What if they gave a war, and nobody came?

Lovely wife and golden child watched SOTU last night, as yours truly was away listening to a lecture by an old friend (and catching up on old times). It was a school assignment, not a choice.

And she mentioned this morning that Bush asserted our troops will be in Iraq for as long as it takes. Which made her wonder: are the 30 year olds there now going to turn 40 in Iraq?

Who, indeed, is going to fight this fight for the Administration?

For the first time in nearly a decade, the Marine Corps in January missed its monthly recruiting goal, in what military officials said was the latest troubling indicator of the Iraq war's impact on the armed services.

The struggles of the Army, the Army Reserve and the Army National Guard to recruit and retain soldiers have received national attention in recent months. But the recent failure of the Marines, who historically have had the luxury of turning away willing recruits, is a potential problem for the service.

The Marines missed their January goal of 3,270 recruits by 84 people, or less than 3 percent. The Marines last missed a monthly goal in July 1995, and 1995 was also the last full year in which the corps fell short of its annual recruiting quota, said Maj. Dave Griesmer, a spokesman for the Marine Corps Recruiting Command.

No draft; fewer people willing to volunteer to be car-bomb fodder in a foreign country. Who is going to pay for this folly? Who is going to go to Iraq to protect our freedom?

Or is that not what Iraq is about, after all?

Thin Ice

Elections do not mean democracy.

There. I said it. Got into a "discussion" on this point at Eschaton, and then, today, NPR broadcasts an interview with the U.N. observer of the Iraqi elections who made the same point. Elections are essential to a democracy, he noted; but they do not equal democracy.

Gore Vidal has mentioned recently, in an interview aired on Pacifica Radio, that the U.S. is not a democracy. It is a republic. Consider ancient Athens, and ancient Rome. When Socrates went on trial in Athens, all the citizens of the town turned out to sit in judgment. Like the "town meetings" of New England, that kind of total participation in governance, is "democracy." Rule by the "demos," the group, the "mob" when "demos" is followed by "-gogue." In Rome, select persons held power. They even had a "dictator," someone given absolute power over the military and the government in times of crisis. The much bally-hooed "peaceful transfer of power" TV talking heads swoon over every four years during an Inauguration, reminds us we are a republic. The people elect representatives, and vest them with the powers of government.

But voting, does not make a democracy, or a republic. Iraqis voted for Saddam Hussein; or, at least, a vote was held. No one outside Iraq (and probably few inside) considered that "vote" either free, or fair.

But is a vote under occupation either free or fair? Many Muslim scholars don't think so, which is one reason they urged Sunnis to boycott the vote last Sunday.

So, is there democracy in Iraq? Not yet. Not nearly. Despite what all the pundits and politicians and possible purple fingers in Congress say tonight, a patch of ice still doth not a winter make, nor a single swallow summer. They had one vote. That's all. A good thing, but only in the sense that it was better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. It is no assurance of anything.

Certainly no sign that the last 3 years have been "worth it." Or that peace has now come to the Middle East. And even W. is not likely to say, tonight, that, once again: "Mission accomplished."

Reason within the limits of reason alone

I'm wrecking the point of having comments by posting on every possible turn in the conversation, I suppose, but Philalethes raises another good point: what is reason, and when is it "reasonable"?

Simply stated, I would say that reason is the terms of discourse to which all agree. The scope is broad, but has its boundaries; and, for the most part, like pornography, we can't define it, but we know it when we see it (discarding, of course, arguments that discussions of theology or religion cannot be reasonable).

When we appeal to such terms of discourse, we are appealing in part to the elimination of contradictions. "Up" cannot simultaneously refer to "down"; "black"cannot also refer to "white"; and so on. Which runs us up against Philalethes' other observation: that "our" opponents in many a political (or religious) discussion, don't even reason by their own definition of the term (i.e., it is "reasonable" to assert that the earth is only 6000 years old, or whatever), but revel in irrationality. And this is certainly true: here is a hypothetical as an example.

I've never had the chance to do this, but if you could confront a Christian fundamentalist, a devout believer in the absolute inerrancy of the Bible, and that every word therein is literally true (and inherently correct, i.e., non-contradictory), the shot to the solar plexus would seem to be the nativity stories in Matthew and Luke. They are absolutely irreconcilable.

In both stories, Jesus is born in Bethlehem: but for Matthew, that is because that's where his parents live. In Luke, they travel to Bethlehem when Mary is pregnant, because of the Roman census. Mary and Joseph, with Jesus, later return to Nazareth, where he grows up. No mention of Herod, or a flight to Egypt.

But in Matthew, Jesus lives in Bethlehem until he's about two years old. That's when the Magi arrive, Herod learns of the boy's birth, and the Holy Family flees to Egypt to avoid the massacre of the innocents. They return to live in Nazareth to stay out from under the nose of Herod's son, after the old king's death.

Now there are enough silences in the stories for many literalists to reconcile the differences. Shepherds could have visited the child on his birth night, and the magi come later; Matthew could record the flight to Egypt while Luke records the dedication in the Temple; and so on. It takes a lot to twist these strands together, but I've seen it done.

However, why was Jesus born in Bethlehem, and why did he come from Nazareth? The explanations simply cannot be reconciled. Either they lived there, or the census forced them there. And he grew up in Nazareth because that's really where his parents lived, or because of Herod. It is either/ or; it cannot be both/and. But if Christian fundamentalism was so easily undone, if this thread alone would be enough to unravel the tapestry of inerrancy and literalism they have woven since the 19th century, Christian fundamentlism would never have lasted this long.

