Here’s the platform Barack Obama ran on from www.barackobama.com. How much of this does the President still believe in? How much did the candidate believe in then?
We could have deployed the full force of American power to hunt down and destroy Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, the Taliban, and all of the terrorists responsible for 9/11, while supporting real security in Afghanistan. …
We could have strengthened old alliances, formed new partnerships, and renewed international institutions to advance peace and prosperity. …
George Bush and John McCain don’t have a strategy for success in Iraq – they have a strategy for staying in Iraq. They said we couldn’t leave when violence was up, they say we can’t leave when violence is down. They refuse to press the Iraqis to make tough choices, and they label any timetable to redeploy our troops “surrender,” even though we would be turning Iraq over to a sovereign Iraqi government – not to a terrorist enemy. Theirs is an endless focus on tactics inside Iraq, with no consideration of our strategy to face threats beyond Iraq’s borders. …
It is unacceptable that almost seven years after nearly 3,000 Americans were killed on our soil, the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 are still at large. Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahari are recording messages to their followers and plotting more terror. The Taliban controls parts of Afghanistan. Al Qaeda has an expanding base in Pakistan that is probably no farther from their old Afghan sanctuary than a train ride from Washington to Philadelphia. If another attack on our homeland comes, it will likely come from the same region where 9/11 was planned. And yet today, we have five times more troops in Iraq than Afghanistan. …
Senator McCain said – just months ago – that “Afghanistan is not in trouble because of our diversion to Iraq.” I could not disagree more. Our troops and our NATO allies are performing heroically in Afghanistan, but I have argued for years that we lack the resources to finish the job because of our commitment to Iraq. That’s what the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said earlier this month. And that’s why, as President, I will make the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban the top priority that it should be. This is a war that we have to win.
What’s changed? Or has the President simply changed his mind now that he’s had a think about it? Was Afghanistan “a war that we have to win” from the beginning? Or is it an economy of force operation? And if it still is the Central Front in what used to be called the War on Terror, then is losing an option?
Or was Barack Obama wrong and is the President now arguing that geostrategic changes in other parts of the world, say the Middle East, can have an indirect but decisive effect on Afghanistan so that pulling out is now an option? Not the hated Iraq campaign, which everyone on the Left believes achieved nothing, but say the Palestinian-Israeli peace process, which it is widely hoped will change everything? So is there a linkage? This question takes on a new significance with new events in Iran that are hardly being covered by the media. Michael Ledeen says Islamic Republic of Iran is falling apart before our eyes:
These little stories illustrate a great event, indeed a world-changing event: the death of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Khamenei and Ahmadinejad, and the rest of the evil empire in Tehran, are all dead men walking. We don’t know the schedule for the funeral yet, but Iranians know it’s on the agenda. One will get you ten at my betting window that, aside from a very thin veneer of top officials (for whom there is no hope, for they will fulfill the demand of the nightly rooftop chants), anyone who is anyone in Iran today is trying to make a deal with Mousavi and Karroubi. They are all whispering that their hearts are green, and always were green.
Here’s a thought for historians writing about the recent past. What if George Bush was right and the center of gravity of Islamic fundamentalism lies in the regimes of the Middle East? In the Damascus-Baghdad-Teheran axis? Then what is the consequence of what the Obama administration is doing now? Open thread.
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W: “Then what is the consequence of what the Obama administration is doing now?”
As regards the middle east: It’s Sisyphus letting the stone roll down the hill again and whoever is the next president is going to have the hard work of rolling the stone back uphill.
It was all a lie.
Well, for starters, I think that one word describes President Obama’s speech which Mr. Fernandez cited:
Disinformation.
As for what Michael Ledeen and George Bush thought about the whole thing: They were right, within the limits of the defined problem.
Afghanistan is not of the “Middle East”. It is not an Arab country; the people do not speak Arabic. And the country is/was a wreck since the civil war in the ’70′s, and the Soviet invasion starting 1979 and the next civil war that was fought there after the Soviets left. The Taliban took advantage of the chaos to bring about a harsh Islamic dictatorship (backed by the ISI in hopes of using them against their natural enemy, Hindu India).
The infusion of Arab/Saudi money (in the 1990′s) and influence in the form of Al Qaeda changed the equation.
But change the Middle East (and scare the Arabs into behaving), and you begin to return to the status quo ante, in which the influence from Pakistan is again paramount.
Obama is definently not interested in scaring the Arabs, and thinks that he can influence the internal politics of Pakistan; in a virtuous way, of course.
