Tag Archives: people

“You’ll Need to Relearn How to Be a Person”: A Letter to Bowe Bergdahl From a Fellow Former Hostage

by MirtaFarkas Posted on June 4, 2014

Mother Jones

Bowe Bergdahl, you are now free, but many of your problems are just beginning. You have left a world of extreme isolation and entered one that is vastly more complex. It will be hard for you to adjust. Anyone who spends a significant amount of time as a prisoner comes out handicapped. This would be true whether you were held by the Taliban or anyone else. And along with all that, you will have to cope with being an odd celebrity.

You will have infinitely more support than most prisoners do when they are released. People will recognize you on the street and welcome you home. But you’ll soon discover that others, in op-eds, blogs, and emails, say terrible things. You’ll find that many are blaming you for your own captivity. Ironically, these are generally people who feel very strongly that your captors are their enemies. Some of them think you should be punished further. You’ll see that many blame you for the deaths of American soldiers, rather than blame the war itself. Blaming the victim is always a way to protect the powerful.

When you get back to the United States, people will ask you over and over, in confidential and heartfelt tones, how you are doing. When they ask, they will look you in the eyes to show you they understand. You will not be able to give an answer that feels true, possibly because you will grow annoyed with such questions, but also because “great” and “awful” will probably both be true at once, though you won’t really understand the awful part.

You will get unreasonably angry at times, even when your life is good. You will carry a strange tension around that you never felt before, one that is unlike the anxiety and fear you felt in captivity. You might develop new nervous ticks. You’ll probably feel tempted to drink more than usual. You might have problems with your memory.

Chances are you will feel anxious in crowds. It may be hard for you to make choices for a while without being told what to do. You will be wracked with guilt for a thousand things. That, or you’ll feel nothing. There will be something you’ll come to miss about captivity, though you might keep this a secret—there, the source of your problems were clear. Now that you’re free, they won’t make sense.

Some people—strangers—will become oddly emotional around you. You’ll come to learn that some relate their own crises to yours and they’ll look to you for answers that you won’t possess. You’ll find that the person many see when they look at you isn’t really you, and this will be awkward.

Some will relate to you as a hero for walking off the military base (if that is what you in fact did; we don’t yet know), which might feel supportive, but also uncomfortable. Some will treat you as a hero for being a soldier, which, if you were in fact disillusioned with the military, might also make you uncomfortable. You will come to understand that you are now a symbol and a story, and you’ll need to relearn how to be a person.

For years to come, people will tell you dreadful things they’ve been through when they first meet you. Some will preface their stories by saying things like, “Of course this doesn’t compare to your situation, but…” Others won’t preface anything. Some will probably tell you things far worse than anything you’ve ever experienced. Eventually, strangers will forget your face and you’ll enjoy your anonymity (while missing the attention).

You’ll find yourself trying carefully not to bring up your captivity, not because you have such a hard time talking about it, but because you want to enjoy your dinner or the party or the company of friends without someone telling you yet another terrible story. You’ll learn how to condense your own experience into sound bites that can wrap everything up in a few minutes and leave the listener feeling satisfied.

It’s impossible to say what is best for another person, but what helped me when I was released after 26 months of captivity in Iran was to find others who have been through similar experiences. Through them, you will see that your confusion is not unusual. When I got out of prison, I found solace in conversations with other Americans who had been wrongfully detained, from Nicaragua to Afghanistan.

I also connected with people who were wrongfully convicted in the United States, some getting out after more than 20 years behind bars. I related to a former Guantanamo detainee, Ahmed Errachidi, who was detained without trial, did three years in solitary, and was released six years after being captured. When I called him up in Morocco and he told me he was having a hard time feeling happy, feeling like he had his life back, I felt less alone.

More likely than not, you will give a press conference or interviews at some point. If you do, you will find that many want to shape your story for you, and this will be hard to navigate. You’ll also realize that, for most everyone else, your story hinges on a moment four years ago—did you, or did you not walk off the base?—as if that would explain everything. Embedded in the question will be a subtle suggestion that if you did, you might have deserved being held captive for four years with the Taliban. This question will be disappointing, though you will answer it so many times that your answer will become rote. For you, of course, the moment you were taken captive will feel like the distant past.

