Book Review: 'Lawrence In Arabia'

History, one might presume, is an assemblage of facts, and the longer and more complex a particular history is the more facts there are.  But facts are malleable, and it took me many years of history reading to come to understand that they too often are merely reflections of historians' perspectives -- the political axes they happen to grind.  This may be no truer than in the modern history of the Middle East because of the diet of chauvinistic Eurocentric claptrap that we have been force fed beginning with school texts and continuing through the tsunami of books extolling the benevolent greatness of the once and future colonial powers.

That Scott Anderson refuses to buy into this big lie is chief among the many virtues of his magnificent new geopolitical history, Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East.  While nominally a biography of the heroic if quixotic T.E. Lawrence, played to such great effect by Peter O'Toole in David Lean's 1962 cinematic masterpiece, it more importantly is the tale of British duplicity, with ample help from the French and the quasi-involvement of feckless Americans, in double-crossing the Arabs in the wake of their successful revolt against their Turkish oppressors in the closing days of World War I. 

Having been promised self-determination in the form of their own homeland as a reward for crushing the Ottoman Empire in its inhospitably arid western expanses, the Arabs instead were left with sloppy seconds as the imperial powers arbitrarily carved up the region, ostensibly at the post-war Versailles Peace Conference but in reality as a result of the Sykes-Picot Agreement hammered out in secret two and a half years before the Armistice.  

The upshot was the artificial boundaries of colonial Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, and eventually the state of Israel, as well.  The predictable result -- and it broke Lawrence's heart as the Arabs' only true champion -- has been never ending ethnic strife, poverty, disenfranchisement, religious extremism and, of course, terrorism.  Long story short, the Iraq, Iran and now Syrian crises were not accidents, but inevitabilities.

"Ever since [the end of World War I], Arab society has tended to define itself less by what it aspires to become than by what it is opposed to: colonialism, Zionism, Western imperialism in its many forms," Anderson writes.  As a New York Times op-ed columnist recently noted, this culture of opposition has enabled generations of dictators to distract attention from their own misrule.

And in one of his most prescient comments, Lawrence discarded the fiction relentlessly peddled by the Great Powers that the Arabs would accept a Jewish nation in their midst.  Instead, he predicted that "if a Jewish state is to be created in Palestine, it will have to be done by force of arms and maintained by force of arms amid an overwhelmingly hostile population."

Oh, and let us not forget that the emergence of the U.S.'s best regional buddy, Saudi Arabia, and its terrorist-breeding, ultra-conservative Wahhabist form of Islam, is a result of the stew concocted by Britain and France.

Things might not have worked out a whole lot differently had those nations kept their promises. But we will never know because once planted, the toxic seed of imperialist duplicity has not and never will be completely eradicated.  While the Arab Spring is a beautiful thing, the tortured history that preceded it and its uncertain future are an inevitable result of the folly alluded to in the subtitle of Lawrence in Arabia.

* * * * *

T.E. Lawrence was a welter of contradictions.  Beyond agreement that he had the iciest of blue eyes and stood five-foot-five inches tall (10 inches shorter than O'Toole), historians have squabbled endlessly over whether this controversial and enigmatic figure, who "rode into battle at the head of an Arab army and changed history," Anderson writes, was greatness personified or merely lucky.

The short answer, Anderson concludes, is anticlimactic: Although Lawrence's exploits were larger than life, he was able to become Lawrence of Arabia because no one was paying much attention.

"Amid the vast slaughter occurring across the breadth of Europe in World War I, the Middle Eastern theater of war was of markedly secondary importance.  Within that theater, the Arab Revolt to which Lawrence became affiliated was, to use his own words, 'a sideshow of a sideshow.' "

* * * * *

Lawrence is, of course, the primary focus of Lawrence in Arabia, but Anderson artfully weaves in the stories of four other key but comparatively little known characters: Curt Prufer, a German scholar turned spy and Turkish adviser; Djemal Pasha, a Turkish leader who showed equal parts compassion and ruthlessness; William Yale, a New England blue blood and State Department special agent while on Standard Oil of New York's payroll, and Aaron Aaronsohn, an agronomist and master spy who was at odds with most other advocates of a Jewish state and contemptuous of the dirt poor Palestinians who would be displaced.

While Lawrence helped the Arabs win the war but could not help them win the peace, his lasting legacy is his plea that Westerners discard their stilted thinking about Arabs and immerse themselves in the local environment, wherever it might be, as to know "its families, clans and tribes, friends and enemies, wells, hills and roads."

Lawrence is best known for Seven Pillars of Wisdom, a sometimes overly fanciful yet fascinating account of his years as a liaison officer with rebel forces during the Arab Revolt on which the Lean movie is based.  But it is his Twenty-Seven Articles, a treatise written for his superiors in 1917, that continues to have profound influence today.   Nearly a century later, Twenty-Seven Articles has the force of revelation, and amid the American military "surge" in Iraq in 2006, General David Petraeus ordered his senior officers to read it so that they might better learn how to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people.

Today's State Department diplomats -- whether toiling in Benghazi or Beirut -- would be well advised to do the same.

 MEANWHILE . . .

Two other books that I've recently read brilliantly capture the transcendental futility of World War I: Robert Graves' autobiographical Good-Bye to All That and Mark Helprin's fictional A Soldier of the Great War.

