Long Pauses

Tag: Bush

  • Kushner on Bush

    Tony Kushner on President Bush and military intervention in Iraq:

    It’s very hard for me to ever say that I think unilateral military action on the part of United States can be a great thing at this point. The idea of the United States armed forces going in and suppressing and controlling a population of any sort is so fraught with history. . . . The minute we start dropping bombs on anybody, everybody feels very good for five minutes. And there is a fantasy sense that we’re still the number one country on earth because we can go in there and kick this person, and we forget we’re talking about this completely decimated country that was annihilated [a few] years ago and has never rebuilt.
    — from an interview with Craig Lucas on January 20, 1993.

    Yep. 1993. He was talking about that President Bush. I’ve just begun working through Tony Kushner in Conversation, edited by Robert Vorlicky. Here’s another interesting tidbit. Turns out that the Reagan administration wasn’t all bad. Kushner describing a federal grant that helped to fund the writing of Angels in America:

    The application for it was very honest. I said I was going to write a play about gay men and Mormons and Roy Cohn, sent it in to the federal government under Reagan, and thought, this will come back immediately with no money attached. Then they gave us this huge check. . . . It was Washington money with an eagle stamped on the check. So I felt, when I was writing it, that it was taxpayers’ money, and I do think that had some impact on the play’s scope.

    I wonder if Jesse Helms — the homophobic, anti-NEA Helms of old; not the kinder, gentler, post-Bono, pro-AIDS relief Helms — ever found out.

  • Frontline

    I watched the address last night and got exactly what I expected. As an aside, I don’t understand why the President’s staff informs the media of what he will be saying hours before he says it. I guess it is just more time for the administration to disseminate its message.

    I watched a fantastic installment of Frontline last night called, The Long Road to War. The first half hour was devoted to a political biography of Saddam, the second segment dealt mostly with the ’91 Gulf War, and the final bit addressed the Clinton and Dubya years. I’m so glad I caught it because it helped fill in a lot of holes for me. It was also nice to get the story from a relatively objective source, which was then supplemented with original interviews with prominent Iraqi officials and neo-cons like William Kristol and Richard Perle, who offered a fascinating peek inside the Hawk mentality. Here’s a helpful chronology from Frontline’s Website.

    Some interesting facts (that were news to me):

    Saddam’s relationship with the CIA goes back to the early-60s, when he was an up and coming enforcer (torturer/killer) for the Bath Party. The CIA helped them overthrow the existing government, which was pro-Soviet, and Saddam slowly rose through the ranks until he deposed his mentor in 1979. To inaugurate his regime, Saddam, at a formal dinner, had several of his best friends removed from the room and executed. Video footage of the dinner (which was shown on Frontline) was also broadcast throughout Iraq to let the people know what kind of a leader they now had. An odd moment: you can see Saddam crying after he gives the orders. Even in the 1960s, by the way, Saddam had a separate library devoted to Stalin. Nice.

    One interesting segment dealt with the feud between Saddam and Bush 41. All commentators, American and Iraqi alike, agreed that each man had disastrously misjudged the other. Bush made the regrettable mistake of making it personal — calling out Saddam by name — and in the process he did nothing but elevate Saddam’s status in the Middle East. Not only was Saddam taking on the United States, but he was now actually taking on the President himself. What a hero. Saddam, for his part, assumed that Bush would never actually attack him. After being supported by America throughout the 80s during his war with Iran and in his suppression of the Kurds, Saddam guessed that Bush would never risk American lives in the Iraqi desert.

    The big revelation for me was learning about the massive mistakes that we made at the end of the Gulf War (and that were strangely well-intentioned). After beating down the Iraqi army and destroying most of Saddam’s Republican Guard, our forces planned to eliminate what remained of enemy opposition. Powell, who was on the scene and who was disturbed by what he was seeing (on Frontline they showed footage of American helicopters gunning down retreating soldiers), Powell called Schwarzkopf and suggested that they call it off. Schwarzkopf passed the recommendation onto the White House, who went along with Powell. Rather than risk more American lives and needlessly kill more Iraqis, a truce was declared and Schwarzkopf was sent alone to sign off on Iraq’s terms of surrender. Here’s where it gets interesting.

    The Iraqis asked for permission to fly their helicopters. Knowing that we had destroyed most of their roads and bridges, Schwarzkopf agreed. Then, the Iraqis asked for permission to fly their armored helicopters. Again, Schwarzkopf agreed. Why did the Iraqis need those helicopters? Both in the North (the Kurds) and in Baghdad itself (Shia Muslims), opposition forces were rising up to depose Saddam — just as Bush had hoped! What did we do about it? Well, after allowing Saddam’s troops to use their armored helicopters, we just threw up our hands and said, “We did our job. Now it’s up the Iraqi people to deal with Saddam.” Tens of thousands of resistance forces were wiped out while our military looked on from a safe distance, forbidden to intervene.

    I’m really frustrated by the frequent comparisons of Saddam to Hitler — Saddam is contained, after all — but the footage of the crushed uprising was eerily similar to what I saw in The Pianist this weekend. Young men were dragged on the ground and shot point blank in the back of the head. Women and children had no choice but to put their belongings on their back and step in line. Everyone fought for bread and water. Bush didn’t act until several weeks later, when Saddam turned his attention to the Kurds. We set up and protected relief camps that were filled with Kurdish refugees, but by then the resistance had been quashed and Saddam was firmly in power again. Several interviewees said that, had America intervened, even for only a few days, Saddam would have been ousted by his own people.

    I also enjoyed the program because it dealt explicitly with the divide in the Republican party between what they called the Neo-Reaganites and the Practicalists. The divide has created an interesting tension in Dubya’s administration. On one side are folks like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, who have been pushing Bush toward war with Iraq since well before 9/11; on the other are Bush 41 and Powell, who warned the President months ago that he would never get support for war from the U.N. The Hawks versus the Diplomats. I was well aware of this divide, of course, but the show cast it in a new light. I have more sympathy for the Practical thinkers, especially for Powell, who has been dutifully fighting an honorable diplomatic battle that he has always known would never amount to more than ceremonial political maneuvering. But I have to admire (in a sick, sick way) the Machiavellian efficiency of the neo-cons, who exercise such remarkable control over affairs. That they’ve managed to do it under the flag of “Christian Providence” is just forehead-slapping.

    I have to admit that some of the administration’s attitudes toward Saddam make more sense to me now. I am so ready to see his reign brought to an end, and to think that that will happen without actual military force is, at best, idealistic, at worst, hopelessly naive. But I’m still horrified by the prospect of our looming war because I genuinely believe — and the Frontline special only reinforced this belief — that our administration honestly thinks that it will be stage one (or maybe stage two, after Afghanistan) in a military-supported, imperial quest to democratize the world. Talk about naive.

  • Rilke’s “The Man Watching”

    Less than an hour until President Bush’s national address, and I’m too tired, too frustrated, and too stunned to think. I know that there’s not much lower on the blog food chain than posting a poem without comment, but, well, a friend sent this to me today, and it’s been a source of welcomed comfort. And besides, great poetry speaks for itself.

    The Man Watching
    by Rainer Maria Rilke

    I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
    so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
    that a storm is coming,
    and I hear the far-off fields say things
    I can’t bear without a friend,
    I can’t love without a sister

    The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on
    across the woods and across time,
    and the world looks as if it had no age:
    the landscape like a line in the psalm book,
    is seriousness and weight and eternity.

    What we choose to fight is so tiny!
    What fights us is so great!
    If only we would let ourselves be dominated
    as things do by some immense storm,
    we would become strong too, and not need names.

    When we win it’s with small things,
    and the triumph itself makes us small.
    What is extraordinary and eternal
    does not want to be bent by us.
    I mean the Angel who appeared
    to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
    when the wrestler’s sinews
    grew long like metal strings,
    he felt them under his fingers
    like chords of deep music.

