5 years in, a time for penance

March 19 will be the 5th anniversary of the Iraq war. With nearly 4,000 American soldiers dead, many more damaged and wounded in terrible and subtle ways, families and communities devastated by endless combat tours, and countless hundreds of thousands of Iraqi's displaced, devastated, and killed, it is a moment that requires thoughtful reflection on our responsibilities and accountabilities.

Five years ago, in the run up to the war, I shared the following with some mailing lists I am on (preblog days):

Echoes and Focus

A timely and thought provoking piece from a voice that earned a right to be heard:

http://atomfilms.shockwave.com/af/content/voice_prophet

In my opinion, Iraq II may be the right war for the wrong reasons. By being for the wrong reasons, it makes it the wrong war (the end can never justify the means).

The US created Saddam in the name of practicality, to help manage the direct consequences of another monster that was created in the name of practicality (the Shah). It falls to us to clean up the mess we created, not in the name of the UN or homeland security, but because of our responsibility to the American ideal.

As a nation, we should address that responsibility directly, and not mask the discussion in wranglings over UN resolutions and WMD posturing. This is a problem we created, and we need to fix it, the French be damned.

The other side of the war on terror understands that their war is with the American ideal, not America the place. It is we that are blind to where the real battle is being fought.

America the place will survive, even if we suffer horrific losses. The great legacy, burden, and responsibility of the nation is the ideals it represents. The smear of hypocrisy is the great enemy, and I fear we're sinking ever deeper into that hole for the sake of practicality (TIA, Pakistan, Venezuela, UN "debates", Saudi Arabia, Palestine/Israel, China, etc.)

Ray

When the war started, we were visiting my parents home in Washington DC. Like many Americans, I was riveted to the television in those first days of the war. My profound dread and fear for our soldiers were replaced by the giddy joy of watching Baghdad fall with minimal loss of life. There were tears flowing down my face as the brave soldiers draped the American flag on the statue of Saddam. As I went on my run that day (down Democracy Blvd of all places), I was bursting with pride that my country had so expertly removed a tyrant and evil man, and had begun to atone for the evil of having put him in place to begin with.

Shortly afterwards, a letter to the editor in the Washington Post lambasted the soldier who draped that flag on that statue. I was moved to write the following to the editor of the Washington Post:

I am writing in response to Joe Dobrow's comments on April 11 that the marine who draped the flag over the statue of Saddam Hussein "displayed the insensitive behavior for which Americans are known around the world."

Mr. Dubrow and others should remember that for our military, their families, and many Americans, our flag is not a symbol of jingoism, political affiliation, or national borders. Regardless of how it may appear to others, the Stars and Strips represents the freedoms that members of our volunteer military have committed their lives to defend, even in distant places for other peoples.

When that brave Marine raised the flag, it was not to chants of "U-S-A" in some perverse ESPN moment. Rather, the flag was raised in honor and memory to those who fought and fell at Okinawa, Normandy Beach, Berlin, Pyongyang, Basra, Baghdad, and countless other far off places so that we and others may enjoy the blessings of liberty.

While we may have honest disagreements about our nation's policies and the long term implications of the war, we as a nation should never be ashamed or reproachful when those who bravely and honorably fight and die for the freedoms we all enjoy proudly raise the Stars and Stripes. They, their families, and what our flag represents deserve better.

Ray Ghanbari

Five years in, I am grateful that we have not turned on members of our military. However, it is clear that we are engaged in an unjust war for unjust reasons. It was the right thing to remove Saddam. We had created a monster, it was our obligation to remove him. Our distorted rationale going in (and on-going distortions to stay in) have corrupted the moral basis for the war, and have hurt our country in ways that will decades for us to recognize and reconcile. Until we acknowledge and accept that we have not been in the right and that we have caused tremendous pain and death to countless innocents, we will be unable to to gain the redemption that will truly save what we are fighting for.

Several weeks ago, I was struck dumb by a remarkably vivid call for repentance and salvation by the Rev. Jim Wallis. His words are worthy of study and contemplation by all Americans, regardless of religious persuasion. His call for repentance is of profound importance to us all. In this season of repentance and rebirth, I wish all of us the courage to confront our past, so we can embrace our future together.

A Lenten Call to Repentance (by Jim Wallis)

March 19 will be the fifth anniversary of the war with Iraq. In this season of Lent, we are called to lament and repent for an ongoing war that is being waged by our country, financed by our taxes, and fought by our brothers and sisters. After five years, we all lament the suffering and violence in Iraq. We mourn the nearly 4,000 Americans who have lost their lives, the tens of thousands wounded in body and mind, and the unknown hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have died.

