Michael Hastings' portrayal of Stanley McChrystal in this week's Rolling Stone is a strange and jarring thing. The general's career and legacy of precise -sometimes ruthless- aptitude is well described, yet so is the near-anarchy of the nation he is (or was, by time of blog) de facto master of. There is something classic about the rise and fall from grace of this unusual executive, just as there is something ugly yet classic about the fable of how the world's most powerful nation is unable to govern one of the world's most pathetically poor and disadvantaged.
Classical metaphors aside, though I don't usually give a whit about Afghanistan. And before you tar and feather me as a willfully ignorant cuss, a bad American, and unfit even to have a blog on the interwebs, let me explain what it was that refired my interest. It was lithium. My friend Jeff -who's always flush with wonderful information, even if it's not always impeccably researched- recently told me that there's been a motherlode of lithium discovered by geologists (minerologists, maybe) in Afghanistan. This tantalizing nugget put me on the case, and before too long I'd discovered the RS piece, which proved to be a far more engaging find than Pentagon dribblings about vast lithium wealth. If anything is going to convince me, as a taxpayer, to support the occupation of a dirt-poor, historically pulverized nation, it'd better be more dope than lithium. Try again, Pentagon (maybe ask Cheney what think tank he hired to bake his yellow cake story).
Now'd be a good time to read this McChrystal article, over at Rollingstone.com-- I'm sure as hell not going to rehash even a fraction of Hasting's piece, for I'm not even a fraction the writer. My goal is to supply some commentary and points of view that I feel have been unintentionally underrepresented, even in this age of the blogosphere and zines. And yes, I already did that, with the Cheney & Pentagon jibes, but there's more to come.
So what points of view, exactly? Are they any more substantive than my irrational hatred of Dick Cheney? Well, as a veteran I have very little love for the bureaucracy and increasingly corporate (re: craven & corrupt) culture of the US military. I respect men like McChrystal; rare indeed are the colonels and generals who actually walk patrols alongside their troops, who actually put their asses on the line and legitmately earn those combat medals that they all seem to acquire, somehow or other. Most generals and colonels I've served under, or had the misfortune to encounter, are possessed of both blitheringly inflated self opinions and a truly terrifying and bland faith in the talents and strengths of their troops.
I'm reminded of a classic, "Catch-22" type happening at a large air base in Korea, where the biggest exercise the US military regularly conducts was in full swing. Not only my own Air Force brethren but thousands of soldiers, marines and sailors had convened on our little stronghold, and we were all "playing war" round the clock for a solid fortnight: there was a personnel-wide moratorium on consuming alcohol for the entirety of the game, even, if you want to gauge the degree of seriousness that infused the air. No one in the military prohibits alcohol lightly.
So it was, during this overwrought and highly tense dozen or so days, when the gathered generals and their staff were convening daily to pore over colorful maps and powerpoint slides (many, no doubt, channeling their first-ever viewing of Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove"), that Colonel Bull made himself known to my team of airmen. The Bull (as he heartily encouraged us to call him) was actually assigned to our unit in Korea, and was not "in town for the rodeo", i.e. was not just passing through. Yet we'd never seen much of the man except for his grand arrival at the base a few months hence, when he last visited my shop, and thunderously ridiculed my haircut in front of my colleagues. (Ed note: whatever relevance this anecdote may have, it seems that the haircut bit is an emotional lynchpin, so it's staying in.) Well, The Bull was now fully on our radar, pestering us night and day, and he seemed to have nothing better to do than request asinine things of my fellow communication engineers, despite being in the midst of a full-scale and insuperably huge military exercise, with something like 30,000 warfighters from around the globe gathered to test their mettle and learn to work together. And to make Kim Jong-Il lose sleep, of course.
The climax of his foolish requests was that we reprogram the encrypted phone switch, just to change the number of his hot-phone (yes, like in "Dr. Stangelove", "Stargate", etc) to 784-BULL. Whether it was an elaborate joke, or whether he was trying to keep his comm guys on our toes, I'll never know. I prefer not to, honestly; if my suspicions as to the true value of 85% of our military high command are ever confirmed, I'm leaving the country ASAP, before some 'accidental junta' happens-- it'll be staged by the proposed 15% with brains and nerve, of course, not by The Bull, yet all the similar matadors that crowd the halls of the Pentagon and the military academies will be given a seat at the table, and I'm not in the mood for something even worse than corporate feudalism.