How do they do it? Obviously by loosening the standards for consistency and reasoning enough to let such matters slip through. Does that mean "they" are completely without reason? No. But it means what is sacred will not be sullied by simple problems of consistency. "Reason" will always give way to what is "holy." Every group has something sacred to its identity, something holy that must be kept pure. Which is an observation, more than a critique. No group stands so far outside of human existence as to be exempt from this fundamental necessity. Finding out what is truly worth preserving is hard work, indeed. Existentialism considers it the creation of the self, even the establishment of the world one lives in. Quite a responsibility; and the issue really is, have we done the work? If we haven't, who are we to complain about "them"?

The other issue is: is politics all about getting "them" to reason like "us"? Or is it about the implementation of governmental power? An issue quite different from either morality or rationality (although not wholly divorced from either).

Or is that killing the conversation before it gets started?

"Hang it all, Robert Browning, there can be but one Sordello!"

"But Sordello, and my Sordello?"--Ezra Pound

Philalethes gives rise to this thought. He argues, quite rightly, that the "Left" cannot change the mind of the "Right" by way of a frontal assault. One side cannot, in other words, persuade the other side of the "error of their ways" simply by making them see things from "our point of view."

We cannot, in other words, convince "them" to be "reasonable. By their lights, they already are being reasonable.

Quite simply, the appeal of George W. Bush in the last election was through fear. He wasn't an appealing candidate, he wasn't even a reassuring candidate. But he was the candidate who played on our fears, and convinced us he understood we had something to be afraid of. Not that he would protect us from it, necessarily; but we were right: the world is a scary place, full of people who hate "us," people who want to kill us. Why? Because "they" are our enemies. "They" hate our freedom. In the end, motivation doesn't matter. 9/11 shattered our complacency and proved we cannot be too vigilant. Tom Clancy was right, and the dangers of the Cold War exploded into reality, and we almost had another Nazi Germany on our hands. Thank God for a leader who understands that threat.

Look at the voting pattern. Even "The Daily Show" understood that the places least likely to be targeted (such as "The Corn Palace") were the states that went strongest for Bush. Why? Fear. New York and California are not afraid, they are rational. But "middle America," "flyover country," receives the shocks of catastrophe in California or assaults in New York, and trembles with the aftershocks long after the coasts have shrugged it off and gone back about their business. Natural disasters middle America understands: tornadoes, droughts, floods, thunderstorms. Man-made disasters, because they never happen "here" ('here' being the area between the coasts), are therefore absolutely terrifying. Last time it was Pearl Harbor; this time it was New York City; next time it will be Omaha.

And our politics doesn't help. Gore Vidal points out that the 2004 election was about gay marriage and abortion, rather than invading foreign countries and countering terrorism in the world. In the name of fear, we have declared war on 1 billion Muslims. But middle America, snug in its coccoon between the coasts and secure in its ignorance and complacency, insists "they" started it. Ignorant of what we do in the world, who we arm, support, how and why, middle America is shocked and surprised when there is a consequence to any action. The fundamental principle of the narrative of The Iliad, that every action has its consequence, is lost on them. Theirs is is a moral universe where they are pure and innocent, and so never have to face outsized responsibility for outsized acts, because they never commit any, and they refuse to believe their government would commit any in their name. So they are easily motivated by fear. Since Harry Truman told them to fear the Russians, a country that wanted only to recover from the 20 million dead in World War II, from the depravity and cowardice of Stalin, they have been convinced to be always afraid.

We are talking, after all, about the land of the missile silos. They convinced themselves a generation ago that they were the shield against godless Communism, and they still believe horror and evil walk the earth, looking for an opening into Paradise. Homer they don't read, but Milton they took in with their mother's milk.

How do you talk to such people? How do you persuade them they are wrong?

You don't.

What, then, do you do? Let's think about that.

THE LESSON: MICAH 6:1-8

Hear what the LORD says: Rise, plead your case before the mountains, and let the hills hear your voice. Hear, you mountains, the controversy of the LORD, and you enduring foundations of the earth; for the LORD has a controversy with his people, and he will contend with Israel. "0 my people, what have I done to you? In what have I wearied you? Answer me! For I brought you up from the land of Egypt, and redeemed you from the house of slavery; and I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. 0 my people, remember now what King Balak of Moab devised, what Balaam son of Beor answered him, and what happened from Shittim to Gilgal, that you may know the saving acts of the LORD." "With what shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

Start with Paul Ricouer's thesis: "namely that religious experience comes to language through specific modes of discourse," and we have a better starting place for considering the words of the Hebrew Prophets.

First: they were talking to a specific community: Israel, before, during, or after, the Exile. And most of them were strong proponents of social justice, which they linked to the worship of the God of Abraham. But even for prophets like Micah, who promoted "pure" worship (i.e., uncontaminated by the practices of non-Hebraic cultures), that worship was also carried out in life, not just in the temple.

Second: the "specific modes of discourse." The image of a trial is almost a constant in the Hebrew Scriptures. As first the northern kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrians, and then the kingdom of Judah first lost power, and then even existence, the people wondered where their protection from the God of Abraham had gone. They challenged God, and the prophets often responded with a courtroom of Creation, where Creation itself was called to bear witness and hear the complaints of Israel (the people), and God. This touches on Ricouer once more, whom I am taking for my own uses (obviously), but who is nonetheless instructive here:

Ricouer's thesis rests in part on the relation between the form of discourse and the theological content, an understsnding developed by Gerhard von Rad. Ricouer applies it to narratives in the Scriptures, and finds:

This example, systematically developed, no longer allows us to construct theologies of the Old or New Testaments that understand the narrative category to be a rhetorical procedure alien to the content it carries. It seems, on the contrary, that something specific, something unique, is said about Yahweh and about Yahweh's relations with the people Israel because it is said in the form of a narrative, of a story that recounds the events of deliverance in the past...Nothing is said about God or about humankind or about their relations that does not first of all reassemble legends and isolated sagas and rearrange them in meaningful sequences so as to constitute a unique story, centered upon a kernel-event, that has both a historical import and a kerygmatic dimension.*

So this story of God calling a "cosmic courtroom" together is a theological expression as well as a visionary episode. Micah speaks about the relationship of the God of Abraham to the children of Abraham. When God calls for justice, God is placed before justice, too: not as judge, but as petitioner. God calls upon Creation to witness and to judge, in a way more like the trial of Socrates in Plato's Apology than
like the second half of "Law & Order." God, like Job, is willing to be judged, because God knows who is innocent, and who is at fault. But God, take note, is willing to be judged.

