As couple of days ago I wrote about my own recollections of believing political propaganda. That post was important for me to write, because like I did, many well meaning and idealistic people believe the lies and follow the propaganda of various politicians, pundits and preachers. They often do so without thinking and without examining their claims in light of the knowledge that they already have.
I have been watching my DVDs of Star Trek Deep Space Nine over the past week. I just finished the final episode of the first season entitled In the Hands of the Prophets. The episode, which aired in June of 1993, was about a religious conflict between rival claimants to the head of the Bajoran religious world, which enveloped the Deep Space Nine Space Station.
In the episode, the claimant of the fundamentalist sect, Kai Winn, played by the great actress Louise Fletcher uses her religious authority to subvert the teaching of science on the space station, and then uses violence and terrorism to attempt to rally Bajorans against the Federation. The story is amazing because it is so real. It involves the clash of cultures, fundamentalism versus modernism, and terrorism. The fact that the episode aired over twenty years ago does not make it any less pertinent today.
I think that the most chilling moment is a conversation between Vedek Winn and a young Bajoran officer and follower of her sect on the station. The officer has already killed a Federation officer, and Winn tells her that she needs to commit another murder, this time of the rival, but progressive Bajoran religious leader, Vedek Bereil, even though her means of escape has been lost.
The young officer says, “I have no way to escape.” And Winn tells her, “Then we must accept that as the will of the Prophets.” The young officer replies, “But if I go through with this now, I will be caught and executed,” and then Winn says, “The sacrifices the Prophets call on us to make are great sometimes, my dear, but the rewards they give will last through eternity.”
When I read or hear about the demands of some stridently militant religious leaders today, I am reminded of that conversation. The comments of Winn are so banal and so lacking in empathy I cannot get them out of my head. They remind me of words that I heard from various pastors and bishops who served over me when I was younger, men who had no empathy, but only demanded that those under them fulfill their “duty.” The fact is that many religious leaders are the ultimate exploiters of idealistic young people, young men and women who want their lives to count for something and who think that their religious leaders actually speak for God.
Thankfully, I broke away from that, but at the same time the words and actions of those men who I served under for years still haunt me. When I was younger I would have done anything to win their approval, but when I no longer suited their purposes, they turned on me, but thankfully what I did for them before they turned on me was as not bad as what so many others are commanded to do by their religious leaders. Sadly, that is what so many people who follow sociopathic religious leaders never learn until it is too late.
The Roman philosopher and political theorist Cicero wrote words that are chilling, and over 2000 years after he wrote them, still troubling, “Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges,” in time of war the law stands silent…
Yesterday I wrote a piece that dealt with the moral and ethical costs of fighting a war against the self-proclaimed Islamic State using the lens of the Star Trek Deep Space Nine episode In the Pale Moonlight. I found it troubling and even had some nightmares involving this war, as a result I did not sleep well last night. So today I am going to continue the discussion, with a slightly different emphasis, again using a Deep Space Nine episode, this one called Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges which deals with a Federation security service trying to co-opt the Chief Medical Officer of Deep Space Nine to spy for them.
James Madison wrote that “A popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or, perhaps both.”
After September 11th 2001 the National Security State went into overdrive with the passage of the so called Patriot Act. That act opened the floodgates for an ever expanding national security state. With the growing likelihood that a Russian airline was destroyed by a terrorist bomb over the Sinai Peninsula, the probability is that more and more civil liberties will disappear in the name of national security. The fact is that we as a society need to wrestle with the questions of maintaining an open and free society in the midst of a world that is growing ever more dangerous. If we are to maintain an open and free society we must have this discussion, and we cannot allow ourselves to be duped into surrendering the very rights and civil liberties that we hold dear, in the name of security against threats real, and imagined. The fact that the threat to civil liberties is growing, and has been for the last decade and a half under both Republican and Democratic administrations, and Congresses controlled at one time or another by the Republican and the Democratic Parties.
I have a lot of apprehension when I read the reports about the activities of the National Security Agency, other intelligence and police agencies at all levels of government and the pervasive erosion of civil rights. The national security state and the seeming all pervasive security and surveillance apparatus which demolishes any sense of privacy, especially the protections enunciated in the Fourth Amendment and to some extent the First Amendment. Of course the use of similar methods by the private sector, often in conduction with government agencies is another concern, but that needs to wait for another day.
I also understand from history and empirical evidence that many others, many from unfriendly countries do not share those apprehensions. Many of these competitors are willing to use whatever openness that we have as a society against us, using similar technology and methods used by our intelligence, police, governmental and private sector. It makes for an ethical, legal and even constitutional conundrum. I know that I am not comfortable with this, and perhaps maybe none of us should be.
It is very easy on one hand in light of history, our Constitution and democratic process to condemn the NSA, the FISA courts and other lawfully constituted agencies and those that drafted the laws over the decades that allow the activities which they now conduct. The same can be said of foreign intelligence agencies which all engage in similar activities including the British GCHQ, the German Bundesnachrichtendienst and so many others including the Chinese and Russians.
Likewise it is equally easy in light of history, current events and national security concerns for people to jump to the other side of the fence and not only defend the activities of the NSA and agencies like it, and to demonize those that protest or expose such activities.
When I see the talking heads on cable news shows defending or condemning such activities and not agonizing over the complexity and issues involved I get worried. Because there are legitimate concerns voiced by critics as well as defenders. But since we live in an era of soundbites, gotcha and half-truths being portrayed as all truth I find it helpful to use either historical examples, literature or fiction, and even science fiction to wrestle with the fundamental truths. So I find looking at such issues through the prism of Star Trek sometimes more interesting and provocative than simply doing the whole moralizing pundit thing.
There was an episode of Star Trek Deep Space Nine that aired well before the events of 9-11-2001, and the subsequent Global War on Terror, that I find fascinating. The episode deals with a secretive agency in Starfleet operating in the gray areas between the laws and ideals of the Federation and the threats that the Federation faces. Even when the Federation is a peace, Section 31, as it is called is engaged in activities https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhkfuyBLDlYagainst historic or potential enemies. In a way it is somewhat like the NSA or the Defense Intelligence Agency.
At the beginning of the Deep Space Nine Episode Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges the head of Section 31, a man only known as Sloan comes back Doctor Julia Bashir to involve him in an clandestine operation. An operation to on the Romulans who at this point are a Federation ally against the Dominion.
Sloan makes his approach and Bashir, who expresses his reservations:
BASHIR: You want me to spy on an ally.
SLOAN: To evaluate an ally. And a temporary ally at that. I say that because when the war is over, the following will happen in short order. The Dominion will be forced back to the Gamma Quadrant, the Cardassian Empire will be occupied, the Klingon Empire will spend the next ten years recovering from the war and won’t pose a serious threat to anyone. That leaves two powers to vie for control of the quadrant, the Federation and the Romulans.
BASHIR: This war isn’t over and you’re already planning for the next.
SLOAN: Well put. I hope your report is equally succinct.
BASHIR: How many times do I have to tell you, Sloan? I don’t work for you.
SLOAN: You will. It’s in your nature. You are a man who loves secrets. Medical, personal, fictional. I am a man of secrets. You want to know what I know, and the only way to do that is to accept the assignment.
I find the exchange both illuminating and riveting. The fact is that in the situation we face today the arguments of both sides should make us very uncomfortable.
