Twitter

I suppose I shouldn't be too flattered, since it's his first day on Twitter and he is following approximately half the people who follow him, but this is still priceless.  Prince Hassan is the late King Hussein's brother and one of the most respected public figures in Jordan.

Salma

A couple weeks ago, at the recommendation of a Jordanian blogger, I discovered a great Jordanian rock band called Jadal.  Today I’d like to share one of their music videos with my readers.  The song is Salma, and it is a prayer and blessing for the guitarist’s niece.

What does this have to do with national security?  Those who study national security issues can fall into a dangerous trap: by focusing so intensely on those issues, we can lose sight of everything else.  This is especially a danger when we study regional affairs from afar.  We lose perspective on the lives of ordinary people, viewing an entire country and its people through the lens of national security concerns.  In actuality, these issues may be of only marginal importance in the lives of citizens.  To cite one example, Islamic terror was so far removed from my experience in Jordan that it almost seemed irrelevant.

Understanding the lives of ordinary people is an important corrective to this bias.  The big national security issues obviously matter, but we need to place them within an accurate human context.

I like this video because, in about three minutes, it beautifully captures so much of ordinary life in Jordan.  This is a society where the country’s top rock band writes a song of blessing to a sister and niece; where a group of shabab (young men) who are out cruising will take along a three-year old niece; and where enjoying the happiness of children is considered one of the highest pleasures in life.  So next time you read dire news from the Middle East, think back to Salma and realize that she represents 95% of what I saw and experienced in Jordan.

LYRICS (translation found online and is a bit rough in places)

Call her Salma, oh sister!
Give it up and go for it!
Baby Salma, if she cries, she would complain the first second!

Salma, I wish your eyes see good things, see your mommy praying, see and hear everything good just don't worry or care... your uncle is singing!

Baby Salma will cry, will fill our homes with joy , and with the loudest voice she will say " I LOVE YOU MOMMY "

Salma, my eyes are waiting...to see your eyes and wish you.....
Wish you long life , oh Salma!...
Life that i wish for you!
Life that i wish for you!
Wish you long life , oh Salma!

Salma, I wish your eyes see good things, see your mommy praying , see and hear everything good just don't care... your uncle is singing!

Salma, my eyes are waiting, to see your eyes and wish you.....
Wish you long life , oh Salma! Life that I wish for you!
Salma, my eyes are waiting....to see your eyes and wish you.....
Wish you long life , oh Salma! Life that I wish for you!
Salma! my eyes are waiting!!

What I'm Reading: Triple Agent

On December 30th, 2009 a Jordanian double agent traveled to a remote CIA base in Khost, Afghanistan for a meeting with his Jordanian handler.  Humam Khalil al-Balawi, a physician, claimed to be treating Ayman al-Zawahiri, the #2 figure in al-Qae'da.  It was one of the biggest breakthroughs of the War on Terror, and an abnormally large crowd of CIA agents and contractors had gathered to receive al-Balawi and hear his report.  That was a tragic mistake.  Moments after dismounting his vehicle, al-Balawi detonated a suicide vest.  Seven people died.  It was the worst loss in the CIA's history.

Triple Agent tells the story behind these terrible events.  I picked up the book because I had a personal connection to one of the Khost victims, albeit a small one.  My wife and I knew the family of Darren LaBonte, a CIA agent who died in the attack.  He was stationed in Amman and was a close friend and associate of Ali bin Zeid, the mukhabarat captain who handled al-Balawi.  I never met Darren, because he was often traveling for work, but we had met his wife on a couple occasions and she had helped us with some arrangements when we got settled in Amman.  We didn't know her well; just well enough that the news from Khost came as a devastating shock.  Until Darren's death, we had no idea what he did for a living.

The events of Khost are well-known by now, documented and studied and analyzed to death by those who wanted to understand what went wrong.  So why read a new book on the subject?  I regretted not having had the chance to meet Darren; my wife, for her part, regretted not getting to know his wife better.  I hoped that the book would shine some light on this family we had briefly crossed paths with, and give me insight into the world they inhabited.  And that, really, turned out to be the book's strength.  It tells the story of the individuals who were at Khost: Darren, Ali bin Zeid, Khost base chief Jennifer Matthews, targeter Elisabeth Hanson, and others.  The book uses this dreadful event to humanize and personalize the long war against al-Qa'eda.

The book is a riveting and dreadful read.  I kept hoping that a crucial warning would be heard, that a key decision would be changed, that somehow the tragic outcome would be averted.  But of course the end of the story was preordained.

