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Israel’s new Soviet Union (Iran) and Why Christian America Doesn’t Get It.

Recent events in Israel and Gaza are certainly troubling, not only as to the violence and loss of life involved in the interdiction of aid ships by Israel bound for Gaza, but also for the fragile coalition of mostly western allies (that includes Turkey—the homeland of those killed) whose aim it is to corral Iran’s nuclear ambitions. As with all things in the Middle East, there are multiple consequences that originate from singular events. Too many people of too many races, ethnicities, and religions on too little land assure it. It is also troubling that Israel’s closest ally—the United States—continues to tolerate Israeli behaviors that compromise U.S. interests in the region. Under the watchful eye of the Israel-can-do-no-wrong American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), every U.S. president starting with Harry Truman has pledged his unwavering support for virtually anything Israel desired. However, there is more than political power at work here, there is also a fundamental lack of comprehension among predominantly Christian American policymakers about Israeli-Jewish identity, which routinely produces poor interpretations and decisions that form U.S. foreign policy. AIPAC’s power combined with passive ignorance—however innocent—is a dangerous combination.

Understanding Israeli Jews is really not that complicated, but it requires setting aside Christian history and, in particular, the New Testament, while considering specific historical events and Hebrew Scriptures. It is also worth realizing that while the Middle East is obviously rich in Christian history, few Christians live there today. Lebanon has the largest Christian population of around 30%; the rest of the Middle East, including Israel, is less than 5%. In towns of founding Christian history, like Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Nazareth, Christians account for less than 3% of the population. The Middle East is a Judeo-Islamic region, not a Christian one. In short, the New Testament doesn’t get much playing time there. Think Kings, not Disciples. The Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and the Holy Qur’an establish history, morality, and law—and they are founded on a contested inheritance since they both claim the heritage of Abraham. Among other things, these historical texts condone a different morality than the Western Christian world professes today. Violence, retribution, slavery, torture, and polygamy are not necessarily immoral. So, Christian Americans who want to understand why things are the way they are must start by erasing their own Christian indoctrinations. They do not apply.

Historical events and Hebrew Scriptures have produced five fundamental ‘truths’ held by Jews that the Western polity must come to understand. First, all the land from the Dead Sea and the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea was bequeathed to the Jewish people included in the territory of Greater, or “Eretz” Israel. They are God’s chosen people in the Promised Land.[1] This includes the long-contested West Bank and Gaza. Second, “Never Again!” is a mantra that every Jew everywhere in the world understands and will never forget. It is a sorrowful maxim to never allow another Holocaust. Third, God is power, not love, as is the Christian interpretation from the New Testament. Fourth, peace is security from the enemy, not some ethereal contemplation of a just, harmonious, or serene coexistence with non-Jews.[2] Furthermore, security is defined by who has the most weapons and controls the most borders. It is not the absence of threat, it is the constant vigilance required to control existential ever-present threats. Finally, ‘trust’ is inconceivable between Jews and non-Jews, especially Muslims.

Given these truths, after the Holocaust Jews established their homeland in the Promised Land and adopted an “Iron Wall” strategy to produce their peace (security).[3] They have never, nor will they likely ever, consider that a just and lasting peace—of the Western Christian variety—can be made with their Muslim neighbors. Their source of peace/security is an exclusive relationship with a powerful state—a patron—not neighborly relations. In the beginning, this relationship was with the British, now it is with the U.S. The “Iron Wall” strategy requires that conflict be sustained to maintain a fully pressurized system to attract resources from the patron; ‘peace’ is little more than a rhetorical exercise. In other words, peace and prosperity (in the traditional sense) could be profoundly destabilizing for Israel. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union played well the role of existential threat and kept the U.S. closely tied to Israel. Oil reserves in the Middle East also bind the U.S. to Israel (although this often cost the U.S. when Arab states and OPEC used oil prices and embargos to punish the U.S. for its allegiance to Israel). Today, Iran is cast by Israel in the role of the former Soviet Union, which is why provocative interdiction of ships bound for Gaza by Israel, which has strained relations with Turkey, may not be unintentional. Threats—perceived or real—must be maintained. They are critical to Israel’s “Iron Wall” strategy.

