Drive-By Atheism

I was walking out of the church building with a group of friends last evening when some guy driving past rolled his window down and shouted, “Jesus isn’t real.”
We’ve all been tempted to yell rudely out the window at other people from time to time. The guy who cuts you off in traffic might merit a “yahoo!”; the woman who walks cluelessly across the street while yakking on the cell phone deserves a “hang up and walk!” But I’ve never been tempted to verbally assault someone else’s faith convictions.
I wonder what motivates that. More to the point, I wonder why atheists these days are so boring.
Come on. Jesus is not real? How silly is that. That the man, Jesus, lived is all but self-evident unless one wants to believe that within a generation of his life a series of letters and other writings attesting to his life began to spring up in various small communities throughout the ancient Mediterranean world. Oh, to be sure, nothing like contemporary history existed at the time so none survives. Moreover, the writings that do attest to him describe a poor man from a marginal background who led a ragtag group of outcasts on a somewhat Quixotic religious quest that led to a shameful execution – not the type of personage about whom history is ever written.
It beggars belief to suggest that writings describing such a life would emerge within 20 years of his death, and that small gatherings of people dedicated to living in the way of Jesus would similarly emerge. Who, if trying to found a religious movement – much less an institution – would make up a story about such a socially insignificant founding leader? Yet there is plenty of contemporaneous evidence of such writings and such communities.
So, I’m sorry Mr. Drive-by atheist, but Jesus was real.
As to the Christ of faith? Well that is, of course, a different kind of question altogether, and a much more interesting, nuanced and compelling one at that.
I find contemporary atheist dull and bombastic. They continue to slay a God who died a long time ago, and seem incapable of imagining any different image of God than the capricious, puppet master, omnipotent albeit slightly crazy old-man-in-the-beard-sitting-on-high being who rules the universe in a manner that is demonstrably unjust.
To unpack that just a bit by way of recent news, the God who protected some from the earthquake in Haiti but was somehow mindless of the 200,000 others buried under tons of rubble, is the strawman of contemporary atheism. To be sure, that God is also on the other end of the God-phone of many faithful people who often lose that faith when, in cruel blindness, this God happens to miss out saving a loved one from tragedy or disease. That God shows up all too often in the sermons at funerals of those who die tragically young and whose pastors attempt to comfort the survivors with some variation on “God just needed another angel so He called Billy home.”
Lousy theology and even worse pastoral care! But that theology describes a God at whom contemporary atheists take regular and loud aim – even out the windows of passing cars. That God is long dead, and well buried. It is a sad fact of contemporary faith that His funeral continues in houses of worship on many Sunday mornings (and on the Holy Days of other faiths as well).
The God toward whom Jesus points is a far more interesting power who works through human life in all its joys and its suffering to bring about redemption and resurrection. Where is that God amidst the rubble of Haiti? First, in the midst of it with those who suffer, but also empowering and sustaining all of those brave souls who are working tirelessly to dig out, to rescue and to restore – all those working for resurrection, for the rising up of new life from the very real deaths.
Christ lives in the midst of that suffering.
That God is known, as the Johanine literature of one of those ancient gatherings of people of way knew well, simply as love. And that is enough theology for today.

When the Walls Come Tumbling Down

Looking out the window of my study this afternoon I've been watching a large machine gathering rubble across the street. Rubble looks pretty much the same the world over, so I'm trying to imagine what it would look like if the entire block was reduced to rubble, or as in parts of Haiti, the entire community.
The rubble across the street is typical Arlington rubble: a perfectly functional older house torn down to make way for a new structure that will be too big for the lot and will sell from more than a million dollars.
It's taken more than a week to reduce the house to the current pile of bricks and insulation and dry wall. Earthquakes are much more efficient.
Somehow I think the rebuilding will be a lot quicker here, where there's a million dollars to be made, than in Haiti where so many of the hundreds of thousands of now homeless Haitians are among the poorest of the poor.
I watched Jim Wallis on The Daily Show last night. Noting the announcements this week of record setting bonuses on Wall Street, Wallis suggested that the recipients of those bonuses donate the money to the relief efforts in Haiti.
Wonder how likely that is. And do you suppose the walls of Wall Street would come tumbling down if they did? More pointedly, I wonder what I would do with a six- or seven-figure bonus? How much would I give away? Not a moral quandary I'm ever likely to face!
Meanwhile, we're collecting donations for Presbyterian Disaster Assistance at CPC, and creating health kits to be distributed by Church World Service.

Don't Worry, Do Happy

I had my hair cut this afternoon by a delightful young woman from China, who told me all about her grandfather and his three wives. She was curious about the mating rituals in America compared to the arranged marriages of her native land and explained how her grandfather had been unhappy with the first wife, chosen by his family. The wife understood his unhappiness so she chose a second wife for him. He wasn't happy with her either so he went out and found a third one.
It wasn't clear to me just how the living arrangements worked, but she did say several times about her grandfather that, "he didn't happy."
I loved the phrase! Happy is a verb apparently.
So, don't worry, do happy.