    Whoever was beaten by this Angel
    (who often simply declined the fight)
    went away proud and strengthened
    and great from that harsh hand,
    that kneaded him as if to change his shape.
    Winning does not tempt that man.
    This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
    by constantly greater beings.

    Okay, one comment . . . I’ll never write a line this good:

    the landscape like a line in the psalm book,
    is seriousness and weight and eternity.

    Read it out loud. There is so much dramatic force in those three nouns. The stanza, up until that point, is almost romantic — filled with images of a storm and a mythical landscape. But then you hit the word “seriousness,” and the tone, even the tempo of the line changes. The light, fluid reading is brought to a halt, and we’re forced to confront those words, individually and in relation to one another: “seriousness and weight and eternity.”

    A perfect poem for today, I think.

  • A Bush Win?

    Mark Levine, an assistant professor in the History Department at UC – Irvine, has written a piece for Alternet that asks a simple but important question: How will the Left respond to a “Bush Wins” scenario? In other words, what will happen to the energies and coalitions formed around the anti-war movement this year when American forces depose Hussein quickly and with relatively few casualties — few enough, at least, to avoid swaying public opinion back home? What will happen when Bush successfully establishes something resembling (superficially, at least) a democratic-like regime in post-war Iraq? Remember that the general opinion of the American populace is that we have already achieved an overwhelming victory in Afghanistan — a victory against terrorism, a victory for democracy. Problem solved. Time to move on.

    The political Left, having established its most public position in decades, could be heading toward another in a series of significant embarrassments. With war now only days away (I assume), parts of the anti-war movement seem to be — and I say this with some hesitation — relishing the prospect of disaster. Today, Antiwar.com posted a link to this article, which promises “thousands of U.S. fatalities.” Surely the Left — which, you must admit, expresses its concerns in moral terms as often as the President does — can stake out its position on stronger grounds than, “Well, when thousands of Americans die, then, then the whole world will finally see how misguided Bush really is.” Surely the Left can hope for better than a bloody “I told you so.”

    Levine writes:

    the reality is that if the war is quick and a U.S.-occupation established effectively, progressive forces need to accept the removal of Hussein as a great opportunity to build democracy and justice in Iraq, whatever the actual motives of the Bush Administration. The social and political forces unleashed by the end of decades of Hussein’s murderous rule will not easily be penned in by a US-sponsored show-democracy; but whether these forces use a reopened public sphere or turn to violence to respond to the likely betrayal depends in good measure on how adroitly the world progressive community can lay fast but deep roots in Iraq.

    Levine argues that the Left should be working overtime now “to inoculate the American people against what the Carnegie Endowment for Peace has already labeled the ‘mirage’ of democracy that will likely be planted in Iraq after a short war.” Doing so is a tricky game, though, especially when American attention spans are busily occupied by American Idol and Anna Nicole. Harkening back to the finest hours of the New Left, Levine suggests that our greatest potential might lie in student movements. But he warns that the Left’s credibility also rests on its ability to refocus “on the larger world systems which have produced toxic conflicts such as Iraq, Sudan, Colombia and the Congo. In other words, taking steps toward a more holistic approach to peace and justice.” I hope I get to see it happen.

    But, of course, the Left continues to hold out hope for peaceful resolution, and the White House waffling of the last few days has offered occasional glimpses of promise. The best initiative for peace that I’ve found was offered this week by Sojourners – Christians for Justice and Peace. After meeting with Tony Blair and Clare Short, an ecumenical delegation of church leaders worked with Sojourners to draft a 6-point “Alternative to War for Defeating Saddam Hussein.” It seems remarkably pragmatic and just to me — a welcomed relief after months of naive anti-war sloganeering. Instead of annotating the proposal, I would encourage you to read it for yourself and pass it along.

  • God Bless Norman Mailer

    My wife is convinced that I’m the only person in America who is grateful that C-Span 2: Book TV comes standard with basic cable service. (If the shoe fits . . .) On Saturday night, I flipped it on and was pleased to find Norman Mailer answering questions from a large audience, doing so with his typical blend of blustery arrogance and spot-on insight. He was there to discuss The Spooky Art, his latest collection of essays, but I tuned in too late and only caught the last few questions. Two of them caught my attention.

    First, a man near the back of the room stood up and told Mailer that he felt “cheated.” His comment was something along the lines of, “While I’ve enjoyed your latest turn toward novels, I hate that I’ll never get to read Mailer on Clinton or Mailer on Bush, because I really cherish Mailer on Kennedy and Mailer on Nixon.” The second question-asker was more to the point: “Mr. Mailer, what is your opinion of American fascism?” I was pleasantly surprised by Mailer’s response. After first pointing out that he had, in fact, written about Clinton — and after taking several well-deserved jabs at the former President for the despicable connections between his policy in Kosovo and a certain Oval Office blowjob — Mailer suggested that, instead of addressing the issue with less care and time than it obviously deserved, he would defer to a speech he had recently delivered, which would soon be published in The New York Review of Books. From the shift of tone in his voice, it was obvious that Mailer was genuinely troubled by recent events, that he had paid them considerable attention, and that he was generally satisfied with the resulting speech.

    Only in America is now available online, and it is the best piece on Bush, Iraq, religion, and America’s political troubles that I’ve read. As I’ve mentioned around here often, I’ve been a champion of Mailer’s political commentary since first reading Armies of the Night and gasping at his prescient analysis of the Cold War. Sure, he can be as subtle as a sledgehammer, but the combined weight of his experience, intelligence, and confidence strike me with a welcomed force. (As an Onion headline put it this week, “Fox News Reporter Asks The Questions Others Are Too Smart To Ask.”) Man, I’d love to see an 80-year-old Mailer hand Bill O’Reilly his ass.

    One of that remarkable generation of Jewish-American authors (along with Miller, Malamud, Salinger, Bellow, and Roth, among others), and as its most explicitly political member, Mailer is, of course, intimately familiar with the long-standing and oft-troubling relationship between America’s faiths in God and country. Bush’s triumphalism has not gone unnoticed. For Mailer, Bush’s brand of “Flag Conservatism” is a natural and deeply disturbing by-product of America’s schizophrenia.

    And, of course, we were not in shape to feel free of guilt about September 11. The manic money-grab excitement of the Nineties had never been altogether free of our pervasive American guilt. We were happy to be prosperous but we still felt guilty. We are a Christian nation. The Judeo in Judeo-Christian is a grace note. We are a Christian nation. The supposition of a great many good Christians in America is that you were not meant to be all that rich. God didn’t necessarily want it. For certain, Jesus did not. You weren’t supposed to pile up a mountain of moolah. You were obligated to spend your life in altruistic acts. That was still one half of the good Christian psyche. The other half, pure American, was, as always: beat everybody. One can offer a cruel, but conceivably accurate, remark: To be a mainstream American is to live as an oxymoron. You are a good Christian, but you strain to remain dynamically competitive. Of course, Jesus and Evel Knievel don’t consort too well in one psyche. Human rage and guilt do take on their uniquely American forms.

    I love Mailer because of moments like this — blunt-force observations with remarkable consequences. Here’s another, where he takes a cliched symbol — in this case, plastic, which has been neutered of its metaphoric value at least since The Graduate — and wrestles from it more significance and poetic delight than I imagined possible:

    Marketing was a beast and a force that succeeded in taking America away from most of us. It succeeded in making the world an uglier place to live in since the Second World War. One has only to cite fifty-story high-rise architecture as inspired in form as a Kleenex box with balconies, shopping malls encircled by low-level condominiums, superhighways with their vistas into the void; and, beneath it all, the pall of plastic, ubiquitous plastic, there to numb an infant’s tactile senses, plastic, front-runner in the competition to see which new substance could make the world more disagreeable. To the degree that we have distributed this crud all over the globe, we were already wielding a species of world hegemony. We were exporting the all-pervasive aesthetic emptiness of the most powerful American corporations. There were no new cathedrals being built for the poor— only sixteen-story urban-renewal housing projects that sat on the soul like jail.

