Continuing my post on Wednesday about Lawrence of Arabia and its relevance to today’s conflict in Iraq:

Lawrence recognizes the disunity among the Arabs, and attempts — ultimately vainly — to bring the tribes together. “So long as the Arabs fight tribe against tribe,” he tells Ali, “so long will they be a little people, a silly people, greedy, barbarous, and cruel.” The division is real, but what right does a condescending foreigner have to voice it? Feisal, the Arabian ruler who seems to inspire the greatest loyalty among the fractious tribes, reminds Lawrence that Arabia was once great. “In the Arab city of Cordoba, there were two miles of public lighting in the streets when London was a village … nine centuries ago.” It is a theme that scholars of the Middle East have dusted off, amid some controversy, to explain the festering anger among today’s population: Once the Arabs were great, so now the poverty and oppression of their people are especially difficult hardships to bear, calling them to arms against the perceived aggressors.

Then as now, the ally is quickly becoming the enemy, because of a perception of ulterior motives. In the film, the British insist that “British and Arab interests are one and the same,” and yet they show with their very actions the clear limits of their concern for Arab welfare. The British will not give the Arabs any artillery, for example, because “you give them artillery and you’ve made them independent,” one British official points out. The royal navy is holed up protecting the Suez Canal in Egypt, instead of joining the Arabian forces in their fight against the Turks, because the canal is an “essential British interest” — albeit of “little consequence” to the Arabs. Finally, there is the betrayal of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, a secret understanding between France and Britain to carve up the former Ottoman lands after the war’s end, which gives the lie to all the glad affirmations of independence for the Arabs. “General, you have lied most bravely, but not convincingly,” Feisal tells the British commander after his protestations that no such agreement exists. With such a history of Western duplicity, it is no wonder that the Iraqis view the U.S. occupation with skepticism, especially since the Bush administration has yet to take the simple, good-faith step of disavowing any permanent military bases in Iraq.

(You may point out that the American government does not have the same interest as the British or French in establishing Middle Eastern colonies, but before you do you may want to read Chalmer Johnson’s insightful book on American foreign policy, The Sorrows of Empire, which focuses on the U.S. military’s peculiar, telling obsession with military bases.)

The revolt that happened in the Arabian desert a century earlier may offer lessons to us today, as America attempts to win the heart of another Middle Eastern land in search of freedom. The mantra today, once again, is for the Iraqis to have the discipline of democracy — to quell their age-old tribal animosities, to come together in the ecumenical spirit of nation-building. But that inevitably clashes with the Arab people’s shrewd understanding of power and politics, as this exchange between Feisal, Lawrence, and another British officer, Colonel Harry Brighton, makes clear:

Brighton: Dreaming won’t get you to Damascus, but discipline will. Look, Great Britain is a small country, much smaller than yours … It’s small, but it’s great. And why?

Feisal: Because it has guns.

Brighton: Because it has discipline.
                  
Lawrence: Because it has a navy. Because of this, the English go where they please … and strike where they please. This makes them great.

The dialogue is fiction, of course. (For a discussion of aspects of the film that are not historically accurate, read this.) But the man Lawrence did exist, and to this day he is revered in the Middle East for supporting Arab independence from both Ottoman and European rule. Lawrence became a hero not just because of his leadership and courage, but also because he believed — when many did not — that the Arab people were worthy of freedom, and had the right to choose their own destiny. In our search for a favorable conclusion to the American intervention in Iraq, we could surely use more leaders like him.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

Jackson Bentley, American journalist: Your Highness, we Americans were once a colonial people, and we naturally feel sympathetic to any people anywhere who are struggling for their freedom.

Prince Feisal, Arabian monarch: Very gratifying.

Bentley: Also, my interests are the same as yours. You want your story told. I badly want a story to tell.

Feisal: Ah, now you are talking turkey, are you not?

I recently watched Lawrence of Arabia, David Lean’s 1962 epic, and kept thinking throughout the film how much it reminded me of another Western power’s involvement in Arab lands. The film focuses on British army officer T.E. Lawrence and his role in uniting the Arab tribes against their Ottoman oppressors during World War I, but it has quite a lot to say, too, about modern-day Iraq under American occupation. (For those who forget, or haven’t seen, the film, here’s a helpful synopsis, and here’s the script.)

