my own private I dunno: résumé | screenplays | fan fiction

the more things change...

by
MaryAnn Johanson
 on September 23, 2008 6:52 PM | | comments (33)

I spotted this, umm, interesting display in the windows of a vintage clothing store on West 23rd Street recently in Manhattan:

Funny how it hardly looks vintage at all.

33 Comments

by kusanagi on September 26, 2008 3:26 AM
Or maybe sad seeing pacifism as window dressing
by david on October 4, 2008 7:22 PM
Pacifism is a dangerous ideology. It is a utopianistic ideology like fascism, nazism, communism, islamism, and whatever led the Alliance to try the 'Pax' on Miranda. Any ideology that states that it can make the world perfect, eliminate conflict, and bring peace and order is doomed to fail spectacularly. The problem with pacifism is that it only really flourishes in countries that are less inclined to engage in aggression, i.e. liberal democracies. Pacifist movements really don't have an effect on terrorist groups, their sponsors, or countries that believe they have a strong moral imperative to conquer others.
by MaryAnn Johanson on October 5, 2008 2:52 PM
I had no idea that "pacifism" incorporated a belief that anyone could make the world "perfect."
by david on October 5, 2008 10:51 PM
Well, that’s certainly the way that I interpreted it. Pacifists believe that we can do away with violence solving conflicts, that we can do away with wars, that we can create a world where all disagreements can be solved with conflict resolution and mutual understanding. That sounds pretty close to “perfect” to me. But then again, so does, “everybody should contribute the same amount and be treated equally and have their needs provided by the group.”-communism And, “there are bad elements of society drag everybody down, let’s remove those bad elements so that civilization can prosper.”-Nazism And, “God has laid out for us a holy plan for how we should live our lives and conduct ourselves. If we follow this plan that tells us exactly what to do in any situation and exactly what to do with our lives then everybody can have the happiness and fulfillment that god bestows.”-islamism But back to pacifism. Pacifists believe that when two sides engage in armed conflict both sides are wrong and that war is never the answer. The flip side of this is that there is nothing worth fighting for and that those who do believe that there are things worth fighting for and are willing to fight for them are warmongers. And like all utopianists they don’t care who pays the price for their illusions. Take Vietnam for example: pass a fist and movement in America was instrumental in getting the united states to withdraw from that conflict. They, baby boomers mostly, continue to pat themselves on the back for ending an “unjust war” and show a shocking lack of concern for the people who paid the price. The over three million people who were slaughtered by the communists in Cambodia and Vietnam don’t matter to them. Of course, they were filled with outrage whenever they heard stories about Americans killing civilians. The same situation in Iraq. The people who are first to latch onto misdeeds of American soldiers in Iraq tend to also show very little concern for what would happen to Iraqis if the American military made an immediate withdrawal as they want it to.
by david on October 5, 2008 10:54 PM
Hey, sorry if that looks all jumbled. There were supposed to be more spaces in it when I submitted it. That’s my fault for not hitting the ‘preview’ button.
by MaryAnn Johanson on October 7, 2008 7:32 PM
The people who are first to latch onto misdeeds of American soldiers in Iraq tend to also show very little concern for what would happen to Iraqis if the American military made an immediate withdrawal as they want it to.
Well, at this point, it may be a situation of "we broke Iraq, we bought it." I don't know for sure if that's true -- there's certainly a degree of condenscension in suggesting that the Iraqi people are not capable of deciding for themselves how they want to run their country. But we did make the mess. Perhaps we shouldn't have made the mess to begin with. Also: I look forward to your similar defense of, say, China, when it unilaterally decides in, say, 2030, that for the putative safety of the American people, China has the right to invade the U.S., remove our leaders, and occupy our nation. Because the U.S. has set that precedent. Nice straw man, too, jumping from "war is not the answer" to "war is never the answer."
by david on October 9, 2008 12:40 AM
First off, when I wrote, “war is never the answer” I was discussing pacifism as an ideology and not any specific antiwar movement. True Pacifists believe that violence is never justified even in the case of self defense. The opinions and beliefs of a movement will obviously vary from person to person. What I am suggesting is that while there are many legitimate reasons to be against a war, Pacifism is not one of them. Pacifism is an absolutist ideology and only a Sith deals in absolutes. This is echoed by perhaps the most famous Pacifist, Ghandi saying, in 1940, when invasion of Great Britain by Germany looked imminent, "I would like you to lay down the arms you have as being useless for saving you or humanity. You will invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions...If these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes, you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow yourselves, man, woman, and child, to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to owe allegiance to them." In a post-war interview in 1946, he said, in reference to the Holocaust, "The Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher's knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs." There are many reasons to admire the life of Mahatma Gandhi. His absolutism that people should never fight back isn’t one of them.
by david on October 9, 2008 12:42 AM
Second, I was a staunch opponent of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Eight made no sense to me to invade Iraq before we had completed the job in Afghanistan. It also made no sense to focus on Iraq while making friends with the Saudi Arabians. Saddam Hussein, as evil as he was, had nothing to do with Bin Laden or Al qaida. The Saudi Arabians did. There were many dictators par worse than Saddam Hussein who could potentially pose a much graver threat to the U.S. Like Kim Jong Il who actually did end up getting nuclear weapons. And finally, the war lacked a clear Casus belli. The administration had failed to make a solid case for Iraqi possession of WMDs. The invasion of Iraq was said to be the next phase in the war on terror, but it was painfully obvious that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. However, after we invaded Iraq the foreign Jihadasts came flooding in. A splinter group called Al qaida in Iraq formed and has since been trying to bleed us in Iraq and to force us out of Iraq so that they can use Iraq as a base. So while, Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 when we invaded it, today the people we are fighting in Iraq are part of the same organization and share the same goals as those 19 hijackers. The consequences of an American defeat in Iraq would definitely be long lasting and bad. I think that’s where most Americans are right now. They believe that we shouldn’t have gone to war in Iraq in the first place, but now that we are in Iraq they feel it’s important that we win. That’s what I personally believe, and that’s why, despite my opposition to launching this ill conceived war, I chose to enlist in the army and volunteered for deployment next spring. Also, if I’m right about the majority of Americans feeling this way, that explains why, despite the overwhelming criticism of the war and the reasons behind it, the republicans are still winning elections and (prior to this whole financial crisis) John McCain was neck and neck with Barack Obama. Because while the democrats have been very successful at criticizing the way the war has been handled and the fact that we went to war the first place, they have completely failed to offer any kind of plan to win it.
by MaryAnn Johanson on October 10, 2008 2:04 PM
The consequences of an American defeat in Iraq