Whether we like it or not or not, the incredibly rapid technical and communication advances of the past couple of decades have primed us for our present conundrum of liberty and privacy or security. That technology, as wonderful as it is has enabled a generation to grow up in a virtual world in many ways detached from the moral and ethical balances between individual rights and liberties as well responsibility to community.
All the wonderful gadgets that we employ in everyday life, make it easy for enemies and “friends” to do things that were unimaginable to people other than science fiction writers even twenty to thirty years ago. Likewise they were certainly beyond the wildest imaginations of any of the founders who drafted Constitution.
The reality is, the things that make are lives so easy are also the things that have the potential to remove the very liberties that we treasure, either by our enemies using them, or those that defend us.
The truth is, that throughout history, even our own there have been operatives within the government in charge of secrets, as well as spies. In the Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges episode we see an operation that is full of duplicity and moral ambiguity all committed in the name of security. I won’t go into the details because it is too full of twists, and turns, you can read the plot of the episode at Memory Alpha.org http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Inter_Arma_Enim_Silent_Leges_%28episode%29
There is an exchange between Dr. Bashir and Admiral Ross of Starfleet command which is very enlightening because it practically mirrors how many on both the civil liberties and the national security side of the current controversy feel about the War on Terror.
BASHIR: You don’t see anything wrong with what happened, do you.
ROSS: I don’t like it. But I’ve spent the last year and a half of my life ordering young men and young women to die. I like that even less.
BASHIR: That’s a glib answer and a cheap way to avoid the fact that you’ve trampled on the very thing that those men and women are out there dying to protect! Does that not mean anything to you?
ROSS: Inter arma enim silent leges.
BASHIR: In time of war, the law falls silent. Cicero. So is that what we have become? A twenty fourth century Rome driven by nothing more than the certainty that Caesar can do no wrong!
ROSS: This conversation never happened.
In light of the controversy of today regarding the NSA, FISA Courts, government secrecy and intelligence gathering information on its own citizens, as well as allies, friends and and enemies we face a growing tide of reporters and others seeking to reveal those secrets. Back in 1989 ethicist Sissela Bok wrote something very important in her book Secrets: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life:
“…as government secrecy expands, more public officials become privy to classified information and are faced with the choice of whether or not to leak … growing secrecy likewise causes reporters to press harder from the outside to uncover what is hidden. And then in a vicious circle, the increased revelations give government leaders further reasons to press for still more secrecy.”
As we wade through the continuing controversy surrounding these issues we will see people do exactly what Bok said. These are the exact arguments are being made by the people and officials directly involved in such activities, as well as former elected and appointed officials, and members of the press.
The interesting thing to me is that very few of the people or agencies, past and present, Republican and Democrat involved have clean hands. It is amazing to see former champions of civil liberties defend the NSA actions and those that empowered the NSA in the Patriot Act now condemn it. I find it both fascinating and frightening.
At the end of the Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges episode the mysterious Sloan pops back in on Doctor Bashir who is in his quarters, asleep and depressed by what he experienced during the operation on Romulus and with Admiral Ross.
SLOAN: Good evening.
BASHIR: Are you expecting applause? Have you come to take a bow?
SLOAN: I just wanted to say thank you.
BASHIR: For what? Allowing you to manipulate me so completely?
SLOAN: For being a decent human being. That’s why we selected you in the first place, Doctor. We needed somebody who wanted to play the game, but who would only go so far. When the time came, you stood your ground. You did the right thing. You reached out to an enemy, you told her the truth, you tried to stop a murder. The Federation needs men like you, Doctor. Men of conscience, men of principle, men who can sleep at night. You’re also the reason Section Thirty one exists. Someone has to protect men like you from a universe that doesn’t share your sense of right and wrong.
BASHIR: Should I feel sorry for you? Should I be weeping over the burden you’re forced to carry in order to protect the rest of us?
SLOAN: It is an honor to know you, Doctor. Goodnight.
We live in this kind of world and maybe it is good to sometimes step back and look at issues using a different prism. I really don’t have the answers. I am a civil libertarian who places a high value on the openness of a government to its people. I also know that there are those that have no regard for such openness or, to quote Sloan don’t “share your sense of right and wrong.”
Maybe that is not a good answer. I really don’t know. All I know is that as uncomfortable as this all is that those on both sides of the issue have valid points and concerns. It is a debate that needs to happen if we are able to balance that a society needs to balance individual rights and responsibility to the community; openness and secrecy; civil liberties and national security.
But that being said. it is a debate that needs to happen, even if it makes us uncomfortable. I for one think that it is better that we be uncomfortable when looking at such an important debate than to be prisoners of our certitude.
“My father used to say that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. I laid the first stone right there. I’d committed myself. I’d pay any price, go to any lengths, because my cause was righteous. My… intentions were good. In the beginning, that seemed like enough.” Captain Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks) Star Trek Deep Space Nine, In the Pale Moonlight
Friends of Padre Steve’s World,
With the increasing probability that elements of the self-proclaimed Islamic State brought down a Russian airliner in the Sinai last week, it is important to ask what we are willing to do to protect innocent lives. I am not just talking about the situation in Syria and Iraq, where tens of thousands have died and millions have been displaced; but around the world from a hybrid terrorist state that knows no creed but victory or death.
The question is not just about fighting the Islamic State as this is already happening. Though there is no formal alliance and many of the states involved have their own interests at heart, the war now involves the United States, some NATO allies, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and a number of Arab states, not to mention the kaleidoscope of different warring parties in Iraq and Syria. Until last week the United States was content to fight using airpower alone. Now it appears that albeit with great hesitancy the Obama administration is slowly expanding the fight to include ground troops, although at the time this is limited to special operations troops and advisers.
As the war expands, we do have to ask hard questions, chief among them how far we will go to fight the Islamic State. The fact that no matter what course of action the United States, our allies, and the other combatants take, each one has its drawbacks, as well as benefits. Each one involves a certain amount of risk, and the fact is that the Islamic State does believe that the United States, Europe, Russia, Iran, and Israel are their greatest enemies and is working to attack each one. This poses a question of making alliances with disparate nations, some of which are mortal enemies of each other. But sometimes necessity makes strange bedfellows, just ask Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin.
So today, I am posing a reflection from the television series Star Trek Deep Space Nine. I think that among the Star Trek series that my favorite is Deep Space Nine. Of course all of the Star Trek series and movies deal with ethics, philosophy and morality to some extent; but Deep Space Nine is perhaps the most interesting to me. Don’t get me wrong I think that the Original Series and Start Trek the Next Generationwere and are leap years ahead of most television series when it comes to addressing ethical, moral and existential issues, but somehow living in the post 9-11 “War on Terrorism” world I find Deep Space Nineto be the most compelling. I think that is that the fact that the moral issues get blurred which attracts me to the series, and to this episode in particular.
I think that using the medium of science fiction we can think about real life issues in a new, and maybe more creative way than we might. I think it to do this is to think outside the traditional box, which sometimes limits our discussion, and consideration of all of the factors involved. But the subject is uncomfortable because it makes us face truths that we might not want to see, and parts of ourselves, our beliefs, and our values that can become clouded in times of crisis.
