Obama's Religiosity

The other night I tuned into the end of a discussion on CSPAN hosted by a Catholic Priest. I have seen him on TV before and think he hosts a Catholic program. His guests were a young Rabbi, Alec Baldwin’s Born-Again Christian brothers and a journalist covering religion. At the point I tuned in they were discussing whether our President was a Christian. (Being a Muslim, I would love to have heard him say that he is indeed a Christian but if he were a Muslim or a Mormon or a Jew, how would he be a lesser president. Unfortunately, though brave, that would have fed the extreme right and alienated a large segment of our country and destroyed any chances for reelection, but I digress.)
There were two points that resonated with me. The first raised by the journalist was that President Obama, while a candidate, said in an interview that though he chose a Christian path, he believes that there are many paths to god. Believing that the only path to heaven is through Jesus Christ, the Christian Fundamentalists take this as a un-Christian position. I believe that this is a debate the fundamentalists pushing for a Christian Theocracy in America are having with the segment of our population trying to maintain a secular country. This has led to much of the vitriolic sentiment toward him from the right. Though I agree with his position, I can understand the logic if one is the keeper of the absolute truth and believes that the only true path is through Christ. Hmmm; that sounds familiar, a bit like the position of Muslim fundamentalists, believing that their path is the only true one and wanting to create Islamic Theocracies.
The other point, a totally irrational one, was made by Mr. Baldwin. He believes that because the President, as his first act, signed some kind of legislation, which somehow supported abortion somewhere outside the country. Thus with abortion being prohibited in the Bible, he said, the President cannot claim to be a Christian. The Priest asked where in the Bible does it speak about abortion, in response to which Baldwin cited the prohibition against taking innocent lives. I am surprised no one challenged him. Maybe it was because the show was coming to an end. If one extends his argument then none of the pro-choice people can claim to be Christians. What about President Bush and other Presidents who have sent us into wars where masses of innocents are killed? Are they not Christians? What about the soldier who, when noticing sniper fire from a large tenement building in Iraq, bombards the entire building with large artillery rounds surly destroying many innocents including children? Is that not taking innocent life? Is he not a Christian? What kind of an example would God have been setting for us when he caused the death of every first born in Egypt during the period of Exodus. Were these children and for that matter their parents, not innocent and not responsible for the deeds of the Pharos who, after all, they didn’t even elect?

Terrorism

There is a lot of ambiguity around what is "terrorism". The word is generally too broadly applied. Acts of war strike terror in the hearts of the civilian population but would not be considered terrorism. Rebellions against an occupier such as our own revolution, or the Hungarian uprising against the Soviet Union are not considered acts of terrorism. However, the Mau-Mau uprising against the Brits in Kenya and the Palestinian uprising against Israel, on the other hand, in our part of the world, are. The actions of the IRA against England are certainly viewed by the British as terrorism but I suspect there are elements of the US population of Irish ancestry who do not. Whether an act is terrorism or not must depend and whose side one is on. Use of the term terrorism is a political ploy meant to stir emotions that winds up leading to confusion and prolonging conflicts unnecessarily.

I believe the terrorism is most appropriately applied in cases where acts of war are perpetrated on a population that is not in a state of war. (There are international legal definitions of what constitutes an act of war. Some of them like massing troops along someone’s border and blockading a country, are not commonly thought of as acts of war by the general public.) By that definition, on September 11th we were not at war. The same can be said of the Spanish train bombings, the bombings in Bali and others throughout the world where the countries were not at war with the assailants and therefore are indeed acts of terrorism.

As to the current "war on terror"; though there is indeed a threat, the term “war” magnifies it. Also the declaration of a "war on terror" by the previous administration now identifies us as a combatant nation and maybe in the minds of some radicals justifies acts of war against us. The fact that we have not had any attacks since 9/11 on our soil suggests that the threat, though real, may be overstated.

An act of war is an expensive proposition both in resources and human lives. During the "cold war" with the Soviets, part of the game was to make the other guy spend money. We would develop a weapons system and the Soviets then would need to develop a system to counter it. If we spent $100,000,000 to develop one and the Soviets spent $90,000,000 to counter it, they won. If they had to spend $110,000,000, we won. We finally bankrupted them. We have spent a trillion dollars on the war in Iraq, and if indeed it is part of a "war on terror", then we are spending 1 trillion against our foe's several hundred million. This is unsustainable. If we are to continue with the "war on terror", we need to figure out some different way that puts our budget closer to a few billion instead of a trillion or somehow get the enemy to need to spend a lot more.

What can we do so everyone can take a peaceful breath? First I think we need to step back and better understand the nature of the conflicts. Who is the enemy? We have thrown so many groups into the terrorism kettle, I think we are confusing ourselves. Though Hamas, The IRA, The Basque Separatists, Hezbollah, the Taliban and Al-Qaida all kill innocent people, as do civilized countries engaged in a war, (the German killing of ¼ of the population of Bialorus, the Russian destruction of Berlin, our fire bombing of Tokyo and atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Israel’s attacks on Gaza to name a few) the aims and strategies of these groups are very different and need to be considered separately. The Taliban, IRA, Hamas all have local agendas whereas Al-Qaida has global aims. We need to understand their agenda and for those who indeed threaten us, develop a strategy to destroy them. When I say understand them, I don't mean to understand the rationale behind their actions, because as was the case with the Red Army Faction in Germany in the middle part of last century or al-Qaida, the ideologies are so radical that they defy logic, but better understand how they organize, propagandize, finance etc.
If we properly segregate and analyze the “terrorists” (the CIA probably is doing that but the politicians ignore them), the group may be much smaller than we think and instead of considering and elevating them to a position of combatants in a war, we may conclude that they are criminals and pursue them as such. In the long run, crime prevention may be more effective and much cheaper in both lives and money than war.