Good-Bye (1929), which is considered to be one of the greatest of non-fiction books, traces Graves' monumental loss of innocence as a captain in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers as he grapples with the horror of the war and later bitterly bids farewell to England and its absurd class culture.  A Soldier (2005) is the magnificently told story of a prosperous Roman lawyer whose life is shattered by the war.  He becomes a hero, then a prisoner and deserter who wanders through a ravaged Europe, in the process losing one family for another.

The Crisis In Syria & The Bush Legacy: A Toxic Gift That Keeps On Poisoning

Many reasons have been offered for the near-paralysis among the U.S. and its allies in fashioning a response to the thuggery of the Assad regime in Syria.  Does anyone really believe that relieving the strongman of a few canisters of nerve gas will make a difference?  But the perhaps least discussed reason is by far the biggest: The Bush Legacy, a toxic gift that keeps on poisoning.

I write of course, of the eight-year interregnum during which George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and their henchmen, chief among them Donald Rumsfeld and John Bolton, used the 9/11 attacks some 12 years ago today as a pretense for invading Iraq at the cost of a trillion-plus dollars and 4,400 American and many tens of thousands of Iraqi lives.  Their actions obliterated a healthy budget surplus, in tandem with tax cuts for the rich tanked the economy and, most importantly in the context of the Syria crisis, plunged America's standing in the world to an historic low. 

The toxicity of the Bush Legacy cannot be underestimated, or as Dubya himself would say, misunderestimated.

It, and not some new found cowardice, is the predominant reason Britain, the U.S.'s most dependable ally in the post-World War II world, and Germany, among other European powers, have turned cold shoulders to Obama's overtures, as if to say, "Fool us once, shame on you; fool us twice, shame on us."  

"The real reason the vote [in the British Parliament to back Obama] was lost was not so much doubt about strategy as the toxic nature of association with the United States, the idea of being dragged along again like a poodle in a U.S.-led military operation," Jonathan Eyal of the Royal United Services Institute told The New York Times. “For Britain’s self-defined status in the world the vote was catastrophic. It has fatally hit the special relationship.”

Combine that with a profound war weariness at home directly attributable to the Iraq war and the mission in Afghanistan, which was repeatedly looted by the Bush administration in service of the Iraq fiasco, as well as a maddening wishy-washiness on President Obama's part on foreign affairs generally, and you have the recipe for that near-paralysis.

If there is an upside to the Bush Legacy, it may be that the very neocons who are sharpening their knives in anticipation of playing a major role in which Republican will face off against Hillary Clinton in 2016, will find their standing in the party seriously diminished.  But there is a downside to that, as well -- the neo-isolationists like Marco Rubio now emergent in the party who in their own way are as dangerous as the waterboard crowd.

After all, Assad and other bad guys doing bad things around the world aren't going to go away.  And the United Nations isn't going to suddenly grow a pair, which means that the next strongman accused of having weapons of mass destruction needs to be dealt with firmly.  Like that Saddam Hussein. 

Oh, wait a minute . . .

* * * * * 

There is more or less a consensus among historians that the worst presidents in U.S. history were Warren G. Harding, Ulysses S. Grant, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson and Franklin Pierce. 

While each of these ignobles left big messes for their successors to clean up (except in the case of Grant, who made an even bigger mess than had Johnson, his predecessor), and even allowing for how different the world stage is today than 60 or 160 years ago, the Bush Legacy is indeed in a league of its own.

If we can be thankful for anything, it is that unlike the unapologetic Cheney and Rumsfeld, whose loathing of Obama is visceral, Bush has kept his pie hole shut about Syria.  Some commentators are saying that his refusal to take a stand is cowardly, while I happen to think it is wise. 

I give Bush enough credit to believe that he knows he's a Nowhere Man.  And to riff off another rock lyric, most Americans -- as well as the world community at large -- won't get fooled again.

Environmental Activist Nancy Shukaitis Goes Back To The Barricades. Again.

Nancy Michael Shukaitis is a hero in her own time. 

Beginning in the 1950s, she opposed a plan to dam the scenic middle Delaware River -- the largest free-flowing river east of the Mississippi -- that would create an immense reservoir at Tocks Island and submerge hundreds of homes and farms.  At first she was a lonely voice facing down the powerful Army Corps of Engineers and politicians in four states.  Twenty years later, she was a leader of an eclectic coalition that would be a lightning rod for the nascent American environmental movement.  Shukaitis and her allies fought the plan all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court -- and won.

Now four decades on, Shukaitis, who is approaching 90 years old, is back at the barricades again.  Her tireless efforts resulted in legislation that substantially enlarged the 70,000-acre Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area with its stunning range of flora and fauna, waterfalls, the Appalachian Trail and historic homes and farms only 75 miles from New York City.  But that legacy is now threatened by a plan by two power companies to build high-voltage electric transmission lines strung between looming 197-foot-tall towers over clear cut forest through the heart of the recreation area that will dwarf everything in their path and be visible for many miles, despoiling a leafy, river-straddling panorama without peer in the region.

A coalition of New Jersey environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, has filed suit against the U.S. Park Service in federal District Court in Washington to stop work on the 500-kilovolt Susquehanna-Roseland Power Line, which would run 130 miles from Berwick in Columbia County in Northeastern Pennsylvania to Roseland in Essex County in North Jersey. 

