Danny's Weblog

William Shawcross's "Sideshow"

This book deals with the sad history of Cambodia and the effects of US policy.

It was first published many years ago, around the time Kissinger wrote his memoirs of the period, and is striking because it contains a succession of afterwords, containing the text of objections to "Sideshow" and the author's responses.

The book was interesting to me for several reasons. One is the fact that it is about Cambodia; another is that it deals with perhaps the central propaganda war of the 20th century, more bitterly-fought than any other: the Spanish Civil War, the Holocaust lie, NATO.

Personally, I felt the dissection of the maneuvering inside Cambodia in the years up to Lon Nol was very readable. It's interesting to know that Sihanouk and his family, for instance, managed to achieve the throne although the Norodom line had a prior claim.

In addition, I feel that many general criticisms of US policy are valid. The concept of the title – that the US saw Cambodia as a tiny "sideshow" important only insofar as it could be diverted to serve other interests – seems incontrovertible. (I recently happened to see a TV show about Watergate, and I saw no mention of Cambodia although this was the period of the "secret war".)

Additionally, it seems clear that US diplomats based their decisions about Cambodia on zero knowledge of or insight into Cambodia's culture and history. For instance, the effects of allowing ARVN to roam unrestrictedly inside Cambodia should have been anticipated, and special precautions taken.

On the other hand, I feel strongly that some of the criticisms made by Kissinger and his supporters are obviously true. Shawcross is evidently a supporter of the Vietnamese communists: sparing no effort to malign every ghastly *unintentional* consequence of the US war effort, he draws a veil over the horrible *intentional* results of the NVA's strategy and tactics, such as their programme of assassinations throughout the war, or their massacre of civilians during the Tet offensive.

It may well be the case that a more clever, or even less duplicitous, policy by the US could have saved Cambodia from the unmitigated hell it went through for many years. However, it is ludicrous to try to assign final blame for that atrocity to the US. The US was there because of the program of the NVA to subvert and invade South Vietnam, and the US aim of holding back the NVA, and communism in general, has only been further justified by the events in South-East Asia since then, and the admissions by the NVA of its aims and operations.

"Sideshow" is a deeply tendentious book. Its logic would have been torn apart by the same reviewers who praised it, if its intention had not been to make those who opposed US involvement in SE Asia feel less guilty about Cambodia.

Luke Rinehart's "The Dice Game"

This novel presented a very interesting idea that seems to have vanished from popular thought. It's the story of a man who realizes that all his life he's decided what to do by balancing his different needs and doing the one which is most important. He has therefore been totally suppressing certain minor drives. He decides instead on a new plan: he will allocate a percentage value to his different desires, and then roll dice for outcomes which correspond to those percentages. In other words, if he mainly wants to go home and watch TV, but one per cent of him wants to go to a bar, he will look for a dice combination that corresponds to one per cent and go to the bar if it comes up.

The novel itself just explores what that plan means, both in terms of what he does once he starts occasionally acting out those minor drives, and what it has meant to his mind to have suppressed those drives all his life until then.

I've never actually carried out this plan because the mechanics of the dice probabilities seemed cumbersome. Also, I wonder whether I would actually have the determination to overrule a major drive for the sake of a minor one occasionally. Still, the concept that so many of our drives remain unfulfilled forever – and how a simple strategy might change our lives – was an intriguing one.

It reminds me of the matter of guilt compared to the value of the individual. In most cases, for instance, of murder, the victim is arguably a better person than the perpetrator, even neglecting the circumstances of the murder, so it seems reasonable to execute the murderer. However, one can certainly imagine cases where the value of the murderer is very high compared to the murderee. In law, this issue is not taken into account at all, at least in criminal cases, but most individuals would definitely do so. A mother, of course, would consider her son more valuable than any murder victim. But one could imagine many employees who could take the view that their boss had done many good things and it would be a mistake to subject him to death because of one little slipup. That certainly seems to have been the case for Sen. Edward Kennedy.

Weird fake posthumous interview w Philip K. Dick

frontwheeldrive.com [http://frontwheeldrive.com/philip_k_dick.html]

Slashdot discussion: slashdot.org [http://slashdot.org/articles/03/07/15/0053234.shtml?tid=186&tid=214]

I was struck by one particular quote from the (notional) Dick:

I do seem attracted to trash, as if the clue lies there.

What do you mean, "the clue"?

The symbols of the divine show up in our world initially at the trash stratum.

Here's another selection from the simulacrum of Dick:

Do not believe – and I am dead serious when I say this – do not assume that order and stability are always good, in a society or in a universe. Before the new things can be born the old must perish. And that hurts. But that is part of the script of life.

...Actually, that reminds me of a conversation I had with my father when I was a teenager. I quoted to him the line from a Gilbert and Sullivan opera: "Things are not always what they seem. Skim milk masquerades as cream". (This line is referred to in one of Dick's novels, I forget which.) Irritatingly, he immediately responded that the line was identical to Shakespeare: "All that glisters is not gold". How dare one's parent have insight.

Here's the canonical (it would seem) website on Dick: www.philipkdick.com [http://www.philipkdick.com/main.htm]

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