WhirledView

When in the Course of human events...

by Cheryl Rofer

The Los Angeles Times has annotated the Declaration of Independence in today's mode, with hyperlinks.

Check it out. Even if you don't click on the links, it's worth reading again.

America's Unsuccessful War in Pakistan

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Pakistan is the world’s sixth largest country, with a population of nearly 168,000,000 people, most of them Muslims, which means there are multiple deeply held divergences in the interpretation and practice of Islam, although these chasms may disappear when outside force is applied—U.S. force included. To understand this dynamic, Americans might remember how bipartisanship crops up when external threats appear. So Americans should not be surprised that even relatively secular urban Pakistanis are not enthusiastic about American efforts to vigorously pursue or eradicate “Islamist insurgents” within their northern borderland. There is certainly a problem of law and order in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, a problem that is acquiring urgency because the ferment is spilling out and into other parts of Pakistan. Terrorists have threatened Islamabad and Lahore as well as the ever volatile megacity of Karachi, for example. Above all, longstanding, largely tacit understandings about cultural autonomy and spheres of influence within and across national boundaries have been abused and violated by many players.

But employing the Pakistani Army to slaughter unruly tribals by the hundreds or thousands in order to pluck Osama bin laden, America’s Enemy Number One, out of his mountainous safe haven would appear, to most Pakistanis, like swatting a fly with an atom bomb: a strategy certain to do more harm than good. And Pakistan is jealous of its sovereignty.

“Half of all Pakistanis want their government to negotiate and not fight Al Qaeda, with less than a third saying military action by the Pakistani government is called for,” according to a recent poll by Terror Free Tomorrow. They'd prefer to negotiate with the Afghan and Pakistan Taliban, too. Some 73 per cent of those polled said that “the real purpose of [America's] war on terror is to weaken the Muslim world and dominate Pakistan.” Part of me wonders if a more effective Public Diplomacy effort might have led to less negativity. Part of me replies, "It's the policy, stupid."

American policymakers should pay attention to such disheartening poll results. Pakistan, as a semi-cooperative ally, is endlessly exasperating to American policy makers. Pakistan as a sullen ex-ally would be far worse, and all it would take to accomplish such a divorce is the capture and public parading of a few U.S. special forces operatives nabbed on the Pakistani side of the border with Afghanistan. The furor over America's border-crossing bombs, called in to kill alleged insurgents who turned out to be Pakistan Border Corps troops, of whom 11 died, gives a tiny hint of the likely reaction. American popularity in Pakistan is at an all time low these days, while sympathy for Al Qaeda’s goals, if not the violence with which those goals are pursued, is rising. Thus, the secular elite that has been governing Pakistan since its inception is increasingly under siege. To stay in power the non-religious parties must maintain their nationalist if not their Islamist credentials. A popular way of criticizing Pervez Musharraf, George W. Bush’s increasingly marginalized ally in the “war against terror,” is to call him an American tool.

Hands Across the Border

Once upon a time India served as the juicy scapegoat for Pakistan’s nationalists, and not so long ago outside observers worried that India (or Pakistan) might inadvertently (or intentionally) lob a nuclear device across the border. To defend the brand new country against the threat of Indian irredentism is what the Pakistan army was created for. And why did Pakistan originally encourage the activities of violent Islamists who are now, in classic blowback fashion, threatening a form of Islamic revolution within Pakistan itself? Why, to weaken India on the cheap, by forcing New Delhi to deal with incessant insurgency in Muslim majority Kashmir.

But things may be changing on the Indian front. When asked the tired old question as to whether a “foreign hand” might be “fanning trouble in the tribal belt,” Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani replied “yes.” Yet India wasn’t named this time. The alleged culprits were “some foreigners from Central Asian States.” No doubt American policymakers would have preferred a Gilani diatribe against Arabs, as in Osama bin Laden, or Egyptians, as in Aymen Al Zawahri, but the latest series of talks between India and Pakistan seem to be achieving some degree of trust between the traditional enemies. The still wary neighbors are discussing peach and security, confidence building measures in Kashmir, economic ties, prisoner exchanges and anti-terrorism.

Better yet, from that point of view, a recent editorial in Dawn applauds the new sanity:

....detente between Indian and Pakistan will impact positively on global politics. With no signs of Islamabad winning the “war on terror” in the immediate future and the militants recognizing no borders, a wise strategy demands that India and Pakistan join hands in their security endeavour.