But not, apparently, so anxious to judge. This is the real significance of the scene. "What does the Lord require of you?" Not the firstfruit of the land; not even the firstfruit of your body (just as the concluding verses echo Psalm 51, there are echoes here of Deuteronomy 26:1-11, and Genesis 22); in fact, before any "demand" is made, there is a reminder that first comes the blessing, then comes the duty. And the budren is, indeed, light: "He has told you, O mortal, what is good." God gives, in other words, and asks for exchange only later. It can be argued, in fact, that what God offers is as close to a gift as is possible under Jacques Derrida's strict definition (i.e., something given without knowledge by the giver or by recipient, so that there is no economy of exchange, no cycle of delivery and compensation for delivery). God sells without price, and we buy without money.

And what is "good"? Those would be the moral precepts of the Mosaic law: the social justice, the proper worship of the God of Abraham. The way of life, as opposed to death, as set before Israel by Moses (Deuteronomy 30:15). We all have to live, and we all have to follow some rules; but which ones are good, and lead to the "good life"? The question, quite simply, of Aristotle's Nichomacean Ethics. That is what Micah is referring to, what God is offering: an ethic, a practice for life.

And what is it? That's the law of Moses, the teachings of the prophets. And what does it require of you? What do you give up, in order to gain this good (even Aristotle understood some things had to be given up, in order to make greater gains)? What, indeed, except to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.

An address, let me repeat, made to the children of Abraham: and now to those who want to walk with the God of Abraham. But what does it cost you? Only the willingness to do the justice the God of Abraham is willing to submit to; the love the mercy offered unconditionally by the God of Abraham; and to be humble before the God of Abraham. It is the lesson of Moses; of Job; or Isaiah; of Jesus of Nazareth and Paul and St. Augustine and St. Aquinas and St. Francis and Thomas Merton and Dorothy Day and Jim Wallis and...well, you get the idea.

As Moses said to Israel: "Surely, this commandment...is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away. It is not in heaven, that you should say 'Who will go up to heaven for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it? Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, 'Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?' No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth an din your heart for you to observe." (Deuteronomy 30:11-14, NRSV)

*Paul Ricouer, "Philosophy and Religious Language," Figuring the Sacred, tr. David Pellauer (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1995), p. 40

Speaking of enemies

If you need a simple, secular, reason to "love your enemies," look no further than the example of Dr. Thomas E. Woods. (Full disclosure: I had a family member by marriage, a person I dearly love, buy Dr. Woods' book from the bookstore were I work a few days a week, as a gift for a relative. "Love your enemy," indeed.) The motivation for Dr. Woods and his "League of the South" comes down to this:

And it would include, presumably, Hill's claim—in an official League of the South press release—that "[t]he 'Reverend' 'Dr.' Martin Luther King, Jr., far from being the saint of recent liberal myth, was nothing but a philandering, plagiarizing, left-wing agitator."

For Dr. Woods' League of the South, the NAACP, you see, is an "enemy" with which the League of the South is "at war." According to the League's President, Dr. Michael Hill, League members "know that the Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons of the world are nothing but vile race hustlers and that 'institutional racism' is merely an excuse to mask black failure and to justify lawless and aggressive behavior against 'white oppressors.' . . . [T]he leftist agenda on race is pretty clear," says Woods' colleague. "The question is, what are we white traditionalists going to do about it?"

And then there is this, that I picked up via Athenae at First Draft, from Keith Olberman.

It goes back to the core of the Dobsonian point of view here: the fear of the “pro-Homosexual” agenda. That may be the way he delicately phrases it, but it is not shared by most of his followers who emailed me. They were clearly angry that there was no anti-homosexual agenda.

Frankly, to have "enemies" like this is the height of hubris. It is to imagine yourself the center of the universe, and your "self" being violated because at the boundaries there are those who are "impure." It is the issue of identity. If someone in your community is not like you, then who are you? Which brings the issue down to this simple, psychological truth: that which you most oppose, you most come to resemble. And that which you most love? Do you come to resemble it, too? Or to resemble love?

ADDENDUM: It occurs to me: that which you love, you come to resemble, too. Relationships alter who you are. And it really is all about relationships. An enemy, by definition, is the one you hate. So: do you want to be defined by hate? Or by love?

"The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?"

Easy to think you are in this all by yourself. Jane caught this reference, even as it was running through my head all day, looking for a connection. Made it to church late today, and what was in the lectionary?

