Readings in the New Year

It's been awhile. I just finished my first semester as a full-time, tenure-track faculty member, so I think that explains the long radio silence.

Lots happening in this New Year pertaining to my book. Here's a list (to be followed by specifics as we get closer to the date):

1.) Saturday, February 2nd: I'll be reading in some illustrious company as part of Soft Skull Press' 15th Anniversary Reading at the Associated Writing Program conference in NYC. Here's the line-up: Lynne Tillman, Matthew Sharpe and Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz. All of them are tremendous writers. Hope to see you there.

2.) Thursday, February 21st: Reading at Hope College in Adrian, Michigan with Lewis "Buddy" Nordan, who is hands down one of the best fiction writers in America.

3.) Friday, March 28th: Panel, Virginia Festival for the Book with Bill Cleveland, author of Art and Upheaval (other visual artists to be announced).

Hope to see some of you at these events.

Have a peaceful and prosperous 2008!

Powered by ScribeFire.

Reading at Gist Street tomorrow Night 8 pm

All you Pittsburghers check me and fiction writer Ben Percy out at the Gist Street reading series tomorrow night at 8pm. Get there early if you want a seat--at least this is what I'm told.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Good Jazz is Hard to Find

This is a clip of a friend of mine George Burton's group. If you're not into jazz then don't watch.

clipped from www.youtube.com

The Limits of Social Justice?

I'm beginning to research attitudes towards the homeless and homelessness for my next book, and it just so happens that a very interesting debate is underway in Roanoke, VA, about an hour southwest of where we live now.

In January 2007, Roanoke conducted a study of the homeless population and found that the number of homeless had increased 326% since 1987. The City Council is worried that Roanoke is attracting too many homeless people. Councilman Bev Patrick is characterized in the Roanoke Times journalist Mason Adams as being "fed up."

clipped from www.roanoke.com "It's about the fact that we're letting people come here because we're too daggone nice," he said. "They find out about it, and they're coming. We've got to corral that. I just say plug it, somehow, so we're doing the right thing for the people of this valley who need us and we're not doing it for everyone else."

The Content of this blog is "Genius"

Someone sent me a link to a service that will evaluate the reading level of your blog. You put in the url and it scans the content and voila! I'm not sure what the different levels are--I saw one site that said "undergraduate." After only a few seconds an icon with a brain came on the screen proclaiming that goodwar.blogspot.com is "Genius."

My parents will be happy to hear this.

You can get your blog evaluated here: http://www.criticsrant.com/bb/reading_level.aspx

Good News All Around

Just a quick post to spread some good news.

Last week my wife, Jessica Mesman, found out that her essay "It's a Wonderful Life" received an "notable essay" distinction in the 2008 edition of Best American Essays, edited this year by one of my heroes, David Foster Wallace.

The essay orginally appeared in Image, which is a fantastic journal and worth subscribing to.

I also got word that my book was reviewed in the American Book Review, which is available on-line if your academic institution or library has a subscription to Lexis/Nexis or the like. It was a very positive review/essay by Christopher Robbins, Assistant Professor of Social Foundations at Eastern Michigan U. I'll try to put excerpts up here, but I haven't figured how to turn a pdf into html. I am computer illiterate.

Colgate University

I'm on a little break before I give a reading here at Colgate University--what a beautiful place!--and while checking my email ran across this article in the San Francisco Catholic, a diocesan newspaper in SF, covering a recent talk by retired Army General Taguba at the University of San Francisco. Taguba is, of course, the author of the Taguba Report, the official report commissioned by the US Military to investigate what happened at Abu Ghraib prison.

His talk reveals much of what we already know, but it is well-worth repeating: Defense Sec. Rumsfeld was antagonistic toward Taguba after learning of the unfavorable nature of the investigation and, it seems, either lied under oath in the Senate hearings looking into the prison scandal, or was intentionally not fully briefed by his aids on the investigation's findings in order to shield him from being complicit in the scandal.

The most poignant aspect of his talk was his statement that though he was not responsible for leaking the now-infamous Abu Ghraib images to CBS, which ended up on 60 Minutes in 2004, he believes that whoever did were within their First Amendment rights and, furthermore, that if it weren't for CBS the world would still be in the dark about what happened there. In fact, he said at his talk, the American public and the world still doesn't know the half of it. There are images, according to Taguba, that make the ones leaked seem tame--a video of a female detainee being sodomized by a soldier, for one. A video, it should be mentioned, that shows another soldier in the background with a video camera taping the assault.

I'm off to the reading. More on Colgate later.

Here's the link:

http://www.catholic.org/diocese/diocese_story.php?id=25621

Internet Radio

Just a quick update to tell you that you can hear an interview with me and Wayne Koestenbaum, author of the fantastic new book, Hotel Theory on "The Eclectic Word," a radio show hosted by Victor Infante.

Check it out here: www.blogtalkradio.com/...serid=4073


We talk about everything from Abu Ghraib to George Hamilton--no kidding.


Also, for those of you in upstate New York, I'll be reading at Colgate coming up in October. See the links along the right side of this blog for more details.

Grace Paley, Dead at 84

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/24/books/24paley.html?ex=1345694400&en=2c87a6330233bece&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Iraqi detainee numbers up 50%

A bit from the NY Times article by Tom Shanker:

WASHINGTON, Aug. 24 — The number of detainees held by the American-led military forces in Iraq has swelled by 50 percent under the troop increase ordered by President Bush, with the inmate population growing to 24,500 today from 16,000 in February, according to American military officers in Iraq.

...Nearly 85 percent of the detainees in custody are Sunni Arabs, the minority faction in Iraq that ruled the country under the government of Saddam Hussein; the other detainees are Shiites, the officers say.

Military officers said that of the Sunni detainees, about 1,800 claim allegiance to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a homegrown extremist group that American intelligence agencies have concluded is foreign-led. About 6,000 more identify themselves as takfiris, or Muslims who believe some other Muslims are not true believers. Such believers view Shiite Muslims as heretics.

Those statistics would seem to indicate that the main inspiration of the hard-core Sunni insurgency is no longer a desire to restore the old order — a movement that drew from former Baath Party members and security officials who had served under Mr. Hussein — and has become religious and ideological.

But the officers say an equally large number of Iraqi detainees say money is a significant reason they planted roadside bombs or shot at Iraqi and American-led forces.

***

The rise in numbers seems to indicate that the US military is using similar insurgency-combating tactics as the French in Algeria: round up the suspected and...then...what? Is there any other way to put down an insurgency? Just when you think you've got all the politically and religiously motivated rounded up, here come the soldiers of fortune.

Is there any denying that War is attractive because it is profitable, especially when your economy is struggling.

I Have Moved

Sorry for such a long hiatus--not that anyone is really out there waiting with bated breath for my posts--but I like to err on the side of decorum.

One reason for the long break is that we have moved to Virginia. I am now gainfully employed at Sweet Briar College. Extremely beautiful country down here. Cell phone reception is awful, but that's a perk as far as I'm concerned. I'll post pictures ASAP.

Those of you in Southern Virginia: I'm giving a reading at the College Sept 5th at 8 pm. Mail me for more info at dgriffith@sbc.edu

Peace--

Breaking Radio Silence for News of Lynndie England

I'm away on a summer teaching gig, so I haven't been keeping up with the blog, but this AP story picked up b the Press of Atlantic City, New Jersey seemed worth posting.

http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/nation/story/3658936p-13022021c.html

Essentially, England, after being released from a San Diego military prison in March, has been hired to the volunteer recreation board of Keyser, West Virginia, a town in the state's eastern panhandle.

Here's a bit from the article:

...England, 24, contributed her knowledge of computers, electronics and graphics for Keyser's Strawberry Festival, which helped her land the unpaid position, said Roy Hardy, the England family's attorney.
"When (council members) saw how hard she worked for the festival, they didn't hesitate to put her on the board," said Hardy, who is also a board member. "If it wasn't for her, we wouldn't have been able to pull off (the Strawberry Festival). She was an absolute asset."

England handled the festival's advertising, scheduled entertainment acts and helped set up vendor booths and stages, among other things. She also helped organize a spring fishing contest and the city's Independence Day activities.

**

I'm going to let John Stewart and Stephen Kolbert handle this one...

Proximity to Darkness: The Collected Stories of Leonard Michaels

For those of you who have never read Leonard Michaels, or just read one story and thought "he's a pervert," here's your chance to really get to know and appreciate his work better. FSG has just published his Collected Stories and republished his autobiographical novel, Sylvia. Both books are reviewed by Mona Simpson in today's NY Times Book Review. Simpson "gets" Michaels--at least I think so--and gives some fascinating insight into how he a New York Jew who only spoke Yiddish untl the age of 6 came to be one of the most lyrical writers of American vernacular.

I teach his story "Murderers" often and I write about its influence on me in my book. Uncannily, Simpson focuses on the same story in her review. In fact, the title of the review, "Proximity to Darkness" is, uncannily, very close to the title of the chapter in my book, which I titled "Some Proximity to Darkness."

