What is Good?

I've just finished two books: Nixon and Mao and The Winter of Frankie Machine. Ms. MacMillan also wrote Paris 1919 about the peace treaty after WWI. She has a great style of writing. She goes back in history throughout the book to give background. We learn all about Mao, Nixon, Kissinger and the history of the world up to this point. There is no getting away from the fact that these were three very flawed men. And considering all that is happening with China today, I'm not too sure that we shouldn't have just left them in their own little world. Mao was doing a very good job of keeping them in the dark ages. Kissinger comes off as amazingly arrogant. Keen insight, no? He and Nixon used a lot of their energy keeping the State Department in the dark on the whole thing.

Nixon was determined to keep everything very hush, hush before the actual meeting took place. The State Department couldn't be trusted not to leak. But China would have done this, even if it hadn't been secret. I just don't understand Nixon's paranoia. I couldn't when he was president and I can't now. What a disgusting, small-minded man he was. Do you know that he never debated McGovern? Too bad. It could have been different.

So, in Nixon and Mao we have portraits of flawed men. In Frankie Machine we have flawed men, too. Frankie used to belong to the mafia in San Diego. Yes, that San Diego. Weird, isn't it. Then he leaves and decides to become a bait and tackle salesman on the pier. And then, just like the Godfather, he's pulled back. I really liked this guy. Here he is, a known murderer, and he has more humanity in him than Nixon did on a good day. When I was reading the beginning I just couldn't believe that he could do anything really bad. But we go back through his history to learn that he has a lot of explaining to do.

I recommend both of these books. I think they should be read together so you have a chance to decide what makes someone evil. It's hard to decide who is the worst person in these two books.

Russian Ghosts

At the end of last year I read and saw The Namesake. The hero of this book was named after his father's favorite author, Nicoli Gogol. The boy was Gogol Gangoli. At one point in the book, you learn that his father was reading The Overcoat on a train when the train was involved in an accident. Because I enjoyed The Namesake, I wanted to read something by Gogol. Luckily, The Overcoat was on sale at Audible, so I bought it.

I have a feeling that this is a book that is often read in college literature classes. Gogol was at the forefront of the Russian realism movement and this was the short story that started it for him. It is beautifully written. The translation that I read was well-written, in any event. The protagonist has an overcoat, buys an overcoat, loses an overcoat, then dies in despair due to an overcoat. Sort of. And then he becomes a ghost and haunts people who have wronged him. The detail about this man and how he saved to get his overcoat is amazing for such a short story. I can understand Gogol's father being caught up in this author's writing.

My brother loves mysteries and thrillers. Me too. I needed a paper book for the "library." Eric has quite a library of his own, so he was happy let me read one of his. I've liked Martin Cruz Smith since Gorky Park. His protagonist, Renko, is a lovely bumbly detective whose father knew Stalin. In fact, he acted a bit like Stalin when Renko was young. In Stalin's Ghost, a ghost is seen at a subway station and then a lot of stuff happens. Through it all you learn more about Renko's relationship with his father. You also learn a lot about what it's like to live in Moscow these days. And Cruz Smith seems to love snow and Moscow. There are as many layers in this book as there are in the snow drifts around the lake. I didn't want to miss a page.

I'm about half way through Nixon and Mao. I'll write more about that when I'm done. I was listening to a bit that was about China Watchers. When I was at Whittier College I had a great professor named Irene Eber. She left after my sophomore year to do some China Watching. I remember that she had written her doctoral thesis in Chinese. I also remember that I loved the class with her, probably called something like Eastern Civilization since we were required to take Western Civilization. We learned about India, China and Japan - history, people, religion, issues. I was so hooked. Then she left. I'd forgotten about her. There was nobody else like her at the college so when a friend said she was transferring to Cal State LA, I went with her. She wanted to be close to her boyfriend. I wanted to be someplace where I could learn more about Eastern Civilization. I changed my major from Government to Foreign Affairs with a Far East Asian Specialty. I started to learn Japanese and took classes about Africa and Asia. But none of those professors held a candle to Dr. Eber. And my friends were going off to fight the Viet Cong. And the world was quickly changing. But I have to thank Dr. Eber for introducing me to the East. She gave me a great foundation for understanding a world outside of Fontana, CA.

The Joint Was Jumping

Saturday was a zoo at our house. A carpenter has been working on the place for over a week. This day, he brought friends. Lots of friends. They were painting, putting in the new French door (see below), fixing rotten wood, replacing trim, repairing brick. You know, just your average household projects. They started cutting out the hole for the doors late in the work week. The drilling noise was amazing. It was like a dentist's drill on steroids. So worth it. The doors are beautiful. They let in an amazing amount of light and air. There is now a sliding screen door behind the windows.

They weren't the only ones working. No, not Eric and I. I could say we were supervising, but I went to the farmer's market and did stuff like that. Maybe Eric was supervising. Kaitlin, on the left, thought she found a quiet place to do her homework. It was quieter than her place. I can't imagine what that must sound like. Cindy, on the right, is always working at her desk. She faces the front yard. Just outside that window are several bird feeders. It is an amazing view.

I learned that one of the meat vendors at the Arlington Farmer's market was written about in The Omnivore's Dilemma. Eric keeps teasing me about buying dead "happy chickens". Once happy because they roamed free, now dead. I mentioned that to the purveyor and he said all their animals were very happy. Just read the book! I don't know why that pleases me so much, but it does. It's a good thing, because they are fairly expensive.

Mark and Trina were visiting the area. He was here for a Navy football game, she for a company conference. Eric and I went to D.C. to meet them. We had brunch by the waterfront. Behind the three you can see the Kennedy Center and just to the left of that is the Watergate complex. We enjoyed their company and watching all the boaters. There were a lot of sculls, canoes and yachts. And it was a beautiful day.

