yclept

Iraq and Vietnam

2007-08-22T19:02:00.000-04:00

Today President George W. Bush made a speech in which he compared the ongoing war in Iraq to the American war in Vietnam (1959 – 1975). There are many ways that a supporter of the Iraq war could argue that the two conflicts are not similar – indeed, recent letters to the editor and opinion column have taken this tack.

But incredibly, that’s not what Bush said. Instead, he emphasized their similarity. He argued that the United States was wrong to withdraw from

Vietnam

, and that our retreat there led to terrible suffering in the region. His lesson: we shouldn’t repeat that mistake in

Iraq

. This is revisionist history at its worst.

For years, a subset of conservative pundits has felt that “we lost in Vietnam because the politicians made the generals fight with one hand tied behind their backs.” Even if one accepts this view – and I don’t – it’s almost always part of an argument that we should have fought with less restraint earlier in the war. I’ve never seen it offered to suggest that we shouldn’t have withdrawn, after losing 58,000 soldiers and contributing to the deaths of over a million Vietnamese.

A few years ago, I read Neil Sheehan’s biographical study of America’s involvement in the war, A Bright Shining Lie, followed by his much shorter work, After the War Was Over, examining the history of Vietnam after unification. As he explains in After the War, Sheehan, who covered the war as a journalist, started out believing in it [p.58- 59]:

I was convinced that this was the right war in the right place. There was an international Communist conspiracy. If we did not win here, we would face a wave of Communist-inspired wars of national liberation throughout the underdeveloped world….To me, the domino theory was not just a theory; if South Vietnam fell, the “Sino-Soviet bloc”, as the Army security clearance forms referred to our opponents, would seize the rest of Southeast Asia and then move on toward Japan...

[W]e Americans, who considered ourselves the exceptions to history, showed ourselves as fallible as the rest of humanity; we could do evil as easily as we could do good. We were all too humanly arrogant in the hubris of our moment in the sun. It was beyond us to put pencil to paper and understand that we were pursuing fantasies that would bring an immense tragedy on ourselves as well as on the Vietnamese and other peoples of Indochina.

There was, in fact, no international Chinese conspiracy and no “Sino-Soviet bloc.” The Communist world of the 1960s was a splintered world. The Chinese and the Soviets had openly despised each other for years. We had ignored the implications of their feud because, in our pursuit of dominion, it suited us to pretend that our enemies were one. But guerilla wars could not be spread like bacteria, and countries were not dominos. They were living entities with national leaders who pursued their own agendas. The Vietnamese were an example. They had become Communists as an accident of French domestic politics, because only the far left in France had supported independence for the colonies. They had never been a threat to the United States. They simply wanted us to go home, and they would not cease to resist, no matter what the cost to us and to them, until we did.

Most of the histories I've read echo Sheehan's account: in Vietnam, the US intervened in a civil war, then kept increasing our involvement, never enough to win (could any amount have won?), but always enough to cause more damage to ourselves and the Vietnamese.

So is Iraq like Vietnam? Not in the leaving of it, no: it was clear when we left Vietnam that the North would win; it is far from clear whether any one faction will emerge to hold Iraq together. Bush’s fatuous assertion that ‘terrorism will follow us home,’ if taken at face value, doesn’t imply any similarity with our departure from Iraq. No, any similarity between Iraq and Vietnam lies in the worldview that got us into to the war, and is rhetorical: a small and arrogant group of leaders decided, in an effort to project American power in a key part of the world, to remake another nation in our image – and instead found themselves bogged down in an unwinnable conflict, and unwilling to admit the mistake. If there’s a parallel lesson to be drawn, it’s the need for greater humility and nuance in our foreign policy.

All the (non-)news that's fit...

2007-08-11T07:58:00.000-04:00

Because we don’t have a TV, I keep track of current events through the newspaper, radio (usually National Public Radio), and the Internet. On the web, my main sources of national and international news are CNN and the BBC. Over the last year or so, I’ve become increasingly disenchanted with the amount of non-news on CNN.