    The current tenor in D.C. seems to reflect a more general suspicion of intellectualism that is seeping across the country (much to the delight of cable news architects). Well, I’m going to say something that will sound terribly elitist to many: phrases like “that sat on the soul like jail” matter — and not just because of their content. Mailer knows precisely what effect that 64-word sentence — the one that begins “One has only to cite” — will have on his readers, just as he knows precisely how much dramatic weight will be carried by each of those seven monosyllabic words that end the paragraph. As do all good readers and writers. Despite the claims to the contrary made by Bush’s defenders, a love of and attention to words cannot be so easily divorced from a love of and attention to ideas, which is why I choke on my fist every time I hear America’s most public evangelical reduce the complex machinations of foreign policy, morality, and theology (most of all) down to good and evil. Is his world really so simple? Is his mind?

    Mailer continues (and in a manner that makes me think he’d enjoy Long Pauses):

    “Flag conservatives” like Bush paid lip service to some conservative values, but at bottom they didn’t give a damn. If they still used some of the terms, it was in order not to narrow their political base. They used the flag. They loved words like “evil.” One of Bush’s worst faults in rhetoric (to dip into that cornucopia) was to use the word as if it were a button he could push to increase his power. When people have an IV tube put in them to feed a narcotic painkiller on demand, a few keep pressing that button. Bush uses evil as a narcotic for that part of the American public which feels most distressed. Of course, as he sees it, he is doing it because he believes America is good. He certainly does, he believes this country is the only hope of the world. He also fears that the country is rapidly growing more dissolute, and the only solution may be—fell, mighty, and near-holy words—the only solution may be to strive for World Empire. . . .

    From a militant Christian point of view, America is close to rotten. The entertainment media are loose. Bare belly-buttons pop onto every TV screen, as open in their statement as wild animals’ eyes. The kids are getting to the point where they can’t read, but they sure can screw. So one perk for the White House, should America become an international military machine huge enough to conquer all adversaries, is that American sexual freedom, all that gay, feminist, lesbian, transvestite hullabaloo, will be seen as too much of a luxury and will be put back into the closet again. Commitment, patriotism, and dedication will become all-pervasive national values once more (with all the hypocrisy attendant). Once we become a twenty-first-century embodiment of the old Roman Empire, moral reform can stride right back into the picture. . . .

    More directly (even if it is not at all direct) a war with Iraq will gratify our need to avenge September 11. It does not matter that Iraq is not the culprit. Bush needs only to ignore the evidence. Which he does with all the power of a man who has never been embarrassed by himself. Saddam, for all his crimes, did not have a hand in September 11, but President Bush is a philosopher. September 11 was evil, Saddam is evil, all evil is connected. Ergo, Iraq.

    I feel obliged to comment on those snippets, but mostly I just want them to be read. Mailer slips so easily into flag conservative “logic” here — coloring it all with much needed irony — which makes his moments of genuine outrage all the more powerful. Mailer on post-war Iraq (as an aside, it’s good to see that he still holds impotent liberalism in such high contempt):

    Real democracy comes out of many subtle individual human battles that are fought over decades and finally over centuries, battles that succeed in building traditions. The only defenses of democracy, finally, are the traditions of democracy. When you start ignoring those values, you are playing with a noble and delicate structure. There’s nothing more beautiful than democracy. But you can’t play with it. You can’t assume we’re going to go over to show them what a great system we have. This is monstrous arrogance.

    “This is monstrous arrogance.” Consonance. I love it. I wonder if we’ll ever again have a president who values the life of the mind, one who can recognize or even define consonance. Take it home, Norman:

    The need for powerful theory can fall into many an abyss of error. I could, for example, be entirely wrong about the deeper motives of the administration. Perhaps they are not interested in Empire so much as in trying in true good faith to save the world. We can be certain Bush and his Bushites believe this. By the time they are in church each Sunday, they believe it so powerfully that tears come to their eyes. Of course, it is the actions of men and not their sentiments that make history. Our sentiments can be loaded with love within, but our actions can turn into the opposite. Perversity is always ready to consort with human nature.

  • American Triumphalism

    First, read Ashes to Alvin by Ann Lamott, whose name has come up so often in my life recently that I feel downright compelled to go get some of her books.

    Hats off to Rev. Fritz Ritsch, pastor of Bethesda Presbyterian Church, for his wonderful op-ed piece in Sunday’s Washington Post. Taking to task both President Bush — who has consistently and brazenly appropriated bad theology in an effort to forward his agenda — and those portions of the American church that have graciously accepted that agenda without criticism, Ritsch likens Bush’s self-image to that longed-for “Davidic ruler — a political leader like the Bible’s David, who will unite [the American church’s] secular vision of the nation with their spiritual aspirations. All indications are that they believe they have found their David in Bush — and that the president believes it, too.” Ritsch distinguishes between this attitude of “American triumphalism” and the alternative message that should be emanating from our churches: “grace, hope and redemption — the truth of Biblical faith.”

    For months now, as I’ve grown increasingly concerned by the administration’s evocations of Providence as a justification for war, I have often accused Bush of a type of Fundamentalism that is difficult for me to distinguish from the “Evil” that he is so determined to eradicate. Ritsch echoes these concerns, but does so more eloquently than I’ve been able to manage:

    In the aftermath of 9/11, people came to church in droves, looking for larger meaning, and then they left again, frustrated. That’s a problem churches need to address, not least because our failure to give them what they were looking for may have lent potency to presidential theology. When people were searching for meaning, the president was able to frame that meaning. In a nation of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. In a secular society, a president who can confidently quote scripture is that man.

    The president confidently (dare I say “religiously”?) asserts a worldview that most Christian denominations reject outright as heresy: the myth of redemptive violence, which posits a war between good and evil, with God on the side of good and Satan on the side of evil and the battle lines pretty clearly drawn.

    War is essential in this line of thinking. For God to win, evil needs to be defined and destroyed by God’s faithful followers, thus proving their faithfulness. Christians have held this view to be heretical since at least the third century. It is the bread-and-butter theology of fundamentalists, whether Muslim, Jewish or Christian.

    In contrast, the Judeo-Christian worldview is that of redemption. Redemption starts from the assumption that all of humanity is flawed and must approach God with humility. No good person is totally good, and no evil person is irredeemable. God’s purpose is to redeem all people. Good and evil, while critical, become secondary to redemption.

    I can’t seem to get that “one-eyed man is king” line out of my head. It occurred to me again and again as I read the cover story in this week’s Newsweek, “Bush and God.” Everything about that article rings so true to me — its portrait of evangelical training (weekly Bible studies, “quiet times”) and “personal relationships” with God. There’s the sense that fluency in the lingo — “laying-on of hands,” being “called” to service, having a “walk” — is no longer an inevitable by-product of the contemplative life, but an end in and of itself. Somewhere along the line, American Christian “culture” seems to have superseded Christianity, diluting its call for humility and forgiveness and replacing them with strict codes of acceptable behavior (which, it seems to me, are decidedly white, suburban, middle class, and Protestant). It’s all so terribly frustrating and confusing.

    I so want Bush to be the Christian President that many of my friends claim him to be, but then I read articles like this, in which he makes such ridiculous comments. Asked about the 30 million marchers who protested against his policies a few weeks ago, he responded:

    “Of course, I care what they believe. And I’ve listened carefully. I’ve thought long and hard about what needs to be done,” he said. “And obviously some people in Northern California do not see there’s a true risk to the United States posed by Saddam Hussein. And we just have a difference of opinion.”

    As if “California liberals” were the only Americans upset right now. It’s difficult for me to believe that he has “listened carefully” when he has refused to even meet with leaders of his own church, who were counted among the protesters.

