Boston Globe columnist Adrian Walker interviews the historian Taylor Branch, who has just published the third, and last, installment of his critically acclaimed series on the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. At Canaan’s Edge follows King in the last three years of the activist’s life, as he fought to extend his message of justice beyond Jim Crow while struggling to inspire a movement increasingly disillusioned with nonviolent protest.

In Parting the Waters we saw King rise from obscurity as leader of the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, a young, charismatic black preacher in a South boiling with racial hatred and violence; in Pillar of Fire we watched him give a hopeful nation a glimpse of the promised land as the legendary orator of the 1963 March on Washington, inspiring legions amid the firestorm unleashed by Freedom Rides and congressional legislation, bombings and assassinations. But it is in the last years of his life that we see King tested as never before. Young Americans turned away from his teachings. Mainstream America turned its back on his increasingly caustic criticisms of the Vietnam War. We sometimes forget how hated King became in those years, even among the liberal intelligentsia: TIME magazine called one of his speeches “demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi,” and The Washington Post argued that King had “diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people.”

“He became more and more lonely, in my view,” Branch says of these last years of King’s life.

But King’s willingness to expand the horizons of his activism in those years is perhaps the reason he is most relevant to us today. Four decades earlier, he was talking about poverty in the global South, joblessness in America, and the moral and social costs of warmongering abroad and — yes — capitalism at home. “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul?” Jesus proclaimed to his followers, and King, addressing strikers in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1968, echoed those words:

What does it profit a man to be able to eat at an integrated lunch counter if he doesn’t have enough money to buy a hamburger? What does it profit a man to be able to eat at the swankest integrated restaurant when he doesn’t even earn enough money to take his wife out to dine? What does it profit one to have access to the hotels of our cities, and the hotels of our highways, when we don’t earn enough money to take our family on a vacation? What does it profit one to be able to attend an integrated school, when he doesn’t earn enough money to buy his children school clothes?

Political liberties were not enough, King said. Economic equality was also necessary, for without it there would be no dignity to speak of, no freedom to defend. And so King and other activists organized the “Poor People’s Campaign,” which sought to rally a “multiracial army of the poor” on behalf of an economic bill of rights that would bring opportunity to America’s poorest communities.

This struggle that King championed in his final years remains with us today, from the rusting factories of America’s heartland to the broken cities of its urban core, where workers of all races and ethnicities continue to struggle for a living wage and basic healthcare.

“His Nobel acceptance speech said that the triple evils are racism, poverty, and war,” Branch said in the Globe interview. “And that nonviolence and democracy are equipped to address these both politically and spiritually.” That political stance became increasingly controversial in the late 1960s, but King did not back down. At a time of deep national divisions over the war in Vietnam, he dared to call America “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today,” a bellicose nation that sought to occupy Vietnam as its “colony” — words that would likely place him among the reviled ranks of Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore today. At a time when American eyes were fixated on their military’s travails in Vietnam or the social strife and malaise within their own borders, King looked elsewhere, calling for an end to American support of brutal generals in countries like Venezuela, Guatemala, Colombia, and Peru. “The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy- and laymen-concerned committees for the next generation,” he said in 1967.

He was searching for the big solutions. The problems besetting America did not lie merely with lone racists and tyrants, King came to believe. They were more deep-rooted than that. Speaking to a New York church audience exactly one year before his death, he declared that the entire system of economic and social injustice needed to be transformed:

True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

It was King at his most fiery, his most controversial, his most defiant. He was ignored by many then. Even decades later, the King who emerged in those last three years of his life remains forgotten, eclipsed by the anti-segregation crusader who stood so tall in Washington.

Perhaps another generation will live to see his parting words remembered and their truth recognized.

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

Today Michelle Bachelet was elected the first woman president of Chile. With her victory, Chile has come full circle.

More than two decades of dictatorship under Gen. Augusto Pinochet ended in 1990, but the South American country has always remained deeply divided between those who saw Pinochet’s dictatorship as a necessary corrective to left-wing extremism and those who saw it as a human rights nightmare of epic cruelty — a nightmare that the United States helped bring about. With Pinochet’s recent indictment for human rights crimes, and Bachelet’s victory today, it appears that history is finally imposing its own corrective upon Chilean politics: Bachelet was herself a victim of torture at Villa Grimaldi, one of the dictatorship’s most notorious detention centers. Her father, a general loyal to the administration of President Salvador Allende, died after enduring continuous beatings in the months following the September 1973 coup, which toppled the democratically elected government and brought Pinochet into power.

