Senator Brownback PWNS Obama’s Sudan envoy

As found here.

Sam Brownback (R-Kansas): President Bashir, he has participated in a genocide in Sudan, is that correct?

Maj. General (ret.) Scott Gration: Sir, he was the president of the country during the time that the genocide took place and, ah, therefore he would have participated.

Brownback: So he has led the genocide in Darfur?

Gration: His government was responsible for that, and he was the leader of the government, therefore he would have done it.

Brownback: President Bashir is an indicted war criminal, by the ICC.

Gration: He is. (Silence. Looks down at table.)

…

Brownback: Are there in the leadership of the government of Sudan, individuals you're dealing with or negotiating with?

Gration: I'm negotiating with individuals that are in high-level positions in the government of Sudan.

Brownback: You're dealing with a government that is conducting an ongoing genocide, is that correct?

Gration: (Pause.) I'm dealing with the government.

Brownback: That is conducting an ongoing genocide in Sudan?

Gration: (Pause.) I'm dealing with the government in an effort to end the conflict, in an effort to end gross human rights abuses.

Brownback: I understand your objective. I'm asking you, are you dealing with a government that is conducting an ongoing genocide in Sudan.

Gration: I'm dealing with--as I said, I'm dealing with the government in Khartoum, of Sudan.

Brownback: Which is currently conducting a genocide in Sudan, is that correct?

Gration: That's correct.

Brownback: Should we have dealt with Charles Taylor, who is an indicted war criminal?

Gration: I have not been involved with Charles Taylor.

Brownback: Should we have negotiated with the Serbian leader Karadzic, the butcher of Bosnia?

Gration: I have not been involved in that situation.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Scott Gration, President Obama's special envoy to Sudan, he has previously summed up his attitude toward the mass murderers in Sudan's government this way: “We’ve got to think about giving out cookies. Kids, countries – they react to gold stars, smiley faces, handshakes, agreements, talk, engagement.”

At least we've still got some good men in Congress.

Politics of the ummah

My friend got a free copy of the Qur’an the other day.

He lives in Minneapolis and attends the University of Minnesota. He went to the campus bookstore, and met two bearded students sitting behind a table stacked with books. One of the students asked him, “Have you heard about the Qur’an?” My friend replied, “Kind of, my friend [meaning me] went to the Middle East and bought a copy there.”

One of the students replied, “It is also known as Palestine, well formerly known as Palestine.”

“Would you like a copy of the Qur’an?” the other asked. Yes, my friend said, he would.

Here are my observations about that exchange. Please feel free to correct me on any count:

1) The Middle East is a pretty big region. There’s no official definition of “Middle East,” but I would probably define it as the area in between Morocco in the west, Iran in the east, Turkey in the north, and Yemen in the south. In other words, all of North Africa, the Levant, the Arabian Peninsula, Mesopotamia, Persia and Anatolia. Yet when my friend told a Muslim in Minneapolis that I had gone to the “Middle East,” the Muslim man automatically assumed he meant Israel/Palestine. I’m guessing this means that Americans use the “Middle East” as shorthand for Israel/Palestine way too often (e.g., “The Middle East conflict”). This is probably because, depending on where you stand on the issue, you think that the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is a) all Israel b) all occupied Palestine, c) Israel and the occupied “Palestinian territories,” d) Israel and the disputed Palestinian territories, or any other number of ridiculous formulations. So “Middle East” is just simpler to say.

2) Because every description of the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean is inherently political, this Muslim man was not simply correcting my friend’s geography. He was trying to educate my friend on a political perspective: “It’s also called Palestine.” And if “the Middle East” is “Palestine,” then the existence of the State of Israel there is illegitimate.

3) While in the act of evangelizing for his faith, this Muslim man quickly and effortlessly made the jump to evangelizing for a political cause – the Palestinian cause.

At first I was tempted to say that there’s no analogy to that in Christianity – but of course there is. In the minds of many American evangelical Christians, there is little to no distinction between spreading the gospel and advocating for political causes, like restrictions on abortion and gay marriage, or even America’s continued status as a “Christian nation.” And of course, in American Judaism, sympathy for the state of Israel often comes as a natural part of religion. On my one and only visit to an American synagogue, the message was delivered by a representative of Israel’s natural resources ministry. She gave me a green button that read, “Naturally for Israel.” (Get it?)