One of my favorite episodes is from season six and is entitled “In the Pale Moonlight.”The episode deals with the unsavory matter of contriving a reason to get the Romulan Empire to join with the Federation and the Klingons to fight the Dominion-Cardassian alliance that is threatening those entities as well as potentially the entire Alpha Quadrant. I have included a link to the conclusion of that episode here:
The ethics of this episode seem very timely as I look at the new phase of the conflict that the United States has been engaged for the past thirteen years. The fact is that in spite of our appeal to higher ideals we are having to make alliances with powers that are only slightly less unsavory than ISIS, powers whose polices have help ISIS grow. In a sense it is the classic scenario of making a deal with the devil to defeat one’s enemy. Of course this is not a new phenomena, individuals and nations have made such deals, sometimes with mortal enemies throughout history.
Unfortunately we usually judge such decisions based on their results, rather than wrestle with the ethical issues involved and how we might behave in similar situations. For me the philosophical and ethical issues involved in such alliances have a special interest and as such I tend to notice or recall instances where I saw, read or heard something that makes a connection to an ethical or moral dilemma faced by policy makers and planners today.
Some of the issues involved for policy makers are related to the traditional Just War Theory, and what is called the “Supreme Emergency” exemption. This exemption basically posits that when faced with a supreme and existential emergency a person or state may engage in behaviors that ordinarily would be considered unethical if the situation were not of a supreme emergency.
Of course such decisions in the real world are difficult. Those who have a system of beliefs that help them define right and wrong behaviors, even if they are not codified in law may struggle with such decisions, while those who act according to what they deem necessary or expedient, unbridled by religious, philosophical or other similar codes may not, instead making their decisions based on what appears to be necessary at the time.
This Deep Space Nine episode is remarkable because we get to see an actor playing a military commander dealing with the morality of the course of action that he is taking. In one of the early scenes Captain Sisko expresses his doubts relating to the morality of a decision that he is making in a war that has already consumed the lives of tens of millions of people.
After an incident where a Federation starship was destroyed, Sisko went to Elim Garak (Andrew Robinson), an exiled Cardassian intelligence officer to uncover any evidence about Dominion-Cardassian collusion to attack the Romulans. When none was uncovered and Garak’s sources on Cardassia were compromised he agreed to allow Garak to manufacture evidence in order to get the Romulans into the war on the side of the Federation and Klingons. Sisko compounded the situation by having the Klingons release a master forger who was on death row to help Garak. Sisko knew it was wrong and confided in his log:
“Why I didn’t listen to the voice in the back of my mind telling me not to believe a word he said, I’ll never know… But it didn’t take long for me to come face to face with the fact that I’d made a mistake.”
When the former prisoner gets drunk and attacks the owner of a tavern on the space station Sisko was in a bind. He wanted no evidence that the man had been on his station and in order to keep Quark, the bar owner quite had to bribe him. Sisko again expressed his doubts in his personal log:
“Maybe I should have put a stop to it right there. Maybe I should have said, “Thank you very much for your input, Mister Garak, I will take your suggestion under advisement,” and then gone back to my office and forgotten the whole thing. But I didn’t. Because in my heart, I knew what he was saying made sense.”
Even so Sisko still had doubts:
“That was my first moment of real doubt, when I started to wonder if the whole thing was a mistake. So I went back to my office. And there was a new casualty list waiting for me. People are dying out there every day! Entire worlds are struggling for their freedom! And here I am still worrying about the finer points of morality! No, I had to keep my eye on the ball! Winning the war, stopping the bloodshed, those were the priorities! So I pushed on. And every time another doubt appeared before me, I just found another way to shove it aside.”
When nations feel they are engaged in a life and death struggle, those who serve as policy makers, planners and military commanders often make uncomfortable compromises with their own religious, ethical or philosophical codes. Sisko continued down the path despite his doubts but justified his actions by the fact that Starfleet had approved them:
“Maybe… I was under more pressure than I realized. Maybe it really was starting to get to me, but I was off the hook. Starfleet Command had given the plan their blessing and I thought that would make things easier. But I was the one who had to make it happen. I was the one who had to look Senator Vreenak in the eye and convince him that a lie… was the truth.”
The forgery was completed and the Romulan Senator secretly arrived on the station to examine the evidence and as he did so all Sisko could do was wait, confiding in his log:
“So all I could do was wait… and see how masterful Tolar’s forgery really was. So I waited… tried to catch up on my paperwork, but I find it very difficult to focus on criminal activity reports, cargo manifests… So I went back to pacing, staring out of the window. I’m not an impatient man, I’m not one to agonize over decisions once they’re made. I got that from my father. He always says, “Worry and doubt are the greatest enemies of a great chef. The soufflé will either rise or it won’t – there’s not a damn thing you can do about it, so you might as well just sit back and wait and see what happens.” But this time the cost of failure was so high, I found it difficult to take his advice. If Vreenak discovered that the data rod was a forgery, if he realized that we were trying to trick them into the war it could push the Romulans even farther into the enemy camp. They could start to openly help the Dominion. If worst came to worst they could actually join the war against us. I had the distinct feeling that victory or defeat would be decided in the next few minutes.”
It did not work, Vreenak discovered that the data rod was a forgery and threatened to expose Sisko’s deception and possibly bring the Romulans into alliance with the Dominion. When Sisko’s actions blew up in his face and his deceit was revealed he was not happy and resigned himself to face the consequences:
“So it all blew up in my face. All the lies and the compromises, the inner doubts and the rationalizations – all for nothing. Vreenak was furious. I can’t say I blamed him; I’d have reacted the same way. After telling me in no uncertain terms that he intended to expose this “vile deception” to the entire Alpha Quadrant, he got back in his shuttle and headed home. There didn’t seem to be anything more to do… so I went back to work. Two days later we got the news.”
Sisko learned in a Starfleet communication that Vreenak’s shuttle had blown up and that is was suspected to be the work of the Dominion. When Sisko found that Vreenak was dead he went to Garak and forcefully confronted him, striking him in the process. He accused Garak of sabotaging the senator’s ship and killing him as well as the forger, Tolar. Instead of backing down Garak confronted the results and the ethical issue. The heated exchange between the two men is fascinating:
Garak: If you can allow your anger to subside for a moment, you’ll see that they did not die in vain! The Romulans will enter the war!
Captain Sisko: There’s no guarantee of that!
Garak: Oh, but I think that there is. You see, when the Tal Shiar finishes examining the wreckage of Vreenak’s shuttle, they’ll find the burnt remnants of a Cardassian optolythic data rod which somehow miraculously survived the explosion. After painstaking forensic examination, they’ll discover that the rod contains a recording of a high-level Dominion meeting, at which the invasion of Romulus was being planned.
Captain Sisko: And then they’ll discover that it is a fraud!
Garak: Oh, I don’t think they will! Because any imperfections in the forgery will appear to be a result of the explosion. So – with a seemingly legitimate rod in one hand, and a dead senator in the other, I ask you, Captain – what conclusion would you draw?
As Sisko’s anger subsided Garak continued:
“That’s why you came to me, isn’t it, Captain? Because you knew I could do those things that you weren’t capable of doing? Well, it worked. And you’ll get what you want: a war between the Romulans and the Dominion. And if your conscience is bothering you, you should soothe it with the knowledge that you may have just saved the entire Alpha Quadrant. And all it cost was the life of one Romulan senator, one criminal, and the self-respect of one Starfleet officer. I don’t know about you, but I’d call that a bargain.”
