On a second viewing of Watchmen

After a simmer and a rewatch, the movie has brightened in my eyes. My main complaint before, the ending...well, I still have my quibbles with that, though much as I hate to see movies used as psychological tools, it's understandable that the filmmakers didn't want to put too bright of a shine on mass slaughter, even if it were done to avert a greater slaughter. Reading some quotes on Ozymandias from Alan Moore, the author of the original graphic novel, also changed my mind somewhat. I'll put them up if I can find them again.

On this second viewing, what stuck out was the Comedian--his role, his world view, him as a character. That scene in the room where Ozymandias (originally Captain Metropolis or some such other in the book) tried to plan an organized effort by superheroes to help save the country, and then possibly the world. The Comedian chuckles, flicks his lighter out and puts Ozymandias's grand map to the flame, saying something along the lines of "People have been killing each other for thousands of years. Now we actually have the tools to finish the job. That some people could be stubborn and stupid enough to sit in a room and talk about somehow stopping that--that's the real joke." As I said, a paraphrase. The Comedian understands the nature of humanity, and more specifically, man, and revels in his role as the embodiment of its greatest extremes. Torturing, raping, murdering, general brutality--all part and parcel of being human, and the Comedian is the audience's constant reminder of that. The 'joke' aspect of it...that, I don't quite understand. Perhaps that human society tries so hard to disassociate itself from these worst aspects, and the Comedian laughingly brings them back into sharp relief?

NITE OWL II: Whatever happened to the American Dream!?
COMEDIAN: It came true.
What do we do once...what, precisely, is the Comedian referring to? I don't know, I can't delineate it so scientifically and exactly...just an intense feeling I got, a feeling that I instinctively understood him. What do we do once society, capitalism, all that, reach adulthood? Does that question even make sense? I can understand such sentiment during the 1980s--"America In Decline" and all that, though Doctor Manhattan's existence would certainly have put a damper on such gloomy feelings, at least as far as America's place in the world.

Essentially, the movie is about human nature. Another review I read spoke disparagingly of it, as though it was nothing but a relic of unreconstructed Cold War anti-Reagan liberalism. It is that, in some respects, but this other review went on to assume that this fact rendered it irrelevant, which it does not. Human nature, the best and the worst of us. Not even quite the best, but a miracle as recognized by Dr. Manhattan, out of the Comedian and Sally Juspeczyk, Laurie--perhaps the 'greatest improvement' award? That's something, anyway.

Oddly enough, watching the movie helped me understand the book better. That somehow reeks of sacrilege, but I'll take greater understanding over ignorance regardless of the package.

On grad school and being a twentysomething

Eva submitted a marvelous post from another blog in the comments section for an earlier post here. I know I'm biased as it relates to my current situation, but I found it so fascinating (and heartening) I figured I should give it its own post. Here's the intro:

A recession is typically a good time for graduate schools. Their application pool goes up because people see them as safe shelter from the storm. The scariest part of a down economy is the idea of having no income. Of course, graduate school does not solve for that. But graduate school does solve the second most scary thing about a bad economy: lack of a learning curve.

The more desperate you are for a job, the more likely you are to take a job that doesn’t teach you what you want to learn. And then you get to that job and you think, “Grad school could solve this problem.” But in fact, grad school creates larger, and more insurmountable problems. And some the problems you’re trying to solve with grad school might not be problems at all.

Well, check it out!

Edit:
After some further perusal, this site is pretty damn good. Check it out, click around--I have 7 or 8 tabs I keep opening up from each entry that I read. That's wikipedia-level tabbing! Perhaps it's just that this site really scratches an itch for me right now, but I'm really loving it.

The State of the Military: An Introduction

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience... We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

...Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

--President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Address, 1961



Eisenhower's worst fear, total dominance of government by the arms industry and its political backers, has not been realized. However, the military-industrial complex plagues us still.

