Jenni, whom I don't know, commented on the Blood:Water posting, referring me to a book called 'Good News About Injustice' which, I do know.
I went with author Gary Haugen (who's the founder and president of International Justice Mission) to India to see if there could possibly be any good news about injustice. There is. The result of that trip is something called The Justice Mission.
Jen Howver at Youth Specialties asked what it was like to work on the Justice Mission. Which took me back to the beginning…
+ + + + +
Numb is what I was. Overwhelmed by 24-hour news about precision bombing + corporate corruption + genocide + suicide killers, evil empires, broken promises, dead children, stolen dreams + working Americans slipping into poverty. Just numb.
So, being numb and all, I wasn’t sure how I was going to engage youth groups in the fight against global oppression. Because that’s the assignment I was asked to take on in The Justice Mission.
I think I know something about constructing appeals that get a knee jerk emotional response. I just don’t think that translates to sustainable engagement. Besides which, manipulating 15 year-olds feels a little sleazy to me.
That said, if the mere facts of the matter were enough to generate committed action we would live in a very different world wouldn’t we.
What to do…what to do?
The solution was finding a way to see the world through the eyes of someone who wasn’t so numb to pain and hope. That turned out to be four American kids who were alert and articulate (and possessed a significant emotional vocabulary). We took them to South Asia for ten days—to look over their shoulders and into their eyes as they became eyewitnesses to oppression.
Ben was few weeks out of Christian high school and on his way to a state university. Charissa was a high school junior. Lindsay had just completed her sophomore year in college. Trever was entering his senior year in high school (some people recognize Trever from his work in television and the movies but that wasn’t why he was on the trip). Trever and Lindsay and Ben and Charissa all went to Asia because they love Jesus and they love people and they are not afraid to see what they’re seeing—however shocking—and describe it clearly and directly.
Our hosts were the International Justice Mission who are heroes as far as I’m concerned. They are law enforcement professionals and government relations experts and attorneys (the sort who become protagonists in John Grisham novels) who have figured out how to extract children from forced labor, how to release girls and women from involuntary prostitution, how to bring corrupt cops and soldiers to justice and how to restore stolen land to poor farmers—all in the name of Jesus and by lawful means. This is very impressive to me, and a heckuva good story.
IJM introduced the American kids to dozens of people their age and younger who were trapped in hideous circumstances—little kids rolling beedi cigarettes instead of going to school; a girl forced into prostitution when she should have been in seventh grade; a boy whose 10th grade year was interrupted when he had to go to work for a loan shark; a woman who had been breaking rocks by hand in a stone quarry for 40 years (40YEARS!) while getting further in debt every year.
The Americans took case histories from more than two-dozen children in bonded slavery—they were working to pay the interest on family debts structured so they could never, in two or three lifetimes pay them off (which explains the woman at the rock quarry). Typical story: My brother was sick. My father borrowed $25 from a man in the village to pay the hospital. I’ve been working ten hours a day for the last six years to pay off the $25. I don’t know how much longer I will have to work. I feel a little sick from remembering. Maybe I’m not as numb as I thought.
Those case histories, including x-marks on little human-shaped outlines to show where some children were beaten by the “businessmen” who held them captive, became part of the evidence against the moneylenders. This was not busy work. In the months following our visit, IJM mounted legal proceedings against those men, leading to jail time and hefty fines for the bad guys and emancipation for the children.
This is what IJM does. They leverage the simple, painstaking work of law enforcement for the benefit of people who have no one else to defend them. The Americans watched as dozens of children waved their papers in the air—the documentation declaring their release from bonded slavery and threatening prosecution against anyone who dares to steal their freedom.
Every night the Americans reflected on what they saw and heard that day and how they felt and what they thought it meant and what they wanted to do about it. All this was dutifully recorded tape after tape by the very tall and talented Jay Delp and me.
The five sessions in The Justice Mission are as good as I know how to write. But what youth workers talk about when they describe The Justice Mission experience in their groups is the moral authority of those four American kids facing up to their responsibility through tears and determination—conspiring to make the world safe for children.
Who has what it takes to look at global oppression without flinching? Not many. Not me. It’s too big; I feel too small. Joseph Stalin, who ordered the murder of hundreds of thousands of his fellow citizens, is supposed to have said that the death of one person is a tragedy, but the death of thousands is only a statistic. That’s why The Justice Mission couldn’t be about numbers. It had to be the story of four American kids who saw and heard and felt certain things when they looked oppression right in the kisser and decided what to do about it.
From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise because of your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger. Psalm 8:2
From the lips of children…
I’ve spent a good chunk of my life trying to represent the voices to people who are mainly overlooked (or ignored, or misrepresented) by people in power. The Justice Mission takes that effort two layers deep: It’s a vehicle for the passion of four young storytellers who would be easy to ignore except that they are eyewitnesses to things most adults have only read about (if that). And these four speak on behalf of millions of children victimized by adults who certainly know better (but do it anyway).
The Justice Mission may be as good as I can hope to produce—I’m still learning so we’ll see. In the meantime, if it engages people like you in groups like yours to make a tiny dent in the universe of pain, it will be enough.
+ + + +
Good people doing a difficult job: International Justice Mission. Gary Haugen has a newer book called 'Terrify No More.'
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
Friday, February 11, 2005
blood:water
The guys in Jars of Clay are doing a good thing called the Blood:Water Mission. Jars' frontman, poet, singer, activist, Dan Haseltine, asked me how I would answer the question, "Why should a Christian be involved in social justice?" My answer…
+ + + + +
I come from a long line of people who think we’re supposed to care more than we do about justice and other guilt-inducing ideals.
We trace our roots back to Moses whose Law, while not exactly concise was certainly thorough. Moses took five books, more or less, to get his arms around how people who say they know something about God had better behave in order to make their claim credible to neighbors, hirelings, relatives and farm animals. His writings remain relevant to this day. A (air quotes) Christian publishing house recently sent me a contract so hostile I suggested they should get themselves a good Jewish lawyer, by which I meant someone familiar enough with the Pentateuch to know there are some things one simply does not do in business dealings.
The Decalogue—I like to think of it as The Big Ten—rendered the commands in a manner suitable for framing (or chiseling in stone and hauling up the interstate on a flatbed). There is also, I believe, a collegiate athletic conference named to honor The Big Ten, though I don’t profess to understand the sports connection.
Some time around the 8th century B.C.E. the prophet Micah laid down the law with such precision it made those who came before him look like they were paid by the word. Micah distilled the substance of pretty much everything that matters into a tiny catechism with one question and three responses.
Q: What does the LORD require of you?
A: To act justly
A: To love mercy
A: To walk humbly with my God
I find Micah’s concision the tiniest bit menacing, like Do the right thing. This is almost no help at all for people used to being told what is the right thing and how to get forgiven for having failed to do it. It’s the sort of simplicity that creates way more problems than it solves. Act justly. Love mercy. Walk humbly with God. These are hard sayings.
But, speaking as a word guy, I certainly admire his elegance.
+ + + + +
If you don’t count the Sermon on the Mount—and I know hardly any Christians who do—Jesus refined the Law to two directives:
1. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength,”
and
2. “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
This is, if anything, worse than Micah. I was just beginning to sway with the whole water to wine vibe and now he comes out with this? Not the least of my problems is the ringing clarity of the thing. I don’t need a priest or professor to tell me what all means.