Shortly thereafter Sisko found out that the out that the deception was successful as Garak had said it would be. The Romulans who recovered the damaged data rod believed that it was genuine and declared war on the Dominion-Cardassian alliance and had entered the war on the side of the Federation. He completed his personal log:
“At oh-eight-hundred hours, station time… the Romulan Empire formally declared war against the Dominion. They’ve already struck fifteen bases along the Cardassian border. So, this is a huge victory for the good guys! This may even be the turning point of the entire war! There’s even a “Welcome to the Fight” party tonight in the wardroom!… So… I lied. I cheated. I bribed men to cover up the crimes of other men. I am an accessory to murder. But most damning of all… I think I can live with it… And if I had to do it all over again… I would. Garak was right about one thing – a guilty conscience is a small price to pay for the safety of the Alpha Quadrant. So I will learn to live with it…Because I can live with it…I can live with it. Computer – erase that entire personal log.”
My guess is that before this war is over, there will be men and women serving in positions of responsibility in our or allied militaries, policy makers and government officials who will make similar deals, violating their own moral codes and even laws in order to defeat the Islamic State and prevent acts of terror against their citizens. Most, like Sisko will not be happy but will live with their decisions. The fact is that long asymmetrical wars in which nation states have to fight non-state terrorist entities get really ugly and the longer and more bloody that they become the more decent and honorable people will make decisions like Sisko and resort to actions that in normal times they would never countenance.
This is nothing new. Those who have fought in such wars throughout history have found ways to “live” with actions that they would not approve of had things been different. Wars such as the one that we are fighting and continue to fight in the years ahead have a corrosive affect on the human spirit. They corrupt and destroy even when they are “successful.”
The question is: Can we live with it? Sadly, as much as I hate to admit it, in a similar situation I think like Sisko, that I could condone or be complicit in something like this. I too could probably convince myself that the end justified the means and that I could live with it, against ISIL. If in fact an ISIL bomb downed the Russian airliner, it is a watershed, and points to worse things to come, and we will have to ask the question, “can you live with it?”
Of course it is possible that this was an accident, truthfully, I do as tragic as it would be, hope this it the case.
Of course there is always the possibility that ISIL or one of its allied groups did it. But another possibility cannot be ruled out; that a bomb was planted bye third party, possibly the Russians themselves, hoping to implicate ISIL. That my friends is far to frightening to contemplate as there are too many nations that have both the capability and a motive to do this.
There are some other issues that I want to discuss about this war using the Star Trek motif, and like this they will be unsettling.
One of the most troubling aspects of genocide is the degree to which people will go to rationalize and justify it, especially if it is supposedly commanded by their “God.” This includes people who exalt their human leader’s pronouncements to that of a god.
Thus, today’s article is difficult to write. I realuze that some people will be offended because to those that cannot see the nuance that any criticism of their beliefs is akin to an attack on God. That is not my intent at all, there are too many people of faith in all religions who work against the extremists who proport to speak evil in the name of their God. Likewise I am not attempting by any stretch of the imagination to broad brush or demonize people of faith.
That being said, there are extremists, and there are many ordinary people who obey without questioning, and if ordered by a high enough authority will commit unspeakable acts.
My sole intent is to point out some of the questions and issues that people of faith need to ask when they faced with the killing of inocents or defenseless people in the name of God, or of a political leader.
One only has to look at history and the words or actions of people who live among us to realize that the seeds of genocide are always being sown by those who find others less than human. The men and women who sow the seeds of future genocide can do so in the name of their God, their religion, their religious or secular political ideological, or their views on the superiority of their race. The Nazis provide us a road map of the twisted logic used by the perpetrators of such actions, but they are not alone in history, and people like them exist today, some peddling their hatred in the name of God and religion, but not always.
When one reads the speeches, the after action reports, and the post-war testimony of those who orchestrated and conducted the worst terror of the Nazi regime against the Jews and others that they considered to be less than human, or in the case of the handicapped and the mentally ill, “life unworthy of life” they are stunning, and troubling.
During his Posen speech of October 1943 SS Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler was quite clear about the aims of the Nazis, and their goals regarding the Jews and other Untermenschen (Sub humans) including infants and children. Himmler said, “We came to the question: what to do with the women and children? I decided to find a clear solution here as well. I did not consider myself justified to exterminate the men – that is, to kill them or have them killed – and allow the avengers of our sons and grandsons in the form of their children to grow up. The difficult decision had to be taken to make this people disappear from the earth…”
One would think that killing babies, any babies, but in the particular case Jewish babies to prevent them from growing up to avenge the deaths of their parents would be repulsive, especially to Jews. For most Jews it is, but like every religion Judaism has its share of extremists. One of them is the controversial Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, the dean of the Od Yosef Hai Yeshiva near Nablus in Israel. In a chapter in his book Torat ha-Melekh [The King’s Teaching] entitled “Deliberate harm to innocents,” which provides numerous justifications to kill gentiles, Shapira wrote:
“In any situation in which a non-Jew’s presence endangers Jewish lives, the non-Jew may be killed even if he is a righteous Gentile and not at all guilty for the situation that has been created… Hindrances—babies are found many times in this situation. They block the way to rescue by their presence and do so completely by force. Nevertheless, they may be killed because their presence aids murder. There is justification for killing babies if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us, and in such a situation they may be harmed deliberately, and not only during combat with adults.”
The Rabbi’s followers have engaged in frequent violence against Palestinians and Jews who do not hold his radical views. In 2006 he was detained for questioning after writing an article in which he said that all Palestinian males from age 13 and up should be killed or expelled from the West Bank. The rabbi condemns any moderation by the Israeli Defense Forces, and he criticizes Israel’s legal system and judiciary when its rulings conflict with his uncompromising views. To be sure his book was condemned by other Rabbis, especially of the Reformed School, but some Orthodox Rabbis supported it.
Those views are not unlike the stated views of the leaders of the so-called Islamic State when it comes to the killing of non-believers. In that organization’s 2013 Declaration of Warthose leaders stated:
“If you can kill a disbelieving American or European – especially the spiteful and filthy French – or an Australian, or a Canadian, or any other disbeliever from the disbelievers waging war, including the citizens of the countries that entered into a coalition against the Islamic State, then rely upon Allah, and kill him in any manner or way however it may be. Do not ask for anyone’s advice and do not seek anyone’s verdict. Kill the disbeliever whether he is civilian or military, for they have the same ruling. Both of them are disbelievers. Both of them are considered to be waging war [the civilian by belonging to a state waging war against the Muslims]. Both of their blood and wealth is legal for you to destroy, for blood does not become illegal or legal to spill by the clothes being worn.”
Many Imam’s and Mufti’s around the world and in the Middle East have issued Fatwah’s against the Islamic State and condemned its teachings. But many of these clerics, who often represent their tribal or government leaders, are considered to be disbelievers and “defenders of Israel” by the Islamic State. As such, many Moslem clerics, and large numbers the vast oppressed masses of impoverished, and often disenfranchised Arab Moslems are attracted to that ideology, especially that directed against the Jews, who are seen as the ultimate enemy.
There are Christians too that find theological justification for killing children, and their reasons are chillingly like those of Himmler: An article on the blog Rational Christianity writes;
“Why were the children killed, if they weren’t guilty? Apparently, they were considered as morally neutral, since they weren’t yet old enough to be held accountable or to have done much right or wrong. While not as corrupt as their parents, they were part of the society that was judged, and shared its earthly (though not its eternal) fate.”
