Roman Polanski at the BFA.

The event began with a promising screening of Polanski’s student films, including “Two Men and a Wardrobe” and “The Fat and the Lean,” the former of which Polanski later attributed to his success in securing funding for his first feature film, the Academy Award-nominated Knife in the Water. The showing of these student films—perhaps a bit unsophisticated by current standards—served as an excellent impetus and inspiration for the BFA students present. Unfortunately, the promising start quickly unravelled. The event suffered from:

1) The poor behavior of the press. A massive number of people in the front snapped pictures of Polanski throughout his interview and during the screening of his film, blinding the man and blocking him from view.

2) The poor behavior of the audience, who embarrassingly stormed the stage at the end, mobbing the elderly Polanski and greedily grabbing at him for autographs and pictures.

3) The idiotic usage of pre-written questions as opposed to audience interaction. The questions were largely read aloud from notes by non-Chinese international students who seemed to be under the impression that their questions were actually letters to Mr. Polanski. The translator could not read the hand-written questions so Mr. Polanski was forced to read the questions, which led to one of the most amusing/embarrassing situations of the afternoon: A “question” began, “Dear Mr. Polanski, not sure if you remember me but I met you last week and gave you a copy of my student film. What do you think of my chances of getting into a film festival?”

Cringeworthy.

The mob descends.

There were a few gems, though. After the diminutive Polanski’s arrival on stage, he attempted to hide behind the comically massive bouquet of flowers placed on the table before him. He also articulately and charismatically responded to questions from the arbitrator. Polanski aimed to inspire the students present, advising them to avoid “chopping your films into fruit salad,” and discussing his rambunctious beginnings as a director in film school: Polanski invited hooligans to a conservative school party to liven up his one and only “documentary,” which almost got him expelled and turned him off of documentaries for life. However, Polanski’s love of film kept the school authorities from expelling him, and it was his education and support at the Polish Film School that led to his momentous success as a director.

There were moments of exasperation—when asked about the film Tess, Polanski irritably recalled the fact that Chinese censors chopped the film from two hours and forty minutes to an hour and a half when it was released in China in the early 80’s. But for the most part the director was patient and elegant, and showed a propensity for telling stories and for providing great sound bites. On the responsibility of the director, he said, “The atmosphere on the set depends on the director. If he knows what he’s doing, the crew immediately respects him. If he has passion, they will follow him. If he has a sense of humor, the crew will laugh. [But] if he is depressed, they will be as well.” With regards to film theory, he scoffed, “What is film theory? Tell the story, and if you don’t have anything to say, shut up! Asking a director about theory is like asking a centipede which leg he moves first.”

Overall, Polanski’s Q&A was a great opportunity which was somewhat wasted. With less bureaucratic planning and a more relaxed Q&A, the session would have been more insightful, and allowed the BFA students to show off its best assets: its students.

The author of this article was a former student of the Beijing Film Academy. The author requested that the article be published anonymously. Any e-mails responding to this post will be forwarded to the author.

This, just two days after Beijing began the final phase of Olympic preparation: the even-odd car ban which reduced traffic above ground at the expense of creating chaos below; the use of Olympic car lanes which plunged regular lanes into traffic while leaving the Olympic ones completely empty; the stationing of two scent hounds and a metal detector at every entrance to terminal 3 at Beijing International Airport; the addition of three new subway lines—Line 10, Line 8, and the Airport Line; and the posting of Olympic volunteers in subway stations to assist confused tourists and laobaixing alike.

Do you feel safer?

The government’s campaign against anything remotely unsafe began early this year and has proven to be all-encompassing, touching on food safety, highway safety, the safety of venues outside Beijing, terrorism, and social and political dissidence.

Do you feel safer?

In June we saw the addition of X-ray machines in subway stops, but to this day the scans have been inconsistent.  Just the other day I was asked to scan my bag while entering Line 10 but when I boarded Line 2 in the afternoon with the same bag no one batted an eyelash.  As the Olympics near the scans could become more routine but right now the whole process seems haphazard, as if the guards were waiting for something to happen before they get serious.

