The Passenger

A Perfect Day for Bananafish

noreply@blogger.com (David Locke) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 21:46:00 +0000

J. D. Salinger
The New Yorker, January 31, 1948, pages 21-25

THERE WERE ninety-seven New York advertising men in the hotel, and, the way they were monopolizing the long-distance lines, the girl in 507 had to wait from noon till almost two-thirty to get her call through. She used the time, though. She read an article in a women's pocket-size magazine, called "Sex Is Fun-or Hell." She washed her comb and brush. She took the spot out of the skirt of her beige suit. She moved the button on her Saks blouse. She tweezed out two freshly surfaced hairs in her mole. When the operator finally rang her room, she was sitting on the window seat and had almost finished putting lacquer on the nails of her left hand.

She was a girl who for a ringing phone dropped exactly nothing. She looked as if her phone had been ringing continually ever since she had reached puberty.

With her little lacquer brush, while the phone was ringing, she went over the nail of her little finger, accentuating the line of the moon. She then replaced the cap on the bottle of lacquer and, standing up, passed her left--the wet--hand back and forth through the air. With her dry hand, she picked up a congested ashtray from the window seat and carried it with her over to the night table, on which the phone stood. She sat down on one of the made-up twin beds and--it was the fifth or sixth ring--picked up the phone.

"Hello," she said, keeping the fingers of her left hand outstretched and away from her white silk dressing gown, which was all that she was wearing, except mules--her rings were in the bathroom.

"I have your call to New York now, Mrs. Glass," the operator said.

"Thank you," said the girl, and made room on the night table for the ashtray.

A woman's voice came through. "Muriel? Is that you?"

The girl turned the receiver slightly away from her ear. "Yes, Mother. How are you?" she said.

"I've been worried to death about you. Why haven't you phoned? Are you all right?"

"I tried to get you last night and the night before. The phone here's been--"

"Are you all right, Muriel?"

The girl increased the angle between the receiver and her ear. "I'm fine. I'm hot. This is the hottest day they've had in Florida in--"

"Why haven't you called me? I've been worried to--"

"Mother, darling, don't yell at me. I can hear you beautifully," said the girl. "I called you twice last night. Once just after--"

"I told your father you'd probably call last night. But, no, he had to-Are you all right, Muriel? Tell me the truth."

"I'm fine. Stop asking me that, please."

"When did you get there?"

"I don't know. Wednesday morning, early."

"Who drove?"

"He did," said the girl. "And don't get excited. He drove very nicely. I was amazed."

"He drove? Muriel, you gave me your word of--"

"Mother," the girl interrupted, "I just told you. He drove very nicely. Under fifty the whole way, as a matter of fact."

"Did he try any of that funny business with the trees?"

"I said he drove very nicely, Mother. Now, please. I asked him to stay close to the white line, and all, and he knew what I meant, and he did. He was even trying not to look at the trees-you could tell. Did Daddy get the car fixed, incidentally?"

"Not yet. They want four hundred dollars, just to--"

"Mother, Seymour told Daddy that he'd pay for it. There's no reason for--"

"Well, we'll see. How did he behave--in the car and all?"

"All right," said the girl.

"Did he keep calling you that awful--"

"No. He has something new now."

"What?"

"Oh, what's the difference, Mother?"

"Muriel, I want to know. Your father--"

"All right, all right. He calls me Miss Spiritual Tramp of 1948," the girl said, and giggled.

"It isn't funny, Muriel. It isn't funny at all. It's horrible. It's sad, actually. When I think how--"

"Mother," the girl interrupted, "listen to me. You remember that book he sent me from Germany? You know--those German poems. What'd I do with it? I've been racking my--"

"You have it."

"Are you sure?" said the girl.

"Certainly. That is, I have it. It's in Freddy's room. You left it here and I didn't have room for it in the--Why? Does he want it?"

"No. Only, he asked me about it, when we were driving down. He wanted to know if I'd read it."

"It was in German!"

"Yes, dear. That doesn't make any difference," said the girl, crossing her legs. "He said that the poems happen to be written by the only great poet of the century. He said I should've bought a translation or something. Or learned the language, if you please."

"Awful. Awful. It's sad, actually, is what it is. Your father said last night--"

"Just a second, Mother," the girl said. She went over to the window seat for her cigarettes, lit one, and returned to her seat on the bed. "Mother?" she said, exhaling smoke.

"Muriel. Now, listen to me."

"I'm listening."

"Your father talked to Dr. Sivetski."

"Oh?" said the girl.

"He told him everything. At least, he said he did--you know your father. The trees. That business with the window. Those horrible things he said to Granny about her plans for passing away. What he did with all those lovely pictures from Bermuda--everything."

"Well?" said the girl.

"Well. In the first place, he said it was a perfect crime the Army released him from the hospital--my word of honor. He very definitely told your father there's a chance--a very great chance, he said--that Seymour may completely lose control of himself. My word of honor."

"There's a psychiatrist here at the hotel," said the girl.

"Who? What's his name?"

"I don't know. Rieser or something. He's supposed to be very good."

"Never heard of him."

"Well, he's supposed to be very good, anyway."

"Muriel, don't be fresh, please. We're very worried about you. Your father wanted to wire you last night to come home, as a matter of f--"

"I'm not coming home right now, Mother. So relax."

"Muriel. My word of honor. Dr. Sivetski said Seymour may completely lose contr--"

"I just got here, Mother. This is the first vacation I've had in years, and I'm not going to just pack everything and come home," said the girl. "I couldn't travel now anyway. I'm so sunburned I can hardly move."

"You're badly sunburned? Didn't you use that jar of Bronze I put in your bag? I put it right--"

"I used it. I'm burned anyway."

"That's terrible. Where are you burned?"

"All over, dear, all over."

"That's terrible."

"I'll live."

"Tell me, did you talk to this psychiatrist?"

"Well, sort of," said the girl.

"What'd he say? Where was Seymour when you talked to him?"

"In the Ocean Room, playing the piano. He's played the piano both nights we've been here."

"Well, what'd he say?"

"Oh, nothing much. He spoke to me first. I was sitting next to him at Bingo last night, and he asked me if that wasn't my husband playing the piano in the other room. I said yes, it was, and he asked me if Seymour's been sick or something. So I said--"

"Why'd he ask that?"

"I don't know, Mother. I guess because he's so pale and all," said the girl. "Anyway, after Bingo he and his wife asked me if I wouldn't like to join them for a drink. So I did. His wife was horrible. You remember that awful dinner dress we saw in Bonwit's window? The one you said you'd have to have a tiny, tiny--"

"The green?"

"She had it on. And all hips. She kept asking me if Seymour's related to that Suzanne Glass that has that place on Madison Avenue--the millinery."

"What'd he say, though? The doctor."

"Oh. Well, nothing much, really. I mean we were in the bar and all. It was terribly noisy."

"Yes, but did--did you tell him what he tried to do with Granny's chair?"

"No, Mother. I didn't go into details very much," said the girl. "I'll probably get a chance to talk to him again. He's in the bar all day long."

"Did he say he thought there was a chance he might get--you know--funny or anything? Do something to you!"

"Not exactly," said the girl. "He had to have more facts, Mother. They have to know about your childhood--all that stuff. I told you, we could hardly talk, it was so noisy in there."

"Well. How's your blue coat?"

"All right. I had some of the padding taken out."

"How are the clothes this year?"

"Terrible. But out of this world. You see sequins--everything," said the girl.

"How's your room?"

"All right. Just all right, though. We couldn't get the room we had before the war," said the girl. "The people are awful this year. You should see what sits next to us in the dining room. At the next table. They look as if they drove down in a truck."

"Well, it's that way all over. How's your ballerina?"

"It's too long. I told you it was too long."

"Muriel, I'm only going to ask you once more--are you really all right?"

"Yes, Mother," said the girl. "For the ninetieth time."

"And you don't want to come home?"

"No, Mother."

"Your father said last night that he'd be more than willing to pay for it if you'd go away someplace by yourself and think things over. You could take a lovely cruise. We both thought--"

"No, thanks," said the girl, and uncrossed her legs. "Mother, this call is costing a for--"

"When I think of how you waited for that boy all through the war-I mean when you think of all those crazy little wives who--"

"Mother," said the girl, "we'd better hang up. Seymour may come in any minute."

"Where is he?"

"On the beach."

"On the beach? By himself? Does he behave himself on the beach?"

"Mother," said the girl, "you talk about him as though he were a raving maniac--"

"I said nothing of the kind, Muriel."

"Well, you sound that way. I mean all he does is lie there. He won't take his bathrobe off."

"He won't take his bathrobe off? Why not?"

"I don't know. I guess because he's so pale."

"My goodness, he needs the sun. Can't you make him?

"You know Seymour," said the girl, and crossed her legs again. "He says he doesn't want a lot of fools looking at his tattoo."

"He doesn't have any tattoo! Did he get one in the Army?"

"No, Mother. No, dear," said the girl, and stood up. "Listen, I'll call you tomorrow, maybe."

"Muriel. Now, listen to me."

"Yes, Mother," said the girl, putting her weight on her right leg.

"Call me the instant he does, or says, anything at all funny--you know what I mean. Do you hear me?"

"Mother, I'm not afraid of Seymour."

"Muriel, I want you to promise me."

"All right, I promise. Goodbye, Mother," said the girl. "My love to Daddy." She hung up.

"See more glass," said Sybil Carpenter, who was staying at the hotel with her mother. "Did you see more glass?"

"Pussycat, stop saying that. It's driving Mommy absolutely crazy. Hold still, please."

Mrs. Carpenter was putting sun-tan oil on Sybil's shoulders, spreading it down over the delicate, winglike blades of her back. Sybil was sitting insecurely on a huge, inflated beach ball, facing the ocean. She was wearing a canary-yellow two-piece bathing suit, one piece of which she would not actually be needing for another nine or ten years.

"It was really just an ordinary silk handkerchief--you could see when you got up close," said the woman in the beach chair beside Mrs. Carpenter's. "I wish I knew how she tied it. It was really darling."

"It sounds darling," Mrs. Carpenter agreed. "Sybil, hold still, pussy."

"Did you see more glass?" said Sybil.

Mrs. Carpenter sighed. "All right," she said. She replaced the cap on the sun-tan oil bottle. "Now run and play, pussy. Mommy's going up to the hotel and have a Martini with Mrs. Hubbel. I'll bring you the olive."

Set loose, Sybil immediately ran down to the flat part of the beach and began to walk in the direction of Fisherman's Pavilion. Stopping only to sink a foot in a soggy, collapsed castle, she was soon out of the area reserved for guests of the hotel.

She walked for about a quarter of a mile and then suddenly broke into an oblique run up the soft part of the beach. She stopped short when she reached the place where a young man was lying on his back.

"Are you going in the water, see more glass?" she said.

The young man started, his right hand going to the lapels of his terry-cloth robe. He turned over on his stomach, letting a sausaged towel fall away from his eyes, and squinted up at Sybil.

"Hey. Hello, Sybil."

"Are you going in the water?"

"I was waiting for you," said the young man. "What's new?"

"What?" said Sybil.

"What's new? What's on the program?"

"My daddy's coming tomorrow on a nairiplane," Sybil said, kicking sand.

"Not in my face, baby," the young man said, putting his hand on Sybil's ankle. "Well, it's about time he got here, your daddy. I've been expecting him hourly. Hourly."

"Where's the lady?" Sybil said.

"The lady?" the young man brushed some sand out of his thin hair. "That's hard to say, Sybil. She may be in any one of a thousand places. At the hairdresser's. Having her hair dyed mink. Or making dolls for poor children, in her room." Lying prone now, he made two fists, set one on top of the other, and rested his chin on the top one. "Ask me something else, Sybil," he said. "That's a fine bathing suit you have on. If there's one thing I like, it's a blue bathing suit."

Sybil stared at him, then looked down at her protruding stomach. "This is a yellow," she said. "This is a yellow."

"It is? Come a little closer." Sybil took a step forward. "You're absolutely right. What a fool I am."

"Are you going in the water?" Sybil said.

"I'm seriously considering it. I'm giving it plenty of thought, Sybil, you'll be glad to know."

Sybil prodded the rubber float that the young man sometimes used as a head-rest. "It needs air," she said.

"You're right. It needs more air than I'm willing to admit." He took away his fists and let his chin rest on the sand. "Sybil," he said, "you're looking fine. It's good to see you. Tell me about yourself." He reached in front of him and took both of Sybil's ankles in his hands. "I'm Capricorn," he said. "What are you?"

"Sharon Lipschutz said you let her sit on the piano seat with you," Sybil said.

"Sharon Lipschutz said that?"

Sybil nodded vigorously.

He let go of her ankles, drew in his hands, and laid the side of his face on his right forearm. "Well," he said, "you know how those things happen, Sybil. I was sitting there, playing. And you were nowhere in sight. And Sharon Lipschutz came over and sat down next to me. I couldn't push her off, could I?"

"Yes."

"Oh, no. No. I couldn't do that," said the young man. "I'll tell you what I did do, though."

"What?"

"I pretended she was you."

Sybil immediately stooped and began to dig in the sand. "Let's go in the water," she said.

"All right," said the young man. "I think I can work it in."

"Next time, push her off," Sybil said. "Push who off?"

"Sharon Lipschutz."

"Ah, Sharon Lipschutz," said the young man. "How that name comes up. Mixing memory and desire." He suddenly got to his feet. He looked at the ocean. "Sybil," he said, "I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll see if we can catch a bananafish."

"A what?"

"A bananafish," he said, and undid the belt of his robe. He took off the robe. His shoulders were white and narrow, and his trunks were royal blue. He folded the robe, first lengthwise, then in thirds. He unrolled the towel he had used over his eyes, spread it out on the sand, and then laid the folded robe on top of it. He bent over, picked up the float, and secured it under his right arm. Then, with his left hand, he took Sybil's hand.

The two started to walk down to the ocean.

"I imagine you've seen quite a few bananafish in your day," the young man said.

Sybil shook her head.

"You haven't? Where do you live, anyway?"

"I don't know," said Sybil.

"Sure you know. You must know. Sharon Lipschutz knows where she lives and she's only three and a half."

Sybil stopped walking and yanked her hand away from him. She picked up an ordinary beach shell and looked at it with elaborate interest. She threw it down. "Whirly Wood, Connecticut," she said, and resumed walking, stomach foremost.

"Whirly Wood, Connecticut," said the young man. "Is that anywhere near Whirly Wood, Connecticut, by any chance?"

Sybil looked at him. "That's where I live," she said impatiently. "I live in Whirly Wood, Connecticut." She ran a few steps ahead of him, caught up her left foot in her left hand, and hopped two or three times.

"You have no idea how clear that makes everything," the young man said.

Sybil released her foot. "Did you read `Little Black Sambo'?" she said.

"It's very funny you ask me that," he said. "It so happens I just finished reading it last night." He reached down and took back Sybil's hand. "What did you think of it?" he asked her.

"Did the tigers run all around that tree?"

"I thought they'd never stop. I never saw so many tigers."

"There were only six," Sybil said.

"Only six!" said the young man. "Do you call that only?"

"Do you like wax?" Sybil asked.

"Do I like what?" asked the young man. "Wax."

"Very much. Don't you?"

Sybil nodded. "Do you like olives?" she asked.

"Olives--yes. Olives and wax. I never go anyplace without 'em."

"Do you like Sharon Lipschutz?" Sybil asked.

"Yes. Yes, I do," said the young man. "What I like particularly about her is that she never does anything mean to little dogs in the lobby of the hotel. That little toy bull that belongs to that lady from Canada, for instance. You probably won't believe this, but some little girls like to poke that little dog with balloon sticks. Sharon doesn't. She's never mean or unkind. That's why I like her so much."

Sybil was silent.

"I like to chew candles," she said finally.

"Who doesn't?" said the young man, getting his feet wet. "Wow! It's cold." He dropped the rubber float on its back. "No, wait just a second, Sybil. Wait'll we get out a little bit."

They waded out till the water was up to Sybil's waist. Then the young man picked her up and laid her down on her stomach on the float.

"Don't you ever wear a bathing cap or anything?" he asked.

"Don't let go," Sybil ordered. "You hold me, now."

"Miss Carpenter. Please. I know my business," the young man said. "You just keep your eyes open for any bananafish. This is a perfect day for bananafish."

"I don't see any," Sybil said.

"That's understandable. Their habits are very peculiar." He kept pushing the float. The water was not quite up to his chest. "They lead a very tragic life," he said. "You know what they do, Sybil?"

She shook her head.

"Well, they swim into a hole where there's a lot of bananas. They're very ordinary-looking fish when they swim in. But once they get in, they behave like pigs. Why, I've known some bananafish to swim into a banana hole and eat as many as seventy-eight bananas." He edged the float and its passenger a foot closer to the horizon. "Naturally, after that they're so fat they can't get out of the hole again. Can't fit through the door."

"Not too far out," Sybil said. "What happens to them?"

"What happens to who?"

"The bananafish."

"Oh, you mean after they eat so many bananas they can't get out of the banana hole?"

"Yes," said Sybil.

"Well, I hate to tell you, Sybil. They die."

"Why?" asked Sybil.

"Well, they get banana fever. It's a terrible disease."

"Here comes a wave," Sybil said nervously.

"We'll ignore it. We'll snub it," said the young man. "Two snobs." He took Sybil's ankles in his hands and pressed down and forward. The float nosed over the top of the wave. The water soaked Sybil's blond hair, but her scream was full of pleasure.

With her hand, when the float was level again, she wiped away a flat, wet band of hair from her eyes, and reported, "I just saw one."

"Saw what, my love?"

"A bananafish."

"My God, no!" said the young man. "Did he have any bananas in his mouth?"

"Yes," said Sybil. "Six."

The young man suddenly picked up one of Sybil's wet feet, which were drooping over the end of the float, and kissed the arch.

"Hey!" said the owner of the foot, turning around.

"Hey, yourself We're going in now. You had enough?"

"No!"

"Sorry," he said, and pushed the float toward shore until Sybil got off it. He carried it the rest of the way.

"Goodbye," said Sybil, and ran without regret in the direction of the hotel.

The young man put on his robe, closed the lapels tight, and jammed his towel into his pocket. He picked up the slimy wet, cumbersome float and put it under his arm. He plodded alone through the soft, hot sand toward the hotel.

On the sub-main floor of the hotel, which the management directed bathers to use, a woman with zinc salve on her nose got into the elevator with the young man.

"I see you're looking at my feet," he said to her when the car was in motion.

"I beg your pardon?" said the woman.

"I said I see you're looking at my feet."

"I beg your pardon. I happened to be looking at the floor," said the woman, and faced the doors of the car.

"If you want to look at my feet, say so," said the young man. "But don't be a God-damned sneak about it."

"Let me out here, please," the woman said quickly to the girl operating the car.

The car doors opened and the woman got out without looking back.

"I have two normal feet and I can't see the slightest God-damned reason why anybody should stare at them," said the young man. "Five, please." He took his room key out of his robe pocket.

He got off at the fifth floor, walked down the hall, and let himself into 507. The room smelled of new calfskin luggage and nail-lacquer remover.

