Monday, October 19, 2009
Afghanistan Weighing on my Mind and Conscience
It is a struggle that will be intercontinental and involve military, political and economic force in which America needs to use "just enough, but no more" military power. It is a different type of struggle, I believe, than any America has engaged in.
It is no less than a struggle between civilization (both Western and Islamic) and barbarism.
It is in the context that the decision about "more troops to Afghanistan" must be considered. The Afghanistan decision is operational: it may be that other commitments of power are called for. But the overall decision to commit America to this extended and expensive struggle is strategic and must be brought home to the American people by President Obama.
I believe he needs to lead us into the most tragically necessary war America has fought since the Civil War and WWII.
Bill Bekkenhuis
Bethlehem, PA
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
References: The Continuing Global Conflict Against Islamic, Extremist Militancy
No particular order than reverse chronological (as I've posted these links to Facebook).
THE PENTAGON’S NEW MAP by Thomas P.M. Barnett (Esquire, March 2003)
McChrystal: More Forces or 'Mission Failure'
COMISAF Initial Assessment (Unclassified) -- Searchable Document
Letter From Tehran: Iran's New Hard-Liners
This Week at War: Where is Jones? | Foreign Policy
The Purpose of the Afghan War - Council on Foreign Relations
The Cost of Commitment in Afghanistan - Council on Foreign Relations
A Muslim solution for Afghanistan - Yahoo! News
Peter W. Galbraith -- U.N. Isn't Addressing Fraud in Afghan Election - washingtonpost.com
Op-Ed Columnist - Still Not Tired – NYTimes.com
The Distance Between ‘We Must’ and ‘We Can’ - NYTimes.com
Obama considers range of Afghan war options - Yahoo! News
Rethinking Our Terrorist Fears – NYTimes.com
Rajiv Chandrasekaran -- In Afghanistan, the Middle Ground May Be Most Perilous – washingtonpost.com
Irans Nuclear Threat Heritage Foundation
Op-Ed Columnist - Obama at the Precipice – NYTimes.com
PostPartisan - Israel's Final Warning to the World?
Obama's Iran disclosure likely part of clever chess game - Yahoo! News
The Arena: McChrystal report-what now? | POLITICO.com
Op-Ed Columnist - Real Men Tax Gas – NYTimes.com
Op-Ed Columnist - Policy Has to Match the Sacrifice – NYTimes.com
The cap-and-trade bill: Waiting for the other shoe to drop | The Economist
Strife in Yemen: The world's next failed state? | The Economist
Even amid a war and a recession, Americans shouldn't adopt a misguided doctrine - By Paul Wolfowitz
David Rothkopf -- Hillary Clinton Redefining State Department and Her Own Role – washingtonpost.com
The Women’s Crusade – NYTimes.com
The Holocaust's shadow over Israel's choices - Yahoo! News
Bill Cahir, Marine sergeant killed in Afghanistan, to receive Purple Heart – lehighvalleylive.com
What to Read on American Primacy
Op-Ed Columnist - Green Shoots in Palestine II – NYTimes.com
US troops now a 'coalition of one' in Iraq - Yahoo! News
A day of reckoning for Bush's 'torture' lawyers - Yahoo! News
Op-Ed Columnist - The Losers Hang On – NYTimes.com
Op-Ed Columnist - Teacher, Can We Leave Now? No. - NYTimes.com
Obama's Favorite Theologian? A Short Course on Reinhold Niebuhr - Pew Research Center
Soldier who fought in pink boxers home for 4th - Yahoo! News
What Role Has Iraq Played in Iran?
Op-Ed Columnist - A Supreme Leader Loses His Aura as Iranians Flock to the Streets – NYTimes.com
The Next Explosion in Iran - Yahoo! News
Beyond the Banks By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Don’t Try This at Home By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Foreign Affairs - Beyond Iraq - Richard N. Haass and Martin Indyk
This Is Not a Test By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Obama Says No to Torture; Interrogators Say Yes to Obama - Yahoo! News
The Long Dance:Searching for Arab-Israeli Peace
Foreign Affairs - Change They Can Believe In - Walter Russell Mead
Friday, October 09, 2009
Troglodyte Talk-Radio Republicans
Please let the rest of us know what we can do (short of putting a Republican in the White House) that will cause you to root for America again.
