Let's just get along -- my way

Katherine Kersten, one of the columnists most active in pushing the "War on Christmas" theme in recent years, is asking for a ceasefire. Sort of.

When an outspoken atheist such as Dawkins says "Merry Christmas," we may be reaching a consensus. American popular culture has appropriated Christmas, as it has Thanksgiving, and drained it of religious meaning.

Huh? It's a cease-fire as long as we all say "Merry Christmas"?

A ceasefire would be letting people say whatever the heck they want, and not getting bent out of shape about it. It would be nonbelievers saying they don't get offended by "Merry Christmas" and believers like Kersten saying there's nothing wrong with "Happy Holidays" -- essentially repudiating their words of the last couple of years.

From that unpromising starting point, Kersten goes on to lay out what believers and nonbelievers should appreciate about each other. While I believe she is sincere, her examples get a bit muddied.

For one thing, she seems to confuse "believers" with "Christian". For instance, she says nonbelievers should get credit for defining and expanding natural rights, and for coming up with political principles such as due process and separation of powers. That's generous, though it ignores the muddy birth of such principles, with many advocates being Deists and other nonChristian believers.

More broadly, though, she thinks believers (Christians) should get credit for ideas like liberty, equality and personal freedom -- and thus democracy.

That's simply incredible.

Christianity led to democracy? Tell that to the Greeks, who invented democracy 500 years before Jesus was born. Or the Romans, who governed themselves with a Republic from 509 B.C. until Julius Caesar seized power in 44 B.C.

Liberty? Equality? Personal Freedom? The ancient Greeks.

Believers have played a major role in the development and enactment of various social ideals. Believers, for instance, were at the heart of the abolitionist movement in the United States (and Prohibition. Hey, we all make mistakes....). But it's an open question whether various movements should be properly connected to belief/nonbelief, instead of to individuals who happen to believe or not. And crediting Christianity with the original concepts ignores Christianity's status as something of a Johnny-come-lately to the world of philosophy.

Cease-fire in the culture wars? I'm all for it. But I'm not sure Kersten is ready yet.

religion, politics, midtopia

Belgium's "War of the Worlds"

Not particularly important, but kind of funny.

State television broke into regular programming late Wednesday with an urgent bulletin: The Dutch-speaking half of the country had declared independence and the king and queen had fled. Grainy pictures from the military airport showed dark silhouettes of a royal entourage boarding a plane.

Only after a half-hour did the station flash the message: "This is fiction."

It was too late. Many Belgians had already fallen for the hoax.

Frantic viewers flooded the call center of RTBF, the station that aired the stunt. Embassies called Belgian authorities to find out what was going on, while foreign journalists scrambled to get confirmation.

The network said it was merely trying to demonstrate the importance of debate on the future of Belgium, which harbors several linguistic and cultural divides. But most people were not amused.

I was, though.

Belgium, politics, midtopia

Whither Iraq

We've heard the Iraq Study Group's opinion, and President Bush's response.

Now we get an elaboration of the latter: Bush will not be rushed into a decision.

Although the White House had initially suggested that Bush would deliver his speech on Iraq strategy before Christmas, he has decided to delay it until early next year.

Defending that decision, Bush said, "I will not be rushed into making a difficult decision ... a necessary decision."

Given Bush's stubborness and perceived inability to acknowledge his mistakes in Iraq, I can understand why such a statement would raise alarm bells that Bush will attempt to ignore reality and simply keep doing what he's been doing.

But those concerns are misplaced. First, Bush is right: important decisions should be made deliberately, not rushed. After all, it was a desire to act quickly while looking tough and decisive that led Congress to rush through the Patriot Act without proper deliberation, for instance.

More importantly, though, is that Republicans would probably string Bush up themselves if "deliberation" turned into foot-dragging and inaction. Change must come: it is up to Bush to decide if he wants to lead the charge or get run over by it.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon is preparing to weigh in on Iraq, and the LA Times reports that it increasingly favors "Go big."

Strong support has coalesced in the Pentagon behind a military plan to "double down" in the country with a substantial buildup in American troops, an increase in industrial aid and a major combat offensive against Muqtada Sadr, the radical Shiite leader impeding development of the Iraqi government.

Of course, troop constraints mean "go big" would really be "go sort of large", with something south of 40,000 new troops. And even that would only be sustainable for a year or so. The plan also calls for increasing the size of the military by 20,000 soldiers, but recruiting and training timetables mean that wouldn't help much in the short term, and it wouldn't make a gigantic difference in the ability to sustain force levels.

And never mind the near-complete lack of public support for such a move. Even the military is sharply divided over the idea.

I also can't help asking: if more troops were the answer (and IMO, they were), why is this plan only being put forward now? Shouldn't we have sent in more troops long ago, when they still could have made a serious difference?

Given the risky nature of going big or doubling down or whatever it will eventually be called, any such plan must also include yardsticks for success, with a plan to call it off if the objectives are not being met. Otherwise we risk an open-ended, ever-growing commitment like we had in Vietnam, where we kept sending more and more troops because nobody wanted to be the one who "lost" Vietnam. The result, beyond the additional lives and money lost, was a shattered military and the emergence of a risk-averse national psyche.