Bachelet’s mother was also detained and tortured by the Pinochet regime. Her boyfriend, Jaime López, was detained and tortured, then “disappeared.”

“Michelle Bachelet belongs to the generation that suffered the most after the coup,” Andrea Insunza, a Bachelet biographer, told The New York Times. “The majority of those imprisoned, killed, tortured, and exiled came from that group, which is why I say her election represents the triumph of history’s defeated.” Bachelet also represents change to the status quo in other ways — as a pediatrician who previously served as health minister and then defense minister, a mother of three who separated from her husband and raised their children (remember that Chile only legalized divorce in 2004), and a self-acknowledged agnostic and socialist in a predominantly Catholic country. In fact, as defense minister Bachelet once joked with military commanders that she represented “all the sins together.”

In her victory speech, the president-elect spoke of extending the prosperity that Chile had achieved under her predecessor, President Ricardo Lagos, to the country’s poor and disadvantaged. “Ours is a dynamic country — one with the desire to rise up — one all the while more integrated into the world — a country of entrepreneurs who with ingenuity and creativity have created prosperity,” Bachelet said. “But in order to dare to innovate, Chileans also need to know that the society in which they live protects them. My promise is that in the year 2010 we will have put in place a great system of social protection.” The Chile that her administration hoped to build, Bachelet said, was one where “everyone — women and men, those living in the capital and those on the periphery, people of all colors, creeds, and convictions — can find a place.”

Bachelet’s words struck a more personal note when she spoke of her family’s history under Pinochet’s dictatorship:

There is someone who in this moment would be very proud. A man whom I wish I could embrace tonight. This man is my father. Alberto Bachelet Martínez, general of the Chilean Air Force. I inherited from him his love of Chile and of all Chileans without distinctions, his admiration for the natural beauty of our country, and his selfless sense of public service.…

You know that I have not had an easy life. But who among us has had an easy life? Violence entered my life, destroying that which I loved. Because I was a victim of hatred, I have devoted my life to reversing hatred, and converting it into understanding, tolerance, and — why don’t we say it? — into love. One can love justice and, at the same time, be generous….

With her election, Bachelet joins a handful of other woman presidents in South American history. Those few who preceded Bachelet, however, were either the widows of prominent politicians or not democratically elected, or both. Bachelet, the “doctora,” earned her victory today with a wider margin than her mentor, President Lagos, garnered in 2000. Given her background as a victim of the dictatorship, Bachelet’s presidency may be just what her country needs to reconcile with its brutal past and move forward.

Those of us north of the equator may also see her victory as a painful reminder of how little success women here have had in attaining their countries’ top posts. In Canada, there was Prime Minister Kim Campbell (who served five months in 1993), and in the United States … well, there was Mackenzie Allen on ABC’s fall drama Commander in Chief. (There was also an African American president, David Palmer, on Fox’s 24, but he was gunned down tonight, I’m sad to say.)

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

They have red hair. And same kind of nose.

—Markku Jaaskelainen, campaign manager for Finland’s president, Tarja Halonen, on the alleged physical similarity between his candidate and American late-night talk show host Conan O’Brien. According to the Associated Press, Halonen’s reelection bid has received an unexpected boost from O’Brien, who has shown a keen interest in the political contest across the Atlantic, regularly mentioning Halonen on his show and praising her positive impact on Finnish carp production. O’Brien says he supports Halonen because she shares his piscatory values and “good looks.”

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

As 2005 comes to an end, critics are trotting out their various “Year in Review” lists. I’m not sure if 10 or 20 years from now we’ll remember anything on these lists. The few items of real importance — Hurricane Katrina or the South Asian earthquake, for instance — we’d sooner forget, along with the litany of 2005’s other disasters, natural and man-made. The rest of 2005’s “memorable moments” just clutter our brain cells. Yes, it is true that our beloved celebrities rose to unprecedented pinnacles of insanity and inanity in 2005 — with on-air crack-ups and fizzled marriages and a revolving door of indictments and acquittals, continually televised and scrutinized — but that kind of news lasts as long as the cheap tabloid paper it’s printed on. A few decades from now, almost all the personalities of 2005 will have become obscure, the stuff of unfortunate Trivial Pursuit stumpers.

