Seven Years After

"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross." 
(Sinclair Lewis, 1935)

Those in my age bracket have been made fun of for scrupulously remembering where we were and what we were doing the day John F. Kennedy was shot. But we have since been joined by succeeding generations who recall what they were doing the morning of September 11, 2001.

In my case I was at work when I heard about the impact of the first plane. At first it seemed remotely possible it was just an accident. After all, the skies around our largest city were crowded, and the towers were so tall. And at least in the first minutes, no one was taking credit for it.

With the second impact that delusion vanished, along with many others. But still the buildings were standing. It seemed only a matter of time before the fires would be put out and expensive renovations would begin. I remember I even joked that they would have to lower the rent for office space.

I watched the news reports from my desk on a tiny black and white portable TV/radio with a 5-inch screen. Reduced to this scale the giant towers were the size of magic markers scribbling smoke against the sky. I had no idea they were going to collapse until it happened. Nor, apparently, did the police and firefighters who were actively trying to evacuate the buildings. But I was watching when the first roof gave way and I followed it with open mouth all the way down, trying to imagine the calamity that this fuzzy remote image represented.

After that I knew it was only a matter of time until the second building would follow. Conspiracy theorists are having a lot of fun now spinning stories about how the jet fuel was not enough to account for the collapse, how bombs must have been on board, and so on. But according to one of the engineers who designed the structure, the failure was inevitable. There are limits to what even steel can do in the face of extreme heat and crushing weight. The miracle really is that the towers did as little damage to their surroundings as they did when they fell.

By this time my shock had given way to a grim resignation to what was sure to follow. I didn't know the exact form it would take, but I could foresee many years of turmoil and retribution. The peace that had followed the Cold War was over. Whatever cost had been exacted by the destruction of these twin buildings, eventually it would be dwarfed by the expense of what we were bound to inflict on ourselves.

I didn't have to wait very long or look very far to see the first results. Incredibly, some of the young men who worked at my company started bringing their guns to work with them and showing them off to each other, while engaging in bravado about how they would deal with any terrorists they found. They seemed to think we were surrounded, or at least infiltrated, on all sides. One of them told me that "all those people" should be sent back where they came from. When I pointed out that there were over seven million followers of Islam in the country, most of them evidently peaceable, the idea seemed to give him pause.

If I had been able to think faster on my feet I might have added something else. The young man was a Cuban-American, one of our many hyphenated citizens. I could have reminded him about the time when our own city of Miami was plagued with a rash of bombings and assassinations by members of Alpha 66, a militant group devoted to the overthrow of Castro. How would he have felt then if all the Hispanics in the whole country had been rounded up for deportation?

But such arguments have been falling mostly on deaf ears. Confronted by fear there appears to be no limit to our collective stupidity.

The argument could be made that the best reaction to this calamity would have been no reaction at all, or at least no more than paying greater attention to airline security. The number of deaths, fewer than 4,000 in all, was about the same as the number of us that drown each year in the US, and there is no retaliation for that.

By comparison, we kill ourselves or one another with firearms at the rate of 28,000 per year -- and 750 of those are accidental, like the incident that nearly involved Dick Cheney in manslaughter. On the highways we die at the rate of 43,000 per year, ten times the 9/11 figure, a number that dwarfs our military casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

But of course it's not about the numbers. The terrorists understood clearly that they were engaged in a struggle that is mostly symbolic. And the administration in Washington reacted in kind. "9/11" was suddenly Pearl Harbor and "Remember the Maine" rolled into one. They immediately cast the incident into military terms. The event was an "attack," something a country or army would do, rather than a crime. It was not mere terrorism, it was "war." (George W. Bush's first reaction was, "that's the first war of the 21st century," sounding like he was pleased to be on deck for it.) And accordingly the military was soon attacking in return, first in Afghanistan, which made some sense, and then Iraq, which made very little sense. Bush claimed it was a slip when he called it, aptly enough, a "crusade."

The military victories were rapid, but the subsequent occupations have not gone so well. Imagine how we would have felt if by 1952, seven years after the end of World War II, our soldiers were still being shot and blown up in Japan, or certain German towns were still in the hands of Nazi holdouts. Such is the situation in both Iraq and Afghanistan, yet we are assured that things are going well. Meanwhile the staggering cost has exceeded even the wildest speculations of critics, and our domestic economy has gone into a tailspin.

Worse yet, we have collectively acquiesced to the dismantling of our civil rights on a scale never before imagined. Habeas corpus, one of the cornerstones of our freedom, has been suspended before, during the Civil War and World War II, but it was soon reinstated. This time it may be gone for good, at least in any case where the magic word "terrorist" has been uttered.