However, the Dawn editorial ends with a twist that may not please Washington:

In that context their agreement...to hold meetings of their anti-terrorism mechanism regularly is encouraging. It would also reduce Islamabad’s dependence on Washington in world politics.

Speaking of Washington, when asked about making Pakistan’s Dr. Strangelove, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, available for further interrogation from IAEA as a result of recently uncovered evidence that his one-man proliferation operation was even more generous than previously known, Gilani said, “the issue of Dr. Qadeer is over.” This will displease the Americans. So will Gilani’s present position on the Pakistani nuclear weapons program: “we are not a rogue state and are neither indulging in an arms race with any one” although “minimum deterrence will be maintained in this regard.

Desperately Seeking Bin Laden

Above all, the Americans are definitely not happy with Pakistan’s failure to nab Osama bin Laden or to permit American forces to nip over the border from Afghanistan to do the job for them.

Congregations Against Torture

by Cheryl Rofer

I drove past the Santa Fe Unitarian Universalist Church this afternoon, after viewing "Constantine's Sword," which is about Christianity and antisemitism and, I might add, power. The sign in front was covered with a black banner with white letters condemning torture. I commented to my passenger that the antiwar movement of the sixties and early seventies included more church people than the priests and nuns depicted in the movie, and it was about time to see the churches taking a stand on torture.

I was wondering about how much of a movement might be developing, so I checked for news stories. Apparently the movement is among individual congregations, mostly Catholic and mainline Protestant denominations, but including Jewish congregations and a few others for a total of about 300.

The Washington Times is one of the few newspapers bothering to cover this development, at least according to what I find in Google News. Papers in localities where the signs are going up are also covering the news. (Corvallis, Oregon; River City, Iowa; Atlanta)

Senators McCain and Obama: How Will they Vote on the Wheelchair Bill?

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

While Obama and McCain play to the crowd on the oil price crunch, Congress is playing games with Medicare.

On the one hand, we have Republican politicians shouting that we can’t afford Medicare, much less universal health care, which many Democrats more or less support, while clinging to various coy and complex reservations. I include Obama in this flirtation with meeting American’s health needs, because he has not, to my mind, been sufficiently comprehensive in his goals or clear in his assertions. McCain is essentially for total health care privatization, which definitely won’t help to raise America’s life expectancy stats to a respectable level.

On the other hand, Congressional leaders of BOTH parties, it seems, have voted to undercut efforts to halt Medicare over payments for medical devices. It seems that an elderly or post-operative person who is a little wobbly can buy an ordinary walker in a big box store for half what it would cost Medicare to provide the same item.

How can this be? Simple. Current procurement policies for Medicare don’t require suppliers to bid competitively on contracts to supply such devices. This bit of federal assistance, a brazen subsidy to the private sector of the sort that "Conservatives" are addicted to, was going to be eliminated by Congressional reformers.

But then the industry got to work on our representatives and presto!!!! More of our tax dollars funneled—approximately $1,000,000,000—to the undeserving. That’s big business bed-manufacturers, not beggars. The system isn’t being milked by illegal immigrants, it seems. It’s being bilked by the free enterprise types who typically hate competition. It's so inefficient.

Guess What? American Muslims Aren’t That Different

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

I always sit up and pay attention when another Pew survey is announced, and the report that was covered in my morning NYT on June 24 had to do with religion in the U.S.

A major survey by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life finds that most Americans have a non-dogmatic approach to faith. A majority of those who are affiliated with a religion, for instance, do not believe their religion is the only way to salvation. And almost the same number believes that there is more than one true way to interpret the teachings of their religion. This openness to a range of religious viewpoints is in line with the great diversity of religious affiliation, belief and practice that exists in the United States, as documented in a survey of more than 35,000 Americans that comprehensively examines the country’s religious landscape

Religion is a hot political topic these days. The wall of separation between church and state is under assault, and the administration has declared war on radical Islam. So I was very eager to read this article which declared that a “survey of religion in U.S. finds a broad tolerance for other faiths.”

The tabulations that followed included nine categories: Mormon, Jehovah’s Witness, Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, Hindu, Jewish, Buddhist, Unaffiliated. But where were the Muslims? Was it possible that the Pew people had neglected to include Muslims?

Or was it that data involving Muslims was simply ignored by the reporter, whose name showed her to be of high caste Bengali Hindu descent. Was this a snub that went back to the ancestral culture in Indian West Bengal?