  • Strange Bedfellows

    After twenty-three straight days of precipitation, the sun is finally shining again on East Tennessee. It’s the type of day that demands grilled something-or-other for dinner. And beer. Not a lot of beer, mind you, but definitely some beer. Cold beer.

    Mmmmmmmm . . . cold beer . . .

    In Armies of the Night, Norman Mailer calls himself a member of the “Conservative Left,” which makes more and more sense to me as I spend more and more time arguing with friends about this unnecessary, but apparently inevitable, war. The cable news networks would like for us to believe that America’s political dialogue can be reduce to a simple dichotomy: conservative versus liberal. That sure would make things easier, wouldn’t it? Right/wrong. Black/white. Good/evil. Problems solved.

    In fact, we’re being led by a cabal of neo-conservatives in the White House (who trade in a strange language that melds religious fundamentalism with liberal interventionism), aided by a sad lot of liberal moderates in Congress (both Republicans and Democrats alike), who cower under the political pressures applied so efficiently by the administration. As a result, the only American politicians who are making any sense right now are those at the extreme ends of the spectrum, those who actuallystand for something. I can’t decide which side is making the stronger anti-war argument at the moment, but I applaud them both. John Duncan, my traditionally conservative Representative to the House, gave a great speech earlier this week that had him quoting Robert Byrd of all people.

    It is a traditional conservative position to be in favor of a strong national defense, not one that turns our soldiers into international social workers, and to believe in a noninterventionist foreign policy, rather than in globalism or internationalism. We should be friends with all nations, but we will weaken our own Nation, maybe irreversibly, unless we follow the more humble foreign policy the President advocated in his campaign.

    Finally, Mr. Speaker, it is very much against every conservative tradition to support preemptive war. Another member of the other body, the Senator from West Virginia, not a conservative but certainly one with great knowledge of and respect for history and tradition, said recently, “This is no simple attempt to defang a villain. No. This upcoming battle, if it materializes, represents a turning point in U.S. foreign policy and possibly a turning point in the recent history of the world.”

    If only the anti-war movement could manage to unite those two poles. That would be a fun march.

  • Beautiful

    I had planned to post a rambling personal narrative today, describing in minute detail my particular experiences in Saturday’s anti-war demonstrations. But when I sat down to it, the idea seemed a bit too self-indulgent, even by blog standards. Here’s the long and short of it: On a rain-drenched day that never climbed out of the mid-40s, an estimated 500-650 Knoxvillians lined the city’s busiest street, stretching in a line of protest across the front face of its largest shopping center. There was a handful of long-hairs and radical-looking college kids in attendance, but most — maybe as much as 95% of the crowd — looked as though they had carpooled to the event in minivans. Hardly a ragtag cabal of jobless anti-Americans, as some would characterize the peace movement. It was pretty beautiful.

    One anecdote: During the two-hour protest, only four or five passersby felt compelled to hurl profanity at us, with maybe three times that many making their voice be heard by way of creative hand gestures. At one point, though, a nicely dressed man in a luxury car came to a complete stop, rolled down his windows, pointed to the group of Muslim women standing beside me, and yelled for them to “just go home.” I was stunned and began muttering under my breath, “I can’t believe that happened. I can’t believe that just happened.” Apparently I was saying it pretty loudly, because the woman beside me — a beautiful older woman wearing a head scarf and a “Human Shield” sign — grabbed my elbow, looked up at me, and said, “It’s okay. This is our country, too.” I can’t get her face out of my head — so kind and welcoming, well-worn and somewhat resigned. That’s the memory that will stick.

    It was such a treat to go home that afternoon and end temporarily my cable news boycott. On every channel I saw footage of global dissent. As many as 30 million people gathered throughout the world’s cities, small and large, from Alaska to Antarctica to India and all points in between. Pretty cool.

    Some notes from around the globe:

    “What astonished everyone who marched on Saturday – let’s settle on a million, shall we? – was the apparently limitless variety of those with whom they shared the roads of central London. Not just a diversity of banner-bearing interest groups but of individuality, brought into focus by the single underlying feeling that gave this day its resonance.”
    — Richard Williams

    “On streets of beauty, the warm people inched along or stood and chanted and laughed against a war and for peace and their warmth made the winter temperature irrelevant.”
    — Jimmy Breslin

    “This is not an America we recognize. When we recited the pledge of allegiance in our long-ago scout meetings, it was to a different America, one with different principles. It was an America that lived by the rule of law. An America that was a land of compassion and brotherly love. An America that took seriously a promise to be a good neighbor, both across the street and around the globe. Sure, some of it was myth but we believed in the heart of the story. Others envied our good fortune to be born in America, and we nodded with recognition of that truth.”
    — Nancy Capaccio

    “The whole world is against this war. Only one person wants it,” declared South African teenager Bilqees Gamieldien as she joined a Cape Town antiwar demonstration on a weekend when it did indeed seem that the whole world was dissenting from George W. Bush’s push for war with Iraq.
    — John Nichols

    “But on Saturday, Feb. 15, I emerged from the largest demonstration I’ve ever attended in Dallas with more hope than ever before that our situation will improve. It wasn’t just that 5,000 or so people from one of the most right-wing regions of the world, the former home of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and the fictional J.R. Ewing and many others who represent cold-hearted, selfish economic and political policies, had braved the wind and cold and threats and everything else to make a statement to Bush Inc. that a ‘blood for oil personal revenge world domination military boost’ war against economic sanctions – wracked Iraq was unacceptable.”
    — Jackson Thoreau

  • Duck and Cover

    I’ve heard the soundbite hundreds of times over the years, memorizing subconsciously its particular pauses and inflections. Not until the weeks following September 11, though, did FDR’s most memorable message resonate in any meaningful ways for me. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” He was speaking, of course, within the context of our Great Depression, but that notion — that America must choose to never surrender its defining characteristics to irrational fear — has since been rightly applied to a host of economic, social, and political concerns.

    The peculiar dangers of “fear” — its threat to democracy, humanism, rationality, diplomacy, spirituality — have been on dramatic display in recent days. I’ve instituted a boycott of all 24-hour news channels in my home, but last night, as I burned off my frustrations at the local Y, I was deeply disheartened by what I saw on the TVs that surrounded me. Connie Chung’s silent lips mouthing the latest terror alerts. “Survival experts” providing how-tos on terrorism preparedness. Home Depot employees reporting raids on their duct tape and plastic sheeting inventories.

    I’m trying so hard to avoid surrendering to cynicism, to have sympathies for those who are genuinely afraid right now, to understand why Our Christian President (TM) has felt it necessary to whip us into such a frenzy of excitement and paranoia. As I’m prone to do, my thoughts have lately been drifting toward the 1950s and its obsessive/compulsive fixation on communism. I can practically hear Senator L. B. Johnson, his Texas drawl demanding that we respond to Sputnik before the Russkies take control of the atmosphere and unleash catastrophic weather on us (which he really did). I can hardly flip on the news without hearing Bert the Turtle reminding me to “duck and cover” at the first sight of a nuclear flash.

    The lines between fact and parody are blurring in frightening ways. Look at this bit from The Onion:

    Saddam Enrages Bush With Full Compliance
    WASHINGTON, DC—President Bush expressed frustration and anger Monday over a U.N. report stating that Iraqi president Saddam Hussein is now fully complying with weapons inspections. “Enough is enough,” a determined Bush told reporters. “We are not fooled by Saddam’s devious attempts to sway world opinion by doing everything the U.N. asked him to do. We will not be intimidated into backing down and, if we have any say in the matter, neither will Saddam.” Bush added that any further Iraqi attempt to meet the demands of the U.N. or U.S. will be regarded as “an act of war.”

    And now this from yesterday’s White House press briefing with Ari Fleischer:

    And I have a document — I’ll be happy to release this to you — about the fact that Iraq has not complied, they cover up their compliance in seeming efforts to comply, such as their statements about unconditional U-2 flights, which we now know from the letter that was sent by the Iraqis, so-called conditional became — so-called unconditional became conditional as soon as the ink was dry on their letter. It was never unconditional to begin with; it always had conditions attached.

