Inside Television 512
Publication date: 7-30-10
By: Hubert O’Hearn
As irony is the outcome of coincidence, I would have say it was ironic that I was watching the news of the volcanic eruption of 90,000 leaked documents concerning the Afghan War at the same time as I was reviewing a novel called A Man in Uniform for bythebookreviews.blogspot.com. The subject of the book? The Dreyfus Affair.
For those who nodded off in history class, Captain Alfred Dreyfus was an artillery officer in the French Army in the 1890s. He was convicted of attempting to sell military secrets to Germany, was sent to Devil’s Island to be shackled and imprisoned.
As it turned out, the case against Dreyfus was false, evidence circumstantial or flat-out forged, and thanks to an eventual popular outrage spurred by the press - most notably Emile Zola’s famous letter ‘J’Accuse’ - Dreyfus was finally re-tried and freed. He returned to the Armya nd served with distinction through the end of World War One.
Why oh why is it that every schoolboy hears the phrase, ‘those that do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it,’ but once the telling moments of adult life arrive, the lesson is completely forgotten? The Afghan revelations are the Dreyfus Affair brought back to life, minus the convenient scapegoat. So far. Heads will roll like melons on a conveyor belt.
At the crux of it is a military-governmental elite in the U.S., UK and even tidy old Canada that is as preternaturally disposed to cover-up or lying as a classroom of naughty little boys. Except naughty little boys fire rubber bands at little girls. Afghanistan involves six 2,000 pound bombs dropped on a village in an attempt to kill one man; who wasn’t there. Between 150 and 300 villagers were there. Emphasis on the past tense.
There used to be joking speculation that George W. Bush never really wanted to kill or capture bin Laden. To do so would be to eliminate the purported reason for the war and the war’s lucrative supply contracts. Now that we see documents showing that bin Laden’s movements and activities were well-tracked from 2003 to 2009, one seriously has to wonder if the paranoid were actually the sane, and the supposedly sane were the paranoids.
This sort of thing keeps happening throughout modern history and eventually one just wants to shut the drapes, lock the doors and cancel the newspapers. What frustrates to the point of tears is that the same pattern always repeats, like a snake shedding its skin only to reveal an identical skin. A misjudgement leads to criminal neglect leads to cover-up leads to revelation leads to embarrassment leads to counter-attack leads to scapegoat leads to nothing learned or at least nothing changed.
Because of space limitations, i can’t go one forever about this, but I invite the reader to take some time and look at Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers scandal of 1971; or the 1925 trial of General Billy Mitchell. Or in Canada’s case, we need only go back a few months to the reporting by Richard Colvin of the Canadian military illegally turning over prisoners to the Afghans. Colvin may not have been sent to Devil’s Island, but given the ferocity of the attacks waged against him by Tory ministers and various top brass during Question Period and televised hearings ... well, I’m sure the Prime Minister at least thought back on Dreyfus’ shackles and wistfully sang, ‘Those Were the Days.’
The saddest part of it is that deep down inside there has been a nagging voice in me that makes me think that the Afghan War actually was just. One cannot promote the causes of freedom and justice at home while looking abroad where those values are not enforced and say that these principles shall not apply over there because ‘you people are different.’ That is racism at its swinish worst. I suspect Christopher Hitchens, sadly battling cancer of esophagus, came to the same conclusions.
But the war is lost now. I think we all know that in our hearts. At the bluntest, were you an Afghan, would you trust us? The final word will go to the historian Garry Wills, who was invited along with several of his colleagues to have a private dinner with President Obama. Wills this week revealed his advice to the President. As he remembers in this week’s New York Review of Books:
I said that a government so corrupt and tribal and drug-based as Afghanistan’s could not be made stable. He replied that he was not naïve about the difficulties but he thought a realistic solution could be reached. I wanted to add “when pigs fly,” but restrained myself.
Keats had it partially wrong. Beauty may always be truth, but truth is not always beauty. Be seeing you.
