Author: storiesbywilliams

Matt Williams is a professional writer, science fiction author, and science communicator who currently writes for Universe Today, Interesting Engineering, Stardom Space, and Stellar Amenities. He is also the Director of Media Communications for Mars City Design and a member of Enterprise in Space and Explore Mars. His novels, The Formist Series, are available at Amazon.com and through Castrum Press. He lives with his wife and family on Vancouver Island in beautiful British Columbia.

Terminator: Salvation!

Hello and welcome to my first film review! Yes, much like my idea for a beer blog and my desire to write, it seems that a forum and an idea have once again come together to give me a chance to express my inane thoughts. Funny how that works, I guess the universe really does have a sense of humor! And as with all those other things, I value feedback and other opinions highly, so please feel free to drop a line and offer your own thoughts on all the subject matter I choose to review. After all, good films and cult classics need to be praised, or trashed, as the case may be. Furthermore, I would welcome suggestions as to what movies people would like to see reviewed. After all, what constitutes a cult classic is open to interpretation, and I’m currently looking for ideas for what to do down the road. That being said, let’s get to my first review…

As promised, I’ve decided to dedicate my first post to the relatively recent movie Terminator: Salvation, the fourth and most recent installment in the Terminator franchise. I say most recent (as opposed to say, last) because of the rather shameless hints that were dropped at the end of the film, but more on that later… And, just to be a nice guy, I’ve also decided to throw in some headers that looks like this (Background—>), (Content—>), and (Synopsis—>). This way, people can skip whatever sections they don’t want to read, cuts down on reading time. Yes, I am verbose, but at least I admit it! Anyway, it’s time to get down to business! Terminator: Salvation!

(Background —>)
When I first heard the film was coming out, I was hopeful. In fact, I was downright excited, seeing as how the last installment (Terminator 3) was a relative flop-fest that seemed totally unnecessary and was generally panned by critics and fans. And the way I saw it, this movie was supposed to do for Terminator what the Dark Knight (also starring Christian Bale) had done for the Batman franchise. My hopes were high, and I can honestly say I was genuinely impressed with the movie for the first hour or so. As hinted at in the previews, it was action-packed and pretty gritty, presenting the world of Judgement Day and the Resistance. And since that’s what fans came to see, I went in thinking that the movie would make good on these promises.

Then, the climax came… and all those hopes fell to pieces. Yep, the movie had the dubious honor of being pretty good up until the ending, at which point the audience is left with a contrived explanation for everything that’s happened and leaves the viewer thinking: “Really? That’s what they decided to do with this? REALLY?” Yes, the ending left a bad taste in my mouth that only seemed to get worse the further I got away from the movie theater. What should have been a fun movie that ended the franchise on a high-note was instead a contrived, forced story with a heavy-handed message about sacrifice and redemption and an over the top, totally implausible climax that was also meant to be open-ended. This last aspect of the film was especially bothersome, since it felt like this was a rather crass attempt to hedge the movie’s bets, letting the audience know another movie could be coming, if only this one made enough money!

But I digress… To recap, this movie was supposed to explain how John Connor and the resistance took down the machines in the future. This is pivotal to the entire plot of the franchise, the very reason why Skynet began sending Terminators into the past, to kill John Connor, the man who would lead the resistance to victory. Similarly, it is why Connor and the resistance began sending back their own people, to ensure Connor exists so that their victory will be assured. In the course of all this, we are treated to a temporal paradox. By trying to protect the future, they essentially created that future. Kyle Reese becomes Connor’s father and the remains of the destroyed Arny machine are found and become the basis for Skynet’s development; hence Judgement Day and the victory of the resistance over the machines becomes inevitable. Then, in movie two, the characters try to break this paradox by destroying the company that invented Skynet and every trace of its research. And, once they’ve killed the evil T1000, Arny sacrifices himself in order to ensure that no trace of the technology will ever fall into the wrong hands. Cool, smart, and virtually seamless. Since the rise of the machines was not totally ensured until Arny himself was destroyed, no obsessive critic could say “if they blew up Skynet, shouldn’t that be the end of the movie? Would Arny and the T1000 just, like, disappear?”

But of course, the studios decided a third had to be made. I mean, no sense retiring a franchise just because the story ended, right? Not when there’s still millions to be made! Naturally, this would prove difficult since the third movie took place after Judgement Day was supposed to have happened (Aug 29th, 1997). How were they to explain this, you might ask. Well, simple! The main characters didn’t stop Judgement Day in movie two, they only postponed it. It’s inevitable, and everything they do in the third movie only ensures that it happens as foretold. Not so smart and seamless, kind of flaccid really, but what the hell? If nothing else, it opened the franchise up again, which was what many fans wanted. Terminator 1 and 2 were box office smashes and critical delights, cult classics and just downright awesome! The studios couldn’t end it all there, so one crappy movie to get things rolling again could be seen as forgivable, provided the fourth one put things back on track.

Yeah, well… that might have been the case had the movie delivered on what was supposed to be its aims. One, show the world of the future, post-Judgement Day, where the machines and resistance are battling. Two, explain how Connor and the resistance brought them down, bring us to the point where the Terminators were sent back in the first place. That’s all… just work within the framework established by the other movies, and don’t do anything stupid like try to throw in another paradox or up the ante with an even bigger crisis. But of course, that’s what they did…

(Content—>)
At the very beginning, the movie introduces us to Marcus, a convict who gave his body to science via the Skynet corporation. Then, we are quickly brought to the future where Connor is a player in the resistance, but not yet its leader. He stumbles onto a facility in an opening action sequence that is cool, but kinda inexplicable (why, for example, did the machines set off a nuke in the distance?) Then, in the ensuring sequences, we are fed two plot tidbits. One: the raid put the resistance in possession of a master list the machines have been compiling, a list of everyone they wanna kill! The name at the top of the list, followed shortly thereafter by Connor’s and the names of all the resistance leaders… is Kyle Reese! Cue scary music! You see, Reese is still a boy at this point in the story and has not yet joined the resistance. If he were to die, Connor would cease to exist, and the resistance would be screwed. Oh, and the other tidbit, the resistance has figured out a way to shut the machines down using some kind of high-frequency thing, and they are planning their final strike with it on Skynet itself.

Then, out comes Marcus, the confused and obvious man-machine hybrid. The audience has the benefit of knowing this already thanks to all the trailers and spoilers. The only question is, what the heck is his purpose? Why was he created and what is he going to do? Well, after wandering from the facility the resistance just attacked, he runs into (of all people!) Kyle Reese. Through him he learns of the resistance and Connor, and then the boy and his little mute friend are captured. He then runs into a resistance fighter, played by the always smoking Moon Bloodgood! A budding romance forms, even though the two have absolutely no chemistry and the whole thing feels forced (but on behalf of men everywhere I think I can safely say, that shower scene was pretty damn hot!) Oh, and speaking of forced, were also treated to some obvious hints that Marcus is, despite his past, a nice man who’s looking for redemption. Then, of course, the wandering continues and they get back to the resistance base, where Connor just happens to be in charge. Shortly thereafter, Marcus steps on a land mine, and his secret is out. HE’S A MACHINE! (more scary music!)