Instead of dwelling on celebrated disasters or disastrous celebrities, then, I’d like to end the year paying homage to two individuals who actually lived quiet and ordinary lives, mostly away from the cameras, and yet left legacies that our grandchildren’s grandchildren will likely remember. One is Rosa Parks, and the other is Fred Korematsu. Both died in 2005.

The better-known of the duo, of course, is Rosa Parks, but even her life has become clouded by myth-making over the years. Most of us remember her as the fearless woman who one day refused to get up from her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama, and thus sent Jim Crow crashing to the ground. Rosa Parks did all this, yes, but we sometimes forget that she was not just a seamstress but also a longtime activist, who served as an officer of her local NAACP chapter and trained at the Highlander Folk School, a center in Tennessee known for its left-wing politics and outspoken advocacy on behalf of workers’ rights and racial equality. At Highlander the instructors taught, “You are a child of God; You can make a difference” — and it was these words, Parks later told a friend, that inspired her to defy a white bus driver’s order to give up her seat.

What is so moving about Rosa Parks’ life is the dignity and humility that she brought to it. She saw herself as one woman in a long line of activists struggling to change an unjust society. She had no ambition for leadership when she became secretary of the Montgomery NAACP in the 1940s: “I was the only woman there, and they needed a secretary, and I was too timid to say no,” Parks later said. She had not planned to stage a bus protest on December 1, 1955, she insisted, but when the bus driver barked at her Parks realized she was just too “tired of giving in.” She was not the first African American to be arrested for refusing to surrender a seat, but Parks brought a character of such irreproachable integrity to the cause that the community easily rallied around her; she was regarded, said the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., as “one of the finest citizens of Montgomery” — black or white. Even after she gained fame for her role in the boycott, Parks continued to work as a seamstress, putting aside her needle and thread only in 1965 when Congressman John Conyers hired her as a secretary and receptionist. “You treated her with deference because she was so quiet, so serene,” Conyers said after her death.

Fred Korematsu, too, was a seemingly ordinary American who defied an unjust system. A 23-year-old welder from San Francisco, he refused to follow 100,000 other Japanese Americans to the internment camps during World War II, and was arrested.

While Korematsu was in jail the American Civil Liberties Union chose him (much as the NAACP had chosen Parks) to be their test case in a fight against the legality of internment. Korematsu’s case wound up before the Supreme Court, but in a 6-to-3 decision the country’s highest court declared that the government had a right to round up its citizens and imprison them, en masse, without trial. Korematsu, meanwhile, had become a pariah. The newspapers called him a spy; his fellow Japanese Americans, anxious to prove they were patriots, shunned him. “All of them turned their backs on me at that time because they thought I was a troublemaker,” Korematsu later said. After the war, Korematsu refused to speak of his earlier resistance. He felt remorse for his role in bringing about the Supreme Court decision that legalized the internment. His own daughter didn’t learn of her father’s wartime actions until she was a junior in high school.

Korematsu’s defining moment of courage would happen decades later, in the early 1980s, when a lawyer convinced him to take up his legal struggle once more. The lawyer, Peter Irons, had uncovered evidence that the government had exaggerated the dangers posed by Japanese Americans even while it was defending its policy of internment before the courts. Government lawyers offered Korematsu, then 64, a pardon. He refused. “As long as my record stands in federal court,” he said, “any American citizen can be held in prison or concentration camps without a trial or a hearing.” His conviction was eventually overturned — and with it, the legality of the Japanese American internment. Korematsu’s activism continued, however; in 2004, he filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court, comparing the detention without trial of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay to those earlier human rights abuses perpetrated against Japanese Americans in the name of national security.

Fred Korematsu died on March 30, 2005. Rosa Parks died on October 24, 2005. On the surface, they were ordinary Americans, thrust into extraordinary circumstances. And yet both showed a quiet dignity that history will surely remember, long after this year’s headlines have faded away.

For more about Rosa Parks and Fred Korematsu, I recommend this Korematsu profile in The New York Times Magazine and the extensive entry on Parks in Wikipedia, which were useful sources for this post.