Where does my energy go? What about my money?
When do I feel most alive? What do I crave?
What is it I can’t get enough of?
Love God with all that.
…and my neighbor as myself…
I feel I have had no choice but to pursue my lifelong interest in loopholes; exclusions that might justify loving God with some of my heart, some of my soul, mind and strength—and, of course, keeping lists to document why loving my neighbor is entirely out of the question.
Between us, I am not proud of my record on this. I take no comfort from knowing I am not alone. And, of course, I’m not.
From the top of my little hill, it appears the people who claim they know something about God have found a comfort zone where saying the right things substitutes for doing…anything, really. Orthopraxy—doing the right thing—means nothing, give or take. Orthodoxy—believing the right stuff from some sort of biblical framework—is presently all that matters, as long as we get to skip the Minor Prophets, the letter from James, all but chapter one of First John and much of what we call the four Gospels—other than that and maybe a couple of other things, we take the Bible to be authoritative in sum and substance.
How else to explain a drug addled talk radio celebrity who gets to keep his position of honor with people who believe drug addicts are criminals—unless they say the right things.
How else to explain sex junkies of various proclivities who are quickly restored to honor by people who believe sex junkies are perverts—unless they say the right things.
How else to explain the free pass for a candidate who called a New York Times reporter an asshole extended by people who believe that kind of language is a sin—unless it’s used by someone who says the right things (in which case it’s a sign of…what?).
And how else to explain myriad unkept promises to the poor and powerless by church and state, willingly excused by people who believe yes should mean yes, no should mean no (and anything else is sin)—unless…you know.
+ + + + +
All that to say this: I think people like me, who say we may know something about God, ought to act justly and love mercy and walk humbly with God because the gospel Jesus preached—don’t listen to your hometown evangelist, go read it for yourself—was the gospel of the kingdom of heaven where justice, mercy and humility are the rules. And because Jesus, if he can be trusted, represented that God intends to have everything his way—on earth as it is in heaven. And because the only people Jesus was hard on were self-important fools (like me)—to whom he said, “Whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.” And because there is no shalom for anyone unless there is shalom for everyone.
Why care about social justice? Well geez…what other kind is there? Loving God and loving my neighbor have inevitably public consequences—unless I’m content to just keep saying the right things. Honestly, I’m not sure I want to live that way any longer.
I hope that’s not just me.
+ + + + +
Of course it's not just me. Visit Blood:Water Mission.
+ + + + +
I come from a long line of people who think we’re supposed to care more than we do about justice and other guilt-inducing ideals.
We trace our roots back to Moses whose Law, while not exactly concise was certainly thorough. Moses took five books, more or less, to get his arms around how people who say they know something about God had better behave in order to make their claim credible to neighbors, hirelings, relatives and farm animals. His writings remain relevant to this day. A (air quotes) Christian publishing house recently sent me a contract so hostile I suggested they should get themselves a good Jewish lawyer, by which I meant someone familiar enough with the Pentateuch to know there are some things one simply does not do in business dealings.
The Decalogue—I like to think of it as The Big Ten—rendered the commands in a manner suitable for framing (or chiseling in stone and hauling up the interstate on a flatbed). There is also, I believe, a collegiate athletic conference named to honor The Big Ten, though I don’t profess to understand the sports connection.
Some time around the 8th century B.C.E. the prophet Micah laid down the law with such precision it made those who came before him look like they were paid by the word. Micah distilled the substance of pretty much everything that matters into a tiny catechism with one question and three responses.
Q: What does the LORD require of you?
A: To act justly
A: To love mercy
A: To walk humbly with my God
I find Micah’s concision the tiniest bit menacing, like Do the right thing. This is almost no help at all for people used to being told what is the right thing and how to get forgiven for having failed to do it. It’s the sort of simplicity that creates way more problems than it solves. Act justly. Love mercy. Walk humbly with God. These are hard sayings.
But, speaking as a word guy, I certainly admire his elegance.
+ + + + +
If you don’t count the Sermon on the Mount—and I know hardly any Christians who do—Jesus refined the Law to two directives:
1. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength,”
and
2. “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
This is, if anything, worse than Micah. I was just beginning to sway with the whole water to wine vibe and now he comes out with this? Not the least of my problems is the ringing clarity of the thing. I don’t need a priest or professor to tell me what all means.
Where does my energy go? What about my money?
When do I feel most alive? What do I crave?
What is it I can’t get enough of?
Love God with all that.
…and my neighbor as myself…
I feel I have had no choice but to pursue my lifelong interest in loopholes; exclusions that might justify loving God with some of my heart, some of my soul, mind and strength—and, of course, keeping lists to document why loving my neighbor is entirely out of the question.
Between us, I am not proud of my record on this. I take no comfort from knowing I am not alone. And, of course, I’m not.
From the top of my little hill, it appears the people who claim they know something about God have found a comfort zone where saying the right things substitutes for doing…anything, really. Orthopraxy—doing the right thing—means nothing, give or take. Orthodoxy—believing the right stuff from some sort of biblical framework—is presently all that matters, as long as we get to skip the Minor Prophets, the letter from James, all but chapter one of First John and much of what we call the four Gospels—other than that and maybe a couple of other things, we take the Bible to be authoritative in sum and substance.
How else to explain a drug addled talk radio celebrity who gets to keep his position of honor with people who believe drug addicts are criminals—unless they say the right things.
How else to explain sex junkies of various proclivities who are quickly restored to honor by people who believe sex junkies are perverts—unless they say the right things.
How else to explain the free pass for a candidate who called a New York Times reporter an asshole extended by people who believe that kind of language is a sin—unless it’s used by someone who says the right things (in which case it’s a sign of…what?).
And how else to explain myriad unkept promises to the poor and powerless by church and state, willingly excused by people who believe yes should mean yes, no should mean no (and anything else is sin)—unless…you know.
+ + + + +
All that to say this: I think people like me, who say we may know something about God, ought to act justly and love mercy and walk humbly with God because the gospel Jesus preached—don’t listen to your hometown evangelist, go read it for yourself—was the gospel of the kingdom of heaven where justice, mercy and humility are the rules. And because Jesus, if he can be trusted, represented that God intends to have everything his way—on earth as it is in heaven. And because the only people Jesus was hard on were self-important fools (like me)—to whom he said, “Whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.” And because there is no shalom for anyone unless there is shalom for everyone.
Why care about social justice? Well geez…what other kind is there? Loving God and loving my neighbor have inevitably public consequences—unless I’m content to just keep saying the right things. Honestly, I’m not sure I want to live that way any longer.
I hope that’s not just me.
+ + + + +
Of course it's not just me. Visit Blood:Water Mission.
Thursday, February 10, 2005
of values and budgets
Here's the letter I sent my Congressman, Randy Cunningham, earlier this week. I was prodded into action by a note on the proposed U.S. budge from the good folks at Sojourners.
Mr. Cunningham:
As a voter and a person of faith, I call on you to look carefully at the effects President Bush's budget will have on Americans living in poverty—especially those who have fallen into poverty in this new century.
