Muslim Peace-Makers

A friend passes along this short article which holds out hope that Muslims will find in their tradition and holy book a rationale for peace-making:

Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) recently conducted a five-day training for Muslim peacemakers at the request of a human rights organization in Karbala. Four CPTers, Peggy Gish, Cliff Kindy, Maxine Nash, and Allan Slater conducted the highly participatory training at the office of the human rights organization from 22-26 January 2005.

Some of the topics covered in the training included stories of non-violent peacemaking, the power of non-violence, the spirituality of non-violence and planning for public action. On the last day, the trainers covered various smaller topics, including trauma and self-care, working with media and human rights documentation.

In response to the stories and exploration of the power of non-violence, participants asked the questions, "How did that work?" and "Can we do that here?" The group also explored the roots of non-violence in the Muslim tradition and told the CPTers that Islam has a firm tradition of non-violence rooted in the teachings of the Qu'ran and in the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed.

During each day's session, the trainees had opportunities to facilitate sessions, be the daily photographer, log keeper, time-keeper, convener and process observer. The concept of assigning roles for the day was new to the trainees and they greeted it with great enthusiasm.

In the course of the training, participants shared stories of suffering and trauma they experienced under Saddam Hussein and during the wars in which Iraq has participated, including the most recent war with the United States and the subsequent occupation. The trainees said they feel compelled to use their suffering for peacemaking instead of avenging wrongs done to them.

Muslim peacemakers and CPT are planning for future trainings in other venues around Karbala. Possibilities include training at a university in Karbala and in the surrounding cities of Najaf and Hilla.

Let's hope that their desire to be peace-makers catches on among their co-religionists.

Autopsy Report

Anyone tempted to think that the autopsy of Terri Schiavo has settled the matter of the circumstances surrounding her condition should read Michelle Malkin's discussion of the coroner's report and the related links.

No Apologies, Please

LaShawn Barber offers her opinion of the Senate's debate on its failure to pass anti-lynching laws 60 to 100 years ago. In short, she thinks it's dumb:

In light of the serious problems we face in the world and our own country, I think this apology is one of the dumbest, emptiest, most politically correct pile of rubbish I've heard in a long time.

We've got fanatics trying to kill us all in the name of their god and hiding among us. We're being taxed to death taking care of deadbeats and criminals, while President Bush is sending even more of our money to brutal dictators in Africa. And the Senate apologizes for failing to pass anti-lynching laws 100 years ago?

A hundred years from now, I hope politicians will apologize for the lynchings that took place in Los Angeles after a jury acquitted the white cops who subdued lifelong criminal Rodney King. They should also apologize for the lynching that goes on right here in the streets of D.C., as black and Hispanic gangbangers kill each other and innocents for the most ignorant reasons. Apologize for failing to deport Hispanic thugs who jumped the border to spread their thuggery into America's heartland. And the Senate apologizes for failing to pass anti-lynching laws 100 years ago?

Perhaps Congress should apologize for decades of bloated socialist programs that caused the black family to disintegrate. Paying unmarried women to have babies is obscene, immoral, and the reason so many (too many) black children have no fathers to speak of. Treating blacks like dummies who require separate (LOWER) standards than every other race is offensive. I'm offended. Where is my apology?

Generations of blacks have been lulled into feeding from the government trough, and the damage it caused will reverberate for generations. And those numbskulls down the street are apologizing for failing to pass anti-lynching laws 100 years ago. Lord, give me strength.

I'm sick of politicians wasting time and money pandering to blacks, treating us like empty-headed children, spoon-feeding us putrid pabulum, and prostrating themselves for every perceived slight. Don't apologize to "Black People." Apologize to individual blacks who actually care about this mess.

Apologize for failing to protect Americans against foreign invaders. Apologize for taking our hard-earned money and giving it to people who don't want to earn it themselves. Apologize for constantly referring to me as "African American," implying that I'm a lesser American than everyone else. Apologize to all Americans for pushing racially divisive entitlements and preferences and insane "hate crime" laws. Thanks to your misguided paternalism, racial tension will always be front and center.

Freedom is more important than all the apologies, handouts, and excuses Congress could ever come up with. I'm living in the best country in the world, and I'd never be freer anywhere else. To blacks who grew up believing America was the most racist place on earth, if you no longer believe that and realize freedom, the right to be left alone, is the only apology you need, demand that from your senators.

Pretty eloquent stuff. Parenthetically, we should mention that many observers have noted that the reason such legislation failed in the past is because it was filibustered, mostly by southern Democrats. You would think that the party that employed the filibuster to block anti-lynching legislation would have been a bit ashamed to employ it to block a vote on a black nominee to the Federal bench. Such a thought, however, assumes a certain sensitivity to historical irony among Democrats that is apparently well-suppressed.

Clueless Bishop

African Anglicans are paying a steep price for adhering to principle:

Anglican bishops in Africa who are refusing millions of dollars from liberal AmericanEpiscopal sources to protest homosexual clergy say the price of their protest has been higher than they thought.

"To be honest, there is not enough money for the needs we have in Rwanda after the [1994] genocide," said Rwandan Bishop John Rucyahana of the Diocese of Shyira, "but if money is being used to disgrace the Gospel, then we don't need it."

The Rev. Alison Barfoot, assistant to the Anglican archbishop of Uganda, said the Anglican province has no working phones in its Kampala headquarters because it lacks the funds. Conservative American churches haven't pitched in enough -- "definitely not to the extent of what we've given up," she said.

Bill Atwood, general secretary of Ekklesia Society, an international Anglican network, just returned from a tour of Tanzania, Malawi, Kenya, South Africa and Uganda and called the lack of money for Africans "scandalous." "I just met with some archbishops a week ago," he said, "They were saying how painful it was, with people starving to death to make these choices."

What choices are these? The Bishops of Africa have decided that they will not accept money, as desperate as is the need, from those Episcopal bodies which support the ordination of gay priests and the marriage of gay couples. The amount of money declined totals in the millions of dollars.

Kenyan Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi said in an interview he was willing "to do without the money" if it's necessary to remind the Episcopal Church of its mission. "It was to preach the Great Commission," he added, "but what kind of Gospel are they preaching now, saying there should be union of people of the same sex?'"

In March, Bishop Jackson Nzerebende of Uganda's South Rwenzori Diocese cut ties with the Episcopal Diocese of Central Pennsylvania, which had donated more than $65,000 for school fees, transportation, college tuition and an AIDS program. Then, last month, the Ugandan province rejected a $27,000 donation from the New Hampshire Diocese to improve local schools.