But at least we've now got the debate bookended by what I've long called for: "get serious or get out." At this point in the war I favor the latter, but if we choose the former and go about it intelligently, I'll cross my fingers and hope for the best.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

The perils of restricting free speech

As all of you undoubtedly know by now, Iran is hosting a conference on the Holocaust. Billed as an academic inquiry, the thinly-veiled gathering of Holocaust deniers has drawn international criticism.

Let's be clear here. Holocaust deniers rank right up there with flat-earthers as people not to be taken seriously. They're a bit like creationists, pointing to bits and pieces here and there, or building elaborate theories based on the flimsiest conjectures, all while ignoring the towering mountains of evidence all around them.

But frankly I think the conference mostly demonstrates why countries like Germany and Austria are misguided when they make denying the Holocaust a crime.

Why? Because by banning discussion of the topic, they make racist, conspiratorial fools like David Duke look reasonable, even civic-minded. From his website:

In some Western nations, to diverge even slightly from Holocaust orthodoxy will cause an historian to face not only a loss of academic career but also imprisonment.

The main theme of the Holocaust Conference is that there must be freedom of speech on this subject as on all others. Free speech, inquiry and debate is the only way to learn the truth on any issue. Many Western governments have imprisoned many academics for simply expressing their historical opinions on the Holocaust.

For instance, world-renowned historian David Irving at this moment sits in a prison near Vienna, Austria for simply stating his historical opinion about Auschwitz in a lecture in Austria in 1989. German researcher/chemist Gemar Rudolf faces years of imprisonment for simply publishing a forensic analysis that challenged the authenticity of alleged Auschwitz gas chambers...

First, freedom of speech is a vital human right. It is the cornerstone of all other rights, because without freedom of speech no one has to the right to even freely know and learn of the abrogation of other rights affecting human freedom and survival. That is why the American founding fathers put freedom of speech, press and religion as the first and highest of the Bill of Rights.

Second, freedom of speech and debate are absolutely vital for the truth to prevail. If one side of any controversial issue can suppress the voice of opposition, we cannot arrive at the certainty of any truth. If academics and citizens can be career and monetarily blackmailed; if they can be threatened with firings, loss of income, or imprisonment from simply sincerely pursuing an historical inquiry and publishing it, how can the truth be fairly arrived at?

See? Duke is simply asking for the right to speak freely, and may the best idea win. How can you disagree with him? You can't; he's right. And by banning him you give him the opportunity not only to indulge his paranoid fantasies ("Look! Look! I'm being repressed!") but to cloak himself in the language of light and freedom.

Never mind that he's a lying loon. He also writes:

I and Davidduke.com take no hard position on the historical accuracy of the Holocaust. Obviously, Jews, as well as other nationalities suffered great losses during the Second World War.

But at the conference in Iran:

On Monday, Mr. Duke asserted that the gas chambers in which millions of Jews perished did not actually exist. In prepared remarks published by the Iranian Foreign Ministry, he contended that the depiction of Jews as the “overwhelming victims of the Holocaust gave the moral high ground to the Allies as victors of the war, and allowed Jews to establish a state on the occupied land of Palestine.”

Hmmm... no hard position, except the gas chambers didn't exist. Sure, Dave.

See what happened there? We gave Duke some light, and exposed him for a fraud. That's how free speech works; while bad ideas are never actually banished, they lose their ability to influence the mainstream. Banning bad ideas merely gives bad ideas credibility and a certain outlaw panache.

I recognize that the Holocaust is a much more provocative and painful topic in Europe than it is here in the States. And I can even understand -- though not agree with -- the feeling that such talk needed to be controlled immediately after the war. But 60 years have passed; three generations have been born since then, more than enough time to get some historical distance on those dark days. Holocaust censorship now does more harm than good, and should be stopped.

Update: Duke goes on CNN and calls Wolf Blitzer a "Jewish extremist." And that was before he got really nutty.

free speech, civil liberties, Holocaust, Iran, politics, midtopia

The nature of civil war

James Traub, one of my favorite writers, has a piece in this Sunday's New York Times on Iraq and civil wars in general. He quotes James Fearon, a Stanford University expert on civil conflicts, who ticks off the death toll, the massive refugee flows, the major players, and says "by any reasonable definition, Iraq is in the midst of a civil war."

But that's not really the point of this post, which is to delve into what we might expect in the future as Iraq is consumed by sectarian conflict.

Scholars and diplomats who have closely studied civil wars describe them almost as forces of nature, grinding on until the parties exhaust themselves, shredding bonds that cannot be stitched back together even long years after the killing stops.

Wars that do not end quickly -- as the Rwanda civil war did, for instance -- tend to drag on for years. Take Northern Ireland, for example, or (as the article does) Bosnia and Lebanon. All three continued until everyone finally recognized that they were not going to win by force alone and decided that just about any alternative, including compromise with hated enemies, was better than continuing to fight.

In Lebanon -- perhaps the best parallel for Iraq -- that came only after 5 percent of the population was killed or wounded and half had become refugees. Translated to Iraq, those numbers would mean a war that caused 1.3 million casualties and uprooted 13 million people.

