Today, we remember “9/11.” It’s a depressing day. I feel it personally, having lost one of my best friends, Michael Asher, 11 years ago, a victim of a terrorist attack, an attack that initiated deep and wide global suffering. Distant suffering, the deaths and mortal wounds of individuals and groups large and small, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan and elsewhere, including the four corners of the United States, combines with personal loss. The day is doubly depressing in my judgment because, tragically, remembering poorly has provoked more suffering than the terrorist act that started the whole mess, and this continues, guaranteeing that the suffering will not end. The term “9/11” and its remembrance are dangerous.

When I went to the ceremony commemorating the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks with my dear friend Steve Assael, a survivor, I heard too many blind patriotic cries, saw too many signs celebrating retribution and military might.

On the day Osama bin Laden was killed: I viewed with dismay the wild celebrations of young people outside the White House and elsewhere in the country. As I wrote here, their enthusiasm confused me. I didn’t understand it, though later with irony, I pretended I did as a way to call for the end of the war on terrorism.

And even as I shared my enthusiasm for the clarity and fundamental soundness of the Democratic Convention last week, specifically as it contrasted with the Republican Convention, the repeated reminders that Obama killed Osama turned me off. “Osama Bin Laden is Dead and GM is Alive,” Biden’s favorite slogan, I believe points the American public in the wrong direction. I understand why this served good partisan purpose, but find this deeply depressing.

Action is the major antidote for depression, and I have been self-medicating here at Deliberately Considered. Thus, over the past year, I have published at Deliberately Considered pieces that try to open up more careful remembrance. These are all highlighted on the home page today, as featured pieces and as favorites. My modest attempt to contribute to a higher quality memory is to invite readers to take a look at these, organized as they are around two themes: 9/11 and Osama bin Laden.

Note how forgetting is natural, as Gary Alan Fine explains, but also consider what should and what should not be forgotten. My suggestion: remember the loss, forget the impulse for revenge. It is interesting to me that this morning NPR reported that now three quarters of the American population doesn’t think the war in Afghanistan has made us safer.

Consider how we look in the eyes of the world with Anna Lisa Tota reporting from Italy. Perhaps wild chants of USA, USA, USA! is not in the national interest. Either at ground zero, or after the killing of Osama bin Laden, or at a national political convention. Read through the thoughtful reflections and debate we had here about this, and don’t stereotype all Americans, note the diversity of judgments and opinions.

I am committed to writing a more scholarly paper on collective memory. Its title will be “Against Memory.” It will be informed by the discussions here.

In my last post, I explored the idea of artistic research as I reflected on my visit to this year’s documenta exhibition. Today I will follow up by reviewing a case in point, “The Afghan Seminars” of dOCUMENTA (13), and then add some concluding reflections.

dOCUMENTA (13) actively stimulated the development of new artistic encounters by commissioning new projects, organizing various proceedings and publications. The organizers invited various artists and scholars for a series of events before and after the opening, for example, in Kabul, Cairo and Banff. “The Afghan Seminars: A Position of Documenta (13)” is particularly interesting because it included artists such as Michael Rakowitz, Giuseppe Penone, Mario Garcia Torres, Francis Alys, and Adrian Villar Rojas, most of whom were commissioned to produce a new work related to their experience in the war-torn country. In addition, the exhibition in Goethe Institute, Kabul presented 27 artists from 13 countries as part of the dOCUMENTA (13).

Although artists had no prior personal knowledge about the context of Afghanistan, they came up with interesting plans. For instance, in his film, “Reel/Unreel” (click link to watch), Francis Alys follows children who are playing a game with a steel circle, as well as an actual film reel given to them by the artist himself. Children continuously navigate by rolling the reels, following different paths in Kabul streets. The camera constantly shows the rotating reels in a close shot, depicting an intimate engagement with the urban context, providing a unique perspective, and a ground-up view of the city. The film operates in many layers. As we follow the kids and the reels, the film reel unfolds and refolds back, both literally and metaphorically, depicting life in Kabul. The project relates to the Kabul’s recent troubled past where films were burned down by the Taliban. However, the children’s playfulness offers the possibility for a joyful future.