If I could say one thing to you, it would be this: Getting free is complicated. It is difficult. Sometimes unbearable. But this will pass. Just like you slowly adjusted to being a prisoner, you will slowly adjust to being free. And several times, you will think you have adjusted, then you will realize that you haven’t.

This will keep happening, for so long that you will think that you are permanently damaged. You are not. It will be hard at first to make your own decisions, but you will learn. People will want you to do things that you don’t want to do, even people close to you. You don’t need to do them. Your decisions are no longer matters of life and death. You are free now.

If you want to chat, hit me up. Seriously.

P.S. To my fellow journalists:

It would be nice—though its hard to imagine—if the media didn’t descend on Bowe Bergdahl like a pack of wolves. When I was released from Iran, some journalists tried to squeeze their way onto my flight home. One tried to embed with our families as they waited for Josh’s and my release, even though our relatives were very clear that they did not want this.

There are some things more important than a scoop. Nothing special will be added to the world if you are the first person to interview this man; you will only satisfy your own ego. He is new to the world. He is going through the slow process of coming to grips with freedom, to being able to function on his own. Don’t prey on him. Give him a chance.

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“You’ll Need to Relearn How to Be a Person”: A Letter to Bowe Bergdahl From a Fellow Former Hostage

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Yes, Let’s Gid Rid of the White House Press Secretary

by EmiliaKeaton Posted on June 2, 2014

Mother Jones

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After President Obama announced Jay Carney’s resignation as White House press secretary last Friday, a number of people suggested we just do away with the position. Dave Weigel’s take was typical:

The tragedy of the White House beat, as hacks like me keep pointing out, is that the White House is forever innovating ways to make it useless. A specific question about the administration? Why, there’s another department you can direct your questions to. What news there is gets generated by reporters acting on their own, not by anything pulled from the White House press secretary. Jay Carney’s role, and Josh Earnest’s role, is to dodge….

Why do we need this particular public official? As the White House pioneers ways to avoid questions, what’s the point of the job Jay Carney’s now leaving?

This is all true. And yet….I wonder if this lets reporters off too easily? Every once in a while I happen to catch a White House press briefing, either live or on YouTube, and what strikes me is that reporters are less interested in gaining actual information than in simply playing gotcha. Do press secretaries dodge? Sure. But then again, if you ask whether the president still has confidence in Eric Shinseki (this is Weigel’s example), what do you expect? It’s a dumb question, designed to produce theater, not information. Everyone knows perfectly well that you have to express confidence in your deputies until the day you don’t. If you ask about it, you’re just going to get mush.

Ditto for lots of other press room fodder. White House reporters seem to be in love with asking questions that they know perfectly well aren’t going to be answered, for no reason except that it provides a soundbite for the evening news that shows them being “tough.”

If I had to guess, I’d say this culture started with Ron Ziegler and Watergate. In that case, tough, relentless questioning was legitimate. In general, it’s legitimate whenever you’re probing a genuine scandal of some kind. But after Watergate was over, White House reporters somehow got in the habit of treating everything like a scandal, and press secretaries got in the habit of treating every question as an attack. After 40 years of this, it’s become a dysfunctional relationship that does no one any good.

So yeah, get rid of the press secretary. Get rid of the televised daily briefing. Maybe the president should just have a low-level staff that distributes schedules, answers basic questions about presidential actions, and coordinates interview requests. Since these would be low-level aides, nobody would expect them to have direct access to the president, and therefore there’d be no point in badgering them.

And then, everyone could go back to doing actual reporting, instead of pretending that either the press secretary or the president himself will ever produce real news. Tough questioning hasn’t produced any real news from either one of them for years, and that’s unlikely to change.

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Yes, Let’s Gid Rid of the White House Press Secretary

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Chris Wallace Demands Answers to Yet More Benghazi Questions That Have Already Been Answered Dozens of Times

by JeannetteHuddle Posted on June 1, 2014

Mother Jones

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I was channel surfing this morning and happened to catch a few minutes of Chris Wallace talking to Claire McCaskill. The subject, yet again, was Benghazi. Why did Susan Rice blame the video? Also: Two sources said they knew it was a terrorist attack immediately, so why didn’t Rice say that? We need these questions answered!