Well, at any rate, back to the RS essay. Unsurprisingly then, I find the most redeeming aspects of Rolling Stone's portrait of McChrystal to be the general's concern for the men and women serving with him, out there in the dark and strange heart of Asia. While Hastings' rightly criticizes McChrystal's lion-hearted and fearless belief in the merits of COIN, it's the bits of the tale where McChrystal visits guards in the most blasted, forsaken, and heavily contested areas of the country that really impress me. From what I've seen of the hierarchy and command structure of the military, nobody is in the position to give orders to a four-star general, to tell him exactly what to do: no one can say to McChrystal, "go play nice, go do a photo-op for Rolling Stone". No, what Hastings observed, and felt were truly sincere pep talks in some of the nastiest zones of the conflict, could only have been initiated by the commander of Afghanistan forces.
And if you're as jaded as me, it's certainly fair game to claim that McChrystal only did those for the benefit of Hastings and RS. I've seen worse abuses of trust in my few short years in the mil, but I'm not prepared to throw McChrystal into the same bucket as all the hypocrites and clowns that I encountered. Not yet. It'll be interesting to see where he ends up five years from now, though.
But yes, some leniency towards the man is in order, I say. Yet what are we to make of the reportage that digs back a few years, that details that slimy mess about Pat Tillman and a tip-off to the Bush administration to distance themselves from the whole thing?
And the weird bluster that the man exudes-- how he seldom eats, sleeps four hours a night, and runs dozens of miles a week? This talk of superhuman endurance and austerity removes him from the realm of common men, surely, and the keenest leaders know that this is usually a good thing for their image and rep with their subordinates. Yet even with the kindest of predispositions, you can't help but start to wonder if McChrystal, ever the warrior's warrior, didn't go completely bonkers many years ago... I mean, REM sleep isn't a good thing to fiddle with, especially for years at a time, and while living under enormous and perpetual stress.
If we can take anything away from this portrayal-become-autopsy of a powerful and talented leader, then, perhaps it should simply be caution: caution against hubris, caution against trying to make your own rules when the game is already lost. If Stanley McChrystal's story is remembered well by his brothers and sisters in arms, I hope it is an odyssey of achievement and strength in the face of status quo and all the 'business as usual' bullshit. It'd be a shame to take anything but high-minded life lessons from Afghanistan now, seeing as how there has always been so very little there for us... unless that trillion-dollar lithium vein turns up after all.
16 June 2010
Bilderbergers and their swelling ranks of anti-fans
There was this interesting story, brought to my attention by my eagle-eyed buddy Adam.
What more can I add to this piece? My usual weapon of choice -blistering irony- is also the favourite of Mr Skelton, and he is a true artist with the hot poker. What I can point out (and point out with glee) is that this is NOT published on some underground blog, nor is this article's website a part of the American "bipartisan hoax machine" media apparatus. No, this is The Guardian, a major and respected news outfit, who claim to be "the world's leading liberal voice". Political ideology aside (can't stand it), I recall surfing upon articles (both humorous and interesting) in The Guardian while stationed at Fort Bragg, while stationed in Korea, while stationed in rural Japan. While I'm forced to take on faith their claim of massive readership above, I can indeed vouch for the ubiquity of their stories, which are found linked into sites and news organizations as diverse and disparate as pravda.ru and fark.com... My admiration for this particular bit of journalism was trebled as soon as I realized that it wasn't some crackpot blog whose only major internet neighbor is huffingtonpost. ;)
So as I cannot add anything but praise to this reportage, let me at least rehash some of my favorite bon mots.
I mean, no wonder the Bilderberg delegates are embarrassed. They're strategising to make the world a better place – who'd want to be seen doing that?
Indeed. Whenever I sit down and play Steve Jackson's "Illuminati" card game, I am struck by the shyness of these people. If I were a card-carrying member of the Ancient Illuminated Seers of Bavaria, I'd sure as heckfire bring that up at cocktail parties and cookouts. Just work it into conversation, all natural and subtle, you know: "Aw yeah, I know what you mean, man~ and if I had to worry about financing a mortgage AND paying for two kids' college, well, I'd just tell The Brothers to "Take Care of the Widow's Son' at the next ceremony --you know, at that ruined abbey on the seawall, where we meet up in dark robes every other New Moon and plan out fun events like group paintball outings and potlucks?-- yeah, I'd just ask for a couple hundred thou and then I'd stop worrying about it". Of course that would probably put me right over the conversational trapdoor where I'm forced to admit that I hold peerage in three European nations ("and not just Johnny-come-lately rubble heaps like Germany and Italy, but REAL nations", cough cough) and that my yearbook quote in the AISB Gold Owl (2008) was "Let them eat cake!"