Michael Rakowitz’s “What Dust Will Rise?” (2012) (click link for image), a conceptually complex project deals with the books that were destroyed during the aerial bombing in Kassel in 1941. Rakowitz’s installation mimics an archaeological museum to present carved stone books. In order to produce the books, Rakowitz worked in Afghanistan to educate Afghani stone carvers to reenact the old tradition of stone carving (a trade that was abolished after the Taliban), and to produce copies of the books with the stones that were taken from the quarries of Buddhas of Bamiyan, which was destroyed by the Taliban with an international showdown in 2001. The projects seemingly connect two troubled pasts together, generating an uneasy bridge. The complexity of the conceptual approach, the stretching of the contexts, histories, labor practices and materials, mixing with a form of philanthropy, creates discomfort.

In contrast to Rakowitz’s intricate project, Kader Attia’s related project, “Repair of the Occident to Extra-Occidental Cultures” (2012), presents a streamlined approach to tackle with historical relationships. In a similarly museological installation, Attia juxtaposes many 19^th and 20^th century artifacts, images and sculpture. Similar to Rakowitz, Attia asks African sculptors to carve disfigured World War I veterans in African busts. These sculptures are presented alongside 19^th century anthropological survey photos of Africans and 19^th century medical images of disfigured people. Attia offers an emotionally loaded portrait of colonialist ideology in its totality, as it flawlessly discloses the very logic of medical, criminal and anthropological assumptions and categories and how the modernist norm established itself in a very violent manner, an ideology of total domination of the other’s body through normalization processes.

One of the achievements of dOCUMENTA (13) is that the organizers gave artists dedicated spaces and the freedom to tackle their own spatial, formal and conceptual matters independent from overall exhibition. This gave a relative autonomy to artists and transformed curators into diligent facilitators of individual projects. In contrast to recently organized biennials/triennials, which take political events as a starting point, dOCUMENTA (13) manages to present political projects in a very direct and undisturbed manner. dOCUMENTA (13)’s spatial nonconformity and spaciousness allowed visitors to fully investigate the given projects without being visually overloaded. In that regard, walking from one venue to another became an expedition. Projects are weaved within the environment and urban context, allowing spontaneous encounters and surprises, generating an intelligent liveliness within the show.

Thus, I believe, dOCUMENTA (13) is one of the most important contemporary art exhibitions in our decade. The diversity of practices that successfully scrutinize social, political, economic and historical events proves that social scientists and the broader public need to give proper attention to artistic research as a genuine way of producing critical knowledge.

One of our rhetorical tics, so common and so universal as to be unremarkable, is the shared assertion by liberals and conservatives alike that our soldiers are our heroes. We may disagree about foreign policy, but soldiers are the bravest and the greatest. That mainstream politicians should make this claim – Obama and Bush, McCain and Kerry – should provoke little surprise, but it flourishes as a trope among the anti-war left as well. Political strategies reverberate through time as we refight our last discursive war.

In the heated years of the War in Vietnam there was a palpable anger by opponents of that war that was directed against members of the military who bombed the killing fields of Cambodia, Hanoi, and Hue. While accounts of soldiers being spat upon were more apocryphal than real, used by pro-war forces to attack their opponents. According to sociologist Jerry Lembcke in his book The Spitting Image the story was an urban legend, but it is true that many who opposed the war considered soldiers to be oppressors, or in the extreme, murderers. This was a symbolic battle in which the anti-war forces were routed, and such language was used to delegitimize principled opposition to the war and to separate the young college marchers from the working class soldiers who were doing the bidding of presidents and generals. In the time of a national draft, college students were excused from service, making the class divide evident. (For the record, I admit to cowardice, fearing snipers, fragging, and reveille. I was a chicken dove).

After the war, war critics learned a lesson. No longer would the men with guns be held responsible for the bullets. All blame was to be placed upon government and none on the soldiers, even though the draft had been abolished, and the military became all-volunteer (and the working class and minority population continued to increase in the ranks).

By the time that American adventures in the Gulf and in Afghanistan became part of our political taken-for-granted, so did the rhetoric of soldier-as-hero. Perhaps these rhetorical choices were strategic, but they also served to give our military a moral pass.

When Barack Obama was a candidate he assured voters that he would conclude this national nightmare. Yes, politics involves bluster and blarney, but bringing the troops home in an orderly process seemed a firm commitment, a project for his first term. I trusted that this hope and change was not merely a discursive sop to those who found long-term and bloody American intervention intolerable. Here was a war that seemed hopeless in year one and now in year eleven it seems no more hopeful. To be sure it is a low-grade debacle, but a debacle none-the-less. If, as some have suggested, we invaded Afghanistan to put the fear of God into the hearts of Pakistanis, the strategy has been charmingly ineffective. It seems abundantly clear that our choice is to determine when we will declare the war lost, and when Americans and Afghans will no longer die at each others hands.

