Frank Rich excerpt: "What was so grievously missing from Obama's address was any feeling for what has happened to our country during the seven-and-a-half-year war whose 'end' he was marking."
Portrait, New York Times columnist Frank Rich, 06/15/09. (photo: Getty/NYT)
Freedom's Just Another Word
05 September 10
Among the few scraps of news to emerge from Barack Obama's vacation was the anecdote of a Martha's Vineyard bookseller handing him an advance copy of Jonathan Franzen's new novel, "Freedom." The book has since rocketed up the Amazon best-seller list, powered by reviews even more ecstatic than those for Franzen's last novel, "The Corrections." But I doubt that the president, a fine writer who draws sustenance from great American writers, has read "Freedom" yet. If he had, he never would have delivered that bloodless speech on Tuesday night.
What was so grievously missing from Obama's address was any feeling for what has happened to our country during the seven-and-a-half-year war whose "end" he was marking. That legacy of anger and grief is what "Freedom" mainlines to its readers. In chronicling one Midwestern family as it migrates from St. Paul to Washington during the 9/11 decade, Franzen does for our traumatic time what Tom Wolfe's "The Bonfire of the Vanities" did for the cartoonish go-go 1980s. Or perhaps, more pertinently, what "The Great Gatsby" did for the ominous boom of the 1920s. The heady intoxication of freedom is everywhere in "Freedom," from extramarital sexual couplings to the consumer nirvana of the iPod to Operation Iraqi Freedom itself. Yet most everyone, regardless of age or calling or politics, is at war - not with terrorists, but with depression, with their consciences and with one another.
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Comments
Yes, Frank Rich was eloquent, but so was the pre-presidential Mr. Obama. But about what? While it would be churlish to demean authentic exercises in self-examination, it does seem always to be all about "us."
Just as most Westerns left out the Indians (unless played by the likes of Chuck Conners, Michael Ansara, Burt Lancaster and Anthony Quinn), and most films about Viet Nam - even the "anti-War" productions - conveniently left out the Vietnamese, so reflective pieces about the Mid-Oil East focus on the American sensibilities.
They strive for Mr. Obama's favourite virtue, "empathy," but they are short on analysis.
One way or another, the American Empire is ultimately about "imperialism." How Americans "feel" about it, and how they bicker with one another about its effects is of decidedly secondary interest to the millions who have suffered in the lands you seek to "save."
...as it damn well should be. My question is simply this: When will "we" rise to the honest confrontation we need to make with the collective sense of shame we so richly deserve? Will we seek to make amends and correct our actions to what extent we can, or will we continue to feed ourselves easy and phoney justifications for our abominable behavior globally and to our own people at home?
I think whether our existence is even deserved rests on this. I don't know what most people see when they look in the mirror, but I sure don't like what I see, especially as a veteran and I still feel too alone making it right. When will the public rise to the duty of taking responsibility for who we are and to seek the greatness it is capable of? When? What does it take?
Obama legacy; Healthcare reform - written by lobbyists, Afghanistan - see Wikipedia Vietnam entry, Medicare Drug prices - still full retail, Financial Crisis - orchestrated by Wall Street cronies of Robert Rubin's, Obama was for deep water gas drilling - before he was against it, Carbon Offsets - left for next year's Republican Congress, Unemployment - he's going to get to it any year now (we need tariffs against slave labor countries, abandon WTO and NAFTA...etc).
I missed it because I went to a more important talk, one given by a veteran of the Iraq war who had developed PTSD from his vain attempt to save a child who had been shot from a US helicopter.
Please cite references to the statement that "toppling Saddam Husseim" was one of the stated reasons for the invasion of Iraq.
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