This budget proposes to cut programs that are lifelines for low-income people while raising discretionary military spending and normalizing tax cuts that benefit people whose wealth makes them immune to all the most hideous illnesses and dangers. With over 30 million of my countrymen—and yours—living below the poverty line, these budget priorities are an outrage to the values I learned to love in this country.
I'm afraid this budget is anti-family and anti-values. What kind of Poverty Impact Statement would objective leaders give a budget that serves the rich and hurts the poor? This is your moment to stand for a broader, deeper America, Mr. Cunningham. I urge you to step up.
+ + + + +
I wonder if things like this make any difference…
Mr. Cunningham:
As a voter and a person of faith, I call on you to look carefully at the effects President Bush's budget will have on Americans living in poverty—especially those who have fallen into poverty in this new century.
This budget proposes to cut programs that are lifelines for low-income people while raising discretionary military spending and normalizing tax cuts that benefit people whose wealth makes them immune to all the most hideous illnesses and dangers. With over 30 million of my countrymen—and yours—living below the poverty line, these budget priorities are an outrage to the values I learned to love in this country.
I'm afraid this budget is anti-family and anti-values. What kind of Poverty Impact Statement would objective leaders give a budget that serves the rich and hurts the poor? This is your moment to stand for a broader, deeper America, Mr. Cunningham. I urge you to step up.
+ + + + +
I wonder if things like this make any difference…
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
Thing One...
The introduction and first chapter of Ten Things We Should Never Say To Kids are available for free download.
Assuming I don't get hit by a bus, I'll post a new chapter each week for next ten weeks. Please help yourself and feel free to pass the chapters along to friends and enemies alike. The sordid tale that leads to the giving away of Ten Things We Should Never Say To Kids is posted here under the title "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Book Store."
THING ONE
Adults say lots of things to kids that don’t really help either of them. OK, that’s not exactly true—some things help adults get things done right now; but the near-term benefit quickly turns to a long-term liability. Thing One: Do You Have Your Jacket-Homework-Gym-Bag-Back-Pack-Ticket-Keys? is such a thing. The first release in this series also includes the introduction to Ten Things We Should Never Say To Kids.
DOWNLOAD THING ONE NOW
Lemme know what you think...
Assuming I don't get hit by a bus, I'll post a new chapter each week for next ten weeks. Please help yourself and feel free to pass the chapters along to friends and enemies alike. The sordid tale that leads to the giving away of Ten Things We Should Never Say To Kids is posted here under the title "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Book Store."
THING ONE
Adults say lots of things to kids that don’t really help either of them. OK, that’s not exactly true—some things help adults get things done right now; but the near-term benefit quickly turns to a long-term liability. Thing One: Do You Have Your Jacket-Homework-Gym-Bag-Back-Pack-Ticket-Keys? is such a thing. The first release in this series also includes the introduction to Ten Things We Should Never Say To Kids.
DOWNLOAD THING ONE NOW
Lemme know what you think...
Sunday, January 30, 2005
Ten Things We Should Never Say To Kids
UPDATE | 07 July 2008
[A smarter man than me would have refreshed this page some time ago, but that man was not available, so...]
The Tiny Company Called Me released Ten Things We Should Never Say To Kids as a free eBook. You can download it by chapters, no strings attached, right here.
Send chapters to anyone you please (but please don't alter, charge or take credit for them).
For the whole story on Ten Things We Should Never Say To Kids (well, most of it) check out the post called A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Bookstore .
So, read to your hearts content; be generous with your children + friends; and let me know what you think...
Thursday, January 20, 2005
a funny thing happened on the way to the book store...
I wrote this book called Ten Things We Should Never Say to Kids. The notion started as a riff off a book I did called Raising Adults. An acquisitions editor thought the idea seemed good enough to offer me some money and a contract to write about these ten things.
The book proved to be harder writing than I anticipated and I ended up working right up to the last minute. So I wouldn’t say the manuscript was the cleanest, tightest thing I ever delivered to a publisher. Still, I was reasonably happy with it—happy enough to actually hit “send” and deliver the manuscript to the developmental editor.
The developmental editor was less happy. The editor seemed to think that (if I may share my impressions), at certain points I was wrapping things a reader might care about—practical things—in a blanket of things a reader most certainly would not care about—I hesitate to put a label on those things but if did I might call them historical narratives, sociological observations, a few less-than-obvious linkages. The editor thought they were distractions. Both us, I’m sure, were thinking about people reading the book and making something of it. We were not, as they say, on the same page.
Figuring neither of us was probably 100 percent right about the spots where we disagreed; I did my best to blend our concerns in reworking several sections. Honestly, I thought the manuscript got better in the next pass. I’m not sure what the developmental editor thought, as this was our last contact.
The next step in publishing is what’s called a “line edit” or “copyedit.” The copyeditor goes line by line through the manuscript to check spelling, punctuation and the like. On this occasion the copyeditor happened also to be the project manager who would move the manuscript through typesetting and proofreading before shipping it off to production. Which sets the stage for the following digression.
One thing that made the developmental editor uncomfortable was my story about how a non-profit called Focus on the Family assailed a different publisher for something Kara Powell and I wrote called Good Sex. Good Sex is an adolescent learning design on sexuality. I like to say the title is autobiographical which for some reason makes my wife smirk and hold her fingers in the shape of a W on her forehead. I’m not certain what that means but people laugh so I just smile and play along.
Anyway, I thought the letter from Focus on the Family was pretty demeaning and, here and there, a bit hysterical. The letter, and a critical review they promised to publish soon (though I don’t think they ever did), included obvious misstatements—where by obvious I mean a side-by-side comparison of what they said was in the book with what’s actually in the book would show they misspoke. I’ve told the story elsewhere (Focus on the Family Hates Good Sex), so I won’t recount it here.
In response to the developmental editor’s discomfort, I softened my telling of the story a bit. But I held onto the point, which has to do with my perception that adults frequently bluff and bully and generally disrespect kids by expecting them to continue taking the big people’s word for things long after they are quite capable of puzzling those things out for themselves—and not merely capable of figuring those things out but responsible to do so and responsible for the choices they make as a result. The perverse transaction is that, in exchange for taking the big people’s (or authoritarian organization's) word for things, kids get privileges and affection and acceptance. You may recognize this as the same logic employed by child molesters but this is not one of the less-than-obvious linkages I made in Ten Things We Should Never Say to Kids. I saw no need to go overboard.
So. The developmental editor flags the story and I soften it a bit. Then comes the copyedited manuscript with the story missing altogether and a note giving six reasons why the material must be removed. This, I think, is a bold move for a copyeditor/project manager. Conversations with the acquisitions editor from the first paragraph of this story ensue.
+ + + + +
Fast-forward a few weeks. It was clear from the moment the copyeditor yanked the story—as distinct from, say, talking further about how to find a win/win—that this was probably not going to work out. And when the acquisitions editor (who is a good friend by the way) said, "Let me run this by our new attorney," I was pretty clear I would be giving the money back.
Which is exactly what I did. I gave back the publishers advance on royalties, deciding I'd rather take my chances than go along with what I believe to be buckling under to…what? a bully? an 800 pound gorilla? a phantom?