He was never serious about waging any kind of protracted engagement (which some reactionairies call “war!”). This was only a mechanism or device to villify George Bush and John McCain. Of course we were fighting the “wrong” war in Iraq, and we should have been fighting the “right” war in Afghanistan. All the right people say so; so it must be so.
Until we aren’t fighting in Afghanistan, for some technicality, like the CIA is on double-secret probation or something like that.
This man Obama is terribly unserious about foreign policy, unless it is to strengthen his domestic agenda to remake America into a Progressive Utopia. I just hope the rest of the world doesn’t catch onto this too soon.
Fool’s hope, that is.
Two things:
1) Obama’s campaign speech was just bravado t paint himself as willing to take bold military action, but “smart” bold military action. Anyone who believed him was a fool.
2) If Ledeen is right about Iran, it may have the unintended consequence of giving Obama a reprieve from history.
What joh said: he lied to get himself elected.
Afghanistan is flypaper. Iraq was, and highly prized by takfiri, but they failed there, and were driven out. Good news, bad news. No (destabilized) Iraq for takfiri to exploit anymore.
So the action rises proportionately in Afghanistan since the stabilization of Iraq.
Afghanistan is a hold ‘em proposition as there is little if any way to organise the place as we are used to doing, (Iraq, Kuwait, South Korea, Japan, Germany). There will come scattered opportunities to inflict severe mass death on al kaida from time to time, if we are patient, have the will, the free reign, and no entangling rules of engagement crap.
Meantime we kill them where we find them, with technology to see from above, and continue on. We do not have the objectives, say of landing an Armada on beaches at Utah, Omaha, and Normandy, or working our way to Berlin, towards unconditional surrender. We liberated Afghanistan as compltetly as we could. We cannot arrange cultural transformation overnight. There are criminal elements and, by definition, terrorist cells, capable of disrupting life as we know it to be, e.g. free trade, commerce, raising families, and so forth, things the vast majority of Afghans aren’t able to even be aware of right now.
Standard of living cannot improve if one cannot even know what that is, given the chaotic place one finds himself.
We are bedeviled with something one finds in democratically based governments; and that is war weariness. With unscrupulous, ambitious exploiters of the perception of war weariness in senate, house, and especially the executive office, the “threat” of war weariness is exaggerated when leadership is incapable of leadership, just to get it off their nervous, impatient, uncommitted desks.
We stick to Afghanistan now because we have already won Afghanistan. Its a difficult place to hold, and there is much chaotic, well, chaos to be found, because afghanistan is all al kaida has right now, and the place where the new foolish recruits have to show up to. but there is no evidence of catastrophe, or loss on our part, just little yet in terms of greater stability; something that an historically more civilised place such as Iraq, has returned to.
What changed? Obama got elected and could stop pretending to be serious about things happening beyond our shores.
Interesting point was made on the Fox All Stars this evening by Fred Barnes. McChrystal is supposed to be a brute force search and destroy warrior, but now, is deciding to go against himself on this and implement a COIN strategy and needs more troops in Afghanistan.
However, we all know Obama is focused on the healthcare debate and does not need distractions from that.
Obama’s supporters never were keen on the action in Afghanistan, immediately after 9/11 many of the “usual suspects” and his supporters put out PRs urging restraint and to resist making war (some idiot I heard on WImP radio said our action in Afghanistan was akin to invading the neighborhood of Timothy McVeigh).
But now, that the job is still going on, people are questioning if it is worth it. Its almost as if many people assumed it was all planned out in MS Project and MS Project is now issuing reports this project is behind schedule and over budget.
If Iran unravels, I am skeptical it will impact Afghanistan too much — at least not directly (especially given the level of distrust between Iran & the Taliban). However, there will be a lot of intrigue in a post-revolutionary-revolution Iran and the players there will be focusing on gaining & consolidating position rather than Israel, nuclear weapons, and the like. So, that period of time may give those working to undermine Iran’s nuclear program and its hostility vs. Israel some time and room to maneuver.
In a sense, I don’t think Obama actually lied. What he did, in campaigning, was to read a prepared script written by others that was totally over his head. It would be like if you were given a script to read that was not in a language you understood. You read it, but its just sounds without meaning to you. You could be saying anything–you just don’t know.
I suspect that Obama knows as much about foreign affairs as I know about performing open heart surgery–nothing. Its all about the fad of the moment. That is the truly frightening thing.