I realize people differ in their sense of what is news. My subjective view – but I think it’s reasonable view – is that news is information about events or trends that may affect or involve a significant portion of the audience, or that helps the audience form an accurate picture of the world in which we live. This implies that news is scaled to the audience: a lurid crime may be local news, in that numerous people in the community may have seen the police cars and want to know what is happening, or the crime may be an important marker of a local trend. But a murder is almost never appropriately national news, because it touches such a small portion of the audience, and is rarely a marker of a national trend.

At any rate, this week I’ve run an experiment. Each afternoon, I’ve copied the top headlines from the CNN and BBC websites. They are replicated below. I’ve put in italics the stories that I think aren’t news – they are about sensation or celebrity, but provide no insight into events or trends that will shape any significant number of lives. A fair number of CNN stories are little more than cross promotions of other products – Time magazine, for example. Rarely do these cross promotions involve news. At the end of the week’s list, I’ve offered my admittedly subjective estimate of the ratio of stories to real news.

Monday, August 06, 2007, 4:10 pm


CNN                                                 BBC

Afghan president mocks Taliban 'cowardice'          No deal on Korean hostages - Bush
Six miners trapped in Utah mine collapse            Russia cancels most Afghan debt
Sheriff: Bridge debris may be tomb                  Taleban rule the road in Ghazni
Rescuer told victim: 'I need your help' Video       Quick guide: Afghanistan
Pentagon loses track of weapons for Iraq            190,000 weapons 'missing in Iraq'
Olmert makes historic trip to Palestinian town      Israeli and Palestinian leaders talk
Romney beefs, 'I'm not running as Mormon'           US coal mine collapse traps six
Ticker: Giuliani's daughter may back Obama          Battle for S Asia flood victims
WPLG: Sheriff's deputy shot in head                 Gusmao to be E Timor's new PM
3 pals shot execution-style in school yard          Darfur's rebel groups reach deal
CNN.com journalist David Osier dies at 62           Economic woes send oil $2 lower
Stray bullet kills boy, 5, as he's fishing Video    Giant cross to mark Stalin terror
Scrappy 87-year-old chases after mugger Video       Drowning stops Nigerian TV show
WLWT: Animal abuser gets his dog back
Black women consider 'dating out'
Hello Kitty shames rule-breaking cops

Tuesday, August 07, 2007, 4:15 pm


CNN                                                 BBC

“Only the Lord knows’ if miners are still alive     S Asia millions face flood hunger
City holding silence for bridge victims             In pictures: S Asia flood relief
Monsoon threatens massive health crisis             Seeking food in a flooded land
Taliban tries to overrun a U.S. base                What is the South Asia monsoon?
WTAE: Evidence backs teen killer's abuse story      Georgia condemns Russian 'raid'
Heat warnings up for chunk of U.S.                  Fresh moves to free Utah miners
WJXT: Beaches take turn for worse                   Stolen Picassos found in Paris
City livid after 'good kids' killed                 Iraq vows to oust Kurdish rebels
Time: Baby Einsteins not so smart                   Nigeria blocks huge clinic deal
Boyfriend sought in NYU death                       Brazil holds Colombia 'drug lord'
Father tries to choke admitted murderer Video       Whale fears silence US sonar
Ticker: Giuliani predicts Democratic ticket         UK sees new foot-and-mouth case
7-year-old chases robber Video                      Largest known planet discovered
CNNMoney: Sharpton wants rap cleaned up             Barry Bonds breaks Babe Ruth's record
Island murder, parents' search for answers Video    F1: Hamilton warned over feud
Your e-mails: Bonds and the home run record         Football: Heinze wants hearing

