Quick Story...

During the Civil Rights era, there was an elderly woman who became separated from the March from Selma to Montgomery, and was cornered by a couple of racist thugs in someone's yard. They said they were going to "teach her her place" with a beating.

She told them she could not resist them, but asked if she could pray for them before they began. The two men, somewhat stunned, agreed.

She knelt down, closed her eyes, and prayed that God would "bless these two men, who are so obviously burdened with such terrible pain."

When she opened her eyes, they turned and walked away.

Pacifism

I have very little patience for apologists for war, especially of the weak-kneed, unimaginative, "well, it's a fallen world, and so war is as inevitable as the dawn..." sort. I'm not an absolute pacifist, in the sense that I suppose that I could conjure a situation where war is necessary: I just think of pacifism as far and away the higher, more Godly way if resolving disputes.

Pacifism, to me, does not mean passivity or quietism in the face of evil - it means resisting evil through means other than violence.

The usual example of the "Good War" (despite the record of firestorms, atom bombs and assorted other appalling carnage) is World War II.

Well, WWII did not just "happen". The Nazis didn’t just “arise” in some pre-ordained, law-of-physics sort of way. They worked to gain power, using German’s (somewhat justified) resentment of having been assigned sole blame (and suffering under ruinous reparations) for the carnage of World War I.

European nations failed to recognize the danger posed by the rise of Hitler and the Nazis, and Germans allowed themselves to be seduced by the intoxicating brew of nationalism and self-exhaltation being peddled by Hitler and his minions.

None of that was inevitable: The allies could have been more humble and willing to accept more of the blame for WWI after their victory in 1918, and thus not impose such unfair and one-sided reparations upon Germany.

Germans could have resisted the temptation to give in to the Idolatry and self-glorification of nationalism, and instead worked to convince the victorious nations of the injustice of the Versailles armistice, through the non-violent means of appealing to their consciences.

Alienation

Chris Hedges told the story of a foreign friend of his who remarked, "Americans must be the loneliest people in the world."

There is a good post up at Vox Nova that explores a bit of why this may be so...

How to end the war in Iraq

I'm going to argue this from a purely pragmatic, Machiavellian, morality-shmorality point of view.

End the war on Bush's watch, force him and the Republicans to eat their defeat (and it is their defeat.)

Step one is to outline what it would take for the United States to really, actually win in the way that gave neocons wet-dreams 4 years ago. Step two is, give Bush and the Republicans a clear, honest choice: either

do what it takes to "win" the war

or

"get off the pot": end the occupation.

Let's define "winning" as...

- Violence reduced to Pre-war levels;
- A stable, secular, united central government in Baghdad;
- Infrastructure (power, water, food distribution, sewage treatment, etc.) equal to, or exceeding, standards that obtained in pre-war Iraq.

...thus providing the example of freedom that would be (highly debatably...) attractive to Arab populations living under dictatorships in the region.

How could the United States (and, given the level of support the United States could realistically expect from the rest of the world, it would be virtually the United States alone doing this) get there from here? What would it really, actually take to completely pacify Iraq?

Step one is troops. Lots and lots and LOTS of troops. Bush's "surge" is comically inadequate to the task. You'd have to absolutely flood the non-Kurdish parts of Iraq with American troops, who could clear of insurgents, and then seal off to weapons smuggling, the whole of Iraq, village by village, city by city, region by region. You'd also have to effectively seal off, or at least monitor in fine-grained, very intrusive detail, the borders of the country, especially the ones with Syria and Iran - to the point that a ball-point pen couldn't enter the country without American say-so.

This means anywhere from tens to hundreds of thousands of combat troops - in each large city in Iraq. Baghdad alone would probably need something in the neighborhood of 200,000 troops, just for the city itself. Plus, every road into Baghdad (and every other city in Iraq) would need to be under 24-hour patrols and surveillance, to prevent insurgents and weapons from moving from place to place. Not to mention saturating every border crossing of any size with American troops, and regular, pervasive patrols of every mile of the border.

The population would need to be disarmed: the military would need to just say, "you have six weeks to turn in any weaponry. Any Iraqi civilian found to be in possesion of a weapon after that time will be presumed to be an insurgent, and will be subject to imprisonment."

In other words, the American Military would need to effectively run Iraq in the short- to mid-term. The total American forces in the country at any moment would probably total somewhere between one and two million troops.

Step two: Once the violence was quelled (and, with sufficient troops, it would be, probably with surprising speed): "turn the lights back on."

Prime targets of insurgents are electrical lines, to keep the population uncomfortable and inconvenienced, and thus resentful. So, rebuilding existing generating capacity, building new capacity as needed, and then putting power stations, and every mile of power line, under 24-hour guard, is essential to undermining support for the insurgents.