While its unwarranted influence may not be responsible for the subversion of our domestic or international political goals, it has undoubtedly reinforced and disseminated its requirements across American society to the point of impeding our government’s ability to achieve its political and military goals.

With the beginning of the Korean War and the reformation of the U.S. armed services following their post-World War II drawdown, the US military elite began to see the need for a fully formed professional army, ready to serve at a moment’s notice. The years of a tiny peacetime military had ended, and the burgeoning Cold War and its accompanying arms race required massive military spending that inevitably encouraged an environment of waste and complicity at the Pentagon.

Even by Cold War standards, however, the past eight years have left an army once capable of flexible, worldwide response now hamstrung, eroded, and overstretched. Yet vastly expensive weapons programs designed to fight yesterday’s battles continue to plod along in the bowels of the Pentagon, sucking up valuable funding and resources. Meanwhile, the services of America's military faces dramatic tasks of a seriously different nature.

The Obama administration has found its power projection capability outside of Iraq and Afghanistan hampered, up to the point that its ability to conduct strategic diplomacy in general is seriously impeded. On top of this, President Obama has given himself perhaps the most difficult task of all: a complete overhaul the entire defense procurement process, the military-industrial complex itself.

The years preceding George W. Bush's presidency marked a period of simultaneous decreases in military spending and increases in the number of military operations abroad. While President Clinton is said to have been reluctant to deploy the U.S. military to intervene abroad, international events often forced U.S. intervention. In such cases he employed a flexible response, often involving the use of cruise missiles and the Marines.

This strategy, however, made for a poor match with available U.S. military forces, but the lessons of such conflicts never managed to penetrate the walls of the Pentagon. As such, development of weapons systems irrelevant to these conflicts and the tactics required to fight them continued.

We at the Internet Bullhorn plan to run a series of posts on these issues and how the Obama Administration might best address them. Each issue can be roughly divided into two parts: reorganizing military forces and procurement methods in order to craft a more efficient and effective fighting force, and the interplay between this process and the United States’ role on the international stage.

An Obama Military
The latest copy of Obama's budget plan for the Department of Defense provides for a 4 percent increase in funding. Among other things, this includes funds for a larger Army and Marine Corps, increased benefits for enlisted families, continuing operational costs for the two major theater operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and plans intended to 'leverage allied support to help struggling states such as Pakistan, which are the keystones for regional stability.'

However, this 4 percent rise in defense spending also masks an overall reallocation of spending to focus on operational costs, as opposed to purchasing new weapons systems. This then implies budget cuts, at least for the Navy and Air Force.

Overall, the focus of defense spending under an Obama administration looks to be based on pragmatism and logistical practicality, stressing the tactical needs of counterinsurgency warfare insofar as they secure strategic goals. This may well exclude the need for major technological spending on programs like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, freeing up money towards increasing troop levels, improving the integration of theater command, and ensuring all troops in current war zones are properly equipped.

On March 4th , President Obama officially opened the door to the axing of one or more of these high end weapons systems with a memorandum giving the Office of Management and Budget the ability to cancel any development program or contract it deems wasteful.

The Road Ahead
The United States can only afford a foreign policy that is backed with teeth, and if it cannot afford the armed forces that serve as those teeth, it must reexamine its foreign commitments. An inability to project power abroad stilts any administration's ability to respond to international events and threatens the international status of our Union.

Military power exists solely to produce political results, war being merely an extension of politics. A military unable to meet the requirements set by political necessity is no longer a fully capable armed force. Determining which programs are prime candidates for cutting, and which programs stand to ultimately ensure national security in proportion to cost will be the objective of this study.

Moan and groan, doom and gloom

A large part of the media and modern thought in general is devoted to bemoaning the decadent, decaying times in which we live, often invoking a past golden era for unfavorable comparison. While this is not unwarranted in some areas, such as education, the wealth inequality gap, global warming, etc., much of it often turns out to be alarmist drivel, like as not thought up for lack of better things to expound upon. If nothing else, bad news sells.