After the attacks in Kunming, police reacted by setting up checkpoints on highways and tightening security at the airport and train terminal but somehow I doubt they will find the bomber, who was identified as “a short man in a black shirt and gray pants.”  Well, that narrows it down.

There are already checkpoints on roads entering Beijing, and airport and train security are as strict as they can be without being obtrusive, but is it enough?  There are too many people (not to mention men wearing gray pants) in China to search every single one, and even if you do, it will only create other logistical problems.  Imagine the lines at the subway if the estimated five million daily passengers during the Olympics all had to go through an X-ray and metal detector.  And yet, if you don’t do that, it would be trivial to smuggle in dangerous materials.  Somehow I’m not deterred by the signs depicting dynamite and guns behind a Ghostbusters circle-and-slash.

Sadly, people will do bad things if they have decided to; it’s just a question of timing and magnitude.  And the Chinese government, though I praise them for their effort, will ultimately be powerless to stop those who have it in their mind to destroy things, especially in small, anonymous attacks—unless they place X-rays and metal detectors at every bus stop around the city.

During the Olympics, the Chinese government has to keep people safe (if not for the people then for their own image), which almost always means tightening security, not taking chances, and limiting freedoms.  But after the Olympics, I hope that they will work on solving the problems that led to this anxiety.  You know what they are.

Benjamin Franklin once wrote, “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”  This implies that one can exchange liberty for safety, and so far, I’ve given up more than enough freedoms for the Olympics.  How come I don’t feel any safer?

The rate of economic growth in Chinese since 1979 has been dizzying. 400 million people lifted out of poverty. Double-digit year-on-year growth since the early 1990s. Such unfettered growth has caused many scholars and bureaucrats to look to China as the new model for growth and development. The Chinese government, rightfully pleased with its superb economic stewardship, has begun asserting itself and wagging a disapproving finger at the U.S. The Chinese criticisms of the U.S. economy in this article were justified, but insightful criticism of a system does not mean that an alternative system is better. Although the Chinese economy may look good now, it is teetering on a broken foundation.

The fatal flaw with the Chinese system is a lack of rule of law. When the central government “opened the door” in 1979, it also decentralized the enforcement of the law and ceded power to local elites. Centrally-promulgated law is now up to international standards, but it is locally and often times arbitrarily enforced, rendering much of it DOA. Indeed, many deals are completed with a handshake instead of a contract. The reason for this is that guanxi, or relationships, are the key factor in determining who gets what, when, why and how. Because of the incestuous relations between local Party elites and business leaders, the state cannot serve its function as a third party enforcer. Rather, the state is part of the system that undermines the importance of the law.

The problem facing China is that it cannot continue to develop as it has, but it does not have a system in place to reign in the pollution and endemic corruption. China is running out of fresh water and its environment is being devastated by polluting factories and industries, which continue to churn out cheap goods for American consumption. Because competition is so fierce and oversight so poor, many factory bosses see cutting corners and polluting as the only way to stay solvent. Thus the economic competition that has created the Chinese economic juggernaut is sowing the seeds of its demise.

As long as local Party elites have a monetary and professional interest in breakneck economic development, they will not willingly close profitable corporations that pollute. And without a strong and independent judiciary, there is no way to enforce all of the centrally-promulgated laws that should preclude any such polluting activities from occurring. Sadly, I do not foresee a law-based system in China developing before the environment has reached the point of no return.

As for the American economy, the Chinese criticisms are important because they speak to a lack of proper regulation (read: lack of effective law). The repeal of the Glass-Stiegel Act during the Clinton Administration and the subsequent emasculation of regulatory and oversight agencies by the Bush Administration has brought the American economy to its knees. Yet because the law is still the final arbiter of justice in America, the passage of new laws that reinvigorate the American regulatory framework should alleviate some of the more acute American economic woes. Despite its current problems, the American economy will rebound because of its strong legal foundation.