He glanced at the girl lying asleep on one of the twin beds. Then he went over to one of the pieces of luggage, opened it, and from under a pile of shorts and undershirts he took out an Ortgies calibre 7.65 automatic. He released the magazine, looked at it, then reinserted it. He cocked the piece. Then he went over and sat down on the unoccupied twin bed, looked at the girl, aimed the pistol, and fired a bullet through his right temple.

Un giorno ideale per i pescibanana

noreply@blogger.com (David Locke) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 21:41:00 +0000

di J.D. Salinger [ da Nove Racconti ]

Nell’albergo c’erano novantasette agenti pubblicitari di New York e tenevano le linee interurbane talmente monopolizzate che la ragazza del 507 dovette attendere la sua chiamata fin quasi alle due e mezzo. Ma non rimase con le mani in mano. Lesse in una rivista femminile un articolo intitolato Il sesso: paradiso…o inferno. Lavò il pettine e la spazzola. Tolse la macchia dalla gonna del tailleur nocciola. Spostò il bottone sulla camicetta di Saks. Strappò due peli da poco spuntati alla superficie del neo. Quando finalmente la centralinista fece il numero della sua stanza, se ne stava seduta nel vano della finestra e aveva quasi finito di laccarsi le unghie della mano sinistra.
Era il tipo di ragazza che non pianta le cose a metà - qualsiasi cosa -per un campanello. Non cambiò espressione, come se quel telefono fosse abituata a sentirlo suonare ininterrottamente fin dalla pubertà.
Mentre gli squilli continuavano, passò il pennellino sull’unghia del mignolo, accentuando la curva della lunetta. Poi rimise il tappo al flacone di lacca e, alzandosi, agitò avanti e indietro la mano bagnata, la sinistra. Con quella asciutta raccolse dal sedile nel vano della finestra un portacenere congestionato e se lo portò fino al tavolino da notte, su cui era posato l’apparecchio. Sedette su uno dei due letti gemelli, fatti entrambi, e a questo punto - era il quinto o sesto squillo - alzò il ricevitore.
- Pronto, - disse, tenendo le dita della sinistra ben distese e lontane dalla vestaglia di seta bianca, l’unico indumento che avesse indosso oltre alle pantofole; gli anelli erano in bagno.
- Ci siamo, signora Glass, ho New York in linea, - disse la centralinista.
- Grazie, - disse la ragazza, e fece posto al portacenere sul tavolino da notte.
Dall’apparecchio venne una voce di donna. - Muriel? Sei tu?
La ragazza scostò un poco il ricevitore dall’orecchio. - Sì, mamma. Come stai? - disse.
- Ero in pena da morire. Perché non hai telefonato? Come stai? Stai bene?
- Ho cercato di chiamarti ieri sera e l’altro ieri. Ma qui il telefono…
- Davvero stai bene, Muriel?
La ragazza allargò ancora l’angolo tra il ricevitore e l’orecchio. - Sto benissimo. Fa un gran caldo. Oggi è la giornata più calda che ci sia stata in Florida dal…
- Perché non hai telefonato? Ero in pena da…
- Mamma, senti, c’è bisogno di urlare così? Ti sento benissimo, - disse la ragazza. - Ti ho chiamato due volte, ieri sera. Una volta erano appena passate le…
- L’avevo detto a tuo padre che probabilmente avresti chiamato, ieri sera. Ma lui niente, ha voluto a tutti i costi…Ma stai bene, Muriel? Dimmi la verità.
- Sto benissimo. Fammi il piacere, smettila di farmi sempre la stessa domanda.
- Quando siete arrivati?
- Non so. Mercoledì mattina, presto.
- Chi ha guidato?
- Lui, - disse la ragazza. - E non agitarti. Ha guidato come un angelo. Non avrei mai creduto.
- Ha guidato lui? Muriel, mi avevi dato la tua parola d’ono…
- Mamma, - interruppe la ragazza, - se ti dico che ha guidato come un angelo. Sotto gli ottanta dal principio alla fine, se vuoi saperlo.
- Non ha più fatto quei suoi scherzetti con gli alberi?
- Ti dico che ha guidato come un santo, mamma. Va bene? Gli ho detto di tenersi sempre vicino alla striscia bianca eccetera eccetera, e lui ha capito subito cosa volevo dire, e mi ha preso alla lettera. Cercava addirittura di non guardarli, gli alberi: me ne sono accorta benissimo. A proposito, papà se l’è poi fatta rimettere a posto, la macchina?
- Non ancora. Chiedono quattrocento dollari solo per…
- Mamma, Seymour ha già detto a papà che pagherà lui i danni. Non c’è motivo di…
- Va bene, vedremo. Come si è comportato… in macchina e… insomma.
- Benissimo, - disse la ragazza.
- T’ha ancora chiamata con quell’orribile…
- No. Adesso ne ha trovato un altro.
- E cioè?
- Oh, senti mamma, che te ne importa?
- Va bene, va bene. Mi chiama Miss Puttana Spirituale del 1948, - disse la ragazza, e ridacchiò.
- Non ridere, Muriel. Non c’è proprio niente da ridere. E’ una cosa spaventosa. Anzi, è un a cosa triste. Quando penso che…
- Mamma, - interruppe la ragazza, - senti una cosa. Ti ricordi di quel libro che mi aveva mandato dalla Germania? Sai, no… quelle poesie in tedesco. Dove diavolo l’ho messo? Mi sono rotta la…
- Ce l’hai sempre.
- Ma sei sicura? - disse la ragazza.
- Sicurissima. Anzi, l’ho io. E’ nella stanza di Freddy. L’hai lasciato qui e io non avevo più posto nella…Perché? Lo rivuole?
- No. Solo che me ne ha parlato, mentre venivamo qui. Voleva sapere se l’avevo letto.
- Ma è in tedesco!
- Lo so, mamma. Questo non cambia niente, - disse la ragazza, accavallando le gambe. - Si dà il caso che quelle poesie siano state scritte dall’unico grande poeta di questo secolo; così ha detto. Ha detto che avrei dovuto comprarmi una traduzione o… insomma. O se no, dovevo imparare il tedesco, e scusa se è poco.
- Spaventoso. Spaventoso. Proprio una cosa triste, non c’è altra parola. Ieri sera tuo padre diceva…
- Un secondo, mamma, - disse la ragazza. Andò a prendere le sigarette vicino alla finestra, ne accese una, e tornò a sedersi sul letto. - Mamma?-
disse, soffiando fuori il fumo.
- Stammi bene a sentire, adesso, Muriel.
- Ti sento.
- Tuo padre ha parlato col dottor Sivetski.
- Ah! - disse la ragazza.
- Gli ha raccontato tutto. Tutto. Almeno, così dice lui… sai com’è tuo padre. Gli alberi. Il fatto della finestra. Quelle cose atroci che ha detto alla nonna, quando le ha chiesto se aveva dei progetti per le vacanze eterne. Come ha conciato quelle meravigliose fotografie delle Bermude… tutto.
- E allora? - disse la ragazza.
- Allora. Per prima cosa, Sivetski ha detto che l’Esercito non avrebbe mai dovuto dimetterlo dall’ospedale: è stato un vero delitto, parola d’onore. Ha detto chiaramente a tuo padre che c’è il rischio - un rischio grandissimo, dice - che Seymour perda completamente il controllo di se stesso. Parola d’onore.
- C’è uno psichiatra qui all’albergo, - disse la ragazza.
- Chi è? Come si chiama?
- Non lo so. Rieser, un nome così. Pare che sia bravissimo.
- Mai sentito nominare.
- Be’, comunque pare che sia bravissimo.
- Muriel, non prenderla su questo tono, fammi il piacere. Stiamo molto in pensiero per te. Tuo padre voleva telegrafarti di tornare a casa, ieri sera, se vuoi s…
- Per il momento non ho nessuna intenzione di tornare a casa, mamma. E quindi non stare ad agitarti.
- Muriel, parola d’onore. Il dottor Sivetski dice che Seymour può perdere completamente il con…
- Sono appena arrivata, mamma. Sono le prime vacanze che mi prendo in non so quanti anni, e non ho nessuna intenzione di rifare le valige proprio adesso e tornarmene a casa, - disse la ragazza. - E poi comunque non potrei mettermi in viaggio. Mi sono presa una scottatura che non posso neanche muovermi.
- Ti sei presa una brutta scottatura? Ma non hai visto quel flacone di Bronze che t’ho messo nella valigia? L’ho messo subito sotto…
- L’ho visto e l’ho usato. Mi sono scottata lo stesso.
- E’ terribile. Dove sei scottata?
- Dappertutto, mamma, dappertutto.
- E’ terribile.
- Non morirò.
- Senti, hai parlato con lo psichiatra?
- Be’, per modo di dire, - disse la ragazza.
- Che cosa ha detto? Dov’era Seymour mentre tu gli parlavi?
- Nella sala belvedere, a suonare il piano. Ha suonato tute e due le sere, da quando siamo qui.
- E allora? Cosa ti ha detto?
- Oh, niente di speciale. E’ stato lui ad attaccare discorso. Ero seduta vicino a lui, ieri sera, mentre si giocava a tombola, e lui m’ha chiesto se era mio marito quello che suonava il piano nell’altra stanza. Ho detto di sì, che era lui, e lui m’ha chiesto se Seymour era stato malato o cos’aveva. Allora io gli ho detto…
- Come mai te l’ha chiesto?
- Non lo so, mamma. Probabilmente perché è così pallido e tutto, - disse la ragazza. - Comunque, dopo la tombola lui e sua moglie mi hanno invitata a prendere qualcosa con loro, e io ho accettato. Sua moglie è orrenda. Ti ricordi quell’atroce abito da sera che abbiamo visto nella vetrina di Bonwit? Quello che tu hai detto che per poterlo portare bisognava avere un microscopico…
- Quello verde?
- Ce l’aveva addosso. E avessi visto i fianchi. Continuava a chiedermi se Seymour è parente di Suzanne Glass, sai, quella che ha il negozio a Madison Avenue… la modista.
- Ho capito, ma cosa ti ha detto? Il dottore.
- Oh, niente di speciale, cosa vuoi. Eravamo nel bar, capisci? C’era un chiasso tremendo.
- Sì, ma tu… ma gli hai detto cos’ha cercato di fare con la sedia della nonna?
- No, mamma. Non ho potuto entrare molto nei particolari, - disse la ragazza. - Probabilmente troverò un altro momento per parlargli. Sta seduto al bar dalla mattina alla sera.
- Non ha mica detto che secondo lui c’è il pericolo che possa… insomma… che si metta a fare delle stranezze? Che possa farti del male?
- Non proprio, - disse la ragazza. - Deve avere più dati, mamma. Devono sapere di quand’era bambino… tutte quelle cose lì. Te l’ho detto, quasi non potevamo sentirci, c’era un chiasso dell’altro mondo.
- Bene. Come va il tuo giaccone blu?
- Va ancora. Ho fatto togliere un po’ di imbottitura.
- Come sono i vestiti quest’anno?
- Terribili. Ma molto divertenti. Perfino lustrini… insomma tutto, - disse la ragazza.
- Com’è la stanza?
- Può andare. Ma appena appena. Non siamo riusciti ad avere la stanza che avevamo prima della guerra, - disse la ragazza. - La gente che c’è qui quest’anno è spaventosa. Dovresti vedere che razza di tipi abbiamo vicino a noi in sala da pranzo. Il tavolo accanto al nostro. Da dirsi, ma come ci sono arrivati qui, in camion?
- Cosa vuoi, è così dappertutto. E la gonna a fiori, poi?
- E’ troppo lunga. Te l’avevo detto che era troppo lunga.
- Muriel, te lo chiedo per l’ultima volta: stai bene?
- Mamma, - disse la ragazza, - per la novantaseiesima volta: sì.
- E non vuoi tornare a casa?
- Mamma, no.
- Tuo padre ha detto ieri sera che sarebbe felicissimo di aiutarti finanziariamente, se vuoi andartene in qualche posto per conto tuo a pensarci sopra. Potresti farti una bella crociera. Secondo noi…
- No, grazie, - disse la ragazza, e disincrociò le gambe. - Mamma, questa telefonata mi sta costando un pa…
- Quando penso che sei rimasta ad aspettare quel ragazzo per tutta la guerra… insomma, no quando penso a quelle mogli che ne facevano di tutti i colori…
- Mamma, - disse la ragazza, - è meglio che smettiamo. Seymour può entrare da un momento all’altro.
- Dov’è?
- Sulla spiaggia.
- Sulla spiaggia? Da solo? E come si comporta sulla spiaggia?
- Mamma, - disse la ragazza, - parli di lui come se fosse pazzo furioso…
- Non ho mai detto questo, Muriel.
- Be’, ma lo pensi. Poveretto, se ne sta lì sdraiato, buono buono. Non si toglie nemmeno l’accappatoio.
- Non si toglie l’accappatoio? E perché?
- E chi lo sa? Sarà perché è così bianco.
- Ma santo cielo, se c’è uno che ha bisogno di sole. Cerca di farglielo capire, no?
- Sai com’è Seymour, - disse la ragazza, e tornò ad accavallare le gambe.- Dice che non vuole che tutti quegli imbecilli vengano a vedere il suo tatuaggio.
- Ma non è mica tatuato! S’è fatto tatuare sotto le armi?
- No, mamma. No, sta’ tranquilla, - disse la ragazza e si alzò. - Senti, ti chiamo io domani, magari.
- Muriel. Stammi bene a sentire.
- Sì, mamma, - disse la ragazza, spostando il peso del corpo sulla gamba destra.
- Se si mette a fare o a dire qualcosa di strano devi chiamarmi immediatamente. Sai cosa voglio dire. Hai capito?
- Io non ho paura di Seymour, mamma.
- Muriel, devi promettermelo.
- Va bene, te lo prometto. Ciao, mamma, - disse la ragazza. - Saluta papà -. E abbassò il ricevitore.