In Arabia, the superior military might of the Turkish Ottoman forces weakened under a barrage of guerrilla attacks by Arab Bedouin horsemen, who blew up railroad tracks, disrupted supply lines, and made daring raids when the enemy least expected them. “The desert is an ocean in which no oar is dipped,” Lawrence muses during a discussion with Arabian leaders. “And on this ocean, the Bedouin go where they please and strike where they please.” The failure to appreciate the strength of guerrilla warriors fighting on their own turf has doomed many a mighty army, from the British in America to the Turks in Arabia to the Americans in Vietnam to the Russians in Afghanistan — to, perhaps, the Americans in Iraq.

The Turks could not be accused of half-heartedness in quashing the Arabian insurgency. In fact, they had a practice of viciously torturing captured Arab fighters. “In their eyes, we are not soldiers but rebels,” explains Prince Feisal, who leads the Arab forces. “Rebels, wounded or whole, are not protected by the Geneva Code … and are treated harshly.” So the Arabs would leave no wounded for the Turks: Those they could not carry to safety, they killed. Rather than being intimidated into submission by Ottoman brutality, the Arabs showed all the more determination and defiance. This should give pause to the U.S. politicos who, in the name of victory against terrorists, have opened the door for violations of the Geneva Conventions concerning the torture and indefinite detainment of prisoners. Immoral policies such as these may have the most unintended consequences.

Another of the film’s themes is the violent divisions between the desert-dwelling tribes of Arabia. The Howeitat fight the Harith, who fight the Hazimi — an endless circle of jealousies and vengeances, waged over the desert’s scarce resources. “He was nothing,” says Sherif Ali (played by Omar Sharif), who has just killed an Arab stranger who was drinking from his tribe’s well. “The well is everything.” Water was the desert’s gold in those days, but now it is oil that has become everything — reason enough to kill Sunni or Shia or Kurd in today’s bloody conflict of part-religious, part-tribal origins. In fact, the dispute over sharing oil revenues is one of the central issues tearing apart the country’s new government and threatening civil war.

On Saturday I’ll have more to say about the film and its message for today’s Arabian insurgency.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

This is supposed to be New York, the world capital of diversity, the home to countless cultures and creeds, the one place you can go — whoever you happen to be — to find a sympathetic ear for your beliefs, maybe even a parade in your honor.

But then you turn on the radio and listen to the Big Apple’s favorite shock jocks spouting off about “gooks,” “slant-eyed whores,” and “tinkling” on little girls.

Troi Torain, the Power 105 disc jockey known as DJ Star, was arrested today after going on a racist, sexist, R. Kelly-esque tirade about a radio rival’s wife and daughter. He called the wife, who is part Asian, a “slant-eyed whore,” and then threatened the 4-year-old daughter, calling her a “little half a lo mein eater” and saying he wanted to have sex with her.

Covering all his bases, Torain also called his rival, DJ Envy, a “faggot ass nigga.”

I suppose one racist turn deserves another. You see, DJ Envy was one of the “Miss Jones in the Morning” crew at Hot 97 who got in trouble last year for playing a song that mocked the victims of the Asian tsunami, whom they called “chinks” and “Chinamen.” Without a doubt, this kind of behavior is normal for morning radio personalities, who apparently must caffeinate themselves to the point of foaming-at-the-mouth racism and sexism.

Torain especially. In 2004 he phoned a call center in India and called the customer service representative a “bitch” and “filthy rat eater” on the air.

Here’s some excerpts from the “Star & Buc Wild” show on the day that Torain had his pedophilic meltdown, courtesy of the office of New York Councilmember John Liu:

Star: Somebody holla at me and tell me about his whore wife and his kid. 866-678-8270 …  Somebody get at me about his whore. His whore wife and his kid, this little ugly ass kid, I hear. Where … where does this kid go to school? I got five hundred bucks for that information. Somebody email me or gimme a call. Just tell me where his kid goes to school. Let’s see who’s really gully on the microphone. Five hundred dollars, in my pocket, right now. I need to know the school, this faggot ass nigga, DJ’s kid goes to school.

Star: I’ve got information on DJ Benji, aka … what’s his name again? Envy. I’ve got information on his gook. His baby’s mother.
Buc Wild: A gook?
Star: Hampton University, uh, cats used to run trains on her. Green BMW … I’ll get to all this in a few minutes.

