A World in One

Two minor, although significant events occurred recently that illustrate how much the world today has become a singular place. Vast oceans, soaring mountain ranges, walls and barriers (whether man-made or natural) no longer separate countries or peoples from each other – no matter how far we live from one another we are rubbing elbows thanks to technology and modern transportation.

The first event was when a Texas plumber found that the Islamic State in the Levant had acquired one of his pickup trucks, the name of his company emblazoned on the side doors, which he had traded in to a Ford dealership for a newer model. A photo of an ISIL fighter firing from the bed of the pickup was featured in an ISIL propaganda video the group Tweeted, later appearing in news media around the world. 

The plumber, who was harassed as an ISIL sympathizer, is suing the Ford dealership for not removing his business decal before it sold the truck. What this event shows is that commerce, particularly American commerce, easily and quickly overcomes whatever barriers it confronts on its way to serve the globe.

The second event occurred in rural Virginia, where Augusta County closed all its schools for a day after parents who profess to the Christian faith became enraged over a history lesson. A teacher, following state guidance and the curriculums of teaching world history, had her students “try their hand at writing the shahada, an Islamic declaration of faith, in Arabic calligraphy,” the Washington Post reported. 

According to the Post, this sparked anger not just in the community, but across the country “including angry emails, phone calls and threats to put the teacher’s head on a stake – led the school district to close rather than risk disruption or violence.”

For the Christian parents, the lesson was tantamount to indoctrinating students in the faith of Islam, but to educators it was about helping students understand the fastest growing religion in the world.

Ironies abound in this event, particularly how people of Christian faith want to disregard Christ’s message of peace and understanding and turn to violence in response to a religion they fear and they fear because they are ignorant about it, so ignorant that they are afraid to enlighten themselves and their children.

Some of the politicians in America today who refer to themselves as leaders relish the fear suffered by Americans – Christian or otherwise – that is largely due to ignorance. Divisive figures like Donald Trump find this fear about the world useful in the tactics and strategies they employ to gain support for their political ambitions.

Instead of discussing the complexities of issues to help understand terrorism and religion and to alleviate fears, they promise simple solutions that involve either isolating ourselves or others from ourselves. Such solutions should make everyone wary. We live in a complex world now that challenges many of our previous held beliefs about pretty much everything.  

Americas’ greatest leaders – and even not-so-great but people tolerant and worldly nonetheless – push Americans to engage the larger world, to encourage our understanding of other races, creeds and cultures. They do so for one reason – the peoples of the world grow closer and closer every day.

Technology and modern transportation has bought us close, so close that we can see we are essentially the same in body and spirit – having the same wants, desires, concerns and hopes.

Our glimpse via television, computer and iPhone screens at the inside of the apartment of the San Bernardino terrorist couple was perhaps crude public voyeurism, yet it nonetheless spoke to our need as Americans to know who this Muslim couple was. Their belongings showed us that to some degree they were just like the rest of us, and that is perhaps what scares us the most.

Lost Souls, Dead Souls

 Although federal, state and local authorities are still assembling evidence to determine the exact motives and operations of the recent terrorist attack by a young Muslim couple in San Bernardino, California, it seems doubtful, based on what the newspapers have reported so far, that it was a coordinated attack by the Islamic State of the Levant (ISIL or ISIS).

What is certain is this:

 

   The wife, Tashfeen Malik, was a Pakistani who had lived in Saudi Arabia, where friends said she had become so extremely conservative and religious that she began to isolate herself from not just friends and relatives, but society.

·   Her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, was born in Chicago to parents who emigrated from Pakistan more than a quarter century earlier, a college graduate and gainfully employed in Southern California – an American.

·   The two married in August 2014, Farook having met his wife in an arrangement, either through an Internet marriage service or an agreement between their two families, exactly which remains unclear.

·    After their marriage, Farook seemed to have joined his wife in living an isolated life, even leaving the mosque where he once prayed a few months before he and Malik went on their killing spree of Farook’s 14 co-workers.

·    Authorities believe the couple received two weapons, the military style rifles, from a friend and neighbor of Farook’s, Enrique Marquez. Other neighbors say Marquez and Farook had an abiding interest, cars, and were often seen working on them.

