Outis

Does a love of material power mean never having to…

If our President was indeed born again after admitting that he had sinned before God, why is it so difficult for him to fire Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld?

Would replacing Rumsfeld, an intelligent tactician but demonstrably inappropriate strategist, be so unnatural within the framework of the President’s all-important faith?

How different is this concession of human fallibility from the Evangelical rite of passage that is being born again?

After all, in the secular world of capitalism, a corporation would surely have fired its marketing director after a campaign that garnered terrific publicity but absolutely no follow-through at the cash register.

A savvy CEO would have fired Rumsfeld. The Economist asked for his resignation months ago.

The only plausible reason for Bush’s refusal to do so would have to be as personal as a matter of faith. But, should my analysis above be correct, the president’s religious beliefs are not compatible with his gullibility or wilful naivete on this important matter.

Perhaps, our leader is able to make a distinction between those crises that can be solved with the Devil and those that can be solved with the invocation of Jesus.

Either way, both share a fundamentalist’s assumption: that mystery trumps science, that humility is well-suited by ignorance, that grace trumps good works.

A lowly, wretched soul myself, I nonetheless wonder if missing from Bush’s interpretation of the life and lessons of Jesus is a proper reckoning with the manifold expressions of humility.

For sure, in the 2000 election cycle, then presidential candidate George W. Bush made quite a stir by describing himself as a humble man: a healer of old wounds.

But within a year, the healer would become a hunter as the President’s unsteady grip on earthly power — already dubious given the election fiasco in Florida — was further questioned by the worst (though hardly the first) terrorist attack in U.S. history.

Where the Oklahoma City bombing prompted Americans to look within, the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon led us to look without. Identifying the material culprit, correctly, as al Qaeda, the president led a swift invasion of Afghanistan.

Back to Baghdad, capital of Afghanistan

It is in the wake of the President’s first, decisive battle to oust the Taliban from Afghanistan — a tactical victory and strategic disaster — that we can say Mr. George W. Bush abandoned any and all pretenses of being a humble man, a follower of Jesus the Nazarene, let alone the son of the far more conservative and cautious Mr. George H. Bush.

For it is at this juncture that President Bush began to exploit the terror attacks to pursue a strategy of geopolitical engineering, possibly shifting U.S. military power from Saudi Arabia to Iraq for a variety of reasons not directly related to the security of the homeland.

It should be argued in the light of day — and not the shadows of Washington D.C. corridors — that securing Iraq’s oil is essential to retarding the power of the Saudi theocrat and terrorist, Osama bin Laden. But it was not such a mission that the U.S. Congress backed in 2002 and 2003.

One could argue — and doubtless many influential if little known men have — that safeguarding our role as preferred customers in the global market for energy, protecting the interests of certain political allies within Israel, and formally terminating our once cozy relationship with the tyrant Saddam Hussein would advance our ability to contain the menace of al Qaeda and their legions of potential collaborators.

I am doubtful most Americans have ever heard any of the above arguments presented clearly on television. If some of the President’s men would like to argue that we are in the midst of a world war, surely the American public should be told about this development. The working class, who will pay the price of the administration’s theories in blood, deserve more honesty than a wink and a nod.

After the attacks on the WTC and Pentagon, no President could be faulted for attempting to channel the outrage, fear and pathos of the American public into a long-term commitment to justice, peace and prosperity in the Middle East and beyond. For it would take great resolve to not only capture individual terrorists but, more importantly, address the factors that motivate future such adversaries and attacks.

It takes valor to look within as the 9/11 Commission has done. After all, rounding up a posse to hunt down a criminal, “dead or alive,” is hardly justice. As President Bush declared on September 11, 2001:

Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America.

America, as any patriot knows, is founded on the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, which holds that “all men are created equal.” In short, America is founded on the very premise of justice.

Yet, as reports from as early as 2002 would indicate, there would be little regard for justice in this “war on terror” and a heavy reliance on, well, terror to obtain the vital intelligence our nation had either failed to collect or analyze for a decade prior.

Moreover, in failing to plan for the occupation and reconstruction of a liberated Iraq, the President demonstrated little if any commitment to justice, peace and prosperity in that region or elsewhere.

Consider the following exegesis of Bob Woodward’s book, a history approved by the current administration, on the planning of the Iraq war:

The vast amounts of energy, ingenuity, and time that were lavished at the highest levels on war plans and logistics paid off in what looked at first like a quick and decisive victory. But, as Woodward confirms, there was no equivalent when it came to the day after.

