Rogues Gallery?

January ~ Blackwater security founder Erik Prince.
Photograph by Nigel Parry.

January ~ Goldman Sachs C.E.O. Lloyd Blankfein and C.O.O. Gary Cohn.
Photograph by Annie Leibovitz.

May ~ General David Petraeus.
Photograph by Jonas Fredwall Karlsson.

It is funny how I discover things on the Internet. My nominee for the least charitable, most self-indulgent, resentful essay on photography ever is Ingrid Sischey's 1991 trashing in The New Yorker, of Sebastião Salgado.* It is a paper so incoherent, so devoid of plausible judgment, I've always wondered how the editors allowed it to see print.

Sischey, of course, has gone on to distinguish herself as editor of that bastion of serious thought and incisive commentary ~ Interview magazine. She now has ascended to the post of contributing editor at Vanity Fair. All this demonstrates that early failure is no barrier to success in the world of vacuous publishing ventures. It also establishes how easy it is to squander whatever meagre abilities you might have on thoroughly specious undertakings while still feeling justified in voicing sanctimonious criticisms of those who try, at least, to put their more substantial talent to productive use. I suppose that is the risk of swimming always in the shallow end of the pool.

I already have devoted enough time to Sischey here. So, . . . end of that rant. My point, in any case, is that for some reason my Google alerts flagged this interview with Sischey about what to do at Art Basel/Miami. And on the same page is a link to a photo essay: Vanity Fair’s Year in Review: January to June 2010. And that slide show is what I really wanted to talk about. How is that for circuitous?

The bulk of the VF half year review consists of pics of entertainers and their enablers (read Hollywood actors and directors). But, interspersed with tie sideshow, are the three images lifted here; they deserve comment.** We have, in order, rabid mercenary, rapacious financiers, and . . . well, everyone's hero, the good General David Petraeus. This seems to me to constitute a real slap at the General. Don't get me wrong, I've made it clear here more than once that I don't hold him in terribly high regard. But there are limits. Petraeus may be misguided, he may be committed to pursuing a losing policy in an authoritarian decision-making structure, but he is not a venal, ideologue like Prince or simply venal like the the boys from Goldman Sachs. That makes him culpable but probably not criminal. You cannot say the same of Prince, Blankfein, and Cohn. Apparently, our media have more or less completely lost the capacity to discriminate not just between the serious and the ephemera, but between between the honest (if deluded) and the crooks.

I have to say that one of the virtues of Blankfein and Cohn is that, as bald bankers, they deprived Leibovitz of the signature fan-induced, wind-swept hair that renders so many of her portraits formulaic.
__________
* If, after this characterization, you want to read it, you can find Sischey's essay reprinted in Liz Heron & Val Williams, eds. 1996. Illuminations: Women Writing on Photography from the 1850's to the Present. Duke University Press.

** All three images © the photographers noted in the Vanity Fair caption/credit.

Our Real Criminals

We hear a lot about purported military heroes like General Colin Powell (liar) and David Petraeus (bullshitter) from those wishing to rationalize continuing on our disastrous foreign policy course. The rationalizers are to be found among Bush administration criminals, among their various cheerleaders in the press and the think tanks, hawks like Joe Lieberman in Congress, and, of course, in the McCain campaign. I wonder why we don't hear from other military officers, some driven from the ranks by pressure from the rationalizers. So, why not listen to the latter sometimes? For starters, try the preface to a report Broken laws, Broken Lives prepared and published Physicians for Human Rights; the author of the preface is Retired Major General Anthony Taguba. Here is the text, with what I take to be the important observations highlighted:

This report tells the largely untold human story of what happened to detainees in our custody when the Commander-in-Chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture. This story is not only written in words: It is scrawled for the rest of these individuals’ lives on their bodies and minds. Our national honor is stained by the indignity and inhumane treatment these men received from their captors

The profiles of these eleven former detainees, none of whom were ever charged with a crime or told why they were detained, are tragic and brutal rebuttals to those who claim that torture is ever justified. Through the experiences of these men in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, we can see the full scope of the damage this illegal and unsound policy has inflicted—both on America’s institutions and our nation’s founding values, which the military, intelligence services, and our justice system are duty-bound to defend.

