Now, finally, he has some answers.
…’till the paperwork’s done.
At Sengakuji Temple, where the 47 ronin are buried alongside their master,
It was at that point that the ronin struck. 47 of them gathered on 14 December 1702 and, after donning the armor and taking up the weapons from the cache, they set out on their revenge on that same snowy night. Once at Kira’s Edo mansion, they divided into two groups and attacked, with one group entering through the rear of the compound while the rest forced their way through the front, battering the gate down with a mallet. Kira’s men, many of whom were killed or wounded, were taken completely by surprise but did put up a spirited resistance (one of the ronin was killed in the attack), though ultimately to no avail: Kira was found in an outhouse and presented to Ôishi, who offered him the chance to commit suicide. When Kira made no reply, Ôishi struck off his head with the same dagger that Asano had used to kill himself with. Kira’s head was then put in a bucket and carried to the Sengakuji, where Asano was buried. After Ôishi and the others had given the bloody trophy to the spirit of Asano, they turned themselves in.
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Though occasionally I saw the real Golden Temple in photographs or in textbooks, it was the image of the Golden Temple as Father had described it to me that dominated my heart. Father had never told me that the real Golden Temple was shining in gold, or anything of the sort; yet, according to Father, there was nothing on this earth so beautiful as the Golden Temple.
Mishima – Temple of the Golden Pavilion
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Here’s TG’s cousin’s home in Ota-ku where we stayed when we got to Tokyo…
We wanted to take her relatives out to dinner as a gift…this is what they chose as a treat…
We spent the first day wandering around Tokyo..
Then we headed to Hiroshima, where we caught a Carp game, and Miyajima
where the deer know they’re safe…
Now we’re in Okayama, headed to the Miyamoto Mushashi museum and then to Kyoto for a few days.
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So we’re heading to Japan for a bit on Monday.
Blogging will obviously be low for a few weeks (OK, it’s already been low, I’m hoping my batteries will be recharged when I’m back and it will get better).
We’ll be visiting TG’s family in Tokyo, Hiroshima (go Carps!! – we’ll catch a game while there), Miyashima (and the tram), Okayama and the Musashi museum, Kyoto, the Five Fuji lakes, and back to Tokyo with a possible side trip up to Takayama.
I’m working on a piece on Afghanistan – it’s depressing and so hard to do – tied to the excellent film Restrepo, the McCrystal flap, the Yon/milblogs flap, and On Strategy – to me somehow they all are hanging together in one pattern…if only I can get it down in words.
Meanwhile, as always, be nice to each other and don’t blow anything up while I’m gone.
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I don’t think I’ve ever reposted anything BG has written me while he’s been overseas. But he sent this yesterday, and it seems like the kind of thing that ought to be shared. Here are some thoughts from a front-line soldier in Afghanistan:
saw somewhere the government is looking at cutting 1billion in aid to iraq. i also read somewhere that south vietnam didnt really fall until congress stopped sending them money and materiel. what is the point of all this fighting if no one is willing to give support to the countries we tried so hard to build?
In the next week, all of the commentariat will be transfixed by the soap-opera of McCrystal and the Administration and who said and did what to whom. Meanwhile, my son carries a machine gun and his friends get shot and blown up. If we’re not going to act like these countries matter – why should he?
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From today’s AP feed:
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration reaffirmed Sunday that it will begin pulling U.S. troops out of Afghanistan next summer, despite reservations among top generals that absolute deadlines are a mistake.
President Barack Obama’s chief of staff said an announced plan to begin bringing forces home in July 2011 still holds.
That’s not changing. Everybody agreed on that date,” Rahm Emanuel said, adding by name the top three officials overseeing the policy girding the war: Gen. David Petraeus, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen.
OK, eff it. Let’s just take our ball and go home.
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Kanani, from the Kitchen Dispatch sent me a copy of War almost a month ago.
The book sat on the dining table for a week before I sat down to read it. To be honest I was scared.