It is unclear if the current frosty relationship between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu portends a fundamental change in U.S.-Israel relations. I would never bet against AIPAC and its capacity to control U.S. policymaking in the Middle East. However, there are signs of divergence between a hardening, militaristic, right wing led by Netanyahu in Israel and a more liberal American Jewish community.[4] For the time being, I expect the U.S. will continue to endure condemnation in the Arab world for its support of Israel—including terrorism aimed at U.S. targets—at least until new sources of energy are produced, and new boogey-man states like Iran no longer grab headlines. These factors may change, but the ‘truths’ that undergird the “Iron Wall” strategy of Israel, formed in a Judeo-Islamic non-Christian context, will never change. Christian Americans take note.[5]

[1] For an excellent summary of this “Promised Land” theology, see Irvine H. Anderson, Biblical Interpretation and Middle East Policy (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005), p. 10-15.
[2] After reading hundreds of pages of declassified documents from the Carter Administration, my own revelatory interpretation regarding these different definitions of ‘peace’ were formed. Carter nearly always characterized peace as a “just and lasting peace” where enemies were transformed into friends. Prime Minister Menachem Begin, on the other hand, seldom mentioned ‘peace’ without framing it in terms of security. I found no evidence either of them ever acknowledged the difference.
[3] The “Iron Wall” strategy is comprehensively studied by Avi Shlaim in The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2001).
[4] See Peter Beinhart, “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment,” The New York Review of Books, June 10, 2010, p. 16-20.
[5] Among members of ‘Christian America,’ I exclude Christian Zionists who have formed their own theological alliance with Israel. See Victoria Clark’s Allies for Armageddon: The Rise of Christian Zionism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007).

By William Steding|2017-05-27T18:46:27+00:00June 6th, 2010|General|0 Comments

The Real BFD

I appreciate Vice President Joe Biden much the same way I do habanero sauce: in small quantities and few places. While it can make a meal, it can also ruin it. I expect President Obama shares my sentiment. Notwithstanding Biden’s (nearly) off-mic proclamation about the passage of the recent healthcare bill, there was a much larger BFD this week (than non-reform-healthcare-reform) with the signing of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty II (START II). Those of you older than college age will remember this pesky thing we once called the Cold War, where our collective fears were frequently if not systemically stoked by the idea that the US and Soviet Union stood poised to annihilate each other with nuclear weapons. (Remarkably, and an obvious illustration of how time flies, those college age or younger were born after the collapse of the Soviet Union.)

The signing of START II is a BFD not so much by what it achieves, but by the relative ease with which it was accomplished and by the general lack of media attention it has received. Indeed, as Thomas Blanton and William Burr at the National Archives pointed out in an email to me today, “the new START treaty signed today in Prague represents ‘real’ but ‘modest’ cuts in strategic nuclear forces comparable to some Cold War alternatives but still higher than the most far-reaching proposals considered by Presidents Reagan and Carter.” But, of course, this one got signed. Having read the archived correspondence between Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev that surrounded the negotiation of predecessor Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty II (SALT II), I can assure you that these treaties don’t come easily. Correspondence and dialogue historically had all the trust and congeniality of an old married couple that have hated each other for the last forty years. The US and the Soviet Union lived with each other in a quasi-psychotic symbiosis characterized by institutional schizophrenia. Fortunately, the Soviet Union collapsed under its own internal contradictions, and as a result Medvedev/Putin and Obama live with less, or different, demons. If any president prior to Bush (41) had accomplished such an agreement in this manner, we would be witnessing a ticker tape parade similar to those that marked the end of World War II. Today, the launch of the iPad received much greater attention.