There are some big game changers in the wings that we’d be smart to consider in this thread. I’ve rolled a few of them up in my miscellaneous ramblings below.
First, new media has peeled off at least two of the protective layers of Obama’s onion. These layers are Acorn (demonstrated to be corrupt), and the ready, prophylactic “Racism” charge (now rendered useless). And we’re busy picking at a third layer, the CRA/Freddie/Fannie gambit, which was the cause of the current banking crisis and the genesis of the September 2008 Surprise that tilted the election in his direction. All three onion-skins, once removed, leave his core, meristematic shoot, call it his credibility, mere layers away from the chef’s paring knife.
Obama’s team knows this, I’m sure. So, they have to be recalibrating (one of O’s favorite words) big time right now. In this context, I wouldn’t be surprised if Obama ratcheted up our troop levels in Afghanistan right now, or, even coordinated a pincer move with Russian, not NATO, forces to demonstrate a tangible benefit for his emasculation of our allies’ missile defenses.
Another indicator is Stephanopolous’ and ABC’s relatively aggressive stance in last Sunday’s interview of Obama. It suggests that the Clinton wing of the Democratic party is trying to gently steer him rightward, so I’m almost expecting a measured retreat to the center in the next month or two. I think that these nudges are the direct result of the removal of the two onion-skins I listed above, an old Arkansas pol like Bill Clinton should know that Obama needs to make a move.
Another thought: It’s well known that a rat with its leg caught in a trap will gnaw off its own limb to escape. Obama could make a show of chewing off his left foot this month, commit to winning “Bush’s War in Afghanistan,” and if this occurs with Russian help, he’ll be counted as “clever as a fox” by the pundits across the political spectrum in the run up to the 2010 congressional elections*, and his Leftist supporters will forgive his militancy for enlisting Mother Russia in the campaign. Also, the aggregated political capital this gains him will not hurt his chances of enacting single-payer health-care during his first term.
Just some thoughts…
-Steve
* Of course, the real credit for Obama’s renewing the US’s Afghan commitment would belong to W’s team because it was them who baited the trap Obama finds himself in in the first place.
it appears that our President also believes in the adage that “the best Defense is a good Offense.” unfortunately, that leads him to launching a lot of poorly thought out initiatives that clutter the radar. we can only hope that more people will start to see throught the chaff.
There is a linkage of some sort to be sure. Reuters reports that the IRG is helping the Taliban attack Western forces in Afghanistan.
So it was never as simple as the candidate portrayed it. Terrorism was never entirely a ghostly, semi-mystical endeavor led by prophets in caves. There was always muscle behind it to some degree. Muscle and money.
Obama has sided with the “enemy” in Honduras, in Poland; he has debased himself with the Russians, Iranians, North Koreans. Yet he is still here, and he is catching no flak for any of this from the people who count in his world. Obama could pull out of Afghanistan tomorrow, or he could nuke it — in either case, the response from the New York Times and the rest of that crowd would be to print page after glowing page about how “presidential” he looked doing it. Why should he care about anything? He is above criticism.
Which makes me wonder about Ledeen’s thesis that Iran is falling apart. Someone listening in on the US internal conversation might assume that Obama would be impeached before long — and yet that assessment would be completely wrong. Could we be making the same mistake about mutterings in Iran against their version of Obama?
McChrystal to resign if not given resources for Afghanistan
I have no confidence in the Commander-in-Chief. If GEN McChrystal falls on his sword to express his lack of confidence in the Commander-in-Chief, a whole lot of senior officers will be retiring.
Unfortunately, the butt boys who were aides to Clintonista Perfumed Princes will stay in.
Could we be making the same mistake about mutterings in Iran against their version of Obama?
I don’t think great countries ever fall apart, even after the worst misfortunes. There’s always be a China; probably always be a Russia. And the odds are good that the United States will survive pretty much anything you can throw at it, short of the end of the world. Hundreds of millions of people, a culture, history, tradition. Hard to kill. Iran has been around for a long time. It will survive. It’s the regime that will change.
Personally I don’t think Iran will ever morph into something we want it to be. But it will become very different from what it has been. Any regime that’s gone on for 30 years is bound to be riddled with faction, corruption and resentment. I think those factors are real. A regime like Iran’s is going to use considerable force to stay in power. But, absent outside support, its day may simply be limited. Past its expiration date. There are ambitious men in Iran; men eager for business, achievement or whatever, and Islamic Republic has cramped their style for too long.