The good news, I suppose, is that we're already making excellent headway on those numbers, with death estimates in the 100,000-plus range and 3.4 million refugees.

Given that civil wars are driven by grievances rooted in tribal, religous and ethnic divisions, it's possible to view an Iraq civil war as inevitable. In this instance we were the catalyst, knocking over the dictator that kept the lid on the bubbling pot. But Saddam wasn't going to live forever, and when he finally shuffled off the scene the suppressed tensions were likely to explode anyway. And one could argue that it's better for that to happen sooner rather than later -- otherwise the grievances keep piling up and make the subsequent spasm of violence that much more gruesome.

So what happens if civil war is indeed in Iraq's future? Assuming the Kurds don't simply secede and the Shiites don't overrun the Sunni, this:

When the sectarian combatants finally do exhaust themselves, Iraq will need a great deal of outside help, though not the kind it has received so far. Civil wars liquidate the trust among parties that makes settlements possible; outsiders must act as guarantors and, usually, peacekeepers. And they have to be prepared to make a major commitment: NATO put 60,000 troops in Bosnia, with a population less than one-sixth that of Iraq, to police the Dayton Accords that ended the war. Today 1,900 soldiers from the European Union are sufficient to do the job.

For Iraq, that means returning in several years as peacekeepers, 400,000 strong -- the same number, not coincidentally, that we should have gone in with in the first place. And it probably won't be us doing it, but a coalition of non-Western forces, perhaps under UN flag, that won't rekindle the anti-Western resistance our presence has provoked.

Perhaps from the perspective of history our invasion of Iraq, flawed as it was, will not be viewed as a horrible catastrophe that caused all sorts of problems in the Mideast. Instead, it will be viewed as the event that merely triggered a catastrophe that was coming anyway. It's a measure of our attenuated ambitions that such a historical verdict might be something for us to hope for.

civil war, Iraq, politics, midtopia

The second battle of Pearl Harbor

The New York Times came up with the best Dec. 7 story, hands down -- a never-published article by their wartime correspondent on the astonishing salvage work after the Japanese attack.

The discussion of how they refloated the battleship West Virginia is incredible -- filling the gaping holes in her hull with concrete, attaching cofferdams to slowly raise her, gingerly moving her into drydock, then blasting the concrete out with dynamite so they could get to work on repairs. It was more of rebuilding than a repair, and came with its own hazards -- like the discovery of an unexploded 1,750-pound bomb deep in the ship's guts.

It's a classic story of the unheralded side of warfare, which is as moving and dramatic as any story of battlefield heroism.

Pearl Harbor, war, history, politics, midtopia

Idiots Anonymous

Hi. My name is Dennis Prager, and I'm a moron.

Keith Ellison, D-Minn., the first Muslim elected to the United States Congress, has announced that he will not take his oath of office on the Bible, but on the bible of Islam, the Koran.

He should not be allowed to do so -- not because of any American hostility to the Koran, but because the act undermines American civilization.

Why, you ask, does one's choice of holy book threaten our very civilization?

What Ellison and his Muslim and leftist supporters are saying is that it is of no consequence what America holds as its holiest book; all that matters is what any individual holds to be his holiest book.

Forgive me, but America should not give a hoot what Keith Ellison's favorite book is. Insofar as a member of Congress taking an oath to serve America and uphold its values is concerned, America is interested in only one book, the Bible. If you are incapable of taking an oath on that book, don't serve in Congress.

In Prager's world, apparently, when an elected official takes the oath of office, he isn't only swearing to uphold the duties of that office; he's also swearing fealty to the Christian underpinnings of our country.

Prager might have a point -- an odious, xenophobic point, but a point nonetheless -- if he were actually correct. But he's not.

First, the use of a Bible in the oath-swearing process is a tradition, but not mandatory, as even the State Department points out.

As evidence of that, two presidents declined to use Bibles when they were sworn in. John Quincy Adams took the oath with his hand on a volume of law; Theodore Roosevelt simply used nothing.

Heck, if Prager had a clue he'd remember that the Founders specifically forbade any sort of religious test as a requirement for holding office. Article VI reads, in part:

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

And the presidential oath of office is studiously secular. From Article II:

Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:--"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

So Prager is wrong on the particulars. But he's also wrong on a general level. Because the point of swearing on a Bible is not to show support for the Bible -- it's intended to be a sign of taking the oath of office seriously by swearing on something important to you. It's akin to a blood oath, or "I swear on my mother's grave" or "cross my heart and hope to die."

So Christians swear on the Bible, because (the thinking goes) swearing on their religion makes them that much less likely to break their oath. But the oath, not the Bible, is the important thing.

And in that context, forcing a Jew or a Muslim or an atheist to swear on a Bible is not just obnoxious; it's pointless. Because to a Jew, for example, an oath sworn on a Bible is no more or less binding than an oath sworn on a telephone book.

Also, it's worth noting that the Founders provided the option of simply "affirming" their committment to their duties. And again, two presidents have done just that: Franklin Pierce and Herbert Hoover. This further demonstrates that the whole idea of "swearing on" something is simply a tradition, not something central to the process. Just like the words "So help me God" that most presidents add to the end of the oath.