Central Pennsylvania Bishop Michael F. Creighton called Bishop Nzerebende's decision "a Good Friday nail in the compassion of Christ." "Our consent to the election of a bishop in New Hampshire (Bishop V. Gene Robinson, who is divorced and living in a homosexual relationship) appears to be more important than the compassionate ministry we have shown with his own people," he said, "who are struggling with and dying of AIDS."

Leave it to an American Bishop to be clueless about what fidelity to a principle means to those who truly believe in it.

The "Christers" Are Coming!

Doug Ireland is beside himself with angst at the success of organizations of "Christers," as he calls them, in mobilizing their troops to boycott sponsors of entertainment which promotes sexual license.

He detects a whiff of fascism emanating from the offices of the gentle folks at the American Family Association and Focus on the Family, Ireland calls them "religious primitives," and grabs his readers by the lapels to scream in their face that theocracy is just around the corner, can't you see. Quick, hide the children.

It's all very comical. Here are a couple of examples:

Ireland quotes Martin Kaplan, director of the Norman Lear Center at the Annenberg School of Communication at USC, who calls the new "Christer" offensive a drive toward "theocratic oligopoly. The drumbeat of religious fascism has never been as troubling as it is now in this country."

Ireland and Kaplan fear that our government agencies are actually responsive to the people's wishes. This ugly recrudescence of dreaded democracy can only lead to trouble. Once the government starts listening to its citizens where does it stop? Auschwitz?

[E]vangelicals feel they have permission to push their way into public and cultural policy in every walk and expression of life.

Imagine the chutzpah of these "Christers" who think they have the same rights as every other American citizen. Where do they get such an impertinent idea? Haven't they learned that religious people, unless they're liberals, are supposed to keep their opinions to themselves, and let the Left alone to run things and impose its values on the rest of the country?

Nobody at the national level is tracking these Christer censorship and pressure campaigns in a systematic way, to quantify them or assess their impact, so that strategies to defeat them can be developed....Unless Hollywood, and the entertainment and broadcast industries, all want to live through an epoch of increasing content blackmail and blacklists, the wealthy folks who make a lot of money from those industries better wake up and start funding intensive and systematic research on the Christian right and its censorship crusades against sexual subversion and sin in the creative arts - or soon it will be too late, and the "theocratic oligopoly" of which Martin Kaplan speaks will be so firmly established it cannot be dislodged.

What this frantic statement lacks in honesty it makes up for in humor. It's dishonest because what Christian organizations are doing is not censorship and, even if it were, there's nothing illicit about censorship unless it's imposed by the government, and even then it's not necessarily unconstitutional. If corporations are persuaded not to subsidize the dissemination of certain ideas on television networks, that's not censorship. They're making a business decision based on the customer's wishes. If the government, through the FCC, chooses to regulate the content of what's going out over public airwaves, that's not necessarily bad either. It's similar to a public school administrator prohibiting the school library from placing pornographic magazines on its shelves.

Ireland's paragraph is humorous because the overwrought author, in his excitement, tacitly acknowledges what I'm sure he didn't intend to admit: that what Hollywood is engaged in is an attempt to sexually subvert the culture. Mr Ireland is obviously distraught that this noble cause is encountering resistance from people who don't want the culture subverted. Resistance to sexual subversion is an evil, in Mr. Ireland's mind, equivalent to being a fascist.

Or worse, a "Christer."

Thanks to No Left Turns for the tip.

What Does <i>This</i> Mean?

A United Arab Emirates daily, citing unnamed sources, reported Wednesday the United States was massing troops on the Syrian-Iraqi border:

The pro-government al-Bayan daily quoted unidentified Arab officials as saying that Egypt and Saudi Arabia "have reliable information from Damascus of U.S. military mobilization on the Syrian-Iraqi border."

The sources also told the paper the U.S. forces have repeatedly crossed the Iraqi border with the "pretext of chasing infiltrators and Iraqi insurgents."

They said that Egypt and Saudi Arabia will express their "grave concern over the growing U.S. administration's threats against Syria" during U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's visit to the Middle East that starts at the end of the week.

If this is true Bashar Assad has probably had to change his underwear a couple of times.

One Way Or Another

The Washington Post tells us that:

The Bush administration, under fire for what critics call its failed North Korea policy, expressed confidence on Tuesday that "one way or another" Pyongyang ultimately would give up its nuclear weapons.

"One way or another they're not going to have these systems," said Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, the top U.S. diplomat dealing with Pyongyang. "And so the real issue for them is what are the terms under which they'll give them up," he added.

But he reiterated the U.S. position that other options remain under discussion and added a dose of reality to recent optimism that Pyongyang may soon come back to the table. "North Korea's unwillingness to return to the table casts increasing doubts on how serious it really is about ending its decades-old nuclear ambitions," he said.

Hill said Pyongyang seems to be "testing our mettle ... testing to see whether we're going to get into endless arguments with our partners. They're waiting to see whether we're going to start negotiating with each other and with ourselves to sweeten the pot for them. And so they feel there's some advantage in waiting."

One wonders what, exactly, the other options are.

Fumento On Iraq

Michael Fumento's two most recent columns at National Review On-Line offer excellent glimpses into what our troops are experiencing in Iraq. They can be read here and here.

A Real Gulag

We've heard much nonsense about the Gitmo Gulag from Amnesty International and others eager to tar the Bush administration with anything which they can transform into a scandal. Babalu Blog has a piece in which he describes what's going on as regular practice in those prisons on the Cuban island controlled by the Left-wing icon Fidel Castro. It should be read by anyone who thinks what Americans have done to suspected terrorists on Gitmo is unconscionable.

This is not to say that because conditions are worse elsewhere whatever offenses Americans commit are thereby excused. It is to say, though, that our prisoners are treated with incredible mildness compared to what prisoners in the real Gulag of the Soviet Union experienced up until the 1980s and what Castro is doing to people even today. It is to say, too, that many of those who are so vocal in their criticism of the United States' relatively benign treatment of their detainees are people who for decades have been tolerant of, sympathetic toward, or even adulatory of both the Soviets and Castro.

The cries of outrage we hear over Gitmo and Abu Ghraib, except those of a very small minority of Christian pacifists, are not really about abuse of prisoners. That is only the pretext. Alleged abuses are merely an opportunity which his opponents have seized upon to discredit George Bush. If these people really cared about horrific treatment of prisoners they would have been screaming for Castro's resignation for the last forty years, but so far from raising their voices against this tyrant's cruelties, they've spent their energies denying them instead and apologizing for the man himself. Their indignation and demands should not be granted any credibility now.