In order for these individuals to suffer the wanton cruelty to which they were subjected, a government policy was promulgated to the field whereby the Geneva Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice were disregarded. The UN Convention Against Torture was indiscriminately ignored. And the healing professions, including physicians and psychologists, became complicit in the willful infliction of harm against those the Hippocratic Oath demands they protect.

After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.

The former detainees in this report, each of whom is fighting a lonely and difficult battle to rebuild his life, require reparations for what they endured, comprehensive psycho-social and medical assistance, and even an official apology from our government.

But most of all, these men deserve justice as required under the tenets of international law and the United States Constitution.

And so do the American people.

You can find the entire report, as well as an executive summary, here; it was published in June (2008) and details the medical evidence PHR gathered relative to 11 former detainees who were tortured while in U.S. captivity in Iraq, Afghanistan and/or Guantanamo Bay.

No American official - civilian or military - ever charged any the subjects with a crime. Those in the "chain of command", especially those higher up, who sanctioned and rationalized this torture should be.

Tossing Words Around (2)

As a follow-up to my earlier post here are some of the concluding comments Barack Obama made today as he finished interrogating (without 'harsh' measures) Petraeus and Crocker:

"I'm not suggesting that we yank all our troops out all the way. I'm trying to get to an endpoint. That's what all of us have been trying to get to.

And, see, the problem I have is if the definition of success is so high, no traces of Al Qaida and no possibility of reconstitution, a highly-effective Iraqi government, a Democratic multiethnic, multi- sectarian functioning democracy, no Iranian influence, at least not of the kind that we don't like, then that portends the possibility of us staying for 20 or 30 years."

You can find a transcript of the exchanges between each of the Presidential Candidates with the General & Ambassador here. One point, at least, worth making. First, this should be a wake up call to those "progressives" contemplating wasting their vote on Nader or even potentially disappointed Clinton supporters threatening to vote for McCain or stay home should Obama get the nomination. Compare this comment with the remarks McCain made in his opening statement. Yes, I wish Obama were much more aggressive in opposing the war. But he at least has some notion that we need to get the hell out.

OK, another point is worth making too. Obama is calling for what he here termed a "diplomatic surge" which would involve actually striking up a conversation with Iran. If you think that is not a strong stance, compare his comments to the nuttiness of Lieberman and several of the other Senators who fell all over themselves at the hearing today fear-mongering about the Iranians. Yes, the Iranian regime is dastardly. No, I do not trust them terribly much. But there will be no settlement - none - in the region if we fail to address them.

~~~~~~~~~~

And, at the risk of seeming terribly un-PC, I will say that this photo makes it appear that Crocker has a rather robust man-crush (to use a term I learned from my sons) on the good, courageous General.

General David Petraeus, commander of the multinational force
in Iraq, and the US Ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, answer
questions from the Senate armed services committee on Capitol
Hill, Washington DC. [Photograph © Matthew Cavanaugh/EPA]

I guess some fellows just wilt when confronted by a chest full of medals. Go figure.

Let's Talk Causes ~ Numbers Do Not Speak For Themselves

This, apparently, is among the graphics that Petraeus displayed during his testimony today. (I've lifted it from the BBC News page.) His point is to show the "success" of the surge in terms of death rates of U.S. military troops. But what does the graphic show? It shows that casualties have indeed declined precipitously in the wake of the surge. OK. Does it explain in any non-tendentious way, why? No. Has the decline resulted because of the prior segregation of Sunni and Shi'a via processes of sectarian cleansing? Did it result from the cease-fire declared by Muqtada al-Sadr? Does it reflect our buying cooperation from the "Sons of Iraq" who might otherwise be fighting us?

Finally, two other questions. What does this graphic tell us about levels of violence, injury and death among Iraqi civilians or, for that matter, between combatant Iraqis who are fighting each other? What does this have to do with political progress in Iraq?

Answer ~ Nothing Crocker or Petraeus said today goes terribly far in answering these questions in a persuasive way.

Tossing Words Around ~ "Success" & "Failure" in Iraq

This probably is just a first installment. You can find transcripts of the opening remarks at the Senate Hearings today by Petraeus, Crocker, Levin, & McCain from various on-line sources. Here are some of the good bits:

"I said in September that I cannot guarantee success in Iraq.
That is still the case, although I think we are now closer. I
remain convinced that a major departure from our current
engagement would bring failure, and we have to be clear with
ourselves about what failure would mean."
~ Ambassador Ryan Crocker

~~~~~~~~~~

"The emergence of Iraqi volunteers to help secure their local
communities has been an important development. As this chart
depicts, there are now over 91,000 Sons of Iraq, Shia as well as
Sunni, under contract to help coalition and Iraqi forces protect
their neighborhoods and secure infrastructure and roads.

These volunteers have contributed significantly in various
areas, and the savings and vehicles not lost because of reduced
violence, not to mention the priceless lives saved have far
outweighed the costs of their monthly contracts.

Sons of Iraq have also have contributed to the discovery of
improvised explosive devices and weapons and explosive
caches. As this next chart shows, in fact we have already
found more caches in 2008 than we found in all of 2006.

Given the importance of the Sons of Iraq, we're working
closely with the Iraqi government to transition them into
the Iraqi security forces or other forms of employment. And
over 21,000 have already been accepted into the police or
army or other government jobs." ~ General Petraeus

~~~~~~~~~~

"After weighing these factors, I recommended to my chain
of command that we continue the drawdown in the surge to
the combat forces and that upon the withdrawal of the last
surge brigade combat team in July, we undertake a 45-day
period of consolidation and evaluation. At the end of that
period, we will commence a process of assessment to
examine the conditions on the ground and over time
determine when we can make recommendations for further
reductions. This process will be continuous, with
recommendations for further reductions made as
conditions permit.

This approach does not allow establishment of a set
withdrawal timetable, however it does provide the
flexibility those of us on the ground need to preserve
the still-fragile security gains our troopers have fought
so far and sacrifice so much to achieve."
~ General Petraeus

~~~~~~~~~~

" . . . [W]hile the job of bringing security to Iraq is not finished,
as the recent fighting in Basra and elsewhere vividly
demonstrated, we're no longer staring into the abyss of defeat
and we can now look ahead to the genuine prospect of success.
Success, the establishment of a peaceful, stable, prosperous,
democratic state that poses no threats to its neighbors and
contributes to the defeat of terrorists, this success is within
reach. And with success, Iraqi forces can take responsibility
for enforcing security in their countries, and American
troops can return home with the honor of having secured
their country's interests at great personal costs and of helping
another people achieve peace and self-determination. That's
what I hope every American desires for our country in our
mission in Iraq. Yet should the United States instead choose
to withdraw from Iraq before adequate security is established,
we will exchange for this victory a defeat that is terrible and
long-lasting. Al Qaeda in Iraq would proclaim victory
and increase its efforts to provoke sectarian tensions, pushing
for a full-scale civil war that could descend into genocide and
destabilize the Middle East. Iraq would become a failed state.
It could become a haven for terrorists to train and plan their
operations. Iranian influence would increase substantially in
Iraq and encourage other countries to seek accommodation
with Tehran at the expense of our interests.

An American failure would almost certainly require us to
return to Iraq or draw us into a wider and far, far costlier war.
If, on the other hand, we and the Iraqis are able to build on the
opportunity provided by recent successes, we have the chance
to leave in Iraq a force for stability and freedom, not conflict
and chaos. In doing so, we will . . .

[ Disruption by protesters ]

. . . If, on the other hand, we and the Iraqis are able to build
on the opportunity provided by recent successes, we have the
chance to leave in Iraq a force for stability and freedom, not
conflict and chaos. In doing so, we will ensure that the terrible
price we have paid in the war, a price that has made all of us
sick at heart, has not been paid in vain. Our troops can leave
behind a successful mission, and our nation can leave behind
a country that contributes to the security of America and
the world." ~ Candidate McCain

~~~~~~~~~~~

MY (top-of-the-head) NOTES::

McCain is hallucinating if he thinks we will come anywhere close to his definition of "success" ( in italics) and, of course, his definition of failure looks an awful lot like what we already have created (e.g., al Sadr already is taking marching orders from the Iranians who apparently have greater influence in Iraq than does the U.S. ...). Al of that said, McCain, unlike the various bullshitters and liars in the Bush administration, has at least spelled out what "success" might actually look like!

We are, according to testimony today by Petraeus, spending $16 MILLION per MONTH paying the "Sons of Iraq" not to attack us. According to The New York Times: "The term refers to armed Iraqi civilians, most of them Sunni Arabs, manning checkpoints and doing security and other work for the American-led coalition or the official Iraqi security forces. They are something of a hybrid between militiamen and security contractors." The point? These people are not "volunteers" as Petraeus claims.

The "recommendation" Petraeus has made is littered with euphemisms and intentional vagueness. It is a wonderful example of the uses of ambiguity to avoid making any commitment. The bottom line? This is his bid for a wholly open-ended commitment of U.S. troops to Iraq.

Our Men in Baghdad

In a photo provided by the U.S. Air Force, Vice President Dick Cheney,
center, is seen at Baghdad's Sather Air Base visiting U.S. commander
in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, Monday, March 17, 2008.
(AP Photo/U.S. Air Force/Master Sgt. Andy Dunaway)*

A short while ago Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made a much publicized official visit to Baghdad. At the time, I posted on the irony that, while Ahmaninejad was visiting with great fanfare, U.S. officials had to sneak in and out of the country. I also noted the idiocy of claims that "the surge" is working. John McCain, who currently is making a campaign, ... er 'fact finding' trip to Baghdad, repeated the latter claim in interviews today. As I noted in my earlier post such assertions would be comical but for the death and destruction and mayhem and predictably counter-productive strategies trailing "the surge's" wake. I have mentioned here too that it is crucially important not to lose sight of McCain's dangerously hawkish views. McCain's remarks today will hopefully make this especially clear.

That is hardly the worst of it though. Today we also have Dick Cheney sneaking into Iraq for a visit. (In this instance too, the supine U.S. media too frequently accept Bush Administration euphemisms , referring to this sort of trip as a "surprise" or "unannounced" visit. If things on the ground in Iraq are so good why all the sneaking in and out?) This morning I was listening to the news while heading to work and almost drove off the rode when I heard the V.P.O.T.U.S. declare, seemingly without the slightest hint of irony, that the BushCo invasion of Iraq has been a "successful endeavour." What I don't get is why, when the F.C.C. punishes stations for broadcasting anything resembling profanity on grounds that someone (anyone!) in the listening audience might be offended, they do not similarly sanction stations for broadcasting offensive bullshit like these inane utterances from Cheney absent an advisory warning. At the very least the F.C.C. should require stations to offer a candid caveat stating that the "news" need not contain any truth. Cheney is quoted in news reports as insisting that American forces have made great progress toward achieving "victory" and "completing the mission" in Iraq. Unfortunately, neither he nor any hawk I have hear, offer any clue as to what that might mean.

As if to punctuate the absurd assertions McCain and Cheney were making, a suicide bomber blew herself up in a Karbala cafe, killing another 40 plus people, while in Baghdad itself today apparently only 10 people (including six children) were killed by bombs and mortars (we can leave aside the nearly 100 people reported to have been wounded in all this mayhem). Read some of the news reports here and here. Our right-wingers seem to have lost whatever sense of reality they ever may have had.

__________

* I apologize for using the propaganda photo, but I thought using one showing the aftermath of the Karbala bombing would be gratuitous.

Media Politics: Trying to Change the Subject

Well, Republicans apparently have their panties all in a knot about the advertisement that moveon.org ran in The New York Times last Monday. The advertisement, a larger version of which you can see here, criticized General Pertraeus for presenting a wildly inaccurate account of conditions "on the ground" in Iraq. There are a number of things to mention about all this.

The first thing is the sheer hypocricy of right-wingers whining when someone's military service and "character" are called into question. Remember how right-wingers questioned John Kerry's Viet Nam war service? How about Max Cleland? (All of that is especially despicable given the by now tiredly familiar story about how none of the architects of our Iraq policy availed themselves of the opportunity for active duty military service.)

The second thing is that Petraeus was selling a policy that is, charitably put, bullshit. He was in on the design of the surge and is recommending a troop "reduction" that, after roughly 18 months of surging, would reduce our forces only to pre-surge levels. That is a shell game. He ran it for the administration. He also, purportedly, ran it out of his own political ambitions.

The third thing is that it hardly is unprecedented for BushCo to send an "honorable" military man out to sell its policies in ways that hardly are straightforward. Can you spell C-o-l-i-n P-o-w-e-l-l? Rhymes with Petraeus, no?

Fourth, moveon.org cites sources for each claim in the advert on their web page. Republicans may not like the ad, but they might argue back with reasons and evidence. That could be tricky though, given BushCo's own report to Congress yesterday that called into question the extent of both military and political "progress" in Iraq.

Finally, what is at issue here is not what some liberal advocacy group says about the fiasco in Iraq but the actual fiasco. Since they cannot really talk about the dismal situation BushCo have created in Iraq, the right wants to change the subject.

My advice? Keep your eye on the ball. That means telling the right-wingers to stop whining and telling the administration (as well as the spinelsss Democrats) to end the war.

Ethicides

I had posted last spring on a forthcoming collection of essays by John Berger, hoping that it might afford a good summer read. Well, Hold Everything Dear: Dispatches on Survival and Resistance (Pantheon) has finally appeared, just in time for the rush of the new academic term. Most of the essays are dated from the past half dozen or so years. (Irritatingly, there are no acknowledgements to indicate the original places of publication.)

Only the final essay ~ "Looking Carefully: Two Women Photographers" ~ deals directly and at length with photography. The women in question, with neither of whom I am familiar, are Ahlam Shibli and Jitka Hanzlová. I will try to post on their work in due time. At the moment, I want instead to call attention to a short passage from another essay, "The Chorus in Our Heads or Pier Paolo Pasolini." I really do not know much at all about Pasolini. Berger's essay, dated 2006, is a response to a 1962 movie, entitled Le Rabbia (Rage), that Pasolini composed from newsreel footage and that was never actually released at the time.

Here is Berger's lament, prompted by watching Rage; it seems especially timely given the onslaught of political "persuasion" to which we've been subjected this week.

“The film lasts only an hour, an hour that was fashioned,
measured, edited forty years ago. And it is in such
contrast to the news commentaries we watch and the
information fed to us now, that when the hour is over,
you tell yourself that it is not only animal and plant species
which are being destroyed and made extinct today, but also a
set of our human priorities. The latter are systematically
sprayed, not with pesticides, but with ethicides -
agents that kill ethics and therefore any
notion of history and justice.

Particularly targeted are those of our priorities which have
evolved from the human need for sharing, bequeathing,
consoling, mourning and hoping. And the ethicides are
sprayed night and day by the mass news media.

The ethicides are perhaps less effective, less speedy than
the controllers hoped, but they have succeeded in
burying and covering up the imaginative space that
any central public forum represents and requires.”

This passage brought to mind a convergence of stories this week. The first was the release by the World Conservation Union of its Red List of endangered species. The second was the reception of general Petraeus in the mainstream media and the Congress (see, e.g., [1] [2] [3] ). It is undeniable that plant and animal species are endangered. As Berger suggests, so too are our priorities and the spaces where we might articulate them.

Petraeus - "I don't know, actually ..."

Well, General Petraeus has provided W with the cover he needs. According to this story in The Guardian, our self-proclaimed decider basically plans to adopt the recommendations that Petraeus has spelled out. Of course, the General apparently has no idea whether those recommendations will contribute to our national security or not. That may seem unfair, but consider the following which I lifted from a short report by David Corn over at The Nation:

"During his second day of appearances on Capitol Hill, Petraeus this afternoon appeared before the Senate armed services committee. Fortified with charts and graphs, he presented the same we're-on-the-right-course pitch he delivered to the House armed services and foreign affairs committees (on Monday) and to the Senate foreign relations committee (this morning). During the Q&A round at the armed services committee, Senator John Warner, the Virginia Republican who used to chair the committee and who has called for beginning a disengagement in Iraq, took a few sharp (albeit respectful) jabs at Petraeus, noting that one intelligence report after another has said that political reconciliation in Iraq could be a bridge too far. He then asked Petraeus a pointed question: "Do you feel that [Iraq war] is making America safer"?

Petraeus paused before responding. He then said: "I believe this is indeed the best course of action to achieve our objectives in Iraq."

That was, of course, a non-answer. And Warner wasn't going to let the general dodge the bullet. He repeated the question: "Does the [Iraq war] make America safer?"

Petraeus replied, "I don't know, actually. I have not sat down and sorted in my own mind."

Don't know? Is it possible that the war is not making the United States safer? Petraeus went on to note that he has "taken into account" the war's impact on the U.S. military and that it's his job to recommend to the president the best course for reaching "the objectives of the policy" in Iraq. Yet he did not say that the Iraq war is essential to the national security of the United States. Warner did not press the general any further on this point. The senator's time was up."

You can watch the exchange here. Note that the question, seemingly a real softball, was posed by a military friendly Republican Senator not some pinko college professor like me. One of my anonymous commentors has offered this perceptive proposal in response to one of my earlier posts:

"Here's a crazy idea: how about you admit you don't know
what the fuck you're talking about when it comes to Iraq
and let the men and women who are there on the ground
and know what's going on do their jobs."

Well, the good General seems to have no idea whether the Iraq fiasco is making us safer or not. He is too busy doing his job to have such thoughts. He is busy trying to justify the "mission," the irreparably flawed policy he has been charged with implementing. The fact that that policy itself is completely and utterly indefensible simply is not at issue for him. That is why we should not allow military officers to make policy. It is why the hearings this past couple of days are a farce. What we need is some justification for continuing the BushCo policy in Iraq. Heck, we could use some plausible account of why they started the war in the first place! There are good reasons to insist on civilian control of the military. This exchange is a very, very pointed example of why it is crucial. If the man in charge of matters "on the ground" in Iraq - and he surely is a smart, articulate, dedicated man - cannot make up his mind whether or not the policy he is implementing is contributing to our national security, why should we here at home support that policy? End the War!

General David Petraeus - BS upon BS

Well, David Petraeus is about to begin testifying before a joint committee in the House of Representatives. He will testify before a joint committee in the Senate tomorrow. The press is trying to make it seem as though there is some possibility that he might ssuggest anything other than staying the course. What a joke! Let's recall that Petraeus himself suggested the "surge." So, in order for Petraeu to admit that things are not going reasonably well in military terms he'd have to admit to a pretty major mistake. Let's also see how Ambassador Crocker is recieved by the legislators since there is little evidence of political progress. And this is a political problem.

Having said all that, it is absolutely scandalous that these hearings are taking place on the anniversary of 9/11. The tacit mesage is that somehow what is happening in Iraq has something to do with the terrorist attacks six years ago. That is clearly bullshit. How are the democrats letting this happen?