The thing that makes Michaels worth reading, especially now, is that his stories span the spectrum from young boys fascinated by the mysteriousness and strangeness of sex to adults mired and addled by their own sexual rapacity. I took immediately to Michaels' work, because unlike his contemporary, Phllip Roth, he is able to express the the sorrow and disillusionment of the libertine lifestyle, while making you laugh. His work is not merely cleverly, ironically or situationally funny, but comedic in that deep divine way which has you smirking to yourself because you recongnize the impulses driving the characters.

Michaels' work helped me to see that there was a way to write about being an adult male that wasn't annoyingly self-lacerating or idiotically macho.

Are the Restrictions on War Journalists Doing Us a Disfavor

Check out this op-ed by David Carr in the NY Times. Not sure that I can agree 100% with his thesis, but it's a provocative piece.

One corrective I'll point out immediately is that Carr sites Matthew Brady as one of the pioneers of war journalism, but neglects to point out that Brady came along after the battle was over and took photos of the fallen, often having his aides move the bodies to create more dramatic poses.

Drama: Another Casualty of War

Check out this insightful article exploring Time's theater columnist, Christopher Isherwood's, "certain impatience" with "Journey's End," a critically well-received play now on Broadway written by a WW I survivor about British solidiers waiting for a German attack.

From the article:

[As to why "Journey's End" is flopping with audiences]:

"A potential conclusion: War in the newspapers isn’t necessarily good for war on movie screens and stages. The conflict in Iraq (and Afghanistan) is so much with us these days that maybe audiences have no inclination to engage with stories from old battlefields.

"Can you blame them? We absorb images and information about the current strife every time we turn on the television, listen to the radio or pick up a newspaper. Obviously not much of the news is good. As the steady drumbeat of grim statistics rolls on — the rising death tolls, the roiling sectarian violence — Americans can perhaps be forgiven for failing to warm to entertainment that underscores what journalism is making brutally plain every day: War is a cruel and destructive enterprise that maims or destroys the lives of people on all sides, even when fought for a noble cause.

"Perhaps right now audiences don’t need to — or can’t bear to — revisit testimony from the past, however artfully and honestly it is presented, to experience the range of emotions that an encounter with the ugly realities of war elicits. Compassion for human suffering, dismay at man’s brutality, understanding of both the moral beauty of courage in the face of danger and its often painful inefficacy: We can cycle through these again every time we read or see detailed accounts of the everyday human costs of the conflict — in life, in prosperity, in dignity and happiness. Art can evoke little more pity and terror, to use those old Aristotelian words, than the immediate news of the waste going on in the world today, intimately taken account of in the best journalism.

"If the freakish success of the recent movie “300” is any indication, a lot of Americans are hungry for narratives that offer escape from the uncompromised truths of the world as it is today. This luridly silly epic offers refuge from the increasingly unavoidable idea that war is always an ethically complex enterprise that can be as demoralizing — and dehumanizing — for the apparent victors as it is for the subjugated. War as a cartoon battle between good guys and monsters more easily satisfies a taste for vicarious excitement after all."

**

So, I'm with all of this, especially the success of "300," which I haven't seen, but a friend of mine whose judgment I trust says she just laughed her ass off the entire movie because it was just so over-the-top, melodramatically masculine.

What I'm disappointed with in Isherwood's article is his comparison of previous wars to the current:

"...Several years into a confusing war with complicated foes and several years after the Sept. 11 attacks, we may have finally reached a point where the old forms of war fiction are no longer capable of giving us the solace and understanding we look for from this kind of material. Stories of noble sacrifice amid the comparatively uncomplicated moral climate of the two world wars seem so remote that emotional indulgence in them seems too much like escapism, a turning away from the truths that we need to keep our eyes sharply focused on."

Indeed, the reason our current "foes" are our foes is very "complicated," as is the reason why we're in Iraq in the first place (Afghanistan isn't so hard to understand, intially, since that's where Osama was shacking up). BUT to say that the first two world wars, from our historical perch, were waged in a "comparatively uncomplicated moral climate" is, if not historically farsighted, at least hubristic--to use another of Aristotle's dramatic terms.

What's wrong about it? Well, there was tremendous reticence to enter WWI. In fact, war was seen by many in the U.S. as barbaric, irrational, something of the past. The U.S. involvement in WWII was delayed, in part, by fears of getting involved in another war like the first. And it should be pointed out that in neither war was the "moral climate"--an unfortunate, inexact, yet smart-seeming po-mo phrase that has made its way into our lexicon as shorthand for the shifting attitudes of the people, that is subtly disapproving of "moral" as an ethical category--"uncomplicated" for untold numbers of conscientious objectors who went to jail for refusing to fight, or the many women involved in the pacifist movement.

Also, to say that the current war is more "confusing and "complicated" is to surrender to the post-modern tendency to see all contemporary situations as irreducible to any one set of analytical tools or cultural perspective. Indeed, it is important to try to understand the impulses that lead many young people of the Islamic faith to become suicide bombers. In fact, art is trying to pick up that slack with a rash of books dramatizing the lives of such people (Delillo's "Falling Man" dramatizes the last moments in the cockpit of one of the planes that hit the WTC on 9/11). But of what use is such fine rhetorical gesturing, concentrated cultural analysis or artistic exploration if we (and I mean everyone), at the end the day, can't agree, or just plain refuse to pass judgement, on whether or not violence is a workable solution to conflict?

If we really want truly complicated drama, we need to start looking more closely at those who refuse to fight under any circumstances, who would turn the other cheek, not just as a thought-experiment but as an ethic to live by, no matter the consequences. My guess is that such drama would strike audiences as tragic, but in that contemporary sense of the word, wasteful.

Thanks to the Students of DePaul U

So I was told not to expect very many students for my reading, it being the end of the semester and all, but when the reading began the room--capacity 36--was filled, standing room only. The final count was over 70. Thanks so much for the great questions and for buying books, which helped defray the cost of gas ($3.75) from South Bend to Chicago (90 miles).

Reading at DePaul Univ. this Wednesday

I'll be reading from my book and answering questions this Wednesday at 7 pm in room 312 of the DePaul University Student Center. Click on the title of this post for more info. Hope to see some of you there.

NYT report: College Students Curious (More than Ever) About Religion

I'm drawing attention to this article in the New York Times ( "Matters of Faith Find a New Prominence on Campus" http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/02/education/02spirituality.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin) because it is typical of the coverage religion is getting these days.

Here are some highlights in which nothing much at all is actually said and when somthing is it's vague:

“All I hear from everybody is yes, there is growing interest in religion and spirituality and an openness on college campuses,” said Christian Smith, a professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame. “Everybody who is talking about it says something seems to be going on.”

**

"David D. Burhans, who retired after 33 years as chaplain at the University of Richmond, said many students “are really exploring, they are really interested in trying things out, in attending one another’s services.”

**

Here's my favorite, which closes the article:

"Among the new clubs is one created last year to encourage students to hold wide-ranging dialogues about spirituality and faith. Meeting over lunch on Thursdays in the chapel’s basement, the students talk about what happens when you die or the nature of Catholic spirituality.....

"The discussion was off and running, with one student saying one needed only to believe in “something outside yourself” and another saying that “sometimes ‘Thank you’ can be a prayer...”

"...Afterward, several students talked about what attracted them to the sessions, besides the sandwiches, chips and fruit. Gabe Conant, a junior, said he wanted to contemplate personal questions about his own faith. He described them this way: “What are these things I was raised in and do I want to keep them?”


Look, I'm pleased as punch that folks are asking these difficult questions, but this article reads like something from the Onion--"Something's going on, but no one knows what it is, really." I mean the tone the article takes is, "Holy shit, what's going on here--this is weird--college students asking deep existential questions!!"

I have an idea, why don't you actually interview some of the students instead of just getting talking-head pull-quotes from chaplains, sociology and religion professors? And why no interview with an actual theologian?

But maybe the most clear sign that, as I argue in my book, the mainstream press is not at all equipped to cover matters of religion is this moment:

"The Rev. Lloyd Steffen, the chaplain at Lehigh University, is among those who think the war in Iraq has contributed to the interest in religion among students. “I suspect a lot of that has to do with uncertainty over the war,” Mr. Steffen said."

Notice the way his view is characterized "among those who think," as though it is widely known that there are all these other people expressing this opinion. Similarly, the caption of the accompanying photo [a group of Colgate students sitting in a circle, heads bowed in prayer] reads: "One of a growing number of religious student groups at Colgate." Here, the phrase "growing number" is used to gesture, imprecisely, toward an increase in an unknown number of religious groups. For all we know, this is the only one, but surely more are expected given this nation-wide epidemic of faith. And this is to say nothing of the ambiguous "uncertainty" in the Iraq War that had "a lot" to do with an interest in religion among students.

So what's the point of such an article? What is its newsworthiness on a scale of 1-10? I give it a 3, but it could have been much much higher had the writer focused on the students and why they're asking these meaningful questions.

Taxi to the Dark Side: Bagram Abuses (finally) Explored

The Huffington Post (click on the title of this post to go there) is reporting on a sneak preview of the new documentary Taxi to the Dark Side, which focuses on the abuse and murder of two detainees at the U.S. military-run Bagram airbase in Afghanistan. I write about Bagram in my book, so it's gratifying to hear that someone has continued to press for more information on the incidents that took place there, which are too often overshadowed by the Abu Ghraib scandal.