    It’s all just too much at times, which, I guess, is precisely their point. Lull us into exhausted submission. I heard a report on NPR a couple weeks ago about the effect of impending war on our economy. The general consensus among those interviewed was, “Well, if we’re going to blow up Baghdad, I wish we’d go ahead and get it over with. I’ve got stuff to buy and episodes of American Idol to watch.” I don’t use this term lightly — and I’ll probably retract this in a day or two — but it all stinks of fascism to me.

    On Saturday, I’ll be standing at the corner of Morrell Road and Kingston Pike, smack dab in front of Knoxville’s largest shopping center and busiest intersection, participating in a peace vigil. I’m of two minds about it. I’m not so naive as to think that my presence will change the minds of those drivers zooming by, conducting their Saturday morning errands. But I’m excited by the idea of taking part in a global protest, and I also like the idea of being a living representative of that significant section of Christian America that feels increasingly alienated by an administration that so frequently claims our interests.

  • Let America Be America Again

    A friend just passed along this link, which made me laugh. Turns out that Laura Bush just cancelled a planned poetry celebration after learning that one of the invited speakers had encouraged his colleagues to use the event as an opportunity to publicly denounce war on Iraq.

    “It came to the attention of the First Lady’s Office that some invited guests want to turn what is intended to be a literary event into a political forum,” a White House statement said. “While Mrs. Bush understands the right of all Americans to express their political views, this event was designed to celebrate poetry.”

    Why do I find this amusing? Because the event was intended to celebrate the poetry of Walt Whitman, Emily Dickenson, and Langston Hughes — a homosexual, an atheist intellectual, and a radical Old Left Communist (grossly reductionist caricatures, but you get the point). Apparently Mrs. Bush thinks that readings of Whitman, Dickenson, and Hughes at the White House should be devoid of political content.

    Hopefully they’ll work out their differences real soon, though. I’d love to hear President Bush reading Hughes’s “Let America Be America Again.” I mean, can you think of a more patriotic title for a poem?

  • The State of the Union

    Thoughts on the State of the Union.

    To lift the standards of our public schools, we achieved historic education reform — which must now be carried out in every school and in every classroom, so that every child in America can read and learn and succeed in life. To protect our country, we reorganized our government and created the Department of Homeland Security, which is mobilizing against the threats of a new era. To bring our economy out of recession, we delivered the largest tax relief in a generation. To insist on integrity in American business we passed tough reforms, and we are holding corporate criminals to account.

    I realize that Bush is fiercely pro-life and that he has an inspirational Christian testimony, so I understand why he has garnered blind support from certain portions of the Right. What I don’t get is his claims of conservatism. When I think conservative, I think fiscal responsibility, small government, states’ rights, and isolationism. The Bush administration is none of the above. After deriding Gore as a “nation-builder” during the 2000 debates and promising to never use our military for such purposes, Bush has ushered in a new age of American imperialism, even winning from Congress the right to launch unilateral pre-emptive strikes on sovereign nations.

    Bush’s “education reforms” have likewise helped to grow the Federal government to its largest size ever and have mandated unprecedented Federal control over local school systems. His Department of Homeland Security now exercises the authority to monitor our private lives with near complete abandon. And his mismanagement of the economy has cost us billions of dollars and thousands of jobs. (Before you claim that he inherited a bloated economy from Clinton, which is partly true, explain to me why Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill and most of Bush’s other chief economic advisors were ushered out in the closing weeks of 2002.) If we can’t count on a Republican President for fiscal conservatism, what’s the point?

    A friend and I were discussing all of this last night, trying, as objectively as possible, to understand what is so conservative about Bush’s brand of “compassionate conservatism.” (Don’t get me started on the “compassionate” part.) This morning he sent me this link, writing, “Someone’s reading your mind.”

    To boost investor confidence, and to help the nearly 10 million senior who receive dividend income, I ask you to end the unfair double taxation of dividends.

    New rule: No one is allowed to play the “senior” card unless they’re discussing, well, seniors. To spin the dividend cut as a compassionate move in the interest of seniors is just dishonest. I can only imagine what kind of lightbulbs went off when someone coined the phrase “double taxation.” Mark my words, we’ll be hearing a lot more of that one in the coming weeks.

    Join me in this important innovation to make our air significantly cleaner, and our country much less dependent on foreign sources of energy.

    Environment-friendly Bush? I wonder if you can buy that in a two-pack with the “Pro-Affirmative-Action Lott” doll?

    I urge you to pass both my faith-based initiative and the Citizen Service Act, to encourage acts of compassion that can transform America, one heart and one soul at a time.

    See, now I actually like this idea in theory, but there is no way it will have legs if it ever squeaks through Congress. The other day, I flipped on an episode of “Random People Arguing” on CNNMSNBCFOX and caught a remarkable exchange between Jerry Falwell and Strawman Liberal Methodist Minister. SLMM did his very best to pin Falwell down with the following question: “Do you support the government’s use of your tax money for the funding of Muslim charities?” Falwell absolutely refused to answer the question, doing his best to maintain that tattooed grin. But SLMM continued to press until the two men regressed to adolescence right before my eyes. Honestly, Falwell threatened him. It was surreal. Dada, even.

    And that’s exactly what we’re going to get in Congress when politicians begin trying to divvy up Federal monies for distribution to “faith-based” initiatives. Again, I can’t imagine why any conservative would support this.

    Too many Americans in search of [drug] treatment cannot get it. So tonight I propose a new $600-million program to help an additional 300,000 Americans receive treatment over the next three years.

    Can you imagine if Clinton had tried this? Lott, Robertson, and Buchanan would have called him a Socialist.

    I ask the Congress to commit $15 billion over the next five years, including nearly $10 billion in new money, to turn the tide against AIDS in the most afflicted nations of Africa and the Caribbean.

    Well I’ll be damned. You know who’s responsible for this, don’t you? Bono, and God bless him for it. If Bush gets half of that amount out of Congress, I’ll be the first person to thank him. I can only imagine what kinds of “reproduction-related” measures will be attached to this one.

    Whatever the duration of this struggle, and whatever the difficulties, we will not permit the triumph of violence in the affairs of men — free people will set the course of history.

    This one is probably too obvious to even be worth mentioning, but with “we will not permit the triumph of violence in the affairs of men,” Bush has secured his place in the Meaningless Double-Speak Hall of Fame.

    In each case, the ambitions of Hitlerism, militarism, and communism were defeated by the will of free peoples, by the strength of great alliances, and by the might of the United States of America.

    Note to self: use this line in the conclusion of your dissertation. I couldn’t possibly imagine what “militarism” means in this context, but if this isn’t proof that the Cold War is alive and well, nothing is. How much do you want to bet that an earlier draft of this speech used “fascism” instead of “Hitlerism”? I guarantee it. Probably something like this:

    Bush: “What’s fascism again?”
    Rove: “Yeah, good point. Let’s change that to, uh, How ’bout Hitlerism?”
    Speechwriter: “Hmmm, I don’t think that’s a word.”
    silent stares from Bush and Rove
    Speechwriter: “Hitlerism works for me.”

    Tonight I have a message for the men and women who will keep the peace, members of the American Armed Forces. . . .

    If war is forced upon us, we will fight in a just cause and by just means — sparing, in every way we can, the innocent. And if war is forced upon us, we will fight with the full force and might of the United States military — and we will prevail.

    Note: I’m praying that we will somehow avoid this war because I don’t feel it is theologically just (despite Bush’s deliberate efforts to work that word into his rhetoric). Because I don’t think this war is justified, I feel that any casualties, any casualties, would be tragic and senseless wastes of lives that were created by God for more meaningful purposes. So please don’t take this as knee-jerk anti-Americanism, a phrase that, in recent weeks, has been thrown around much too casually and ignorantly by Rush Limbaugh and his ilk:

    This and this is how our forces will “keep the peace.”

