The Gaza Attacks: “Israel carefully planned the attack to extract the highest possible price.”

Posted on December 29, 2008 by wallwritings

UPDATE: Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Israel’s attacks on Gaza have entered their fifth day. The Israeli cabinet has rejected a call for a cease fire. 

Amira Hass writes in Ha’aretz on the careful planning of these attacks. Hass covered Gaza and the West Bank for Ha’aretz for many years. She is currently a correspondent for Haaretz. Her understanding of Gaza’s neighborhoods adds an important insight into the Israeli bombing campaign of Gaza. She is the author of Drinking the Sea at Gaza.  Here are the opening paragraphs of her Haaretz report:

This isn’t the time to speak of ethics, but of precise intelligence. Whoever gave the instructions to send 100 of our planes, piloted by the best of our boys, to bomb and strafe enemy targets in Gaza is familiar with the many schools adjacent to those targets – especially police stations. He also knew that at exactly 11:30 A.M. on Saturday, during the surprise assault on the enemy, all the children of the Strip would be in the streets – half just having finished the morning shift at school, the others en route to the afternoon shift. 

This is not the time to speak of proportional responses, not even of the polls that promise a greater share of Knesset seats to the mission’s architects. This is, however, the time to speak of the voters’ belief the operation will succeed, that the strikes are precise and the targets justified. 

Take, for example, Imad Aqel Mosque in Jabalya refugee camp, bombed and strafed shortly before midnight on Sunday. These are the names of the glorious military victory we achieved there – Jawaher, age 4; Dina, age 8; Sahar, age 12; Ikram, age 14; and Tahrir, age 17, all sisters of the Ba’lousha family, all killed in a “precise” strike on the mosque. Another three sisters, a 2-year-old brother and their parents were injured. Twenty-four neighbors were wounded and five homes and three stores destroyed. This part of the military victory did not open our television or radio news broadcasts yesterday morning, nor did they appear on many Israeli news Web sites. 

This is the time to speak about the detailed maps in the hands of IDF commanders, and about the Shin Bet advisers who know the exact distance between the mosque and nearby homes. This is the time to discuss the drone planes and the hot air balloons fitted with advanced cameras floating over the Strip day and night, filming everything. . . .

SECOND UPDATE:

For Philip Weiss’ analysis of the media coverage of the Gaza attacks, click here.  For another Weiss posting which includes a cell phone video clip taken by an Al Jazeera camerman, click here. 

by James M. Wall

The mind boggles, the heart aches, and the anger builds. Massive suffering and destruction in Gaza enters its fourth day. The death toll exceeds 350 and the wounded total approaches 1,400.

American political leaders and media reports say the attacks are the fault of Hamas. Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter, a regular commentator on MSNBC, makes a big deal about all those rockets Hamas has been slinging Israel’s way, and once again quotes Barack Obama’s ill-chosen statement that if someone were sending rockets that threatened his daughters, he would respond. 

Which raises the question:  Now that Obama has demonstrated that he needs to work out a better understanding of proportionality–a serious flaw in a president, as we know–we must ask, what would Obama do if his daughters lived in Gaza with bombs falling from the sky?  He would not be able to do very much because the only weapons available to the Obama parents would be those largely ineffective rockets Hamas keeps firing at a major military power out of their frustration and anger. 

American political leaders and American media are trash talkers, something that basketball player Obama knows well. They talk trash about anyone opposing Israel even though the smart ones know that the justification for Israel’s attack on Gaza is a complete farce.  Define farce? Doing something that does not connect to reality. 

Media coverage constantly repeats Israeli talking points that absolves Israel of all blame. The Bush White House blames Hamas. Both Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi say, in unison, Israel has every right to “defend itself”. So let us be forewarned: With Reid and Pelosi running the Congress and Rahm Emmanuel in the White House, if Obama names Dennis Ross as his envoy to the Middle East, expect the policy of “never blame Israel” to continue. If Ross is tapped, who you gonna call? Ghostbuster Hillary Clinton?  Good luck on that one.

A moment in history with Joseph Welch springs to mind. On that memorable day in 1954 Welch had finally had all he could take of Senator Joe McCarthy’s deceptive and deceitful attacks.

Reacting to a McCarthy attack on a Welch staff member during a Senate committee hearing, Welch said what should now be said to Israel and its American sponsors, and which someday will be said when enough sensible Americans wake up to the reality of Israel’s Occupation: 

Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. . . .Little did I dream you could be so reckless and cruel as to do an injury to that lad. It is true he is still with Hale & Dorr. It is true that he will continue to be with Hale & Dorr. It is, I regret to say, equally true that I fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you. If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty, I will do so. I like to think I am a gentleman, but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me. .

These brutal attacks against Gaza are part of a long range ethnic cleansing strategy that is “reckless and cruel” and it has done enormous injury to the Palestinian people.  It is a strategy that has been on the Israeli planning books since 1948. Was Israel ever called to explain its actions?  Where is the challenge today for its farcical rocket rationale?

Check the record. Both ill-fated invasions of Lebanon were blamed on “attacks” from the other side.  All those targeted assassinations of Palestinian leaders?  Think back, Pilgrim: Those attacks were sold as responses to something those “targeted” leaders would have done had they lived. Think of it as Israel’s version of  preemptive strikes. 

 Challenge is an online magazine which originates in Israel from a peace-minded publisher. In its current issue, Challenge describes the current attack on Gaza as carefully planned  in advance. It even has its own military title. And the attack, according to Challenge, was enthusiastically received in Israel:

Israel’s military operation called Molten Lead started on Saturday, December 27, 2008 and took more than 200 lives in its first day, much to the satisfaction of the Israeli public. Already on Friday there were cries of “Go get ’em!” from the columns of the leading newspapers, and on Saturday the Gazans got what Israelis have long been wishing them. This was no spontaneous operation, no mere response to the recent firing of rockets on the towns of the Negev. In the preceding half year of calm, while warning that Hamas was arming itself, Israel carefully planned the attack to extract the highest possible price.

Marty Pertz, editor in chief of The New Republic, and a zealous Israeli supporter, doesn’t care when the attacks were planned,. He wants no part of this disproportionate argument.  To get the full flavor of his belicosity, read his blog in full. And then pray that Peretz reflects only the more extreme Zionist proponents in the US. Here is a taste of Peretz:

The government in Jerusalem had made it unmistakably clear that it would no longer tolerate this fire power aimed at innocent civilian life. It had been saying this for months to an increasingly skeptical and apprehensive, not to say, restive public. And to Hamas which didn’t seem to care. Instead, it threatened Israel by word and follow-up deeds that confirmed the recklessness – as if confirmation was needed- of also this Palestinian “liberation” movement, the last in the long line of terrorist revolutionaries acting in the name of pathetic and blood-thirsty Palestine.

So at 11:30 on Saturday morning, according to both the Jerusalem Post and Ha’aretz, as well as the New York Times, 50 fighter jets and attack helicopters demolished some 40 to 50 sites in just about three minutes, maybe five. Message: do not fuck with the Jews. At roughly noon, another 60 air-attack vehicles went after other Hamas strategic positions. Israeli intelligence reported 225 people dead, mostly Hamas military leaders with some functionaries, besides, and perhaps 400 wounded.  The Palestinians announced 300 dead, probably as a reflex in order to begin their whining about disproportionate Israeli acts of war. And 600 wounded.

Glenn Greenwald’s reading of Pertz is harsh. You owe it to yourself to read Greenwald, also in full. 

Let us be brutally honest here.  This onslaught has been in the works since Hamas defeated Fatah in the January 2006 parliamentary election. Israel and the US insisted the Palestinians hold democratic elections. They just did not mean for Hamas to win.

Palestinian voters forgot the old reminder, “It’s not nice to mess with Mother Nature”.  Hamas had been lulled into believing that the winner of a democratic election assumes control of the government. But Mother Israel told Hamas “it’s not nice to mess with this Mother because she has the biggest guns”. So Israel cut off all Palestinian funding with the full collaboration of its US and European allies. 

Hamas pulled in its collective belt and kept talking about this thing they thought was democracy. Didn’t work. Mother Israel sold the Fatah party leaders on the riches and power they would have if they joined the enemy.  Lo and behold, while more than 300 Gazans die from Israeli bombs, Fatah President Mahmoud Abbas drinks the cool aid and reads the script, “Its all the fault of Hamas”.  In World War II, he would be a Quisling. (Source: From the name of  Major Vidkun Quisling, the Norwegian diplomat and army officer who ruled Norway for the German occupiers from 1940-45.) 

