The Threat Is Real

The United States is sacrificing freedom for the cause of freedom. We are allowing our liberties to be shredded so that we can be protected against those who hate our liberties. In our War On Terror, we are creating a space for our own brand of terror.

On October 17th, 2006, when he signed the Military Commissions Act into law, President Bush emphasized that history would hold a simplified and stark view of the current fight against terrorism. He said, “The questions will be narrowed and few: Did this generation of Americans take the threat seriously, and did we do what it takes to defeat that threat?”

Mr. Bush is right about the fact that we are accountable to our children’s children in the decisions we make today. He’s right about our need to take threats to our freedom seriously. But he’s dead wrong about just what the threat is.

The threat to the U.S. is within the U.S. itself. It is in our fear-mongering and deceptive president, the compliant congress that enables him, and a citizenry that always has the option of looking the other way. We must not look the other way. Our nation’s constitution is being systematically undermined by leaders who claim they are serving justice and protecting our way of life.

The Military Commissions Act allows the government to label persons “enemy combatants” and then suspend Habeas Corpus, the right to a trial. Let’s think about that for a moment: A person can be called a terrorist, can be arrested, can be detained indefinitely, and have no ability to challenge the accusation made against him or her. An accused person can also be tortured, so long as the ones doing the torturing are creative enough to sidestep the short list of interrogation techniques explicitly prohibited in the MCA – not such a tall order.

The Military Commissions Act is an attack on America far greater than even the horrific events of September 11th, 2001. On 9/11, Americans offered a stark contrast to the viciousness of terrorists as we cared for our dead and wounded with incredible compassion and generosity. On that tragic day and in the weeks that followed, there was a clear distinction between heroes and villains. But in the years since, the actions of our government have come to resemble those of terrorists more and more.

Do the terrorists kill innocent people? Our military campaigns will cause a hundred times the destruction to innocents. Do the terrorists have no regard for human dignity? Our soldiers will offer the disgrace of Abu Ghraib. Do the terrorists hate the rights that American’s enjoy? Our government will fight terrorists by sacrificing the inalienable rights it presumes to be founded upon.

Jesus Christ, the one in whom George Bush reputedly places much faith, was keenly aware of these sorts of dangers. Repeatedly throughout the Gospels, Jesus warns his followers against imitating their enemies. When two of his disciples wanted to claim seats of power for themselves, Jesus forced them to think seriously about those to whom they felt so superior: “Their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be a servant.” (Matthew 20:25-27) Or, consider the saying of Jesus that is known as the Golden Rule of Christian faith: “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” (Luke 6:31) The other side of this prescription could be stated, “Do not become that which you despise in others”.

Since 2001, Bush has been telling us that the terrorists want to destroy our way of life. If, in response to terrorism, we undermine liberty and practice our own forms of injustice, then the terrorists have accomplished their objective splendidly. The saddest part of Bush’s MCA speech was when he bragged that, "One of the terrorists believed to have planned the 9/11 attacks said he hoped the attacks would be the beginning of the end of America. He didn't get his wish." It breaks my heart, but I fear he actually did.

Self-righteous Contempt is Bankrupt.

The now-famous ad run by the RNC slandering the Tennesseean US House candidate Harold Ford has been called racist by the NAACP. RNC spokesman Danny Diaz says "I won't even maintain the premise" that the ad is racially offensive.

Read the LaTimes article.

Watch the ad here.

The pitiful thing about this ad is that even if you could convince the world it's not racist, which it is, you'd be elevating the ad to the status of vile and contemptuous, but not racist, advertising.

We're in desperate times, living amidst war and impoverishment, despair and meaninglessness, but the people asking to be our leaders are not talking about a bright future, a vision for a better world. Everybody's just talking about how god-awful the other guy is.

Read or listen to NPR's coverage of this phenomena.

In church we get ourselves in a similar mess, when we focus on the nastiness of sins, typically of the internal, moralistic variety. Somehow calling out bad behavior takes the place of offering a vision of unbridled love and radical hospitality in the kingdom of God, and the church thus inverts the teaching and example of Jesus.