It's already lost. Occupiers never win. The defeat just gets dragged out.

democrats have been very successful at criticizing the way the war has been handled and the fact that we went to war the first place, they have completely failed to offer any kind of plan to win it.

And you're suggesting that the Republicans have?

by david on October 10, 2008 3:19 PM
"It's already lost. Occupiers never win. The defeat just gets dragged out." Really? The last time I checked the occupations of Germany, Italy, and Japan worked out smashingly well. And as for the Republican plan (at least since they fired that fool Rumsfeld), it's very simple: Let the Military do its job until we win. That's where I stand. What about you? What do you feel is the right thing to do now? Not six years ago, but now?
by MaryAnn Johanson on October 10, 2008 10:44 PM
Let the Military do its job until we win.
Ah, well, that's easy then. I see you have all the answers.
by david on October 10, 2008 11:21 PM
No, I don't. I don't have a clue how we're going to be able to keep this war going on in the face of $10 trillion+ national debt. I don't know how Europe is going to keep itself from being taken over by the Islamists when demographics and the state of the opposing sides sense of confidence and will seem to make that event inevitable. That is without resorting to ethnic cleansing or genocide. And I wonder if it is possible to avoid a nuclear attack given the inevitability of proliferation. All I know is that the more I learn about what's happening and about this enemy the more worried I am. And, I'm really afraid that our leaders, be they republicans or democrats, are going to screw up and my children will have to live with it. Please answer my question. What do you feel is right? I'd really like to know.
by MaryAnn Johanson on October 11, 2008 1:30 PM
What do I feel is right? Perhaps the first step is: We should stop creating more people who hate us, which is what the American occupation of Iraq is doing: radicalizing a whole new generation of people against us. And we need to find a way to get off the teat of Middle Eastern oil, fast. Then we wouldn't need to be in bed with a bunch of lunatics like the Wahhabi Saudis. I do know that "letting the military do its job until we win" is a nonanswer. What "job" is that, and what constitutes "winning"?
by david on October 13, 2008 5:36 PM
"What constitutes winning?" That's a very good question and one of the greatest failures of our leaders has been to provide us with a clear definition of what victory looks like. At first they were saying that Iraq was going to look like Turkey, a fully modern, secular, liberal democracy. I’m pretty sure most people have given up on that. When we leave Iraq it should be stable, the government should be capable of maintaining internal control, and terrorist groups should not have significantly greater capabilities to operate than they do in other countries like Egypt and Jordan. That seems to be the definition of “winning” that we're tumbling towards. That sounds pretty nebulous, doesn't it? There is however, a very simple way to know when we’ve won in Iraq. This is the truth and it’s gonna depress the hell out of you. You ready for it? Brace yourself. The cold, hard, and bitter truth is that we win in Iraq when Al Qaida and the rest of the world believe that we’ve won. War is perception and perception is everything. If the rest of the world believes that we have been defeated then we’ve been defeated. Look at Vietnam. We used words like “withdrawal”, “drawdown “, “ceasefire”, and insisted that we were not being defeated. Well unfortunately the entire world interpreted Vietnam as an American defeat and so America was defeated. The same situation when we withdrew from Lebanon in 1983 and Somalia in 1993.
by david on October 13, 2008 5:44 PM