It would be merely annoying if not for the fact that people develop a tolerance for it after a while and start seeing truly important issues as the next flavor of the week...but I'll stop there, lest I become guilty of my own sin.

At any rate, I found an interesting example of this sort of hysteria via...damn, I can't recall at this point, Sullivan or Yglesias, I think. Anyway, it's about "the Age of Commodified Intelligence"--essentially, as the writer puts it, "a time of conspicuously consumed high culture in which intellectual life is meticulously measured and branded." It's actually an interesting read, despite (because of?) such hilariously broad doozies as this:

Of course higher education has always meant a chance for greater economic success, and more careers now require such certification. But degrees are also more readily pursued as status symbols. We are not growing more intelligent, only more obsessed with its outward markers.

We engage in an elaborate credentials kabuki. Our graduate schools are filled with students forcing out narrow, irrelevant dissertations. They labour to be professors, not to spend lives devoted to their fields. Writers and librarians now seek graduate degrees to prepare for jobs that have existed for thousands of years without such hurdles. Even dogwalkers take classes for certification. We’ve become so reliant on checklists of accomplishment that we’ve lost our ability to make independent judgments. We no longer pursue passions or interests without quantifiable reward.

My first instinct would be to demand some kind of source for all of this doomsaying, especially the second two sentences of the second paragraph. Somehow, though, one senses that this was never meant to be taken as a measurable, provable, solvable phenomenon so much as savored in its all its elegant pessimism, given a pass for its stylish evocation of doom and gloom. After all, if it's bad news, it's probably true, right? Numbers? Proof? How dare you disturb my beautiful ennui!? Back off, my man, I have credentials kabuki! Credentials kabuki!

Perhaps the writer is intent on proving his point through example...

Is it really that bad, though? Dogwalker certification, huh? Sounds more like a growing service industry than the rotting of a society from within. Writers and librarians? Some jobs require certification, but the writer has conveniently neglected to mention just which ones you're talking about. Graduate schools? Perhaps you've been stuck in the humanities or social sciences cocoon a bit too long; I have a few aspiring scientist friends who would debate that point. Ah, but that's anecdotal, right. Lovely hiding places, anecdotes.

The writer ends thusly:

There is nothing innately wrong in gobbling up great art, important novels and educational credentials. Attending a performance of "The Rite of Spring" does no one harm. But if we fail to distinguish between attendance and appreciation, we may end up poorer for it, left with a corporate caricature of our cultural richness. The “intelligent” masses will work hard mining the store of culture artefacts, but will they read the texts and learn from them, or only use them as objects for trade?

Eh, since when in history have the masses, "'intelligent'" or not, ever really improved themselves, ever truly changed, at least to the satisfaction of the elite of this or that cultural sphere? If they ever did, who would be the "masses"? Would we have only elites? Somehow I don't think it works that way, but I'm rambling.

If you ever feel that you have truly appreciated something or fully apprehend an experience like few others ever do, take a hint from that wording. For various reasons, you probably won't be able to spark a mass, deep--however you define that--appreciation for Rembrandt or Liszt. At least in ages past the elite didn't have to worry about hordes of unwashed poseurs pretending to appreciate...ah, but there I go again!

"Dammit, if that's the price we have to pay, let's pay it"

(via Andrew Sullivan via The American Conservative) Found an excellent and highly revealing post by Philip Weiss about the growing chasm in the Jewish-American political sphere on the Israel-Palestine issue between traditional AIPAC-style neocons and the more liberal J Street types. (For those of you less familiar with the battle lines here, the former see the conflict through a pretty hardcore pro-Israel lens, which they justify by noting that Israel is the sole liberal democracy in the region and far more worthy of support than Hamas-led Palestinians, while the latter are more evenhanded in their treatment of the two sides).

