Bag O' Books: 'Cloud Atlas' by David Mitchell

I'm not sure how I missed "Cloud Atlas" when it came out in 2004: I was reading lots of novels at that point and was trying to stay current with all the best stuff. But I missed it, only to find out about it when David Mitchell's newest book resulted in a bit of hype.

Is "Cloud Atlas" a work of genius? I'm not sure. It's certainly a work of talent. It's as though Mitchell wrote a half-dozen novellas -- a South Sea adventure; a Jazz Age cautionary tale; a pulpy '70s mystery; a dystopian "Blade Runner"-meets-Asimov near-future sci-fi tale; and a post-apocalyptic story of the Last Humans On Earth -- and stacks those novellas on top of each other, weaving enough commonalities and references to the other stories to give it the sheen of a holistic artistic vision. Does that work? Maybe just barely; we begin and end in the same place -- the death of civilizations, redeemed only by the hope offered by one or two good people.

That's not to detract from Mitchell's accomplishment. The South Sea tale -- "The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing" -- sounds remarkably like something written in its era. Same for each of the stories; Mitchell's voice morphs to match his subject matter, cleanly and convincingly in a way few writers can match. Some critics have complained, apparently, that we don't know what Mitchell's voice sounds like in all of this. But that's a silly, forced complaint in the face of his virtuosity. Mitchell and "Cloud Atlas" might be the topic for debate within the "literary fiction" universe, but he just might be the best genre fiction writer alive -- in a number of genres, and all in the same book. The result? More than a little reading pleasure.

Is the Army Thinking About Bacevichian Isolationism as 'Grand Strategy'?

A few weeks ago I pondered what America would look like if Andrew Bacevich ran the country. Though Bacevich rejects the term "isolationism" to describe his worldview, it's a term that'll do in a pinch: He essentially envisions the United States divesting itself of overseas military commitments and bringing troops home so that A) the defense establishment can concentrate on defending the United States, instead of projecting power around the world and B) the United States can start to live, fiscally, within its means.

Turns out Bacevich's vision has some fans inside military circles. The latest issue of Military Review -- one of the Army's intellectual journals, published at Fort Leavenworth -- contains an article retired Navy Commander John Kuehn, an associate professor of military history at the Army's Command and General Staff College for rising career officers at Leavnworth. His piece references and echoes Bacevich.

Prior to the outbreak of World Wars I and II, Kuehn writes, America's national security strategy was simple: Dominate the Western Hemisphere, use the Navy to guarantee free access to markets elsewhere -- and otherwise stay the hell out of the way:

Over time, the grand strategy came to encompass military nonintervention outside the Western Hemisphere, free trade access to whatever markets Americans desired, and the right to act as the hemispheric hegemon. These last two components are known as the Monroe Doctrine and the Open Door Policy, respectively.13 The attainment of a contiguous landmass from sea to shining sea completed the defensive geographical requirement needed by this strategy with a sort of buffer zone in the southwest along the Rio Grande. This was the American grand strategy, constitutionally based, for almost 150 years—although the geographical land component came after the war with Mexico.

The Cold War necessarily changed that vision, Kuehn writes. But the Cold War has been over for 21 years. It's way past time for American to revert to the old ways, he says.

I would submit that there is not much work to do to adopt a new grand strategy. Just re-adopt the old one, technologically updated of course and with a strong, but smaller, military establishment capable of defending our air,sea, and space “moats.” The war that lasted from 1914 to 1989 is over. The grand strategy that served the United States well before World War II is a fine framework for the 21st century.

Today’s operational environment is actually a more promising one in which to implement the traditional strategy than it appears at first blush. The American voting public does not favor interventionism. We need only divest ourselves of commitments made in error (Iraq), in haste with little thought of the end state (Afghanistan and Iraq), and those that have outlived their utility (Korea, Japan, troops in Europe, and our Navy in the Persian Gulf). Strategic retrenchment of this sort, in which we remove the training wheels from the bicycle and stand on the sidewalk, is a necessary step toward healthy growth. The United States has more than enough national power to get involved if the bicycle falls down, but the U.S. must control its tendency toward strategic impatience (a feature of our strategic culture). We need to practice strategic patience. We need to learn to say “no.” In doing so, we may find we actually have more strategic choices—and less strategic imperatives—than ever.

Now, I don't want to overstate what's being said here: Military Review is one of those places within the Army that smart folks in the military establishment can do their "blue sky" thinking. It's unlikely President Obama is going to start bringing troops home from Korea and Japan anytime soon. But Kuehn, it should be noted, develops the military history curriculum at CGSC, where virtually every Army officer goes for mid-career education after making the rank of major. These are the ideas being kicked around by the next generation of generals. Maybe we should be taking them seriously.

Andrew McCarthy, Robert Wright, Moderate Islam and the Fundamentalist Mindset

The face of "real" Christianity?

Not long ago, National Review's Andrew McCarthy wrote something that has stuck in my craw for a few days. He conceded that there are many moderate Muslims while dismissing the possibility of moderate Islam itself. Here he is:

There is no moderate Islam in the mainstream of Muslim life, not in the doctrinal sense. There are millions of moderate Muslims who crave reform. Yet the fact that they seek real reform, rather than what Georgetown is content to call reform, means they are trying to invent something that does not currently exist.

