Excerpted from God’s Politics Blog.
On Friday, Jim Wallis and Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, engaged in a dialogue on the role of faith in politics at the Family Research Council’s “Values Voters Summit,” tackling such issues as abortion, poverty, the environment, and national security. Below is a video with some of the highlights.
Below is a video of the highlights.
I’m not sure how this slipped by me. But the posturing continues. I really hope that W & Cheney aren’t dumb enough to try and pull something out in their remaining time in office. I’m fairly confident that an incoming office (Republican or Democrat) wouldn’t try something like that coming into office until they built up some credibility in the first couple of years and wouldn’t do it in the last couple of years so as not to screw up their 2nd term bid. Especially without staffers like Wolfowitz and Rove influencing decisions.
So that should buy us a little bit of time provided that W & Cheney don’t start smelling blood in the water.
But I’m getting more and more convinced that they do in smell blood in the water of American sentiment towards Iran. And they’ve put the machine back into full gear to convince us. To be fair, it could be diplomatic posturing. But to be fair again, I have a rather large body of evidence (7 years) that would suggest otherwise.
This video that I posted yesterday shows how much is similar to the ramp up in Iraq. This newest development in combination with what I’ve linked to here, here, and here. It has an eerie feeling (to me at least) that some people are trying to get their ducks in a row.
On my way to Alabama yesterday, I was listening to an audio book of Blessed Unrest. And the narrator/author asked something along these lines.
“Between the options of war and peace, which one addresses the root problem?”
Which I find to be a great way to articulate what I believe about peace. It sort of weeds out some of the more philosophical and theological questions.
War never address the root of the problem. If anything it perpetuates and throws fuel on the fire of the problem. And it’s always reactive in nature, dealing more with the effects of something that the cause of something.
Whereas peace . . . a lifestyle and the action of peace almost always address the roots.
Which is why I find it odd that for every $1 the UN spends on peacekeeping endeavors, we spend $5,000 on war and the production of it.
And we wonder why things never change. The only times things have ever changed and an empire was brought to it’s knees was through the way of peace. Jesus. MLK. Gandhi. Mandela/Tutu.
In recent American “war” history, war lead to war because it never dealt with the root.
The “victory” of WWI created a vacuum for WWII. The “victory” of WWII created a vacuum for communism, which lead to puppet regimes and conflicts in Africa and Latin America from the mid 70’s on. The “victory” over communism and the collapse of puppet regimes created a vacuum for the rise of radical extremism, i.e. terrorism.
“Between the options of war and peace, which one addresses the root problem?”
Once – A new movie that has an amazing soundtrack and the main actor and composer is the lead singer of The Frames, one of the great European bands no one has ever heard of and his female counterpart is a singer and actress and who is only 19. They’re both dating and it looks quite magical. This movie is going to be sneak up on you. Mark my words. They also have a CD out under the name The Swell Season which I’ve been listening to straight for the last 24 hours and is currently opening for Damien Rice.
Map the Candidates – a way to follow each candidate and see which states they’re focusing their time on
Bloomberg Running After All? – the rich mayor might not be telling us the whole truth after buying up a couple of domain names
Finally Thunderbird might get it’s due
Is it just me or is anyone else noticing the rhetoric is increasing on Iran? Why do I get the uneasy feeling that W wants to do something before he leaves office? Quote: “Training of extremists is being conducted in Iran . . . (they) continue to smuggle powerful roadside bombs and mortars across the border from Iran.” I’m not saying this isn’t the case . . . but after the false information that was generated at the beginning of our last fiasco . . . and hearing Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki say Iran is playing a positive role in Iraq makes me at least a bit skeptical of the increasing accusations. Especially considering he’s back to using the argument that he had at the beginning, later recanted on, and is now proposing again.
[tags]Once, Marketa Irglova, The Frames, Glen Hansard, Fox Searchlight, Map the Candidates, Thunderbird, Bloomberg, Bloomberg + President, Swell Season, Iran + Iraq, Nouri al-Maliki, Damien Rice[/tags]
Because soon (a couple more years) the political climate will not allow it.
Terrorism is a growing threat. It is a threat that can not be beaten by conventional warfare. It’s not like there are some Germans standing behind this line that we just have to line up with and exchange tactical military procedures. Terrorists are pros at guerrilla warfare. Hit and run. Use children and women. Suicide bombers. Decentralized in nature and speedy in movement. A faceless army. No face. No centralized brain. But plenty of hands and feet.
If you kill Hitler, a movement dies. If you kill Bin Laden, a movement grows. Much like the martyrdom of the saints was reason for the growth of Christianity . . . marginalized people will always give their allegiance to the martyrs. In many ways this is formative to their identities.
I’m afraid to admit that in the coming years terrorist attacks at malls, subways, airports, and shopping centers will become much more common place. What we see happening in the streets of Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and Iraq will increasingly be taking place in “Western” places.
When this begins to happen on a regular basis . . . the tide is going to turn in public sentiment. Even more so than what we currently have.
At that time people are only going to see through the lens of fear and security. Fear of the unknown is going to become the great enemy. And our insecurity about getting attacked is going to lead us to this desperate place.
Right now we aren’t desperate. But in the coming years when our bubble gets broken, our security is no longer secure, and fear is the driving force in our trips, flights, shopping, and travels to name a few, we will become desperate.
Terrorists are already desperate. That’s why they become terrorists.
So we will have 2 groups of desperate people.
One group trying to get rid of the other at all costs. And the other group trying to get rid of the other at all costs.
In our “defense” of our family, land, and security . . . we will become reactionary. We will still try to fight conventionally. Which is a nice way of saying that we will try to get rid of all the bad guys and when there are no more bad guys we will win.
The only problem with this is that we’re not going to be able to kill all of the bad guys.
So we need to look at what causes terrorists to become terrorists. What causes innocent little boys and girls to become destructive, angry, vengeful people.
The same thing we will have to ask of our children.
And the same thing we will have to ask of our politics and economic policies that create vacuums in which terrorism can exist, grow, and thrive.
Now this is where I say what I need to say before it becomes even more politically incorrect than it already is.
The American way of life (insert “Western world” if you don’t want to feel as guilty) lives in a hyper-consumerist culture. This over-indulgence on material things at the expense of everything else not only affects us. But it affects those across the world who go “without”. When they see our gross marketing, over sexualized, sugar-coated entertainment culture . . . the vain decadence of it all . . . it creates a fragile fault line. The wealth that we enjoy the benefits of . . . creates imbalance in the rest of the world.
Our hyper-consumerist, hyper-material, globalized world is built on the backs of colonialism.
Do I think it gives terrorists and extremists a free pass on their hate and attacks? Absolutely not.
But instead of being reactionary, which will never work in this type of conflict . . . perhaps we should be asking ourselves what role are we playing in creating a world that this type of violence becomes acceptable? And what right do we have to claim that this violence is horrendous and then practice violence ourselves against our enemies?
I know the claim will be made that these conflicts are religious in nature and not economic. Perhaps so. But I think they are more economic in nature. Religion just becomes the fuel for the fire. The thing that the culture uses to justify the morality of their actions.
Their minds are made up. Just like ours. They are made up because they go without a voice and without power. Ours are made up because we stand on top of the hill and have the power. This is the source of the problem.
The fact that we both use religion to justify the morality of our violence is simply the excuse we use to absolve ourselves of the guilt.