I know, I know. It’s my fault for watching TV. But Jesus. Chris Wallace knows the answers to these questions. He has to know. But just in case he still doesn’t, here they are:

Why did Susan Rice blame the video?

On Chris Wallace’s own show aired four days after the Benghazi attack, here’s what Susan Rice said:

Well, first of all, Chris, we are obviously investigating this very closely. The FBI has a lead in this investigation. The information, the best information and the best assessment we have today is that in fact this was not a preplanned, premeditated attack. That what happened initially was that it was a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired in Cairo as a consequence of the video. People gathered outside the embassy and then it grew very violent and those with extremist ties joined the fray and came with heavy weapons, which unfortunately are quite common in post-revolutionary Libya and that then spun out of control.

But we don’t see at this point signs this was a coordinated plan, premeditated attack. Obviously, we will wait for the results of the investigation and we don’t want to jump to conclusions before then. But I do think it’s important for the American people to know our best current assessment.

Rice was very clear that she was providing a preliminary judgment. She was very clear about the role of the video: It had inspired protests in Cairo earlier in the week. She was very clear that we believed the Cairo protests sparked protests in Benghazi. She was very clear that we believed this provided extremist groups with a chance to launch an opportunistic attack.

In the end, almost all of this turned out to be true. The video did spark protests in Cairo. Some of the Benghazi attackers were motivated by the video. The attack wasn’t premeditated: it was planned no more than a few hours previously. The only part Rice got wrong was that there were, in fact, no initial protests in Benghazi. That was the best reporting we had at the time, but it turned out to be incorrect.

A couple of sources said they reported immediately that it was a preplanned terrorist attack. Why didn’t Rice and the rest of the Obama administration say that?

Because the intelligence community had multiple sources of reporting about Benghazi, and they conflicted. How hard can it be to understand this? Besides, the best evidence we have today is that it wasn’t a preplanned attack. It was an opportunistic attack organized in less than a day. What’s more, the groups that led the attack had only the most tenuous ties to Al Qaeda.

Aside from that, there’s this continuing weird totem around the word “terrorist.” What’s the point of this? Hillary Clinton called the attackers a “small and savage group.” Susan Rice called them extremists. Others used different words. It’s hard to understand why this matters. The attack was carried out by mostly local militant groups with mostly local grievances and no serious ties to Al Qaeda. The precise word you use to describe these folks can’t possibly be that important, can it?

And an aside….

Critics have focused heavily on the fact that the Obama administration blamed the “Innocence of Muslims” video for the violence that had erupted around the Middle East and then, indirectly, provoked the attacks in Benghazi. But I think everyone needs a trip down memory lane here. That video was a very, very big deal at the time. Maybe everyone has now forgotten this, but it did spark riots all over the region and it was the subject of nearly constant coverage in the local media both before and after the Benghazi attacks. The notion that it was responsible for regional violence at the time and at least partially responsible for what happened in Benghazi was hardly some bizarre flight of fancy.

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Chris Wallace Demands Answers to Yet More Benghazi Questions That Have Already Been Answered Dozens of Times

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Wait, So the New "Transformers" Movie Is a Pro-Immigration Allegory?

by MiraHarricks Posted on May 30, 2014

Mother Jones

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Michael Bay‘s big, loud action movies sometimes have plot elements resembling political messages. The Rock (1996) depicts the blowback from illegal American covert operations overseas. In Armageddon (1998), the NASA-recruited team of deep-core drillers agree to embark on a dangerous mission to save the planet from an asteroid—on the condition that they never have to pay taxes again. In Bad Boys II (2003), the film’s heroes illegally invade (and destroy large chunks of) Cuba, all in the name of fighting the drug war.