Another author, a man named Wayne Jackson of Apologetics Press writes of the children of the Canaanites, “Would it not have been infinitely worse, in view of eternity, had these children grown to maturity and adopted the same pagan practices as their parents?”
William Lane Craig, a frequent apologist wrote in the Reasonable faith website a comment that sounds like it could have come from the lips of Himmler in dealing with the effect of the mass murders of Jews and others on the troops of the Einsatzgruppen. Craig wrote,
“So whom does God wrong in commanding the destruction of the Canaanites? Not the Canaanite adults, for they were corrupt and deserving of judgment. Not the children, for they inherit eternal life. So who is wronged? Ironically, I think the most difficult part of this whole debate is the apparent wrong done to the Israeli soldiers themselves. Can you imagine what it would be like to have to break into some house and kill a terrified woman and her children? The brutalising effect on these Israeli soldiers is disturbing.”
However, Craig has no qualms about what the Israelites did, simply because the genocide was commanded by God.
If one substitutes “Hitler” for “God” one sees a similar rationalization used members of the Einsatzgruppen. Colonel Walter Blume, a Police Colonel at Vitebsk who tried to “care” for his troops during a mass execution of Jews. He wrote, “If I am now asked about my inner attitude which I then held, I can only say that it was absolutely split. On the one hand there was the strict order of my superior… and as a soldier I had to obey. On the other hand I considered the execution of this order cruel and humanly impossible. My very presence at this execution convinced me of this in a final manner. I still know that I wanted to make the situation easier for my men who were certainly moved by the same feelings. When ten men were shot there was always a pause until the next had been brought in. During these pauses I let my men sit down and rest and I joined them. I still know what I said exactly the following words to them at this time: “As much as it is no job for German men and soldiers to shoot defenseless people but the Fuhrer has ordered these shootings because he is convinced that these men would otherwise shoot at us as partisans or would shoot our comrades and our women and children were to be protected if we undertake these executions. This we would have to remember when we carry out this order.” Furthermore, I tried talking about neutral subjects to make the difficult spiritual situation easier and to overcome it.”
That is the troubling issue for me. Genocide is genocide and evil, no matter who commands it. We can try to wiggle around and avoid the subject by saying that whatever God we have is above normal law, or that our secular leader’s commands are above the law, but we cannot escape the fact that genocide is immoral and an immutable evil; even if we do it in the name of our God.
I think that is the problem that I have with people who follow their leaders down the path to genocide, even those who they believe are speaking for God. Likewise, I am very much concerned when people seem to care more about the emotional and spiritual effects of mass murders on the perpetrators than on the victims.
But then, the victims are dead and have no one left to speak for them.
Some people reading my site the past week or so probably believe that I am obsessed the Holocaust, genocide, and mass murder. I know that the subject is extremely uncomfortable and that most people would rather not be reminded of it, but the further we get from the Holocaust and the further it recedes into memory, the more danger we face of more genocides.
While these may not involve the Jews, we cannot assume the Jews are completely safe. The fact is that large percentages of people in many countries, and not just Middle Eastern Moslem countries harbor significant anti-Semitic attitudes. The highest percentages of anti-Semetic feeling outside of the Middle East are in Eastern Europe, Central and South America, and parts of Asia, including South Korea, something which suprised me.
If such events like the Holocaust were limited to history they would simply be a tragic footnote on the road of human progress, but they are not. Sadly, these events continue with startling regularity and most of us bury our heads in the sand of our culture of entertainment and denial. The fact is it is easier that way. Yehuda Bauer a leading scholar of the Holocaust wrote, “Thou shalt not be a victim, thou shalt not be a perpetrator, but, above all, thou shalt not be a bystander.” The tragic thing is that we are not even decent bystanders, we just turn our backs and look the other way.
Paul Theroux wrote, “As for the sanctimony of people who seem blind to the fact that mass murder is still an annual event, look at Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur, Tibet, Burma and elsewhere-the truer shout is not “Never again” but “Again and again.”
How many times must it happen and how many times will we allow our politicians to label other people, other groups as undesirable, less than human, or unworthy of being our neighbors or even of life itself? When I hear politicians talk groups of people in using very generic and neutral terms like “problem, or question” I get worried. This is the language of exclusion, and of dehumanization. Thus when I hear a very popular presidential candidates as well as the pundits and preachers who support them talking about the “immigrant problem”, the “Mexican problem”, the “Moslem problem”, the “Black problem”, “Gay problem”; the word “problem” being a euphemism to dehumanize the people in question, I know that it can happen again, even in this country. For when they talk about the problem or question, they then begin to seek a solution, another nice and neutral word. In the current climate there are talks of walls, massive deportations, camps, denial of rights, even of citizenship, or even basic human rights like housing, subsistence, and medical care. Christopher Hitchens wrote:
“Die Judenfrage,’ it used to be called, even by Jews. ‘The Jewish Question.’ I find I quite like this interrogative formulation, since the question—as Gertrude Stein once famously if terminally put it—may be more absorbing than the answer. Of course one is flirting with calamity in phrasing things this way, as I learned in school when the Irish question was discussed by some masters as the Irish ‘problem.’ Again, the word ‘solution’ can be as neutral as the words ‘question’ or ‘problem,’ but once one has defined a people or a nation as such, the search for a resolution can become a yearning for the conclusive. Endlösung: the final solution.”
This is not just an issue of the past, be it foreign countries like Germany, Rwanda, Cambodia, and Armenia. It is not simply an issue that is happening in other nations today, like in the areas controlled by the so-called Islamic State; but it has happened in the United States. We cannot wash our hands of genocide when our ancestors committed it on a massive scale, and when for much of our history we have turned our backs on it in other parts of the world. We have pundits like Rush Limbaugh who famously said, “Holocaust? Ninety million Indians? Only four million left? They all have casinos — what’s to complain about?”
Likewise there is the supposedly Christian “historian” David Barton has justified genocide of Native Americans as necessary for the spread of capitalism and Christian civilization “People complain about the fact that the American military and buffalo hunters went out and wiped out all the buffalo in the western plains. Doing that was what brought the Indians to their knees because the Indians lived on those wide western plains where there were very few towns; Indians didn’t go into town to buy supplies, they went to the buffalo herds, that’s where they got their meat, that’s where they got their coats, the hides provided coats, they provided covering for their teepees. If you don’t have the buffalos, those Indians cannot live on the open western plains without those buffalo and so what happened was the military wiped out the supply line by wiping out the buffalo. That’s what brought those wars to an end, that’s what brought the Indians to their knees and ended all the western conflict.” Of course back in 2011 current presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said that all Americans “should be forced at gunpoint” to listen to Barton.
Hitler himself drew inspiration from the American example. As a child he read German translations of American Western novels, a practice that he maintained even as his Reich collapsed around him.
He told people at dinner regarding his conquest of Russia, “Above all, no remorse on the subject! We are not going to play children’s nurses; we’re absolutely without obligation as far as these people are concerned… There’s only one duty: to Germanize this country by the immigration of Germans, and to look upon the natives as Redskins…. In this business I shall go straight ahead cold bloodedly…. I don’t see why a German who eats a piece of bread should torment himself with the idea that the soil that produces this bread has been won by the sword. When we eat wheat from Canada, we don’t think about the despoiled Indians.”
Other minimize the systematic enslavement of African-Americans, the persecution of Asian immigrants and the later imprisonment of Japanese Americans, all committed by White Americans in the name of economics, security, or prosperity.