Now Connor is left to ponder over the mystery of the man. Here we have a Terminator that walked right into his lair, has no idea he’s a Terminator, and is telling him he needs their help to rescue the kid who will grow up to be Connor’s father. The kid is currently in the machines HQ, and an attack on that place is impending. We can smell the tension at this point, as we are all well-aware of the fact that if the attack is carried out and Kyle Reese dies, that Connor will never exist and the machines will win. Things are beginning to make sense. So what does Connor do? Let’s Marcus go because he thinks he has a shot at getting into Skynet’s base, and follows him in himself, but only after he’s given all the resistance cells who listen to his pirate radio broadcasts the message that they are to disobey their orders and hold off on the attack. And with Marcus inside the facility, things finally come together. Some programming things takes over, he wakes up after being repaired by the machines, and the big, mean Skynet computer lets him in on everything.

And, as I said before, the explanation is bunk! The part about the “signal” was kind of neat. It’s a Trojan Horse, you see. Instead of shutting down the machines, its actually a tracking signal which the machines are now using to locate all the resistance’s positions and destroy them. But the rest? Bunk! I know at this point they want to make us think that all hope is lost so we start caring and get all emotionally involved, but man, what a stupid attempt at trying to tie all the loose ends together! In essence, Marcus was designed with the foresight that a man-machine hybrid would somehow manage to wander the desert, find Reese, find Connor, and deliver them both to Skynet so they could be killed. That was his purpose from the beginning, and what seemed like coincidences was in fact Skynet pulling his strings.

Really? I mean, aside from seeming highly contrived and way too convenient, the explanation is devoid of any and all logic! If the machines wanted to do what they’ve done many times over now and send out a machine to get Connor, and by extension Reese, why not just program him to kill them? Hell, Marcus had Reese at gun point twice in the movie, within the first half hour! If he was under Skynet’s control, why not just tell him to pull the trigger? Second, he was well within range of John Connor on multiple occasions too. If his death is what Skynet wants, why not let him kill him? Why the stupid game of cat and mouse, luring him to the base and all that? One shot, bang! and the movie’s over. I know, then the movie would end abruptly. But I mean c’mon! Both these people are supposed to be at the top of the machines hit list for Christ sakes! And as Connor’s father, if Reese were to die wouldn’t that make Connor disappear from the face of the Earth, thus taking out both of their biggest worries and making their victory inevitable?

But even more nonsensical was the fact that Marcus, now supposedly under Skynet’s control at this point, just reaches into his neck and yanks out the chip that’s in there, cutting off Skynet’s control over him, and goes off to save them both. A chip in his neck? That’s how Skynet was controlling him? Why not his brain? Why not somewhere where he wouldn’t be able to get at it? In fact, what the hell was the point in letting him keep his brain and heart but turning them rest of him into hardware? The flesh I can understand, you gotta put a facade on his exterior so he can get past the guards. And even the brain bit I could understand, that could be seen as a way of making sure he retained his humanity, so no one would guess he was an AI by his total lack of feeling… but the rest of him? Hell, the heart was just an obvious Deus ex Machina which comes out at the end. The rest served no purpose! But once again, I’m getting ahead of myself…

The other problem I had with this climax was obvious. How does Skynet know how things are supposed to unfold? I know that at this point in the story, everyone knows about the prophecies and the future, as told by Connor, but he has all this knowledge because he was told about it by those who were actually THERE! Kyle Reese told his mom what was going to happen and she told him, simple! The machines? They got no crystal balls, they got no people from the future telling them how its going to be. So how do they know Reese is Connor’s father? How do they know Connor is the one who will destroy them? How, for that matter, do they know that they’ve repeatedly failed to “get John Connor” as Skynet puts it? It wasn’t until Connor and the resistance had them on the ropes and were delivering the death blow that Skynet even decided to send Terminators back in the first place, as we are told in the first movie. So really, how does Skynet know anything? Some explanations of how they figured this out might have actually helped tie things together more plausibly. Like, “we interrogated people and they told us about Connor and who his father was. We did some calculations using higher-order mathematics and temporal theory and established that they needed to die!” Just a thought. Also, some indication of how the machines were building a time machine in the first place so they could send Terminators back in time to kill Connor and his mother. It’s been established that they were doing this in the earlier movies, so shouldn’t the machines be actively working on that by this movie? Wouldn’t now be the time for them to send Arny back to kill him and his mother? Wouldn’t now be the time for Connor to send Reese back so he can do what he’s supposed to do, i.e. save his mother’s life, knocking her up with him in the process? Temporal paradox people, these things need to happen in the past so things will unfold in the future…

Ah, whatever, there’s enough wrong with this movie without over-thinking things. So, to summarize, Connor rescues Reese, Marcus rescues Connor, and they decide to set some of the machines fuel cells to explode. These just happen to sitting around since the base is also a factory where the Terminators are built. And to top off this unlikely ending, the resistance flies in to their rescue and pulls everyone out before Skynet goes boom! Uh, really? If it was this easy to get into Skynet, why the hell didn’t they do it sooner? Shouldn’t this big, important base have some kind of… oh, I don’t know, defenses??? In fact, we already got to see these big gun towers protecting the place when Marcus walked in. What the hell happened to those? A quick scene or one line of dialogue would have solved that, say you had a hard time punching through and lost a lot of men, or have Marcus and Connor say they managed to disable them from the inside! Show some people dying or some such shit, it’s not that hard!

Then, back at the resistance base, the medics declare that Connor will die. Hold on, I thought, were they really going to kill him off now? Now that they won, were they going to sacrifice their main character? Such a move could only be considered risky and respectable, but of course, they didn’t! Remember Marcus’ real human heart? Yeah, well, he decides to commit the ultimate act of sacrifice by giving it to Connor, thus fulfilling the whole redemption angle of this movie. Personally, I would have thought saving Connor and Reese the first time around and ensuring that the machines lost the war would have done it, but what do I know? Then, in a final scene, Connor has a voiceover explaining that in spite of the fact that the big bad machine is dead, there is still danger because Skynet’s “Global Network” is still out there. What the hell man? Wasn’t the whole idea that taking down the central AI would knock out the machines everywhere, or at least leave them disorganized and easy pickings? Why is there more to do if you just whacked their nerve center? Did you really think the audience would be screaming out for more, or was this just in case the studio decided to squeeze the franchise for more blood down the road?

(Synopsis—>)
Okay, to be fair, there were some things I liked about this movie. The action sequences, for one. We did get to see some pretty cool scenes where Gatling-gun toting Terminators shot up the streets, HK’s were doing aerial combat and big towering tanks blew shit up. And the robot bikes and other assorted killing machines were neat as well. But those strengths were not played upon nearly enough in this movie. Also, the homages that were paid to the originals: Marcus doing the whole “you hit me, I look at you angrily before taking you down” thing that Arny perfected in the second movie, Bale saying “I’ll be back”, the scene with Guns and Roses playing while he hijacked a bike, the cameo by the Arny-bot; those were all pretty cool too. But none of that could save this movie from its forced ending, its heavy-handed theme of redemption, or the fact that the movie should have ended with Skynet being destroyed.

