This page supplements the e-mail edition of the Class
News with photos that have been submitted by classmates. Around
the time of publication of the news in Technology Review these
photos, along with the new column, will be available on the Alumni
website - accessible to all alumni who sign up for it. At that
time these photos will be removed from this web site.
December
started with the publishing of a year-long project, a book of my
photographs of the daily (and nightly) life of 400 year old Hospital
St. Louis, a Public Assistance hospital in Paris. Speaking at the
ceremony presenting the book, I thanked first the sick, pointing out
that without the sick, all those in the room, aside from me and my
family, would be unemployed. I added that, thanks to the
dedication of people like this hospital staff, France is ranked N. 1 in
the world by the World Health Organization, for quality and
availability of health care, with the United States N. 37, between
Costa Rica and Slovenia. This got a good round of laughter. I told them
I had recently received medical exams in both countries, and that the
$860 CT scan in Minnesota (producing a heart attack when I got the
bill) cost $150 in Paris. (I am fine.)
After
three days and one night of book signing, I left for Kuweit, Iraq, and
Afghanistan where I joined three country singers, a hiphop group, the
Army Band, sex bomb Leann Tweeden, and my brother, Al Franken, on our
fourth USO tour in the region. My friends in France cannot
imagine how I can support the soldiers without therefore supporting the
war, but that is the case for me and for my brother and the rest of us
“lefty liberals.” I admire the professionalism of the soldiers, who,
even though they volunteered for this career, are themselves victims of
a disastrous foreign policy blunder, and incompetence and lack of
strategy from the top on down. Beyond the “untruths” (to
put it mildly) that sold this war in Iraq to a gullible US public and
press, there have been mistakes all along the way, from the firing of
the Army and all the Baathist civil servants, allowing looting, not
securing weapons depots and the borders, breaking down doors in the
middile of the night and Abu Graib and Gitmo abuses, (and the conquent
recruitment for the insurgency), not to mention the ignoring of 1400
years of Sunni-Shia schism and animosity. The Iraq War has
weakened our position in the region and the world and made Iran and now
Hezbollah the major players there. (Iranian student friends in Paris
ironically thank Bush for making Iran number one and helping to elect
Amajinazad.)
My
solution: Iraq becomes Kurdistan, Moktadastan and Saddamistan with
sharing of the oil revenues and deployment of US troops to Kuweit and
Afghanistan, and home to the USA.
The
soldiers and especially the officers are more and more every year quite
aware of this and the mistakes of the administration, are thrilled to
see Rumsfeld gone, are doing their jobs as well as they can, protecting
their brothers and sisters “on their left and on their right,” and just
hope to survive to the end of their tours. Very few see any
military “victory” possible. They know they are in the middle of
a civil war which is getting worse. Most do not want
more troops sent (“Just means more IED targets”). This is
confirmed by a recent poll published by the Army Times. I met
soldiers who are training the Iraqi Army and Police, and they just
rolled their eyes when asked if they are hopeful. But they are
there doing their jobs and “We try to keep out of the politics of all
this.” Some will talk openly to you and some point out that they
cannot legally criticize the Commander in Chief. So much is left
unsaid. But they love the USO and laugh at Al’s story about Sly
Stallone being afraid to come on a tour (“Hey, weren’t you fucking
RAMBO!?”), sway arm in arm in the show’s finale to “Stand by Me” and
cry to “Good Bless America. – as do I..
And
then we fly around Iran to Afghanistan, and for me, it is like a weight
off my shoulders, because I, and my brother, support the mission in
Afghanistan, which is going worse than it should thanks to our
distraction of Iraq. Afghanistan is where more troops should be,
and where there is a real coalition, including a lot of French troops
that I met in a base in Kabul.
Al and Andy Barr, Al’s assistant and writer) and I finally found a
menorah in Kabul and celebrated the last two nights of Hanukah there,
photos attached. It was not as much fun as three years ago in Saddam’s
Palace in Baghdad. We celebrated Hanukah at the base mess hall. Al gave
me his Coin, the military medallion (“Al Franken, serving his country
ten days a year”) on night seven, and a Rush Limbaugh Newsletter on
night eight. Andy gave me a hamburger and I gave Al a pen from Ramstein
Airbase, and an orange.
Another
highlight of the trip was finishing off the oysters I brought from
Paris, with country star Daryll Worley, first in Kuweit, and then in
Mosul, Iraq. This as well as the humor of such as Daryll (while
waiting, yet again, for a late military transport to take us from Mosul
to Tikrit, Daryll suggested to Al that we rent a car and drive, adding
“No problem! What are they gonna do? Kidnap us and cut off our heads,
shoot us and light us with diesel? What are they gonna do?” This became
an ongoing riff during the rest of the trip, “Daryll, call Avis. What
are they gonna do? Drill us full of holes and suck out our
brains? What are they gone do?” And in Afghanistan we were told
it would actually be safe to do, at least around Kabul.
So until next, year, unless Al runs for the Senate and cannot go….
( see http://www.andygoestoiraq.blogspot.com/ for a good look at the USO tour
and http://www.startribune.com/562/story/905313.html for an oped by Al Franken )
From left to right: Mike Marcus, Gail Marcus, Nancy
Berry, and Randy Berry during 4/06 MIT Eclipse tour to Turkey having
lunch at hotel on the Bosphorus owned by Nedret AR '76 and Mark AR '76 Butler.
(Actually there are a lot of great photos on this site, as you might expect from a professional photographer.)
