I am astonished by the announcement of John Boehner’s resignation from Congress.
My recommendation to the Republican Establishment is to put a Tea-Party candidate into his position as Speaker, and then give them a taste of their own medicine. The consequences of that object lesson would be far less disastrous than allowing them to continue to inflame political passions. I would hope that within 30 days, it would drive them completely out of the Republican Party.
During the motorcade through Washington, Pope Francis elevated the human reality of our immigration crisis by calling to him a beautiful Hispanic child. The circumstances of the little girl’s arrival upon the guarded road are suspicious – even the mildly cynical would surmise that she was put there by an adult. The appeal for relief from fear for her parents was also remarkably mature. Of course, that may reflect the constant working of her thoughts against the pressure of her fear. Children are sometimes forced into maturity.
The Pope’s response to her was spontaneous, specific and human, having her lifted up so that he could embrace her. That it was this child that caught his attention may reflect a deep internal resonance of her experience with his own experience as the child of Italian immigrants to Argentina.
Unfortunately, that personal identification is a weakness in his appeal for immigration reform in America. It seems to generate in him a confusion over two very different motivations for immigration: the search for opportunity, and the flight from desperation.
The two narratives – of opportunity and flight – are mingled in the American story. Many of the settlers were fleeing religious or political persecution, but chose America (rather than another European country) because it was a place of opportunity. That opportunity was secured by the huge imbalance in cultural and immunological sophistication of the settlers relative to the Native Americans. These two factors supported population densities that guaranteed that the European tide would eventually sweep aside the native way of life.
But as of 1950 or so, that process had been concluded. The West was settled, parceled and titled to its new owners. The appeal of America shifted: no longer the land of unfettered opporunity, we became the “land of the free.” The “Statue of Liberty” was installed with a plaque that called for the world to send “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses.” But the logistics of arranging a trip across the ocean created a filter that biased the arrivals more towards the clever, industrious and opportunistic. This is cemented in current American immigration policy, where heavy preference is given to those that come with exceptional skills. With its mantra of freedom, America now draws to it the most productive citizens from states that do not respect political rights.
What is faced by the refugee – one among the many waves fleeing fear – is an entirely different reality. It is a world of abusive employment practices, first brought to national attention by Caesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers, but reborn in the housekeeping business and meat packing plants. It is a culture dominated by aggressive men who establish diasporas enforced by intimidation and violence. Does this represent a shift in American immigration experience? No, for European immigrants, arriving in the densely populated East Coast, often did the same. What is different is that there is now no geographical outlet for those pressures.
So the Pope’s plea for unfettered resettlement of refugees is a little tone deaf. Where are the immigrants to go?
To those that cherish liberty, there is also a moral quandry. What about the tyranny, venality and incompetence that creates a refugee crisis? Would the advanced democratic societies, in guaranteeing the safety of refugees, become unwitting codependents and victims to oppression? In taking in the most productive and resourceful citizens of the affected nations, are we not simultaneously sapping them of the capacity to resist and recover from the side-effects of oppression?
The Catholic Church, as observed by the Canadian philosopher John Hall in Powers and Liberties, has some experience with this problem. As the curator of Europe’s shared culture heritage (including Latin, the libraries and universities, and religious expression), the Church facilitated the flourishing of the Renaissance by issuing letters of introduction for those fleeing feudal oppression. This meant that seizure of wealth actually facilitated the dissemination of ideas and technologies that drove the generation of wealth. However, it was only with the industrial age that the benefits of that dissemination reached down to the lower class, generating the era of relative wealth in the developed nations.
So do we ignore the Pope’s plea?
As a Christian, I cannot. I cannot ignore the misery of those fleeing societal collapse. But I would argue that we should be far more focused in ensuring that the wealth that is transfered from our societies to refugees is organized to ensure that pressure is brought to bear on the originators of their misery.