THE LESSON: MICAH 6:1-8 ,
Hear what the LORD says: Rise, plead your case before the mountains, and let the hills hear your voice. Hear, you mountains, the controversy of the LORD, and you enduring foundations of the earth; for the LORD has a controversy with his people, and he will contend with Israel. "0 my people, what have I done to you? In what have I wearied you? Answer me! For I brought you up from the land of Egypt, and redeemed you from the house of slavery; and I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. 0 my people, remember now what King Balak of Moab devised, what Balaam son of Beor answered him, and what happened from Shittim to Gilgal, that you may know the saving acts of the LORD." "With what shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" He has told you, 0 mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

And better than that, was the rest of the lectionary:

THE PSALM: PSALM 37:1-7

1 Do not fret yourself because of evildoers;
do not be jealous of those who do wrong.

2 For they shall soon wither like the grass,
and like the green grass fade away.

3 Put your trust in the LORD and do good;
dwell in the land and feed on its riches.

4 Take delight in the LORD,
and he shall give you your heart's desire.

5 Commit your way to the LORD and put your trust in him,
and he will bring it to pass.

6 He will make your righteousness as clear as the light
and your just dealing as the noonday.

7 Be still before the LORD
and wait patiently for him.

THE EPISTLE: 1 CORINTHIANS 1:26-31

Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, "Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord."

THE HOLY GOSPEL: MATTHEW 5: 1-12
When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you."

Could spend a fruitful week just exegeting each of these, especially in their juxtaposition to each other....

The Lord be with you.

What Maureen Dowd Said

Nothing more than recycling material from someone else, but, this is Maureen Dowd's description of some of the material in Erik Sarr's book about his experiences as an Army Sergeant and Arabic interpreter at Gitmo:

After the prisoner spat in her face, she left the room to ask a Muslim linguist how she could break the prisoner's reliance on God. The linguist suggested she tell the prisoner that she was menstruating, touch him, and then shut off the water in his cell so he couldn't wash.

"The concept was to make the detainee feel that after talking to her he was unclean and was unable to go before his God in prayer and gain strength," Mr. Saar recounted, adding: "She then started to place her hands in her pants as she walked behind the detainee. As she circled around him he could see that she was taking her hand out of her pants. When it became visible the detainee saw what appeared to be red blood on her hand. She said, 'Who sent you to Arizona?' He then glared at her with a piercing look of hatred. She then wiped the red ink on his face. He shouted at the top of his lungs, spat at her and lunged forward," breaking out of an ankle shackle.

"He began to cry like a baby," the author wrote, adding that the interrogator's parting shot was: "Have a fun night in your cell without any water to clean yourself."

A female civilian contractor kept her "uniform" - a thong and miniskirt - on the back of the door of an interrogation room, the author says.

Who are these women? Who allows this to happen? Why don't the officers who allow it get into trouble? Why do Rummy and Paul Wolfowitz still have their jobs?

And, of course:

The military did not deny the specifics, but said the prisoners were treated "humanely" and in a way consistent "with legal obligations prohibiting torture." However the Bush White House is redefining torture these days, the point is this: Such behavior degrades the women who are doing it, the men they are doing it to, and the country they are doing it for.

"God bless America", they say. But when they are acting like this, have they forgotten what God did for the country God had a covenant with? Have none of these people heard of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, Hosea? "God Bless America" is soon going to sound like a desperate plea, not a triumphalist slogan.

The public response to this, of course, will be that such disclosures undermine our "war on terror," or the troops, or the country. A textbook example of Samuel Johnson's assertion that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. And our country is now full of patriots.

Why We Don't Need the Kyoto Treaty, or...

The World According to George W. Bush, oilman:

Three gallons per day--amount of oil consumed by average American. this is twice as much as the average European or Japanese, 15 times as much as someone in the developing world.

One quarter of world oil production--amount consumed by the United States. Of that, 1/2 is consumed by cars, pickups, and SUV's.

19.7 tons of carbon dioxide per annum--amount emitted by the average American. Nearly twice the amount emitted by average European or Japanese; over 5 times the global average.

From The End of Oil, by Paul Roberts, Houghton Mifflin 2005.

Oh, and, according to Robertson, oil production will effectively end in 30 years. According to Hibbert's Peak, the man who predicted the "oil crisis" of the '70's (and was ridiculed for it, until it came true), also predicted the inevitable end. The reason you don't hear these statistics, and the government that is supposed to protect you isn't worried about it?

Three guesses; first two don't count. Just remember: the crisis is Social Security; not petroleum. And once you buy that, you'll want to invest in this land in Louisiana I have available...

How Do You Love Your Enemy?

How do you love your enemy? How do you let go of your anger and animosity and fear? Is it merely an act of will, a matter of right thinking? Is it a product of emotional development, or intellectual insight?

Or is it an act of faith?

You cannot love what you do not know. To try to do so is an act of madness, an empty gesture that proves meaningless. But how do you love the one you know who does wish to harm you, the one who seeks your life or the life of those you care about? How do you decide what is within, and what is outside, your control?

Begin with your self. Where is your center? What is your self? How do you define it? Is it the boundaries you try to maintain? Or is it the irreducible center that you recognize and accept? Is it established by your constant efforts? Or is it established from before the time you were born, and you need merely hold on to it? And do you find it by your own efforts? Or by your openness?

Greek epistemology presumes that all knowledge worth knowing is uncovered by an act of will: a willingness to learn, to seek, explore, discover and finally know. "We shall not cease from exploration," says Eliot, "and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." But Hebraic epistemology presumes that all knowledge worth knowing is revealed, because all that is, comes from the hand of God; it comes from the Creator.

One pillar of Western civilization presumes that the most important relationships are the human ones, that how we relate to the community, how we find our place in the community, is what defines us as human beings. This is not Greek particularly; it goes back as far as the epic of Gilgamesh. Another pillar of Western civilization, however, presumes that our most important relationship is with the Creator, that from that relationship all other human relationships find their meaning, purpose, and place. This is why Genesis opens, not with the story of the Garden of Eden, but with the six days of creation, each act spoken into existence by the Creator, each result pronounced good, and humankind, male and female, placed in the midst of it and given stewardship and responsibility over it, and all related to all and to the Creator because the word of the Creator is the creative force and is the origin of everything that is. All relationships within all creation, start there.

