Dominionist Christians in their context, for better or worse

Christian dominionists like to control their own marketing. And despite supposedly being bold in their witness for Jesus, they don't want to let their little lights shine before the unbelievers (Democrats, non-Christians, Catholics, most Protestants). It's not exactly timidity. They know that can't justify their positions in terms that most Americans and most Christians in the US or anywhere would support. So they mealy-mouth a lot.

Al Bundy - Christian dominionist theologian?

Our stumbling press is willing to facilitate the mealy-mouthing, since that's largely what our star pundits generally do anyway. So there's a discussions going on now in places that actually deal realistically with the Christian Right, like Talk to Action and Religion Dispatches, as to what the correct way to talk about the dominionists is. I understand why serious journalists and scholars like to be careful about their terminology. For scholars in particular, their work involves making careful distinctions.

This piece from Religion Dispatches is an especially good one on the topic, Beyond Alarmism and Denial in the Dominionism Debate by Sarah Posner and Anthea Butler 08/29/2011. They make an essential point in reference to the Christian Right in general and the Pentecostal New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), a group that suddenly came to new (and to them unwelcome) public attention with Rick Perry's big prayer rally:

... theological disagreements among these folks are largely inconsequential from a broad political perspective; the overarching Christian nation ideology, along with opposition to secularism, LGBT rights and abortion rights, and favoring public prayer and Ten Commandments and so forth are unifying.

But the idea that the NAR in particular — as opposed to the broader apparatus and movement the religious right has built over four decades — is somehow, in a vacuum, more powerful, or more authoritarian, or more threatening to democracy is a view that is far too narrow, ahistorical, and uninformed. [my emphasis]

What makes Posner's and Butler's piece especially good is the way they describe the networks of relationships that participants in neo-Pentecostal groups experience and how the influence of the leadership enters into that experience. As Posner puts it, this is a "crucial point here that I think is frequently overlooked by some people who focus too hard on the NAR rhetoric without contextualizing it: how people actually live and experience these movements." Their description doesn't minimize the ugly side of the neo-Pentecostal experience. It puts it in its actual context as lived by its believers.

Butler slips in a kind of disclaimer that I've seen several times lately in similar articles by people who actually know the Christian Right. She says the lack of decent research by mainstream reporters "has also led to a whole cottage industry of those who write about dominionism, the NAR, and other theocratic movements from the opposite perspective: It’s taking over everything." Now, I'm willing to believe there are people exaggerating one aspect or another of this phenomenon. But who is she talking about? I've seen this kind of comment several times lately without those guilty ones supposedly doing this being referenced, linked or specified. Without knowing who they are talking about, this kind of comment isn't helpful. In fact, it sounds suspiciously like knee-jerk rhetoric to reassure the un-assurable that the speaker/writer isn't one of those stereotypical libruls who supposedly hates "people of faith" and their faiths, too.

But, as I said, Butler's and Posner's description of the neo-Pentecostal lived experience is an exceptionally good summary. Butler:

... there are streams of people crossing each other, and what is happening can have a multiplicity of meanings. That is how to think about the NAR, dominionism, all of these movements that people are involved in. In evangelical and Pentecostal churches, most people have a home church they identify with, but you have a favorite pastor or evangelist that you listen to occasionally. Studying scripture means you don't just read the Bible, you read devotional books, and books designed to help your spiritual walk or the church broadly construed. That is the problem with focusing in only on NAR and dominionism. If you don't know the everyday context of how people, churches, and organizations deal with these broad-based movements, it can sound like a vast conspiracy theory.

People who are in that web don't often recognize differences, or they don’t care about them. They care about their spiritual lives, and that's what keeps these movements going. They can go from one meeting to the next if they have the funds to do so, and the highs are good. Who doesn’t want to go to a meeting that feeds your soul where you meet like-minded people?

All of the groups are enmeshed in a symbiotic web. These evangelists', apostles’, and leaders’ messages are the commodity, and you have to buy the books, conferences, and other materials in order to get the blessings. I know that will seem distasteful and a caricature to some, but these events are well-attended, and at a hundred bucks a person, revenues from book and DVD sales. Conferences and meetings like Lou Engles’ The Call are not just prayer meetings, they are Christian marketplaces, with all sorts of spiritual wares being sold. [my emphasis]

Posner amplifies that description:

... if you’ve ever been to a neo-Pentecostal conference or revival you’ve seen this sort of thing. And as [Carlton] Pearson's biography clearly demonstrates, if you give up that central idea that there is a hell (and hence a Satan), you'll be banished from not only friendships, but the lucrative ministries that Pearson himself helped to create.

All that said, there are different ways that people experience this, or faith healings, or other performances you find in these environments. Not everyone is in lockstep, when you sit down and talk with them. I remember vividly the 2007 event at Gimenez's church in Virginia Beach—this was before John Gimenez passed away—and there was quite a lineup of different preachers (I mean entrepreneurs)! I remember Lou Engle was on what I might, looking back, call a prophecy bender: rocking, as he does, and really doing an extended sequence on some dream he had about Jerusalem. People were wandering out of the sanctuary, as I did, and I was chatting with a woman in the hall. She commented about she hadn't seen him preach in a while. And she seemed pretty unimpressed with this one.

I point this out only to emphasize how these individual players do not necessarily always enrapture the audience; I've seen this at various events. On the other hand, I've seen others, like Rod Parsley and Kenneth Copeland, have the audience eating out of their hands (and also putting money in their hands).

These events are, like I said, performances that are carefully staged and mapped out; there may be a series of speakers who seem like they are reacting spontaneously to what's happening, moved by the holy spirit. But it's carefully orchestrated, along with mesmerizing music, for maximum impact. It's big business.