"We should stop creating more people who hate us, which is what the American occupation of Iraq is doing: radicalizing a whole new generation of people against us." There’s certainly some truth to that. When we’re training for the environment in Iraq we’re taught to be as polite and unobtrusive as we can be. If we’re courteous when dealing with one of the local guys and we’re helpful and we treat them with respect that might actually make the difference between them helping an insurgent or just staying out of it. However, it’s important not to get the idea into our heads that this war is about hate and people join terrorist groups because they hate us for what we’ve done. People don’t start wars over hate; people start wars because they have goals. The United States has a goal and that is to spread democracy across the world. This goal has been pursued in a variety of different ways under different administrations, sometimes aggressively sometimes passively. Many times this goal has been subordinated to what was perceived to be more important interests at the time i.e. supporting dictators against democratically elected leaders. But overall spreading democracy has been a national goal of the United States because we feel that it will make the world better. Our enemies have their own goal; they believed that if they can spread Islamism, political Islam or whatever you want to call it, to the far reaches of the globe then all the suffering and humiliation can be over. The United States is a central target because they feel that secular democracy, more so than fascism or communism or socialism is the central impediment to their goal. To put it succinctly, for every one guy who joins a terrorist org because his family got blown up or his home was destroyed and had no possibility for any kind of future, you’ll find five guys who are well educated and gave up a comfortable middle or upper class lifestyle to join the Jihad. Oh and speaking of the Saudis, if you're in the mood to be really depressed and saddened at the limitless cruelty humans are capable of, Read the "Princess Sultana" books.
by MaryAnn Johanson on October 13, 2008 10:18 PM
"What constitutes winning?" That's a very good question and one of the greatest failures of our leaders has been to provide us with a clear definition of what victory looks like.
But you're one saying we just need to "win"! And you don't even know what that means.
People don’t start wars over hate; people start wars because they have goals.
It's interesting that you should say that. What goals do you think the Bush administration had in invading Iraq? What goals do you think they had in abandoning the search for Osama Bin Laden?
by david on October 15, 2008 9:32 PM
"But you're one saying we just need to "win"! And you don't even know what that means." I do too! (sticks out tongue). As for the administration’s goals, the goal I think with Iraq was to take a country that had been a hostile enemy and turn it into an ally. WMDs, oil, and the view of Saddam Hussein as america’s number two enemy were just a reasons that Iraq in specific was chosen. Most policymakers and pundits who supported the war in Iraq, including prominent liberals such as Thomas L. Friedman and Richard Cohen, did so because they felt that a pro American Arab democracy would be a huge benefit to the region. And as for why we downshifted the effort to capture Osama, the only way to guarantee his capture in the maze of caves, not ons, and otherwise difficult terrain that is Eastern Afghanistan\west Pakistan would have been to commit more troops there which would have forced a postponement of the invasion of Iraq. Also, there was a strong belief that Bin Laden really didn’t matter that much. Although he is still “officially” the leader of Al qaida, he is been so deep in hiding that he really doesn’t have any kind of actual operational control outside of Afghanistan and even then most of the people that we’re fighting in Afghanistan today are the remnants of the Taliban. I think that they neglected the effect that the symbolism of america’s number one enemy being still alive and taunting us with videos has on many people throughout the world and inside our own country. I personally feel that if the Bush administration had committed itself to capturing or killing Bin Laden before invading Iraq that currently the war in Iraq would have much greater support even if it had gone the same way.
by JoshB on October 18, 2008 3:12 PM
When we leave Iraq it should be stable, the government should be capable of maintaining internal control, and terrorist groups should not have significantly greater capabilities to operate than they do in other countries...

Here's a big problem for you then: Saddam Hussein's regime met those requirements.

