The term “six-party talks”, used to describe the efforts for a peaceful resolution to the North Korean nuclear standoff, might not be a misnomer, but it’s certainly misleading. That’s because the six-party talks are really the two-party talks, with four spectators on the sidelines. Surprisingly, the other party in question isn’t South Korea; it’s the United States. Binding North Korea’s neighbors to the talks is certainly a shrewd political move that adds legitimacy and pressure to the negotiations, but as we’ve ascertained from recent events, international pressures are a distant dynamic compared to the fragility of U.S.-North Korean relations.
Since 2003, South Korea, Japan, Russia, China and the United States have been exerting pressure on North Korea to dismantle their nuclear weapons program. At the same time, President Bush promoted his policy of alienating the Stalinist regime, aligning it with the “Axis of Evil” and branding North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il a “pygmy.” Pyongyang responded to the stalemate in negotiation and overtly hostile name-calling by successfully testing a nuclear weapon this past October.
This disregard for North Korea shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. For years, the six-party talks somehow escaped the general debate and, while current analysts bicker over the potential costs of nuclear war with Iran, we instinctually stick our heads in the sand like oblivious ostriches and ignore the real threat of nuclear war with North Korea. Of the 25 paragraphs President Bush dedicated in his 2007 State of the Union address to foreign policy, 23 dealt with the Middle East, including the potential nuclear threat in Iran and its phantom link with Al-Qaeda, Iraq and Sept. 11th. He subtly interjected a single sentence mentioning North Korea. A major obstacle in American foreign policy had been blatantly omitted, and nobody seemed to notice or care.
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Columnist George Will had some Valentine’s Day advice for Barack Obama: “If you get the girl up on her tiptoes, you should kiss her. The electorate is on its tiptoes because (he) has collaborated with the creation of a tsunami of excitement about him.” Standing in front of the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois, where Abraham Lincoln delivered his famous “House Divided” speech, Obama heeded Will’s advice last Saturday and began his much-anticipated bid for the presidency. Clever campaigning and media fascination aligned Obama’s developing political persona with nostalgia for past leaders.
Columnist Ruth Marcus called him the “truly Clintonian figure running for the Democratic nomination,” surely to the chagrin of that other Clinton. These appeals to historical sentiment are overt; but when contrasted to his perceived inexperience, many inevitably question the comparisons as premature.
Newton Minow, a former political advisor, proposed another president: “I thought, ‘I haven’t felt this same thing since Jack Kennedy.’”
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You’ve probably heard of Tucker Max, the 30 year old self-proclaimed “asshole” popularly known for his elaborate online stories recounting his booze and sex-fueled adventures. He sums it up: “I get excessively drunk at inappropriate times, disregard social norms, indulge every whim, ignore the consequences of my actions, mock idiots and posers, sleep with more women than is safe or reasonable, and just generally act like a raging dickhead.” Tucker Max is purportedly the reason Duke Law School dropped from 7 to 11 in the U.S. News rankings during his tenure; after reading his “Sushi Pants” story, in which he decides to buy a portable breathalyzer and match his blood alcohol content to his age, I would completely accept the claim as fact.
Described by The New York Times as “highly entertaining and grossly reprehensible,” Max’s self-titled website is largely composed of his documented escapades and receives around 1.2 million visitors a month. He’s made a career out of selling his stark frankness. And in the “truthiness” age, where it is the responsibility of the reader to discern between truth and “kinda” truth, Max’s unabashed candor is a relieving quaff of honesty (or beer) for parched throats.
Max’s stories are also ancillary to a greater literary revolution, defined by columnist Warren St. John as “fratire”: “Young men, long written off by publishers as simply uninterested in reading, are driving sales of a growing genre of books like Mr. Max’s that combine a fraternity house-style celebration of masculinity with a mocking attitude toward social convention, traditional male roles and aspirations of power and authority.” Max is often the first to admit that his work is not high brow and that his audience is composed partly of “dudes who can’t spell ‘dude’ right.” But fratire, in a grander context, represents an outlet for angst, a philosophy of expression and, surprisingly, a candid methodology that can be construed as art.
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A critical scene from Clint Eastwood’s Oscar-nominated film “Letters from Iwo Jima” resonates in the zeitgeist: As a group of Japanese troops in a cave prepare to dispatch a captured U.S. soldier, an officer stops them and demands that the prisoner receive medical attention. Later, the same officer finds a letter from the U.S. soldier’s pocket and reads it to his countrymen. The letter contains the concerns of the soldier’s mother, emphasizing her wish that her son return home safely. As one Japanese soldier later reflects, “(his) mother sounded like mine”, a profound realization of the commonality obscured by the toils of combat. And for a brief moment, the soldiers reassess the wounded American and glumly realize the folly of the madness surrounding them.
Eastwood’s film documents the last days the of ill-equipped and malnourished defenders against the impending onslaught on Iwo Jima. The film does not depict a Japanese version of the Battle of Iwo Jima, but rather the Japanese experience. It was not meant to be the contradiction to the American side, but a complement to express unrealized but inherent similarities.
I’m not ruining the movie because you already know how it ends: Of the 20,000 Japanese defenders on Iwo Jima, about 1,000 would survive. The film portrayed soldiers who do not struggle for victory, but come to terms with impending death. Eastwood depicts the brutality of these final days in harrowing fashion, using drained color and barren landscapes to portray those bleak final days. This is not a movie of personal glory on the battlefield, but the stark reality of war.
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