The larger issue of course remains: the ‘miracle’ of the Manhattan Project—nuclear weapons—remain in ample supply throughout the world and are the highest ambition of terror networks and unstable states. The next BFD is dealing with that reality. Next week, forty-seven nations will meet in Washington to sort out what might be done. As with his recent ‘re-conceptualization’ of the use of nuclear arms by the US, Obama deserves credit here too. Sam Nunn, former senator from Georgia and former security hawk, who now laments his support of nuclear arms development and heads National Threat Initiative (working to rid the world of ‘loose’ nukes) would like us all to view a new documentary, Nuclear Tipping Point (www.nucleartippingpoint.org). The message is chilling but credible: Will we choose cooperation or catastrophe? Will we allow terrorist networks and/or unstable states to turn our ‘miracle’ into further madness?

As much as we all wring our hands over domestic issues, and as much as they will decide short-term political futures, we need to take responsibility and attempt to put our ‘miracle’ back in the proverbial Pandora’s box. It is a BFD, and as impossible as it might seem, we must try, try, and try again.

By William Steding|2017-05-25T21:36:12+00:00April 9th, 2010|General|0 Comments

Seven Unspeakable Truths

Americans live in a state of deceit and denial inculcated by the insidious accumulation of entitled thinking that has reached a tipping point beyond which the destruction of social order and national power is certain. Like children without rules or boundaries we have become tempestuous and, in more cases every day, violent. We still have the capacity to identify the truth but lack the courage to speak it. Our leaders, including President Obama, will not speak these truths. I will.

There are seven truths—things I am certain of after significant study and deliberation—that America must face if we are to maintain our position in the world, even if only in relative terms.

The wars we have chosen to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan are unwinnable; we must move expeditiously to extract ourselves from the center of this quagmire and deploy a strategy of offshore balancing to contain terrorism while, at the same time, develop new sources and forms of energy to become energy-independent. If we don’t, we will find ourselves at the center of a much larger confrontation beginning in the Middle East (probably between Israel and Iran) and spreading from there.
The obligations of our government to supply public goods, particularly Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, are financially unsustainable—even if we radically reform our healthcare system—which isn’t going to happen. Debt is not power.
Our critical national infrastructures including transportation, power grids, and water supply systems are rapidly approaching a period of catastrophic failure that will cripple our economy more than the current financial crisis. When main street fails, it’s over.
Climate change is a reality, notwithstanding the unfortunate apocalyptic grandstanding by Al Gore and a few rogue scientists, but the orthodoxy of environmentalism is wrong. We must find new ways to conserve and produce energy that allow economic growth to be sustained. We must do this for the environment and, moreover, for our national interest; for our health and security.
Within twenty-five years the dollar will no longer be the world’s reserve currency. We must move expeditiously to begin the process, region-by-region, of migrating to a common currency—the ‘globo’—to protect us from non-US currencies being used against us and to mitigate the inherent instability produced in a global financial system populated (currently) by 178 different currencies.
Our primary and secondary education system is broken. Today, we are maintaining our global edge on the back of our superior universities. While our students catch-up because they have access to college, unlike the developing world (especially China and India), this will change. We must immediately move to improve the quality of teachers and reduce the burden of unions and bureaucrats. Parents, teachers, and communities must wrest control of this system, which is in rapid decline.
The absence of a liberal immigration policy, which has always been the lifeblood of America’s capacity for self-renewal, will lower our replacement rate and increase our dependency rates to levels that will produce demographic-induced collapse. If you want a preview, look at Japan.

Rival interests do not defeat great powers; they collapse at their own hand. In America, we have the knowledge and the means to maintain our position in the world and to secure our future for many generations. If we do not face each and every one of these truths, we will fail. Let the real discussion begin.

By William Steding|2017-05-25T22:26:36+00:00February 21st, 2010|General|0 Comments

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow!

Mother nature has accomplished what reasonable people cannot: closing our federal government for the week. While our government’s effectiveness remains unchanged—nothing is getting done—at least the majority of pols and pundits are home-bound, awaiting the arrival of a lobbyist to deliver a Honey Baked Ham and shovel their driveways. Meanwhile, we have been granted a respite from the din of weak-kneed incompetence. If the current storm persists, we might even get the Olympics started before the Boehners and Pelosis can spray on their faces and return to the podium. (Maybe we can even get some of those new C-17 cargo planes the Pentagon doesn’t want to haul some snow from DC to Vancouver to finish grooming the freestyle course! Sigh, I digress.)