    Americans are a free people, who know that freedom is the right of every person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not America’s gift to the world, it is God’s gift to humanity. We Americans have faith in ourselves, but not in ourselves alone. We do not know — we do not claim to know all the ways of Providence, yet we can trust in them, placing our confidence in the loving God behind all of life, and all of history. May He guide us now. And may God continue to bless the United States of America.

    This will be my most carefully measured comment. The histories of nations that have exercised imperial force under the guise of Providence should be telling to all but the most blindly ill-informed and arrogant.

  • High-Stakes Testing

    Eight years ago next week I began my student teaching internship at Niceville High School in Niceville, Florida. Niceville won a Blue Ribbon award that year, designating it one of the state’s finest. (I’m not making that up.) Midway through the semester, I was surprised when I learned that my lesson plans would have to be discarded for the next few weeks because it was time to begin preparing the 9th graders for their next round of standardized exams. And by “preparing,” of course, I mean giving practice tests and working systematically (and in mind-numbing detail) through past reading samples — or, in a nutshell, equipping my students not with knowledge or repeatable skills but with the tricks of test-taking. That experience is one of the main reasons my career as a secondary school teacher ended before it began.

    It’s also one of the main reasons  I was bothered by Bush’s education platform in the 2000 campaign. After accusing Gore of instigating an “education recession” and of using “fuzzy math,” Bush proceeded to construct America’s educational system in grossly capitalist rhetoric. “All I’m saying,” he grunted in the first debate, “is, if you spend money, show us results, and test every year.” Bush then turned to his “Texas miracle” as evidence of his rightitudedness, “proving” that more standardized testing would narrow the growing gaps in white/minority results. The “Miracle” had its doubters even then, but a new study, recently released by researchers at Arizona State University, seems to have proven what every good classroom teacher has been preaching for years:

    “Teachers are focusing so intently on the high-stakes tests that they are neglecting other things that are ultimately more important,” said Audrey Amrein, the study’s lead author, who says she supported high-stakes tests before conducting her research.

    “In theory, high-stakes tests should work, because they advance the notions of high standards and accountability,” Amrein said. “But students are being trained so narrowly because of it, they are having a hard time branching out and understanding general problem solving.”

    Perhaps most controversial, the study found that once states tie standardized tests to graduation, fewer students tend to get diplomas. After adopting such exams as a requirement for graduation, twice as many states did worse than the national graduation rate as did better. Not surprisingly, then, dropout rates worsened in 62 percent of the states, relative to the national average, while enrollment of young people in programs offering high school equivalency diplomas climbed.

    The reason for this is not solely that struggling students grow frustrated and ultimately quit, the study concluded. In an echo of the findings of other researchers, the authors asserted that administrators, held responsible for raising test scores at a school or in an entire district, occasionally pressure failing students to drop out.

    Here is the full report, and here is Arizona State’s press release.

  • Hauerwas, Bush, and Alexander

    After listening to me ramble incessantly, a professor recently pointed me toward Stanley Hauerwas. I now see why. Hauerwas is a professor of theological ethics at Duke Divinity School, where he has earned a reputation as an outspoken critic of the complacency that has come to characterize much of the American Christian church. I’m on my way to the library to grab a book or two, and at the top of my list is A Better Hope: Resources for a Church Confronting Capitalism, Democracy, and Postmodernity, which sounds like it may have been written explicitly for me. Should be interesting.

    Hauerwas is a ridiculously prolific writer, but here’s an interesting and timely introduction. When asked what advice he would give to President Bush, he responds:

    It’s a tricky question because, if he had asked me, he wouldn’t have been President! (Laugh) So, I’d say, “You need to tell the American people the truth.” This is still about oil. We intervened in Kuwait to protect Saudi oil. You can say, “Well, gee, don’t you think you ought to oppose a tyrant?” Look, the United States is very selective about which tyrant it’s going to pursue. When Indonesia invaded East Timor twenty-five years ago, we didn’t do anything. Why? East Timor didn’t have any strategic interest to us. Bin Laden is clearly motivated by the fact that the United States is in Saudi Arabia. We’re in Saudi Arabia to protect the oil. We need to say that the reason America has such a problem is because we’re such a rich country, and we depend on the resources of the rest of the world. Therefore, maybe the best thing we could do… I mean, rather than saying, “Well, what can you do to support a reaction against bin Laden” — rather than saying “Go out and shop” — maybe he should have said we should put a three dollar tax on gas. (Laugh) That way we won’t use so much of it. That would have been a sacrifice. Yeah, I’d say, “Tell the American people the truth about these matters.” I’m not sure that people around the Bush Administration even know the truth because they need to tell themselves lies about what they’re doing — and they believe the lies — in order to carry forward.

    And later:

    I distrust words that try to explain. I think that we’re desperate to find some explanation when there just isn’t an explanation. I mean, George Bush saying, “Why did they do this? Because they hate us because we are free.” That’s not what they’re saying. They say that they’re enacting jihad against the infidel who they think are deeply corrupt. I think even to accept that — I mean, it doesn’t explain what was there. Of course it’s helpful to get certain kinds of background to put it into perspective, but the idea that somehow or other we’re going to understand this is a little bit like people wanting to have a conspiracy theory around Kennedy’s assassination. We so hunger for some reason that this might embody and make it intelligible to us. But genuine evil is not intelligible. Bin Laden understands some of this. He wants the action to be senseless. And it is senseless because he wants it to call into question America’s sense of non-vulnerability. And he certainly did.

    And along those same lines . . . In January, Laura Bush stood with Hamid Karzai and said:

    We will not forget that 70 percent of Afghans are malnourished.

    We will not forget that one of every four children dies by the age of five because of lack of health care.

    We will not forget that women were denied access to medical care — denied the right to work, and denied the right to leave their homes alone.

    Her speech echoed the sentiments voiced by her husband repeatedly since the days immediately following the start of the U.S. bombing campaign:

    In our anger, we must never forget that we are a compassionate people. While we firmly and strongly oppose the Taleban regime, we are friends with the Afghan people.

    But, of course, the rhetoric of compassion is quite different from the practical problems of “nation building.” Like many opposed to war in Iraq, one of my main concerns has always been “the day after.” What do we do after we have destabilized a dictatorship? What do we do after, in Hauerwas’s words, “we bomb a Stone Age country back into the Stone Age”? If Afghanistan is any indication, then not much:

    “Rather than getting out there in a leadership role and saying, ‘We need a Marshall Plan,’ and fighting for it, they’ve taken a minimalist approach,” complained Joel Charny, a vice president of Refugees International.

    He’s right. The reconstruction funds the Bush White House requested for Afghanistan have been flowing slowly to the country. Moreover, several months ago the White House opposed an effort in Congress to add $200 million to the total. And the total number of US troops committed to rebuilding — after the doubling — will be 340. That’s not a lot.

    Word of the day: nomothetic adj.

    • Of or relating to lawmaking; legislative.
    • Based on a system of law.
    • Of or relating to the philosophy of law.
    • Of or relating to the study or discovery of general scientific laws.

    Maybe some context would help. From Jeffrey Alexander’s Fin de Siecle Social Theory: Relativism, Reduction, and the Problem of Reason:

    In the postwar period, general sociological theory has been associated with the search for nomothetic knowledge. It has been viewed, by its proponents and critics alike, as the crowning glory of the positive science of society. (90)

  • Here in the States

    A friend from Canada wrote, asking what friends and neighbors in the States are feeling and saying to each other. This is how I responded.

    I’ve been noticing a really odd disconnect between the American political climate as it’s depicted in the media (a too-easy target these days) and what I hear in typical conversations. Generally speaking, I think that most media outlets are slightly more liberal than the average American, which makes the media’s apparent disregard for the popular anti-war sentiment all the more frustrating (and borderline suspicious). Though estimates have varied wildly, something like 100,000 people gathered in Washington last weekend, and if I hadn’t actively sought out coverage, I wouldn’t have even known about it. In most major papers it was literally page 8 news.