Wars cannot be conducted without the connivance of soldiers. Soldiers are the pawns that permit State policy. I recognize that in parlous economic times there are many strategic reasons for desiring the benefits of a military life. And spittle is not political philosophy. But choice is always tethered to responsibility. Members of the military are accepting and even benefiting from a misguided and destructive policy. The nation of Afghanistan deserves self-determination free from our boots on the ground. And the absence of complaint among the all-volunteer military underlines the complicity of our soldiers.

So I do reject the choices of the members of the military whose presence and obedience makes possible the fantasias of foreign policy strategists. They have moral responsibility for their decisions. But the responsibility is not theirs alone, but ours. That we have been unable, unwilling, or unconcerned to stop an unending war against a nation that did not attack us is a mark of shame. It reveals the American public as timid and craven.

Are soldiers responsible for their actions? Surely. Should soldiers be hated? Not until the rest of us are willing to hold a mirror to our own acquiescence in a system that reveals in our political priorities that War and Peace matters far less than Standard and Poors.

I am not completely satisfied with my last post. I’m afraid I wasn’t clear enough. I wanted to express my appreciation of Obama’s speech on Afghanistan, while highlighting what I see to be the limitations of his foreign policy. I wanted to show how, judged realistically, Obama’s speech on the Afghanistan drawdown was a significant advance, but also wanted to show why I think he did not go far enough. It’s about principles, not numbers.

Obama presented a vision of change in the direction of American foreign policy, although he didn’t fundamentally question the premise of America as a superpower with global responsibilities. I appreciate and support the vision, but question the premise. I also worry about the identification of defense of country and national security with military capability and response. But, I don’t expect the President of the United States to publicly challenge this identification. He is commander-in-chief and a politician who must ultimately make sense to the majority of the American people, while I can happily call myself a pragmatic pacifist, with all the contradictions that involves.  The speech struck me as being successful because Obama linked short terms goals with long term ends, i.e. withdrawing from an unpopular war while diminishing the power of Al Qaeda and giving Afghans a decent chance at determining their own just future, with changing the direction of American foreign policy.

I want a change of direction more radical than the President, but I still can’t be against all wars. Although I realize that non-violent action often gets things done more effectively and decisively than violent action, I believe that sometimes violence, including military force, is necessary. I understand, even support, the military action in Libya, but I also realize that the use of force in such situations is an indication of weakness. The most effective way to remove dictators with a democratic result is through non-violent action. But sometimes this is not possible, and thus, although democracy in Tunisia and Egypt is far from assured, it is much less likely in Syria, Libya and Yemen, not only because of the violence of the despots, but also because of the violent nature of the resistance. Political means have a way of defining their ends.

I find myself in an odd situation, the military interventions during my life time that have been most controversial from the beginning, in the former Yugoslavia and now in Libya, have been the ones I have favored. The ones that have been at least initially most popular, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Gulf War and Vietnam, have been the ones I have found most problematic. I am more comfortable with international intervention when human rights and life are endangered, than calculated unilateral ideologically driven action, fighting against abstractions, be it international communism or the global jihad.

The other posts this week reflect on the question of war and peace as well. Corey is more or less of my generation. When he went to Vietnam, I went to college and made a decision to avoid military involvement at all costs. I tried to be a pacifist, but couldn’t persuade myself. But because I strongly objected to that war, I refused involvement. I was ready to go to Canada, but in the end, because of the accident of the draft lottery, it didn’t come to that. Many years later, I read, along with Michael, the stories about how poorly Vietnam vets were received upon their return, but I don’t remember anyone I knew responding to veterans in that way or ever seeing evidence of that sort of thing. I spent a lot of time with Vietnam vets in the summer of 1976 and 1977. I taught a course at the University of Chicago to future ROTC instructors, all Army captains and majors. We got along and compared my anti-war experience with their military experience. There were no reports of civilian antagonism to them. Perhaps they didn’t tell me, but I think just as likely is that the rumors of abuse were just that, rumors (as Gary Alan Fine knows is often the case).

To be sure, there was no celebratory homecoming. Yet, there also was no victory or even a definitive ending of the war to commemorate. Haltingly, Americans worked to come to terms with the experience of the war, as Corey recounts. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the Moving Wall, Chicago’s Welcoming Home Parade, and much more, were commemorative acts that worked to put an end to the war and to remember it in a variety of different ways, from a variety of different viewpoints. I am rather convinced that this is the way it will be with military action in our times. There will be those who want to romantically celebrate heroes, but such romance will be elusive in wars that don’t have clear beginning and endings, or clear meanings. There will be political romantics, as Vince Carducci’s demonstrates in his review of Hitch 22, but I am convinced that they are becoming more marginal on the political scene. I think this is a good thing. Christopher Hitchens has been an entertaining clown when it comes to his support in Iraq, while the politics of such figures as Carl Schmitt and Martin Heidegger were significantly more serious, and disastrous.