Next, restore basic services: Water, sewage, garbage collection.

Garbage collection especially would improve life measurably for the population, in a highly visible way, and would be rewarded with lots of goodwill. Garbage collectors are prime targets of insurgents, because garbage piles by the side of the road make good hiding places for IEDs.

Step 3: Send the vast, vast majority of the American contractors in Iraq home, and hire Iraqi companies for all future rebuilding projects, and pay them in dollars. Iraqi unemployment is somewhere north of 50%, and unemployed men (especially former Iraqi Army soldiers) are ripe for recruiting by insurgents. Employing them would dry up this particular resource for insurgents, and also give Iraqis a sense of ownership of the projects they would be building. Even people not involved directly in building schools, post offices, etc., would see them being built, and have a clear sense that everyday life is getting incrementally better.

All this would, of course, be hideously expensive - hundreds and hundreds of billion dollars, every year. There would also be a sharp spike in American casualties, but the insurgency would probably melt away in the face of pervasive American troops, so the spike would be significant but temporary.

Also, some of those casualties would be draftees, because summoning the level of troops required for all this would require a draft (and a big one) without question: a level of mobilization not seen since World War II.

Once some semblance of stability was achieved, a scheme for governing Iraq could probably be forged.

So, Democrats could say: "24 years ago, a Marine general in Lebanon put it more eloquently than we ever could:

'If you have sent us here to fight, we are too few; if you have sent us here to die, we are too many.'

Here's a realistic plan for success in Iraq. We'll be sending the President two bills: one to end the occupation over the next six months, the other to do what it takes to succeed in his mission in Iraq, using the metrics that he himself defined."

Distorted Calvinism and America's Predicament

Morning's Minion has a great post up at Vox Nova, where he explores some of the theological underpinnings of American arrogance. Read the whole thing: here's an excerpt:

It ultimately derives from a derivative form of Calvinism whereby the world can be divided into good and evil, the elect and the damned. From its earliest days, America has seen itself as God’s chosen nation, the idea of the Calvinist elect projected onto a country. The role model, of course, was ancient Israel. The early settlers were the “elect”, chosen by God to be saved through no action of their own. And America was their country. This concept resonates deeply among the American evangelical culture today. There was much outcry over Jerry Falwell’s comments after 9/11, when he was accused of blaming abortion, gays etc. for the catastrophe. But what Falwell really said was that God had withdrawn his shroud of protection from America. That presupposes that God was protecting America in a way that other countries could not access.

Two things to make America more just

I'm for de-regulating the border - no more fences, certainly no walls, no patrolling the border (or, let's say, assigning the same number of agents to the Mexican border as the Canadian border).

Make the new rule: "Anyone who wants to come to the United States and be a citizen, can do so." Just live here for 5 years, keep your nose clean and work - don't be a burden on society - and the folks at the INS will swear you in, and congratulate you on becoming a citizen. The Immigration and Naturalization Service's new mission will be solely to Serve the needs of people who want to Immigrate and become Naturalized, absurd as that may sound. Put up signs at the border that say:

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

If America is to be a beacon of hope, a place where people can renew themselves and their prospects, then it must act as a beacon of hope.

I think this will spur countries south of the border to reform their systems in order to keep their populations from emigrating en mass. It would renew American life, leavening it with new energy, hybridize its culture for the better, in the same way that African Americans gave our culture the gifts of Jazz, Blues, Gospel, Soul and so on.

Also, it would be just.

Quick story: When I was in the Army and stationed in El Paso, Texas, I took a walk one day to a suburb in the southwestern corner of the city. There, I saw a view I will never forget: I looked through someone's side yard, over their back yard swimming pool, and saw, maybe a mile away, Mexicans living on the opposite slope of the Rio Grande valley, in shacks and cinderblock houses, no electricity, no sewage system...and it occured to me how strange it was. Only a mile or so separated American opulence and Mexican poverty, and all because some people had decided that there was a notional thing called a "border" between the two places. It gave me a distinct feeling of metaphysical dread: here was glaring, concrete injustice, unrepented: unexamined, even.

Taxes:

I'm for a (truly) progressive income tax. "To whom much has been given, much will be required." "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." (Both those quotes are from the Bible. Let the Dominionists chew on those.)The rate on income over a certain amount (to be determined) should be 91%, the same as it was under that fiery Leninist, Eisenhower.

There was once a consensus in this country that we wanted the government we had chartered to help balance society by keeping things fairly equal, at least more equal than they end up being under unfettered capitalism, and thus provide stability. It's worth mentioning that places in the the world where this ethic does not obtain are places that, gee, always seem to be on the verge of armed revolution.