Wednesday, August 08, 2007, 4:17 pm



CNN                                                 BBC

Intruders arrested near bridge (Minneapolis)        US raid kills 30 Iraq 'militants'
Powerful quake hits Indonesia                       US forces in Iraq reach new peak
CEO: Drill inches toward miners                     In pictures: Raid sparks anger
Suspect may be ID'd in schoolyard deaths            Monitoring the surge
Pollution fears cloud Olympic gala                  Storms lead to chaos in New York
LIVE: Endeavour astronauts gear up Video            Finds test human origins theory
Beau of NYU victim slits wrists, confesses          Strong earthquake hits Indonesia
Big Dig glue firm charged with death 10 min         Musharraf stays away from jirga
WISN: 3-year-old shoots 6-year-old                  S Asia victims face health crisis
Family fights off armed home invaders Video         African troops pledged for Darfur
NYC storm creates commuter chaos                    Endeavour shuttle ready to launch
Ticker: Bush reaches Bonds -- finally               Huge cross marks Stalin purges
CNNMoney: Realtors see more sales declines          Monkey on US flight
Clerk grabs robber's gun, turns it on him           Ukrainian man tallest in the world
Police find $66m stolen Picassos                    Pollution risk for Olympic events
Buffalo rush to aid baby seized by lion Video       Cycling: Contador 'not wanted'

Thursday, August 9, 2007, 6:32 pm


CNN                                                 BBC

Execution Suspect cuffed                            Big US slump ends volatile week
Seventh body reportedly pulled from bridge site     Mortgage concerns hit US markets
Alleged 9/11 mastermind closer to trial             US lender on brink of bankruptcy
Drill hole may reach miners today                   Security tight for Iraq pilgrims
CNN gets rare tour inside mine Video                President Bush Bush urges fair Pakistan election
CNNMoney: Dow dives on 2nd worst day of 2007        Russia planes spark Cold War scramble
Mayor 'demonized' gays, protesters say              Countdown quickens in US poll
Boy, 9, grabs wheel of big rig, saves dad Video     Iran urges US pull-out from Iraq
Ticker: Sen. Clinton, are you black enough?         Moderate elected Turkish speaker
DHS taking over checking passenger info             Spain burns fields to kill voles
Shuttle crew tackles inspection                     Flood rains hit new India regions
CNNMoney: GM to test Volt electric car              Escaped crocodile hunted in Ukraine
Escort services list jobs on government site Video  Glowing furniture reveals guests' weight
Bertinelli no stranger to f-word, (fat)             Cricket: India building strong total
Man teases huge crocodile, swabs its teeth Video    Live - USPGA Championship
KIRO: Man claims decapitated snake bit him

Friday, August 10, 2007, 5:21 pm


CNN                                                 BBC

Remains of girl, 2, found in bridge rubble          UN backs expanded Iraq mission
Interpreters who help U.S. go missing, die          Security tight for Iraq pilgrims
CNNMoney: Fed's $38 billion helps markets           Concern over UN's wider Iraq role
WRTV: Workers fall to deaths from mine basket       Monitoring the surge
Bail set at $1M for schoolyard slayings suspect     S Korea in Taleban hostage talks
Rescuers pin hopes on second drill                  NASA space shuttle docks with ISS
Sources: U.S. checking future of Pakistan nukes     World shares fall on credit fears
Musharraf set to u-turn on peace talks              Three killed in US mine accident
Police doubt Tech shooter rehearsed                 France mourns former archbishop
Missing toddler's family hopeful she's alive Video  Sacked S Africa minister hits out
Ticker: Obama belts out Mexican love song           Fresh talks over Kosovo's status
Mom strangles rabid raccoon attacking kid Video     Two nosed dog tipped to sniff out drugs
SI: Lance Armstrong's old team folds                Cycling: Discovery team quits
130 cats + 1 bag of food = flying fur Video         Golf: USPGA
KPTV: Woman must forfeit $1M lottery cash
Snarling, biting dogs attack in parking lot Video

So here’s my score:

Monday	CNN: 16/9	BBC: 13/13
Tuesday	CNN: 16/9	BBC: 16/16
Wednesday	CNN: 16/9	BBC: 16/15
Thursday	CNN: 16/10	BBC: 15/13
Friday	CNN: 16/10	BBC: 14/14

One of the most annoying features on the CNN website is the ‘Ticker’, which is essentially a political gossip column. Almost nothing covered by the Ticker is actual news, but because it attaches to political celebrities, that’s not obvious at first. It's like trying to grab a snack only to find out that all your options are full of empty calories.

