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Memorial Day’s Red Poppies

By Patricia H. Kushlis

I suppose it’s asking a lot to suggest that the red poppies that symbolize Memorial Day in the US and have been sold by American Veterans’ groups to raise money for fellow veterans in need over the years are European – not American - and the author of the poem “In Flanders Fields” was a Canadian surgeon.

Remember its first line – “In Flanders Fields the poppies blow?” Well, the poppies did and they still do. Red poppies grow and blow in profusion in Flanders and elsewhere in Europe. These spectacular spring flowers grow wild in fields from Belgium to Turkey’s Aegean coast(see photo left by WJKushlis 1983).

The poem was written by a Canadian Lieutenant Colonel named John McCrae in tribute to Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, a young Canadian soldier and former student, who had died two days before in the 2nd Battle of Ypres. It was subsequently published in the British journal Punch on December 8, 1915. The term Flanders Fields represented all battlefields in the medieval County of Flanders which, by World War I, had been split between Belgium and France. These fields were also the sites of the worst and most protracted trench warfare of the entire war.(Map right from Wikipedia)

Trench Warfare

Yes, the American military did fight, live and die in those trenches. Those World War I GIs fought hard and well in a difficult and ugly campaign. There is a six acre cemetery near Ypres maintained by the US government where American dead from those battles – known and unkown - are buried.

I haven’t been there, but I have visited other American military cemeteries in Europe and the Philippines (See photo above right of the US War Memorial in Manila, Philippines by PHKushlis, 1992). They are immaculately kept and moving to visit. They lend a special feeling of sorrow and reverence for the military who died in service to our country.

No paean to pacifism

McCrae’s poem is no paean to pacifism. Certainly not the third stanza which reads: “Take up our quarrel with the foe; To you from failing hands we throw, the torch; be yours to hold it high. . .” Rather it is a call to continue the battle. Since it was written in the heat of the struggle by an officer on the ground charged with taking care of the wounded and dying, what different could one ask?

Robin Hood: A Cautionary Tale of Injustice and Insurgency

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

The critics are unanimous.  Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood is a bad bad bad film.  Converted into martini glasses, reviewers’ impressions show as empty or upside down.  And what do reviews actually say? The hero is stout. The battles have a stodgy obligatory feel.  The plot is contorted. The history is distorted. The cinematography is a sepia disaster—and no one is merry.  I went to see it anyway.  I’m a Robin Hood junkie.

The Right Context

Little by little, as I watched this Robin Hood, I found myself thinking of the stubborn insurgencies that wrack our own world and how they began, with injustice. Read about the Maoists in India, for example. Think about Afghanistan. Or Nepal. Or the pirates in the Niger delta.  Or about Aceh before the Indonesian government came to its senses.  And so on.  Which isn’t to say that justified rebellion can’t, in turn,  morph into even worse ugliness, but that’s another story, another film. 

Gradually I realized that we shouldn’t be judging this film by the ho hum genre criteria of standard summer entertainment.  Battles there may be, but it isn’t an action film.  It’s not about salvation through robotic or human superheroes.  It’s not a sexploitative, skin-rich love story or a male-bonding buddy film–too bad for the guys who play Little John, et. al.  Nor is it a hilarious send up like Men in Tights, as if there’s no way to play the story straight (a contention of some critics). 

The Past as Present

Conclusion: medieval trappings notwithstanding, this Robin Hood is a full blown critique of the world we live in today—and this Robin Hood gets it right. It’s hard for an ordinary honest man and/or woman to get ahead, or even to tread water, in a world of pitiless crooks masquerading as economic and political leaders.

One of Robin Hood’s critics complains about the dirt-smeared, rag-wearing urchins who scuttle through the twilight in shadowy packs to burn and pillage, then melt uncatchably  back into the forest.  Not enough is done with these urchins, he carps.  Wrong.  They perfectly symbolize the vague fears and chafing discontents, the unsatisfied hungers, the corrosive subliminal malaise, of a sick society gnawing upon itself. 