Does Mahmoud Abbas not know, has he not heard, what his new best friend, Mother Israel, is doing in Gaza?  Of course he knows and of course he has heard. But power corrupts.

President Abbas needs to read this description of Gaza from Ali Abunimah, writing after the first day of attacks for his online Electronic Intafada: 

“I will play music and celebrate what the Israeli air force is doing.” Those were the words, spoken on Al Jazeera today by Ofer Shmerling, an Israeli civil defense official in the Sderot area adjacent to Gaza, as images of Israel’s latest massacres were broadcast around the world.

A short time earlier, US-supplied Israeli F-16 warplanes and Apache helicopters dropped over 100 bombs on dozens of locations in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip killing at least 195 persons and injuring hundreds more. Many of these locations were police stations located, like police stations the world over, in the middle of civilian areas. The US government was one of the first to offer its support for Israel’s attacks, and others will follow.

Reports said that many of the dead were Palestinian police officers. Among those Israel labels “terrorists” were more than a dozen traffic police officers undergoing training. An as yet unknown number of civilians were killed and injured; Al Jazeera showed images of several dead children, and the Israeli attacks came at the time thousands of Palestinian children were in the streets on their way home from school.

Shmerling’s joy has been echoed by Israelis and their supporters around the world; their violence is righteous violence. It is “self-defense” against “terrorists” and therefore justified. Israeli bombing — like American and NATO bombing in Iraq and Afghanistan — is bombing for freedom, peace and democracy.

The rationalization for Israel’s massacres, already being faithfully transmitted by the English-language media, is that Israel is acting in “retaliation” for Palestinian rockets fired with increasing intensity ever since the six-month truce expired on 19 December (until today, no Israeli had been killed or injured by these recent rocket attacks).

But today’s horrific attacks mark only a change in Israel’s method of killing Palestinians recently. In recent months they died mostly silent deaths, the elderly and sick especially, deprived of food and necessary medicine by the two year-old Israeli blockade calculated and intended to cause suffering and deprivation to 1.5 million Palestinians, the vast majority refugees and children, caged into the Gaza Strip. In Gaza, Palestinians died silently, for want of basic medications: insulin, cancer treatment, products for dialysis prohibited from reaching them by Israel.

What the media never question is Israel’s idea of a truce. It is very simple. Under an Israeli-style truce, Palestinians have the right to remain silent while Israel starves them, kills them and continues to violently colonize their land. Israel has not only banned food and medicine to sustain Palestinian bodies in Gaza but it is also intent on starving minds: due to the blockade, there is not even ink, paper and glue to print textbooks for schoolchildren.

Richard Silverstein points to an analysis of the Gaza agony:

In the midst of this madness called Operation Solid Lead, I see one of my roles as recording who got it right and who got it wrong.  I am grateful for Sol Salbe informing me of Tom Segev’s strong denunciation of Israel’s Gaza onslaught published in Haaretz. Here is a long excerpt full of wisdom. For anyone who asks how to end this mess, read the last paragraph below:

…The assault on Gaza…demands a few historical reminders. Both the justification given for it and the chosen targets are a replay of the same basic assumptions that have proven wrong time after time. Yet Israel still pulls them out of its hat again and again, in one war after another.

Israel is striking at the Palestinians to “teach them a lesson.” That is a basic assumption that has accompanied the Zionist enterprise since its inception: We are the representatives of progress and enlightenment, sophisticated rationality and morality, while the Arabs are a primitive, violent rabble, ignorant children who must be educated and taught wisdom – via, of course, the carrot-and-stick method, just as the drover does with his donkey.

The bombing of Gaza is also supposed to “liquidate the Hamas regime,” in line with another assumption that has accompanied the Zionist movement since its inception: that it is possible to impose a “moderate” leadership on the Palestinians, one that will abandon their national aspirations.

As a corollary, Israel has also always believed that causing suffering to Palestinian civilians would make them rebel against their national leaders. This assumption has proven wrong over and over.

All of Israel’s wars have been based on yet another assumption that has been with us from the start: that we are only defending ourselves. “Half a million Israelis are under fire,” screamed the banner headline of Sunday’s Yedioth Ahronoth – just as if the Gaza Strip had not been subjected to a lengthy siege that destroyed an entire generation’s chances of living lives worth living.

…Hamas is not a terrorist organization holding Gaza residents hostage: It is a religious nationalist movement, and a majority of Gaza residents believe in its path. One can certainly attack it, and with Knesset elections in the offing, this attack might even produce some kind of cease-fire. But there is another historical truth worth recalling in this context: Since the dawn of the Zionist presence in the Land of Israel, no military operation has ever advanced dialogue with the Palestinians.

Most dangerous of all is the cliche that there is no one to talk to. That has never been true. There are even ways to talk with Hamas, and Israel has something to offer the organization.Ending the siege of Gaza and allowing freedom of movement between Gaza and the West Bank could rehabilitate life in the Strip.

Posted in Middle East Politics | 8 Comments

Niebuhr, Carter and Obama Understand History as “a larger realm of Mystery”

Posted on December 22, 2008 by wallwritings

by James M. Wall      

Reinhold Niebuhr’s influence on former President Jimmy Carter has been evident throughout Carter’s political career. That influence is even more pronounced in Carter’s post-presidency.

Carter is a political realist who understands, and acts on, Niebuhr’s concept of the irony of history . William Dean, a retired faculty member at Denver’s Iliff School of Theology, was moved recently to write about Barack Obama’s potential as the second president with a working knowledge of Niebuhrian realism. Dean describes Niebuhr this way:

Niebuhr looked long and hard at history and claimed to see what the Bible did.  He saw a record of personal and group pride so appalling and unremitting that it should cause us to distrust every nation and every leader, and every politician and preacher who glorifies them.  That same skepticism should also be directed at the rest of us, who regularly exaggerate our virtue and diminish our vice.  

And yet for Niebuhr, pessimism without hope is just as wrong as pride.  Why hope?  Because there is a redemptive spirit operating in history that encourages nations and people to do better than their history and pride alone would permit.  History, said Niebuhr, is informed by “a larger realm of Mystery.”

In recent months the Niebuhrian-Obama connection has been the subject of several columns and blog postings. Dean found one of those connections in the New York Times.

In the spring of 2007, conservative political columnist David Brooks met Senator Obama on the run.  “Yesterday evening,” Brooks writes, “I was interviewing Barack Obama and we were talking about effective foreign aid programs in Africa. His voice was measured and fatigued, and he was taking those little pauses candidates take when they’re afraid of saying something that might hurt them later on.

“Out of the blue I asked, ‘Have you ever read Reinhold Niebuhr?’

“Obama’s tone changed. ‘I love him. He’s one of my favorite philosophers.’   So I asked, ‘What do you take away from him?’ Obama answered in a rush of words:

“I take away the compelling idea that there’s serious evil in the world, and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn’t use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction. I take away . . . the sense we have to make these efforts knowing they are hard, and not swinging from from naïve idealism to bitter realism.”

Brooks then wrote, “My first impression was that for a guy who’s spent the last few months fund-raising, and who was walking off the Senate floor as he spoke, that’s a pretty good off-the-cuff summary of Niebuhr’s The Irony of American History.” 

Monte Bute has been writing on the Niebuhr-Obama connection in his blog. He recently cited a Martin E. Marty posting in a Washington Post blog:

The election of Barack Obama says—about America and to the world—that it is open to “realistic hope” and “hopeful realism.” Those two two-word phrases paraphrase themes from the mid-century theological great, Reinhold Niebuhr. I mention him because President-Elect Obama is influenced by him and quotes him (as did President Jimmy Carter, the other theologically literate president of our time). . . .

I am singling out the combinations of “hope” and “realism” because the nation and the world needs a dose of hope, and hope has been a main theme of Obama the author, who used the word in a book title, and who accurately sensed the need and a hunger for hope. . . . 

. . . “Realistic hope” is a caution against utopianism, naive idealism, the claiming of bragging rights, or politically “not knowing to come in out of the rain.” As author, community organizer, law school professor, state and U.S. senator, and presidential primary candidate, Senator Obama tirelessly invoked and promoted hope–and always coupled his invocation and promotion with cautions. We hear it all the time: righting wrongs and charting new courses in a dangerous world and with a destroyed economy allows no chance to relax and sit back. . . .