(General background of my views on the Israeli-Palestinian issue at the end of this post)

As Weiss notes, one of the great maxims of foreign policy is "that the strategic interests of two states inevitably will diverge." This is where my largest beef with Israel and its American boosters begins.

Ever since its turbulent founding in 1948, Israel has relied heavily upon U.S. government aid, generally in the form of weapons, for its continued security--well, for its continued existence, really. So heavily, in fact, that in 1973 the Israeli government chose to weather a massive Arab attack rather than risk losing U.S. aid by making preemptive strikes against the forces building up along their border.

It is less clear, though, exactly how much the United States benefits from its end of this relationship. Certainly our military and intelligence agencies cooperate extensively (though we are by no means completely trusting of one another), and without checking I'll assume we have some excellent trade deals worked out. Not to mention the general good will which has always prevailed between the populations of our two nations.

As anyone with a basic grasp of U.S.-Arab relations knows, however, our unwavering support for Israel is a major sore point among its neighbors and is one of the biggest, and, outside of Iran and prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom, was arguably the biggest reason* for Arab popular hostility toward the United States.

You can see where this is heading. But I discovered in Weiss's post, though...well, I'll post my reaction after the quote.

Eric Alterman is a well known, fairly mainstream columnist for The Nation, one of the most influential left-leaning magazines in the United States. I have agreed and disagreed with him at various points in the past, but in general he has struck me as a serious, thoughtful writer. He took part in the panel discussion described in the linked post as one of "'the left,'" as Weiss puts it.

Alterman cited the maxim of foreign policy that the strategic interests of two states inevitably will diverge and said, "Sometimes I'm going to go with Israel" when its interests and the U.S.'s interests diverge. Because the US can take a lot of hits, but Israel can't.

You heard that right, boss. To her credit, Eisner asked Alterman to name a situation in which the two countries' interests diverge. Alterman offered: that bin Laden and the 9/11 terrorists were "to some degree inspired" by the U.S. relationship to Israel. The general environment of "terrorist attacks" and their "pool" of supporters in the Arab/Muslim world obviously draws on the the U.S.-Israel relationship.

"Dammit, if that's the price we have to pay [for the special relationship], let's pay it... But let's be honest about it."

I wonder: how many Americans would share that view? (And where's the dual?)[in 'dual loyalties' -- Peter]

I had to force my eyes back over this several times just to be sure I hadn't misread the post. The US can take a lot of hits, but Israel can't...if that's the price we have to pay, let's pay it.

I'm happy that Eric Alterman would prefer Israel's supporters be honest about the war into which he just admitted Israel has dragged the United States. However, I can't figure out what, apart from a Rorschach-level devotion to transparency, could be motivating this bizarre level of honesty. Perhaps he's only paying the lip service to the idea--he couldn't actually believe that's a majority opinion, surely...? I'll go Weiss one further on skepticism here and assert that a solid majority of the American public would favor leaving Israel twisting in the wind if they thought it would mean a substantially reduced risk of Arab terrorist attacks on Americans.

The reality is far more complicated, of course. At this point, we're in a bit too deep to simply drop everything and leave, and there remains the nagging issue of oil supplies from the Gulf States, though it's not as though OPEC is doing us any favors.

The sheer presumptuousness of Alterman's words, though...he would put the safety of 300 million of his (apparently ostensibly) fellow countrymen at risk for the sake of 5 million Israelis? And he is counted as one of the liberals! Does this mean AIPAC would rather see a terrorist nuke hit the United States than Israel? After all, "the U.S. can take a lot of hits, and Israel can't." People are entitled to their views, but remember, this is widely acknowledged to be the most influential lobby in Washington. If I didn't know better, I might conclude that he was purposely trying to confirm the worst of the anti-Semitic paranoia currently confined to the dregs of Stormfront and its ilk.

Regardless, the Israel lobby seems to be taking an awful lot for granted recently in terms of American support, even by its usual standards. That may have flown with the past Administration, but it looks to be changing. Even their technical victory in the Charles Freeman affair came at a cost of raising their public profile, something anathema to any effective lobby.