The story of how, not long before the war began, the Defense Department hierarchy tossed aside the carefully prepared recommendations of the State Department’s “Future of Iraq Project,” along with the experts who had spent a year working on it, has been told before. (See “War After the War,” by George Packer.)

Woodward, who mentions the episode in passing, reports Powell’s view that the very success of the war planning undermined the peace planning, such as it was.

Any man, even and especially a very bad man, can be a Prince of War. But what does it take to be a Prince of Peace? Again, we return to the matter of humility.

What is humility? To every peaceful soul, it must mean something quite different for human beings are not all born of the same race, wealth or social position. So it is that when a poor man expresses humility it is no less genuine than a rich man. Who dares claim that the accident of their birthplace and language allows their prayers to float higher — or faster — to God’s ears?

As St. Augustine writes, simply: God is everywhere. The Creator does not require FedEx, thank you very much. A missile defense shield is but a toothpick in Leviathan’s armor of scales — scales which, in our day and age, are placed over the eyes, with absolute mastery, as evinced by the partisan abuse of the media as well as our remote control and “virtuous” wars.

As an extension of this argument, consider the 43rd president’s record of “killing time” on the home front.

What does our leader — the president of a democracy — owe God by way of humility? Is it not a steadfast dedication to results rather than promises, to honesty rather than mendacity, to a clean fight rather than a dirty campaign by proxies?

If our goal is to reduce the number of state-sponsored terrorists while preventing criminal elements from aiding one and the same, have we have thus far not utterly failed? As noted in the links to a failed “marketing campaign” above, even Fox News recognizes that we have surely increased the number of terrorist recruits while elsewhere signs of nuclear proliferation are quite clear.

Or is our President more concerned with his own personal appearance and any material power he derives thereby than the long-term protection of national security?

Remember, unlike Iraq, ours is a nation of laws. If you’d like to defend a nation that does not believe in its own laws, there are many out there. The U.S.A. should not be one of them.

It takes only pride to be aggressive. To be humble, one must have courage.

Maybe, as his friend in Mexico would say, this President just doesn’t have the cojones to say: “As commander-in-chief, I made a mistake. I am correcting the mistake. I am sorry. ”

Four more years and then what?

Four years ago, President Bush promised to heal the nation. Polling would indicate he has, instead, aggravated old rifts both abroad and at home. He has, in all likelihood, created new and very deep wounds.

If the Bush administration is re-elected, the GOP may very well change the letter of the law to invent an America that harkens back to the Gilded Age. But the spirit of the law will ultimately prevail. It always has and always does.

“For he so loved the world…”

It takes hard work, not luck, not force, to be #1.

Remarkably, the unfolding of God’s love could mean the end of American hegemony — its moral advantage. So be it. Empires rise and fall on the strength of personalities. Lasting leadership — liberal progress — is a moral endeavor. In short, there are no natural-born killers only blasphemous actions.

If you love the sinner but hate the sin, you will vote against George W. Bush on November 2nd, 2004. Or, you can vote for him on November 3rd. Whatever floats your boat.

 
What would Jesus hunt?
A digression on the President as self-avowed healer and hunter

A game hunter who is born into the aristocracy of this mostly meritocratic society is purposely encountering nature in an aggressive manner when his very wealth presents a panoply — endless — possibilities for communing with God’s creatures in ways far less violent.

Can one be “pro-life” on Tuesday but not on Friday? Obviously, yes. We are but unfinished clay. But, it is the excuses — or lack thereof — that one cites for just such inconsistencies that distinguish us from mere animals. Living “in the now” is certainly not a psychological state exclusive to human beings.

The poor hunt animals for food. The wealthy do it for sport. The poor kill out of ignorance. The rich do it out of arrogance. Simply put, when the gentry encounter nature (say, oh, the world’s finite petroleum reserves) as the stomping grounds of the rich and powerful, you can be quite sure they don’t consider native human populations to be much more than animals.

Every society of living creatures has a organizing principle. Ours is not terribly unlike that of pack animals: i.e., we entrust alpha-males and alpha-females to set the tone for our encounter with competing parties.Slightly less than half of the half of the U.S. population that voted in 2000, did so for George W. Bush. When the 43rd president of the U.S.A. snorts, do not upwards of 20 million of his followers snort accordingly — if unconsciously, by habit or tradition?

Given the above, New York Newsday’s editorial calling for accountability in the Abu Ghraib case, a fiasco that confirms our government’s sloppy disregard for human rights, is right on the money. If the Leader of the Free World does not set the tone, who the fuck does?

