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What’s Foreign about Success?

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When President Clinton’s team left office, they warned the incoming Bush Administration that some military response had to be mounted against Al Qaeda in the aftermath of the Cole bombing. The Bush security team, dominated by Cold War hawks, dismissed the warning as a Clinton albatross, and set off to renegotiate the arms treaties with Russia to allow construction of a nuclear missile shield.

The rest, of course, is history. Osama bin Laden, encouraged by U.S. flaccidity to believe that one last strike in the heart of America would cause us to curl up in a fetal position, set about planning the 9/11 attacks.

In the Middle East, we face a similar situation with Israel, still living in the memory of the Holocaust, and even after 60 years unable to build a lasting peace with its neighbors. They turn to America again and again for financial and military aid, but do not heed our requests to negotiate a lasting peace. Instead, as recent perusal of the Jerusalem Times reveals, they rewrite the history of Israel to present themselves as victims rather than armed aggressors.

I agree that the state of Israel should survive, but the conditions of that survival have to reflect the realities of the politics of the Middle East. That means, if we are going to pursue conflict against those that seek to destroy it, we must establish impeccable moral credentials. That means talking to the leaders of Israel’s enemies, and giving them the opportunity to participate in the success that comes with liberal economics. It means eroding the “American + Israel = Axis of Evil” rationale for suppressing Iranian dissent. Simply beating Iran down because Netenyahu says so is going to inflame the entire region against American involvement, bring terror back to us at home, and – given the asymmetrical practical realities in the region – ultimately result in Israel’s destruction.

So, people of Israel, you need to elect a different leader. And Republicans in Congress – you need to stop playing politics with Israeli lives.

The situation in Russia has similar characteristics. Arguably, Vladimir Putin is criminally psychotic, having recently awarded medals of honor to two members of the personal hit squad that has assassinated those attempting to document the costs to Soviet society of Putin’s psychosis (Metsov being the most recent). But the very fact that Putin caters to these men is a revelation of weakness. Where once he was heralded as the guarantor of economic stability in Russia, recent military adventurism (in Georgia as well as the Ukraine) has caused the West to unite in economic sanctions against Russia, and stimulated weaker neighbors to seek NATO membership. The oligarchy recognizes this, and so Putin is left with only one tool for managing opposition: murder.

The Soviet Union experienced such a reign of terror under Stalin, and one of the causes of Russia’s declining global influence in the ’70’s and ’80’s was the creation of a Politburo that ensured no one man would ever again wield that kind of power. Russians have experience with this kind of tyranny, and while it may take time, the oligarchy will not allow Putin to purge them as Stalin purged his foes. Putin’s adventurism is the death knell for his regime.

That President Obama defers to Germany’s Chancellor Merkel in this matter should be considered a blessing to us at home. It allows us to focus on the worsening situation in Syria and Iraq that is fanning sectarian tension and generating powerful sympathy for Iran among Iraqi Shias. That Merkel counsels against providing advanced lethal assistance to Ukraine reflects her nation’s experience in winning the Cold War. It was economic power that brought Germany back together, and it is economic power that will eventually hold sway in the Ukraine.

So, again, Senate Republicans, try to be good neighbors. Stop playing politics with the lives of our allies.

Bibi, Stay Home

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I wrote previously about the balance of powers problem in the federal government. As Congress continues to refuse to act on the pressing issues confronting the nation, President Obama has chosen to take executive action under existing laws to mitigate the developing crises in competitiveness (education), immigration and global climate change. The Republican-held Congress continues to complain.

While I believe that the House of Representatives under Boehner “dost protesteth too much” – after all, they have the opportunity to pass legislation – it seems more and more obvious that they pursue an agenda driven by narrow political calculation. I see the shadow of Karl Rove still lurking in the background. Rove was the campaign adviser that filtered for political impact all Cabinet decisions in W’s first term. He or his ilk appear to be doing the same for the Congress.

This began with the “poison pill” terms in the first-term budget negotiations that preserved high-income tax breaks. It continues with leaving Obama to wrestle with the nation’s intractable problems, and crying “foul” on separation of powers whenever a Republican constituent has an ox gored. And it proceeds now with a clear trespass on the President’s foreign policy remit with the invitation to Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, to speak before the Congress.