Monte Bute notes that from the 1930s through the 1960s, Niebuhr was arguably the nation’s most influential theologian and political theorist. He disappeared from public sight, and until 911, was a largely forgotten theologian and intellectual leader. Bute says that since 911, Niebuhr has attracted attention from many scholars and pundits.  Offering a guide to the complexity of Niebuhr’s thinking, Bute suggests in his blog:

No single work of Niebuhr’s does justice to the range and depth of his unique fusion of religious faith and power politics. Nevertheless, if you are among those many readers of the past two generations who have never made the acquaintance of Pastor Niebuhr, The Irony of American History is the place to start. . . . 

What is perennial about Niebuhr is a style of thought—and his ironic mind is most evident in the first and last chapters. In the alpha and the omega, he sketches an existential drama that is born of the human condition. Niebuhr appropriates the ideas of tragedy, pathos and irony to portray three enduring theories of human nature and destiny. With Abraham Lincoln as his exemplar, the preacher casts his lot with irony: The evil in human history is regarded as the consequence of man’s wrong use of his unique capacities. The wrong use is always due to some failure to recognize the limits of his capacities of power, wisdom and virtue. Man is an ironic creature because he forgets that he is not simply a creator but also a creature.

An American president has the unique capacity and enormous power to do good. At the same time, the president has the unique capacity and power to do evil. What has made Jimmy Carter a practicing Niebuhrian is his deep awareness of that internal reality, good and evil in constant conflict.

In his post presidency, Carter acts on this awareness with a zeal of a man eager to solve problems. It is not a retirement of leisure he has chosen. He and his partner and wife, Rosalynn, do the heavy lifting.  It is not glamourous to wade into the jungles of Africa to do battle with a scourge like the guinea worm.

In February of 2007, Jimmy Carter told Nicholas D. Kristof of the New York Times: “I’m determined to live long enough to see no cases of Guinea worm anywhere in the world.” The Carters are close to their goal. The Carter Center reported earlier this month that the guinea worm is almost eliminated.

Carter feels that it is his responsibility to utilize his post-presidency prestige to encourage leaders of other nations to combat the evils they confront. 

He risked his prestige to confront Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians by writing a game-changing book, Palestine: Peace not Apartheid. He was viciously attacked by supporters of Israel, including the New Yorker’s Jeffrey Goldberg. This does not deter him. He know it is his responsibility to address the damage the occupation does to both Israelis and Palestinians. 

Carter has written a sequel, scheduled for publication around the time of Obama’s inauguration.

As a former president, Carter insists on speaking truth to those currently in power. With President Bush seated nearby (and on camera), Carter spoke at Coretta Scott King’s funeral and excoriated the practice of wire tapping of American citizens, an illegal practice used against both of the Kings. 

Carter will soon monitor another Middle East election, this time in Lebanon, ignoring a refusal from Hezbollah, one of the parties involved in the election, to meet with him on a recent trip there. (Hezbollah will, however, welcome Carter’s team of monitors to Lebanon in February.)

Carter has criticized the Bush Administration, Israel and the European Union for failing to honor the results of the last election he monitored in 2006, which Hamas won over the US-Israel backed Fatah party in the Palestinian Occupied Territories.

Barack Obama has promised Carter that he will pursue a realistic path in the Middle East. When these two Niebuhrians start talking the language of realism, the world has good reason to hope. Behind that hope is the realization that the two presidents understand, with Niebuhr, that history is informed by “a larger realm of Mystery”.

Posted in Religion and politics | 1 Comment

Rick Warren To Pray at Obama’s Inaugural? Was Otis Moss III Already Booked?

Posted on December 19, 2008 by wallwritings

by James M. Wall                     moss-cropped1

When word came that Barack Obama had selected Rick Warren to give the opening prayer at his inauguration, you had to wonder, was Otis Moss III already booked?

Warren has been a leading warrior in the culture wars that have divided the nation. Reaction in opposition to Warren was swift and predictable. Many of Obama’s enthusiastic support base felt betrayed. Warren has every right to voice his opposition to the GLBT community and to speak out against choice. But that does not earn him the right to pray while the whole world watches on January 20.

Why did Obama choose a leading general in the culture wars when he could have selected someone with whom the Obama family already has a religious connection? Why not ask the Rev. Otis Moss III, Obama’s young, dynamic pastor at Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, the church where Barack and Michelle Obama were married and where their children were baptized.

Moss, who is African American, (and the son of the Rev. Otis Moss, Jr, a contemporary of Martin Luther King)  may or may not agree with Warren on the culture war issues. Many African American pastors and church members oppose choice and gay marriage. But Moss has not been a general in that war, firing off remarks highly offensive to the other side.

Which raises the obvious question: Who, in the name of all that is sacred, advises Obama on religious matters? It cannot possibly be anyone who knows American religion as well as his economic advisors know hedge funds and derivates. Obama’s secular advisors, on this matter at least, are tone deaf to American religious life.

And yes, Trinity United Church of Christ was for many years the home of the prophetic preacher, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. But Wright has retired. Otis Moss III was called to the Trinity pulpit in February, 2008.  Moss became pastor of the church at a difficult time, but as he demonstrated in a Chicago press conference,  he was up the assignment.  

Now is the time for healing. Bringing Otis Moss III to Washington on January 20 would have said, change is coming. This is our moment to transcend divisiveness. This is the time to transcend the culture wars, not bring them to the inaugural in the form of a prayer. This is a time for the nation to celebrate, not argue.

Moss should have been an easy choice. He is not only the Obamas’ pastor. He is also the pastor of a United Church of Christ congregation, a part of a denomination which by a recent count, has 1,330,985 members worldwide.  spread over more than 6000 local churches.

Numbers should never be the measure of religious influence, but in a nation that needs desperately to rebuild a sense of community, it is a matter of some significance that Trinity belongs to a denomination formed by the union of four different historic Protestant traditions, Congregational Churches, the Reformed Church in the United States, The Christian Churches, and the Evangelical Synod of North America.

With all due respect and admiration for what Rick Warren has accomplished, Brother Rick is not rooted in a denomination with worldwide connections. He is part of a new phenomenon in American religious life, the individual local mega church movement with congregations that rise and fall on the personalities of entrepreneurial leaders of the sprit.

It is no small accomplishment to start with an initial knock on the door of a new housing development on the way to building a congregation that now reaches 20,000 members. But why pick one success story pastor among the meta church phenomenon and ignore all the others?  Even one as innovative as Warren, who in 2005 rented a baseball stadium for a single service so he could preach to his entire congregation at one time. 

It is also impressive to write a book that sells zillions of copies to a religious market, a book whose author traveled below the radar screen of the nation’s opinion makers until he turned up hosting a nationally televised debate between two presidential candidates on the stage of his church. That successful author had the audacity to name his church, Saddleback, which sounds more like a California dude ranch than a place to worship, which probably helped in reaching the unchurched or the fallen away crowd.

Zero to 20,000 members, you have to admit, the guy is good. But does that qualify him to pray before the entire world at the inaugural? Do Obama’s advisors think the evangelical community has voted to make Rick Warren their new Billy Graham? No way.

So why will Warren, a successful spiritual entrepreneur, deliver that prayer? Was it because Diane Feinstein,  chair person of the Inaugural Committee, wanted Warren because he is from California? Surely, that could not be it, even if, as one blogger suggests, Feinstein wants to run for governor of California in 2010. There must be other reasons.

Maybe Obama wants to show he is able to say no to his base in the little symbolic moments like inaugural prayers. But saying no is not the way to govern a nation in need of healing. It is true that Obama chose the Rev. Joe Lowery to deliver the inaugural benediction, a good choice for many obvious reasons. Lowery is an icon in the civil right movement and deeply rooted in the African American community. His comments at Coretta Scott King’s funeral testify to his qualifications.

Sorry, Mr. President-elect, picking your own pastor, Otis Moss III, to deliver the inaugural prayer, should have been a slam dunk. You are going to have to come up with a superior inaugural address of your own to make up for this one. And please, in the meantime, get yourself some religious advisors who understand American religion as well as you understand American politics.