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

In journalism there are two fairly reliable ways to figure out if you’ve done a good job reporting a story. One is if both sides like your article, which suggests you were fair.

The other is if both sides despise it.

Well, the reviews are in of Munich, Steven Spielberg’s film about the 1972 Olympic massacre, and not surprisingly, partisans on both sides hate it. One group accuses it of pandering to the enemy. The other accuses it of the so-called “sin of equivalence” because it depicts wrongs committed on both sides. (I’ll let you figure out which group is which.)

The irate reactions to Spielberg’s film remind us of how futile this decades-long conflict has become. Whether you believe that one group or the other had a claim to justice at one point, with the passing of time any compelling idealism or coherent ideology in this struggle has disappeared. Now there is only a ritual of bloodletting, followed by a ritual of finger-pointing.

Debates over Munich’s “equivalence” and “pandering” have the same hollow ring to them as these real-world protests over land and rights and security. The devil is always in these details. People die for them. Perhaps they are right to believe what they believe. And yet they never seem to find the justice they seek.

Rhetoric and righteousness aside, it is clear that there must be compromise on both sides for the conflict to ever end. Yet any attempt to reach compromise or consensus — including Munich, which Spielberg calls his “prayer for peace” — are inevitably savaged as pandering to the other side.  

Munich will not persuade the extremists hungry for more justice, but perhaps it will encourage a conversation between those tired of it. Spielberg says he saw a glimpse of this on the set of Munich, among the young Arab and Israeli actors who played the roles of terrorists and hostages in the Olympic massacre:

“It was just very, very difficult for me to play war with them,” says Spielberg. “It was — it was brutal and cathartic at the same, all in the same breath, to stage a scene where Jews have been killed and then I say, ‘Cut.’ The Palestinian with the Kalashnikov throws his weapon down and runs over to the Israeli actor who is on the ground and picks the actor up and falls into the Israeli’s arms and is sobbing. And then the Israeli actors and the Arab actors all running into this kind of circle and everybody is crying and holding each other.”

Spielberg’s voice is tremulous as he describes the young actors, steeped in the history and suffering of their two tribes, nonetheless trying to communicate with one another.

“It was so positive to see these two sides — actors, professional actors — coming together and being able to discuss what’s happening today in their world. Over dinner, between shots. There was always open discussion. No fighting. Just understanding and listening. I wish the world would listen more and be less intransigent. These kids weren’t talking on top of each other like trying to win an argument. These kids took time to listen before they spoke.”

The extremists, of course, aren’t listening. They are always criticizing, always asserting their righteousness, always demanding justice.

Perhaps someday peace will become more valuable to them than justice.

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

Congressman John Dingell, a Michigan Democrat, recited a poem parody of “The Night Before Christmas” on the House floor last night, in response to a resolution proposed by Republicans to “protect” the “symbols and traditions of Christmas.” Demagogue has the text, and Crooks & Liars has the video.

I hope this War on Christmas ends sometime during my lifetime. Christmas just isn’t any fun anymore with all the elves locked up in Abu Ghraib and St. Nick stuck in a spider hole. I say we launch a preemptive strike on Hanukkah and Kwanzaa and take them out. Let’s not wait until Dec. 25 for that mushroom cloud over Macy’s.

Free the reindeer!

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

Cartoonist Aaron McGruder has a good riff going this week at The Boondocks, with Granddad Freeman intent on seeing a “manly” movie. Here’s an example:

Grandad Freeman: I feel like seeing a movie! What’s out?

Huey: 50 Cent, “Harry Potter,” “Syriana” …

Grandad: Naw … I want to see a man’s movie. How ’bout this “Brokeback Mountain”? What’s that about?

Huey: Um …

Grandad (reading newspaper): Let’s see here … Oh, it’s about cowboys! Well, that sounds very manly! Let’s go!

Things go quickly downhill from there.

Do your slightly homophobic granddad a favor and take him to see the film adaptation of Annie Proulx’s short story “Brokeback Mountain” this weekend. It’s directed by Ang Lee, stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger as our gay cowboy heroes, and boasts an 80 percent “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes so far. Granddad Freeman would approve.

P.S. I had a Granddad Freeman moment last week, when my dad spotted us watching the film Saving Face. “Oh, a Chinese movie!” he exclaimed, his immigrant interest piqued, just minutes before the racy lesbian love scene … (fortunately for all involved, he fell asleep).

