Recently in Terrorism Category

One of the President Obama's first promises was that he would close Guantanamo Bay.  Closing Gitmo, which has been become a worldwide symbol of American abuse and intertwined with the horrors of Abu Ghraib, has been supported by military leaders and civil liberty activists alike.  But once the rubber actually hit the road, cowardly representatives in congress decided that holding criminals without trial was good enough in far away places but not in their own state.  Fortunately, the Democrats prevailed last week and congress has voted to allow detainees held in Guantanamo Bay onto American soil for prosecution

Republicans in the House have lost a bid to block the transfer of any detainees held at the Guantanamo Bay prison to the United States.

Instead, the House stood by a Democratic plan to allow suspected enemy combatants held at Guantanamo to be shipped to U.S. soil only to be prosecuted for their suspected crimes. President Barack Obama has ordered the facility closed in January but has yet to offer a plan to accomplish that.

Democratic leaders had to push hard for the win because many lawmakers see political danger in voting to move detainees from Guantanamo. The Republican plan failed on a 193-224 vote.

This is the first step but it can't stop here.  America should have the courage of our convictions.  Bring all the war criminals here to the United States for a triall.  If they are guilty then lock them up and throw away the key. If there is not enough evidence to hold them, then we have to release them.  We have built a massive prison industry in America - largely used to lock up African Americans and the poor.  You can't tell me that we can't find a place for international criminals.  If other states are too chicken to hold those held on suspicion of terrorism then bring them to my state of New Jersey where so many people where affected by the events of 9/11 and the wars.  We'll keep an eye on them.  

Closing Guantanamo is necessary to show the world that we are determined to lead the world not through military might, but in moral righteousness.  Let's do the right thing and close Gitmo.

This op-ed by the New York Times Frank Rich called Guns of August articulates what I have been thinking for the last months.  Two months ago I wrote a piece on the shooting at the holocaust museum and before that about the killing of the doctor in his church.   Rich's piece is a frightening portrayal of the rising violent rhetoric and actions of the right fringe and the inability or unwillingness of the mainstream right politicians to confront it.  Read it and weep...

"IT is time to water the tree of liberty" said the sign carried by a gun-toting protester milling outside President Obama's town-hall meeting in New Hampshire two weeks ago. The Thomas Jefferson quote that inspired this message, of course, said nothing about water: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." That's the beauty of a gun -- you don't have to spell out the "blood."

The protester was a nut. America has never had a shortage of them. But what's Tom Coburn's excuse? Coburn is a Republican senator from Oklahoma, where 168 people were murdered by right-wing psychopaths who bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995. Their leader, Timothy McVeigh, had the Jefferson quote on his T-shirt when he committed this act of mass murder. Yet last Sunday, when asked by David Gregory on "Meet the Press" if he was troubled by current threats of "violence against the government," Coburn blamed not the nuts but the government.

"Well, I'm troubled any time when we stop having confidence in our government," the senator said, "but we've earned it."

Coburn is nothing if not consistent. In the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, he was part of a House contingent that helped delay and soften an antiterrorism bill. This cohort even tried to strip out a provision blocking domestic fund-raising by foreign terrorist organizations like Hamas. Why? The far right, in league with the National Rifle Association, was angry at the federal government for aggressively policing America's self-appointed militias. In a 1996 floor speech, Coburn conceded that "terrorism obviously poses a serious threat," but then went on to explain that the nation had worse threats to worry about: "There is a far greater fear that is present in this country, and that is fear of our own government." As his remarks on "Meet the Press" last week demonstrated, the subsequent intervention of 9/11 has not changed his worldview.

I have been writing about the simmering undertone of violence in our politics since October, when Sarah Palin, the vice-presidential candidate of a major political party, said nothing to condemn Obama haters shrieking "Treason!," "Terrorist!" and "Off with his head!" at her rallies. As vacation beckons, I'd like to drop the subject, but the atmosphere keeps getting darker.

Coburn's implicit rationalization for far-right fanatics bearing arms at presidential events -- the government makes them do it! -- cannot stand. He's not a radio or Fox News bloviator paid a fortune to be outrageous; he's a card-carrying member of the United States Senate. On Monday -- the day after he gave a pass to those threatening violence -- a dozen provocateurs with guns, at least two of them bearing assault weapons, showed up for Obama's V.F.W. speech in Phoenix. Within hours, another member of Congress -- Phil Gingrey of Georgia -- was telling Chris Matthews on MSNBC that as long as brandishing guns is legal, he, too, saw no reason to discourage Americans from showing up armed at public meetings.

Read more of Frank Rich's Guns of August

Chris Rock had a great riff in one of his early stand up comedy routines which basically said how he was scared to death of white teenage boys.  This was the time around the Columbine shootings and the joke was funny because it played off of a contradicting mainstream American fear of grown black males, a demographic of which Chris Rock is of course a member. 