OK. Reporters are human. But where was the editor? Surely an editor would have noticed that Muslims were absent from the story submitted by the reporter. Except, it seems, the editor didn’t, unless the Pew people had been very very negligent.

So, naturally, I went on line. I found, to my great relief, that the Pew people had not failed to include Muslims in this very important tabulation (though the consolidated data comes from different studies).

Above all (and this is of major political importance) it seems that Muslims in America aren’t statistically all that different from any other Americans in the essence of their theology or the resulting political implications.

Thus, under the category “Many Paths to God,” it appears that 56% of American Muslims agree that “many religions can lead to eternal life.” Mormans rank only 39% on this item and Jehovah’s Witnesses lag at 16%. Nobody who can tolerate other roads to god is likely to throw bombs, so we should certainly be reassured that a solid majority of Muslims are very tolerant indeed. (And most of the rest aren’t fanatical or suicidal, just as most evangelicals wouldn't bomb an abortion clinic.)

Even more interesting as a perspective on American Islam was the category which involved “Conception of God.” This choice had to do with whether one believes that god is “a person” one can have a “relationship” with or that god is “an impersonal force.” Some 42% of Muslims saw God as an impersonal force. That’s more than the Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Protestants, Catholics and Orthodox Christians—and nearly as many as the Jews, who stand at 50% in this category. Now I ask you, if someone thinks of God as an impersonal force, is that person likely to support or go on a violent jihad? I think not.

The third category category reported in the NYT had to do with the comparative value of “ensuring peace" through “diplomacy or military strength." Some 84% of Muslims prefer diplomacy. Catholics come in at 64%, Protestants at 55% and Mormons at a mere 49%. What does that say about the supposedly violent inclinations of Muslims as a whole? Totally demolished.

It’s often said in political commentary today that violent Islam is espoused by those who feel their values are threatened by America’s popular culture or by those who are dissatisfied with their lives or opportunities. The Pew poll shows that American Muslims are no more worried than other Americans about whether “Hollywood threatens my values” and they are equally satisfied with their lives. So American Muslims aren’t disproportionately alienated either.

Perhaps we are over the worst human rights abuses which followed the destruction of the World Trade towers, but simplistically negative ideas about Muslims and Islam are still all too prevalent. This Pew study should go a long way toward inoculating non-Muslim Americans against such prejudice.

Torture Links

by Cheryl Rofer

No surprise, it's what we've expected all along, but there's some comfort in Congress's much-delayed investigation.

If you're like me and can barely stand to read about it, much less write about it, here are the two pieces you should read, along with the links by helmut if you want more.

Torture, Torture, Torture (phronesisaical)

Torture from the Top Down (Scott Horton)

Three Stumbles and (Maybe) He's Out

By Patricia L. Sharpe

For about 48 hours I tried to feel good about the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, but I wonder now.

Support Barak!

Not that I won’t vote for Obama in November. No matter what. Here’s one very strong reason why. The most recent Supreme Court rulings extend habeas corpus rights to Guantanamo detainees, but the vote was five to four, a close call, and Bush-appointees Chief Justice Roberts and Associate Justice Alioto dissented. Should a Bush clone be in a position to fill the next vacancy on the Supreme Court, these welcome decisions could be reversed. In fact, the differences between Republicans and Democrats are clearly drawn on a whole host of important issues. So there is no way I could back John McCain, and I was going to argue that strongly with other high-and-dry Hillary supporters.

A Wobbly Supporter

Then, last weekend, I had an interesting conversation with a friend. An early and staunch Obama supporter, she astonished me by expressing the fear that Obama himself might be a little wobbly on foreign affairs.

“But,” she said, quickly, “that doesn’t matter. He has good advisers.”

Not Just a Pretty Face

My reply had several parts. First of all, I don’t want a president elect who comes to the Oval Office as a naif when it comes to foreign affairs. We've seen where that leads. I want a president who already knows a lot about the world, its current state and how it got here. I want a president who already knows plenty about the ways in which the U.S. has acted in the world—and why. I want him to have some vision of where he’d like to take us, a vision he can articulate in reasonable detail. In short, I don’t want a president who’s dependent on advisers for the whole shebang. Why elect an empty suit? Furthermore, in order to evaluate advisers, you have to know something. In order to choose between good and bad advice, you have to know a good deal. Too bad Joe Biden wasn’t able to mount a stronger campaign.