There is hope, of course, as there always is. A new administration, the result of our own "regime change," will have its work cut out trying to extricate itself from the Middle East tarbaby and to heal the many wounds at home and around the world. But the possibility of success is still there. Not this year, or next, but maybe before another seven years have gone by, we may be able to look back on what we learned. Let's just hope we can afford the price of the lesson.

The Men Who Would Be King

Of all the versions of this tale, the true one is the most amazing ...

I've long been a fan of John Huston's 1975 film version of Rudyard Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King, and have watched it several times. But only recently did I finally read the original short story it is based on. The film is faithful to Kipling, but even more incredible is the real story that lies behind them both.

Starring Sean Connery as Daniel Dravot, Michael Caine as his pal "Peachy" Carnehan, and a youthful Christopher Plummer as Kipling, the film tells the story of two adventurers in the days of the British Raj in India who set out to forge a kingdom for themselves in Kafiristan. In those days this remote province of Afghanistan might as well have been darkest Africa for all that was known of it. Foreigners who went in were seldom seen again.

Our heroes are not to be discouraged, however. Full of British pluck they set off on a pair of camels loaded down with concealed rifles, disguised as a crazy holy man and his servant. The ruse is intended to keep secret their identity and the fact that only one of them speaks an indigenous language.

Once in the country they quickly form a series of alliances by offering their services (and rifles) in support of one local ruler against another. This of course was a practice that the British, like the Romans before them, used in many places including Scotland, Ireland, and America, as well as in India. With each victory they add to their followers and the size of their territory. And they use their military experience to train a growing army.

In Kafiristan their right to rule is recognized by a fortunate fluke. The inhabitants claim to be the descendants of Alexander the Great, whose army established an outpost there two thousand years ago. There is also a connection between Alexander and Freemasonry having to do with the Gordian knot, and the Masonic medallion around Dravot's neck is a match to the ancient and revered symbol in their temple. This is all they need to consider him a god who has returned to claim his throne.

This detail is the most marked difference between the film and Kipling's yarn. As the author -- a Freemason himself -- told it, the natives actually knew the secrets of the sect, including handshakes and the initiation rites for the lower orders. I suppose Huston and his screenwriters thought this would be a bit much for general audiences in the 20th century.

But power soon goes to the newly crowned head of Dravot. He begins lording it over his subjects, including the hapless Carnehan, to whom falls the task of training the army while his friend tells them what to do. In the story version Dravot's plans run wild. He foresees himself delivering the whole country to Britain as a perfect bulwark against Russian expansion in the region, from which his fortune, medals, and a knighthood are sure to follow.

In the end it is his desire for a queen that proves his undoing, in a way I will not mention so I don't spoil the plot for anyone. Suffice to say that only one of the pair of adventurers makes it back alive, and I won't say which one, or what is the fate of the other.

The Story Behind the Story

Kipling's story was long thought to have been based on the exploits of James Brooke, an Englishman whose foreign adventures ended with him becoming the Raja of Sarawak in 1841, a post he held until his death in 1868. But it has since been discovered that there was another possible model in the person of Josiah Harlan, whose story has many parallel details to the ones in Kipling's tale and is an even more likely source.

Harlan was an American Quaker from a small town in Pennsylvania. When his girlfriend broke his heart he left the country to seek his fortune abroad, and ended up serving as a self-declared physician with the British army in Burma. For this alone his Quaker meeting revoked his membership when they heard of it. Little did they realize what was to become of him later.

Leaving Burma he made his way to the Punjab region of India (later Pakistan) and formed the idea that he wanted to explore Afghanistan--oh, and perhaps become king of it. He was quite aware that the last European to do so was Alexander the Great, a person of particular historical interest to Harlan, and one whose mantle he saw himself taking up.

How he did so is related in exquisite detail in Ben MacIntyre's 2004 book, The Man Who Would Be King: The First American in Afghanistan. Through an amazing series of diplomatic encounters, Harlan managed to obtain support from both the British (as an intelligence source) and the deposed Shah of Afghanistan (as one who would create a rebellion and restore his lost throne). Armed with the Shah's money and his own chutzpah, he proceeded to raise an army of loyal supporters of the Shah and bands of mercenaries, and led them to conquest under his personal banner--an American flag made to his order by a local seamstress.

I recommend MacIntyre for the rest of this incredible story. But it is worth noting that along the way Harlan took in two deserters from the British army who were out to seek their own fortunes by offering their services as military commanders to anyone who would have them. They are Dravot and Carnehan incarnate. Like those characters, Harlan too started out by impersonating a holy man who had taken a vow of silence as a way to conceal his foreign identity until he could learn the language. He even ended up in Kafiristan where he may have married, or at least cohabited with, a Kafiri woman--though with better results than in Kipling's tale.