- L’acchiappatoio – disse Sybil Carpenter, che abitava nell’albergo con sua madre. – Dov’è l’acchiappatoio?
- Se lo dici ancora una volta, topino, la mamma impazzisce. Diventa matta. Sta’ ferma, su.
La signora Carpenter stava mettendo dell’olio solare sulle spalle di Sybil, spalmandolo sulle scapole delicate come ali. Sybil era seduta precariamente su un grosso pallone da spiaggia, volta verso l’oceano. Indossava un costume da bagno giallo canarino, a due pezzi, e di uno dei due pezzi non avrebbe, in realtà, avuto bisogno per altri nove o dieci anni.
- Era un comunissimo fazzoletto di seta… da vicino si vedeva benissimo, - disse la donna nella sdraio accanto a quella della signora Carpenter. - Vorrei proprio sapere come se l’era legato. Le dico: un amore.
- Ci credo, - consentì la signora Carpenter. - Sybil, vuoi star ferma, per favore ?
- Che cosa acchiappi se non te lo togli? - disse Sybil.
La signora Carpenter sospirò. - Ecco, - disse. Riavvitò il tappo sul flacone. - Adesso corri a giocare, topino. La mamma va un momento in albergo a prendere un martini con la signora Hubbel. Ti porto l’oliva, eh?
Lasciata libera, Sybil corse fini alla parte piatta e dura della spiaggia, poi cominciò a camminare verso il Chiosco del Pescatore. Fermandosi solo una volta a ficcare il piede dentro un castello di sabbia ormai ridotto in poltiglia, si trovò ben presto fuori dal tratto riservato agli ospiti dell’albergo.
Continuò a camminare per quattro o cinquecento metri e all’improvviso partì di corsa, tagliando obliquamente attraverso la striscia più interna della spiaggia, dove la sabbia era soffice. Si fermò di colpo quando raggiunse il punto in cui un giovanotto se ne stava sdraiato sul dorso.
- Che cosa acchiappi se non te lo togli? - disse.
Il giovanotto sussultò, chiudendosi con la destra i risvolti dell’accappatoio di spugna. Si rivoltò sullo stomaco, lasciando cadere un asciugamano arrotolato che gli copriva gli occhi, e alzò lo sguardo su Sybil, ammiccando.
- Ehi! Ciao, Sybil.
- Non te lo togli?
- Stavo aspettando te, - disse il giovanotto. - Novità?
- Come? - disse Sybil.
- Che novità ci sono? Che c’è in programma?
- Il mio papà arriva domani col nareoplano, disse Sybil, scalciando nella sabbia.
- Non in faccia, Sybil, - disse il giovanotto, chiudendo la mano intorno alla caviglia di Sybil. - Be’, era ora che arrivasse, il tuo papà. Sai che lo aspettavo con impazienza. Con viva impazienza.
- Dov’è la signora? - disse Sybil.
- La signora? - Il giovanotto si tolse un po’ di sabbia dai capelli radi. - Difficile dirlo, Sybil. Ci sono mille posti in cui potrebbe essere. Dal parrucchiere. A farsi tingere i capelli di un bel visone. O a fabbricare delle bambole per i bambini poveri, in camera sua -. Tornando a sdraiarsi, ma questa volta sul ventre, il giovanotto chiuse le due mani a pugno, le mise una sopra l’altra, e appoggiò il mento su questo sostegno. - Domandami qualche altra cosa, Sybil, - disse. – E’ bello quel costume che hai addosso, sai? Se c’è una cosa che mi piace, è un costume da bagno blu.
Sybil lo guardò a occhi sgranati, poi si contemplò lo stomaco sporgente. - Questo è un giallo, - disse. - Questo è un giallo.
- Ah sì? Vieni un po’ più vicina.
Sybil fece un passo avanti.
- Hai proprio ragione. Ma guarda che stupido sono.
- Non ci vai nell’acqua? - disse Sybil.
- Ci sto pensando seriamente. Sto considerando la cosa con molta serietà, Sybil, se questo può farti piacere.
Sybil tastò col piede il materassino di gomma che qualche volta il giovanotto usava per appoggiare la testa. - Gli manca aria, - disse.
- Hai ragione. Gli manca più aria di quanto io sia disposto ad ammettere -. Tolse i due pugni di sotto il mento, che lasciò ricadere sulla sabbia. - Sybil, - disse, - sei proprio in forma. E’un piacere vederti. Perché non mi parli un po’ di te? - Protese le mani davanti a sé e le strinse attorno alle caviglie di Sybil. - Io sono del Capricorno, - disse. - E tu cosa sei?
- Sharon Lipschutz dice che l’hai lasciata sedere sullo sgabello del piano vicino a te, - disse Sybil.
- Sharon Lipschutz ha detto questo?
Sybil annuì vigorosamente.
Il giovanotto le lasciò andare le caviglie, ritirò le mani e appoggiò una guancia sull’avambraccio destro. - Be’, - disse, - lo sai come vanno queste cose, Sybil. Ero là seduto che stavo suonando. E tu chissà dov’eri, in quel momento. E Sharon Lipschutz è venuta lì e a un certo punto si è messa a sedere vicino a me. Non potevo mica spingerla via, ti pare?
- Sì, che potevi.
- Oh no. No. Non potevo fare una cosa simile, - disse il giovanotto. - Ma sai cosa ho fatto, invece?
- Cosa?
- Ho fatto finta che fossi tu.
Immediatamente Sybil si chinò e cominciò a scavare nella sabbia.
- Andiamo nell’acqua, - disse.
- Va bene, - disse il giovanotto. - Si può sempre provare.
- Un’altra volta spingila via, - disse Sybil.
- Chi devo spingere via?
- Sharon Lipschutz.
- Ah, Sharon Lipschutz, - disse il giovanotto. - Come torna spesso quel nome. Mischiando il ricordo al desiderio -. Si alzò in piedi di colpo. Guardò l’oceano. - Sybil, - disse, - sai cosa faremo adesso? Cercheremo di acchiappare un pescebanana.
- Un cosa?
- Un pescebanana, - disse il giovanotto, e sciolse la cintura dell’ac-cappatoio. Si tolse l’accappatoio. Aveva le spalle bianche e strette, e le mutandine azzurre. Piegò l’accappatoio, prima nel senso della lunghezza, poi in tre parti. Srotolò l’asciugamano che s’era messo sugli occhi, lo stese sulla sabbia e vi depose sopra l’accappatoio ripiegato. Si chinò, raccolse il materassino e se lo mise sotto il braccio destro. Poi, con la sinistra, prese la mano di Sybil.
Insieme si avviarono verso il mare.
- Immagino che ne avrai visti parecchi, di pescibanana, ai tuoi bei tempi, - disse il giovanotto.
Sybil scosse il capo.
- No? Ma si può sapere dove vivi?
- Non lo so, - disse Sybil.
- Ma sì che lo sai. Devi saperlo per forza. Sharon Lipschutz sa benissimo dove abita e ha solo tre anni e mezzo.
Sybil smise di camminare e strappò la mano da quella di lui. Raccolse una comune conchiglia e la esaminò con elaborato interesse. La gettò via. - Whirly Wood, Connecticut, - disse, e riprese a camminare con lo stomaco bene in fuori.
- Whirly Wood, Connecticut, - disse il giovanotto. - Non è dalle parti di Whirly Wood, Connecticut, per caso?
Sybil lo guardò. - E’ lì che abito, - disse spazientita.- Abito a Whirly Wood, Connecticut -. Corse davanti a lui di qualche passo, si prese con la sinistra il piede sinistro, e saltellò due o tre volte su una gamba sola.
- Tutto è chiaro, finalmente, - disse il giovanotto.
Sybil lasciò andare il piede. - Hai letto Il piccolo Sambo? - disse.
- E’ strano che tu me lo chieda, - disse lui. - Vedi caso, ho finito di leggerlo proprio ieri sera -. Allungò il braccio e riprese la mano di Sybil. - Come t’è sembrato? - le chiese.
- Come correvano intorno a quell’albero, le tigri.
- Non si fermavano più. Mai viste tante tigri in vita mia.
- Ce n’erano solo sei, - disse Sybil.
- Solo sei? - disse il giovanotto. - E lo chiami solo?
- Ti piace la cera? - chiese Sybil.
- Mi piace cosa? - chiese il giovanotto.
- La cera.
- Moltissimo. E a te?
Sybil annuì. - Ti piacciono le olive? - chiese.
- Le olive… sì. Olive e cera. Non faccio un passo senza portarmene dietro una provvista.
- Ti piace Sharon Lipschutz? - chiese Sybil.
- Sì. Sì, mi piace, - disse il giovanotto. - Quel che soprattutto mi piace di lei è che non fa mai delle brutte cose ai cagnolini nell’atrio dell’albergo. Quel piccolo bulldog di quella signora canadese, per esempio. Tu probabilmente non ci crederai, ma ho visto coi miei occhi certe bambine tormentarlo con un bastoncino. Queste cose Sharon non le fa. Non è mai cattiva o dispettosa, lei. E’ per questo che mi piace tanto.
Sybil taceva.
- Mi piace masticare le candele, - disse finalmente.
- Lo credo bene, - disse il giovanotto, mettendo i piedi nell’acqua. - Ahi! E’ fredda -. Lasciò cadere il materassino. - No, aspetta un momento, Sybil. Aspetta che arriviamo un po’ più in là.
Si spinsero avanti finché l’acqua giunse alla vita di Sybil. Allora il giovanotto la sollevò e la fece sdraiare sul materassino., a pancia in giù.
- Resti con i capelli così, senza cuffia, senza niente? - le chiese il giovanotto.
- Non lasciarmi andare, - ordinò Sybil. - Tienimi forte, adesso.
- Signorina Carpenter. La prego. Conosco i miei doveri, disse il giovanotto. - Tu devi solo tenere gli occhi bene aperti per il caso che passi qualche pescebanana. Questo è un giorno ideale per i pescibanana.
- Non ne vedo neanche uno.
- E’ comprensibile. Hanno delle abitudini molto singolari. Molto, ma molto singolari.
Continuò ad avanzare spingendo il materassino. L’acqua non gli arrivava al petto. – E’ una vita molto tragica, la loro, poveretti, - disse. - Lo sai cosa fanno, Sybil?
Sybil scosse il capo.
- Vedi, nuotano dentro una grotta dove c’è un mucchio di banane. Sembrano dei pesci qualunque, quando vanno dentro. Ma una volta che sono entrati, si comportano come dei maialini. Ti dico, so da fonte sicura di certi pescibanana che, dopo essersi infilati in una grotta bananifera, sono arrivati a mangiare la bellezza di settantotto banane -. Avvicinò di mezzo metro all’orizzonte il materassino e la sua passeggera. - Naturalmente, dopo una scorpacciata simile sono così grassi che non possono più venir fuori dalla grotta. Non passano dalla porta.
- Non troppo lontano, - disse Sybil. - E poi, cosa fanno?
- Cosa fanno chi?
- I pescibanana.
- Oh, vuoi dire dopo che hanno mangiato tante banane che non possono più uscire dalla grotta bananifera?
- Sì, - disse Sybil.
- Ecco, mi rincresce molto di dovertelo dire, Sybil. Muoiono.
- Perché? - chiese Sybil.
- Ecco, gli viene la bananite. E’ una malattia terribile.
- C’è un’onda che sta arrivando, - disse Sybil nervosamente.
- Faremo finta di non vederla. La snobberemo, - disse il giovanotto. - Due snob -. Prese in mano le caviglie di Sybil e spinse in basso e in avanti. Il materassino si rizzò sopra la cresta dell’onda. L’acqua inondò i capelli biondi di Sybil, ma il suo strillo era pieno di gioia.
Con la mano, quando il materassino fu di nuovo immobile, si tolse dagli occhi un lungo ciuffo bagnato e piatto, e riferì: - Ne ho visto uno.
- Cos’hai visto, amor mio?
- Un pescebanana.
- Santo cielo, no! - disse il giovanotto. - Aveva delle banane in bocca?
- Sì, - disse Sybil. - Sei.
All’improvviso il giovanotto tirò su uno dei piedi bagnati di Sybil, che sporgevano oltre l’orlo del materassino, e ne baciò il collo.
- Ehi! - disse la padrona del piede, voltandosi.
- Ehi cosa? Adesso si torna. Ti basta così?
- No!
- Mi rincresce, - disse il giovanotto, e spinse il materassino verso la spiaggia finché Sybil poté scendere. Poi lo tirò fuori dall’acqua e lo portò a riva.
- Ciao, - disse Sybil, e corse senza rimpianto in direzione dell’albergo.

Il giovanotto si infilò l’accappatoio, accostò strettamente i risvolti e si cacciò l’asciugamano in tasca. Raccolse il materassino bagnato, cui ora aderiva un velo di sabbia, e se lo mise alla meglio sotto braccio. Si avviò solo, a passi pesanti, sulla sabbia fine e rovente verso l’albergo.
Al piano seminterrato dell’albergo, dove c’era l’ingresso riservato dalla direzione ai bagnanti, una donna col naso coperto di pomata allo zinco entrò nell’ascensore insieme al giovanotto.
- Vedo che mi sta guardando i piedi, - disse il giovanotto quando la cabina si mise in moto.
- Come ha detto, scusi? - disse la donna.
- Ho detto che vedo che lei mi sta guardando i piedi.
- Scusi, ma stavo guardando in terra, disse la donna, e si volse verso la porta della cabina.
- Se le fa piacere guardarmi i piedi, si accomodi, - disse il giovanotto. - Ma perdio, abbia almeno il coraggio di farlo senza sotterfugi.
- Scendo qui, prego, - disse in fretta la donna alla ragazza che manovrava l’ascensore.
Le porte si aprirono e la donna uscì senza voltarsi indietro.
- Ho dei piedi normalissimi e perdio non capisco perché la gente me li debba guardare con gli occhi fuori dalla testa, - disse il giovanotto. - Al quinto, prego -. Tirò fuori dalla tasca dell’accappatoio la chiave della sua camera.
Scese al quinto piano, percorse il corridoio ed entrò al numero 507. La stanza odorava di valige nuove e di acetone.
Il giovanotto guardò la ragazza addormentata su uno dei letti gemelli. Poi si avvicinò a una valigia, l’aprì, e di sotto a una pila di mutande e canottiere trasse una Ortgies automatica calibro 7,65. Fece scattare fuori il caricatore, lo guardò, tornò a infilarlo nell’arma. Tolse la sicura. Poi attraversò la stanza e sedette sul letto libero; guardò la ragazza, prese la mira e si sparò un colpo nella tempia destra.

J. D. Salinger, Literary Recluse, Dies at 91

noreply@blogger.com (David Locke) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 21:24:00 +0000

January 29, 2010

By CHARLES McGRATH

J. D. Salinger, who was thought at one time to be the most important American writer to emerge since World War II but who then turned his back on success and adulation, becoming the Garbo of letters, famous for not wanting to be famous, died Wednesday at his home in Cornish, N.H., where he had lived in seclusion for more than 50 years. He was 91.

Mr. Salinger’s literary representative, Harold Ober Associates, announced the death, saying it was of natural causes. “Despite having broken his hip in May,” the agency said, “his health had been excellent until a rather sudden decline after the new year. He was not in any pain before or at the time of his death.”

Mr. Salinger’s literary reputation rests on a slender but enormously influential body of published work: the novel “The Catcher in the Rye,” the collection “Nine Stories” and two compilations, each with two long stories about the fictional Glass family: “Franny and Zooey” and “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction.”

“Catcher” was published in 1951, and its very first sentence, distantly echoing Mark Twain, struck a brash new note in American literature: “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”

Though not everyone, teachers and librarians especially, was sure what to make of it, “Catcher” became an almost immediate best seller, and its narrator and main character, Holden Caulfield, a teenager newly expelled from prep school, became America’s best-known literary truant since Huckleberry Finn.

With its cynical, slangy vernacular voice (Holden’s two favorite expressions are “phony” and “goddam”), its sympathetic understanding of adolescence and its fierce if alienated sense of morality and distrust of the adult world, the novel struck a nerve in cold war America and quickly attained cult status, especially among the young. Reading “Catcher” used to be an essential rite of passage, almost as important as getting your learner’s permit.

The novel’s allure persists to this day, even if some of Holden’s preoccupations now seem a bit dated, and it continues to sell tens of thousands of copies a year in paperback. Mark David Chapman, who assassinated John Lennon in 1980, even said that the explanation for his act could be found in the pages of “The Catcher in the Rye.” In 1974 Philip Roth wrote, “The response of college students to the work of J. D. Salinger indicates that he, more than anyone else, has not turned his back on the times but, instead, has managed to put his finger on whatever struggle of significance is going on today between self and culture.”

Many critics were even more admiring of “Nine Stories,” which came out in 1953 and helped shape later writers like Mr. Roth, John Updike and Harold Brodkey. The stories were remarkable for their sharp social observation, their pitch-perfect dialogue (Mr. Salinger, who used italics almost as a form of musical notation, was a master not of literary speech but of speech as people actually spoke it), and the way they demolished whatever was left of the traditional architecture of the short story — the old structure of beginning, middle, end — in favor of an architecture of emotion, in which a story could turn on a tiny alteration of mood or irony. Mr. Updike said he admired “that open-ended Zen quality they have, the way they don’t snap shut.”

Mr. Salinger also perfected the great trick of literary irony — of validating what you mean by saying less than, or even the opposite of, what you intend. Orville Prescott wrote in The Times in 1963, “Rarely if ever in literary history has a handful of stories aroused so much discussion, controversy, praise, denunciation, mystification and interpretation.”

As a young man, Mr. Salinger yearned ardently for just this kind of attention. He bragged in college about his literary talent and ambitions, and wrote swaggering letters to Whit Burnett, the editor of Story magazine. But success, once it arrived, paled quickly for him. He told the editors of Saturday Review that he was “good and sick” of seeing his photograph on the dust jacket of “The Catcher in the Rye” and demanded that it be removed from subsequent editions. He ordered his agent to burn any fan mail.

In 1953, Mr. Salinger, who had been living on East 57th Street in Manhattan, fled the literary world altogether and moved to a 90-acre compound on a wooded hillside in Cornish, N.H. He seemed to be fulfilling Holden’s desire to build himself “a little cabin somewhere with the dough I made and live there for the rest of my life,” away from “any goddam stupid conversation with anybody.”

He seldom left, except occasionally to vacation in Florida or to visit William Shawn, the almost equally reclusive former editor of The New Yorker. Avoiding Mr. Shawn’s usual (and very public) table at the Algonquin, they would meet instead under the clock at the old Biltmore Hotel, the rendezvous for generations of prep-school and college students.

After Mr. Salinger moved to New Hampshire, his publications slowed to a trickle and soon stopped completely. “Franny and Zooey” and “Raise High the Roof Beam,” both collections of material previously published in The New Yorker, came out in 1961 and 1963, and the last work of Mr. Salinger’s to appear in print was “Hapworth 16, 1924,” a 25,000-word story that took up most of the June 19, 1965, issue of The New Yorker.

In 1997, Mr. Salinger agreed to let Orchises Press, a small publisher in Alexandria, Va., bring out “Hapworth” in book form, but he backed out of the deal at the last minute. He never collected the rest of his stories or allowed any of them to be reprinted in textbooks or anthologies. One story, “Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut,” was turned into “My Foolish Heart,” a movie so bad that Mr. Salinger was never tempted to sell film rights again.

In the fall of 1953, Mr. Salinger befriended some local teenagers and allowed one of them to interview him for what he assumed would be an article on the high school page of a local paper, The Claremont (N.H.) Daily Eagle. The article appeared instead as a feature on the editorial page, and Mr. Salinger felt so betrayed that he broke off with the teenagers and built a six-and-a-half-foot fence around his property.

He seldom spoke to the press again, except in 1974 when, trying to fend off the unauthorized publication of his uncollected stories, he told a reporter from The Times: “There is a marvelous peace in not publishing. It’s peaceful. Still. Publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy. I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure.”

And yet the more he sought privacy, the more famous he became, especially after his appearance on the cover of Time in 1961. For years, it was a sort of journalistic sport for newspapers and magazines to send reporters to New Hampshire in hopes of a sighting. As a young man, Mr. Salinger had a long, melancholy face and deep soulful eyes, but now, in the few photographs that surfaced, he looked gaunt and gray, like someone in an El Greco painting. He spent more time and energy avoiding the world, it was sometimes said, than most people do in embracing it, and his elusiveness only added to the mythology growing up around him.

Depending on your point of view, he was either a crackpot or the American Tolstoy, who had turned silence itself into his most eloquent work of art. Some believed he was publishing under an assumed name, and for a while in the late 1970s, William Wharton, author of “Birdy,” was rumored to be Mr. Salinger, writing under another name, until it turned out that William Wharton was instead a pen name for a writer named Albert du Aime.

In 1984, the British literary critic Ian Hamilton approached Mr. Salinger with the notion of writing his biography. Not surprisingly, Mr. Salinger turned him down, saying he had “borne all the exploitation and loss of privacy I can possibly bear in a single lifetime.” Mr. Hamilton went ahead anyway, and in 1986, Mr. Salinger took him to court to prevent the use of quotations and paraphrases from unpublished letters. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, and to the surprise of many observers, Mr. Salinger eventually won, though not without some cost to his cherished privacy. (In June 2009, Mr. Salinger also sued Fredrik Colting, the Swedish author and publisher of a novel said to be a sequel to “The Catcher in the Rye.” In July, a federal judge indefinitely enjoined publication of the book.)

Mr. Salinger’s privacy was further punctured in 1998 and again in 2000 with the publication of memoirs by, first, Joyce Maynard — with whom he had a 10-month affair in 1973, when Ms. Maynard was a college freshman — and then his daughter, Margaret. Some critics complained that both women were trying to exploit and profit from their history with Mr. Salinger, and Mr. Salinger’s son, Matthew, wrote in a letter to The New York Observer that his sister had “a troubled mind” and that he didn’t recognize the man portrayed in her account. But both books nevertheless added a creepy, Howard Hughesish element to the Salinger legend.

Mr. Salinger was controlling and sexually manipulative, Ms. Maynard wrote, and a health nut obsessed with homeopathic medicine and with his diet (frozen peas for breakfast, undercooked lamb burger for dinner). Ms. Salinger said that her father was pathologically self-centered and abusive toward her mother, and to the homeopathy and food fads she added a long list of other enthusiasms: Zen Buddhism, Vedanta Hinduism, Christian Science, Scientology and acupuncture. Mr. Salinger drank his own urine, she wrote, and sat for hours in an orgone box.

But was he writing? The question obsessed Salingerologists, and in the absence of any real evidence, theories multiplied. He hadn’t written a word for years. Or like the character in Stephen King’s novel “The Shining,” he wrote the same sentence over and over again. Or like Gogol at the end of his life, he wrote prolifically but then burned it all up. Ms. Maynard said she believed there were at least two novels locked away in a safe, although she had never seen them.

Jerome David Salinger was born in Manhattan on New Year’s Day, 1919, the second of two children. His sister, Doris, who died in 2001, was for many years a buyer in the dress department at Bloomingdale’s. Like the Glasses, the Salinger children were the product of a mixed marriage. Their father, Sol, was a Jew, the son of a rabbi, but sufficiently assimilated that he made his living importing both cheese and ham. Their mother, Marie Jillisch, was of Irish descent, born in Scotland. The family was living in Harlem when Mr. Salinger was born, but then, as Sol Salinger’s business prospered, moved to West 82nd Street and then to Park Avenue.

Never much of a student, Mr. Salinger, then known as Sonny, attended the progressive McBurney School on the Upper West Side (he told the admissions office his interests were dramatics and tropical fish). But he flunked out after two years and in 1934 was packed off to Valley Forge Military Academy, near Wayne, Pa., which became the model for Holden’s Pencey Prep. Like Holden, he was the manager of the school fencing team, and he also became the literary editor of the school yearbook, Crossed Swords, and wrote a school song that was either a heartfelt pastiche of 19th-century sentiment or else a masterpiece of irony:

Hide not thy tears on this last day

Your sorrow has no shame;

To march no more midst lines of gray;

No longer play the game.

Four years have passed in joyful ways — Wouldst stay those old times dear?

Then cherish now these fleeting days,

The few while you are here.