The coalition argues that the Park Service unlawfully granted permission for construction of the line on the existing 4.3-mile footprint of a much smaller 230-kilovolt line build in the 1920s, nearly a half century before the recreation area was created.  This, it says, is in violation of the Park Service's own rules, the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, and the Environmental Policy Act of 1969.  They note that the Park Service itself acknowledges in its own power line impact study that it "would adversely affect protected resources within the park, in some instances irreversibly." The plaintiff's case would seem to be a slam dunk, but given today's anything-can-happen legal climate, it is not.

PPL of Pennsylvania and Public Service Gas & Electric of New Jersey, the power companies that would operate the line, claim it must be built because of an order from PJM, the regional electric grid operator, to upgrade existing lines to address power demand issues that were expected to occur in North Jersey by 2012.  But not only have such issues not materialized, demand has dropped because of energy conservation, while four cleaner burning natural-gas powered generating stations will be coming on line in North Jersey in coming years that will provide more than enough electricity.  As it is, electricity for the line would be generated by highly polluting coal-fired power stations in Western Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia.

The real -- if unstated -- reason that PPL and PSE&G are anxious to build the power line is that the utilities would be able to pass on the entire cost of the $750 million project to 51 million ratepayers in the PJM region while making a tidy profit.  The electricity available because of the line would be sold by PSE&G to New York City at rates far greater than it charges its New Jersey customers.  When PSE&G completes a long-term agreement to manage the Long Island Power Authority, electricity from the line also would be sold there at inflated rates. 

Except for Shukaitis, the silence on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River has been deafening. 

The editorial page of the hometown Pocono Record, which slavishly supported the Tocks plan, has remained silent.  It's not hard to see why: One of the companies behind the power line is among the Record's biggest advertisers.  When Shukaitis submitted an op-ed piece in opposition to the power line, she was told it would not run unless she personally paid for it in the form of an ad.  Insulted, she nevertheless did.

Meanwhile, environmental and conservation groups in the Poconos are not taking a stand on the power line.  Again, it's not hard to see why.  The power companies have said they will create a multi-million dollar fund to purchase open space in return for desecrating the heart of the recreation area, and these groups seem to be in thrall of the prospect of "free" land.

The ugly underside of these bribe lands is that if the power companies get their way in the recreation area, this extraordinary precedent will allow them to wreak irreversible environmental havoc wherever they want in the region. 

Take the Cherry Valley National Wildlife Refuge and its diverse mosaic of wetland and upland habitats.  The refuge was created in 2008 largely because of the efforts of the Friends of Cherry Valley organization, but the group has been a study in silence as the power line controversy has played out, although one of its board members, who happens to be a public official, has attacked the Sierra Club for its opposition to the power line.

Having made a deal with this particular devil by default,  the group will be unable to stop a power company from putting a power line through the heart of the refuge or any other encroachment, for that matter.  A dam -- yes, a dam, in this case to drive a hydroelectric power system -- may be lurking in the future at Wallenpaupack Bend, some 10 miles north of Tocks.  This would be bitterly ironic since it was the very fight against that dam that was to leave the river and the verdant valley through which it flows in their natural state.

And in the latest potential assault on the river and recreation area, the Delaware River Basin Commission -- the four-state and federal authority that regulates water resources in the basin -- is being pressured to lift a moratorium on fracking, a controversial method in use elsewhere in Northeastern Pennsylvania to extract more natural gas using water and cancer-causing chemicals.  A new study concludes that allowing fracking near the recreation area would have a negative environmental impact.

"We don't need enemies.  They are us," Shukaitis told me several years ago with her customary prescience, aware that the battle against Tocks would not be the last she would have to fight.  It was not.

* * * * *

Peter Hall of the Allentown (Pa.) Morning Call has written a fine article on Shukaitis.  Click here for more on the Delaware River and Shukaitis's crusade against the Tocks Island dam.  Click here for more on the fracking study.  Shukaitis's extensive papers are at Lehigh University's Special Collections Department.

PHOTOGRAPH BY THE AUTHOR

Mahavishnu John McLaughlin: The Amazing Godfather Of Fusion Is Back

When the history of the jazz guitar is written, Mahavishnu John McLaughlin is sure to have a chapter of his own, and a deservedly large one.  It was McLaughlin who changed the direction of the instrument from the smooth sound of Charlie Christian, Les Paul and Wes Montgomery, imbuing it with a technical precision and harmonic sophistication paired with aggressive speed, exotic scales and unconventional time signatures. As a godfather of the fusion genre, he galloped off into uncharted musical territory, catching the attention of jazz legends including Miles Davis, with whom he recorded five albums, among them the seminal Bitches Brew.

Forty years on, the man Jeff Beck calls "the best guitarist alive" not only has not lost his virtuosic intensity, but has returned with a passion to amplified music after an acoustic sabbatical.  This was very much on display during an electrifying performance on June 17 at the Musikfest Café at SteelStacks in Bethlehem, Pa.