Netanyahu is involved in his own political shenanigans at home. Prior to his election as prime minister, Israel was the target of frequent suicide bombing attacks. The terrorist attacks were the asymmetrical Palestinian response to ongoing Israeli settlement of the occupied territories. The stupidity of the strategy was evidenced in Netanyahu’s election in 2000, as the Israeli public eventually accepted his long-established “greater Israel” policy as the only way to restore internal security. However, years of secure living and the growing problem of domestic intimidation by Orthodox Jews is causing the Israeli public to broaden their concerns, and think fundamentally about justice. Raising the specter of Iranian attack preserves the political psychology that brought Netanyahu into office.

Israel has benefited from the action of both US presidents to serve in the 21st century. The removal of Saddam Hussein from Iraq ended a bounty program that paid $30,000 to the families of suicide bombers. US-led global sanctions against Iran have also prevented an end to Israel’s nuclear monopoly in the region. John Kerry has already made clear that the U.S. was motivated to a great extent by concerns for Israeli security, and Netanyahu’s panicked protests against diplomatic reconciliation between the US and Iran seems untrusting.

What other issues could be driving Netanyahu’s move? Obama has embarrassed him on at least one occasion in memory – letting comments regarding Netanyahu’s honesty slip out to the press during an open-mike chat with the French President. The rise of a respectable Palestinian counter-part in Mahoud Abbas has allowed the US to apply pressure against Israel to bring concessions to the negotiating table. (The lack of such concessions continues to place Abbas in danger from Palestinian extremists, making him dependent upon Israeli security, and thus undermining his authority.)

But the pro-Israel vote in America includes the historically Democratic Jews, and as we saw in 2000, that vote is enough to swing key states. So Netanyahu and Boehner have common cause in this engagement: embarrass Demcratic Foreign Policy to improve Republican chances for the 2016 presidential elections, and reinforce the ability of Israel to be the tail that wags America’s Middle Eastern policy.

Given this complicated political calculus, Netanyahu would be best advised to stay home, pursuing his agenda in coordination with the Administration’s Foreign Policy team. If this issue becomes a Republican talking point, placing the Jewish vote as a token to trade in the 2016 presidential election is going to reduce its strength over the long run. This is reflected in the decision by Democratic Representatives of Jewish heritage to boycott his speech. Once the Jewish vote is divided, there is less and less reason for any presidential candidate to cater to the concerns of Israel, while currently they get the best of both worlds: respected collaborators for Democratic presidents, and a justification for Republican hawkishness.

Hang It Up, Rudy

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There’s nothing more mortifying than for a presidential hopeful to generate press by attacking the patriotism of a sitting president. Rudy Giuliani’s comments about President Obama “not loving” his country are just terribly pathetic.

The Republican Party, with it’s Neo-conservative economic policies (what Reagan extolled as “trickle-down” economics) has presided over a huge transfer of wealth from the middle class to the ultra-rich (what I decry as “tinkle-down” economics). Now, the only way that I have been able to make sense of “love” is as an investment in creating power in people. Taking their money is exactly the opposite of that.

Contrast this with the centerpiece of Obama’s domestic policy: the Affordable Health Care Act. This is an investment in the people of America. It ensures that individuals can get medical care before their ailments become debilitating, and thus that they can remain active contributors to our economy. It lessens health care costs because it keeps people out of the emergency room, and thus will lower rates for everyone over the long term.

Now that – that is loving.

So why isn’t that perspective shared by Giuliani and his cronies?

There are two kinds of people: those that project themselves upon the world (narcissists) and those that allow the world into themselves (empaths). The Republican Party is beholden to the former: people that believe that whatever works for them is what is right for the country. The Affordable Health Care Act created some losers – very wealthy people that made their money by ensuring that they minimized the number of sick people on their plans. This left a back-log that has to be paid down as coverage is extended without regard for preexisting conditions. This means that, in the short term, rates will go up – particularly for those people that were on preferred coverage plans.

Giuliani represents those people, and all I have to offer is that it is un-Christian to ensure that sick people cannot rely upon society to invest in their healing. When Giuliani has the courage to recognize the inherent selfishness of that attitude, then I might have some confidence that, if elected president, he might actually love the people of this nation. And I don’t mean just the rich cronies that line his campaign coffers. I mean all of the people.

Any Road Will Do

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My sons’ mother is an Eastern European émigré. As she described her society prior to the fall of the Iron Curtain, the hypocrisy of communist ideology was a hidden injustice. It was not obvious as a child: the promises of the ideology are fairly concrete for children in state-paid schools and summer camp. The trouble began in college, when the theory of the ideology was transmitted. Successful students learned to regurgitate the rhetoric without being troubled with internal logic or consistency with state policy.