My first thought at 5:30 AM on hearing this was, 'Can't wait to see how Hannity, Beck, Limbaugh, Coulter and the other troglodyte media-heads spin this such that President Obama receiving a prestigious international peace award for attempting to prevent a nuclear holocaust is a disgrace, confirmation of his traitorous ambitions and another indication of the illegitimacy of his presidency.'
Coming home tonight and reading some of the response, I've not been disappointed.
I would love it if some ditto-head would explain to me how Republicans ever intend to win another election in this land.
But I guess I have my answer - by hoping Obama fails and that they'll be elected by default.
That would explain, of course, why the Republicans chose, early on, not to put forward their own global reform plan for health care. (See Dems taunt GOP: Where's your health plan?)
I can only hope that the wild hope that Obama fails at anything he attempts will not carry over to his constitutional responsibility as Commander-in-Chief.
The first step back toward sanity is to take the little ear bud out of your ear and go read some articles by knowledgeable people - and I don't care if its The Weekly Standard or or Foreign Policy or the Heritage Foundation.
Anything is better than the mind-screwing you get from listening to the demagogues (and yes, that means you too Keith Olbermann - nuts is nuts whether you fall to the left of the tree or the right.)
Bill Bekkenhuis
Bethlehem, PA
Saturday, September 26, 2009
A Time for Heroic Action?
Family cemetery visit led to hanged census worker
Friends: Hanging victim devoted his life to kids
“Times of threat bring increased aggression,” said Jerrold Post, a CIA veteran who founded the agency’s Center for the Analysis of Personality and Political Behavior during his 21-year career at headquarters in Langley, Va.
“And the whole country’s under threat now, with the economic difficulties and political polarization,” said Post, now a professor of psychiatry at The George Washington University. “The need to have someone to blame is really strong in human psychology. And once you have someone to blame, especially when there’s a call to action, some see it as a time for heroic action.”
(see Social change could spark violence)
If census worker (and Scout leader and teacher and lymphoma survivor and churchman) Bill Sparkman's death turns out to be anything other than suicide or deliberate mis-direction on the part of the killer or killers, then every person and especially every media pundit – professional or amatuer – who ever diseminated the idea that our current federal government is fascist or socialist or run by traitors or is being illegally led by a constitutionally unqualified president (or similar statements) has some blood on his hands for his death.
Let me say that again.
Maybe it was a suicide, or a murder in which the killer sought to deliberately mislead on motive or maybe some weird auto-erotic thing such as that which ultimately claimed Keith Carradine...
But if not...
...then anyone who participated in the poisoning of our national conversation to help create an atmosphere in which a harmless census worker could be targeted for lynching by a violent wing-nut bears some responsibility for his death.
In 1974 (the year of his death from cancer at the age of 50) Ernest Becker won the Pulitzer Prize for his book, The Denial of Death. I cannot recommend it enough. It, along with the works of the late lawyer / theologian William Stringfellow and, I guess I should add, the Bible, have most informed my views on the reality of (and the attempt to overcome) death as a moral (as compared to a biological) issue.
In a nutshell, my read on Becker is that humans – the one animal species with the capacity for symbolic thought – find the idea of death, in its full implications for human meaning, intolerable. The better adjusted of us learn to accept a “vital lie” in which, somehow or other, death is overcome. For example, death will not matter if I have surviving children, or if I gain tremendous wealth or power, or a great number of sexual conquests, or make the world a better place, or have the greatest stamp collection in the world – the content of the “lie” doesn't really matter, so long as we believe it and can fulfill it.
And God help the poor fool who stands in the way of our (as psychologist Norman O. Brown called it) immortality project. (This, in the Bible, is what is called “sin”, but that's a topic for another time :-)
For the lesser adjusted (and I place myself in that category :-), we develop some neurosis or phobia or something, which allows us to continue functioning, albeit in an impaired way.
For example, let's say I can neatly bundle all my existential anxieties about my death and the ultimate meaning (if any) of my life into a fear of snakes. I can function just fine so long as I'm not confronted with snakes. And that's a viable “plan” because, to a certain degree, I can manage my activities to minimize the possibility of encountering snakes.
One major alternative for dealing with death is to openly confront it – that option Becker calls 'heroism'.
The hero (and we all love heroes – look at the movies we watch) confronts the power of death in a very direct and non-metaphorical way – and defeats it.