Backed by the 4th Dimension, a band he assembled in 2010 for To The One and his new Now Hear This album, McLaughlin is celebrating his 71th birthday year with a tour of jazz festivals and intimate clubs like the Musikfest Café.  This formidable ensemble includes powerhouse Indian drummer Ranjit Barot, Cameroon-born bassist Etienne M'Bappe and fellow Yorkshire Brit keyboardist (and occasional drummer) Gary Husband.  You know they're great musicians because they would have to be to keep up with the master, and the interplay -- no set lists and no whispering instructions between songs, merely eye contact -- melded them into a sublime oneness. 

* * * * * 

I count the first time I saw McLaughlin in 1973 as one of my most unforgettable musical experiences. 

My friends and I (how to say it?) were ambushed.  The main event that evening at Philadelphia's Academy of Music was Weather Report, and the warm-up act a group called Mahavishnu Orchestra, about whom we knew nothing.  The deeply powerful opening notes from McLaughlin's trailblazing ensemble levitated me out of my seat, and I never really came back down.  Weather Report was in its heyday and great in its own right, but Mahavishnu (with McLaughlin on double-neck guitar, Billy Cobham on drums, Rick Laird on bass guitar, Jan Hammer on keyboards and synthesizer, and Jerry Goodman on violin) was transcendental.

Fast forward four decades.

In the course of a two-hour set, McLaughlin ranged  from Mahavishnu Orchestra-tinged compositions to pieces reminiscent of his tabla-infused Shakti ensembles to lovingly played covers of jazz classics, including Pharoah Sanders' Light at the Edge of the World and John Coltrane's A Love Supreme. McLaughlin now plays a single-neck custom Paul Reed Smith guitar, but his early fascination with Indian classical music merged with jazz, rock and Eastern influences is never far from the surface in everything he plays.

* * * * * 

Mahavishnu John McLaughlin (Mahavishnu translates roughly as Godhead) seems to be able to talk endlessly about the musical universe and his place in it. 

The title Now Hear This "is related to the state of awareness, very important in jazz and all improvised music," he has said. "It all has to do with the environment. Being in the moment is important to jazz musicians. We spend time living in yesterday and tomorrow, but collective improvisation can only take place in the moment.

"I don't see myself as a composer. I can't sit down and expect it to happen. Inspiration might come under the shower, in a restaurant, or even in a plane. When it comes at inopportune moments, I have to write it down. I remember one time when it came on a plane and the only thing I had to write on was the barf bag."

The Musikfest Café is about as unusual a musical venue you're likely to encounter.  The stage is framed by floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on the immense blast furnaces of the former Bethlehem Steel Works, the surreal looking structures morphing through an mesmerizing series of colors as the sun set behind them.

In the end, McLaughlin's music is deeply satisfying.  But just as you couldn't ride a roller coaster every say, or as a friend suggested watch a fireworks display, an evening of music with this godfather of fusion goes a long way.

ABOUT STEELSTACKS

Bethlehem is located in Pennsylvania's Lehigh valley, 80 miles west of New York City and 70 miles northeast of Philadelphia.  The gritty industrial city suffered a grave blow when its largest employer, Bethlehem Steel, once the U.S.'s second-largest steel producer, closed is doors in the face of withering foreign competition and cheap labor, and a short-sighted penchant for short-term profits.

But the community has fought back, revitalizing its historic downtown and building SteelStacks.  More than $70 million has been invested in SteelStacks through state and federal grants and contributions from corporate and private donors.

Today, the former plant is once again thriving, this time as one of the premier destinations in the Northeast for music, art and entertainment. Since its opening in spring 2011, more than one million people have visited SteelStacks to enjoy over 1,700 musical performances, films, community celebrations and festivals, including Musikfest, the largest free music festival in the nation.  

The purpose-built Musikfest Café, located on the 3rd and 4th floors of the ArtsQuest center, is among the most intimate venues I've visited in nearly 50 years of concert going.  No seat is more than 60 feet from the stage and the acoustics, despite all the open architectural steel work, are excellent.  There also are a full-service restaurant and bistro offering pub fare.  Table service was excellent and parking is free.

Understanding The Greatness Of Obama's End-To-Perpetual-War Speech

Barack Obama's speech last week calling for an end to perpetual war was, bar done, the greatest given by an American president in my lifetime.

This is because the speech articulated fundamental truths about the times in which we live long overdue in the telling, chief among them that our democracy demands that while we must continue to fight terrorism, the perpetual war the 9/11 attacks unleashed must end.  And this: History shows that while terrorism continues to be ever present in many guises, it is by no means the greatest threat that America has faced, let alone one that justified abrogation of the liberties and principles that are the bedrock of our society.

Republicans predictably took to the fainting couch en masse, because -- let's face it folks -- you either like war or you don't like it, and the ideologues who have bent the Grand Old Party out of any recognizable shape believe there is no higher calling than shedding American blood on foreign soil no matter how flimsy the reasons for doing so may be.  This mindset, in turn, prompted a litany of brickbats aimed at the commander in chief, the most inane of which surely was that he has "a pre-9/11 mindset."

Among those with that mindset was James Madison, whom the president quoted as saying, "No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."  In other words, wars compromise our values and we eventually become what we hate.  (Thank you, Messrs Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld.)

Obama defined the scope of the future struggle against terrorism and other global threats in a post-perpetual war America. This includes repealing the Authorization for Use of Military Force mandate, giving the military, intelligence agencies and law enforcement the right tools, focusing on more localized threats like Benghazi, and more judicious use of unmanned drones.  Oh, and dear Congressfolk, it's long past time to close Guantánamo Bay, dammit.