Further, I believe members of Congress take the oath en masse, and nobody checks to see if they're swearing on a Bible, Playboy magazine or nothing at all.

Prager ratchets up the hyperbole later on:

Devotees of multiculturalism and political correctness who do not see how damaging to the fabric of American civilization it is to allow Ellison to choose his own book need only imagine a racist elected to Congress. Would they allow him to choose Hitler's "Mein Kampf," the Nazis' bible, for his oath? And if not, why not? On what grounds will those defending Ellison's right to choose his favorite book deny that same right to a racist who is elected to public office?

Note the logic: If it's not the Bible, it's the equivalent of "Mein Kampf."

That aside, the argument is fallacious. There are many religious objects and books that might be looked at askance if used in a swearing-in ceremony; but that has nothing to do with them not being the Bible. I doubt an Aztec would be allowed to take the oath while standing over a human sacrifice. And he definitely wouldn't be allowed to play soccer with the head afterward. But that says nothing about the use of something other than a Bible -- it merely demonstrates that some things are repugnant.

Ellison should be able to swear on a Bible if he wants to; he should be able to swear on a Koran if he wants to. He should be able to affirm his oath without swearing on a book at all if he wants to. The oath is the important thing, and his adherence to it is what he will be judged on.

Update: The Star Tribune did a cover story on the flap. It references a Eugene Volokh column at National Review Online that echoes many of the points I make above. While we both identified Pierce and Hoover as presidents who affirmed their oath rather than swearing it, he missed the fact that John Quincy Adams and Teddy Roosevelt didn't use a Bible at all. On the other hand he notes that Hawaii governor Linda Lingle, a Jew, was sworn in on the Tanakh.

Further discussion of Volokh's column can be found at a companion post on his blog.


Koran, Prager, Ellison, politics, midtopia

Montenegro votes for independence

The dissolution of Yugoslavia is now complete.

Montenegro's referendum commission has confirmed that slightly more than the required 55 percent of voters supported independence for the tiny republic in Sunday's referendum.

In the capital Podgorica, a key-stronghold for the pro-independence-camp, young people in particular welcomed the birth of Europe's newest nation, with some shooting Kalashnikov rifles in the air, waving flags, and dancing.

At 600,000 people, it becomes one of the smallest nations on earth. And with this final breakup, we've gone a long way toward recreating the Balkans of the early 20th century -- a period of political instability that gave us the term "Balkanization" and helped spark World War I.

Let's hope things go better this time around.

Serbia, Balkans, Montenegro, politics, midtopia

Police intelligence units stage comeback

In conjunction with yesterday's report that Bush is simply ignoring laws he doesn't like, this all starts to sound like variations on a theme. From U.S. News & World Report:

Since 9/11, the U.S. Departments of Justice and Homeland Security have poured over a half-billion dollars into building up local and state police intelligence operations. The funding has helped create more than 100 police intelligence units reaching into nearly every state.

To qualify for federal homeland security grants, states were told to assemble lists of "potential threat elements"--individuals or groups suspected of possible terrorist activity. In response, state authorities have come up with thousands of loosely defined targets, ranging from genuine terrorists to biker gangs and environmentalists.

Guidelines for protecting privacy and civil liberties have lagged far behind the federal money. After four years of doling out homeland security grants to police departments, federal officials released guidelines for the conduct of local intelligence operations only last year; the standards are voluntary and are being implemented slowly.

I'm okay with the police being on the lookout for terror suspects. But basic standards of evidence and conduct need to be followed, or any such system is guaranteed to be abused.

U.S. News has a sidebar on why pervasive police surveillance is troublesome.

Starting in the 1970s, lawsuits and grand jury investigations uncovered all kinds of abuse by these units: illegal spying, burglaries, beatings, unwarranted raids, the spreading of disinformation. Americans engaged in constitutionally protected free speech were routinely photographed, wiretapped, and harassed--all in the name of national security. In Memphis, the police department spied on the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and gathered data on political activists' bank accounts, phone records, and close associates. In New Haven, Conn., police wiretapped over a thousand people. In Philadelphia, then police chief Frank Rizzo boasted of holding files on 18,000 people. The list of "subversives" grew to include the League of Woman Voters, civil rights groups, religious figures, and politicians running for office.

If you want even more history and examples of how police powers can be abused, I heartily recommend Geoffrey Stone's book "Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime." It traces the history of free speech law from the founding of the Republic.

The FBI did all sorts of heinous things under its COINTELPRO initiative, including arranging for antiwar activists to be fired, sabotaging the campaigns of antiwar candidates, mailing anonymous letters to their spouses suggesting the activists were having affairs, causing activists to be evicted, disabling their cars, intercepting their mail, planting derogatory information about them in the press.... the list goes on.

Then there's the blurry line between infiltration and agitation:

1. A state undercover agent served as co-chair of the Students for a Democratic Society chapter in Columbia, S.C.

2. Another became chairman of the SDS chapter at the University of Texas.

3. Agents infiltrating the SDS chapter at Northwestern led a sit-in in 1968 and then actively participated in a 1969 Weatherman action.