The romance story is also pretty stiff, the actors themselves just don’t have the right kind of chemistry to sell it, and the dialogue between them is pretty damn cheesy. Marcus: “I’m not a good man!” Moon Bloodgood: “You are, you just don’t know it yet.” Yeah… yeah. But what was most disappointing about this film was the fact that instead of redeeming the franchise after Terminator 3, the movie ended up doing the same thing it did: cash in on the franchise with a movie that was all flash and little substance, not to mention full of plot holes so big you could drive a truck through em! I could be wrong, maybe that was their intention from the beginning. But it seemed to me that the whole point of making a fourth movie was to end the series with a bang. Instead, we got a whimper and were openly told we could expect more, should they decide to make another. I don’t know about you, but if they do decide to make T5, I’ll wait to download. That’s right, I won’t even rent it! Take that, money-grubbing studios!

Terminator: Salvation:
Entertainment Value:7/10
Plot:2/10
Direction: 6/10
Total: 5/10

Of Sci-Fi Movie Reviews!

Today, I made an important decision with regards to this blog of mine. After much consideration, I have decided to include science fiction movie reviews to the lineup. Why? Because I love reviewing movies! Because there are countless sci-fi movie classics that rival the written word. And because many books have been adapted to film, with notable differences from the original text that deserve mention. And because I said so, dammit! It’s my blog and I can do what I want! Uh, but feel free to read them and have your say as well. Nothing more fun than comparing opinions on movies I loath and love, especially sci-fi one. Can you say Nerdgasm?

So to get this ball rolling, I’d like to dedicate my first review to a movie that is both relatively recent and relevant… Terminator: Salvation! Yes, the final installment (so far) in the Terminator franchise will be the first ball thrown out in this game! So stay tuned for the full-length review, coming out tomorrow! Followed shortly thereafter by Independence Day and Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen. Yep, I plan to eviscerate them, one at a time! Also, if anyone has any requests, send them my way. As long as its science fiction (fantasy welcome too), its fair-game. Nerdgasms for all!

1984: the year that wasn’t (Phew!)

1984_John_HurtTo finish off this review of the two great satires that encapsulated the 20th century: 1984, George Orwell’s dystopian vision of a totalitarian future. As I’ve said many times in the course of this thread, there has been an ongoing debate as to which vision of the future came true, and it appears that Huxley’s was the one that proved to be more accurate. But as I said in the previous post, the era in which the books were written had much to do with their divergence of opinion. And ultimately, it was the course of history that proved Orwell wrong and vindicated Huxley. But then again, his book was a cautionary tale, something that was not meant to come true, right? Damn straight, so let’s move on…

And as I also spoke about in the previous post (at great length), Brave New World was written within the context of the 1920’s as a satire on Fordism, commercialism, mass-consumption, leisure, propaganda, and the American Way. Beginning in the early 20th century, shorter hours and better pay, coupled with aggressive marketing strategies that targeted the working class, were used to tame an increasingly unmanageable workforce, not to mention immigrants. In addition, it ensured the creation of a new consumer base, on that could fuel ongoing economic growth and industrial expansion. Win-win! Well, sort of… Then, as now, the most effective way to steer workers away from radical organizations and immigrants away from their traditional cultures was seen to be the combination of nationalism and commercialism, consumption advertised as a way to achieve the American Dream of prosperity and acceptance.

IngsocBut by Orwell’s time, a new demon had emerged that threatened to extinguish human freedom. The roaring twenties, a time when bribing the workers seemed both enlightened and possible, ended abruptly with Black Tuesday and the crash of the New York Stock Exchange. Mass unemployment, desperation, drought; all these led to the radicalization of society and the rise of totalitarian ideologies. For the first time since the Age of Revolution, human beings appeared willing to surrender their freedom in exchange for security and a better life. And with Liberal-Democracy largely discredited, people needed a new philosophy to look to for solutions. On the one hand, many intellectuals and workers found a likely candidate in the Soviet Union, the home of Marxist-Leninism and the global crusade against capitalism. On the other, people began to turn to a strange new – but no less radical – philosophy known as fascism. This polarization tore many countries apart, with different segments of society turning on each other to the point of civil war. This trend continued well into, and even after, World War II. The Age of Extremes was born!

Which brings us to George Orwell, an intellectual and writer who turned to socialism at a young age and saw it as the means to cure the ills of traditional liberal-democratic society. After years of championing reform in England, he joined the international brigades and went off to fight in the Spanish Civil War. Like many intellectuals who looked favorably to the Russian example, he quickly became disillusioned with Soviet Communism, witnessing firsthand its methods and motivations in the field. The Great Purges, in addition to leading to the death of millions of Russians, had the effect of alienating countless intellectuals who had turned to Russia for inspiration over the years. Those who had visited Russia were especially appalled. The liquidation of the Kulaks, the Show Trials, the Great Terror, the constant purging of political dissidents; all of this convinced people just how precious human freedom was, and how flawed social theories that promised utopia truly were.the_blitzDuring the war, Orwell became further disillusioned by the growing trend of authoritarianism in his own and other democratic countries. While he initially approved of the process of “socializing” the economy, a necessity in a time of total war, it soon became clear to him that the process of censoring information, controlling industry, and using war as a means to keep the population united and compliant could lead to totalitarianism at home. These themes were all central to 1984, a book that takes place in a futuristic London that very much resembles London during the time of “The Blitz”. And just like in World War II, England (renamed Airstrip One, part of the global state of Oceania) is at war with another global power named Eurasia. The war dominates the lives of the people, with all aspects of society being slaved towards the need for victory. Industry, security, information, education, and even record keeping; all of these are controlled by The Party, Orwell’s satirical rendition of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the only power in the one-party state that has been in power as long as anyone can remember.