Connecting the Dots

Stephen Colbert put his own hilarious spin on the “underwear bomber” and the failure of the national security system to “connect the dots” and thus predict and interdict the would-be bomber.
Colbert offers up a montage of pundits (and the president) talking about the failure to connect the dots, and then notes that connecting the dots is the easiest puzzle of them all.
Connecting the dots, it seems, is not rocket science.
Actually, it's way more difficult than rocket science. Rocket scientists depend upon immutable laws of physics and gravity. They can test and retest on various scales and project from those tests what will happen on a full scale with near certainty.
Try that with human behavior.
I've been reading William Poundstone's Priceless, a fascinating book on the theory of pricing and decision making. Poundstone relates a story from Nobel-prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman's formative experience of sitting in on psychoanalysts' patient conferences. One such conference, Poundstone reports, stuck in Kahneman's memory because the patient did not attend -- having committed suicide the night before. Poundstone writes:

"It was a remarkably honest and open discussion," Kahneman mordantly observed, "marked by the contradiction between the powerful retrospective sense of the inevitability of the event and the obvious fact that the event had not been foreseen."

The analysts, who presumably knew the patient well and were in quite regular conversation with him, failed to connect the dots.
The same was quite obviously the case with the Ft. Hood shooter last year. Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's behavior had, as was widely reported, raised concerns among his colleagues but others close to him were shocked at the shootings. The imam at his mosque said to CNN, "The quiet, very peaceful person coming in and out of the mosque, I couldn't believe he could have done this."
On the other hand, a Pentagon report acknowledged a failure on the part of a terrorism task force "to connect the dots" which included the major's e-mail correspondence with a radical Yemeni cleric who has also been connected with the alleged underwear bomber.
Moreover, Major Hasan's former colleagues at Walter Reed had wondered aloud about his mental stability and capacity to serve.
All of which leads to the same contradiction of a powerful retrospective sense of inevitability and the obvious fact that no one saw it coming.
We had a young friend visiting over the weekend. She is a Virginia Tech graduate who was in school when Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 students during a rampage shooting in April, 2007. As CBSNews noted, "A special state panel convened after the shooting concluded the school had misinterpreted privacy laws and had failed to connect the dots."
Our friend noted that she had several classes with Cho. "He was a little odd and very quiet," she recalled, but said she would never have thought he was likely to commit such a crime. Her recollection sounded remarkably like the ones heard so often following such shocking events. The response, "he was so quiet; I never would have thought he'd do such a thing," has become a cliche in the aftermath of these spasms of violence.
The dots, in other words, are damnably difficult to see in advance.
In a technologically advanced society such as ours it comes as no surprise that in the aftermath of an attempted terror attack we would turn to technology to protect us. In this case, the security experts are turning to the full body scanning technology to find the dots that we do not seem able to connect.
The problem is that even when all the dots are on full display connecting them -- when it involves predicting human behavior -- is incredibly difficult and inexact. Poundstone spends an entire book demonstrating that the rational actor school of economics fails miserably to explain something a fundamental to economic activity as pricing and purchasing decisions. At least when it comes to those basic decisions the rational animal is unreasonable. And if such relatively simple transaction are not subject to the predictions of reason why should we expect that far more complex human interactions would be?
On the other hand, what Poundstone ultimately demonstrates is not that it is impossible to predict human decision making with regard to price and purchase, but rather the decisions that we make are contrary to the expectations of prevailing economic theory. Perhaps what we need with respect to security is a better theory.
There are plenty of quiet, troubled, angry young men who will never shoot up their college campuses or stuff explosives into their underwear or join a terror cell. And there is the occasional seemingly well-adjusted young woman who turns out to be a serial killer.
All of which suggests that, while we can hope that the national security apparatus improves its own internal communications and ability to cut through its own red tape, we probably cannot expect that the human dots will get any easier to connect until and unless we begin to look at them differently -- not through a different scanner but through different eyes.

Hang Up and Drive, %&#@!

Happy New Year, a few days late.
I've enjoyed a post-Christmas staycation during which I completely unplugged from e-mail, office phones and blogging to dig into some painting, plumbing and decorating endeavors. Some folks have suggested that I miss the meaning of vacation! But, in truth, I find such work restorative, and, to be sure, I wasn't slaving away non-stop.
There was plenty of time for good eating and great visits with a steady stream of out-of-town guests that continues this week, as well.
So, just like Nixon in 80, I'm rested and ready -- if not tanned.
Headed back into the world of work yesterday only to be rudely greeted by a %#@!& taxi driver who must have been talking on his cell when he rear-ended me at a traffic light. I was taking our youngest to school and we were well stopped and waiting for the light to turn when the guy banged into us. No damage, and Hannah said, "wow! that was perfectly timed in the book I'm reading."
All of which had me wondering about how and when certain activities become socially acceptable or not. We have all kinds of hang ups in American culture about work and idle time. Vacation, we seem to believe, involves getting physically away and includes recreation understood mostly as consumers of entertainments. My time after Christmas was spent getting away mentally and being productive. I'm not suggesting that one is better than the other, just that the way we come to value one or the other is curious.
Which brings me back round to the cell-yakking cab driver.
Last evening I was sitting in the car, parked around the corner from the Metro station waiting to pick up my beloved and checking messages on my cell, when I strayed off into a mental tangent/rant on the hack who hit me and on driving while talking on the phone. My rant was interrupted when Cheryl called to say that she'd been dumped from the train a couple of stops early when %$#&! commuters did not heed the conductor's call to clear the doorways and the doors got stuck so the train had to be emptied.
So I had to drive about a mile to pick her up, which gave me plenty of time to get back into internal rant mode. I was well into my silent sermon about how drinking and driving was once perfectly acceptable, and about how safety studies show that talking on the phone while driving is as distracting and dangerous as drinking, when my phone rang.
If I was driving and someone offered me a drink I would turn it down, but I answered the phone. It was Cheryl. It was convenient. It was necessary. There are probably three or four other excuses I could invent.
What it was not was socially unacceptable.
Alas, there was no cab in front of me to rear end.