In 1937, after a couple of unenthusiastic weeks at New York University, Mr. Salinger traveled with his father to Austria and Poland, where the father’s plan was for him to learn the ham business. Deciding that wasn’t for him, he returned to America and drifted through a term or so at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pa. Fellow students remember him striding around campus in a black chesterfield with velvet collar and announcing that he was going to write the Great American Novel.

Mr. Salinger’s most sustained exposure to higher education was an evening class he took at Columbia in 1939, taught by Whit Burnett, and under Mr. Burnett’s tutelage he managed to sell a story, “The Young Folks,” to Story magazine. He subsequently sold stories to Esquire, Collier’s and The Saturday Evening Post — formulaic work that gave little hint of real originality.

In 1941, after several rejections, Mr. Salinger finally cracked The New Yorker, the ultimate goal of any aspiring writer back then, with a story, “Slight Rebellion Off Madison,” that was an early sketch of what became a scene in “The Catcher in the Rye.” But the magazine then had second thoughts, apparently worried about seeming to encourage young people to run away from school, and held the story for five years — an eternity even for The New Yorker — before finally publishing it in 1946, buried way in the back of an issue.

Meanwhile, Mr. Salinger had been drafted. He served with the Counter Intelligence Corps of the Fourth Infantry Division, whose job was to interview Nazi deserters and sympathizers, and was stationed for a while in Tiverton, Devonshire, the setting for “For Esmé — With Love and Squalor,” probably the most deeply felt of the “Nine Stories.” On June 6, 1944, he landed at Utah Beach, and he later saw action during the Battle of the Bulge.

In 1945, he was hospitalized for “battle fatigue” — often a euphemism for a breakdown — and after recovering, he stayed on in Europe past the end of the war, chasing Nazi functionaries. He married a German woman, very briefly — a doctor about whom biographers have been able to discover very little. Her name was Sylvia, Margaret Salinger said, but Mr. Salinger always called her Saliva.

Back in New York, Mr. Salinger moved into his parents’ apartment and, having never stopped writing, even during the war, resumed his career. “A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” austere, mysterious and Mr. Salinger’s most famous and still most discussed story, appeared in The New Yorker in 1948 and suggested, not wrongly, that he had become a very different kind of writer. And like so many writers, he eventually found in The New Yorker not just an outlet but a kind of home, and developed a particularly close relationship with the magazine’s editor, William Shawn, himself famously shy and agoraphobic — a kindred spirit. In 1961, Mr. Salinger dedicated “Franny and Zooey” to Mr. Shawn, writing, “I urge my editor, mentor and (heaven help him) closest friend, William Shawn, genius domus of The New Yorker, lover of the long shot, protector of the unprolific, defender of the hopelessly flamboyant, most unreasonably modest of born great artist-editors, to accept this pretty skimpy-looking book.”

As a young writer, Mr. Salinger was something of a ladies’ man and dated, among others, Oona O’Neill, the daughter of Eugene O’Neill and the future wife of Charlie Chaplin. In 1953, he met Claire Douglas, the daughter of the English art critic Robert Langdon Douglas, who was then a 19-year-old Radcliffe sophomore who in many ways resembled Franny Glass (or vice versa); they were married two years later (Ms. Douglas had married and divorced in the meantime). Margaret was born in 1955, and Matthew, now an actor and film producer, was born in 1960. But the marriage soon turned distant and isolating, and in 1966, Ms. Douglas sued for divorce, claiming that “a continuation of the marriage would seriously injure her health and endanger her reason.”

The affair with Ms. Maynard, then a Yale freshman, began in 1972, after Mr. Salinger read an article she had written for The New York Times Magazine called “An 18-Year-Old Looks Back on Life.” They moved in together but broke up abruptly after 10 months when Mr. Salinger said he had no desire for more children. For a while in the ’80s, Mr. Salinger was involved with the actress Elaine Joyce, and late in that decade he married Colleen O’Neill, a nurse and the director of the Cornish town fair, who is considerably younger than he is. Not much is known about the marriage because Ms. O’Neill embraced her husband’s code of seclusion.

Mr. Salinger is survived by Ms. O’Neill; his son, Matt; his daughter, Margaret; and three grandsons. His literary agents said in their statement that “in keeping with his lifelong, uncompromising desire to protect and defend his privacy, there will be no service, and the family asks that people’s respect for him, his work and his privacy be extended to them, individually and collectively, during this time.”

“Salinger had remarked that he was in this world but not of it,” the statement said. “His body is gone but the family hopes that he is still with those he loves, whether they are religious or historical figures, personal friends or fictional characters.”

As for the fictional family the Glasses, Mr. Salinger had apparently been writing about them nonstop. Ms. Maynard said she saw shelves of notebooks devoted to the family. In Mr. Salinger’s fiction, the Glasses first turn up in “A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” in which Seymour, the oldest son and family favorite, kills himself during his honeymoon. Characters who turn out in retrospect to have been Glasses appear glancingly in “Nine Stories,” but the family saga really begins to be elaborated upon in “Franny and Zooey,” “Raise High the Roof Beam” and “Hapworth,” the long short story, which is ostensibly a letter written by Seymour from camp when he is just 7 years old but already reading several languages and lusting after Mrs. Happy, wife of the camp owner. Readers also began to learn about the parents, Les and Bessie, long-suffering ex-vaudevillians, and Seymour’s siblings Franny, Zooey, Buddy, Walt, Waker and Boo Boo; about the Glasses’ Upper West Side apartment; about the radio quiz show on which all the children appeared. Seldom, in fact, has a fictional family been so lovingly or richly imagined.

Too lovingly, some critics complained. With the publication of “Franny and Zooey,” even staunch Salinger admirers began to break ranks. John Updike wrote in The Times Book Review: “Salinger loves the Glasses more than God loves them. He loves them too exclusively. Their invention has become a hermitage for him. He loves them to the detriment of artistic moderation.” Other readers hated the growing streak of Eastern mysticism in the saga, as Seymour evolved, in successive retellings, from a troubled, suicidal young man into a genius, a sage, even a saint of sorts.

But writing in The New York Review of Books in 2001, Janet Malcolm argued that the critics had all along been wrong about Mr. Salinger, just as short-sighted contemporaries were wrong about Manet and about Tolstoy. The very things people complain about, Ms. Malcolm wrote, were the qualities that made Mr. Salinger great. That the Glasses (and, by implication, their creator) were not at home in the world was the whole point, she said, which said as much about the world as about the kind of people who failed to get along there.

Margalit Fox contributed reporting.

Homeward Bound

noreply@blogger.com (David Locke) — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 09:33:00 +0000

Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice

noreply@blogger.com (David Locke) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:15:00 +0000

Is it actually his voice?

Les Paul, 1915 - 2009

noreply@blogger.com (David Locke) — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 20:53:00 +0000

Playing For Change | Peace Through Music

noreply@blogger.com (David Locke) — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 11:53:00 +0000

Playing For Change | Peace Through Music

Posted using ShareThis

"Thank you for the carbonara"

noreply@blogger.com (David Locke) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 09:05:00 +0000

Ormai uno dovrebbe essersi abituato, però fa sempre un certo effetto. Voglio dire, riesce sempre difficile digerire il fatto che in Italia sui giornali e in TV si continuino a raccontare i G8 come fossero matrimoni di provincia. Sarà perché questi vertici, in effetti, sono noiosi e alla fine non si decide mai un cazzo e allora qualcosa bisogna pur raccontare, ma titoli come, "Michelle allo chef, 'thank you for the carbonara'", oppure, "Clio e Isabella seducono le first lady", ci inchiodano sempre lì, a quella realtà della quale De Gaulle disse, "L'Italia non è un paese povero, è un povero paese". I cessi in sala stampa, peraltro, non funzionano.

U.S. Relies More on Aid of Allies in Terror Cases

noreply@blogger.com (David Locke) — Sun, 24 May 2009 08:17:00 +0000

May 24, 2009 - The New York Times

By ERIC SCHMITT and MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON — The United States is now relying heavily on foreign intelligence services to capture, interrogate and detain all but the highest-level terrorist suspects seized outside the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, according to current and former American government officials.

The change represents a significant loosening of the reins for the United States, which has worked closely with allies to combat violent extremism since the 9/11 attacks but is now pushing that cooperation to new limits.

In the past 10 months, for example, about a half-dozen midlevel financiers and logistics experts working with Al Qaeda have been captured and are being held by intelligence services in four Middle Eastern countries after the United States provided information that led to their arrests by local security services, a former American counterterrorism official said.

In addition, Pakistan’s intelligence and security services captured a Saudi suspect and a Yemeni suspect this year with the help of American intelligence and logistical support, Pakistani officials said. The two are the highest-ranking Qaeda operatives captured since President Obama took office, but they are still being held by Pakistan, which has shared information from their interrogations with the United States, the official said.

The current approach, which began in the last two years of the Bush administration and has gained momentum under Mr. Obama, is driven in part by court rulings and policy changes that have closed the secret prisons run by the Central Intelligence Agency, and all but ended the transfer of prisoners from outside Iraq and Afghanistan to American military prisons.

Human rights advocates say that relying on foreign governments to hold and question terrorist suspects could carry significant risks. It could increase the potential for abuse at the hands of foreign interrogators and could also yield bad intelligence, they say.

The fate of many terrorist suspects whom the Bush administration sent to foreign countries remains uncertain. One suspect, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, who was captured by the C.I.A. in late 2001 and sent to Libya, was recently reported to have died there in Libyan custody.

“As a practical matter you have to rely on partner governments, so the focus should be on pressing and assisting those governments to handle those cases professionally,” said Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch.

The United States itself has not detained any high-level terrorist suspects outside Iraq and Afghanistan since Mr. Obama took office, and the question of where to detain the most senior terrorist suspects on a long-term basis is being debated within the new administration. Even deciding where the two Qaeda suspects in Pakistani custody will be kept over the long term is “extremely, extremely sensitive right now,” a senior American military official said, adding, “They’re both bad dudes. The issue is: where do they get parked so they stay parked?”

How the United States is dealing with terrorism suspects beyond those already in the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, was a question Mr. Obama did not address in the speech he gave Thursday about his antiterrorism policies. While he said he might seek to create a new system that would allow preventive detention inside the United States, the government currently has no obvious long-term detention center for imprisoning terrorism suspects without court oversight.

Mr. Obama has said he still intends to close the Guantánamo prison by January, despite misgivings in Congress, and the Supreme Court has ruled that inmates there may challenge their detention before federal judges. Some suspects are being imprisoned without charges at a United States air base in Afghanistan, but a federal court has ruled that at least some of them may also file habeas corpus lawsuits to challenge their detentions.

American officials say that in the last years of the Bush administration and now on Mr. Obama’s watch, the balance has shifted toward leaving all but the most high-level terrorist suspects in foreign rather than American custody. The United States has repatriated hundreds of detainees held at prisons in Cuba, Iraq and Afghanistan, but the current approach is different because it seeks to keep the prisoners out of American custody altogether.

How the United States deals with terrorism suspects remains a contentious issue in Congress.

Leon E. Panetta, the director of the C.I.A., said in February that the agency might continue its program of extraordinary rendition, in which captured terrorism suspects are transferred to other countries without extradition proceedings.

He said the C.I.A. would be likely to continue to transfer detainees from their place of capture to other countries, either their home countries or nations that intended to bring charges against them.

As a safeguard against torture, Mr. Panetta said, the United States would rely on diplomatic assurances of good treatment. The Bush administration sought the same assurances, which critics say are ineffective.

A half-dozen current and former American intelligence and counterterrorism officials and allied officials were interviewed for this article, but all spoke on the condition of anonymity because the detention and interrogation programs are classified.

Officials say the United States has learned so much about Al Qaeda and other militant groups since the 9/11 attacks that it can safely rely on foreign partners to detain and question more suspects. “It’s the preferred method now,” one former counterterrorism official said.

The Obama administration’s policies will probably become clearer after two task forces the president created in January report to him in July on detainee policy, interrogation techniques and extraordinary rendition.

In many instances now, allies are using information provided by the United States to pick up terrorism suspects on their own territory — including the two suspects seized in Pakistan this year.

The Saudi militant, Zabi al-Taifi, was picked up by Pakistani commandos in a dawn raid at a safe house outside Peshawar on Jan. 22, an operation conducted with the help of the C.I.A.

A Pakistani official said the Yemeni suspect, Abu Sufyan al-Yemeni, was a Qaeda paramilitary commander who was on C.I.A. and Pakistani lists of the top 20 Qaeda operatives. He was believed to be a conduit for communications between Qaeda leaders in Pakistan and cells in East Africa, Iran, Yemen and elsewhere. American and Pakistani intelligence officials say they believe that Mr. Yemeni, who was arrested Feb. 24 by Pakistani authorities in Quetta, helped arrange travel and training for Qaeda operatives from various parts of the Muslim world to the Pakistani tribal areas.

He is now in the custody of Pakistan’s main spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, but his fate is unclear. The Pakistani official said that he would remain in Pakistani hands, but that it would be difficult to try him because the evidence against him came from informers.

American officials said the United States would still take custody of the most senior Qaeda operatives captured in the future. As a model, they cited the case of Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, an Iraqi Kurd who is said to have joined Al Qaeda in the late 1990s and risen to become a top aide to Osama bin Laden, and who was captured by a foreign security service in 2006. He was handed over to the C.I.A., which transferred him to Guantánamo Bay in April 2007. He was one of the last detainees shipped there.

Stats

noreply@blogger.com (David Locke) — Mon, 11 May 2009 19:58:00 +0000

Finisco tardi una cosa al Viminale, di cui non mi importa granché e detto decine di righe di cui, a dire il vero, mi importa ancora meno, mestiere, vado avanti in automatico, tra l'altro ho lasciato aperto un pezzo al quale invece tenevo molto e che ormai chiuderò domani sperando che sia ancora buono, per andare a riprendere lo scooter passo davanti alla libreria dell'Istat, espongono l'ultimo annuario statistico e davanti alle vetrine c'è, mezzo incosciente di Tavernello, uno straniero, sembra dell'est Europa, non ancora del tutto barbone, ma sul punto di diventarlo, mi fermo un istante a pensare all'immagine, la vetrina dell'Istat con l'annuario statistico italiano e lo straniero, penso alle statistiche nelle quali lui può rientrare, poche probabilmente, e nemmeno molto positive, poi penso a quelle in cui posso rientrare io, molte, e la cosa non mi rende affatto felice, né soddisfatto di me stesso, penso di aver fallito.

Un paese normale

noreply@blogger.com (David Locke) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 15:32:00 +0000

Un po' di cose sparse, alle quali tenterò di dare una forma decente. In questi giorni di straordinaria emergenza m'è venuto da ragionare sulla questione del "paese normale", evocata per anni da Massimo D'Alema (se non sbaglio era anche il titolo di un suo libro), messo in contrapposizione alla 'anormalità' (allo strappo nella tela della storia come se l'era immaginata D'Alema) rappresentata da Berlusconi e dal berlusconismo. Al netto delle tattiche parlamentari, mi sembra che la parte maggioritaria dell'opposizione, vale a dire il Pd, abbia (per una volta) rinunciato al consueto copione e abbia riconosciuto dignità di uomo di governo (quella accordata dalla maggioranza degli italiani non basta, naturalmente, essendo noialtri un popolo di imbecilli lobotomizzati che votano in un certo modo perché ce lo impongono i Tg manovrati da Bonaiuti) a quello che fino a poche ore prima era visto come un impresentabile guitto di provincia ("miodio che vergogna, ma hai visto la regina come lo ha guardato? E la Merkel? Ha fatto bene la Bruni a rinunciare alla cittadinanza").

Insomma, il consueto "lo Stato peggio che da noi, solo in Uganda!", come recitava Gaber nel suo teatro canzone ("Qualcuno era comunista", e sempre scrosciavano applausi compiaciuti, quando lo diceva, tanti quanti ne scrosciavano quando recitava, "Berlinguer era una brava persona e Andreotti non era una brava persona ), stavolta, col terremoto in Abruzzo, non s'è verificato.

Però, di qui a dire che siamo diventati un paese normale (per le ragioni totalmente opposte a quelle invocate da D'Alema, perché in un paese normale il leader di un partito che prendeva soldi da un paese straniero che aveva i suoi missili armati con testate nucleari puntati contro le nostre città, non può permettersi di dare patenti di normalità a nessuno), ancora ce ne corre.

Un paese normale è un paese dove il sistema di protezione civile, in caso di calamità naturali con effetti catastrofici, interviene in maniera efficace ed efficiente, come è accaduto in Abruzzo. Dove il governo si prende la responsabilità delle cose e agisce di conseguenza (in Gran Bretagna, paese normale, non dicono mai "lo Stato", dicono proprio "il Governo"). Un paese normale è quello che abbiamo visto all'opera nei soccorsi, negli interventi del governo, nelle reazioni della popolazione, nella solidarietà del resto del paese, nei giorni successivi al terremoto. Un paese normale è un paese dove il capo del governo si comporta come si è comportato il nostro capo del governo. Se poi questa normalità reggerà anche alla prova del dopo emergenza e alla ricostruzione, lo vedremo nei prossimi mesi e anni.

Un paese non normale è invece un paese che pensa veramente, in una parte non trascurabile della sua popolazione, che il mondo sia come glielo raccontano Michael Moore e Vauro, dove uno scrittore (sì, d'accordo, non è uno scrittore qualunque, ma è un simbolo, un eroe, ecc. ecc, eppure io non sono riuscito ad andare oltre pagina 25) scrive un breve reportage, molto impressionista, su un quotidiano, denunciando il rischio di infiltrazioni camorristiche nel business della ricostruzione in Abruzzo, in base a non si sa quali evidenze, prove e circostanze e subito il procuratore nazionale antimafia, senza fornire evidenze, prove, citare circostanze, gli dice che sì, ha ragione. Un paese normale è un paese che cerca la sua normalità nell'evidenza dei fatti, non nelle impressioni. Altrimenti, tanto vale evacuarci tutti in Uganda.

Yes, We Can

noreply@blogger.com (David Locke) — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 18:05:00 +0000

Yes, We Can
In the 'graveyard of empires,' we are fighting a war we can win.
by Max Boot, Frederick W. Kagan & Kimberly Kagan
The Weekly Standard, 03/23/2009, Volume 014, Issue 26

Kandahar
If you believe the headlines, Afghanistan is "the graveyard of empires," a "quagmire" and a "fiasco," the place where President Barack Obama will meet his "Vietnam." In the media's imagination, the Taliban are on the march, and Kabul is on the verge of falling to a resurgent insurgency that already controls much of the countryside. Increasing numbers of voices, on both the left and the right, counsel that the war is unwinnable and that we need to radically "downsize" our objectives in order to salvage something from a failing war effort lest we go the way of the Russians or British, previous conquerors who foundered in this merciless land of violence and fanaticism.

Evidence to support the pessimists isn't hard to find. Violence has increased every year since 2001. The United Nations recently reported that there was an especially big jump last year, with civilian deaths up nearly 40 percent, from 1,523 in 2007 to 2,118 in 2008. Coalition deaths were up 27 percent, rising to 294 in 2008 from 232 in 2007. Because of the improving situation in Iraq, there have been a number of months when more U.S. soldiers have died in Afghanistan. Meanwhile the number of Afghans surveyed by ABC, the BBC, and the German network ARD who said that their country was headed in the right direction fell to 40 percent, down from 54 percent in 2007, with security rated as by far the worst problem, outpacing corruption and the economy.