And THAT type of heroism, I'm afraid, is what Jerrold Post (in the block quote above) refers to: someone who has been all charged up by anti-federal government ranting and decides to fight and destroy “evil” directly by lynching a representative of the federal government.
It's the same type of heroism Roeder (allegedly) had when he gunned down Dr. Tiller as the unarmed Tiller ushered at his church.
Now his heretofore worthless life is transcendently “meaningful.”
But – and you can trust me on this - God help the radio show hosts and internet bloggers who selected his target for him.
A true hero right now is someone who leaves their ultimate justification in life in the hands of God and does their best to de-escalate irresponsible rhetoric before more innocent people are killed and, more importantly, before all chance of America's brilliant constitutional government functioning is lost amidst the inane babble of those who would substitute hate and ideology for citizenship and intelligent conversation.
Bill Bekkenhuis
Bethlehem, PA
Monday, September 21, 2009
The Battle Against Extremist, Militant Islam
McChrystal: More Forces or 'Mission Failure'
COMISAF Initial Assessment (Unclassified) -- Searchable Document
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Thwarted Decency
See This Anger Isn't Just In Black And White by Jim Sleeper (The Washington Post)
This may be the most intelligent paragraph I've read regarding the fear and rage that otherwise decent folks are expressing through screaming and other forms of incivility.
Yet it would be a mistake to feel disdain for these guys [young folks screaming 'USA' at John McCain's acceptance speech], for their buffoonish chanting was only one side of them, and not necessarily the dominant one. They haven't curdled into fascists, as some on the left seemed to think. More likely, the thwarted decency in them is trying to find a political home, a sense of civic standing that is slipping away.
I see it in the anti-choice protesters at the Allentown Womens' Center. I see it in Rep. Wilson's shout-out at the President of the United States addressing a joint session of Congress. I see it in the anger expressed during the Town Halls and I saw it in the crowds Sarah Palin was drawing during the presidential compaign.
I see it in my friends and family, many of whom are glued to Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Fox News.
I see it in one conservative micronationalist friend who is supporting the state sovereignty initiative in Tennessee and I see it in a liberal Scouting friend who has recently been singing the praises of fascism.
It reminds me of the prescient film, Network, and the deranged anchor, Howard Beale (played by Peter Finch), who has an on-camera nervous breakdown.
I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's work, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be.
We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.'
Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad.
[shouting] You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, Goddamnit! My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell,
[shouting]'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!' I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it:
[screaming at the top of his lungs] "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"
These people are all decent people (including the anti-choice protesters and I'm giving some of them the benefit of the doubt on that :-).
There is a fear in all of us... the fear that the (more or less) comfortable lives in a comfortable America (which is the situation most of my friends and family share, though many others do not) are passing away; they are transitioning into something new, particularly if one is white, male and middle class.
And as fear will do what fear, from the standpoint of evolution, is “designed” to do, we are pushed into fight or flight mode.
Well, unless we plan to leave these fair shores to go to another (equally transitional world), that leaves us with fight mode.
It starts with verbal agression and can escalate to physical aggression.
I am convinced there are two triggers to verbal and physical aggression.
The first is the simple matter of not getting our own way.
I don't believe that is all that significant. Most of us, since childhood, have learned that we don't get our own way much of the time.
And that's okay – so long as our “non-negotiable” needs are met and so long as we believe the process is fair that that we (the minority) have been heard.
And that's the anger I'm hearing now... that the needs denied are “non-negotiable”, that the process is not fair and that I'm not even being heard. (And, of course, if I'm not even being heard, what recourse do I have other than violence?)
Most (not all) of the people I know are Christians and Americans.
For those of us that fall into both of those categories, we live within something that the late lawyer and theologian William Stringfellow called, The Constantinian Arrangement.
Christians were persecuted in Rome until the Emperor Constantine “cut a deal” with the Church: respect and live within the laws of my regime and I will tolerate (and even allow as a monopoly) the practice of your religion.
Some sixteen hundred years later, it is still a matter of dispute as to whether or not that was such a good idea :-)
But for those of us who believe it was a good deal (or who are willing to live with it nonetheless – see “on not getting one's own way” above :-), this is my take on the American situation.
In America, we live according to a social contract whose penultimate authority is the Constitution and whose ultimate authority is God (or, for my secular friends, conscience, not that I believe the two are identical, but they are close enough for government work :-).