Merry Christmas from the Senate

From the U.S. Senate to 30 million Americans who will now have access to health insurance, an imperfect bill to be sure but also a significant step toward universal coverage -- merry Christmas indeed. Ted Kennedy's Irish eyes are smiling down today.

Christmas 2009

Gratitude is the fundamental response to creation common to all authentic religious expression, and the fundamental attitude in response to experience as well. It’s easy to feel a depth of gratitude today, for I’m sitting in a nice warm house watching the snow pile up. The tree is lit, the carols are playing, and delicious smells waft from the kitchen. There is so much for which to give thanks.
So, to celebrate Christmas 2009, I offer this thanksgiving.
For our crazy, comical family, much thanks. It’s hard to believe it’s been almost an entire year since our family played host to a couple of dozen folks who came to town on a frigid January day to witness the inauguration of President Obama. Despite the difficulties of the year, I do give thanks for the promise of that hope-filled moment, and remain deeply inspired by my dying aunt’s words on the night of his election – among her very last words: “see what we can accomplish when we all work together.”
For Bud, who has grown into his real name (Dylan) most places outside of the family, 2009 was a year of great transition. He graduated from the Clonlara School last spring, and, due to so much work at Northern Virginia Community College, he entered Mary Washington University a few hours short of being a sophomore. We have noted for him that he is pretty sophomoric already, so it seems he’s just precocious. He’s had a fine first semester in Fredericksburg exploring lots of academic options and “majoring” in ultimate Frisbee thus far.
For Martin, who finally caught up and grew taller than his older brother, it’s been a year of growing pains and celebrations. He learned a bit about consequences when some self-imposed academic struggles resulted in his missing out on summer camp. We’re not sure if that experience made the difference this fall, or if it’s the fact that his girlfriend lives in Richmond and they only get to see each other if their grades are such that their parents see fit to trek up and down I-95. Out-of-town love interests are a great bit of leverage! Obviously, the mere fact that there is such interest tells you that Martin is growing up. The fact that the interest is another sweet child of another Presbyterian pastor tells you that he is growing up well. Beyond the love interest, Martin continues to expand his artistic endeavors, adding the mandolin to his violin playing and continuing to work on his drawing and cartooning.
For Hannah, who continues to accomplish whatever she sets her mind to, 2009 was a year of holding on fast to rapidly ending childhood. Hannah did some growing up when her best friend Josie moved to Tunisia with her State Department family. We’re further grateful to live in the communication age, and Hannah and Jo have kept up a great long-distance friendship over Skype. But Hannah remains a little girl at heart, spending hours in blanket forts with one or more dogs and one or more books because, well, outside of a dog a book is a little girl’s best friends, and inside of a dog it’s too dark to read. She emerges from the forts to practice her flute, to write stories and create small art works that decorate her walls.
When the collective mood is right, as it was earlier on this snowy day, Hannah and Martin and I get our instruments out and make music together. We’ll be playing an Irish bit during the Christmas Eve service next week.
Cheryl is the master of ceremonies for this three-ring circus – sitting in the rocking chair, sipping tea, knitting and offering wry commentary on the chaos that unfolds around and interrupts her serenity. To make sure that her ringmaster credentials stay current, she added another master’s degree to her pedigree this year, completing the library science degree at Syracuse University. One more master’s and she’ll have a degree for each ring of the circus. Of course, one more master’s degree and she’ll be in the asylum, too, at least to visit her husband. She gives thanks for continuing good work at the Library of Congress. In a time when so many are struggling, to have a great job, doing work that you love with good colleagues is a great gift.
I continue to serve as pastor to the great little congregation at Clarendon, where we are still feeding the hungry, extending hospitality to the outcast, empowering the marginalized, trying to do justice and make peace, and preaching good news. The highlight of my year was reaching the respectable age of 50. I celebrated the benchmark by running a 10K. I finished it in just less than an hour. Last time I ran one I did it in 39 and change. Of course, I was 25 then! I added less than a minute per year, so by the time I run another when I’m 75 … well at that stage I’m sure I’ll be grateful if I can make it to the finish line.
On the one hand, it is difficult to sum up a year in the life of a family in a few paragraphs, on the other hand, it was a typical year in the life of a typical family. Oh, to be sure, there were interesting moments: President Obama gave his "back to school speech" at Martin's school; Bud and I spent a wonderful week in Italy to celebrate his turning 18; Hannah visited Jamestown; Cheryl and I got to see Herman Wouk honored by Jimmy Buffet -- which doesn't happen just every day.
Other than the Italy trip, these were all just perks of living in Arlington. Nothing extraordinary happened, but there were small miracles every day. Ordinary resurrections, as Jonathan Kozol calls the rising up that we do every day, mark the passing of our time. For some, in these days, rising up is an extraordinary challenge for it comes in the face of violence, sickness or grief. For we who rise up so easily, and take it so for granted, it is often easy to forget the great gift we have been given. When we remember, sometimes we are moved in gratitude to rise up singing, rise up dancing, rise up praying, rise up marching to end the violence, heal the sick and comfort those who mourn.
Despite endless wars, economic calamity, and dysfunctional politics that darken the present and threaten the future, a light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it.
So we rejoice and give thanks in this season of lights, and move boldly into the future bearing as much of that light as we can.
Shalom.