As is his custom, Gary Alan Fine is again provocative in his latest post. He presents a number of important observations. Rumor and atrocity feed war. The truthfulness of atrocity is often unknown and unknowable. In the specific case of the alleged rape of Iman Al-Obeidi , the way she claimed to be raped and tortured leads Fine to wonder. Telling the difference between claims of atrocity and atrocity in the time of war is difficult. And sharply in his conclusion: “if you give generals authority to fight, they find wars that have no need to be fought.” The replies to his post confirm its major theoretical point. There is a fog of war when it comes to atrocities, and this can be, and often is, manipulated.

But I would amend his conclusion. My amendment: “give generals the authority to fight wars, and they will fight.” The need or absence of need for war is a political question, to be decided through political leadership and in political debate. Obama has attempted to lead in his speech, and we have the responsibility to critically respond and to critically appraise truth claims.

In his remarks to the nation last night on the way forward in Afghanistan,  the leadership style of President Obama was on full view. He presented a clear rational position, addressing immediate concerns with precision and subtlety, placing a simple decision about the pace of troop withdrawals in a larger historical context. It was rhetorically elegant. It was, from a strictly formal point of view, a satisfying speech. It was substantively, though, challenging, concerning immediate military, political and economic calculations.

I watched the address having earlier in the week attended a local organizing meeting of “Organizing for America” (which will soon again become “Obama for America”). The attendees included those who are realistically pleased with Obama’s Presidency, and those who were once enthusiastic, but are now skeptical. I thought about both the skeptics and the realists watching the speech.

An anti-war activist was particularly concerned about Obama’s war policies. To his mind, Obama has continued Bush’s approach, with variations on a deeply problematic theme. While he had listened carefully during the campaign to Barack Obama, as the candidate promised to withdraw from the bad war in Iraq so that we could fight the good fight in Afghanistan, he has still been disappointed by that war’s escalation. He predicted that Obama would announce a minuscule reduction of forces. I recall: 5,000 this summer and 10,000 in a year. He didn’t believe that a real change in direction of an overly militarized foreign policy would be forthcoming.

The announced troop reductions more than double my neighbor’s expectation. But I suspect that he is not satisfied. After all, the announced withdrawal of 33,000 troops by the end of next summer will still leave twice as many troops in Afghanistan than at the beginning of the Obama administration. The Congressional Democrats who are criticizing Obama’s decision are representing broad public judgment that enough is enough in Afghanistan. I should add that I share this judgment.

There were of course no strong opponents of the President at our meeting. Although it is noteworthy that the first meeting I went to in support of Obama near my home in 2007 was hosted by a Republican who was not only fed up with the Presidency of George W. Bush, but also enchanted by the Obama magic. Be that as it may, had there been Republicans at our meeting, their response to the President’s speech would likely have been muted, as was the Republican response on the central political stage.

Generally, the dominant Republican line was that Obama didn’t listen to the Generals, and that he is too aggressively withdrawing, not sufficiently supporting the troops, threatening to grab defeat from the jaws of victory. But Republicans are far from unanimous in this judgment. Notably, two candidates in the Republican race to replace Obama, Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman, are calling for a more rapid withdrawal than the President proposed.

Yet, there is the question about the military soundness of the withdrawal. The active military will soldier on, as Admiral Mullen indicated in his testimony to Congress today. They will accept their orders and work to achieve their mission. Yet, it is pretty clear that this was a decision that they do not think was ideal, wanting more troops for a longer period of time as indicated in a powerful op. ed. piece by Robert Kagan this afternoon in the Washington Post. Its title provocatively summarized its argument “Military Leaders Know Obama’s Decision is a Disaster.” Kagan argues, along with many others, that the decision to withdraw 33,000 troops by the end of next summer, a few months before the elections, is a raw political move, having no military justification. And he also judges that this is a political calculation that could backfire, “If the war is going badly in the summer and fall of 2012, it will be because of the decision the president made this week.” And, Obama will pay politically.