This is not rocket science. As the other slow, toxic leak from Washington D.C. would indicate, the current administration has absolutely no problem admitting to intentional malfeasance if and so long it can prove that such errors did not in fact lead to other, more grave errors. In other words: no foul, no harm.

But, in fact, any violation of a law ratified by the U.S. Congress or violation of a treaty into which the U.S. has signed is a terrible blow to the saving grace of this Republic: that we are a nation of great laws and lots of little men. Such is the most basic of conservative values!

Are not the great criminals of the 20th century despots who ruled with charisma rather than respect for the laws of man and nature? Stalin, Mao, Castro, Hussein, Hitler and Mussolini. All were charismatic, outwardly down-to-earth and secretly elitist monsters. Did America’s history lesson from World War II really end at the pronounciation of the word “Axis”?

Shouldn’t we look a bit deeper at what defined this bizarre and at times ad hoc coalition of megalomaniacs?

Imperial hubris, it seems, can lead to all manner of unintended consequences. Including goobal conflicts over apparently intractable local disputes (Kuwait, Iran, Israel, Palestine, Syria, etc.).

And so several months after the revelation that Abu Ghraib had transpired under the President’s watch, we learn that an even more brazen violation of protocol could be at the heart of our military’s fruitless search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq: did the the President of the United States get conned into attacking Iraq?

If so, it is surely not because our leader is humble enough to doubt his own intelligence and eschew bravado when careful planning is of the essence.

Perhaps, the Wild West is a nightmare from which America has not yet fully escaped. Surely, the massive psychic blow dealt to the U.S. by terrorist on September 11, 2001 was worsened by the largely unrealistic image of that most Americans carry of their own country and its place in the greater world.

Which looks more comfortable?

A burned or a padded hand? I’d say that avoiding damage is almost always better than attempting to heal that which has been maimed.

Was it possible to trim back Saddam Hussein’s potential reach without tearing apart Iraq’s social fabric in one long, slow, dramatic rip?

Perhaps.

Note the following sentence from the now London-based Ayatollah Al-Sistani, as reported in today’s New York Times:

Ayatollah Sistani agreed to accept the keys, The Associated Press reported from London on Friday, as long as Mr. Sadr’s militiamen left altogether. “If the people inside the holy shrine leave it altogether, lock the doors and place the key in an envelope and take it to Sistani’s office in Najaf, then he has told his people there to receive the key,” a spokesman for Mr. Sistani said.

Now, consider the language that the Ayatollah Sistani is using in this published account and remember that the speaker is also our defacto “emergency brake” on the careening, runaway vehicle that is Iraq. How does Sistani speak? Like a man in full control of his own house: “place the key in an envelope and take it to Sistani’s office.” Like he was the landlord, which, in the eyes of millions of Muslims, he might as well be — or, is about to become.

Now, if Sistani is willing to intervene on behalf of and be heeded by the very same people we, the Bush administration, set out to liberate, why did we not co-ordinate with his people in order to prevent the occupation from melting down into a violent confrontation, on television, at one of the holiest sites of the Muslim world?

Did we really believe that our biggest challenge in securing the liberation of Iraq would be neutralizing Saddam Hussein’s Imperial Guard? Were they the ones keeping order among the Iraqi Shiites? Is that how the Iranian revolution of 1979 went down? Is that why Sistani is able to issue orders to al-Sadr, the intransigent and possibly mentally disturbed, leader of a bottomless insurgent militia with such crisp language?

Maybe I’m the ignorant fool here. Maybe I am misreading a possible mistranslation of Sistani’s communique. But, to my dumb ears, it sounds like Our Man in Havana Najaf —Mr. Sistani and not, I must stress, Mr. Chalabi — should have been in on the occupation before the bell rung for “Round 1.”

Two weeks ago, at a Bush-Cheney ‘04 campaign rally, a member of the pre-screened audience exclaimed before the cameras: “God is in the White House.” President Bush responded, quite simply, with Thank you. Thus ends the argument against a theocratic, transitional government in Iraq.

Personally, I think our soldiers deserve respect. They should never have been led into a booby-trapped foxhole. We can watch Fox News all we want. The rest of the world is watching Al-Jazeera. What they’re seeing is making a whole lot of people very unlikely to collaborate with our master plan for world peace and prosperity for quite some time to come.

Professional fighters don’t throw a naked punch. Why should the U.S. armed forces?