The Chinese government is right to fault the Bush Administration for its failure to effectively regulate the American economy. But the irony is that, because of foundational differences, though the disastrous economic policies of the Bush Administration may not destroy the American economy, the brilliant economic stewardship of the Central Government may not be able to save China’s.

Many netizens have decried him as the most “shameless” man in China. The disparaging “Song of Running Fan,” which was written to warn Chinese against acting in such a cowardly manner, will soon be released as a cell phone ring-tone. To his great credit, the opprobrium of the masses has not cowed Fan into issuing an apology or condemning his actions. “At such a life-and-death moment, I would only give up my life for my daughter. I would not do it for other people, even my mother,” he wrote.

The web-based attacks against Running Fan are the latest in a series of nationalistic outbursts against Chinese who aren’t sufficiently patriotic. The last such outburst was directed at Grace Wang, the Duke University freshman who along with her family received death threats after she attempt to reconcile Pro-Tibet and Pro-China protesters on the Duke Campus.

In the wake of the 1989 protests, the Party began to inculcate a stronger sense of patriotism and nationalism through a school curriculum that emphasized “patriotic education.” Twenty years and one generation later, it is easy to see the fruits of this campaign in the attacks on Running Fan and the post-earthquake proliferation of young people in Beijing wearing “I love China” t-shirts with a Chinese flag etched into the heart.

Showing one’s patriotism by lashing out at others online or wearing a t-shirt (or a flag lapel pin) is an easy and convenient way to feel good about oneself―and one’s country―without exerting much effort. Real patriotism requires sacrifice. This does not ipso facto mean dying or fighting for one’s country, but it does necessitate something more than a superficial indication that one is “patriotic.” For example, forgoing a lucrative job that is damn near bequeathed to one upon graduating from Peking University in order to teach in a place as rural and poor as Dujiangyan is the essence of a patriotic desire to give back to one’s country. And this is, of course, what Fan Meizhong did. Before more people run off to attack Running Fan for his actions, they should think about which is more patriotic: writing a scathing message condemning someone online, or devoting one’s life to helping those in need.

The cinema chain UME has decided to ban two of Stone’s upcoming film releases this year from their theaters, which I suppose assumes that people would have gone to see them in the first place. And, taking a hint from Carrefour, Christian Dior has pulled all advertisements featuring Stone, who models a cosmetics line, from Chinese stores, lest they find themselves the target of another capricious Chinese boycott (Dior is French after all).

From Dior China’s statement:

Due to some customer reaction we have decided to pull her image from all of the department stores and from all of China…. We just want our customers and fans to realize that her personal comments are not related to the company and of course we don’t support any type of commentary that will hurt the feelings of our customers.

It seems that China is getting good at a popular American pastime: taking offense at things. Watch out, Wal-Mart, Dixie Chicks, et al. I am not defending anything celebrities say or companies do (especially if they are ridiculous and untrue), but China is getting quite adept at drawing apologies—from CNN, BBC, even Stone herself. Is this indicative of an oversensitive population, anxious about the Olympics? Or is it a symptom of the West trying to capture the essence of a country they can’t quite read? Or maybe it’s just another episode in the long-running soap opera, “People Doing Stupid Things.”

Stone’s apology, issued through a statement so you know she means it, goes something like this:

Due to my inappropriate words and acts during the interview, I feel deeply sorry and sad about hurting Chinese people…. I am willing to take part in the relief work of China’s earthquake, and wholly devote myself to helping affected Chinese people.

I fully support Stone’s commitment to help with relief work. If she goes to Sichuan to help with disaster relief, she can show the Chinese people that she isn’t wholly insensitive. But if, while helping remove rubble, a neighboring wall collapses on her and leaves her trapped for days, she would no longer have to apologize, because there might be something to be said for karma after all.

The video has several parts. It begins with an introduction by an anchor then goes into Stone’s rambling, followed by reactions from carefully-selected bystanders. Only the first reaction is in Chinese; the rest are in English. Watch the video, then we’ll talk.