But could the 49-year-old director’s latest film, Transformers: Age of Extinction (in theaters June 27), actually be an allegory for the plight of undocumented immigrants in modern-day USA? Well, the film is currently being marketed that way. As flagged by Entertainment Weekly earlier this week, the Paramount Pictures-associated website TransformersAreDangerous.com documents the (obviously purely fictional) rise of anti-Transformer sentiment in America. In the previous Transformers film, some of these alien robots killed a bunch of people and blew up a lot of stuff in Chicago, so the advent of a “KEEP EARTH HUMAN” movement isn’t exactly stunning.

Much of the anti-Transformer/pro-human propaganda certainly resembles what you might expect from anti-immigration hardliners. Here are a couple posters from the website:

Courtesy of Paramount Pictures

And here’s a fake PSA on the “fall of Chicago”:

So will this dose of mindless, robots-battling-robots summer fun also double as Michael Bay’s impassioned cry for immigration reform? Dunno. We’ll have to wait until the end of June to find out. In the meantime, here’s a trailer for the upcoming Transformers flick:

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Wait, So the New "Transformers" Movie Is a Pro-Immigration Allegory?

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Here’s Mindy Kaling’s Hilarious Speech to Harvard Law: "You Will Defend BP From Birds."

by TysonGoldfarb Posted on May 30, 2014

Mother Jones

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Here’s actress/comedian Mindy Kaling speaking at this year’s Harvard Law School Class Day on Wednesday:

With this diploma in hand, most of you will go on to the noblest of pursuits, like helping a cable company acquire a telecom company. You will defend BP from birds. You will spend hours arguing that the well water was contaminated well before the fracking occurred. One of you will sort out the details of my prenup. A dozen of you will help me with my acrimonious divorce. And one of you will fall in love in the process.

Later, on a more serious note, Kaling urged graduates to “please just try to be the kind of people who give advice to celebrities, not the other way around.” She continued: “You are entering a profession where no matter how bad the crime, or the criminal, you have to defend the alleged perpetrator. That’s incredible to me.”

You can check out other highlights from her speech here, and you should watch the whole thing above.

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Here’s Mindy Kaling’s Hilarious Speech to Harvard Law: "You Will Defend BP From Birds."

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Friday Cat Blogging – 30 May 2014

by Obediah Ousley Posted on May 30, 2014

Mother Jones

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Today is snoozing day. Much like every other day, in fact. I recommend that if you’re having trouble falling asleep, take this picture to bed with you and stare at it until you fall serenely into a zenlike feline state. Let Domino be your sleep guru.

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Friday Cat Blogging – 30 May 2014

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America Is Becoming a Bit More Liberal. That’s Pretty Unusual Six Years Into a Democratic Presidency.

by MargotBugden Posted on May 30, 2014

Mother Jones

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Why are there more moderate Democrats than moderate Republicans? This has never been because Democrats are spineless wimps who won’t stand up for liberal values. The main reason is simple: there aren’t very many self-identified liberals in America. There never have been. Self-IDed conservatives have outnumbered self-IDed liberals by 10-15 percentage points for decades. This means that Democrats are forced to appeal more to the center than Republicans are.

But Gallup reports that this is changing. On social issues, the ID gap has narrowed to nearly zero. On economic issues conservatives still have a healthy 21 percentage point lead, but that’s way down from 2010. Here’s the chart:

In one sense, you should take this with a grain of salt. Sure, there are now more self-IDed liberals, but that’s compared to 2010, a high-water mark for conservative identification.

In another sense, this is pretty unusual. Normally, the country gets steadily more liberal during Republican presidencies and steadily more conservative during Democratic presidencies. This is, presumably, because voters get increasingly tired of whoever’s in power and more open to the idea that the other guys might have better answers. But this time that hasn’t happened. There’s too much noise in the Gallup chart to draw any definitive conclusions, but if you compare the numbers now to the average from the last few years of the Bush presidency, the country has actually gotten a bit more liberal. That’s something that rarely happens six years into a Democratic presidency.

The trend is more noticeable on social issues, which shouldn’t surprise anyone. On gay rights in particular, the country has plainly moved in the direction of more tolerance, and conservatives are just flatly out of step. As this trend continues—and it’s inexorable at this point—the conservative position strikes more and more people as not merely misguided, but just plain ugly. And you don’t self-ID with an ideology that you think is ugly.