Posted in Religion and politics, Religious Faith | 10 Comments

George Bush’s Legacy: A Deadly Manichean Mindset

Posted on December 14, 2008 by wallwritings

tragiclegacycoverBy James M. Wall

Bill Moyers’ Journal interview with Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald, provides a valuable insight into the Bush legacy that is both wise and frightening. What Bush leaves behind, as Greenwald documents, is best described as a Manichean mindset, a simplistic and dangerous mental state which has spread like a disease to our media, the public and a great number of our government leaders from both parties.

Video clips and the full text of the Moyers-Greenwald interview are posted on Moyers’ website. 

Who is this fellow who makes this persuasive case?

Glenn Greenwald brings strong legal credentials to the Moyers PBS interview. He has been a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York. He has written three highly acclaimed books, How Would a Patriot Act (May, 2006), a critique of the Bush administration’s use of executive power, A Tragic Legacy (June, 2007), which examines the Bush legacy, and Great American Hypocrites (April, 2008), which examines the manipulative electoral tactics used by the Republican party which were enabled by the mainstream media.

The subtitle of A Tragic Legacy is “How a Good Vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency”. Greenwald explains the source of his book’s central thesis:

. . . the idea of being a Manichean comes from this third century BC philosophy that – or religion really, that basically understood the world, [as] a never-ending battle between the forces of pure good and the forces of pure evil. And all human events could be understood . . .  through that prism.

[Manichaeism is] a very simplistic idea that even early Christianity rejected as not appreciating the complexities of how the world actually is and the ambiguities, the moral ambiguities that characterize who most of us are in most situations. George Bush views the world and his followers viewed the world through this lens of pure good versus pure evil. (emphasis added).

And it’s not me saying that. He said that in virtually all of his speeches. And when you see the world that way what it means is that if you’re on the side of pure good, as he asserted that he was and we are, it means that anything that you do, no matter how limitless, no matter how brutal and immoral, is inherently justifiable because it’s being enlisted for service of the good.

And by contrast, anything that you do to those on the other side is inherently justified as well because they’re pure evil. And from the war in Iraq to the torture camps and secret prisons that we set up all of the things that have done so much damage, I think that’s the mentality that lies at the heart of it.

Anything you do to those on the other side is inherently justified because they are pure evil.  The Manichean mindset believes that there are no limits to what the good person or the good nation can do to an evil person or an evil nation. No limits. 

The Patriot Act was based on this concept. So also, are the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq. The Manichean mindset demands that in a world viewed as totally evil and totally good, the good are granted permission–indeed, are required–to torture, imprison, lie, kill, without regard to the rule of law. All of this is done by the good because they know themselves to be good. 

George Bush’s simplistic good vs. evil mindset found a natural constituency in the fundamentalist Christian Right in precisely the same way radical Islamist leaders are able to recruit warriors to fight against evil by convincing them that they are purely good and their enemies are purely evil. They distort the Koran to achieve their purpose just as the fundamentalist Christian Right adherents distort the Bible.

Robert Dreyfuss, in his book Devil’s Game, describes the parallel between Christian and Islamic fundamentalists:

Both exhibit an absolute certainty about their beliefs and they tolerate no dissent, condemning apostates, unbelievers and freethinkers to perdition. Both believe in a unity of religion and politics, the former insisting that America is a “Christian nation,” the latter that Muslims need to be ruled either by an all-powerful, religio-political caliphate or by a system of “Islamic republics” under an ultra-orthodox version of Islamic law (sharia).

And both encourage blind fanaticism among their followers.  It is no accident that among followers of both Chrsitain and Islamic fundamentalists, the world indeed appears to be engaged in a clash of civilizations. (P. 13). 

The Republican administration, headed by Bush, but essentially run by Vice President Dick Cheney, did not have to believe in Christian fundamentalism to see the potential for Manichaeism to control a nation gripped by fear. For a few hopeful weeks after 911, Bush reached out to American Muslims, but almost overnight, his public utterances began to embrace the Manichean heresy (much to the dismay of his fellow United Methodists). And he has never looked back.

The attacks on 911 provided the excuse Bush and Cheney needed to implement their Manichean strategy.  The fear and anger in the nation made it an easy sell to a compliant media that likes the good versus evil story line. Politicians of both parties quickly followed suit. They there was the fortuitous Icing on the cake provided by a noted academic, Samuel P. Huntington, whose 1993 essay,  The Clash of Civilizations emerged as a convenient way to package, and sell,  modern Manicheanism.  

Huntington puts it this way: “The fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural.”  Not exactly a religious conflict, but fundamentalist Christians and an empire-building White House were happy to embrace it as a template.

This fellow Huntington is an academic all star who speaks about the good guys and the bad guys. That’s good enough for a media-political-religious combine which eschews nuance and has never heard of Manichaeism. Of course, Norm Chomsky knew better, but mainstream media made sure he stayed out of sight, as This You Tube clip explains. 

There is a fatal flaw in applying Manichaeism to political decision-making. The Bush-Cheney strategy was to sell the nation on the notion that only good nations act rationally. Evil dictators, ao they promised,  will always act irrationally.

Take the leaders of Iran, for example. The White House Manicheans do not give up power until January 20.  They still have time to partner with Israel in an attack on Iran.

In his review of  Glenn Greenwald’s book, A Tragic Legacy, David Gordon addresses the rational-irrational dichotomy:

Iran is a rational state actor, which, like most other countries in the world — including American allies — will eagerly cooperate with the United States when their interests coincide with ours…. To know that a country and its leaders act rationally is to take a huge and critical step toward realizing that that country — no matter how internally repressive it might be — cannot and will not be a threat to the U.S. (p. 186).

Gordon explains further:

Greenwald’s argument is a simple one: Because of the overwhelming military might of the United States, no other country can attack us without facing utter destruction. Other countries, wishing rationally to advance their own interests, grasp this fact. Accordingly, they will neither attack us nor threaten us. A rational American foreign policy then to a large extent presents no difficulty. Military measures directed against other countries are unnecessary. Given the manifest costs of these measures, we should not undertake them.

With five weeks to go before the Inauguration, it should be comforting to know that on January 20, 2009,  the one president we have at a time will finally be Barack Hussein Obama (the full name he will use at his swearing in ceremony).  But a President Obama assumes the leadership of a nation still infected with the Manichaen mindset that traveled to Washington from Texas. The Bush-Cheney team will be gone after January 20, but the disease has spread and will be difficult to eradicate. 

Democratic members of Congress, for example, have demonstrated they were willing to trash the Constitution because of the degree to which they had been infected by Manichaeism.

In his Moyers interview, Glenn Greenwald recalls that Democratic Congressional leaders were briefed on the Bush administrtation torture procedures. If they objected, they did not say so then, nor have they revealed their culpability. Wire tapping American citizens, in violation of federal law?

Without the Democrats, the telecom industry leaders would not have gotten immunity for their part in these violations. 

BILL MOYERS: . . .  The fact of the matter is Democrats knew about this wire tapping without warrants that conducted by the telecoms. And then they voted to give the telecom communications companies immunity. Barack Obama opposed giving them immunity and then reversed himself on it. So how does an incumbent president or an incumbent party in Congress investigate itself?

GLENN GREENWALD: Well, I think what you’re getting at is the reason why the political class on a bipartisan basis is coming together to say, “Oh, no, we don’t want to investigate these crimes. We think it’s best to let it go.” It’s not because they’re being magnanimous. It’s not because they think it’s important that Barack Obama be able to fix the economy undistracted by the controversies that would be created. It’s because exactly as you said. Top Democrats were complicit in these crimes and assented to them. I mean, it wasn’t just the warrantless eavesdropping.

In 2002, as the Washington Post documented, Nancy Pelosi was brought to the CIA and along with Jane Harman and Bob Graham and Jay Rockefeller, the key Intelligence Committee Senators, were told about the torture program that the CIA had implemented, that we were going to water board and had water boarded certain suspects, that we were going to do things like hypothermia and stress positions and forced nudity and sleep deprivation.

All of the tactics that we’ve always said characterized tyrannies that used torture. That we were going to start using them ourselves, even though they clearly violate both international and domestic law. And according to all public reports, and they’re not denied by the participants, every single Democrat in that session either quietly assented to it or actively approved of it.

And so the question then becomes, well, as a matter of political reality, how is Barack Obama going to encourage investigations of crimes to be undertaken when the leading members of his own party were, if not-

BILL MOYERS: Good question.