We may never know.
In the meantime I've decided that, since I'm out all that money I may as well turn Ten Things We Should Never Say to Kids into an inexpensive downloadable book — which you can help yourself to right here.
Saturday, January 01, 2005
Young Not Dumb Handout
Click on the handout to open it as a jpeg image, then Save Image As whatever you want to call it.
Crisis: Now in Three Flavors Handout
Click on the handout to open it as a jpeg image, then Save Image As whatever you want to call it.
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
about that story...i got nothin'
i'll still have to write the second half of the Reply All story. i have the uncomfortable feeling it's not gonna be that good by the time i get it posted. well, then i'll just have to apologize for it when the time comes.
in the meantime, Jars of Clay asked me to write a little something about why anybody should care about social justice for the launch of their Blood:Water website (www.bloodwatermission.org). Blood:Water is deep in the fight against HIV/AIDS in Africa, doing as much as they can for as long as they can to put an end to death by HIV—especially as those deaths relate to water-borne illnesses.
It's not as complicated as it sounds. You can go to www.bloodwatermission.org to get the picture.
the day they hit the go button for the new Blood:Water website, i'll post my answer here to the question, "Why should anybody care about social justice?" to remind you to go there, where we can do some good for people who could really, truly stand to have some good done for them.
stand by for more in about a heart beat and a half.
in the meantime, Jars of Clay asked me to write a little something about why anybody should care about social justice for the launch of their Blood:Water website (www.bloodwatermission.org). Blood:Water is deep in the fight against HIV/AIDS in Africa, doing as much as they can for as long as they can to put an end to death by HIV—especially as those deaths relate to water-borne illnesses.
It's not as complicated as it sounds. You can go to www.bloodwatermission.org to get the picture.
the day they hit the go button for the new Blood:Water website, i'll post my answer here to the question, "Why should anybody care about social justice?" to remind you to go there, where we can do some good for people who could really, truly stand to have some good done for them.
stand by for more in about a heart beat and a half.
Saturday, December 04, 2004
i know, i know
i left my last post hanging (not for dramatic effect so much as the fact that it was late and i was really tired).
since then i've been more than a little nutty…
• going to Atlanta for the National Youth Workers Convention (where i gave away 6,500 copies of The Boy Who Believed in Magic and had many relational adventures)
• launching a web site (www.westofthe101.com) with the kind assistance and generosity of my friend Will Leingang (www.iamwill.com)
• coping with the news that my friend Ralph is dying more quickly than he thought
• coping with the impending death of Dorothy Hoover, dear mother to my wife Susan
(Dorothy slipped quietly away this afternoon, leaving behind a small but devoted fan club).
so that's my lame excuse to the two people who want to know what happened after i hit Reply All in the last post.
please stand by a tiny bit longer. i can't promise you won't be disappointed, only that i'll try to entertain you as much as i was entertained by the goings-on in my in-box.
but right now i have to grieve.
since then i've been more than a little nutty…
• going to Atlanta for the National Youth Workers Convention (where i gave away 6,500 copies of The Boy Who Believed in Magic and had many relational adventures)
• launching a web site (www.westofthe101.com) with the kind assistance and generosity of my friend Will Leingang (www.iamwill.com)
• coping with the news that my friend Ralph is dying more quickly than he thought
• coping with the impending death of Dorothy Hoover, dear mother to my wife Susan
(Dorothy slipped quietly away this afternoon, leaving behind a small but devoted fan club).
so that's my lame excuse to the two people who want to know what happened after i hit Reply All in the last post.
please stand by a tiny bit longer. i can't promise you won't be disappointed, only that i'll try to entertain you as much as i was entertained by the goings-on in my in-box.
but right now i have to grieve.
Monday, November 15, 2004
well, this is grimly overdue...
I have almost nothing to say about in the aftermath of the election because i don't think i understand it .
The Evangelical friend whose question spurred me to write 'Why Not Bush' and 'Why Kerry' in this space was polite but unconvinced. This seems to have been the case with a great many people. Except for the politeness.
Another friend, less Evangelical in his convictions but no less conservative in his politics than my first correspondent, sent a fairly tasteless gag map of the new Iraq to me and about 40 of his other closest friends. He knew it was stupid and I knew he knew it was stupid. Then again, when tasteless, stupid jokes just lay out there at the expense of people who did nothing worse than wake up, say, female or Iraqi, I figure some white guy oughta stand up and say 'Hey! That's stupid and tasteless!"
So I did, in that passive agressive way people find so charming. My friend committed the faux pas of including all 40 of our addresses in the CC box (an unruly mob if you ask me and just asking for it), so i hit Reply All and and wrote,
If you think THAT'S funny, wait'll you get a load of THIS!
and attached a pdf of the first report of the Johns Hopkins/Lancet study on civilian casualties in Iraq--which i paste here with attribution and copyright notice and the sincere hope Reuters won't come take my trailer.
Study: 100,000 Excess Civilian Iraqi
Deaths Since War
By Patricia Reaney
LONDON (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed
in violence since the U.S.-led invasion last year, American public
health experts have calculated in a report that estimates there
were 100,000 "excess deaths" in 18 months.
The rise in the death rate was mainly due to violence and much of it
was caused by U.S. air strikes on towns and cities.
"Making conservative assumptions, we think that about 100,000 excess
deaths, or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq," said
Les Roberts of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
in a report published online by The Lancet medical journal.
"The use of air power in areas with lots of civilians appears to be killing
a lot of women and children," Roberts told Reuters.
The report came just days before the U.S. presidential election in which
the Iraq war has been a major issue.
Mortality was already high in Iraq before the war because of United
Nations sanctions blocking food and medical imports but the
researchers described what they found as shocking.
The new figures are based on surveys done by the researchers in Iraq
in September 2004. They compared Iraqi deaths during 14.6 months
before the invasion in March 2003 and the 17.8 months after it by
conducting household surveys in randomly selected neighborhoods.
Previous estimates based on think tank and media sources put the
Iraqi civilian death toll at up to 16,053 and military fatalities as high as
6,370.
By comparison about 849 U.S. military were killed in combat or attacks
and another 258 died in accidents or incidents not related to fighting,
according to the Pentagon.
VERY BAD FOR IRAQI CIVILIANS
The researchers blamed air strikes for many of the deaths.
"What we have evidence of is the use of air power in populated urban
areas and the bad consequences of it," Roberts said.
Gilbert Burnham, who collaborated on the research, said U.S. military
action in Iraq was "very bad for Iraqi civilians."
"We were not expecting the level of deaths from violence that we found
in this study and we hope this will lead to some serious discussions of
how military and political aims can be achieved in a way that is not so
detrimental to civilians populations," he told Reuters in an interview.
The researchers did 33 cluster surveys of 30 households each,
recording the date, circumstances and cause of deaths.
They found that the risk of death from violence in the period after the
invasion was 58 times higher than before the war.
Before the war the major causes of death were heart attacks, chronic
disorders and accidents. That changed after the war.
Two-thirds of violent deaths in the study were reported in Falluja, the
insurgent held city 50 km (32 miles) west of Baghdad which had been
repeatedly hit by U.S. air strikes.