Well, maybe they stay out of the backyard BBQ scene for a reason, maybe they avoid casual convos with the serfs for a reason.
But seriously, if you work on the foreign desk of a major news corporation and you're at the "Bilderberg what?" level of political awareness, you need to think about getting a different job. Take a sabbatical. Take up carpentry, or read a book. It's like calling yourself a porn star and not knowing the reverse cowgirl.
Where was this kind of jocular chutzpah in the American press for the past twenty years? Back in the 90s, we heard about scandals, were even given cute names for them: Travelgate, Whitewater, Lewinsky(gate), "that murdered lawyer Vincent Fostergate". Nothing was ever accomplished~ the Clintons were too damn clever, and too damn popular. Then the 00s hit, and something massive and reality-bending happened... all of a sudden the White House press corp became a trained poodle show, and to find a respectable journal with the nerve to criticize Team Bush you needed to go as far as Rolling Stone. C'mon, admit it-- YOU never read it for the album reviews, either.
But here's the first year of a new decade, and here's The Guardian, fearlessly interviewing border-jumpers, internationally-networked party crashers, and passionately angry people of all stripe and color of sleeping bag. Some of them, surely, have only enough political conviction to fight for truth; yet it's the seriously meaningful, "capital T" Truth. Their soul brethren that are content to simply watch and catalog, they're the ones camped out in saguaro and underbrush in a part of Nevada that doesn't get mapped, scanning the civil twilight for American-made UFOs. No, these anti-Bilderberg people have, if nothing else, purity of heart. What was that guy's name, the lead for the article? He sleeps in the mountains more than he sleeps in beds! Mr Skelton has some good fodder for heroic sympathies here, and for once it isn't a contrived Disneyesque storyline about kids from an inner-city ball club, fighting to escape from squalor and socio-economic doom with three point shots and good half court defense. Fuck that. These are people who are being detained, imprisoned, harassed by federal police agencies...
Or are they?
This year, the police have been deployed in the same extraordinary numbers, but they are smiling, rolling their eyes at the rigmarole; the riot police are giving the thumbs-up to protesters and honking their horns as they come round the "awareness roundabout" at the foot of the hotel.
"The police have been laughing and chatting," says Daniel Turon, a Spanish psycho-sociologist, here in Sitges to psycho-sociologise Bilderberg. "One of them said he had read a book about Bilderberg; another said, 'Yes, we understand.'" The Catalan police, he says, "have a different sensibility" from what you may expect. "They are Catalan. Their minds are independent."
That was the biggest surprise of this jarring story: the apparent rising solidarity between "the conspiracy theorists" (a term that neatly refers back to "whacko" and "wing nut" in the American Standard Dictionary of Mass Media) and the cops that are bullied about by the Bilderbergers so that they bully the whackos. It's scary if it's true. It's scary to realize that, much like in the final minutes of George Lucas's brilliant trilogy of good and evil, the twisted, lightning-slinging Emperors of the world CAN indeed be fought against, CAN be photographed, can be ridiculed in online news forums. If you carry the comparison too far (and you know how fond I am of that), you can even grab Queen Beatrix and hurl her down a bottomless power conduit, and burn the old hag forever.
This seems to be the general angle of Skelton's piece. I hope I didn't just imagine it. Was the ironic tone even there? Ah, this must have been one big put-on, or just a weird daydream brought on by watching Chinatown a few weeks ago, and drinking gin last night. Or was it?
I'd love to hear all of your thoughts on the article. As my friend Adam said, let's discuss and discourse.
What more can I add to this piece? My usual weapon of choice -blistering irony- is also the favourite of Mr Skelton, and he is a true artist with the hot poker. What I can point out (and point out with glee) is that this is NOT published on some underground blog, nor is this article's website a part of the American "bipartisan hoax machine" media apparatus. No, this is The Guardian, a major and respected news outfit, who claim to be "the world's leading liberal voice". Political ideology aside (can't stand it), I recall surfing upon articles (both humorous and interesting) in The Guardian while stationed at Fort Bragg, while stationed in Korea, while stationed in rural Japan. While I'm forced to take on faith their claim of massive readership above, I can indeed vouch for the ubiquity of their stories, which are found linked into sites and news organizations as diverse and disparate as pravda.ru and fark.com... My admiration for this particular bit of journalism was trebled as soon as I realized that it wasn't some crackpot blog whose only major internet neighbor is huffingtonpost. ;)
So as I cannot add anything but praise to this reportage, let me at least rehash some of my favorite bon mots.
I mean, no wonder the Bilderberg delegates are embarrassed. They're strategising to make the world a better place – who'd want to be seen doing that?