Star: Oh! And, I got the information, the school his kid goes to.
[Woman’s voice] Really?
Star: Yeah, I’m savin’ that one. That’s, that’s … That’s the one I’m gonna pull out if I have to. If I have to. Oh yes, I’ll, I’ll come for your kids. I will come for your kids. I finally got the information on his slant-eyed, whore wife. The information on his slant-eyed, whore wife. Yes. A cat who actually ran a train on her, contacted me. [chuckle] Allegedly ran a train on her once upon a time. Allegedly. Once upon a time. Ejaculated all over her face …

Star: No, let me just touch on this real quick. But there’s a woman out there right now who pushed out a little lo-mein eater by a DJ down by the sloppy station. I got at this alleged slut whore, heh, and this little half a lo-mein eater … Yes, I disrespected your seed. If you didn’t hear me, I said, I would like to do an R. Kelly on your seed, on your little baby girl. I would like to tinkle [urinate] on her.

“Call the cops”? Nigga, please, there’s no bodyguards. I carry the 9 [millimeter gun]. Most of the cats that are with me, have felony convictions, they can’t carry. I’m disrespectin’ your seed. I would like to skeet [ejaculate] on the face of your seed. Now that’s, that’s real talk dawg. You have to come holla at me now. Call me, I’ll meet you somewhere, but don’t act like you were waiting in some parking lot with like 50 niggers. Please.

Now, again, to the woman, who carried that little mongrel for 9 months … I’m coming for your seed. Did you hear me? [“squirt, squirt, squirt” noise] I want to do an R. Kelly in the mouth of your seed fam[ily]? You holla at me now, I’m the easiest man in the world to find. [snickers] And my name is The Hater. You holla back now, DJ Envy.

Star: Let me see now, uh, DJ Benji attention! In case you didn’t hear me, I said, I want to put some mayonnaise in between your baby girl’s ass crack and take a bite.

Now that you’ve read all of that, you might consider taking a long shower and then listening to the soothing sounds of NPR to purify yourself.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

This brings new meaning to the phrase long-distance relationship.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

This IHT article underscores how strained the Bush administration’s arguments have become in defending some of its more unsavory practices, such as shipping suspected terrorists to countries where they can be tortured.

American officials were defending their policies Friday before a U.N. panel investigating possible breaches of the Convention Against Torture, a 1987 treaty that bans prisoner abuse and that the U.S. signed and ratified.

The reason that America needs to send terror suspects to countries with poor human rights records, the officials said, was to keep dangerous individuals out of the United States. But that doesn’t make much sense. Suspects held by the U.S. remain in custody and unable to harm others. Those abroad, on the other hand, seem to find ways to escape. How does it make America safer, then, to ship its problems elsewhere?

When the U.S. sends suspects to these countries, American officials also said, it seeks assurances that the individuals will not be tortured. That argument seemed less than credible to the U.N. panel. “The very fact that you are asking for diplomatic assurances means you are in doubt,” said Andreas Mavrommatis, chairman of the committee.

As for allegations of torture and murder by U.S. personnel, an American official insisted that the criticism had become “so hyperbolic as to be absurd.” He added: “I would ask you not to believe every allegation that you have heard.”

Fair enough. But let’s remember that American soldiers themselves have made these allegations. And given that the Bush administration won’t even take the simple, good-faith step of allowing U.N. investigators to interview prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, it’s not hard to understand why critics would be paranoid about prisoner abuse. Hyperbole feeds on secrecy.

It’s worth reviewing some relevant passages from the U.N. Convention Against Torture, which the U.S. is legally bound to follow:

[Torture is defined as] any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity….

Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction…. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture….

No State Party shall expel, return (refouler”) or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture….

Each State Party shall undertake to prevent in any territory under its jurisdiction other acts of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment which do not amount to torture as defined [above], when such acts are committed by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity….

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

Always release the bad news midday on Friday, for brief mention in the ill-read Saturday paper.

Yesterday the U.S. State Department released its second annual Country Reports on Terrorism (click here for the report). This year, there were statistics. According to the government, there were 11,000 terrorist attacks around the world in 2005, which killed a total of 14,600 people. Iraq alone accounted for about one-third of these attacks and more than half of the fatalities. At a news conference announcing the report’s findings, the State Department’s counterterrorism coordinator put a happy face on the numbers, insisting that the world is becoming a safer place and the fight against terrorism can’t be measured “month by month or year by year.”

