Buzz's Obituary for the Iraqi War

President Bush declares victory and "Mission Accomplished" nine years before the Iraq war actually ended.

The last American combat troops left Iraq last week, not in a victory parade, but in the middle of the night, without advanced warning to the Iraqis, who might have attacked the last convoy as it made its way to Kuwait. The Iraqi War will be studied, written about and debated for generations to come, but its legacy is already known.

• 4,487 Americans dead
• At least 100,000 violent deaths of Iraqi civilians
• 32,226 Americans wounded, many of them horribly maimed for life
• $800 billion cost
• 505 bases & 170,000+ troops at height of conflict in 2007
• A cruel dictator, Saddam Hussein, is deposed
• In his place is a shaky elected government with an uncertain future, while sectarian bombings and violence continue daily
• Oil production, nine years after the war began, is still not up to pre-war levels, nor are municipal services such as water, electricity and garbage disposal
• America’s reputation has been sullied by such horrors as Abu Ghraib and the fact that America entered the war without justification
• Strategically, the greatest advantage has gone in the Middle East to Iran, which now has an influence disproportionate to what it had before this war began.
• Iraqi war diverted resources from the Afghanistan war for years, thereby weakening our efforts there
• America has been weakened and is less influential as a result of the war

Buzz’s Verdict: Some commentators, such as David Brooks of the NYT, argue that it is too early to tell whether the war was successful and that it will take 50-100 years to know if the war was really worth it. If it will take 50 years to figure out whether asking 4,000 Americans to die and another 30,000 Americans to serious impair their lives, the verdict is already in: it clearly wasn’t worth it.

Christmas 2011 in Bangkok

Bangkok, Thailand. December, 2011. When I first arrived in Bangkok some 10 years ago, Christmas was a footnote to the Thai's celebration of the New Year, a time when Thais have extended holidays and return to their villages to celebrate the New Year with their families. In Bangkok itself, the major hotels had elaborate Christmas day buffets for the many foreign residents and tourists. An occasional small Christmas tree with lights could be found in hotel lobbies and restaurants frequented by expats and tourists.

This has now changed as Bangkok is aglow with Christmas trees, lights, and displays incorporating traditional secular Christmas-time icons: Santa Claus, snow, reindeer, sleighs, and lighted Christmas trees (all artificial as there are no fir trees in Thailand). Thailand is 90% Buddhist, so one may wonder how this came about.

The proliferation of major malls in Bangkok, all quite beautiful and certainly among the largest and best in the world, and the malls' ceaseless marketing efforts to bring people in and, yes, spend money, have made Christmas in Bangkok a huge affair. The outdoor Christmas decorations are stunningly beautiful and rival those in any major city in America and Europe. The Christmas iconography has been kept intact by the Thais, who have not added any Thai artistic traditions to their Christmas displays. This is in contrasted to Thai architecture, which, in many instances, has taken basic and easily-recognizable Western forms, and modified them with tradition Thai symbols and designs, so that the building itself, while recognizable as largely European, is distinctively Thai.

I walked around Bangkok's CBD and took pictures of some of the decorations and displays.

16th Century Florentine Merchants in Portuguese Asia

Siam Society. Bangkok, Thailand. December 1, 2011. Of course I was aware of the great Portuguese age of exploration beginning in the 15^th century, as well as the influence of the Portuguese in such Asian locales as Goa, Malaysia, Singapore, and Macao. The Portuguese arrived in Thailand, in Ayutthaya, in the early 16^th century. What I had no knowledge of, was that the Portuguese were financed by the merchants and bankers of Florence, who played a vital role in supporting the Portuguese. This little known aspect of Asian-European history was the subject of Maura Rinaldi’s December 1 lecture at Bangkok’s Siam Society. Ms. Rinaldi, an Italian, is a recognized authority on the history of this period. Her interesting lecture was accompanied by a steady stream of pictures and maps. Italian Maura Rinaldi (above) lectures at Bangkok's Siam Society.

From Bach to Broadway

Siam Society. Bangkok, Thailand. November 29, 2011. There are very few opportunities for a Thai opera singer to perform in Thailand, but whenever there is a live opera here, baritone Saran Suebsantiwongse is sure to be a member of the cast. Educated at the Manhattan School of Music in New York, and the Royal College of Music in London, Saran has a gorgeous voice, powerful, but not harsh. Ably accompanied on the piano by Pornphan Banternghansa, he sang a varied program from Bach, Brahms, Ravel, and ending with Broadway standards. Saran is currently a professor of voice at Silpakorn University, and his students constituted a cheering section, which Saran and Pronphan well-deserved.

An Evening of Chamber Music

German cellist Kleinknecht (left) and Japanese pianist Hayashi (right) at the Goethe, Bangkok

Goethe Institut Auditorium. Bangkok, Thailand. November 28, 2011. Another pleasant, if undistinguished, evening of varied chamber music, at the Goethe Institut, featured German cellist Friedrich Kleinknecht and Japanese pianist Sumiko Hayashi. One benefit of small venues like this, is that artists sometimes feel free to let their inner imaginations roam into interpretations of well-known classics that would never get onto CDs or be received well in major concert halls. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. Hayashi’s playing of a Schubert Impromptu and four Moments Musicaux, were marked by what would have been extreme rubato even for Chopin, and accented and pronounced bass that was anything but classical. Having grown up on Gillels’ and others’ playing of these popular works, I was surprised that I actually liked the way Hayashi departed from accepted classical tradition, but I can’t say I would welcome a repeat performance. Cellist Kleinknecht’s tone was somewhat harsh, but his Beethoven and Schubert were pleasant to listen to. It was notable that Hayashi, when she partnered with Kleinknecht, reverted to more normal standards of interpretation and provided beautiful accompaniment. The evening ended with a wind quartet performance of a Rossini quartet, by the local Sawasdee Woodwind Quartet of Bangkok.