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

In a piece in this month’s Atlantic, Nir Rosen offers a succinct, compelling argument for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq as soon as possible.

If the rationale for the U.S. presence is to do what’s good for the Iraqis, Rosen reminds us that most Iraqis — even the country’s Shia majority, increasingly a target of terror attacks — want foreign soldiers out of their country, and leaving would allow the Iraqi leadership to promote democracy without being branded collaborators. If the rationale is that withdrawing would embolden America’s enemies, Rosen points out that the insurgency is almost entirely a homegrown phenomenon, driven not by lust for global jihad but by nationalist resistance; it will dissipate without a foreign presence to rally against. If the rationale is that America must put an end to terrorism overseas, Rosen points out that terrorism thrives in a failed state like Iraq, where daily attacks on the occupiers and their perceived collaborators prevent the establishment of civil order. If the rationale is that Baghdad would fall if the troops leave, Rosen maintains that the stronger Shia and Kurdish armed forces would never allow the Sunni resistance to take over the city. And if the rationale is that Iraq would fall apart if America withdraws, Rosen notes that this is happening already: The presence of U.S. troops is encouraging civil war, and the best of the painful options that remain is to leave Iraq alone, allow the Kurds to secede, and give up the dream for now of a purely secular, human rights-loving, democratic paradise in Iraq.

It is a bitter pill to swallow. For one thing, many Americans genuinely want a positive outcome in Iraq, after thousands of lives and billions of dollars have been expended in the name of liberation. They want, above all, an end to the violence. To leave with such uncertainty still looming over Iraq may seem like a defeat. But it is nonetheless the right thing to do. Perhaps the French had similar uncertainties after they helped the Americans vanquish the British at Yorktown: Why not stay for a few decades more, help the Americans with their terrorist problem in the western Indian lands, prevent the fractious new government from falling apart, and protect French interests across the continent? But the French chose to leave, and the American experiment in democracy survived.

For those of us who care about the rights of women and minorities, it would be preferable if Iraq became a truly secular nation, with protections for those groups that are typically oppressed under fundamentalist governments. With stability the most pressing concern in Iraq, that may be too much to demand right now. But this does not mean that progress will never come. America has spent more than three centuries extending the rights of white, Christian, male property owners to a wider circle; perhaps Iraq deserves some time to make a similar transition on its own. With any luck, the example of other countries will move it quickly along that path. But in any case, democracy means allowing the people to decide for themselves what they want. Until America’s troops leave, the Iraqis will never really have that chance.

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

In today’s New York Times, Lawrence Downes scrutinizes the legacy of Pat Morita, the Japanese American actor best known for playing the role of sensei to a barely pubescent Ralph Macchio in Karate Kid:

The movie and TV industry has never had many roles for Asian-American men, and it seemed for a while that they all went to Mr. Morita. He made his debut as “Oriental No. 2” in “Thoroughly Modern Millie” in 1967 and never stopped working. He hit two peaks — as Arnold the diner owner on TV’s “Happy Days” and the wise old Mr. Miyagi in the “Karate Kid” movies — and spent the rest of nearly 40 years roaming an endless forest of bit parts.

He was Mahi Mahi, the pidgin-talking cabby in “Honeymoon in Vegas,” Lamont Sanford’s friend Ah Chew in “Sanford and Son,” Brian the waiter in “Spy Hard,” Chin Li the Chinese herbalist in “The Karate Dog.”

Whenever a script called for a little Asian guy to drive a taxi, serve drinks or utter wise aphorisms in amusingly broken English, you could count on Mr. Morita to be there.

Those who knew Mr. Morita say he was a man of uncommon decency and good humor. He fulfilled the actor’s prime directive, to keep busy.

But it’s distressing to think that the life’s work of one of the best-known, hardest-working Asian-American actors is mostly a loose collection of servile supporting roles.

It wasn’t for lack of trying. Born to migrant farmworkers in California and confined to an internment camp in Arizona during World War II, Morita decided to become a stand-up comic and actor at a time when Hollywood was “interested only in the stock Asian,” Downes writes. Little changed during Morita’s lifetime:

Harold Sakata played Oddjob in “Goldfinger” and was typecast as a mute brute forever after. Philip Ahn played houseboys and villains for decade upon decade.