So how do we love our enemy? We start with the impossibility of the command, and with our move toward our center. Love is a matter of vulnerability, but the more we move to our center, the more we move to God (it is the confession of Christianity, after all, that God is who gives us this command), the more we lose our vulnerability to each other, as we gain our security in God. How do we love our enemy? By loving and trusting God. Any other answer would mean it is simply an act of will, that this command is simply a statement of wisdom, and that human effort alone will finally secure our salvation. If that were so, there'd be no need for a Christian confession, for any religious confession, at all.

Preparatory to an Answer....

Answer when I call, faithful God.
You cleared away my trouble;
be good to me, listen to my prayer.

How long, proud fools,
will you insult my honor,
loving lies and chasing shadows?
Look! God astounds believers,
the Lord listens when I call.

Tremble, but do not despair.
Attend to your hear,
be calm through the night,
worship with integrity,
trust in the Lord.

Cynics ask, "Who will bless us?
Even God has turned away."
You give my heart more joy
than all their grain and wine.
I sleep secure at night,
you keep me in your care.

--Psalm 4

All you sheltered by the Most High,
who live in Almighty God's shadow,
say to the Lord, "My refuge, my fortress,
my God in whom I trust!"

God will free you from hunter's snares,
will save you from deadly plague,
will cover you like a nesting bird,
God's wings will shelter you.

No nighttime terror shall you ear,
no arrows shot by day,
no plague that prowls the dark,
no wasting scourge at noon.

A thousand my fall at your side,
ten thousand at your right hand.
But you shall live unharmed.
God is sturdy armor.

You have only to open your eyes
to see how the wicked are repaid.
You have the Lord as refuge,
have made the Most High your stronghold.

No evil shall ever touch you,
no harm come near your home.
God instructs angels
to guard you wherever you go.

With your hands they support you
so your foot will not strike a stone.
You will tread on lion and viper,
tramply tawny lion and dragon.

"I will deliver all who cling to me,
raise the ones who know my name,
answer those who call me,
stand with those in trouble.
These I rescue and honor,
satisfy with long life,
and show my power to save."

--Psalm 91 (90)

Lord, let your servant
now die in peace
for you kept your promise
With my own eyes
I see the salvation
you prepared for all peoples:
a light of revelation for the Gentiles
and glory to your people Israel.

--Canticle of Simeon

"Love Your Enemy"

Dom Crossan includes that phrase, in just those words, in The Essential Jesus, his collection of what he considers the "original sayings" of Jesus of Nazareth. How he came to choose them, and to render them, is another matter. But his comment on it is instructive.

We sometimes think of this admonition as primarily internal and emotional. Jesus' first audience heard it especially in terms of attitude and action, in terms of treating enemies as if they were friends, strangers as if they were kin, opponents as if they were family. That did not mean external action as distinct from internal attitude but simply placed emphasis on the former rather than the latter.

John Dominic Crossan, The Essential Jesus (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994, p. 163)

Think of it in terms of the rebels who brought doom upon Jerusalem. Considering Rome their enemy, they struck at Rome; which struck back, and destroyed the city, and changed Jewish history forever (in fact, some scholars see it as the end of Hebraism and the creation of Judaism). But what enemy did they hate? Caesar? Did Caesar even know they existed, except as a threat to the Pax Romana?

How do you hate an enemy you have no personal relationship with? What you hate, what you oppose, is an abstraction, not flesh and blood. When someone follows a celebrity around excessively, we don't say that person is in love, we say they are delusional. They love the idea of the celebrity, not the person herself. When we say we "hate" our political opponents, are we describing an external action, or an internal attitude? Can I act out my anger at a politician? Does the action have any meaning?

Conversely, can you love a politician? A person, perhaps, but an idea? What relationship do I have with that idea, and who is in charge of it? Me? or the idea? Can I love someone I do not know? How do I love without any personal relationship at all? If I say I love a celebrity, I am either a child, or a deluded person. If I say I hate them, I am placing myself at the center of existence, and insisting that only what I think is important.

The issue of center and boundaries and power and powerlessness are all of a piece, and all to be seen here. "Love your enemies"? That would require action, not attitude. I cannot love those whom I do not know. I can hate; but that is impotent, because hate is about power, about action, about exerting my influence over another. If love is patient, and kind, and endures all things, and hopes all things, and believes all things, then love is about powerlessness, and I cannot exert it over another, especially over one I do not know. Love is about the other, not about me. Hatred focusses on me, on my wants, my desires, my ability to gain power over another. Love focusses outward, but needs an object, needs a reciprocation, abhors a void. Loving an idea is trying to love the void. Hating an idea is simply trying to feed my ego, to convince myself of my own importance.

"Love your enemy." You first have to know who your "enemy" is; and who it cannot be.

"(Let the reader understand)"

Gathered in this place we are reminded that such immense cruelty did not happen in a far-away, uncivilized corner of the world, but rather in the very heart of the civilized world. The death camps [like the invasion of Iraq, and the atrocities at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo] were created by men with a high opinion of themselves - some of them well educated, and possessed of refined manners - but without conscience. And where there is no conscience, there is no tolerance toward others ... no defense against evil ... and no limit to the crimes that follow.

The story of the camps [and Iraq, Abu Ghraib, and Gitmo] reminds us that evil is real, and must be called by its name, and must be confronted. We are reminded that anti-Semitism [which, after all, simply means being anti-Middle Eastern, as Arabs and other nationals of the Middle East are as "Semitic" as Jews] may begin with words, but rarely stops with words ... and the message of intolerance and hatred must be opposed before it turns into acts of horror.

