JACK BERNARD'S TRAVELS

Let me go on the record – I thought Zero Dark Thirty was a great film. It doesn’t purport to be a documentary but it does claim fidelity to actual events surrounding the hunt for and eventual killing of Osama Bin Laden. Kathryn Bigelow, the director, was passed over by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in the 2013 run for the Best Director Oscar, and word on the street is that the opening scenes of “enhanced interrogation” and “extreme rendition” are behind the Academy’s snub.

I’m disappointed that the debate following the film’s release was hijacked by critics who made it about America’s use of torture rather than a portrayal of the drudgery and sifting of detail that is at the heart of modern intelligence gathering. Critics turned the debate into a morality tale in which the US became the bad guy when the outcome was actually the elimination of the most dangerous terrorist on the planet.

Did torture yield the critical piece? The CIA, FBI and others have complained that enhanced interrogation and extreme rendition, where torture is outsourced to other countries, was not responsible for eliciting a critical piece of intelligence that identified the courier that eventually led them to the Abbottabad compound where Bin Laden was holed up. Does torture produce actionable intelligence? Sometimes it might. Experts disagree about its efficacy but most do agree that a good interrogator can get the actionable intelligence without torture and that the information obtained through torture is eminently suspect because subjects will say anything to bring an end to the pain. I don’t know the “truth.”

There is no question that Alberto Gonzales, as Attorney General, prodded by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, authorized and sanctioned the use of waterboarding as an interrogation tool during those years. President Obama has made it clear and established policy to eliminate waterboarding and extreme rendition. Let the record reflect that I am not a supporter of torture, but at the time of these interrogations enhanced interrogation techniques and extraordinary rendition were sanctioned and authorized by the US government.

I don’t know what it’s really like to be tortured. I went through two survival schools – summer and winter – in the 1960’s. I was captured by the “aggressors” and taken to an interrogation compound where I was sleep deprived, left in a cell with no heat and an outside air temp of 15⁰F. I was interrogated under bright lights and when I refused to give anything but name, rank, and serial number I was placed in a small box (like the one shown in the film) and left for a few hours. It was no fun, and I don’t know how I would have fared had the situation been real. The point is that all enemy combatants use these techniques and worse. Let’s be clear; Zero Dark Thirty is not about the ethics of interrogation techniques. It is a damn good detective story about how the CIA tracked down the world’s most dangerous terrorist.

In addressing the critics of the film I like the words Hillary Clinton used in frustration the other day – “What difference at this point does it make?” We can’t rewind the clock and take back the active use of enhanced interrogation and extreme rendition. The world is not a black and white place, even though some would like to think it is. Since the end of the cold war and the advent of terrorism on a world scale the United States has been searching for a moral compass to guide its foreign policy. It wants to hold itself to a high moral standard while still protecting itself and its citizens. I think this film celebrates the hard work and perseverance that yielded a positive outcome. Let’s give the people who did it credit. After all it is a film about people. In the end, I believe a film’s importance is measured, at least in part, by the discussion it provokes. This isn’t a documentary; it’s a narrative film based on actual events and it is both art and fact. I think it’s a great one.

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I was taken by how Richard Blanco’s poem captured America’s hopes, landscape and people.

One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores,
peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces
of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth
across the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies.
One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story
told by our silent gestures moving behind windows.

My face, your face, millions of faces in morning’s mirrors,
each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day:
pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights,
fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbows
begging our praise. Silver trucks heavy with oil or paper—
bricks or milk, teeming over highways alongside us,
on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives—
to teach geometry, or ring-up groceries as my mother did
for twenty years, so I could write this poem.

All of us as vital as the one light we move through,
the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day:
equations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined,
the “I have a dream” we keep dreaming,
or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won’t explain
the empty desks of twenty children marked absent
today, and forever. Many prayers, but one light
breathing color into stained glass windows,
life into the faces of bronze statues, warmth
onto the steps of our museums and park benches
as mothers watch children slide into the day.

One ground. Our ground, rooting us to every stalk
of corn, every head of wheat sown by sweat
and hands, hands gleaning coal or planting windmills
in deserts and hilltops that keep us warm, hands
digging trenches, routing pipes and cables, hands
as worn as my father’s cutting sugarcane
so my brother and I could have books and shoes.