Savage Wars - Internal and International

I don't usually do this, but this review from Amazon of the Savage War of Peace tells it all. It's from The Washington Post. Once again, I don't know why I decided to read this book. But it is so relevant to what has been going on in our country and in Iraq. You must read the new edition. The author tells about all the people in the current administration who have read/are reading the book. He seems to suspect that they are only reading it because "everyone is." The truths don't seem to have sunk in.

Even if you don't relate this to our current situation, you will learn a lot. The battle for Algiers took place in my lifetime. I have a vague recollection of reading about it at the time. This book makes it perfectly clear what was happening on all sides of the war.

The Review:

When Americans talk about the raging insurgency in Iraq, they often draw parallels with the Vietnam War, but a better analogy is probably the French war against nationalist rebels in Algeria from 1954 to 1962. That's one reason why the landmark history of that conflict, Alistair Horne's A Savage War of Peace, has been an underground bestseller among U.S. military officers over the last three years, with used copies selling on Amazon.com for $150. Indeed, "Algeria" has become almost a codeword among U.S. counterinsurgency specialists -- a shorthand for the depth and complexity of the mess we face in Iraq. Earlier this year, I referred to Horne's book while conversing with one such expert in Taji, Iraq, and got a grim nod of agreement.
Now a new paperback edition of Horne's 1977 classic has been issued, cutting the price of wisdom to a more reasonable $19.95. In a new preface, Horne makes the connection to Iraq explicit. First, he notes, the Algerian insurgents fighting to end France's colonial control over the country avoided taking on the French army directly; instead, they attacked the police and other more vulnerable targets, thereby demoralizing local supporters of the French presence. Second, Algeria's porous borders greatly aided the insurgents, who could receive reinforcements, arms and sanctuary from neighboring countries such as Tunisia and Morocco. Third, and most emphatically, he writes that "torture should never, never, never be resorted to by any Western society."
Those three parallels are provocative enough, as far as they go. But many other, perhaps less obvious points in Horne's lucid, well-organized history may do even more to deepen our understanding of the Iraq War.
Again and again, Horne wrote passages about the French in Algeria that could describe the U.S. military in Iraq. As I wrote about the U.S. Army's big "cordon-and-sweep" operations that detained tens of thousands of civilian Iraqi males in the Sunni Triangle in the fall of 2003, I remembered Horne: "This is the way an administration caught with its pants down reacts under such circumstances. . . . First comes the mass indiscriminate round-up of suspects, most of them innocent but converted into ardent militants by the fact of their imprisonment."
Like the Americans in Iraq, the French in Algeria consistently misunderstood the nature of the opposition, focusing too much on supposed foreign support and too little on the local roots of the insurgency. Horne also detected a distinctly familiar pattern of official optimism among French officials, who were quick to declare their war "virtually over" four years before it ended in their defeat.
Moreover, A Savage War of Peace draws an important distinction between torture by the police and torture by the military. The former damages mainly individuals and need not be hugely damaging to the war effort; the latter, Horne quotes a former French officer as saying, involves the honor of the nation -- as it did at Abu Ghraib and other facilities where Iraqis were abused by American soldiers in 2003-04.
Along the way, Horne offers three other comments that are not particularly encouraging. First, when considering the Bush administration's policy of having U.S. forces stand down as newly trained Iraqi forces stand up, it is worth noting that throughout the eight years of the Algerian war, more Algerians were fighting on the French side than on the rebel side -- and the French still lost.
Second, when trying to understand Iraq's current violence, it is good to recall Horne's comment that "such a simultaneous internal 'civil war' " often rages alongside a "revolutionary struggle against an external enemy."
Finally, when we hear U.S. military officers arguing that they achieved their mission in Iraq but that the rest of the U.S. government failed or the will of the American people faltered, remember Horne's quotation from a French general, Jacques de Bollardière, who was critical of his army's performance: "Instead of coldly analysing with courageous lucidity its tactical and strategic errors, it gave itself up to a too human inclination and tried -- not without reason, however -- to excuse its mistakes by the faults of civil authority and public opinion."
To be sure, there are huge differences between the two wars. Most notably, the United States isn't a colonial power in Iraq, seeking to maintain a presence of troops and settlers as long as possible. Rather, in Iraq, victory would consist of getting U.S. personnel out while leaving behind a relatively friendly, open, stable and independent government. And while elements of the French military tried to assassinate French President Charles de Gaulle for pulling out from what he termed "a bottomless quagmire," there is little fear that U.S. officers will go down that rebellious road.
But there are numerous suggestive parallels -- mainly relating to conventional Western militaries fighting primarily urban insurgencies in Arab cultures while support for their wars dwindles back home and while the insurgents hope to outlast their better-armed opponents. As such, anyone interested in Iraq should read this book immediately.
Reviewed by Thomas E. Ricks Copyright 2006, The Washington Post.

Be Near Me

And I have finally read the winner of The Times Book Award for Fiction. This is a lovely book. If you read it, you should go Audible. It takes place in Scotland and the reader does Scottish very well. The protagonist is from England and that is important in the book. The reader does an excellent job of reading these voices in the correct accent.

This is about a priest who strayed while meandering his way through life. He has wonderfully supportive people around him. I loved reading about his mother and his relationship with his late fater. The characters are well drawn, the dialogue is realistic. Loved it. Please listen to it.

My life

I have been working hard this past week. I had two different jobs, worked 5 days. Argh. It was good for me and I keep meeting lovely people from whom I learn a lot. So, life continues to be good. Construction goes on at the house constantly. Workmen are putting in a beautiful door in the dining room and a hundred other things. The joint is really jumping in VA