Six of the Many, Many Ways That Bombing Syria is a Horrible Idea

1. What the Rebels Will Do If They Win

"Most militias are drawn from the poorer, rural districts of Syria. Most wealth is concentrated in the city centers that remain integral (such as Damascus, Lattakia, Tartus, Baniyas, Hama, etc.), which have survived largely unscathed in this conflict... If the militias take these cities, there will be widespread looting and lawlessness which will threaten many more civilians who have managed to escape the worst until now. It would be preferable to avoid a Somalia-like scenario in the remaining cities and provinces.  The potential for ethnic cleansing and revenge killings is high."

- Professor Joshua Landis, University of Oklahoma

2. What the Rebels WON'T Do If They Win

"The opposition is incapable of providing government services.  Millions of Syrians still depend on the government for their livelihoods, basic services, and infrastructure. Destroying these state services with no capacity to replace them would plunge ever larger numbers of Syrians into even darker circumstances and increase the outflow of refugees beyond its already high level. Syria can get worse."

- Professor Joshua Landis, University of Oklahoma

3. What the Regime Will Do If We Bomb

"Military interventions in favor of the rebel faction (as opposed to pro-government or neutral interventions) tend to increase government killings of civilians by about 40%."

- Erica Chenoweth, citing a 2012 study of military interventions from 1989 to 2005 by Reed Wood, Jason Kathman, and Stephen Gent.  Hat/tip Matt Yglesias.

4. Cost/Benefit Analysis

"Should the United States government drop a bunch of high-powered explosives in order to kill and maim a bunch of Syrian individuals while destroying some of Syria's physical infrastructure in order to help other Syrian individuals? ...If the United States was able to spend the $1.1 billion we spent on the Libya operation on long-lasting insecticide treated bed nets we could have saved almost 590,000 lives from almost certain destruction. ...That's something to think about."

- Matt Yglesias, Slate

5.  And Generally Speaking...

"Civil wars with outside involvement typically last longer, cause more fatalities, and are more difficult to resolve through negotiation."

- Cambridge Journal of International Organization, October 2011 (cited here)

6. This Was True Even Before We Got All Snippy With Egypt for Overthrowing an Islamist Government:

"For the first time, all of America’s ‘friends’ in the region are Sunni Muslims and all of its enemies are Shiites [or secularists]. Breaking all President Barack Obama’s rules of disengagement, the US is now fully engaged on the side of armed groups which include the most extreme Sunni Islamist movements in the Middle East."

- Robert Fisk, The Independent

In Short:

 

 

There's still time.  Make your voice heard!

 

Pharaoh's Protection

I speak only for myself in this post.

Oh my.  It has been a terrible week in the Middle East, beloved.  Egypt's worst political violence since people started using the term "political violence." The worst anti-Christian pogroms in Egypt in over a century.  The deadliest single day in Syria's civil war so far, in the form of a chemical weapons attack that killed hundreds - the worst chemical attack since Saddam Hussein's genocide against the Kurds in the 1980s.  A suicide bombing at a Sunni mosque in Lebanon that killed 27. 

There's so much to say, and so many people talking, to so little avail, that I'll let most of it pass, except for this comment: The U.S. is going to start bombing Syria in the next few weeks.  Expect it.

The likely result will be the victory of the rebel forces, the end of Christianity, Alawite Islam and the Druze religion in Syria, and all-out civil war in Lebanon and Jordan, as both of these tiny states buckle under a refugee influx in the millions.

All that will have to wait.  What I want to focus on in this post is Egypt.

Almost two years ago, I joined hundreds of Egyptian Christians in a rally at the White House after the U.S.-funded Egyptian military massacred 24 Christians in Cairo. 

Today, the U.S.-funded Egyptian military is back in power, and, as the New York Times puts it, "In the more than seven weeks since [President Mohammed] Morsi’s ouster, security forces have carried out at least three mass shootings at pro-Morsi street protests, killed more than a thousand Morsi supporters and arrested at least as many." Mohammed El-Baradei, the civilian vice president who resigned in protest when the massacres began, is now under investigation by the military government for “betraying the public trust.”

The Muslim Brotherhood scapegoated Egypt's Christians for the killings, and unleashed a countrywide wave of violence against them, torching scores of churches, Christian homes and businesses.  During these attacks, Human Rights Watch found, the military's "security forces were largely absent or failed to intervene even when they had been informed of ongoing attacks."