Reasonable, thoughtful people from many corners of scholarship and journalism are starting to seriously question the future of our government. James Fallows recent essay in The Atlantic, “How America can Rise Again” offers a lengthy survey of America’s strengths and weaknesses. He recounts America’s history of overcoming adversity, but laments that the system that largely enabled those victories is broken today. He argues, “That is the American tragedy of the early 21st century: a vital and self-renewing culture that attracts the world’s talent, and a governing system that increasingly looks like a joke.” He explores a range of options including “an enlightened military coup … a new constitutional convention … a viable third party … [or] hope for another Sputnik moment” to right the ship. In the end, he settles for “muddling through” over “starving the beast” as the best worst choice.[1] Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig argues in The Nation, “if you want change, you have to change Congress” and solicits readers to sign a “change Congress petition” that calls for a new “Fair Elections Now Act” to subvert the insidious power of lobbyists.[2] Still others, like Tim Dickinson in Rolling Stone blame Obama for “ muzzl[ing] millions of followers eager to fight for his agenda” and effectively trading in his “Yes We Can!” pledge for a mockingly “No, we can’t” reality.[3] In the end, what happened to Obama was simply stated by Clinton advisor James Carvelle: “Washington always wins.”

While many, including myself, can easily point at the government to assign culpability, the larger reality is that our government will not and cannot face its problems. Moreover, when you set questions of ideology, capability, and blame aside—turn off Obama’s teleprompter and wash the notes from Palin’s palms—and just look at the numbers, there is no chance our government can sustain its current or future obligations. Absent a series of syzygystic miracles, it will collapse under the weight of its own financial malfeasance. It is time, as Jacob Weisberg argues at Slate, “to stop blaming the rascals we elect to office and start looking at ourselves.”[4] It is time to take the initiative—to quit staring at our government like an infant who has discovered his navel—and take our future back; one person, family, school, and community at a time.

[1] James Fallows, “How America Can Rise Again.” The Atlantic, January/February 2010.
[2] Lawrence Lessig, “How to Get Our Democracy Back.” The Nation, February 3, 2010.
[3] Tim Dickinson, “No We Can’t.” Rolling Stone, February 11, 2010.
[4] Jacob Weisberg, “Down With the People.” Slate.com, February 6, 2010.

By William Steding|2017-05-25T22:35:56+00:00February 10th, 2010|General|0 Comments

Rebooting “We the People”

We the People of the United States of America are in trouble. Our democratic experiment is in peril, dominated by demagoguery and corruption. The concerns of our Founding Fathers have come to fruition as ‘errant man’ has prevailed in the institutionalization of mercenary-grade rapacity. Congress continues to get nothing done (albeit at great expense), and our Supreme Court has now put the final nail in the coffin of our liberal democracy by ruling that our Constitution really meant to read We the Corporations. While liberty was once our common bond, anger has taken its place. Unless we find a way to reboot our democratic values we will soon enter the Pantheon of former superpowers.

While this may sound like a jeremiad, we have got to find a way out of this. Our government still has power and money, but no longer has its people; who have and always will be its principal source of strength. If anyone could have succeeded in rebooting our democracy, President Obama arguably had the best shot, but a wide mandate evaporated in the quagmire of Washington DC. Someday we may come to realize Obama was the canary in the coal mine, a sign that bright young leadership could no longer produce reform and renewal. The system is ungovernable. It now exists as little more than a host for parasites.

Smart people with big money those at Goldman Sachs have made their risk assessment and are deeply discounting the capacity of the United States government. While many rail against what they believe is a greedy behemoth, the reality is the folks at Goldman are simply doing a better job of pursuing their self-interest. And, they have made their bet: they don’t believe the government can do anything to govern them. They know what the rest of us are now realizing; our government—once a model for the free world—has a terminal case of constipation, which has immobilized its power. The partners at Goldman Sachs know they will always be able to out-smart and out-maneuver regulators in Washington.