The sense of doom is fed by news reports on spectacular attacks, such as the February 11 raid in which suicide bombers and gunmen attacked several government sites across Kabul, killing at least 20 people; the June 13, 2008, raid on the main prison in Kandahar, which freed 1,200 prisoners; and the April 27, 2008, attempted assassination of President Hamid Karzai at a public ceremony.

Fears of impending disaster are hard to sustain, however, if you actually spend some time in Afghanistan, as we did recently at the invitation of General David Petraeus, chief of U.S. Central Command. Using helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft, and bone-jarring armored vehicles, we spent eight days traveling from the snow-capped peaks of Kunar province near the border with Pakistan in the east to the wind-blown deserts of Farah province in the west near the border with Iran. Along the way we talked with countless coalition soldiers, ranging from privates to a four-star general. We also attended a tribal shura or council-a fantastic affair straight out of an earlier century-to sample opinion among bearded Afghan elders. What we found is a situation that is cause for concern but far short of catastrophe-and one that is likely to improve before long.

To start with, much of the north, center, and west remains relatively secure. Attacks have increased in those areas but are still extremely low. Figures showing large increases are deceptive because the total numbers to begin with were so small and because most of the attacks produced few if any casualties. For instance, the Brookings Afghanistan Index shows a 48 percent increase in attacks last year in Regional Command-Capital, which encompasses Kabul and its environs and has a population of more than 4 million people. But the total (157 attacks in 2008) would have represented just four days of violence in Baghdad in the summer of 2006. (Overall civilian casualties in Afghanistan, while rising, are still 16 times lower than the comparable figure for Iraq in the pre-surge year of 2006.)

As these figures suggest, while the capital of Iraq was a war zone, the capital of Afghanistan is remarkably peaceful. Entire weeks go by without an insurgent attack, and the streets bustle with cars and pedestrians. Coalition officials drive around in lightly armored SUVs, something that would have been unthinkable in Baghdad. We asked officers at NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) headquarters in the middle of Kabul whether they took any incoming rocket or mortar fire. Such attacks were an almost daily occurrence in the Green Zone in Baghdad for years, with numerous personnel being killed only yards away from the U.S. ambassador's office. But at ISAF they could remember only a single ineffectual attack back in September 2008.

The idea that Kabul is under siege is a figment of the news media's imagination based on hyped reporting of a few isolated attacks. ISAF officers suggested to us that the recent insurgent raids on three government buildings, which generated so much negative publicity, were actually good news, because Afghan security forces, who have assumed lead responsibility for operations in much of the capital, were able to handle the crisis on their own. Commandos from the Afghan National Police Crisis Response Team stormed into the Justice Ministry within hours and killed all the attackers, who had hoped to carry out a protracted Mumbai-style siege. Other would-be suicide bombers were rounded up before they could set off their explosives.

Equally impressive progress is being made in Jalalabad, a city of perhaps 400,000 in eastern Afghanistan's Nangarhar Province. Violence is low; U.S. troops don't even patrol the city, leaving that job to the Afghan National Security Forces. The Afghan army, police, and border police coordinate their activities through a "fusion" center which responds to an emergency phone number that residents can call in case of trouble. Economic development is booming, spurred by "Nangarhar Inc.," a development plan overseen by a U.S.-run Provincial Reconstruction Team in cooperation with local officials. "Nangarhar has progressed light years in the last six or seven years," says Lieutenant Colonel Patrick Daniel, who commands a battalion based in Jalalabad.

Not all of Regional Command-East is as peaceful or prosperous. This remains the second-most violent region in the country, behind only Regional Command-South. This is hardly surprising since RC-East is located along the long, mountainous eastern border with Pakistan, which has become a safe haven for numerous Islamist terrorist groups. With rumored assistance from Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Agency, many of these groups are carrying out cross-border attacks in Afghanistan in pursuit of a bewildering array of strategies and objectives. Officers at the Bagram headquarters of the 101st Airborne Division, who run RC-East from the site of one of Alexander the Great's base camps, have taken to speaking of an insurgent "syndicate." Their charts draw numerous intersecting lines between nine different groups which alternately compete and cooperate with one another.

The most famous of these is al Qaeda, but its strongholds are located in Pakistan, and it does not play a leading role in Afghanistan. The other groups are often colloquially referred to as the Taliban, but this catch-all phrase hardly does justice to-and can actually distort understanding of-a complex, multifaceted insurgency. The Taliban proper under the direction of Mullah Mohammad Omar ("One-Eye") are based in the city of Quetta in the Pakistani province of Baluchistan, and their activities are largely confined to southern Afghanistan.

Other prominent insurgent groups include (bear with us) the Haqqani Network run by former mujahedeen leader Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son Sirajuddin; the Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin (HiG), a party led by another former mujahedeen commander, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar; the Hezb-e Islami Khalisa, a breakaway faction of the Hezb-e Islami founded by the late Mohammad Yunus Khalis; the Tehrik-e Nefaz-e Shariat-e Mohammadi (TNSM), a group that is especially powerful in the Swat Valley and is run by Maulana Fazlullah, son-in-law of founder Sufi Muhammad; the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), commonly known as the Pakistan Taliban, who are headed by the notorious Baitullah Mehsud; the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the Punjab-based terrorist group responsible for the Mumbai attacks as well as numerous attacks in Kashmir; and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), which was founded by a former Uzbek paratrooper, the late Jumaboi Khojayev, who was radicalized while fighting with the Red Army in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

The IMU has a pan-Central Asian focus, the TTP and TNSM are focused primarily on Pakistan, the LeT has a regional and even, increasingly, a global focus, while the Taliban and HiG are interested in taking over Afghanistan, and the Haqqani Network and HiK are thought to be primarily focused on seizing their traditional powerbases in eastern Afghanistan.

What unites these groups beyond a shared antipathy to the modern world, a propensity for violence, and a devotion to extremist forms of Islam? Some central direction is provided by three shuras or councils sitting in the western Pakistani cities of Quetta, Miram Shah, and Peshawar. (Baitullah Mehsud's TTP has its own shura in South Waziristan.) Connections with the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency also link most of these groups together. But the shuras provide only broad direction. Individual groups and subgroups act with considerable autonomy. That is a big advantage for the government of Afghanistan and its allies, since there is no Ho Chi Minh or Mao Zedong to knit together a far-flung insurgency into a cohesive movement.

Even without much central direction, however, these insurgent groups have been pursuing a loose-knit strategy whose contours are faintly discernible to ISAF. Some of the southern Taliban are pushing toward Kandahar, the central city of southern Afghanistan and a traditional Taliban stronghold. The northern groups are pushing toward Kabul. They are concentrating attacks on coalition and Afghan security forces in the countryside, hoping to drive them into the major cities and besiege them there. Eventually they hope to inflict enough pain on the coalition to force public opinion in Europe and North America to demand a withdrawal. Once the coalition is gone, they figure the government of Afghanistan will fall like rotten fruit.

In the meantime, to exert control of rural areas, they seek to intimidate anyone who dares to cooperate with the infidel "occupiers." The insurgents often post threatening "night letters" warning those who work with the foreigners and sometimes follow up by beheading supposed collaborators. Through such actions they have created a feeling of insecurity even in areas of Afghanistan where the objective levels of violence are not that high.

Unlike in Iraq, the insurgents in Afghanistan are not indiscriminately slaughtering the civilian population. Some are making greater use of suicide bombers, but their targets are largely the Afghan National Security Forces, coalition forces, and government officials. Such attacks, however, can all too easily go wrong. We visited a district center, in the Mandozai District of Khost Province, that had been hit on December 28. Guards prevented a suicide bomber driving a car from entering the compound, so he blew himself up at the gate, killing 14 children and 2 adults. The rubble is still visible.

Whereas Iraqi insurgents might have reveled in such violence, their Afghan counterparts are more sensitive to the need to cultivate public opinion. They prefer for the coalition to kill civilians-something they make much more likely by hiding among civilians. The insurgents have made skillful use of collateral damage inflicted by the coalition, especially in air raids and what are known as "night raids" when Special Operations Forces swoop down on insurgents' homes after dark. The guerrillas have done a brilliant job of trumpeting civilian casualties-usually exaggerated, sometimes invented-to accuse the coalition of brutality. Wittingly or not, President Hamid Karzai has helped the enemy by harping on coalition-caused casualties while all but ignoring in his public pronouncements mention of the far greater number of deaths inflicted by the guerrillas. Numerous coalition commanders complained to us that, as one of them put it, "we are getting our ass whupped in the information war."

As a first step in regaining the initiative, the coalition would be well advised to limit or adjust the tactics of the notorious "night raids." These operations should be more closely coordinated with village elders and Afghan security forces both before and after the "kinetic" phase. (Elders at the Mandozai shura complained to us that such coordination is often lacking.) Otherwise, Special Operations units risk creating more enemies than they take off the battlefield.

When it comes to operations against coalition forces, the insurgents, like their Iraqi counterparts, rely primarily on improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The number set off increased from 2,569 in 2007 to 3,742 in 2008. The bombs employed in Afghanistan are, however, less sophisticated than in Iraq. So far Explosively Formed Penetrators, the armor-piercing munitions that Iran shipped to Iraqi terrorists, have not made an appearance in Afghanistan. So coalition troops have a fair degree of protection as long as they stay in Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles, 2,000 of which have been shipped to Afghanistan. Of course, sufficient quantities of explosives can penetrate any armor in the world, and some MRAPs have suffered terrible damage.

While not as sophisticated as Iraqi terrorists in the dark arts of the IED, Afghan insurgents are rated more proficient in light infantry tactics thanks to the training they have received in Pakistan. "This is a capable opponent," says Brigadier General Mark Milley, deputy commander of the 101st Airborne Division. Insurgents most often operate in groups of 5 to 15 but sometimes they can mass several hundred fighters. When they get into firefights, they sometimes draw close enough to use their weapons effectively, and they have shown the ability to fire and maneuver in squad-, platoon-, and even company-sized formations. "We used to see sporadic RPG [rocket-propelled grenade] fire several years ago. This past year we have seen RPG volley fire," Milley says. Often the insurgents will fight to the death, but they have a crude system of "medevac," with stretcher bearers organized to take casualties off the battlefield on foot.

In the east, the insurgents are helped immeasurably by the terrain-some of the world's tallest mountains split up the population into numerous small valleys that are cut off from one another, much less from the outside world. It has always been hard to establish any degree of central control in mountainous terrain from the Caucasus to Colombia, and Afghanistan is no exception. "This is perfect guerrilla country," Milley remarked as we flew with him in a Black Hawk helicopter over the snowy Hindu Kush.

In an attempt to control insurgent movements across a porous border, U.S. forces have established a number of small combat outposts in the hinterlands. Some are beyond the reach of Afghanistan's primitive road network and are dubbed "air centric" because they can be supplied only from the air. Unfortunately some of these remote positions are so small that the troops inside have to devote most of their resources to defending themselves, and they have scant capability to project much combat power "outside the wire." Each has become, in military slang, a "self-licking ice cream cone." Some American units are in the process of pulling back some of those isolated bases and consolidating most of their troops into at least company-sized detachments (100 or more soldiers), the smallest number they believe can maneuver and safely sustain themselves in this dangerous environment. In Iraq, practicing the classic counterinsurgency tactic of positioning the troops among the population required taking them off giant Forward Operating Bases and putting them into smaller bases. In Afghanistan it may require slightly bigger bases, though still considerably smaller than mega-FOBs like Baghdad's Camp Victory, with its tens of thousands of inhabitants.

One should not exaggerate the combat prowess of the insurgents. Occasionally, it is true, they are able to catch a coalition unit off guard and inflict considerable casualties. Two such incidents occurred last year in RC-East when a newly arrived French detachment suffered nine killed in action and when a new, still-unfinished American outpost was hit so heavily that nine American soldiers were killed. But such incidents are the exception, not the rule. Most insurgent attacks inflict no casualties on coalition forces and result in devastating losses for the attackers when coalition troops call in air or artillery strikes. The Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police are less well armed and trained and so suffer more heavily, but the ANA, at least, has shown itself superior to the enemy in every major firefight. By coming out to fight in the open (which they do much more often than their Iraqi counterparts), insurgents actually play to the strengths of American troops and their allies.

More effective from the enemy standpoint have been attacks on coalition lines of communication. The Pakistan Taliban have been attacking private trucks hired to lug supplies from the port of Karachi, Pakistan, into Afghanistan. Their Afghan counterparts have also been mining roads and blowing up culverts and bridges, replicating tactics that the mujahedeen once used against the Red Army. The Russians have contributed to the coalition's difficulties by pressuring Kyrgyzstan to close the U.S. air base at Manas, which is a primary hub for aerial tankers supporting coalition aircraft as well as a transit point for troops flying in and out of Afghanistan.

Given the hyperbolic reporting on these supply woes, when we arrived we half expected to find troops cowering in unheated hovels without sufficient bullets to fire, fuel to move, or food to fill their bellies. Nothing could be further from the truth. U.S. forces in Afghanistan appear to be as well supplied as their counterparts in Iraq. Certainly there is no dearth of fresh eggs, cakes, ice cream, and other chow in the dining facilities we visited. The cappuccino is still flowing at numerous Green Beans coffee houses. At the main base in Kandahar, troops can eat at Pizza Hut, Subway, or the Canadian doughnut outlet Tim Horton's while surfing the Internet via Wi-Fi.

It turns out that the materiel flowing through Pakistan, which is the most vulnerable to interdiction, is mostly not critical to the coalition mission. Much of it is lower-priority goods such as building supplies to expand bases and Humvees to equip the Afghan Army. The most important stuff-everything from weapons and bullets to communications gear and MRAPs-is airlifted in. The coalition still gets 30 percent of its fuel through Pakistan, but 70 percent now comes via an alternative route running south from Turkmenistan. Senior commanders are now figuring out how to rejigger lines of communication to cope with potential disruptions. But supply difficulties are hardly a critical impediment to the coalition's future success, except insofar as they divert troops into endless highway patrols and thus fail to secure the most critical population centers.

Contrary to the gloomy impression prevalent back home, commanders on the ground expressed confidence that they would be able to beat back the insurgency with the additional U.S. troops now flowing in. The 38,000 U.S. troops currently in Afghanistan will be joined by 17,000 more by this summer thanks to reinforcements wisely authorized by President Obama, and more may be coming later. One Brigade Combat Team, part of an earlier reinforcement authorized by President Bush, had just arrived in RC-East when we were visiting. With the addition of Polish and French forces-which come without any of the caveats that have hindered the effectiveness of most other NATO contingents-RC-East has seen a considerable boost in troop strength. Just a few weeks ago, Wardak and Logar provinces south of Kabul were garrisoned by only 400 U.S. troops. Now they will have more than 4,000, an entire brigade, and the two existing U.S. brigades in RC-East will be able to shrink their area of operations considerably, thus concentrating more troops in less "battlespace."

The transformation will be even more dramatic in RC-South, which General David McKiernan, the ISAF commander, currently describes as a "stalemate." An officer in the south told us, "We've said we're doing counterinsurgency in the south but we've never resourced it." That is about to change. This region will receive almost all of the 17,000 additional U.S. troops, including a Marine Expeditionary Brigade and an Army Stryker Brigade Combat Team, to reinforce the existing force of just 3,300 Americans. (There are also 20,000 other troops in RC-South from 16 nations, the biggest contingents being 8,200 Brits, 3,500 Canadians, 2,100 Dutch, and 1,050 Australians.) Beyond this ground combat power, there will be a major increase in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets and a doubling of rotary airpower with the arrival of a whole new U.S. Army Combat Aviation Brigade to supplement the one already in Afghanistan.

This represents a significant change in the correlation of forces on the battlefield, and coalition commanders expect that it will allow them to take the fight to the enemy in ways that were impossible before. Their goal is to conduct "shape, clear, hold, and build" operations in conjunction with Afghan allies. Their expectation is that the insurgents will violently contest their efforts, resulting in an increase in attacks and casualties during the summer fighting season. But coalition commanders are fully confident that before long, perhaps by the fall, insurgents will have taken a licking, forcing them to retreat. As one American officer put it to us, "An awful lot of bad guys are going to get killed in the next four to six months." They recall what happened last year in Garmsir District in Helmand Province, when the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit arrived in the spring. The 2,500 Marines faced a hard fight for a month, but gradually they drove out the enemy, allowing bazaars to reopen, shuras to be conducted, and development assistance to flow.

As coalition troops make progress this summer in RC-South, focusing in particular in Helmand, Kandahar, and Zabul provinces, there is a danger that they may wind up pushing some of the insurgents farther west into Nimroz, Farah, and Herat provinces, where there are currently very few coalition troops. We traveled across Farah province and discovered a vast, ungoverned desert that just happens to be on the border with Iran. Published reports suggest that Iran's Quds Force is providing training and supplies to some of the insurgents inside Afghanistan. To avoid the risk that upcoming operations will destabilize western Afghanistan, it is imperative to put more U.S. troops into those areas as well, something that probably cannot be done before 2010. Even if 2 or 3 American brigades are dispatched to RC-West to go with the 7 likely to be in Afghanistan by the end of the year (2 of them on a training mission), that will still result in only 9 or 10 brigade combat teams (45,000 to 55,00 troops, plus enablers) in the country, fewer than half the 22 in Iraq at the height of the surge.

It is not, of course, anyone's intention that foreign forces carry the bulk of the fight in Afghanistan indefinitely. And they won't have to. The Afghan National Army has already established itself as the most trusted indigenous institution in the entire country. This ethnically balanced force has performed capably and bravely in battles too numerous to count. It has taken heavy losses, but it has not suffered heavy desertions. "The enemy cannot fight us face to face," Brigadier General Sher Mohammad Zazai, commander of the ANA's 205th Corps based in Kandahar, told us proudly.

The problem is that the ANA is still far too small, numbering only 80,000 soldiers. The Afghan National Police, which is less effective and more corrupt, has another 70,000 personnel. That's 150,000 security personnel for a country of 30 million. By way of comparison, Iraq, which has a smaller population, has more than 500,000 men in its army and police forces. The current plan to expand the ANA-it is supposed to reach 134,000 men by the end of 2011-is completely inadequate to the size of the challenge. Since the government of Afghanistan lacks the money and resources to do the job itself, the United States and its allies will have to fund and support a much larger (and, if possible, much faster) expansion of the Afghan National Security Forces. We should immediately commit to the goal of a 250,000-strong ANA. Afghan troops also need better equipment-everything from armored vehicles and helicopters to night-vision devices-and they need it as soon as possible.

