Good God, "This isn't Us"

This week we finally made it to a local theater to see The Bourne Ultimatum, and the action did not disappoint. Interestingly, there was scattered applause throughout the theater several times during the movie. People were obviously cheering Matt Damon's Jason Bourne character in his fight with ultra-secret elements in the CIA and the unethical, murderous intent of David Straithairn's character, Deputy Director of the CIA, Noah Vosen. There were definite parallels to political events today. When Joan Allen's character, Pamela Landy, rejects Vosen's disregard of the "red tape" that is really oversight established to prevent unethical behavior of our governing and intelligence-gathering agencies, she tells Bourne, "This isn't us."

I wanted to clap, too.

When I viewed those first images coming out of Abu Ghraib, I, too, thought, "My God, this can't be us."

When I read of how prisoners were being tortured at Guantanamo and refused legal aid, I couldn't believe this was us; we were doing the torturing, and American psychologists were aiding in that torture. I was outraged and could hardly believe that we were denying Jose Padilla, an American citizen, access to a lawyer. "This can't be us," I wanted to insist. "This isn't us."

Well, here isn't us again: at Afghanistan's Policharki prison, a prison that was "a notorious torture center during. . . Soviet domination" of that country. Good God, what is wrong with our elected officials and military leaders? Why do they keep stashing people in prisons notorious for horrible torture perpetrated by previous oppressive regimes? And how do we justify torturing prisoners to death, such as what happened at Bagram, the U.S. Air Force base in Afghanistan?

Why aren't more Americans screaming, "This isn't us!?"

Soldiers Speak

In this morning's New York Times online, several sergeants, staff sergeants, and an army specialist have co-published their views on the situation in Iraq, titled, "The War as We Saw It". In this editorial the writers describe their skepticism at the press coverage "portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable," and they warn that "[t]he ability of, say, American observers to safely walk down the streets of formerly violent towns is not a resounding indicator of security." These words are important to keep in mind as just such American observers as Michael O'Hanlon, Kenneth Pollack, and William Kristol have returned from recent trips to Iraq describing the safety with which they have walked down such formerly violent streets. When General Petraeus and the Bush administration give us the much-heralded September report on the success of the surge, will the sunny side of the American occupation again be served up for our consumption? We deserve the truth, a thorough explanation of the complexities of the war in Iraq, the hard work of either staying or leaving, neither of which is a good option. (Nor do we seem to have anything close to Solomonic leadership that can split this baby.)

These soldiers' op-ed is a rebuttal to the happy talk of the O'Hanlon and Pollack op-ed of two weeks ago, "A War We Just Might Win". As these men of the 82nd Airborne Division explain, the military successes of our superior forces are offset by tremendous failures elsewhere, particularly in improving "basic social and economic conditions."

The United States has "failed on every promise," but no one takes responsibility or blame in the Bush administration. The pattern is to repeat platitudes until they are either accepted as wisdom or forgotten on the way to the mall.

UPDATE, 12 September 2007: Two of the men who wrote the editorial "The War as We Saw It," criticizing the war in Iraq, are now dead, killed in Iraq. Staff Sergeant Yance Gray was killed September 10th in an accident in Baghdad. Sergeant Omar Mora was killed in the same vehicle rollover accident.

Thus Speaks. . . uh. . .General Petraeus?

Over and over again, the Bush administration has told us to be patient with the "surge" in Iraq until General Petraeus gives his report in September. This week on The Daily Show William Kristol repeated that advice. General Petraeus, Kristol told Jon Stewart, would give his report on how the surge has made Iraq a better place to be. "Don't trust me. Don't trust the president," Kristol said. "But trust Petraeus."

But who is writing the report that General Petraeus will give those of us waiting for his wise analysis? The Bush administration, reports the LA Times

Despite Bush's repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, administration officials said it would actually be written by the White House, with inputs from officials throughout the government.

So General Petraeus will say what the administration wants him to say. Now, watch the sock puppet .