The uncoordinated dispersal of refugees should be prevented. Rather, I would recommend that they be admitted as a diaspora, seeking to maintain their cultural identification. Refugees should be integrated in the economy, contributing their energy and drive. But they should be encouraged to maintain a political involvement in the affairs of their home country, including participating in cultural exchanges (perhaps within the borders of a third country) that transfer knowledge and experience to those that remain behind. And I recommend that a portion of their earnings be allocated, under State Department oversight, to efforts to bring justice to their country. Their ultimate goal should be full citizenship through return to a reformed state.
The Pope should reflect that Jesus did not flee tyranny, but submitted to its ultimate injustice, and in doing so inspired others to shake off the chains of their fear. Obviously, those that can emulate him are few in number. But the founder of the Catholic Church would exhort it to not cater to cowardice, but rather to encourage others to “pick up their cross.” Of course, there is much that the Western democracies can do to facilitate that process, and in supporting the flowering of justice when chains are eventually cast off.
So I would exhort us not to seek to be free of immigration, nor allow unrestricted freedom of immigration, but rather to focus our policies to ensure that freedom is generated through immigration.
We Americans might be expected, as members of the most powerful nation on Earth, to be used to thinking that every political issue ultimately will be a domestic issue. I expect, upon reading the analysis of the Pope’s message, to be confronted with arguments regarding the merit of his pronouncements regarding the death penalty, immigration, climate change, economic justice and the primacy of statesmanship over armed might. I myself will offer analysis on immigration in a future post.
But is that how we should interpret the lesson on political civics offered to us by Pope Francis in his oration before the Joint Meeting of Congress? For that is indeed what it was: a reminder that politics is an act of service to the people, and that the measure of political success is not the towering monuments of wealth, but the hope and opportunity served to the most desperate of our citizens. Did Francis attempt to resolve the delicate balance between, on one hand, the creation and maintenance of infrastructure that generates opportunity, and, on the other hand, the basic needs that sustain individual initiative? No, he did not, but long experience has shown that a resolution is impossible, and so could not have been his goal.
His goal was far simpler: to remind the United States how important it is as an example to the world. To this end, he raised to our attention four great personalities: Lincoln, MLK Jr, Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton. He did not dwell on their accomplishments, only offering the briefest analysis of their virtues before plunging into an elaboration of how those virtues relate to the challenges facing the world today.
Many will not see it that way. Many will see his pronouncements on immigration, for example, as meddling in domestic politics. But from his perspective, the problem is a global problem. The displaced refugee does not appear only as an illegal within our borders, but on every inhabited continent. If America cannot sustain the compassion to see them as human beings in need of support, then what nation can?
And so with his civics lesson: our tolerance of aggression in American politics is to authorize tyrannical pronouncements by despots all around the globe. That we tend to use economics to elaborate Clauswitz’s dictum (“War is the continuation of politics by other means”) cannot be expected to register on those without our economic sophistication. Tyrants will use the tools available to them when hostility is sparked by rhetoric, and often their tool of choice will be violence. Our political discourse should be civil, and thus set a better example for the rest of the world.
So I stand in awe of the presentation today. The negative was left implicit. Instead, Pope Francis offered us a paean to American excellence, and exhorted us to heed our better angels when crafting policy.
I do wish that Pope Francis would have extended a practical hand to the politicians that resist collaborative policy making. Early in his speech, he did offer that his goal was to reach not just those present, but all those they represent. The tenderness and humility of this man are a manifestation of divine authority that has changed many hearts over the course of human history. To have indicated some of the many Catholic initiatives intended to address our shared difficulties might have – as did Kennedy’s exhortation to reach the moon – provided an impetus to those that fear the problems are too large, and nothing can be done.
And I know that as an observer of reconciliation in Argentina, Pope Francis must have many profound personal stories to share regarding the political power of love, and the healing that it brings. While his personal example of charity and compassion is profound, those engaged in the cut and thrust of politics may see indulgence in such demonstrations. For those struggling with that resistance, personal testimony of political reconciliation might have been beneficial.
