The War in Afghanistan, being the new focus of the US and UK, is quickly shooting up the agenda. Much of the debate recently has focused on the lack of equipment for our boys, primarily the lack of helicopters. There should be a massive increase in helicopters, and they should be used to lift 'our boys' out of a depraved war. The focus given to Afghanistan by President Obama and the increasing severity of the situation in 'Af-Pak' has led to a rather fine upsurge of oppositional literature on the topic. Firstly, Tariq Ali's general piece from 2007, in the beautifully presented, but ever infuriating New Left Review and his more Pakistan-focused 'diary' in this fortnight's London Review of Books. Hitting a more rabble-rousing and less self-obsessed note is Jonathan Neale's wonderfully simple overview of the issues, actors and factors that make up the situation. The feat of this piece is that an 8-year-old could come out the other end of it, and know more about Afghanistan than George W. Bush.
Finally, and on a more bloggy note, the magnificently named Lenin on the crassness of the inevitability argument - a kind of Vietnam syndrome of the left, where any war in difficult territory, with an opposition, will lead to US defeat. The comments section is, as always, worth reading - proof that, however problematic the anti-Iraq war campaign was, the left remains capable of losing its bearings faced with 'the Good war'.
Showing posts with label 'war on terror'. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 'war on terror'. Show all posts
Monday, 20 July 2009
Tuesday, 30 June 2009
Oh, What a Lovely War!
Tomorrow, US troops will 'pullback' from towns and cities in Iraq. Good taste surely dictates that the celebrations will be muted - throwing a giant parade, given the million dead and 2 million displaced, would be quite grotesque (I foolishly searched for an image for this post, using the terms 'Iraq War' - not a clever move). The Iraq War (or 'Iraq 2 - This Time, It's Protracted') is seen, by all other than the most ostrich-like supporters of the invasion, as an unmitigated disaster - the deposition and execution of Saddam being scant consolation for the utter destruction of infrastructure, the creation of a sham 'democracy' and the unleashing of inter-communal violence. All of the main governmental supporters of the war: Bush, Blair and Aznar, are now out of office.
The election of an American President who was opposed to the war, and the 'pullback', are drawing a line under the invasion - continued criticism of the war will henceforth appear to be, if not sour grapes, then an increasingly irrelevant irritant. Of course, US troops remain in Iraq, as will the aircraft that rain fire indiscriminately and the branches of KFC. The message is that it's over - the massage of the message from the pro-war crowd will be "we came with good intentions, but got it wrong. Better luck next time!". They'd prefer not to learn the lessons, as they didn't after Kosovo, as they won't after Afghanistan. It's a shame, as I maintain a sedentary lifestyle, and really hate marching, even against war, but needs must.
One problem for the anti-war movement is film. The director and critic Francois Truffaut argued that it is impossible to make an anti-war film, as film can't fail but make look war look exciting. I've always taken this argument as fact - if we look at Apocalypse Now!, all 'the horror, the horror' is balanced with wide shots of helicopters, Flight of The Valkyries and that. Platoon, despite Oliver Stone's pinko-commie ways, leaves us with a slo-mo death scene that makes the chemical squalor of US conduct in Vietnam seem like the greatest heroism. But the Iraq War, for all the horror it's wrought, has left us with a genuinely anti-war film in the form of Paul Haggis' mesmeric 'In The Valley of Elah'.
'In The Valley of Elah' achieves its stance against the war by not setting its film in Iraq - the battered country is only seen in cameraphone footage, grimly reminiscent of leaked footage of so much atrocity. However, Iraq has come home - the film is set on a sunblasted army base, as disconnected from the US as the troops stationed thousands of miles away. Tommy Lee Jones plays the protagonist, the father of an Iraq veteran, and the narrative takes the form of a police procedural. The heavy lifting of the piece is undertaken by Tommy Lee's face, shown in nearly perpetual close-up, and his face's performance is magnificent. It's been said of the jazz pianist Cecil Taylor that he's capable of playing different tempo, tone and volume on each finger. In 'Elah', Tommy Lee Jones does the same thing with each facial muscle.