"Our results need further verification and should lead to changes to
reduce non-combatant deaths from air strikes," Roberts added in the
study.
Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, said the research which was
submitted to the journal earlier this month had been peer-reviewed,
edited and fast-tracked for publication because of its importance in the
evolving security situation in Iraq.
"But these findings also raise questions for those far removed from Iraq
-- in the governments of the countries responsible for launching a preemptive
war," Horton said in an editorial.
10/28/04 14:57
© Copyright Reuters Ltd. All rights reserved. The information contained In
this news report may not be published, broadcast or otherwise distributed
without the prior written authority of Reuters Ltd.
NOW, the reason i ambushed all my friend's friends with this Reuters report (I feel sure HE sent the silly map in a fit post-election exuberance) was that in that moment i felt genuinely sad about the trend of America's foreign and military policy and the unveiled hubris of the thing from Main Street to Wall Street all the way out to my street. Just to be clear, had the study not been conducted and vetted under the Johns Hopkins umbrella and published by the Lancet, i would hardly have paid attention, let alone passing it along. But…it was, and I did.
So i sent the little email enticement with the clear implication that there might be something funny in the attachment, which of course there was not. What there was was a somewhat hazy report about a complicated statistical study of Iraqi civilian casualties that i pray is wrong but am afraid may be right...
Whatever the grim facts in Iraq, what happened in response to my Reply All was pretty darned interesting. More on that shortly...
The Evangelical friend whose question spurred me to write 'Why Not Bush' and 'Why Kerry' in this space was polite but unconvinced. This seems to have been the case with a great many people. Except for the politeness.
Another friend, less Evangelical in his convictions but no less conservative in his politics than my first correspondent, sent a fairly tasteless gag map of the new Iraq to me and about 40 of his other closest friends. He knew it was stupid and I knew he knew it was stupid. Then again, when tasteless, stupid jokes just lay out there at the expense of people who did nothing worse than wake up, say, female or Iraqi, I figure some white guy oughta stand up and say 'Hey! That's stupid and tasteless!"
So I did, in that passive agressive way people find so charming. My friend committed the faux pas of including all 40 of our addresses in the CC box (an unruly mob if you ask me and just asking for it), so i hit Reply All and and wrote,
If you think THAT'S funny, wait'll you get a load of THIS!
and attached a pdf of the first report of the Johns Hopkins/Lancet study on civilian casualties in Iraq--which i paste here with attribution and copyright notice and the sincere hope Reuters won't come take my trailer.
Study: 100,000 Excess Civilian Iraqi
Deaths Since War
By Patricia Reaney
LONDON (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed
in violence since the U.S.-led invasion last year, American public
health experts have calculated in a report that estimates there
were 100,000 "excess deaths" in 18 months.
The rise in the death rate was mainly due to violence and much of it
was caused by U.S. air strikes on towns and cities.
"Making conservative assumptions, we think that about 100,000 excess
deaths, or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq," said
Les Roberts of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
in a report published online by The Lancet medical journal.
"The use of air power in areas with lots of civilians appears to be killing
a lot of women and children," Roberts told Reuters.
The report came just days before the U.S. presidential election in which
the Iraq war has been a major issue.
Mortality was already high in Iraq before the war because of United
Nations sanctions blocking food and medical imports but the
researchers described what they found as shocking.
The new figures are based on surveys done by the researchers in Iraq
in September 2004. They compared Iraqi deaths during 14.6 months
before the invasion in March 2003 and the 17.8 months after it by
conducting household surveys in randomly selected neighborhoods.
Previous estimates based on think tank and media sources put the
Iraqi civilian death toll at up to 16,053 and military fatalities as high as
6,370.
By comparison about 849 U.S. military were killed in combat or attacks
and another 258 died in accidents or incidents not related to fighting,
according to the Pentagon.
VERY BAD FOR IRAQI CIVILIANS
The researchers blamed air strikes for many of the deaths.
"What we have evidence of is the use of air power in populated urban
areas and the bad consequences of it," Roberts said.
Gilbert Burnham, who collaborated on the research, said U.S. military
action in Iraq was "very bad for Iraqi civilians."
"We were not expecting the level of deaths from violence that we found
in this study and we hope this will lead to some serious discussions of
how military and political aims can be achieved in a way that is not so
detrimental to civilians populations," he told Reuters in an interview.
The researchers did 33 cluster surveys of 30 households each,
recording the date, circumstances and cause of deaths.
They found that the risk of death from violence in the period after the
invasion was 58 times higher than before the war.
Before the war the major causes of death were heart attacks, chronic
disorders and accidents. That changed after the war.
Two-thirds of violent deaths in the study were reported in Falluja, the
insurgent held city 50 km (32 miles) west of Baghdad which had been
repeatedly hit by U.S. air strikes.
"Our results need further verification and should lead to changes to
reduce non-combatant deaths from air strikes," Roberts added in the
study.
Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, said the research which was
submitted to the journal earlier this month had been peer-reviewed,
edited and fast-tracked for publication because of its importance in the
evolving security situation in Iraq.
"But these findings also raise questions for those far removed from Iraq
-- in the governments of the countries responsible for launching a preemptive
war," Horton said in an editorial.
10/28/04 14:57
© Copyright Reuters Ltd. All rights reserved. The information contained In
this news report may not be published, broadcast or otherwise distributed
without the prior written authority of Reuters Ltd.
NOW, the reason i ambushed all my friend's friends with this Reuters report (I feel sure HE sent the silly map in a fit post-election exuberance) was that in that moment i felt genuinely sad about the trend of America's foreign and military policy and the unveiled hubris of the thing from Main Street to Wall Street all the way out to my street. Just to be clear, had the study not been conducted and vetted under the Johns Hopkins umbrella and published by the Lancet, i would hardly have paid attention, let alone passing it along. But…it was, and I did.
So i sent the little email enticement with the clear implication that there might be something funny in the attachment, which of course there was not. What there was was a somewhat hazy report about a complicated statistical study of Iraqi civilian casualties that i pray is wrong but am afraid may be right...
Whatever the grim facts in Iraq, what happened in response to my Reply All was pretty darned interesting. More on that shortly...
Monday, October 18, 2004
Why Kerry?
A few weeks ago a dear friend of deep evangelical persuasion wrote:
"I am always interested when intelligent thoughtful, and insightful people think so differently in some areas than I do. And I am certainly not interested in big time political debate with friends, but was curious as to why...or maybe... if ...you would share your thoughts as to why you would consider voting for Mr. Kerry."
My answer falls in two parts, the first posted in this space under the title 'Why Not Bush?" Here's part two…
If my ballot this year is a vote of no confidence in George W. Bush, it is also a gesture of hope based on what I believe about John Kerry.
I say believe because it is impossible to do anything else. Beyond believing I’m stuck with the dilemma of proving the negative: “Prove you won’t screw this up.” This is part of what got us in trouble in Iraq. “Prove you don’t have the weapons and we don’t mean showing us empty warehouses and laboratories—we know you have them and nothing you say or do will convince us otherwise unless you prove you don’t.” This never had a prayer of working and I have trouble believing I’m the only one who thought so from the outset.