A good question indeed, and ironic, to boot, since the simplistic form of  Manicheanism that pervades our land today had its origins in Persia (present-day Iran, of all places): 

Manicheanism (sometimes Manichaeism or Manichaeanism) was one of the major ancient religions of Persian (ancient Iran) origin. Though its organized form is mostly extinct today, a revival has been attempted under the name of Neo-Manicheanism. However, most of the writings of the founding prophet Mani have been lost. Some scholars argue that its influence subtly continues in Western Christian thought via Augustine of Hippo, who converted to Christianity from Manicheanism, which he passionately denounced in his writings.

Because Manicheanism is a faith that teaches dualism, in modern English the word “manichean” has come to mean dualistic, presenting or viewing things in a “black and white” fashion.

Posted in Media, Religion and politics | 2 Comments

Obama Knows the Gaza Siege is Immoral Yet He Remains Silent

Posted on December 6, 2008 by wallwritings

by James M. Wall

For more than a month, Israel has imposed a tightened  blockade over Gaza’s one million and a half residents.

Outside aid is forbidden which is why, on Monday, December 1, the Israeli navy blocked a Libyan ship carrying 3,000 tons of food and medical aid from entering Gaza, 

Israel’s attempt to clamp a media blackout on the suffering in Gaza did not prevent Israeli journalist Amira Hass from defying the blockade. Hass, who works now from Ramallah, entered Gaza from the sea, traveling on a boat with international peace activists.

Hass worked for three years as a correspondent in Gaza for  the Jerusalem newspaper, Ha’aretz, after which she wrote her (essential reading)  book, Drinking the Sea at Gaza, a personal story about life under an earlier siege in Gaza in the mid-1990s. (The book’s title may be translated from Arabic as a defiant, “you can go to hell”).

What she found in Gaza on this trip, she told Amy Goodman in a Democracy Now interview, were Gazans who felt like they were living in a “black hole”.  

This siege. any siege that punishes an entire population, is immoral.  An immoral act is an action we perform deliberately and with forethought even when we are fully aware that what we are doing is immoral.

A siege contributes nothing to the security of the nation that imposes it. 

I believe Barack Obama knows this. 

He also knows that the siege of Gaza is a deliberate, ongoing, unrelenting attack on a helpless population, a siege that is fully endorsed and financially backed by the government of the United States.  

To be sure, Israel is the front line actor in this immoral conduct. But Israel would not be maintaining this siege without the blessing of the United States government.   

The American media has been conditioned to look the other way in matters involving Israel, which is why the American public remains largely ignorant of what is happening to young boys like the one above, staring from the window in his home in Rafah on the Egyptian border.

Barack Obama is not an ignorant man. He knows what is happening in Gaza. Soon it will be happening on his watch.  Still, he remains silent.  This is our new leader who promised us a different vision when he introduced his national security team with a statement that included these words:

To succeed, we must pursue a new strategy that skillfully uses, balances, and integrates all elements of American power: our military and diplomacy; our intelligence and law enforcement; our economy and the power of our moral example. (emphasis added)

Continued  support and funding for the siege in Gaza is immoral. To fail to say this is to close our ears and shut our eyes to the sick, the weak, and the hungry. This is immoral.  To deliberately  and consistently violate the human rights of an entire population, is immoral.  Still Barack Obama remains silent.

Barack Obama has taught US constitutional law. He knows international law. It is no secret to him that as Stephen Lendman has written:

Israel is a serial human rights international law abuser. The UN Human Rights Commission affirms that it violates nearly all 149 articles of the Fourth Geneva Convention that governs the treatment of civilians in war and under occupation and is guilty of grievous war crimes. The Commission also determined that as an occupying power Israel has committed crimes against humanity as defined under the 1945 Nuremberg Charter. . . .

. . . .  The world community has been silent. Conditions continue to deteriorate, and Christian Aid is speaking out. It accused Israel of collective punishment in violation of international law. Under Fourth Geneva’s Article 33:

“No protected person (under occupation) may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measure of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited (as well as) Reprisals against protected persons and their property.”

International law is designed to protect the unprotected. Lendman writes of specific examples of the impact of the siege on Gaza residents:

Costa Dabbagh from the Near East Council of Churches (a Christian Aid partner) says “Simply letting food into Gaza is not enough,” and precious little is arriving. Its people “are fed and kept alive without dignity and the international community should be blamed for it.” It’s “not acceptable to be waiting for food to come. (Gazans) want to live freely with Israel and other countries in peace. (They’re) not against any individual or government (but) are against imprisonment.”

In March, 1998, before George Bush replaced Bill Clinton as Israel’s Best Friend Ever in the White House, and back when Barack Obama was an Illinois state senator, International law expert Francis Boyle proposed that “the Provisional Government of (Palestine) and its President institute legal proceedings against Israel before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague for violating the” Genocide Convention.

Boyle also stated that “Israel has indeed perpetrated the international crime of genocide against the Palestinian people (and the) lawsuit would….demonstrate that undeniable fact to the entire world.”

I believe this is information that is well known to Barack Obama.

So why has he not demanded an end to the siege of Gaza? He is no longer running for president; he no longer must worry about money nor votes, at least not for four years, by which time his actions could have made him a true friend of Israel. Not the sort of false friends Clinton and Bush have been.

How do we recognize a true friend of Israel?  Israeli columnist Gideon Levy knows:

. . . Bush was a friend of Israel. . . [who let Israel] embark on an unnecessary war in Lebanon. He did not prevent the construction of a single outpost. He may have encouraged Israel, in secret, to bomb Iran. He did not pressure Israel to move ahead with peace talks, he even held up negotiations with Syria, and he did not reproach Israel for its policy of targeted killings. 

Bush also supported the siege on Gaza and participated in the boycott of Hamas, which was elected in a democratic election initiated by his own administration.  That’s just how we [Israelis] like U.S. presidents. They give us a green light to do as we please. They fund, equip and arm us, and sit tight.

Such is the classic friend of Israel, a friend who is an enemy, and enemy of peace and an enemy to Israel.  Let us now hope that Obama will not be like them. That he will reveal himself to be a true friend of Israel.

Barack Obama is aware that true friends want only the best for others.  Friends do not enable others to cling to the fiction that security comes from oppressing others. Friends help others to realize that immoral behavior carries its own seeds of destruction.  Barack Obama knows this. Yet he remains silent on Gaza. 

In an essay for the Electronic Intafada, President Obama and the Prospects for Israeli-Palestinian Peace, Ali Abunimah looks back at the destructive behavior of the Bush administration. It is not a pretty picture.

The outgoing Bush administration took American engagement to unprecedented levels both overtly and covertly.  Contrary to the well-crafted public initiatives, like the Annapolis conference and attempts to revive the “peace process,” it was the Bush administration’s covert activities that had the greatest impact.

Intervening directly in Palestinian internal politics, it pushed for Palestinian elections, and then when Hamas won, attempted to overturn the result. The administration helped arm and train Palestinian militias opposed to Hamas and vetoed a Palestinian “national unity government.” It has supported the blockade of the Gaza Strip and used financial aid to bolster client Palestinian leaders.

Abunimah looks ahead and finds no positive signs that Obama will be the sort of friend Israel needs:

During the campaign, Obama actively distanced himself from establishment figures, including elder statesman Zbigniew Brzezinski and Clinton aide Robert Malley, who were accused of being “pro-Palestinian.” At the same time, “the advisers most intimately involved in [Obama’s] Israel-related policies are veterans of the Clinton administration and come out of a pro-Israel milieu.” President-elect Obama’s first major appointment of pro-Israel hardliner U.S. House Representative Rahm Emanuel to serve as White House chief of staff confirms this trend.

The Obama team shows few signs that it recognizes the reality that is Gaza. And after a month long Israeli-imposed siege, what is that reality?

The Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), reports that by December 5, “the border crossings into the Gaza Strip had been sealed by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) for 30 consecutive days. 

The 1.6 million civilians of the Gaza Strip are being denied all their rights to freedom of movement, and are confined inside Gaza, where the humanitarian situation is deteriorating amidst chronic fuel shortages, and shortages of goods, including essential food items.

The Gaza power plant has been forced to shut down due to lack of fuel, and Gazans are now totally dependent on electricity generated from Israel, and to a lesser extent, from Egypt. There are also chronic severe shortages of domestic cooking gas. .  . . . patients who require urgent medical treatment outside the Gaza Strip are facing immense travel restrictions, with an average of just seventeen patients a day currently permitted to leave Gaza. . . [for] emergency medical treatment in Israel. . . .