Teach Them Both

Christianity Today has this story on the progress of Intelligent Design in the Kansas public school system:

Eighty years after the infamous Scopes "Monkey Trial," Kansas has reopened a national debate over school science standards. Hearings were convened on May 5 by the state board of education to determine whether current criticisms of evolutionary theory may be taught in public schools. Proponents of Intelligent Design (ID) had the stage to themselves.

A pro-evolution group, Kansas Citizens for Science, boycotted the meetings, saying they were a thinly disguised assault on atheism. Pedro Irigonegaray, a Topeka attorney retained by the board to defend the current science standards, characterized Intelligent Design scientists as repackaged creationists.

The theory of evolution holds that all life developed via natural selection to its present diversity over billions of years. Intelligent Design holds that natural selection cannot account for the complexity of life.

"An intelligent design by definition requires a designer," Irigonegaray told CT. "I just disagree that science should involve a supernatural answer. I think it is essential that science remain neutral."

Board chair Steve Abrams told CT that while the subject has obvious religious implications, "the objective is to minimize the religion and politics and focus, as much as possible, on the science education." This summer the board is expected to approve teaching critical of evolution.

At least 13 states are looking at legislation requiring a more critical stance toward evolution in the classroom, or allowing alternative theories to be taught.

Jonathan Wells, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, a Seattle think tank that advocates Intelligent Design, told CT that he does not favor teaching students about ID because the theory is not fully developed yet.

Wells is correct that ID is not yet a fully developed scientific theory, but that's no reason not to present in the classroom the reasons why many people accept it. Neither the Big Bang nor String theory are completely understood, but we don't hesitate to teach their main points in the appropriate science classes. Nor is the incompleteness of ID a reason why students should not be taught the difficulties with Darwinism as well as its strengths. Indeed, Darwinism itself is a theory that has been mutating continuously since Charles Darwin first published Origin of Species in 1859, and, it could be argued, is itself still not fully worked out.

Viewpoint recommends that both ID and Darwinism be taught in high school biology classrooms as competing theories in the philosophy of biology. Teach students the difference between empirical investigation and the philosophy that undergirds it and show them how philosophical assumptions permeate all that scientists do and why science cannot be practiced or taught without bringing those philosophical assumptions into play. Students will find the controversy between the two explanations of origins fascinating, and they'll learn a lot of science and philosophy along the way. So will their teachers.

Finally

The long-awaited and strangely tardy autopsy report on Terri Schiavo will be released tomorrow, Wednesday, June 15th, according to the Washington Post.

We'll be surprised if there's anything in it that settles any of the big questions in dispute, chiefly the question whether Michael, her husband, abused her and perhaps caused the heart attack which led to her subsequent brain damage. Even so, we'll be interested to see what the coroner reports.

Sappy Nonsense

The Reverend Dr. N. Graham Standish offers a sterling illustration of how not to try to make your case. Along the way he employs several dubious tactics taken, no doubt, from Liberalism's manual on how to engage in political argumentation. He writes:

If you are a Christian, how should you vote, Republican or Democrat?

As a seminary student in the 1980s, the choice seemed clear, at least for many of my classmates. We could not be Christian and Republican. We especially could not be Christian and vote for Ronald Reagan. The only choice was to be a Democrat. You can imagine that I felt a bit odd being a registered Republican who happened to vote for Ronald Reagan ... twice. Apparently I wasn't much of a Christian back then.

How time changes everything. Today, Christians all over the country, in print and on conservative talk radio, suggest that the only political option for Christians is to be Republican. During the last election, churches nationwide urged their members, and Christians their friends, to vote for George W. Bush. They simultaneously attacked John Kerry's faith, suggesting that he should be barred from Roman Catholic communion because of his political beliefs. Apparently, to be a Christian now means to be a Republican.

This last sentence is disingenuous. It was Catholic bishops who determined that Kerry's position on abortion was outside the teaching of the Church and should therefore disqualify him to receive the sacrament. Does the Reverend Standish hold that the bishops should not be making such determinations? Moreover, to conclude from the fact that Kerry's pro-choice stance is not Catholic that therefore only Republicans can be Christians is a non-sequitur unless the Reverend believes that only Republicans can be pro-life and that only pro-lifers can be Christian.

Ironically, I left the Republican Party in 1992 and registered as an independent precisely because I sensed the Republican Party slipping away from the Christianity to which I had committed my life. Why? Among other things, I could no longer abide the Republican-sanctioned, Lee Atwater-orchestrated style of politics in which politicians attack, denigrate, eviscerate and even falsely accuse each other. This was a style of politics that became a mainstay of the 1988 elections and remains a staple of politics today. It skirts the issues in favor of assailing the character of the enemy.

These are charges frequently made but rarely supported. Exactly how have Republicans been involved in the type of campaigning where they "attack, denigrate, eviscerate and even falsely accuse" their opponents. Can the Reverend give us some examples?

This attack-and-accuse style of politics has grown fiercer over the years, yet it conflicts with a Christian Gospel that says "love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you and pray for those who persecute you," and to "be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing one another in love."

For a time I considered joining the Democratic Party, but they seemed to have little interest in people of faith, and my leanings are still more Republican than Democrat. I still share many of the Republican economic and social beliefs, but I'm left in a quandary, and I'm not alone.

Note that he doesn't balk at joining the Democrats because they, too, engage in dirty politics. The Democratic slanders of Bush's judicial nominees, the complete smearing of their characters, apparently doesn't faze the good parson.

There are millions of Christians who lean Republican, but have found that the Christianity of the Republican Party is a strand of Christianity that promotes a narrow Gospel, while ignoring much of what Christianity has always taught about caring for the poor, the virtues of sacrificing self for the welfare of others, and the need for humility, compassion and peace.

The "Christianity of the Republican Party"? Does the party have an official religion? The claim that Christians who are Republicans don't care for the poor, or sacrifice for others, and are not humble or compassionate is just plain stupid. Where is the evidence for such an incredibly arrogant and malicious claim? Were Republican Christians hesitant to give to tsunami relief last December? Has President Bush been niggardly in his commitments to solving the problems of the poor in Africa and the Middle East? How have the Democrats shown significantly greater levels of compassion and sacrifice than Republicans have? Dr. Standish declines to tell us.