How, then, did the ideology serve to organize the state? Simply as a “semiotic system” used to evoke behavior. Dealing with oppositional or inconvenient people was a simple matter of threatening them with the right labels. Whether the labels were applied logically or even consistently was not a matter of great concern. In fact, everybody violated the ideology. What was critical was to avoid the ostracism or incarceration that came with the labelling.

Did Marx and Engels understand the rhetoric they invented? Almost certainly, but not as the communist leaders ultimately did. Remember that Marx laughed when asked whether Russia itself could lead the transition to communist society. He understood that the political sophistication of the Russian workers was insufficient to support communist practices. If brought back to analyze the political scene today, he would almost certainly identify Germany – the most profitable economy in the world – as the nearest to his ideals.

The inconsistency between Eastern European politics and ideology reflected, to a great degree, the impoverished practical context and political skills of the societies forced to try to implement the ideology. They had no way of visualizing the reality that Marx was trying to evoke, and so corrupted the rhetoric to serve purposes that made sense to them.

This is also evident in the rhetoric of the Christian fanatics. As a means of fueling my output here, I subscribe to a conservative Christian magazine. The editor recently sent out an e-blast linking Planned Parenthood to sex trafficking. The assertion was that traffickers brought girls in for abortions when they became pregnant, thus preserving their sexual availability. The stupidity of such a situation appeared to escape him: there are so many means of preventing conception, some of which are desirable in the sex trade to prevent the spread of STDs. Even if these are not used and pregnancy does result, bringing kidnapped girls into a center focused on reproductive health runs a terrible risk of exposure: the procedure requires a physical exam, which would be likely to reveal signs of abuse that, in the case of under-age girls, must be reported by law. And if the trafficker really cares so little about the health of their victims, legal abortions aren’t the only means of ending an unwanted pregnancy.

But the writer wasn’t concerned with logic or plausibility. The bald assertion at the beginning of his diatribe justified his rant: life begins at conception. I have previously refuted this statement, making it clear that only a mother knows the moment when a spirit enters her womb. But once made, the assertion justifies the labelling of Planned Parenthood for the purposes of its destruction. Because Planned Parenthood brings an essential social good – providing for the reproductive health of women – those that oppose it have been able to demand enormous resources from those that subscribe to their attempts to destroy it.

All this because, as in Eastern Europe, the process of bringing life into the world is not understood.

In the New Testament itself, we see the Apostles struggling with this gap between ideology and rhetoric. Sometimes this appears in the disjointed nature of the exposition. Consider this apparent non sequitor:

The student is not above the teacher, nor a servant above his master. It is enough for students to be like their teachers, and servants like their masters. If the head of the household has been called Beelzebul, now much more the members of his household!

Taken on the face, this appears to be a rather dour assessment of the human condition, suggesting the prospect of an irreversible decline into depravity begun with the expulsion from Eden. Collecting such statements out of context, the atheist builds a powerful case for rejecting Christian practice. That people such as the editor above align their theology with the axiom is a great assistance to the atheist.

Why does the statement appear so disjointed in the original telling? Because the Apostles did not know where they were heading. Matthew records the statement in the chronology of events, but it is only in the demonstrations reported in Acts that the statement makes sense:

  • First, Jesus was sending the Apostles out into the world to assume his role as a healer and teacher. They were frightened, and his statement is an admonishment that unless they liberate themselves from the mindset of the student and slave, they will never accomplish the work that love required of them.
  • Secondly, the statement is an indictment of the authority of human religious leaders. The require dependency in their followers. The Apostles were conditioned by their culture to believe that they needed teachers and masters to survive. Those relationships must be set aside if the followers were to grow into the strength Jesus was offering them.
  • Finally, Jesus was identifying a contrast with other gods from the relationship his parables declared that the Father sought: not a relationship of dependency, but a relationship that flowered, as in Jesus, to full equality when children became adults.

In this light, the statement becomes a source of deep wisdom. That wisdom is revealed only in the context of the purpose that Jesus pursued in the world.

So let’s reassert the quest documented by the Bible: it describes the process of guiding humanity into the embrace of unconditional love. The goal is to demonstrate the felicity and power of a surrender to love.

In that context, the fear used by the editor is revealed as an incredible perversion. And the logic of the atheist is refuted.

Why elaborate this truth? Because if we don’t know where we’re going as Christians, any road will do. Evangelism can succeed only when it supports the purposes that Christ established: to join our souls to the Father’s. When it does not, it becomes incomprehensible, subject to corruption from within, and risible from without.