Do we still believe we’re the exception to the rule when it comes to picking a fight? Are we really the first society to assert a doctrine of preemptive defense? Not so. Why did the preemptive strikes against Nazi Germany fail? Because we failed to fully undermine the Nazi regime.

How do you undermine the ethereal regime of charismatic Islamist terrorism — the enemy that nearly crippled our economy with a surprise attack using a dozen boxcutters?

There are probably many good answers to this difficult question.

I would bet my life on the assertion that you can’t neutralize headless, propaganda driven monsters like al-Qaeda by letting the young, hot-headed, son of a revered leader determine the time and place of engagement: on live Arabic-language television and inside a sacred shrine.

Sorry, I meant the two tough-talking, soft-palmed sons of revered leaders who fiercely opposed Saddam Hussein.

As the U.S. sees its uncoordinated and overpaid “Dream Team” lose to countries and American territories without an NBA franchise, what contest of national pride will the Arab and Muslim world be watching?

Anchorman: Well, Janet, on prime time tonight, we have an exciting match in lovely Najaf Park, as the civilian natives square off against a professional imperial power.

[Footage of very important building being shelled or about to be shelled by an advanced air force.]

Anchorwoman: So it’s gunships vs. rifles. Oh, that’s gotta hurt.
Anchorman: That’s right Janet. Those aren’t soccer balls the visiting team is dropping from above.

After one of our many enemies inside Iraq threw off the mother-of-all-security-blankets, the United Nations, with a terrorist bombing last summer, who exactly did we think we were dealing with?

And how did we respond to this masterful attack of psychological warfare?
What did we do to enlist the help of ordinary Iraqis on this new front in the war against terrorists? How did we reach out to Iraqi men, ver much like our own men, with families of their own to look after?

In the terrible staging of the Najaf standoff, in the slow leaking toxic waste dump we created at Abu Ghraib, we have presented this agile enemy with true weapons of mass destruction: a hundred thousand potential recruits.

For if televised appearances don’t matter, why go through the trouble of having the U.S. Commander-in-Chief land on an aircraft carrier facing away from San Diego?

On September 11, 2001, we were attacked not by illiberal regimes (North Korea, Iran, Pakistan), but by devotees of an ideology that uses religious symbolism to foment strife based on political and economic grievances.

We would be foolish to continue to ignore the importance of religious symbols, political complaints and economic hardships in our governance, however indirect, of these newly occupied American territories.

For future reference: a civil society cannot be created by force.

The evidence for this claim — a law of human nature as fast and hard as anything Newton or Pasteur ever advanced — must now include Iraq, where the “surgical application” of violence has utterly failed to bring about a liberated, civil society.

Learned, esteemed men once proclaimed that flies could spontaneously generate on rotting meat, “that non-living objects can give rise to living organisms.” They were wrong.

Violence has certainly hovered over many noble moments in the history of mankind (e.g., the U.S. War of Independence). But violence is no more the cause of liberty than corpses are of flies.

It is possible to win the battle — even every battle — and still lose the war. We know this because, as Americans, we are not so foolish as to think ourselves better than our ancestors. Take your pick: they all lost many wars in which significant battles were won. England. Germany. France. Russia. China. Rome. Greece. Turkey. The African, American and ancient tribes. They all won battles and lost wars.

The only difference between a living, happy American and a dead, sad American is the American’s intelligence. Brute force will get you, maybe, half the battle. But, the winning half is never size and weight. (Would you rather be David or Goliath?)

I don’t know that the 9/11 Commission Report advocates more intelligence and nation-building and less invading and “regime-changing.”
But I do know you can read that section for yourself right here: What To Do? A Global Strategy. (PDF)

It has come to my attention that a recent report from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of the Vatican, bearing the Pope’s approval, contains a notable typo.

Writing that feminism leads to opposition between men and women while blurring the differences between them, the report concludes these changes have lethal consequences for the traditional family. Authored by one of the Pope’s most controversial aides, the memo on values also attempts to promote the rights of women with calls for more and more accessible day care programs.

While a notable contribution to the growing body of documents to assert the Church is finally catching up to the important trends of 1977, a glaring typo throughout the document distracts the reader from probing its more nuanced assertions of theological interpretation.

Where the document uses the term “feminism” to describe an ideology of gender that creates strife, denigrates the integral worth of individuals and threatens the family, a simple review of history would suggest that the term they meant to use is “machismo.”