It’s a funny thing. People say they don’t like President Obama’s foreign policy, but it turns out they approve of the specific things he’s doing. They say they don’t like Obamacare, but they like the things Obamacare does. They say they don’t like Obama’s economic policy, but they largely approve of his actual positions. You see this over and over. It doesn’t look like Obama is doing much to move the country in a more liberal direction, but in his slow, methodical, pragmatic way, he’s doing just that. A lot of people might not know it, but they’re attracted by his no-drama approach to incremental social change. It frustrates those of us who want to see things change faster, but in the end, it might turn out to be pretty effective.

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America Is Becoming a Bit More Liberal. That’s Pretty Unusual Six Years Into a Democratic Presidency.

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Obama: Some of America’s "Most Costly Mistakes" Come From Relying Too Much on the Military

by BelleCorrigan Posted on May 28, 2014

Mother Jones

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President Obama today:

To say that we have an interest in pursuing peace and freedom beyond our borders is not to say that every problem has a military solution. Since World War II, some of our most costly mistakes came not from our restraint but from our willingness to rush into military adventures without thinking through the consequences, without building international support and legitimacy for our action, without leveling with the American people about the sacrifices required. Tough talk often draws headlines, but war rarely conforms to slogans. As General Eisenhower, someone with hard-earned knowledge on this subject, said at this ceremony in 1947, “War is mankind’s most tragic and stupid folly; to seek or advise its deliberate provocation is a black crime against all men.”

….America must always lead on the world stage. If we don’t, no one else will. The military that you have joined is, and always will be, the backbone of that leadership. But U.S. military action cannot be the only, or even primary, component of our leadership in every instance. Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail.

It’s nice to hear Obama say this so directly. Oh, the usual suspects will howl, but no one who has paid even the slightest attention to the history of the past 50 or 60 years can really question this. Our world isn’t yet beyond the need for war, but for war to be an effective instrument of policy it needs to be used judiciously. It needs to be used when core interests are at stake and, equally importantly, it needs to be used only when it’s likely to succeed on its own terms. If we don’t know how to win, or if we have unrealistic ideas of what it even means to win—both of which were the case in Afghanistan and Iraq—then we shouldn’t fight. This isn’t a matter of deep foreign policy thinking, it’s just common sense. Like it or not, there are lots of problems in the world that US military force can’t solve.

On another note, I was intrigued, toward the end of Obama’s speech, at the parts that got applause from the West Point cadets. Here’s a sample:

Having other nations maintain order in their own neighborhoods lessens the need for us to put our own troops in harm’s way. It’s a smart investment. It’s the right way to lead. (Applause.)….What makes us exceptional is not our ability to flout international norms and the rule of law; it is our willingness to affirm them through our actions. (Applause.)

And that’s why I will continue to push to close Gitmo, because American values and legal traditions do not permit the indefinite detention of people beyond our borders. (Applause.) That’s why we’re putting in place new restrictions on how America collects and uses intelligence, because we will have fewer partners and be less effective if a perception takes hold that we’re conducting surveillance against ordinary citizens. (Applause.)….We’re strengthened by civil society. We’re strengthened by a free press. We’re strengthened by striving entrepreneurs and small businesses. We’re strengthened by educational exchange and opportunity for all people and women and girls. That’s who we are. That’s what we represent. (Applause.)

The cadets were applauding multinational engagements, international law, closing Guantanamo, cutting down on the surveillance state, and the use of soft power. I confess that I wouldn’t have guessed that these points would get the strongest response from an audience of West Point graduates. But I’m not sure if that says more about them or me.

David Corn has some more thoughts about Obama’s speech here, and Max Fisher has a pretty good rundown here of both the benefits and the pitfalls of Obama’s approach. I think he goes too far when he describes it as a “superdove foreign policy doctrine,” but his criticisms are worth reading anyway.