However, I suspect this ability to understand and empathize with rank-and-file participants may also contribute to the temptation to downplay that nuttiness and cultish aspects of these movements. Posner, for instance, expresses misgivings that some (unnamed) "people have been distracted by focusing too much on bizarre statements Perry’s prayer friends made (the Statue of Liberty is a demonic idol, Oprah is the harlot of Babylon, and so forth)."

But this stuff is also standard fare in the neo-Pentecostal subculture. I just clicked on the website of Charisma, a leading Pentecostal magazine, and found this article on the front page: J. Lee Grady, Unraveling the Power of Witchcraft—One Warlock at a Time 09/07/2011. Ole Jaylee apparently believes literally in the ability of witches and warlocks to magically affect people:

Just a year ago, Victor Hugo Perez Vargas was a leader in Peru’s vast but secretive occult movement. His strange ability to curse people and cause accidents seemed to be increasing. He was being mentored by a well-known satanist master and he attended witchcraft conferences. ...

Victor, who is 36, was drawn into this occultism as a teenager in the city of Moyobamba, where friends convinced him to have sex with dogs in order to receive supernatural power. Witches told him to do this so he could hear better and see in the spiritual realm. After the perverse initiation rites, he began to hear voices—and he discovered his ability to kill people with his words.

I'm sorry. People who can swallow tales about warlocks causing accidents by cursing and initiation rites involving dog-fucking are just superstitious and gullible. If it hurts their feelings to see or read someone saying that, then they just need to grow up. Ole Jaylee has his head stuck in the 19th century:

Victor’s transformation showed me how the Holy Spirit is working in Peru, where occultism has been a tradition ever since ancient Incas sacrificed children on altars to their sun god. Today, occultists from Africa, Europe and the United States attend witchcraft gatherings in Peru because they consider the country a central power center for New Age energy.

He goes on to describe an exorcism allegedly performed on the warlock's girlfriend, a description evidencing less critical thinking ability than the average illiterate backwoods hick can muster.

He goes on to describe his conversion to a brand of Christianity evidently as superstitious as the most dim-witted occultist. "I had a vision of the feet of Jesus," the redeemed and exorcised former warlock says. It reminds me of an episode of the old TV series Married...With Children in which Al Bundy has a vision of God's shoes and starts to manufacture and market them, only to later to discover they were the shoes a deceased fellow shoe salesman had invented and had never been able to sell, either.

And Pentecostalists like Jaylee often track in National Inquirer fantasies like this:

Observers say witchcraft is growing in Peru today, and human sacrifice still occurs—although it is rarely reported. (Several weeks ago, a girl’s dismembered body was found in Mayobamba.) Teresa Gomez believes this is all a last-ditch effort by satanic forces.

"These satanists want to take over the nation of Peru," she says. "Witches come here because there was so much blood sacrifice during the Inca times." She also noted that poor families, especially in jungle areas, have been known to sell their children to be sacrificed in occult rituals.

Substitute "Jews" for "poor families" and you've got the bad old medieval (and later) "blood libel" about Jews sacrificing Christian babies. This is a mean, superstitious, and militant ignorant brand of Christianity. I don't see any good reason for other Christians, journalists, scholars, Democratic politicians or anyone else who's not crouching in a corner trembling in fear of flying demons and witches' curses to treat this kind of nonsense as anything other than a sad, degenerate brand of religion that will certainly do most participants more harm than good.

Ole Jaylee is at least not so mired in the 16th century he doesn't have a Twitter account, where you can read confessions like this: "I hope this doesn't disappoint anyone...but I like Easy Listening music. It calms me." I don't know, Jaylee, sounds like you've got one of them thar Guy Lombardo demons or something. You'd better lock yourself in a room and listen to Christian contemporary for 24 hours straight. It may not git rid of yore Easy Listenin' demon, but it will strip you brain badly enough that you're unlikely to be able to hurt anybody. Also not be able to write your silly column.

Tags: anthea butler, christian dominionism, christian right, pentecostalism, sarah posner

September 11 retrospective: More on chances missed

Mitch Carnell has a good summary on the sense of missed opportunity in After 9/11, Our Unity Morphed into Rage Ethics Daily 09/06/2011:

For a very short time, our country came together with a sense of communal grief and then a huge spirit of neighbor helping neighbor.

We had all been wounded and shocked. We were catapulted into the horrors of terrorism that the rest of the world already knew.

All too soon our oneness gave way to frustration and rage. Our president expressed our collective hate in language so explosive that even he would come to regret it.

We went to war against people who had done us no harm. We vented our wrath on what we thought was an easy target. We proudly proclaimed, "Shock and Awe."

Here we are 10 grueling years later still mired in the consequences of our revenge. Our nation has sacrificed its blood, emptied its treasury and forfeited its prestige abroad.

I'm usually reserved about collective summaries referring to what "we" did collectively as a nation. But it works here. As the German truism goes, there's not such thing as collective guilt, but there is collective responsibility.

In the end, that unity of "communal grief" and the sense that that "We had all been wounded and shocked" was inevitably fleeting and ambiguous. And what did that "huge spirit of neighbor helping neighbor" really amount to? There were donations to disaster relief, of course. And volunteers for the Ground Zero clean-up. But by far most collective effort went into the vast expansion of the national security state and wars. The "frustration and rage" found far more practical expression than the "spirit of neighbor helping neighbor."

And he ends with an appropriate question:

Perhaps the lessons would be worth the price had we learned from what has transpired, but there is little evidence to show that we have.

There are those who are urging us toward yet another war and other voices who want us to continue the folly of this one.

Where are the voices of reason? Where are the voices of peace?

Tags: 9/11, mitch carnell

September 11 retrospective: Chances missed

Anatol Lieven wrote about the risks and opportunities in the American and Western response to the 9/11 attacks in Strategy for terror Prospect 10/20/2001, which he says was written "a few hours after the attacks." (A somewhat revised version of this essay was included in James Hege, Jr. and Gideon Rose, eds, How Did This Happen? (2001) that somewhat confusingly makes it sound like it was written after the October 7 start of the Afghanistan War.)