Jeb Bush on Barack Obama:
Barack Obama is a talented man — and by the way he’s an American, he’s a Christian — his problem isn’t the fact that he was born here or what his faith is. His problem is that he’s a progressive liberal who tears down anybody that disagrees with him.
Well, Jeb, you’ve got another eighteen debates to overcome two precedents that establish that the Republican Party can’t put forward any candidate that can build bridges even within the Republican Party.
Much less put together the two-party coalition that passed the Health Care Affordability Act, much as the flip-flippers would like to disown it.
In explaining the necessity of God in Tragic Sense of Life, the Jesuit philosopher Miguel de Unamuno asserts that it arises when every man, naturally desiring to control the world, confronts the inevitability of death. As the latter treads on our heels, even the most powerful are pressed to the conclusion that the only way to live forever is to embrace a God that loves us enough to grant us life.
Atheists are inclined by this logic to conclude that faith is a delusion. Marx certainly saw it that way, declaring that “religion is the opium of the masses.” But the underlying pressure is evidenced in the pronouncements of some technologists, among them the man I described yesterday who saw our digital sensors, networks and software as empowering us to build God. Others are more humble. At the ACM fiftieth anniversary symposium in 1997, Nathan Myhrvold, then chief architect at Microsoft, envisioned (somewhat playfully) a future in which we could escape death by creating digital simulations of our brains. The video skit included Bill Gates rubbing his chin as he thoughtfully considered the reduction in Microsoft’s benefits budget.
But if delusion is pathetic, oftentimes in the powerful avoidance is grotesque. We have Vladimir Putin, assassin of Russian patriots, proclaiming that Jesus will find no fault with him on Judgment Day. Or the effrontery of Donald Trump who, protected by his army of lawyers, knows that so long as he asserts righteousness, no one has the means to contradict his claims of competency and benevolence. Thus he continues to assert – in contradiction of the actual birth certificate – that his lawyers have compelling evidence to reveal regarding President Obama’s citizenship. Both of these men suffer from the same affliction, the tendency of our bodies to respond to successful acts of aggression by manufacturing more and more testosterone, the chemical driver for aggression. This is a positive feedback loop that was broken only by death in the cases of Hitler, Franco, Mao, Stalin, Kim Yung Un and so many other tyrants. In the prelude, millions of people were sacrificed on the altars of their psychological invincibility.
This dynamic is writ small in the lives of many businesses, congregations and families. People addicted to the rush of adrenaline and the power of testosterone manufacture experiences that stimulate their production. This is why it is said “absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The desire for power arises from the biological thrill of success, and to continue to receive that thrill, the addict must continue to risk his power in ever greater contests. In the heat of passion, the suffering visited upon others is ignored.
There are three antidotes to this dynamic. The first is popular rebellion. Paradoxically, this is the very force that pushed Putin and Trump to prominence. At a stump speech yesterday, Trump opened the floor to questions, and the first person to the microphone began to rant hatefully about President Obama and an imagined domestic Muslim threat. Trump did not defuse the situation, instead responding “We need to hear this question!” But often rebellion is merely another manifestation of the drive to power. Unless tempered, it rages out of control, as happened in the Jacobian tyranny following the French Revolution.
The second antidote is reason. Reason builds discipline that forces us to reconcile our actions with their consequences, thereby disciplining our aggression with objective evidence of failure. The tension between reason and will is not just moral, however: heightened levels of adrenaline actually degrade the higher thinking centers of the brain. This creates a terribly contradictory dynamic, perhaps manifesting itself in the fact that most academics do their greatest work in their youth. While testosterone serves the reasoning mind in creating the thirst to conquer and claim ideas, as the successful mind expands, so do levels of testosterone and adrenaline, which destroys the power of reason. In that context, the methods used to sustain power are not as brutal as those used by the social tyrant, but have their own unique form of cruelty, and leave lasting scars on the psyche. Isaac Newton, cheated of credit for a scientific insight by his predecessor as head of the Royal Academy of Sciences, had the satisfaction of burning the man’s portrait. Most victims of intellectual tyranny are consigned to obscurity.