Too many Republican Party leaders have aligned themselves with a fundamentalist brand of Protestant Christianity characterized by black-and-white, us-versus-them perspectives: we're saved, you're not; we're right, you're wrong; we conservatives are right and virtuous, you liberals are wrong and sinful.

Listen to Howard Dean the Chairman of the Democratic party: "I hate the Republican party and everything it stands for." Has anyone ever heard a Republican of high office ever say anything remotely close to something like this about his political opposition. Dean also claimed that the Republican party is the party of white Christians so presumably among the objects of his loathing are white Christians. He has also called Republicans "liars", "evil", "corrupt", and "brain-dead."

Hillary Clinton asserts that Republicans are "intent on abusing power, destroying the United states senate, and undermining our constitution." She didn't say that this would be the inadvertent consequence of Republican policies. No, that would have been too temperate. She said that Republicans were intent upon these goals. I.e. they deliberately intended to accomplish them.

Al Gore accused George Bush of having "betrayed this country", of having deliberately mislead us into a war that has claimed thousands of lives. This is an incredibly irresponsible and mean-spirited allegation unless Mr. Gore has some proof which, of course, he does not.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, while addressing an assembly of schoolchildren, called their president "a loser".

About these examples of Liberal rhetoric, which are probably fewer than a tenth of the examples which could be cited, the Reverend has nothing to say. He's either deaf to them or he's willfully unconcerned about them. Neither possibility is very flattering.

This kind of thinking bleeds into their political rhetoric as they assert a kind of divine mandate for proposed programs and platforms. The Republican Party has been guided in this way of politicking by fundamentalists like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Ralph Reed, Rick Scarborough of the Patriot Pastors Network and James Dobson of Focus on the Family, among others, who have an agenda to make the United States a so-called "Christian" nation, with little room for Christians like me with different perspectives. Many of them call themselves evangelicals, despite the fact that the evangelical viewpoint actually is much broader and allows for much more diversity of opinion and belief.

What does the Reverend Standish mean when he states that these men are seeking to make the United States a Christian nation? He doesn't say. How does he know there'd be little room for Christians like him in such a nation if he doesn't even know what sort of nation it is that these men envision? Is it Christian to just throw out an accusation like this and not support it?

Fundamentalism isn't restricted to American politics. Religious fundamentalism has a grip on much of the world. We are in an international struggle against fundamentalist Muslim terrorists who want to create truly "Muslim" nations to counteract a modern world that has strayed too far from the Quran. Israel struggles to appease Jewish fundamentalists who believe that abandoning settlements in the West Bank erodes Israel's divine rights as a "Jewish" nation. Even the Roman Catholic Church is grappling with its own fundamentalists who want to return the church to its pre-Vatican II days.

Why do so many non-fundamentalist Christians follow fundamentalist agendas, especially when it comes to politics? One answer is that influential fundamentalists have learned to articulate rigid beliefs in a moderate and compelling language that softens the hardness of their position.

This is bad? I thought he wanted politicos to be conciliatory and gentle in their disputes. Doesn't the Reverend think it a good thing that disputants soften their rhetoric? Apparently not. The only good thing the other side can do, in his way of thinking, is abandon the principles they hold with which he disagrees.

For example, in Kansas fundamentalists have put their weight behind a proposal that "intelligent design" be taught in biology classes. Intelligent design is an idea that sounds very much like what the Roman Catholic Church and most mainline Protestant churches worldwide believe: that while evolution may be the mechanism of creation, God is the architect, engineer and project manager. Fundamentalists hope that the teaching of "intelligent design" in schools will take them one step closer to barring the teaching of evolution in schools. What they don't reveal is their belief that there is only one truth: their religious truth. There is little room for thinking that integrates the insights of both religion and science.

This is another libel. The moral and upright Rev. Doctor Standish has no grounds for his allegation that Intelligent Design supporters want to get evolution banned from schools. Everything they've said on the matter indicates otherwise. Perhaps, though, this is Standish's reasoning: Conservative Christians are liars. Conservative Christians deny any intent to ban evolution. Therefore, conservative Christians will ban evolution. How perspicuous of Rev. Standish to discern the subtle and insidious malice in conservative rhetoric. Of course, he can't come out and make his case this explicitly because then he'd be guilty of the kind of politics which employs the tactics of "attack, denigrate, eviscerate and even falsely accuse" that he condemns above. So he couches the whole smear in innuendo and implication.

Fundamentalists have also learned to employ an issue-reduction strategy using people and their stories to oversimplify complex issues in order to promote a fundamentalist ideology.

The Terry Schiavo case was a great example of this. Fundamentalists who heavily influence the Republican Party used her to reframe the issue of euthanasia by reducing it to a portrayal of a virtuous family trying to keep a disabled (they refused to call her comatose) woman alive, while her evil husband tried to kill her. They prompted the media and Republican rhetoric with all sorts of unsubstantiated accusations that Michael Schiavo was a greedy and abusive husband who wanted to kill Terry for his own personal gain. In doing so, they reduced the larger issue of euthanasia to a simple equation they hoped all would agree with: extending life is virtuous, while euthanasia is evil.

Well, the Reverend is a master of the "unsubstantiated allegation" so he probably knows one when he sees one, but even so, the allegations against Michael Schiavo were hardly unsubstantiated. They were borne out by several eyewitnesses to his attitude toward his wife. It is odd, too, that the Reverend chose this example. Saving Terri Schiavo was hardly a cause championed solely by "fundamentalists". It was embraced by most of the Roman Catholic Church, including the Pope, Jesse Jackson, and atheist libertarians Nat Hentoff and Christopher Hitchens. Perhaps Standish just wasn't paying very close attention.

What they didn't expect was that the majority of Americans, especially mainstream Christians, many of whom have grappled with end-of-life issues in their own families, believe that this issue is not so simple. They also never proposed an alternative Christian suggestion, one that is very much in keeping with the biblical mandate to make "every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." What would have happened if Christians had encouraged this traumatized and divided family to seek reconciliation and to prayerfully discern an answer together? What if Republican politicians had united all of us behind this kind of solution rather than reducing the issue to a divisive one of good versus evil?

This is sappy nonsense. The Schindler family wasn't divided. They were firmly united against the machinations of Terri's husband to have her life ended for what they believed were self-interested reasons. If they were right, then it was indeed an issue of good versus evil. Does Standish have some sort of inside knowledge into the matter that proves that the Schindlers were wrong? If so, he should state it. If not, then he sounds every bit as judgmental of those who felt that this was an unjust taking of a human life as the fundamentalists he's so fond of deprecating.