Even in retrospect, I still think this was a true statement for the immediate aftermath of 9/11: "On the assumption that the perpetrators are identified and traced to some physical space a ferocious military response will be necessary. Not to do this would be to betray the victims and display weakness." It was, as he said, "the worst terrorist attack in history and the worst attack of any kind ever directed against the American mainland."

But this observation now looks like a description of opportunities terribly squandered:

A hardline response from the US is appropriate in the short-term. Moreover it would be wrong to execute any significant policy shifts that could be construed as a victory for the terrorists. ... Above all, a new US policy needs to be shaped by three linked realisations. First, that since the end of the cold war, there has come into being the basis of a unified world system in which the world’s other leading states are partners, not enemies, and in which all these states are under threat from similar forces. In other words, there really is the makings of an "international community" - or would be, if the US could stop acting as if it alone constituted this community. The community is based on shared adherence to western-led modernity. The only categorical opponents of this modernisation project are indeed religious maniacs - who are not to be found in Moscow or Beijing. Second, that with the exception of certain middle eastern states, the real threat to the world order comes not from states, but from below: from alienated populations. And third, since the US cannot occupy and police the Muslim world in the struggle against Muslim terrorism, it is essential to have the co-operation of leading Muslim states. This is something which was already emphasised by the aftermath of the attacks on Khobar Towers and the USS Cole. [my emphasis]

He didn't get the following exactly right. But he was correct in identifying the core problem, the fact that the American military establishing really has a strong self-perpetuaing dynamic, as John Kenneth Galbraith patiently insisted for much of his adult life:

The failure, until now, to move away from the cold war has its roots not only in various forms of inherited bigotry, but also in very strong interests within the US security establishment. This establishment was a product of the cold war, and it needs a cold war-type enemy: huge, identifiable, and, most importantly, armed with either high-tech conventional arms or with old-style nuclear missiles. Hence the endless insistence on the danger of a restoration of the Soviet Union. [my emphasis]

We need to be fair to Lieven on this. Who knew that the national security establishment and the many private firms that profit from it could recreate and bogeyman called "Al Qai'di," one based only in small part on the real existing organization lead by Osama bin Laden in 2001, that could serve as well or better than the nuclear-armed Communist Soviet Union to justify military spending at higher levels than the peak of the Cold War?

He made the following pragmatic observations that are also a reminder of opportunities lost:

One way of combating the kind of attacks we saw is of course better security in the US; but this will not necessarily prevent a terrorist attack, as long as that terrorist is prepared to die. In the end, the key to fighting this war successfully has to be good intelligence - and given the difficulty that American agents have of penetrating the world of the Islamist extremists, for such intelligence the west desperately needs Arab and Muslim allies. The Saudis in particular will have to be persuaded to drop the decades-old strategy begun by Saudi Arabia’s founder, King Ibn Saud, according to which the House of Saud has turned a blind eye to Saudi-based radicalism beyond the borders of the kingdom, as long as the radicals do not cause trouble within Saudi Arabia itself.

The help of leading Muslim states will also be essential if there is to be an invasion and occupation of some part of the Muslim world. For, in their different ways, the US bombardment of targets in Sudan and Afghanistan, and the aftermath of the Nato bombardment of Yugoslavia, have shown the inadequacy of long-range bombardment when it comes to destroying enemies on the ground, who are dispersed and hidden in a friendly civilian population. [my emphasis]

It's not that these aspects were entirely neglected. On the contrary, most of the real successes in the "Global War on Terror" (GWOT) have come from police and intelligence work, not from blowing up Muslims in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and whereever else the US military may be operating without public knowledge. It didn't come from creating a sado-masochistic torture regime in Guantánamo and our "black site" prisons, either, although many Republicans including Dick Cheney were happy to know that such twisted acts were occurring.

It's worth noting here that the United States, even with a government more deeply concerned with human rights and encouraging democracy abroad than either the Cheney-Bush or the Obama Administrations, has limited ability to pick and choose which government we deal with. I can't see that the diplomatic isolation of Cuba and Iran for decades has in itself yielded useful results.

What the US should have been doing and should do now is cooperate with governments, even nasty ones, on anti-terrorism while taking very seriously basic human rights concerns. Torture is a crime. And despite Obama's irresponsible and illegal decision to give effective amnesty ("Look Forward, Not Backward") to American torture perpetrators, the torture issue isn't going away. Dick Cheney may be doing a profitable book tour. And there's no guarantee of which individuals will eventually be put before a court on torture charges from that Adminsistration. Torture goes to the hear of the rule of law. There will be an historical and legal reckoning for the Bush Administration's torture crimes. The tragedy and shame is that it should have come from the American government itself. A large portion of the American Constitution will remain in abeyance until there is a real reckoning with the torture crimes.

One reason for the emphasis on conventional military action in the American response to terrorism is what Lieven himself says at the start of this essay, that the 9/11 attacks were "a very serious act of war, conducted by a formidably cruel, brave, fanatical and well-organised enemy with a terrifying capacity for both savagery and self-sacrifice." (my emphasis) I thought that at the time. German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder used the phrase "act of war" immediately after the attacks in offering his unlimited support for the US in responding to it. (Schröder soon found that applying limits was indeed necessary!)

In retrospect, this understanding was wrong. It was a spectacular act of terrorism by a small, fanatical group acting on behalf of a demented religious ideology, not on behalf of a state. But by framing it immediately as a war, it lead to the consequences we now no so well. And we surely don't know all the consequences, since a pathological attitude toward government secrecy prevailed during the Bush Administration and, tragic to say, has been intensified under the Obama Administration.