In the novel, society is rigidly divided between the Inner Party, the executive branch who’s membership is secret, the Outer Party that is made up of bureaucrats and government workers, and the Proles, the proletariat who have no power or any understanding of how it is exercised. Four institutions dominate Oceania, the Ministry of Love (responsible for breaking the will of dissidents), the Ministry of Truth (responsible for misinformation and propaganda) and the Ministry of Peace (responsible for war), and the Ministry of Plenty (Responsible for rationing and controlled shortages). In keeping with this contradictory appraisal of all things, the three slogans which embody the state’s power are “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength”. And above all else, the ever-watchful state is embodied by “Big Brother”, a frightening yet somehow comforting caricature who represents the police state, depicted as a man with cold, dark eyes and a big, black mustache (echoes of Joseph Stalin and the cult of personality).

ministry_of_truthAll of these institutions, the entire agenda of the party, is clearly dedicated to preserving its own power and the total control they have over people’s lives. The war is ongoing, the shortages and fear it inspires constant. Propaganda and monitoring, which includes telescreens and the “Moment of Hate” are inescapable. No one has a moment’s peace or privacy. The people are taught that the war has always been, and with always the same enemy, regardless of the fact that the enemy frequently changes. Thanks to the Party’s control over information, no one knows whats really happening or whether or not a war is even taking place beyond their borders. Thanks to the Party’s censorship of all records, no one knows the true course of history or how they got to where they are. When a person is purged, they simply disappear, and no one knows if they ever really existed thanks to the Party’s control of all census data. Hell, thanks to the Party, no one even knows if it is 1984 at all…

Enter the main character, Winston, a man who remembers something of what life was like before the revolutions and the ongoing war. He is searching for answers, a search which leads him to his love Julia, a woman who actually enjoys sex, contrary to what women are taught in Oceania. The two then meet up with a man named O’Brien, a member of the Inner Party who is apparently a member of the resistance as well. In Oceania, the resistance is a clandestine group that is led by a figure known as Goldstein, a man who embodies all things evil and treasonous as far as the state is concerned (echoes of the Nazi campaign against “The Jew”). Through O’Brien, Winston and Julia are given a taste of freedom and a copy of Goldstein’s manifesto which explains how the Party seized and exercises power. Satisfied with the who, the what, the where and when of it all, Winston is left with only one question: why? Why did the Party take power, why do they exercise it so brutally and repressively, and why do they want force humanity to live a constant state of war and fear? There has to be a reason, right? Right?

ministry_of_loveWell, as it turns out, there is. In the end, Winston and Julia are betrayed and sent to the Ministry of Love. Winston soon meets O’Brien again, and realizes he’s been had, that there is no resistance, and that O’Brien and the Inner Party were the ones who wrote Goldstein’s manifesto. After being tortured and forced to confess his treason, Winston is given the answer he seeks. The Party, O’Brien claims, is interested in power, power for its own ends, the power to tear up minds and remake them however they see fit. The main difference between the Party and others like it in the past is that the Party has no illusions of why it does what it does. Then, to complete the process of torture and brainwashing, O’Brien and the Ministry of Love force Winston to betray Julia rather than undergo his worst fear (in Winston’s case, being eaten alive by rats). When its all over, Winston ends up at the same cafe he saw in an old photograph, one which he was previously ordered to destroy. In this photo, some old Party members who were purged were seen sitting after clearly being tortured, and right before they were killed. In this way, we know that Winston is about to die, but not before he says good-bye to Julia, they confess that they sold each other out under the pressure of torture, and he undergoes the terrifying transformation to become what the Party wants him to be: a loyal and loving servant of Big Brother.

I tell ya, this book scared the crap out of me when I first read it! It was so gripping that I read the bulk of it in two sittings, (something unheard of for me) and took its many lessons to heart. Foremost amongst these was the message that human freedom is precious, that empathy and feeling are what make us human, and that the last thing we should do with our minds is surrender them to those who promise us deliverance from our suffering and an earthly paradise. I am thus far relieved that his predictions did not come true, for it is how 1984 came to be that is very important, and often overlooked in my opinion. In essence, Orwell feared that the process of total war would continue well into a third world war, that society would be destroyed by nuclear bombs and then overthrown by radical revolutions, and that the world would descend into a series of totalitarian regimes that had learned from the failures of others and could therefore not be overthrown as the others had. But lucky for us, World War III didn’t happen (yet), democratization and socialization spread in western nations, and the Cold War ended. Fears of a totalitarian future have been renewed since 9/11 and the “War on Terror”, but these fears have served to demonstrate how important and enduring Orwell’s vision was.

George-OrwellIn a way, Orwell was a more effective satirist than Huxley in that his vision did not come true. Which, after all, was why he wrote it, wasn’t it? The whole point of cautionary tales is that people avoid what they’re being cautioned about, right? RIGHT? Well yeah! Orwell sought to warn the people of his day what could very well be coming, what could come from the scourges of total war, the desire for security, revolutionary justice, and putting one’s faith in ideologies that promise an earthly utopia. In many respects, its a credit to him that people have to turn to Huxley’s vision to identify the sources of their oppression. It means he did his job!

So thank you George Orwell, and rest in peace knowing that the world is still safe from 1984… so far!

Brave New World Revisited

As a follow-up to my last post, I wanted to delve into the two great satire-epics in more detail. First up, the satire that came true: Brave New World! And as the title says, I would also like to include a little commentary on the thoughtful essay that capped off his thoughts about his magnum opus, its reception, its enduring legacy, and the themes it addressed. There were so many, so where do I begin?

For starters, the central premise in his work: that humanity would be controlled through amusement and pleasure, not fear or brutality. Without a doubt, his commentary was based on the age in which it was written (American society of the 1920’s), an age in which amusement was seen as the cure to all social ills. It might even ventured that if he wrote it a little later, say, during the 30’s and 40’s during the age of totalitarianism and total war, he might have thought differently. One could make this case, but whether by circumstance or design, he ended up being right. In the post-war era, with the death of Soviet Communism, the extension of democracy and the growth of the middle class throughout the industrialized world, it seemed that the forces of repression would need to be more creative if they were going to control the hearts of minds of the people. And, in many respects, they succeeded. With the advent of television, mass advertising, mass consumption, deregulation, globalization, outsourcing, the decline of job security, unions, public broadcasting, and the concentration of industry and information into fewer and fewer hands, personal freedom once again appears to be threatened by the forces of repression and conformity. In fact, in many ways, life today is beginning to resemble life in the 1920’s when Huxley wrote his book. Funky coincidence huh?

But enough background! Let’s get specific. Brave New World opens on the facility where selective breeding takes place under the watchful eye of Mustaffa Mond, one of the ten leaders of the world and the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning. It is quickly made clear that in Huxley’s world, the World State as its known, all people are predetermined before they are even born. Those who do manual labor are specifically designed for it, their size, physical and intellectual capacities tailored to that purpose. Alphas are the top of the line people, tailored for intellectual work and management, Gammas and Epsilon’s perform the most menial tasks, and Betas and Deltas do all the stuff in between (middle-management and processing, I guess!) In this way, class conflict and expectations are eliminated, no one can feel unhappy with their vocation because they can expect nothing better, and to just to make sure readers are catching on to the subtlety of this assembly-line birthing process, the people in this future revere Henry Ford and cross their chest with a large T when uttering his name. Henry Ford, the man who invented the assembly line and the concept of unskilled labor, who reduced his workers to cogs in the machine, and then bought their loyalty by cutting their hours and increasing their pay. Some saw these as enlightened reforms and Ford as humanitarian; but other, smarter people, saw it for what it was: an attempt at making his workers passive consumers! And what was good for Ford was good for all industrial giants, America soon followed suit and the age of plenty was born! A fitting social commentary, but I’m getting off track here.