Obama has again positioned himself in the center, trying to please his base while still appealing to the broad public. And the instant punditry seemed to agree, at least as of last night, that he was likely to get the worst of both worlds. He is trying to satisfy the broad desire of Americans to end our longest war and to focus our nation building energies on our own country, answering the call of the nation’s mayors to end our wars abroad so that we can address our pressing domestic problems, while properly defending the nation against security threats. He is in danger of satisfying no one in his decision. And as the cliché goes: “only time will tell” how unsuccessful his move will be.

At this point, I think about the realists at the local organizing meeting, me among them. At the meeting there were concerns expressed about the health care law. He was too soft in his bargaining, compromised too readily, got much less than he could have. But on the other hand, the realist majority realized that this reform was a major achievement.  Great and powerful presidents and congresses didn’t achieve this, while the leadership of President Obama, Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid did. With the President’s leadership, there was also a significant, if insufficient, stimulus package, financial reform and changed position in the regard, standing and leadership of the United States in the larger world. Each of these accomplishments in the short term looks insufficient, but imagining what our situation would be like without them, at least for these pro-Obama partisans, makes it clear not only who they will vote for, but also who they will work for, with enthusiasm. Each of these marks a long term trajectory that is quite different than if they had not been enacted. The long view underscores the nature of these accomplishments and also I think the significance of yesterday’s decision and speech.

I repeat what I have written a number of times already in my DC posts. Obama is a committed centrist, dedicated to changing the nature of the center in a progressive fashion. In this case, he is working to demilitarize, or more precisely diminish the military emphasis of, our foreign policy, and to making it more multilateral. And he knows that this must be accomplished step by step. Thus the key passage in his speech in my opinion was when he explained his centrist vision.

“Already this decade of war has caused many to question the nature of America’s engagement around the world.  Some would have America retreat from our responsibility as an anchor of global security, and embrace an isolation that ignores the very real threats that we face.  Others would have America over-extended, confronting every evil that can be found abroad.

We must chart a more centered course.  Like generations before, we must embrace America’s singular role in the course of human events.  But we must be as pragmatic as we are passionate; as strategic as we are resolute.  When threatened, we must respond with force –- but when that force can be targeted, we need not deploy large armies overseas.”

Withdraw from wild adventures, as quickly as is possible, serving national interests. Engage the world with others as a matter of principle. Don’t overextend, but don’t bury heads in the sand. President Obama is clearly attempting to change the direction of American global engagements, and he said so last night.

I suspect the realists at our Obama meeting were pleased with this, as I am. But I should add, I am also critical and skeptical about the nature of American power. I am more critical than Barack Obama is about the role the United States has played in global affairs. But then again, I am a professor, writing for this webzine, while he is a political leader of the super power. And Max Weber had it right. Politics and scholarship are different vocations.

Perhaps I am exaggerating, but as I deliberately consider the celebratory response of Americans around the country to the killing of Osama bin Laden, I am coming to the judgment that the kids got it right. They revealed the wisdom of youth. While I am not sure that the chants: “USA! USA! USA!” and “We killed Osama, let’s party” were in good taste, I am coming to understand the outburst better than I initially did, thanks to a number of DC contributions and some reflection.

As I indicated in my first post, I immediately thought of the operation in terms of ongoing wars, about the mission. I thought the question was: How does the elimination of an important enemy leader affect our ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq? While I thought about ongoing military operations, the celebrants seemed to have understood that it meant the war was over. It was time to celebrate, not calculate. And perhaps, in a way, they were right.

I know from abroad, especially from the point of view of those from countries which have in the not too distant past experienced military dictatorship, such as Argentina, that there are serious legal problems. In his reply to my initial post, Emmanuel Guerisoli raised important issues, reminding me of the sorts of observations and judgments of his compatriot, Martin Plot. The US invaded a sovereign country and killed an unarmed man, apparently deciding it was better to get him dead than alive. The president acted more like a dictator than a democratic leader, adhering to the norms of international law. This continued the apparent illegality of much of American foreign policy, especially since 9/11. And the public cheered. This is indeed jarring.

I share the concerns and critical observations of others who joined the discussion here. I worry with Vince Carducci that Obama’s use of the word justice for killing is disturbing. I suspect with Rafael Narvaez, Tim and Radhika Nanda that there is a hyper-reality to the way Americans responded.  I am aware with Sarah and Elzbieta Matynia that the way we have used force against bin Laden and in general in “the war on terrorism” threatens democratic institutions and norms.

Dechen lost a family member. I lost a dear friend, and I agree with her that, “Killing bin Laden does not resolve anything for me,” but I am not so sure about her judgment when she notes, “I don’t think it will do much to end ‘war on terror’.”