4. Other Chicago undercover operatives provided explosives to the Weathermen, encouraged them to shoot the police, and led an assault upon a uniformed police sergeant during a demonstration, which was widely publicized as "proving the violence" of the New Left.

Supporters of this resurgence in police activity say that the police have learned the lessons of history and will be more careful this time. I'm not reassured, especially given the examples in the U.S. News story.

In February 2006 near Washington, D.C., two Montgomery County, Md., homeland security agents walked into a suburban Bethesda library and forcefully warned patrons that viewing Internet pornography was illegal. (It is not.)... Similarly, in 2004, two plainclothes Contra Costa County sheriff's deputies monitored a protest by striking Safeway workers in nearby San Francisco, identifying themselves to union leaders as homeland security agents.

Union leaders and Web surfers. Well, I suppose they could cause trouble. But how about this one, from here in Minnesota?

In Minnesota, the state-run Multiple Jurisdiction Network Organization ran into controversy after linking together nearly 200 law enforcement agencies and over 8 million records. State Rep. Mary Liz Holberg, a Republican who oversees privacy issues, found much to be alarmed about when a local hacker contacted her after breaking into the system. The hacker had yanked out files on Holberg herself, showing she was classified as a "suspect" based on a neighbor's old complaint about where she parked her car.

Scary on two counts: the absurdness of the classification system and the insecurity of the data.

Or how about the lead example in the story:

[In Atlanta], two agents were assigned to follow around the county executive. Their job: to determine whether he was being tailed--not by al Qaeda but by a district attorney investigator looking into alleged misspending. A year later, one of its plainclothes agents was seen photographing a handful of vegan activists handing out antimeat leaflets in front of a HoneyBaked Ham store. Police arrested two of the vegans and demanded that they turn over notes, on which they'd written the license-plate number of an undercover car,

DAs and vegan protesters. Not good.

The fight against Al Qaeda is morphing into an intimidation campaign against the same old "troublemakers". We've been down this road before; it will be shameful if we go down it again.

civil liberties, terrorism, politics, midtopia

Islam's Reformation

I recently had an e-mail exchange with a reader who said that the problem facing the world today is Islam. Not radical Islam, not Islamic terrorists, but Islam itself.

He pointed out, correctly, that much of the violent behavior is justified by either the Koran or the Hadiths (collections of sayings and deeds attributed to Muhammad). His main thesis was that Islam is not a peaceful religion, it is a violent one, and thus cannot be accomodated; it must be opposed.

Even if you believe this, there are lots of reasons not to act on that belief -- not making instant enemies of the world's 1 billion Muslims, for example. I know moderate Muslims, so they do exist. Even "battle of civilizations" proponents should want such Muslims on their side, simply because it makes the battle more winnable.

But that's not the point of this article. What I'm reaching for here is historical context. I do not pretend to be a religious scholar, but this is what I see unfolding in Islam today.

Most major religions are born out of conflict and tribulation. Judaism arose from the beliefs of the wandering tribes of Israel; Christianity arose from the torture-death of a Jewish heretic and rabblerouser; Islam arose among the warring nomadic tribes of the Middle East. The notable exception to that rule is Buddhism -- which is also, not coincidentally, the most peaceful of the major religions.

Thus Jewish scripture is full of stories of conquering land, slaughtering enemies, condoning polygamy and slavery, and horrific punishments for violation of minor religious laws. Christianity, being an offshoot of Judaism, adopted those same stories, renaming them the Old Testament. And despite the New Testament being a modification or even wholesale replacement for the Old, the Old Testament is still cited on such matters as homosexuality and adultery, as well as when invoking the awesome power of God and the penalties for defying him.

Islam, too, contains a contradictory mix of violence and peacemaking, a product of the tribal culture it sprang from, as well as the practical realities that Muhammad straddled the secular/sectarian line. He founded a major religion, but he was also heavily involved in efforts to unite the tribes and turn their violent energies outward, into a conquering force that swept the region. It's no coincidence that the Koran is more forgiving and peaceful than the Hadiths. The task is trying to separate the words of Muhammad the prophet from the words of Muhammad the general and tribal nationalist.

Admittedly, it's more complicated than that. The Koran and the Hadiths are somewhat similar to the Jewish Torah and Talmud. One is the core religious text; the other is a collection of explanations and traditions. But in the case of the Hadith, the authenticity of many sayings is suspect, and as a result there are many different Hadiths. Reconciling them will be a major challenge. But the main point is that the Hadiths are less authoritative than the Koran.

From those usually violent beginnings, most religions seem to undergo a predictable growth arc -- from persecuted sect to evangelical expansion to established religion that persecutes its own sects in turn. At some point there is a schism among believers, which is either settled -- violently, for the most part -- or results in a split, such as the Protestant/Catholic split in Christianity or the Sunni/Shiite split in Islam.

Eventually a religion has to reconcile its violent, expansionistic origins with the reality of being part of the establishment. And that means repudiating the more extreme aspects of their origins. Hence no mainstream Christian denomination follows Jewish dietary law, even though Jesus was a devout Jew. No Jew or Christian thinks slavery is divinely approved, even though the Old Testament had no problem with it. Most of Leviticus has been discarded wholesale.