Another element that is used to control society are “Feelies”, and like many things in the novel, it took some historical context to teach me the true genius of this concept. You see, at the turn of the century, the relatively new phenomena known as motion pictures were called “movies” (get it?). When sound was incorporated, the term “talkies” came to be used. Sensing the trend, Huxley came up with the idea of “Feelies”, films where the audience were wired into the theater so they could feel everything happening to the actors. Clever! And then there’s the designer drug Soma, a chemically non-addictive substance that people are actually encouraged to use, the process of which is known as “going on holiday”. Whenever people are frustrated, sad, depressed, anxious, restless, or angry, they are encouraged through conditioning and slogans to take their Soma and bliss out. Echoes of antidepressants perhaps? Speaking of conditioning, Huxley sought to portray the forces of commercialism by once again taking things to the next level. In addition to signs, radio jingles, and pervasive ads, people are conditioned from an early age through sleep conditioning to consume, use Soma, and follow the rules of the World State. One such rule is that everyone belongs to everyone else, including in the Biblical sense. Yes, in this world, promiscuity is encouraged and orgies are commonplace, all to keep people satisfied and avoid the pitfalls of monogamous relationships, which include jealousy, infidelity, and crimes of passion.

Thanks to all these measures, society is kept controlled and everyone is happy. Well, almost (here comes the plot!) Enter into this world an Alpha named Bernard Marx (recalling the venerable Karl) who is unhappy with society since he does not fit in. His discontent with all things is often blamed on the fact that he is a bit stunted and maladjusted, the result of a mistake rumored to have happened while he was still in the test tube. His partner Lenina (as far as that is possible in a promiscuous society) is more the traditional sort, and the object of desire for multiple main characters. Together, they visit a Reservation, where the so-called Savages who do not belong to the world state reside. Here, they meet John, the lovechild of a former Alpha who got knocked up and was forced to live out her life on a Reservation in former Mexico. When they find him and speak of their world, which he knows about only through stories his mother told him, he decides to return with them. But, much to his chagrin, he does not fit in in this Brave New World either. Lenina and he are incapable of forging a relationship, despite mutual attraction, because of their different values. In John’s world, his views on love having been shaped largely by Shakespeare and traditional “Savage” values, love is monogamous and righteous. In Lenina’s, love is free and cheap, and to be shared openly.

By the end, all the non-conformists are forced to leave, Bernard and his free-thinking friend are forced to live in exile. Lenina goes back to the world she knows, having been rejected and even beaten by John, and John exiles himself to the countryside to live a simple life. But the forces of civilization won’t leave him alone, they chase him to his new dwelling at an abandoned lighthouse and demand he entertain them. Things get a little violet, the crowd is doused in Soma gas (a standard tactic during a riotous event in the World State), and John and the people engage in a drugged-inspired orgy. When he wakes up, he’s overcome with guilt, realizes he will never be left alone, and hangs himself. A sad and fitting ending, the boy who could not function in either the “civilized” or free world resorting to the only out he can think of. Between barbarism and insanity, death appears to be the only option.

In hindsight, Huxley said that he wished he could go back and revise Brave New World, offer some third options and potential solutions other than suicide. For example, he hoped that the idea of the colony of exiles could have been developed more, where free-thinking people could have come up with some solutions to the problems of insanity and barbarism, civilization and its discontents. But arguably, this way was much more effective. In the end, the point of how a “utopian society” crushes the will of sensitive, thinking individuals, how it does not suffer challengers or people do not see eye to eye with it. And lets not forget that good art needs to frighten and offend sometimes in order to make its point. Letting people down easy just waters down the message. At least I think so. So writers remorse aside, I’d say Huxley’s vision was well-rendered in his book and needs no revisions.

And its ingenious really, regardless of whether or not history has proven his vision to be the more accurate one. Because in truth, the totalitarian age, if it taught us anything, was that human beings cannot be forced into anything for long. In order for people to surrender their freedom, they need to be made to do so willingly, and that takes fear and/or the promise of something better. In addition, it also taught us that totalitarian regimes can only truly thrive in underdeveloped corners of the world where they benefit from ignorance, poverty, and a long history of abuse. And even then, they cannot last indefinitely. Modern, developed countries that boast high rates of literacy and take things like mass media for granted require a more subtle approach when it comes to tyranny and social control. Power can never be exercised by a single man, woman or institution, and it cannot be overt. It must take place behind the scenes, where prying eyes cannot easily go, and excesses and abuses cannot easily be proven. Similarly, punishment must be equally subtle, meted out in ways that are either covert or even appear to be benign or beneficial (aka. therapy, mental hospitals, doping, etc). And above all, measures must be taken to ensure that citizens are kept happy, or at least that the majority are kept happy while the rest are kept marginalized and divided. And last of all, there has to be ways to channel or dissuade discontent. Campaigns and institutions that put a happy face on bad things are a good example, as are offices that give the illusion of making a difference or fighting the system, when in fact they are serving it.

Brave New World, ladies and gentlemen! Not as good a read as 1984, but definitely more accurate and prophetic in terms of its vision. Take that, Henry Ford! You and your little Model T too!

1984 vs. Brave New World

Whenever I’m confronted by a virtual bookshelf or asked to list my favorite authors, I always make sure that George Orwell and Aldous Huxley are ranked among the top 10. Both of these men were immensely influential for me, inspiring not only my love of literature but also my desire to write. In that, I am hardly alone. Literally millions of people list these men as major influences, claiming that 1984 and/or Brave New World had a huge impact on their personal and/or intellectual development. It is probably for these reasons that I love teaching them so much, they’re just so chock full of all the elements a literary teacher likes to get into! Picture a quarry full of gold nuggets, one that never runs out and pays out for every new person who’s willing to mine it, and you’ve got a good idea of what these books are like.

Geez, was that sycophantic enough for ya? Okay, both books have their share of weakness too, and while I must admit that 1984 was certainly better structured and more serious than Brave New World, arguably it is the latter which proved to be more accurate. This is another aspect of these two books which has helped to establish their timeless nature: both are distopian visions of the future, both are works of satire that – like all works of satire – were set in the future but were really about the times in which they were written. And, most importantly, both were extremely critical of the day and age they were written in, addressing the many ways in which freedom was being suppressed. But since their approaches and their visions contrasted heavily , future generations were left to debate: which came true?

Huxley sought to answer this question himself in his essay “Brave New World Revisited”. Naturally, he thought that it was his vision that proved more accurate, but of course he’d say that! It was his vision! He also had the advantage in that Orwell had died shortly after writing his magnum opus so he wasn’t exactly around to rebut. But alas, Huxley’s contemporaries and subsequent generations of scholars tend to agree with him. Between a future where humanity is controlled by a series of brutal dictatorships who suppress free thought and control their citizens through the destruction of language, the rewriting of history, and the constant manipulation of emotions, and a future where humanity belongs to a global state where people are made compliant through pleasure and conditioning, it is arguably the latter which came true. The jury is still out, and the trial never ends, but right here, right now, Huxley’s vision is still taking the lead.