London Times: Ultraviolent sadism is now in Hollywood's bloodstream

Good War in Wash Post, Subliminally

I got this email this morning from Peter Manseau ed. of Killing the Buddha (www.killingthebuddha.com):

Hi Dave --

I just spotted this and thought you'd get a kick out of it: a Home
section feature by Sally Quinn, wife of former Post editor Ben
Bradlee, about how to decorate. There's an interactive image of her
library, and sure enough A Good War is Hard to Find is there on the
coffee table:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/artsandliving/homeandgarden/features/2007/house-home-040507/gallery.html?hpid=artslot

I could spot that cover a mile away!

Hope this finds you well,
Peter

Another Review...This one at Bookslut

http://www.bookslut.com/features/2007_04_010890.php

Religion and Activism Blog (Pie and Coffee) to Host A Discussion of Good War

Check out the site "Pie and Coffee: Activism, Religion Hospitality" at www.pieandcoffee.org for a week-long discussion of "A Good War is Hard to Find." Pie and Coffee is run, according to the site, by "Catholic Wokers, personalists and Adam Villani."

For those of you not familiar with the Catholic Worker Movement, check out Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Worker_Movement) and www.catholicworker.org

Thanks to Pie and Coffee for hosting the discussion.

"Good War" Reviewed in New York Times Book Review!

After many months of teasing and leading us on, the New York Times Book Review has seen fit to publish a review of my book, A Good War is Hard to Find: The Art of Violence in America." (Click on the title of this post to read the review. Also, make sure to check out the link to the first two chapters of my book.) We kept hearing that there was "still a good chance" and that the editors "were waiting for it to be assigned a 'run date'" Frankly, I abandoned hope a couple months back when the Book Review ran a "War" issue, but now here it is, and on April Fool's Day, no less.

Christopher Sorrentino, author of the novels "Sound on Sound" and "Trance" (a finalist for the National Book Award) wrote the review. I'm reading "Trance" right now, and I have to say that the man can write--not that he needs my validation--just for the record.

The review is also accompanied by a very smart graphic (see above image) by Lenny Naar. Good work, Lenny.

Here's a taste of the review:

In the manner of Susan Sontag’s “Regarding the Pain of Others” and Roland Barthes’s “Camera Lucida,” the book is quiet, offbeat, at times intensely personal. Griffith claims that “the Abu Ghraib photos are the very picture of the American soul in conflict with itself,” that the reaction to them “calls attention not to a difference but a similarity in belief between author and audience.” He sees an enormous gap between the viewing of disturbing images and contemplation of the ways in which we are implicated in the acts they portray. It’s a valid observation, as we continue to fight a war whose strategic rationale, in part, is surely to allow us to continue to pay less for a gallon of gasoline than we do for a bag of Chips Ahoy.


Thanks to Soft Skull and Richard Nash and my agent Andrew Blauner for whatever voodoo spells they cast to make this happen.

"Ghosts of Abu Ghraib" Screening Snafu (As Told by a "Whistleblower")

Click on the post title for a look at an article by former Army Sgt. Sam Provance an intelligence analyst at Abu Ghraib stationed there when the notorious abuses occured. He describes the "surreal" upper-crust, dog-and-pony show screening of Rory Kennedy's documentary, "The Ghosts of Abu Ghraib" in Washington D.C. Provance was the only soldier present, besides former Gen. Janis Karpinski, formerly in charge of 17 military prisons in Iraq. Also in attendance were Sen. Ted Kennedy (D) and Sen. Lindsay Graham (R) who lead a Q and A/discussion following the film. What went down is worth reading about...

Billboards for Lionsgate Film, "Captivity," Rankle Parents

This is the movie poster for a new film that is causing a furor in Hollywood. Imagine this on a huge billboard.

This, from an article in the LA Times:


Shanise Laurent and her friends left Palms Middle School one afternoon last week and stopped for a soda at Jack in the Box.

Shanise, a seventh-grader, didn't need me to point out the billboard across the street. She said she had noticed it the day before.

"What a graphic, nasty billboard," said the 13-year-old.

Her sister Rachel, 11, was in agreement, as were their friends.

"There's kids who walk around here," said Taylor Shaw, 13, who didn't think kids should be subjected to such images on their way home from school.

"I think it's scary," said Cameron Olivas, 12.

Across the busy intersection of Overland and Venice was one of 30 billboards in the Los Angeles area promoting the May 18 release of the film "Captivity." The ad consisted of four panels:

Abduction, in which a terrified young blond woman has either a gloved or black hand over her face, as if she's being kidnapped.

Confinement, in which she's behind a chain-link fence and appears to be poking a bloody thumb through the fence.

Torture, in which she is flat on her back, her face in a white cast, with red tubes that resemble jumper cables running into her nostrils.

And Termination, in which her head dangles over the edge of a table, the murder complete.

Hooray for Hollywood.

Posthumous Susan Sontag

Check out this review in the New York Times Book Review of Susan Sontag's At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches (FSG).

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/11/books/review/Mishra.t.html?_r=1&ref=books&oref=slogin

I have yet to pick this up, but I plan on it. Her 2004 essay in the New York Times Magazine on the Abu Ghraib prison photos, "Regarding the Torture of Others," was one of the reasons why I began writing my book, A Good War is Hard to Find.

AP Photos deleted by U.S. Special Forces

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/03/04/afghan.photos.ap/index.html

Flattering Review in The Literary Review

Ben Freeman at Fairleigh Dickinson U's The Literary Review has written a flattering review of Good War in their Winter issue. Click on the title of this post for a look.

Here's an excerpt:

Encountering Griffith’s nonfiction debut, a collage of images interwoven into eight essays of thoughtful criticism, we learn to see the Abu Ghraib photos as imaginative pathways. We find ourselves standing behind a nude Iraqi in a Christ pose, fearing with him a guard with a weapon raised. We are naked, clutching inward in fear and holdout modesty. And in a sheer 180-degree shift, we are the photographers, we know our own fear, our power. As the author writes, “We meet ourselves coming and going.”

Thanks, Ben.

Why Are the Pascifists So Passive?

An op-ed from the NYT by Lynn Chu and John Yoo:

...The fact is, Congress has every power to end the war — if it really wanted to. It has the power of the purse. Its British forebears in Parliament micromanaged the monarchy quite a bit, for instance by making money (the “sinews of war”) contingent on attacking one country and making peace with another. And there is more direct precedent: In 1973, Congress affirmatively acted to cut off funds for Vietnam. It also cut off money for the Nicaraguan contras with the Boland Amendment in 1982.

Not only could Congress cut off money, it could require scheduled troop withdrawals, shrink or eliminate units, or freeze weapons supplies. It could even repeal or amend the authorization to use force it passed in 2002.

A pullout, however, would have no chance of success, because its supporters are likely to lack the two-thirds majority necessary to override a presidential veto. But to stop President Bush’s proposed troop surge, Congress doesn’t have to do anything. It can just sit back and fail to enact the periodic supplemental spending measures required to keep the war going. Congress has wielded considerable power by just threatening such measures, as with President James K. Polk in the Mexican-American War and President Ronald Reagan in Lebanon after the 1983 barracks bombing.

The Constitution doesn’t pick winners. It leaves it to the three branches to use their unique powers to struggle for supremacy. James Madison, the leading intellectual force behind the Constitution, rebutted Patrick Henry’s firebrand attack on executive war powers during the Virginia ratifying convention by reminding him that Congress could control any renegade president by stopping the flow of money.

But with power comes responsibility. The truth is that this Congress is not sure what to do in Iraq. Its hesitation reflects America’s uncertainty and divisions. Antiwar bluster is high at the moment, echoing popular frustration and grim news from Baghdad.

Celebrating the Work of Brett Yasko

Click on the title of this post for a flattering article about Brett Yasko, Pittsburgh-based graphic design guru. He designed my book and won an award from the AIGA for it. For a closer look at the design and a statement by Brett on the design, go here: http://designarchives.aiga.org/?s1=2|s2=1|eid=1209


An excerpt:

“It’s crucial to think about everyone out there,” the lanky, soft-spoken Yasko says, “and hope my designs have an effect on them. I’m touched when they do.

“I always wanted to make things,” [Yasko] adds. “Design is good for that. Design is where I’ve fallen.”

Fallen is far too passive for so rich a graphic portfolio, so powerful a vision in two dimensions – especially given the raves Yasko’s getting all over town. All over the world, in fact. With clients in New York, Virginia, and Barcelona, Yasko has placed his graphics in the Whitney Museum’s permanent collection, the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) Denver archives, Partisan Project’s poster archives in LA and so on. As a fave of New York’s Princeton Architectural Press, he’s designed three books.

Books? In this e-age? “I feel great when I finish a book,” Yakso says. “It goes on a shelf. It has a permanence. I love books.”

Good War excerpt in Utne Reader

Click on the title of this post to read my most recent publication in the Utne Reader.