. . . Local emergency health services are . . .  on the brink of collapse as they try to respond to critical cases. . .  many Gazan families are being denied access to drinking water, as there is insufficient fuel for the electric water pumps that supply domestic drinking water. 

This current thirty day siege  (the latest of many) with all border crossings sealed, behind barriers that enclose 1.6 million Palestinians living in abject poverty, is an act of collective immorality.  And still, a month after his election, there is only silence on Gaza’s siege from President-elect Barack Obama.

Posted in Middle East, Middle East Politics, Religion and politics | 1 Comment

Were Bloggers Wrong to Block Brennan for CIA?

Posted on December 3, 2008 by wallwritings

brennan-photo-by-getty1

by James M. Wall 

When President-elect Obama rolled out his national security team at a press conference in Chicago Monday, there was no CIA director on stage. 

Until November 24, Barack Obama had John Brennan on a short list to become the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Brennan is co-chair of the Obama review team on Intelligence matters.

But after intensive criticism from progressive bloggers, and a negative letter from a group of 200 psychologists, Brennan wrote to Obama and took himself out of consideration for any appointment in the intelligence sector.

The International Herald Tribune reported on the withdrawal:

. . . Brennan wrote in a Nov. 25 letter to Obama that he did not want to be a distraction. His potential appointment as CIA director has raised a firestorm in liberal blogs that associate him with the Bush administration’s interrogation, detention and rendition policies. Brennan, a 25-year CIA veteran, helped establish the National Counterterrorism Center and was its first director in 2004.

He has privately and publicly said that he opposed water boarding and questioned other interrogation methods that many in the CIA feared could be later deemed illegal. . . .

What happened to Brennan? The answer may lie in a comment from the strongly conservative Wall Street Journal that praised the Obama national security choices. It might not have been Brennan’s terrorism views that kept him from that stage Monday. In his blog for the Nation, Robert Dreyfuss puts it this way:

I’ve interviewed Brennan on a number of occasions, and he impressed me as an intelligent and thoughtful critic of President Bush’s entire so-called War on Terrorism. Brennan was one of the first top officials to ridicule the idea of calling it a “war,” and he is a supporter of a far more nuanced, supply-side approach to dealing with terrorism. He is a proponent of dealing with the root causes of terrorism, not just fighting its manifestation.

In that same blog posting, Dreyfuss quoted from the Wall Street Journal’s praise for the Obama team and ridicule of Dreyfuss. From the WSJ:

Obama’s national security team “are drawn exclusively from conservative, centrist and pro-military circles without even a single — yes, not one! — chosen to represent the antiwar wing of the Democratic party.” In his plaintive post this week on the Nation magazine’s Web site, Robert Dreyfuss indulges in the political left’s wonderful talent for overstatement. But who are we to interfere with his despair? 

Tomgram.com wonders if the neo cons that ran the Bush foreign policy are sneaking back into the Obama administration. The signs are not promising:

Given their right-wing proclivities, the Journal’s editorial writers then offer the equivalent of high praise for Obama’s choices: “So far,” they conclude, “on security, not bad.” That should make just about anyone who voted for Obama to change American global policy in significant ways pause a moment for reflection.

And the Journal isn’t alone. Other Republicans are, according to the Times of London, already “showering praise on these selections. Senator Lindsey Graham said that Mr Gates, President Bush’s Defense Secretary, had ‘led us through difficult times in Iraq’ and that Mrs Clinton had a ‘little harder line’ than Mr Obama on foreign policy.”

The dark prince of neocons Richard Perle commented, “I’m relieved… Contrary to expectations, I don’t think we would see a lot of change.”

If the Dark Prince is relieved, does this mean Obama’s team is prepared to fulfill the dream of the neo cons and drag the US into yet another war in order to remove Iran as a threat to Israel’s security? 

Senator Clinton’s support for Israeli war policies should also “relieve” Perle’s worries over a new administration. She bring a less than stellar record on human rights to her new position. Stephen Zunes writes for Alternet.com that as a senator, Clinton was among. . .

. . . .  a minority of Democratic Senators to side with the Republican majority in voting down a Democratic-sponsored resolution in 2007 restricting U.S. exports of cluster bombs to countries that use them against civilian-populated areas. Each of these cluster bomb contains hundreds of bomblets that are scattered over an area the size of up to four football fields and, with a failure rate of up to 30 percent, become de facto land mines. Civilians account for as much as 98 percent of the casualties caused by these weapons.

Senator Clinton also has a record of dismissing reports by human rights monitors that highlight large-scale attacks against civilians by allied governments. For example, in the face of widespread criticism by reputable human rights organizations over Israel’s systematic assaults against civilian targets in its April 2002 offensive in the West Bank, Senator Clinton co-sponsored a resolution defending the Israeli actions, claiming that they were “necessary steps to provide security to its people by dismantling the terrorist infrastructure in the Palestinian areas.”

She opposed UN efforts to investigate alleged war crimes by Israeli occupation forces and criticized President Bush for calling on Israel to pull back from its violent re-conquest of Palestinian cities in violation of UN Security Council resolutions.

Against that record of support for military options in the Levant region, the absence of Brennan on the team could loom large. Indeed, so far as Robert Dreyfuss is concerned, the strange case of Brennan and the CIA appointment he did not receive, cries out for an explanation:

When I interviewed Brennan last, for a piece for The Nation this summer, he told me on the record — as an adviser to then candidate for president Barack Obama — that he thought that Obama would, as president, talk to both Hamas and Hezbollah. Brennan is an astute observer of political Islam, and he knows what he is talking about when he mentions these groups. He’s under no illusion about their views, but at the same time he is enough of a realist to know that you can’t ignore these groups and hope that they go away, and you can’t kill them.

It’s true that Brennan has been obtuse, at times, when it comes to torture. In his letter to Obama, he pointed out, however, that he had no part in shaping CIA or administration policy on torturing detainees. It’s possible that his obtuseness did him in, in terms of getting the CIA post. But I’d look elsewhere. It’s far more likely that Brennan was shot down, behind the scenes, by the Israel lobby and its allies inside the Obama camp. This needs looking into.

I agree. If Obama’s choice for CIA director also comes from what the WSJ describes as the same “conservative, centrist and pro-military circles” that gave Obama his national security team, doesn’t that leave the pro-war Israel Lobby-neocon crowd firmly in charge of our Middle East policy?

It does, unless Barack Obama really means it when he says that it is his vision that will prevail. But what is that vision, exactly, if he feels comfortable with a national security team that thus far, has not a single anti-war member that plays either point guard or at the very least, a sixth man role on his team?

Posted in Politics and Elections | 1 Comment

Father Greeley, Century, Georgia Run Off

Posted on November 29, 2008 by wallwritings

Wayne Holst, a Canadian colleague, has a list serve he sends out weekly with information and reprints, Recently, he included an update on the condition of Chicago’s Father Andrew Greeley, the Catholic priest and novelist, who has been in a coma as a result of a fall on a Chicago street. A second Short Take from Holst is a note I sent to Wayne after he published a report from Christianity Today with a reference to The Christian Century.

From Martin Marty: As of 1:51 p.m. (Monday, Nov. 24th) this word from the Greeley family: A glimmer of better news: Andy (Father Greeley) has been upgraded from critical to fair condition, vital signs remain stable, he is off the ventilator but still taking some oxygen, has not yet regained consciousness. Terse, to the point, leaving openings for us all to fill in the blanks with our prayers and hopes.

Holst also took note of a reference to The Christian Century in Christianity Today. He posted my response to the reference:

From Jim Wall. . . . The magazine began using the name, The Christian Century in 1900, not 1908. Christianity Today may have been thinking of 1908 as the year when Charles Clayton Morrison took it over and made it officially an “undenominational” magazine. From 1884 to 1900 it was called the Christian Oracle, a Disciples of Christ denominational magazine They picked up the Christian Century name, as CT suggests, as part of the excitement of the new century which Protestantism believed would truly be a “Christian Century”, thanks to the modern advancements in communication and transportation. In 1908 Morrison made the shift to “undenominational”. Morrison continued as editor until 1947. There were several editors after him before I took the job in 1972. I was the sixth editor, Morrison was the first. He served the longest as editor. I served the second longest term, 29 years, until 1999.