The notion of empty calories is relevant to the whole exercise. Most of us have only a limited amount of time to spend taking in news. The most striking thing about the CNN story list isn’t that many stories are damaging to watch – though I suspect the emphasis on sensational crime has a skewing effect on viewers’ perceptions of the world – but the news that the fluff displaces. When the roster opts for 130 cats fighting over catfood rather than South African politics or talks over the status of Kosovo, is it any wonder that most of us know so little about the rest of the world?

Futility and Strategy

2007-08-02T20:23:00.000-04:00

Last week I finished John Keegan’s Illustrated History of the First World War. Once again, I'm grateful for our public library system.

In the past, I’ve been puzzled why WWI took so long. Keegan’s account offered a way to understand the evolution of the war:

1914: through mangled diplomacy and poor choices, Europe slides into war. The various powers’ armies roll out their plans, but all come up short, and the year ends with armies facing off against each other on the eastern and western fronts.

1915: the powers poke at each other directly, but also try to open new, winning fronts on the edges and peripheries – in their colonies, at sea, in northern Italy. Nothing works.

1916: the two sides attack each other head on, slogging it out, wasting hundreds of thousands of men in battles that go nowhere.

1917: having strained itself to the breaking point, France experience mutinies; Russia collapses in revolution and civil war; Germany and Britain barely hold on.

1918: after a final, desperate push by Germany, an avalanche of fresh American troops tips the balance in the west in the Allies' favor.

I find the middle phase – 1916 and 1917 – particularly curious. Given the information available to them, and the way the initial battles of 1915 and early 1916 inflicted huge carnage while producing little advantage, generals on all sides should have grasped that frontal assaults would fail, at enormous cost. Nonetheless, without a better or more creative approach to pursue, they kept ordering frontal assaults until their armies broke.

This compels my attention for two reasons. First, the horror and incredible waste of this butchery is still riveting to read about, 90 years later. It’s like reading about a natural disaster, except worse, because people chose to make it happen. Second, on the detached level of strategy, the pattern looks surprisingly familiar. I’ve sometimes watched public policy advocates follow a similar progression: pursuing a strategy that anyone thinking through the situation can predict is doomed to failure. In the circumstances that I’ve seen this, some participants do see the inevitable, but question their own certainty, while others refuse to look ahead until the defeat becomes inevitable. And often, at that point, they say: ‘who could have predicted this? We did the best we could.’ Fortunately, it the case of the public policy campaign, no one dies, at least not from the campaign itself.

Rising seas, gradually

2007-07-20T18:11:00.000-04:00

I’ve been trying to understand the likely challenges to economic recovery following a major hurricane strike on the North Carolina coast. Although it is focused on climate change, a report released this past March provides a thoughtful discussion of the economic impacts of hurricanes as a part of a larger discussion on the likely economic impacts of long term sea level rise. Measuring the Impacts estimates the impacts of climate change, as mediated through sea level rise and increased storm severity, on property values, beach recreation, tourism, and storm damages in coastal North Carolina.

There are several respects in which the study likely underestimates the impacts of climate change and sea level rise. That statement isn’t meant as a criticism of the authors, who have provided a great service by developing this estimate – something North Carolina has needed but hasn’t had. At any rate, the report left me with these additional thoughts.

(1) The FEMA floodplain data does not account for expansions in the floodplain likely to be caused by upstream development, both encroachments into the floodplain and increased impervious surface on uplands. That may matter less on the coast, but it will add to flooding along the inner banks. The combination of increased runoff coming from upstream and increased storm surge coming from the ocean may increase flooding on the lower sections of coastal rivers beyond what storm surge would account for alone.

(2) The authors note that while the study models the impacts of increased storm severity, it does not attempt to model the impacts of increased storm and hurricane frequency. It would be hard to estimate how much an increase in frequency would increase costs, since the answer depends on whether government and private investment choices change as disasters losses become more frequent. But even though there’s a practical reason the study doesn’t address this, the choice between rebuilding over and over, or shifting to a more resilient model of coastal land use, will become a key political question if one effect of climate changes turns out to be more frequent storms.