The film is remarkable for its portrayal of soldiers as human beings. Despite the millenia old existence of armies, this remains a difficulty (see the film '300' if you don't believe me). Perhaps it's because the things which armies do are beyond human - it's hard to believe that the people who razed Fallujah are of made of flesh like ours. But they are - they drink, they fight, they cry, they grieve and love. In a sane society, we wouldn't need an Armed Forces Day, or a Veterans' Day. We'd simply remove these individuals from the hideous situations in which they are placed, and carry about our business.
In dealing with the aftermath of war, 'In The Valley Of Elah' makes war as unsexy as it should be, and by implication, makes the decision to prosecute wars of choice seem as psychotic as it truly is. The film is problematic in its almost exclusive focus on the suffering of Americans. This is an imbalance that we can presume will exist until Iraq becomes the Las Vegas on the Gulf that we are promised. But in its unflinching portrait of what becomes even of the prosecutors of war, it deserves attention and acclaim.
The election of an American President who was opposed to the war, and the 'pullback', are drawing a line under the invasion - continued criticism of the war will henceforth appear to be, if not sour grapes, then an increasingly irrelevant irritant. Of course, US troops remain in Iraq, as will the aircraft that rain fire indiscriminately and the branches of KFC. The message is that it's over - the massage of the message from the pro-war crowd will be "we came with good intentions, but got it wrong. Better luck next time!". They'd prefer not to learn the lessons, as they didn't after Kosovo, as they won't after Afghanistan. It's a shame, as I maintain a sedentary lifestyle, and really hate marching, even against war, but needs must.
One problem for the anti-war movement is film. The director and critic Francois Truffaut argued that it is impossible to make an anti-war film, as film can't fail but make look war look exciting. I've always taken this argument as fact - if we look at Apocalypse Now!, all 'the horror, the horror' is balanced with wide shots of helicopters, Flight of The Valkyries and that. Platoon, despite Oliver Stone's pinko-commie ways, leaves us with a slo-mo death scene that makes the chemical squalor of US conduct in Vietnam seem like the greatest heroism. But the Iraq War, for all the horror it's wrought, has left us with a genuinely anti-war film in the form of Paul Haggis' mesmeric 'In The Valley of Elah'.
'In The Valley of Elah' achieves its stance against the war by not setting its film in Iraq - the battered country is only seen in cameraphone footage, grimly reminiscent of leaked footage of so much atrocity. However, Iraq has come home - the film is set on a sunblasted army base, as disconnected from the US as the troops stationed thousands of miles away. Tommy Lee Jones plays the protagonist, the father of an Iraq veteran, and the narrative takes the form of a police procedural. The heavy lifting of the piece is undertaken by Tommy Lee's face, shown in nearly perpetual close-up, and his face's performance is magnificent. It's been said of the jazz pianist Cecil Taylor that he's capable of playing different tempo, tone and volume on each finger. In 'Elah', Tommy Lee Jones does the same thing with each facial muscle.
The film is remarkable for its portrayal of soldiers as human beings. Despite the millenia old existence of armies, this remains a difficulty (see the film '300' if you don't believe me). Perhaps it's because the things which armies do are beyond human - it's hard to believe that the people who razed Fallujah are of made of flesh like ours. But they are - they drink, they fight, they cry, they grieve and love. In a sane society, we wouldn't need an Armed Forces Day, or a Veterans' Day. We'd simply remove these individuals from the hideous situations in which they are placed, and carry about our business.
In dealing with the aftermath of war, 'In The Valley Of Elah' makes war as unsexy as it should be, and by implication, makes the decision to prosecute wars of choice seem as psychotic as it truly is. The film is problematic in its almost exclusive focus on the suffering of Americans. This is an imbalance that we can presume will exist until Iraq becomes the Las Vegas on the Gulf that we are promised. But in its unflinching portrait of what becomes even of the prosecutors of war, it deserves attention and acclaim.
