A book about an iconic ballet deserves a stellar cover, and artist Millicent Hodson certainly has delivered just that for The Rite of Spring at 100. In this special interview with IU Press, Hodson reveals her process behind the cover design as well as her long relationship with The Rite of Spring.
IU Press: At what point in the book’s development did you become involved? How did you find out about the project?
Millicent Hodson: I was part of The Rite of Spring at 100 team from the outset. The book evolved from the festival and conference of the same name at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in October 2012, a kind of “world summit” of experts on Igor Stravinsky and the Ballets Russes, the emigre company of Sergei Diaghilev which first presented this music as a ballet. A sister conference was then given in Moscow, in May 2013, with further Russian scholars. As a choreographer I was part of the dance contingent at these conferences.
For several decades I had researched and then staged a reconstruction of the original 1913 Rite of Spring, with choreography after Vaslav Nijinsky. I had begun the project as a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, where the Joffrey Ballet spent a summer in residence. I took classes with the company and organized an exhibition of Ballets Russes materials from the Bancroft Library. After performances of his company each evening, Robert Joffrey stopped by to view my progress on the exhibition, where I worked late most nights. I told him my dream of restaging the original “Rite.” A decade later I published a number of my drawings for the reconstruction in Dance magazine, New York, where I continued my research and directed a small dance troupe. I had lost touch with Mr. Joffrey, but when he saw my drawings he had an assistant phone and ask “Are you that girl from Berkeley?”
Mr. Joffrey asked to meet and, when he discovered I had just been named an NEA exchange artist to pursue “The Rite” research in London, he wrote me letters of recommendation that opened doors. In London I discovered that the English art historian, Kenneth Archer, had been doing parallel research for a decade, focusing on the scenario and designs for “The Rite” by Nicholas Roerich. We began to collaborate, married before long and eventually premiered our reconstruction with the Joffrey Ballet in the US then with companies worldwide.
IUP: What was your process like as you created the cover illustration?
MH: Drawing has been part of my creative process in dance since I was three years old. Intrigued by what I learned in children's ballet classes, I made sketches of everything we did. So I actually drew dance before I wrote language and later, when I developed as a choreographer, I always drew the movements I created. For the reconstruction of “The Rite” I did hundreds of drawings of the original choreography as I re-discovered it in order to embody, literally, all the clues to the movement gleaned from my research.
The cover drawing for The Rite of Spring at 100 was part of a series, “Maidens Advancing," from a scene of the ballet (Act I, Scene 4) called “Ritual of the Rival Tribes.” Some of them I have published and exhibited. The first one that I sold was, in fact, to a professor of musicology at Indiana University, Estelle R. Jorgensen. In 2003 when I presented the Patten Lectures at IU, did workshops and talks with Kenneth Archer, and set up an exhibition of small drawings from our “Rite” reconstruction, Prof. Jorgensen asked me if I would like to work in a larger format. That led to some poster size works I made for her.
The drawing that became the cover of The Rite of Spring at 100 I made as a gift for Emil Kang, the impresario at Chapel Hill who masterminded the festival and conference. When the editorial team for the book needed a cover, they suggested use of my drawing. As a contributor, I had witnessed and benefitted from their perseverance in making The Rite of Spring at 100 a definitive and coherent volume on this work, so I was pleased to help. Kenneth happened to photograph me at my drawing table as I drew a “Maiden Advancing” for Emil, none of us aware of its destiny on the front of the book then in progress.
IUP: The Rite of Spring was controversial in its own time and some of the cultural issues surrounding the performance still linger today. Did that shape your design process or thinking at all?
MH: I think there is a controversial gene deeply embedded in “The Rite." It keeps manifesting. Nijinsky, for example, the greatest ballet technician of his generation, wanted in 1913 to go backwards in time to the ritual roots of dance. So he reversed the turned-out position that had become central to ballet and made his ancient Slavs dance turned-in, what we think of as pigeon-toed. That creates an entirely different image from elegant dancers in the lineage of Louis XIV. The 1913 choreography shocked the audience and no doubt tormented the performers, and perhaps still does. But, without doubt, with Nijinsky's choreography for “The Rite” he broke with four centuries of tradition and launched what is now called “modern dance.” So my “Maiden” joins the advance.
Ray Boomhower's new book Dispatches from the Pacificdives deep on the reporting of World War II correspondent Robert L. Sherrod. In this interview, Boomhower shares some of what he learned about Sherrod and what his work means to people today.
Indiana University Press: If someone is coming into this book without knowing much about Robert L. Sherrod, what should they know?
Ray Boomhower: Robert Sherrod was a World War II correspondent. He wrote for Time and Life magazines. I kind of compare and contrast him to Ernie Pyle, where he’s kind of the Ernie Pyle of the Marine Corps and the War in the Pacific. He meant as much to the Marines as Ernie did to the average GI in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, and France.
Sherrod was in the Pacific War almost from the start. He was one of the first correspondents to go to Australia and was there to greet Douglas MacArthur after he made his famous escape from the Philippines and vowed “I shall return.” Sherrod was there to hear that speech. Later he covered the fighting in the Aleutian Islands, and from there he concentrated mainly on the Central Pacific battles. He went to Tarawa, Saipan, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa, and followed the Marines as they fought against the Japanese in the Central Pacific.
IUP: How did you first encounter Sherrod and his work?