In addition, most religions discover that religion and secular power don't mix well, nor does intolerance and enforced orthodoxy. So over time most religions get out of the governing business, and allow all believers to follow their conscience. Christianity managed that trick just a couple of centuries ago -- and still hasn't shaken the impulse entirely.

Such growth didn't happen easily, and it didn't happen overnight. It takes a long time for a religion to mature. It's no coincidence that the oldest major Western religion, Judaism, is also the least evangelical and most tolerant; Jews resolved their major schism thousands of years ago. Christianity is younger, and resolved its contradictions just a few hundred years ago, although the effects linger in certain quarters.

Islam is the youngest of the three. I submit that what we are seeing today is Islam passing through the same painful adolescence that both Judaism and Christianity endured centuries ago.

Let's look at the timeline. Christianity was born in the 1st Century. The Reformation came 1,500 years later, and took a century of warfare to resolve -- and was preceded by centuries of religious warfare, such as the Crusades.

Islam was founded in the 7th Century. And now, 1,500 years later, it is at the same stage of development as Christianity was 600 years ago.

The parallels are striking. The 1400's began with the Spanish Inquisition, which eventually led to the expulsion of Jews and Muslims from Spain. Elsewhere there was a brisk business in burning heretics at the stake, notably John Huss and Jerome of Prague, burned for spreading the writings of John Wycliffe.

This led to the rise of the Hussites, which in turn prompted the first interChristian Crusade, a 13-year war between the church and the Hussites that the Hussites won.

All this bloodshed merely laid the foundation for the Reformation, which would convulse the entire 16th Century in violence and horror. And religious wars also marked the 17th Century, notably the Thirty Years' War that began in 1618.

But Christianity emerged from all that a more mature religion. Split, of course, between Catholics and Protestants, but with armed force no longer a desirable option for enforcing orthodoxy. Two centuries of war had, quite simply, worn everybody out. They were ready to embrace tolerance if that was the price of peace.

And so it is, I believe, with Islam. We are unfortunate enough to be alive during Islam's bloody transition from its medieval origins to modernity. The good news is that eventually moderate theology should win the day: the more violent parts of the Koran will be devalued, and any conflict between the Koran and the Hadith will be resolved in favor of the Koran, since the Koran is God's word and the Hadith is not.

The bad news is that it could take 100 years or more, and the fallout and human cost could be very, very high.

There is reason for optimism. The world is not as backward a place as it was in the 15th Century. The West has learned the lessons of religious violence, and can serve as an example and guide for resolving Islam's internal conflicts. So while the Islamic Reformation is and will be violent, it can be expected to take less time than the Christian Reformation did.

Our job, therefore, is to encourage and support the moderate reformers while opposing and undermining the medievalists. It will take patience, money, intellectual firepower and an acknowledgement that it will proceed in fits and starts. But the entire world will benefit from Islam shedding its medieval past. If ever there was a project well worth undertaking, this is it.


terrorism, history, Reformation, religion, Christianity, Islam, politics, midtopia

I'm shocked; shocked!

Another British memo makes even more clear that Bush was determined to invade Iraq regardless.

During a private two-hour meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 31, 2003, he made clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons, said a confidential memo about the meeting written by Mr. Blair's top foreign policy adviser and reviewed by The New York Times.

"Our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning," David Manning, Mr. Blair's chief foreign policy adviser at the time, wrote in the memo that summarized the discussion between Mr. Bush, Mr. Blair and six of their top aides.

"The start date for the military campaign was now penciled in for 10 March," Mr. Manning wrote, paraphrasing the president. "This was when the bombing would begin."

Assuming the memo is genuine -- and it appears to be -- this would seem to be the "smoking gun" indicating that Bush was hellbent to invade Iraq, and all of his publicly stated reasons and rationales were so much window dressing. Having decided to invade, he then proceeded to develop rationales to justify the decision.

That's an indefensible way to conduct foreign policy. At the very least, he was required to level with the American people about his reasons for invading. Even better would have been to develop general criteria for pre-emptive war, then see if those criteria applied to Iraq. That way we could at least claim to be following a set of rules that other people could examine so as to know which side of the "eligible for invasion" line they fall on.

I often describe myself as something of a "baby neocon." I support the idea of America being a force for good in the world. I cheered the first Gulf War and the intervention in Kosovo. Why? Because I thought (and still think) that it's high time the world got off its butt and did something about the bad guys. Sure, the Gulf War was probably about oil, but I was able to support it because it was opposing aggression. And this was while many of my friends were active duty military and in harm's way.

I would support a doctrine that called for taking out bad guys like Saddam. However, such a doctrine requires a few key things:

1. An actual doctrine. We asserted our right to do as we wanted and not wait for U.N. approval. I have no problem with that. BUT: you have to lay down the ground rules, make it clear that *this* might get you invaded while *this* will not. Otherwise we're just throwing our weight around, knocking over whomever we feel like, and the rest of the world is justified in wondering if we're just being self-interested bullies. I think most of the world would support us taking out bad guys, as long as we had a clear and compelling definition of "bad guy".