Recent U.S. claims of modest security gains in certain sectors of Iraq do not justify extending the U.S occupation - especially when five years of occupation has not produced the political reconciliation necessary for real security and stability. The fragile security improvements are not sustainable without a political solution, which is simply not forthcoming. And without a clear path to political progress, we will simply see more of the same failed strategy and a scenario of American occupation in the midst of bloody sectarian warfare with absolutely no end in sight—and with a real prospect of compounding the tragedy by attacking Iran as well.

On this anniversary, we should all repent for America's actions. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel once said about the war in Vietnam: "How can I pray when I have on my conscience the awareness that I am co-responsible for the death of innocent people in Vietnam? In a free society, some are guilty, all are responsible." It is a good lesson for those of us who oppose the war – it is still funded by our tax dollars and supported by our elected leaders. That is a responsibility for which we all must repent.

But repentance means more than just being sorry. It means both admitting that the course we have been on is wrong and committing to begin walking in a new direction. Repentance has to do with transformation, and that's exactly what the American church needs to break out of its conformity to the American government's foreign policy of fear and war. We must pursue our future foreign policy in ways that are consistent with moral principles, wise political judgments, and international law - rejecting unilateral preemptive wars for multilateral cooperation. We need a new definition of our national security. There is a better way. The global church feels it, and the world is hungry for it.

Given how important the issues of Iraq, Iran, and U.S. foreign policy will be in the 2008 elections, there is no better time than now for U.S. churches to offer words and acts of repentance for their misguided and misleading support for America's mistakes. It's finally time for the American churches to find their voice for Jesus' way of peacemaking and to demonstrate—in matters of war, peace, and the critical area of conflict resolution—just who we belong to.

For the next four weeks, God's Politics will be featuring posts from a variety of voices on Iraq. We'll hear from Iraqis, U.S. veterans and parents, Christians from other countries, pastors, and peacemakers - all reflecting on the cost of the war. Together, we can dedicate ourselves to a world where war is not the answer.

For those so inclined, Rev. Wallis has an on-line affirmation for those looking to publicly embrace a new path.

"We Are The People We Have Been Waiting For"

Super Tuesday night, I participated in the Minnesota caucuses at a local middle school. The scene was breathtaking. Cars were lined up for blocks. Old and young were walking up and down the snowy and icy roads, bundled against the Minnesota winter.

I was forced to park ~1/2 mile away. As I walked towards the school, I passed excited college students texting their friends, elderly shuffling as best they could, and parents with their children. Given the importance of the evening, I was immensely proud of my neighbors, and caught up in the sense that the long night may in fact be coming to an end.

All through the school, neighbors were packed into classrooms and hallways, talking about issues and candidates. The combination of engaged people, political signs, and children's drawings were a powerful reminder of why I was there.

As I moved through the line to receive my ballot, I was shocked to be handed a 2x3" piece of plain paper with ripped edges, and asked to write my preference for President and put it in an envelope. Once I realized that they must have run out of printed ballots 30 minutes into the caucus, I was overcome with the emotion of knowing that something much larger had begun.


"We The People of the United States of America, In Order to Form a More Perfect Union..."

It was my privilege to write the name "Barack Obama" on that piece of paper.

Many others have written much better than I about their rationale for supporting Senator Obama. In particular, the author Michael Chabon makes the emotional case for the intellectual issues and noted law professor Lawrence Lessig makes a very strong intellectual case for the emotional issues. Both are well worth your time. Their analysis has both beauty and integrity.

In my case, I have a commitment to (and belief in) the American Dream (or more precisely, the Dream that is America) that is so profound, that it is difficult for me to talk of it without getting choked up.

Not the dream of a chicken in every pot, nor the dream of two cars in the driveway.

Rather the Dream of many peoples coming together to achieve something larger, and leave something better for those that follow. This is the true soul of America, and embodied in our Nation's Motto: E Pluribus Unum — Out of Many One.

We may celebrate the Declaration of Independence, but our true character and what we should aspire to live by is best captured in the preamble to our Constitution:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

We the People does not refer to the 51% of the 64% who vote that agree with us, but it refers to all that we are and all that we will be. Not Red States or Blue States, but the United States. Not the welfare of those that vote for us or give us donations, but the general Welfare. Not a southern strategy or swift boating a military hero, but to form a more perfect Union.

The past 20 years have been a long dark night for those of us that believe in We the People. The lessons and successes of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove (shamefully applied by both parties) have put our nation on a path to Balkanization, and manipulated the American Dream into a micro-targeted nightmare. More frighteningly, over the past decade the tactics of division have moved beyond partisan politics to an Orwellian exploitation of fear, and set the last great superpower on a path that could easily spiral to neo-facism.