Law and Order and Responsibility

It seems that Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly is ticked off at the producer of NBC's Law and Order, Dick Wolf, because in a recent episode of the show the actions of a character who aims to kill the children of immigrants are explained, in part, as due to the hatred spread by pundits such as O'Reilly, who was named in the show.
I don't know that I've ever seen an entire episode of the show, so I don't know what kind of agenda it might put forth. The little bits I've seen did not lead me to believe it was right wing agitprop like "24" or pushing a liberal agenda, a la The West Wing.
I can understand O'Reilly being angered at being called out, and I don't watch his show ever so I can't say much about it behind clips. From the clips I would say O'Reilly is not in the same league as others named in the show such as Glen Beck or Rush Limbaugh.
But that's for others to decide, and apparently the Law and Order folks lump them all together.
Personally, I'm all for all of them having the right to speak their minds, but I also believe that we are responsible for what we say and how we say it. The only reason we have Constitutional protections on speech is because we believe firmly that speech makes a difference.
It's OK to yell "fire" in a crowded theater if you're an actor and it's in the script. It may even be OK to yell it if there is, indeed, a fire -- although something a bit calmer might be more helpful.
It's altogether another thing if there is no fire, or if the fire is, say, a match used to light a cigar. (OK, I know, no smoking, but even someone as turned off by smoking as I am shouldn't yell "fire" at a lighter.)
A lot of today's bloviators strike me like that: they are screaming their heads off trying to whip up a frenzy about threats that don't amount to much more than a flick of the Bic (now there's an old reference).
It's remarkable, for example, how quickly both left and right play the "Hitler" card in their arguments. When you get to the point of comparing your opponents to Hitler and the Nazis -- which so many do in about two steps -- then what you are suggesting is that it is justified to use violence to stop the other side. I've tried to avoid the rhetorical temptation, though I've succumbed once or twice over the years -- usually in the guise of "I'm not suggesting that they're Nazis, but the way they goose step scare me ...". That we use that kind of rhetoric over issues such as reforming health care or immigration laws is just plain sad.
The sadness turns to tragedy if followers take up arms in response to the clarion calls. The same holds for makers of violent entertainment when its consumers reenact it in the real world. Speakers are responsible for their words, and while there is no reasonable way of legally extending responsibility for how listeners respond, to deny that there is a response is to deny the power of speech.
The causality is impossible to trace, but simply resorting to "1st amendment" arguments in the aftermath of tragedy is a coward's way out.
Don't know that this has much to do with the way Bill O'Reilly's name was used, but it does have something to do with how his words may get used.

Good News

Or, at least, fun news; especially for those of us who are on the downhill side of midlife. Amidst the gloom of war stories, sex scandals and broken politics, I heard a story on NPR today about an 83-year-old woman who took her first solo flight a few weeks ago.
She told NPR that she hadn't taken her first flying lesson until after her 80th birthday, and, in fact, hadn't ever thought about learning to fly until then. She wanted to find something to stretch herself and keep her mind active.
Some older folks take up cross-word puzzles. I hope that when I reach this woman's age I have her enthusiasm for taking on something new.

Bonhoeffer on Advent

“We have become so accustomed to the idea of divine love and of God’s coming at Christmas that we no longer feel the shiver of fear that God’s coming should arouse in us. We are indifferent to the message, taking only the pleasant and agreeable out of it and forgetting the serious aspect, that the God of the world draws near to the people of our little earth and lays claim to us. The coming of God is truly not only glad tidings, but first of all frightening news for everyone who has a conscience.”

Remember What Mr. Nobel Invented ...

As they say on Sesame Street, one of these things is not like the other. One of these things just doesn't belong.

Just a fraction of what is expanded so obscenely on defense budgets would make the difference in enabling God's children to fill their stomachs, be educated, and given the chance to lead fulfilled and happy lives.

-- Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize acceptance remarks

This must be a world of democracy and human rights; a world freed from the horrors of poverty, hunger, deprivation, and ignorance, relieved of the threat and the scourge of civil wars and external aggression and unburdened of the great tragedy of millions forced to be refugees.

-- Nelson Mandela, Nobel Peace Prize acceptance remarks

In spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problems, it merely creates new and more complicated ones. Violence is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr. Nobel Peace Prize acceptance remarks

As commander-in-chief, I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan.

-- President Barack Obama's address to the nation two weeks prior to receiving the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize
As usual, the president was eloquent in his remarks accepting the peace prize, saying, "Let us reach for the world that ought to be -- that spark of the divine that still stirs within each of our souls."
To which most human beings will say, "yes."
But in practicing an unimaginative realism, the president seems to have forgotten his own campaign slogan: "yes we can." As president, clearly Obama faces a different set of responsibilities than the rest of us, but in this crucial moment he is facing those responsibilities in the same way that each of his predecessors as commanders in chief did.
In falling back into a defense of just war, as the president did in his acceptance, he walks the same tired path that kings and despots and commanders in chief and revolutionaries all have walked; justifying their path for a thousand years in Augustine's unbiblical theory of just war.
In the end, however justified a war may seem, a just war is just war. The institution building that the president proposed is certainly important, but there is no way to peace. Peace is the way.