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Obama: Some of America’s "Most Costly Mistakes" Come From Relying Too Much on the Military

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A Health Care Scandal That’s Way Bigger Than the VA

by LilianW64evhn Posted on May 27, 2014

Mother Jones

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The VA hospital scandal is basically composed of two separate things:

  1. A longstanding problem of excessive wait times for non-urgent appointments as well as problems with access to the VA system in the first place.
  2. A specific and recent case of hospital officials allegedly gaming the system by putting some vets on a “secret” waiting list so that the performance reports they submitted to Washington would look better than they really were.

We’ve heard a lot about #1, but this is largely a policy problem, not a scandal. No administration has ever secured enough resources from Congress to properly staff the VA system, and the result has been waiting lists and backlogs. In the past few years this has started to improve as more vets have been allowed into the system; funding has increased; mental health has become a bigger priority; the paper-based approval process has become more automated; and the backlog of vets waiting for approval has been cut in half.

The real scandal—in the normal sense of “scandal” as opposed to inefficiency and underfunding—is #2. As scandalous as these charges are, however, they’re localized; small; and entirely nonpartisan. Everyone agrees that heads need to roll if they’re confirmed. That’s in stark contrast to a far, far larger denial of medical services to sick Americans that could be fixed instantly if there were the political will to do it. Ezra Klein explains:

It’s a relief to see so much outrage over poor access to government-provided health-care benefits. But it would be nice to see bipartisan outrage extend to another unfolding health-care scandal in this country: the 4.8 million people living under the poverty line who are eligible for Medicaid but won’t get it because their state has refused Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion.

As appalling as the wait times are for VA care, the people living in states that refused the Medicaid expansion aren’t just waiting too long for care. They’re not getting it at all. They’re going completely uninsured when federal law grants them comprehensive coverage. Many of these people will get sick and find they can’t afford treatment and some of them will die. Many of the victims here, by the way, are also veterans.

….All in all, the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that more than 7.5 million uninsured adults would be eligible for Medicaid but live in a state that has refused the expansion….The point here isn’t to minimize the problems at the VA, which need to be fixed — and fast. But anyone who feels morally outraged over the extended wait times at the VA should be appalled by the literally endless wait times the poor are enduring in the states that are refusing to expand Medicaid.

Fat chance of that, I suppose. Nonetheless, it’s at least as big a scandal as VA #1, and far, far bigger than VA #2.

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A Health Care Scandal That’s Way Bigger Than the VA

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Amazon’s War Against Book Publishers Goes Into Nuclear Territory

by LidiaHowchin Posted on May 23, 2014

Mother Jones

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Amazon.com, the company run by the psychopathically competitive Jeff Bezos, is apparently upping the ante into nuclear territory in its contractual dispute with book publisher Hachette:

The retailer began refusing orders late Thursday for coming Hachette books, including J.K. Rowling’s new novel. The paperback edition of Brad Stone’s “The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon” — a book Amazon disliked so much it denounced it — is suddenly listed as “unavailable.”

In some cases, even the pages promoting the books have disappeared. Anne Rivers Siddons’s new novel, “The Girls of August,” coming in July, no longer has a page for the physical book or even the Kindle edition. Only the audio edition is still being sold (for more than $60). Otherwise it is as if it did not exist.

Well, at least this is a war between equals. That makes it a little easier to stomach than Amazon’s routine attempts to strong-arm boutique publishers after sweet talking them into making Amazon such a big part of their business that they can no longer survive without them.

But it’s also why I’m so unhappy over the inevitable demise of Barnes & Noble. It seems inevitable, anyway, and when it happens Amazon will be essentially the only source left for e-books. At that point, Amazon will no longer have any real incentive to improve its crappy e-reader, but we’ll all be stuck with it anyway. Yuck. I don’t have a ton of choices even now, but at least I have some.

I dunno. Is there some way for the Justice Department to demand that Amazon figure out a way to make its DRM accessible by third parties so that we can have a thriving market in e-readers? I don’t really understand the tech well enough to know whether that’s possible. But Amazon already has near-monopoly control of the e-book market, and if B&N does eventually die, Amazon will basically have total control. Isn’t that supposed to be a bad thing?

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Amazon’s War Against Book Publishers Goes Into Nuclear Territory

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