Publication date: 7-30-10
By: Hubert O’Hearn
As irony is the outcome of coincidence, I would have say it was ironic that I was watching the news of the volcanic eruption of 90,000 leaked documents concerning the Afghan War at the same time as I was reviewing a novel called A Man in Uniform for bythebookreviews.blogspot.com. The subject of the book? The Dreyfus Affair.
For those who nodded off in history class, Captain Alfred Dreyfus was an artillery officer in the French Army in the 1890s. He was convicted of attempting to sell military secrets to Germany, was sent to Devil’s Island to be shackled and imprisoned.
As it turned out, the case against Dreyfus was false, evidence circumstantial or flat-out forged, and thanks to an eventual popular outrage spurred by the press - most notably Emile Zola’s famous letter ‘J’Accuse’ - Dreyfus was finally re-tried and freed. He returned to the Armya nd served with distinction through the end of World War One.
Why oh why is it that every schoolboy hears the phrase, ‘those that do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it,’ but once the telling moments of adult life arrive, the lesson is completely forgotten? The Afghan revelations are the Dreyfus Affair brought back to life, minus the convenient scapegoat. So far. Heads will roll like melons on a conveyor belt.
At the crux of it is a military-governmental elite in the U.S., UK and even tidy old Canada that is as preternaturally disposed to cover-up or lying as a classroom of naughty little boys. Except naughty little boys fire rubber bands at little girls. Afghanistan involves six 2,000 pound bombs dropped on a village in an attempt to kill one man; who wasn’t there. Between 150 and 300 villagers were there. Emphasis on the past tense.
There used to be joking speculation that George W. Bush never really wanted to kill or capture bin Laden. To do so would be to eliminate the purported reason for the war and the war’s lucrative supply contracts. Now that we see documents showing that bin Laden’s movements and activities were well-tracked from 2003 to 2009, one seriously has to wonder if the paranoid were actually the sane, and the supposedly sane were the paranoids.
This sort of thing keeps happening throughout modern history and eventually one just wants to shut the drapes, lock the doors and cancel the newspapers. What frustrates to the point of tears is that the same pattern always repeats, like a snake shedding its skin only to reveal an identical skin. A misjudgement leads to criminal neglect leads to cover-up leads to revelation leads to embarrassment leads to counter-attack leads to scapegoat leads to nothing learned or at least nothing changed.
Because of space limitations, i can’t go one forever about this, but I invite the reader to take some time and look at Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers scandal of 1971; or the 1925 trial of General Billy Mitchell. Or in Canada’s case, we need only go back a few months to the reporting by Richard Colvin of the Canadian military illegally turning over prisoners to the Afghans. Colvin may not have been sent to Devil’s Island, but given the ferocity of the attacks waged against him by Tory ministers and various top brass during Question Period and televised hearings ... well, I’m sure the Prime Minister at least thought back on Dreyfus’ shackles and wistfully sang, ‘Those Were the Days.’
The saddest part of it is that deep down inside there has been a nagging voice in me that makes me think that the Afghan War actually was just. One cannot promote the causes of freedom and justice at home while looking abroad where those values are not enforced and say that these principles shall not apply over there because ‘you people are different.’ That is racism at its swinish worst. I suspect Christopher Hitchens, sadly battling cancer of esophagus, came to the same conclusions.
But the war is lost now. I think we all know that in our hearts. At the bluntest, were you an Afghan, would you trust us? The final word will go to the historian Garry Wills, who was invited along with several of his colleagues to have a private dinner with President Obama. Wills this week revealed his advice to the President. As he remembers in this week’s New York Review of Books:
I said that a government so corrupt and tribal and drug-based as Afghanistan’s could not be made stable. He replied that he was not naïve about the difficulties but he thought a realistic solution could be reached. I wanted to add “when pigs fly,” but restrained myself.
Keats had it partially wrong. Beauty may always be truth, but truth is not always beauty. Be seeing you.
(I look forward to your comments - and I welcome you to share this blog. And...clicking on ads does put food on the table. Cheers! - H)
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