So I guess what stands out for me is the identification of Islam with Palestinian nationalism that my friend experienced. In Judaism, where ethnic heritage and religion are so closely related, Israeli nationalism makes a certain kind of sense. But Islam is a religion for all people. So why is it that the vast majority of Muslims around the world seem to uniformly come down on the side of the Palestinian cause? I have a few guesses, but as a supporter of Israel who wants to see a better relationship between my country and the Islamic ummah (worldwide community), none of them make me feel better about it.

If you’re wondering if there’s an exception to the standard Islamic line on Palestine, the answer is – yes. I give you Stephen Schwartz, an American Sufi Muslim and leading neoconservative. “Israel, to me, is the historic, sacred land of the Jews,” he writes. “Neither more nor less. It was given to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob by the Almighty as their eternal home.” He even backs it up with verses from the Qur’an.

And here’s an endlessly fascinating (to me) video of Jews and Muslims clashing over the subject of Israel at an interfaith dialogue:



(If the dialogue in that video seems harsh, remember – at least they’re talking to each other.)

As soon as you’re done chewing on that one, I have another question: In the past six years, around 300,000 Muslim civilians have been murdered and 2.7 million displaced in the Darfur region of Sudan. Since the early 90s, over 50,000 Muslim civilians have been killed in Chechnya by the Russian army, 25,000 since 1999.

In all the wars fought between Israel and its neighbors in the last 61 years, around 150,000 people – Israeli civilians, Israeli soldiers, Arab civilians and Arab soldiers – have been killed. Since 2000, Israel has killed around 7,000 Palestinians and Lebanese – civilians and terrorists – in its various wars.

The rage directed at Israel by the Muslim world, compared to the rage it directs at the governments of Sudan or Russia, seems a little disproportionate, no?

فلسطين حرة

Free Palestine.

Jeremiah

I will probably never do a “Bible-in-a-year” program, but I do want to read through the entire thing someday. I recently made a list of all the books in the Bible that I know I’ve read all the way through (sadly, it was pretty short), and I’ve started reading the rest of the books one by one, marking them off as I go. I decided to start with the prophets, since I don’t know them very well. It’s going at a snail’s pace. Last semester I finished Isaiah. Last week, I finally finished Jeremiah.

The prophets are something else. They are poetic, and beautiful, and terrifying. For me, what separates them from the rest of the Bible is the amount of talking God does in them. In the histories, the narrative mostly follows human beings, and every once in a while God interrupts to give blessing, teaching or condemnation. In the gospels, we follow God incarnate around, but we’re still reading a story. In the prophets, God just talks – for pages and pages and pages. When I read the prophets, I imagine him bellowing from the heavens about the sin of Israel and the nations, and the judgment and restoration he has planned.

Beyond that, I don’t really have any profundities to offer. So I decided to assemble a list of some of the verses in Jeremiah that stuck out to me the most – probably because they’re relevant to what I’ve been thinking about lately. (Politics, politics, politics.) Maybe they only make sense together like this in my own mind, but hopefully you, dear reader, will get some sense of the book from this post.

Without further ado, thus saith the LORD:

“Has a nation ever changed its gods?
(Yet they are not gods at all.)
But my people have exchanged their Glory
for worthless idols.
Be appalled at this, O heavens,
and shudder with great horror,” declares the LORD.
- Jeremiah 2:11-12

“On your clothes men find
the lifeblood of the innocent poor,
though you did not catch them breaking in.”
- Jeremiah 2:34

“The prophets prophesy lies,
the priests rule by their own authority,
and my people love it this way.
But what will you do in the end?”
- Jeremiah 5:31

We hoped for peace
but no good has come,
for a time of healing
but there was only terror.
- Jeremiah 8:15

“Am I only a God nearby,” declares the LORD, “and not a God far away? Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him?” declares the LORD. “Do I not fill heaven and earth?” declares the LORD.
- Jeremiah 23:23-24