·   Since the incident Marquez has checked himself into a mental health clinic. He has not been charged with a crime.

·   The other two weapons the couple possessed, like the rifles, were most likely easily and legally purchased in another state, which makes California’s strict gun laws weak at best. The bomb-making materials the couple had amassed for their pipe bombs are easily and legally purchased on the market.

·   Just before Malik and Farook started killing, Malik went on Facebook and professed loyalty to ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. To date, authorities have found no link between the terrorist group and the couple. ISIL has praised the couple as “supporters,” but have not claimed to have planned and coordinated the attack as they did for the Paris killings.

 
With these facts taken together it appears the San Bernardino terrorist attack was not part of ISIL or al-Qaeda or the Taliban or any other terrorist group with death-cult ambitions to rule to world.

What does seem plausible in the murkiness of this early investigation is a young couple, in their late 20s, chose to live an isolated existence, far from a support network of family and friends that could help them see a better world for themselves and their six-month-old daughter, who they left with Farooks’ mother on the way to conduct their killing.

What could have driven a young, educated couple with every hope and dream before them to choose murder and death over life?  

Perhaps the clues are in the facts, and one fact that continues to appear in all these terrorist incidents related to people who practice an extreme form of Islam is a Middle East nation – Saudi Arabia, a country ruled by a royal family whose wealth is, to the average person, unimaginable. Most of the 9/11 terrorists came from Saudi Arabia, where freedom of religion, other than the practice of Islam, is forbidden, and the brand of Islam the Saud’s allow is Wahhabism, an extremely ultra conservative doctrine that imposes such quaint strictures as forbidding women to drive to such brutal and archaic punishment as beheading criminals. As in any ultra conservative religion, there is no room to think for oneself in Wahhabism – only to obey or face harsh penalties.

Outside the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism, like any religion, is practiced to varying degrees by its adherents, from casually obedience to obeying every word without question.

In this respect, Islam is not unlike other religions. In the United States, where devotion to any religion including Christianity is on the wane, the same type of ideological thinking exists in conservative churches as it does in conservative mosques.

Take, for example, the recent words about San Bernardino from Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty University, a conservative Christian school: “I’ve always thought that if more good people had concealed-carry permits, then we could end those Muslims before they walked in,” according to the Washington Post.
 
Falwell’s comments are interesting, if not disturbing, in that he speaks from a pulpit to promote unfettered gun ownership and use to the young followers of a conservative brand of Christianity. Falwell’s comment earned their roar of approval. As  polls now demonstrate, belief in owning a gun has for gun owners become an ideology, which is as fervent as those who hold deep religious beliefs that say one must be pure in the eyes of the Lord, or that  killing is required of all non-believers, or that abortion clinics should be attacked.
 
While we tremble at the thought of terrorism and its fear-mongering images of beheadings, we are not considering what is actually happening at home and abroad. It is a clash of ideologies – religious and secular – between moderate and conservative Muslims against a rapidly changing world in which technology challenges long-held beliefs. It is a battle for Middle East hegemony between that region’s dominant powers, Iran and Saudi Arabia.  Some intelligence analysts believe the Saud’s are helping Sunni ISIS battle the Shiite Iranians.  That seems apparent.

ISIL’s aspiration for a worldwide Caliph is as delusional as any other ideology that seeks world domination. Cults of death don't seem to have much staying power because everyone dies.

We may never know why Malik and Farook killed 14 people in a San Bernardino municipal building. They appear to have been two lost souls who chose to join a legion of dead souls that believe death and murder is better than living with imperfection.
 
We do know this: religious extremism – no matter what the faith – and diehard beliefs (oppose any gun regulation in the name of the Second Amendment) leaves no room for humanity.
  

The Churchill Loop

              Whenever world events appear to border on bedlam, and our adversaries, perceived or true, appear to threaten our security or national interests, politicians and pundits reach for the time-honored historical comparisons to Winston Churchill, the British prime minister who led England and Empire through the Second World War.

            The latest iteration of the “Churchill Loop” is now being applied to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who addressed Congress on March 3 to warn America about the Iranian leadership as the Obama administration negotiates with the Islamic Republic over its nuclear program. Churchill had warned his country about Adolf Hitler in the 1930s.