David, we've already lost. We lost because this is not a war we can fight with soldiers. If we could shoot our way out of this then the occupation would have been a success long ago. Iraq is not and has never been a unified country. That was true long before we got there. It took a strong-arm dictator like Saddam to give it "stability". We can keep our soldiers there, indefinitely maintaining martial law, but that's not winning and it never will be.

Americans like to indulge in this Hulk Out fantasy that if we just get angry enough and proud enough we will have the strength to defeat terror. But the truth is that all it takes to make a terrorist is one pissed off person with some household chemicals. Witness Tim McVeigh. We toss around the name 'Al Qaeda' as though that organization is the beginning and end of terror. Al Qaeda is a symbol. Any Muslim anywhere in the world can make a bomb and call himself an Al Qaeda operative. He doesn't have to be funded by or have met Osama bin Laden.

by MaryAnn Johanson on October 19, 2008 11:46 AM
As for the administration’s goals, the goal I think with Iraq was to take a country that had been a hostile enemy and turn it into an ally.
Then you would have no argument, say, if the Chinese decided that the U.S. is a dangerous rogue nation and that the world would be better off with a regime change and a new government? Do you really want to advocate for preemptive war as the right of any nation strong enough to invade whomever it deems necessary?
by david on October 31, 2008 5:37 PM
No, as I said in my previous post I was opposed to the invasion of Iraq. But I still think that we should stay in Iraq until a reasonable level of stability has been reached or until the democratically elected government of Iraq tells us to leave. See, that's the one thing proponents of withdrawal ignore, we have been in Iraq since 2005 because the Government of Iraq has asked us to stay. The people who demand the war end now are advocating betraying the Iraqi government. Now if the Iraqi government demands that we leave I would concede that and agree that we should not stay in Iraq against the wishes of the Iraqis. Let me posit this scenario, in 30 years the united states turns into a dictatorship and China has democrasized. A group in America, let's say Mexican-Americans, decide to launch a campaign of genocide against those of Cuban descent and the federal government refuses to get involved because they've decided that they don't like Cuban-Americans either. Would you support China Invading those areas where genocide is occurring in order to stop the killing?
by MaryAnn Johanson on November 4, 2008 11:32 PM
I take it from your hypothetical that you would support such a scenario. Are you suggesting that it's okay for democracies to invade dictatorships?
by david on November 7, 2008 8:36 PM
What I'm suggesting is that you can go to movies like Hotel Rwanda and Darfur Now, have your little protest rallies, form activist groups to try to raise "awareness", and pat yourself on the back. But you won't have changed anything. The only thing that stops genocide and dictators is military force. In the immortal words of Trey Parker and Matt Stone, "Only dicks can f@#k assholes."
by Paul on November 8, 2008 7:46 PM
But who decides who is the d*** and who is the a******? And as far as America spreading democracy goes, that's mistaking the justification for the reason. The reason the CIA went around overthrowing democracies in the Latin American and Islamic parts of the world was because they were interfering with American business interests. We said we were spreading freedom, but we were actually spreading crony capitalism, often working with the worst slime of their upper classes because only traitors would betray their own country so another can make money. Neither Castro nor the Vietnamese went Communist until they needed Russia's weapons to defend themselves against us. As for war vs. peace in general, Adam Smith was against foreign wars because they were a drain on the wealth of nations, a warning to the British Empire before it peaked as to why it would fall. He also warned against permanent public debts. Since most American wars have been about money and politics instead of morality, I'd say it was a warning we should have heeded as well.
by david on November 11, 2008 11:45 AM
Its funny, but Paul's response doesn't in anyway contradict or argue the point that I made in my previous post. Mentioning times when American foreign policy has failed to live up to our ideals does not change the fact that those ideals do have to be defended, many times through military force. I guess it's the difference between saying that American has made mistakes and we should fix those mistakes and between saying that America's role in the world is fundamentally corrosive.
by david on November 11, 2008 12:06 PM
It also seems to me that a lot of people use this kind of "who are we to?" mentality to avoid feeling any obligation to confront evil in the world. Who are we to criticize Russia's invasion of Georgia when we invaded Iraq? Who are to criticize China's human rights record when we have Guantanamo Bay? Who are we to criticize Robert Mugabe's stealing of Zimbabwe's election when we had the disputed 2000 election? It was the same thing 70 years ago at Munich. The British and American ambassadors told themselves, "who are we to criticize Germany's aggression towards Czechoslovakia when we have fought these colonial wars? Who are to criticize the Nazi concentration camps when it was the British Military who first used them in South Africa? And who are we to criticize Germany's anger towards us when it was the Treaty of Versailles that we imposed on them that is the source of their militancy?"
by MaryAnn Johanson on November 21, 2008 3:11 PM

I'll believe we're being all noble and humanitarian when we invade some poor-ass country with no natural resources we can appropriate merely to save the starving, oppressed, and abused people of that country from the terrible dictator they had nothing to do with putting into power.