Material World

Several years ago when the kids were small, I gave them a book for Christmas titled Material World in which the photographer Peter Menzel includes photographs of families around the world. Each country is represented by a family. In the first photo, a two-page spread, the family is photographed outside with all their material possessions spread around them. A key to the photo spread describes each item and numbers the possessions. Subsequent photos illustrate family members at play or at work, with interior shots of the family's home or views of the city or countryside where the family lives. Accompanying text by Charles Mann describes the lives of the family members in context of the society in which they live, along with statistics on each country.

In unpacking boxes in the study today, I came across Material World and was reminded very forcefully of the unnecessary stuff we own, especially in comparison with many families around the world. For instance, the Regzen family of Mongolia live in a ger, a tent-like home designed to be portable. The ger is only 200-square feet, and six family members live there. The Regzens own few possessions, but what they have looks well-maintained and cherished.

I noticed that the Regzen family owns one photograph. Now, we are weighed down with photographs spanning several generations, including deguerrotypes of people we don't even know; few people in Tom's family labeled photographs. We've filled Mary Greene's steamer trunk full of photographs and old letters, I've devoted bookshelves to photographs in albums dated to the early 1900s, we have boxes of photographs we've never organized, and we have multiple copies of many photographs. The Armstrong family (Baker White Armstrong, Sr., Tom's great-grandfather) particularly liked to sit for photographs; we've got professional photos of all four children (born in the 1890s and early 1900s) at almost every age.

At what point will our descendants decide to quit packing all this dead weight? I can't bring myself to get rid of much of the stuff.

Except books--I'm now going through our books. We have limited shelf space, and I'm determined to keep only enough books that will fit on these shelves. We shall see.

The Regzen family of Mongolia told the authors of Material World that they hoped for a permanent house in the future. They wanted to give up their ger for a "house for all seasons made of wood and cement with a corrugated roof." As I pare down our belongings to fit in this 1300-square foot home, I'm longing for more portable stuff, with less weight and less responsibility to the past.

In his introductory notes to Material World, Charles Mann writes that "[u]ntil recently, humanity could always escape from itself, packing up the kids and going to the world's empty places. Now those places are filling up, and we have no choice but to confront ourselves. . . . "

Today I'm confronting myself and several generations of pack rats in the boxes stacked in our study.

Moving Grief and Recovery

Your Move. Our Reputation. That's the slogan of A-1 Freeman Moving Group, the folks in charge of our move from Texas to Georgia. Insert negative words of your choice before "Reputation," and you'll get a feel for my attitude toward the company. Our furniture has arrived in Georgia smashed or missing or generally in worse shape than before it was loaded up on a North American Van Lines truck at the end of June. In the ten moves that my husband and I have made in twenty-nine years of marriage, this has been the worst one.

The guys who loaded the van in Texas did so in about five hours, carrying huge pieces of antique furniture on their backs. The truck driver didn't know what to do with the hardware. "Ma'am," he addressed me at one point while I was briefly off the telephone from dealing with roofers who wouldn't show up to finish their work. "Ma'am, what do you want me to do with these pieces of your bookcases?" He held out the pins that hold the shelves in place.

I looked at him in surprise. The last truck driver who moved us from Georgia to Texas had everything in order: hardware taped to furniture in places easy to find or stored in a hardware box. This man didn't have tape or a hardware box. At one point, we gave him an envelope and box tape to affix some hardware to a table.

When the truck driver and his hired movers were taking apart an antique table top with original hardware, my husband cautioned the driver not to lose the parts, as they were impossible to replace. Of course, the parts are missing--although the driver carefully taped (with borrowed box tape) to a part of the table the cheap, plastic buffers for the feet. We have the linch pins that attach the lid of our 1907 Steinway & Sons grand piano only because my husband found them on the living room floor where the movers had dropped them in Texas.

A wheel of an antique tea cart is smashed to smithereens, the trim on our daughter's dresser is broken and missing, our daughter's antique washstand that she uses as a bedside table has missing parts and broken wooden support that is meant to hold up a marble top, one of the wheels of her antique twin bed is missing, one of the legs to her secretary's desk is off and missing screws, and a five-foot round antique dining room table top has been lost between our former home and our new abode in Georgia.