Netanyahu, well aware of our penchant of seeking comparisons to Churchill whenever we feel some sort of military response is in order, made sure he sounded Churchillian when he spoke to Congress: “Even if Israel has to stand alone, Israel will stand.”

Churchill giving his famous V for victory sign on May 20, 1940, more than a week after he became prime minister. (Credit: Imperial War Museum)

 

That was enough for pundits such as Thomas Sowell of the Hoover Institute to wax on about Netanyahu’s Churchill-like stance, imploring an ignorant, naive world to recognize the Iranian machinations to rule the globe, if not just the Middle East. Comparing Netanyahu to Churchill, Sowell wrote, “Both warned the world of mortal dangers that others ignored, in hopes that those dangers would go away."

The problem with this comparison is that Netanyahu, in his speech to Congress, did not tell the world anything that it doesn’t already know about Iran and its machinations. In 2015, unlike 1935, technology has made communications vast and penetrating, and America’s ability at covert operations, better known as spying, is wide reaching and effective, as is our allies.

 

We actually do know what’s going on in the world, but it’s never easy to address, or know how to address, the issues and problems that are ever arising. It’s not that the world is suddenly on fire, it has always been on fire. How could it not be with seven billion people living on the planet, all of them striving for better lives? The key is trying to keep the fire under control without creating more fire.

However, this, and the fact that the United States is the most powerful military on the planet and always on the technological vanguard with its weapons systems, blocks the narratives that pundits like Sowell and politicians like Arkansas’ U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton (he of the recent letter-to-the-Iranian-leaders fame) like to tell.

In Cotton’s recent “maiden speech,” which newly elected senators give on the Senate floor, the freshman senator referred to Churchill’s “unnecessary war” quote from World War II to make a point about America’s defense.

“I know many of you in this chamber stand with me, and I humbly urge you all, Democrat and Republican alike, to join in rebuilding our common defense, so that we will not face our own unnecessary war, our own period of consequences,” Cotton said.

Earlier in the speech, though, Cotton called for American “global military dominance,” sounding less Churchill-like and more like a certain unsavory leader of that era. Despite his poor choice of phrasing, Cotton’s point is that projecting American power through its military is a stabilizing force. Perhaps, but it’s not clear how the rest of the world would feel about this. The last nation that tried global domination with its military ended up bombed to pieces and split into geographical and ideological halves for 45 years.

            It’s worrisome when politicians rush to Churchill to make their case for military intervention and condemn his predecessor, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who irresponsibly – not naively – believed a peace deal with Hitler was possible. They do so without context or reality for what really occurred in those years leading to the Second World War.

           Chamberlain was inflexible as a statesman. He refused to reconsider his policy of appeasement until it was too late. Yet, in the 1930s, British voters were unwilling to consider war, having 20 years earlier lost a generation of men in World War I. Chamberlain adhered to his constituency, but when it came time to lead, to tell voters what they didn’t want to hear, that it was time to standup to Hitler, he failed miserably.

            President Franklin Roosevelt had the same problem with American voters until that foreign war they believed was an ocean or two away came home to them at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Churchill was correct about Hitler’s ambitions, but he was hardly alone in that realization. In his January 1939 State of the Union address, Roosevelt warned Congress and the American public “of the need of putting our own house in order in the face of storm signals from across the seas.” In September of that year, Hitler invaded Poland and World War II started.

Historian James McGregor Burns wrote in Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom that FDR was relieved the night he won an unprecedented third term in 1940 because, after years of isolationism, he could prepare to fight the Nazi dictator: “There were altogether too many people, he felt, who thought in terms of appeasement of Hitler.”  

Churchill grasped the Nazi threat clearly, but he failed miserably when it came to understanding a threat just as great as Hitler, if not greater – The Japanese Empire, which had been slaughtering its way through China since the early1930s.

Churchill thought of the Japanese as a lesser race, according to William Manchester in his The Last Lion biographic trilogy. To Churchill, the Japanese were incapable of mounting an effective military campaign against the vaunted British. He often repeated this belief to his War Cabinet, and choosing, because of this belief, not fortify such colonial possessions as Hong Kong and Singapore.