It is natural for supporters to gather around the social or intellectual tyrant during his rise to power. Claiming benevolent intention is a great way of rallying support from the oppressed. Unfortunately, this dictum holds: A man will change his beliefs before he will change his behavior. When that behavior is organized around aggression, enemies must be created when there are none left at hand. All tyrants eventually turn on their lieutenants, often using hallucinatory rhetoric to justify their actions.
A peer once offered to me that all the greatest scientists were lovers of humanity. This brings us to the third antidote: love. This arrives upon us through many pathways. It can be through sex and maternity. It can be when an infant first grasps our forefinger. It can be through service to those in want. In those moments a bond is established, a linkage that makes palpable the suffering we visit upon others. That can be rationalized in material terms: tears on a beloved face or cries of shame are evidence of our failure. That breaks the vicious cycle of success and aggression.
But there is another aspect that goes beyond negative feedback. Aggression stimulates the loins and the mind, but barely touches the heart. Exchanging love with someone just feels good. It opens us up to a world of experience that can be touched in no other way. Ultimately, its rewards are far greater because no one that loves themselves objects to being loved. They do not turn on their friends for satisfaction, because their friends offer them satisfaction every day.
Democracy attempts to combat the urge to power by institutionalizing rebellion. In America, the two Presidents that were awarded most authority were George Washington, who gracefully surrendered power after two terms of service following universal acclamation by the Electoral College, and FDR, who literally worked himself to death through four terms in office. Both those men were governed by a sense of duty and love for their country, a commitment affirmed by the popular voice that is expressed in elections. At the end of the 20th century, those that seek the freedom to act always as they please (the ultimate manifestation of power) responded to electoral constraint by attacking our faith in government. Driven by testosterone and thus unable to govern themselves, they have invested huge amounts of money creating personalities such as Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly. As visible in the Oklahoma City bombing and the events surrounding the Republican nominating process, the end result has been to stimulate the resort to violence by others.
Thus we have the wisdom of Jesus: “Render unto Caesar those things that are Caesar’s.” We have the promise of Jeremiah: “For I will write my law on their hearts, and no man will be told ‘Come learn about my God’, because all will know me.” And we have Christ’s summation of the Jewish experience with law (the rule of reason) and governmental control: Love God and your neighbor.
It is through self-regulation that we discover truth and peace[NIV Matt. 7:13-14]:
Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
But what other government would we choose, except the governance of our hearts? And to what other authority would be choose to submit, other than the authority of compassion in another? Why do we delude ourselves that there is any other way?
The exhausted pleas of the Mayor of Kansas City touched me deeply today. Decrying the shooting death of a one-year-old child, he observed that our city officials can’t be everywhere at once, and exhorted all of us to stand up against violence. As a policy prescription, that translates to instituting restrictions on gun access.
It is true that ready access to firearms inflates violent death. Emotional shock or dehumanizing abuse can create a driving urge to remove the source of our pain. When a gun is at hand and familiar to the touch, it represents an immediate solution. But equally true is that a strong person does not employ that solution unless life is under threat.
The problem is that people are becoming weaker, not stronger. This is obvious in the comments on conservative bulletin boards. A steady theme is that the average American is not valued by the social elite, whether political or business leaders. Looking at the decline of the middle class, it is hard to argue with them. We suffer from the naivete of politicians that believed that the war on drugs could be won through incarceration, or that growth would stimulate China to liberalize its economy. And we suffer from the greed of business leaders that lobby to hold down wages and weaken environmental and public health regulations, often using the threat of Chinese competition as a rationale.
A recent study on sexism and racism on gaming sites reveals the social dynamics of the downward slide. What the researchers discovered is that the most successful gamers are nice to everybody – it’s those that struggle that hurl abuse. That abuse is reserved for new entrants to the competition – the skill of winners is widely admired. The abuse is directed at those trying to enter the community and acquire skills. It’s a means of keeping down direct competition.