Two Charged in Manhole Murders

Click on the title of this post to read the South Bend Tribune's coverage.

Also, check out an interesting story on "scrapping" in South Bend: http://www.southbendtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070204/News01/702040358

South Bend Trib reports on National (and local) media attention garnered by Manhole Murders

I had a pleasant surprise yesterday when South Bend Tribune reporter Alicia Gallegos showed up at our apartment to ask me a few questions about my interest in the murder of four homeless men mere blocks away. She had read this blog and after a bit of driving around, she spotted the green awning that I mention in my post about the murders. She guessed at which doorbell to ring and got it on the first try. Despite attempts by my 13 month-old daughter to rip the pen from Alicia's hands while taking notes, we had a nice chat about the ongoing case.

Click on the title of this post to read Alicia's Tribune article.

About the photo: This is the photo that accompanied the story on the South Bend Tribune's Web site. It is of the New York Time's photographer walking near the train tracks where the men were found. Post-Modern anyone?

Good Article in Sojourners (makes mention of Good War)

http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magazine.article&issue=soj0701&article=070165

Nice words about Good War

Book reviewer Colleen Mondor is working on a review/article about my book for Bookslut and posts on her blog:

Griffith's book is deeply personal; it's a collection of essays of his thoughts on everything from Hiroshima, the bombing of Dresden, the Abu Ghraib scandal and the motivations of those directly involved that draws on all sorts of pop culture references. He writes about Flannery O'Conner at one point and Deliverance and Pulp Fiction at another. High culture, low culture, even the weirdness of his wife's old boyfriend having a home built electric chair in his living room (college boys are such fun, aren't they?). It all wraps around and comes together in Griffith's mind as he tries to understand and come to terms with his place in a country that largely identifies itself as Christian and knows about such violence but determinedly remains oblivious to the real impact of that violence on others.

This is exactly the sort of small thought provoking book that I think should win awards and I'd love to know if anyone on any of the big nominating committees has even ever heard of it.


Thanks, Colleen!!

A Brief History of Bohemianism (a working title)

We live in an old brick apartment building within a few blocks from the center of downtown South Bend, county seat of St. Joseph County in northcentral Indiana. When people ask where we live I tell them that our building is one block from a great stone, ivy-covered mansion built by the Studebakers, the once great car manufacturers whose plant closing in 1964 left 30,000 people jobless. South Bend hasn’t bend the same since. The mansion is now a restaurant that is known for their fancy brunch and as a destination for summertime wedding receptions. Big white tents are pitched on the lawn and when it gets dark luminaria mark the stone steps leading down to the dark grass so tipsy twenty-somethings don’t trip and sue. When I was a student I never went to this part of town at night, now I live here.

We chose to live here so we could be closer to downtown where there is a well-appointed liquor store, two coffee shops, a decent breakfast spot, a bar that doesn’t allow smoking and even a couple art galleries, but we are also on the verge of one of the worst neighborhoods in South Bend, the near west side, where just two weeks ago two men were found bludgeoned to death at the bottom of a manhole on the crest of a railroad trestle, four blocks away. Three days later two more men were found in a similar state in a manhole just one block east from the first. As it happens, the men are all known to be homeless, frequenters of the Hope Rescue Mission, a few blocks east of where their bodies were found, and the St. Peter Claver Catholic Worker House, which is one block further. Police are treating the deaths as murders, most likely connected to the underground “scrapping” business, a hustle in which scrap metal is collected and redeemed for cents on the pound at scrap yards. Although to say it’s “collected” is to overlook that fact that much of the time the metal is copper wiring, plumbing pipes and aluminum siding stripped from vacant homes; or, in the case of these four men, from old industrial sites, such as the half-demolished Stuebaker manufacturing plant. The police say that the manholes the men were found in provide access to long tunnels that run beneath the old Studebaker plant and give access to the decimated factory, tunnels that contain electrical wiring that could be cut and stripped of its copper and sold. The police cautioned that the tunnels are so long that after awhile they cease to contain breathable air, which sounded like an urban myth purposefully perpetuated in order to dissuade future scrappers. In any case, it is believed that these men were in the process of scrapping—perhaps even working together to pull off a large scrap score. An acquaintance of one of the men is quoted in the South Bend Tribune that his friend asked him if he wanted to make 250 bucks and then hinted at a plan to push something out of a window, possibility something far too heavy to carry—maybe an old piece of machinery or a boiler.

When the third and fourth bodies were found is when I began to worry about my family; specifically, I worried that Jessica would hyperbolically conclude—as she usually does—that we were all going to die at the hands of some homeless serial killer lurking in the sewers bopping people over the head; that he would find his way into the building through the drain in the laundry room. I decided not to tell her because as I parked the car at the curb outside I happened to look up and see the train underpass in the distance and realize that it was the very place that the men were found.

Four Murdered Homeless Men Found Blocks from Our Apartment

This week I've begun work on an essay about the recent discovery of the bodies of four homeless men at the bottom of a manhole. They were found a couple days apart in manholes near railroad tracks owned by Norfolk Southern Railroad, the same railroad my dad has worked for for 30 plus years. My interest in what the police are calling murders is that I can see the railroad viaduct from the front of our apartment here in South Bend. Police believe that the men were murdered while in the act of "scrapping," a slang term for salvaging scrap metal for money. This past May, amid a rash of house guttings in which copper wire, plumbing and aluminium siding were stolen from abandoned houses and construction sites, South Bend passed an ordinance making scrapping a more serious offense. Click on the title of this post for more on the murders.

Above are pictures I snapped of the area near where the bodies were found. Stay tuned for more and excerpts from the essay.

Link to Harvard op-ed

http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110009391

Harvard Faculty Shoots Down "Faith and Reason" Requirement

I've just been forwarded a pdf of an op-ed from the Dec 15, 2006 Wall Street Journal in which Professor of Religion Richard Schmaulzbauer of Missouri State U takes Harvard to task for not following through on the university's Task Force for General Education proposal to require all students take a course that would fall under the broad heading, "Faith and Reason."  The proposal came with the rational that the tension between religious faith and reason is one of the defining issues of our times and a course broaching the subject is necessary for molding informed citizens.

I reported on  this back in October or November, I believe, and was very excited by the prospect.  In fact, I figured this was a done deal, but didn't know at the time that such a proposal would be voted on by the faculty.

Schmaulzbauer laments the defeat of the proposal as a missed opportunity for Harvard to set a precdent for other universities and colleges to take faith seriously.

In place of a course on "Faith and Reason", the faculty has countered with a course on "what it means to be a human being."

It seems to me that such a course must deal in some way with religion, right?  We'll see.

The books I'm reading right now in preparation for my next book project would make for an interesting reading list for their proposed class on "being human":

William James' Varities of Religious Experience

Harvey Cox's Religion in the Secular City

On Killing by Lt. Dave Grossman


What books would you add?

Excerpt from Good War in Jan/Feb Utne Reader

Don't know if I mentioned this or not, but the check out the latest Utne Reader for an excerpt from my book.  It has a snazzy title: "An Orchestrated Attack : War's sound track echoes from Dresden to Baghdad." 

The chapter concerns the my experience playing Daniel Bukvich's  Symphony No. 1 (In Memoriam Dresden) as a sophomore in high school and how it changed my life.  Ok, a little dramatic, but true.

Recordings of Bukvich's symphony aren't readily available. Trish from San Mateo, CA already wrote to ask where she could get her hands on a recording.  You can download recordings of it here:

http://www.bukvichmusic.com/comp/symphonyno1/index.asp

Boy hangs self after seeing Saddam death

HOUSTON, Jan. 4 (UPI) -- A 10-year-old Houston-area boy apparently hanged himself accidentally while mimicking Saddam Hussein's execution, police said Thursday.
Sergio Pelico's mother told authorities the boy had been watching a TV report on the execution of former Iraqi president on a Telemundo news broadcast before he hanged himself.
"It appears to be accidental," Police Lt. Tom Claunch told the Houston Chronicle. "Our gut reaction is that he was experimenting."

Box Office Faire Reflects Cultural Appetites?

Same old same old, but it's a question that must be asked over and over until...

From the Houston Chronicle:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ent/4441190.html

Contractors Are Cited in Abuses at Guantanamo

From the Washington Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/03/AR2007010301759.html?referrer=email

FBI reports that Gitmo Abuses No Myth

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/americas/01/02/guantanamo/index.html

The FBI inquiry reveals the details of 26 incidents of abuse witnessed by FBI agents, including abuses that previously were thought to be mere rumor, including the use of naked female interrogators, tricking detainees into believing they were being defiled with menstrual blood.  

This has to be the nail in coffin for those who were holding out hope that reports of abuse at the Guantanamo Bay prison were overblown and isolated incidents.

Read the official report here:

http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/guantanamo.htm

The interesting thing about the release of the FBI's report is that it was completed in Sept 2004 but not released to the public until now as the result of a Freedom of Information Act request.  However, the FBI was quick to point out, the substance of many of these allegations has previously been reported elsewhere.  Those of you that have been keeping up with allegations of abuse at Gitmo will recall that FBI agents have indeed come forward several times over the past few years.  The importance of this report seems to be that we now have an official document from the FBI saying that they back the witness(es) of these abuses.  Previous allegations would be reported and then forgotten because they seemed to lack credibility and corroboration.