Wednesday, 11 March 2009
The Enemy Above
Today, fifteen Islamic anti-war protesters foolishly descended on a parade held for soldiers returning from Afghanistan. This miniscule action was enough to distract the editors of the Sun and the Daily Star from their quest to find the most photogenic pair of tits in the world. HATE FOR HEROES thundered the Sun, while the Daily Star went for the more stylish, and more unnerving THE ENEMY WITHIN. (Amusingly, searching for 'Enemy Within' on their website brings up two stories, both about radical Muslim sentiment, showing that originality eludes them as much as proportionality). Normally, this would be cause to gently tut and smugly chuckle at venal stupidity of the tabloids, but there is another dynamic at play here, and one that's worth exploring further.
The above picture comes from the work of the artist Steve McQueen, made while he was artist in residence for the British Army, 'Queen and Country'. It shows three of the 324 soldiers killed as a result of our invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan (179 and 145 respectively). These people need not have died, each of their deaths was avoidable.
Needless to say, the stamps didn't get made. Who wants to face the human costs of geo-strategic cockwaving while paying a gas bill? Of course, this poses the question of who wants to look at the Queen's increasingly heavyweight boxer-like features , but you get my point. To put these people, who died young, for a set of lies, in front of the populace, might cause a bit of thinking - about blood sacrifice made for mysterious reasons, hidden cabinet minutes, missing terrorist masterminds and WMD. And Her Majesty's Government can't risk us thinking, when there's a crunch on.
For the Sun and the Daily Star, soldiers are not people to be protected, but to be possessed and infantalised ('Our Boys'). They're simultaniously living and breathing embodiments of Great Britain - Blitz spirit, bulldogs staring nobly out from the White Cliffs of Dover, wondering which country to invade next - and instruments for use.
The bluster of the Sun and Daily Star at the activities of a tiny contingent of protesters at this parade would hold more weight if they didn't fulsomely support throwing these young men and women to the lions for the most slender of reasons - the paper invasion of nearly unoccupied islands in the South Atlantic, a tiny civil war in 'Europe's backyard'. As it stands, the Stop The War Coalition has done more to protect British soldiers than these wank-merchants ever have, and if any of the 15 protesters have ever marched against their government endangering these soldiers and their fallen comrades, they've shown greater respect (if not love, the presumable opposite of Sun HATE) for human life than the tabloid press and the government.
But, just to finish, it's interesting how the increasing severity of the recession, and the promise of a summer of rage has led to the brushing off of the notion of 'the Enemy Within'. The Miners, 25 years ago, faced a similar label, and similar conditions. Let's hope we can avoid the temptation to strike horizontally - at Muslim radicals, striking workers, the unemployed - and instead strike vertically - at the fuckers who see soldiers' deaths as a part of a cost-benefit analysis, at bosses turfing workers out potless into the harshest labour market in a generation, and at the fascists and profiteers yelping about 'an Enemy Within'. There is just an enemy above, and we forget that at our peril.
The above picture comes from the work of the artist Steve McQueen, made while he was artist in residence for the British Army, 'Queen and Country'. It shows three of the 324 soldiers killed as a result of our invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan (179 and 145 respectively). These people need not have died, each of their deaths was avoidable.
Needless to say, the stamps didn't get made. Who wants to face the human costs of geo-strategic cockwaving while paying a gas bill? Of course, this poses the question of who wants to look at the Queen's increasingly heavyweight boxer-like features , but you get my point. To put these people, who died young, for a set of lies, in front of the populace, might cause a bit of thinking - about blood sacrifice made for mysterious reasons, hidden cabinet minutes, missing terrorist masterminds and WMD. And Her Majesty's Government can't risk us thinking, when there's a crunch on.
For the Sun and the Daily Star, soldiers are not people to be protected, but to be possessed and infantalised ('Our Boys'). They're simultaniously living and breathing embodiments of Great Britain - Blitz spirit, bulldogs staring nobly out from the White Cliffs of Dover, wondering which country to invade next - and instruments for use.