(3) The estimates of impacts to real estate values are framed in terms of 2004 dollars. Dare County and Carteret County show the heaviest losses, while Bertie and New Hanover Counties show much lower losses. For Bertie, that difference reflects the lower value of properties in this rural, underdeveloped county. However, if one considers the socioeconomic distribution of disaster impacts, the Bertie losses look a good bit more significant. Properties at risk in Bertie are more likely to constitute the main wealth for the families that own them. The cost in human terms – and the resulting longer-term economic dislocation – may be significant even where the paper economic loss is small.

(4) The travel and tourism estimates are based on an analysis of willingness to pay. The assumption is that consumers are willing to pay a certain amount for a beach trip. If the beach shrinks, they get less enjoyment from the trip – or have to go farther to find a beach, which costs them more. At a certain point, they conclude that the trip costs too much for the pleasure they are getting, and they stay home. While this seems right, the report does not factor in increases in the cost of transportation – likely to result both from rising energy prices and federal carbon reduction policies. The effect of rising transportation costs is to further cut into the margin of consumer interest in taking trips, amplifying the impact of sea-level changes that make a beach or fishing trip less fun. So, the analysis likely underestimates the decline in tourism likely to follow from beach erosion.

(5) The estimates of business interruption are built around figures for ‘full day equivalents lost’, calculated in a 2002 analysis by R.T. Burrus of the impacts of three historical storms, all category III or lower. This is right; the storms do result in lost work days, and those have a cost. However, this approach does not capture a key second impact: eventual permanent loss of businesses that are initially destabilized by storm disruptions. A 2001 study by the Public Entity Research Institute, Organizations at Risk: What Happens When Small Businesses and Not-for-Profits Encounter Natural Disasters, found that most businesses that close as a result of disaster do not close right away, but instead struggle along for months before finally giving up, often taking an additional psychological and financial toll (in the form of debt that will never be paid off).

(6) The estimates of agricultural losses are based on an analysis of the impacts of 14 storms on four counties: Bertie, Dare, Carteret, and New Hanover. The report suggests that category I, II, and III storms have respectively, impacts to crop and livestock of roughly $40 million, $200 million, and $800 million, respectively. What this approach doesn’t capture is the special vulnerability of North Carolina’s hog industry, centered round a bull’s eye in Sampson and Duplin Counties. A storm crossing through the middle of this region could cause much greater damage than suggested by the estimate. It’s also worth noting that the expansion of turkey and chicken farming in the coastal plain over the last decade – during which hog farms remained contained by the hog moratorium – means that historical data likely underestimates the damage of storm passing through Bertie or Carteret would do today. For example, Rose Acre Farms in Hyde County, permitted in 2004, has brought four million chickens close to an area predicted to be inundated by 2080.

Watching the Reapers in 2007

2007-07-14T10:04:00.000-04:00

This week farmworker advocates in North Carolina won a significant victory. After three years of negotiations, the NC House passed a bill, S1466, slightly improving living conditions for migrant farmworkers in the state. The bill now returns to the NC Senate for that body’s concurrence. On its path so far, the bill has had to overcome several hurdles, including repeated attempts by Republican legislators to turn the bill into an attack on illegal immigrants (for example, an unworkable proposal that would have required housing inspectors to check immigration papers of workers). Not all, but many of the migrant farmworkers who endure harsh living and working conditions to plant and harvest crops in North Carolina are undocumented.

On the House floor, progressive legislator Rep. Paul Luebke (Durham-D) rose to express support for the bill, but to lament that it made such incremental progress. While the bill will require inspections of farmworker housing at the beginning of each growing season, and mattress covers for worker beds, conditions for many workers will still be dismal. Luebke spoke of the hardships experienced by workers and chided his colleagues for not doing more.