For better or for worse (neither I guess) we have witnessed a leveling of the American fear field as predicted by Mr. Rock. The bread and butter American fears of people of color and of different faiths have been complicated by recent events. The Jewish community experienced violence threatened and actualized by extremists from across the rainbow of color and religion first at the Synagogue in the Bronx followed by the Holocaust Museum in DC. In between we have a Christian doctor gunned down in church by an anti-abortion Christian extremist.

There is a fearful current in America that is beginning to violently surface.  Fox News analyst Shep Smith spoke about his experience of this anger:

"...in the wake of today's shooting at the Holocaust Museum, Smith went on the air today to talk about the emails he's been receiving for "the past few months," and how they've been getting "more and more frightening."

SMITH: There are people now, who are way out there on a limb. And I think they're just out there on a limb with the email they send us. Because I read it, and they are out there. I mean, out there in a scary place...I could read a hundred of them like this...I mean from today. People who are so amped up and so angry for reasons that are absolutely wrong, ridiculous, preposterous."

He went on to read an email, filled with the usual paranoid "birther" nonsense, which included an admonishment to Smith. "This is, I promise, a representative sample of the kind of things that we get here," Smith said.

Much of the anger that Smith is talking about is coming from those who feel disempowered and fearful under the Obama administration.  Fears about his supposed racisim and socialism are fueled on the internet and by some unfortunate pundits and politicians.  Where there is frustration and a sense of powerlessness there is also a tendency towards violence. 

America's new awareness of the truth that violence can and has come from any group at any time demands our response.  No single group can look at another and say the problem is them, because every demographic has its own extremists  It forces each of us to take responsibility for maintaining and lifting others to a higher ground within whatever racial or religious identity we hold.  When we encounter extremists within our own community we have the duty to disabuse them of their disturbed fantasies, and when they are threatening violence we should contact the police.

Being equal in fear is not a religious or American goal, instead it is to be equal in justice and respect.  Its up to us.  

With yesterday's shooting at the Holocaust museum, I was reminded of a story told to me several years ago by a professor of when he had been a doctoral student. 

An eminent post-modern theologian had come to his university to deliver a lecture on morality.  The guest insisted that morality was completely embedded in culture, "and that there was nothing that was universally wrong from one culture to another.  "Nothing," he insisted, "there is nothing that has been wrong in all places, all times, and to all people."  Then he added, "I dare you.  I dare you to tell me one thing--one thing--that is always wrong!"

My friend, whom I knew to be a liberal Democrat and was also a serious Methodist, rather sheepishly raised his hand.  "You there," the famous lecturer called on him, "can you tell me something that is always morally wrong?"  The young student responded shakily, "I think so.  One shouldn't burn Jews in ovens?"

The post-modern theologian stopped, and he looked as Paul might have on the road to Damascus.  "That's right," he thundered.  "One shouldn't burn Jews in ovens.  That is one, universally true moral principle." 

Well, there it is.  A universal moral principle--along with a corresponding principle, "One shouldn't walk into the Holocaust museum and start shooting people."

Yesterday, all of the news commentators agreed that James W. Von Brunn's action was morally wrong.  And, whenever a criminal breaks violates the communal moral conscience, everybody asks, "Why?"  What was the source of his evil?  Where did he go wrong?  What triggered this episode?

As pundits discuss these questions on the airwaves, their answers will fall into two predictable camps.  Conservatives will emphasize that Von Brunn was a "lone wolf," a deeply troubled man, who, acted on a bad belief (hatred of Jews) and made a bad choice (to pick up a gun and shoot people).   Liberals will analyze anti-Semitism, placing Von Brunn's actions within a larger framework of structural sin involving racism.  Some may also comment on institutional sins--gun control laws, the current economic crisis, and the "climate" created by talk radio for example--as sources of Von Brunn's actions. 

This is, of course, an old argument.  For almost a century, conservatives and liberals have been arguing the same point about sin.  Conservative theologians believed that sin is a personal matter, a choice made to break a moral code, usually based in some flawed belief system; liberal theologians believed that sin resulted from structural evils, whereby people act out of subservience to some form of institutionalized sin.  Hence, conservative sought to reform individuals while liberals sought to reform systems.  What made someone sin?  The soul or structure?  The individual or institution?  And this theological division made its way into political life--and it has shaped the way we argue about moral events in our public discourse.

In the 1990s, biblical scholar Walter Wink wrote a series of books arguing a new progressive understanding of sin.  He suggested that Christian theologians needed to re-engage the ancient biblical idea of the "principalities and powers,"

In the biblical view the Powers are at one and the same time visible and invisible, earthly and heavenly, spiritual and institutional . . . the Powers are simultaneously an outer, visible structure and an inner, spiritual reality. (Wink, The Powers That Be)

In other words, sin--the "powers" are both.  They exist in the malformed soul and are intrinsically tied up in the ways in which the world and culture are structured.  Everything--and everybody--has both good and evil within. 

This integrated understanding of sin goes a long way to help understand Von Brunn, where inner and outer "powers" combined to push him toward a form of racial idolatry and personal wickedness that resulted in killing another person.  But an integrated understanding of sin also begs the question:  Where was I in this story?  What do I do to resist these dehumanizing powers?  What systems and structures that I am part of perpetuate the evil from which Von Brunn acted?  (Talk radio hosts, take note....)