In defense of Stone, she seems mildly inebriated/baked/both. Maybe that’s why she speaks with the grammatic variation of a four-year-old (sorry four-year-olds!). But although she phrases the idea of karmic retribution in the form of a rhetorical question—which either implies that she doesn’t really believe an unseen force caused the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people in retaliation for “not being nice” or that she lacks the sense, common or otherwise, to not express those ideas in public—the use of the subjunctive only makes her comments slightly less egregious and inordinately offensive.

Stone’s comments are unjustifiable, so I won’t waste any more time criticizing her. I just wonder, were the reporters asking everyone on the red carpet for their opinions on the earthquake, or did they somehow sense that Sharon Stone had the best chance of making a mockery of herself when responding to a current events question?

But Sharon Stone isn’t the only one talking about Tibet again. The Dalai Lama, after a meeting with Britain’s Gordon Brown, claimed he heard from a military source in Tibet that “after the Olympics 1 million Chinese are going to settle in the autonomous region of Tibet.” He continued, “There is every danger Tibet becomes a truly Han Chinese land and Tibetans become an insignificant minority. Then the very basis of the idea of autonomy becomes meaningless.”

These two stories serve as a reminder that the earthquake might have bought the China a reprieve from outside scrutiny, but the ceasefire won’t last forever. Soon, the familiar questions will resurface, along with several new ones: why did the schools collapse? Could anything have been done to mitigate the damage? And if so, who, if anyone, could be held responsible?

I wonder if this video will cause as much of an uproar as Jack Cafferty’s gaffe on CNN. It certainly surpasses all previous benchmarks for obscenity, insensitivity, and ignorance, placing it on par with blaming Hurricane Katrina on a homosexual parade. I hope Chinese audiences can rise above this bizarre spasm of logorrhea and realize that, in the grand scheme of things, Sharon Stone’s opinion on China-Tibet relations counts for very little. But the reporter’s loaded questions (”But these people are innocent right?”), and the video’s description (”This is the real face of this high IQ hollywood star!!!” which I imagine refers to Stone’s debunked claim that she was a member of Mensa) belies an insecurity or perhaps a concern that people might actually take Stone seriously. When the second French reporter characterizes the earthquake as “just a natural disaster, and that’s all,” the reporter asks, “It’s not something political right?” A political earthquake? Unless the tectonic plates are shifting places because some of them support Tibetan independence while others oppose it (Eurasian plate I’m looking at you), I think we’re okay.

There is no need to defend China against attacks like these. They are absurd and any sleep lost over them is as meaningless as the comments themselves. Let’s focus instead on the issues at hand: the earthquake, the Olympics, and boycotting the next Sharon Stone movie.

Leaving out the Tangshan earthquake (four generations of Chinese leaders ago), the Chinese government had solid reasons for attempting to cover up the disasters of the past decade. Yellow River flood control was one of the biggest programs of the Chinese government; the building of thousands of dams and higher and higher levees worth billions of dollars were meant to tame and control the Yellow River, often called “China’s Sorrow.” The floods represented a catastrophic failure of one of the cornerstones of China’s domestic improvement policies. The SARS epidemic sparked a panic, flooding China’s already overcrowded hospitals with patients with complaints both real and imagined, as well as keeping frightened people with the disease at home where they could infect others rather than seeking medical treatment. While the Chinese government can be criticized for slow action, it is hard to imagine otherwise in a country with an overtaxed health system and no centralized computer information sharing. In any case, the reasons for suppression were twofold—to keep a panic from developing and to conceal China’s slow response. The train crash represents another dramatic failure which could be laid at the hands of Chinese government. China’s rail network carries hundreds of millions of people every year—a record 170 million during the week of Spring Festival alone. A disaster like that might erode public trust in the Chinese railway transportation system, which could have a very negative effect on confidence in the government. If the government stands to lose face from an incident, it will be covered up as they are best able.