    I have also yet to speak to a single American who is adamantly in favor of war. Sure, a certain portion of the population will simply parrot the words of those politicians who they most respect — “You’re either for us or against us” — but that tendency is hardly exclusive to Americans. Instead, everyone I speak to is, at best, unsure of the President’s motives, and most are downright upset. Granted, I spend most of my time in a university environment, which also tends to be more liberal, but I have yet to detect anything like a swell of broad support for war. In the days following 9/11, most Americans wanted to fire back. Now, there seems to be a more healthy skepticism.

    As an amateur political nut, I’m really intrigued by all of this. Bush and his buddies dug deep into the well of standard Republican tactics. They demonized an enemy (the axis of evil) in order to unite support, they reminded Americans of our “moral responsibility” to police the world, and they distracted us from traditional Democratic issues (social reform, health care, workers rights, etc.). Now, though, they’re obviously surprised to discover that their political rhetoric isn’t as stable as it was during the Cold War years. You can practically see it on Bush’s face. He says, essentially, “The U.N. won’t tell us what to do,” fully expecting every American to back up his claim. But a lot of us don’t, and now he’s stuck in quite a battle with France and Russia, frustrated that he even needs their input. I have no doubt that if a majority of Americans *really* wanted war, this UN resolution would be irrelevant.

    The war issue is obviously really complex — I think there are some very compelling arguments for the ouster of Saddam — but I have no doubt that Bush’s motivations have always been largely political. War has always been a good Republican issue, especially leading into election season. But I think it might just backfire on him this time. I guess we’ll find out on Tuesday, when we have our midterm elections. If the Democrats maintain control of the Senate, which just might happen, then I think Bush’s saber rattling will go down in history as a political mistake.

  • Sick Day

    An early update today because I’m at home, trying to kill a cold before it gets out of control. I hate being sick. Although I can’t really knock an opportunity to sleep late, drink coffee, and watch The Dixie Chicks: Behind the Music for the fifth time.

    After reading yesterday’s blog, a friend sent me two interesting links. The first is to an interesting article at ABCNews that questions Bush’s claim that “America speaks with one voice.” I wish the article had backed up some of its anecdotal evidence with hard statistics, but it’s comforting to know that other citizens are voicing concerns similar to my own.

    The other is to the home page of Act Now to Stop War and End Racism. ANSWER is working to organize several high profile demonstrations on October 26, the one year anniversary of Bush’s Patriot Act. Their rhetoric is a bit blustery at times — too often reducing the entire, complicated situation to a matter of “Big Oil” — which is unfortunate because, as the Vietnam era should teach us, public dissent only carries political weight when it becomes louder than the voices of the more radical minority. Still, though, their goal of 100,000 marchers in D.C. and San Francisco is impressive. It’s definitely an exciting start. Dig around the site. Plenty of interesting reading material.

    Oh yeah, and welcome to any of you who may have found Long Pauses through my short piece on Ingmar Bergman at Christianity Today. I’d love to hear from you.

  • Miscellaneous Debris

    Four random but interesting links for today:

    “On Being Postacademic” — After earning tenure at a research university, the dream of all young academics like myself, Kenny Mostern resigned and entered into the world of non-profits and political analysis. I find this article in which he justifies his decision absolutely fascinating, both because he happened to resign from my department (though I never really knew him) and because he says so much that I have been thinking lately. I’ll go ahead and give away the end:

    Even in postmodern times, do-it-yourself art, the art of people who survive through other means, retains a political potential, an intellectual energy, a form of commitment to community building that I believe has fundamentally dissolved in the professional world of the academy.

    And, yes, I know the critique of that position. So what?

    “The Painter of LightTM” — I can’t even remember how I stumbled up this site — Images: A Journal of the Arts and Religion — but I like it. Gregory Wolfe’s editorial takes on many of the same questions that I’ve been writing about lately: What is the proper response to Christian kitsch? Can ten million people be wrong? How do we step away from the commodification of culture in order to have a genuine experience? And what is wrong with sentimentality? (I have other questions about Thomas Kinkade, but since Wolfe doesn’t go into them, neither will I.) Thanks to Wolfe for my new quote of the week:

    The great theologian, Cardinal Henri de Lubac, once wrote: “There is nothing more demanding than the taste for mediocrity. Beneath its ever moderate appearance there is nothing more intemperate; nothing surer in its instinct; nothing more pitiless in its refusals. It suffers no greatness, shows beauty no mercy.”

    “OJ Stupid: Bush’s Iraq Gambit” — Christopher J. Preist’s 4,500 word analysis of current events should be required reading for every American of voting age. Priest is a modern Renaissance man — comic book writer, minister, political commentator, and fellow blog-ist. His site is a great way to lose a day of work, and this article is a powerhouse.

    Doing The Pepsi Challenge between Bush’s proposed resolution and the Tonkin Resolution conjures up possibilities that’ll have me sleeping with the light on for quite awhile. Or, am I just being unreasonably cynical? Maybe. But, in the final analysis, the Bush Administration’s Iraq policy boils down to this: these men are either evil or stupid. There’s really not much middle ground. Rallying America for a just cause would seem to invite if not require bipartisanship, and eschewing even the appearance of politics. No component of Bush’s mealy, meandering attempts to convince us of the rightness of his cause presents any compelling reason why the whole matter couldn’t be tabled until the new congress is seated in January. The merits of his case are not my issue here so much as the timing, the urgency being so seemingly transparent. For all I know, the president has a valid case for this policy, but he squanders it on brazen political opportunism, which makes me question his ethics and, therefore, his judgment.

    “Make Your Own Bush Speech” — It ain’t mature, or even in good taste, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun.

  • Calling the Bluff

    Things are getting interesting, eh? Looks like Hussein has called Bush’s bluff. This editorial is the best I’ve found. Of course, the folks in Washington and London are already voicing their doubts about Iraq’s motives, which is neither unexpected nor completely unwarranted. I realize that the Bush administration must continue to pressure both the UN and Iraq, but it sure would be nice to hear someone, anyone, in Washington voice some enthusiasm about the possibility (even this slim one) that we might avoid war after all. But then that $200 million we’ve set aside for anti-Iraq PR would go to waste.

    Check out Terry Gross’s interview with M.J. Akbar, the founder and editor-in-chief of The Asian Age, an English language newspaper published in India. Akbar is wonderfully entertaining and the most articulate spokesman I’ve yet heard for “regular” Muslims. His analysis of the Pakistan/India situation is fascinating and more than a bit frightening. He also has some interesting opinions on America’s showdown with Iraq. (I say “interesting” because he generally agrees with me.) Good stuff.

  • Wagging the Dog

    In today’s Post, Dana Milbank lets leading figures from both sides decide if the Bush administration is “Wagging the Dog” in Iraq. It’s a good, well-balanced piece, and worth a read, despite being fairly predictable. (Daschle: He’s wagging the dog. Fleischer: No he isn’t.) This is the first article I’ve read that compiles all of the relevant soundbites from the last few weeks:

    Karl Rove argued earlier this year that the war on terrorism should be part of Republicans’ campaigns this year. Last week, White House political aides encouraged GOP candidates to emphasize national security. Also, Andrew H. Card Jr., Bush’s chief of staff, said last week that the White House held back on promoting the Iraq policy in the summer because, “from a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August.” And Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (Va.), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, made an Iraq vote explicitly political, saying, “People are going to want to know, before the elections, where their representatives stand.”