So how exactly are we doing in the “war on terror”? Do we have any idea of how last year compares to previous years? The National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), which compiled the report’s statistics, says that the 2005 figures cannot be compared to previous year’s figures because the center started using a new methodology for identifying terrorist attacks. This new methodology counts not just incidents of “international terrorism” (“incidents that involve the territory or citizens of two or more countries”), but acts of terrorism more broadly.

Perhaps I’m missing something here, but a browse through the NCTC’s online data pulls up not just the 2005 data, but also the 2004 data — beginning on January 1 and including incidents with victims from just one country (i.e., the broader definition of terrorism). These are the figures we get for 2004: 3,168 incidents of terrorism, 7,717 fatalities, 18,865 injuries, and 6,086 hostages. In 2005, there were 11,110 incidents, 14,602 fatalities, 24,755 injuries, and 34,780 hostages.

On all counts, the numbers have gone up — way up.

Now, I’m not sure when the methodology change occurred, or if it even applies to the data online (the difference may be between what’s online and the previous reports, for example). But assuming that the change occurred in May 2004 — as the Counterterrorism Blog suggests — then the figures later in the year should be comparable. In December 2004, there were 455 incidents and 692 deaths; in December 2005, there were 888 incidents and 1,013 deaths. In October 2004, there were 323 incidents and 628 deaths; in October 2005, there were 927 incidents and 1,377 deaths.

Again, the 2005 figures are substantially higher.

So is the world really a safer place? I’m not sure, but the numbers here don’t look promising. We should also remember that the government has quite a history of spinning terrorism numbers. Last year’s Country Reports on Terrorism did not include statistics after a controversy over what to categorize as “terrorist incidents.” Counterterrorism officials declined to use an alternative accounting method recommended by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s office that would have reported fewer significant attacks. Rice’s office responded by creating the Country Reports on Terrorism — which replaced the previous series, Patterns of Global Terrorism — and refusing to include any numbers in the 2004 report. (At the news conference announcing that report, however, State Department officials did provide figures: 1,907 people had been killed and 9,300 wounded in terrorist attacks in 2004, they said — the highest ever.)

Before that, there was a flap over the 2003 report, which the government hailed as showing a decline in terrorism when first released. After a barrage of criticism — including allegations from two academics that the numbers were being manipulated — the government revised its estimate upward two months later and admitted a “slight increase” in terror.

Here’s some insightful background on the government’s international terrorism reports from the Counterterrorism Blog.

You have to wonder how the U.S. government is going to win this war on terror if it can’t even get the numbers right.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

Last week I visited the peace park in Hiroshima, where a U.S. bomber dropped the first nuclear weapon to be used in war. Walking through the memorials, it is impossible not to remember the exact moment of the bomb’s detonation: 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945. Clocks in the city stopped because of the awesome power of the atomic blast, and the distinctive face of the A-bomb watch — minute hand stretched level to the right, hour hand splayed out slightly lower to the left — is Hiroshima’s own crucifix, displayed in wristwatch relics that survived the bombing as well as modern-day memorials. By the end of 1945, an estimated 140,000 people had died from the A-bomb attack, slightly less than half the city’s population. An astounding one in ten of the dead were actually Koreans, many of them brought over to Hiroshima as slave laborers.

I remember a while back there was a flap over an exhibit in the Smithsonian Institution commemorating the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. American veterans groups were angry that the exhibit focused too much on the casualties inflicted by the bomb and not enough on how it — and the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki three days later — brought about a thankfully swift end to the war. The Smithsonian exhibit was eventually canceled. More anniversaries have come and gone, but the debate is still not resolved. Supporters of the bombings, including some Japanese historians, have argued that the war would have gone on for many months longer without the use of atomic weapons and that the cost of conquering Japan, in military casualties on both sides as well as Japanese civilian deaths, would have surpassed the nuclear death toll. Opponents of the bombings, including General Dwight Eisenhower and other top U.S. commanders during the war, have said that Japan was all but defeated by August 1945 and the use of such an awesome and indiscriminate weapon could not be justified militarily. The latter is the view expressed in the Hiroshima peace museum. Clearly, the Japanese war machine needed to be stopped — the exhibits in the museum make pointed reference to Japanese war crimes in China and Korea — but the atomic bombings were not the solution. The museum makes the case — one that I never heard growing up in the U.S. — that the entry of the Soviet Union into the war against Japan would have ended the war quickly, without the need for atomic weapons. (The Americans refused to wait, the museum claims, because they did not want the communists to establish any further footholds in Asia once the fighting ended and the victorious powers began carving up their post-war spheres of influence.)