Talk, of course, is cheap and Obama has broken promises in the past.  Then there is the matter of those obdurate Republicans, whom he has no hope of engaging.  This means that when it comes to actions like closing Gitmo and transferring the hardest of the remaining hardcore prisoners to escape-proof federal maximum-security prisons, he will have to pretty much go it alone.

In the end, what made the president's speech so great was that it was an appeal to a war-weary nation for a return to normality.  That is to say an America that has a proportional approach to counter-terrorism, like the pre-9/11 responses to the Beirut embassy bombing, Pan American flight 103, and the attacks on American facilities and embassies in Saudi Arabia and East Africa.  In which soft power trumps hard power in all but the most extreme circumstances. 

I am 66 and a veteran. I also am a keen observer of history, and America’s perpetual warmaking has prompted me to reread Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest and Fitzgerald’s Fire in the Lake, two of the very best and most honest books about the Vietnam War. The lessons unlearned from that misadventure were much on my mind as Obama spoke.  His perspective, wisdom and candor were deeply refreshing, and all the more so because of my own malaise.

It seems to me that Obama has had a catharsis and was not merely coddling his grumpy liberal base or trying to paper over scandals, as some critics would have it.  Perhaps the Nobel Peace Prize winner was being mindful of his legacy.  In any event, I can imagine a late night conversation with a trusted friend who told him, “Mr. President, it’s time to take it home on this war business."

We may never know, but someone or something got to him and America will be better for it.

Photograph by Saul Loeb/AFP-Getty Images

Before Hallmark Cards There Was . . .

My Mother: Jane Page Snellenburg Mullen (1927-2000)

A Mother's Day Proclamation (1870)
By Julia Ward Howe

Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

"We're Number 17! We're Number 17!" America's Hellbent Race To The Bottom

The United States was once an indisputably great country, and in some respects perhaps the greatest country.  I speak not of American Exceptionalism, the belief of neoconservatives and some fundamentalist Christians that God made this nation to spread liberty and democracy to the unwashed masses, in the case of the Iraq War at point of gun.   I speak of a nation where prosperity and success could be attained through hard work, where there were myriad educational and job opportunities, and where borders were open to people in pursuit of the American Dream.

But in recent decades America's standing has steadily eroded, and today it is indisputably no longer a great country, ranking at or near the bottom among the 17 industrialized nations in quality-of-life and other social measures.  This, of course, will come as news to many of us, not the least of whom are the inside-the-Beltway politicians who fiddle while America crumbles.

America is first by some measures, all of them negative: These include infant mortality, incarceration rates and anxiety disorders, as well as a gulf between the rich and everyone else that accelerated during the Bush Recession as the economy tanked and unemployment soared, but CEOs and their corporations pocketed record stock dividends and profits.  But by other measures, including life expectancy (despite by far the highest health-care costs in the world), as well as obesity, child poverty, commitment to infrastructure development, broadband access and arts funding, America ranks dead last or nearly so.

* * * * *

This hellbent race to the bottom ("We're Number 17! We're Number 17!") has been a group effort, but the three arms of government -- the executive, legislative and judicial branches -- that are supposed to be the custodians of our national interests must shoulder most of the blame.

Nixon's excesses and Clinton's infidelities aside, the Bush-Cheney interregnum was not merely the darkest chapter in modern American history with its gross distortion of presidential power, including the use of torture and governance by fear, it has remained a debilitating presence in the four-plus years since Barack Obama took office.  While the young president has suffered his share of self-inflicted wounds, as well as the slings and arrows of cruel Republicans and spineless Democrats, the toxic fallout from the first eight years of the decade has compromised his ability to lead.

Congress deserves the harshest criticism because it is so out of touch with all but the most affluent and powerful Americans.  I recently read David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest and was struck by how President Johnson and his advisers had to escalate the Vietnam War by stealth because Congress would never have approved massive troop increases and a sustained bombing campaign because the American people would not have supported them.  Contrast that with how Congress rolled over on gun control in fawning obeisance to the National Rifle Association, America's largest terrorist organization, although most of us favor toughening laughably weak federal laws and demanded action in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has become a branch of the Republican Party and the plutocracy, its hackery evident in decisions from Citizens United to enshrining workplace discrimination and validating civil liberties abuses, to protecting Big Pharma from liability for killer drugs and medical devices.

* * * * * 

I am in the clutches of a malaise.  It is impossible for me not to conclude that America is abandoning its youth, its elderly and its poor; is suffocating its middle class, increasing numbers of whom have become working poor; is timid and risk averse; is allowing the drift from productive manufacturing to a service economy where little is made of value; continues to give obscene tax breaks to the super rich and corporations; fails to confront the fossil fuel monster that saps our resources and further dirties our environment, and has turned its back on newcomers while disenfranching voters.

And not least has turned away from its own rich history, core values and virtues to the point where many of us, if shown a copy of the Bill of Rights, would believe it to be a subversive document.

* * * * *

What makes my malaise so deep is that I do not merely believe things will continue to become worse in a land for which I have bled red, white and blue.  I believe they may never get better.

If you feel otherwise, please offer your thoughts on how the country can rebound within the present political and social framework.  And if big changes are necessary beyond that framework, as well, what are they?  If the darkest hour is before the dawn, what should a new American dawn bring?