So, last evening it was a surprise to run across a poem by the Chinese poet Bai Juyi (Po Chu’i) (772 – 846) that stresses a similar theme – that the rest of us who profit from the farmworkers’ labor haven’t done right by them. The translation is by Arthur Waley, in his Translations from the Chinese (1941). According to Waley, Bai Juyi intended his poems to teach moral lessons. Throughout his career, Bai got himself banished by submitting remonstrances to the T’ang Emperor encouraging better government, including better treatment of farmers.

Watching the Reapers (806 A.D.)

Tillers of the soil have few idle months;
In the fifth month their toil is double-fold.
A south-wind visits the fields at night:
Suddenly the hill is covered with yellow corn.
Wives and daughters should baskets of rice;
Youths and boys carry the flasks of wine.
Following after they bring a wage of meat
To the strong reapers toiling on the southern hill,
Whose feet are burned by flames of the shining sky.
Tired they toil, caring nothing for the heat,
Grudging the shortness of the long summer day.
A poor woman follows at the reapers’ side
With an infant child carried close at her breast.
With her right hand she gleans the fallen grain;
On her left arm a broken basket hangs.
And I today…by virtue of what right
Have I never once tended field or tree?
My government-pay is three hundred tons;
At the year’s end I still have grain in hand.
Thinking of this, secretly I grew ashamed;
And all day the thought lingered in my head.

There are some key differences, as well. It’s not clear whether Bai Juyi views the peasants as inferiors or equals. Under Confucian paternalism, everyone should be treated with propriety and should receive the respect due to their station, but that’s not the same as a belief that all people – peasants and officials – share a common human dignity. On the other hand, Bai’s Buddhist associations may have disposed him to see social distinctions as illusory and feel equal compassion for all beings. We have both points of view in modern America as well – that farmworkers aren’t like us but they deserve something; and that farmworkers are, in all essentials, just like the rest of us, and they deserve a hell of a lot more than they’ve gotten. Luebke’s speech came from the second place. More importantly, that sense of equality is at the heart of a long tradition of labor and farmworker organizing in this country.

Another key difference is the situation of the workers. In Bai’s poem they are peasants, working near the villages where they live with their families. They are laboring not in a wage economy, but to feed themselves and pay taxes. The dispossessed of the village, the poor woman with the infant, can follow along with the workers and glean. In North Carolina’s fields, the farmworkers are migrants. Many used to cultivate their own farms in Mexico, but thanks to NAFTA, they can’t compete on their own land and have had to become migrant workers. Now, the woman with the infant is two thousand miles away, in a town with few men of working age, and the workers are laboring in a foreign land where they don’t speak the language and have few rights.

The two differences are connected: economic pressure has the potential to undermine our philosophical commitment to equality. In a recent edition of the New York Times Magazine focused on poverty, a thoughtful article by Jason deParle dealt specifically with the question of migrant workers. Economist Lant Pritchett argues that the United States should create a large, permanent category of temporary migrant workers that can fill our low paying jobs but never – they or their children – be eligible for citizenship. Presented with the moral objections that this creates two classes, Pritchett responds, with some accuracy, “Letting guest workers in America doesn’t create an underclass....It moves an underclass and makes the underclass better off.” But Pritchett’s sometime mentor, economist Lawrence Summers, offers this caution: "[this] kind of compassionate libertarianism carries the risk of a morally problematic coarsening that we resist in many other ways." That seems right to me. I don’t think a society can create two classes of semi-permanent residents without ultimately denying the human rights of the less respected class. Over time, that impossibility has led us to eliminate official barriers based on race and gender. I’m hoping we’ll likewise find a better solution for migratory workers – and ensure that they have better living and working conditions in the meantime.

Parallel Cases from Under the Pear Tree

2007-07-13T00:41:00.000-04:00

I’ve been reading a reprint of Robert Hans Van Gulik’s 1955 translation of the T’ang-yin-pi-shih, Parallel Cases from Under the Pear Tree. The book consists of 144 short cases, arranged into 72 thematic pairs, each pair preceded by a short couplet. Gulik was the author of the Judge Dee mysteries; many of the plots of the mysteries were drawn from the cases in this and similar books.