 And Egyptian Christians were out protesting again in Washington DC on Thursday - holding up hagiographic portraits of the new military dictator (Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi), writing his name on their faces, calling him "our hero" and "the eagle of our flag."

"C C"=Sisi.  Get it?

(Source.)


Then, on Friday, a Coptic Christian youth organization I follow on Facebook, the Maspero Youth Union, shared this photo:




 

Point of interest: the "Maspero Youth Union" is named after Maspero Square, where the Egyptian military murdered 24 Christian protestors less than two years ago.

This group is now asking people to report Facebook friends who use logos showing support for the victims of another military massacre, to military intelligence.

I have Egyptian friends who use those logos on their Facebook profiles.  I disagree heartily with them on politics, but they are not terrorists.

GUYS - aside from the horrifying moral implications, do you really think the Egyptian military, which has proven itself only too willing to shoot Christians dead in the street if it suits their purposes, is on your side?

They are not.  Their main interest in church burnings is using them as political propaganda, not in stopping them.  And if the Brotherhood ever ceases to be a threat, they will be only too happy to use church attacks as a safety valve for Islamist violence, as Mubarak did. (The military just released Mubarak from prison, by the way.  No big deal.)

I am 100% anti-Muslim Brotherhood.  If I lived in Egypt, I would have been out protesting against the Brotherhood regime on June 30.  But removing them from power does not require a return to military dictatorship.  And the point of being a Christian is knowing that we don't have to rely on wicked, violent men for protection.

I know this is easy for me to say.  My life isn't in danger.  And this is a lesson American Christians need to learn, too.  Our political leaders, with the support of most of us - including me - invaded two countries and killed a million people in the last decade to keep us "safe."

Take it from me - it's not worth it.

"Pharaoh's protection will be to your shame." - Isaiah 30:3

 "The LORD will fight for you.  You need only be still." - Exodus 14:14

For the Damascus Countryside

I can’t take it anymore.
I can’t read any more reports
Speculating endlessly, “Who?” and “Why?”
I already know the answers I will hear –
Who: The regime, the rebels, the Zionists, the Islamic extremists, the enemies of the Syrian people
Why: Counterinsurgency, fighting terrorism, fighting for freedom, false flag
All lies, meant to disguise the truth
That Who is our Fellow Man
And Why is to appease the God of Death
The God on whom all governments and rebel groups rely
From whom they draw all their power and authority
To whom they pray for deliverance
From the consequences of their crimes
And the God of Death is only too happy to oblige
But the God of Death demands sacrifice
And demands the right to choose the victims
Soldiers, freedom fighters, little girls in pajamas, babies, nursing mothers
Gasping, burning, screaming, shaking, shaking, shaking and then becoming still
And perhaps the supplicants cringe at the demand
But in the end, they make the hard choice, and the tough call
Because that’s what it means to be a leader
To do what it takes to defeat your enemies
But "the last enemy to be defeated is Death."

More Adventures in Muslim Apologetics

Courtesy of one of my Muslim Facebook acquaintances, I present to you a 20-minute-long video “proving” that the Jewish Bible predicts the coming of the prophet Muhammad – “by name!”

Too long, didn’t watch? The entire case is built around Song of Songs 5:16:

“His mouth is sweetness itself;
he is altogether lovely.
“This is my beloved, this is my friend,
daughters of Jerusalem.”

According to the video, the word “lovely” in the original Hebrew is actually “Muhammad.” Therefore, the Bible predicted Muhammad’s coming! Or, at least, the coming of someone who would be “altogether Muhammad.”

(If you’re wondering what the other 18 minutes of the video are, it’s mostly accusations of Christians and Jews hiding the “real” Bible. How clumsy of them to forget to remove clear prediction of Muhammad’s coming.)

In Arabic, the name “Muhammad” simply means “praiseworthy.” Given Hebrew and Arabic’s similar linguistic roots, it’s not surprising that there’s a Hebrew word – “mahammad” – with a similar meaning. (“Lovely, desired, charming.”)

It’s actually interesting that this common adjective doesn’t occur more often in the Jewish Bible.

I now have a mental picture of God looking into the future, and seeing Muslim evangelists scouring the Jewish Bible for any occurrence of the common adjective “praiseworthy,” and deciding that the one – the only – place that word will occur in scripture is in a passionate dialogue about sex between two people anticipating their wedding night.

Your move, apologists.