However, if the president of the U.S. is going to be a pretty face, a cheerleader, a figurehead, then he or she better have very good advisers indeed. And so I come to my second concern. Two big stumbles have already given the McCain forces dangerous ammunition.

The initial blooper had to do with Obama’s remark that he’d speak to anyone, even the leaders of Iran. This willingness to prioritize diplomacy pleased many of his supporters. It pleased me, too, even before the primary phase was over. But McCain and company jumped on it. Naturally. The failure came when Obama was unable to explain, clearly, why he could and would stand on that simple principle. Talking to tough cookies really is defensible.

Of Tomatoes and Governments

by Cheryl Rofer

The FDA and other federal and state agencies are trying to figure out how the salmonella got into the tomatoes. The salmonella strain seems to be distinctive, so that should help the detective work.

I'm wondering if the salmonella is in or on the tomatoes. If it's in, that's a real problem that tomato growers and processors will need to address in the future.

The bigger problem, of course, is how these things keep happening. Big farming, big processing of produce leads to this sort of thing, but that is what government agencies are for. Of course, if the main object of government is to reduce taxes, then of course you have to cut services. But the kindly free enterprise system will of course step in and regulate those who sell tainted tomatoes. All of the tomato producers may have to let their crop rot in the field, but the malefactors will be hurt too.

Meanwhile, the South Korean government nearly fell yesterday because they wanted to open their market to beef from the US. That same FDA system that gave us salmonella in our tomatoes is the problem here, too. Less regulation of beef entering the marketplace, some YouTubes of falling cattle that will become hamburger, and that's not so appetizing to customers.

The South Korean government has other problems, too, but it seems as though all these reverberations of that free and unregulated market in tainted food suggest that there might be a better way to do it.

The Sins of the Fathers: Thoughts on the Fulbright Snafu in Gaza

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Here’s the gist of it: because Palestinians in Gaza chose Hamas, Gaza has been turned into a concentration camp, and even the children of those naughty voters must be punished, according to Israel and its primary financial and moral (ahem!) backers in the Bush administration. As a result, Palestinian students can’t count on exit visas to study abroad, even when they’re awarded the full scholarships they need to do so. Not even when those scholarships are sponsored by Israel’s official friends in the U.S.

So, Palestinian children are to be punished for the sins of their fathers even unto the umpteenth generation. This sort of thinking goes back to the Bible. It’s purpose, several millenia ago, was to account for the baffling cosmic injustice by which good people suffered very bad things. The explanation: God designed it that way. You’re in trouble because you had a bad daddy or mommy ad infinitum.

Well, that explanation may work, sort of, for some people, to account for the consequences of natural phenomena like tsunamis and earthquakes and tornadoes. Unavertable catastrophes kill a lot of innocent people and even some saints, no doubt. Such premature mortality doesn’t seem fair, but people often feel better if they can find a “good reason” for the horror.

Actually death by typhoon, etc., isn’t fair, because fairness has nothing to do with nature.

But the Israeli exit visa policy has nothing to do with god or nature. It’s a political decision, and it’s hubris or sacrilege for humans to think they may act like god. On the human level, meanwhile, the notion of punishing children for the sins of their fathers is not only unjust inhuman and unjust, it’s ludicrous. It assumes that a person’s future can be predicted at a very early age. It also assumes that children always or mostly turn out like their parents.

On what sage-worthy grounds might an Israeli security staffer deny an exit visa? The kid threw stones at Israeli soldiers when he/she was 12 or 14? He/she shouted anti-Israeli slogans or scribbled anti-Israeli graffiti? He/she has a father, mother, cousin, uncle who is/was a Hamas member or supporter?

In practice, no such factors reliably predict anyone's future philosophy or behavior. For example, when I entered college, I was a Christian, a Republican and an ardent Israel supporter. I am none of these now, and I have changed no more than many people do over a lifetime.

Sometimes children adopt the parental religious orientation or profession; sometimes they don’t. Some children get more liberal as a result of travel and education. Some get more conservative. Furthermore, we all know that siblings can be as different as night and day. Thus, there is no way to know how a young or inexperienced person will react when exposed to foreign countries and cultures.

To give the devil his due, it’s true that some foreign-educated engineers and doctors have become terrorists. Yet most turn out to be beneficial members of society. Is it reasonable to punish 1000 potential agents of good in order to avert the minuscule risk of one (or less) going amok? The Israeli policy of denying foreign education to Gazans is a crude and vicious business of punishing children for the supposed sins of their fathers, a policy of totally gratuitous cruelty.