RB: I’ve always been interested in World War II, particularly in the Pacific Theater of operations. As a young man I was helped in that interest by reading Sherrod’s book Tarawa: The Story of a Battle, which was originally published in 1944 and was a bestseller at the time. It really fired my imagination because I too wanted to be a reporter growing up, and later was a newspaper reporter like Sherrod was early in his career. I was fascinated by the fact that here was a guy that was on the operation with the Marines, landed with them, was there for the entire three days of the battle, and his firsthand observations of the fighting just really captured my imagination. I wanted to be someone like that who could be there to offer these firsthand observations of what the fighting was like.
IUP: What stands out about his writing? What keeps you coming back?
RB: I think his identification with the men he followed into battle, his reluctance to be one of those he called “communique commandos,” a reporter who stayed behind the front lines and just took the handouts from the public relations officer and just made the reports from that. He wanted to be there with the men who were doing the actual fighting, and that’s what makes him stand out from the pack of reporters who covered the war.
IUP: How did you put this book together? What was your process like?
RB: Mainly there were two main collections of Sherrod’s work, one at Syracuse University archives and one at the Marine Corps archives at Quantico, so just making visits there, collecting the material. It’s kind of a slice of life biography. It’s not a full biography of Sherrod. I concentrate mainly on his work during World War II. I do talk a little about his early life and what happened to him after the war, but it mainly concentrates on his time in the Pacific during World War II.
IUP: What do you hope people take away from this book?
RB: I think the courage he displayed, the way that he covered the action in the Pacific. His contributions represents well what reporters bring to the war effort, reporting on it, trying to make people back home realize the gravity of the situation, what it would take to actually win the war, and get them to sympathize and identify with the men under fire.
History and true crime are among the most popular topics in popular media today. At Indiana University Press, author Jane Simon Ammeson has already published two books that fall in these categories and is working on a third. Here, she takes a few minutes to give us a look into her research, writing, and work on both her current books and her forthcoming project.
IU Press: Your books are obviously very history-centric. What’s your research process like?
Jane Simon Ammeson: A lot of online searching and a lot of going to archives and old museums. So many towns have just these little museums. Talking to historic societies. I subscribe to a couple online newspaper archives and also the New York Times, which has just wonderful newspapers, and also Chronicling America, which is through the Library of Congress. A lot of this stuff is free. It’s just amazing.
I’m kind of geeky. I love sitting in dusty old archives and looking through old photos and things like that. I travel with a scanner so I can scan photos. I call people. Maybe I get a name in an article and I’ll try to find the family if there’s still family living in the area or somewhere and talk to them, or anybody who I can think of who might be connected who might have some information about the historical aspects of it.
IUP: You’re a psychologist by trade. How do you jump from that to writing about hauntings and murders?
JSA: You know, there’s a lot of similarities. When you’re a psychologist, you listen to people and you try to listen to and process what they’re saying and give it back to them to help them. As a writer, you’re processing and analyzing all the information and giving it back, and then you know I write about ghost stories, there’s a real human component that’s kind of psychological too.
IUP: With topics like murders or the Underground Railroad, you’re dealing with information about lives that were irrevocably changed in a negative way. How do you balance between the popular appeal of something like a murder mystery or a ghost story and the sensitivity of the issue? JSA: That’s a really good question, because it is a balance. I’ve never tried to talk to the murderer’s family because I just feel like because they have so much to deal with even though my murders are old. A lot of times, people don’t even know.
It’s interesting how even victims’ families don’t always know all the information [about the murders] because it’s kind of taboo to talk about it. But if somebody’s willing to talk, I just try to be very respectful of them, and maybe that’s where my psychological background comes in.
I try to feel what they’re feeling and know what the boundaries are. Sometimes people really want to talk, and then you meet some interesting people, like for the Underground Railroad thing. I actually met a woman whose grandfather was a slave who made it to Indiana and then prospered as a blacksmith and was really accepted by Fountain City, where he ended up living. That’s really wonderful to connect with history like that.
IUP: True crime seems to be having a little bit of a moment right now. NPR has done a lot of stuff in that sort of genre, and it seems to be growing. Everyone has a true crime blog or podcast or something. Do you feel like you have to differentiate yourself or does the rising tide carry everybody?
JSA: I differentiate myself a little bit because I’m looking at it from a historical aspect and I have the local Indiana aspect. Of course, my next book will be more nationwide because she lived all over
IUP: Tell us about your next book. You’re looking at the story of a truly unique woman: Minnie Wallace Walkup Ketcham. What can we expect from you?
JSA: This is an interesting woman. She was very beautiful, just totally beautiful. Married at 16 to a man who was 58 or something like that. He was very well-to-do. Within a month, he was dead of arsenic poisoning, and she had been around town buying arsenic. But Minnie was so beautiful, all the male reporters could write about was how gorgeous she was, and the jurors, who were all men in 1886, acquitted her even though she was so vague about why she was buying the arsenic. But she had a very influential friends, like a U.S. Senator and people like that. So she got off, and one of the jurors even said something like “I could never have lived with myself if I’d convicted that little girl.”
Minnie did eventually go to jail, but while she was there, she supposedly had sexual relationships with the jailer’s son, who was like 18. She eventually moved to Chicago and was a little shady there, too. The death of her husband meant had a lot of money, and she went through it, so she married again and her new husband only lasted for a month before he also died of poisoning.
And she moved on to New York, and there was somebody else who died of arsenic, but she was never convicted. She lived to a ripe old age of about 86. It’s a fascinating story.
While some may like their bourbon “neat,” the process of getting the drink into from grain to barrel to bottle is anything but. Many supporting industries have a hand in creating the most iconic American spirit, and photographer Carol Peachee has documented their work in her new book Straight Bourbon, due out this fall from Indiana University Press.
Peachee explained the genesis of the project in this interview, edited lightly for clarity.