Does a father who abuses his children and ignores the voice of his wife truly know best? I speak not metaphorically of the Church, but, simply, of any man who wishes to perpetuate the myth that the family was any less violent under machismo; that is, before the very recent advent of women’s rights, at home and in greater society.

Where does the radical humanism of Jesus Christ promote the claim that relationships between men and women attained their final form in 1546, that our observations of human nature have always been and are now at one with the ineffable Allmighty, that the way things have been is the way they were intended by God? What hubris!

From whence such machismo, blind to itself and thus all the more pernicious?
An institution of men, issuing edicts on women — their true values and proper role in the greater order of things — while restricting the role of women in both historical accounts and current life, that is surely the definition of an ideology that seeks to subordinate a group of people on the basis of their sex.

Did I say an institution of men? I’m sorry. Another typo. I meant boys. Men are those who grow up, emotionally and socially, by interacting in a variety of ways with their own and the other sex, either through dating, collaboration or marriage. Truthfully, the Church — in its leadership and political organization — is a glowing example of an old boy’s club.

Cardinals like Mr. Ratzinger assert that the past is a clear blueprint for the ultimate destiny of humanity. To me, the story of human society contains far too many instances of arrogant chauvinism — e.g., the trial of Galileo Galilei — to warrant such a lazy abuse of history. Above all, I seek justice and I am far from convinced that the laws of Man have been, are now, or will ever be, as just as those of God the Creator; particularly those canons that place women in a separate category “for their own protection” or, even more disingenuously considering the source, “for the sake of the children.”

It would be interesting to chart the progress of such a woefully cynical ideology in the human institution which gave the world the Rosary and the Holy Virgin Mary (”untouched by the sin of Man — impregnated by God, Himself”), but, really, why bother?

The economic conditions and political reality that once afforded the Church its supreme power over the laity have changed in the industrial world and are changing in the developing nations, as well. When poverty and ignorance prompted peasants to produce children as farmhands and “retirement policies,” it was a matter of course that two out of eight such offspring would be given away to the Church. What else would you do with them?

But, today, the Church must compete with other institutions — commerce, government — for the sons and daughters of its flock. How does it do so? By harping on its greatest weaknesses, the notable absence of women — and families — in its juridical and theological faculties.

There are those who argue that the Church is not a stern enough father-figure, though they are just as likely to refer to the Church as a feminine entity. For them, what is needed is more discipline — especially of the arbitrary and top-down variety — as well as a return to some mythical past when all was in harmony. They look at the global resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism not with horror but envy.

In my ignorant estimate they are misanthropes who disguise their lack of faith in God’s great creation by arguing, for example, that the Second Vatican Council, which adapted the bylaws of the Church (though not its charter) to the changing conditions of human civilization, has led to a numerical decline in the clergy and a weakening in the influence of the Church among males 18-35 or in the burgeoning “Tweens” market.

To these cynics, loyalists to human folly rather than human possibility, I recommend a stark accounting of self. Why is their distaste for many of the democratic innovations of the 20th century a minority view among the laity of the Church, and, more importantly, within our civilization? Are they truly shepherds or deserters? Does humanity’s turning away from the darkness of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, and towards the light of egalitarian democracy challenge the teachings of Jesus or merely those men who subjugate, maim and kill in his name?

What does it mean to assert egalitarian principles in the workplace, in the classroom, in the delivery room, in the bedroom? In the post-industrial nations of the late 20th and early 21st century, that lurch towards justice has meant feminism — as well as anti-communism. Were the Pope not only a Pole but a woman, she might have experienced the need for such a movement first-hand.

But, instead, we who would be the Church are confronted with a clergy apparently informed of “the facts on the ground” via court spies who are careful to articulate social developments through the narrow lens of the Vatican’s earthly, political interests. Of course feminism is a challenge to the highest echelons of the Church. The Church today is run by a bunch of bachelors.

Theirs is a selective rejection of human achievement and innovation. Does the Pope not rely on modern medicine to stay alive? Does he fly around the world with the help of angels or airplanes?

Yet, not all of humanity’s achievements are in the physical sciences — there are social and political innovations as well. At times, these innovations will encroach upon the all-too-human institutions of the Church, from the Latin mass (why not in Aramaic?), to the vow that casts marriage as below those who would be priests.

Rejecting any efforts to test the validity of these institutions as heresy requires a reasonable justification — not just the reason of force. At the very least, talk to me when there are some real mothers in charge of the Mother Church.

The fears of a clique of men, confronting the prospects that they will have to share their power or lose their jobs altogether, are not the stuff of which humble, pious theology is made.