“See, the storm of the LORD will burst out in wrath, a driving wind swirling down on the heads of the wicked. The fierce anger of the LORD will not turn back until he fully accomplishes the purposes of his heart. In days to come you will understand this.”
- Jeremiah 30:23-24

“Later, however, Egypt will be inhabited as in times past,” declares the LORD.
- Jeremiah 46:26

“Do not fear, O Jacob my servant,
for I am with you,” declares the LORD.
“Though I will completely destroy all the nations among which I scatter you,
I will not completely destroy you.
I will discipline you but only with justice;
I will not let you go entirely unpunished.”
- Jeremiah 46:28

“Yet I will restore the fortunes of Moab in the days to come,” declares the LORD. Here ends the judgment on Moab.
- Jeremiah 48:47

“Yet afterward, I will restore the fortunes of the Ammonites,” declares the LORD.
- Jeremiah 49:6

“Yet I will restore the fortunes of Elam in the days to come.”
- Jeremiah 49:39

“Her [Babylon’s] people all roar like young lions,
they growl like lion cubs.
But while they are aroused,
I will set out a feast for them
and make them drunk,
so that they shout with laughter –
then sleep forever and not awake,” declares the LORD.
Jeremiah 51:38-39

(I’m mostly including that one because it was a head-scratcher for me.)

“Babylon must fall because of Israel’s slain,
just as the slain in all the earth
have fallen because of Babylon.
You who have escaped the sword,
leave and do not linger!
Remember the LORD in a distant land,
and think on Jerusalem.”
Jeremiah 51:49-50

It is not good for man to be alone

My roommate Neal got engaged over break.

I met him over three years ago, when we were both freshmen living in North Hall at Dordt. He liked loud music, scary movies, Mountain Dew, Guitar Hero, and Dean Koontz books. He’s changed a lot since then. So have I. He still likes Dean Koontz books. So do I. Now, he likes good music and good movies, and no longer wears Hollister or plays video games.

We were roommates for the first time our sophomore year, when we lived together with our friend Zach in West Hall. None of us had any clue what we wanted to do with our lives. We watched a lot of dumb movies, watched a lot of good movies, read the Chronicles of Narnia, watched Lost, had dance parties with the girls down the hall, made lots of coffee, fell in love with the Shins, swore for hours on end just for the heck of it, tried to get girlfriends, took a golf class together, made a few trips to the emergency room, and chased down a tornado. Those were the days.

When I came back from Egypt last year, and struggled to adjust to life without dorms or dining halls, Neal invited me over to his room for coffee-and-homework time at least once a week. I never had to call him; he called me. Sometimes he cooked supper for me without my asking. It was the worst semester of my college career, but Neal was the highlight.

We argue a lot. I’m a coldhearted capitalist/neoconservative. He’s a...well, I’m not sure what to call him. I once made up the label “neo-ag,” short for “neo-agrarian,” to describe him. Sometimes I accuse him of being a hippie, an anarchist, or a Luddite, depending on if I’m winning the argument. He wants the government to stop spending so much money and stop subsidies to big farms and encourage regular Americans to return to the land. He loves the simple and the beautiful, and hates the overly practical and efficient. He scorns technology – TV, videogames, cell phones, the internet. He has no Facebook account. I have pledged multiple times to rescue his kids from technological backwardness. He composts and recycles and rides his bicycle and shops at secondhand shops and frets about what the corporations are putting in all our food. He makes me feel guilty, though I’ll never admit that.

Neal will say, “Joel, have you read the gospels lately?”

I will say, “Neal, you are so wrong, I don’t even know where to start.”

We enjoy it.

Neal once read through the whole Bible, start to finish, vowing not to take a stand on anything until he had finished it. A while after he finished, he discovered that his Bible was made in China, and immediately wrote an angry letter about it to Zondervan.

When I applied for the Peace Corps this fall, I needed a reference from two former employers and a close friend. Without my asking, Neal volunteered. He got it done right away. I was still hounding my employers weeks later for the references they had volunteered to write.

This summer, he went to the Ivory Coast to help a native Dordt alumnus get some agricultural development projects started. He came back with funny stories about policemen, rebels, chickens, churches, Muslims, and bribery, and no firm desire to return to Africa.