Run Off Election in Georgia Tuesday

Mudflats, the Anchorage blog that has kept us up to date on Sarah Palin, takes note of her appearance in Georgia Monday where she will campaign for incumbent Senator Saxby Chambliss. The Senator was disgruntled over having been forced into a runoff election (he failed to get 50% of the vote). For the entire posting, click here, and look to the right for the posting, “The Governor of Alaska and the Queen of Georgia”.                              ”.

This is Mudflats’ conclusion:

. . . while America prepares to witness the most historic Presidential inauguration of our lifetime, and children of every color look at their TV screen at our new first family and think, “Yes, I can” maybe for the first time, we hear again from Senator Chambliss. Here’s what he said about the neck-and-neck race that brought about this run-off election.

“There was a high percentage of minority vote,” Chambliss told Alan Colmes on Fox a couple weeks ago, “but we weren’t able to get enough of our folks out on election day.”

“WE weren’t able to get enough of OUR folks out on election day.” Who is “we”? Who are “our folks”?

During the fall Senate campaign, Chambliss cautioned his followers that “the other folks” are voting. The senator added that the “rush to the polls by African-Americans” has “got our side energized early, they see what is happening.”

In Chambliss’ world it is “our side” vs. the African-Americans. Our folks vs. the minority vote. I am tired of Chambliss’ world. I am tired of racially divisive politics and the words that keep it alive. It was Gandhi who said, “Words become our deeds.” This country has had enough of those words, and those deeds. And this country has had enough of those who support them. This is not a chess game.

Huffington Post’s  Sam Stein sees Saxby Chambliss repeating his 2002 tactics when he ran against Vietnam veteran Max Cleland, accusing the triple-amputee of a lack of patriotism.  Stein sees an “eerie familiarity taking hold” in the runoff.

This time, Chambliss and other Republican groups are going after Democratic challenger Jim Martin for being soft on crime and a danger to children, even though Martin’s daughter was kidnapped at the age of eight and, subsequently, the Georgia Democrat introduced a wide-variety of legislation to protect families from crime.

Martin is being outspent by Chambliss, but he has responded with this new ad which explains why the fight to protect children is personal for Martin. Pro choice forces have rallied behind Martin, calling attention to Chambless’ disastrous record on women’s issues.

Major Democratic stars have been campaigning in Georgia, including Bill Clinton and Al Gore. President-elect Obama has taped robo calls and radio ads. Still, Martin remains the underdog, with The Daily Kos poll giving Chambliss a 52-46 margin going into the final weekend.

Martin’s chances now rest on his ground game, led by a strong Obama organization that remained in Georgia following the General Election.  If the turnout is strong Tuesday, especially among African American voters, Martin could win in an upset. But the odds are against him.

UPDATE (December 3) The turnout for the runoff election was low, and Senator Chambliss, with 97% of the districts counted, returns to the Senate for six more years. The results, as reported by Talking Points Memo: Chambliss: 57% (1,220,854) and Martin 43% (905,637)

Posted in The Human Condition | Leave a comment

007 is Back With a New Enemy: US Imperialism

Posted on November 27, 2008 by wallwritings

by James M. Wall

craig-threeThe latest James Bond film, The Quantum of Solace, has a vision so different from previous incarnations, that few, if any, film critics noticed the change.  

Why?  Because the critics for mass culture outlets focused on the film’s chases and crashes and chose to ignore the underlying political plot that reveals Bond as a warrior against imperialism. 

A scholar of Middle Eastern studies, Juan Cole, of Georgetown University, noticed. Writing in his Informed Comment blog, Cole found that this new James Bond film “is at odds” with imperialism.

To see how this was missed in reviews, study Rotten Tomatoes, the website monitor of current films. There you will find “leading” critics writing on such profound topics as how much shorter this Bond film is than its 23 predecessors.

Or they point out that this “blue collar” Daniel Craig is different from the debonair British secret agents (e.g. Sean Connery) in previous Bond incarnations.

Leading critics are also eager to point out that Craig, as the new British agent 007, does not utter the trademark Bond phrase,”shaken, not stirred”. He leaves that original Ian Fleming description to a bartender.

All very interesting, but these critics failed to catch the fact, as Cole notes, that this new Bond film has a new and different view of popular movements of the political left. One trailer has only a fleeting reference to politics: “We have already begun to destabilize the government.” Trailers are for promotion; they show only what sells tickets.

Juan Cole ignored the misleading trailer and discovered that. . .

. . . [Director] Marc Forster presents us with a new phenomenon in the James Bond films, a Bond at odds with the United States, who risks his career to save Evo Morales’s leftist regime in Bolivia from being overthrown by a General Medrano, who is helped by the CIA and a private mercenary organization called Quantum. In short, this Bond is more Michael Moore than Roger Moore.  

The film refers to Haiti’s former president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, when Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric) tells the fictional General Medrano that while Aristide was president from 2001 to 2004, he raised the minimum wage from 25 cents an hour to a dollar an hour. 

This led the corporations that benefited from cheap Haitian labor to mobilize to have Aristide removed. (Aristide himself maintained that US and Canadian intelligence connived with officers at the coup against him and kidnapped him, taking him to southern Africa.) . . .

. . . [Bolivia’s Evo] Morales is not mentioned in the film, but his movement was in the headlines while “Casino Royale” was being shot, as he challenged the old “white” elite and was denounced by the US ambassador as an “Andean Bin Laden” and his peasant followers (many of them of largely native stock) as “Taliban.”

Morales’s nationalization of Bolivia’s petroleum and natural gas and his redistribution of wealth from the wealthy elite to villagers were among the policies drawing the ire of George W. Bush and his cronies. . . .

. . . [The film’s] producer Michael G. Wilson . . .[earned] a law degree at Stanford in the 1960s and worked for a while at a firm specializing in international law. Outrage at offenses against international law are as much at the heart of this film as the more personal vendettas of Bond and Camille (Olga Kurylenko). 

Nestled inside the film’s surface tale of Bond’s anger over the death of the woman he loved, lies the central vision of the film: the outrage over violations of international law. Examples abound, starting with this report of Israel’s illegal treatment of civilians in Gaza:

There can be no dispute that measures of collective punishment against the civilian population of Gaza are illegal under international humanitarian law. Fuel and food cannot be withheld or wielded as reward or punishment. But international law was tossed aside long ago. (The London Guardian, November 24, 2008).

Or this televised exchange on Democracy Now, about Evo Morales and the developing situation in Bolivia:

AMY GOODMAN: Jim Shultz, do you think the US is trying to topple Morales?

JIM SHULTZ: Well, that’s been speculation on the internet all week, and I think it’s not black and white. I think the [US] ambassador, Philip Goldberg, was an extraordinarily arrogant and incompetent diplomat. And for him to go and meet with these opposition governors on the eve of their launching these attacks on Morales and calling for his resignation, I mean, what he said to them is known to them and the ambassador, but he is beyond clueless in terms of how this appears in Bolivia and the rest of Latin America. (Democracy Now, with Amy Goodman, September 17, 2008. Jim Shultz is the Executive Director of the Democracy Center in Cochabamba, Bolivia. He writes a blog on the situation in Bolivia that can be found at DemocracyCtr.org.)

If the fights, crashes and chases (boats, planes and cars) don’t put you off, then by all means, go and see The Quantum of Solace. Feel free to be outraged by “offenses against international law” which continue to be promoted and sustained by US imperialism.  As long as the 007 franchise remains in the hands of Producer Michael G. Wilson, you are not alone in your outrage.

Posted in Middle East Politics, Movies, Politics and Elections | 1 Comment

Thanksgiving With The Obamas

Posted on November 26, 2008 by wallwritings

by James M. Wall

The Obama family visited a Chicago south side Food Center at the St. Columbanus Catholic Church, where they handed out packets of food.  Huffington Post ran the story on Thanksgiving Eve, complete with a slide show and a video. The Obamas wanted to show the children the “true meaning” of Thanksgiving.

Tom DeFrank of the New York Daily News filed a “pool report” on the visit. (A “pool report” comes from a small group of media representatives covering the President-elect on “light” news days.).

Below are excerpts from DeFrank’s pool report

“Clearly, those lining up for food hadn’t been told they had an important guest helping out. this day. Many of them lit up; some shrieked with delight and hugged one or more of the Obamas. . . . . . The daughters behaved like troopers for a half hour or so before the cold caught up with them, and they retired for a few minutes to warm up. . . . 