This Is Wrong, Mr. President: UPDATED post speech

This is the first week of Advent, a season of preparation for what Bonhoeffer called “the great turning around of all things.”
As if to prove he is not the messiah (as if such proof were needed) tonight President Obama is going to reassure the world that nothing has really changed. Following in the sunken footsteps of so many of his predecessors, the president is going to choose the path of war and more war.
Bonhoeffer knew that true change that we can believe in does not come through the revolutionary acts of strong men, the grand statements of politicians or even the pious acts of a saint, but instead through the utterly strange action of God.
Thus no one should be surprised by the military steps that President Obama will set in motion tonight. Nothing will be turned around – surely not the arc of the moral universe – by increasing troop levels in Afghanistan. It is a quite open question whether or not even the situation on the ground in Afghanistan will be markedly changed by this action.
Thus I believe the president is making a huge mistake: politically, strategically, morally and historically.
So, first, we hold in the light all of those who are caught in the line of fire -- whether civilian or in uniform, whether on "our side" or the other.
Some of us will be inclined to think that President Obama makes this choice against the better angels of his nature, but it does not really matter. I don’t think George W. Bush was, or is, evil – just wrong on many things. I don’t think Barak Obama is evil, but he is wrong on this decision politically, strategically, morally and historically.
It does not seem to matter whether we send the “best and the brightest,” “the young and the restless,” or the “rich and the famous” to Washington, the disease of war infects them all.
President Obama is wrong politically. As The Nation’s Mark Cooper observes on his blog, “the calculation has been made that his presidency and the Democrats would not be able to survive the charge of cut and run that would be yelled to the high heavens” if he began a serious beginning to the end of the war in Afghanistan. Therein lies the irony of the action all of Washington expects him to announce this evening. Obama was elected, in large part, as an antiwar candidate. Go back and watch his major speeches of the 2008 campaign – from Iowa to Denver, his promise to end the war in Iraq consistently drew the loudest, most enthusiastic cheers. Those voters will not be “fired up and ready to go” in 2012 if the president who promised change has dragged us deeper into a morass that cannot be changed by military means, and that is unlikely, at this late date, even to be improved by such means.
President Obama is wrong strategically. If the aim of the war in Afghanistan was to route from their safe havens those responsible for the atrocities of September 11 – namely the terrorists of al Queda – then the United States and our allies won that war by early in 2002. Quoting an unnamed senior U.S. military official, the Washington Post reported this month that there are “perhaps fewer than 100 members of the group left” in Afghanistan. The same is true if the aim of the war was to unseat the Taliban. Long before we invaded Iraq, the Taliban had been removed from power in Afghanistan and al Queda in Afghanistan had been reduced to a haggard remnant.
The well-documented resurgence of the Taliban over the past 18 months was fueled in part by the continued presence of American (and allied) troops viewed as an occupying force by a people well known for resisting any and all occupying forces. There is plenty of reason to believe that we can negotiate with the Taliban, which was there long before we arrived and will be there long after we depart – whenever that day comes. We are already paying them off handsomely simply to move supplies through the country, as Adam Roston exhaustively reports this month in The Nation. The tangled web of tribal relationships, Taliban leadership, and members of the ruling party in Kabul is such that no one can account for where much of the billions of U.S. dollars pouring into Afghanistan is actually winding up.
Moreover, the 30,000 or so troops that will be added to the fight are probably too few to succeed in a classic counterinsurgency scenario, in which troop levels are determined relative to population size. Even with the increase, troop levels in Afghanistan will be lower than the level in Iraq, which has the smaller population. On top of that, the proposal to turn things over to a civilian government in Afghanistan in 18 months or so seems like an incredibly rosy scenario given the rampant corruption of the current regime. When the current president's brother is among the largest opium dealers in the world it seems more than reasonable to wonder how effective the government can become in a year and a half.
As for al Queda, they have no meaningful presence in Afghanistan. Eight years ago this fall, as American political and military leaders dithered and dreamed of regime change in Iraq, al Queda moved into Pakistan – a U.S. ally and recipient of billions of dollars of U.S. military aid. Their growing presence in Pakistan was widely reported as early as the summer of 2002, when Time ran a lengthy piece on the trend. Al Queda continues to operate in the lawless tribal regions of the mountains along the border, but they do so at a significantly reduced capacity. They are a ragged remnant reduced to living in caves and producing propaganda. They are criminal terrorists; thugs who should be brought to justice.
That we should continue to work strategically with our allies in the region is obvious. That we should be prepared to act swiftly and decisively whenever the opportunity presents itself to capture – or, more likely to kill – bin Laden and his henchmen is equally obvious. Such operations call for smaller strike forces engaging in counterterrorism and criminal justice, not an additional 30,000 troops engaged in nation building by another name.
To capture, try and convict bin Laden would be a triumph for American values. To imprison him for life rather than make him a martyr would be a triumph of nonviolence.
However, it is clearly unlikely that anyone will take him and his lieutenants alive. Killing them then – whether in acts of war or of militarized criminal justice – may be the necessary evil that is part of living in a broken and violent world. Perhaps that would be part of “the Bonhoeffer exception” to the practice of nonviolence. When such killings occur, they are not actions to celebrate but rather events that should lead us to seek God’s mercy.
I do not expect President Obama to share that perspective, but my own commitment to Christian nonviolence leads me to say that the president is wrong morally in this decision.
His moral error ought to spur the church in America into action, both to speak clearly against the ongoing wars of the nation, and also to articulate a new vision rooted in the principles of Christian nonviolence for responding to international terrorism. That call is more urgent today than at any point in our nation’s history, and in the long, mixed history of church thinking on war and peace.
When I was asked at a National Security Council briefing for religious leaders last month what I would say to the president if I had the chance, I said, “I would encourage him to be mindful of history.”
In particular, the president should be mindful of two distinct moments in American war history:
• Counterinsurgency in Vietnam.
• The surge in Iraq.
From the earliest days of the war on terrorism, comparisons to the Vietnam War have been suggested and argued. Were the two wars similar or not in terms of the difficulties of counterinsurgency? Were they similar or not in terms of American knowledge (or ignorance) of the native cultures? Were they similar or not in terms of tactics and strategies? Were they similar or not in relation to their origins? Such questions will doubtless be the subjects of countless history dissertations in the years to come.
Personally, I tend to think that the Vietnam War share some similarities with both Iraq and Afghanistan. But I think the same thing about World War I with respect to World War II. Some things were similar; some things were not.
The real question, however, is why we continue, 50 years past the American entry into Vietnam, to fight that long ago war.
That we are doing so is clear in the echoes of Manichean reasoning about the communists in North Vietnamese so clearly discernable in contemporary discussions of the Taliban and the insurgents in Afghanistan.
That we are doing so is evident in the “hearts and minds” rhetoric in the Army’s new manual on counterinsurgencies, that underscores the primacy of the “battle for the people’s minds.”
That we are doing so is obvious in the rhetoric employed to support the deployment of additional troops.
For example, Peter Hegseth, executive director of Vets for Freedom, is urging President Obama to make the case for “finishing the job.” In so doing, Hegseth lays the groundwork for some future argument that Afghanistan was lost, or that the surge failed, because the politicians in Washington did not provide adequate support for the soldiers on the ground.
The deeper problem, the great unlearned lesson from Vietnam, is that no amount of support for soldiers on the ground is going to alter the outcome, because not only is there no military solution to an insurgency, but there is also no political one – at least not if by “political solution,” one means that America and our allies can build something like a stable civil society in Afghanistan.
As Jonathan Schell argued recently in The Nation, “The circle to be squared is getting the people of a whole country to want what Washington wants. The trouble is that, left to their own devices, other peoples are likely to want what they want, not what we want.”
Indeed, the new counterinsurgency manual explains the battle for hearts and minds this way:
Hearts means persuading people their best interests are served by your success; minds means convincing them that you can protect them, and that resisting you is pointless.
The problem arises when people are persuaded that their best interests are served by their success, and that your continued presence does not protect them but, instead, keeps them from succeeding on their own terms.
Changing public opinion in Afghanistan underscores the problem. Between 2006 and 2009 Afghani public approval of the United States slipped from more than 80 percent to fewer than half the population having a favorable view. The New York Times reported last month that the Afghan public is growing more concerned at the prospect of a surge in troop levels.
A decrease in the level of violence would no doubt improve the public’s perceptions of Americans, and in that regard the experience with the American troop surge in Iraq no doubt seems compelling.
Civilian deaths in Iraq dropped significantly from the 2007 surge through the end of 2008, and have fallen to fewer than 5,000 this year marking the fewest civilian casualties since the war began in 2003. That is good news, but it begs the question of causality, and that question is far from clear.
A report released this fall by the Zurich-based International Relations and Security Network concludes, “The civilian/ethno-sectarian death toll in Iraq peaked in December 2006-January 2007, suggesting US soldiers were unable to check the sectarian bloodshed at its high point, and the preponderance of the sectarian cleansing occurred well in advance of the US troop increase to Baghdad. The troop increase became operational a short time before the end of the civil war, in mid-June 2007. Enough time, roughly two months, to nudge the various Shia militia groups to back down, but insufficient time to end a civil war the US did not control.” Indeed, civilian casualties had dropped from a post-invasion high of 3,160 in July, 2006, to 2,094 in June, 2007, before most of the surge troops were on the ground.
Historians will argue the efficacy of the Iraq surge for years to come, but just as Iraq is not Vietnam, neither is Afghanistan Iraq. What may have worked militarily in Iraq, where the violence and civilian casualties have been mostly an urban affair, may be irrelevant to Afghanistan, where the violence and civilian casualties are mostly in the hinterlands. What may have worked politically in Iraq, where there has been a functioning national civil society for generations, may not work in Afghanistan, where there is little history of a functioning national civil society. (That the Iraqi civil society was for more than 20 years a corrupt and violently enforced one is indisputable, but weighed against the Taliban’s rule in Afghanistan its seems beside the point in considering the prospects for a surge in American troops.)
Taken as a guide, then, the as yet incomplete history of the troop surge in Iraq does not offer President Obama much clarity – which is precisely the point.
If the aim of any troop surge at this point is, as it must be, to hasten the end of the war in Afghanistan, the history of the troop surge in Iraq is sobering. Since that surge was announced by President Bush on January 10, 2007, more than 35,000 Iraqi civilians have died as a result of the violence in their country. In that same period, more than 1,300 American soldiers have died in Iraq.
Almost three years after the surge was announced, more than 140,000 American troops remain in Iraq, and despite President Obama’s pledges, increased violence there over recent months seem likely to keep that number steady well into 2010. Three years into the once-new policy and there are roughly 8,000 more American troops in Iraq than there were in 2007. Or put into a different perspective, more than six and a half years into the war in Iraq, the undefined end of the job is still not in sight.
If President Obama is prepared to tell the nation tonight that well beyond the end of his first term in office there will be more troops on the ground in Afghanistan than there are today, and that the still undefined end of the job will remain out of sight, then he will have honestly assessed the history of the surge in Iraq.
I imagine that the president, like so many before him, will argue that the troop surge is the way to peace. There is no way to peace; peace is the way.
On the eve of the invasion of Iraq, I spoke at a rally in Cleveland’s Public Square. I said then that that Bush’s War in Iraq was wrong, politically, strategically, morally and historically. As President Obama prepares to address the nation this evening to announce his troop surge in Afghanistan, I have reached the same, sad conclusions concerning what is about to become Obama’s War in Afghanistan.
NOTE: the original version of this post is in a document with numerous links to supporting documents. The links fell out in posting it to the blog. If you are interested in seeing them, post a comment with an e-mail and I will send the original your way.