Cartoon du Jour

Tom Toles/The Washington Post

(2011)

Why Have Our Dear American Golden Retrievers Become Cancer Time Bombs?

(ORIGINAL VERSION PUBLISHED IN 2006)

It's not hard to see why Golden Retrievers are among the most popular breeds in the U.S. year in and year out. They're cuddly cute as puppies and beautiful as adults. They're great around kids, energetic, intelligent, intensely loyal and easy to train. In fact, they often train their owners. 

But American golden retrievers are also are ticking time bombs. An extraordinary six of every 10 Goldens succumb to cancer well before living to the once typical 12- to 16-year life expectancy. The mortality rate for other dog breeds, as well as for humans, is three in 10. 

While any dog that has lived beyond its normal reproductive years is at increased risk for cancer and Goldens are not alone compared to other breeds in this regard, anecdotal evidence suggests that an inordinate number of Goldens are dying before they reach middle age 

This post has become somewhat of a Wailing Wall for people who have lost their Goldens. Some 73 of them have shared stories of their losses as of this date. The average age of these dogs is 8.4 years.

* * * * *

The outlines of the Golden epidemic have been clear for over 10 years, but organizations like the Golden Retriever Club of America (GRCA), while on the one hand funding studies on and supporting research into the cancers, have done little or nothing to rein in greedy member breeders who play God in knowingly selling interbred, cancer-prone puppies to unsuspecting buyers who end up heartbroken. 

Their rationale, in so many words, is that it's not their job. The GRCA's homepage contains no mention of the epidemic and the association has not updated its National Health Survey of the breed since 1999. 

The GRCA has gone so far as to recommend that owners give their Goldens a regular regimen of a drug that has been shown to inhibit cancers, which is not unlike a car manufacturer recommending that drivers wear crash helmets when using vehicles that it knows cause an inordinate number of fatal accidents. 

Meanwhile, it would seem to stand to reason that if breeders only bred Goldens whose parents were long-lived, progress could be made against the epidemic. 

Alas, many breeders seem to be in the business only for the money and have little interest in improving the breed. No surprise there. Purebred Golden pups can fetch upwards of $2,500 and the alternative to selling dogs with shortened life expectancies is to stop selling them. Period. 

And while the canine genome has been successfully sequenced, the fine print of the genetics of Goldens and their cancers is still not understood well enough to hold out hope for Goldens less vulnerable to cancer in the foreseeable future.

* * * * *

I know of the Golden Retriever cancer epidemic all too well. I have lived with and been acquainted with a dozen or so goldens over the years. I have midwifed their births, taken them to the vets, helped breed them and cradled them in my arms as they drew their last breaths.

It's hard to name favorites, but Ruffie (Medford Ben's Ruffles was the snooty name on her pedigree papers) would have to be at the top of my list. 

Ruffie was special from the time she opened her tiny eyes. While she played with her litter mates, there was an unpuppy-like serenity about her which grew deeper as she matured. She in turn seemed to impart a Zen-like quality on her own offspring, who included Cody, the companion of a good friend, and a sweetheart by the name of Luna.But despite careful attention to their diets, plenty of exercise, regular visits to a terrific vet and the love and devotion of their owners, Ruffie departed this world well before her time, a victim of lymphoma (cancer of the lymphatic system) at age five, while Luna died at age three, also of lymphoma. Cody, meanwhile, lived to the relatively ripe old age of 11 before succumbing to hemangiosarcoma (cancer of the blood). 

While hemangiosarcoma and lymphoma are the leading killers of Goldens, the breed also is at increased risk for osteosarcoma (cancer of the bones) and immune system diseases -- primarily allergies and hypothyroidism -- that can comprise their ability to destroy abnormal cells before they can cause cancer. 

In fact, it may be that the first litter of founder dog Goldens -- a cross between a registered Tweed Water Spaniel and unregistered yellow flat-coated retriever bred in 1865 by a Scottish land baron who was seeking a superior sporting dog -- carried genes that have led to widespread immune system dysfunction in the breed.

All purebred dogs are technically interbred, but as Rhonda Hovan, an Ohio breeder and health and genetics writer puts it, Goldens may have a very similar inherited "germ line" that put them at greater risk. 

"One gets cancer, another becomes hypothyroid, another gets lots of hot spots, and another has food allergies -- but the underlying genes that put them at risk for cancer and which are passed on to the next generation, may be very similar," Hovan explains. 

This situation is further complicated because cancers usually don't appear until after a Golden is no longer bred but has passed on its genes to multiple puppies.

* * * * *

There is little that Golden owners can do to detect cancers in their dogs and they often are too advanced to treat when discovered, although there have been strides in treating the cancers with Palladia, the first FDA-approved cancer drug for dogs, as well as some of the same chemotherapy drugs used in humans.

Such treatments can be quite expensive, $26,000 in the instance of one owner who managed to prolong her Golden's life by only a few months, while some pet health insurance policies have cancer riders that do not cover hereditary conditions.

There are some early warning signs. These include lumps or masses on or under the skin, vomiting, diarrhea, lethargy, difficulty in breathing and changes in eating habits, but many Goldens seem fine one minute and are deathly ill or dead the next.