IU Press: The book is called Straight Bourbon, but your creative process didn’t begin with an idea to set out and make a book about bourbon. Where did this idea get its start?
Carol Peachee: The first book I did, The Birth of Bourbon, was really about industrial heritage. This book really was conceptualized as a follow up to that. The first one is about distillery plants, but on this one I was interested in the cultural heritage of the supporting industries, which would be all the industries that make the bourbon industry possible.
I focused in particular on stills and barrels and mills, because they’re the iconic support industries that go along with bourbon.
IUP: How do you tell that story from a photographic perspective? There’s a lot of visual stuff that goes into bourbon, but there’s a lot of science and behind the scenes processes too. How do you marry those?
CP: Well, when I’m photographing the industries that support bourbon, I am photographing the copperworks, the still makers, and so you see the process happening. When I go to a cooperage where they’re making the barrels, I see that happen. At the mills, you don’t really get to see the science. You sort of have to know that there’s a science behind it, and that’s the science that goes into the recipe, what we would call the mash bill.
IUP: Bourbon is about as big now as it’s ever been, maybe bigger. Do you think a lot of people appreciate the process that it takes to produce bourbon or are they just in it for the drink?
CP I think there are a lot of people that are very interested in the process. When I went around for the first book photographing the distilleries, you know there are tons and tons of tourists, and while they do have to go through the tour to get to the tasting room, a lot of them are genuinely interested. A lot of them show off their knowledge, trying to trip up the tour guides and whatnot. I think there’s a huge interest in how it happens, not just the drink.
IUP: Were you a bourbon drinker before you got involved in these projects, or is this a new interest? CP: New as of 2010, so seven years new. When I first started, I was not a bourbon drinker. My drink was wine, but because I started doing industrial heritage and because that industrial heritage turned out to be distillery plants, and then from that I did the national historic landmark areas of the currently operating distilleries, I also would take the tours and at the end I would do the tasting. And I really started to appreciate the difference in the various recipes and the various processes. I guess you could say it’s new! It’s now the preferred drink of choice.
IUP: Say there’s someone like you were, just starting out, who’s never been interested in this subject before. Where does someone get started in bourbon? CP: The best way to get started is to take a tour of several distilleries, and each tour guide has their own schtick, so to speak, and you’ll learn a lot, and then you’ll also see the guys that show off and the questions they ask, so you’ll learn a lot from the smart alecks too.
IUP: How do you drink your bourbon? CP: I drink it one of two ways. I love an old fashioned, and then I’ll drink it on the rocks.
On the nights of July 16 and 17, 1942, French police rounded up eleven-year-old Joseph Weismann, his family, and 13,000 other Jews. After being held for five days in appalling conditions in the Vélodrome d'Hiver stadium, Joseph and his family were transported by cattle car to the Beaune-la-Rolande internment camp and brutally separated: all the adults and most of the children were transported on to Auschwitz and certain death, but 1,000 children were left behind to wait for a later train. The French guards told the children left behind that they would soon be reunited with their parents, but Joseph and his new friend, Joe Kogan, chose to risk everything in a daring escape attempt.
Available in English for the first time, After the Roundup tells the story of Joseph's escape and survival in France during World War II. This book only came to be thanks to the tireless work of translator Richard Kutner, who spoke with IU Press recently about what it took to create this book. Below is that conversation, edited lightly for clarity.
IU Press: Tell us a little bit about your process working on this book. How long did it take?
Richard Kutner: I got the request to do this book via my son. He teaches a course for AP French on World War II and, of course, gets involved in the Holocaust. So he saw a movie about this author’s experiences and decided to see if he could get in contact with him to interview him for his class. And while he was interviewing him, the man said “You know, I wrote a book about what happened to me after I escaped. Do you know anybody who could translate it?” So my son said, “You know, I think I have the right person for you. “
So we got in contact with each other. I had to get permission from the publisher to do the book. It was very complicated. I started working on the book and it took me about six months to translate it. It was a very intense experience, as you can imagine, working on a Holocaust memoir, not just from the point of view of the language and dealing with the language of the 1940s and a lot of street slang from the 1940s, but also with the emotions of this kind of book brings up.
IUP: How do you make sure you convey not just the factual meaning of the words, but also the emotion and feeling as well?
RK: With any kind of author you have to get into the author’s mind, but with this kind of book you have to, as best as you can, think and feel things the way you think the author probably did and try to internalize his emotions so you can express them to their full intensity and find the right words to really feel that emotion.
I think one thing that helped me was that I was an elementary school teacher and I kind of know how kids think, , so even though I didn’t have any kind of experience like what the author experienced, I still know how kids think about things and how they use language to talk about things.
IUP: There are obviously a lot of books about World War II and the Holocaust. We publish many of them. What sets this book apart?
RK: I think what sets this book apart is the voice that it’s written in. It’s really the authentic voice of an eleven year old child.
Also, the author has this fantastic life force, and also his strength, his courage, his clear-headedness, and his out-of-the-box thinking. His out-of-the-box thinking and clear-headedness are what saved his life when all the other kids that they were about to be reunited with their parents in two weeks and believed it. Something inside him said I don’t believe that, this is not happening, I am getting out of here.
Throughout the book, that kind of thinking and some unbelievable strokes of luck saved his life and got him to the point where he is now. He’s really an extraordinary person, and the more you get to know him, the more you get to see that.
Indiana University Press is proud to distribute What is Philanthropy?, an in-depth documentary on the nature of philanthropy throughout the United States. We recently spoke with producer Salvatore Alaimo about the project and he gave us some insight into how the film came to be. Here's what we learned.