2. At least the appearance of listening to the rest of the world. We went out of our way to anger the rest of the world in the run-up to Iraq. Sometimes that's necessary. More often, it comes back to bite us in the keister, as it did this time.

3. Capabilities that match our doctrine. The reason we haven't tried to overthrow every bad actor in the world is because we can't. Afghanistan and Iraq already have us overstretched. We either add more capability (and accept the attendant cost), or we accept that we have limits and set our doctrine accordingly. Not overstretching is another reason to have a doctrine; that way, you think about what you're going to do ahead of time.

4. The support of the American people. You can have any doctrine you want, but if the voters won't support it, it's a non-starter. The thing that most irks me about the neo-cons is they *knew* that the voters wouldn't support an attack on Iraq simply because he was a repressive dictator. So they tried to link him to terrorism and breathe life into old reports about WMDs. It's only *after* the war that they've switched mostly to talking about what a bad guy Saddam was, as if that alone were reason enough to have taken him out. I happen to agree that that should be reason enough, but that's for the voters to decide. They had no right to lie about it in the beginning. The American people had a right to decide whether this was how they wanted to spend their blood and treasure.

So without a doctrine , the Bush administration unnecessarily angered the world and misled the American public in order to prosecute a war they wanted to prosecute. They didn't have the guts to make their true case to the public; they didn't trust the public to support them. That's unforgivable.

If Bush had made a forthright case for invading Iraq as part of a new "get the bad guys" doctrine, I would have supported that case. I might still have argued that the invasion was ill-advised for several reasons, starting with "it has nothing to do with the war on terror" and seguing to the incredible cost and the fact that we had not yet built the military needed to support such a doctrine, and finishing with the fact that Saddam wasn't at the top of the bad-guy list. But I would have applauded his effort to engage the American people in a grand and worthy endeavor to make the world a better and freer place.

Instead, it increasingly appears that he misled America and the world because he didn't trust them or didn't think they had a right to weigh in on what he was doing. But laudable goals aren't good enough, especially when incompetently executed for crass reasons under cover of lies and half-truths. Because the lack of matching capability pretty much ensures the venture will flounder, and once people figure out the truth the rug gets yanked out from under the effort, leaving the soldiers hanging high and dry.

Nice work, Mr. President.

British memo, Bush, Iraq, politics, midtopia

A thoughtful perspective

Over at Centerfield, the blog of the Centrist Coalition, a thread on the "undisputed" facts about Iraq has, predictably, drawn a lot of comments disputing the facts.

But among all the thoughtful comments, one stands out, a long response by Maxtrue. I shamelessly reproduce it here, because it's well worth reading even if you disagree with parts of it.

-----------------------------
By Maxtrue

I, too, supported removing Saddam even while Clinton was President. After all, Bill was in favor of "regime change".

The real difficulty about Iraq gets back to the re-emergence of "pre-emption". Our NSS, going back to Truman, was effected by 9/11. No longer was America to use prevention and intervention, but pre-emption as well.

Without going into the reasons for our being in the Gulf and our supporting the State of Israel (which is consistent with our historically bi-partisan NSS), our NSS for the last sixty years sets out broad centrist principles which Republicans are botching and many Democrats are now rejecting. Bush certainly did not establish a sound criteria for pre-emption. Neither did the Germans at the outbreak of WW1.

The validity of invading Iraq ultimately rests on the soundness of pre-emption. The centrists must develop a criteria for pre-emption as well as the responsibilities of the pre-emptor to the international community. This must include a reasonable intelligence basis for pre-emption as well as a policy for dealing with the consequence of pre-emption such as radiation containment or the spread of bio-weapons from a targeted terrorist sight. If Bush had to seek centrist consensus of his intelligence judgments, his post-invasion plan and diplomatic strategy BEFORE he invaded Iraq, the American people through their representitives would have favored the Clinton plan and the Powell Doctrine. That approach called for a "deal" with the Security Counsel to abstain from vetoing American force by 2004 in exchange for a final round of inspections and acceptance of constraints and monitoring both Saddm's military production and human rights abuses. It is clear Saddam was certainly more than two years away from wmd delivery. It is most probable that the Bush timetable was based on partisan politics -which might be a "high crimes and misdemeanor" given the consequence of that intentional decision.

I do think it would be suicide for the Dems to even breath the word impeachment before the 2006 elections. Yet, intelligence seems not to be either Party's inclination. The difficulty with Centrist supporting removing Saddam ala Bush was the lack of criteria and the "clear and present danger" intelligence which MUST be present in order to mitigate the effect on international consensus & law as well as the needed international commitment to the consequence of pre-emption.

Americans drift to extremes partly due to the inablility of Centrist-minded people to stand up to these political extremes and to explain that Western Hegemony is not "American domination" and is the greatest force behind the international consensus required to resist terrorism, proliferation, human rights abuses and constraint on both China and Russia.

Rove would be the other reason for domestic polarity. Hillary is under attack by her own Party which Rove has managed to back into a corner with the Far Left. To see Rove spin the Democrats to reject Wilsonian Internationalism, Bill Clinton and decry the clear merit and success of our modern NSS is almost as bad as Bush bungling. Almost...