Hovan had a Golden who had hiked 8,000 miles by her side and died of hemangiosarcoma."As experienced as I am," Hovan said, "I didn't know until 12 hours before she passed away." 

As with humans, lifestyle can make a difference. Studies show that dogs that are lean and fit have a lower risk of cancer, as well as other health problems, but there is no evidence that exotic diets make a difference. 

Not much of a defense in the face of an unrelenting epidemic without end.

SOURCES

"Pedigree Dogs Exposed," a BBC One documentary first aired on August 19, 2008; "When Cancer Comes With a Pedigree" by Melinda Beck, The Wall Street Journal (May 4, 2010); Winning Cancer Fight: No Longer Automatic Death Verdict Thanks To Advances" by Amy Sacks, New York Daily News (November 14, 2009); "Understanding Cancer In Golden Retrievers" by Rhonda Hovan; Email interview by the author with Hovan.

Why Joe Biden Has Become The Most Influential Vice President In History (Sorry, But Dick Cheney Doesn't Count)

When Barack Hussein Obama takes the presidential oath of office on January 21, at his side will be Joseph Robinette Biden, without question the most influential vice president for good in American history.  This by way of differentiating him, as if one needs to, from Richard Bruce Cheney, without question the most influential vice president for evil in American history.

Perhaps one reason Biden's star has risen so high is because he succeeded Cheney, who acted as a de facto president when it suited his imperial self, usurped the roles of national security adviser and secretary of state, was a tireless cheerleader for the use of torture and fear mongering, a scold in accusing anyone who didn't agree with him as being unpatriotic, a key player in going to war against Iraq, and a man who brooked no dissent.  Ever.  

By contrast, Biden's chops as a conciliator, honed through 36 years in the Senate, has thrust him into the spotlight at key junctures since Obama was elected, most recently in breaking the fiscal cliff logjam.  Additionally, and perhaps most importantly as history will show, Biden has played a special role as Obama's devil's advocate with the encouragement of a president nearly two decades his junior. 

Biden has spoken up when he believed Obama was not making the correct decision, notably in being the sole holdout among the president's inner circle in opposing the daring raid that took out Osama bin Laden, and as the harshest skeptic of the president's Afghanistan strategy, so harsh that some Pentagon bigs labeled him a traitor behind his back.  As history will also show, Obama got lucky with Bin Laden and Biden was right regarding Afghanistan.

There are those who will tell you that Biden was destined for greatness, but I would not be one of them.

I met the future vice president when I was 12 and on my way to junior high school, and he was 17 and entering his senior year at a Roman Catholic boy's school. He was a gangly kid with no apparent social skills and had a stutter. We played beach volleyball together at the Delaware shore for a couple of summers, and his folks and my folks became friends. Delaware, you see, is even smaller than it looks on a map.

Biden went on to the University of Delaware, where he excelled at political science in a department later chaired by the late Jim Soles, who was to attract the future managers of both the 2008 Obama and McCain campaigns to Delaware as undergrads. I followed Joe to Delaware where I excelled at nothing except getting in trouble with the university administration as editor of the student newspaper.

Although I sort of kept up with Biden through my parents' friendship with his, our paths didn't cross again until 1972, my second election as a voter, when I pulled the lever for a Joe who had long left behind the traits of awkward adolescence.

Biden upset a longtime Republican U.S. senator, but within days of the election suffered the tragic deaths of his wife and baby daughter in a traffic accident.  (Years later, he had his own brush with mortality after suffering a potentially fatal brain aneurysm.) Persuaded by Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield to not quit, he began the first of six terms in Washington -- at 29 the youngest senator in modern history -- and a tenure in the upper chamber that was to be characterized by hard work, growing foreign relations expertise, a willingness to conciliate, which is to say compromise, and a successful hair weave, as well as a tendency to shoot from the lip.

As my friend Mark Bowden wrote in an Atlantic essay, Biden is in some respects the antithesis of the president he serves.

"No one believes Obama would want, need, or tolerate a Rasputin across the [West Wing] lobby," Bowden wrote. "But whether it has been managing the tricky drawdown of American involvement in Iraq, or implementing the $787 billion Recovery Act, or soothing worries in Eastern Europe over Obama’s revised missile-defense strategy, or helping select two Supreme Court nominees, Biden seems the opposite of a pain in the ass. He has made himself indispensable."

Biden's indispensability was on offer during the many meetings on how to take out Osama bin Laden.  Defense Secretary Robert Gates, like the vice president, also opposed an air or ground operation, but later went along with the high-risk ground mission that Obama advocated.

"Mr. President, my suggestion is: don’t go," Biden said during one Situation Room meeting. "We have to do . . . more things to see if he's [at a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan]." Biden believed that if the raid failed, Obama could say good-bye to a second term. 

Like vice presidents in general, Biden has been subjected to ridicule.

Beyond his verbal blunders, there was The Awl's liveblog (with the sound off) of the Biden-Ryan vice president debate and a hilarious series of articles and images in The Onion to which Biden has reacted to with good humor and then some.  A consequence is that these send-ups have burnished his image as a Joe Sixpack.  (For the record, Biden does not drink alcohol.)