Lieven also points to that perenniel failure of American foreign policy, the need to have a real peace settlement between Israel and Palestine. While noting that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a major problem for US relations with the Muslim world, he reminds us, "To blame Muslim-based terrorism on Israel would be unfair and inadequate." It is part of the cause of such terrorism, even far removed geographically from Israel-Palestine. He points to severe development problems in the Arab world as having created the breeding ground for jihadist appeals. BAsed on his own research and reporting from Pakistan, he describes the appeal as follows:

In these depressing circumstances, adherence to a radical Islamist network provides a sense of cultural security, a new community and some degree of social support-modest, but still better than anything the state can provide. Poverty is recast as religious simplicity and austerity. Perhaps, even more importantly, belief provides a measure of pride: a reason to keep a stiff back amidst continual humiliations and temptations. In the blaring, stinking, violent world of the modern "third world" Muslim city, the architecture and aesthetic mood of the mosque is (like the Catholic churches in central America described by Graham Greene in The Lawless Roads) the only oasis, not only of beauty but of an ordered and coherent culture and guide to living. Of course this is true ten times over for a young male inhabitant of an Afghan, Chechen or Palestinian refugee camp.

Tags: 9/11, afghanistan war, anatol lieven, global war on terror, gwo, terrorism

Making big bucks for Jesus. Or for somebody.

Investigative reporting isn't dead, fortunately for the public. Bob Smietana reports on his investigation of the financial management of Jay Sekulow, one of the most prominent figures in the Christian Right, in Christian crusaders cash in: Sekulow's family, firm collect millions The Tennessean 09/04/2011. Sekulow heads the Christian Right's main legal bulldog organization, the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) and another, less famous one called Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism (CASE).

I suppose this could be a case of "doing well but doing good," if you think ACLJ's rightwing political causes are good:

Along with its spiritual benefits, Sekulow's new calling has come with significant financial benefits.

Since 1998, the two charities have paid out more than $33 million to members of Sekulow's family and businesses they own or co-own, according to the charities' federal tax returns, known as form 990s.

Contributors to charities and nonprofits need to pay attention to the evaluations they receive from independent watchdogs like the American Institute of Philanthropy. Religious charities often have problematic ethical practices, especially ones not associated directly with major denominations.

This is a telling part of Smietana's story:

In a phone call, Ronn Torossian, a public relations executive serving as ACLJ’s spokesman, portrayed Sekulow as a great lawyer getting by on modest pay.

"You are asking about one of the most successful lawyers in the country whose income is very small and owns a very small home," he said.

Property records show Jay and Pam Sekulow own three homes, including one they bought in 2008 in Franklin for $655,000 and another in Norfolk, Va., bought in 2005 for $690,000. Their third home, which once belonged to CASE, is in Waynesville, N.C., and is assessed at $262,800, according to Haywood County, N.C., tax records.

Maybe the $263K one is small. So it would be true that Sekelow "owns a very small home." So I suppose that Torossian's statement is technically not a departure from Christian honesty.

Robert Parham comments on Smietana's story in Conservative Evangelical Turns Nonprofits into Lucrative Family Business Ethics Daily 09/04/2011. One of the bad ethical signs of Sekelow's operations is the prominent role family members play in governing the charities. Parham notes that Sekelow is not unique among conservative evangelical nonprofits in that practice, which he calls "a disturbing problem within some high-visibility quarters of the evangelical and Pentecostal community."

Faith can become a family business ...

High-profile examples exist in which financial gain is spread throughout a faith-based family organization, and family members seek control of the organization from generation to generation.

Some examples illustrate that passing organizational control from the founder to his children is seldom successful:

• Faith-healer Oral Roberts passed his mantle to son Richard Roberts, who was forced to resign as president of Oral Roberts University due to financial improprieties.

• With his wife and children in the faith business, Robert Schuller named son Robert as his successor. When that didn't work out, he gave the mantle to his daughter, Sheila. The Crystal Cathedral is now in bankruptcy.

• Billy Graham passed the leadership mantle to son Franklin, who has squandered the credibility of the Graham name with extremist statements and had extremely generous compensations from two nonprofits.

Other examples of an entrepreneurial evangelical founder passing the mantle of leadership to the next generation include Pat Robertson naming son Gordon the CEO of Christian Broadcasting Network.

Tags: christian right, jay sekulow

September 11 retrospective: "Why do they hate us?"

This column from the British Guardian of 09-13-2001 catches the mood of that question with some critical perspective: Seumas Milne, They can't see why they are hated. Separated in time from the event by hours rather than years, he wrote:

Nearly two days after the horrific suicide attacks on civilian workers in New York and Washington, it has become painfully clear that most Americans simply don't get it. From the president to passersby on the streets, the message seems to be the same: this is an inexplicable assault on freedom and democracy, which must be answered with overwhelming force - just as soon as someone can construct a credible account of who was actually responsible.

... Perhaps it is too much to hope that, as rescue workers struggle to pull firefighters from the rubble, any but a small minority might make the connection between what has been visited upon them and what their government has visited upon large parts of the world.

But make that connection they must, if such tragedies are not to be repeated, potentially with even more devastating consequences. US political leaders are doing their people no favours by reinforcing popular ignorance with self-referential rhetoric. And the echoing chorus of Tony Blair, whose determination to bind Britain ever closer to US foreign policy ratchets up the threat to our own cities, will only fuel anti-western sentiment. So will calls for the defence of "civilisation", with its overtones of Samuel Huntington's poisonous theories of post-cold war confrontation between the west and Islam, heightening perceptions of racism and hypocrisy.

Obviously, the terrorist attacks were a surprise and a terrible shock. It was also the case that we didn't have a firm idea right at first who had done this. So that added to the feeling of bewilderment, as well. Our national media had spent far more time chasing the nonexistent Whitewater scandal and obsessing over Monica Lewinsky than on educating the public about foreign policy in general and Islamic jihadist groups in particular. No wonder people were asking, "What possible reason could there be for this?"