Indiana University Press: You’ve produced a feature length documentary on the subject of philanthropy. To borrow the title of your film, what is philanthropy?
Salvatore Alaimo: Great question. The word comes from the Greek root word philanthropia which means in essence, the love of human kind. The more modern definition from Robert Payton is voluntary action for the public good. I didn’t seek to define or redefine philanthropy but yet to expand our perspectives for this broad concept of giving which can come in many forms.
The evolution or devolution of how we frame the concept today in comparison to the ancient Greeks has systematically narrowed our perspectives to mean only the giving of money, only something that the wealthy can engage in or even more narrowly, when a foundation gives a grant to an nonprofit organization. We all come at this concept from our own social construction, so the purpose of this film is to introduce a variety of ways to give and explode some myths about giving all while using the visual medium to educate and entertain the viewers.
IUP: What are the main obstacles to creating this documentary?
SA: I had several obstacles to completing this film. First, I had to do it in my spare time, which was minimal considering I am a full time university professor. I am proud to say that I worked the film around my teaching schedule and never cancelled a class or found a substitute instructor because of a location shoot, screening, or other purpose.
Second, being a first-time film maker I had a learning curve. Reading books, watching DVDs and attending seminars and conferences on how to make documentaries will only get you so far not having a formal education in film and video. So, I had to surround myself with professional crew who had those skills. I communicated my vision for the film to them and supervised their work to the extent that I maintained that vision but also allowed them to make some suggestions, some which I thankfully used. I had to learn new skills, manage a budget, schedule travel, purchase equipment, license content, market the film , and at times at location shoots get on the floor to run cables, all to complete this documentary.
Another function, the third main challenge, was fundraising which was extremely frustrating at times. My assumption was that the world of institutional philanthropy, foundations, would be interested in a visual medium that helps educate the public about the world in which they operate. I was wrong, as the only foundation funds I secured were from those with whom I had a personal connection of some kind. This proved once again that what we feel are our good ideas sometimes don’t stand alone on their own merit. It’s all about relationships. So, while my thick skin can handle rejection just fine, I was troubled with how some of them went about it. I encountered lying, narcissism, rudeness, condescension, inconsistencies in decisions, and more.
Of all the challenges this is the one that would make me think twice before making another documentary. I have no regrets putting $70,000 of my own money into this film, but raising the other $70,000 was at times unpleasant. However, I am extremely grateful to all who contributed to the film because I couldn’t have finished it without them. They took a chance on a first-time film maker and that does not get lost on me.
IUP: You have several high profile guests and interview subjects in this film. What different insights do they offer? How do people from different backgrounds approach philanthropy differently?
SA: People’s backgrounds help shape their giving, and it reminds us how powerful context is in driving giving. Mike Farrell, star of M*A*S*H, for example reminds us in the film that just because he became a celebrity it didn’t mean he gave up his right to engage in social activism. He also reminds us that we’re all social activists by default, but if we do nothing we give up that innate power we have to someone else.
Alex Smith, quarterback of the Kansas City Chiefs, has a very interesting story because his foundation was not started because he came out of the foster care system and had a tough time adjusting to life. It’s precisely the opposite, because as a high school student in San Diego, he came from a family that provided a strong support system. When he became aware of this issue of foster care kids aging out at age 18 he couldn’t imagine what they were going through. So his foundation provides full scholarships for San Diego area high school students to attend San Diego State University.
Nell Newman co-founded the Newman’s Own Organics product line, and she explains how our society is moving towards more organic and sustainable farming because it is environmentally responsible and more healthy for us. She points out the growth of farmers markets in the United States. Interestingly enough, however, she says that she doesn’t see educating the public about these issues as philanthropy but more so as part of her job.
Then you have an example of living history with Civil Rights Leader Dr. William G. Anderson, who worked with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Albany, Georgia in the early 1960’s to help get African Americans the right to vote. He reminds us that sometimes our acts of giving come with great risk. In his experience, this meant going beyond willing to go to jail but also risking your life.
Senator Charles Grassley provides the perspective from government, and he has been a leader in attempting to get the nonprofit sector to be ethical and accountable, which politically can be a lonely position. I was struck by the extent these people and others like Evelyn Lauder knew their issues. Evelyn had no notes and talked at length about breast cancer, quoting many statistics and the latest scientific advancements. This reminded me of how important it is for us to research issues and causes when we want to engage in philanthropy.
IUP: What do you think people misunderstand most about philanthropy?
SA: It’s probably a tie between thinking it’s only about giving money and it’s only an activity for the wealthy. Then, beyond that I feel that advocacy and social activism don’t often get included in discussions about giving, but this film reminds us that they deserve attention, too. Our civil society wouldn’t have evolved to where it is today without the advocacy and activism of social movements that have influenced policy, put laws on the books and ultimately shaped our culture.
I had an encounter with a representative of a local community foundation in a city where the documentary was shown at a film festival. During the Q&A session she told me to take out the social activism content, and I was unsuccessful at convincing her it was also a form of giving. We only need to turn to Dr. King for a great example of someone who volunteered his time, risked his life and paid the ultimate price so that people’s rights would be protected and that our society would be better for all.
What I hope people realize from watching the film is that everyone can be a philanthropist. We all can give in our own way.
February 20-24 marks "Fair Use Week," a time when researchers and librarians around the world take some time to reflect on the best practices and procedures related to fair use. Being an academic publisher, Indiana University Press spends a lot of time working through fair use considerations, and rights manager Stephen Williams took some time to share what fair use means to a publisher like IU Press.