While we face many challenges and dangers in this world, I believe the greatest threat to what we are is to forget who we are. When we fracture ourselves and "win" by causing someone else to "lose", we spiral ever deeper into the zero-sum night.

We stepped back from the same precipice in the 1890s (greed) and 1950s (fear). Each time, the moment was right to elevate a leader and a voice that rejected the politics of division and the policy of the ends justify the means, and reminded us that we are at our best when we grow the pie, not when we fight over the scraps; that our manifest destiny is born of our shared values and dreams, not conflicting fears and greed.

I have been waiting for that leader and that voice for the past 20 years. While I have done my best to live the example of the greater good — of people coming together to accomplish more than they thought possible — I had nearly lost hope.

Although I still suffer from what Chabon called the "pitiable...fear of disappointment", I believe that leader is Barack Obama.

Even if he falls, or falls short of the ideals he has set forth, there is a glow on the horizon, waking those who believe more in the Dream than they fear the darkness. As that glow grows into full light, we are indeed the people we have been waiting for.

As Seneator Obama said Tuesday night (emphasis mine):

You see, the challenges we face will not be solved with one meeting in one night. It will not be resolved on even a Super Duper Tuesday. Change will not come if we wait for some other person or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we have been waiting for. We are the change that we seek. We are the hope of those boys who have so little, who've been told that they cannot have what they dream, that they cannot be what they imagine. Yes, they can.

We are the hope of the father who goes to work before dawn and lies awake with doubt that tells him he cannot give his children the same opportunities that someone gave him. Yes, he can.

We are the hope of the woman who hears that her city will not be rebuilt, that she cannot somehow claim the life that was swept away in a terrible storm. Yes, she can.

We are the hope of the future, the answer to the cynics who tell us our house must stand divided, that we cannot come together, that we cannot remake this world as it should be.

We know that we have seen something happen over the last several weeks, over the past several months. We know that what began as a whisper has now swelled to a chorus that cannot be ignored — that will not be deterred, that will ring out across this land as a hymn that will heal this nation — repair this world, make this time different than all the rest. Yes, we can.

Let's go to work.

Happy Birthday

Today's Writer's Almanac reminds us that today is the 216th anniversary of the adoption of the Bill of Rights.  With the social pendulum having swung as far as it has, it is worthwhile to reread the Bill of Rights and remember there are values that define us a nation that transcend fear.

It was on this day in 1791 that the Bill of Rights was adopted by the United States, thanks in part to a man who hasn't gotten a lot of credit, George Mason. He was a lifelong friend of George Washington's who wasn't interested in politics, but when Washington was named Commander of the Continental Army, George Mason reluctantly took over his friend's seat on the Virginia legislature. And then Mason was assigned by chance to the committee to write the new state constitution.

Mason had read the philosopher John Locke, and he liked Locke's idea that all people are born with certain rights, and that government's purpose should be to protect those rights. George Mason believed that the best way to protect those rights would be to list them in the constitution itself. And so he put together Virginia's "Declaration of Rights," the first government document in history that specified the absolute rights of individuals. Mason's ideas about rights and freedom influenced a 25-year-old legislator named James Madison, who passed them along to his friend Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson would go on to use Mason's ideas in his own draft of the Declaration of Independence.

Mason was asked to participate in the Constitutional Convention after the war, but he disagreed with the other delegates on numerous issues, especially slavery, which he thought should be outlawed in the new constitution. He fought for the inclusion of a list of rights, like the "Declaration of Rights" in the Virginia Constitution, but his idea for a bill of rights failed by a wide margin.

And so, when it came time to sign to the new U.S. Constitution, George Mason was one of the only men there who refused. He said, "I would sooner chop off [my] right hand than put it to the Constitution as it now stands." His decision ruined his friendship with George Washington. The two men never called on each other again. But he hoped that his protest would encourage an eventual passage of a bill of rights, and it did. His former protege, James Madison, introduced the Bill of Rights into the first session of Congress in 1789, and Madison used Virginia's Declaration of Rights as the model.

Even with the Bill of Rights, the U.S. Constitution didn't provide full citizenship to blacks or women, among others, and it has had to be amended again and again over the years. But when we think of what it means to have a free country, most of our ideas about the meaning of freedom come from those first 10 amendments, adopted on this day in 1791, which include the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures, and the right to a fair trial. George Mason died in 1792, a year after those freedoms and rights became law.