Things  are also out of balance at the top of the social pyramid, among the barons, whose  powers are being usurped by the ruthless centralization of a dimwit king with an empty treasury. Speak about kleptocracy!  Drought or not, even the church is on the take; if peasants starve and the minor gentry lose their land, so what?  Let them eat communion wafers. Ultimately, a bankrupt, divided England itself is up for grabs.  The slimy oyster-eating  French are on the prowl. 

The Pentagon’s Strategic Communications Overdrive Continues – Back to the Future

By Patricia H. Kushlis  

In a May 25, 2010 news story entitled “Pentagon tries to steer media coverage on Iraq,” veteran Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus pointed out that although the Pentagon may be sharply reducing its combat forces in Iraq, plans are well underway to expand its media activities in that country, throughout the broader Middle East and also in the US – under a single contract to some apparently yet to be named strategic communications company. 

Pincus’ report which in essence turns this troubling pre-contract, contract announcement from jargon into English is crucial reading for all sorts of reasons including some beyond those Pincus identifies. 

What is the Obama administration thinking?

Or is the National Security Council even cognizant of the Pentagon’s latest strategic communications contracting out shenanigans?  If so, why did it allow this blunder bus of an announcement to move forward?   

Think about it yourself. It strikes me as if – here we go again – the U.S. military is stepping into something that the civilian side used to do, and do well. Some, if not all, of the media monitoring included in the pre-contract contract announcement should still be being done by civilians at the State Department and the CIA (the Pentagon announcement only suggests that the yet to be named contractor cross-check with the Defense Intelligence Agency for potential redundancy).

If, however, the shrunken State Department is not doing what USIA used to do as a matter of course - or at all - in terms of monitoring foreign media globally, and the administration wants to reduce America’s military boot-print abroad (which I thought it did) shouldn’t media relations of this sort be among the first functions transferred back to the civilian side?

Common sense, please - not to mention obeying the law?

Furthermore, the US component of this package is likely in violation of the Smith-Mundt Act, a law that prohibits the US government from propagandizing Americans.  Period.  End of story. Although Pincus left this little question out of his news report, whoever is overseeing strategic communications these days at the Pentagon should be well aware of the legality problem.

Taser Training at the Police Academy: Sweet-talking Brutality

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Remember the waterboarding debate?  Remember how euphemisms were used to protect torturers from  charges of cruel and unusual punishment?  I’ve just discovered another instance of language abuse in the law enforcement world.  We’re talking about ordinary police, here, not shadowy CIA operatives, but mechanism and effect are the same.  People are hurt.  Words are used as whitewash.    

Everyone (except NRA spokespeople) publicly admits that guns are dangerous.  They maim and kill. Tasers are different and better, we've been led to believe.  Criminals apprehended with less use of lethal force: how could this not be a good thing?  I tended to agree.

Then I began to read about cases in which tasered suspects died.  Worse, some of the dead had turned out to be innocent or, almost as bad, some were only petty offenders.  Aha!  So tasers, like guns, are dangerous weapons.  Like guns, they can be misused and overused by policemen with bad tempers and itchy fingers.

Often, when I’ve  read of torture sessions or of vicious beatings inflicted in the course of a routine arrest, I’ve wondered whether those who choose careers in law enforcement or the shadier echelons of national security service are brutes by nature, sadists on salary getting their jollies.  We’re encouraged to view police officers and the military as protectors or saviors. No hero of mine uses excess or gratuitous force in executing an arrest.  Nor do I feel safer in a society that condones torture to squeeze out information for any reason.

However, there’s a somewhat less depressing possibility.  The brutality too often exhibited by American law enforcers may be a learned trait, an attitude (with equivalent techniques) instilled, most unfortunately, during the course of training for police work.  The likelihood of this possibility was reinforced by an article reprinted on May 19 in The New Mexican from the Alamagordo (NM) Daily News.  (No link because the site isn’t a freebie.)   In this case, it looks as if the cops-in-training are conditioned to minimize the excruciating pain involved in experiencing tasering even as they themselves testify to the agony of having 1200 volts of electricity running from taser probe to taser probe through their bodies.

Here’s how some of the Alamagordo recruits described the experience:

•    When it hits, it shuts down your brain, all the sensory nerves and you just lock up.

•    Your muscles tighten.  You think you’re going to bend your knees and fall, but you don’t.  It locks you straight up and you fall forward.