That’s not to say the successor regime will be all sweetness and light. But sooner or later, there will be a successor regime. All things come to an end, especially tyrannies. I think that’s clear. President Obama’s problem is two fold. First, is he dealing with yesterday’s men? Second, is he indirectly propping them up? The Left makes a big deal about conservatives supporting tyrants and thereby besmirching America’s name in the mud. But they rarely notice when they do the same thing themselves. How will it be for America’s name if the Iranian opposition comes to power and remembers that Obama helped their oppressors to the last? Somehow I don’t think he will be as convincing to them as he can be to the American left. So for practical as well as moral reasons, his “grand bargain” ought to take into account the real possibility that he will be signing with the wrong crowd.
“…Islamic Republic of Iran is falling apart before our eyes….”
Indeed. The G.W. Bush plan is working. And everyone seems to be baffled. Just frigging incredible…. I guess the Left really does believe its own propaganda.
Clinton used the Balkans as a club to beat G.H.W. Bush about the head and prove he was tough on defense. Hillary got us into Kosovo because she had Monica to hold over Bill and wanted some nice photo ops for her Senate campaign. But no matter how badly we hugged that tarbaby there it really did not matter in the end. We could and should tell the Euros it was their problem and just walk away.
Baroque used Afghanistan as his own club to beat up G.W. Bush but has figured out that the place is an albatross around his own neck. The only way to win decisively is to use more forces than it is worth to us. We are more likely to destabilize nuclear Pakistan with aggressive moves in their border region than we are to defeat the Taliban once and for all.
Thee latest news is that they are leaning toward more Predator strikes inside Pakistan instead of a larger ground offensive. So now an anti-war Democrat reinvents the Vietnam war….
I think Afghanistan is important. But it’s a theater in a wider war — you know the war that doesn’t exist any more — that stopped existing some months ago. But assuming it still exists at least in one place, I’ve always been puzzled by the simultaneous assertion that it was “the war we could not afford to lose” and then contemplate “mission failure” in that same place. If Afghanistan is now a war one can afford to lose, when did it become a “war of choice”? During Bush’s last months? During Obama’s first months? Suddenly for no reason, just now? What changed?
So let’s discount the rhetoric and look at it from a layman’s point of view.
Here’s the way I see it. Afghanistan will never against host al-Qaeda if they are certain that a return in force will be triggered if it starts to happen. And the major rogue powers won’t support anything like a resurgent terror sanctuary if they are convinced the US will go apeshit if it slides that way. Terrorism is a worry to China, India, Pakistan and Iran. The only way they’ll tolerate a new terror sanctuary is if they’re convinced it can be directed outward at the US. If they suspected it could be directed against them, they’d smash it. And if they are convinced a resurgent terror state would bring the US, the lid will be put on.
The problem is to convey that message.
The point of a battlefield victory in Afghanistan is to send the signal that the capability exists to carry it out. You must go out with the band playing and the enemy on the floor. And the conviction in the local mind that a rematch is not worth the candle. Either that or the major bad guys must be pinched somewhere else to send the same signal across. If you truly can’t send the message across in Afghanistan, go somewhere else. Imagine you’re a boxer. Your opponent has his guard up. You can’t head hunt. So you go for the body. There’s nothing wrong with hitting a boxer in the body, because it’s the same boxer and you’re hitting the same guy. This is why BHO’s assertion that things ought to be limited to certain designated places don’t necessarily make sense. They’ll fight in New York City when they want; why should they be sure the riposte will occur only in the wilds of Afghanistan where nobody’s wine party will be disarranged? Hit the same boxer, and it counts just the same.
Now from time to time the signal will fade. Some new kid will show up for a rematch. And who knows that 10 or 15 years down the track another incident may cause another flare up. It’s regrettable, but that’s the way history is. It never ends. Peace is like a vacation from history. You can earn it, but it doesn’t seem to last forever.
However, it seems univerally true that if you portray yourself the loser or send the perception that you lost that you are unlikely to gain that 10 or 15 years of grace. Rather you will get beat up at 3 or 5 year intervals. Nothing succeeds for terrorism like success. And nothing succeeds for counterterrorism like success. So the question boils down to this: who is our enemy, what is the best place to beat them, and make sure of it.
It is, I think, not won, by the process that goes “we have no enemy”, “we can’t beat them anywhere” and “I’ll think about it”.