Isn't it odd, by the way, that Standish, after having criticized the Republicans earlier for not caring enough about the weak and the helpless, for not having enough compassion, now criticizes them for having too much? He seems to be a very confused man.

This current mixture of Christianity and politics is troublesome because the more religion identifies with a particular political movement, the more that movement erodes religion. Politics, by its very nature, is a realm that is often tainted by pride and a desire for power that can bring out the worst in humans because the pursuit of power corrupts. It's for this reason that Jesus said we should render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and render unto God that which is God's. Mixing politics and religion causes too many people to confuse Caesar's empire with God's kingdom.

Reverend Standish says something sensible here. Now we shall look forward to his protests when Democrats start showing up in black churches, as they always do, to preach the political gospel of good Democrats versus evil Republicans next campaign season. We're sure he'll have a sharp eye out for these illicit marriages of politics to religion.

Religion does have a place in political discourse, yet Christians need to be sure they don't confuse a politically expedient position with God's position. God's position is often unclear, especially in many of the gray areas of life. Presenting one political party as "the Christian party" is particularly troublesome because distilling religious faith down to political terms drains religion of its ability to lead people to move beyond a politics of self-interest.

Party affiliation doesn't make a person a Christian. There are millions of Christians who serve Christ faithfully as members of both major political parties; for each party represents particular concerns of Christianity, but neither captures them entirely. The Republicans are not the Christian party, even if millions of Christians are Republicans.

Of course Republicans never claimed to be the Christian party. It is their opponents, like Howard Dean, who keep making that claim in an attempt to somehow discredit Republicans among secular-minded people.

I believe that those of us who are Christian and take politics seriously need to resist the tendency to align our beliefs too strongly with any particular political movement.

Christians need to find a way to take the Gospel seriously, while simultaneously avoiding the assumption that one political party can embody the concerns of our faith. And if we are true to our faith, we need to embrace a political stance that expects politicians to seek solutions in line with our beliefs, and in a way that seeks unity rather than division.

Liberals like Standish have a test for whether the behaviour of politicians conduces to "unity rather than division." It is this: If politicians hold to principle and refuse to yield to the demands of their opposition then they are divisive. If they fail to come around to the way of thinking approved by such luminaries as Reverend Standish then they are divisive. If they believe that there is good and there is evil, and that evil should be opposed, then they are divisive. And, above all, if they are conservative, then they are divisive.

Perhaps it is time to expect more from Republican and Democratic politicians, demanding that if they proclaim a Christian mantle, they begin acting with Christian regard for others, even their enemies, even each other.

Even for Terri Schiavo?

The Reverend Doctor N. Graham Standish nicely illustrates the Left's favored mode of political polemic: Make accusations but offer no supporting evidence. Accuse your target of heinous behavior but give no examples. Misrepresent them whenever possible. Claim the moral high ground but offer no justification for placing yourself there.

Perhaps, to quote the Reverend, it is time to "expect more from our [clergy], demanding that if they proclaim a Christian mantle, they begin acting with Christian regard for others, even their enemies, even each other."

The Nutty Professor

The United States isn't the only country afflicted with history professors on leave from the local asylum. Read this interview with Egyptian History professor Zaynab Abd Al-Aziz on Saudi television to get a sense for how detached some people are from any semblance of reality:

Abd Al-Aziz: "The decision to impose one religion over the entire world was made in the Second Vatican Council in 1965."

Host: "Huh?"

Abd Al-Aziz: "Yes. A long time ago."

Host: "They decided to Christianize the world?"

Abd Al-Aziz: "Yes. The decisions of the 1965 Vatican Council included, first of all, absolving the Jews of the blood of Christ. This decision is well known and was the basis for the recognition of the occupying Zionist entity - Israel. The second decision was to eradicate the left in the eighties. I believe we've all witnessed this. The third decision was to eradicate Islam, so that the world would be Christianized by the third millennium."

Host: "Why is America hostile to Islam, although we never had and never will have the same conflict with them we had with Europe?"

Abd Al-Aziz: "Well, do you remember what we just said about the Second Vatican Council in 1965 and about Christianizing the world? It was agreed upon and pre-arranged. John Paul II prepared a five-year plan, on the eve of the third millennium, Christianize the world. His address in 1995 was based on the assumption that by the year 2000, the entire world would be Christianized. Since the plan was not accomplished, the World Council of Churches assigned this mission to the US in January 2001, since the US is the world's unrivaled military power. They named the decade between 2001-2010 "the age of eradicating evil" - "evil" referring to Islam and Muslims.

"The Crusader war is ongoing, because it has been a religious war since the dawn of Islam. Later, colonialism, missionaries, and Christianization were introduced. The Crusader war is ongoing. The Inquisition courts exist to this day. As I told you, the pope who was appointed a few days ago, headed the Inquisition Court, which is now called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

"When in January 2001, the World Council of Churches delegated this mission to the US - what did the US do? It fabricated the show of... is it September 9 or 11?"

Host: "11. Please explain this to me."

Abd Al-Aziz: "Yes, of course..."

Host: "You mean to say that the World Council of Churches delegated the mission of Christianizing of the world to the US."

Abd Al-Aziz: "Yes. And how could the US win legitimacy for this without anyone saying that they are perpetrating massacres and waging a Crusader war? It fabricated the 9/11 show. I call it a fabrication because much has been written on this. We are also to blame. Why do we accept a single perspective? Countless books were written, some of which were even translated into Arabic, like Thierry Meyssan's 9/11 - The Appalling Fraud [2] and Pentagate. "Pentagate" like Watergate... He brings documents to prove that the method used in destroying the three (sic) towers was "controlled demolition.

"This is an architectural engineering theory, which was invented by the Americans. They teach it in their universities. They make movies and documentaries about it. They incorporated it in movie scenarios and then carried it out in real life. Why do we accept this?"

Host: "My God, doctor. This is unbelievable! You're saying that this destruction..."

Abd Al-Aziz: "...was a controlled demolition. The building collapsed in its place, without hitting a single building to its left or right. The three towers fell in place."

Host: "In the same method they use in movies and plays?"

Abd Al-Aziz: "Yes, Exactly like that. That is how the US won international legitimacy. You could sense the (9/11) operation was pre-planned because many things were revealed in the days that followed. For example 4,000 Jews caught influenza on that exact day. They set a timer, and all 4,000..."