Of course, a few years ago, proponents of the 1984 school of thought believed the odds might have been tipped in Orwell’s favor thanks to the rise of the Bush administration, Afghanistan and Iraq, domestic spying and the controlled paranoia of orange alerts and patriotic orthodoxy. However, with the worsening situation in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, and a series of blatant scandals, each one a “slow-bleed” on Bush’s approval rating, those fears were put to rest. With every passing month after the 2004 election, it seemed that Bush’s “War on Terror”, which many believed to be little more than a justification for waging war on American civil liberties or launching a global neo-con agenda, was doomed to fail. So once again, the pendulum swung back to Huxley. Thank God too! I don’t know about you, but between Feelies and Soma on the one hand and he Thought Police and Room 101, I’ll take being amused to death over being brutalized to death any day!

Naturally, the debate shall continue, most likely well into the “information age”, a time in which new ways and opportunities for encouraging social cohesion or suppressing human freedom will present themselves. But it is such a good debate isn’t it? Not only is it fun, from an intellectual standpoint anyway, but it also forces us to confront the ways in which our personal, intellectual, and creative freedoms are not being addressed, by circumstance or design. It forces us to take stock of our society and think of ways with which we could address the ways in which our governments and even we as a people fall short. It forces us to think for ourselves, which, I don’t know about you, but to me seems to be the point of these novels in the first place. For it is only in individual thought and the freedom to do so that any kind of social control or attempts to make us compliant fail. Well, that and armed rebellion, but this way is much cleaner, I think you’ll agree!

Of Great Sci-Fi (and other non-affliated) Quotes:

alien-worldRecently, I’ve taken to posting quotes by the great science fiction authors on twitter. Most are from the authors I draw the most inspiration from, others are just from people I admire and who offered some wisdom along the way. Like a true nerd, I keep these things in a file on my computer, adding to it every time I find a new one or think up one myself. Might sound odd but I find it useful, it offers fresh inspiration and perspective whenever I’ve hit a wall or am not sure how a piece of writing is turning out. Today, I thought I’d share a few of the gems that have really inspired me over the years. To be fair, some of them are not science-fiction related, or even by authors; they’re just moments of brilliance captured in an utterance. Here are a few:

ā€œWe sit atop a sort of anthill of technologies. At the bottom thereā€™s fire, and growing cereal grains, and learning to store cereal ā€“ all those things that people have to store edible energy and start building cities. Not that weā€™re the crown of creation; we are at the crown of technological creation at any given moment.ā€
-William Gibson during an interview after writing “Pattern Recognition”

ā€œIt’s impossible to move, to live, to operate at any level without leaving traces, bits, seemingly meaningless fragments of personal information.ā€

ā€œThe future has already arrived. It’s just not evenly distributed yet.ā€

ā€œCyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts…ā€

ā€œWhen I began to write fiction that I knew would be published as science fiction, [and] part of what I brought to it was the critical knowledge that science fiction was always about the period in which it was written.ā€

ā€œ. . . the street finds its own uses for things.ā€
-Other tidbits from Gibson, who’s nothing if not prolific in his observations!

ā€œThe difference between stupid and intelligent peopleā€”and this is true whether or not they are well-educatedā€”is that intelligent people can handle subtlety. They are not baffled by ambiguous or even contradictory situationsā€”in fact, they expect them and are apt to become suspicious when things seem overly straightforward.”
-Neal Stephenson, “The Diamond Age”

ā€œRonald Reagan has a stack of three-by-five cards in his lap. He skids up a new one: “What advice do you, as the youngest American fighting man ever to win both the Navy Cross and the Silver Star, have for any young marines on their way to Guadalcanal?”
Shaftoe doesn’t have to think very long. The memories are still as fresh as last night’s eleventh nightmare: ten plucky Nips in Suicide Charge!
“Just kill the one with the sword first.”
“Ah,” Reagan says, raising his waxed and penciled eyebrows, and cocking his pompadour in Shaftoe’s direction. “Smarrrt–you target them because they’re the officers, right?”
“No, fuckhead!” Shaftoe yells. “You kill ’em because they’ve got fucking swords! You ever had anyone running at you waving a fucking sword?”
-Stephenson, “Cryptonomicon”. One of the funniest written passages I’ve ever read, and fitting because it puts Reagan in his proper, historically accurate place!

“I just think talk of suffering should be left to those whoā€™ve actually suffered.”
-Jack (a First Nations former student I knew. As soon as he said it, I knew that I had just heard one of the smartest things ever said by anybody, anywhere, ever!)

Reviews are in… well two anyway!

The reviews are in from fans who have taken time out of their busy day to post reviews for a story of mine. The story in question is Liability, which has been downloaded 2470 times and added to 33 personal libraries! Here’s what two of said people have had to say:

“Good story. Gets you wrapped up in the action right away and doesn’t stop till the end.”

“Dont look behind you when you read this novel, they may be watching you. thoroughly enjoyable reading.”

Just what I was going for too! Good to know other people spot this stuff, even better when they spot things you yourself didn’t intend when you wrote it. But that’s how it goes, oftentimes the reader will reveal things of the text that the author did not realize they were including, but which is no less valid (at least that’s what T.S. Eliot tells us!) More to come soon.

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Of Kowloon’s Walled City and “Virtual Light” (by Gibson)

Just finished reading Gibson’s first installment in the “Bridge Trilogy”, and was reasonably impressed with it. In addition to being a good intro to his pre-Bigend series, it also gave me some insight into the writer himself and his inspirations. For starters, and I urge everyone to go look this up, I’d never heard of Kowloon’s Walled City before, nor did I know that was what inspired The Bridge for which the trilogy is named.

In short, this city began as a Chinese fort but became part of Britain’s mandate after they acquired Hong Kong in the lease of 1898. Since that time, it evolved into a massive squatter community, a place for refugees, migrants, drug dealers, thugs, and the poor and downtrodden. Although it had a reputation for being a den of crime, gambling and prostitution, it was also home to over 33,000 people. At least, until the Hong Kong government decided to demolish it in 1993. It took over a year to complete the process, and only after a very intense eviction process.

After reading about all this, I could see where Gibson got the idea for “The Bridge”, which is the center point of Virtual Light and other stories in the trilogy. Set in San Francisco in 2005, the Golden Gate bridge has become a squatter city of its own. This was due mainly to the fact that San Fran was devastated by the “Little Grande” (aka. the Big One), and this and other factors had a dramatic impact on the city. Like many of his other works, the US and North America have become fragmented shadows of their former selves, and private companies enjoy ridiculous amounts of power.

And, as usual, the main characters are freelance people who get caught up in a scheme that is far bigger than themselves. Add to that some cooky religious cult and an interesting side story about Shapely, a man who inadvertently cured AIDS and became a sainted figure, and you’ve got Gibson’s usual take on America of the future, a gritty, dirty place, marked by polarized wealth, private contractors, high-tech assassins, and corporate scheming. It was fun, enjoyable, and the concept of the Bridge was both novel and entertaining.