I think that this is an important aspect of America’s perverse love affair with guns. They provide a false sense of security to those that bear them. They allow the dispatch of the physical intruder that comes to take our property or our jobs, while the elite collects credit card interest every month, drives up working hours and pushes mortgages into default.
But the love affair doesn’t end there. Our over-sized military and jails are social support systems, providing for the basic needs of large cohorts of our society while incubating violence. Our media appeals to our primitive psychological urges with the portrayal of life-threatening circumstances visited upon sexually attractive people whose mastery of physical violence produces victory. And our sports heroes become ever more powerful and intimidating in their performances, to the point that no padding can protect them from long-term disability, and so we simply throw them into the arena without covering for anything except their genitals.
This sounds terribly gloomy, but the celebration of brute physical power above strength of mind and character has a silver lining. It makes those that struggle against violence all the more powerful.
It’s hard to explain until you’ve actually experienced it (though I try in Ma and Golem). It’s to be stalked by a mountain lion in the moonlight, and to calmly escape it from ten feet after freezing it with the mental command, “Go eat something that can’t talk.” It’s to react to the men squared off over a woman in a night club – not by screaming “take it outside” – but by sucking the violence out of the air to the point that the one that threw a punch actually fell over on the floor, reporting later that “I just got all weak all of a sudden.”
But it’s also to give of our selves. It was the CEO of FMC who, having planned a series of acquisitions that created a vertically integrated company without redundancies, offered to the employees of a small, struggling subsidiary that he had “felt your pain.” It is to look the homeless in the eye, validating them as people. It is to tutor in a school for children that walk mean streets every night to homes that may not contain food to fill their stomachs.
It is to let people in fear know that “Yes, this is what it is to be loved.” Once they know, the short-term thrills of adrenaline and lust just don’t have the same attraction.
And more: through an encounter with a disciplined mind and compassionate heart, the promises of our religious avatars become obvious truths. The overwhelming power of those instruments has no material support – they are what they are only because an infinite source of unconditional love enters the world through them. It is through this knowledge that the long-suffering find patience that blossoms into enduring hope. In that endurance and strength, the threat of violence loses the last of its power.
The reactionary right has seized upon the cause of the Kentucky county clerk jailed for failing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. When challenged to justify her position from the New Testament, two passages of scripture are offered.
A reference to Old Testament law, of which Jesus said [NIV Matt 5:17-18, emphasis added]:
…I have not come to abolish [the Law and the Prophets], but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until all is accomplished.
That “all”, of course, being the crucifixion and resurrection, through which the fulfilled Law is superseded by the New Covenant.
But then there is Jesus’s response to the Pharisees [NIV Matt 19:4-5]:
“Haven’t you read,” [Jesus] replied, “that in the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united with his wife, and the two will become one flesh’?”
Of course, if you back up just one verse, you’ll see that this is in response to a specific question [NIV Matt 19:3]:
Some Pharisees came to [Jesus] to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”
Which is elaborated further [NIV Matt 19:7]:
“Why then,” [the Pharisees] asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”
In other words, Jesus was confronting the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, who reference the Law of Moses as higher than the direct effect of God’s presence in the lives of a married couple [NIV Matt 19:6]:
“So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
Understand this: such joining occurred without the sanction of any court. It was a natural state of union arranged by God. A marriage license is merely a recognition of that spiritual reality, backed by conventions and sanctions that ensure that the temporal fruit of that union are shared equitably when the union is dissolved.
So, there is no New Testament justification for asserting that “marriage” is only between a man and a woman. Trumpeting the faith of a clerk that refuses to issue same-sex marriage licenses therefore has no foundation, particularly as the woman has been divorced four times. Of course, the Law of Moses appears to justify the practice of divorce, in spite of Jesus’s direct teaching on the matter.
I, for one, will continue to celebrate the sensitivity of clerks that recognize when God has joined same-sex couples, clerks that proceed joyfully and proudly to issue licenses that ratify the spiritual unions that God has formed.