In other words, McCarthy dismisses "millions of moderate Muslims" because -- even though those millions of Muslims live their lives in what we're calling "moderate" fashion -- Islamic doctrines aren't similarly moderate. And that makes little sense: It's like insisting that there are no Catholics who use birth control or Southern Baptists who dance, because the doctrines and practices of those churches prohibit or discourage such practices. We know that's not the case, though.

I have no idea what religion, if any, McCarthy practices and observes. But it seems to me that many of the people who insist that "real Islam" is the ugliest version of itself revealed in the Koran are people who -- like Florida Rev. Terry Jones -- are Christian fundamentalists themselves or, like the broader American conservative movement, often politically allied with fundamentalists.

Homeland Security, Gay Terrorists and the Tragedy of Gov. Ed Rendell

Big Brother

A couple of days ago I wrote that "the surveillance state always claims to be acting in the interest of our safety and security. Sometimes, it's even true." I was writing then about a 40-year-old incident involving the civil rights movement; luckily, the State of Pennsylvania has decided to offer us a fresh example:

HARRISBURG – Gov. Rendell said Tuesday that he was "appalled" and "embarrassed" that his administration's Office of Homeland Security has been tracking and circulating information about legitimate protests by activist groups that do not pose a threat to public safety.

Rendell said he did not know that the state Office of Homeland Security had been paying an outside company to track a long list of activists, including groups that oppose drilling in the Marcellus Shale, animal-rights advocates, and peace activists.

The office then passed that information on to large groups of people, including law enforcement and members of the private sector.

"Let me make this as clear as I can make it," the governor said at news conference Tuesday night, pounding his fist on the podium. "Protesting against an idea, a principle, a process, is not a real threat against infrastructure. Protesting is a God-given American right, a right that is in our Constitution, a right that is fundamental to all we believe in as Americans."

Nice words. Except for this:

Rendell said that he will not fire or discipline anyone in the Office of Homeland Security, headed by director James F. Powers Jr., for the lapse. But he said he ordered the office to terminate its contract with Philadelphia-based Institute of Terrorism and Research Response, which he said has been paid $125,000 in the last year to gather data about possible security threats.

That, my friends, is scapegoating. An outside contractor loses a nice little paycheck and that's supposed to be accountability. But "security" officials who received the information -- and published them in a thrice-weekly intelligence bulletin? They get to keep their jobs, even though they should've known better. They didn't know better -- which suggests that Gov. Rendell wasn't really setting a "protect the civil rights of Pennsylvanians" vibe in office.

Say, who were the "threats" anyway?

The bulletin included information about a PrideFest by gays and lesbians; a rally that supported his administration's education policy; and an anti-BP candlelight vigil.

The controversy over the Homeland Security Office's intelligence bulletins came to light after one became public last week. The August bulletin included a list of forthcoming - and mostly public - hearings involving Marcellus Shale natural-gas drilling, and noted that they would be attended by anti-drilling activists. It also listed a planned screening of the controversial movie Gasland in Philadelphia.

It's laughable, really. And our lame-duck governor gets to say a lot of nice words about rights without holding anybody in government responsible for infringing on those rights. So I don't believe Ed Rendell. The surveillance of peaceful protest groups happens too often -- here and elsewhere -- for a reasonable person to believe it's anything but business as usual. The problem, for government officials, is getting caught.

The Tragedy of Ernest C. Withers

Earnest C. Withers, a black man who photographed so many key moments of the Civil Rights Movement, was apparently a paid informant of the FBI during the 1960s -- keeping the government apprised of the movements and plans of Martin Luther King Jr. and his allies who fought for equal rights.

Civil rights leaders have responded to the revelation with a mixture of dismay, sadness and disbelief. “If this is true, then Ernie abused our friendship,” said the Rev. James M. Lawson Jr., a retired minister who organized civil rights rallies throughout the South in the 1960s.

Others were more forgiving. “It’s not surprising,” said Andrew Young, a civil rights organizer who later became mayor of Atlanta. “We knew that everything we did was bugged, although we didn’t suspect Withers individually.”

The children of Mr. Withers did not respond to requests for comment. But one daughter, Rosalind Withers, told local news organizations that she did not find the report conclusive.

“This is the first time I’ve heard of this in my life,” Ms. Withers told The Commercial Appeal. “My father’s not here to defend himself. That is a very, very strong, strong accusation.”

Mr. Withers is dead, so we can't possibly know his motivations for informing to the FBI.

But I was reminded of the great movie "The Lives of Others," about East Germany's extensive domestic spying program during the Cold War. As that movie -- and ample documentation from that era show -- a surveillance state is a leviathan that does much more than simply "surveil." It reaches into the lives of the people it observes, and the people around them, seeking control through manipulation, fear and the ever-present reminder that you are being watched. We think of ourselves in the West as being more free and more enlightened than East German stooges -- and, mostly, we have been -- but there have been times, such as when J. Edgar Hoover ran the FBI, that it has been a fairly close call.