IU Press: What does “fair use” mean in the context of academic publishing? Why is it important?
Stephen Williams: The concept of “fair use” in copyright law guarantees the right to re-use material that has copyright protection, under certain circumstances, without payment or permission from the copyright holder. Obviously, for the academic world publishing, it is an incredibly important principle because it guarantees the right to re-use previously published material. For example, if an IU Press author wanted to quote a short sentence from a book or journal article, without “fair use” they may have either seek permission or give payment for the usage. In short, fair use guarantees the spread of information and ideas.
IUP: How does what you do play into the world of fair use?
SW: According to Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act, four factors must be taken into consideration when claiming fair use, and they cover things like purpose of the reuse, nature of the copyright work, amount of material being reused, and the potential effective of use on the market value of the original work. All requests to reuse material from IU Press publications come across my desk, so one of the first things I do when reviewing the request is to determine whether or not it can be claimed as “fair use.” If the request corresponds well to the four factors, we acknowledge that the request is fair use, and if it doesn’t then we proceed to discuss licensing terms.
IUP: Why is it important for authors to understand the meaning of fair use?
SW: As fair use claims can be a two-way street, it's important for authors to understand fair use from both the creative and the reuse points of view. First, when they are creating their material, it's imperative that they are clear on what can be claimed as fair use. Can they use that specific photo they like? Can they use their favorite poem or song lyric as an epigraph? Can they quote a paper by another author that reinforces their own point?
Second, as authors often receive a share of the licensing revenue from their work, it is important that they understand how claims of fair use might impact their income. A poet, for example, might expect to make a good share of their income on a given title from the licensing of their individual poems, rather than from sales of the book of poetry. Knowing whether a poem can be re-published under fair use will definitely affect their expectations.
IUP: Are there any common misconceptions about fair use?
SW: The most common misconception around fair use is the amount of material that can be used as fair use. You often hear things like “less than 500 words or 10% of the total length of the book is automatically fair use.” This is totally false; there is no specific word count that you can point to when it comes to claiming fair use. An entire poem might only be 50 words, but you would have a difficult time claiming the fair use of a poem. The only way to determine whether something can be reasonably claimed as fair use is to use the four factors.
IU Press author Larry Lockridge grew up in his father's shadow. Ross Lockridge, Jr. was the award-winning author of Raintree County, but the younger Lockridge didn't have the chance to get to know his father. Two months after Raintree County was published, Ross Lockridge, Jr. took his own life. Larry was just five years old at the time.
Decades later, Lockridge penned Shade of the Raintree, an exploration into his father's life and work. He recently appeared on Heartland History, the official podcast of the Midwestern History Association to discuss the book, his life, and the meaning of his work.
He also recently sat down for an interview with David Brent Johnson of WFIU for an interview on the show Profiles. Hear that discussion here.
Shade of the Raintree was republished by IU Press in 2014. It is available below.
As an embedded journalist in Afghanistan, Douglas A. Wissing wanted to know the ground truth about the war. What he discovered was that in contrast to the victory narrative US officials were trying to spin, America's strategy in Afghanistan was failing. His most recent book Hopeless but Optimistic: Journeying through America’s Endless War in Afghanistandetails the greed, dysfunction, and waste that he witnessed.
Wissing's book concludes that the US should end its involvement in Afghanistan and let the Afghan people run their country as they see fit. But just last Thursday, Army General John Nicholson's told Congress he needed more troops in Afghanistan.
We asked Wissing to share his thoughts about General Nicholson's request for additional troops, what mistakes the US has made in the Afghanistan War, and why he wrote Hopeless but Optimistic:
Why did you choose to embed in Afghanistan, not once, but three times?
I initially embedded in 2009 with an elite team of Indiana National Guard farmer-soldiers, who were on a WHAM (military-speak for “winning hearts and minds”) mission in insurgency-wracked Khost Province, located in the volatile eastern Afghanistan borderlands. Their agricultural development mission intrigued me. Could you actually do development work in an active warzone? And would the US counterinsurgency strategy with its richly funded aid, development and nation-building component prevail against a traditional tribal society that has a storied thousand-year history of defeating foreign invaders?
I already had some experience in central Asia from my research for Pioneer in Tibet, a biography of a famous American missionary-ethnologist who lived in a wild part of Tibet during the Great Game era. A few years before 9/11, I had also traveled through northwest Pakistan’s restive tribal regions, where I garnered some understanding of the obdurate nature of the Pashtuns, who were then fighting the Soviet-backed Afghan proxy government. So I knew the US was facing a tough challenge.
During my first embed, soldiers revealed to me that the US counterinsurgency was grotesquely wasteful and riddled with corruption—so dysfunctional that our money was also financing the Taliban. We’d be out on missions in Taliban country and soldiers would be telling me, “We’re funding both sides of this war.”
I returned home and began digging through a mountain of reports while interviewing hundreds of people, from generals and ambassadors to combat soldiers, government bureaucrats and contractors. After a lot of deep diving, I realized there was a toxic network that connected ambitious American careerists, for-profit US corporations, greedy Afghan insiders—and the Taliban. I went back to Afghanistan, embedding with a number of units to confirm things. One day on an embattled forward operating base in Laghman Province, a smart intelligence officer said to me, “It’s the perfect war. Everyone is making money.”
That research resulted in Funding the Enemy: How US Taxpayers Bankroll the Taliban, a meticulously footnoted critique of the counterinsurgency, which came out in 2012. Got media attention and had an impact on DC policymakers. But the war went on. Despite the clear indication that the Afghan insurgents were winning, the US government persisted with troops and goat-choking appropriations. Increasingly cynical soldiers on the ground repeatedly told me, “The juice ain’t worth the squeeze.”