Mr. Bush is in the same quandary today. “Prove to us you won’t keep screwing this up.” This, of course, he cannot do. His line seems to be, “Trust me, this is complicated, I know things, we have to stay the course to change direction.”
David Puttnam told the Los Angeles Times, “There's a wonderful Chinese proverb--it really is a Chinese proverb, not one that I made up--that says if you continue down the road you've purposely taken, you're likely to end up where you seem to be heading.” (L.A. TIMES 12/3/89) Well, where we seem to be heading is crippling deficits, an unconscionable widening of the gap between the wealthiest Americans and all other Americans, steadily diminishing moral authority in the world, a crisis in the U.S. military, an increasingly divided citizenry, an increasingly united alliance of terrorist movements and the growing likelihood of being politically quarantined by nations who have stood shoulder to shoulder with us in the past.
These are trends I believe John Kerry can reverse.
I believe Mr. Kerry sees the world through a more finely ground lens than the President. I believe he understands diplomacy as something more than the art of letting people have your own way. I believe he understands the give and take of true alliances, not just the binary you’re-with-us-or-against-us bluster of the strongest kid on the playground.
I don’t believe John Kerry would ever have put the U.S. military in the position George Bush put them in—specifically in exposing how much thinner U.S. capability is than had been presumed. The sloppiness of that is inexcusable. Following the third debate Mr. Kerry wondered rhetorically, “is that all you have Mr. President?” I think that’s what America’s enemies have been saying for 18 months. “You call that shock and awe? We’ll show you shock and awe.” I believe this administration has emboldened America’s enemies to believe they can absorb more punishment than the U.S. military can dole out. And, since there appear to be no terms under which American allies will accept the deal offered by the Administration and no offer of help the Administration is willing accept from the Allies, we’re in this mostly on our own. The number of countries in the “Coalition of the Willing” is a misdirection. The actual number of troops and the actual dollar amount of their investment is a minute fraction of the investment from the allies in the 1991 action. In the spirit of full disclosure, I was against that one too. But I was in smallish minority on that occasion when, for better or worse, it worked. This intervention has not worked, nor is it likely to work along the lines currently drawn. The U.S. will keep muttering, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” until we end the pretense and put together a coalition capable of cleaning up the mess as well as it can be cleaned. I believe Mr. Kerry can do that. I’m convinced Mr. Bush cannot.
Of course one alternative is slowly bleeding to death a few hundred million dollars at a time. In the old days, aided by the ill-advised and ill-fated invasion of Afghanistan, this was a contributing factor to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The Afghanis proved that, with a little help from friends in the West, they could absorb more punishment than the Soviets could afford to deliver. As indeed the U.S. proved it could keep spending on weapons of mass destruction long after it was too late for the Soviets to recast the conflict in more sustainable terms. This lesson was not lost on anyone except, perhaps, the neo-conservatives presently in control of the U.S. government. In fact the report from Mr. Bush’s Iraq Survey Group says the Iraqi’s war plan was based upon an assumption that a weeklong conventional phase of the conflict would give way to a long-term insurgency (pages 65 & 66 of the Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on
Iraq’s WMD). ''The basic idea of trying to decapitate the regime was still the right approach," Michael O'Hanlon, a military specialist at the Brookings Institution in Washington said in a Boston Globe article on October 11, 04. ''But not having a serious plan to deal with insurgency was unconscionable to the point of being incompetent. Not having a backup plan if it failed was foolish."
I suppose you can guess I’m no fan of war as a concept let alone the bloody reality. But even I know that what we saw in Iraq in 2003 was a textbook fight against an overwhelming force. I remember saying as much to my neighbors as U.S. casualties mounted that Spring and suggesting that, at that very moment, someone might be saying, “We’ll give up the country and then kill one of them a day for as long as they can stand it.” Trust me when I say I felt sick at the thought that I might be right…and sicker still as evidence mounts that I was.
I think John Kerry believes peace is a possibility in the general sense of shalom (though I have no idea whether he would employ that language). Shalom is wholeness for everybody. If that seems too high-minded, forgive me for taking such matters so seriously and let’s settle on the notion of win/win solutions as superior to win/lose and most certainly better than lose/win or lose/lose.
I believe Mr. Kerry will stop the hemorrhaging from the U.S. Treasury. I think the Bush economic theory was discredited the last time it was attempted during the 80’s when the poor got poorer, the rich got richer and tens of thousands of mentally disabled people were summarily discharged from government-funded hospitals to become the problem of under-funded state, county and municipal law enforcement. Incidentally this is also the period of U.S. alliance with Saddam Hussein during which his regime was armed with the capacity to produce and deploy weapons of mass destruction—but I digress. Ten Nobel Prize-winning economists endorsed John Kerry in a joint letter saying the Bush Administration had “embarked on a reckless and extreme course that endangers the long-term economic health of our nation.” The 10 say the Bush tax cuts were “poorly designed” and that “fiscal irresponsibility threatens the long-term economic security and prosperity of our nation.” They say the differences between the candidates are “wider than in any other presidential election in our experience.” Kerry, the letter says, “will restore fiscal responsibility" and he "understands that sound economic policy requires a substantial change in direction, and we support him for president." (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5818277/)
Part of Mr. Kerry’s soundness from my point of view is his regard for those who work as well as those whose capital provides jobs. I don’t think Kerry is hostile toward business at all. I think he sees a clear link between those who put capital at risk and those whose labor secures that risk. That means looking out for the solvency of well run companies along with the wellbeing of working Americans, including the swollen ranks of the working poor. That means dealing favorably with the 45 million American who have no health care whatsoever. Mr. Bush keeps returning to the impact of lawsuits on hospitals and I have little doubt he’s partly right. I suspect the far greater impact on hospitals comes from uninsured people who rely on Emergency Room care because they can’t afford office visits. Heck, I’ve been there. Uninsured, marginally employed sick people wait until they can’t wait another minute, then show up the one place that’s mandated by law to treat them whether they can pay or not. Actually, hospitals don’t have to treat poor sick people. They can and many have simply shut the doors to the emergency rooms, protecting profits by shifting the burden to others. It’s a familiar theme by now: Pay me now or pay me later. We have to do better. I believe John Kerry is committed to solving this crisis and I expect Congress to join him.
Of course the simplest course includes living wages for every worker. As I see it, one measure of a president’s term in office is how America’s poorest citizens fared under his Administration. “A rising tide,” the proverb says, “raises all boats.” When some boats are rising and others are being swamped, I generally conclude that what’s truly rising is something other than the tide. So if at the end of the term the wealthy are demonstrably better off and the poor are in demonstrably worse off, I consider the administration a failure in economic terms (I think there have been exceptions to this in my lifetime; I don’t think this is one of them). I think the present Administration has helped the owner at the expense of the worker. John Kerry is committed to helping the worker without unduly burdening the owner. The 10 Nobel Prize-winning economists see it too, noting Mr. Kerry’s commitment “to work with our allies and trading partners to promote global growth that lifts up workers around the world."
I believe John Kerry has access to great talent. In addition to one or more of the Nobel Prize-winners I want see the likes of William Cohen, Madeline Albright, Wesley Clark, Robert Reich, Richard Holbrook, Bob Kerry, Eliot Spitzer, George Mitchell and Robert Rubin in the next Administration.