The Politics of Jesus by John Howard Yoder, explained (at least to myself)

I just finished reading The Politics of Jesus by John Howard Yoder, the indispensable guide to Anabaptist Christian pacifism.

Yoder's central argument is that Jesus' life and teachings are a model for how Christians should act in everyday life.

As my housemate Jordan said when I tried to sum it up that way, that seems like a pretty obvious, even cliche statement. Most of us who grew up during the "WWJD?" fad would probably agree. Cliche it may be, but that doesn't make it untrue. Nor does it mean we've fully grasped the implications.

Christendom's "traditional" understanding is that Jesus' primary mission was to die for the sins of mankind, and conquer death through his resurrection. It's a nifty bonus that he was around long enough to teach us, do some miracles, and choose the apostles. His was a unique mission, and while Jesus' teachings and actions are very important as a model for us, we aren't called to literally follow him to the cross. The cross was a spiritual event. The Son of God had to die to make peace between God and mankind with his blood, something no one else could do. Jesus had to live a perfect life, otherwise his sacrifice wouldn't have counted, but it's not the life for everyone. When the Gospels say Jesus "set his face towards Jerusalem," it means he was preparing himself to die. Jesus yelled at Peter, "Get behind me, Satan!" for suggesting that he shouldn't let himself die, and ordered Peter to put away his sword in the garden of Gethsemane, because he knew he had to be the sacrifice, and Peter was trying to prevent that. Pilate, the Roman soldiers, and the Jewish religious leaders had no idea what they were really doing. They were essentially being used by God and Satan like puppets in a larger, unseen cosmic struggle. Jesus basically tricked them into killing him. He presumably could have allowed himself to be killed in the remote forests of Lebanon, and it would have been just as spiritually meaningful (with perhaps the drawback of fewer spectators.) Jesus had no political mission. He was a king, but his kingdom was not from this world.

Jesus' crucifixion, while of ultimate spiritual significance, had no political significance, and certainly isn't a model for how Christians should live their lives.

This is what I grew up believing, at least implicitly, and this is what, I think, most evangelicals and Catholics teach, at least implicitly.

John Howard Yoder rejects this interpretation.

For Yoder, not only is all of Jesus' life a model for Christians in politics, but the cross is its centerpiece. Jesus did come as a king, and all Christians are called to participate in his kingship. When Jesus began his ministry with a sermon in Nazareth, he read from Isaiah 61:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor."

Then he said, "Today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing."

According to Yoder, this was the announcement of a political program: Jesus wanted to reinstate the Jubilee, the ancient Jewish practice of annulling all debts, returning all property, and letting all the slaves go free every fifty years. This was a requirement of God's law, but not surprisingly, it was rarely applied.

Yoder views Jesus' entire ministry as a movement for the restoration of the jubilee. In occupied Judea, this call posed a direct challenge to the Roman authorities, the Herodian monarchy, and the religious leaders who collaborated with them.

Seen in this light, the crowds of tens of thousands of people following Jesus all across Galilee and Judea, repeatedly trying to make him king, following him into Jerusalem in a giant procession, where he proceeds to basically take over the temple, take on a rather different significance, no? Jesus "setting his face towards Jerusalem" meant he was embarking on a political mission.

Under this interpretation, Jesus didn't trick the Romans into killing him and thereby fulfilling God's sacrificial purpose. The Romans had no choice but to kill him. He posed a huge threat to their rule.

However, Jesus refused to marshal his followers into an armed challenge to Rome and the Sanhedrin. He combined his demands for political justice with the universal love of God, a love that ruled out killing his enemies, even in self-defense. Jesus orders Peter to put away his sword because killing is wrong, not because Peter's about to unwittingly screw up God's plan of redemption.

Rather than adopt Rome's tactics and use their own violence against them, Jesus confronts the powers for their corruption, oppression and injustice, and then lets himself die at their hands, rather than call on armies of angels to smite them down.

Jesus' living a perfect life and Jesus' self-sacrifice aren't separate things. They're the same thing. The only way to be a witness for justice and peace in 1st-century Judea would inevitably result in execution. So Jesus did it, and through his resurrection, proved that the power of this world and its violent men is meaningless.

Therefore, Jesus' call to his followers to "pick up your cross and follow me" is in part a political call. We are to struggle against the injustices of the world's fallen political systems, even if it costs us our lives - but we are not to do so by using the devil's methods. To the crowd he had fled from when they tried to make him king by force, Jesus says, "You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning." (John 6:15, 8:44) To his own followers, Jesus says, "But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven." (Matthew 5:44).