In his introduction, Gulik suggests the book was intended as a practical handbook for junior officials: “the case books provided a welcome short-cut to a general acquaintance with the Penal Code and the methods of its enforcement, including also some elementary facts about jurisprudence and the detection of crime." In a 1990 paper contrasting the Parallel Cases (and other legal casebooks like it) with the tradition of Chinese kung-an detective fiction, Ann Waltner offers a different interpretation. She suggests the casebooks were intended as “handbooks of legal ethics…The overriding lesson of these texts is: be moral, be diligent, be cautious, and you will succeed…. Justice is a result of common sense, intelligently and fairly applied.”

As a lay reader, the book seems to me less a guide to either law or ethics than an exercise in focused reasoning. Some cases involve the detection of a criminal; other cases involve legal interpretation – deciding whether a given act is illegal and how, if at all, it should be punished. But the key element is the pairing of cases, which turns each pair into a riddle for the reader: what lesson is meant by the juxtaposition of these two cases?

That may be easiest to see with a couple specific examples. So, here’s one short pair (#26):

A. In the former Sung Dynasty (420 – 479 A.D.), when Fu Chi-Kuei was magistrate in San-yin, there were two old women, one of whom sold silk and the other needles. They had a quarrel over the ownership of a ball of silk, and brought the matter before Fu Yen. He ordered to hang the silk against a pillar and to flog it; then some iron filings dropped from it. He thereupon fined the woman who sold sugar.

B. When Li Hui of the Later Wei Dynasty (386 – 584 A.D.) served as Prefect of Yung-chou, a salt carrier and a wood carrier quarreled about a lamb-skin, each claiming it as the very one he used to wear on his back. Li Hui ordered one of his officers: “Question this skin under torture, then you will know its owner.” All of the officers were dumbfounded. Li Hui had the lamb skin placed on a mat, and had it beaten with a stick; then grains of salt came out of it. He showed them to the contestants, and the wood carrier confessed.

Each of these stories illustrates a single thought: close forensic examination of disputed property can show whose it is. (Incidentally, the reference to ‘torturing’ the skin is sardonic rather than poetic: many of the stories involve torture to force witnesses to confess. In the Parallel Cases, torture is a standard part of the collection of evidence, but more often than not results in false confessions. Sadly, that’s a lesson we apparently still need to learn.)

Here’s a more complex pair (#68):

A. In the Northern Chou Dynasty (557- 585 A.D.), when Liu Ch’ing…was Vice-Governor of Yung-chou, a Turk was robbed with violence. The local authorities initiated an investigation, but no one knew where to look for the criminal; they therefore arrested several of the victim’s neighbors. Liu Ch’ing, however, said that he could entice the real criminal by deceit. He drew up an anonymous letter and had it put up on all the gates of the official buildings. It read: ‘I and some others together robbed the Turk. Since many persons are concerned in this I fear that in the end the truth will come out. Now I desire to give myself up, but fear that I shall not escape the death penalty. If the punishment of him who gives himself up first should be commuted, I shall come forward and report.’ Thereafter Liu Ch’ing had again a notice put up promising a pardon. After two days a slave of Hsin, Prince of Kuang-ling, having covered his face, stood himself by the placard and gave himself up. Thereupon his entire band consisting of a great many persons was arrested.

B. In the Eastern Wu Dynasty (220 – 280 A.D.), when Ch’en Piao…had been appointed military commander…there were a number of people who stole government property, but only one man called Shih Ming was arrested. When questioned under torture he (being a very brave man) rather waited for his death than saying one word. The Commandant of Justice conceived doubts and reported the case to Sun Ch’uan. Since Ch’en Piao was very popular with the soldiers, Sun Ch’uan ordered to transfer Shih Ming to him. Ch’en Piao had the chains taken off the prisoner, gave him food and drink, and had him take a bath, so as to bring him in a happy mood. Then Shih Ming confessed and denounced all his accomplices. Sun Ch’uan was pleased. In order to further enhance his fame, he specially released Shih Ming, but had his accomplices executed. Shih Ming mended his ways and later became a general.