*Neoconservatives like to cite Sayyid Qutb as evidence of innate Muslim/Arab hostility to America independent of our support of Israel. I see this as at best a gross distortion of Qutb's influence based on wishful thinking and at worst a canard intended to exaggerate his influence. Even discounting our support for Israel, Western (and at points Soviet, which to Qutb is identical in its toxicity to true Islam) support for brutal, authoritarian regimes across the Arab world including Qutb's own Egypt gave him fertile ground in which to plant his ultra-orthodox, anti-modernist doctrine. Nutcases and fanatics exist in all human societies, and widespread support for them should be taken as evidence of deeper problems rather than proof of true popularity of their brand of extremism. Hitler, too, received broad adulation throughout Germany, but we rightly attribute this to the worldwide economic crash of the 1930s and lingering bitterness over World War I than innate Germanic anti-Semitism or megalomania.

******
BACKGROUND

A quick rundown on my previous thoughts on this issue may be in order here. Israel is an amazing country, and the progress it has made in the mere half-century since its founding is little short of miraculous. A liberal democracy with a robust economy, outsize contributions to science and technology, and a large cultural influence as well as fantastic music of which I count myself a fan--all that with less than 5 million people on a glorified beach on the Mediterranean. Imagine what we could do with a world of Israels!

I do not by any means believe Israel is blameless in its conflict with the Palestinians. On the land issue, particularly, I am inclined to side with the Palestinians--just because you happen have a book which claims that God promised your people this land a few thousand years ago does not, in my mind, give you the right to summarily seize it from its current occupants. I do, however, recognize that simple eviction of one or the other side from the area is an impossibility, and in a nutshell I'd favor a complete withdrawal to the 1967 borders, but Israeli-Palestinian relations are for another post.

One final word, however. Regardless of whether one wishes Israel good or ill, it cannot continue the status quo if it wishes to survive as a liberal democracy. Absent a massive deportation effort that would likely turn Israel into a true international pariah, demographics project that in a few short decades it will be a majority Arab state. The IDF can shell Gaza into the Stone Age and AIPAC can dump as much money as it likes into our political process, as is its right, but this fact remains.

BACKGROUND ENDS
******

Watchmen film thoughts, or "Zack Snyder has no balls"

Caught Watchmen last night. I'm a big fan of the book (more on that in a bit), and was quite skeptical about efforts to bring it to the big screen, especially with Zack Snyder of 300 directing.

For the most part, it actually wasn't bad. Had to be cut waaaaay down just to fit under 3 hours, and perhaps the frantic pacing needed to cram in as much as possible will leave non-Watchmen readers' heads whirling. My sympathies, but here I'll discuss my own impressions.

*******SPOILER WARNING*******

Really, everything leading up to the end was handled solidly enough, such that with a properly climactic ending, all the previous flaws could have been excused. But the ending... (skip to PLOT REHASH OVER if you know the background)

For those who don't know and don't care about spoilers, the setting is an alternate-history 1985. In 1959, the United States accidentally transformed one of their nuclear scientists into a being with near-godlike powers of teleportation, matter manipulation, and temporal distortion. This "man" was called Dr. Manhattan (the glowing blue guy). Dr. Manhattan's existence vastly imbalanced the Cold War--he could knock thousands of nuclear missiles from the sky in an instant, and when Nixon called upon him to aid in Vietnam, Dr. Manhattan won the war within a week.

By 1985, the U.S. enjoyed near-total veto power over the world, although the U.S.S.R. remained and had built vastly more nukes in the hope of overwhelming Dr. Manhattan through sheer numbers if need be. Then, in the events of the Watchmen book, Manhattan abandons Earth for various reasons, both personal and political. With the United States' trump card gone, the Soviets eagerly push in to Afghanistan, daring fifth-term President Nixon to respond. (Why would Nixon immediately resort to nukes? It's a good bet that, due to Manhattan's existence, the U.S. never dropped its policy of massive retaliation in favor of flexible response--the former nearly led to a nuclear war over some islands off China in the 1950s, hence Kennedy's historical decision to drop it).