I could keep going on but I think that you get the point, which is that it can happen again and we always have to be on guard. It would not take much, in times of crisis, and desperation people, even the best and brightest can delude themselves into the commission of terrible crimes against others. That is the lesson of history, and we should not forget it, lest it happen again.
“At the beginning of the AIDS epidemic many Americans had little sympathy for people with AIDS…. The feeling was that somehow people from certain groups ‘deserved’ their illness. Let us put those feelings behind us. We are fighting a disease, not a people.” C. Everett Koop, Surgeon General 1986
Friends of Padre Steve’s World,
I have mentioned that I have been reflecting on many things over the past few weeks and months. Of course if you follow my writings you know what I think about public officials who refuse to do their duty to follow the law and protect the rights of other citizens, even of those that they happen to disapprove. This came to a head recently with the case of the anti-marriage equity county clerk, Kim Davis. I am not going to revisit her case as I have been worn out by it and have no need to waste any more time on her.
That being said I can point out the case of a public official, a conservative, pro-life, Evangelical Christian who served as Surgeon General under President Reagan, Dr. C. Everett Koop. In an era of extreme intolerance and hatred for those infected with HIV, Dr. Koop became one of the leading proponents of compassionate and responsible care for victims of HIV/AIDS, most of whom were homosexual men. He met opposition within the administration, where despite his impressive credentials he was marginalized and was vilified by conservative Christians.
Dr. James Dobson and Dr. D. James Kennedy, early leaders of the political religious right were particularly vindictive. These unscrupulous leaders helped spread much disinformation about HIV from the a book published by a charlatan named Gene Antonio who wrote what was then a popular book called “The AIDS Cover Up,” They claimed that AIDS could be spread by kissing, mosquito bites or even by touching surfaces that had been touched by those infected. These men were bolstered by their allies in the Reagan White House, Secretary of education Bill Bennett and his assistant Gary Bauer who were the official administration spokesmen regarding AIDS.
They marginalized the Surgeon General; Dr. C. Everett Koop who noted in the early days of the epidemic was “completely cut off from AIDS” by Bennett and others in the Reagan Administration. They were so wrong that Koop, who was by no means a liberal took them to task on their hateful, dishonest and un-Christian proclamations. Koop told a journalist:
“the Christian activity in reference to AIDS of both D. James Kennedy and Jim Dobson is reprehensible. The first time that Kennedy ever made a statement about AIDS, I saw it on television. It was so terrible, so homophobic, so pure Antonio that I wrote him a letter.”
Koop said of Dobson, who he had worked with earlier on HIV/AIDS: “I don’t know what happened to him. He changed his mind, and last August in his paper he attacked me for two pages as leading people down the garden path. But again his arguments were full of holes. I just cannot believe the poor scholarship of so many Christians.”
Despite the opposition and attacks on his character by leaders of the Christian Right, Dr. Koop was undeterred and had no problem taking on these men and women. Some of these supposedly Christian leaders still are with us and spout the same hatred for homosexuals that they did in the 1980s. Dr. Koop realized that many of his fellow Christians really didn’t care about people, and believed that HIV was God’s judgment against people that they already despised and had in their theology condemned to Hell. He also realized that many of these leaders would resort to poor scholarship and even inflammatory statements to influence public opinion.
For doing so Dr. Koop was condemned by fanatical extremists like Phyllis Schlafly who said that Koop’s recommendations in his report about preventing AIDS looked “like it was edited by the Gay Task Force” and Schlafly, ever the loving, honest and ethical Christian that she is accused Koop of advocating that third-graders learn the rules of “safe sodomy.”
Koop replied in a very courageous manner to Schlafly, who in my view is one of the most loathsome people to ever unite religion and politics: “I’m not surgeon general to make Phyllis Schlafly happy. I’m surgeon general to save lives.”
Dr. Koop understood the oath that he took as a physician and the oath that he took when he became Surgeon General; sadly Mrs. Davis and many in the Christian Right will never understand that. In 1988 Dr. Koop said something that most people in positions of any public responsibility, be they public health officials, medical professionals, politicians or even the most partisan political preachers should abide: “I separate ideology, religion and other things from my sworn duty as a health officer in this country.”
Dr. Koop’s words should be heeded by any Christian in public office, but sadly, those who do will be treated with the same scorn and hatred as Dobson, Kennedy, Bauer, and Schlafly heaped on him.
I can understand Dr. Koop’s plight. I have been set upon by some of the disciples of Bauer, Dobson, Schlafly, Kennedy and others for simply defending people’s rights under the Constitution and obeying the oath of office that I took in 1981 and have continued to affirm since. Sadly, the truth is that many so-called Christians will attempt to destroy the lives, reputation and careers of other Christians who do not tow their ideological line, and sadly this has become much worse than it was in the 1980s.
I will write more about this but for now I will wish you a good day.
Judy and I were watching a Star Trek the next Generation video the other night and both of us were moved by it. The episode called The Outcast from season five, involved an encounter where the crew of the Enterprise assisted people of an androgynous race to find a missing shuttlecraft.
The androgynous race had believed that they had evolved beyond gender, and members who felt that they were either male or female were outcasts, and subjected to what we might call reprogramming, something quite like what some Christian conservatives call “reparative therapy” or “conversion therapy” in which homosexuals are forced to renounce and deny who and what they are.
In the Star Trek episode a scientist, of that race named Soren meets the crew of the Enterprise and finds that she is attracted to Commander Riker. It is a highly emotional episode, and when her leaders find that she is attracted to Riker they put her on trial. During that interrogation she is given the chance by Riker to deny who she is and blame the situation on him, but she cannot. Instead she declares the truth about who she is, a truth that is shared by so many of the homosexuals and lesbians that I have come to know over the years. Her argument is so compelling, and has been stated in similar ways by so many of the people that I have known.
“I am female. I was born that way. I have had those feelings, those longings, all of my life. It is not unnatural. I am not sick because I feel this way. I do not need to be helped. I do not need to be cured. What I need, and what all of those who are like me need, is your understanding. And your compassion. We have not injured you in any way. And yet we are scorned and attacked. And all because we are different. What we do is no different from what you do. We talk, and laugh. We complain about work. And we wonder about growing old. We talk about our families, and we worry about the future. And we cry with each other when things seem hopeless. All of the loving things that you do with each other, that is what we do. And for that, we are called misfits, and deviants, and criminals. What right do you have to punish us? What right do you have to change us? What makes you think you can dictate how people love each other?”
The leaders of the planet reject her argument and she is subjected to the reparative therapy against her wishes. When Riker attempts to rescue her she rejects the attempt. When I first saw the episode when I was in seminary I was conflicted because I understood that the heart of the matter did not deal with someone being a heterosexual, but toward how we as a society and as members of the Christian faith community have treated homosexuals and lesbians for millennia.
I know and have known many homosexuals and lesbians, many of them Christians, many much more conservative in their faith than me. Sadly, their families, their faith communities, have rejected most of them and until the past few years denied the rights enjoyed by heterosexuals, inside or outside of marriage, including the right to have their partner with them when they die.
Who is to dictate whom people love and the manner in which they love each other? What would I, or you do if someone in a church, or the government, or even our families told us that we could not be who we were born to be? And honestly, what would we think if people tried to change us against our will and against every fiber of our being? Would that not be a crime against our humanity?
