The Ants March on...

Colin Fletcher is one of my favorite authors. His book "The Man Who Walked Through Time" is probably the best known. It tells the story of his solo walk the length of Grand Canyon National Park. That's not the book which haunts my memory. The one image I think of most is from his book "The Winds of Mara" where he returns to the Kenya of his youth.  There is a moment where he watches ants cross a dirt road. Time stops and the ants march on. The world of human cares fade and the ants march on. Of all the things which have changed since he last walked the Mara this has not, the ants march on.

September 11, 2001 I was on the ranch in Colorado. A short 2 weeks before I'd been in a yellow cab under the World Trade Center riding back to Greenwich Village. We were just finishing a Studio launch for a new network on Bond Street. It was scheduled to go live September 11.  

I, like millions of other Americans, watched the plane hit the second Tower on TV. Like millions of other Americans I saw the film of the Towers falling, over and over again. I spent that week trying to stay in contact with my friends on the East Coast, particularly those who lived in New York. The internet proved the best way to do this which meant I was spending a lot of early morning hours in the Studio.

While walking back from the Studio to the House I saw a line of ants.  It was a beautiful blue fall day with a silent sky.  I stopped. I crouched down and stared at the steady stream. The words rang in my head "The ants don't know that the world has changed forever." 

The second movie at Mountainfilm last evening was "Manhunt: The Search for Bin Laden" It's a film about CIA Analysts and Operatives.  Greg Barker must have done a jig when he found Marty Martin, the camera loves him. Reality Show producers worldwide would line up to get Mr. Martin. The "sisterhood" of Analysts were far more compelling although I'm pretty sure "wrangling" them would be like wrangling a room full of Many Patinkin clones. The breakthrough moment was when they recognized the sequencing of seemingly unrelated events revealed an underlying organization, a bureaucracy of terrorism. My favorite line has to be "How can you connect the dots when the whole page is black?"

It's been an interesting summer in Aspen for connecting dots. It started out with Thomas Friedman and Solly Granatstein talking at The Aspen Ideas Festival about their Showtime series "Years of Living Dangerously"

It's basic premise is that climate change leads to revolution. Their argument is the Arab Spring was fueled by the price of bread. There is little question that throughout history climate change has precipitated regime change. 

This was closely followed by the Aspen Security Forum at the Aspen Institute. There was even a session on "Manhunt".  The Security Forum revolved mostly around NSA issues and how 9/11 had shoved us into this policy of gulping mega data. However, the most intriguing session may have been the one on Africom with General Carter Ham who stated that Africom wasn't seen as a military command, until Libya. During the Q&A he elaborated that even though our intelligence gathering and drone ability is the most requested US contribution from local governments our strategic intelligence gathering gets a  "C+" and he stated  "We have to listen first.. we can't carry.. an attitude..we gain as much as we give..." followed by "If you're in search of stability... you may need to bring veterinarians." With a "C+" analysis giving drones their targets, yep I'd rather send out veterinarians.

The icing on the cake was the Aspen Institute's McCloskey Speaker Series with Condoleezza Rice and Raj Shah discussing the state of the Department of State. Podcast

Honestly I never expected to hear "humanitarian work is not separate from political stability" or "subsistence agriculture is at the heart of rebellion" in this talk but it was there. The nod to poverty as an incubator for violence was soon submerged under the old carrot stick standby of "military and economic aid" being the heart of US foreign policy. It all sounded very Cold War and Domino theory Military Advisors. There was a general wariness leaking around the edges of the discussion whenever it touched on the Arab Spring. That's unfamiliar territory.

Which brings me back to 2011. Take a close look at the picture- above the "D" in TED... really closely... you will see a handmade sign in English held by one of the people in Tahrir Square during the protests of 2011. It reads "America  F***  your  Aid" Mr. Khanfar was the one who provided a number of images for his speech. Our projection designer is the one who scaled this one and he *swears* he didn't see the juxtaposition.

 

This was one of the most extraordinary TED talks I've ever seen. 

Wadah Khanfar head  of  Al Jazeera TV talking in February of 2011

 I thought of Wadah Khanfar when I listened to the last words of "Manhunt" which bluntly stated ".... hope that you never have to fight an enemy who has no respect for human life." Whatever ride the documentary had taken me on- whatever admiration I may have had for the tenacity of the Analysts or the dedication of the CIA Operatives, it was wiped out in that last sentence. I had just watched a documentary where torture and invasion was justified. I had just watched a movie where the escalation from 19 drone attacks a month to 300 drone attacks was seen as a something "overenthusiastic" a bit of a runaway train which was a direct response to a ruthless enemy.  The fact that this bred more terrorists was seen as a regrettable and unforeseeable side effect. 

Yet it was only "the enemy" who disrespected human life? 

Really? 

The ants march on, and so do we.