And lest these words be taken as a declaration of war on divorce, let us be aware that God can separate as well as join. The state of spiritual union is something known only to the two parties to a relationship. Let not material concerns prevent the parties from seeking renewed fulfillment with other partners.
Stung by the image of a Turkish rescuer carrying the body of a three-year old Syrian boy, drowned when the boat bearing has family to Europe capsized, Chris Hayes last night denounced US immigration policies that will allow only eight thousand Syrians to immigrate next year.
Hayes drew a stark comparison with Germany, where Chancellor Merkel has promised to accept nearly a million refugees next year. Looking at the relative sizes of our two nations, Hayes suggested a target number of at least 100,000 for immigration to the US. Echoing “Black Lives Matter”, Mr. Hayes went on to insist that every presidential contender should be forced to make a declaration of policy on the issue.
I agree that the plight of the refugees is inexcusable, but would respectfully suggest that Mr. Hayes is looking at the problem too narrowly. The US accepts millions of refugees every year from Latin America. Yes, most of those come into our country illegally, but most come to find work, and many of them will be nationalized.
Latin American refugees are driven to the US by political tyranny and criminality rampant in their native countries. The conditions in Syria are more extreme and intense, but the basic problem is the same: the failure of governments to create security and stability for their people. So if Germany is held up as a paragon of compassion on the international stage, we should ask “How many Latin American refugees does Germany accept each year?” Almost none, it would appear from the foreign population statistics (see figure 3).
Now the high-minded will complain that US regional policy – including support for fascist regimes during the Cold War and the ongoing War on Drugs – makes us culpable at least in part for the instability in Latin America. But no less so is Europe responsible for instability in their back yard. The Tutsi genocide in Rwanda at the hands of the Hutus was not an outgrowth of ancient ethnic hatred. The Hutu-Tutsi divide was created by the French, who handed out identity cards to create an exploitable ethnic divide based upon wealth. Elsewhere in Africa, the colonial occupiers created national boundaries to exacerbate existing ethnic tensions, thereby ensuring that the natives were unlikely to rally against their European overlords. Those ethnic tensions continue do bedevil Africa to this day, and the residue of these policies is also evident in the Middle East.
Finally, we should focus on the wealthy nations of the Middle East themselves. The region is awash in oil money. Where are Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Dubai in the relief effort?
I am aware of at least one program that responds to the humanitarian crisis emanating from Syria. The Shia community in the south of Iraq is allocating religious charity to the support of Iraqi Sunnis displaced by ISIS/Daesh.
Given this context, I believe that Mr. Hayes has no moral case that compels us to take the extreme measure of relocating hundreds of thousands of refugees to America. And considering the logistics, it would appear that the most effective way to support the relief effort is to provide financial support to regional efforts. I would hold this as the litmus test for American involvement, but it is from the region that the request should come. When Europe comes forward with a plan for managing the crisis, that is the moment for us to pony up to support the effort. If we are to be outraged, it should be that our allies allowed the problem to fester until it became a disaster.
I’m just realizing that the military, confronted with the option of either going to war with Iran or supporting the implementation of the multi-national nuclear technology agreement with Iran, is strongly motivated to shift its loyalties from the Republicans to the Democrats in this election cycle.
What do the Republicans not understand about getting the nuclear issue off the table so that we can start grinding Iran down for it’s activities fomenting terrorism against our allies in the Middle East? Is that really so difficult to understand?
One step at a time. All that your blustering is going to do is upset the apple cart.
Trapped between a rock and a hard place by the legacy of his brother’s War in Iraq, Jeb Bush delivered a speech at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley (I wasn’t invited) that followed the pattern of all self-rationalizing bullies: blame the victim.
Hillary was First Lady during the transition to Jr’s Administration. The Cole destroyer had been holed by a floating IED, and the Clinton team had determined that Al Qaeda was certainly the culprit. The defense briefings implored the Bush team to send a strong message to the perpetrators, but Karl Rove’s political calculationn was that the incident was something that could be painted as a Democratic legacy.