Words Escape Me

I have heard a small bit about this proposed Ugandan legislation to ban homosexuality, but seeing the text leaves me struggling for the right words to describe the hatred, ignorance, and violence inscribed in the legislation.
Asked recently for his view on the proposed law, Rick Warren demurred, saying it was not his role to get involved in the politics of other nations.
The only problem with that perspective is that the politics of other nations have effects beyond the borders of other nations. Institutionalized violence against anyone based on group identity -- race, gender, sexuality, etc. -- gives sanction to such violence beyond the reach of the given institution or jurisdiction. As Dr. King often said, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
The current issue of the journal American Psychologist includes an article on the way religious beliefs have been used in the mix of arguments about contentious social and political issues. The authors write

People who are members of sexual
minority groups are still legitimate targets of random
violence, domestic terrorism, and unequal treatment/protections
under the law. Discrimination against sexual minority
group members is not only encouraged and tolerated, it is
legally required in some contexts. They are discriminated
against in many jurisdictions in the same ways that states
practicing racial segregation, criminalizing interracial marriages,
and carrying out other infringements and denials of
civil liberties and constitutional rights were given license
to do until the Federal government, in the context of social
movements and advocacy, determined that such practices
violated the constitutional rights of free citizens.
Legitimized inequality gives license to harm.

Legitimized inequality gives license to harm. That is what is at stake in all this: the lives of men and women who are at risk of violence and death because they are gay or lesbian. That is what Uganda wants. No religious argument justifies such violence. Is it too much to ask a prominent pastor in America to speak against it?

Note to the White House

It is all but impossible to get through the White House comment line these days, so I resorted to brief e-mail to register input on the upcoming Afghanistan decision.
Dear Mr. President,
Thank you for including faith communities in gathering input on Afghanistan/Pakistan policy. It was an honor to join the group last week at the Eisenhower building.
As you near your final decision, please be mindful of the dismal history of military responses to insurgencies, and focus U.S. policy on diplomatic, political and humanitarian responses to the problems in Afghanistan.
Please be honest in your assessment of the "surge" in Iraq, and know that any similar surge in Afghanistan will likely accomplish no more than creating isolated zones of temporary safety.
True peace is not merely the absence of violence; it is the presence of justice. Please seek peace and pursue it.
Blessings on you and your family in the midst of such difficult times.
Shalom,
Rev. Dr. David Ensign
Christian Peace Witness
Pastor
Clarendon Presbyterian Church

Me, Kal Penn and Peace

I represented the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship at a White House security council briefing on Afghanistan and Pakistan. Twenty or so representatives from Protestant, Catholic and Muslim groups were in the room at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building (former Old Executive Office Building, former State Department, former War Department) next door to the West Wing.
The briefing was an off-the-record meeting as part of President Obama's "listening tour" as he deliberates U.S. policy in Afghanistan. Because it was off the record, I'll note only that we were asked by the security council staff to tell them exactly what you would say to the president were he in the room because they are the ones who will bring him the information and recommendations on policy and how to articulate it.
There was, as one of the staffers noted to me afterward, remarkable agreement among the faith groups. We want the military operations to end. We want American troops to be withdrawn as quickly as possible. We want aid operations to be supported. We want the U.S. to engage the region diplomatically and culturally.
None of that is any surprise, nor is it breaking any confidence to repeat those broad strokes.
When my turn to speak came, well into the 75 minutes we had, I simply said that the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship would underscore and amplify most of what had already been said, and that we would add only the strong encouragement to the president to be mindful of history as he makes this decision.
In particular, be mindful of the dismal history of military counter-insurgency efforts. They simply do not work, and 20th-century history is dotted with examples of their failures, most strikingly in this instance, the oft-noted failure of the Soviet Union in the same mountains fighting the same insurgents.
Moreover, be mindful of the history and cultures in the places where we are engaged. We have a long, sad history of ignorance dating back to our failure to engage and understand the history and culture of the indigenous people on our own continent and extending on through our military efforts in Korea, Vietnam, the Middle East and Asia. That ignorance, too often combined with an imperial arrogance, has led us down some long, dark, and deadly paths.
Finally, be mindful of our own history. The last time an American president tried to take on such serious domestic issues -- poverty, health care -- the effort was derailed by the costly war in Vietnam.
Of course, recalling President Johnson also brought to my mind his inelegant remark that he would rather have his political adversaries "in the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in," and left me wondering if the religious peace groups are simply being co-opted by the administration. On the other hand, after eight long years of walking on the other side of the fence being utterly ignored, it was refreshing to be invited in to share our perspective.
All of that, however, is neither here nor there, because the highlight of the meeting was at the very beginning when Kal Penn walked in. House fans know him as Doctor Kutner. Political junkies know that he walked away from his lucrative acting career to work in the White House Office of Public Liaison. In that role, he was at the meeting to take notes.
I did not get a chance to speak with him, though I considered feigning some strange and serious malady and asking him for a diagnosis. Seriously though, I did want to congratulate him for setting aside his career for a while to work for something he believes in. Whatever one thinks of the president, it's always pretty cool to see someone make a significant sacrifice -- in this case, financial -- to work for the common good.
Oh, and the bottom line of the gathering: it's not lupus.