I will not tell you how he asked Laura to marry him – that’s her job – but it was awfully sweet.

Soon he will be married, starting a wonderful life with a wonderful girl. Nevertheless, this is not an obituary blog post. But sometimes, when someone embarks on a new stage in life, with all the doubts and uncertainties attendant, you think to yourself, “Someone really ought to tell that person how cool they are.”

So this is my clumsy attempt at doing so.

Congratulations, brother. I love you more than you know.

The things one learns in the freshman-level economics course one decided to take as an elective one’s senior year...

According to today's assigned reading in my economics textbook:

• The poverty rate in the United States in 2005 was 12.6%.
• If “in-kind transfers” – food stamps, healthcare, housing vouchers, etc. – were counted as income, the poverty rate in the United States would only be about 3%.
• The average income of the richest fifth of Americans is fifteen times higher than the average income of the poorest fifth of Americans. ($149,963 per year vs. $9,974).
• The average consumption of the richest fifth of Americans is only two times higher than the average consumption of the poorest fifth of Americans.
• In a typical 10-year period, one-quarter of American families will sink below the poverty line at least once.
• Fewer than 3 percent of families are below the poverty line for stretches longer than eight years.
• Only 20% of millionaires in the United States inherited their wealth.

My textbook is Principles of Economics, by N. Gregory Mankiw, a professor of economics at Harvard, who was a member of President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers a few years back.

Think my textbook is biased?

Scratch that. Of course it’s biased. Think my textbook is so biased that by reading it, I am getting a picture of reality so inaccurate as to be damaging?

If it walks like a Republican, talks like a Republican, and votes for mass deportations like a Republican...

With most of Bush’s national security policy and foreign policy co-opted by Obama, and a blizzard of domestic crises that seem to cry out for big government solutions, Republicans have been struggling to define themselves lately. They have attracted the “Party of No” label of late by opposing nearly all of Obama’s proposals without offering much in the way of alternatives. And with the growing tension between the party’s fading neoconservative wing and its rejuvenated Glenn Beck populist wing, many people – or at least, me and my friend Scott – have been asking, “What do the Republicans actually stand for?”

We may soon officially find out. At the upcoming Republican National Committee meeting this winter, Congressman James Bopp of Indiana will present a resolution containing ten principles he believes Republicans should be united on. If his resolution passes, Republican national candidates will need to publicly state their support for at least eight of the principles to get support or funding from the RNC.

I’m pretty psyched about this for two reasons: 1) I think our political system benefits when a party is more closely attached to specific policy ideas, 2), I’ve been debating lately about whether or not to call myself a Republican anymore. Now Rep. Bopp has given me a way to decide.

Here is Bopp’s list:

(1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill;
(2) We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run healthcare;
(3) We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;
(4) We support workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check;
(5) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;
(6) We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;
(7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat;
(8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;
(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and
(10) We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership.

Ok, let’s take this one thing at a time.

I’m pretty sure I'm down with 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9 (even though 7 is pretty vague, and regarding #6, the troop surge in Iraq is well-past over.)

Number one poses some problems. Do I support smaller government? Not necessarily. Smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes? Definitely. Do I oppose bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill? What the heck does that even mean? What kind of bills are “like” the stimulus? Does any bill that tries to jumpstart the economy through government spending when we’re teetering on the edge of a new depression count?

Number two: I do support market-based healthcare reform. I also support most of Obama’s health plan (which I deny introduces “government-run” healthcare). This “support/oppose” thing is starting to get tricky.

Number five: This is madness, but typical Republican madness. Sorry, RNC – I cannot support the deportation of twelve million people from the United States, so I guess I’m an “amnesty” supporter. (Also – did Rep. Bopp write this himself? What atrocious sentence structure. “We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society.” Legal immigration and assimilation of whom into American society? This sentence is practically screaming for a prepositional phrase there. Perhaps it’s Freudian.)