Instead, the Bush team set about antagonizing both allies and adversaries with strong-armed attempts to modify the interpretation of arms limitations treaties to allow deployment of a nuclear missile shield. The week before 9/11, Tom Daschle, leader of the Democratic majority in the Senate, called a press conference on the Capitol steps to voice his concerns that the Bush team did not understand the geopolitical threat posed by Islamic extremists. Later reporting indeed revealed that American withdrawals in Beirut and Somalia were capped by the failure to take action after Cole. Osama bin Ladin believed that America was morally weak, and that one further blow would cause us to curl up and hide from the world.
The Bush team’s incompetence and short-sightedness was compounded in the run-up to the Iraq War. The false claim of yellow-cake trading with Niger was the linchpin of the “weapons of mass destruction” case against Saddam Hussein. When Joe Wilson, former Ambassador to Niger, stood up to dispute the claims, the Bush Administration outed the CIA’s head of nuclear threat control – Valerie Plame, who happened to be Wilson’s wife.
While the conquest of Iraq was a military masterpiece, the weakness of the planning for the peace was evident. Despite the “Mission Accomplished” announcements, the tangled web of Iraqi ethnic resentments provided rich soil for Al Qaeda sympathizers. The nation began to collapse, and the Bush team kept National Reservists in the theater and called up large numbers of additional troops in a “Surge” that finally allowed Iraq to return to self-government.
Since then, the Obama administration’s policy has been to disengage slowly, providing time and incentives for the Iraqi nation to stand on its own two feet. It hasn’t been a pretty picture.
At root, what Jr’s Administration revealed was the danger of disengaging from reality – of treating all foreign policy decisions first and foremost as domestic political decisions. The Democratic response was to serve as the loyal opposition to the nation’s commander-in-chief. They swallowed their complaints and criticism, and focused on trying to ensure that damage was minimized and lessons were learned.
So what about Jeb’s claims that the Obama administration was culpable in the rise of ISIS? How sophisticated a view of foreign policy do they represent?
Well, I would assert “naive to the point of dangerous.” Bush calls, for example, for arming of the Kurds. That can only antagonize Turkey, which has seen 40,000 casualties in a decades-long struggle for Kurdish independence. Turkey’s president Erdogan was apparently a supporter of IS until attempts to control the activities of Sunni extremists lead to a number of bombings. So, no, he’s not a reliable ally, but there’s no reason to push him into the arms of IS.
Or the claim that the Obama Administration didn’t take strong initial action against Islamic State (IS)? Far enough, in 20/20 hindsight. IS grew out of the Syrian civil war, which started as a rebellion against a leader guilty of crimes against humanity, but became a global lightening rod for militant extremists as it dragged on.
The nature and ambitions of IS were not obvious until defectors revealed that operations were actually being guided in secret by Sadaam’s Baathist generals. The initial IS surge was so successful because it exploited Sunni resentment against Shia dominance of Iraq’s government, with many of the early atrocities committed against Shia troops guarding the peace in Western Iraq.
The policies stated by Bush would be to bring additional American troops and material back into the region. That makes sense, except that the most potent weapon in the IS arsenal are suicide bombs crafted from Humvees captured from Iraqi bases. Until the Iraqi security forces demonstrate the resolve to engage the enemy, unless American commits indefinitely to a military presence, IS will simply fade into the civilian population, only to appear again after we leave to take advantage of the resources we leave behind.
And the final charge that Clinton didn’t visit Iraq during her tenure at State: well, there was no State Department presence. The entire operation was run out of the Department of Defense. What would have been the point of starting a turf war?
I understand that in domestic politics, the best defense is always a strong offense. It was perhaps to be expected that Bush would mount his attack against the Democratic front-runner. But what the tone and substance of the attack reveals is a dangerous lack of understanding of the issues. Given the documented history, Hillary will clean his clock in the run-up to the general election, or we’ll find ourselves suffering at the hands of the government we deserve.
everdeepening 