A Note to My Catholic Colleagues: Updated

I have worked with Catholic Charities many times over the years, and have been consistently impressed by the compassionate service provided. Thus, I was dismayed to read of the archdiocese's threat to pull social services from the District in response to changes in its marriage laws. I am pretty certain that when Jesus said, "when I was hungry you fed me," or "feed my sheep," he did not say, "unless you oppose same-sex marriage." Jesus never attached strings to his compassion or threatened to use the poor as pawns in a political game. Whether or not one agrees with your stand on same-sex marriage, to harm the least of these in order to make your point is unworthy of your great tradition. I pray that you will reconsider.
UPDATE: Kojo Nnamdi had Ed Orzechowski, President & CEO of Catholic Charities of Washington, on this afternoon to talk about this issue. The most interesting part of the interview came when an attorney called in to press Mr. Orzechowski on the inconsistencies in Catholic Charities' positions with respect to their noncompliance with DC's human rights code. It's worth a listen, and it underscores my central concern here: the archdiocese is making the poor a pawn in the struggle over marriage equality. DC and the gay rights community have turned a blind eye to Catholic Charities noncompliance with the human rights code for years, and there is no reason to believe that would not have continued under the proposed law. Moreover, federal law prohibits a locality from forcing a private entity to comply with any regulations regarding insurance coverage (of, for example, domestic partners or same-sex spouses).

A Poem for Veterans Day

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Lt. Col. John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

The Executioner's Song

The man found guilty of masterminding the DC-area sniper murders in fall of 2003 was put to death by the Commonwealth this evening.
Yesterday I found myself sitting in the Barnes & Nobles next to the "sniper Depot" reading about the father of one of the victims and remembering that distant October. We lived in Ohio at the time, but even there we wondered about copycats every time we filled our gas tanks or walked across large suburban parking lots. I was bringing a busload of Presbyterian peacemakers down for one of the first major rallies in opposition to the drumbeat of war in advance of the invasion of Iraq, and I recall the deep sense of relief we felt when the sniper arrests were made during the week before we headed down.
All of those memories are incredibly vivid even now, and none of the events touched me personally.
The father believes tonight's execution will bring "closure," but closure is a myth that sells pop-psych books not a reality that brings comfort six or seven or even seventy years after a devastating loss. Grieving never ends as long as memory endures. It is part of what makes us human, and part of the human condition of living always in the valley of the shadow of death.
Each of us bears our own scars from the particular paths we walk through this lonesome valley. Another's death will never remove the scar he caused. There is only moving with and through the pain of the wound until we find some deeper path where the suffering and scars inform instead of debilitate.
The cross of Christ offers deep wisdom to those who walk the lonesome valley in the company of Jesus, but that's a sermon for another day.
And so I sat sipping my mocha and wondering what point it serves to execute anyone.

Mixed Bag On the Road to the Inevitable

I join my GLBT friends in sadness this morning over the results of the Maine vote to repeal the state's legislative victory legalizing same-sex marriage. Meanwhile out on the other cost, Washington voters voiced their support for domestic partnerships.
Amidst the gray from Maine there is one bright shining promise: returns from the University of Maine were running more than 80-20 in favor of marriage equality. Those votes are the future. The moral arc of the universe is long, but it does bend toward justice.
As Bishop Robinson said in Maine over the weekend, "We're in this for the long haul. Keep your energy up and your focus clear. We can be in it for the long haul because we know how this is gonna end: full equality."
I spent election night ignoring the politics of the moment (after voting), and concentrating on the work of arc bending. The local More Light Presbyterians chapter board, which I co-moderate, had its monthly meeting and we spent two hours in an energetic conversation about movement building, public witness and outreach.
We are in this for the long haul, and we know how this is going to end. As Sen. Kennedy said, the work goes on, the dream endures, the hope shall never die.

a poem for the day

Last Night I Dreamed a High School Musical
A rising electricity from the gathering crowd,
glimpsed around the edge of the curtain.
The orchestra tunes.
Places!
Houselights dim.
Single spot: stage left.
I count ten. Curtain up.
A lone figure on the stage
as I wait on my first cue.
Dancing girls and extras hustle past,
lit exquisitely by my hands.
The leading lady swirls by.
Ballet slipper leads to the turn of her ankle,
Curling up her perfect legs until I reach
Intermission.
Twelve minutes alone with Vonnegut.
Flip the house lights three times then dim.
A lone spot light as once again the curtain rises.
The light falls on her face as she dances,
then a second spot and he joins the dance.
I sit in the darkened booth;
backstage in my own dream.