That is the question that all of us have to ask, even when we claim that God only blesses certain relationships while ignoring the other clear commands of scripture? When I see people who have multiple divorces, and adulterous relationships condemn homosexual couples who only desire to legally marry and remain with the love of their life, I am appalled, for I know many same sex couples who have been faithful to each other and lived together for decades before their relationships were recognized as legal and proper, even if some religious people disagree.
My commitment is to care for and accept people no matter what their sexual orientation is. As a priest and pastor I can do nothing else. Of course some will disagree with me and that is their right and I will not take freedom away from them, but I do ask that they not impose their beliefs on same sex couples and thus deprive them of the same freedoms the rest of us enjoy.
While the Supreme Court has recognized that gays and lesbians have the Constitutional right to marriage based upon the 14th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1965, that right is still being assailed by its opponents; most of who are conservative Christians.
This is about civil rights and human rights, and at the same time the religious freedom of gay and lesbian Christians who have been denied the right other heterosexual Christians have always had; the right to have the marriage they entered into and blessed by their ministers as legal. For too many centuries those defending the faith, including Popes, bishops and kings engaged in the same relationships that they persecuted others for doing. The list of these defenders of the faith is long, and the people often illustrious and sometimes infamous.
I think that it is time that we learn to accept people for who they are, and not who we think that they should be.
I have been troubled by the disaster at the Doctor’s Without Borders in Kunduz Afghanistan, a disaster that appears to be linked to the actions of U.S. and or NATO, Coalition, and Afghan forces as well as the Taliban who had taken control of that city a few days before the attack.
There are so many things about this incident that trouble me, but truthfully I, like almost everyone, know very little about it, other than the fact that too many innocent people died as a result of what appears to be a prolonged air strike against what should have been a known hospital. Now, truthfully, none of us knows enough about the incident to declare it a justified act, a tragic mistake, or a war crime, and there are people who without full knowledge of the facts are arguing for each of these positions. However, that has not stopped the speculation about the circumstances concerning the incident. Today the American command released a statement saying that Afghan forces requested the air strikes.
The fact is that the circumstances are unclear, and in the fog of war we may never know the truth about what happened. I do not pretend to think that the Taliban are entirely without blame, nor is the incredibly corrupt Afghan government and military; and most importantly are American, NATO and other non-Afghan coalition forces.
I do caution anyone who attempts to place the blame for what happened on any one group in this conflict, and I think that it was irresponsible for people in the United Nations to declare that this could be a war crime without knowing all the facts.
That being said I believe, as a career military officer, that we as Americans need to hold ourselves, and our military to a higher standard than our enemies and even our coalition partners. Sadly, we have not always done this and sometimes we have not only committed war crimes, but also we often hold ourselves above international sanction and law when our forces are suspected of committing war crimes. Even more importantly we ignore the words of a man who acting as an agent of the United States, and the United Nations set the standard for prosecuting war criminals. I am talking about Supreme Court Associate Justice Robert Jackson, who organized the trials of the major Nazi War Criminals at Nuremburg.
When the trials were being organized Justice Jackson set down a rule of conduct for his American, and allied colleagues from Britain, the Soviet Union and France. Sadly, we Americans have failed to heed his words on many occasions. Jackson noted:
“If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.” Justice Robert Jackson International Conference on Military Trials, London, 1945, Dept. of State Pub.No. 3080 (1949), p.330.
Now personally I hope that this is a tragic accident brought about by a confused tactical situation that was worsened by the fog of war. Truthful that does not lessen the pain and tragedy of what happened in Kunduz, but it is far better than the alternative; that American forces ignored warnings and intelligence that this was a hospital and kept attacking even after being told that it was a hospital. If the latter is the case the charge that this could be a war crime cannot be ignored.
As a veteran of Iraq and a career officer who knows the terrible horrors of war first hand, as well as being a historian and theologian I am especially sensitive to the nuances of such events and know that many times that what happens is difficult to fully understand or comprehend. I can only hope that Secretary of Defense Carter and President Obama will ensure that an investigation, coordinated with the U.N. and our coalition partners fully explores what happened, and if American forces acted improperly, or even in a criminal manner take the moral high ground and assume responsibility.
We cannot ignore the precedent that we ourselves set when we tried the surviving leaders of the Nazi regime at Nuremburg. War crimes are war crimes no matter what people commit them, and we must hold ourselves to this higher standard. But then we must also realize as Hannah Arendt noted “The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.”
Likewise there are people, like a younger me, who agree with Commodore Stephen Decatur who declare “my country right or wrong” and then ignore any possible evils committed by the United States. I love and serve my country, but if we are complicit in war crimes then what have we become? Are we willing to throw away our ideals, our ethics, our humanity to ensure our survival?
Personally, even if the worst outcome is true, I cannot imagine that those involved meant to commit a war crime, but that being said there is a rationalization that even good people make during war, that their actions, or the actions of their nation are excused by necessity. I am reminded of the words of Spencer Tracy in the movie Judgment at Nuremburg when he said:
“There are those in our own country too who today speak of the “protection of country” – of ‘survival’. A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient – to look the other way. Well, the answer to that is ‘survival as what’? A country isn’t a rock. It’s not an extension of one’s self. It’s what it stands for. It’s what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult! Before the people of the world, let it now be noted that here, in our decision, this is what we stand for: justice, truth, and the value of a single human being.”
At Kunduz over twenty medical personnel at the Doctors Without Borders died, another three dozen were wounded when American, or other coalition aircraft responded to the call of Afghan ground forces for air support against the Taliban. Regardless of if the Taliban were taking advantage of the hospital to engage the Afghan troops, the location of the hospital was known to coalition forces, it had been there and in operation for four years.
Please do not get me wrong, I want my country to always be in the right. For over 30 years I have sworn an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States and followed what I believe is a call to uphold the best that our country has to offer. I do not support the Taliban or any other group that would seek to impose a theocracy on their people, but at the same time how can I countenance the support of a discredited, unethical and corrupt regime that has squandered the lives and trust of its own people while at the same time taking advantage of American and NATO forces, our military and intelligence support as well our massive economic support without which they could not remain in power?
When I see what the U.S. backed governments in Afghanistan, not to mention Iraq have done to their people with our support I feel much like T.E. Lawrence who wrote of the British administration in 1920 Iraq:
“The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Bagdad communiqués are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It is a disgrace to our imperial record, and may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are to-day not far from a disaster.”
Like about everyone I do not pretend to know everything that happened in this incident. But that being said; of we as Americans cannot uphold and subject ourselves to the same standards that we have imposed on others, then what does that say about us? I wonder what our response will be and I am troubled, because I think that we will not hold ourselves to the standards that we ourselves claim to uphold. I say this because we have not done so since Nuremberg.
If we fail in this task, the task to embody the truth of what is in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution, to embody the spirit of the city set upon a hill that inspired so many before we were ever a military power to come here, to believe that the principles that we stood for were better than their own countries; it will not matter how many Taliban we kill for we will have lostthawed and in the process our collective soul. As Lawrence wrote in 1920 “We are to-day not far from a disaster.”
The Author on the Iraq-Syrian Border, December 2007
Friends of Padre Steve’s World,
I have been continuing to be a bit reflective and it seems with each day there is something to cause me to reflect on different aspects of life and the human experience. When I am in these reflective times I tend to look back at flawed, yet brilliant men who had unique insights into their times and even the future, but who were often ignored by those who supposedly knew better.