Which military scenario would have brought about the least loss of life is just one of the questions to consider, however. We sometimes forget that bombing Hiroshima was more than just the taking of civilian life — it was the taking of life in the most gruesome way imaginable. The horror is captured in heartbreaking detail by the museum’s exhibits. Men, women, and children walked through the burning city like zombies, their skin charred and hanging off their bodies in tatters. Black rain fell from the skies, the detritus of a poisoned earth; bomb victims mad with thirst drank the radioactive waters. The black-and-white photographs of the carnage are difficult to behold, but for me the most moving images were the sketches drawn by the survivors themselves. In raw colors and sometimes child-like scrawls, they depict the most terrible suffering. Naked bodies and tortured flesh, like a scene of hell from the dark imaginations of medieval Christian painters. A mother wailing over her son’s disfigured body as it lies in a field of unclaimed dead. Such suffering did not end on the day of the bombing. Those who were within one kilometer of the blast radius died within days. Others drowned themselves in the Motoyasu River because the pain of their wounds was so great and the available treatment so little. Still others suffered for years to come, bearing keloid scars and other disfigurements and eventually contracting diseases linked to their radiation poisoning. (They included the young girl Sadako Sasaki, just two years old when she was exposed to the bomb’s radiation, who died of leukemia at the age of 12 and whose spirit is remembered in the peace park’s especially moving memorial to Hiroshima’s young victims.)

Since the bombing of Hiroshima, the city’s mayors have written letters to the leaders of the world’s nuclear powers, reminding them after each nuclear test they conduct that they are dishonoring Hiroshima’s dead and killing the hopes of the bomb’s survivors for an end to war. The last two letters featured in the museum were sent in February to U.S. President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Sixty years after Hiroshima, the United States and Great Britain persist in testing sophisticated new forms of nuclear weaponry, even while reprimanding hostile nations like Iran and North Korea for their arms development.

Since the U.S. and British governments still have not given up their addiction to nuclear weapons, citizens of these two countries may find a trip to the city’s peace museum all the more important. For American visitors in particular, the scenes of blasted buildings and soot-covered victims may evoke memories of the horrors of the September 11 terrorist attacks. It seems that the power to perpetrate mass killings of civilians, and the politics to justify them, remain very much with us today. Until the world lays down its arms, Hiroshima, too, will remain with us, as the cross of our shared suffering.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

I’ve been in Tokyo for a day now, and today I visited the Tsukiji fish market, the world’s largest, which handles more than 400 types of seafood every day. This includes fresh tuna weighing more than 600 pounds each, which are auctioned off in frenzied early-morning bidding and then quickly find their way into sushi bars across the country and around the world.

The irony is that many of these tuna are caught in waters off the coast of New England, then are shipped overnight to Tsukiji in Tokyo — and then, if deemed premium grade, may actually make their way back to America for sale in top-end sushi bars.

This article in Foreign Policy provides a fascinating look at the global network of fishermen, fishmongers, and businesspeople who bring that fresh pink tuna onto your dinner plate. Here’s one paragraph worth pondering:

Not to impugn the quality of the fish sold in the United States, but on the New England docks, the first determination of tuna buyers is whether they are looking at a “domestic” fish or an “export” fish. On that judgment hangs several dollars a pound for the fisher, and the supply of sashimi-grade tuna for fishmongers, sushi bars, and seafood restaurants up and down the Eastern seaboard. Some of the best tuna from New England may make it to New York or Los Angeles, but by way of Tokyo — validated as top quality (and top price) by the decision to ship it to Japan by air for sale at Tsukiji, where it may be purchased by one of the handful of Tsukiji sushi exporters who supply premier expatriate sushi chefs in the world’s leading cities.

So what value does that around-the-world jaunt from New England to Tokyo and back actually impart to your wasabi-laden sushi roll? Nothing more than the stamp of approval of a certified Japanese tuna buyer — one worth a substantial amount of money in this global fish market.

Of course, this may not be so strange a concept if you remember all the “American” brand-name products that are manufactured in far-off lands, with no real U.S. connection except for, at best, a corporate headquarters still rooted (thanks to generous tax breaks) in some random city. Even the label “Made in America” can sometimes mean parts produced in Mexico and China were merely clamped and welded together in a domestic factory.