It will be interesting to see if this leads to the closure--once and for all--of Gitmo.

Refusing to Deploy Because the Iraq War is Illegal

The Court-Martial of Ehren Watada Begins

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010207J.shtml


From Truthout.org:

A pre-trial hearing is scheduled to take place Thursday in Tacoma, Washington, in the court-martial of Ehren Watada, the 28-year-old Army lieutenant who is the first commissioned officer to publicly refuse to deploy to Iraq on the basis that the war is illegal. Captain Dan Kuecker, the Army prosecutor based at Fort Lewis, Washington, has subpoenaed Truthout contributing reporter Sarah Olson and Gregg Kakesako, a Honolulu Star-Bulletin reporter. Kuecker had also stated his intent to subpoena Truthout's executive director Marc Ash, assistant editor Sari Gelzer, and contributing reporter Dahr Jamail to appear at Watada's trial in February.

Abu Ghraib "Whistleblower" Can Never Go Home Again

Sorry I wasn't more on top of this.  I didn't catch the 60 Minutes interview with Joseph Darby, the Army specialist who received the now infamous Abu Ghraib abuse photos from his friend Charles Graner and decided that the actions portrayed in the photos "had to stop."

This from Nat Hentoff's editorial on Darby:

When [Joseph Darby] arrived at Dover Air Force base, with his wife there to meet him, the Army told Darby it wasn't safe for him to go back to Cumberland, adding: "You can probably never go home." And, indeed, reported Anderson Cooper, "the Army's security assessment had concluded: "The overall threat of criminal activity to the Darbys is imminent. A person could fire into the residence from the roadway."


Darby, who left the Army recently misses his home, as does his wife. Their current residence is secret. "It's not fair," Bernadette Darby told the New York Daily News (Dec. 8). "We're being punished for (him) doing the right thing."

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?BRD=1300&dept_id=374730&newsid=17620029&PAG=461&rfi=9

U.S. Inquiry Falters on Civilians Accused of Abusing Detainees

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/19/washington/19detain.html?_r=1&th=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&emc=th&adxnnlx=1166541137-D8IyikxGrtBwWvZHYzeeXQ

Brett Yasko: Design Stud

As some of you know, Brett Yasko (www.brettyasko.com) is an extraordinary Pittsburgh-based graphic designer and artist.  He is the designer of my book, A Good War is Hard to Find.

Anyway, he's featured in this month's issue of Communication Arts, the leading trade journal for visual communications.

Please visit his site and marvel at his work.

 

Failures of Imagination

A GREAT piece in the Sept/Oct issue of the Columbia Review of Journalism by Eric Umansky on the way the American press covered stories relating to torture in Iraq.

If I were a journalist I would be very very pissed that I didn't write this piece.  As it is, I'm just pissed.

He spends the beginning discussing the death of two Afghan men at Bagram Airforce base, a story I deal with in considerable detail in my book.

Please, please check out this article:

http://www.cjr.org/issues/2006/5/Umansky.asp

New Issue of The Sign of Peace now On-line

Some of you may know, but many probably not, that I'm an associate editor with a journal called The Sign of Peace, the official publication of the Catholic Peace Fellowship (an organization dedicated to raising a "mighty league of conscientious objectors.")  Their Website is a wonderful resourse for anyone interested in pacifism and conscientious objection.

I have a brief backpage piece in the latest issue.  It's a spin-off of the chapter in my book on Hiroshima.  Check it here:

http://www.catholicpeacefellowship.org/nextpage.asp?m=2507 

Great Review in the Pittsburgh City Paper

Thanks to Bill O'Driscoll for his review.  He really captures the essence of the book (if I do say so myself), which is difficult considering I'm all over the place.

Check it out here:

http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A20280

My favorite part is the last three paragraphs:

...Griffith was in Pittsburgh recently to lead a seminar at the 412 Creative Nonfiction Festival. Now 31, and back at Notre Dame as a teacher, he's tall, sandy-haired and unassuming. As with any good essayist, you can hear him thinking on the page; yet in print as in person, the boyish Griffith exudes the humility not necessarily of a trombonist (which he was in Pittsburgh with Johnsons Big Band) but of someone who has some pretty good ideas about the world but is asking your help to work through them.
A Good War is Griffith's first book; it grew out of a shorter, self-published version by he and Yasko that Yasko submitted to Soft Skull. Drawing a line between the news on our TV screens and the movies on our theater screens is an old endeavor. Griffith says he hopes to move the conversation beyond vengeance, rage and insensibility.
"My belief is forgiveness is going to trump everything," he says. "If you're going to radically reform culture, there has to be reconciliation. Changing not just minds but hearts."

Job Search Driving Me Crazy

Don't want to name names (that would be unethical), but this job hunting stuff is making me paranoid.  I keep having dreams that my cover letters all have typos and that I sent the wrong letters of recommendation to the wrong school, etc. ect. etc.

My wife is feeling it too.  We were driving in the car today and she said, "I just had an image pop into my head of a sandwich being cut with a pair of scissors."

A Refreshing Word About Suffering

Sorry for the ironic headline.  It seems that's the only way to get people to think about suffering.

The link below is to a great little article by James F. Keenan, S.J. in The Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine.  I came across this while doing some research for upcoming job talks (presuming I get interviews at MLA and then get invited for a campus visit).  My book draws upon some premises in Elain Scarry's The Body in Pain, a real doozy of a book dealing generally with pain and its effects on humans and specifically with torture.

Anyway, Father Keenan's emphasis is on the importance of listening to those who have endured suffering, instead of trying to intepret their pain for them--explain it away using theological interpretation.  Victims are denied voice, as Scarry discusses at length in terms of the way pain stifles the voice, or at least makes it incoherent, and they must be allowed to voice their own story freely.

Keenan feels he needs to raise this caution because many Christians try to interpret suffering and what its purpose might mean for those who have suffered, for example Catholics trying to improve Christian-Jewish relations by trying to make sense of the suffering Jews endured during the Holocaust.

Keenan admonishes, quoting Marcel Sarot, instead of asking how can we make sense of this suffering we must ask, "How can we prevent that Christianity ever again can provide fertile soil for anti-semitism and kindred movements?"

http://www.med.yale.edu/intmed/hummed/yjhm/spirit2003/suffering/jkeenan2.htm

Peace on Earth? Not in Our Subdivision!

Unbelievable....

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/11/27/peace.wreath.ap/index.html

Standing up to "Bully"

elow is a link to a brief article concerning the latest violent video game sensation, "Bully," in which you are enrolled in a tony Northeastern boarding school and must fend of upper-crust bullies through violent means.

http://newsinfo.nd.edu/content.cfm?topicid=20182

Darcia Narvaez, Assoc. Prof of Psychology at Notre Dame says of the game:

One might think that standing up to bullies makes a good game, but not if you are using violence to stand up to them,” said Darcia Narvaez, a University of Notre Dame psychologist who researches moral development in children and the effects of violent video games on them.

The most powerful effect of violence on users is the hero using violence to meet a goal, especially if it is humorous. This type of violence is more likely to be imitated when seen, and particularly when practiced repeatedly.”

Though “Bully” doesn’t involve any blood or killing, fist fighting in the game is almost constant, with one test-gamer reporting that he engaged in 400 fights by the halfway point of the game.

“With violent video game play, children learn to associate violence with pleasure when they are rewarded for hurting another character, and this undermines moral sensitivity,” said Narvaez , director of Notre Dame’s Center for Ethical Education.

60 Abu Ghraib Photos Leaked to Sydney Paper

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/the-photos-america-doesnt-want-seen/2006/02/14/1139890737099.html

Photograph with the Enemy

http://insidehighered.com/news/2006/11/06/penn

University of Pennsylvania's president, Amy Gutmann, hosted a Halloween party at her home and was put upon to take a photo with a student dressed as a suicide bomber.  The student, Saad Saadi, wore camo pants, a package of fake dynamite strapped to his chest and carried a toy gun, which he used, according to the story, to stage mock executions around campus.  The photos are circulating through cyberspace on Facebook and have gotten president Gutmann in hot water.

Those of you who have read my book will immediately grasp the relevance of this story.  In a middle chapter of my book (which is excerpted at Killing the Buddha www.killingthebuddha.com) I write about attending a Halloween party and encountering an aquaintance--a guy I had a class with once--dressed as Charles Graner, so-called ringleader of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.  He wore rubber golves, glasses, had trimmed his mustache to approximate Graner's and carried a sandbag and a Polaroid camera.  (Check out the excerpt to see how the situation played out for me.)

Let me reflect on the U Penn situation via my own experience. 

First of all, it's important to point out that at the party I attended, now two years past, no one recognized the costume for what it was.  There was no discussion among the party-goers about the tastefulness of the costume.  There was no whispering behind his back or nervous laughter, at least that I saw.  Not that lack of  recognition on the part of party-goers absolves either Saad Saadi or Graner for their poor taste, BUT the root of the problem here is the photographic record of the decision--both the student's decision to wear the costume and president Gutmann's decision to allow her picture to be taken with him. Deciding whether or not a picture of the moment is worth making is an interesting moral conversation in and of itself. John Berger, in his essay "Understanding a Photograph" agrees that a photo, the actual thing itself, is a statement:
"I believe this moment is worth capturing." Therefore, a photo is a reflection of our moral vision.