There is a way out, however, thanks in part to new technologies that offer us new ways to form new modes of collective action. While our government may be entering a slow but certain period of entropy, we have the capacity to form new relationships and associations to solve seemingly intractable problems. The solution starts by taking a page out of Goldman Sachs’ game plan and learn to ignore our government. Turn our back and, to the extent possible, quit feeding/funding the monster it has become. Each of us must pick an objective—education, healthcare, alternative fuels, security, communication, technology, whatever. Set out to organize those with common interests, whether or not they too are Americans. When a solution is found, pursue its execution with all the energy and resources available, with or without government support or approval.

“We the People” can form more perfect Unions. The time to get started is now.

By William Steding|2017-05-25T22:45:10+00:00January 22nd, 2010|American Identity, General|0 Comments

Human Rights: War and the Righteous

Human rights scholars and advocates were busy last week.

While President Obama reconciled security, morality, and human rights in his speech in Oslo, members of Congress were tied to an effort to incarcerate and/or execute homosexuals in Uganda. In Obama’s remarks at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, he identified one of the principal tensions our leaders must wrestle with as they uphold their oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States: between assuring our security and protecting human rights. Throughout most of American history security has held primacy over morality as the modal framework of foreign policy. As a result, human rights, based in a moral precept of liberty, have been occasionally compromised to achieve security. But, as Obama pointed out in his elocution of the contradiction of waging war to achieve peace, “We lose ourselves when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to defend.” He argued that the “United States of America must remain the standard bearer in the conduct of war” to serve its dual aims of security and morality.[1] In these words he rejected the advocacy of realpolitik prominent during the Nixon-Kissinger era, as well as the hyper-exceptionalism of the George W. Bush era, for a nuanced hybrid of realism and idealism—waging war with moral compass in-hand—an ideological approximation of Reinhold Niebuhr’s “Christian realism.”[2]

Meanwhile, a few senators and congressmen waged their own war against Ugandans by supporting its leaders who are about to pass an anti-gay law that would deprive suspected homosexuals of their freedom and, under certain circumstances, their lives.[3] Why are these senators, who presumably have a grasp of the American concept of human rights, supporting leaders in Uganda who are trying to legalize the incarceration and execution of homosexuals? The short answer: because they can. Their motive and means reveal the dark side of a network of powerful fundamentalists—of a dubious and power-centric theology—who wield influence saturated by righteousness and bigotry. Their common bond with the president of Uganda: they are all members of “the Family.”[4]

The Family is an informal network of Christian fundamentalists that has existed in the United States for many years. They are also referred to as the “Fellowship,” or “Fellowship Foundation” and sponsor the annual National Prayer Breakfast, attended each year by numerous politicians including the President of the United States. They own and operate residences in the Washington DC area for the care and fellowship of members, including members of Congress. Their “man in Africa” according to Jeff Sharlet, author of The Family, is Yoweri Museveni, president of Uganda. The relationship between Museveni and the Family dates back many years and includes business and moral development.

Uganda has become the sandbox of righteousness for members of the Family who believe their particular interpretation of the Bible is supreme to the laws of man. Their “life equation” according to their leader, Doug Coe, is Jesus + 0 = X.[5] Jesus plus nothing is everything. Jesus is all you need. And, not surprisingly, homosexuals are evil. In Uganda, they have twisted the concept of God’s love with such abandon they have morphed it into hate. Personal liberties, as conceived by the Founding Fathers, are no match for their righteousness. Their concept of separation of church and state is a “myth” that, when interpreted through their evangelical lens, only prohibits the state from influencing the church.[6] Their concept of human rights includes the right to imprison and execute humans who do not conform to their beliefs.

Human rights are likely more safe than they were under Bush with Obama’s contemplation of foreign policy. But, human rights remain in peril every day as religious fundamentalists, like those who claim membership in the Family and occupy seats in Congress, operate as rogue warriors waging hate.