The bluster of the Sun and Daily Star at the activities of a tiny contingent of protesters at this parade would hold more weight if they didn't fulsomely support throwing these young men and women to the lions for the most slender of reasons - the paper invasion of nearly unoccupied islands in the South Atlantic, a tiny civil war in 'Europe's backyard'. As it stands, the Stop The War Coalition has done more to protect British soldiers than these wank-merchants ever have, and if any of the 15 protesters have ever marched against their government endangering these soldiers and their fallen comrades, they've shown greater respect (if not love, the presumable opposite of Sun HATE) for human life than the tabloid press and the government.
But, just to finish, it's interesting how the increasing severity of the recession, and the promise of a summer of rage has led to the brushing off of the notion of 'the Enemy Within'. The Miners, 25 years ago, faced a similar label, and similar conditions. Let's hope we can avoid the temptation to strike horizontally - at Muslim radicals, striking workers, the unemployed - and instead strike vertically - at the fuckers who see soldiers' deaths as a part of a cost-benefit analysis, at bosses turfing workers out potless into the harshest labour market in a generation, and at the fascists and profiteers yelping about 'an Enemy Within'. There is just an enemy above, and we forget that at our peril.
Monday, 9 March 2009
"I'm a Soldier, in a War" - Arular, Taste, and Shame, or how I learnt to stop laughing and love M.I.A (part 1)
We all miss bandwagons, and it's a fair bet that the most common behaviour following these missteps is to chase the bandwagon, frantically attempting to persuade the driver to let you join. The tragically unhip, the rear-guard, are left professing their love for the creed with the gauche devotion of the recent convert. In extreme cases, they may start blogs just because they feel the urge to write about them.
The first time I heard M.I.A was around the time of the release of her first album, Arular, on an end of year compilation put out by a probably-defunct-by-now music monthly. The song was 'Galang', and it seemed to my unknowing, mocking ears, to be some kind of elaborate joke. Reading on, it seemed the vast majority of critics were in on the joke, praising this farce - that managed to be clattering, atonal and boring all at once - as the work of a brave new voice from and for the developing world. The lyrics were at worst outright non-English, but generally vague, slurred exhortations to resistance. It was just hilarious.
Nevertheless, over the next few years, the refrain of that one song, the word "Galang" - which remains for me, meaningless - stuck with me. I'd find myself singing it, rolling it around my mouth in her weird, contemptuous way, knocking the syllables into each other, and into other words: "lazy days" "purple haze". Something about its oddity jammed it in my brain, along with this and this.
Without a doubt, praise for M.I.A. at this time was distorted through a number of filters. As a political refugee, her mere presence in the public realm was utterly unique. Animus towards asylum seekers has to a certain extent subsided, but at the time, with riots in detention centres, and accusations of swan eating, the Tories were capable of running a campaign based on an absolute cap on immigration, controvening international law regarding refugees (the young imbecile on work experience who wrote the Conservative Party's woefully misguided 2005 general election manifesto, David Cameron, was later to die of massive head trauma following a similarly misguided attempt to fly). Added to this, the fact that her father was a leading member of the Tamil Tigers (the group which it is claimed pioneered the suicide bombing) and that she was willing to make wonderfully cavalier references to terrorism, left her with the interesting USP of being, to paraphrase James Brown, "the Funky Terrorist".
Listening to Arular, the first thing you notice, after the immediacy of the beat, and the heartbreaking poverty of the farting Casio keyboard lines, is the constant references to terrorism. In 'Pull Up The People', she refers to herself as "a fighter" - indeed - "a nice, nice fighter", and "a soldier in a war", oddly presaging 7/7 bomber's Mohammed Sidique Khan remark in his 'martyrdom video' that "we are at war, and I am a soldier". 'Sunshowers' wonderfully overplays her hand, striking a comic, and utterly historically inaccurate note with the exuburantly delivered "like PLO I don't surrender!", and then a genuinely chilling note with "it's a bomb yo, so run yo, put away your stupid gun yo". These lyrics go part way to dealing with the question, blurted from Americans following 9/11 - "why do they hate us?". Well, actually, they don't really answer, but they present the opposite position - incomprehension, turned on its head. They imagine what the voiceless are saying, they list the places they live ("from Congo, to Colombo").