We have had an extended series of reflections on the killing this week. In addition to the aforementioned responses to my initial post, there were many others, responding to the forum of DC contributors reflecting on the significance of the killing and the response. As the host of this site, I appreciate the variety of the perspectives expressed, though I want it to develop more dialogically, a technical – social problem we will work on. I am pleased with the diversity of the opinion and of the variety of insightful theoretical insights.

I found myself most challenged by Daniel Dayan’s post. He illuminates many problems with the way this important political event developed. Indeed, the four invisibilities he highlights potentially compromise the political significance of bin Laden’s death. The world has changed because of the assassination, or at least that is what the American (bi-partisan) political elite and a broad swath of the American population want to believe, however problematic that may be. But how can something so momentous be invisible, four times, as Dayan puts it? The iconic photo capturing the momentous act is not of the act itself but of the political – military leadership, perhaps, looking at the act. Because we don’t see it, the account of the event is particularly unstable. As DC contributor Robin Wagner Pacifici would put it, it is a radically “restless event,” because it is not pictured. Because the response to the event has been muted, by tactical concerns about inflaming the passions of bin Laden sympathizers, the practical impact of the killing as an expression of a mission accomplished is frustrated. Alas, few are declaring: Osama has been killed! Long live Obama!

I actually think not showing the corpse was a good idea. I was more moved by the silent dignity of the president’s visit to lower Manhattan than I would have been by a grand speech, which of course he is quite capable of giving. I am pretty sure that official celebration would have served little purpose. And the vehemence of Sarah Palin’s criticism of Obama for not showing the dead terrorist convinces me that that decision was wise one. Yet, I also know that Dayan is right. Monumental change has to be marked.

And thus, the kids were right. It might be that what they were thinking was not particularly insightful, perhaps it even was deeply problematic, as suggested by Jeffrey Olick. His point was very forcefully underscored in responses to his post that I shared on my Facebook page. Yet, a major event needed to be underscored, even though for good reasons Laura Pacifici and many others found it to be a generational embarrassment.

The kids were right because it is time to declare victory and bring the troops home. One of the greatest principles of sociology coined by the early 20^th century sociologist, W. I. Thomas, concerns “the definition of the situation.” “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences,” Thomas stated. It is not as easy as it sounds. Men and, of course, women, can’t just define any situation real in any way they want. But they work to define and re-define their situation. Bin Laden’s killing, and the kids’ response to it, began the changed definition of the war on terror. More thoughtful people are contributing, even Republicans such as Senator Richard Lugar. It’s over.

I take seriously the criticism of the killing of bin Laden. I don’t find myself comfortable in a happy country that is so pleased with the result that it doesn’t consider how it came about. Not only the killing but the illegitimate wars need to be critically appraised. But there is a time and a place for everything. Now is the time to end the war, and the kids response may have contributed to this definition of timing.

Other important topics fell by the wayside in the past couple of weeks at DC. There was an interesting post and discussion about Brooklyn and urban authenticity by Vince Carducci, and reflections on the role of empathetic leadership in post earthquake politics by Bin Xu, and Cecilia Rubino’s beautiful May Day reflections on her theater piece. There was Benoit Challand’s very interesting criticism of the media, of The New York Times, and lightly this blog, when it comes to the Palestinian Israeli conflict, and Gary Alan Fine’s broad criticism of liberal interventionist foreign policy. Other issues need to be addressed, and they will be in what perhaps is our emerging post war era.

We already have interesting confirmation of the hypothesis in the many posts and discussions in our first months of operation.  A discussion that developed in response to my post on the Afghan women’s soccer team, I think was particularly illuminating.

I started with an examination of an instance of the politics of small things. This opened a discussion of the big issues on the question of war and peace, and to my mind the discussion came to a strong insightful ending with a reply that used the perspective of everyday life to address the big issues under discussion.

There were notes on all sides of the issue, from Michael who critically but sympathetically reflected on the American position, to Alias who denounced the NATO effort in no uncertain terms, and opinions in between, including mine. But Mariam Yasin, offered another perspective completely. That of a person against all wars and as someone whose position in the conflict provides a unique perspective:

“There are too many stories of family and my family’s acquaintances killed by Americans, Soviets, and Taliban. This is not to mention the dispersal of Afghans; Afghans just want to be left alone. My family’s house was not shelled by Taliban, but by the Americans and coalition forces. Fortunately no one was hurt that time.”