But in December 1941, when the Japanese bombed the American naval fleet at Pearl Harbor and took England’s Asian possessions – as well as American and Dutch possessions – and sunk England’s two revered battleships, Prince of Wales and Repulse, the prime minister was stunned. Manchester wrote that Churchill sat for long moments “mumbling repeatedly to himself: ‘I don’t understand what happened. I don’t understand it.’”

            Churchill was one of the world’s great statesmen, and a politician like Tom Cotton shows promise – as a freshman senator he ably convinced 46 other senators, most of them veterans of the chamber, to co-sign the misguided letter he wrote to the Iranians.

            Yet, politicians and pundits should watch their narratives. Churchill didn’t, and he lost a large chunk of the British Empire, two battleships that were the pride of Britain and her navy, and countless lives.

 

 

The Road Back From War

      From birth to death life is a journey, for some more arduous than others, but a journey nonetheless, fraught with the sadness and joys, the challenges and achievements, the fears and triumphs that mold our humanity.

       Like any journey, we will on occasion wander paths – sometimes reluctantly, sometimes eagerly – that are in directions we neither want to go nor should go, but we go nonetheless, to find out where they lead or what we could learn along the way.

        As it is so with America and war.

        War becomes unfashionable after the last one fought. America struggles to get away, only to find ourselves wandering down more paths of conflict, sometimes reluctantly, sometimes eagerly; embracing war when we are successful, opposing war when we are failing – always forgetting, whether in blood or treasure, that war is wasteful.

      Wars are never won or lost. They are just ended, left to be fought on another day, in another season, but always for the same reason – power and glory, the same old story.

Erich Maria Remarque, here at ease at the Hotel Curhaus in Davos, Switzerland, 1929, knew the futility of war. The title of his World War I novel about war’s ravages on the human spirit, “Im Westen nichts Neues,” means “In the West Nothing New.” When the novel was published in English, it had a more benign, perhaps deceiving title: “All Quiet on Western Front. (German Federal Archive)

America began the 21^st century like she began the 20^th century – at war. Then it was the war to keep her imperial possession – the Philippines – from Filipino resistance fighters; today it’s to battle global terrorism and protect her self-interest – oil and markets.

We fight to keep the nation secure and the world stabilized, though the citizenry is not interested in world stability, they are interested in their safety and security. Few know clearly the power of their military. Fewer care to know the destruction it has wrought.

        Our sense of duty and self-interest to stabilize countries in the war-torn Middle East keeps pulling us down Conflict Road. Our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have made us weary; we want an end to the fighting in a region where we have long been, once dared not go, now dare to go again.

           Narratives about our wars in film and verse tell some of us we have been worthy along that road, abiding our ideals; and tells some of us that we have been unworthy, failing to abide those ideals. Reality is ever more complicated.

          The road to war is never ending, always another fight just around the corner; just one more, but always just one more.

            Long and uncertain is the road back from war. We struggle to keep in that direction, to reach a time of peace, but we find the way difficult to navigate. We are doubtful, but always hopeful; we are vengeful, but desire to be peaceful.

           We try and take the road back from war, but it always leads us down the next road to war.

 

 

 

Divided We Govern

           After watching President Obama in last week’s State of the Union layout what is likely the Democratic blueprint for next year’s presidential race and listening to the legislative agenda of the Republicans who now have complete control of Congress, this congressional session could well be meaningful and productive.

Why would this occur after six years of rancor between the White House and Republicans? For one reason: the government is divided.

            Obama, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) need each other, if they want to accomplish progress on critical issues such as minimum wage, healthcare, immigration, transportation infrastructure, etc.

            Even the political calculations – as the two parties’ angle for voter advantage in 2016 – are such that they have to work together. Perhaps it’s the hyper speed of our technology or the sluggish economic growth, but the old way of politics, of putting off needed legislation until the time is opportune politically, appears no longer wise or practical.

            Over the last 60 years some real progress in America has been achieved because of divided government, and by this I mean one party holds the White House and the other both houses of Congress.

            Still, divided government has often been confrontational more than compatible.

Happier times at the Capitol: A snowball fight in 1930.