U.S. commanders plan to meet the needs of the growing Afghan forces by sending an entire brigade of the 82nd Airborne to Afghanistan to focus on the training mission. The tentative plan is to break up this force into embedded training teams. Trainers we spoke with, although desperate for reinforcements, expressed grave reservations about this scheme. The problem is that there are not enough senior officers and noncommissioned officers in a regular brigade to provide seasoned mentors for Afghan military leaders who have been fighting for decades. A veteran Afghan colonel is not likely to pay much heed to the pronouncements of a fresh-faced American captain who has never commanded a unit in battle. This is a society that values gray hair, and the U.S. armed forces will have to dig deep to provide the senior mentors necessary. This will be a painful process, but it will pay major dividends: It is much cheaper (in both dollars and lives) to stand up Afghan forces than to send more American combat troops into harm's way.

Since it will take years to create larger, more effective security forces, coalition officials are understandably looking for short cuts. Much hope is invested in a new program to create an Afghan Public Protection Force. Starting with a trial program in Wardak Province, the idea is to ask local leaders to select young men who will receive a few weeks of training and then will be sent back to their communities to act as a police auxiliary, protecting villages against insurgents. American officials stress that this is not meant to be a new tribal militia of the kind that has plagued Afghanistan in the past. The new force, they say, will be fully accountable to the interior ministry and to local police chiefs. If successful, the Afghan Public Protection Force could fill an important need-but that's a big if, since similar programs have foundered in the past.

No one claims that force alone can defeat the insurgents (General Petraeus recently told Time magazine that "you cannot kill your way out of an insurgency"), but clearly a greater level of security in the east and south is essential for progress on political, social, or economic development. In that regard one of the biggest problems cited by Afghans is the corruption of their own government. The symbol of this problem is Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of President Hamid Karzai, who is the head of the Kandahar Provincial Council and the most powerful man in this crucial southern province. Numerous reports link him to the drug trade, although no definitive evidence has ever been made public and he has denied the charges. Nevertheless there is a widespread impression that the president's brother is involved in narco-trafficking and that the president is running protection for him. Numerous other, lower-profile government officials (including a number of governors) are said to be connected with the illicit narcotics trade, which is Afghanistan's leading industry.

The drug business, centered in the southern provinces (Helmand is the biggest producer, but Farah is catching up), produces 90 percent of the world's opium, worth an estimated $4 billion a year. Of that total, the United Nations estimates $500 million goes into the hands of the insurgents, who provide protection for the narco-traffickers and collect taxes from poppy farmers. That makes the drug trade a major concern for the coalition. Yet NATO's mandate does not allow coalition troops to target the drug lords directly. That is a job reserved for Afghanistan's counternarcotics forces, which are advised by DynCorp contractors paid by the U.S. State Department, and which work with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and other law-enforcement agencies. But ISAF forces are starting to get into the anti-drug fight because the poppy-eradication forces are protected by Afghan Army troops who have with them embedded American advisers. When these forces are attacked on anti-drug missions, they can call in coalition support including quick-reaction forces, medevac, and airstrikes.

It makes sense for ISAF troops to take on the corrosive drug trade, which funds the insurgency and undermines governmental legitimacy, but doing it through this backdoor route carries a heavy cost in inefficiency. As things now stand, counter-drug efforts are poorly integrated with a larger counterinsurgency strategy in the south.

Developing such a strategy has been, to put it mildly, challenging given the competing demands of 41 countries that are represented in ISAF. Few of them will even admit that they are fighting a "war," a word that is not used in NATO's plans. Some of the foreign contingents-notably the British, Australians, Canadians, and French-are willing to fight, take risks, and suffer losses, but many others refuse to leave their bases. Even those troops who are willing to engage in combat are not well integrated with the overall effort. The British and Canadians, for example, operate in national task forces in Helmand and Kandahar provinces, respectively, and like other coalition units they have to check with their home governments before they can undertake certain missions.

Trying to bring some coherence to this unwieldy coalition is General McKiernan, an American four-star who is commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan as well as ISAF. (Almost all American forces are now under ISAF authority, the notable exceptions being a small number of Special Operations Forces and a larger number of trainers embedded with Afghan Army and police forces.)

McKiernan's task is made considerably more difficult by the polyglot nature of ISAF's headquarters in Kabul and Kandahar, which are designed to maximize coalition representation rather than military effectiveness. In the U.S. military, headquarters staff will train together for a year before deploying into a combat zone. In ISAF, headquarters staffs from many different nations assemble only a few weeks before heading to Afghanistan. Making the problem worse, while most Americans stay in Afghanistan for at least a year, most other NATO soldiers are on four- to six-month rotations, making it almost impossible to achieve any coherence or continuity. Even NATO officers privately admit that the resulting arrangement is, as one of them put it, "partially dysfunctional." Their American counterparts are more scathing. "You couldn't pay someone to come up with a more screwed-up structure than we have here," one colonel in Kabul told us. Yet as long as the top concern is to keep the coalition together, making significant changes involves a diplomatic nightmare.

The essential problem is that in Afghanistan there is nothing resembling the smooth-functioning arrangements that were in place in Iraq by 2007, with Multi-national Forces-Iraq under Petraeus overseeing the strategic framework, Multi-National Corps-Iraq under Lieutenant General Ray Odierno running day to day operations, and both in turn cooperating closely with the U.S. embassy led by Ambassador Ryan Crocker, who had control of most civilian development efforts. There is no Odierno equivalent in Afghanistan since there is no corps headquarters. McKiernan has to act as both Petraeus and Odierno, while also dealing with tasks neither man faced in herding 41 coalition countries and a multitude of international organizations.

Some possible improvements in these schizophrenic command and control arrangements have been discussed, including creating a new corps headquarters in Kabul and an American division headquarters in RC-South. (There is already an American division headquarters in RC-East.) The problem is that it would be diplomatically difficult to make a corps headquarters or a division headquarters a purely American affair, and if it were another ISAF affair, it would likely prove more hindrance than help. As a result General McKiernan is implementing some clever work-arounds. To boost the effectiveness of ISAF, he has increased the number of American officers on its staff and created an entirely new command, U.S. Forces Afghanistan, whose job is, in part, to bolster the ISAF staff. As for the south, he has asked the British military, which is due to take command of the region in the fall, to send an existing division headquarters that has trained together for a full year rather than the usual coalition pick-up team.

Only time will tell whether these patches can fix the deep difficulties in ISAF's command structure. But at some point the United States will have to decide what price it is willing to pay for keeping all of the ISAF contributors happy, most of whom send contingents so small or so heavily limited by caveats that they contribute little or nothing to the success of the mission. A smaller coalition could actually be more effective. Thus the United States should not be afraid to make decisions that might lead some of the more faint-hearted contributors to pull out.

One of the top areas that needs to be addressed is the inability of ISAF forces under their NATO mandate to hold prisoners for more than 96 hours. This is driven by distaste among the Europeans and Canadians for getting involved in detention operations with their whiff of Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo. But the result is that it is self-defeatingly difficult to take enemy fighters off the battlefield. Detainees turned over to Afghan forces are liable to be released because the Afghan legal system has scant ability to process or hold insurgents. Those released include 37 of 41 detainees returned to Afghanistan from Guantánamo. Many of them are believed to have returned to fighting coalition forces. This "catch and release" pattern not only undermines the morale of coalition and Afghan forces but also jeopardizes the willingness of villagers to cooperate with the coalition, because they know that terrorists they turn in could be back to wreak vengeance within weeks. "We catch IED facilitators and release them," one American officer in RC-South told us. "We hope and pray they don't come back to hit our guys."

The small number of U.S. forces still outside the NATO mandate do have the right to take prisoners, but they are holding only 620 detainees at the Theater Internment Facility located at Bagram Air Base north of Kabul. Another 350 suspected insurgents are housed at the Afghan National Detention Facility, a wing at the Pul-e-Charkhi prison that has been built and supervised by American personnel but is operated by Afghans. By way of comparison, at the height of the surge in Iraq, U.S. forces were detaining 24,000 people. And no one suggests that Afghanistan's insurgents are 24 times fewer than Iraq's. Although counting the enemy is an inexact science in any counterinsurgency, the estimates we heard suggest that there are at least as many enemy fighters in Afghanistan as in Iraq. Some will be killed and others may be co-opted, but it will be hard to pacify the country until more of these terrorists are locked up.

For the long term, that will require putting more efforts into bolstering the rule of law in Afghanistan-building prisons and courts and training judges, lawyers, and prison guards. That is something that has not received nearly the priority it deserved, and it has created an opening for the Taliban who operate sharia courts to settle disputes that ought to be settled by tribal elders or government courts. But even with more resources being poured into this area, it will take years to build sufficient judicial capacity. In the meantime, defeating the insurgency will require the United States to expand its own detention facilities. (The Bagram facility is already being renovated to handle 1,200 prisoners by the fall, but there is room there to build cells for as many as 3,000 more.) Just as important, it will require the United States to push its allies to allow ISAF forces to detain terrorism suspects. Even if our allies balk at this (as most surely will), U.S. commanders should give U.S. troops wider detention authority than they currently enjoy under their NATO mandate.

Even under the best of circumstances, the coalition will face a long, difficult fight in Afghanistan. But it is hardly a mission impossible. It is not even as difficult as the war in Iraq, where the insurgents were better organized and more deadly. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that bringing a measure of stability to Afghanistan will require considerable expenditure of blood and treasure over a number of years. Is it worth it?

Those who answer in the negative point out that Afghanistan no longer hosts substantial concentrations of al Qaeda. They argue that it is these international terrorists who should be of concern to the United States and that we shouldn't waste our resources fighting the Taliban and assorted other local malefactors. It is true that today there are more al Qaeda fighters, to say nothing of leaders, in Pakistan than in Afghanistan. But the most effective steps we can take to target them, using Predators and other assets, are made possible by the coalition troop presence in Afghanistan. If coalition forces pull out of Afghanistan or substantially reduce their presence, the already limited willingness of the government of Pakistan to cooperate with the United States will evaporate. Pakistan will see that the Taliban are heading toward victory and will cut deals with them-something that is already happening but will accelerate if U.S. forces are seen as being on the way out.

A victory for the insurgents in Afghanistan would have baleful consequences on many levels. It would, first of all, be a major morale-boost to the terrorists and a devastating blow to American prestige and credibility. The mujahedeen victory over the Red Army led to the rise of al Qaeda and hastened the dissolution of the Soviet Union. There is no doubt that al Qaeda would trumpet an insurgent victory in Afghanistan today as the defeat of another superpower by the jihadists. An insurgent victory would also surely lead to the establishment of major terrorist base camps in Afghanistan of the kind that existed prior to September 11, 2001. Finally, an insurgent victory in Afghanistan would significantly undermine the government in Pakistan. Many of the groups fighting in the Pashtun belt of Afghanistan and Pakistan are as eager to topple the government in Islamabad as the one in Kabul, and victory on one side of the border would accelerate their efforts on the other side. Conversely, if the coalition could stabilize Afghanistan, that would provide a major boost to the government of Pakistan in its efforts to police its frontier districts.

Those who say that we cannot succeed in Afghanistan without fixing Pakistan have it backwards. We cannot begin to improve the situation in Pakistan without improving Afghanistan, and it is possible to do that no matter what happens in Pakistan because, for all the cross-border support it receives, the Afghan insurgency remains largely home-grown.

While the United States is in Afghanistan to battle terrorism, it cannot define its mission in narrow "counter-terrorism" terms. That is a term of art within the military for commando strikes carried out by Special Operations and CIA forces backed by precision airpower. Such strikes have to be an integral part of the American war effort, but they cannot be its sum total. We have been pursuing such actions for years in Afghanistan without significantly weakening the insurgency. As one senior American officer told us, "I thought we could decapitate the insurgency. I was wrong. We've gone through 22 HVTs [high value targets] in this province, but they nominate someone new to take over leadership very fast. The duration of our success is no more than three to four weeks before the insurgents have a new leader, and often that person is younger and more brutal. Even if someone killed Baitullah Mehsud [head of the Pakistan Taliban], someone else will simply take over."

Experience in Iraq showed that the only effective way to deny terrorists sanctuary is to pursue a full-spectrum counterinsurgency strategy that establishes governmental control of contested areas. That means putting coalition and local security forces into villages where they can gain the trust of the locals and thereby secure the intelligence needed to root out terrorists. Otherwise, if coalition forces are only a fleeting presence, locals will never rat out the terrorists for fear of retribution. The security "line of operations" has to be coupled with efforts to promote better governance and economic and social development.

Those who claim that this is a fool's errand because Afghanistan has never had any effective governance only reveal their own ignorance of that country's long and proud history. For all its tribalism and internecine warfare, Afghanistan has been an independent country since the 18th century, with such strong monarchs as Dost Mohammad, who drove out a British incursion in 1842 and ruled for 33 years. Under King Mohammad Zahir Shah, who ruled from 1933 to 1973, Afghanistan made considerable economic and political progress, including the adoption of a fairly democratic written constitution. It was relatively peaceful and stable before a Marxist coup in 1978 set off a long period of war and turmoil whose most consequential events were the Soviet invasion in 1979, the Soviets' departure in 1989, and the rise of the Taliban starting in 1994.

In seeking to repair Afghanistan's tattered social fabric, the coalition will have to foster the growth of representative government, which is hardly an alien import but rather comports neatly with Afghanistan's long tradition of tribal councils that rely on the consent of the community. That doesn't mean that the coalition should foster a rigidly centralized regime. In fact, a bit more decentralization could be a spur to progress. In particular, it is important to change the constitution to allow governors to be elected rather than appointed by the president in order to make them more accountable to those they are supposed to serve.

But the West would be making a big mistake if it were to give up on supporting the governmental system that it helped to midwife in 2002. That doesn't necessarily mean supporting Hamid Karzai-but neither does it mean pushing him out. Officials in the Obama administration, from Vice President Biden on down, have been publicly trashing the president of Afghanistan without grooming a viable alternative. This will only make our task more difficult if Karzai is reelected in the presidential election scheduled to be held in August. It is important to respect the wishes of the Afghan people, as expressed at the ballot box, while working to bolster the effectiveness of their anemic governmental institutions.

The greatest asset that the United States and its allies have in the battle for Afghanistan's future is the people of Afghanistan. In a recent poll conducted by ABC, the BBC, and ARD, only 4 percent of Afghans expressed a desire to be ruled by the Taliban. Sunni and Shiite insurgents in Iraq enjoyed far higher levels of popular support in their respective communities at the height of the violence. For all their ferocity and cunning, the insurgents in Afghanistan do not offer a viable alternative that can win widespread acceptance. They can only take power if coalition forces give up the fight. To do so would hand Islamist terrorists their most significant-indeed, almost their only-victory since 9/11. It is fully in the power of coalition forces to prevent that dire outcome, but only if they have the popular support back home to finish what we started in 2001.

Max Boot, a contributing editor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD, is the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow in National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Frederick W. Kagan, a contributing editor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD, is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Kimberly Kagan is the president of the Institute for the Study of War and the author of The Surge: A Military History.

(Bona Fide) Creep in the Banana Republic

noreply@blogger.com (David Locke) — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 17:25:00 +0000

Laggiù nel paese dei tropici, dove il sole è più sole che qua, sotto l'ombra degli alberi esotici, non t'immagini che caldo che fa... But I'm a (bona fide) creep, I'm a weirdo, what the hell am I doin' here? I don't belong here.

Officer Leads Old Corps in New Role in Pakistan

noreply@blogger.com (David Locke) — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 17:58:00 +0000

March 7, 2009 - The New York Times

By ERIC SCHMITT

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Maj. Gen. Tariq Khan, commander of Pakistan’s Frontier Corps paramilitary force, got some bad news the other day: The Pakistani Army needed its two helicopters back for a more urgent mission.

Trouble was, they were the only two helicopters General Khan had that day — or any other day — to combat Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the country’s lawless tribal areas. “If the army needs their assets, we don’t get priority,” General Khan said of the transport and attack aircraft that the army lends him because his forces have none of their own.

So it goes for the Frontier Corps, a stepchild of the army that has to borrow most of its heavy weaponry, even as it increasingly finds itself on the front lines fighting Qaeda and Taliban operations that threaten American troops in Afghanistan and are increasingly destabilizing Pakistan.

Still, with the 500,000-member Pakistani Army focused on its archenemy, India, and reluctant to embrace serious counterinsurgency training, the Frontier Corps, long maligned as poorly trained, ill equipped and at times in league with the insurgents, may yet be the country’s best immediate hope for countering a fast-spreading militancy.

Unlike the Punjabi-dominated army, the 60,000 troops in the Frontier Corps are largely drawn from Pashtun tribesmen who know the language and culture of the tribal areas, making it the most suitable force to combat an insurgency there, Pakistani and American military officials say.

Enter General Khan, a portly, 52-year-old tank commander who made his name last year battling the Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud in South Waziristan. He took command of the corps seven months ago and has sought to drag it from its 19th-century border-patrol past into the 21st-century world of counterinsurgency.

The general, who once was Pakistan’s military representative at the United States Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Fla., has already improved morale by raising salaries and expanding medical care to dependents. He has drafted a detailed plan to overhaul the corps, aiming to transform it into a more agile lightly armed force while also swelling its ranks by more than 10,000 to allow home leaves.

He is an unusually progressive officer, a trait that has ruffled some feathers among his army brethren. In this conservative society, General Khan plans to offer women jobs as medics in rear-area field hospitals, freeing up male orderlies to fight.

Pakistani and American officials say the Frontier Corps is already more effective now. The corps’s forces, fighting alongside regular army soldiers, have largely wrapped up operations against the Taliban in the Bajaur, Mohmand and Khyber areas of the tribal belt, the general said.

A new commando unit within the Frontier Corps has used information from the Central Intelligence Agency and other sources to kill or capture as many as 60 militants in the past seven months, a senior Pakistani military official said. “The results speak for themselves,” Owais Ahmed Ghani, the governor of the North-West Frontier Province, which includes the tribal areas, said in an interview.

General Khan has strong support from the army chief of staff, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. But many military analysts question whether General Khan will get the resources and backing to continue carrying out his changes. Moreover, some critics say, the recent Frontier Corps operations have not eliminated the Taliban threat, but just shunted it to neighboring areas.

“The Frontier Corps has shown improvement, but there’s still a long way to go,” said Hasan Askari Rizvi, a military analyst in Lahore. “The Taliban are entrenched and move quickly from one area to another.”

The United States has thrown its support behind the corps. The Pentagon has spent more than $40 million to equip it with new body armor, vehicles, radios and surveillance equipment, with more in the pipeline. Over all, American officials have said that the United States could spend more than $400 million in the next several years to enhance the corps, including building a training base near Peshawar.

A United States Army Special Forces officer is assigned to the corps’s headquarters here to help share intelligence and coordinate operations with American forces across the border in Afghanistan.

Last fall, about 30 American and British military instructors spent three months training some 120 senior enlisted corps troops in new weapons, combat tactics, communications and other technical skills. Those Pakistani troops will in turn train additional corps forces.

But a review of policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan by the National Security Council this year, under former President George W. Bush, concluded that the “train-the-trainer” approach was so indirect that it would take about 12 years to field an effective counterinsurgency force. “They’ve got a long way to go before you can rely on them,” Representative John F. Tierney, a Massachusetts Democrat, said of the corps. Mr. Tierney’s oversight subcommittee has conducted several hearings on Pakistan.