BUT is it inherently immoral to take such a photo when it is clear that the intent is to create a memento, a conversation piece to show others? Unsure? Well, what about when it is probable that the photo will be widely disseminated to potentially millions of 18-22 year olds via Facebook, a faddish yet extensive online social network as integral to college lifestyle as a cell phone, IM screenname and wireless laptop? Now we're getting closer to the line, and closer to the reality of picture taking today. If you want to become infamous, just take a photo or a video of yourself doing something tasteless, idiotic, pornographic, or all three, and put it on your Facebook/MySpace account or YouTube. Within days your deed will have circled the globe several times over. But, again, is such behavior immoral?

The short and long answer is "No."

The photographs taken of Saad Saadi create moments that are meant to be seen as transgressive in that they resemble or mimics other images we have seen, images of actual militants brandishing weapons and actual executions. This similarity creates a moment of reckoning for the viewer, a moment where the awfulness of the original image is commented on by the reinactment. In the case of Saad Saadi's costume the suicide bomber is ridiculed, made to look like a fool now he is seen in the absurd context of a Halloween party standing next to the president of Penn, who is dressed a a princess, or fairy, or whatever she is sypposed be. The ultimate effect of scary costuming is thus achieved: All of a sudden the bogeyman isn't so scary anymore now that we've seen him for ourselves and we realize that he has no power over us.

Be this as it may, such an explanation does not negate the fact that many may be wounded by such images, especially the images that depict execution style killings, in particular the one in which Saadi appears to be reading the Koran (although it looks suspiciously like the green-covered New Testaments campus preachers distribute) while another party-goer kneels before him as though waiting to be shot. Clearly, the Islamic faith is being indicted. Saadi may honestly (however, naively) believe that he has not impugned Islam, but this reveals his ignorance of how religious people of all Abrahamic faiths feel about how they are represented in popular culture. This sensitivity toward religious peoples is rejected because of the perceived damage and destruction religion reaps--such a corrupt institution does not deserve reverence. But, again, Saadi would probably deny such a blatant attack.

A quick glance at Saad Saadi's website reveals the kind of intellect we're dealing with, an intellect that despite his Ivy-League pedigree is woefully common among young men these days. One link on his page takes you to YouTube and dozens of clips of an amateur "Fight Clubs," in which scrawny kids in boxing gloves try to beat one another up. Another link takes you to video footage Saad took himself. The majority feature him in different settings make masturbatory hand gestures.

With this in mind, it's difficult to give him any credit for putting together a "transgresssive" costume. He just desires to be contrary, which is irresponsible, though not immoral, given the current global climate.

What should be the punishment of idiocy and irresponsibility? Having being part of a similar situation--although I am not president of a university--I would say that these moments catch you by surprise. You want to believe that what you are doing has very little consequences. However, I found that the consequences were, for me, personal and caused me to reflect on my own complicity not just in this kind of Halloween shenanigans but how actual images of pain and suffering change us.

A Great Quote from Thomas Merton

I'm writing this review for the Merton Seasonal, a little journal put out by the International Thomas Merton Society, and I really want to incude the above quote but just can't find the room, so I give it to you.

In a letter to Fr. Dan Berrigan:

In the beginning I was all pre-contemplation because I was
against trivial and meaningless activism. 
But now I have been told that I am destroying the image of the
contemplative vocation, when I write about peace.  In a word, it is all right for the monk to break his ass
putting out packages of cheese for the old monastery, but as to doing anything
that is really fruitful, that is another matter altogether.

Killing the Buddha

Killing the Buddha, the "religion magazine for people made nervous by churches," has published an excerpt from Good War.  Check it out and make sure you stay to read their other high-quality articles and essays. 

http://www.killingthebuddha.com/dogma/prime
directive.htm

Thanks to Peter Manseau, the editor of KtB, and author of Vows and coauthor of Killing the Buddha with Jeff Sharlet, editor of The Revealer, www.therevealer.org

Check out this blog

Very interesting blog run by Jim Johnson titled "(Notes On) Politics, Theory and Photography"--right up my alley. 

He wrote and called my attention to a post he wrote on my book.

Thanks, Jim

http://politicstheoryphotography.blogspot.com/2006/10/good-war-is-hard-to-find.html

He writes:

I find Griffith's stance in many ways persuasive, but also remain deeply skeptical. He repeatedly chastises Americans for mis-understanding or mis-interpreting what it means to inhabit a "Christian Nation." He at several points calls attention to the literal ignorance of American Chirstians, many of whom when questioned cannot, for instance, name the ten commandments. But I find this narrative of authentic Christianity despoiled by those who are inattentive to or ignorant of its teachings too easy. Here is Griffith: "Nations cannot be Christian, only individuals. And while it may be true that all those who believe in Christ are united in one body, they quickly find themselves at odds with one another, divided by those things that belong to Caesar." The problem for me is that the differences in political and social outlook among various sorts of American Christian cannot be attrbuted simply to the distractions of this world - as though there would not be differences in interpretation and doctrine absent such factors. Any cultural system (of which a religion is one variety) will be contested and contestable for all sorts of internal reasons. Such differences, it seems to me, invariably will play themselves out in politics.

I disagree that religion is just "any cultural system," but I take his point and appreciate it very much. 

Nice mention on the National Book Critics Circle Blog

http://bookcriticscircle.blogspot.com/2006/10/saturday-morning-roundup_28.html

War is Love....War is Porn

A fascinating review of Clint Eastwood's latest, Flag of Our Fathers at beliefnet.com.

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/202/story_20234_2.html

I haven't yet seen the film, but the trailers I've seen on prime-time TV make it seem that this is another shallow glorification of the Greatest Generation's sacrifices.  Robert Nylan, the reviewer, and a veteran, seems to think this film transcends such ultimately damaging pap by "telling it like it is."

But the line from the review that makes me want to see the film is: 

"Maybe there's no such thing as an anti-war movie. On some basic level, it's all war porn." 

Reason and Faith at Harvard

Coincidentally, this op-ed appeared in today's Washington Post by Father John Jenkins, president of the U. of Notre Dame and Thomas Burrish, the university's provost.

The op-ed draws attention to a recent decision by the Harvard curriculum committee to begin offering more classes that explore the "role of religion in contemporary, historical or future events--personal, cultural, national or international," in order to point out that the ways that Notre Dame is already doing so and invite secular scholars into dialogue with scholars of faith. 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/22/AR2006102200714.html

The Fragmentation of the American University

This just in... A very interesting essay by Alistair MacIntyre, prof of philosophy at Notre Dame, on the ways that American Universities (even Catholic ones) are failing to address the important questions pertinent to human beings due to specialization amongst academics. 

Such specialization, he argues, obscures the connections between disciplines, places that need to be studied and understood in order to adquately address the rifts between positions and cultures. 


http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/article.php3?id_article=1767

Review in TimeOut Chicago

Below is the link for the first print review of my book.

http://www.timeout.com/chicago/Details.do?page=1&xyurl=xyl://TOCWebArticles1/86/books/a_good_war_is_hard_to_find.xml

From the review:

...Asking key questions about the state of our country’s faith and humanity without the crutch of an agenda, this book is a massively forceful piece of criticism.

5 out of 6 stars.

Abu Ghraib More About Porn than Torture

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/10/13/ap/politics/mainD8KNUTR00.shtml

Republican Rep. from Conn, Christopher Shays,  said in a Wednesday debate against his Democratic opponent Diane Farrell, that he believed what happened at Abu Ghraib was not torture, but the actions of a "sex ring"--more about porn that torture.

However, when pressed about his remarks Shays captiulated:  "I was maybe not as expansive as I needed to be," he said. "Of course, the degrading of anyone is torture. We need to deal with it."

General Says Abu Ghraib Officer Lied

http://www.forbes.com/technology/ebusiness/feeds/ap/2006/10/16/ap3095740.html

Not a big shock, but the lack of attention the story is getting on the major news outlets is astounding.

Good Question: To What Extent Does Art Help to Change Political Realities?

Thoughts?

Abu Ghraib in Paint

http://www.nysun.com/article/41632

An Article on a traveling exhibition of Columbian artist Fernando Botero's series of paintings based on the Abu Ghraib prison photos. 

From the article:


Naked figures writhe in an eerie darkness. Vicious beasts bare their teeth and snarl. The faces of lost souls cry out in unimaginable agony, forced into strange and contorted positions reminiscent of crucifixion.
Such a vision evokes a scene of the apocalypse typical of 15th-century Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch. But no, these paintings by Colombian artist Fernando Botero are depictions of real events. Despite their hellish subject matter, they are all meticulously based on photographs and press accounts of the torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2003.
It seems hard to credit, but Mr. Botero says the pictures, which many will undoubtedly view as a scathing indictment of American foreign policy, are not meant to convey a political message.
Although he admits that President Bush "is not my favorite president," Mr. Botero says art has no effect on political realities, adding that his work is merely a relic to be looked upon by future generations as evidence of events past.
"You just leave a testimony," he said. "It's something that comes from the heart. It's something immortal that moves you to do your work."