Some actors — well, a couple — broke out, like George Takei, Mr. Sulu in “Star Trek” [who recently broke another taboo by publicly acknowledging he was gay], and Jack Soo on “Barney Miller.” B.D. Wong’s role on “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” is a major improvement, but it will be a long, long time before we erase the memory of the bucktoothed, jabbering Mickey Rooney in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” or Sidney Toler as Charlie Chan.

Watch Rob Schneider play Ula, a leering Hawaiian in the Adam Sandler movie “50 First Dates,” with a pidgin accent by way of Cheech and Chong, and you get the sense that Hollywood still believes that there is no ethnic caricature a white actor can’t improve upon.

Actually, Rob Schneider is hapa, or half-Asian — his mother is Filipina. I’m not sure if that extra sliver of “authenticity” makes his racial buffoonery any better — or just more depressing.

But lately there have been some promising developments on the Asian American cinema front, thanks in part to the growing visibility of new Asian American directors like Justin Lin (Better Luck Tomorrow) and Eric Byler (Charlotte Sometimes). Last night I saw Saving Face, by first-time director Alice Wu, a film that is at once a lesbian love story, an intergenerational Asian American tale of culture clash, and a comedy of manners — all the while playing with genres and conventions to create something uniquely heartfelt, universal, and funny. I recommend you see it, if anything just to gape at Joan Chen’s brilliance as a comedic actor (or just to gape at her, I guess).

As for Morita, we may yet see a different side of the late actor in Only the Brave. This film — now in search of a distributor — tells from an Asian American viewpoint the story of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, a Japanese American unit whose families were held in the government’s internment camps but who nevertheless fought valiantly for their country in World War II. Judged by its size and length of service, the so-called “Purple Heart Battalion” is the most decorated unit in U.S. military history. Morita plays a Buddhist priest imprisoned in Hawaii after the Pearl Harbor attacks.

Of course, Morita will probably always be remembered, with genuine fondness, as Mr. Miyagi, that ever-upbeat font of fortune cookie wisdom and helpful car-waxing tips. But hopefully younger generations will place Morita in the context of his times and also appreciate the pioneer he was — and the actor he could not be.

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

… to get greedy, reports The Scotsman:

Police arrested a man at a Wal-Mart in Orlando, Florida, after he allegedly jumped a queue to buy a bargain notebook computer and was wrestled to the ground. Shoppers at another Wal-Mart store, in Texas, complained that a security guard used pepper spray when scuffles broke out….

A crowd of shoppers sparked a melee in the rush for the new Xbox 360 video game console at a Wal-Mart store in north-east Maryland, and it took 10 police officers to restore order….

Some customers were knocked down and trampled, though there were no serious injuries. Then Wal-Mart decided to cancel the sale and police ordered everyone to leave.

In western Michigan’s Cascade Township, a woman fell as dozens of people rushed into a store for the 5am opening and several stepped on her.

When the rush ended, the woman and a 13-year-old girl suffered minor injuries.

Put an end to the senseless violence. Support Buy Nothing Day. Because an Xbox 360 is a terrible thing to be trampled for.

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

Michael Kinsley, in Friday’s Washington Post:

The longer the war goes on, the more Americans, “allies” and Iraqis will die. That is not a slam-dunk argument for ending this foreign entanglement. But it is worth keeping in mind while you try to decide whether American credibility or Iraqi prosperity or Middle East stability can justify the cost in blood and treasure. And don’t forget to factor in the likelihood that the war will actually produce these fine things.

The last man or woman to die in any war almost surely dies in vain: The outcome has been determined, if not certified. And he or she might die happier thinking that death came in a noble cause that will not be abandoned. But if it is not a noble cause, he or she might prefer not to die at all. Stifling criticism that might shorten the war is no favor to American soldiers. They can live without that kind of “respect.”

Instead of focusing on this important question — whether the goals of “American credibility or Iraqi prosperity or Middle East stability” are worth the war’s financial and human cost — our nation’s leaders seem obsessed with appearances. Does criticism of the war in Iraq hurt the morale of American soldiers? Does photographing the coffins of soldiers killed in action undermine public support for the war? Do revelations of prisoner abuse damage the popularity of the U.S. military abroad? Does voting for the war back then and voting for a withdrawal now endanger my reelection chances in 2006?