The key question in all of these previous examples is: “Could the government have been more prepared, and prevented this from becoming a disaster?” The answer is, “most likely, yes.” Better land management or flood control on the Yellow River, faster action and treatment of SARS, and a better information network for the train, are all possible answers. It poses a challenge to the legitimacy of the government. Apply that rubric now to the earthquake. The Chinese government could have done absolutely nothing to mitigate the effects of the earthquake. This is one kind of natural disaster that no one can be expected to be able to prevent. While there have been unprecedented levels of openness and access so far, this will soon change. The Chinese government has a long history of allowing open access at the beginning and then suddenly reining in coverage. Already, in between the when the first draft of this article was written and when it will be published, you see the beginnings of that reversal.

Many Chinese will point to the fact that China often shows its poorer face on the news these days. Stricken farmers with piteous situations are often featured in the nightly news, struggling to make a living when there is no water to irrigate their plants with. In this case, disaster victims huddling in the streets, afraid to enter their homes. The key difference is that the blame is on Nature, not the government. The government is not being expected to solve or prevent the problem—merely to mitigate its effects. That is the key difference with the media response to the earthquake. People of any country unite around common disasters, and this represents a golden opportunity to solidify support for the Chinese government by showing off that it is doing everything it can. Put a picture of a woman crying over the dead body of her child next to a picture of a grave Wen Jiabao standing amidst rubble, and you have a propagandist’s dream: a win-win situation for the government. Now that many are perishing before they can be rescued from the rubble, and now that exposure is beginning to take its toll on the survivors, the openness is being reconsidered.

This is not to say that the Chinese government should not be praised for its quick response—it deserves to be lauded. It is outdoing itself in its response to this disaster. Many pundits, however, seem to be surprised by the media openness that is being seen to this disaster, and speculate if it represents a new trend in Chinese thinking. To the contrary, this is merely the continuation of basic principles of news broadcast propaganda that have been followed for years: stir up the people’s emotions against an outsider (be it America, Japan, or Mother Nature) and show them how the government is doing well against them. That is what happened in 1999 for the Belgrade bombing—initial open news coverage was then suddenly throttled—and it is what will happen now with this earthquake.

Howard Goldblatt, who was a guest last week at the Bookworm’s International Literary Festival, would certainly agree. “Translation is inadequate, but it’s all we have if good writing is to have its life extended, spatially and temporally,” he wrote in a Washington Post article six years ago. Goldblatt, a research professor at Notre Dame, has published over thirty translations and is largely credited for bringing contemporary Chinese fiction to an English-speaking audience. In his hour-long session at the Bookworm, Goldblatt talked about his path to becoming a translator and his philosophy on translation. (For those not present, many of the questions asked during the evening can be found in this interview from Full Tilt)

Like many late-blooming intellectuals, Goldblatt was a “terrible, terrible student” and almost flunked out of college. But he graduated, and after graduation he made the “irredeemably stupid” decision to join the Navy. It was during his first tour that he was sent to Taipei but it wasn’t until he was redeployed to Taiwan after a brief stint in Vietnam that he began to study Chinese and found that he had an ear for the language. After completing an MA at San Francisco State University and a Ph.D at Indiana University, he began his career as a translator.

Although the night was billed as “Contemporary Chinese Fiction,” the moderator, Eric Abrahamsen from the blog Paper Republic, kept the questions strictly to translation after admitting he had a vested interest in the subject, which left little chance for Goldblatt to expound on the state of contemporary Chinese fiction apart from debunking exaggerated criticisms that there was no good fiction coming out of China. The evening proceeded with a careful prodding of what Goldblatt considered was a translator’s role and several anecdotes that illuminated the sometimes-rewarding, sometimes-punishing process of translating a novel.

Goldblatt believes that as a translator he has a duty to three things: the author, the text, and the reader–and the most important of these is the reader, whose understanding of the text trumps all other considerations. Indeed, what good is a translation if no one wants to read it? He acknowledged that translation was a losing game, but it had to be done for people who were unable to read the original text and to allow the text a new life in a new language. In rare cases he admitted he had the chance to breathe new life into the text, adding a pun here or a joke there that wouldn’t have worked in the original language. But his loyalty to the reader has gotten him in trouble, with authors and editors alike. Some authors have been unhappy with his work, claiming that it sounds too foreign, while others (he mentioned Mo Yan specifically) gave him free reign and were happy to answer questions when they arose.