In an interview here at his headquarters, a massive 19th-century brick fortress built by the British, General Khan said that a relatively modest investment — say, $300 million — in sensors, night-fighting equipment, sniper rifles and helicopters would enable the corps to respond to specific threats within 90 minutes and “to go independently anywhere it wanted to go.”

“It would change the dimension of the combat capacity of the Frontier Corps,” he said. “In the long run, it would reduce expenditures because you wouldn’t need so many troops.”

In the end, General Khan said the only long-term solution was to rebuild the tribal leadership structure that has been decimated by Taliban attacks, and then provide local tribal communities economic assistance and job training. “I consider the front-line force against the militants to be the tribes themselves,” General Khan said. “By bringing back tribal leadership, we’d be able to control this. But we have to have the wherewithal to protect those tribes.”

Riguardatevi il Tg1 delle 20.00 di stasera (02/03/09) e capirete perché Franceschini non è affatto un cretino

noreply@blogger.com (David Locke) — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 20:18:00 +0000

Ok, ok, lasciamo perdere la prima uscita, quella a Ferrara con the book of my father e tutta l'enfasi zuccherosa che sembrava Veltroni al Lingotto. Un'uscita che pure è servita a dare un segno ai suoi e a zittire Di Pietro (a proposito, che fine ha fatto Di Pietro?)

Concentriamoci sulle cose serie: il Tg1. Vale a dire, l'unica testata che in Italia sposta veramente i voti. E spesso proprio quei voti che fanno vincere o perdere un'elezione. Concentriamoci sull'edizione delle 20.00, la più seguita. Sull'edizione del 2 marzo.

Apertura: il lunedì nero delle Borse, il Pil 2008 che secondo l'Istat è giù dell'1%. A seguire, Conferenza dei Paesi donatori per Gaza, Berlusconi che annuncia (noi sappiamo che non è vero, ma visto che se la sono cercata, in fondo è anche troppo) che l'Italia donerà 100 milioni di dollari per la ricostruzione della Striscia. Segue ancora - e qui siamo al capolavoro (inconsapevole?) - di Riotta, Franceschini che incalza ancora il governo con la sua proposta di un assegno per i disoccupati e il governo che risponde di no. Seguono ancora - e qui siamo all'autolesionismo (probabilmente involontario) i vari portavoce del governo che dicono che è già stato fatto molto aiutando le banche, ecc. ecc. Nel mezzo c'è anche Casini, ma in questa fase non conta.

Allora, fermo restando che:

1) Tutti sappiamo (o dovremmo sapere) che la proposta di Franceschini, per quanto suggestiva sostanzialmente giusta, è assolutamente impraticabile, non solo per via di Maastricht e del rating sul nostro debito pubblico, ma anche perché nel Paese delle finte pensioni di invalidità, delle finte ricette, dei finti tagliandi auto per disabili, delle finte aziende che prendono i contributi statali e della Ue, del finto tutto, l'assegno di disoccupazione rischia di diventare la nuova Cassa del Mezzogiorno.

2) Tutti sappiamo (o dovremmo sapere) che storicamente, in Italia, chi non ha mai voluto l'istituzione di assegni di disoccupazione (così come sono previsti nel resto dei Paesi industrializzati), è stato il Sindacato, in particolare la Cgil, e questo per motivi facilmente comprensibili (gli assegni di disoccupazione sono generalizzati, vengono erogati a prescindere dalla appartenenza sindacale e a prescindere dalla mediazione sindacale e la loro erogazione non è gestibile dal sindacato che così perde potere negoziale, cioè potere, quindi meglio i famigerati 'ammortizzatori sociali', da contrattare con le aziende e con i governi).

Dunque, fermi restando i punti di cui sopra, bisogna capire che qui non conta la realtà reale, ma quella percepita. E, in base alla scaletta del Tg1 delle 20.00 del 2 marzo 2009, lo spettatore medio del Tg1, vale a dire quello che fa vincere o perdere le elezioni, capisce che:

1) L'economia sta andando a puttane e c'è il rischio di rimanere presto in mezzo a una strada, ammesso che lo spettatore medio del Tg1 non ci si trovi già in mezzo a una strada;

2) L'Italia (Berlusconi) sta spendendo soldi (100 milioni di dollari ufficialmente, anche se in realtà sono molti di meno) per ricostruire le case a quelli che se le sone fatte bombardare dagli israeliani perché continuavano a tirare missili contro gli israeliani, anche se quelli gli avevano detto, smettetela sennò vi bombardiamo le case;

3) Il segretario del Pd, tale Franceschini ("... ma chi è, non c'era quell'altro, Veltroni? No, ti sbagli con D'Alema..."), fa una proposta giusta, cioè dare un assegno a chi resta in mezzo alla strada;

4) Il governo (Berlusconi) dice di no, perché l'assegno costa troppo ed è già stato speso molto per aiutare le banche, le imprese, ecc. ecc. (.. e per me?, pensa lo spettatore medio del Tg1)

Conclusione. Con una proposta che i miopi si ostinano a definire "demagogica", ma che i saggi dovrebbero invece valutare concretamente, Franceschini ha messo in difficoltà il governo (Berlusconi) e ribaltato completamente l'immagine del Pd di Veltroni. Quel partito inconcludente e molliccio (abituato a valutare il mondo in base alla disposizione degli ombrelloni sulla spiaggia di Capalbio), sempre attento ai 'diritti' (di cui la maggioranza degli italiani si sente piena e non gliene frega niente di averne di più) e mai attento ai bisogni (di cui pure la maggioranza degli italiani si sente piena, ma preferirebbe non averne affatto, o comunque un po' meno).

Franceschini non è affatto un cretino.

Dubbi, solo dubbi

noreply@blogger.com (David Locke) — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 20:29:00 +0000

Eluana Englaro è morta. Il pensiero va alla sua famiglia, ai suoi amici, a chi l'ha conosciuta e l'ha amata. E va a lei, ovunque sia ora. Personalmente, dubbi, solo e ancora dubbi. In questo momento, tra i tanti pensieri, vengono in mente due suggestioni letterarie. La prima dalla Bibbia, la seconda da Shakespeare. “Io non godo della morte di chi muore. Parola del Signore Dio. Convertitevi e vivrete". (Ezechiele, 18-32). "Se ci ferite noi non sanguiniamo? Se ci solleticate, noi non ridiamo? Se ci avvelenate noi non moriamo? E se ci fate un torto, non ci vendicheremo? Se noi siamo come voi in tutto, vi assomiglieremo anche in questo". (Dal monologo di Shylock, dal Mercante di Venezia).

Obama tende la mano all'Islam (ma non è che Bush gliel'abbia mai negata)

noreply@blogger.com (David Locke) — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 20:30:00 +0000

Una mia amica italiana, all'indomani dell'11 Settembre 2001, rimase sconvolta dalla reazione americana. Ma come, mi disse, io pensavo che Bush avrebbe chiamato Bin Laden per negoziare e invece quello ha invaso l'Afghanistan (dopo l'Iraq l'amica mi tolse per un po' anche il saluto)...

Ora immagino che la mia amica, dopo 'l'apertura di Obama all'Islam', come hanno titolato molti giornali dopo l'insediamento del nuovo presidente americano, sarà un po' più tranquilla. E con lei tutti i paladini del volemose bene, secondo i quali se uno ti attacca, non solo non devi rispondere, ma devi anche sottoporti a lunghe e dolorose sedute di autoanalisi per domandarti come mai ti hanno attaccato. Perché alla fine, gira che ti rigira, se uno ti attacca è perché tu gli hai fatto qualcosa no? Citare esempi storici di un certo rilievo, come ad esempio l'invasione nazista della Polonia, serve a poco in questi casi.

Un'altra mia amica, americana, attivista democratica, insieme alla quale ho assistito al giuramento di Obama come 44esimo presidente, auspica addirittura che il Congresso apra una commissione di inchiesta per processare 'Bush e la sua cricca' per i crimini di cui si sono macchiati negli ultimi otto anni.

Il Bene contro il Male, quindi. La visione per così dire manichea, tanto a lungo rimproverata al presidente uscente Bush nella 'sua' Guerra al Terrorismo, stavolta viene applicata per commentare il passaggio di consegne tra l'amministrazione dei Cattivi e quella dei Buoni.

Per inciso, uno dei primi gesti simbolici del presidente 'cattivo', dopo gli attacchi alle Torri Gemelle e al Pentagono, fu di visitare una moschea, tanto a ribadire che non era che 'noi' ce l'avevamo con 'loro', ma che una piccola parte di 'loro', semmai, ce l'aveva con 'noi' e che comunque dovevamo 'tutti' assolutamente evitare di iniziare a dividerci ed eventualmente a scannarci in base a criteri di appartenenza religiosa e culturale. Di quel gesto pochi si ricordano, ovviamente, preferendo esaltare la famosa gaffe della 'crociata'. E vabbé.

Direi che per una volta la posizione più pragmatica ce l'hanno avuta quelle poche centinaia di irriducibili alfieri della libertà che animano alcuni centri sociali italiani, che durante le manifestazioni pro Hamas che si svolgevano nelle nostre città, mentre ancora infuriava la battaglia di Gaza, maledicevano in egual modo Bush e Obama. Oltre, ovviamente, lo Stato di Israele.

Altrettanto pragmatismo lo ha dimostrato quella parte di Islam, certo assai minoritaria, ma decisamente irriducibile alla quale Bush, fottendosene degli auspici della mia amica italiana (e di parecchie anime belle come lei sparse per il mondo), si è ostinato in questi anni a fare la guerra. I messaggi via Internet di Al Qaeda o quelli della leadership di Hamas, all'indomani dell'insediamento del nuovo presidente, lasciano poco spazio alle buone intenzioni. Obama è come Bush, vale a dire un nemico. Questo il senso.

Una posizione lievemente più articolata e quindi più interessante l'hanno invece assunta alcuni gruppi fondamentalisti pakistani, che periodicamente mi inviano le loro newsletter. L'animatore di questi gruppi, tale Kaukab Siddique, ha accolto molto positivamente il discorso inaugurale di Obama, titolando il suo commento: 'Al contrario di Bush parla senza arroganza, tratta i musulmani da pari, ma minaccia Al Qaeda'.

Nel testo si legge che Obama è stato reso possibile dallo sforzo islamico, poiché se Bush avesse vinto le sue guerre, non ci sarebbe stato nessun Obama. Quindi, è grazie alla resistenza islamica in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Palestina e in ogni angolo del mondo dove l'imperialismo americano e sionista hanno tentato di affondare i loro stivali se oggi gli Stati Uniti e il mondo hanno un presidente 'buono' che ha sostituito uno 'cattivo'.

Certo, conclude Siddique, c'è ancora quella minaccia che Obama (senza citarla esplicitamente) ha rivolto ad Al Qaeda, l'organizzazione che più di ogni altra, in questi anni, ha resistito strenuamente all'imperialismo di Bush e ci sono ancora tutti quei dannati sionisti al fianco del nuovo presidente, che rischiano di comprometterne l'azione riformatrice, magari suggerendogli che Hamas è un'organizzazione terroristica. E ci sono poi personaggi come il generale Petraeus che vogliono convincerlo che la guerra in Afghanistan può essere vinta, ma per il momento godiamoci almeno la speranza.

Uno si immagina che in un Paese isterico e tendente al fascismo come l'America di Bush, minato nei suoi valori fondamentali dall'odioso Patriot Act, uno come Siddique, invece di mandare newsletter in giro per il mondo, se ne stia rinchiuso a Guantanamo a subire violenze e umiliazioni degne di un gulag sovietico. E invece, guarda un po', se ne è sempre stato a Kingsville, nel Maryland, a insegnare ai suoi studenti, a editare e spedire in giro per il mondo il suo newtrendmag.org, 'The Biggest Islamic web site in the USA'.

Taliban Fill NATO’s Big Gaps in Afghan South

noreply@blogger.com (David Locke) — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 18:14:00 +0000

The New York Times

January 22, 2009

By Dexter Filkins

TSAPOWZAI, Afghanistan — The Taliban are everywhere the soldiers are not, the saying goes in the southern part of the country.

And that is a lot of places.

For starters, there is the 550 miles of border with Pakistan, where the Taliban’s busiest infiltration routes lie.

“We’re not there,” said Brig. Gen. John W. Nicholson, the deputy commander of NATO forces in southern Afghanistan. “The borders are wide open.”

Then there is the 100-mile stretch of Helmand River running south from the town of Garmser, where the Taliban and their money crop, poppy, bloom in isolation.

“No one,” General Nicholson said, pointing to the area on the map.

Then there is Nimroz Province, all of it, which borders Iran. No troops there. And the Ghorak district northwest of Kandahar, which officers refer to as the “jet stream” for the Taliban fighters who flow through.

Ditto the districts of Shah Wali Kot, Kharkrez and Nesh, where the presence of NATO troops is minimal or nil.

“We don’t have enough forces to secure the population,” General Nicholson said.

The general is going to get a lot more troops very soon. American commanders in southern Afghanistan have been told to make plans to accept nearly all of the 20,000 to 30,000 additional troops that the Obama administration has agreed to deploy.

The influx promises to significantly reshape the environment of southern Afghanistan, the birthplace of the Taliban. The region now produces an estimated 90 percent of the world’s opium, which bankrolls the Taliban.

While the American-led coalition holds the cities and highways, it appears to have ceded much of the countryside to the Taliban, because it lacks sufficient forces to confront them.

A force of about 20,000 American, British, Canadian and Dutch soldiers have been trying for years to secure the 78,000 square miles of villages, cities, mountains and deserts that make up southern Afghanistan. The region is one of the two centers of the Taliban insurgency, which has made a remarkable resurgence since being booted from power in November 2001.

The other center is in the eastern mountains, where 22,500 American troops are battling a multiheaded enemy, which includes Al Qaeda. Its operational center is based in the tribal areas of Pakistan.

Here in southern Afghanistan, the insurgency is homegrown and self-sustaining. The home village of the Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, is 30 miles from here. Poppy fields, now fallow in winter, dot the countryside here and in neighboring Helmand Province. The United Nations estimates that the opium trade provides the Taliban with about $300 million a year.

American commanders say the open borders allow the opium to move unimpeded into Pakistan and other places, and for weapons and other supplies to flow in. Five of the six busiest Taliban infiltration routes are in the south, American officers said.

“Drugs out,” one American officer said, “guns in.”

The commanders here call the current situation “stalemate,” meaning they can hold what they have but cannot do much else. Of the 20,000 British, American and other troops here, only roughly 300 — a group of British Royal Marines — can be moved around the region to strike the Taliban. All the other units must stay where they are, lest the area they hold slip from their grasp.

It is perhaps in Kandahar, one of the provincial capitals, where the lack of troops is most evident. About 3,000 Canadian soldiers are assigned to secure the city, home to about 500,000 people. In a recent visit, this reporter traveled the city for five days and did not see a single Canadian soldier on the streets.

The lack of troops has allowed the Taliban to mount significant attacks inside the city. Two clerics who joined a pro-government advisory council, for instance, have been gunned down in the past two months, bringing the total assassinated council members to 24. Over the summer, a Taliban force invaded Kandahar and stormed its main prison, freeing more than 1,200 inmates.

But whether extra troops will have the desired impact is unclear. Adding 20,000 new troops to the 20,000 Western soldiers already here — in addition to an equal number of Afghan policemen and army personnel — would bring the total to 60,000. The six provinces that make up southern Afghanistan have a population of 3.2 million. In that case, the ratio of troops to population would just match that recommended by the United States Army’s counterinsurgency manual: 50 people per soldier or police officer.

American commanders say the extra troops will better enable them to pursue a more sophisticated campaign against the insurgents; the overriding objective, rather than killing Taliban fighters, is to provide security for the civilian population and thereby isolate the insurgents.

Even so, many of the Western troops already here are not deployed among the population. And Afghanistan, with its predominantly rural population living in mostly small villages, presents unique challenges.

Across much of the countryside, the Taliban appear to hold the upper hand, not necessarily because they are popular, but because they are unopposed. Hediatullah Hediat, for instance, is a businessman from Musa Qala, a city in Helmand Province that was occupied by the Taliban for much of 2007 until the insurgents were expelled by British troops at the end of that year. (The British have about 8,000 troops in Helmand Province.) The British, Mr. Hediat said, control the center of Musa Qala and nothing more.

“The Taliban are everywhere,” Mr. Hediat said in an interview in Kandahar, where he had come for business. “The Taliban are so near to the city that you can see them from the city itself. The British can see them. They can see each other.”

Mr. Hediat said he had no great gripes with the British soldiers who were occupying the town — for one thing, he said, they do not raid houses and peer at the women. But the biggest complaint, he said, was the Afghan the British installed as the district governor, Mullah Salam. The governor is unpopular and corrupt, demanding bribes and tributes from anyone who needs something.

“This is why people hate the British, because they put Mullah Salam in power, and they keep him there,” he said.

In the mud-brick villages that line the Arghandab River, winning over the people is no easy job. The Taliban are here, in the villages; earlier this month, a suicide bomber killed two American soldiers and nine Afghans in the Maiwand bazaar. But the Taliban are mostly invisible.

On a recent foot patrol through the village of Tsapowzai, about thirty miles west of Kandahar, a platoon of American soldiers ventured inside and found empty streets. It was a sunny day. A pair of Afghans stared at them from a wheat field, and neither of them waved. No one stepped from his house to say hello.

“Where’s everybody at, Jimmy?” Lt. Brian James asked a comrade.

“Don’t know,” Lt. James Holloway replied.

Finally, the soldiers came across three Afghan men. They were sitting on a blanket and listening to music on a radio. What followed seemed, more than anything, a game.

“So, seen any Taliban lately?” Lieutenant Holloway asked the men.

“We haven’t seen the Taliban in eight months,” a man named Niamatullah said, looking up.

“Do you ever see anyone moving through here at night?” Lieutenant Holloway asked.

“We don’t go outside at night,” said Mr. Niamatullah, who, like many Afghans, uses one name. “When we do, you guys search us and hold us for hours. And you never find anything.”

Lieutenant Holloway shook his head.

“The last person we stopped in this village, we held for 20 minutes,” the lieutenant said. “We never detain anyone.”

“We are afraid of you,” Mr. Niamatullah said.

“Is there a Taliban curfew?” Lieutenant Holloway asked.

“Only a man with a white shawl is allowed outside at night,” Mr. Niamatullah said.

“A white shawl?” Lieutenant Holloway squinted.

Mr. Niamatullah did not offer to explain.

“But he has no gun, so you cannot detain him.”

After several minutes, Lieutenant Holloway gave up.

“Everybody knows something,” Lieutenant Holloway said, walking away, “But no one tells us anything.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/world/asia/22taliban.html?hp

Time has come for us to pause

noreply@blogger.com (David Locke) — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 15:49:00 +0000

Jorma Kaukonen - Genesis

Annozero, la guerra e la TV, la luna e il dito

noreply@blogger.com (David Locke) — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 16:42:00 +0000

Solo in un paese che ha perso il senso di sé, perennemente intento a guardarsi l'ombelico, la rappresentazione (deformata e grottesca) di un evento suscita più interesse dell'evento stesso e lo sopravanza nella impaginazione dei giornali e nei sommari dei TG. Questo, per certi versi, dà quasi più fastidio di quanto abbiamo visto in televisione giovedì sera.