Indeed. Whenever I sit down and play Steve Jackson's "Illuminati" card game, I am struck by the shyness of these people. If I were a card-carrying member of the Ancient Illuminated Seers of Bavaria, I'd sure as heckfire bring that up at cocktail parties and cookouts. Just work it into conversation, all natural and subtle, you know: "Aw yeah, I know what you mean, man~ and if I had to worry about financing a mortgage AND paying for two kids' college, well, I'd just tell The Brothers to "Take Care of the Widow's Son' at the next ceremony --you know, at that ruined abbey on the seawall, where we meet up in dark robes every other New Moon and plan out fun events like group paintball outings and potlucks?-- yeah, I'd just ask for a couple hundred thou and then I'd stop worrying about it". Of course that would probably put me right over the conversational trapdoor where I'm forced to admit that I hold peerage in three European nations ("and not just Johnny-come-lately rubble heaps like Germany and Italy, but REAL nations", cough cough) and that my yearbook quote in the AISB Gold Owl (2008) was "Let them eat cake!"
Well, maybe they stay out of the backyard BBQ scene for a reason, maybe they avoid casual convos with the serfs for a reason.
But seriously, if you work on the foreign desk of a major news corporation and you're at the "Bilderberg what?" level of political awareness, you need to think about getting a different job. Take a sabbatical. Take up carpentry, or read a book. It's like calling yourself a porn star and not knowing the reverse cowgirl.
Where was this kind of jocular chutzpah in the American press for the past twenty years? Back in the 90s, we heard about scandals, were even given cute names for them: Travelgate, Whitewater, Lewinsky(gate), "that murdered lawyer Vincent Fostergate". Nothing was ever accomplished~ the Clintons were too damn clever, and too damn popular. Then the 00s hit, and something massive and reality-bending happened... all of a sudden the White House press corp became a trained poodle show, and to find a respectable journal with the nerve to criticize Team Bush you needed to go as far as Rolling Stone. C'mon, admit it-- YOU never read it for the album reviews, either.
But here's the first year of a new decade, and here's The Guardian, fearlessly interviewing border-jumpers, internationally-networked party crashers, and passionately angry people of all stripe and color of sleeping bag. Some of them, surely, have only enough political conviction to fight for truth; yet it's the seriously meaningful, "capital T" Truth. Their soul brethren that are content to simply watch and catalog, they're the ones camped out in saguaro and underbrush in a part of Nevada that doesn't get mapped, scanning the civil twilight for American-made UFOs. No, these anti-Bilderberg people have, if nothing else, purity of heart. What was that guy's name, the lead for the article? He sleeps in the mountains more than he sleeps in beds! Mr Skelton has some good fodder for heroic sympathies here, and for once it isn't a contrived Disneyesque storyline about kids from an inner-city ball club, fighting to escape from squalor and socio-economic doom with three point shots and good half court defense. Fuck that. These are people who are being detained, imprisoned, harassed by federal police agencies...
Or are they?
This year, the police have been deployed in the same extraordinary numbers, but they are smiling, rolling their eyes at the rigmarole; the riot police are giving the thumbs-up to protesters and honking their horns as they come round the "awareness roundabout" at the foot of the hotel.
"The police have been laughing and chatting," says Daniel Turon, a Spanish psycho-sociologist, here in Sitges to psycho-sociologise Bilderberg. "One of them said he had read a book about Bilderberg; another said, 'Yes, we understand.'" The Catalan police, he says, "have a different sensibility" from what you may expect. "They are Catalan. Their minds are independent."
That was the biggest surprise of this jarring story: the apparent rising solidarity between "the conspiracy theorists" (a term that neatly refers back to "whacko" and "wing nut" in the American Standard Dictionary of Mass Media) and the cops that are bullied about by the Bilderbergers so that they bully the whackos. It's scary if it's true. It's scary to realize that, much like in the final minutes of George Lucas's brilliant trilogy of good and evil, the twisted, lightning-slinging Emperors of the world CAN indeed be fought against, CAN be photographed, can be ridiculed in online news forums. If you carry the comparison too far (and you know how fond I am of that), you can even grab Queen Beatrix and hurl her down a bottomless power conduit, and burn the old hag forever.
This seems to be the general angle of Skelton's piece. I hope I didn't just imagine it. Was the ironic tone even there? Ah, this must have been one big put-on, or just a weird daydream brought on by watching Chinatown a few weeks ago, and drinking gin last night. Or was it?
I'd love to hear all of your thoughts on the article. As my friend Adam said, let's discuss and discourse.
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