Franklin Roosevelt spoke about this explicitly in his acceptance speech at the 1936 Democratic Convention [hat tip: Sara at Orcinus]:

Throughout the nation, opportunity was limited by monopoly. Individual initiative was crushed in the cogs of a great machine. The field open for free business was more and more restricted. Private enterprise, indeed, became too private. It became privileged enterprise, not free enterprise.

An old English judge once said: "Necessitous men are not free men." Liberty requires opportunity to make a living - a living decent according to the standard of the time, a living which gives man not only enough to live by, but something to live for.

For too many of us the political equality we once had won was meaningless in the face of economic inequality. A small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people's property, other people's money, other people's labor - other people's lives. For too many of us life was no longer free; liberty no longer real; men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness.

Against economic tyranny such as this, the American citizen could appeal only to the organized power of government. The collapse of 1929 showed up the despotism for what it was. The election of 1932 was the people's mandate to end it. Under that mandate it is being ended.

The royalists of the economic order have conceded that political freedom was the business of the government, but they have maintained that economic slavery was nobody's business. They granted that the government could protect the citizen in his right to vote, but they denied that the government could do anything to protect the citizen in his right to work and his right to live.

Hmm, reminds me of a certain regime in Washington...

This is becomeing kind of epic, so I'll quit for now.

Dem Dems...

I find myself pretty unsatisfied by all the Democrats in the Presidential field this cycle, and in the last several.

The missing piece, for me, is Economic Justice.

The income distribution in our society is more skewed towards the rich than at almost any time in our history, and yet, virtually no one is talking about it, at least in any depth.

The Dems seem very, very gun shy about even bringing this up.

There used to be a consensus in this country - a consensus forged by Democrats of the past - that one of the more important functions of government was to help balance society by keeping things more economically equal than they would be under a purely capitalist system (mostly through a progressive income tax, and redistribution), and thus provide soocial stability.

Places where this ethic does not obtain tend to be places constantly on the verge of armed revolution.

The current consensus - the idea that redistribution = communism - is a consensus put in place by Republicans, who are the party of the Rich.

Hurricane Dean gets me thinking...

[Update: This post stared as a comment on this " post at Street Prophets...]

Living in the San Francisco Bay Area as I do, I remember the Lome Prieta Earthquake in '89, and then the Oakland Hills Firestorm a couple years later.

The power being out seems to pull back the electronic veil behind which we hide, and which (I've come to realize) keeps us isolated from one another. Without the constant blaring of television and radio, my city neighborhood seems to revive after a long slumber - suddenly neighbors are talking to each other, learning each others' names (this after living 20 feet away from each other for 10 years).

You can hear the neighborhood - without the immersive electronic din that characterizes life in early 21st Century America, people become the only sound you can hear. Everyone pulls together. The neighborhood suddenly becomes a village, a true community. It is a startling transformation, which happens instantly.

It's always struck me in these situations, "why aren't people doing this all the time? This is actually pretty cool... "

Epitaph for a Reprobate

An excerpt from a post on Daily Kos, which pretty much presents the unvarnished truth about Karl Rove:

Rove's oft-touted "genius" is nothing more than single-minded amorality. In campaigns and in the administration, he was and is unapologetically amoral in service to his own cause or that of his client: his "genius" is that he has consistently been willing to go farther, be meaner, and invent more astonishing lies than would be done by anyone in politics with a thin remaining threads of a conscience. From smearing John McCain's children with race-baiting taunts to attacking the careers and wives of critics to helping corrupt the most basic and foundational premises of the the United States Department of Justice, nothing has ever been considered "out of bounds". If a malevolent action is not taken -- such as ratcheting up the already venomous Republican rhetoric against immigrants -- it is done only in service to calculated poll numbers, never as a nod to basic morality or patriotism or human decency.

Feeling a Draft?

New Business

A friend of mine is opening a store for women (no, not "that" kind of store) called All About Eve, some time this fall. From her description of the store's mission, to be found Here.

Along with creating a marketplace for local women to promote and sell their creations, we will also be providing a community space for women to come together.

I'll keep my SF Bay Area readers posted about the progress of this store.

Republican Surrenders to Reality-Based, um, Reality

This is an excerpt from an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I post it here without further comment or emendation:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Thursday the Bush administration is waging a "phony war" on terrorism, warning that the country is losing ground against the kind of Islamic radicals who attacked the country on Sept. 11, 2001.

A more effective approach, said Gingrich, would begin with a national energy strategy aimed at weaning the country from its reliance on imported oil and some of the regimes that petro-dollars support.