Soldier Hoped to Do Good But Was Chaged By War

Check out this article in the New York Times.  http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/13/us/13awol.htm

A born-again Christian from Washington  who claims to have gone to Iraq to serve his country and God and began to doubt if he was serving either.

From the article: 

He said he saw American soldiers shoot and kill an unarmed Iraqi teenager, and rode in an Army Humvee that sideswiped Iraqi cars and shot an old man’s sheep for fun — both incidents Sergeant Clousing reported to superiors. He said his work as an interrogator led him to conclude that the occupation was creating a cycle of anti-American resentment and violence. After months of soul-searching on his return to Fort Bragg, Sergeant Clousing, 24, failed to report for duty one day.

Flannery O'Connor in the Age of Terrorism

I'll be giving a paper at a conference this weekend in Grand Rapids, MI at Grand Valley State U.  The conference is uncannily titled, "Flannery O'Connor in the Age of Terrorism"  Fits right in with what I've been writing about.

Tonight I sat down to make sure I know what I'm going to say.  As usual, I started reading another book instead: Archbishop of Cantebury, Rowan Williams' book of essays, Grace and Necessity.  His chapter on Flannery O'Connor is perhaps the best thing I've ever read concerning her work that treats her Catholicity as the reason for her consistently soul shaking brilliance, instead of pointing to it as her tragic flaw.

Williams points out that the irony famously associated with her work can hardly be helped.  The irony in her work is the greatest irony: Humans made in the image and likeness of God yet tend toward evil.

I'll be talking about this irony and its relationship to Grace--the notion that God extends invitations to deeper intimacy with Him through unexpected encounters.  Because it is inevitable that Humans tend toward evil, irony, although unhinging, should not be looked to as an end in itself, but as a surface indication of a deeper spiritual disturbance--a starting point rather than impasse.  

This is what it means for art to empower depth of sight.

Today is Good War's Official Release....I Promise More Posts!

October 1st.  

This is the official release date of the book.  Let the reviews begin...I hope.  

It seems that Good War will be reviewed in the New York Times Book Review.  No idea when.  That's just the hunch at Soft Skull Press because the Review asked for a finished copy.  


Time Out Chicago is reviewing it sometime in the next week or so.

I just downloaded this gadget for my Mac that lets me post to the blog without going to the site  and logging on.  This should lead to more posts.  So keep it tuned here.

Flattering Words from Lo-Fi Tribe

An excerpt from a review at Lo-Fi Tribe (www.lofitribe.com), a hip blog dedicated to religion and theology maintained by Shawn Anthony. He's a seminarian studying to be a minister in the Unitarian Universalist Church:

David Griffith has produced one of the deepest critiques of contemporary American culture I have read to date. He did so in less than 200 pages....I was moved by the author’s ability to totally avoid the familiar rhetoric and party lines owned and wielded by the twin sides of a culture war whose participants miss the big picture entirely. This is especially impressive considering the inspiration of the book: Abu Ghraib. Griffith, however, holds up Abu Ghraib as a mirror in which we can honestly see our state as a nation of collected and individual selves.

Click on the title of this post to see the entire review.

Thanks, Shawn.

Abu Ghraib: the Last Great American Movie

The other day, Peter Manseau, editor of Killing the Buddha sent me an email with this quote from author Michael Tolkin's interview in the New York Times:

"I don't think America's had a good movie made since Abu Ghraib," Tolkin said, before clarifying that he's talking about big movies, not the minuscule ones that have met the industry's quotas for unembarrassing award nominees. "I think it showed that a generation that had been raised on those heroic movies was torturing. National myths die, I don't think they return. And our national myth is finished, except in a kind of belligerent way."

It's difficult to know whtat exactly he means by this, but I'm taking it as a statement about the provocative nature of the images and the way the images call the audience to reflect on not only the character of the American military but their own character, their own response to such images. Let's face it, very seldom do American films provide such a critique. "Boys Don't Cry," the fim that dramatized the life and death of Tina Brandon comes to mind, but I can't think of others off the top of my head.

This got me thinking about ground that I wanted to cover in my book (A Good War is Hard to Find) but just didn't have the space or the time. Might there be a connection between a national cinema that boldly deals with issues of pain, suffering, war and peace in earnest (unironic) ways and the peacefulness of that nation's people? I'm going to need some help from international film experts on this, but my instincts are leading me to think that there might be some truth in this.

The absolute dearth of American films critquing violence as a means of conflict resolution leads me to ask:

Is it plausible that American cinema is responsible for the degradation of a culture's moral imagination, its movement from a nation (prior to WWI) that looked upon war as a barbaric solution to a nation that largely supports violence as a means of achieving what is in the nation's "best interest"?

It's hard to know exactly which films Tolkin is critquing in his statement, but let's take a look the 1980s, since that was when I was doing my first movie-watching. Consider Rambo (especially part 2) Friday the 13th (and its interminable sequels and imitators) and Indiana Jones; in each, violence and identity stand in interesting relation.

Rambo II: Rambo wants to get even with American policy-makers who botched the Vietnam War by sending the cartoonish Army-of-One, Sly Stallone back into Vietnam to kick some Vietcong ass. Pauline Kael's review is a hilarious read as she skewers the film not only for the its crude appeals to the barely pubescent (Arrows tipped with explosive charges blowing up helicoptors) but also the disgruntled vets with not-so-subtle Christ imagery and troubling lines such as, "In order to survive in war you have to become like war." In effect, the film celebrates vigilante justice, critiques American foreign policy makers but, ultimately, further projects the myth that America's strength lies in its rugged individualism. Thus, we see the logic of the U.S. Army's current "Army-of-One" ad campaign: Entice a generation of young people cagey about authority to enlist in the military, a decision that signs away your civilian rights, by telling them that they will become "somebody"--the ultimate fighting machine.

Friday the 13th: Although intended as cheap thrills for teens, through the lens of Tolkin's comments, becomes a series of films that shows us teen on teen sex through the eye holes of a hockey-masked (he was badly burned as a child) serial killer who's pissed off because he's badly deformed and his mother is dead. This formula continues to be bankable, so much so that contemporary American culture is inundated with similar plots and images. There is an odd sickness in American male culture that makes us interested in the violent assault of beautiful woman. Men both revere and wish to protect beautiful women but also punish them for being so beautiful and therefore beyond attainment. Violence becomes associated with the sexual urge to both love and conquer at the same time. (Brett Easton Ellis' "American Pscyho" most recently and infamously explored this issue.)

Indiana Jones: While the most dear to my heart is, nonetheless, a film that portrays bearded men in turbans (Muslims) and men with sinister German accents and monocles (Nazis) teaming up to use the Ark of the Convenant, one of THE most powerfully holy relics to Judeo/Christian thinking, to, ostensibly, wipe out the Jews and the Americans. Hmmm.

What do these films have to do with Abu Ghraib, torture, and the American public's authorization of violence? Well, based on the research done by sociologists and psychologists on what motivates torturers, such films aren't necessarily creating torturers. On the whole, torturers see what they do as a job, a job that would be unncessary if only the subject would talk. Though this may be the case, it seems that Abu Ghraib is not so much about state mandated torture (although the boundaries of what is what is not torture do seem to have been intentionally blurry), it is about young people whose moral consciences did not cause them to balk and a citizenry that failed the same test.

Film studies folks have been thinking about the roots of misrepresentating the "other," and "problematically" totalizing the complexity of cultural identity, ethnicity, sexuality, etc. through the deployment of a subtle visual rhetoric, some of which is conscious and some of which is, arguably, subconscious. These scholars hold that film can call attention to such problems. Just look at countries along cultural fault lines, such as Irish and Mexican film: both deal quite literally with borders and the violence that erupts as a result of the tension between perspectives. In these films the violence is understood as symptomatic of deep social undercurrents.

The explication above is just a beginning, but I think it starts to get at the sinister undercurrents in American culture: how sex, violence, nationalism and religion are connected in the American psyche. The Abu Ghraib seem to be a nexus point for thinking about these connections in the American subconscious and how the connection influences the American mind.

When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Parts

I just got done watching Spike Lee's new HBO documentary, "When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts." My wife, who was born and raised in Slidell, just across the lake from New Orleans, a community equally hard hit by Katrina, had to get up and leave the room because she thought she might have a panic attack. That's how striking this documentary is. And I'm pleased to report that Lee achieves this without taking any of Michael Moore's effective yet impudent (adj 1: marked by casual disrespect; "a flip answer to serious question") tone. Moore's brand of mock naivete and sass isn't appropriate here. And why not? I kept wondering as I watched. Why isn't Spike narrating over top of these images? I kept waiting for his now iconic voice--that kid-trying-to-be-cool voice that I first heard in Air Jordan commercials back in the late 80s--to come in with that hip-hop politico swagger, but he restrained himself. And what a difference it makes.