Number ten: Again with the false “support/oppose” linkages! This is killing me. “We support the right to keep and bear arms...” So far, so good. “...by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership.” Arrgh! The only way to support the right to keep and bear arms to oppose government restrictions on gun ownership? All restrictions? Children, ex-cons, and mental cases should be able to own guns? Any kind of guns? No Republican supports that. This list needs to be rewritten. What does this Bopp guy have against prepositional phrases and qualifiers?

Six out of ten. It’s official. If the RNC passes this resolution, I can no longer call myself a Republican.

The mismatched dogmatism and ambiguity of Bopp’s Top Ten list reminds me of the “9 principles” of Glenn Beck’s 9/12 movement (“If you believe in at least seven of them, then we have something in common.” Yes, Glenn. Seven things in common, to be precise):

1. America Is Good. [Ugh. Better definition of terms, please!]
2. I believe in God and He is the Center of my Life. [Yep.]
3. I must always try to be a more honest person than I was yesterday. [Okay.]
4. The family is sacred. My spouse and I are the ultimate authority, not the government. [Ultimate authority on what? Education? The proper care of children? Child sacrifice rituals?]
5. If you break the law you pay the penalty. Justice is blind and no one is above it. [All right.]
6. I have a right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, but there is no guarantee of equal results. [All right.]
7. I work hard for what I have and I will share it with who I want to. Government cannot force me to be charitable. [No tax-funded welfare, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public education or disaster relief then?]
8. It is not un-American for me to disagree with authority or to share my personal opinion. [What if my personal opinion is that America sucks? Not actually my opinion, for the record.]
9. The government works for me. I do not answer to them, they answer to me. [Except on financial, legal, judicial and educational matters.]

Four out of nine. Glenn, we have nothing in common.

I might have to come up with a top ten list of my own. Then I’ll just have to start my own movement. I’ll look into that.

In the meantime, peace be upon you all.

New Dordt Diamond Column: Don't Gloss Over Ft. Hood Reality

Last Thursday, an Army psychiatrist went on a shooting spree at Fort Hood army base in Texas, killing thirteen people and wounding thirty others.

The shooter’s name is Nidal Malik Hasan. He gave his neighbor a copy of the Qur’an, the holy book of Islam, the night before the shooting. Multiple witnesses report hearing him shout “Allahu akbar” – Arabic for “God is the greatest” – as he gunned down his fellow soldiers.

At the time of this writing, President Obama is asking the nation not to “jump to conclusions,” and the lead Associated Press story on the case says that the shooter’s motive “remains unclear.”

The story does not mention Hasan’s Muslim-sounding name until the ninth paragraph, his shouting “Allahu akbar” until the twelfth paragraph, or his gift of a Qur’an until the forty-sixth paragraph. His religion is never directly identified. In the sixteenth paragraph, the story speculates about whether Hasan was working for an “unidentified radical group.”

I don’t think either President Obama or the Associated Press writers are stupid. I assume they’re tip-toeing around the blindingly obvious to avoid stirring up anti-Muslim sentiment.

The problem is, the average American isn’t that stupid either. And he is going to draw the obvious conclusion, whether the press and the president draw it for him or not.

No one should be prejudiced against Muslims. There are no violent religions, only violent people. But in light of current events, to claim that Hasan’s Muslim beliefs played no role in his actions is beyond dense – especially since this isn’t the first time Muslim American soldiers have turned on their comrades in recent years.

American Muslims are a tiny minority in a country that is at war in two Muslim nations overseas. At the movies and on TV, Muslims are the villains. We shouldn’t be surprised if some American Muslims feel alienated. Violent acts like Hasan’s are evidence that this alienation is nearing a dangerous point.

By driving that reality underground, our cultural gatekeepers leave the alienation of some American Muslims unresolved, and the perception that all Muslims are violent uncorrected. That is a recipe for more conflict.

As we struggle to understand this horrific attack, let’s not brush over uncomfortable realities. If President Obama and the press will treat us like adults and address this problem head-on, all Americans will be better for it. And we in the church should go out of our way to make sure our Muslim brothers and sisters feel welcome in this country.

Further reading:
A Muslim Soldier's View from Fort Hood

Jacob Weisburg: "The president needs to dip into his reservoir of good will to remind mainstream Muslims of their special responsibility."

Revolution Muslim