The constitution was (wisely) designed in such a way that competing interests (whether of individuals or collectives such as companies, industries, non-profit groups, etc.) could battle it out to a victory in a three branch system with checks and balances all along the way – all of which occurs in the context of a Bill of Rights which protects the rights of the minority).
I must admit that I believe the Founders of America did a bang-up job on this (with the notable exception of their tolerance of slavery and the subjegation of women and other non-propertied peoples).
In the world today, America has the “longest-lived” and briefest constitution of any other nation.
My friends on the right would (I believe) declare that we do not, at this time, live under the Constitution. They might argue that life under the Constitution as that was understood by the Framers ended with United States vs. Butler in 1936:
The general welfare clause of article 1, section 8, was also intended as a shield, to ensure that Congress, in the exercise of any of its enumerated powers, would act for the general rather than for any particular welfare. Here, however, Hamilton stood opposite Madison, Jefferson, and others in thinking that the clause amounted to an independent, enumerated power--albeit limited to serving the general welfare. But as Congressman William Drayton noted in 1828, if Hamilton were right, then whatever Congress is barred from doing because there is no power with which to do it, it could accomplish by simply appropriating the money with which to do it. That, of course, is precisely what happened, and what the Court sanctioned when it came down on Hamilton's side in 1936 (United States v. Butler), then a year later went Hamilton one better by saying that although the distinction between general and particular welfare must be maintained, the Court would not itself police that distinction (Helvering v. Davis). Congress, the very branch that was redistributing with ever-greater particularity, would be left to police itself. On the First Principles of Federalism by Roger Pilon
I don't buy this.
The Framers understood that the government would, at times, get it wrong. (See “on not getting one's own way” above :-).
When it's wrong, we have to suck it up and live with it (as I did for eight years with Bush vs. Gore and as slaves did for decades – under slavery – and Blacks did for decades under Jim Crow, and as women did until the early part of the 20th century).
And as Republicans need to do now. At least for 4 – 8 years.
Why?
Because I have free speech. Because I have freedom of the press. Because I have the right to assemble with like-minded people.
Because there is no power of government, whether Executive, Legislative or Judicial that, in the long term (if not always the short), is beyond the reach of the people through either legal means or through non-violent civil disobedience.
So what we really need to do, as liberals and conservatives, as Democrats and Republicans, as Hamiltonians and Madisons, as pro-choice and pro-life, as etc., etc....
...is listen to each other.
We need to listen to each other and get political and, if we cannot come to an agreement, at the end of the day, use our political power to force our will.
Because if we get it wrong it will not, in the long run, endure.
Obama can possibly force health care reform through a simple majority vote if he can get enough votes to fight a filibuster. Then the issues will be resolved under conference.
But if what comes out of it is not good, it will not last – because laws can be changed or repealed (see Prohibition :-)
As Benjamin Franklin said, we must all hang together or we shall assuredly all hang separately.
And while it may not play well in Tennessee (at least WESTERN Tenassee ( :-) ), I cannot help but recall the words from Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address:
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic cords of memory will swell when again touched as surely they will be by the better angels of our nature.
Bill Bekkenhuis
Bethlehem, PA
Friday, September 18, 2009
Is Healthcare a Right or a Personal Responsibility?
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States; [Followed by Congress' enumerated powers]
For those who care, this would put me on the Hamiltonian side of constitutional interpretation as distinguished from the interpretation of James Madison.
No one questions the authority of congress to legislate in support of military defense against national security threats so it seems to me quite reasonable for Congress to legislate in support of non-national security threats to life.
For those who would argue the Madisonian view I would, while aware of the dangers of a predatory federal government such as is restricted in the 9th and 10th amendments to the Constitution, am persuaded (until someone persuades me otherwise) that the same interpretation given in the Hamiltonian view is used by state governments within their own state constitutions.
Governments – whether federal, state or local – simply must have sufficient power to create conditions in which people's welfare (including their health, which is the foundation for most other types of welfare) can best be enabled.
This would not, in my opinion, rule out legislation that would require people to take significant responsibility for their own health and welfare (as we do with our careers, our finances, our marriages and our other private endeavors) but – as with these other endeavors – the federal government has the responsibility and power to fund and regulate the larger rules of the game.
Anyway, that's where I come down on the issue (for today, anyway :-)
Bill Bekkenhuis
Bethlehem, PA
bekkenhuis@fast.net
