over Iraq. It did not prevent Saddam Hussein from slaughtering people on the ground, and it did not get him out of office.
This from a woman who has been staunch in her opposition to the Iraq war ever since she voted to authorize it, and whose husband was Commander in Chief for eight years of that no-good no-fly zone.
I have a theory to suggest that might help clear up the confusion between Secretary Albright and her "partner" Secretary Clinton regarding the efficacy of the Iraqi no-fly zone, and help us as we plot a path ahead with Libya. No-fly zones and sanctions, be they smart or otherwise, are not a solution in themselves in perpetuity after a popular uprising has failed. They can however be strategically deployed to hamper and harass a dictator when he is back on his heels, giving opposition forces the actual support--not just the encouragement--that they need.
If Gadhafi does indeed turn the tables on the Libyan insurgents over the next days and weeks, it seems unlikely he will be any more gentle with the rebels than Saddam was. In short, I wonder if 20 years from now we will be looking back at March, 2011 the way we look back at March, 1991 and shake our heads over how much trouble we could have saved--with perhaps as little as one of Secretary Albright's no-fly zones.
Monday, January 3, 2011
Making Leonardo Dance
Leonardo’s Last Supper: A Vision by Peter Greenaway
Park Avenue Amory
Dec. 2, 2010-Jan. 6, 2011
Peter Greenaway's "Vision" of Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper at the Park Avenue Armory is packing in the holiday crowds. Young and old are thronging to this promised facsimile of the great Renaissance masterwork, enhanced by a lavish multi-media spectacle of film and music. It is certainly convenient to have the Last Supper beamed to Park Avenue where it can be better appreciated by its many American admirers; Greenaway's stated goal is to make the generation who believe painting started with Jackson Pollock connect with the old masters in a new and vibrant way. Any project that pries students away from their PDAs and into an old-master themed exhibition has to be a good thing, and Greenaway is successful--the close to hour long presentation held not only our adult attention but also the interest of our attendant eight and nine year olds, who were charmed by the opening montage of great Italian art, sumptuous cityscapes and grand music. Eventually the swirling imagery focused on Leonardo and we were shepherded over and through projections of the Last Supper into a space dedicated to it.
This area focuses on a sort of apse that recreates the main wall of the refectory of Sta. Maria Della Grazie in Milan, which has been graced by Leonardo's monumental fresco since 1489. Additional screens to the side and around the entrance display fanciful, animated microscopic-level tours of the fresco's pigmentation, bits of which periodically flake off the surface and dance like snowflakes in patterns that are beautiful until you realize they represent the ongoing decay of the original. Down the center of the space stretches an installation of the table itself; when dormant it is pure white, like a plaster cast, but periodically it pulses and glows with psychedelic colors. The table makes the experience "interactive," that totem of the digital age. The fifteenth-century monks of Sta. Maria might have been content to contemplate the miracle of the Last Supper while consuming their own earthly food on a lower level. By contrast, we get a seat at the table—we do not merely witness but also participate in the Last Supper. Judy Chicago's Dinner Party has come full circle.
Like the table, the Last Supper up on the wall throbs and morphs between two and three dimensions—the figures periodically appear sculptural, as if they are intruding into our space. Some of the lighting effects suggest the passage of time, thus invoking a fourth dimension. White lines trace the outlines of the figures so you can admire the construction of the composition; hands and feet are highlighted in isolation so you can appreciate their peculiar grace; the entire image is bleached into a grisaille so you will momentarily not be distracted by color from its purity. A re-imagining of the lost feet of Christ, cut away from the original when a new door was installed in the seventeenth century, periodically reappear, somewhat brighter than the rest. Through the miracle of modern technology this ancient act of vandalism has been healed. Music loosely based on classical Italian opera or chorale but clearly modern plays loudly throughout.
After about twenty minutes of visual gymnastics, the piece de resistance arrives: the promised fully restored, scale facsimile of the Last Supper appears and stays put on the end wall, enshrined by a pastiche of Leonardo's handwriting. But the glowing blue, grossly oversized script overwhelms the Last Supper and takes on a life of its own--this iconic handwriting, this unmistakable mark of genius that we all recognize even though none of us can read it is in a way a much clearer sign to this modern audience than anything in the fresco itself.