For me, the most gut-wrenching moment in the book is when Darren LaBonte and Ali bin Zeid say goodbye to their wives in Amman before flying to Afghanistan for the fateful meeting.  They are worried.  Darren and Ali do not trust their own agent and are worried that things are moving too fast.  Darren's wife has expressed fear that the agent might turn out to be a suicide bomber.  Despite their fears, these two women send their husbands off with courage so remarkable that it deserves special mention:

The women knew the men shared a fascination with ancient warrior culture, for the armies of Athens and Sparta. In ancient Greece the mothers of Spartan warriors exhorted their sons to bravery with the words that Fida Dawani and Racheal LaBonte now spoke to their departing husbands: “Return with your shields or on them.”

That sendoff reminds me of the final pages of Steven Pressfield's historical novel about Thermopylae, when the Spartan King Leonidas meets a woman named Paraleia a few days before he leads the 300 off to battle.  Paraleia is about to be robbed of both her husband and son.  King Leonidas says:

"The city speculates and guesses... as to why I elected those I did to the Three Hundred.  Was it for their prowess as individual men-at-arms? ... I chose them not for their own valor, lady, but for that of their women ... When the battle is over, when the Three Hundred have gone down to death, then will all Greece look to the Spartans, to see how they bear it.  But who, lady, who will the Spartans look to?  To you and the other wives and mothers, sisters and daughters of the fallen.  If they behold your hearts riven and broken with grief, they, too, will break. And Greece will break with them. But if you bear up, dry-eyed, not alone enduring your loss but seizing it with contempt for its agony and embracing it as the honor that it is in truth, then Sparta will stand. And all Hellas will stand behind her."

By telling their stories as accurately and honestly as possible, Triple Agent is a fitting tribute to those lost at Khost--as well as the loved ones they left behind.

Steve Jobs

Budget Cuts

I guess it's official: catastrophic budget cuts are here.  Yesterday the Lodging Office at the base where I'm doing C-17 re-qualification training notified me that they are disconnecting cable service in all lodging facilities due to lack of funding. 

For the aspiring social scientists out there, this sounds like a great opportunity for an experiment.  I'm willing to bet that after a few months without cable news, the collective intelligence of everyone in base lodging will be significantly higher.

What I'm Reading: Achilles in Vietnam

Ever since I discovered the amazing translation by Robert Fagles, I've been a fan of The Iliad.  I also have a strong interest in the human dimension of war, particularly the way that good men and women come to grips with war's moral ambiguities and horrendous suffering.  So I was pleased to stumble across a book that combined these two interests.  In Achilles in Vietnam, Jonathan Shay argues that The Iliad is really a story about Achilles' combat trauma and the tragic undoing of his character. This is how he summarizes the tale:

Agamémnon, Achilles’ commander, betrays “what’s right” by wrongfully seizing his prize of honor; indignant rage shrinks Achilles’ social and moral horizon until he cares about no one but a small group of combat-proven comrades; his closest friend in that circle, his second-in-command and foster brother, Pátroklos, dies in battle; profound grief and suicidal longing take hold of Achilles; he feels that he is already dead; he is tortured by guilt and the conviction that he should have died rather than his friend; he renounces all desire to return home alive; he goes berserk and commits atrocities against the living and the dead. This is the story of Achilles in the Iliad, not some metaphoric translation of it.

What I enjoyed so much about this book is that it transformed my view of both subjects: The Iliad and post-traumatic stress disorder.  As much as I enjoyed The Iliad, I never much liked Achilles.  I saw him as a spoiled child who is unforgivably selfish, who ceases to care about his own army but explodes in killing rages to protect his own interests (it probably didn't help my view of Achilles that he was played by Brad Pitt in the movie Troy).  My sympathies were always with Hector, Achilles' quieter and more noble adversary who eventually sacrificed his life defending his family and his city.

Shay turned my view of Achilles upside down.  In Shay's reading, Achilles is not merely selfish; he is not simply pouting because Agamemnon stole his woman.  On the contrary, Agamemnon's act violates the moral universe that the Greeks inhabited.  It is a grave act of betrayal by Achilles' leader, and it sets Achilles on a tragic descent into combat trauma that ultimately costs him his moral character.

The book also changed my view of post-traumatic stress disorder.  I have always associated PTSD with (to put it simply) seeing, experiencing, or doing terrible things.  But for Shay, who has worked extensively with Vietnam veterans who suffer extreme PTSD, something else is primary: moral injury, which is typically inflicted directly or indirectly by a soldier's superiors.  Shay writes:

moral injury is an essential part of any combat trauma that leads to lifelong psychological injury. Veterans can usually recover from horror, fear, and grief once they return to civilian life, so long as “what’s right” has not also been violated.

This is an intriguing read for anybody who has a special interest in the psychological journey of traumatized veterans.  It is also of interest for those who enjoy Homer and wish to see his work in a new light.  Shay captures the timelessness of war and the constancy of human nature; he shows the enduring relevance of the ancient Greek tale to warriors today.