The missing dining room table top is the piece we mourn the most; it belongs to a dining set that Tom's grandmother had as early as the 1920s when she married. It might have belonged to HER parents. The pedestal legs and the table inserts arrived, but not the huge table top.

And this is just the short list.

Instead of unscrewing parts, the movers just yanked apart furniture pieces, taking along flaky bits of wood, making re-attaching the screws in their original holes impossible.

We had heard horror stories of Gorilla Movers but had never experienced such horror first hand. Now we've been initiated, and our feelings are those of anger, betrayal, and grief.

I've talked to a person in the warehouse in Atlanta where our furniture was housed, to a person in charge of the relocation, and I'm supposed to talk with two different people in charge of claims. These companies seem to work on the premise that if they pass along dissatisfied customers to enough unknowledgeable people that the customer will eventually give up the claims--or give up the ghost, whichever comes first!

No one will take responsibility: "Oh, that was the responsibility of the driver on the Texas end!" "Oh, you need to talk to so-and-so and fill out claim forms after we e-mail you the forms if we remember to do so."

As I told my daughter yesterday, we can get angry and try to receive recompense for the damage, but we will accomplish little if we stay in a stew about the Move from Hell. We have to look forward and begin to enjoy our new community.

M-M was upset because all of her bedroom furniture--all antiques--are so damaged that repairs will have to be made before she can organize her bedroom and all her stuff. She had thought she would finish the process before school started next week. Anxious about beginning her sophomore year in a new high school, missing her friends in Texas, she sought the comfort of an organized bedroom, a safe place to think and to read where she could hold chaos at bay. But now she can't unpack clothes until her dresser and washstand are repaired, and she can't place knick-knacks on the shelves of her desk until her desk is re-assembled with its legs.

"It's okay to grieve and to be angry at the incompetence of the movers," I told M-M. "But last night when I was wondering if we had made a mistake in moving, I thought of the 50,000 Iraqis who are fleeing their homes every month to take up temporary quarters as refugees in neighboring countries. Thinking of their situation put my own in perspective."

Then this morning after registering M-M in her new school, I took my bowl of Cornflakes on the patio and sat in a patio chair to eat a delayed breakfast. Birds were singing: a cardinal in the distance, a nuthatch somewhere closer. The trees in the backyards of the neighborhood were a-twitter with chickadees, tit mice, robins, and perhaps a thrush or two. One of our cats had escaped outside with me, and she rolled ecstatically on the sidewalk before setting off to explore our carport, stacked with boxes of stuff for Good Will and of packing paper to be recycled.

Every move is difficult. One hand slowly lets go of what's being left behind; the other opens to receive what is to come. And our neighbors next door, Karen, Scott, and their two daughters, knocked on our door last night to place their welcome in our open hands: four home-baked cupcakes.

I think that's a first in all our moves.

With a Friend Like This. . . .

Matthew Lee, Associated Press Writer, published a short piece yesterday about how few Iraqi refugees the United States has taken in. According to Lee (and other sources I've read), approximately 50,000 Iraqis are fleeing their country every month, yet the United States has "only taken in 190 refugees since last year." Because we started this war, we owe something to the Iraqi people, especially to those who helped us and continue to help us there. This news report reminded me of an in-depth article I read some months ago, written by George Packer and published in The New Yorker. The title of the article is "Betrayed", and in the article, Packer describes in horrifying detail the ways in which the United States failed--and continues to fail--the Iraqis who serve as interpreters and staff and thus risk their lives and the lives of their friends and relatives.

Another writer has written more recently of an Iraqi friend who served as an interpreter for four years for the U. S. Army. The interpreter's house was bombed, his wife and young children threatened, and relatives (his father and brother) kidnapped and murdered. The American officers and soldiers who have worked with this Iraqi have written letters attesting to the young man's faithfulness and trustworthiness and of the need to get him out of Iraq before his family is murdered in retaliation for that very friendliness to Americans. But "Andy" has not been successful in acquiring immigration status. Read and weep over Maura Stephens' description of American bureaucratic incompetency and her follow-up to Andy's story.

George Packer describes how this failure to help our friends foreshadows our defeat: "America’s failure to understand, trust, and protect its closest friends in Iraq is a small drama that contains the larger history of defeat."