As the US began reducing troop levels, I was struck with the writer’s delirium: I wanted to know how the story turned out. After all the revelations, the congressional inquiries, the damning indictments, I wanted to know if the system had reformed; had there been any lessons learned? And I wanted to know how American soldiers on the ground maintained their honor and cohesiveness fighting in a lost war. I wanted to know the ground truth.
So I went back to Afghanistan for the third time, embedding in the war zones of the east and south, then researching in Kabul, the besieged capital. I wanted to tell a broad audience of Americans what it is like to be in a failed war. What the waste of American blood and treasure looks like. To show the terrible prices of war. To rebut the happy stories told from podiums in Washington and Kabul that bear no relation to the reality on the ground. And I wanted people to know about the courageous and resilient Afghans, who are perfectly capable of making their own way in the world. The result is Hopeless but Optimistic: Journeying through America’s Endless War in Afghanistan.
When you were in Afghanistan, you discovered that the situation was far worse than what US officials were telling the American public. Give us some examples of the contradictions you saw in the official narrative versus what was happening on the ground.
The phrase “truth deficit” describes much of what the US officials promulgate about the Afghanistan War. In some cases, “alternative facts” and “fake news” are also appropriate. One reviewer compared my tales of government untruths in Hopeless but Optimistic to 1984. I can say there were definitely times when it felt Orwellian.
To give an example: Just before I left for my third set of embeds, marine commanders in Helmand directed a public affairs officer to write an article for Foreign Policy entitled “We are Winning the War,” which was quite simply not true. Saying it didn’t make it so. There were clear indicators to the contrary: insurgent attacks had increased year after year; the number of insurgents had grown each year since the US invaded; the Taliban-led insurgency held increasing amounts of territory, including a substantial part of the countryside; the Taliban shadow government operated in virtually all of the provinces, and essentially controlled many. The marines in Helmand had just suffered a Taliban attack on Camp Leatherneck that resulted in the destruction of six fighter jets worth $200 million, the biggest loss of marine aircraft since the Vietnam War. And as I am sure the marine commanders knew the long-promulgated Special Forces dictum: If an insurgency isn’t shrinking, it’s winning.
Despite the US officials’ flack-spin, the US government’s vastly expensive nation-building campaign is close to a total loss. When the US invaded in 2001, Afghanistan was a basket case of a country, at the bottom of virtually every human development indices: life span, infant mortality, electric generation, literacy, etc. Beginning in about 2005, an avalanche of US development money, eventually more than the Marshall Plan, flooded into Afghanistan, a country of about 30 million people with a per capita income of about $400 a year. Most of the money was wasted or stolen. Phantom aid, critics call it. Despite countless (and wildly expensive) rule-of-law and nation-building programs, the US-backed Afghan government ranks among the most corrupt government on the planet—a feckless propped-up proxy government. And fifteen years later, after hundreds of millions of American taxpayer dollars were spent on development, Afghanistan remains at the bottom of virtually every human development indices.
Your previous reporting on Afghanistan and your book Funding the Enemy criticized the US handling of the war. But ultimately, despite getting the impression that not everyone in the Pentagon was a fan of your work, the US military gave you approval to embed a third time. Why do you think journalists are allowed this kind of access?
Beginning with the invasion of Grenada, the Pentagon recognized they could shape media coverage if reporters were embedded with the troops. Firstly, the same intense small-group dynamics that bond warriors together also anneals reporters to the soldiers they cover. And the military can keep better tabs on journalists if they know where they are. Few people know the Pentagon has one of world’s largest public relations organizations, and the military’s control of information is legendary: the public affairs officers call the press briefings “feeding the chickens.” This skillful media manipulation unfortunately often results in coopted coverage. All too commonly, the Pentagon story becomes the unverified and uncorrected media story.
So why did the military let me back in for my third embeds after my critical coverage? Well, I can only conjecture, as those decisions are pretty opaque. I did get denied for embeds a number of times, and even had approved embeds later rescinded. After a while I let it be known that I was just going to fly to Kabul and try to get embed approvals there. I don’t think the military wanted me running loose, so the embed approvals came not long after. Secondly, I think people in the military knew the critical story I told in Funding the Enemy and other published articles was the truth. I have never had a soldier claim my reporting or analysis was inaccurate. To the contrary, soldiers were most often supportive of my work. I can say that once I was embedded, they were professional, and except for a few naughty (and scary) incidents, were as respectful of me as I was of them.
In your opinion, what are the US's biggest mistakes in Afghanistan?
Changing the mission from defeating the Taliban government to eliminate Al Qaeda safe havens to completely reconstituting the Afghanistan government with the aim of reshaping Afghan culture and society into a Western-modeled one. It was arrogant and doomed to fail.
Also, privatizing the war and its attendant development schemes. The post-9/11 wars became corporate profit centers. The US has never privatized a war to the extent it has in these post-9/11 wars. And the result has been disastrous. The cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is approaching $5 trillion, not including the decades of interest on the immense public debt. And despite the horrific waste of money and lives, the US has failed to accomplish its stated military or diplomatic goals in these countries.
Despite the seriousness of its subject, parts of your book are rather funny. How did you manage to find humor in war?
Black humor is certainly a part of any war, as MASH and Catch-22 can attest. Some of the funniest banter I have ever heard came over the intercom as we rolled through “Indian country” (Taliban-controlled territory) in giant armored MRAPs with machine gunners up in the turrets. Relieves the tension, and highlights the surreal disparities between policy and reality.