It's funny, though, how we only get noble and humanitarian when our own interests happen to benefit from such actions. Does anyone honestly, sincerely believe that the U.S. would have had a damn thing to do with Saddam Hussein -- either by first propping him up and selling him the damn weapons he used against his own people in the first place, or later by invading his country when he stopped being our bastard on the ground -- if Iraq were not sitting on the greatest untapped oil reserves on the planet?

If you want to support what the U.S. is doing in the Middle East, fine. But at least be honest about why we're really there.

by david on December 25, 2008 8:19 PM
First off, the US has repeatedly intervened when there was no material gain, simply because we felt it was the right thing to do. For example, we lost 50,000 soldiers defending South Korea from north Korea's invasion. I've talked to people who have been stationed in Korea and they 'll tell you how strongly Pro-American it is, because the older generation remembers what we did for them. The US has repeatedly gotten involved in peacekeeping operations in which we had no material interest: Lebanon, Somalia, Kosovo. Most of these didn't work out too well but hey we gave it a shot.
by david on December 25, 2008 8:42 PM
Second, I will concede that oil is a major factor in our (and everybody else's) involvement in the Middle East. Without oil I'm pretty sure that the major powers (The US, Western Europe, Russia, and China) would disengage from the Middle East the same way that they have with Subsaharan Africa. What I want from YOU is for YOU to concede that idealism played as big or bigger a part in the Iraq war than control over resources.
by MaryAnn Johanson on December 30, 2008 9:01 PM
Why would I concede something I don't believe?
by david on January 9, 2009 11:18 PM
Fair enough. But I think you're going to be frustrated if you are trying to understand why things happen in the world and you don't look beneath the surface to the deep idealogies that motivate people. But let's change gears for a while, how do you feel about 9/11 truthers? 'Cause a buddy of mine saw one of these internet videos and starts talking about how the towers collapsed in a controlled demolition and that the Pentagon was hit by a missile, etc. What do you think about that?
by MaryAnn Johanson on January 12, 2009 10:24 PM
I think you're going to be frustrated if you are trying to understand why things happen in the world and you don't look beneath the surface to the deep idealogies that motivate people.
You're the one who's buying the excuses our leaders have given us -- that we're spreading peace and freedom in the Middle East -- and you're suggesting that *I'm* the one not looking beneath the surface?
how do you feel about 9/11 truthers?
I would love to know the truth about 9/11. Who wouldn't?
by david on January 13, 2009 7:06 PM
"You're the one who's buying the excuses our leaders have given us". No, I just call it as I see it. In the elections in Jan of 2005 I saw the Iraqis brave suicide bombers to vote for the first time in decades in numbers higher than in US elections. Maybe you're right. Maybe the guys in the White House cared only about control and resources. Maybe the US military is incapable of making any great impact on the establishment of democracy. But the fact remains that there are good people in Iraq who do want to see their country rise above the basket case that is the Arab world. Maybe I was being naive in making the choice to go there. Maybe I won't be able to make any kind of positive impact. But I have to try. The way I see it, whatever mistakes and decisions made by various politicians and leaders, the important thing is what I personally choose to do now. I've chosen to go and do what I can. I'll let you know how it turns out.
by MaryAnn Johanson on January 14, 2009 5:55 PM
Maybe the US military is incapable of making any great impact on the establishment of democracy.
Um, did you really just say that? Are you honestly suggesting that democracy can be imposed by military force?
The way I see it, whatever mistakes and decisions made by various politicians and leaders, the important thing is what I personally choose to do now. I've chosen to go and do what I can.
I admire your personal initiative, and I hope you feel you're able to make a positive change. But you have to realize that those of us who are railing loudly and often about the "mistakes" (which we don't see as "mistakes" at all) of our leaders also wish for positive change. We just disagree about the way to do it. I don't doubt *your* motives, David. Your motives are not the issue.

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I'm MaryAnn Johanson, writer and editor, and this is my scratch pad, idea-jotter-downer, portfolio and resume, and general hang-out blog.

• film/TV/pop culture critic at FlickFilosopher.com
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