Not so much of what the book itself would show – I’ve read a lot about war and talked to a lot of people who have been in them – but because right now I’m a war parent – my son is at war. Today, right now, as I write this about a book about war, he is living it. And one of the ways I have dealt with the fear of it is through rationalizations. It’s just a camping trip, with guns. It’s no more dangerous than me riding my motorcycle, statistically. I box the fear up – the fear that he’ll be killed or wounded, the fear that as I sit here comfortably on my sofa listening to music and writing on my laptop, he might be bleeding somewhere 12,000 miles away and that there is nothing, nothing I can do for him…the fear that he’ll come back with his heart broken. Those fears have been put away, wrapped in my trust of his skills and smarts and luck and character, and I have gone on with my days.
But in truth, there’s a better way to deal with fear and that is simply to take the box off the shelf, open it, and look inside.
So I picked the book up and read it in an afternoon.
And, to be honest, that’s what ‘War’ did for me – it opened the box; more than any of the other books that have come from this war. It didn’t show me how soldiers think of themselves – as ‘Kaboom’ did. It didn’t show me how analysts or strategists think about war. It showed me what I think war would look like if I was standing there.
I’m glad that I read it before seeing the NBC footage.
There are flaws with the book, to be sure. But this is a book about one’s fellows at war; a book in which the writer doesn’t hold himself apart from the solders in his words, but instead lays in the dust with them.
I’ve written – a lot – about the role of journalists in covering our nation, and how wrong it is for them to pretend they can put their citizenship aside and stand among, but not with, our solders as they fight.
Journalists in the past did exactly that – Ernie Pyle and Joseph Galloway.
It’s not too much to ask of our modern journalists, and in my view Junger delivered that. His loudest critic to date dislikes the book and calls Junger a ‘War tourist.’ Well, of course he is; the question is whether that’s pejorative or not. In my mind, it isn’t – by definition any outsider who writes about war (or anything else) is a tourist. And their views are valuable – valuable not in opposition but in conjunction with the views of those inside. No participant can give an honest account of anything; many try and try honorably. But the description of war by a soldier to someone like me – to a nonsoldier – must be incomplete and inaccurate; I can never know war. I will never know what my son knows, I will only know him.
And, in truth, the more I know about war, the better I will know him. And the better all of us will know our sons and daughters and husbands and wives when they finally come home, wrapped in the cloak of a knowledge we will never share.
So thank you, Sebastian Junger, for bringing me closer to my son. Thank you for taking us fellow tourists and bringing us closer to all our soldiers.
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Anthony Cordesman has an important piece up on where we are in Afghanistan today.Shockingly, I disagree with him in many areas. But possibly, just possibly, not in his conclusions.
His piece has seven sections:
The Strategic Importance of Afghanistan and the Case for Staying in the War
Can This Mission Be Successful? Can We Win?
Estimating the Enemy
Deadlines and Expectations
Accepting Afghans as Afghans
The Civil-Military Side of the War
The Reality of Continuing Risk
Let me talk about the first one now, and move through the rest as I have time.
Two critical questions dominate any realistic discussion of the conflict. The first is whether the war is worth fighting. The second is whether it can be won. The answers to both questions are uncertain. The US has no enduring reason to maintain a strategic presence in Afghanistan or Central Asia. It has far more important strategic priorities in virtually every other part of the world, and inserting itself into Russia’s “near abroad,” China’s sphere of influence, and India’s ambitions makes no real sense. Geography, demographics, logistics, and economics all favor other nations, and no amount of academic hubris can realistically model American reform of the “Stans” in ways that are cost-effective relative to other uses of US resources.
Well, if you look at spatial geography, that’s absolutely true. But in the world we live in today, geographic geography – spatial geography – is only one of the maps on which we have to operate. We also have to operate in the space of cultural geography, and I wish just once that someone with deep expertise in this area would talk about what Afghanistan means.
The carefully spun good news story about Afghan minerals may or may not prove to be economically realistic. It is all too typical of a long series of “breadbasket” arguments that take problem countries and argue that their natural resources can make them wealthy or that they can become major exporters of agricultural products. In practice, it will be at least half a decade before Afghanistan’s mineral resources will pay off, and the key outside investors are likely to be Chinese, Russian, and local. It is very unlikely that firms can compete without bribes and incentives as the cost of doing business, and even if US registered companies do invest, they are likely to operate as non-US entities in ways than minimize any economic benefits to the US.