It’s cruel in another way, too. It assumes that parents will do anything you want them to do if you make life hard for their children. It assumes, in this case, that Gazans, at a certain point of deprivation and humiliation, will hug their babies, fall on their knees and beg for forgiveness, after which they will humbly vote as Israelis want them to vote. By now, it should be clear that such self-negation will not happen. Not even the Bush administration is willing to let Gazans starve.

Fortunately, then, most of the trapped children will grow up, but there’s a consequence to consider. Although the principle of non-predictability applies across the board, I strongly suspect that a larger proportion of those who never experience a more benign environment will be angrier and more vindictive than those who left to study at Harvard or Michigan State or Bryn Mawr. Or Oxford. Or Heidelberg.

How could the U.S. have slavishly acquiesced in this policy of punishing youth for the sins of the grown ups? I don’t understand it, but I am deeply grateful to those who spilled the beans and hope (not very optimistically) they will not be punished for disclosing this injustice. There is nothing like public humiliation to cause policy change. The Palestinian Fulbrighters will travel.

I am no less happy to see that exit visas will also be issued to hundreds of Gazans who had been denied the opportunity to travel to other countries for education.

However, nothing can be taken for granted. Vigilance will be required, lest the prison gates be locked again, after this little brouhaha dies down. And should an administrative “bottleneck” occur again, I suggest that the proper U.S. response should not be to revoke Palestinian grants or to plead for reversal, but to immediately reassign all Israeli Fulbright grants to Muslim students elsewhere in the world.

Not all Fulbright awards go to young students, of course, but visas for older scholars are equally defensible. Surely no Israeli official in his or her right mind can believe that a Palestine without professionals and academics will be good for Israel’s future security. Unless, of course, Israel’s true goal really is the genocide, total expropriation or perpetual serfdom that some Israelis, at least, seem to envision for the Palestinians.

Ending the Revenge Cycle: A Film from Chad

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Nelson Mandela understood.

Acted upon, the all-too-natural hunger for revenge invites retaliation which, in turn, activates an endless cycle. Since the lex talionis is such a ghastly trap, truth and reconciliation councils were created to allow South Africans to wipe the political slate clean and participate, under new rules, in a post-apartheid society. It looked, for awhile, as if the revenge cycle had been stopped almost before it started. Unfortunately, Mandela’s successor Thabo Mbeke hasn’t been so adept at handling the very different challenges of his presidential tenure, with the result that immigrants from poorer African countries are now being scapegoated, even murdered, for economic difficulties they certainly did not cause. The townships, still poor, are erupting in violence again, and other South Africans are in a state of disbelief as they cope with electricity shortages. One hopes that Mbeke’s successor will not stoop to the thuggery and demagoguery by which Robert Mugabe has controlled an economically-devastated Zimbabwe, where Mugabe’s high level henchmen obviously intend to perpetuate their grip on government even after the once-respected octogenarian can no longer serve as a front man for their ambitions.

Mugabe rose to power by decimating his post-independence opposition. Not the whites. A political faction dominated by another tribe. Then, for fear of retribution, he had to keep sitting on them. One hopes that when Mugabe and those he has nurtured are, eventually, inevitably, replaced, the new regime will take a wiser course. One hopes against hope that the upcoming rerun of presidential elections in Zimbabwe will be overseen by outside electoral experts so that the Zimbabwe workers being driven out of South Africa will be able to participate, without fear, in the rehabilitation of their ruined country. For that to happen in a post-Mugabe Zimbabwe there will have to be a lot of forgiveness and political restraint.

This is a long introduction to a fine film made in Chad, but it’s an appropriate introduction because the film indicates that Nelson Mandela is far from the only African dedicated to promoting an end to ugly cycles of murder and revenge. Forgiveness is difficult, but possible.

Here’s where the story in Daratt, the Dry Season begins: the civil war in Chad is over, but young Nassara’s blind grandfather is outraged by the news that all participants in the bloodbath will be granted amnesty. He tells the young man that he must go to the capital Ndjemena, find his father’s killer and avenge the family by doing away with him. The old man gives his grandson a hand gun for the job and says that he will be waiting for a report of success under a certain tree in the desert some distance from their village. The boy sets off to do his duty. We don’t realize it at the time, but the symbolism is clear: a blind old anachronism anchors himself to a barely surviving, solitary tree in the desert.