[Oops. Too late.]

From remarks delivered by Vice President Dick Cheney at the "Let My People Live" Forum, Krakow, Poland, January 27, 2005.

Yes, overly snarky. The more civilized option would perhaps be to point out that this man holds office and represents the United States only after climbing into that high position on the mound of 10,000 to 100,000 Iraqi bodies that he is directly responsible for creating. That he stands in that lofty place atop a veritable mountain of decaying human flesh, a mountain of his own creation. And that he has the gall to speak of the evil of others, to point out their splinter as if there were not a tree protruding from his own eye....

And yes, there is a difference between industrialized slaughter of a group of people, and deaths caused by blind ideology and indifference to reality. But it is a difference in degree, not in kind. To the dead, the reasons for their deaths no longer matter; and to the living, trying to slip a piece of paper between the distinctions of the Holocaust and the unwarranted invasion of Iraq, is like trying to argue the importance of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Evil is evil, no matter who perpetrates it, no matter what excuse they give for their actions. There is no justification for the deaths at Auschwitz and Dachau, or any of the deaths of World War II. And there is no justification for the deaths and the horrors of Iraq today. Saddam Hussein was evil, but we have proven no better. The Vice President's remarks only confirm that evil knows evil. It can be said for all of us. We recognize evil because we know it from our hearts. But some of us have a sense of our culpability, and some of us don't.

If George Bush doesn't know who you are, is George Bush your enemy?

But the first step is to recognize that you "have" enemies only because you hold them as such, only because you engage in a practice of possesion, rather than in a relationship with the other.

Can you have an enemy, when the enemy doesn't know it? Can you have an enemy, when you don't know it?

The enemy that seeks your life is one kind of enemy, but it is largely the creation of the entertainment industry. Few of us have someone dedicated to taking our life. Most murders occur between friends, not strangers. Most victims of violent crime know their assailants. Strangers lurking in the bushes are a frightening idea, but they are seldom reality. And an enemy doesn't always seek to do you violence.

Facing the stone cold heartlessness of the other is like facing an open pit. How to not fall in? How to face that emptiness without needing to summon all your own ego in hating that person just to know that sense of "I AM." Hating is easier than facing the void. And loving, pouring love into a bottomless pit...isn't that somehow what God did when he loved us into being, into creation?

How not to fall in, indeed. And why the need to fall in, except the "enemy" challenges the "boundaries" that you have declared to be your "self." And defending the boundaries of the self is always a losing proposition. So let it go; it is lost. Hold fast to the center. And consider: how can you have an "enemy" whom you do not see face to face, even "the stone cold heartless" face? How can you have an enemy who does not know you, as you know your enemy? How can the relationship of "enemy" not be reciprocal?

These are not abstract questions of the philosophy of religion. These are the necessary fundamentals, the "building blocks" toward understanding how one can "love" one's "enemy"?

Death in the Morning

State sanctioned death has never been limited to our national "enemies," and an excellent article by Sister Helen Prejean makes that clear. It also reveals that, among other obfuscations, Bush has used the tool of "definitions" before, and has always been more careful and clever with his language than his persona of malapropisms would suggest:

To make sure that he never had to examine death sentences seriously, Governor Bush used a legal tactic similar to the one used by the US Supreme Court to block death row petitioners' access to constitutional claims. He restricted the standard for clemency so severely that no petitioner could qualify. He stated that since the courts had "thoroughly examined" every obscure detail of a death row petitioner's claims and found no grounds for injustice, it was not his place to "second-guess" the courts. In his autobiography Bush wrote,

In every [death] case, I would ask: Is there any doubt about this individual's guilt or innocence? And, have the courts had ample opportunity to review all the legal issues in this case?

But, of course, the courts would already have reviewed and rejected the legal issues of death row petitioners' cases before they landed on Bush's desk. As governor, Bush was literally the court of last resort for a condemned man or woman, vested with authority to dispense mercy or withhold it, according to his personal judgment. Unlike the courts, he was not restricted to pure legalities. As far back as 1855, the US Supreme Court saw compassion and mercy as central to the exercise of gubernatorial clemency. This means that governors and their boards are free to consider any basis for mercy: mental handicaps, mental illness, childhood abuse, incompetence of defense counsel, remorse, racial discrimination in juries, signs of rehabilitation.

To have and to hold

To have an enemy, first, is to have a relationship with another person.
To have an enemy is to have someone who acts against me, either over a long-term, or on a sudden impulse. And an enemy must be someone who can be held responsible for what occurs, must be accountable for his or her actions.

But what does it mean to "have" an enemy? How is it that we come to possess such a relationship with another person? "Love your enemy," we are told. Why is the enemy "mine"? Is it a person I possess? Or a relationship?

I can have relationships with several people, in several different ways. But relationship is an ontological situation: it is a position of my being, and always one that is reciprocal. I cannot have a friend if the other person does not accept my friendship, too. I cannot have a lover if the other person does not reciprocate my love. We rightly consider people who have merely one-sided relationships as either sad and delusional, or in need of therapy. "Enemy" is an ontological relationship; not a personal one, or a physical one. But is it also a reciprocal one? Must my enemy reciprocate in the same way, in order for the relationship fo "enemy" to be established? Well, if someone declares himself my enemy, but I don't recognize the relationship, I don't reciprocate, is the relationship established? Or is that person merely deluded? Dangerous, perhaps, to be sure; but if I don't recognize the relationship on those terms, does it exist?