[1] Barack Obama, December 11, 2009, “Obama’s Nobel Remarks,” New York Times, www.nytimes.com.
[2] Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996.)
[3] Rachel Maddow of MSNBC has been on this story for several days now. See http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34345821/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show/
[4] For a comprehensive study of the Family, see Jeff Sharlet, The Family (New York: Harper Perennial, 2008).
[5] Ibid., p. 58.
[6] Ibid., p. 339.

By William Steding|2017-05-27T18:53:27+00:00December 13th, 2009|General|0 Comments

Trillion Dollar Decisions

There are two trillion dollar decisions bouncing around our nation’s capital these days: healthcare and Afghanistan. While each significant in their own right, they are chapters in a larger story: the re-definition of American identity.

Ironically, one initiative intends to improve and save lives while the other wages death and destruction—achieving as yet unspecified objectives. Both cost about the same within their projected ‘lives’ per the Congressional Budget Office and estimates leaking out of the Pentagon and the White House. While no one is suggesting it is an either/or choice—the sublime notion of fiscal discipline notwithstanding—these choices illustrate what is likely a transformational time in American history. Do we continue to assert our hegemony in the global system (with or without the cover of national security), or do we turn inward and take care of our own house?

Even if we succeed at each—admittedly a foolish assumption—even if we actually take our healthcare system back from the stranglehold of the health insurance industry, pharmaceutical companies, state-based fiefdoms, malpractice attorneys, et al, and achieve affordable, accessible healthcare for all; or that we crush al-Qaeda, the Taliban, build a democracy in Afghanistan, or whomever/whatever it is we’re fighting for today, is it worth two trillion dollars and thousands of lives? Are hegemony and/or healthcare the right priorities? What about education, energy, climate change, economic development, scientific research, human rights, international law, or the dependability of the global financial system (to name a few other choices)?

The larger issue is what makes a nation powerful and successful today—cherished by its people and envied by the world? Which of the laundry list of initiatives collectively succeed in meeting this standard? Which America will emerge in the next five years, ten years? What does it mean for our children and grandchildren? Will there be any trillions left for them to spend? Will they even be spending dollars? Are we staring at the sunset of the American empire or its re-birth? Do our leaders understand the enormity of the moment? Is Obama the next Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, or Reagan; presidents who transformed our national identity and kept the American dream alive? Or, are we destined to fumble our way recklessly forward toward a crisis where we are defined by powers, elements, and interests beyond our control?

The moment is Obama’s, notwithstanding the march of members of congress to the lectern to grab their seconds of fame, or the pundits who fan the flames of absurdity to claim the title of last loudmouth standing. They will still be there second-guessing everyone when this sequel is written. It is time for Obama to sit alone and contemplate the larger issue: how to keep America on top, cherished by her own and envied my many more, keeping the American dream alive. The answer may or may not include healthcare and Afghanistan.

By William Steding|2017-05-27T16:29:04+00:00October 30th, 2009|General|0 Comments

Mr. Brooks ‘n Me

My wife has often suggested, after reading David Brooks’ column in the New York Times, that there is a synaptic circuit—a telemetric loop that runs between Brooks’ mind and mine. In his column today, “Let’s Get Fundamental” (www.nytimes.com/2009/09/04/opinion/04brooks.html) he argues, citing David Goldhill’s piece in The Atlantic (see “Let the Numbers Speak” post) and a research report from the Brookings Institute, that it is time, as I suggested (see ‘RIP-Teddy’ post), to go for it—all out reform—to swing for the fences.

Brooks is more eloquent than I and has just a few million more readers. I hope he gets his message across before it’s too late. I hope he gets his hour with Obama to offer guidance before next week’s address to Congress. (I’m relatively certain I won’t.) I hope we actually do accomplish reform rather than, as Brooks warns, just “essentially cement the present system in place.” But, maybe I hope too much. And, maybe Obama is all hoped-out.

As Brooks, I, and the Brookings Institute study agree: the problem is fixable. The resources are there. The financial imperative couldn’t be more obvious. The outstanding question: do we have the will?

By William Steding|2017-05-27T16:58:09+00:00September 4th, 2009|General|0 Comments

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