"Look, I ran for president [in 2008]," Biden told Bowden, "because I honest-to-God believed that for the moment, given the cast of characters and the problems of the country, I thought I was clearly the best-equipped to lead the country . . . But here's what I underestimated: I had two elements that I focused on, which made me decide to run. One was American foreign policy, and the other was the middle class and what's happening to them economically. If Hillary were elected or I were elected, and assume I did as good a job as I could possibly get done, it would have taken me four years to do what [Obama] did in four weeks, in terms of changing the perception of the world about the United States of America. Literally. It was overnight. It wasn’t about him. It was about the American people . . . It said, these guys really do mean what they say. All that stuff about the Constitution, and all about equality, I guess it's right."

The biggest reason for Biden's success is revealed in that reflection on 2008: As in the Senate, he has made his own political fortunes secondary and those of the president and country he serves first and foremost.

Dance Of The Dunes: The Biggest Lesson To Be Learned From Superstorm Sandy

An iconic Sandy-damaged house in Union Beach, New Jersey

I was a beach baby, a fortunate child who spent much of each summer at the Delaware shore.  I was able to swim in the ocean by age three, mindful of big breakers and undertows because of a father who had been a lifeguard.  And had met my mother when she introduced herself to a ruggedly handsome man atop a lifeguard stand at the very beach where my brother, sister and I were to later swim, built sand castles, eat Boardwalk fries and Old Bay-seasoned steamed blue crabs, took surreptitious sips of beer offered by my father's Irish emigre mother, and endure raucous late-night poker games while tossing and turning on uncomfortable cots in the hot and stuffy attics of rental cottages. 

I cannot recollect exactly when I first understood that this beach was a sort of house of cards, but I did eventually become aware that cottages, hotels, and boardwalk shops and concessions had been built chockablock on the dunes that are the environmental underpinnings of many beaches, disrupting the cyclical ebb and flow of the beach.  That became obvious after the Great Nor'easter of 1962, which pretty much wiped out the beach block and dozens of ratty wood frame buildings, including the cottages where we had stayed.

When this beach town rebuilt, it was mindful of allowing the dunes free rein.  Then in a second victory for common sense, in 1971 Delaware established a landmark Coastal Zone in which construction of industrial plants and high rises were prohibited.  Most of the shoreline, save for a few relatively small incorporated communities, became state park where the dunes could come and go unfettered.  And have provided surprises on our first trips to our particular state beach of choice each spring.  Had the beach grown or shrunk over the winter?  How much had the dune line moved?  Toward or away from the ocean? 

This so-called Dance of the Dunes was a lesson never understood -- and in some cases rejected outright --  by many of the New York and New Jersey shore communities devastated by Superstorm Sandy in late October.  Meanwhile, communities mindful of the dunes' crucial role that had allowed their beaches free rein, suffered substantially less damage from Sandy's vicious storm surge.

There perhaps is no more pungent example of the wisdom of allowing Mother Nature to have her way than Long Beach, New York and three neighboring beaches on the westernmost barrier island off Long Island's South Shore. 

Barrier islands are narrow strips of sand that are parallel to mainland coasts and especially vulnerable to hurricanes.  This prompted the Army Corps of Engineers to propose a $98 million plan in the late 1990s to build dunes and elevate beaches along the six miles of barrier island where Long Beach is located, but its city ouncil voted unanimously against paying the community's $7 million initial share in the project.  Surfers said a new beach would interfere with the curl of the waves, while businesses dependent on tourists railed against it because the ocean view from the Boardwalk would be obscured by new dunes.

The neighboring communities of Point Lookout, Lido Beach and Atlantic Beach approved construction of 15-foot-high dunes. Those dunes -- sea walls of sand and vegetation -- spared them a catastrophe, while Long Beach was flattened, suffering at least $200 million in damage. 

Other examples abound.

Bradley Beach, on the North Jersey shore, began building a 15-foot-high dune barrier along its mile-long beach in the 1990s, laying 25,000 feet of snow fencing in a saw-tooth pattern, and later adding 20,000 recycled Christmas trees as traps for drifting sand. After wind pushed sand over this artificial dune, shoots of dune grass were planted to further stabilize the barrier.

When Sandy came knocking, the force of her surge flattened the dunes but left the town's Boardwalk and houses only 75 feet from it intact.  The town suffered a mere $3 million in damage, while many of its unprotected neighbors were destroyed.

(Overall, Sandy caused an estimate $80 billion in damage, second only to Hurricane Katrina at $108 billion, but this did not move 32 Republican senators who voted against giving New York, New Jersey and Connecticut disaster relief, although the senators in those Mid-Atlantic states stepped up when disaster hit the Gulf Coast and elsewhere.)

The big question for this beach baby in the weeks since Sandy has been whether those devastated shore communities have gotten religion.  The short answer, fueled in part by an Obama administration that is making aid largely contingent on not repeating old mistakes, seems to be "you betcha."

The Long Beach City Council now embraces an environmentally-friendly beach rebuilding project, while the Surfrider Foundation, an advocacy group that opposed dunes at Long Beach, has softened its stance. 

Chad Nelsen, environmental director for the national group, said rising sea levels and the threat of more intense storms required a thoughtful consideration of all strategies.

"We're more likely to have a less black-and-white view of the issue," he said, however belatedly.

A FOOTNOTE

Awareness that climate change is not merely a liberal fantasy has been growing by the year.  Superstorm Sandy should be a knockout punch for conservatives and industry stooges who have been in denial.

At least one can hope in the New Year.

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