At this point, the disconnect between the fifteenth century and the twenty-first becomes awkward. The space in the Park Avenue Armory is clearly supposed to be sacred ground—but sacred to what precisely? To the miracle of the Last Supper? To Leonardo himself? It is certainly not a temple to Christ, who is at best marginalized in this presentation. The experience is lively and dramatic, but it is also hectic, shifting and reduces the work of art to the sum of its parts, while the original achieves transcendence by being in its whole so very much more. The problem is that the actual Last Supper is a profoundly static and silent religious picture, utterly dependent on the monumental dominance of its spiritual center for its effect. Leonardo’s genius was his ability to create a remarkable variety of human pose and emotion swirling around Christ and still sublimate it all to Him.
The Last Supper at the Park Avenue Armory does not seem to have a spiritual center as Leonardo would have understood it. Perhaps that vision has little relevance for New York City in 2010. Instead, Greenaway’s work has at its core the wonders of technology, which is ironic given that the ruinous condition of the original was caused by a failure of technology. All those dancing fragments of perilously detached pigment were not the result of World War II bombs or carbon emissions as we might assume, however. No, the mischief goes straight back to Leonardo himself, who wanted to develop a new painting technique that would fuse the permanence of fresco with the flexibility and luminous effects of oil. The result was to be a magically life like, glowing surface--the likes of which had never been seen before. Sadly, Leonardo's technology did not match his vision. The pigments would not adhere to the wall and within decades the Last Supper was little more than a ghost, which successive generations have dutifully tried to at least preserve, even if they cannot revive it.
Greenaway's presentation is our contribution to this now centuries-long process, defined by our computer-generated abilities to reproduce with relentless mechanical precision what we have decided are Leonardo's "true" intentions. It may be that this triumph of technology, which succeeds where the artist failed, does have in it a kernel of what Leonardo attempted more than five centuries ago. But before we fall into the trap of assuming our technology can correct the errors of history, we should recall that Leonardo’s failure and the subsequent elusive, changeling quality of the Last Supper has been an integral part of its appeal. Greenaway's presentation is heavily colored by the methods and fetishes of the present day, as it must--and should--be. But it raises an interesting issue as at some point, Leonardo's magnificent ruin may vanish altogether, leaving only the facsimile in its stead and this work is in the final analysis a contemporary piece.
Along these lines, if you do bring young people to this show, be prepared for some puzzled disappointment should you ever take them to Milan. Leonardo’s Last Supper will inevitably seem so much paler and quieter, perhaps in a word old, than the vibrant, animated original they connected with so easily at the Park Avenue Armory.
Park Avenue Amory
Dec. 2, 2010-Jan. 6, 2011
Peter Greenaway's "Vision" of Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper at the Park Avenue Armory is packing in the holiday crowds. Young and old are thronging to this promised facsimile of the great Renaissance masterwork, enhanced by a lavish multi-media spectacle of film and music. It is certainly convenient to have the Last Supper beamed to Park Avenue where it can be better appreciated by its many American admirers; Greenaway's stated goal is to make the generation who believe painting started with Jackson Pollock connect with the old masters in a new and vibrant way. Any project that pries students away from their PDAs and into an old-master themed exhibition has to be a good thing, and Greenaway is successful--the close to hour long presentation held not only our adult attention but also the interest of our attendant eight and nine year olds, who were charmed by the opening montage of great Italian art, sumptuous cityscapes and grand music. Eventually the swirling imagery focused on Leonardo and we were shepherded over and through projections of the Last Supper into a space dedicated to it.
This area focuses on a sort of apse that recreates the main wall of the refectory of Sta. Maria Della Grazie in Milan, which has been graced by Leonardo's monumental fresco since 1489. Additional screens to the side and around the entrance display fanciful, animated microscopic-level tours of the fresco's pigmentation, bits of which periodically flake off the surface and dance like snowflakes in patterns that are beautiful until you realize they represent the ongoing decay of the original. Down the center of the space stretches an installation of the table itself; when dormant it is pure white, like a plaster cast, but periodically it pulses and glows with psychedelic colors. The table makes the experience "interactive," that totem of the digital age. The fifteenth-century monks of Sta. Maria might have been content to contemplate the miracle of the Last Supper while consuming their own earthly food on a lower level. By contrast, we get a seat at the table—we do not merely witness but also participate in the Last Supper. Judy Chicago's Dinner Party has come full circle.