Enter Adrian Veidt, or Ozymandias. Formerly a member of the Watchmen, a team of superheroes including Dr. Manhattan--though Manhattan was the only one with actual super powers--Veidt, the "smartest man on Earth," parleyed his fame into a massive fortune after the Keene Act outlawed superheroes.

Seeing the nuclear Armageddon humanity was preparing to visit upon itself, Veidt secretly struck first, razing several of the world's major cities from his antarctic base. In the book, he elaborately constructs a gigantic fake alien, pieces of which he then teleports into the cities to fool humanity into thinking they are under extraterrestrial attack; in the movie, he frames Dr. Manhattan. Either way, the intent is to unite humanity by convincing the world that it is collectively under attack. "Killing millions to save billions."

The plan works, as Nixon is seen on television lamenting the devastation and pledging to work together with the Soviets and all the nations of the world to defend against future attacks.

PLOT REHASH OVER

One of the most magnificent, truly bold things Alan Moore did with Watchmen the book was to paint Adrian Veidt and his actions in a sympathetic light. At first horrified at the slaughter their onetime comrade has perpetrated, the remaining members of the Watchmen, having arrived too late to stop him, reluctantly agree with his decision, promising never to reveal the true nature of the attacks. Save Rorschach, the psychopathically principled vigilante: "Never compromise. Even in the face of Armageddon." He tries to leave but is blocked, then disintegrated by a reluctant Dr. Manhattan, all the while defiantly screaming "What are you waiting for!?"

In the movie, however, Dr. Manhattan is the only one to truly accept Veidt's decision, offering understanding while neither "condemning nor condoning" his actions. After Rorschach's death, the rest, as represented by Nite Owl, violently attack Veidt before collapsing in tears, declaring that his deception has not "saved humanity, but deformed it."

Deform humanity? What exactly does this mean? The concept of ostensibly sworn enemies banding together in the face of a greater external threat is as old as human history. Even older; witness the symbiotic relationships enjoyed by the clownfish and sea anemone as well as ants and the Central American Acacia.

Is the deception the main issue? Veidt has ensured that no one will ever know the truth of the story. But what good is this one truth in a world where a multitude of less grandiose lies have led us to the brink of nuclear suicide?

The death toll? Don't even bother bringing it up. Veidt wiped out the centers of many of the world's major cities (out of New York City, only downtown Manhattan), whereas Nixon admits that they'd be lucky to only lose the entire East Coast in the event of a war--and those would just be the American casualties.

So why the refusal to fully embrace Veidt's solution? The first thing that springs to my mind is that director Zack Snyder and his backers were afraid to be seen as openly endorsing mass murder, even to avert a nuclear holocaust. Thus they let Dr. Manhattan, the blue-skinned quasi-god, speak in Veidt's defense, while putting their own voice in the human, audience-identifiable Nite Owl: "I don't care what the facts are, there's just something inherently wrong about all this!"

What a missed opportunity! They flirt with some truly weighty moral issues but at the last second refuse to take the plunge, retreating to spout stereotypically Good Guy stuff and in the process dropping all pretensions of true depth, portraying Veidt in the end as a naive crackpot visibly rethinking his actions. Oh, all the facts remain the same, but killing innocent people is bad no matter what, we certainly can't break that rule.

For all its other faults, it could have been a truly deep, bold, thought-provoking movie; not quite along the lines of the book, but in its own way. See this, audience? Moral and ethical issues! Gray areas! This man killed millions, but under the circumstances, that makes him the good guy. Think about that!

Ugh, I can't spit any more out. I may return with some edits or add-ons.

*******END OF SPOILERS*******