She made telling observations in her two replies:

“Though I would have to agree that women have regained new means of re-entering social and political life in Afghanistan, I believe there is too much ignored by the strong focus on women and women’s rights…

The struggles faced by Afghan men are ignored and effaced because, as we know, Afghan men are terrorists. However, their mere “inclusion” in society and presence in public life is also a matter of life and death. Those without beards, for instance, risk imprisonment or even immediate execution. Men and boys brave all sorts of dangers to work for whatever meager wages they can manage.

Why don’t we actually speak more about the Bible verses marked on the sides of American weapons or on the targeting sights? Why don’t we speak of the American boys handed guns with the knowledge that they will most likely be shooting people? What does such an act do to American society? Why does the government offer the poor and disenfranchised a chance at an education only if they go to war? Are there those who believe that Afghan children, who have grown up and are growing up through nearly four decades of war, will forget the invasion, occupation, and death?”

The discussion proceeded with an agreement that the policy choices presented a real dilemma.  Mariam agreed.  But she underscored her fundamental position based on her many observations of significant details.

“The only way “out” that I see is a withdrawal of all external intervention in Afghan (Central Asian and Arab) affairs–this includes the so-called Taliban…

For Afghanistan to recover, there needs to be a political and military withdrawal of American and coalition forces. The destruction of the Taliban–politically and culturally–will take place, I have no doubt….”

An interesting perspective, she presents.  Concerned about women’s rights but noting how Afghan men have been demonized.  Very much against the Taliban, but with a strong conviction that they as a foreign import would have been rejected by Afghan’s without outside assistance.  It seems too good to be true, from an American strategic and tactical point of view.  Win the war, by withdrawing.  But as someone who is not able to say as Mariam confidently does, that I am against all wars, my intuition as a pragmatic pacifist, tells me that she might just be right.  There is little evidence that the military option of “the war on terrorism” has been a success or is likely to lead to such success.  The knowledge and the insights of a critical involved person paying close attention to the details of the Afghan experience, such as Mariam, warrants careful deliberate consideration.

Adam Michnik and I decided to try to organize our friends in a common discussion.  Despite the workings of the security police and his jailers, and despite the hard realities of the cold war, we created alternatives in our own lives, and this affected many others. Although I am not informed about the specifics, I am sure that such things are now happening in China.

But I should be clear. I am not saying that therefore, the People’s Republic’s days are numbered, or that liberal democracy is just around the corner.  Escalation in repression is quite a likely prospect.  Michnik’s life after receiving our honorary doctorate did at first lead to a prison cell.   Shirin Ebadi is in exile today, as was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn after his prize.   But people continue to interact around the shared human rights principles to which these people dedicated their lives, and this has persistent effects, at least for those people, but beyond their social circles as well.  As Michnik put it “the value of our struggle lies not in its chances for victory but rather in the values of its cause.”   My point is that if people keep acting according to those values, they are very much alive and consequential.

And it is in this way that I applaud the Afghan Womens Soccer team and understand its significance.  That these young women manage to play their game despite all the horrors of war and occupation, despite the persistence of harmful traditional practices and inadequate implementation of the law on elimination of violence against women in Afghanistan (this was the subject matter of the UN report that Denis Fitzgerald referred to in his reply to my post) is their great achievement.  We have to pay attention to such achievements, and not reduce everything to simple slogans:  whether they be “US and NATO forces out,” or “the Taliban must be defeated.”

And of course, the soccer team is an example of a general phenomenon, which may or may not prevail, of the empowerment of women that is developing in Afghanistan.  That there is such a struggle must be noted, even by opponents of continued American engagement in the war, such as me and Alias.  His assertion: “The plight of women in Afghanistan has always been a coy political tool to advocate war and nothing more,” I think, is deeply problematic.

Paying close attention to the details, the small things that make up a war, as the documentary Restrepo does, is also clearly important to orient informed action.  The film reveals the backstage of counterinsurgency, not a pretty sight. Michael points out that the film is not political, but it does reveal important facts upon which our politics should be informed. The film makes clear to me that a war without end, such as the one we seem to be in, is also deeply problematic.

For a Jew, who grew up meeting people recently arrived from Europe with tattooed numbers on their arms, the idea of a Democratic and Jewish state has been appealing.  But what does this mean in the detailed interactions of everyday life?  That is the crucial question, from the point of view of the politics of small things. In the details,  great injustices can be created, revealed in the letter we posted by Amal Eqeiq, begging for a resolution that provides respect, dignity and justice for Palestinians and Israelis alike.  This does require close examination.  So in our next post, Iddo Tavory will provide a translation of the Rabbi’s edict with a short commentary to encourage careful deliberation.