    Once again, I have to begrudgingly applaud the Republicans, who, as Milbank points out, are winning this round. A few weeks ago a Canadian friend asked me to explain why so many Americans were supporting this war. After ranting about Dubya’s supposed “moral authority,” I predicted that he would apply enough political pressure on Congress to force a vote, leaving even the most hesitant Democrats with a choice between supporting a war that they don’t want or looking “soft on terrorism.” Unfortunately, it looks like I was right. Milbank writes:

    Whatever the White House motive, the emergence of Iraq as an issue before the election has spooked Democrats, who find themselves struggling for a response. Though there is no consensus for handling the matter, party strategists said the likeliest course is for Democrats to agree to votes quickly on a resolution authorizing force against Hussein — in hopes of getting back to domestic matters.

    Of course, while the Democrats struggle to find an answer, Bush has already turned his attention to domestic matters, in a manner of speaking. While his two most eloquent spokesmen, Cheney and Powell, take turns looking Presidential on Meet the Press, Bush is back out doing what he does best: shaking hands, posing for pictures, and sitting down to $1,000 dinners. Remember the good ol’ days of bashing Clinton for his fundraising exploits? He’s got nothin’ on this guy. After visiting Iowa today, Dubya will spend part of tomorrow in my most recent home state, Tennessee, where he’ll be stomping for Lamar Alexander. Yes, that Lamar Alexander. He’s hoping to return to Washington by filling our vacant Senate seat. (Feel free to support his competition.)

    And what message will Bush be pushing on the trail? Why the need for “fiscal responsibility,” of course. It seems that we’ve suddenly run into a $157 billion deficit. A note for Karl Rove: please tell Mr. Bush that his $1.35 trillion tax cut may be partly responsible for that crunch and that the war in Iraq will also cost a penny or two. For more info, listen to Terry Gross’s interview with Steve Weisman, author of The Great Tax Wars, who puts the current situation in its proper historical perspective. He mentions, for instance, that no President has ever cut taxes during war. Interesting.

  • Cold War Logic

    The first editorial I read today is also the best. What I love about this piece is that it makes explicit the paradox at the root of the current administration’s appropriation of Cold War rhetoric: while they have succeeded (though not without difficulty) in reducing the situation to a gross dichotomy (good America vs. evil totalitarianism), they have suddenly abandoned our six-decade policy of deterrence and containment. Every time I hear Dubya speak, I’m reminded of those Congressmen who we point to in our recent history books and laugh at, those who called for a preemptive nuclear attack on the Soviet Union in order to “guarantee peace.” Our containment policy has, of course, been fraught with problems — ethical problems most of all — but it seems odd to me that our new Cold War logic has made a bigger threat of Iraq than the Soviet Union ever was. I wish I could take some solace from thoughts of Dubya’s inevitable place in future editions of those same history texts, but too many lives are at stake.

    A quick note: The Artists Network has built several demonstrations around the slogan, “Our Grief is Not a Cry for War.” I wish I could attend just for an opportunity to hear “REVEREND BILLY & The Stop Shopping Gospel Choir.”

  • Democracy?

    Two weeks ago I read a wonderful novella by Joan Didion called, Democracy (1984). Near the end, we learn that one of the main characters is an Ollie North-like agent, a guy who embraces the profit potential and moral ambiguity of international affairs. I love Didion’s treatment of his downfall: “What Jack Lovett did was never black or white, and in the long run may even have been . . . devoid of ethical content altogether, but since shades of gray tended not to reproduce in the newspapers the story was not looking good on a breaking basis.”

    So, in pursuit of those gray areas, be sure to read Fred Hiatt’s column. After deftly summarizing the positions of both the hawks and the doves, he turns his attention to the more complex problems associated with our involvement in the Middle East:

    After achieving a crushing military victory last fall, Americans said that they would not walk away again from Afghanistan. Bush invoked the Marshall Plan. Yet, incredibly, with not even a year gone, Washington’s attention is drifting away. Administration officials say that they would not oppose broadening the inadequate peacekeeping force. But they wait for others to do the job.

    “We have a greater objective than eliminating threats and containing resentment,” President Bush said in his State of the Union speech. “We seek a just and peaceful world beyond the war on terror.”

    That is the right aspiration. No lesser goal could provide a foundation for war. But no speeches on Iraq will carry the day, no matter how inspiring the rhetoric or solemn the promises to stay the course, if explosions in Afghanistan are the accompaniment.

    This one’s been making the rounds, but if you haven’t seen it, be sure to check out the New Hampshire Gazette’s Chickenhawk Database. Seems that the folks behind our current war-mongering found some interesting ways of avoiding combat themselves. My favorite response is from Cheney, who apparently “had other priorities” during Vietnam. Also worth reading is Marty Jeezer’s great piece on the subject.

    And have I mentioned lately that This Modern World is really funny?

     

  • A Blessing and a Symbol

    Why am I surprised? The Sunday edition of my local paper leads with two “local interest” stories: one on a couple from Chattanooga who were married hours before driving to Knoxville for UT’s opening game; the other an embarrassing interview with a couple whose first child was born on the morning of September 11. If the folks at The Onion are paying attention, I would encourage them to rerun the story without alteration. My favorite line is from the proud and deeply earnest father:

    “We just want Audrey to be an encouragement, a blessing and a symbol of hope and inspiration to the people of America. Terrorists can take life out, but they can’t bring it in,” he said.

    I can’t really blame the father, though. When I read stories like this I wonder why the “journalist” felt any need to conduct the interview at all. The story writes itself. And it’s a story that goes down much more smoothly than, say, a discussion of Colin Powell’s curious defense of America’s preemptive attack policy. Did I say “preemptive”? Sorry. I meant “preventive.”

     

  • Nine Questions

    What with Dubya and Tony Blair now promising startling revelations in the coming weeks (what exactly does a dossier look like?), I’d like to join those who are encouraging the President to answer the following questions (courtesy of the editors of The Nation):

    1. Why engage in a risky and potentially calamitous invasion of Iraq when the existing strategy of “containment”–entailing no-fly zones, sanctions, technology restraints and the deployment of US forces in surrounding areas–not only has clearly succeeded in deterring Iraqi adventurism for the past ten years but also in weakening Iraq’s military capabilities?

    2. Why has the Administration found so little international support for its proposed policy, even among our closest friends and allies (with the possible exception of Britain’s Tony Blair), and what would be the consequences if Washington tried to act without their support and without any international legal authority? Isn’t it dangerous and unwise for the United States to engage in an essentially unilateral attack on Iraq?

    3. Is the United States prepared to accept significant losses of American lives–a strong possibility in the projected intense ground fighting around Baghdad and other urban areas?

    4. Is the United States prepared to inflict heavy losses on Iraq’s civilian population if, as expected, Saddam concentrates his military assets in urban areas? Would this not make the United States a moral pariah in the eyes of much of the world?

    5. Wouldn’t an invasion of Iraq aimed at the removal of Saddam Hussein remove any inhibitions he might have regarding the use of chemical and biological (and possibly nuclear) weapons, making their use more rather than less likely?

    6. Are we prepared to cope with the outbreaks of anti-American protest and violence that, in the event of a US attack on Iraq, are sure to erupt throughout the Muslim world, jeopardizing the survival of pro-US governments in Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia and further inflaming the Israeli-Palestinian crisis?

    7. Can the fragile American economy withstand a sharp rise in oil prices, another decline in air travel, a bulging federal deficit, a drop in consumer confidence and other negative economic effects that can be expected from a major war in the Middle East? And what would an invasion mean for an even more fragile world economy and for those emerging markets that depend on selling their exports to the United States and that are vulnerable to rising oil prices?

    8. Even if we are successful in toppling Saddam, who will govern Iraq afterward? Will we leave the country in chaos (as we have done in Afghanistan)? Or will we try to impose a government in the face of the inevitable Iraqi hostility if US forces destroy what remains of Iraq’s infrastructure and kill many of its civilians?

    9. Are we willing to deploy 100,000 or more American soldiers in Iraq for ten or twenty years (at a cost of tens of billions of dollars a year) to defend a US-imposed government and prevent the breakup of the country into unstable Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite mini-states?