He told a story about a detail in one of Mo Yan’s stories. There was a scene where an automobile was driving down a bumpy road, making a certain sound. Goldblatt felt the detail was extraneous and asked the author whether the fact that the road was bumpy was important. Mo Yan responded, of course it was, because it shows that the villagers by the road are so poor they scrape the road to make it uneven so that when coal trucks pass, the shaking will knock some of the coal off, which they then gather and use to heat their homes. Without a careful translator and a willing author, a minute detail like that surely would have been lost on its way into English.

Another anecdote about translation revolved around a cliché in Su Tong’s My Life as Emperor. Su Tong took the phrase “lick his wounds” and translated it literally into Chinese which Goldblatt then translated directly back into English. This small gaffe (a choice between fidelity to the text and fidelity to the reader) did not escape the practiced eye of John Updike who, in his review in The New Yorker, called the choice of wording “just plain tired.” Updike, of course, could not be expected to read the original Chinese for his review. Goldblatt chuckled as he retold this story, saying that maybe it was an instance where he was too faithful to the text. It seemed to me that, after so many years, he had come to terms with the paradoxical nature of his work.

During the hour-long conversation, Goldblatt shifted effortlessly between English and Chinese and at times he would say whole sentences in Chinese if it better suited his meaning. It made me think that Chinese literature, in the hands of someone who not only spoke, but clearly understood both languages, was safe for years to come, although he called for new translators after admitting that he couldn’t go on translating forever. Other than an apocryphal assertion that Murakami Haruki has had more short stories published in The New Yorker than any other author (he could have been joking because Murakami isn’t even close), Goldblatt was humorous and self-effacing, nothing like I’d imagined a notable scholar would be (a professor in college told me horror stories about Donald Keene).

Goldblatt, who at times seemed beleaguered by his chosen profession, in the end praised his job and said all the choices he made in his youth were worth it if they had brought him here. Many times during the night he would ask rhetorically why anyone would want to be an translator. Oddly enough, it was a question he had answered six years ago:

Because I love it. I love to read Chinese; I love to write in English. I love the challenge, the ambiguity, the uncertainty of the enterprise. I love the tension between creativity and fidelity, even the inevitable compromises. And, every once in a while, I find a work so exciting that I’m possessed by the urge to put it into English. In other words, I translate to stay alive.

Purchasing Power Parity is the measure of the nominal exchange rate between two countries obtained by comparing the price differential between goods in the two countries. For example, if a Big Mac costs $1 in the U.S. and ¥10 in Japan, then the exchange rate should be ¥10 to $1. But the ratio of prices between two countries based on only one good may not be an accurate estimate—there could be a myriad of other factors that impact price, like the availability of beef, for example. Thus, studies must use the prices of goods across a wide variety of sectors. The 2005 study of PPP used the prices of 1,000 goods and services.

Interestingly, a 1999 paper published by Chen Kai at the World Bank comes to the completely opposite conclusion from the Economist—that by using PPP, China’s GDP should be much higher than listed. However, this paper addresses China’s GDP from the period of 1980-1991, different from the 2005 calculation reported in The Economist.

Is it possible for China’s GDP to be grossly underestimated by using the PPP approach in 1991, and then be radically overstated 15 years later? One explanation might be the stratification of China’s economy. China’s growing wealth gap could very well be reflected in the prices of goods and services. China’s urban class is growing in wealth while the rural poor, the majority of China’s population, remains impoverished. Prices in shops and restaurants around Beijing vary wildly in price, based on location and intended audience (34 RMB for a Venti Frappucino in Zhongguancun; 2.5 RMB for half a dozen baozi in Dahongmen). The goal of selecting 1,000 different goods to compare is so that such disparities even out. But with China’s much more bipolar economy, how effective is it to compare price differentials?