So it was never as simple as the candidate portrayed it. Terrorism was never entirely a ghostly, semi-mystical endeavor led by prophets in caves. There was always muscle behind it to some degree. Muscle and money.
Yes. And it involved State Actors, acting either directly or by simply allowing NGO terrorist groups to operate freely within their territories. And Bush was just so very, very rude in calling them out on this with his Axis of Evil speech. After all, its far better for millions of peasants to die than it is for one member of the transnational elite (as personified by the UN) to be embarrassed. When our betters insist, it is our duty to pretend.
There is no truth but the narrative, and those who oppose it shall burn in Hell.
Kinuachdrach:
Ledeen bases his conclusions on a lot more than mutterings.
—
“Look at what didn’t happen in the streets last Friday. Not a shot was fired at the millions of demonstrators in Tehran. There are YouTubes of police fraternizing with the Greens. There are stories of Revolutionary Guardsmen helping the demonstrators, and even the Basij didn’t dare to attack or arrest, with a handful of exceptions (one of which is notable: in Tabriz, if I remember correctly, they started to round up some people, and the crowd turned on them, freed the would-be victims, and beat the Basijis to death).
And look at what else didn’t happen: nobody tried to arrest Mousavi or Karroubi.
—
Under the circumstances, you’d think that your government would be talking to the Greens. But you’d be wrong. Perhaps Hillary Clinton thought she was telling the truth when she claimed, a few days after the insurrection of June 12th, that “behind the scenes” we were helping the Iranian opposition. If so, she shouldn’t have said anything about it, but I don’t think she was well informed. There are no contacts between the American Government and the leaders of the opposition. One should not expect the new government to look kindly upon a President Obama who publicly sweet-talked the Tehran butchers, and all but begged Khamenei for a few minutes of his precious time. The same applies to the Europeans, all of whom scrambled for oil and other commercial contracts, and none of whom talked to the Green leaders.
As so often, Martin Luther King Jr. summed it up perfectly: “In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
Ledeen does not expect the new leaders in Iran to continue much of it’s support for terrorism.
THAT would be nice!
He also expects it to be more secular.
By the way, in his book “Kill Bin Laden” the Delta Force on-site commander says that the decision to pull back our forces after the fall of Kabul was not to redeploy them for Iraq but was someone’s bright idea to lull the enemy into a false sense of security. So the forces were brought back to the USA.
Then a few weeks later they went back to attack Tora Bora. They routed Al Queda from Tora Bora with precision airstrikes and Afghan warlords’ forces but the only way to get Bin Laden would have been to also put a blocking force of our troops in Pakistan along the border. That may not have even been possible from the diplomatic standpoint even if we were willing to do so. But putting large numbers of our own troops assaulting Tora Bora fom the Afghan side would have been a disaster.
My apologies–this will be my last comment on this thread–but in reference to comment #17 above, the transnational set is nothing but a Confederacy of sharks preying upon the sardines. The odds are, if you are reading this, that you are a sardine.
How does the old joke go? Do you know why sharks don’t attack lawyers? Answer–professional courtesy.
Zelaya in Honduras–the same principle. You can’t attack a Leader for any reason, the other Leaders reason, because there, except for the grace of God, go I, and there are plenty of reasons for the same thing to happen to me.
All fish are equal–except for the sardines.
13. Cannoneer No. 4:
I have no confidence in the Commander-in-Chief. If GEN McChrystal falls on his sword to express his lack of confidence in the Commander-in-Chief, a whole lot of senior officers will be retiring.
Unfortunately, the butt boys who were aides to Clintonista Perfumed Princes will stay in.
God I hope not, because that could lead towards my nightmare scenario, which is that serious patriots are driven out of the military. That would leave a sycophantic officer corps loyal to Obama, and the shortfall in recruitment would be met by drafting surly, ignorant, thuggish types.
T Cobb:
With the number of Czars now approaching 40,
it has been suggested that we call them
“Tsardines”
OT sad news, Newscorp is closing the Far Eastern Economic Review. When my ship stopped in Sasebo I went to Tokyo a quarter century ago and went drinking with the BBC radio and FEER correspondents. My weekly copy was a joy to read. Just having it made me feel I was part of a special club.
And the odds are good that the United States will survive pretty much anything you can throw at it, short of the end of the world. Hundreds of millions of people, a culture, history, tradition.
But tens of millions of people living in the US do not share a culture, history, and tradition and their percentage of the population is rapidly increasing. Then there are the non-ethnic divisions – red state v blue state, regional, etc.