I hope I've explained Yoder's thesis well. (Obviously he has a lot more to say than this.) I'm not sure to what degree I accept it. On the one hand, I think it coheres very well. It makes more sense of Jesus' ministry than the traditional model. It unites the human and divine missions of Jesus into one. And it reaffirms the importance of human life and human history to God. If Yoder is right, the oppressive politics of Judea were not a sideshow to him when he lived with us. It follows that oppression is not a sideshow to him now.

But I have a lot of unresolved questions. Well, two, I guess:

1) Doesn't the Bible pretty clearly teach that Jesus eventually will come with angel armies to defeat the wicked? If so, there seems to still be a division between the ethics of God and the ethics of man.

2) What tactics are acceptable to God in our struggle for justice? May we try to reform state institutions that inherently depend on violence? May we work through political parties and elected officials? Or should we abandon state politics altogether, in favor of a community that tries to embody God's justice in a fallen world?

Yoder's argumentation style is different from every other theology book I've read. With some exceptions, he doesn't spend long pages poring over select passages and proving his interpretation of them. Instead, he takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of Jesus' ministry, placing almost every event and conversation into a political context. On the one hand, I appreciate the holistic-ness of this approach. On the other, I feel a little bit like I've been taken for a ride. I'm not sure whether I agree with him or not (though I want to); the book didn't give me time to examine any of the issues he raises in-depth. I suppose I could do it by myself, but I also work full-time, you guys.

So let me know: if you've read John Howard Yoder, what do you think of his work? If you haven't, what do you think of his ideas as I've laid them out here? And if you don't care to get that specific, what do you think about pacifism generally?

Preliminary Thoughts on Egypt's Coup/Revolution/Crazytime

Wait.  What Just Happened?

Here's how I see it, based on what I've read and conversations with Egyptian people somewhat in-the-know.

In January 2011, massive popular demonstrations throughout Egypt convinced the Egyptian military that continuing to rule Egypt through Hosni Mubarak was not a viable option.  They forced him to step down, and promised democratic elections.

At the same time, they were furiously negotiating with the largest, most organized opposition group in Egypt - the Muslim Brotherhood.  The negotiations resulted in a deal: the military would aid the Muslim Brotherhood in its rise to power, and the Brotherhood would respect the military's autonomy and considerable economic interests.  The military rulers of Egypt would keep their villas, and the Brotherhood would take power.

The Brotherhood won in relatively free and fair parliamentary and presidential elections in 2012.  The yearlong rule of the Muslim Brotherhood's president Mohammad Morsi was characterized by economic tailspin, a violent crime rate that tripled, the disintegration of police authority in many parts of the country, vicious attacks on Christians and Shia Muslims, rampant sexual violence against women, and political violence from the Muslim Brotherhood's armed factions against its opponents.

Mohammad Morsi wrote the grim epitaph of his stunningly incompetent, tone-deaf, evil presidency last month, when he appointed a former terrorist responsible for massacring scores of foreigners and Egyptians in Luxor province...as governor of Luxor province.

No, for real.  That happened.

Christians, liberal Muslims, and other opponents of the Brotherhood organized a campaign called "tamarod," or "rebellion," and called for massive anti-Morsi rallies on June 30, the one-year anniversary of Morsi's inauguration as president.  They gathered some 22 million signatures on a petition calling for his removal and for new elections.  (Morsi won the election with slightly more than 13 million votes.)

Driven by desperation at the course the new Egypt was taking, these protests may well have been the largest in world history. (I've heard the number 33 million bandied about, but who can say?) After a day of this, the military decided that Morsi was no longer a reliable protector of their portion.  They gave him - with a straight face - 48 hours to "meet the people's demands." Morsi went on TV and gave a desperate speech, yelling over and over again, "I am the president of Egypt!," forgetting that:

Morsi was unable to resolve all of Egypt's political problems in 48 hours, and the military threw him out.

Boom.

Tahrir Square in Cairo.

What Will Happen Now?

The Facebook page NOT A COUP currently has over 12,000 likes.  The protestors are insisting that this is a popular revolution, not a military coup.

The popular protests triggered the chain of events that led to Morsi's fall, to be sure.  But there's a reason the Egyptian popular revolution has now displaced two presidents, while the Syrian popular revolution has devolved into a horrific war.  In both cases, the military's decisions were the driving factor.  Syria's Alawite-dominated military has thrown in its lot with their president.  The Egyptian military is willing to chuck their president when necessary.