It's interesting to see that Milne was worried within a day or two of the attack that the leaders in the US and Britain were "reinforcing popular ignorance with self-referential rhetoric." Source Watch has compiled a page of various quotes on the question, "Why do that hate us?" This one from President Bush on October 11, a month after the attacks, is one that sticks out for me: "I'll tell you how I respond: I'm amazed."

It's understandable that the Cheney-Bush Administration would want to ask such self-referential questions and not focus on any reasons for the attack that might in any way suggest that they may have been justified. Otherwise, people might have focused much more on other obvious questions. Like, "What did Bush know about the threat and what did he do about it?" Or, "We spend a bizillion dollars on the military and they can't even stop a few fanatics from crashing an airliner into the Pentagon itself?" Cheney and Bush much preferred that we worship our glorious generals and cheer for the Administration and whatever actions it took in foreign policy.

Ironically, it's hard to recall or even imagine now. But there was actually legitimate reason for the public to be concerned for the first few days after 9/11 that the Bush Administration wouldn't respond in a sufficiently direct and forceful way to the attack. He had actually campaigned for a more "humble" foreign policy than the intervening ways of the Clinton Administration. A substantial number of Republicans in Congress had opposed the Kosovo War, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott leading the antiwar group in the Senate. Candidate Bush had sneered at the concept of "nation building." And most of us in the public had no idea at the time was a major bad actor Dick Cheney was. It's now downright embarrassing to that a lot of us actually though Cheney would be a mature, constructive influence on Shrub Bush.

We know now that senior officials, notably Rummy's deputy at the Defense Department, Paul Wolfowitz, wanted to use the attack to implement forcible regime change in Iraq. Tony Blair, we now know, was a major influence in convincing Bush to attack Afghanistan first. It's likely, although I'm not certain how fully it's documented, that Blair agreed to support the invasion of Iraq if Bush agreed to attack Afghanistan first.

The Afghanistan War was launched on October 7, less than a month after the 9/11 attacks. How did that go? Tom Engelhardt, Details of Secret Pact Emerge: Troops Stuck in Afghanistan Until 2024 Alternet 08/23/2011.

Gideon Levy looks at a different "why do they hate us?" question, but one of a similar kind, in The reason why the Egyptians hate us Haaretz 28.08.2011. The US has looked to Israel for many of our lessons in fighting terrorism. The fact that it's been 44 years since the Six Day War and neither terrorism nor the proximate causes have been solved should get more consideration from Americans than it does. Levy writes:

The fact that it has not always been this way should be food for thought in Israel. But as usual, the question of why does not come up for discussion here. Why is there terror? Because. Why is there hatred? Because. It is much easier to think that Egypt hates us and that's that, and divest ourselves of responsibility. Peace with Egypt, which is considered an asset only when it is at risk, was a peace that Israel toyed with and breached from the beginning.

It required recognizing the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people and granting it autonomy within five years. Israel conducted ridiculous negotiations, headed by its interior minister (Yosef Burg ) with the intention of making the negotiations go away, and never met its obligations. The invasion of Lebanon the day after the treaty was completed in 1982 was dangerous and impertinent. Against all odds, Egypt withstood this baiting.

People who ask why Egyptians hate us should think back to these two pivotal actions by Israel. Public memory may be short-lived, but hatred is not. Its flames have been fanned since then. People who want to understand why the Egyptians hate us should recall the scenes of Operations Cast Lead and Defensive Shield, the bombing of Beirut and the shelling of Rafah. If Israelis were exposed to scenes in which some country acted in the same way toward Jews, such hatred would burn within us toward that country as well. The Arab masses saw terrible pictures and its hatred increased.

Understanding the multiple causes of terrorism is not the same as making excuses for it. Explaining it in a realistic way is not the same as justifying it. But that's exactly the kind of thinking that Bush promoted in saying things like, "I'm amazed that there's such misunderstanding of what our country is about that people would hate us. I am -- like most Americans, I just can't believe it because I know how good we are."

Tags: 9/11, afghanistan war, gideon levy

September 11 retrospective: more PBS person-on-the-street interviews on 9/11

This is the third day in a row I've been posting these short videos from PBS Newshour's YouTube channel. I've been partially making fun of them. But except for the ones who come across as outright bigots, I'm not making fun of them so much as the person-on-the-street format. They are at least asking the same set of questions to everyone, it seems. But the questions are things like whether the person thinks the 9/11 attacks "changed everything." It's too general a question to get much of any kind of interesting perspective from someone who's not used to doing TV interviews. If it were followed up with questions like, what do you see different about politics now? What do you think has changed for the better? What has changed for the worse?, that would likely get more meaningful responses.

If the ones posted on YouTube are any measure, a lot of people tended to focus on their obvious encounters with airport security. That would be interesting in itself if there were some kind of representative sample and follow-up questions were used. Are the subjects aware of the massive warrantless NSA spying on e-mails? Are they aware that the FBI can get a person's library records without the slightest evidence or criminal activity?

But without some systematic treatment and organization, we get essentially a series of informal and often poorly-informed chatter.

A middle-aged Texas Latina, short version: Ah'm gone vote for Rick Perry 'cause ah hate Muslims.



This Texas lady doesn't have much distinctive to say, but she comes off as a very sympathetic person:



Why would you ask someone under 25 if the US is safer now that before 9/11? Unless you ask them for specifics that would indicate they actually know something about it, you get general stuff like this:



Or like this:



Not that uniformed responses are restricted to younger people, though.

Then there are a series of interviews with serving military and emergency-response personnel. But what should you expect to get in an interview like this but fairly conventional safe responses?