Host: "By God, you crack me up! They all set a timer and got influenza on the same day. So the building was completely empty of Jews."

Abd Al-Aziz: "Much has been written about this. 150 Congressmen demanded an inquiry."

We have to give credit to the host of this show for not taking his guest seriously. Let's hope that there's no fatwah issued against him by the mullahs to punish him for his insolence.

The host's obvious amusement causes us to try to imagine how much fun it would be to be able to sit in on an international conclave of history professors with speakers like this guy, Ward Churchill, and other inmates from the state hospital for the psychologically dysfunctional holding forth. It'd be a real hoot.

Savagery at Gitmo

TIME Magazine has blown the lid off the secret horrors that transpire everyday at Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba with the publication of an interrogation log detailing the military's treatment of the "20th hijacker" Mohammed al-Qahtani. Those who accuse the military of systematic atrocities will have new ammunition with the release of this log:

Al-Qahtani's resilience under pressure in the fall of 2002 led top officials at Gitmo to petition Washington for more muscular "counter resistance strategies." On Dec. 2, Rumsfeld approved 16 of 19 stronger coercive methods. Now the interrogators could use stress strategies like standing for prolonged periods, isolation for as long as 30 days, removal of clothing, forced shaving of facial hair, playing on "individual phobias" (such as dogs) and "mild, non-injurious physical contact such as grabbing, poking in the chest with the finger and light pushing." According to the log, al-Qahtani experienced several of those over the next five weeks. The techniques Rumsfeld balked at included "use of a wet towel or dripping water to induce the misperception of suffocation." "Our Armed Forces are trained," a Pentagon memo on the changes read, "to a standard of interrogation that reflects a tradition of restraint." Nevertheless, the log shows that interrogators poured bottles of water on al-Qahtani's head when he refused to drink. Interrogators called this game "Drink Water or Wear It."

Brutal. Absolutely brutal, what they're doing to this poor boy down there in Cuba. What al-Qahtani underwent was as horrible as, well, as what most of us went through at the hands of our Phys-ed teachers back in the insensitive sixties.

After the new measures are approved, the mood in al-Qahtani's interrogation booth changes dramatically. The interrogation sessions lengthen. The quizzing now starts at midnight, and when Detainee 063 dozes off, interrogators rouse him by dripping water on his head or playing Christina Aguilera music.

Okay. I admit the Christina Aguilera music might be a bit hard to defend. It certainly violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the Geneva Conventions.

According to the log, his handlers at one point perform a puppet show "satirizing the detainee's involvement with al-Qaeda." He is taken to a new interrogation booth, which is decorated with pictures of 9/11 victims, American flags and red lights. He has to stand for the playing of the U.S. national anthem. His head and beard are shaved. He is returned to his original interrogation booth. A picture of a 9/11 victim is taped to his trousers. Al-Qahtani repeats that he will "not talk until he is interrogated the proper way." At 7 a.m. on Dec. 4, after a 12-hour, all-night session, he is put to bed for a four-hour nap, TIME reports.

A Puppet Show! Do they have no mercy? It makes one ashamed to be an American. I wonder if they had some of the puppets in black hoods cut off the head of another terrified puppet who confessed to being an infidel.

Then the ultimate humiliation. They make him stand for the national anthem. I feel faint.

Over the next few days, al-Qahtani is subjected to a drill known as Invasion of Space by a Female, and he becomes especially agitated by the close physical presence of a woman. Then, around 2 p.m. on Dec. 6, comes another small breakthrough. He asks his handlers for some paper. "I will tell the truth," he says. "I am doing this to get out of here." He finally explains how he got to Afghanistan in the first place and how he met with bin Laden. In return, the interrogators honor requests from him to have a blanket and to turn off the air conditioner.

Being physically close to a woman he couldn't beat up or shoot was evidently very stressful for the young man. Should we be putting detainees into such unaccustomed positions? What if the woman had bad breath? How would you like it?

And what was that about air conditioning? Air conditioning? For terrorists?

Soon enough, the pressure ratchets up again. Various strategies of intimidation are employed anew. The log reveals that a dog is present, but no details are given beyond a hazy reference to a disagreement between the military police and the dog handler. Agitated, al-Qahtani takes back the story he told the day before about meeting bin Laden, TIME reports.

A dog is present. Uh oh. Was the dog used to make the terrorist uneasy? To frighten him, perhaps? Those interrogators are sure big on irony, aren't they?

Well, after reading this article we agree with Jimmy Carter and others who are calling for Gitmo to be shut down. We have enough country club prisons paid for by American taxpayers.

TIME's scoop can be read in its entirety here.

A Special Three-Pointer

This is a great story. Don't miss it.

Thanks to Michelle Malkin for the tip.

Consequentialist Ethics

Evangelical Outpost recently featured a discussion of consequentialist ethics, the view that the rightness of an act is a function of the consequences it produces and not the motive behind the act. A specific example of this type of ethics is utilitarianianism, the view that an act is right if it maximizes happiness. That is, if it produces the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people. Utilitarianism is one of the dominant schools of thought in our universities and law schools today. Even so, it is seriously flawed.

Imago Dei features a post which illustrates the failure of utilitarianism:

Let me offer a scenario that, unfortunately, affects the way I perform in my career every single day. There is no greater honor that I have that my patients trust me to give them anesthetic medications and perform surgery while they sleep. I believe it is a great crime, worthy of great punishment, when that trust is broken in cases where a patient is inappropriately touched while anesthetized by a doctor like this. To be specific I am discussing a scenario when a doctor fondles a female patient while they are asleep for surgery. I believe this is one of the most immoral acts a doctor can perform.

However, according to utilitarian ethical theory, if the patient does not find out about the fondling, was an immoral act committed? After all, the patient has suffered no physical harm, and she has no awareness that anything occurred in that scenario. According to [consequentialism]:

"the consequentialist emphasis leads to a position of moral tolerance for any kind of behavior until it results in tangible good or harm to a person, at which point moral evaluation is required. (Rule-bound moralists, on the other hand, have to spend their entire time checking every act and circumstance to see whether someone, somewhere, is having a good time - so they can put a stop to it.)"

Since there was no "tangible harm" that was done to the patient, there is no basis in which to state the doctor's actions were immoral. In fact, one could argue that since the doctor received some tangible pleasure from the experience, and the patient suffered no tangible harm, that is actions were actually moral. His actions increased the overall pleasure from the situation, and no tangible harm to another occurred. In other words, only positive consequences happen as long as the patient remains unaware of what has occurred.