I believe John Kerry has a healthy regard for the Constitution as a whole and the separation of powers in particular. It seems to me that should go without saying but that hasn’t been the case in this Administration, which has actually shut dissenting Members of Congress out of the White House. It doesn’t take much of a historian to know why we have three branches of government and how their balancing act contributes to the resilience of our political system. For a little head-shaking, track down a copy of Rumsfeld’s Rules, composed by Donald Rumsfeld in 1974 and revised by him in 2001. Had this Administration stuck to Rumsfeld’s Rules as they relate to governance we might not be in this mess.
Speaking of resilience, I believe Mr. Kerry’s principles of governance are resilient enough remain intact in the post 9/11 world. Mr. Bush changed his mind about many things following the attacks on America. Mr. Kerry had a broader, deeper view of things. Without diminishing the horror and evil of those attacks nor the great losses suffered, I don’t believe they changed everything at all. Due respect to Mr. Bush’s performance in the days immediately following 9/11, I think we need domestic and foreign policy that is decisive not impulsive, resolute, not stubborn, focused, not tunnel-visioned. Fixing what’s broken requires statesmanship, wisdom and sound philosophy. I believe Mr. Kerry is better suited to the ongoing task in every way.
Mr. Kerry does not complicate simple things nor oversimplify difficult things. The present administration seems extremely binary—totally on or totally off, with us 100% or dead set against us. The notion of complexity seems to escape them. Or perhaps they believe we’re too dumb to understand complexity. With the end of the debates I think it’s clear that Mr. Kerry is in personal command of the principles and facts underlying his policy positions. His capacity to state matters clearly does not diminish his frequent refusals to make speculative statements and promises about matters over which he has little control. I respect that degree of respect for the electorate. It is, to me, the kind of thing I expect from honest, clear-thinking parents who decline to say foolish things like “I will protect you; nothing bad will happen to you; you’ll always have what you need; I guarantee your safety” when they know full well these things are beyond their capacity to deliver. Far better to say, “I will do my best to make sure you are safe and secure and cared for.”
I believe Mr. Kerry views his life of privilege as a responsibility. Why else go to Viet Nam and extend his commitment to a second tour? Why else become a prosecutor? Why else choose government over business? I think tales of blind ambition fail to account for 20 years of service. The ambitious are seldom patient in my experience.
I believe Mr. Kerry values truth over loyalty. Though I didn’t know his name at the time I was deeply impressed by the work of Viet Nam Veterans Against the War. I thought if anyone had earned the right to criticize the prosecution of that war the VVAW were certainly at the front of the line, at least at the level of operations. It was costly to speak against the war in 1971—I remember it vividly. I believe John Kerry spoke unflinchingly and in good conscience. To those who say he broke the code I ask, Are you saying a priest who knows other priests are abusing children should keep the code? Are you saying a police officer who knows other cops are shaking down business people or killing the homeless should keep the code? Please.
I’ve said too much. It’s settled for me. I have no confidence in the Bush Administration and that alone is enough to move my vote to the other side. But it’s more than a vote of no confidence. I’m convinced my vote for John Kerry is the wisest exercise of my responsibility as a citizen in this election.
"I am always interested when intelligent thoughtful, and insightful people think so differently in some areas than I do. And I am certainly not interested in big time political debate with friends, but was curious as to why...or maybe... if ...you would share your thoughts as to why you would consider voting for Mr. Kerry."
My answer falls in two parts, the first posted in this space under the title 'Why Not Bush?" Here's part two…
If my ballot this year is a vote of no confidence in George W. Bush, it is also a gesture of hope based on what I believe about John Kerry.
I say believe because it is impossible to do anything else. Beyond believing I’m stuck with the dilemma of proving the negative: “Prove you won’t screw this up.” This is part of what got us in trouble in Iraq. “Prove you don’t have the weapons and we don’t mean showing us empty warehouses and laboratories—we know you have them and nothing you say or do will convince us otherwise unless you prove you don’t.” This never had a prayer of working and I have trouble believing I’m the only one who thought so from the outset.
Mr. Bush is in the same quandary today. “Prove to us you won’t keep screwing this up.” This, of course, he cannot do. His line seems to be, “Trust me, this is complicated, I know things, we have to stay the course to change direction.”
David Puttnam told the Los Angeles Times, “There's a wonderful Chinese proverb--it really is a Chinese proverb, not one that I made up--that says if you continue down the road you've purposely taken, you're likely to end up where you seem to be heading.” (L.A. TIMES 12/3/89) Well, where we seem to be heading is crippling deficits, an unconscionable widening of the gap between the wealthiest Americans and all other Americans, steadily diminishing moral authority in the world, a crisis in the U.S. military, an increasingly divided citizenry, an increasingly united alliance of terrorist movements and the growing likelihood of being politically quarantined by nations who have stood shoulder to shoulder with us in the past.
These are trends I believe John Kerry can reverse.
I believe Mr. Kerry sees the world through a more finely ground lens than the President. I believe he understands diplomacy as something more than the art of letting people have your own way. I believe he understands the give and take of true alliances, not just the binary you’re-with-us-or-against-us bluster of the strongest kid on the playground.
I don’t believe John Kerry would ever have put the U.S. military in the position George Bush put them in—specifically in exposing how much thinner U.S. capability is than had been presumed. The sloppiness of that is inexcusable. Following the third debate Mr. Kerry wondered rhetorically, “is that all you have Mr. President?” I think that’s what America’s enemies have been saying for 18 months. “You call that shock and awe? We’ll show you shock and awe.” I believe this administration has emboldened America’s enemies to believe they can absorb more punishment than the U.S. military can dole out. And, since there appear to be no terms under which American allies will accept the deal offered by the Administration and no offer of help the Administration is willing accept from the Allies, we’re in this mostly on our own. The number of countries in the “Coalition of the Willing” is a misdirection. The actual number of troops and the actual dollar amount of their investment is a minute fraction of the investment from the allies in the 1991 action. In the spirit of full disclosure, I was against that one too. But I was in smallish minority on that occasion when, for better or worse, it worked. This intervention has not worked, nor is it likely to work along the lines currently drawn. The U.S. will keep muttering, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” until we end the pretense and put together a coalition capable of cleaning up the mess as well as it can be cleaned. I believe Mr. Kerry can do that. I’m convinced Mr. Bush cannot.
Of course one alternative is slowly bleeding to death a few hundred million dollars at a time. In the old days, aided by the ill-advised and ill-fated invasion of Afghanistan, this was a contributing factor to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The Afghanis proved that, with a little help from friends in the West, they could absorb more punishment than the Soviets could afford to deliver. As indeed the U.S. proved it could keep spending on weapons of mass destruction long after it was too late for the Soviets to recast the conflict in more sustainable terms. This lesson was not lost on anyone except, perhaps, the neo-conservatives presently in control of the U.S. government. In fact the report from Mr. Bush’s Iraq Survey Group says the Iraqi’s war plan was based upon an assumption that a weeklong conventional phase of the conflict would give way to a long-term insurgency (pages 65 & 66 of the Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on
Iraq’s WMD). ''The basic idea of trying to decapitate the regime was still the right approach," Michael O'Hanlon, a military specialist at the Brookings Institution in Washington said in a Boston Globe article on October 11, 04. ''But not having a serious plan to deal with insurgency was unconscionable to the point of being incompetent. Not having a backup plan if it failed was foolish."