And what does it mean to "have" an enemy? "Your" is clearly possessive. "Love your enemy," is the commandment. Clearly I can love my friend, my family, my lover. But do I have a possessory interest in them, too? Possession is a legal and physical concept. The law establishes and protects the concept of possession. Physical presence establishes and enforces it. But persons are not possessions. We do not possess people, either at law, or in ontology. Even if the law establishes a right to possession, a right to control (as it does in the case of parents and children), it does not establish a possessory interest that is similar to title in personal, or real, property. And the distinction is not merely legal. Possession of an object is possession, ownership, control, grasp, of a thing. How could we ever have, even under the most severe slavery, possession of a person?

You may possess the body; but do you possess the soul, the mind, the essence, of the person? Do you possess who they are, their being? Do we even possess our own being? Possession of things is possible. Possession of persons, is impossible.

So how can we say that we "have" an enemy? What do we mean? What do we possess? An entity which opposes us, an entity which is against us? Why would we have such a possession? Why don't we discard it? Because we do not choose our enemies, they choose us? Because we do not have enemies, they have us? Do we truly imagine that we stand that far outside of the economy of human relationships as to be innocent, as to be blameless? Or do we imagine that we are mere pawns in a game we cannot play, chips in the flood, helpless in a world we never made? If so, then how do we love anyone? We have no power to affect anything; we have no responsibility for what is done to us.

But if we "have" an enemy, and if we must love that enemy, then the entire situation is in our hands. And while we may want to cry out "Wretched creature that I am, who is there to rescue me from this state of death?", we simultaneously realize that we alone have the key to our imprisonment. We cannot "have" enemies unless we possess them. We cannot love our enemies, until we release them. Because so long as they are enemies, they are not other to us; they are objects. And we cannot love objects. We can only love entities, those who can be in relationship to us.

So, how do we love our enemy? By not having any; by refusing to be in possession of enemies, but refusing to treat entities with whom we can have relationships, as objects to whom we can only stand in possession or dis-possession. That is not the full way, but that is the start of the way. It is, of course, a way of vulnerability; not yet of complete vulnerability. To simply let go of an enemy, to simply refuse that relationship, is to make yourself vulnerable physically or psychicly, if not emotionally and spiritually. To love your enemy, is to open yourself fully, wholly, completely: it is to be absolutely vulnerable. It is another step entirely.

But the first step is to recognize that you "have" enemies only because you hold them as such, only because you engage in a practice of possesion, rather than in a relationship with other. That is the first step. That is the beginning.

The Quest of the Historical Jesus

Building on a great deal of critical and scholarly work that began in Germany in the 19th century, Albert Schweitzer conducted his own research and published The Quest of the Historical Jesus, in which he questioned whether historians could establish the existence of Jesus of Nazareth at all. The book stirred some controversy, and continues to do so to this day, largely among people who have never read it or even heard of it, but are convinced that all reasonable and educated people know that Jesus of Nazareth is a complete fiction. I've had brief discussions with such people over at Eschaton. Some of them base their opinions merely on what they have heard; some base it on the claims of the Gospels, such as the virgin birth and the resurrection, insisting that any stories with such claims are inherently not credible. And then this morning I pulled out John Dominic Crossan's The Essential Jesus.

The book is Crossan's reduction of the authentic sayings of Jesus (according to his hermeneutic), and the outgrowth of his rather magisterial study: The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Peasant. That book, of course, both presumes and establishes the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth. But in his prologue to The Essential Jesus, Crossan provides a succinct refutation to the claim that there is no evidence, outside the gospels, of this man's existence.

If no Christian had written anything about Jesus for the first hundred years after his death, we would still have two succinct accounts from those not counted among his followers. One account dates from the last decade of the first century and comes from the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus in his Jewish Antiquities 18.63:

"About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man. . . . For he was one who wrought surprising feats and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. . . . When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing amongst us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the firstplace come to love him did not give up their affection for him. . . . And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared."

His description is carefully neutral or, at most, mildly critical. The text was both preserved and interpolated by Christian editors, but I cite it without their proposed improvements.

The next account dates from the first decades of the sec-ond century and comes from the pagan historian Cornelius Tacitus. Having told how a rumor blamed Nero for the disastrous fire that swept Rome in 64 C.E., he continues in Annals 15-44:

"Therefore to scotch the rumour, Nero substituted as culprits, and punished with the utmost refinements of cruelty, a class of men, loathed for their vices, whom the crowd styled Christians. Christus, the founder of the name, had undergone the death penalty in the reign of Tiberius, by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilatus, and the pernicious superstition was checked for the moment, only to break out once more, not merely in Judaea, the home of the disease, but in the capital itself, where all things horrible or shameful in the wor1d collect and find a vogue."

Despite the differences between the studied impartiality of Josephus and the sneering partiality of Tacitus, they agree on three rather basic facts. First, there was some sort of a movement connected with Jesus. Second, he was executed by official authority presumably to stop the movement. Third, rather than being stopped, the movement continued to spread.

There remain, therefore, these three: movement, execution, continuation. But the greatest of these is continuation.

John Dominic Crossan,The Essential Jesus (HarperSanFrancisco 1994, pp. vi-vii)

If, after all, it is all invention, it had to be invented by someone. It had to have a focal point, an origination, a beginning. Scholars have long stopped debating the existence of Jesus of Nazareth. Now they discuss the life he lead (Crossan's books are excellent on this point), and the words he actually said.

Support the Troops

In other sections, the NYT almost redeems itself by publishing the words of Frank Rich:

In this same vein, television's ceremonial coverage of the Inauguration, much of which resembled the martial pageantry broadcast by state-owned networks in banana republics, made a dutiful show out of the White House's claim that the four-day bacchanal was a salute to the troops. The only commentator to rudely call attention to the disconnect between that fictional pretense and the reality was Judy Bachrach, a writer for Vanity Fair, who dared say on Fox News that the inaugural's military ball and prayer service would not keep troops "safe and warm" in their "flimsy" Humvees in Iraq. She was promptly given the hook. (The riveting three-minute clip, labeled "Fair and Balanced Inauguration," can be found at ifilm.com, where it has seized the "most popular" slot once owned by Jon Stewart's slapdown of Tucker Carlson.)