OT That Pesky Leo Is Back In The Saddle
i second coisty –two of the three great nations w mentions weren’t worth a plugged nickel until December 07, 1941.
If you dislike America every policy choice is designed to weaken and damage her. A drawn out Vietnamization of Afghanistan would be preferred.
“Vietnam” was a great and bountiful victory for the international left, including its American cadres –
Ho, Ho, Ho.
Better than Jenjis Kahn, for some.
“That boat people thing, that never happened”
Wretchard — Great Countries fall apart all the time. The Roman, Greek, and Austrian Empires, the Hapsburg Empire, the UK (a basket case), Spain, Italy, rapidly approaching extinction. Russia is a basket case, waiting to be conquered by whatever Muslim forces can muster the will, along with China. India is but a shadow of what it once was, so too France, broken and cobbled together with glue.
Moreover, no one is the least bit afraid of the US or Obama. Pakistan or Iran could openly nuke out of existence two US cities and Obama would grovel, apologize (for making them angry) and announce curbs on “anti-Islamic activities.” Indeed the response of the Left in the UK and the US has been to grovel MORE after attacks, guaranteeing more of them. Obama wants a defeat in Afghanistan for the US so badly he can taste it, so that the forces that win there can and will attack the US. So he can use that “crisis” to become Hugo Chavez.
In fact, Obama has so weakened the US and made the US appear so weak and useless and ineffectual and surrender minded, that the French are feared more than the US. The French! This guarantees ever-bigger attacks, no matter what Obama does (and he is incapable of anything but Petain-style surrender anyway as is his backers) so leading to inevitably, when leadership passes from Obama, to basically the third conjecture. There simply is no other way. [Feminized elites such as HG Wells or say Yosi Sergant are simply incapable of anything but abject surrender to any enemy with a smidgen of will power.]
Damned women. It all went downhill when they unsaddled the horse.
Stepping back from this, one is struck by the absolute hypocrisy of those on the left who, after 9/11, claimed that they supported the war in Afghanistan, but had the basis of their BDS in the attack on Iraq (include Obama and huge swaths of his supporters in this category).
If those folks were honest, sending more troops now to Afghanistan should be a top priority and the opportunity to do so should be pursued and celebrated. Yet we are faced with their behavior being the polar opposite.
The only logical conclusion to be drawn is that ‘support’ for the Afghanistan theater of operations was never real, it was a talking point used to deflect criticism that the left suffered from lack of patriotism and seriousness on the WoT because of their lack of support for the Iraq operations. The truth is, if the Iraq invasion had never occurred, within a very short time the left would have abandoned their support for the effort in Afghanistan and found some reason or another to gin up the notion of abandoning the ‘good war’, too, because (as is evidenced by recent events) their support for it was never real, merely part of the mechanics of opposing Bush and the WoT generally.
Bob @26,
Looks like another onion skin is gettin’ peeled off!
Probably the only way to persuade Obama to go balls out in Afghanistan is to convince him that it chock-a-block full of bitter, gun toting, Bible thumping, capitalist Republicans. There’d be no holds barred then.
Probably the only way to persuade Obama to go balls out in Afghanistan is to convince him that it chock-a-block full of bitter, gun toting, Bible thumping, capitalist Republicans.
Bitter clingers! The Stans version of rural Pennsylvania!
“That boat people thing, that never happened”
We had a Vietnamese refugee family join our church (Catholic parish in FLA) when I was in 5th grade. One of the boys was put in our grade. He did not speak a word of English at first but learned PDQ. When the grandpa died we went to the viewing … interesting to hear all the Catholic prayers, but recited in Vietnamese. I last saw Hung at our HS reunion some years ago … family is now thriving in America. But what stories he and his parents & brothers & sisters could tell.
BW/40; –i’m sure you as a film culture maven have some feelings about Clint Eastwood’s Asia trilogy. i thought Gran Torino was a masterpiece –up there with Unforgiven. Maybe the symbolism was heavy –but the sheer concept of connecting latter-day America all the way from the Hmong thru to the auto industry –well, only someone not lost in the labyrinth could have done it, and done it for the screen, for the culture, for someplace where Joe & Jane can get at it (as they –we –never can, in the academic studies with their professoriated priesthoods). He’s a sort of film kierkegaardian –on the screen the subjective is truth enough for matters of the heart –and it lets him go right to things –like Rowdy Yates used to do!
BTW, re “that boat people thing never happened”