I actually wonder if the minerals story isn’t more for internal consumption in Afghanistan – to motivate Karzai and the warlords to think that there may be a pot of gold (or lithium) that they can dip into if only there were stability.
The key reasons for the war remain Al Qa’ida and the threat of a sanctuary and base for international terrorism, and the fact the conflict now involves Pakistan’s future stability. One should have no illusion about today’s insurgents. The leading cadres are far more international in character, far better linked to Al Qa’ida and other international extremist groups, and much closer tied to extremists in Pakistan. If they “join” an Afghan government while they are still winning (or feel they are winning), they are likely to become such a sanctuary and a symbol of victory that will empower similar extremists all over the world.
He’s absolutely right here – and I wish that the balance of this analysis focused more deeply on the linkages he’s delineating and what they mean for our policies in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Experts disagree sharply about Pakistan’s instability and vulnerability in the face of a US and ISAF defeat in Afghanistan. There is no way to predict how well Pakistan can secure its border and deal with its own Islamic extremists, and Pakistan is both a nuclear state and a far more serious potential source of support to other extremist movements than Afghanistan. A hardline, Deobandi-dominated Pakistan would be a serious strategic threat to the US and its friends and allies, and would sharply increase the risk of another major Indo-Pakistani conflict.
To a certain extent, this is true; at the same time I think that China and India would have a lot to say about it as a regional matter. More important is the fact that any international salafist/islamist movement would now have a wealthy, secure home.
It should be noted, however, that the US may be forced into leaving Afghanistan regardless of its intentions to stay, or face conditions that make any stable form of victory impossible. Containment from the outside may be the only choice, and having to leave Afghanistan does not mean having to abandon Pakistan. Maintaining a major civil and military aid effort to Pakistan, and keeping US capabilities to work with Pakistan in UCAV and other strikes on insurgent networks is also an option. So is working with Russia to support a rebirth of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan and to pin down the Taliban and other insurgents as much as possible.
That’s absolutely true; we may have wasted the opportunity to ‘make Afghanistan work,’ if one existed. In the overall context of our world (finances) and politics, and most of all, absent any kind of strategic rationale that our leadership can explain to the rest of us, I doubt our ability to sustain our current efforts in Afghanistan. In fact, I don’t doubt them – it’s not going to happen.
Moreover, it is time to stop demonizing Bin Laden and Al Qa’ida and focus on the broader threat. Massive population increases, poverty, decaying educational and social infrastructure, culture shock and alienation, and failed secularism affect far too much of the Islamic world. Yemen and Somalia are only the two worst cases, and some form of extremist and terrorist threat is likely to be a regional constant for the next two decades -regardless of whether the US and its allies win or lose in Afghanistan. Moreover, the trade-offs involved do raise serious questions about whether the same – or a much lower – investment in helping key allies like Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco would do far more to provide overall security.
You know, here he just jumps off the rails. There is no research showing any links at all to any of these issues; the roots of the radical movement we face are philosophical and social and have little if anything to do with population, poverty, decayed infrastructure. Those simply provide failed state ‘playgrounds’ for the radicalized.
The fact is, the strategic case for staying in Afghanistan is uncertain and essentially too close to call. The main reason is instead tactical. We are already there. We have major capabilities in place. If we can demonstrate that the war can be won at reasonable additional cost in dollars and blood, it makes sense to persist. But, only if we can demonstrate we can win and show that the additional cost has reasonable limits. Containment and alternative uses of the same resources are very real options, and would probably be more attractive ones if we could somehow “zero base” history. The reality is, however, that nations rarely get to choose the ideal ground in making strategic decisions. They are prisoners of their past actions, and so are we.
The questions simply is at what cost, and what for.
Beyond that, there is the question of whether we want (because we certainly don’t have) the kind of army – small, unbureaucratic, lethal, bloody-minded – that would be effective in a place like Afghanistan. I doubt, sincerely that we do today.
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