That's what they get here from the emergency response fellow who seems like a very pleasant guy:



Same with this firefighter who sounds like a nice fellow:



Here, they interview a woman who works in public relations for the US Army. You've got to be kidding me! She talks about her personal career path since 9/11; she's not spouting some Pentagon propaganda. But she's not saying that much either, and if you're listening closely to doesn't make entire sense. Her response is about how her career changed since 9/11, and winds up saying she's now doing the same thing she was back then. Say what?



Here we have a National Guardsman giving superficial but sensible enough response to questions that practically beg for a superficial response:



Here's one that illustrates what a lazy form of journalism this is. It's a man in Texas obviously not fully fluent in English. He actually sounds like he has some substantive opinions on the questions he's asked, maybe more so than most of the others whose responses are posted. But it would have taken some follow up questions to get them articulated clearly.



I like this young woman in the next one. She shows that would can say something at least a bit meaningful while you're answering lame questions from lazy journalists:



Tags: 9/11

September 11 retrospective: More random opinions on 9/11 via PBS Newshour

Continuing from yesterday's collection of PBS Newshour YouTube videos of person-on-the-street interviews in which the subjects offer mostly canned or clueless comments.

Here we have a Delaware Bubba. Short version of his comments: Hanging out at gun shows is my favorite thing to do.



Short version from this lady: I come from overseas but I don't really know anything much about Muslim-Christian relations.



Short version from the next guy, who comes across as generally well-informed and tolerant, but probably not knowing that much about Islam: Racial and religious bigotry suck. (This is one of the best of these clips I've seen.)



A kid from Wisconsin, short version: I'm too young to remember much before 2001, but I think I heard recently that some terrorist named Osama or something was killed.



Short version of this woman of Cuban descent: I'm a grown-up so I know that there's no 100% security and that it's good to be prepared for emergencies.



Another Delaware guy, short version: Patriotism means being afraid of foreigners.



Another grown-up, short version: I'm not a Pod Pundit on TV but I sure think constantly waging war against other countries is a really bad idea.



Tags: 9/11

September 11 retrospective: Random opinions mostly from people who don't know what they're talking about (no, I don't mean our star pundits this time)

The PBS Newshour YouTube channel has been running a series of stereotypical "person on the street" interviews on 9/11. To me, their main interest is in the somewhat dubious value of such reports. Especially when the clips are presented with no explanation of the context. I've been interviewed every now and then by someone doing one of these on-the-street compilations. Since it's a surprise, you don't really have time to prepare. I generally try to keep my responses short, uncomplicated and, if appropriate, put in a touch of humor.

My assumption is that most people who agree to do these interviews are focusing on keeping their responses in the range of what they consider "safe." There's also no way for the viewer to know in most of these whether they're hearing from an "average" person (whatever that may mean!) who doesn't spend a lot of time thinking about the issue at hand or, at the other extreme, someone who may be actively committed to a position on the issue. As Rick Perlstein has pointed out recently, it's been the style of Tea Party-style rightwing activist group to present themselves as jus' reglar folks who recently became involved in politics, even when they may have immersed themselves for years in a particular perspective on the subject.

Here's one clip of a woman in Seattle:



It's hard to know what to make of this. She doesn't come across in her mannerisms like a paranoid to my non-medical eyes and ears. But she says at the start that since 9/11, "it just makes you think of everything around you, it makes you think of everyone around you, it makes you think of, when I go in a room, or on a plane, who's with me, and if something happens, what can I do." She concludes the thought by saying it "makes me live every moment now." Really? Every time she goes into a room?! That sounds more like a case of PTSD than a remotely rational response to the threat of terrorism. But in her subsequent comments on the balance between civil liberties and security, she gives what sounds like the reflective response of someone who has a basic grasp of the issues and is genuinely conflicted by her thoughts and experiences with it. It's interesting to hear. But it doesn't really hang together. It leaves me mainly wanting to say, "You worry every time you walk into a room? Really?!?"

Here's a woman from Oklahoma who apparently works for a pest control firm who distinguishes between "Muslims" and "Americans" in the context of racial profiling. She doesn't sound paranoid. She just sounds like a cheap bigot. It's probably reasonable to conclude that this kind of talk sounds "safe" to her. I can imagine what she says when she's not being interviewed by a television station.



I'm guessing she wouldn't consider Deena Kuko from somewhere in California a Real American:



But here again, without knowing something more about the person's background, it's a little hard to know what to make of this. This woman very articulate, more so than many of our politicians. She's wearing a conservative head covering and identifies herself as Arab and a native-born American.

This New Yorker sounds like a likable guy in this brief clip. He conveys a sense of decency and good will. But he's also giving the kind of "safe" answer I would probably give to an on-the-street interviewer on a subject on which I wasn't terribly familiar. Also the kind of safe answer you might give to avoid saying you really don't know that much about it.



Then there the kind of "safe" answer a beauty pageant contestant would be expected to give:



Here's an African-American woman who clearly likes the idea of a police state:



Does she really think Big Brother is her friend? Or does she just not get out a lot?

This seems more like a well-spoken college student's idea of a safe answer:



Here's a young guy who admits he doesn't get out very much - he's never flown on a plane, he says - and is basically clueless. He also looks like he was probably about 10 years old in 2001, so his personal testimony of how 9/11 have made him more apprciative of life isn't that convicing:



Here we have someone saying airport security is different now that it was 10 years ago:



And this is "quality" journalism from public television.

Tags: 9/11

9/11 retrospective: Why do they hate us? Could things like this be one reason?

Matthew Schofield has a report on one of the Wikileaks documents. You know, one of those our Pod Pundits tell us have no real importance: WikiLeaks: Iraqi children in U.S. raid shot in head, U.N. saysMcClatchy Newspapers 08/31/2011.

This was is a grim report about an incident near Tikrit, Iraq, where the evidence strongly suggests that American soldiers handcuffed and executed the inhabitants of a house from which at least one person was firing. Handcuffed and shot in the head, gangster style. Including little children. And then called in an air strike to try to cover up the crime.