There’s a chapter in the book entitled “Shitholes,” which depicts the often-humorous toilet challenges faced by soldiers in a primitive, war-torn country. I confess, the chapter is potty humor. There are tales of poisonous vipers, hyenas and giant jumping camel spiders at the Porto-Potties; the marine ban on audible farting because of the dire political implications; discussions of front-line latrines built extra big so soldiers can defecate wearing their body armor; FUDs (female urinary devices) so female soldiers can use their “artificial weenis” to STP (military speak for “stand to pee”).
One dark morning on a hardscrabble forward operating base in Taliban-dominated Zabul Province, I was in the immaculately clean and brightly lighted latrine, a vivid contrast to the grim reality right outside. There were two young soldiers shaving at the long line of sinks and mirrors. One said, “Man, I had a dream last night I was in the shithole.” His buddy retorted, “What do mean ‘dream?’”
What common experiences do you believe soldiers of all wars go through?
While Hopeless but Optimistic is about the Afghanistan War and America’s 21st-century way of war, it is also about the universal experience of war: humans going to battle, learning to love and hate, keeping it together when all is going wrong, the terrible prices they pay, physically, psychologically, spiritually. It’s about humans in extremis; what we learn about others and ourselves when we go to war.
Why should the American public pay attention to what's going on in Afghanistan even if, as you write in Hopeless but Optimistic, “it's a war that [they] increasingly want to forget”?
Fifteen years after the US invasion, there are still almost 10,000 US troops on the ground, as well as over 26,000 highly paid Department of Defense contractors, and thousands of uncounted contractors working on development contracts. Additionally, there are large contingents of Spec Ops soldiers cycling through that are seldom included in the counts.
And the mission is again expanding. The US is now back to bombing; 300 marines are headed back to Helmand, where they shed so much blood during the surge. The Pentagon is now requesting “a few thousand more troops” to attempt to break the “stalemate,” the PR term that the military is using to describe the failed war. They want to continue the Forever War.
The Pentagon and Dept. of State are requesting about $44 billion for the Afghanistan War for Fiscal 2017, by far the largest part of the war-related budget. In contrast, military operations against ISIS in Syria are only budgeted for $5 billion. The Afghanistan War budget request is bound to go up if the additional troop request is granted. The $44 billion is a lot of money, which will also go to no good end. It is, as the soldiers say, pouring more money into the Afghan sandpit. Americans have far better uses for the money.
Beyond the monetary waste, there are the horrific human costs of the endless war. America’s military sons and daughters are being ravaged by the war. The VA is overwhelmed with record numbers of brain trauma injuries. There were over 1,700 amputees from the wars. PTSD is rampant among vets. And the burden of care most often falls on our military families, who struggle to assist vets wounded in body, mind and soul.
Caught in the crossfires and bombings, Afghan civilians are dying in increasing numbers. The UN recently reported that in 2016 3,498 Afghan civilians died from the conflict, and 7,920 were wounded, including 923 children killed and 2,589 wounded.
So that’s why Americans should pay attention to Afghanistan. A congressman told me that sometimes citizens have to shame their representatives into doing the right thing. This may be one of those times.
What do you think about Army General John Nicholson's recent request for more troops in Afghanistan?
General Nicholson’s recent request for “a few thousand” more troops seems to be the Pentagon’s opening gambit to get the Trump administration to commit to continuing the Afghanistan War. At this stage, President Trump’s plans for Afghanistan are very unclear. As a businessman, Trump certainly understands the dangers of a sunk cost bias. Why throw good money after bad?
What does the future hold for Afghanistan after the US leaves?
Many knowledgeable people, both Afghan and international, tell me they see a period of upheaval as the now-conflicted Afghan interest groups sort out their differences. There is consensus that the Taliban and other allied insurgent groups have to be part of the overall agreements. I find few who speak highly of the current Afghan government leadership. And even fewer who speak positively about the US counterinsurgency, which has so obviously failed.
The title of your book comes from a conversation you had with an Afghan government official. We’ve covered the hopeless part, so what is there to be optimistic about in Afghanistan?
The title, Hopeless but Optimistic, came from a meeting on a cold gray day in Kabul. I was interviewing a suave Afghan official in his gloomy office, which was sequestered behind high-security walls. His life seemed to embody Afghanistan’s turbulent recent history: His family fled in the 1980s to escape the US-supported mujahideen war against the Soviets and the subsequent 1990s civil war. Like so many educated Afghan exiles, he returned to Afghanistan after the Americans invaded with their troops and endless development money. He’d witnessed the corruption and violence that followed. Sitting dapper in his government sinecure, the perky technocrat was weighing his options as the American commitment waned. When I asked him about the future, he looked me in the eye and confidently said, “I am hopeless—but optimistic.” Another government minister wryly told me, “We are optimistic. We’re Afghans. What else can we be?”
Through my experiences with the Afghans, I believe they will work it out in the Afghan way if greater powers don’t continue to use their country as a place to wage proxy wars. This is a valiant people with ancient traditions, a beloved religion and a vibrant culture. They deserve some peace. As I have reported in Hopeless but Optimistic, I have witnessed sustainable, Afghan-appropriate aid and development projects done by relatively low-cost organizations with long experience in Afghanistan. Good work can be done to help Afghans improve their lives. There are alternatives to self-serving phantom aid that mainly benefits the already rich. Like the Afghans, I am hopeless, but optimistic.
Watch Douglas Wissing discuss Hopeless but Optimistic in this book trailer:
IU Press: There are about 3.3 million Muslims in the United States, or roughly one percent. How does that compare to the percentage of Muslims in the military?