Discussion of Iraq invariably falls into this political abyss of our NSS and pre-emption is popularly replaced with "Evil Empire" or "oil exploitation". David Duke and Harvard seem to think Iraq was an Israeli conspiracy. Does this prove Western political space is curved like the universe and extremes meet at the ends of a apparently straight line?

How the Right concludes from the transcripts of Saddam's secret cabinet discussions in the 90s that he had any real wmd ability is ludicrous. How the Left concludes Saddam was not a maniacal butcher seeking wmd and that he would not have quickly become a 100x more difficult a job to remove is equally pathetic.

Jefferson built a navy to go after pirates. Madison had General Jackson to save face in 1812 while the Federalists were swept away in a wave of nationalism. Perhaps it is the Center's roleat the moment to remind both Parties that ignorance of history and global realities often lead to repeated mistakes with increasing consequence (especially political). Today, American leadership is seriously challenged by a failure of Centrist American Leaders from gaining the power to apply non-ideological solutions to present conflicts. In this, the Dems and Repugs SHARE blame for the polarized statemate of unsound thinking and performance that marginalizes the Center. Dems respond that the Center is merely the average between extremes. Talk about marginizing! Our times require informed debate, decisive action and consistent principles. Niether Repugs or Dems have shown that much over the last six years. Another six might be too late for America to recover.

To have Bush lead the charge forward is however, a bit like Custer directing the battle. Now there was a general who had trouble understanding the difference between single shot and repeating rifles -which the government wouldn't buy because the Army didn't manufacture it directly. Unfortunately the Indians bought them on the free market and the result wasn't too good for Custer.

Perhaps, Centrists in both Parties should defect to a Centrist Party before the Dems would have us squander American leadership, security and commerce, or the Repugs leave us bankrupt, militarily broken, Constitutionally weakened and no longer invited as the defender of freedom and the system of prosperity. A wonderful outcome for the greatest generation to witness before departing.

Then America would at least have a Party that represents the majority view......

Bush, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Welcome to the 21st Century

The tiny island of Sark, in the English Channel, has decided to exchange feudalism for democracy.

After around 450 years of rule almost exclusively by landowners, the smallest independent state in the British commonwealth will allow each of the 600 residents to stand for election.

(snip)

Since around 1565, 40 heads of the island's farm owning families have raised taxes and decided on matters of law, part of an independence agreement brokered with Queen Elizabeth, after the English seized control of the island from France.

In 1920, 12 non-landowning deputies were appointed, voted for by all islanders over 18 -- the last concession made to democratic government.

I bet you didn't know there was an independent nation in the English Channel, much less a feudal one.

Still, the feudalism couldn't have been too bad. There were 40 landowners and 12 deputies overseeing an island of 600 people. That works out to one government official for every 12 people. Now *that's* representation!

The new system will cut that down to 28 officials, so representation will get diluted -- one representative for every 22 people. It still probably won't be too difficult to get an appointment with your elected legislator, though....

Technorati tags
Europe, feudalism, Sark, politics, midtopia

U.S. reclassifying National Archive documents

The government continues to exhibit its penchant for excessive secrecy:

WASHINGTON, Feb. 20 -- In a seven-year-old secret program at the National Archives, intelligence agencies have been removing from public access thousands of historical documents that were available for years, including some already published by the State Department and others photocopied years ago by private historians.

(snip)

Mr. Leonard said he ordered the audit after reviewing 16 withdrawn documents and concluding that none should be secret.

"If those sample records were removed because somebody thought they were classified, I'm shocked and disappointed," Mr. Leonard said in an interview. "It just boggles the mind."

Things like this are why I'm generally unimpressed by the mere fact that a leaked document is classified. The government routinely classifies stuff that has no business being classified. Leaking such information is against the letter of the law, but it does not violate the law's spirit, nor is it unethical or treasonous.

To determine if a leak is wrong, you have to first determine if the information in question deserved to be secret to begin with. Allowing the government to keep every little thing secret makes it impossible to know what the government is up to, and thus impossible to monitor or regulate it. This can be poisonous to democracy.

For instance, here's an example of a "reclassified" document:

a 1962 telegram from George F. Kennan, then ambassador to Yugoslavia, containing an English translation of a Belgrade newspaper article on China's nuclear weapons program.

Government information should be viewed with the presumption that it is a public record, and only classified if the administration can show sufficient cause. This is in fact the case:

Under existing guidelines, government documents are supposed to be declassified after 25 years unless there is particular reason to keep them secret.

But without oversight and review, nothing stops an official from classifying anything they want.

Technorati tags
national archives, terrorism, politics, midtopia

Imprisoned for opinion

A British historian has been sentenced to three years in jail for denying that the Holocaust occurred.

While I have no sympathy for people who attempt to revise history, it is simply wrong to jail or fine people for opinions or beliefs -- however repugnant those beliefs may be. Criminal punishment chills discussion without eliminating the problem. In the face of legal pressure, people who deny the Holocaust will simply go underground, where their claims cannot be examined, refuted and then discarded from public discourse.

Europe in general has a free and vigorous political culture and a strong committment to free speech. But cases like these illustrate why the United States is lucky to have a First Amendment -- even if we don't always like some of the speech that it protects.