Now for the weak points. For starters, I really didn’t feel the whole “post-millennium shock” thing. While it was a very interesting idea, it was not as well developed or convincing as I was hoping. In addition, the techno-angle, not as intriguing as I would have hoped. The glasses, which are the MacGuffin of the story, were interesting enough, but really didn’t blow my mind the way some of his other works have. And the story’s setting just doesn’t seem realistic given that it was set only a decade from when he wrote it. It seemed far-fetched that nanotechnology and the disintegration of America could have happened in such a short time.

Perhaps that was why I felt unconvinced throughout, the fact that it was all taking place in 2005. Too soon to seem real! I was also thrown by the rather striking resemblance this book bore to Neal Stephenson’s “Snow Crash”, which had been published a year prior. The stuff about privatized America, cooky religious sects, hacker communities, and corporate plotting, not to mention how the lead female is a messenger; these were all the same! I’m a sucker for all that stuff, but perhaps that added to the whole “unconvinced” thing. I’d seen it done before, and frankly… better. Sorry William! This round goes to Stephenson.

Incidentally, I’m kind of sad that the Kowloon Walled City no longer exists. Rather than demolishing the place, I think the Hong Kong authorities ought to have preserved it as a museum. It was a living piece of history, after all! And let’s not forget that the place was the result of neglect by many generations of civil authorities, so razing it wasn’t exactly a smart (or particularly sensitive) solution! Look it up, the photo galleries are immense and very cool to look at. Here’s a few links I happened to find:

Kowloon Walled City, Cross-Section
“Kowloon Walled City: The Modern Pirate Utopia”, Coilhouse Magazine
Kowloon Walled City Park: Official Webpage

What does Osama’s death mean (part II)?

What is to be done? Well for starters, the US and its coalition allies should withdraw from Afghanistan. If history has taught us anything, its that occupations are a losing battle, especially in places like Afghanistan. That country has made a name for itself grinding up invaders and spitting them back out. It’s mountainous terrain, hardened people and impenetrable network of tribal loyalties have always proven to be the undoing of invaders, no matter who they were or what kind of technological superiority they possessed. But above and beyond all that, it is startling how much Afghanistan is beginning to look like Iraq, which in turn showed the same signs of failure early on that haunt all occupations and foretell their failure. To break it down succinctly, there are five basic indicators that indicate that an occupation has failed.

1. Insurgency: If the population turns against you and begins mounting an armed resistance, you know you’ve lost. Little to nothing can be done at this point because tougher measures will only aid in their recruitment, they have the home field advantage, and can recruit endlessly from their own population. The occupier, no matter how benign their original intentions, can’t allow violence to go unchecked, and so they inevitably play into the hands of their enemy. Already Afghanistan has mounted its own insurgency in the form of a resurgent Taliban that is actively recruiting from the country’s Pashtun majority. Recruits spill over the border on a regular basis from Pakistan, where millions of Pashtuns also live, and there is little the US and Coalition can do about it because the Khyber Pass (the mountainous region that spans the border) is too vast and rugged to keep sealed.

Much like in Iraq, what we’re seeing is a major resistance that is actively recruiting from a major ethnic group that is fighting to regain the power it once enjoyed. In some ways, it worse than with the Sunnis of Iraq, because the Pashtuns constitute the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan with 40 percent of the population, the remaining 60 being made up of Tajiks, Uzbeks, Turkmen, Arabs, and many other groups. In short, they constitute a larger chunk of the population, and their counterparts are disparate and divided.

2. Weak/Crooked Allies: Hamid Karzai, an ethnic Pashtun who served in the post-Soviet Afghani government, has a long history of allying himself with US interests. During the Russian occupation, he was a secret contact for the CIA and helped run guns and money to the mujahedin from neighboring Pakistan. During the Taliban’s rise to power, he became a vocal opponent, and after 9/11 he became a major ally of the US . It is also rumored that he was a consultant for Unocal, a major oil firm with strong ties to the Bush family. It’s little wonder then why he was installed as president once Coalition forces had ousted the Taliban. Unfortunately, since the invasion, his government has been notorious for its corruption and impotence. In the former category, his election win in 2009 was tainted by scandal and blatant instances of fraud. His family have also thrived under his rule and committed numerous criminal acts, the most notorious of which were by his half-brother Ahmad Wali Karzai, a prominent drug trafficker and CIA contractor.

In the latter category, Karzai’s political impotence is legendary. In fact, he is often playfully referred to as the “mayor of Kabul” because his power does not extend beyond the capitol. Warlords who owe no allegiance to him or coalition authorities, who were bought off in order to fight the Taliban, are largely responsible for controlling the other regions of the country. Though corrupt and weak, Karzai’s remains an important political ally to the US because of his background and ethnic-ties. He is able to put a Pashtun face on a government dominated by non-Pashtun groups, and is a long-standing enemy of the Taliban which it is still doing battle with. Beyond that, however, he is powerless and fast becoming a liability.

3. Civil War: When the people turn on each other as a result of the occupation, you know you’re not doing a very good job. Iraq is a prime example of this, with the Sunni minority doing battle with the Shia majority and the US and its allies playing the role of arbiter. No one, especially the Iraqi people, can forget the carnage of that episode. But worrying still is how Afghanistan is going in the exact same direction. While the country is no stranger to civil war, it is clear that it has been inching in that direction for years now and another civil war seems inevitable. And when that happens, the general chaos tends to be blamed on the occupation force. Not only is their presence seen as the catalyzing force, which it usually is, but their inability to contain the situation also makes them accountable.

4. Unclear Enemy: While the US and its allies have always claimed that their fight is with the Taliban on behalf of the Afghani people, the reality is quite different. The line between Taliban and Pashtuni’s became blurred sometime ago, with US and Coalition forces now waging war on the dominant ethnic group. This is not a choice position for an occupier to be in. When you can’t tell the difference between your enemy and the general population, you know you’re in trouble. When the line that separates them becomes blurred, and not just to you, you know your mission is doomed to failure. In any failed occupation, this is precisely what happened. What began as a controlled, limited engagement, spilled over and became messy, brutal and confusing. This is what happened to the United States in Vietnam and to the Russians in Afghanistan, not to mention every colonial ruler everywhere. And, inevitably, it backfired… horribly!

5. Criticism at Home and Abroad: When your own people begin to criticize you, not to mention your allies, you know you’ve overstayed your welcome. In any democracy, one cannot prosecute a war without popular support. Dictatorship’s fare slightly better with domestic opposition, but sooner or later, any war effort can be broken because of popular resistance. For years now, public opposition to the presence of US and Coalition troops has been on the rise. Recent survey’s conducted by US news services even went as far as to claim that Afghanistan was becoming “Obama’s Vietnam”. A comparison to Iraq would be more apt, but the existing metaphor has more power.