Edward Curtis: There are 4,000 or so service members who register their religious preference as Muslim with the Department of Defense. So, about one tenth of one percent of Muslims serve in the military. For comparison, this is similar to the percentage of American Jews who serve in the U.S. armed forces.
It may be that the military's dominant religious culture of Christianity discourages some religious minorities from joining, but there are obviously other economic, social, and political factors, too.
IUP: Your book is subtitled “Centuries of Service,” and that may come as a surprise to some people. Muslim Americans have come into the spotlight much more frequently recently, but your book points out that they have played a role in American culture since the very beginning. How have Muslim Americans served in the military?
EC: Before the twentieth century, Muslims often played supporting roles in the military. In the War of 1812, enslaved Muslim scholar Bilali Mahomet led a group of enslaved musket-bearing African Americans on Sapelo Island, Georgia, ready to defend the seacoast against British invasion. In the 1850s, Hadji Ali was recruited from the Middle East to help run Army Secretary Jefferson Davis' experiment to introduce camels into the military. In the Civil War, the jobs of Muslim soldiers were largely those of other African American people, though Sgt. Nicholas Said of the 55th Massachusetts (Colored) Infantry — one of the better educated Americans of any race — served as a clerk for a famous military doctor.
In the 20th century, there has been no job in the military that Muslims have not performed. As my book shows, they serve on the front lines as combat engineers, as members of infantry, as decorated pilots, public affairs officers, logistics specialists, as intelligence officers at Ft. Meade, as doctors, nurses, and medics, as chaplain and chaplain assistants, as sailors, as Air Force reserve human resource officers, you name it.
IUP: Speaking of Muslim Americans filling a variety of roles through all major combat operations, you tell a great story about a Muslim flight engineer and turret gunner named John Ramsey Omar, who served during World War II. In fact, people will be able to read that story as a short excerpt online. Are there any other stories that jumped out to you as you were working on this book that perhaps didn’t make the final cut?
EC: One great untold story is the service of Col. Doug Burpee, call sign ""Hadji," a Muslim Marine pilot who flew helicopters in Afghanistan. I wish that I could have asked him not only about the missions that he flew but also about how he views the ongoing conflict in what has become one of America's longest wars.
I had to write the book quickly. So what really jumped out at me were the number of leads that I didn't have time to track down. To give you one example, perhaps a thousand Muslims served during World War I. There is still so much to be written about them. Since their religious identity is not part of their military records, I had to find other historical records that would tell me something about just two of them, including oral histories, tombstones, deeds, and their social networks. I was lucky that I had already researched Muslims in North Dakota — buried in my files were photocopies of WPA interviews from the 1930s that happened to include some veterans. They've just been sitting there for years. I was able to use them in the book to depict the lives of these service members beyond what their military records told me. But I wonder what stories are still out there waiting to be told.
IUP: A recent survey by the Pew Research Center shows that Americans have a lower opinion of Muslims than they do atheists. How have you found that Muslims in the military combat this stigma?
EC: It may be sad to say, but Muslim military members combat the stigma sometimes by remaining quiet when a fellow soldier insults them. They take a lot of grief, keep their head down, and try not to make a big deal of it. They try to prove their loyalty and value by being the best service member possible. Some file formal complaints against overt acts of discrimination.
The military reflects U.S. society, and so like America as a whole, there is both tolerance for and discrimination against Muslim service members. The culture of the military can be deeply Islamophobic. There is a lot of hazing, especially anti-Muslim name calling. Perhaps most painful for Muslim military members is the questioning of their loyalty to the United States. The difference between the military and American society more generally is that the military follows a chain of command. Since the Gulf War of 1991, some military leaders have often sought to accommodate and support Muslims under their command. The Pentagon has developed a core group of Muslim chaplains. Commanding officers sometimes employ Muslims to advise them on religious issues and to conduct cultural training for service members. Muslims are also being promoted up the ranks, which shows that the Department of Defense is serious about its commitment to the success of Muslim armed service members. When the commanding officer is a Muslim — as is the case with Col. Nashid Salahuddin — they are particularly sensitive to the religious minorities under their command. Other Muslim military members, especially those in small units deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan, report that the intimate, life or death circumstances almost force non-Muslims to get to know their Muslim brother or sister in arms beyond stereotypes and misunderstandings.
IUP: As a follow up to the previous question, why would a Muslim even want to serve in the American military? What motivations do you find that this community has for offering up, in some cases, the ultimate sacrifice for a country that has a generally low opinion of that community?
EC: Muslim Americans want to serve for the same reasons that non-Muslims do. After 9/11, there was a spike of young Muslim Americans who wanted to serve in the military, sometimes to prove their loyalty to the country. Some Muslims say that their faith actually requires that they defend their nation — that this is a religious duty. But Muslims join for other reasons too. They hope to get their education paid for by the military, they need a job, they wish to see the world, and for some, they pine for adventure.
IUP: What sort of effect, if any, has this year’s presidential campaign had on the perception of Muslims in the military, if any?
EC: The first chapter of the book examines how two fallen Muslim soldiers — Kareem Khan and Humayun Khan — played important symbolic roles in the Presidential elections of 2008 and 2016. For the large percentage of Americans who hold anti-Muslim views — it is about 40 to 50% depending on the poll — the service of Muslims in the military does not make them question their points of view on the whole. But among Americans already sympathetic to the plight of Muslims in the country, it has solidified the idea that Muslims in uniform prove the promise of America: if you work hard and you serve the country, the country will honor you as one of its own. The blood sacrifice of these soldiers even redeems the idea of America.
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