•    It feels like it will never end....You hear all the stories, but you can never really grasp it until you get shot by one.

•    It was like being electrocuted—which it is.

•    It’s a five second ride.

•    It was a hell of a ride.

Please focus on those last statements.  The "ride" image is clearly not spontaneous.  Although the tasering experience is “five seconds of hell,” the law enforcement profession calls it a “ride.”  Like being on a Ferris wheel. Or a merry-go-round.  Or a cruise through the tunnel of love.  How can anyone object to that?

Going for a ride/being taken for a ride  has a long history in America of being misused as a euphemism for mistreatment.  You may be conned, if you are taken for a ride, or you may be dead.  Either way, it’s bad stuff made into a joke.  Is this the best way to encourage recruits to classify the experience of being tasered?   Sure, they can think of themselves as heros for shrugging off the pain.  But won’t they also be encouraged to use the weapons more lightheartedly than they should?

In the same minimization vein, the Alamagordo people pooh-pooh the idea that a tasering as such does serious harm. Examine the weird self-exoneration contained in the following statement:

Lots of people think it causes cardiac arrest, but it’s [meaning any fatal impact] because that person already has something going on with them.

Translation: in the natural course of police work, tasering is going to kill people who aren't as robust as police recruits.  But the fault won't lie in the weapon.  Oh no!  The fault will lie in the victim who couldn’t take it.

So, take your choice.  Many of our law enforcement people are brutes by nature or brutes by training.  Most likely the latter, given the abuse of language required to defend death-threatening techniques.  Waterboarding is merely “an enhanced interrogation” technique.  Tasering is merely “going for a ride.”

Hey! What are you civil liberties people so upset about?

Thailand – A break from the past?

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Update May 22: See Dick Virden's op ed in The Star Tribune for additional Thai political history and Bill's comment on Thaksin Shinawatra's background below.

In October 1973 over 200,000 Bangkok students demonstrated against the Thai government demanding a permanent Constitution, democratic government and the resignation of a military junta that had seized power in November 17, 1971 citing the threat of Communist insurgency to justify its actions.

The student demonstrations were centered at Thammasat University, Thailand’s second oldest, located on the banks of the Chao Praya River near the Royal Palace and some of the city’s most venerated monuments. Students, professors, and former members of parliament led the demonstrations. Over the next ten days – from their beginning on October 6 – the protests mushroomed in size and increased in violence. They had begun as peaceful panel discussions and seminars designed, according to a special bilingual supplement of The Bangkok Post published at the time, to “encourage the government to complete the drafting of the constitution.”

Despite claims of the then military government of Thanom Kittikachorn, there was little if any evidence that the 1973 student revolt had ties to the domestic Communist insurgency confined to the rural areas or that the students, faculty and others were Communists or, heaven forbid, even fellow travelers.

1973 Military over-reaction

The over-reaction of that military government, its arrests of 13 of the pro-democracy leaders, its indiscriminate killing of demonstrators and even medical personnel swelled the demonstrators’ ranks.

Furthermore, Thammasat may have been the hotbed of Thai democratic sentiment and protest but its students were joined by 30,000 from Chulalongkorn University (Thailand’s oldest), and many more from various teacher training institutes. In fact, members of both elite faculties had largely been western trained and western oriented either having studied in the United Kingdom, the US or less frequently, France.

The violence of the police against the demonstrators and their supporters – many products of the rising urban middle class - provoked an increase in violence from elements of the demonstrators – especially engineering students who formed the most violent core. But even then, the student-led violence was largely directed against the police, police stations, and their guard posts – the people and physical elements of the state that had been used to target the students. The students' weapons were home-grown.

Meanwhile, the demonstrations were miles away from the core commercial district, foreign embassies and residential districts – their locus in recent months.

A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire – Book Review Essay

By Patricia H. Kushlis

The 150 years leading up to the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in 1920 should be required study for understanding the history behind the seemingly never ending conflicts from the Balkans to Eastern Turkey, the Caucasus to the Arabian Peninsula and Egypt to Algeria. Şükrü Hanioğlu, Princeton University professor of Near Eastern Studies, makes this painlessly possible through his readable, thoughtful and manageably-sized 241-page book entitled A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire and published by Princeton University Press in 2008.