There are also disturbing indications in the article that the military tried to cover up evidence of war crimes more generally. It wouldn't be the first time.

Even with the best of discipline on such things - and the Abu Ghuraib torture scandal showed that our glorious generals did not maintain the best of discipline in Iraq - the conditions of a counterinsurgency war in Iraq, where the customs, religion and language are all strange and scary to the average soldier and where the environment is deadly hostile all around, are going to lead to atrocities like this.

But it hurts the United States. And [insert whatever acknowledgments one thinks appropriate on how the Bad People misuse images like this for propaganda], they hurt the United States. People tend to hate foreign occupiers. Especially ones that are killing their fellow citizens, their friends and their relatives. We shouldn't romanticize wars, whether it's Iraq or Libya or anywhere else. War is a failure of policy and politics.

Tags: iraq war, war crimes

September 11 retrospective: Bruce Lawrence on Osama Bin Laden's strategic thinking

Quoting again today from Bruce Lawrence of Duke University from his edition of one of the English editions of Bin Laden's public pronouncements, Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama Bin Laden (2005). In his Introduction, he agrees with sociologist Michael Mann that American military presence and actions in the Middle East lay at the root of the hostility of Bin Laden and his followers to the US. In Mann's words, "As long as America seeks to control the Middle East, he and people like him will be its enemy."

But Lawrence stresses that Bin Laden framed his ideology in religious terms:

Objectively speaking, bin Laden is waging a war against what many - admirers as well as critics - now call the American empire. But it is crucial to note the he himself never uses this vocabulary. The word "imperialism" does not occur once in any of the messages he has sent out [as of the publication of the book]. He defines the enemy differently. For him jihad is is aimed not at an imperium, but at "global unbelief". Again and again, his texts return to this fundamental dichotomy. The war is a religious war. It subsumes a political war, which he can wage with terms appropriate to it, as he demonstrates in his addresses to the people of Europe or of American. Yet the battle in the end is one of faith. [my emphasis in bold]

Because of that religious vision, Lawrence argues against the view that Bin Laden's Al Qai'da was a kind of direct, lineal successor to anti-imperialist terrorist groups like Germany's Rote Armee Faktion (RAF) or Italy's Brigate Rosse (Red Brigades; BR), which were secular groups with their own brands of Marxist-Leninist ideology. (In the quote below addressing the comparison with those groups, Lawrence gives them them perhaps a bit too much credit in articulating a vision of a future society; but his point about their materialist-social focus is valid.)

Lawrence is not agreeing with the Muslim-haters who claim that Bin Laden's view of Islam is correct because Islam is a religion of violence: "It would be wrong either to dismiss these [Qur'anic] references [by Bin Laden] as imaginary, or to take them as representative of contemporary Muslim opinion." Bin Laden's "select reading of scriptural sources and extra-scriptural authority," Lawrence argues, "sits ill with the conscience of the great majority of contemporary Muslims; for all but a few, implacable warfare in the name of jihad is not the sole or the best measure of Islamic loyalty."

The jihadist ideology of Al Qa'ida had its immediate origins in the mujahidin war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Lawrence argues that the confidence that Bin Laden took from the Afghan victory over the Soviets and the American withdrawal from Somalia in 1993 was what "originally launched [Bin Laden] on his hugely ambitious undertaking." Bin Laden assumed that the US could be beaten just as the Soviet superpower was in Afghanistan.

This confidence was based on "two great miscalculations," Lawrence argues. One was an overly-expansive generalization from the Afghan experience. Its particular conditions made it an especially favorable staging ground for a guerrilla war against an invading power. "Even so, it required massive amounts of US finance and weaponry, and the full backing of the Pakistani state, for the mujahidin to prevail."

The other was the American withdrawal from Somalia:

As for Somalia, the inconsequential American landings there, more a public relations than strategic operation, were no gauge of the powers of the Pentagon. The effect of both Afghanistan and Somalia seems to have been simply to lure him into illusions of US fickleness and weakness.

What Lawrence is saying here is that however clever Osama bin Laden may have been in staging dramatic terrorist attacks, he was operating from a foolish set of political and military assumptions. The magnification of Bin Laden and "Al Qa'idi" - the actual organization and the mythological bogeyman - into an existential threat to the United States served the interests of Dick Cheney's vision of war and torture. It was not founded in strategic reality.

Lawrence summarizes the strengths and weaknesses of Bin Laden's theology of jihad this way:

Connected to these miscalculations is the nature of his religious vision itself. One of its most striking features, displayed throughout the texts in this book, is the absence of any social dimension. Bin Laden was barred from the kind of analysis that would have allowed him to distinguish the different structural features of the various Muslim societies in which jihad was to be awakened, and made him hesitate in inflecting the notion of "One, Two, Three, Many Afghanistans." Morally, he does denounce a host of evils. Some of them­ - unemployment, inflation, and corruption - are social. But no alternative conception of the ideal society is ever offered. There is an almost complete lack of any social program. This alone makes it clear how distinctive al-Qaeda is as a phenomenon. The lack of any set of social proposals separates it not just from the Red Army Faction or the Red Brigades, with which it has some­ times mistakenly been compared, but - more significantly - from the earlier wave of radical Islamism, whose leading thinker was the great iconoclast Sayyid Qutb [whose similar-minded brother was a professor of Osama bin Laden's]. In place of the social, there is a hypertrophy of the sacrificial. Bin Laden's messages rarely hold out radiant visions of final triumph. His emphasis falls far more on the glories of martyrdom than the spoils of victory. Rewards belong essentially to the hereafter. This is a creed of great purity and intensity, capable of inspiring its followers with a degree of passion and prin­cipled conviction that no secular movement in the Arab world has ever matched. At the same time, it is obviously also a narrow and self-limiting one: it can have little appeal for the great mass of believers, who need more than scriptural dictates, poetic transports, or binary prescriptions to chart their everyday lives, whether as individuals or as collective members of a commu­nity, local or national. Above all, there is no rush to restore a Caliphate today. Bin Laden seems at some level to recognize the futility of a quest for restitution [i.e., restoration of the Caliphate]. He sets no positive political horizon for his struggle. Instead, he vows that jihad will continue until "we meet God and get his blessing!" [my emphasis in bold]