Like the table, the Last Supper up on the wall throbs and morphs between two and three dimensions—the figures periodically appear sculptural, as if they are intruding into our space. Some of the lighting effects suggest the passage of time, thus invoking a fourth dimension. White lines trace the outlines of the figures so you can admire the construction of the composition; hands and feet are highlighted in isolation so you can appreciate their peculiar grace; the entire image is bleached into a grisaille so you will momentarily not be distracted by color from its purity. A re-imagining of the lost feet of Christ, cut away from the original when a new door was installed in the seventeenth century, periodically reappear, somewhat brighter than the rest. Through the miracle of modern technology this ancient act of vandalism has been healed. Music loosely based on classical Italian opera or chorale but clearly modern plays loudly throughout.
After about twenty minutes of visual gymnastics, the piece de resistance arrives: the promised fully restored, scale facsimile of the Last Supper appears and stays put on the end wall, enshrined by a pastiche of Leonardo's handwriting. But the glowing blue, grossly oversized script overwhelms the Last Supper and takes on a life of its own--this iconic handwriting, this unmistakable mark of genius that we all recognize even though none of us can read it is in a way a much clearer sign to this modern audience than anything in the fresco itself.
At this point, the disconnect between the fifteenth century and the twenty-first becomes awkward. The space in the Park Avenue Armory is clearly supposed to be sacred ground—but sacred to what precisely? To the miracle of the Last Supper? To Leonardo himself? It is certainly not a temple to Christ, who is at best marginalized in this presentation. The experience is lively and dramatic, but it is also hectic, shifting and reduces the work of art to the sum of its parts, while the original achieves transcendence by being in its whole so very much more. The problem is that the actual Last Supper is a profoundly static and silent religious picture, utterly dependent on the monumental dominance of its spiritual center for its effect. Leonardo’s genius was his ability to create a remarkable variety of human pose and emotion swirling around Christ and still sublimate it all to Him.
The Last Supper at the Park Avenue Armory does not seem to have a spiritual center as Leonardo would have understood it. Perhaps that vision has little relevance for New York City in 2010. Instead, Greenaway’s work has at its core the wonders of technology, which is ironic given that the ruinous condition of the original was caused by a failure of technology. All those dancing fragments of perilously detached pigment were not the result of World War II bombs or carbon emissions as we might assume, however. No, the mischief goes straight back to Leonardo himself, who wanted to develop a new painting technique that would fuse the permanence of fresco with the flexibility and luminous effects of oil. The result was to be a magically life like, glowing surface--the likes of which had never been seen before. Sadly, Leonardo's technology did not match his vision. The pigments would not adhere to the wall and within decades the Last Supper was little more than a ghost, which successive generations have dutifully tried to at least preserve, even if they cannot revive it.
Greenaway's presentation is our contribution to this now centuries-long process, defined by our computer-generated abilities to reproduce with relentless mechanical precision what we have decided are Leonardo's "true" intentions. It may be that this triumph of technology, which succeeds where the artist failed, does have in it a kernel of what Leonardo attempted more than five centuries ago. But before we fall into the trap of assuming our technology can correct the errors of history, we should recall that Leonardo’s failure and the subsequent elusive, changeling quality of the Last Supper has been an integral part of its appeal. Greenaway's presentation is heavily colored by the methods and fetishes of the present day, as it must--and should--be. But it raises an interesting issue as at some point, Leonardo's magnificent ruin may vanish altogether, leaving only the facsimile in its stead and this work is in the final analysis a contemporary piece.
Along these lines, if you do bring young people to this show, be prepared for some puzzled disappointment should you ever take them to Milan. Leonardo’s Last Supper will inevitably seem so much paler and quieter, perhaps in a word old, than the vibrant, animated original they connected with so easily at the Park Avenue Armory.
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