I thought I had a pretty good grasp of the period and the region – especially with respect to the Balkans and Turkey – but I missed the tug and pull inside a highly decentralized empire as its leaders attempted to deal with the impact of modern technology, nationalisms and the rise of the West while at the same time fending off the expansionism of the Russian Empire in its quest for ever more territory and warm water ports all the while dealing internally with competing tribal chieftains and independently minded local and regional leaders from Bosnia to the Arabian Peninsula and beyond.(Photo right: Dolmabahçe Palace by PHKushlis 2006 - Photo Note: the Sultanate was moved from Topkapi to the European-style Dolmabahçe in 1843)

Route 60 and the Salt River Canyon

By Patricia H. Kushlis

There are several ways to drive between Phoenix, Arizona and Albuquerque, New Mexico. The fastest is I-40 via Holbrooke and then south on 191 or even I-40 to Flagstaff and then south on 180 via Sedona. That is if you don’t mind getting caught in multiple swarms of ten wheeler trucks piloted by aging race car drivers – or wanted-to-be race car drivers - hell-bent on drag racing at 85 or faster to see who reaches the port of Los Angeles first.

US Route 60, in contrast and listed as scenic on the Triple A map, is a welcome relief to careening along the truck equivalent of the Indy-500. It’s prettier and in early spring, at least, far easier on the nerves. (Photo Right: US Route Signs in New Mexico high desert photo right by PHKushlis, April 2010)

This route goes through such towns as Globe (named for a globe shaped piece of silver found nearby) and Show Low (for the turn of a card) on the Arizona side then on to Quemado, Pietown, Magdalena and Socorro, New Mexico before reaching I-25 on the banks of the Rio Grande seventy miles south of Albuquerque.

Route 60 probably takes an hour or so longer than Interstate 40 – but the traffic – once beyond the Phoenix suburbs is light, roads are good and the early spring desert scenery is splendid. The Salt River Canyon itself is a highlight. (Photo left: Arizona Salt River Canyon by PHKushlis, April 2010)

The road winds its way up from the valley floor hugs the canyon walls, traverses the Salt River and then continues skyward. This is not the Grand Canyon or Canyon de Chelly further north in Arizona, but for all intents and purposes, the Salt River Canyon is no slouch as canyons go and the road had few trucks as well as plenty of pull outs for tourists, picnickers and photographers.(Photo right: Arizona Salt River Canyon by PHKushlis April 2010)

The State Department, Public Diplomacy and the IKEA Factor

By Patricia H. Kushlis

May 17 Update - please also be sure to read Gerald Loftus' "The Singing Diplomat" on Avuncular American.  Why shouldn't the US have a Department of Culture and Communication?  

I spent more hours than I’d like to admit last week assembling IKEA furniture. When, that is, I wasn’t attending meetings, concerts and visiting with friends and former colleagues - mostly although not entirely - inside the Beltway.

Truth be told, I hadn’t assembled out-of-the-box furniture in several years. But the principles of build-by-the-numbers (or actually follow the pictures) furniture assembly haven’t changed much since then except that the directions this time around came with no text instructions whatsoever. Totally pictorial. There were several times I needed to tear nearly finished pieces apart and return to the beginning because I hadn’t interpreted the pictures as carefully as I should have. Or the pictures themselves were not as explicit as they could have been. A little color coding and numbers on the boards would have helped.

But I was reminded of one important rule of thumb: assembling the second version of the same object took half as long as the first. For every chair, foot stool and bed stand – the same rule still stood. I had made my mistakes on the first model but by the time I got to the second – I had the bugs worked out, and therefore, the assembly process worked smoothly and rapidly.

Practice makes perfect

So what does this have to do with the State Department or with the practice of America’s public diplomacy, you may wonder? At lot. Remember the old adage “Practice makes perfect?” A near Russian equivalent is “pafterenia mat uchenia.” Pardon the transliteration but this is just to point out that it was not only my Yankee grandmother who understood the value of repetition as a major tool to success. Bottom line: The more one repeats the same thing or something similar while getting the bugs out along the way – the fewer mistakes one makes and the smoother and faster the process becomes in the future.