To say that Von Brunn was a lone gunman in a lone incident misses the point.  However, to say that D.C. has weak control laws (which were recently weakened by the NRA) also misses the point.  Von Brunn lived--as all of us do--in a complex, connected web of unredeemed powers that act as a cancer in the world. 

Walter Wink proposed that:

Redemption means actually being liberated from the oppression of the Powers, being forgiven for one's own sin and for complicity with the Powers, and setting about liberating the Powers themselves from their bondage to idolatry.  The good news is nothing less than a cosmic salvation, a restitution of all things, when God will "gather up all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth". . . The gospel, then, is not a message about the salvation of individuals from the world, but news about a world transfigured, right down to its basic structures. (Wink, Powers That Be)

Progressive Christianity is in no way a morally relativistic vision; instead, it is emerging as a morally integrated theology.  We need to examine all the powers-at-play in Von Brunn's reprehensive moral act--to name and resist the Powers is one way to transformation.   It is wrong--in every case, everywhere, for everyone, and every institution--to target people and deny them basic human dignity because of their race, ethnicity, religion, gender, and sexual identity.  And equally wrong to let the "little" sins that contribute to the bigger evils to pass unchallenged.  

In 2004, a little book appeared that made quite a splash among dispirited Democrats:  George Lakoff's Don't Think of an Elephant.  In it, Lakoff argued that Republicans and Democrats worked out of two different "framing" stories--frames are "mental structures that shape the way we see the world."  Republicans frame their politics in the terms of "a strict father family," while Democrats frame theirs on the ideal of a "nurturant parent family."  According to Lakoff, the party with the most compelling storyline often "wins" in public discourse.

Yesterday, in the dueling national security speeches of former Vice-President Cheney and President Obama, the two storylines stood in stark contrast--a visible demonstration of the difference between political approaches.

On one hand, Vice-President Cheney enacted the part of the strict father.  He chided Obama as a parent might correct an erring child--delivering a verbal conservative spanking to the young upstart who (according to Cheney) doesn't understand the ways of the real world.  He protected the traditions of the older generation, applauding himself for his own wisdom and insight--all the while reassuring the rest of the fearful family that his way is the right way.  Stay on the course of the Fathers (Cheney and Bush) and all will be well. 

And it was implicitly religious in the style of a Puritan jeremiad.  Cheney chastised the new administration for the sin of departing from the true path and threatened hellfire and damnation would result.  He insisted Obama repent and return.  Only then can the nation be saved.  It was a narrative masterwork of the old Republican frame--brilliant, scary, intimidating, and bizarrely reassuring all at the same time.

In contrast, President Obama's speech embodied many of the characteristics of nurturing parent politics--he empathized with people's worries about terrorism, and reiterated his commitment to national security (thus allowing for maximum human happiness).  He brought themes of freedom, fairness, community-building, trust, and open communication to the discussion--all of which are the nurturing values of progressive politics. 

However, Obama turned the prism of nurturing parent politics in an interesting and unexpected way.  Historically, progressives have said, "I empathize with you" (as did Bill Clinton), "These policies empathize with you" (as did Jimmy Carter), or "The government empathizes with you" (as did FDR).  But President Obama essentially said, "The law empathizes with you."  The entire speech, delivered at the National Archives (the building that houses our most cherished legal documents), argued that the closest possible attention to the traditions of the law would both protect us from harm and save our national soul.  The nurturing parent is not an individual, policies, or government.  In Obama's progressive politics, the law nurtures the American family with its hopes for happiness, fairness, community, and justice. 

This emphasis on the law-as-nurturing parent helps explain Obama's own coolheaded and dispassionate nature--he is able to stand alongside an issue and analyze it through the lens of legal traditions.  And it also explains his remark on wanting an "empathetic" Supreme Court justice.  He wants someone who shares this vision of the nurturant law as his legacy on the Court.

It is also a profoundly Judeo-Christian vision.  The law--as summed up in the injunction to love God and love one's neighbor--saves.  The law is not a set of rules to be adhered to in every circumstance (as some people misinterpret it); rather, the law is a summary of divine wisdom of how to shape a community in both devotion and ethics.  As rabbis, ministers, and theologians know, the law both instructs and empathizes.  According to Jewish and Christian scriptures, the law delights; the law forms the soul; the law teaches; the law nourishes; the law guides; the law frees; the law protects.  The law establishes Israel; Jesus reaffirmed the grace-filled power of the law in his own teaching:  The law is life.

Obama isn't trying to mediate between liberals and conservatives as Dick Cheney charged.  The President is trying to create an entirely new vision of progressive politics--one based deeply in American law, and one anchored in the wisdom traditions of Judaism and Christianity.  A progressive revival--both secular and sacred--of American community through the Law.

Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread or sit in the seat of scoffers; but their delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law they meditate day and night.  They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither.  In all that they do, they prosper.  Psalms 1:1-3.