 

In 1947-49, the Republican-controlled 80^th Congress, which Democratic President Harry Truman called the “Do Nothing Congress,” sought to roll back New Deal legislation such as Social Security that was enacted between 1933 and 1946 by Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Democratic-controlled Congresses. The GOP also rejected Truman’s Fair Deal legislative agenda. After serving in the minority for 14 years, during which time labor made great strides, the GOP was eager to re-shape the national agenda for business.

            The Republicans passed many pro-business bills and looked for ways of undoing the New Deal, but they had miscalculated in their political strategy. Not only did it ruin their chance to take the White House after 16 years of Democratic control – Truman won handily despite polls’ and pundits’ predictions to the contrary – they lost control of Congress to the Democrats for another four years. Republicans took power again with Dwight Eisenhower’s election to the presidency in 1952, but lost it again in the mid-term two years later.

            As supreme allied commander during World War II, Eisenhower understood the need to work with people you disagree with. He easily grasped the congressional Republicans’ folly, and he knew that the overwhelming majority of Americans favored the New Deal because those programs improved their lives. The agenda of the extreme elements in his party left him wary.   

            On Nov. 8, 1954, a week after the GOP lost Congress in the mid-term election, Eisenhower said, “Should any party attempt to abolish social security and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things ... Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”

Working to accomplish great things with those you don’t always agree with in post-war Berlin, June 5, 1945: General Eisenhower with England’s Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery on his left and on his right, General Georgy Zhukov of the U.S.S.R. and Jean de Lattre de Tassigny of France. (Bundesarchiv Berlin)

           Divided government set in once again, but this time the two sides worked together. The Democratic-controlled 84th Congress of 1955-57 worked with the Republican president and accomplished significant pieces of legislation such as the Air Pollution Control Act, at the time establishing just an information role for the federal government but which started the government on the road toward eventually adopting more comprehensive laws for clean air, water and soil. The Democratic Congress and Eisenhower passed and enacted the Federal-Aid Highway Act, which, at the time, launched the largest public works project in history, creating thousands of jobs and transforming the American road system and economy – all those new highway systems needed cars as well as businesses to serve the tired and hungry motorists.

           According to a biography of the president by the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, “Eisenhower favored a more moderate course, one that he called Modern Republicanism, which preserved individual freedom and the market economy yet insured that government would provide necessary assistance to workers who had lost their jobs or to the ill or aged, who through no fault of their own, could not provide for themselves. He intended to lead the country "down the middle of the road between the unfettered power of concentrated wealth . . . and the unbridled power of statism or partisan interests."

           “As President, Eisenhower thought that government should provide some additional benefits to the American people. He signed legislation that expanded Social Security, increased the minimum wage, and created the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. He also supported government construction of low-income housing but favored more limited spending than had Truman.”

            Divided government continued with the 85th Congress, and Eisenhower and the Democrats produced such legislation as the first civil rights act since the 1860s, paving the way for subsequent legislation bolstering civil rights, and the National Aeronautics and Space Act that created NASA, launching the space age. 

            For the next 25 years, the Democrats controlled Congress, through Democratic and Republican presidents. Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980 brought the Republicans control of the Senate, which they held for six years, but in 1987 Democrats were again in control of Congress while Republicans held the White House into the presidency of President George H.W. Bush. Once again, significant legislation is passed including the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991, launching the Internet age.

                       President Eisenhower with a future U.S. president, George H.W. Bush

 

           Voters seem to prefer divided government, but they gave single-party control of the two branches another try with the election of Democratic President Bill Clinton in 1992, but two years into Clinton’s term Republicans gained control of Congress. In the ensuing years we’ve had periods of divided government, but congress hasn’t been as productive or successful as it was during the presidencies of Eisenhower and H.W. Bush.

            Now we have another divided government. If Obama and the Republicans can succeed in making real progress that satisfy some of the nation’s concerns then voters may start to realize that a divided government may be the best way to get things done. This could be particularly so if places where the government is also divided, Pennsylvania (Democratic governor, GOP legislature) and Maryland (Republican governor, Democratic legislature) are also successful in working together to move things forward.     

            And if that is how voters think as they go into the ballot booth – and granted, this requires some complex thinking but voters are capable of it – then the parties’ political cognoscenti will have to worry about which party the voters favor for the White House (Democrat or Republican) and for Congress (Republican or Democrat).