The dust of farms and deserts, cities and plains
mingled by one wind—our breath. Breathe. Hear it
through the day’s gorgeous din of honking cabs,
buses launching down avenues, the symphony
of footsteps, guitars, and screeching subways,
the unexpected song bird on your clothes line.

Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling,
or whispers across café tables, Hear: the doors we open
for each other all day, saying: hello, shalom,
buon giorno, howdy, namaste, or buenos días
in the language my mother taught me—in every language
spoken into one wind carrying our lives
without prejudice, as these words break from my lips.

One sky: since the Appalachians and Sierras claimed
their majesty, and the Mississippi and Colorado worked
their way to the sea. Thank the work of our hands:
weaving steel into bridges, finishing one more report
for the boss on time, stitching another wound
or uniform, the first brush stroke on a portrait,
or the last floor on the Freedom Tower
jutting into a sky that yields to our resilience.

One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes
tired from work: some days guessing at the weather
of our lives, some days giving thanks for a love
that loves you back, sometimes praising a mother
who knew how to give, or forgiving a father
who couldn’t give what you wanted.

We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight
of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always—home,
always under one sky, our sky. And always one moon
like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop
and every window, of one country—all of us—
facing the stars
hope—a new constellation
waiting for us to map it,
waiting for us to name it—together.

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My last Surviving Seattle post talked about quieting the noise – the volume, the clutter, the shrill voices that come at us constantly – the chatter from the radio, network and cable TV news, blogs, newspapers, magazines, documentary films, and above all internet websites. From the beginning of the information age the challenge has been to sort and select information, assess its value, and not be overwhelmed by its volume as we try to make effective use of it. The amount of information available is a luxury but also a challenge. How do we manage it as we strive to be our best selves? We can’t be at our personal best if we don’t manage the intake.

I no longer have the demands of a full time job and that gives me the luxury of free and unscheduled time. If there’s fresh snow at the pass I can grab my skis and jump in the car. If I want to go to a movie I can go at 4pm when the crowds are light and the traffic flows. If I want to write something I sit down and write without having to cram it in between work, dinner, and bed. But I like structure and work definitely gives the day structure.

Too much time gives us things like The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills or Jackass. Discipline gives us Op-Ed columnists like Thomas Friedman or David Brooks, which brings me to the point of this post – where do we go for news of current events and how often do we go there?

The personal computer and the internet have changed the way we access information. Newspapers, once the primary source of most current events, are struggling to stay alive and to maintain their status as reliable generators and distributors of the news, But, they have lost audience share because readers can get the same news at no charge on their computers. Seattle is just one example of how the internet has changed the news landscape. For most of the 20th century the Seattle Times and the Post-Intelligencer competed to deliver the news to the local population. By the end of the century it had become financially difficult for the two papers to co-exist and a joint operating agreement was crafted to enable them to continue. That worked until the internet took a share of the pie and the P-I went out of business – like the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the San Francisco Examiner. Even the venerable New Orleans Times-Picayune has gone to three day a week distribution. I guess that’s how the free market works, but these changes remove reliable sources of investigative journalism and make it more difficult to assess the credibility of news sources.

None of our adult children takes a daily newspaper. They get their news via the internet or from network or cable TV. It is definitely a way to filter the news but it’s someone else’s filter. I look at internet sites when I’m not at home, but my normal day begins with the New York Times (Marilynn takes the Seattle Times) and CBS Morning News with Charlie Rose and Nora O’Donnell and by 9 o’clock I have looked through all sections of the paper and heard breaking news from two reliable news anchors. During the day I might check headlines at The Huffington Post or CNN, maybe even Fox News to see what the enemy is saying, but I try to limit my time at any one of these sites. Marilynn listens to Rush Limbaugh in the car. I can’t do it, but it is a noise option.

What you miss when you go to the internet are the small articles on the inside pages of the paper – the local news, the obituaries, the theater and book reviews, the articles you notice as you turn the pages. I think it’s worth keeping these things in mind, and it’s why I subscribe to two newspapers and several magazines. If we don’t support them they will disappear and with them the investigative reporting that uncovers the stories behind the stories.

There is good news coming from the TV side however. With TiVo, On Demand and Direct TV we can be selective about what we watch and when we watch it. We don’t have to stay up until midnight to see the late night shows and we don’t have to be home at 2pm to watch Charlie Rose interview a world class economist. I love TiVo and know that I am making better choices about content because I use it. Here’s to making good choices and becoming a well informed citizen.

Real News not Real Housewives.

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