What it isn't willing to do is let go of its autonomy and economic power.

My guess is that the Egyptian military will now try to install another president - through popular elections, no doubt - who has the support of the people, but will protect the military's interests.

(They may also move to cement a military dictatorship.  See below.)

Because the Egyptian military is terrible (massacring peaceful Christian protestors and such), the new president will probably be a terrible person.  But terrible people can still guarantee a modicum of prosperity and peace. (See, the Great, Cyrus, and Obama, Barack.) That's not what worries me.

What worries me is: what is the Muslim Brotherhood going to do now?

After 80 some years of state persecution, they are finally given the chance to participate in a free presidential election, and they win, fair and square.  And now, that president has been overthrown.

Egypt's Islamists have engaged in armed resistance against the government before.  When the Algerian military overthrew a freely-elected Islamist president in 1991, it triggered a ten-year civil war in which 200,000 people died.

And now Egypt is surrounded by chaotic countries full of loose weapons and Islamist militias that are better-connected and more motivated than they've ever been. (Syria, Gaza, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Mali.)

"A message to the church of Egypt, from an Egyptian Muslim: if you conspire  to bring Morsi down, that will be another matter. [T]here are red lines—and our red line is the legitimacy of Dr. Mohammad Morsi. Whoever splashes water on it, we will splash blood on him."

- Safwat Hegazy, Muslim Brotherhood cleric, December 2012

“Measures announced by the armed forces’ leadership represent a full coup categorically rejected by all the free men of our nation."

- Dr. Mohammad Morsi, July 3, 2013

Might Egypt become the eleventh Arab country to have a post-independence civil war?  And might that give the military just the excuse it needs to put itself in power again - and permanently?

Buckle up, kids.  This is gunna suck.

Isn't there a chance that this is a genuinely democratic moment that will lead to a brighter future for the people of Egypt?

U.S. Sending Weapons to Syrian Rebels: A Grief-Stricken Attempt at Analysis

Hello America.

Can we talk about what just happened?

Great, thanks.

On August 20, 2012, President Obama announced that the use of chemical weapons in Syria by the Assad regime was a "red line" that would "change his calculus" in deciding how to intervene in Syria.

A month and a half ago, after evidence of small-scale chemical weapons use in Syria apparently became impossible to deny, the White House admitted that:

"Our intelligence community does assess with varying degrees of confidence that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale in Syria... Given the stakes involved, and what we have learned from our own recent experiences, intelligence assessments alone are not sufficient — only credible and corroborated facts that provide us with some degree of certainty will guide our decision-making ..."

Translation: We're pretty sure, but not sure enough to do anything about it.

Last week, the Assad regime retook the strategic town of Qusayr in western Syria from the rebels, with the help of Hezbollah fighters.  Thousands of Hezbollah fighters have entered Syria from Lebanon to fight for the regime, and regime forces are heading north to Aleppo to retake Syria's largest city once and for all.

As Samuel L. Jackson said in Quentin Taratino's most recent film, "Lo and behold!  Out of nowhere!" the administration now concludes that all the evidence is in on chemical weapons in Syria:

Today, we are providing an updated version of our assessment to Congress and to the public.  ...Following a deliberative review, our intelligence community assesses that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons, including the nerve agent sarin, on a small scale against the opposition multiple times in the last year.

So said Ben Rhodes, President Obama's deputy national security adviser, in a statement today.

Reuters is reporting that Obama has now authorized direct weapons transfers to the Syrian rebels.

Do not believe for a second that this decision is based on the Syrian government's chemical weapons use - which is responsible for less than a fifth of one percent of the casualties in this war.

This decision came about because the Assad regime, with the help of Hezbollah, gained the upper hand.

Our government was only to happy to watch Syrians dying en masse, as long as its enemies were losing.  Now its enemies are winning, and our government aims to correct the problem by sending weapons to its enemies' enemies, including groups affiliated with al Qaeda, who have pledged to cleanse - and are cleansing - Syria of its non-Sunni Muslim population.  60 Shiite Muslims were massacred in eastern Syria on Tuesday.

There's really nothing else to say.  I feel like I'm watching a train wreck from a mile away.  The human catastrophe that's approaching is so obvious, and I can't do anything to stop it.

Please pray for Syria.