Although there are some moments where the nice is twisted, particularly at the beginning when Louis Armstrong sings "Do You Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans?" over top of stock news footage of the inundated city. For me, this is the big question that the documentary is asking me to grapple with. The photos and news footage gathered from CNN and other networks ask us to review the evidence and ask: Can you fathom this? How could this happen? Human beings left for four or five days without food or water at the New Orleans Convention Center and on interstate overpasses. Armed mobs blocking the Crescent City bridge so that inner-city New Orleanians cannot seek shelter in their white enclave.

What results truly is a requiem, a solemn service to the dead. In short, Lee has done this right. He has jazz musician and composer Terrance Blanchard as a talking head and a contributor of original music for the soundtrack--one that doesn't just--again, like Moore--ironize, but that rounds off the sharpness, the sting of the photos in such a way that doesn't feel sentimental, very much anti-CNN. After all, sentimentality, according to Flannery O'Connor is "an early arrival at a mock state of innocence," a condition that leads to obscenity rather than actual grief.

It is grief that a requiem, in its very structure and solemn pageantry, is meant to provide a proper outlet. It is is meant to affirm the gift of life even amidst doubt and darkness. Without having seen the second part, which airs tonight on HBO, it's too soon to say where Lee will leave us off, but I suspect we won't be let off easy.

Lee's documentary reminds me of a classic of the genre, Harlan County, USA, in which poor white coal miners and their families eek out an existence in a place that looks like a Sebastio Salgado photograph. Similarly, "When the Levees Broke" shows America to be not so different than your typical despot-ruled third world country: concerned primarily with wealth and war.

Book is Out, Apparently

Well, it seems that the book is out. Finally, after many delays and false alarms and sabotage attempts--no lie--by disgruntled employees of at the printer in Montreal, the book is, apparently, in warehouses all across the country. I say apparently because Amazon.com has changed the status of the book's availbilty from "We have no fricking clue. Good Luck!" to "In Stock."

And,also apparently, the book is selling. As of this morning, Amazon.com tells me, there are "only 3 left in stock" at their warehouse. I'm hoping that this means hundreds of copies have been shipped to the four corners of the earth; although, I suspect that several dozen are heading for Perrysburg, Ohio--where my parents live.

The next step is to place some excerpts from the book in various places to promote more sales. So far I have leads with Killing the Buddha , the award-winning online website for those who aren't exactly atheists but aren't exactly believers either and The Huffington Post, the online political and cultural news clearing-house. This last lead has an interesting wrinkle in that the editor I've been working with is passing my book on to John Cusack, who, she told me, expressed interest in the premise of my book. Apparently, she was talking with John at a party at Arianna Huffington's house one evening and mentioned my book to him and he--who has just finished shooting a film in which he plays a guy whose wife is killed in the line of duty while serving her country in Iraq--apparently--said, "I'd liked to check it out."

Weird. Wonderful.

Review in the National Post of Canda

Randy Boyagoda, author of the forthcoming novel "The Governor of the Nothern Province" (Penguin Canada, September 2006), chose Good War for his Hot Summer Reading list. Below are his kind words:

A Good War is Hard to Find by David Griffith (Soft Skull). This slim study of violence and visual culture in America explores the cultural conditions that prepared the way for the Abu Ghraib photograph scandal. Two elements rescue the book from banal American self-hatred and soft lefty self-righteousness: first, Griffith's idiosyncratic involvement of Catholic social teachings in his approach to cultural critique; second, his first-person reckoning with the wider problems that the Abu Ghraib images signal, which admits a personal culpability in their creation as much as it accepts a personal responsibility for their correction.

Thanks, Randy! I highly recommend his novel. I had the pleasure of reading an advanced copy of it recently. It is that rare breed of book that begins as ambitiously as it ends, not shying away or taking the easy way out when confronting the complex issues of racial prejudice, assimilation, local politics and the manners of an entire nation.

Final Blurb for Book Compares Good War to Merton

Got the last blurb for the book just before the "drop-dead" date--the point of no return in publishing lingo--from Greg Wolfe, editor of Image, the only literary journal dedicated to Judeo-Christian art and artists. Click on the title of this post and check out Image's Web site.

Here's what he said:

David Griffith is a writer to watch--politically engaged and bitingly funny, but never shrill. His passion for social justice is grounded in his understanding of art and religion-two forms of vision that, rightly understood, increase our awareness of irony and ambiguity rather than stifle them. This combination of talents and interests is rare indeed: Griffith is working the same territory as Thomas Merton in books like Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander and Seeds of Destruction. In short, this is cultural criticism with a soul.

Highest Ranking Abu Ghraib Officer to Date to be Charged

Amnesty Says Abuse in U.S. Detention Facilities 'Widespread' Despite Denials

Sr. Helen Gets Standing "O" at Valpo

Went to see Sr. Helen Prejean last night at Valparaiso University. Man, she's a force of nature. I definitely was on the verge of tears a couple times. I picked up her new book, The Death of Innocents, and had her sign it. I also thanked her for blurbing my book. More later....

Toronto-Based "This Magazine" Gives Good Review

The first review of my book is out from This Magazine, a well-known and long running Toronto-based alternative magazine of politics and culture. Below is the review by Brian Joseph Davis.

The Jam once ambivalently sang, "A smash of glass and the rumble of boots, an electric train and a ripped up phone booth, paint splattered walls and the cry of a tom cat, lights going out and a kick in the balls ... that's entertainment." It's a sentiment also echoed in Davis Griffith's first person essay, A Good War Is Hard to Find.

Focusing mostly on the strangeness of the Abu Ghraib torture photos and '90s-style transgressive culture, Griffith's thesis is that society is suffering a disconnect between its feelings and the images we produce. As a subjective essay, A Good War takes its time in saying what it wants to say, but Griffith's impassioned and always-questioning mind makes the journey worthwhile. Even if you disagree with him (as I do), take comfort that someone is asking uncomfortable questions about what makes what worthy of humour, or disgust.

Not bad, huh? "Impassioned and always questioning mind"--I can live with that. I'm happy that he's honest in his disagreement of the thesis. Go to This' Website by clicking the title of this post.

Haunting Photograph: Abu Ghraib Icon or Political Opportunist?

Salon.com is reporting that the New York Times got the wrong man in its front page feature on the alleged man-behind-the- hood in the now iconic photo from Abu Ghraib prison (see the orginal article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/11/international/middleeast/11ghraib.html). Click the title of this link for the Salon account.

It seems fitting that the identity of this man is hard to pinpoint. I don't know why I think that. I guess it's as though that this man--whoever he is--is a sort of bogeyman, an apparition that embodies the horror of the Iraq war. Just as the tomb of the unknown soldier in any country touched by war inspires mournful respect and reflection, the photo of the unknown torture victim inspires frustration and anger. As Donald Rumsfeld said: "Those pictures never should have gotten out." It's safe to say that Susan Sontag was right: "Photographs haunt."

Death of a Christian Peacemaker a "Wake Up Call"?

The Catholic Peace Fellowship (http://www.cpfblog.blogspot.com/) has a
number of wonderful posts up at the moment. Check out the lovely post about
the death of Tom Fox, a member of the Chrisitian Peacemaker team that was
kidknapped months ago. The post takes on pundits who believe the murder of Fox is a wake-up call for "naive peaceniks" who feel they can make a difference by going to Iraq--or wherever strife exists--and acting as an instrument of Christ's
peace. Also check out the CPF's posts on the ROTC debacle at Marquette University.

Times Op-Ed: Use of Dogs at Abu Ghraib Understood as "Legal"

An Op-Ed by ex-Army interrogator ANTHONY LAGOURANIS published in the February 28, 2006 NYT discusses how confusion among soldiers, and double-speak on the part of top brass, as to how detainees at Abu Ghraib should be considered (POW? Enemy Combatant? Insurgent?) lead to following through with orders that are clear violations of the Geneva Conventions.

What It Takes to Be a Conscientious Objector

The Catholic Peace Fellowship has a great story (click on the title of this post for the story) about a soldier who applied for Conscientious Objector staus, got it, and then was Honorably Discharged from the Army. Now the Army is trying to change his discharge status to "General," which would deprive him of many benefits, like the GI Bill. Click on the link at the bottom of the story to see excerpts from his statement of conscience, which is needed in order to make a successful bid for CO status.

Which gets me thinking: Wouldn't it be great to gather together statements of conscience and put them together in a big book? What would you say in your statement of conscience?

Gay Porn Used in Guantanamo Interrogations

The Nation's blog is reporting on an ACLU report in which FBI agents conducting interrogations at Gitmo witnessed the use of Gay pornographic films as an interrogation tool. Click on the title of this post for the whole story.

Since the beginning of the war we have been hearing allegations that the military's plan of attack against the "Islamic male" is rooted in an understanding of Middle Eastern culture's sense of shame, specifically when it comes to sexuality. The Abu Ghraib photos seem to support such allegations of a systematized approach to "softening up" detainees.

However, the fact that the ACLU is breaking this story doesn't bode well for its acceptance as "fact." In my experience, here in the middle west, the ACLU is given no more cred than a grocery store tabloid.

How do we combat such prejudice?