Most Americans express very little faith that politicians and government do good in the world. Why would we, when all we see and hear is mudslinging during the seasons we choose our nation's leaders?

The exquisite irony with contemporary political campaigning is that most of the grand efforts candidates make to contrast their virtues against their opponents' vice actually contribute to the feeling in the citizenry that "all politicians are the same."

The reasons so many stay away from the polls on election day are not too different from the reasons so many stay away from church.

Choosing Gods

Tonight I heard Rosemary Radford Reuther, the pre-eminent feminist and ecofemenist theologian and activist speak at the Old Brick Episcopalian church here in Iowa City.

If you're around these parts, you can hear her tomorrow night when she speaks on ecofeminism for the U of I's Religious studies department as part of the Spalding Lecture Series.

Tonight, tho, she spoke on a new book she's got coming out early next year about American imperialism, in which she not only surveys the evolution of America's ideas about its divine mandate for world domination, but also develops a discussion for how the confessing church TODAY can protest the use of Christian religious language by politicians and other social leaders to promote policies of brutality and exploitation across the world.

I'm also reading a book by Dorothee Solle, the late/great german social theologian, called Thinking About God.

Great quote from page 8:
"Tell me how you think and act politically and I will tell you in which God you believe"

Reading this book, hearing Reuther speak, living in the religious maelstrom of 2006, make me think about making the step of simply drawing lines between the different gods we're talking about in public discourse.

It's common these days to think we're being civil by saying things like "We all worship the same God," but I find at times a naming or definition of God thrown about that is entirely at odds with what and who I think God is.

For instance, many contend that God's will was that GWB be president and lead our nation in these dark times. Not only do I reject the notion that God works in this sort of puppet-masteresque way, I believe it is blasphemous to say that the God manifest in Jesus Christ would select a war-mongering and thoroughly empire-oriented man to be the most powerful person on earth.

Am I disagreeing with folks about God or am I actually talking about a God entirely different from the one Bush invokes in the war on terror?

link

Excellent letter to the editor of a local newspaper, criticizing a board decision to remove funding for a homeless persons resource center from their county's budget.

My classmate Becky Bogs wrote the letter and it's an example of smaller-scale local action that can be taken by concerned citizens. Being a voice for change isn't a goal out of reach!

Rethinking Football.

I've always liked to play sports, but it's been a while since I've been able to enjoy most pro or collegiate sports, especially football. I don't like the violence of the game, not to mention the violence in the attitudes of way too many fans.

Yeah, people go psycho over football; lots of folks allow this little ball-moving contest to bring forth their most obsessive and/or hedonistic and/or hostile tendencies and let them run amock. I just moved to Iowa City, IA, which is - trying for the understatement of the century, here - something of a football town. Last weekend the U of I hosted Ohio State (Iowa lost, but they're still good.), and whoah! This place was a steaming, pulsating frothing pigskinny mess of fans.

I don't know why exactly I don't relate to the mania. I do like football. I do. But the freak-out is just not me.

Still though, I'm rethinking the generally critical stance I've had toward the fanatical love many people have for their sports teams. It must be the times. There's so much war, everywhere. So much war. So much of a "Kill first" mentality. God help us, are we invading Iran, now? Somebody tell me.

And I know that people live vicariously through the entertainment they consume. I know that a certain amount of anger and aggression is endemic to the human condition, and must be expressed. We can all rent Rocky (the original, or part III, or maybe IV. Definitely not II. V is better than II, I don't care what you say.), or we can dream up titanic faux battles between our various communities on the football fields.

There will always be lots about football that I hate - the gluttony of it's associated passtimes, the destruction of the players' bodies - but in this season of history, in which the travesty of military missteps is so much in full view, I wonder why we wouldn't want to fixate upon an ultimately meaningless contest of strength and will, and throw all our fight into that.

Peace be with you.