. . .An Obama aide said the family has been to this particular food bank before and has pitched in here or elsewhere at least two other years.

After about 40 minutes on the line, Obama decided to go say hello to about 200 students. After shaking hands with the food bank volunteers, he came over to the pool and had this to say:

“The number of people who are getting food this year is up 33%. It gives a sense times are tough – and I think that on Thanksgiving it’s importat for us tpo remember there’s a need for support.

“These folks were already oftentimes having a tough time, and it gets tougher now.” He encouraged all Americans of means to help out however they could. “This is part of what Thanksgiving should be all about,” he said,”

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Columnist: Have Bush/Cheney Resign; Let Pelosi Take Over

Posted on November 22, 2008 by wallwritings

white-house1by James M. Wall

I know, I know, it sounds like a West Wing episode. (It was, once; Speaker John Goodman took over, briefly.) But it could work and it’s constitutional. New York Times columnist Gail Collins says she is serious. She makes the suggestion in her Saturday morning column.

Okay, maybe not real serious.  But it is possible. Here is how it would work: Both Bush and Cheney resign and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi takes over. The succession plan is constitutional. You can look it up. Under the Succession Act, the Speaker, in this case a woman, becomes president. We would have a woman as president in 2008.  (Nod to Hillary.)

The Speaker would certainly defer to Barack Obama to act as the unofficial president until Jan 20.  Here is the nub of the Collins’ plan:

. . . Seriously. We have an economy that’s crashing and a vacuum at the top. Bush — who is currently on a trip to Peru to meet with Asian leaders who no longer care what he thinks — hasn’t got the clout, or possibly even the energy, to do anything useful. His most recent contribution to resolving the fiscal crisis was lecturing representatives of the world’s most important economies on the glories of free-market capitalism.

Putting Barack Obama in charge immediately isn’t impossible. Dick Cheney, obviously, would have to quit as well as Bush. In fact, just to be on the safe side, the vice president ought to turn in his resignation first. (We’re desperate, but not crazy.). . .

The Bush and Cheney families would remain in their homes until January 20. But their fingers would be removed from all the buttons and the Obama economic team would assume command.

We would not let Bush rush through all those last minute environmental changes. But he could pardon his cronies.  Otherwise he might not agree to the deal.  

History would remember Bush and Cheney as two leaders who put country first. (Nod to McCain.) President-Elect Barack Obama will take over January 20 anyway.  Let him start now. Makes sense to me. As Madeline Albright once said to Colin Powell in another context: We have that Succession Act, why not use it? 

Meanwhile, back in the real world:

We have all been wondering, Why would Hillary Clinton even want to be Secretary of State? New York magazine’s John Heilemann makes sense with his description of the complex relationship between Hillary and Barack. Here is a part of what he writes:

What’s she thinking? What’s her game? No doubt part of the reason her people began leaking word that she’s not certain she wants the gig was to cushion the blow in case the Bubba vet turned ugly. But one person who knows her well told me she was genuinely torn.

“She likes the Senate, likes working on a wider range of issues, likes that she’s answerable to herself,” this person said. Did the thought of Obama’s being her boss give her pause? “A lot of ground has been made up in the relationship. She’s flattered by this.” Did she feel like it was handled well? Or that with the leaks and the delay, she was left twisting in the wind? “Not at all. She’s impressed that he did it despite knowing it would be controversial. It says that he really wants her.

Heilermann has this take on Obama, which is right on target:  “In all the dizzying personal and political complexities of Hillary at State, one thing is clear: Obama has nerve.”  A good thing, nerve, when our next president starts looking into the souls of world leaders.

Then there is the strange case of Joe Lieberman, a man who trashes the Democratic candidate for months, travels the world with the Republican candidate, whispering corrections into his ear, and then gets to keep his “cherished” chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security committee.

Any reasonable senator would have punished Joe and tossed him out of the chair. What would he have done? Become a member of the Republican party which is out of power for at least the next decade?  

So Joe keeps his chair because Obama, the Don Vito Corleone of this real life drama, nods ever so quietly to his Senate colleagues: The Message: Keep Joe happy. Why would Obama do such a thing?  He has nerve, that’s why. And he is smart: He puts Janet Napoliano in his cabinet to run Homeland Security, where she will watch Joe.

Here is how it plays out. The Democratic party has (at least) two factions, two of which are the Progressive Peace Wing that has a pretty good idea that the road to peace goes through Tel Aviv, and the War Wing that is slightly to the right of the Israeli Kadima party. It also serves as the US branch of Kadima.

Obama needs both factions to get stuff through the Senate. The Peace Wing is giving him slack while the country basks in the warm glow of the new Abraham Lincoln in power, so it just grumbles about Joe.

The War Wing is happy with Joe at Homeland Security and Hillary Clinton at State. Yes, she is a member of the Democratic War Wing; think back, pilgrim, she never could bring herself to admit she was wrong on her Iraq vote. Speaking on the Senate floor in 2002, she specifically linked Al Qaeda to Saddam. The Republican Right would welome her appointment. 

You need evidence of the War Wing in action? Start with the senators who carried out Don Corleone’s orders. Alternet.org explains “How Lieberman Kept His Post“. It fingers Joe’s tight-knit support team:

They had more than two and a half weeks to organize around this,” said one high-ranking aide who favored Lieberman being stripped of his post. “And the fact of the matter is, Reid basically met with Lieberman 48 hours after the election was over. During that time it seemed like he was leaning towards stripping Lieberman of his committee chairmanship. But once that word came out, the only folks who were organized were the pro-Lieberman supporters.”

The problem, the aide reluctantly ceded, was an absence of coordinated progressive leadership. While the pro-Lieberman allies were out in force — led by Sens. Chris Dodd, Ken Salazar, Tom Carper, and Bill Nelson — the Senators who wanted a harsher punishment held their cards tightly. Sens. Patrick Leahy and Bernie Sanders ultimately let it be known that they wanted Lieberman punished, but they did so on a dead-news Friday. (Emphasis added)

The senators highlighted above have been together before. Here is a column in Salon by Glenn Greenwald from Thursday (November 20) which reports on the a court decision to free five prisoners from Gitmo:

A federal district judge, Richard Leon, today ordered the Bush administration “forthwith” to release five Algerian detaineeswho have been held in Guantanamo without charges since January, 2002 — almost seven full years.   The decision was based on the court’s finding that there was no credible evidence that the 5 detainees intended to take up arms against the U.S.  The court found sufficient evidence to justify the ongoing detention of a sixth Algerian detainee.
When they were detained in 2001 in Bosnia, the Bush administration claimed that they were plotting to bomb the U.S. embassy in Sarajevo.  But once they were shipped to Guantanamo, the U.S. backed off that accusation and instead claimed they intended to travel to Afghanistan to fight against the U.S. . . . 

. . .The five men ordered released today have been imprisoned in a cage by the Bush administration for 7 straight years without being charged with any crimes and without there being any credible evidence that they did anything wrong.  If the members of Congress who voted for the Military Commissions Act had their way (see them here and here), or if the four Supreme Court Justices in the Boumediene minority had theirs, the Bush administration would nonetheless have been empowered to keep them encaged indefinitely, for the rest of their lives if desired, without ever having to charge them with any crime or allow them to step foot into a courtroom to petition for habeas corpus.  

In addition to every Republican Senator (except Chafee), those voting to authorize that repellent power include Jay Rockefeller, Ken Salazar, Tom Carper, Ben and Bill Nelson, Debbie Stabenow, and Joe Lieberman. (emphasis added). . .

The Democratic party’s War Wing has hung tight with the Republican minority to allow George Bush to hold five men, unjustly, as prisoners at Gitmo, for seven years. Take note of those names: Salazar, Carper, Nelson, Lieberman. You are looking at the core of the War Wing.

There are others in the Wing, of course, Hillary Clinton included. Follow their votes on matters involving Iraq, Iran and Israel. It is an interesting and a frightening pattern. 

Our very smart President-Elect knows this Senate.  He knows he will need all their Democratic members. So ask not how Joe Lieberman survived.  Just remain alert to the actions of the US Senate as its Democratic majority works with President-Elect Obama. It is the way the game is played.

Nobody ever said the political process would be pretty.

Posted in Politics and Elections | 1 Comment