On a curious spectacle of ‘flying shoes’ in mainstream television

As a couple of size 10 shoes sailed ungracefully over the head of leader of the free world, I took some time out to read parts of a report that chronicles the events that have led unto the colossal failure in the reconstruction of Iraq. One might think that after five years there, reconstruction might be progressing at a fast clip and infrastructural development proceeding smoothly. The report manages to convey something far from that line of thought. The report lays bare a continuous string of flawed decision making and points to the single factor that might be responsible for the quagmire that we are in now: Miscalculation. Pure and simple miscalculation.

A colossal miscalculation of what the United States would face after the shock and awe of the initial firebombing campaign was complete. Miscalculations that seemed to have spawned countless trial and error governance experiments executed on the fly to fix mistakes even as scores of innocent civilians were mowed down by roving Sunni/Shia death squads. To borrow from the science of project management, when one conceives of a project without a coherent project plan or roadmap, one is forced to adapt to the 'whack a mole' approach to running the same. Just as soon as a problem pops up, the response to tackling the problem turns out to be tactical, imprecise, short sighted and novel in every instance.

The ‘shoot first and ask questions later’ nature of the invasion did not account for any strategic thinking with respect to the larger picture at hand – that Iraq was a country full of living, breathing people just like you and me. Instead, the focus on removing Saddam and the elaborate framework that he had built to syncretize power so consumed the war planners that governance of the country and its people were relegated to being nothing but afterthoughts. Afterthoughts that have come to haunt us in the form of flying shoes sailing unceremoniously on mainstream television. In many ways, one hopes that the fiasco in Iraq will serve as a constant and present reminder towards large nations to think twice, breathe deeply and weigh options before starting to meddle in places where they have little idea of local mores, customs, sects or culture.

The following incident featuring the creator of the phrase 'known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns' vividly illustrates the sheer ignorance with which a senior strategist like the United States Defense Secretary went into Iraq.

On the eve of the invasion, as it began to dawn on a few officials that the price for rebuilding Iraq would be vastly greater than they had been told, the degree of miscalculation was illustrated in an encounter between Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, and Jay Garner, a retired lieutenant general who had hastily been named the chief of what would be a short-lived civilian authority called the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance.
The history records how Mr. Garner presented Mr. Rumsfeld with several rebuilding plans, including one that would include projects across Iraq.
“What do you think that’ll cost?” Mr. Rumsfeld asked of the more expansive plan.
“I think it’s going to cost billions of dollars,” Mr. Garner said.
“My friend,” Mr. Rumsfeld replied, “if you think we’re going to spend a billion dollars of our money over there, you are sadly mistaken.”
In a way he never anticipated, Mr. Rumsfeld turned out to be correct: before that year was out, the United States had appropriated more than $20 billion for the reconstruction, which would indeed involve projects across the entire country.

An American soldier watches President Bush's televised apology for Abu Ghraib. Iraq 2004. Photo by Ashley Gilbertson. From here.

Poem

FLEEING THE WAR ZONE

In the streets,
the blood spurts
from myriad deaths,
some avenged, some not.
Whenever they can, uncaring
scythes fill in for rusty daggers,
slicing skin to the unfeeling bone.
Inside, the scullions butcher the young
while petty clan fights dominate the lonesome
couple still squabbling over trifling fumbles. The
unclear whispers of the coming destruction are
eerily etched in the minds of the wary as
substantial legacies crumble with ease
and the whispering back benchers
deal hazy rumors while belching
rum at the local hole amidst
decorated war whores
belittling innocent
children.

Jaunts in beleaguered bureaucracy

Soldiers do what they are told to do – it is what they have been trained for. They often come back home with the disastrous effects of wars fought overseas. Often, they have no say over the unfolding action seen in combat zones and in most cases they are cogs helping mesh the larger military/industrial/political wheel. The disadvantages faced by a soldier spending their prime years on a battlefield should not follow the person back home. The least a nation could do for them on coming back home is to offer them building blocks with which they could again step back and become active/productive members of society. Education contributes to a large part of this post-war-rehab. 50 years ago, after the World War, the lawmakers realized this and gave them the GI Bill.

From here: The original G.I. Bill of Rights, signed into law by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1944, paid the full load of a returning veteran’s education at a college or technical school and provided a monthly stipend. It was an investment that paid astounding dividends. Millions of veterans benefited, and they helped transform the nation. College would no longer be the exclusive preserve of the wealthy and those who crowned themselves the intellectual elite.

The original GI Bill did not take into account the galloping costs associated with college tuition and hence needed retooling. There is a new bill in Congress whose passage is being held up by the usual partisan bickering and one-upmanship of Washington politics. Latest news reports indicate a clear and present danger to this bill failing. For the war or not, it is in our common interests that this bill needs to go through. This website has details.

Disclosure: One of our family (a first cousin) is a member of the United States Army and is stationed ‘somewhere in Iraq’. He is only 23 years old.

Pavel Tchelitchew, ‘Hide and Seek’, Oil on canvas, 1940-42, MOMA

Painting post

There is a certain cosmic element about large battles described in epics like the Iliad or the Mahabharata. Maybe the forces unleashed from the large seething masses of humanity numbering in the tens of thousands as they stand to square off in what could be the last day or night in their lives evokes out of control celestial bodies – or maybe it is the magnitude of destruction about to unfold while rational thought remains crucified at the battlefield entrance helplessly watching the bloodletting that ensues… I am not sure, but there is something other worldly about them that pricks our atavistic core. Childhood memories are fairly strong – or so neurologists say – it must be because our brain cells have not fully formed then and any available information sliver is indelibly singed on our neurons… For some reason, to this day, I remember vicariously participating in the imaginary battles while the warring clans clashed under the overcast demeanor of Kurukshetra through comic books such as the Amar Chitra Katha…

One such scene from this epic tale unfolds with two very large armies about to face off each other over a vast battleground. Moments before the time of reckoning draws near and that first arrow rends the sky, one of the commanders experiences a sudden burst of self-doubt and starts a dialogue with his charioteer on the nature of humanity, the soul, our existence and filial duty. A striking tableau develops when his charioteer drives the chariot out to the midlines of the battle field and starts to explain the answers to some of the questions posed. The interesting dialogue between the doubtful commander and his self assured charioteer is so powerful that it forms a separate section of the Mahabharata called the Gita. Though I would consider certain portions of the conversation between the two to be bit facile, a lot of the principles laid out in the exchange thousands of years back does resonate even today.

Even if the words did prod my conscience in many ways, the aspect of the epic that was most retained in my mind from all those surreptitious nights of comic book mythology was this scene from the battle. This painting is an attempt at trying to capture some those crucial moments before the impending battle. This scene is a familiar one and numerous Indian homes have a semblance of this tableau in some framed format. Owing to the scale and the gravity of the scene, I decided to try something large scale (though it was not really necessary) – I had not done anything so large before and the aspect of size in and of itself presented its own peculiar problems. Finished, the painting is about nine feet wide and six feet tall. I did make a mess of our basement completing the thing and am not sure how long that is going to take to clean the oil paint mish mash left on the floor. It took about two and a half months for me to go through the motions of the initial measurements, sketches, gesso ground and finally painting the canvas in three sections – the middle first, followed by the left and finally the right side.

This post also appears in Art and Perception here.

Sunil, ‘Everyman and Charioteer’, Oil on canvas, 101" X 73"