Harlan's exploits predated those of Brooke by several years. In fact, when the British finally invaded Afghanistan they found Harlan comfortably in residence. Now with a title, the Prince of Ghor, and claim to much Afghan territory, he found himself at odds with the imperious Brits, who refused to take his sage advice about how they should conduct themselves (ultimately with disastrous consequences). Eventually he left in a huff to return to America. Back home he penned a book that was so critical of the Empire's bungling in the region that it created a scandal all over Europe--one more reason that Kipling was quite likely to have heard of Harlan's story even many years later.

Harlan's end was less dramatic than that of Kipling's heroes, but no less tragic. Back in his own country he was an utter failure. When the Civil War erupted he took up a commission in the Union army and tried to replicate his military successes overseas. But he was now so out of touch with the customs of his homeland that his troops mutinied. After the war he spent much time lobbying the government to establish a corps of camel cavalry, putting himself forward as the only person to go abroad and bring back the camels. Perhaps he was just looking for a free pass back to Afghanistan. At any rate, this too was a failure.

His last days were spent in San Francisco, a city where he knew not a soul, and where one day in 1871 he died on the street. He might have been forgotten altogether but for MacIntyre's research. More than a century later, his curiosity aroused by the American invasion of Afghanistan, he discovered Harlan's journals in a box in a back room of a public library in Pennsylvania.

At the bottom of the box was an ornate document signed with an official seal: the proof of Harlan's royal title, and the grant in perpetuity of his Afghan lands.

Charlie Wilson and the Economics of War

Imagine for a moment that you consider yourself a pacifist, as I do. Then imagine that one day you find yourself inwardly cheering when you see a helicopter blown out of the sky by Islamic militants, and chuckling when the vanquished have the following toast proposed to them: "Here's to you, you mother****ers."

Such is the effect of the film, Charlie Wilson's War, in which the occupying Soviets are oh so evil, and in which the poor downtrodden Afghanis are oh so good and pathetic and heroic. Not to mention that a congressman and a CIA operative are somehow subversive radicals who manage to divert huge amounts of government funds into military aid without public notice. Yes, you even find yourself cheering for that.

The characters are so likable, and the story of protecting the weak from the strong is so compelling, that it is impossible not to go along for the ride. Never mind that the oddly reversed roles of the conflict made the Islamic radicals our allies in the Cold War, and that Osama Bin Laden (who is never mentioned) was among them.

There is an even more pointed moment, in case anyone hasn't got on board yet. After a scene in which Julia Roberts, as a wealthy Texan raising funds (and Cain) for Afghanistan, has to be asked to tone down the religious nature of her appeals, we jump to a montage of Soviet armor being destroyed to the soundtrack of "And He Shall Purify" from Handel's Messiah. Yikes! This makes "Onward Christian Soldiers" sound like a Boy Scout campfire song.

In a lot of ways the film only turns serious at the end. After the Soviet army has to admit defeat and leave, Wilson continues to push for aid to rebuild Afghanistan. But this task is not so easy as fighting a war, and he is unable even to get funding to construct some schools. The historic consequences are plain, and don't have to be spelled out.

There is a subtext, however, which I found interesting, whether it was intentional or not. In one of the planning sessions, the point is made that the hand-held anti-aircraft missiles that are being supplied to the Afghanis are a small fraction of the cost of the helicopters that they are bringing down. The ratio means that the "evil empire" can be vastly outspent, and for a bargain price.

Obviously the same math can work just as well when the shoe is on the other foot, as it is now in Iraq, as well as in Afghanistan. Every time another suicide bomber detonates himself, the casualty rate is bound to tilt in his favor. And every roadside bomb that goes off exchanges a few dollars worth of explosives for a vehicle costing tens or hundreds of thousands--not to mention the cost in lives and caring for the wounded. The implication is that the sheer expense of modern weaponry is now a disadvantage to the side that is better equipped. As long as some influx of low-cost weapons exists, the cost to the stronger side will be hugely greater.

This is not necessarily to say that the United States is losing the fight for control of Iraq and Afghanistan; but it insures that the price of success will be enormous, as we are finding out--as the Soviets found out, and as we should have remembered from our own experience in Vietnam. Eventually, if our foreign policy demands continued military interventions elsewhere, the expense may have such a crippling effect on our economy that we will be forced to change our behavior in order to survive.

In short, military domination may have become too costly to work in the modern world. A huge and expensive army may be what you need to destroy another huge and expensive army, but it is not the right tool for controlling a population, or creating real social change. This trend is likely to become more pronounced as new technologies continue to make the old ones more vulnerable at lower cost.

And maybe, in the long run, that really will be something to cheer about.