British military historian and theorist B.H. Liddell-Hart wrote:
“A study of history, past and in the making, seems to suggest that most of mankind’s troubles are man-made, and arise from the compound effect of decisions taken without knowledge, ambitions uncontrolled by wisdom and judgments that lack understanding. Their ceaseless repetition is the grimmest jest that destiny plays on the human race. Men are helped to authority by their knowledge continually make decisions on questions beyond their knowledge. Ambition to maintain their authority forbids them from admitting the limits of their knowledge and calling upon the knowledge that is available in other men. Ambition to extend the bounds of their authority leads them to a frustration of others opportunity and interference with others’ liberty that, with monotonous persistency, injures themselves or their successors on the rebound.
The fate of mankind in all ages has been the plaything of petty personal ambitions. The blend of wisdom with knowledge would restrain men from contributing to this endless cycle of folly, but understanding can guide them toward progress.” B.H. Liddell-Hart “Lawrence of Arabia” DeCapo Press, Reprint, originally published as “The Man Behind the Legend” Halcyon House 1937
Over the past few days I have been thinking about the reaction to the near government shutdown, the latest mass murder in this country, and the latest events in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. I have found each of these events troubling in their own way, especially when I see the statements of powerful leaders, political, religious, military, and media about them. With the exception of the response of President Obama to the killings in Roseburg Oregon, I was troubled because it seemed like most commentators had no empathy about any of these events. Power, politics and ideology seem to obscure the pain and suffering of people.
Since I returned from Iraq I have become much more empathic regarding the suffering of others. In some ways this is good, but it also brings about a certain amount of pain as I feel that suffering. Some account that as wisdom and tell me so, though most of the time I feel painfully unwise. Even so I strive to seek wisdom even as I recognize my own limitations, and as such I look to history and the lives of others who seem to have struggled with some of the same issues that trouble me.
The ceaseless repetition of these tragedies and the lack of empathy of so many powerful political, media, and even religious leaders cause me a lot of pain, and sometimes I wish I did not feel so much. That is interesting because until I went to Iraq and came home I was very good at being able to compartmentalize my feelings. But that kind of compartmentalization is now very difficult for me, so I have to try to integrate them with reason and knowledge and act on them, and to do this I turn to books and history for lessons and examples.
The late James Baldwin, a noted African-American author and civil rights activist wrote, “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.” I can understands that, because when I find myself experiencing such feelings I turn to history, to books and the lives of people much like me.
One of my favorite flawed heroes is T.E. Lawrence, or as he is better known, Lawrence of Arabia. I think that Lawrence was gifted with profound insights and had a rare sensitivity to humanity, politics, conflict, and even peace than many people before or since. Lawrence wrote, “The rare man who attains wisdom is, by the very clearness of his sight, a better guide in solving practical problems than those, more commonly the leaders of men, whose eyes are misted and minds warped by ambition for success….”
Sadly, all too many of our leaders, and not just American leaders have eyes that are misted and minds warped by ambition for success. But as I mentioned yesterday, nothing that we despise in others is entirely absent from ourselves.
James Madison wrote something about certain Christians of his day that could have been written today. The topic, one of Madison’s favorite topics actually, was the subject of the relationship between church and state. Madison wrote:
“[T]here remains [in some parts of the country] a strong bias towards the old error, that without some sort of alliance or coalition between Govt. & Religion neither can be duly supported. Such indeed is the tendency to such a coalition, and such its corrupting influence on both parties, that the danger cannot be too carefully guarded against.”
I have lost count of the number of preachers, pundits, and politicians, who have been making public statements and doing their best to pass legislation to make Christianity the official state religion of the United States. To a person all represent the politically militant wing of the conservative, or maybe better named Right Wing Christianity. I wrote about this some yesterday and have written numerous pieces on the subject so I am not going to say much more here; except to say that the historical ignorance of those that want to impose Christianity as the law of the land is mind-numbing in large part because of how fiercely the concept was resisted by those who founded the United States.
The great Virginia Baptist leader John Leland, a friend of both Jefferson and Madison was scathing in his condemnation of those who wanted to impose a Christian state religion and place it in the Constitution:
“How undeniable the fact, that civil government is not founded on Christianity …. How improper, how unjust, how anti-Christian it must be, for one man or one party of men to get that kind of religion interwoven into the civil constitution, which they believe is best, under the pretence that their consciences are wounded if others do not believe like themselves. The plea of conscience, in such cases, is the art of ill design, or the effect of imposition, which none but tyrants or bigoted enthusiasts will make …. Government is the formation of an association of individuals, by mutual agreement, for mutual defence and advantage; to be governed by specific rules. And, when rightly formed, it embraces Pagans, Jews, Mahometans and Christians, within its fostering arms–prescribes no creed of faith for either of them–proscribes none of them for being heretics, promotes the man of talents and integrity, without inquiring after his religion–impartially protects all of them–punishes the man who works ill to his neighbor, let his faith and motives be what they may. Who, but tyrants, knaves and devils, can object to such government …. It is the glory of the United States, that, after Christian tyranny had raged with savage fury for fifteen hundred years, its progress should be arrested in this land of liberty.”
The fact is, in every place and clime where a religion, be it a Christian Church, or any non-Christian religion holds the franchise of power with the state that no person is safe. Robert Ingersoll stated it very well, “The liberty of man is not safe in the hands of any church. Wherever the Bible and sword are in partnership, man is a slave. All laws for the purpose of making man worship God, are born of the same spirit that kindled the fires of the auto da fe, and lovingly built the dungeons of the Inquisition….”
Today, a very vocal minority that has seized control of a major political party wish to reverse the very liberty promoted by our founders and men like Leland who fought for it by legislating at every turn laws which give special privilege to Christians, often under the name “Religious Freedom Restoration Acts,” which exempt people from obeying laws applicable to all citizens, merely based on their “sincere religious beliefs.” Some of these laws even permit discrimination against others based on an individual’s sincere religious beliefs. One of that party’s leading candidates for the Presidential nomination, Ben Carson, said that a Moslem should not be able to be President, defying the Constitution itself. I do not have to wonder what Jefferson, Madison, Leland or so many other pioneers of real religious liberty would say to Mr. Carson or others like him. Their replies to the people of their day more than suffice to reply to such ignorant buffoons.
Leland was right. This country was miraculous because to again quote Leland; “It is the glory of the United States, that, after Christian tyranny had raged with savage fury for fifteen hundred years, its progress should be arrested in this land of liberty.” And as he so succinctly put it, who but tyrants, knaves, and devils, could resist a government which “embraces Pagans, Jews, Mahometans and Christians, within its fostering arms–prescribes no creed of faith for either of them–proscribes none of them for being heretics, promotes the man of talents and integrity, without inquiring after his religion–impartially protects all of them–punishes the man who works ill to his neighbor, let his faith and motives be what they may.”
For me it gets old to continue to have to write about this, but then someone has to, otherwise the truth about religious freedom will be trampled under the jack-boots of Christian tyrants who have the fact is we deceived sincere Christians into following a creed that will enslave them. History matters, and have not advanced so far that we cannot return to the barbarism of our ancestors. If the political manifestation of the Christian Right was ever to establish themselves and their Dominionist theology as the law of the land, we would all be in trouble.
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