Alas, there were no Fox News cameras to capture what may have been the week's most surreal "salute" to the troops, the "Heroes Red, White and Blue Inaugural Ball" attended by Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. The event's celebrity stars included the Fox correspondent Geraldo Rivera, who had been booted from Iraq at the start of the war for compromising "operational security" by telling his viewers the position of the American troops he loves so much. He joked to the crowd that his deployment as an "overpaid" reporter was tantamount to that of an "underpaid hero" in battle. The attendees from Walter Reed and Bethesda Naval Hospital, some of whose long-term care must be picked up by private foundations because of government stinginess, responded with "deafening silence," reported Roxanne Roberts of The Washington Post. Ms. Roberts understandably left the party after the night's big act: Nile Rodgers and Chic sang the lyrics "Clap your hands, hoo!" and "Dance to the beat" to "a group of soldiers missing hands and legs."

"You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

But nobody said it would be easy; or that it would come quickly.

All the News That's Glaringly Obvious

When American troops entered Baghdad and overthrew the government of Saddam Hussein 21 months ago, Raad al-Naqib felt free at last.

But Dr. Naqib, a 46-year-old Sunni dentist who opposed Mr. Hussein, will not vote Sunday when Iraqis will have their first opportunity in a generation to participate in an election with no predetermined outcome. It is, he said, far too dangerous when insurgent groups have warned that they will kill anybody who approaches a polling station.

Starkly put, Baghdad is not under control, either by the Iraqi interim government or the American military.

From the New York Times, this morning.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but: what was their first clue?

On the bright spring day in April 2003 when marines helped topple Mr. Hussein's statue in Firdos Square, Baghdad, more than any other place in Iraq, was the place American commanders hoped to make a showcase for the benefits the invasion would bring.

Instead, daily life here has become a deadly lottery, a place so fraught with danger that one senior American military officer acknowledged at a briefing last month that nowhere in the area assigned to his troops could be considered safe.

I suppose one should be grateful they are finally mentioning this. But still, it raises the question: why didn't they mention this last October? Has anything really changed since then? Was there some empirical, or even vaguely sensible, reason to believe the Bush Administration had a rabbit, or even a hat to pull it out of?

Morning meditation on enemies and love

"Love your enemy." But who is "your" enemy? And how can an enemy be loved?

On a national level, "enemy" can be fairly easy to define. Almost without argument, the one who attacks you is your enemy. The nation has a duty to defend itself. The nation exists, as a legal or political concept, to "provide for the common defense." So it is in the definition of a nation, to defend its existence against those who would destroy it. And those who would destroy it, are the "enemy."

How enemies are created, is another matter. Some attacks seem to be unprovoked; clearly that is a matter of perspective. Even then, the enemy can be the provacateur, although few nations stand outside the cycles of violence and retribution, and none stand so far above it as to claim absolute innocence. But those are moral questions; sometimes applicable to the situation, and enlightening; sometimes not applicable, and merely inappropriate. Usually they are somewhere in between. But "enemy," at its simplest meaning, is the one who wishes to do the nation harm, and who must be stopped if the nation is to persist in its existence.

So nations may have enemies; but nations can never be called on to "love" their enemies. Nations, to begin with, cannot love. People can. And one of the questions about love is, can people love entities? Or can they only love individuals?

Nations cannot love, because nations have no existence, have no ability to have a relationship with another entity such that the relationship can be properly understood as one of "love," under any definition. A nation is merely an idea, a construct, an agreed upon set of political boundaries, of laws and traditions and agreements about governance. In the simplest terms, a nation is merely a social contract, and it is preserved as much by adhering to the general terms of the contract, as by its armies and navies and air power. Nations cannot have relationships. Only people can.

People have relationships; with other beings, clearly: people or animals. With institutions, too? Only through people. No one has a relationship with a corporation, a church, a school. They have a relationship with the people of that corporation, church, school. Some of those people may symbolize the institution, but the institution does not exist apart from the people who uphold and adhere to the idea of that institution. We may say our love is for the Church, or the alma mater, or "Big Blue." But it is for the ideas of those things, and those ideas are only known through other people, only realized and made accessible to us, through the actions of other people. If someone says they have a relationship with an institution, and truly mean apart from any person who represents it, we don't consider them more insightful than us; we consider them delusional. Our relationships are with beings: with people, with pets, with animals. Our relationships are never with ideas alone.

So we alone can love, can give love and receive love. It is a giving and a receiving, is love; that is why it is, and requires, a relationship. Unrequited love is mere fancy; it is, in fact, self-love. We love other people. And only other people, can receive our love.

So how do we "love" our "enemies"?

To have an enemy, first, is to have a relationship with another people. Nature may be my enemy, in some cases; or time, or circumstance. But I can't have a relationship with those things. They are indifferent to my problems, don't react to thwart my plans, don't plot to bring about my destruction, don't act on will. And I cannot love nature, time, circumstance. To have an enemy that can be loved, the enemy must be a person.

But not merely because it must be capable of receiving love from me. The enemy is willful. The enemy is the one who acts against me, either over a long-term, or on a sudden impulse. The enemy is the one who can be held responsible for what occurs. Nature, time, circumstance; all are fundamentally irresponsible. An enemy, in order to be an enemy, in order to be considered my adversary, must be responsible for what occurs, must be accountable for its actions.

Now, the question is: how do I hold my enemy accountable? In love? Or in justice?