Some might question the role of income disparity and point out that the China’s Gini coefficient is similar to America’s. Thus, differences in economic price structures shouldn’t matter since both countries have similar income gaps. But the Gini coefficient is a measure of the inequality of wealth distribution, a measure in which the size of a country’s GDP doesn’t matter.

In addition, the Gini coefficient does not measure income derived from wealth. The booming stock market in China amounts to very significant gains in wealth for the small fraction of Chinese who can afford to invest, thus significantly increasing the wealth gap. Stock ownership in China in 2006 was estimated to be less than 10% of the population, compared to about half of the U.S. population in 2004. Further, the Chinese middle class is estimated to be only 13% of the population, while in the United States it’s closer to 45%-50%.

Even the economic measurements in a country with very open information, such as the United States, have a margin of error. With much data about the Chinese economy is left opaque—such as the inner management of state-owned enterprises and sovereign wealth funds—the margin of error for measurements is much greater. It’s not out of the question that GDP is grossly overstated.

Conventional wisdom—a term coined in 1958 by the economist John Kenneth Galbraith—holds that the winner of an argument is almost always the person who sets the parameters, or “rules of the game.” This can be seen in the Presidential campaigns; is Barack Obama is transcendent figure who will bring an end to partisan politicking, or is anyone who believes that, “living in a fairytale” and “rolling the dice” by supporting him, as Bill Clinton has said? The way in which the media and public decide this question will have far reaching implications for the Democratic Primaries to come.

The underlying point is that framing matters. Moreover, by setting the “rules of the game” one is able to dictate what is going to be discussed. For example, the Bush Administration has done a masterful job of framing the Iraq War. Not only is it a part of the “War on Terror,” (terrorism is a tactic, not a group; furthermore, staying in Iraq is not in the interest of those trying to win this so-called war, although that’s another topic for another posting) but it is being fought against one foe: the “insurgents.” This term has a monolithic implication—if we can just somehow defeat the insurgents, then we’ll be fine. Yet the groups currently engaging in guerilla warfare are fighting both the U.S. and each other—the ex-Baathists, followers of Moqtada al Sadr, Al Qaeda, and local clan leaders are not all from the same stock. By reducing all of them to “insurgents,” we are obfuscating and simplifying the complexities that currently confront the U.S. and the Iraqis.

Moreover, the “surge” has shifted the focus of the American public from the key benchmarks for Iraq and towards one statistic: a drop in violence. Yet even a decrease in the number of American and Iraqi security force casualties is not going to fix the problems in Iraq. It may delay them, but it will not fix them. The addition of ground troops in Iraq is not going to lead to reconciliation and compromise, an agreement over how to share oil wealth, or an end to the civil war. If anything, arming and training the security forces in Iraq is laying the groundwork for the future subjugation and/or extermination of the Suuni population.

The focus on insurgents and the surge has caused people to miss the forest for the trees—the immediate implications of the war and occupation are obscuring more general trends like the growing alienation of the Arab street from the U.S., which serves as a great recruitment tool for al Qaeda and reaffirms long-held notions that the U.S. is just an imperial power interested in oil and the subjugation of Arab peoples. Should the U.S. attack Iran, look for leaders in the Middle East to turn away from the U.S. as a protector and toward a country with an extremely bloody last that is running a sunshine campaign about how loving and peaceful its rise on the world stage will be: China.

Not only have “insurgent” and “surge” come to dominate discussion of Iraq and thereby clouded the thinking of most of the American public, they have also crept into our discussion of the Presidential election. Obama is the “insurgent” candidate doing battle with the establishment (i.e. Hillary Clinton). Moreover, Huckabee saw a “surge” at the polls when he won in Iowa, as did Hillary when women “surged” to the polls in New Hampshire, which is helping her “surge” ahead in the rest of the country. The point is that, by using these terms over and over again, we forget what they mean, why they have entered the general lexicon and the way in which they serve the agenda of those who started using them. When listening to candidates and politicians and reading things in the papers, it is important to remember that the all catch phrases originated somewhere, and in most cases the reason for their creation was not to illuminate, but to obfuscate.