And then there is the issue of pleasure and its social construction.  Pierre Bourdieu studied how cultural sensibilities position us in the social order.  But it is not only class that is so determined, so is pleasure, as Iddo’s reflections on his trip to MoMA reveal.  We learn to have pleasure by developing pleasures in our youth.  Working on such details and providing the opportunities for them is an important part of a democratic education and culture.  I think I will return to that issue sometime next week.

Does thinking about the details we’ve considered this week lead to ready answers about the pressing issues of our times, or even of the week?  Clearly no.  But with reflection upon the details, we can critically judge more seriously President Obama’s continued war strategy announced on Thursday.  And we can understand that the status quo in Israel – Palestine is not acceptable, even if we don’t have at hand an easy solution.

In recent posts, Jeff and Elzbieta have each commented on how revealing back stage moments can destroy understanding and meaningful action.  I agree.

However, I also believe revealing the back stage is sometimes crucial for widening understanding and establishing the grounds for critique.  An interesting example is the documentary Restrepo, winner of the Grand Jury Prize-Documentary at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, produced, directed and filmed by Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington

From the director:

The war in Afghanistan has become highly politicized, but soldiers rarely take part in that discussion. Our intention was to capture the experience of combat, boredom and fear through the eyes of the soldiers themselves. Their lives were our lives: we did not sit down with their families, we did not interview Afghans, we did not explore geopolitical debates. Soldiers are living and fighting and dying at remote outposts in Afghanistan in conditions that few Americans back home can imagine. Their experiences are important to understand, regardless of one’s political beliefs. Beliefs are a way to avoid looking at reality. This is reality.

Restrepo is the name of a now abandoned U. S. Army outpost located in the six-mile-long Korengal Valley in the eastern province of Kunar, Afghanistan near the Pakistan border. The outpost was known as one of the most dangerous Army postings in the world.

Restrepo portrays the back stage and the front stage. Moments of human frailty, the boredom of a stranded soldier, the pain of a war wound are the back stage truths of military life, normally shielded from view. The well-publicized front stage: awards ceremonies, dedications to fallen soldiers, moments of valor. Understanding both parts of a soldier’s life is crucial to understanding their experience.

The back stage in this documentary (as opposed to the Wikileaks situation) was obtained with the explicit consent of the U. S. government. In fact, few limitations were placed on the project by the US military, and most concerned security and privacy. The filmmakers were sensitive to the way they depicted the wounded and dead–but they still did it. Restrepo is a dual-sided coin.

Anyone who has an interest in understanding the Afghanistan War [link ] in its most elementary form, especially the day after the release of the White House report on Afghan war strategy [link], should see Restrepo. The documentary is not overtly political, but allows the actions and words of members of an infantry platoon to make its points. Its access to the military’s backstage provides a rare insight.

A review of our policy on Afghanistan is due this month.  As I have already indicated, I think this is a war that is bound to fail if the current logic of engagement does not include a planned withdrawal.  The longer American and NATO troops stay there in large numbers with great visibility, I think, the stronger the support for those who fight against occupation.   But a rapid and complete disengagement will lead to a battle between the Taliban and the highly ineffective and corrupt government of Hamid Karzai, in which the victor is not known but the victims are the Afghan people.

It is truly a dilemma.

In the face of the dilemma, I think it is important to pay close attention to the facts on the ground.  Last week, in The New York Times there is a report on an instance of what I mean by “the politics of small things,” a report on a national women’s soccer team.

They play under great restrictions.  Their fathers, brothers and uncles frequently disapprove of their activities.  They actually have to practice on a NATO helicopter landing field, because outside the military zone, they are too vulnerable to attack.  They take great pride in their physical accomplishments.  Most recently, they actually defeated the women’s team of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.  Khalida Popal, an official of the Afghan women’s soccer federation and long a team member, noted that “We wanted to show them Afghans are friendly people, not like the stupid people they are fighting.”

These women also reveal to us and to themselves the power of Afghan women to fight for themselves against great odds, and the importance of their struggle.  And as is the case of other instances of the politics of small things, such as the poetry café in Damascus I discussed in a previous post,  Afghanistan with its national women’s soccer team is a different place than it would be without these women playing and competing.  As I write this post, the Times reports, they are showing this difference in their first international competition, in Bangladesh in a tournament sponsored by the South Asian Football Federation.