I suppose you can guess I’m no fan of war as a concept let alone the bloody reality. But even I know that what we saw in Iraq in 2003 was a textbook fight against an overwhelming force. I remember saying as much to my neighbors as U.S. casualties mounted that Spring and suggesting that, at that very moment, someone might be saying, “We’ll give up the country and then kill one of them a day for as long as they can stand it.” Trust me when I say I felt sick at the thought that I might be right…and sicker still as evidence mounts that I was.
I think John Kerry believes peace is a possibility in the general sense of shalom (though I have no idea whether he would employ that language). Shalom is wholeness for everybody. If that seems too high-minded, forgive me for taking such matters so seriously and let’s settle on the notion of win/win solutions as superior to win/lose and most certainly better than lose/win or lose/lose.
I believe Mr. Kerry will stop the hemorrhaging from the U.S. Treasury. I think the Bush economic theory was discredited the last time it was attempted during the 80’s when the poor got poorer, the rich got richer and tens of thousands of mentally disabled people were summarily discharged from government-funded hospitals to become the problem of under-funded state, county and municipal law enforcement. Incidentally this is also the period of U.S. alliance with Saddam Hussein during which his regime was armed with the capacity to produce and deploy weapons of mass destruction—but I digress. Ten Nobel Prize-winning economists endorsed John Kerry in a joint letter saying the Bush Administration had “embarked on a reckless and extreme course that endangers the long-term economic health of our nation.” The 10 say the Bush tax cuts were “poorly designed” and that “fiscal irresponsibility threatens the long-term economic security and prosperity of our nation.” They say the differences between the candidates are “wider than in any other presidential election in our experience.” Kerry, the letter says, “will restore fiscal responsibility" and he "understands that sound economic policy requires a substantial change in direction, and we support him for president." (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5818277/)
Part of Mr. Kerry’s soundness from my point of view is his regard for those who work as well as those whose capital provides jobs. I don’t think Kerry is hostile toward business at all. I think he sees a clear link between those who put capital at risk and those whose labor secures that risk. That means looking out for the solvency of well run companies along with the wellbeing of working Americans, including the swollen ranks of the working poor. That means dealing favorably with the 45 million American who have no health care whatsoever. Mr. Bush keeps returning to the impact of lawsuits on hospitals and I have little doubt he’s partly right. I suspect the far greater impact on hospitals comes from uninsured people who rely on Emergency Room care because they can’t afford office visits. Heck, I’ve been there. Uninsured, marginally employed sick people wait until they can’t wait another minute, then show up the one place that’s mandated by law to treat them whether they can pay or not. Actually, hospitals don’t have to treat poor sick people. They can and many have simply shut the doors to the emergency rooms, protecting profits by shifting the burden to others. It’s a familiar theme by now: Pay me now or pay me later. We have to do better. I believe John Kerry is committed to solving this crisis and I expect Congress to join him.
Of course the simplest course includes living wages for every worker. As I see it, one measure of a president’s term in office is how America’s poorest citizens fared under his Administration. “A rising tide,” the proverb says, “raises all boats.” When some boats are rising and others are being swamped, I generally conclude that what’s truly rising is something other than the tide. So if at the end of the term the wealthy are demonstrably better off and the poor are in demonstrably worse off, I consider the administration a failure in economic terms (I think there have been exceptions to this in my lifetime; I don’t think this is one of them). I think the present Administration has helped the owner at the expense of the worker. John Kerry is committed to helping the worker without unduly burdening the owner. The 10 Nobel Prize-winning economists see it too, noting Mr. Kerry’s commitment “to work with our allies and trading partners to promote global growth that lifts up workers around the world."
I believe John Kerry has access to great talent. In addition to one or more of the Nobel Prize-winners I want see the likes of William Cohen, Madeline Albright, Wesley Clark, Robert Reich, Richard Holbrook, Bob Kerry, Eliot Spitzer, George Mitchell and Robert Rubin in the next Administration.
I believe John Kerry has a healthy regard for the Constitution as a whole and the separation of powers in particular. It seems to me that should go without saying but that hasn’t been the case in this Administration, which has actually shut dissenting Members of Congress out of the White House. It doesn’t take much of a historian to know why we have three branches of government and how their balancing act contributes to the resilience of our political system. For a little head-shaking, track down a copy of Rumsfeld’s Rules, composed by Donald Rumsfeld in 1974 and revised by him in 2001. Had this Administration stuck to Rumsfeld’s Rules as they relate to governance we might not be in this mess.
Speaking of resilience, I believe Mr. Kerry’s principles of governance are resilient enough remain intact in the post 9/11 world. Mr. Bush changed his mind about many things following the attacks on America. Mr. Kerry had a broader, deeper view of things. Without diminishing the horror and evil of those attacks nor the great losses suffered, I don’t believe they changed everything at all. Due respect to Mr. Bush’s performance in the days immediately following 9/11, I think we need domestic and foreign policy that is decisive not impulsive, resolute, not stubborn, focused, not tunnel-visioned. Fixing what’s broken requires statesmanship, wisdom and sound philosophy. I believe Mr. Kerry is better suited to the ongoing task in every way.
Mr. Kerry does not complicate simple things nor oversimplify difficult things. The present administration seems extremely binary—totally on or totally off, with us 100% or dead set against us. The notion of complexity seems to escape them. Or perhaps they believe we’re too dumb to understand complexity. With the end of the debates I think it’s clear that Mr. Kerry is in personal command of the principles and facts underlying his policy positions. His capacity to state matters clearly does not diminish his frequent refusals to make speculative statements and promises about matters over which he has little control. I respect that degree of respect for the electorate. It is, to me, the kind of thing I expect from honest, clear-thinking parents who decline to say foolish things like “I will protect you; nothing bad will happen to you; you’ll always have what you need; I guarantee your safety” when they know full well these things are beyond their capacity to deliver. Far better to say, “I will do my best to make sure you are safe and secure and cared for.”
I believe Mr. Kerry views his life of privilege as a responsibility. Why else go to Viet Nam and extend his commitment to a second tour? Why else become a prosecutor? Why else choose government over business? I think tales of blind ambition fail to account for 20 years of service. The ambitious are seldom patient in my experience.
I believe Mr. Kerry values truth over loyalty. Though I didn’t know his name at the time I was deeply impressed by the work of Viet Nam Veterans Against the War. I thought if anyone had earned the right to criticize the prosecution of that war the VVAW were certainly at the front of the line, at least at the level of operations. It was costly to speak against the war in 1971—I remember it vividly. I believe John Kerry spoke unflinchingly and in good conscience. To those who say he broke the code I ask, Are you saying a priest who knows other priests are abusing children should keep the code? Are you saying a police officer who knows other cops are shaking down business people or killing the homeless should keep the code? Please.
I’ve said too much. It’s settled for me. I have no confidence in the Bush Administration and that alone is enough to move my vote to the other side. But it’s more than a vote of no confidence. I’m convinced my vote for John Kerry is the wisest exercise of my responsibility as a citizen in this election.
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