We should thus mourn the tragedy of Ernest C. Withers, then: a man, maybe a man who could've been great, apparently compromised by forces much bigger than he.

And we should be concerned, too, that some 40 years from now we'll be finding out similar, horrifying revelations, about our friends and neighbors and government. The surveillance state always claims to be acting in the interest of our safety and security. Sometimes, it's even true.

A Letter From A Reader on the 'Ground Zero Mosque'

Presented without comment with comments in the comment section:

Joel,

I'd like to help you put this whole arguement in a perspective you've never considered. All my life, I have admired the athletic, popular, totally successful guys who are so good at what they do, they don't feel that they have to constantly prove themselves. They are confident and secure in their own identity but they never take themselves too seriously.

That's an analogy of the United States population. We are a very benevolent society, having given more to provide food and shelter to the afflicted than all the other countries of the world combined. Who else defeats an enemy in war and then pays to rebuild their country? The US bears the torch of freedom for the rest of the world and we must be doing something right because everyone wants to come here.

Even the malcontents that scream from the rooftops about all that is wrong with our country never stop to thank God that they live in a country where they can shout obsenities and hide behind the internet to dispel their hate without being arrested as traitors.

As for the Muslims. They are a minority, are they not? In a way, that makes them guests in our house where we sweat and fought to build this country long before they got here. We extend our courtesy to them and grant them every right we've earned and initiated. We tolerate them, we tolerate their religion, but, as a virtuous and principled people, we will not tolerate bad behavior, nor should we.

No nation can survive without virtues and values. One of our most cherished values is the right to raise our children as we see fit. We love them, but when they do wrong, it is because we want them to blend into a diverse society that we teach them good behavior. The Muslims that want to build this mosque are exhibiting bad behavior, basically being rude. I mentioned before that minorities can be considered guests in our American 'house' and we will treat them as equals and defend their rights when they show good intent. The Muslims who insist on imposing their will on this country by trying to use our own constitution against us are, without a question, within their rights. However, they are exhibiting bad behavior in our house. As a guest in someone's house, wouldn't you respect their wishes? After all, part of democracy is 'majority rules' and every special interest group cannot be pleased all the time.

One more thing. If I lose a fight/contest/game, I'll be a good sport and gracious loser. But if the person that beat me insists on 'rubbing my nose in the dirt', I get riled. As the tolerant man I mentioned in the beginning, we have been polite but we're tired of being tolerant to people that behave badly and enjoy rubbing our face in the dirt.

Why is it always American that has to be tolerant? Why can't the minority be tolerant and respectful of the wishes of the majority, especially if they insist they want to blend with this majority? What is it about these Muslims that they can't be good guests in our house and let us be good hosts witout having to rub our faces in the dirt? We can be tolerant but allowing our faces to be rubbed in the dirt is just plain cowardice and weakness. We didn't get where we are by being weak.

As a last word, let me offer this comment. If I am a racist because I don't want my face rubbed in the dirt, then you are a traitor for not standing up for your country. Toleration is a good thing, but children have to be taught good behavior and these people must be 'persuaded' to behave as the good citizens they claim to be. Anyone that is OK with this mosque, I wouldn't want on my side in a fight because they have no problem laying down and giving up while their face gets rubbed in the dirt.

This whole arguement is not a legal one and not an arguement of toleration of diverse groups, it's all about pride of country and pride for self.

Jim Crawford
Louisville, Georgia

Netflix Queue: 'The Men Who Stare At Goats'

A recent New York Times interview with Elliot Gould lamented that -- 40 years after "MASH," nobody is making good American war comedies anymore, a loss to be lamented all the more because there are some aspects of the last decade of tragedy and death that are in ripe need of satire.

Don't listen to the Times. Yes, there's been tons of anti-war schlock out of Hollywood, failures that are cause for joy among conservatives every time one goes down in flames. But the new era has given at least one fairly entertaining war satire: "The Men Who Stare At Goats."

Now: It's not a great movie. It's a deeply flawed movie, in some respects, clumsily playing for pathos near the end -- and coming up with a trick in its last second (literally) that weakened the whole "do they have powers or not?" structure of the flick. And structuring it around the home life of the journalist played by Ewan McGregor was, well, a misfire.

What's more, the movie wasn't really pitched as a war satire in the previews like the one above. Instead, it's sold as a wacky comedy -- more "Sgt. Bilko" with Jedi powers, maybe, instead of "MASH." But most of the movie is set in Iraq during the 2003 invasion -- and it plays for laughs gun battles between Blackwater-type private security contractors, the confusion of Americans unable to distinguish Al Qaeda from common local criminals and, yes, the torture of Iraqis.

Mostly this got missed by critics when the movie came out in 2009 -- focusing on the absurdities of a small-bore program (allegedly) started by the U.S. government instead of what the movie had to say about the big-picture absurdities of our presence in Baghdad. That's ok. The movie only made $32 million at the box office, but I suspect it will age well and garner a new a devoted audience in the years to come. Like the Iraq War itself, it may prove more popular after the fact.