La rissa Annunziata-Santoro ad Annozero è stata brutta e volgare, soprattutto perché ha spinto sullo sfondo la tragedia della guerra, le sofferenze dei civili di Gaza e quelle dei civili israeliani , costringendo le telecamere a zoomare sui volti incattiviti dei due protagonisti.

Tanto sfacciato protagonismo, di fronte a paure, dolori, emozioni così grandi, fa veramente ribrezzo. Tanto per dirne una, di Dexter Filkins del New York Times, oggi forse il miglior reporter di guerra in circolazione, pochi conoscono il volto. Eppure, molte delle cose raccontate sull'Afghanistan, l'Iraq, il Medio Oriente, di cui poi si discute (spesso a sproposito) negli esaltati talk show televisivi, le ha raccontate lui per primo. Lo stesso dicasi per alcuni dei migliori inviati di guerra italiani.

La puntata di Annozero su Gaza era una autentica porcheria. I motivi per cui lo era erano tanti e nemmeno vale la pena stare qui a ricordarli ed elencarli. Cadrei nella solita rissa da bar tra chi ritiene Michele Santoro il depositario di tutte le verità negate d'Italia e del mondo e chi lo ritiene invece il peggiore esempio di disinfomazione possibile. Finché ci saranno queste risse, Santoro continuerà ad essere sicuramente il titolare di un cospicuo conto in banca.

Insomma, chissenefrega. Nel senso che per quanto mi riguarda, se un programma non mi piace, cambio canale. Punto. Non sto a perdere tempo, a indignarmi e nemmeno a chiedere che il tale conduttore venga riportato all'ordine o rimosso. E nemmeno vale il ragionamento per cui trattandosi di un programma Rai, quindi del servizio pubblico, ci sono degli obblighi ben precisi, ecc ecc. Il problema, semmai, non è rimuovere Santoro, ma proporre programmi che sappiano raccontare e spiegare i fatti con maggiore rigore e altrettanto successo.

Lì per lì, nella concitazione della diretta, ho fatto anche io l'errore che si fa allo stadio, quando ci si alza in piedi e si urla, "Rigore!". Eppoi, riguardando la moviola, si scopre che poi così rigore non era e l'arbitro in fondo non era così cornuto. Che insomma, forse il nostro giocatore s'è buttato apposta.

Quello che voglio dire è che se mi invitassero al Manifesto per un dibattito, non passerei il tempo che mi è concesso a dire, "ragazzi, ma che giornale di merda che fate, ma che titoli...". Tenterei di esporre le mie idee. Altrimenti, me ne starei a casa.

Idem per Annozero, la cui formula giornalistica è nota da anni. Intervenire due volte (su tre) per dire che la trasmissione è sbagliata, faziosa, ecc. come ha fatto la Annunziata, non ha impedito alla trasmissione stessa di proseguire sui binari della faziosità, ma l'ha trasformata in una ancora più fastidiosa rissa tra prime donne stanche e incarognite. La guerra, poteva aspettare.

Small talk on war days

noreply@blogger.com (David Locke) — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 14:22:00 +0000

Nel ristorante sotto la redazione lavora da anni un cameriere egiziano. E' una brava persona, sempre sorridente, e sa fare bene il suo lavoro, che è un lavoro difficile e con il quale anche io, tanti anni fa, mentre studiavo o in attesa di tempi migliori, mi sono guadagnato da vivere. Ci salutiamo sempre cordialmente ogni volta che passo lì davanti e lo vedo intento a lavorare ai tavoli e, ovviamente, ogni volta che vado a mangiare in quel ristorante.

In questi anni ho visto cambiare in quel posto almeno due dozzine di camerieri. Molti si improvvisano, non sanno fare quel mestiere e non hanno nemmeno grande voglia di impararlo. Il proprietario, che è un mio amico, li prova per un po' e poi passa ad altro. Lui, invece, il cameriere egiziano, nonostante le difficoltà iniziali (la lingua, ecc.) ha imparato bene ed è rimasto, apprezzato da tutti i clienti del ristorante.

Durante le feste, una mattina ho portato un po' a spasso mia figlia, che ha dieci anni. A pranzo siamo andati lì, sotto la redazione e il cameriere egiziano è stato veramente molto carino con lei e mi ha fatto i complimenti per quanto è bella, eccetera. Si preoccupava che non mangiasse abbastanza, il che è vero, essendo mia figlia, come molti bambini, un po' difficile a tavola. Quando ce ne siamo andati l'ha abbracciata e baciata su una guancia e la cosa mi ha fatto molto piacere.

Un paio di giorni fa sono andato a pranzo in quel ristorante e mi ha servito lui, il cameriere egiziano. Ero da solo, mentre aspettavo ciò che avevo ordinato, leggevo il giornale, le notizie da Gaza. Lui mi ha visto e - per la prima volta in diversi anni che vado lì - ha iniziato a commentare con me un fatto di attualità. Finora, le conversazioni, per quanto cordiali, avevano sempre e solo toccato argomenti generici, come il tempo, i prezzi che aumentano, il traffico, le difficoltà del lavoro, ciò che avevo visto e conoscevo del suo paese, ecc.

Hai visto cosa sta succedendo a Gaza, mi ha detto con aria seria e scuotendo la testa, i bambini... le donne... Io ho risposto di sì. E' tutta colpa di Israele, ha continuato. E poi, vedendo che rimanevo in silenzio, ha tentato di spiegarmi perché era per lui colpa di Israele e di chi altro era colpa. La colpa, per il mio amico egiziano, era anche dei tedeschi che aiutavano Israele per cancellare quello che avevano fatto agli ebrei in Europa e degli inglesi, che aiutavano Israele per cancellare il fatto , secondo lui, di essersi voltati dall'altra parte mentre i tedeschi facevano delle brutte cose agli ebrei nel resto d'Europa. Stranamente, non ha nominato gli americani.

Io rimanevo in silenzio, non volevo replicare alla sua visione delle cose, non volevo imbarazzarlo e non volevo nemmeno infilarmi in una conversazione che pensavo non avrebbe avuto molto senso.

Credo che abbia capito come la pensavo su Gaza, solamente quando ha tentato di dirmi, ma poi si è fermato, lo sai cosa è successo in Europa no? Sì, gli ho detto, lo so. E allora si è fermato, un po' imbarazzato e un po' perplesso e anche io ero un po' in imbarazzo e un po' perplesso. Poi se ne è andato a servire altri tavoli e io ho ripreso a leggere il mio giornale. Durante il resto del pranzo è stato come al solito gentile, ma un pezzo della sua consueta cordialità, grande o piccolo non so ancora dirlo, se n'era andato.

Forse, la prossima volta, cercherò di affrontare la discussione e vedere dove ci porta.

Il mondo che c'è

noreply@blogger.com (David Locke) — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 19:10:00 +0000

In questi giorni di guerra si attivano quegli strani meccanismi psicologici di massa che scattano in occasione di eventi grandi, in questo caso tragici. Poco serve qui ricordare perché e a causa di chi si combatte, non è questo il punto. Il punto è che si vuole partecipare in qualche modo, si vuole dire la propria, in qualche caso nella speranza, se non nell'illusione che il proprio 'esserci', sia pure a distanza, sia pure nei modi che ci sono possibili, sia pure in maniera spesso inconsapevole degli eventi, percepiti attraverso la loro rappresentazione parziale (non nel senso di parte, ma nel senso di incompleta), possa determinare in qualche modo il corso degli eventi stessi, segnarli con la propria 'presenza' e non limitarsi a rimanerne spettatori passivi.

Non sono abbastanza stronzo da giudicare la genuinità dei sentimenti altrui, siano essi vicini o lontani dai miei. E con questo non voglio nemmeno avallare quell'atteggiamento di cosiddetta equidistanza (o equivicinanza) morale che in molti casi è solo l'anticamera dell'ennesima condanna di uno e dell'ennesima assoluzione dell'altro. Ma, ripeto, non è questo il punto, stabilire chi ha torto e chi ha ragione, ecc. ecc.

Guardiamo le immagini di guerra e dolore alla TV, alcuni di noi sono stati testimoni di immagini simili, in alcuni casi negli stessi luoghi, al di qua e al di là del confine. "Padre, perché i bambini muoiono?". La domanda senza risposta fatta da Ivan Karamazov, per me, in questo caso, una risposta ce l’ha. Ma questo non mi lava la coscienza e il cuore da ciò che vedo e so, naturalmente. Aiuta a sopravvivere, al più.

Il punto, però, ripeto ancora una volta, non è questo. Il punto è, dicevo, che si vuole partecipare e tutto questo va bene, anzi è giusto. Ma la cosa che proprio non mi va giù, in tutto questo, sono quelli che dicono e scrivono cose tipo, il mondo è uno schifo, gli uomini sono bestie, è tutto una merda, per gli interessi di pochi si scatenano tragedie, mi vergogno, ecc. ecc.

La rappresentazione grafica di questo atteggiamento è la foto, ormai un classico, che riprende di spalle il bambino palestinese e il bambino ebreo, abbracciati. Un altro mondo possibile, calpestato dalla brutalità della guerra. Voglio escludere qualsiasi retropensiero nell'impiego di quella foto. Nel senso che per alcuni quel mondo, prima del 1948, può essere non solo stato possibile, ma reale. Prima, cioè, della nascita di Israele. Ma non arrivo a pensare con tanta malizia.

Quello che mi preme dire, in un contesto più generale, è che per me il mondo, per quanto schifo possa farci quello che vediamo e percepiamo, non è mai stato migliore di quello attuale. Non c'è un'Arcadia alla quale tornare, non c'è un Eden terreno al quale bussare e chiedere con permesso di essere riammessi. Non ha senso, insomma, domandarsi se questo mondo faccia schifo o se sia il miglior mondo possibile, perché questo è l'unico mondo che c'è e qui bisogna stare. Non c'è un altro luogo. E l'unica cosa che possiamo fare, per quel che mi riguarda, è starci dentro da uomini vivi e liberi e se proprio ci teniamo a cambiarlo questo mondo, bisogna avere il coraggio di dire che la foto dei due bambini è una gran stronzata perché, ammesso che sia vera, l'unico posto dove può essere stata scattata è Israele. Al di là del confine, uno dei due bambini, il bambino ebreo, sarebbe con molta probabilità stato ucciso prima ancora di scattare la foto.

Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town

noreply@blogger.com (David Locke) — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 18:12:00 +0000

One of my Turns

noreply@blogger.com (David Locke) — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 21:17:00 +0000

One of my Turns. Pink Floyd the Wall.

W. Mark Felt, Watergate Deep Throat, Dies at 95

noreply@blogger.com (David Locke) — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 11:34:00 +0000

Nytimes.com
December 19, 2008

By TIM WEINER

W. Mark Felt, who was the No. 2 official at the F.B.I. when he helped bring down President Richard M. Nixon by resisting the Watergate cover-up and becoming Deep Throat, the most famous anonymous source in American history, died Thursday. He was 95 and lived in Santa Rosa, Calif.

His death was confirmed by Rob Jones, his grandson.

In 2005, Mr. Felt revealed that he was the one who had secretly supplied Bob Woodward of The Washington Post with crucial leads in the Watergate affair in the early 1970s. His decision to unmask himself, in an article in Vanity Fair, ended a guessing game that had gone on for more than 30 years.

The disclosure even surprised Mr. Woodward and his partner on the Watergate story, Carl Bernstein. They had kept their promise not to reveal his identity until after his death. Indeed, Mr. Woodward was so scrupulous about shielding Mr. Felt that he did not introduce him to Mr. Bernstein until this year, 36 years after they cracked the scandal. The three met for two hours one afternoon last month in Santa Rosa, where Mr. Felt had retired. The reporters likened it to a family reunion.

Mr. Felt played a dual role in the fall of Nixon. As a secret informant, he kept the story alive in the press. As associate director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, he fought the president’s efforts to obstruct the F.B.I.’s investigation of the Watergate break-in.

Without Mr. Felt, there might not have been a Watergate — shorthand for the revealed abuses of presidential powers in the Nixon White House, including illegal wiretapping, burglaries and money laundering. Americans might never have seen a president as a criminal conspirator, or reporters as cultural heroes, or anonymous sources like Mr. Felt as a necessary if undesired tool in the pursuit of truth.

Like Nixon, Mr. Felt authorized illegal break-ins in the name of national security and then received the absolution of a presidential pardon. Their lives were intertwined in ways only they and a few others knew.

Nixon cursed his name when he learned early on that Mr. Felt was providing aid to the enemy in the wars of Watergate. The conversation was recorded in the Oval Office and later made public.

“We know what’s leaked, and we know who leaked it,” Nixon’s chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, told the president on Oct. 19, 1972, four months after a team of washed-up Central Intelligence Agency personnel hired by the White House was caught trying to wiretap the Democratic Party’s national offices at the Watergate complex.

“Somebody in the F.B.I.?” Nixon asked.

“Yes, sir,” Mr. Haldeman replied. Who? the president asked. “Mark Felt,” Mr. Haldeman said. “Now why the hell would he do that?” the president asked in a wounded tone.

No one, including Mr. Felt, ever answered that question in full. Mr. Felt later said he believed that the president had been misusing the F.B.I. for political advantage. He knew that Nixon wanted the Watergate affair to vanish. He knew that the White House had ordered the C.I.A. to tell the bureau, on grounds of national security, to stand down in its felony investigation of the June 1972 break-in. He saw that order as an effort to obstruct justice, and he rejected it. That resistance led indirectly to Nixon’s resignation.

Mr. Felt had expected to be named to succeed J. Edgar Hoover, who had run the bureau for 48 years and died in May 1972. The president instead chose a politically loyal Justice Department official, L. Patrick Gray III, who later followed orders from the White House to destroy documents in the case.

The choice infuriated Mr. Felt. He later wrote that the president “wanted a politician in J. Edgar Hoover’s position who would convert the bureau into an adjunct of the White House machine.”

Hoover had sworn off break-ins without warrants — “black bag jobs,” he called them — in 1966, after carrying them out at the F.B.I. for four decades. The Nixon White House hired its own operatives to steal information, plant eavesdropping equipment and hunt down the sources of leaks. The Watergate break-in took place six weeks after Hoover died.

While Watergate was seething, Mr. Felt authorized nine illegal break-ins at the homes of friends and relatives of members of the Weather Underground, a violent left-wing splinter group. The people he chose as targets had committed no crimes. The F.B.I. had no search warrants. He later said he ordered the break-ins because national security required it.

In a criminal trial, Mr. Felt was convicted in November 1980 of conspiring to violate the constitutional rights of Americans. Nixon, who had denounced him in private for leaking Watergate secrets, testified on his behalf. Called by the prosecution, he told the jury that presidents and by extension their officers had an inherent right to conduct illegal searches in the name of national security.

“As Deep Throat, Felt helped establish the principle that our highest government officials are subject to the Constitution and the laws of the land,” the prosecutor, John W. Nields, wrote in The Washington Post in 2005. “Yet when it came to the Weather Underground bag jobs, he seems not to have been aware that this same principle applied to him.”

Seven months after the conviction, President Ronald Reagan pardoned Mr. Felt. Then 67, Mr. Felt celebrated the decision as one of great symbolic value. “This is going to be the biggest shot in the arm for the intelligence community for a long time,” he said. After the pardon, Nixon sent him a congratulatory bottle of Champagne.

Mr. Felt then disappeared from public view for a quarter of a century, denying unequivocally, time and again, that he had been Deep Throat. It was a lie he told to serve what he believed to be a higher truth.

William Mark Felt was born in Twin Falls, Idaho, on Aug. 17, 1913. After graduating from the University of Idaho, he was drawn to public service in Washington and went to work for Senator James P. Pope, a Democrat.

In 1938, he married his college sweetheart, Audrey Robinson, in Washington. They were wed by the chaplain of the House of Representatives. She died in 1984. The couple had a daughter, Joan, and a son, Mark. They and four grandsons survive Mr. Felt.

Days before Pearl Harbor, after earning a law degree in night classes at George Washington University, Mr. Felt applied to the F.B.I. and joined it in January 1942. He spent most of World War II hunting German spies.

After stints in Seattle, New Orleans and Los Angeles, Hoover named him special agent in charge of the Salt Lake City and Kansas City offices in the late 1950s. Rising to high positions at the headquarters in the 1960s, he oversaw the training of F.B.I. agents and conducted internal investigations as chief of the inspection division.

In early 1970, while waiting in an anteroom of the West Wing of the White House, Mr. Felt chanced to meet a Navy lieutenant delivering classified messages to the National Security Council staff. The young man in dress blues was Bob Woodward. By his own description fiercely ambitious and in need of adult guidance, Mr. Woodward tried to wring career counseling from his elder. He left the White House with the number to Mr. Felt’s direct line at the F.B.I.

On July 1, 1971, Hoover promoted Mr. Felt to deputy associate director, the third in command at the headquarters, beneath Hoover’s right-hand man and longtime companion, Clyde A. Tolson. With both of his superiors in poor health, Mr. Felt increasingly took effective command of the daily work of the F.B.I. When Mr. Hoover died and Mr. Tolson retired, he saw his path to power cleared.

But Nixon denied him, and he seethed with frustrated ambition in the summer of 1972.

One evening that summer, a few weeks after the Watergate break-in, Mr. Woodward, then a neophyte newspaperman, knocked on Mr. Felt’s door in pursuit of the story. Mr. Felt decided to co-operate with him and set up an elaborate system of espionage techniques for clandestine meetings with Mr. Woodward.

If Mr. Woodward needed to talk, he would move a flowerpot planted with a red flag on the balcony of his apartment on P Street in Washington. If Mr. Felt had a message, Mr. Woodward’s home-delivered New York Times would arrive with an inked circle on Page 20. Mr. Woodward would leave his apartment by the back alley that night and take one taxi to a downtown hotel, then a second to an underground parking garage in the Rosslyn section of Arlington, Va.

Within weeks, Mr. Felt steered The Post to a story establishing that the Watergate break-in was part of “a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage” directed by the White House. For the next eight months, he did his best to keep the newspaper on the trail, largely by providing, on “deep background,” anonymous confirmation of facts reporters had gathered from others. The Post’s managing editor, Howard Simons, gave him his famous pseudonym, taken from the pornographic movie then in vogue.

By June 1973, Mr. Felt was forced out of the F.B.I. Soon he came under investigation by some of the same agents he had supervised, suspected of leaking information not to The Post but to The New York Times. He spent much of the mid-1970s testifying in secret to Congress about abuses of power at the F.B.I. Millions of Americans knew him only as a shadowy figure in the 1976 movie made from the Watergate saga, “All the President’s Men,” which made “Woodward and Bernstein” legends of American journalism. In the movie, Deep Throat (Hal Holbrook) gives Mr. Woodward (Robert Redford) probably the most famous bit of free advice in the history of investigative journalism. It was a three-word road map to the heart of the matter: “Follow the money.”

Mr. Felt never said it. It was part of the myth that surrounded Deep Throat.