But it gets even stranger. Lets say a nurse walks by the room and witnesses the doctor fondling his asleep patient. What is she to do? If she does not tell the patient or turn in the doctor, moral "good" appears to be maximized. The patient would remain unaware, and would not suffer the emotional trauma in knowing that she had been innappropriately touched. The doctor would not suffer harm or prosecution if she stays quiet. The moral "good" would be maximized by her keeping the fondling a secret.

In other words, she would have a moral obligation to keep quiet. Remember, it is not the act itself which is either moral or immoral; it is the consequences of the act. If she stays quiet, she decreases (or maybe even eliminates) the harm from the act, and if she informs the patient and the authorities, she increases the harm from the act. Clearly, from a utilitarian viewpoint, the moral thing for her to do is to stay quiet, and the immoral thing to do would be to inform the patient.

In fact, her actions in telling the patient could be considered even more immoral than the doctor's. I would argue that the doctor caused no tangible harm as long as the patient remains unaware of what happened. Therefore, the harm that occurs from the scenario is not the act of fondling itself, but the patient being informed of the act. The nurse is the one who is responsible for creating the harm if she tells the truth about the situation to the patient.

I give anesthetic meds to over 20 patients a week who place their absolute trust in me and my office staff. Do you believe they would agree with the utilitarian ethic as described here? Is there something intrinsically immoral in fondling an asleep patient, or is the morality based solely on the consequences (or lack thereof) of such an act? Would anyone trust a physician who they knew ascribed to a utilitarian ethical theory to perform surgery on them?

Any theory that results in such blatantly absurd conclusions needs to be rejected. Utilitarianism and Consequentialism fail miserably on this account.

There are other reasons for rejecting consequentialism as well. For example, how do we determine which consequences are to be aimed for? Should we pursue happiness, pleasure or justice? What standard enables us to choose between them? The classic utilitarians opted for the first two, but consider this true story:

Some years ago four young men in L.A. were arrested and charged with homicide. Their crime was that they would travel into the areas of the city where they could find some homeless derelict and they would take him up on a tenement roof, play music, drink, tell stories and in general show the poor man a great time until he was thoroughly besotted and oblivious to what was happening. The young men would then culminate the evening by pushing the fellow off the roof and watching him fall to his death on the pavement below.

Assume these guys never got caught. Assume that no one was made unhappy by their act (the victim, remember, was so inebriated that he didn't know what was happening to him), and that they were made happy by carrying out their executions. How does a consequentialist avoid the conclusion that there was nothing wrong with what they did?

Here's another problem. This story is taken from Lewis Smedes' Mere Morality. In the wake of WWII a German woman, innocent of any crime, was nevertheless interned in a Soviet detention camp. As time went on she realized there was little chance of her being released. She took a chance, however, and seduced a guard, got pregnant, and petitioned for release on the basis of her pregnancy. Release was indeed granted and she was reunited with her family which was delirious with joy to have her back. They raised the child whom they loved and called their freedom child. Did the woman do the right thing? The utilitarian would have to say yes. No one was hurt and everyone's happiness was increased.

But suppose she had done what she did and gotten pregnant but was then denied release from the camp. Suppose further that she had contracted syphilis from the guard which she then passed on to her child who suffered terribly from the disease. Suppose both mother and child lived a miserable existence in the prison camp until they died. Now the utilitarian has to say that she did the wrong thing because no one, except perhaps the guard, is happier and everyone involved is unhappier. But how does she know whether her act is right or wrong when she does it? She can't because she can't know all the consequences before they occur. Shakespeare built a considerable reputation writing plays which illustrate just this difficulty.

The consequentialist can give us no reason for choosing the particular consequence we aim for. He can, if he's a utilitarian, offer no reason why someone is wrong to do a grave injustice if it makes more people happy, and he can offer no way of evaluating the rightness of the act until all the consequences are known, something which may take generations to ascertain.

Finally, utilitarianism suffers from an even more fundamental flaw, one which afflicts every non-egoistic system of ethics based on human reason. It can give no explanation why we should seek to promote the happiness of others rather than simply promote our own happiness. In other words, it can give no answer to the question, why should I care about other people? Utilitarians just assume that all thoughtful people will agree that we should care about other people's welfare, but when pressed to give a reason why we should they simply cannot produce one that makes any sense.

The decision to treat other people in a fashion likely to increase their happiness is a purely arbitrary choice on the part of the agent, grounded in nothing more than irrational or non-rational preferences and biases. If someone makes the choice to be a complete egoist the utilitarian has no grounds for claiming him to be wrong. The most the utilitarian can say is that he's simply made a different choice, one which the utilitarian personally dislikes.

None of this is to say that consequences are not important in deciding matters of moral import. Of course they are. But they are not all that matters. It is perhaps as incorrect to say that consequences don't matter at all as it is to say that they are all that matters.

Ken Taylor, 1917-2005

Kenneth Nathaniel Taylor, who founded Tyndale House Publishers after he had been unable to find a company willing to publish his Bible paraphrases, died at age 88 on Friday. Tyndale House is now a leading publisher of Christian books and resources. Taylor's biblical paraphrase, which became The Living Bible, sold more than 40 million copes in North America alone.

In 1950, Taylor also founded the Christian Booksellers Association, a trade association of Christian stores, publishers, and other retail companies now known simply as CBA. He also created the missions organizations Evangelical Literature Overseas and Short Terms Abroad (which merged with Seattle-based Intercristo in 1976).

A brief account of Taylor's life can be found at the link.

Who-Dean-ie?

There is a struggle going on for the soul of the Democratic Party. One way this struggle reveals itself is in the conflict over who, exactly, Howard Dean should be.

On the one hand there are left-wing zealots like TruthOut.org's John Corey who proclaims that he loves Howard Dean just as he is, especially as he has been exhibiting himself over the past few weeks. The Howard Dean who has declared that he hates Republicans, who alleges that Republicans haven't worked an honest day in their lives, who derides the Republican party for being a bunch of white Christians, is the Dean who was elected Chairman of the DNC, and it's who he should remain.

Corey is exasperated that his fellow Democrats seem to be disavowing Dean's attacks upon Republicans. He writes:

So what is the topic that grabs the news and the Democratic leadership's attention? Howard Dean said something mean. Extra! Extra! Read all about it!