Does pulling the soldiers out now disrespect the sacrifice of those who have already died in Iraq?

Our leaders tend to dwell on superficial problems. The release of damaging reports, and not the reported situation. The appearance of flip-flopping, and not the circumstances that have changed. The deference paid to sacrifice, and not the sacrifice itself.

Rather than spending so much time on symbols and slogans, we might find it more helpful to deal with realities. Respect, after all, tends to last longer when it is rooted in the real world and not artful illusions. A good leader knows that the best way to show respect for those under his or her charge is making fair, honest, and informed decisions — not pandering to them, not savaging critics, not wishing bad news away.

The decision to stay or leave Iraq cannot be made lightly, pushed along by either the inertia of poll numbers or the incitement of insults like “coward.” It deserves a fair, honest, and informed debate in Congress.

That would be the best way to honor the sacrifice of those who have died.

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

Congressman John Murtha of Pennsylvania, a conservative Democrat who received two Purple Hearts as a marine in the Korean and Vietnam Wars, gave a speech on Thursday in which he laid out the case for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. As a sort of pilgrim’s progress from hawk to heavily armed dove, Murtha’s speech is worth reading in its entirety, but I wanted to focus on an excerpt:

I believe with the U.S. troop redeployment the Iraqi security forces will be incentivized to take control. A poll recently conducted — this is a British poll reported in The Washington Times — over 80 percent of Iraqis are strongly opposed to the presence of coalition forces, and about 45 percent of Iraqi population believe attacks against American troops are justified. I believe we need to turn Iraq over to the Iraqis. I believe before the Iraqi elections, scheduled for mid-December, the Iraqi people and the emerging government must be put on notice. The United States will immediately redeploy — immediately redeploy. No schedule which can be changed, nothing that’s controlled by the Iraqis, this is an immediate redeployment of our American forces because they have become the target.

All of Iraq must know that Iraq is free — free from a United States occupation, and I believe this will send a signal to the Sunnis to join the political process. My experience in a guerrilla war says that until you find out where they are, until the public is willing to tell you where the insurgent is, you’re not going to win this war, and Vietnam was the same way. If you have an operation — a military operation and you tell the Sunnis because the families are in jeopardy, they — or you tell the Iraqis, then they are going to tell the insurgents, because they’re worried about their families.

There are two points worth emphasizing here. One is that the insurgency feeds on the presence of U.S. troops. No longer is it just an extremist fringe that opposes having foreign soldiers in the country: The vast majority of Iraqis want them out. Almost half believe attacks on American troops are justified. In such a poisonous climate, U.S. soldiers will find it harder to tell friend from foe; more innocents will be imprisoned or killed; and these wrongs will fuel further hatred and further bloodletting.

The second related point is that the United States cannot win a guerrilla war in Iraq without the support of the population. The insurgents know the terrain and enjoy the protection of local communities who either approve of their actions or are too frightened to resist. It is difficult to root them out, and the general population’s distrust of the occupiers means that the insurgents can easily recruit more followers.

America faced a similar situation in Vietnam, as Murtha alluded to. But perhaps the more telling example is Afghanistan. There, a communist regime with the overwhelming balance of military power and no apparent vulnerability to popular protest at home was unable to beat down a determined guerrilla resistance. The Soviets expended 10 years and 15,000 of their own soldiers in their quest to keep Afghanistan communist, and in the end they still failed. Iraq is quickly becoming the third modern example for military historians of why the better-armed, better-trained forces do not always win.

Those who want to stay the course in Iraq assert that “cowards cut and run.” It’s true that good soldiers stand their ground. But it’s also true that good leaders do not send their soldiers into battles that cannot be won. Foolhardiness is no way to respect the sacrifice of young lives.

A man of some intelligence once said, “It is stupidity rather than courage to refuse to recognize danger when it is close upon you.” In his speech last week, Murtha had the courage to acknowledge the facts on the ground in Iraq — that Iraqi support is minimal, that the occupation is toxic, that the U.S. military is weakening. Murtha has been bitterly attacked for his words. Meanwhile, an administration blind to danger, unpleasant news, and the consequences of its own mistakes continues to slog through the Iraqi morass, showing at every lethal bend in the road rashness instead of valor, obsession instead of leadership.

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