In addition, Karzai himself has become increasingly vocal in his condemnation of Coalition forces “methods”. In this respect, he is not unlike Nouri al-Maliki, the current Prime Minister of Iraq, who also skirted the fine line between supporting and condemning his US-allies. In time, Maliki even began to go as far as to say that Iraq would demand a total withdrawal of US forces if things continued on their current track. Karzai may not be in that kind of position, he knows he cannot survive without US support for the time being, but he also cannot sit idly by while Afghani civilians are killed and not speak up. In time, as civilians casualties mount, he may very well be forced to choose sides, no longer able to skirt the line between his allies and his people.

6. Widening Conflict: When your conflict begins to spill into neighboring countries, you’ve got a full blown quagmire! Remember the US bombing of Cambodia during the 70’s, which took part because US forces believed the Viet Cong were running guns through that country? Well, the outcome – hundreds of thousands of people killed, no change in the course of the war, and the rise of Khmer Rouge in Cambodia – was hardly a success, regardless of what Nixon would say. Much the same is true of Iraq, where Iran began exercising a sizable influence over Shia politics in the south and had to be called in to mediate. Turkey’s border conflicts with the Northern Kurds is another example, lucky for everyone it did not end in an invasion! But in any case, the rule is clear. If you have to widen the scope of the conflict to strike at your enemy, you got a problem and need to examine your options.

For many years now, this has been the problem in Afghanistan. The conflict has been spilling over the border into Pakistan, due in part to the fact that Osama found refuge there, but also because the shared border region, which remains unsealed, is heavily populated by militants, most of whom share ethnic and cultural ties to Afghanistan Pashtuni population . The US began conducting Predator strikes in the area in 2008, and has since expanded its involvement to include special forces and CIA operatives. While the death of Bin Laden is certainly a symbolic victory for this expansion, it cannot be expected to make the war in Afghanistan itself any easier. In the long run, its more likely to destabilize Pakistan’s already shaky government and create a permanent haven for Islamic militants, much like Cambodia became a radical communist regime.

So, since the war in Afghanistan possesses all of these things in abundance, I would argue that the time has come to pack up and leave. In addition to it being a potential disaster, and that its really not making life any better for those affected, there is also the fact (as stated in my previous article) that it ceased being about Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden some time ago. Now that he is dead and his whereabouts confirmed, perhaps this is just the justification that’s needed to put an end to the last war in the “war on terror.” I doubt anyone would buy it, but what can you do?

What Does Osama’s Death Mean?

I did not start this blog with the intention of getting into politics. There are few things more subjective and divisive than where one stands on various issues, political parties, or where they fall in the big spectrum. However, once in awhile something comes along and you just have to take to whatever forum you have available and comment on it.

And so I come here, to my webpage where I usually do reviews, to comment on this groundbreaking story.

Yes, it finally happened. After ten years of obscurity and unconfirmed whereabouts, after years and years of being told “we think he is in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan”, Bin Laden was not just found, but killed. And the big question that seems to be on everyone’s lips is, what happens now? Obviously, 9/11 was a turning point in history.

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Whether or not you agreed with the assessment that it “changed everything”, you had to admit that it was what Gibson described as a “nodal point” in our history. It changed many things, for better or for worse, including but not limited to how the world thinks of terrorism, how the US executed its foreign policy, what that policy entailed, and had a huge impact on international relations.

It also put a face on global terrorism, again for better or for worse. And with Bin Laden’s escape from the US-led invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent invasion of Iraq and torture controversies, many people have been left wondering about the course of the whole “war on terror” and whether or not it was even worth pursuing anymore.

And now, ten years, and two inconclusive wars later – not to mention some “enhanced interrogation techniques”, hundreds of thousands dead, and a whole lot of unanswered questions – the man responsible for 9/11 and this detour in our history is finally dead. But the question remains…

What Now?

Does Bin Laden’s death mean anything for the “war on terror”? Even though the term has been dropped from the US’ foreign policy lexicon, will this affect the position of the US on the world stage or have any impact on the problems of extremism or terrorism?

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Second, and perhaps of equal importance, how will future generations look back on this period in our history? Will they see it as an aberratio, as our generation tends to do with Vietnam? Or will they see it as something that began with tragedy and ended with triumph, albeit with some bumps along the way?

Not Really, No

Personally, I think the answer to the first question is a resounding no. While Bin Laden’s death is certainly a symbolic victory, and definitely a victory for Obama (if he exploits it just right), his death really doesn’t change things vis a vis the bigger picture. Why? Because the war on terror ceased being about Osama many years ago, shortly after Afghanistan was invaded in fact.

Which I think helps to answer question two, but one thing at a time! As it stands, the US is still engaged on a number of fronts with its former “war on terror”, and its enemies go far beyond Bin Laden and his small band of people. Whether it’s the resurgent Taliban, Islamic militants in Pakistan, or the possibility of Al-Qaeda in Yemen, the US finds itself committed to a war on several fronts.

And they aren’t going so well! While the Obama administration’s focus on relying on drone strikes and tactical operations is certainly better than having boots on the ground, this strategy isn’t working too well either. Drone strikes are not as surgical as advertised and the civilian death toll is something the current administration is deliberately keeping from the public.

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On the plus side, the US has pulled out of Iraq after seven disastrous years of occupation. The long-term effects that it will have on the region are also unclear. But one thing is for sure… after years of insurgency, civil war, and most areas of the country still living in fear and dire poverty, things couldn’t get much worse.

Any hopes the neo-cons have that something good will come out of the Iraqi war, hence saving Bush’s legacy, cannot be taken seriously anymore. There are those who predict it will get even worse, that the sectarian violence is nearing phase two, that the current government can’t possibly control the country, and that some kind of fundamentalist autocracy with strong ties to Iran is inevitable.

Some think there’s nowhere to go but up, but even many of them believe that it was the withdrawal of the US that now makes this possible – i.e. that nothing good could happen so long as the occupation continued, the Iraqis needing to “build democracy” on their own.

Addendum: these hopes were dashed as well, due to the rise of ISIS and the extreme sectarian violence that followed. While it’s clear that ISIS is a long-term consequence of the US invasion of Iraq and the civil war in Syria, there is also plausible speculation that the rather abrupt withdrawal of US troops from Iraq in 2009 was a factor.

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So realistically, Osama’s departure from the international scene is really not the decisive factor it could have been roughly a decade ago. At least, not in my humble opinion. And this, as I said earlier, goes a long way towards answering how this whole episode will be viewed by future generations, – provided I’m correct, of course! šŸ˜‰

Given the fact that the US can’t use this as a pretext to pull out of Afghanistan, stabilize Iraq, restore the US’s tarnished reputation in the Middle East or amongst it allies, mend fences with Russia, end North Korea and Iran’s defiance, or bring back the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis or Afghans, future generations are likely to see this whole campaign as a resounding failure.

So indeed… what now? What can be done to salvage the situation that 9/11, Osama Bin Laden, and the “war on terror” has left us with? What can we do, short of turning back the clock and killing him back in 2002 when the opportunity first presented itself, thus avoiding all the crap that happened between now and then?