Bush lied and people died. Nope - not news. Ohio Republicans involved in financial and voting scandal. Nope - not news. Republicans jam Democratic phone lines during 2004 election to stop the vote. Republicans hack into Democratic computers. No news there. Tom Delay has repeated ethical lapses and takes money from lobbyists like Jack Abramoff. Nope - not news. The White House edits critical environmental reports to refute scientific fact. Nope - no news there.

Wait a minute - this just in: Howard Dean said something mean. Oh my God! Stop the presses! Did you hear? Dean has gone mean, pass it on. Get Candy Crowley at CNN and Chris Matthews at MSNBC. Don't forget Scarborough. This is a week's worth of programming! Get Holy Joe Lieberman to speak for the good Democrats. Get Jive-Joe Biden, he'll be good for a sensible quote to contrast with the madness of Howard "Beal" Dean.

Quick, do you know why Republicans are against federal money for stem cell research? They're afraid the Democrats will use it to grow a spine. (ba-da-boom)

The Dainty Dems of Petticoat Junction got their knickers in a twist because Howard Dean spoke harshly about Republicans. Not that any of the Democratic leadership heard what Dean said or even asked him what he said. No, they got it from talk radio or from someone with good hair and white teeth on TV, or from some other reliable source.

I don't give a crap whether or not you like Howard Dean. It's about damned time the Democratic Party quit sucking up to corporations and Republicans and began sticking up for the people! You remember, we the people? Of the people, by the people, and for the people? It is there somewhere in a government document, as I recall. Make a Freedom of Information request and maybe one of your new conservative judges will let you look at it under the glass where they keep it.

You want to hold Howard Dean accountable for what he says, fine. How about holding Bush accountable for what he does? I want someone who will stand up not stand down. I want someone outspoken and outrageous and out there, for me. I want someone on my side, not on my back for more money. I want someone who fights, not folds at the first sign of fake indignation.

To paraphrase my good friend Titus: You whiny Democratic Leadership wussies - get down off the cross and use the wood to build a bridge to get over it! We love Howard Dean!

On the other hand there are the mainstream liberal Democrats who themselves have to stand up for election. They don't disagree with what Dean says, of course, they'd just rather he not say it. It's unnecessarily distracting and counterproductive since they find themselves constantly having to defend Dean's remarks to the press. A recent L.A. Times piece said this:

[A]t a private meeting Thursday on Capitol Hill, a number of worried Senate Democrats warned Dean that he had been going overboard and needed to choose his words more carefully.

The former Vermont governor and unsuccessful presidential candidate recently referred to the GOP as "pretty much a white, Christian party" and declared that a lot of Republicans have "never made an honest living in their lives."

Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.) said that at the Capitol Hill meeting, "there couldn't be any doubt that there was some concern, even by Dean himself," about how his comments had been received.

Also Thursday, two Democrats seen as rising stars - Rep. Harold Ford of Tennessee and Virginia Gov. Mark R. Warner - made a point of distancing themselves from Dean's remarks. Ford, who plans a Senate run next year, said on the Don Imus radio show that if Dean could not "temper his comments, it may get to the point where the party may need to look elsewhere for leadership, because he does not speak for me."

Ford later told The Times that Dean was "leading us in a direction that makes it difficult to win.... His leadership right now is not serving any of us very well." Warner, who has been mentioned as a possible 2008 presidential candidate, said Dean was using "not the kind of tone that I would use, not the kind of tone a lot of the Democratic governors in mostly Republican states are using to get elected or to govern."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said on her way into the Capitol Hill meeting with Dean that he "ought to stick to organization, raising funds and supporting Democrats, rather than creating friction and splitting the party." She added that she would advise Dean to "cool it."

Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), up for reelection next year, said that he cautioned Dean "not to get caught up in the Washington game of political polarization."

"This is a learning process," Sen. Joseph Biden said. If Dean were to continue to make the sort of comments he has made recently, he said, "he might find himself in a real difficult situation. But I think you'll see him be a little more careful in how he phrases things. Do I think this has caused long-term damage for the Democratic Party? No. If it becomes the steady diet for the next three years? Yeah."

So the question is, whose advice will Dean heed? Who will Howard Dean be for the next three years? Will he be the moderate, reasonable, sagacious leader the mainstream Democratic politicos want him to be, or will he be the down and dirty, punch 'em below the belt brawler that the far left foot soldiers want him to remain? Dean's reply to this question is going to make one faction or the other very unhappy, and could precipitate an enervating and self-destructive internecine conflict among Democrats. That'd be too bad.

The Most Harmful Book Ever Written

Regarding the Ten Most Harmful Books list to which we alluded a few days ago, Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost writes that the most harmful book ever written wasn't in the top ten and didn't even make honorable mention. Check out his argument here.

An Offer Difficult to Refuse

Strategy Page explains how the war against the Sunni terrorists in Iraq is proceeding. Apparently Iraqi government representatives are offering the Sunnis in town after town a choice which many are finding difficult to refuse:

June 9, 2005: More towns in Iraqi's "wild west" are making peace with the government. The usual drill is not another Fallujah, but a government official meeting with local tribal and religious leaders, where an offer is made. It is announced that Iraqi and American troops are coming. Neighborhoods that support the government will see little or no fighting as a search is made for weapons, bombs and the like. Neighborhoods that wish to resist will be hit hard.

By now, everyone knows how smart bombs work. Increasingly, Sunni Arab leaders are being told, by their followers, that all this violence is not worth it. After Saddam fell, Sunni Arabs continued to believe in fantasies. For the last two years, the collective delusion was that the Americans had no stomach for guerilla war, and the Kurds and Shia Arabs could never get a government together.

Today, Sunni Arabs who can get away on a little vacation, go north to the Kurdish north, or south to Shia Basra. In both places you can sit in an outdoor cafe without fear of a suicide bomb going off down the street. The Kurds and Shia have more jobs, more reconstruction and less crime. The Sunni Arabs don't want to live in their own mess any more. They don't want to live in a combat zone, especially while the Kurds and Shia are not.

For Sunni Arabs to support the government, it often means fighting with the terrorist groups, and sometimes the criminal gangs they are allied with. The government offer includes help in building up local security. It has not gone unnoticed that Iraqi police are a lot more effective than they were a year ago. The government also has police commandoes who can go into any area, no matter how well defended, and take out terrorists or other heavily armed enemies. No longer does the government have to depend on the Americans for this sort of thing.

Read the rest at the link. Also check out the post for June 7th.