So why are these together? The first illustrates the Prisoner’s Dilemma. In the second story, it’s possible that Ch’en Piao presented Shih Ming with a similar choice, but the story doesn’t say that. Instead, it appears that simple kindness turned Shih Ming. The second story can be read to show the value of recognizing strength in an opponent, and co-opting rather than destroying them – but the first story doesn’t say what happened to the slave of Hsin who was tricked into coming forward, so that’s not a common theme. The best I can come up with is that both stories show how a criminal who cannot be reached by force can nonetheless be manipulated by a magistrate who takes the time to look at the situation from the criminal’s perspective. That’s a pretty abstract lesson, though. Any better ideas?

Why this blog?

2007-07-13T00:03:00.000-04:00

This should probably have been my first post, but it wasn’t.

My primary reasons for launching this blog are a desire to escape the burnout of solitary reading; a hunger for a community in which to exchange ideas; and a desire to find out if the challenge of composing blog entries is, like virtue, its own reward.

Regarding solitary reading, as Ecclesiastes wearily says, ‘Of making many books, there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh” [12:12] – but also, more hopefully, that there's gain in community: “two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil.” [4:9]

Online community is not a substitute for flesh and blood friends, but honestly, few friends want a call at 11:30 pm to hear about a book they are not reading. I’m hoping that this format – thoughts left for friends and strangers to read at your convenience – makes up for in convenience what it lacks in immediacy. If you’re a friend who already knows me, welcome. If you’re a roaming stranger, welcome too. Either way, I’m hoping, once I get past the practice phase, that this blog will be a series of conversations; please do post your thoughts and reactions.

As for the challenge of writing: some of the blogs I’ve visited are mirrors of the web’s hottest topics; others, curiosity cabinets of their authors' lives; still others, heartfelt cries poured into the electronic void. There’s clearly no single right way, but I’m hoping that, over time, this blog can maintain a distinct and satisfying tone, with entries that are thoughtful, engaging, and not too long. You can decide if the entries hit the mark, and let me know.

Looking for History

2007-07-09T20:46:00.000-04:00

Last winter, I ran across an excerpt of an essay titled Mexico City 1992 by New York journalist Alma Guillermoprieto, collected in The Mexico Reader. (The essay was previously published in the New Yorker and in Guillermoprieto's 1994 collection The Heart that Bleeds.) In the excerpt, Guillermoprieto used ranchera music as a theme to describe how Mexican culture was being shaped by free trade with the United States. The piece was such a pleasure to read that it sent me in search of her other writings.

This past weekend I finished reading Looking for History, which collects articles she wrote between 1994 and 2000. Most of the essays discuss then-current events in Colombia, Cuba, and Mexico, with reviews of biographies of Eva Peron and Che Guevara, and of the memoirs of Mario Vargas Llosa. I don't know how the book would be perceived by an expert on the region, but to someone with painfully little knowledge, these essays were a terrific introduction. One of Guillermoprieto's gifts is that, while she must have strong personal opinions, she presents a multifaceted view of each of her subjects. Her own thoughtful analysis works its way into the structure of her essays and her factual descriptions of her travels; she lets the guerrillas, officials, and ordinary people she interviews speak for themselves.

In recent months, I've been appalled at the mindless hostility to Mexican immigration that I've seen on the comment boards of our local newspaper and television stations. It's clear the U.S. needs a better immigration policy. It is hard to imagine how we can arrive at a compassionate, just, and viable policy without working closely with the government of Mexico to raise standards of living and economic opportunity in that country. In that regard, the last paragraph of 'The Peso' (1996), struck a particularly resonant note: "no one has yet come up with a model of development suitable to a poor country with a weak industrial base and poor agricultural potential, whose population has doubled in the last thirty years, and which is situated next to the world's most powerful economy and most voracious market for illegal drugs." It's not Guillermoprieto's purpose to try, and in any event, at this point the book's essays on Mexico are over a decade old. Nonetheless, but her account of the Zapatistas, the end of the Salinas presidency, and the fracturing of the PRI provides a very helpful background for understanding the challenges that Mexico still faces today.