Going back to 'Galang' after years of treating it like a childhood crush - throwing rocks at it while wishing I could get to know it better - I found it was better than I remembered. Then, at around halfway, it stopped. For a while. Something made me leave it on. The song unfolded from the taut knot it had been into a boxer in the 12th round, and started assailing me with the least ironic political statements so far, all about 'followers', 'leaders', and, most wonderfully "Bush getting ready for takeover". She was proved very wrong about the Bush administration, but the promise offered by the last few minutes of 'Galang' and the glimmer of melody in 'Sunshowers' was proved wonderfully right with Kala.
The first time I heard M.I.A was around the time of the release of her first album, Arular, on an end of year compilation put out by a probably-defunct-by-now music monthly. The song was 'Galang', and it seemed to my unknowing, mocking ears, to be some kind of elaborate joke. Reading on, it seemed the vast majority of critics were in on the joke, praising this farce - that managed to be clattering, atonal and boring all at once - as the work of a brave new voice from and for the developing world. The lyrics were at worst outright non-English, but generally vague, slurred exhortations to resistance. It was just hilarious.
Nevertheless, over the next few years, the refrain of that one song, the word "Galang" - which remains for me, meaningless - stuck with me. I'd find myself singing it, rolling it around my mouth in her weird, contemptuous way, knocking the syllables into each other, and into other words: "lazy days" "purple haze". Something about its oddity jammed it in my brain, along with this and this.
Without a doubt, praise for M.I.A. at this time was distorted through a number of filters. As a political refugee, her mere presence in the public realm was utterly unique. Animus towards asylum seekers has to a certain extent subsided, but at the time, with riots in detention centres, and accusations of swan eating, the Tories were capable of running a campaign based on an absolute cap on immigration, controvening international law regarding refugees (the young imbecile on work experience who wrote the Conservative Party's woefully misguided 2005 general election manifesto, David Cameron, was later to die of massive head trauma following a similarly misguided attempt to fly). Added to this, the fact that her father was a leading member of the Tamil Tigers (the group which it is claimed pioneered the suicide bombing) and that she was willing to make wonderfully cavalier references to terrorism, left her with the interesting USP of being, to paraphrase James Brown, "the Funky Terrorist".
Listening to Arular, the first thing you notice, after the immediacy of the beat, and the heartbreaking poverty of the farting Casio keyboard lines, is the constant references to terrorism. In 'Pull Up The People', she refers to herself as "a fighter" - indeed - "a nice, nice fighter", and "a soldier in a war", oddly presaging 7/7 bomber's Mohammed Sidique Khan remark in his 'martyrdom video' that "we are at war, and I am a soldier". 'Sunshowers' wonderfully overplays her hand, striking a comic, and utterly historically inaccurate note with the exuburantly delivered "like PLO I don't surrender!", and then a genuinely chilling note with "it's a bomb yo, so run yo, put away your stupid gun yo". These lyrics go part way to dealing with the question, blurted from Americans following 9/11 - "why do they hate us?". Well, actually, they don't really answer, but they present the opposite position - incomprehension, turned on its head. They imagine what the voiceless are saying, they list the places they live ("from Congo, to Colombo").
Going back to 'Galang' after years of treating it like a childhood crush - throwing rocks at it while wishing I could get to know it better - I found it was better than I remembered. Then, at around halfway, it stopped. For a while. Something made me leave it on. The song unfolded from the taut knot it had been into a boxer in the 12th round, and started assailing me with the least ironic political statements so far, all about 'followers', 'leaders', and, most wonderfully "Bush getting ready for takeover". She was proved very wrong about the Bush administration, but the promise offered by the last few minutes of 'Galang' and the glimmer of melody in 'Sunshowers' was proved wonderfully right with Kala.
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