In the interconnected world of today, rich countries like America and Japan may not build or produce anything in their own factories anymore, but they sure know good value — enough to charge a hefty premium for it.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

The U.S. Supreme Court refused today to hear a legal challenge to the president’s war powers brought by Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen who was held until recently as an “enemy combatant” without basic legal rights. The court’s majority pointed out that since the Bush administration moved Padilla after 3 1/2 years from military to civilian custody, the appeal was now “hypothetical.” (Forget that the administration transferred Padilla precisely to avoid any such legal questioning of its wartime policies.) But by not taking up the case, the court has left unanswered key questions about the president’s wartime authority to circumvent or defy the Constitution. The administration will continue with dubious measures it insists are legal, and critics will continue to be able to do nothing about it. What, you may ask, is the purpose of a Supreme Court, if it cannot resolve these divisive wartime issues?

It’s important to remember this kind of legal uncertainty encourages abuse. We can see this at U.S.-run prison camps in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, where the administration’s failure to dictate clear policies encouraged soldiers to make their own conclusions about what treatment was “humane” and what was not — with tragic results.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

Those were the good days when a man had friends in distant clans. Your generations does not know that. You stay at home, afraid of your next-door neighbor. Even a man’s motherland is strange to him nowadays.

—Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart

On Wednesday I wrote about Chinua Achebe’s book Things Fall Apart, and its relevance to modern-day struggles between old and new — specifically, the recently renewed debate over evolution, which pits religious doctrine against scientific knowledge.

I should be clear about one thing: By humanizing deeply flawed men like Okonkwo, Achebe is not telling us that we should wax nostalgic about the old ways. It would be foolish to forget the cruelties of that past society. But it would be foolish, too, to forget why Okonkwo clings so desperately to his culture’s disappearing traditions — or, for that matter, why men and women of a similar mindset today persist in certain beliefs about the origins and history of life in spite of scientific evidence to the contrary.

When I used to cover religious issues as a reporter, I saw these reasons firsthand. The church is, above all, a community, and tradition is the bedrock of that community, the shared language, imagery, and philosophy that make communication, and communion, possible. It is not surprising that today’s most fervent defenders of the old doctrines — evangelical Christians in this country — have some of the most tightly knit communities of faith and the fastest-growing congregations. Especially in regions of the country (or world) that have yet to hear the good news of this new era of global markets, the good news of scripture adds real, undeniable value to people’s lives.

Perhaps the clash of cultures in Things Fall Apart could have turned out less tragically, and we may hope the same for the current battle over evolution. (There have been some recent attempts to reconcile faith with science — take, for example, the Dalai Lama’s recent book, The Universe in a Single Atom, which attempts a dialogue between Buddhism and modern science, especially physics and genetics.) That said, the lack of understanding on either side does not bode well. We see the terrible consequences of such ignorance in Achebe’s novel. The British overlords do not understand why the Igbo persist in their “primitive” customs, and their intransigence forces a confrontation that ends in death.

Particularly illuminating is the description of one zealous missionary, the Rev. James Smith, who insists there is no reason to compromise with or accommodate the heathens. “He saw the world as a battlefield in which the children of light were locked in mortal conflict with the sons of darkness,” Achebe writes. It is not hard to see a similar kind of combativeness on both sides in the recent debate over teaching evolution. On one side are those who disdain science; on the other are those who see the religiously devout as “primitives” of another sort. What lies between them is shared misunderstanding. When Okonkwo and his fellow villagers confront the missionary, one of the men offers an apt description of their predicament: “We say he is foolish because he does not know our ways, and perhaps he says we are foolish because we do not know his.”

Near the end of Things Fall Apart, Achebe gives us more clues of what the old ways mean to men like Okonkwo. Giving thanks before a feast at Okonkwo’s home, his uncle Uchendu prays to the ancestors for health and children. “We do not ask for wealth because he that has health and children will also have wealth. We do not pray to have more money but to have more kinsmen. We are better than animals because we have kinsmen. An animal rubs its itching flank against a tree, a man asks his kinsman to scratch him.”

With all our modern technology and sophistication, humanity still hungers for connection and kinship. The old ways die, the new ways take root, but what happens to the community? That is the tragedy of Achebe’s book, and the challenge we face now, on the precipice of another transformation.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

I say let the prisoners pick the fruits.

—Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, Republican from California, criticizing a Senate bill that would provide an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants the opportunity to become U.S. citizens. Rather than turning to immigrant farm workers, Rohrabacher said, the agricultural industry should instead rely upon the country’s homegrown inmate population, currently the world’s largest, at 2.1 million. Another House Republican, Rep. Steve King of Iowa, said that “anybody that votes for an amnesty bill deserves to be branded with a scarlet letter A&rdquo — reminding Americans of a kinder, gentler time in our nation’s history, when “witch hunt” was not yet a quaint figure of speech.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

”If we leave our gods and follow your god,” asked another man, “who will protect us from the anger of our neglected gods and ancestors?”

“Your gods are not alive and cannot do you any harm,” replied the white man. “They are pieces of wood and stone.”

When this was interpreted to the men of Mbanta they broke into derisive laughter.

—Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart

Continuing my occasional series, “Random Thoughts About Random Books,” I want to say a few things about Things Fall Apart, by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, which I recently reread. This slim, sparely written book is so many things — a story of a family crushed under the weight of a father’s sins, a history of upheaval and subjugation in colonial Africa, a tragedy reminiscent of the Greek classics that speaks of the consequences of pride, a tale of violent conflict between sexes, classes, communities, and cultures. I can’t hope to do justice to its brilliance with the few words I have here. But I want to focus on one particular strand of Achebe’s masterpiece: what happens after new ways usurp the old, and those older traditions — and the communities they hold together — fall apart.

It’s a topic that’s been on my mind lately, now that this country’s perennial unease about change has found its way into the headlines yet again. This time, it has taken the form of theories of “intelligent design” and other efforts to salvage religious doctrine from the onslaught of Darwin’s theories. In Achebe’s novel it is the Christianity of the European masters that viciously clears away the vital undergrowth of indigenous tradition. Today it is science that is burning away dominant Christian beliefs — or, at very least, threatening to do so. (Fortunately for those who love doctrine, today’s defenders of the faith are much better organized than the villagers in Achebe’s novel.)

Things Fall Apart focuses on the story of Okonkwo, a determined and industrious man living in an Igbo community in what is now Nigeria. Bitter at the memory of his late father, who lacked ambition and died heavily in debt, Okonkwo has long dreamed of achieving wealth and status in his village and raising his sons to be strong, tradition-minded men. But Okonkwo’s hopes collide with the transformations that are taking place throughout Africa. Christian missionaries establish a presence in the village and turn young and old against the old ways. British imperial functionaries impose their own customs, beliefs, and laws, and brutally suppress dissent.

Part of the beauty of Achebe’s novel is that he does not come out on the side of the old or the new. While Things Fall Apart was written as a necessary corrective to simplistic, condescending depictions of Africans in European literature (it takes its title from the much-quoted poem by Irish poet William Butler Yeats that prophesized the destruction of Western European civilization by rising hordes of “uncivilized” peoples), Achebe does not depict the Christian missionaries, or the doctrines they preach, as evil. In fact, his portrait of Christianity is quite sympathetic at times. We see courageous Christians standing up to aspects of Igbo traditional life that are unjust and unethical. Twins are left to die in the forest because they are believed to be cursed. Men are taught to be stern, even cruel, with their (multiple) wives. The society’s lowest caste — the Igbo version of India’s “untouchables” — are kept at a distance from the so-called “free-born.” Those men and women who convert to Christianity in Okonkwo’s village choose to reject these unjust beliefs among their people, and Achebe acknowledges their bravery. He also spends much time in his novel depicting the plight of those harmed by the whim of superstition and custom — including, most tragically, one of Okonkwo’s adopted sons.

But Achebe also shows us how the death of tradition becomes the death of a community. The old ways were unjust, irrational, impractical — but they gave men like Okonkwo a sense of purpose, a bond of kinship, and a foundation on which to build their society. As the fabric of tradition unravels, so does the community. “I fear for you young people because you do not understand how strong is the bond of kinship,” one of the village elders says at one point in the book. “You do not know what it is to speak with one voice. And what is the result? An abominable religion has settled among you. A man can now leave his father and his brothers. He can curse the gods of his fathers and his ancestors, like a hunter’s dog that suddenly goes mad and turns on his master. I fear for you; I fear for the clan.”

I’ll continue this discussion of the book in my post on Saturday.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen