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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
quickstrategy
Published Letters: 397
Not to pile on the nattering-nabob stuff, but I think your example shows how things are getting worse.
I keep thinking about Raymond Bonner, the NYT reporter who wrote about what happened in El Sal, specifically in El Mozote (someone correct me if I'm misremembering the name of the place). He walked right into the face of all the positive press about the Atlacatl Battalion, the counter-insurgency battalion 'we' had trained, and reported an atrocity ... which was well known (immediately after the fact), documented, and commented on OTR by the embassy staff. Bonner served in the Marines in Vietnam (0311, not as a reporter), and had a good reputation as a reporter.
Predictably, the RW went batshit when the story appeared, took the usual potshots at the NYT, tried to slime Bonner, etc.
BUT ... the paper stood by him, piled on more coverage with more reporters (this is a tactic we taught foreign editors struggling with the same things), which was then emulated by other outlets, and the truth became pretty hard to argue. The struggle to define what had happened went on, with the usual ambiguous outcome, but the RW had been handed their ass and people started taking a very critical line against the Reagan administration's claims about what was going on in their attempts to defend the hemisphere against the communist menace. That reporting was crucial to passing the Boland amendment, outlawing aid to the (Nicaraguan) Contras. I could be wrong, but I think that reporting was cited in the hearings.
Hard to imagine that happening now, isn't it?
I feel a certain private irony when I think I'm being read as saying something that is the opposite of what, in talking about other topics, I've said very forcefully. This is not meant as a jab against you guys ... the 'opposite' is usually something I've argued elsewhere, in print or F2F, not here.
My feelings about Powell are an example. I've been caustic in talking about him for almost 20 years. People think Powell is a cryptoliberal, I say Are you effing kidding me? They express their admiration, I say, this is what it's come to, that this is the kind of guy we 'look up to'. I insist that the 'Powell Doctrine' was no such thing, that it was the 'Weinberger Doctrine', renamed to suit the personal advancement of one C. Powell. If Powell were the principled guy people think, then I would expect him to be the one in the Principals Meetings discussing torture to say, 'Why are we, the senior officials in this government, sitting here discussing torture?' and stop trying to rimlap his way into a more comfortable relationship with his boss.
I hate the guy, and something else I would personally add to the My Lai and DADT follies and his lies to the UN, is his substitution as CJCS of the 'Just Cause' Panama plan, which killed an extraordinary number of people for no good reason, for a much more nuanced and careful 'Blue Spoon' plan ... leaving aside the question of whether the invasion had anything to do with its purported justifications and whether it wasn't just another imperial knock-down (which I hope you won't call on me to defend, for the reasons I said above).
So I don't aim to praise, rehabilitate, or excuse Powell. What I do, though is admit a) I've never actually met the guy, b) I wasn't there during any of these latest deliberations he took part in, and c) since it's possible that I could let my animosity color my conclusions about what happened, I'd have to give some credence, with reservations, to any other reports that contained information I have no basis for impeaching. Likewise with the accounts of the truly odious and psychotic John Ashcroft, whom I believe really could have resisted signing off on those controversial memos in his hospital bed, and can believe so without having to back off on any of my loathing for the guy.
So, what I said was accurate, I think, that Bob Woodward suggests something about Powell in his books that might be true, though I'm not sure, and it's worth thinking about how other people (more worthy of such contemplation) might have been in a similar situation.
But don't get me started on Bob Woodward. :>
This slim volume (link at sig) was written by my dissertation supervisor and mentor, a guy named Michael Taylor who was well known in some very small circles but invisible outside them. He started out as a math prof at Essex, did another PhD in political philosophy at Yale, and came to the US later (much to my benefit). At Essex, he lived on a commune 20k or so outside of town and ran to and from class every day. Great guy (for a Brit). (Just kidding, Rowan). He had a very strong influence on me, and we had some great conversations about 'nested communities' within hierarchical organizations (like the army).
His previous book, "Anarchy and Cooperation" (later reprinted as "The Possibility of Cooperation"), was a technical and largely game theoretic examination of cooperative collective action. This one has more history and anthropology added in, and its more accessible (though still kind of turgid).
Taylor was also part of the circle of scholars who developed the 'social capital' idea first articulated by Glenn Loury, formalized by James Coleman and then monetized (:>) by Robert Putnam. The crowd included Douglass North and a handful of other notables who gathered under a grant that Putnam facilitated. Coleman died shortly after they started meeting.
I don't think Taylor was a big believer in 'social capital', or even anarchy, by the tail end of his career, but it was another piece of the puzzle (along with transactions costs, for example) that he was trying to wrestle with.
The first book is out of print, but this one is still kicking. Recommend you give it a gander ...
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