Tags: 9/11, bruce lawrence, osama bin laden

President Obama and the imaginary country

Obama's caving to the Republicans on matters large, small and everything in between in getting comical. Or at least comically sad: Sam Stein, Obama Jobs Speech Thursday Night: President Gives In To Boehner Over Congress Joint Session Address Huffington Post 08/31/2011. This prompted numerous scornful tweets. Nell Scovell: "Obama's jobs speech was asked to leave a resume and come back the next day."

Jamison Foser: "Thinking about having an ice cream sandwich for dessert. I mean, if it's OK with John Boehner."

Polutlas: "Obama's making full use of the bullied pulpit."

Josh Marshall: "Boehner stipulates Prez must wear bag on head"

I'm not really into gratuitous Obama-bashing. But this is an easily-understandable incident where Obama winds up looking like he's endlessly willing for the Republicans to slap him around. At a time when Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are still disappointed over his debt ceiling debacle, this is just the kind of symbolism he doesn't need. The Republicans in every Presidential election accuse the Democratic Presidential candidate of being a "weak leader." Our national political press is happy to echo that charge. Obama can't avoid the accusation. But he could do a much better job of avoiding giving it credibility.

Martin Wolf in Struggling with a great contraction Financial Times 08/30/2011 has an excellent phrase for the Obama Presidency to date:

Mr Obama wishes to be president of a country that does not exist. In his fantasy US, politicians bury differences in bipartisan harmony. In fact, he faces an opposition that would prefer their country to fail than their president to succeed. [my emphasis]

Wolf's analysis of economic prospects also defines what a serious problem this creates for President Obama's re-election, though that is not his focus:

Yet all is not lost. In particular, the US and German governments retain substantial fiscal room for manoeuvre – and should use it. But, alas, governments that can spend more will not and those who want to spend more now cannot. Again, the central banks have not used up their ammunition. They too should dare to use it. Much more could also be done to hasten deleveraging of the private sector and strengthen the financial system. Another downturn now would surely be a disaster. The key, surely, is not to approach a situation as dangerous as this one within the boundaries of conventional thinking. [my emphasis]

In other words, something the US and the European Union could apply policies that could substantially improve the world economy and the US and EU economies, more particularly. But that requires their government to adopt something more sensible that Herbert Hoover economic policies. And Obama's own conservatism, combined with his seeming delusions about the Republican Party and the bizarre image of voters looking for Compromise regardless of substance, makes that an almost unthinkable prospect at this time.

Cenk Uygur gives his view of the negotiating problem in The audacity of weakness Salon 09/01/2011. Arguing against the die-hard Obama fans who see even the most embarrassing stumbles and failures as the sign of a sophisticated strategy (rope-a-dope, three-dimensional chess, pick your metaphor). Instead, Uygur argues:

He doesn't realize he's getting pummeled. He thinks this is all still a genius strategy to capture centrists by compromising on every single little thing. He is not trying to put on an appearance of weakness to lull his opponent into a false sense of complacency. He doesn't even realize he is being weak. He's the one with the false sense of complacency. As he's getting knocked around the ring, he thinks he's winning.

These guys in the Obama camp are in for a horrible, rude awakening. Sometime in the next year, they are going to blink and realize they are lying flat on their back on the canvas. Then as they finally stumble up, they'll realize they should have started fighting 11 rounds ago. Then a panic will set in, but I'm afraid it will be too late by then.

Yes, a Republican President would definitely be worse. But unless Obama can start being a better President, the chances for a Republican successor in January, 2013 are high.

Tags: barack obama, martin wolf

September 11 retrospective: Bruce Lawrence on Bin Laden's predicted end and posthumous image

We'll be seeing a flood of 10th-anniversary retrospectives on the 9/11 attacks, some of them obviously more substantial than others. So I'm taking the occasion to offer a few posts of my own for the occasion.

Bruce Lawrence of Duke University edited one of the English editions of Bin Laden's public pronouncements, Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama Bin Laden (2005). In his Introduction, he makes a prediction that turned out remarkably accurate this year:

Bin Laden's own fate remains uncertain. Unless he dies a natural death in hiding, it seems inevitable that sooner or later his hunter will catch him. If captured alive, he will doubtless be killed on the spot, as Che Guevara was forty years ago. His captors will know that it would be useless to torture him for information, as they have his lieutenants; while to put him on trial would risk huge embarrassment for those attempting to judge him, given his powers of eloquence and their own record. [my emphasis]

Lawrence isn't defending or romanticizing Bin Laden. He's explaining his perspective. And, in that passage, the perspective of the US and its allies. I was surprised in retrospect to see how firmly he made this prediction about Bin Laden's summary execution.

Lawrence notes that Bin Laden adopted a martyr's pose. Though, again accurately, he predicted that his legend would have some appeal, though not his deeply flawed methods and approach:

His posthumous legend will live on, like that of Guevara, to inspire other such knights [a reference to Bin Laden's self-description as one of "a band of knights"], until such time as different, more humane heroes can attract the idealism of Muslim youth, and find a better way not only to liberate their homelands but also to forge a brighter future for those liberated.

The Arab Awakening is providing some substantial part of that "better way," though obviously it's a process with a hopeful future rather than an accomplished fact.

Tags: 9/11, bruce lawrence, osama bin laden