Month: November 2004

Jim Henley goes deeper into the foibles of the liberal hawks:

Now a lot of the disenchanted liberal hawks I know complain less about brutality than about mismanagement. In this they take their lead from the Kerry campaign, which has focused its criticism on the Bush administration’s incompetence and “failure to win the peace.” Complain that Bush committed “too few troops to secure the peace” and you can, for possibly enough listeners to get you elected, attack the incumbent without sounding “soft.”…

We invaded Iraq with the force we did because it was the only politically viable way to have the war at all. Until well along the buildup phase when the familiar “close ranks” phenomenon hit the American public, support for immediate military action against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was tepid. The Bush Administration’s political people knew perfectly well that a bigger, more disruptive deployment and less cakewalk talk risked sinking the whole deal. To say “We shouldn’t have invaded Iraq with such a small force” is to say “We shouldn’t have invaded Iraq.” It’s just not saying it forthrightly.

Read more here.

For what it’s worth, I think the liberal hawks were somewhat naïve in thinking they could have the kind of war they wanted on their terms. “Liberation” always seemed, at best, a secondary consideration in the administration’s public case for war. And any war for liberation, if such things are to be undertaken, has to be judged by its prospects for success, not just the good intentions that may lie behind it.

The “liberal hawks” who plumped for war with Iraq are now deserting the president in droves. Andrew Sullivan, Paul Bermam, et al. have endorsed Kerry rather than the man who acted on their vision. Is this just fair-weather hawkery or something worse? Reason’s Tim Cavanaugh says:

These days, none of those luminaries can summon a kind word for the president who acted in accord with their own arguments. Ignatieff dismisses the humanitarian intervention as a “fantasy.” Sullivan has in recent days seized on the nebulous circumstances surrounding the disappearance of explosives at Al Qaqaa as evidence that Bush failed to keep order in postwar Iraq. Jarvis tells Reason, “though I think the execution of the war itself was good—Rumsfeld is really smart—the aftermath has been really f[*]cked up.” Friedman declares, “Iraq is a terrible mess because of the criminal incompetence of the Bush national security team, and we are more alone in the world than ever.” Zakaria calls the president “strangely out of touch,” unaware that his “attitude” is responsible for the problems of postwar Iraq. Pollack condemns “the reckless, and often foolish, manner in which this administration has waged the war and the reconstruction.” For Kaplan, the only question is whether the Bush administration is “reckless or clueless.” Berman is now relieved to recall that even while championing the invasion he was cautioning against the president’s “rhetoric, ignorance, and Hobbesian brutishness,” and declaring himself “‘terrified’ at the dangers [Bush] was courting.” Even Hitchens, while standing by Bush’s side (temporarily, as it turned out), criticized the administration’s “near-impeachable irresponsibility in the matter of postwar planning in Iraq.”

This is a neat arrangement of responsibility by the liberal hawks: All the blame falls on the president, none on themselves. Bush’s former supporters channel what is now the overwhelming conventional wisdom that the administration (in the person of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld) failed to provide a large enough force to run the country adequately. Leave aside the question about just how large a force would be adequate, given that even under the current deployment the armed services are strained to meet their commitments and relying on callups of the Individual Ready Reserve to fill manpower gaps. Ignore for a moment how 300,000, or 500,000, or a million, non-Arabic-speaking troops would prevent, for example, an insider from helping massacre 50 Iraqi police recruits. Under any conditions, the liberal hawks’ brand of armchair generalship is stunningly glib.

Read more here.

I would say that vegetarianism is the diet of hope, an eschatological diet. It’s not morally obligatory, though it’s morally commendable, because it’s an impossible diet. No matter what we eat, we’re going to take away food from other animals. Even if we turn all of America into cropland we will inflict suffering on animals because you have to keep animals out of the field.

One problem with vegetarianism is that it often gives rise to self-righteousness, a sense of holier-than-thou purity. It can be schismatic, which I think is why the church has seldom embraced it.

It’s a diet of witnessing to your hope that, in the end, God will restore the entire world to God’s original intentions. That God will redeem humans and animals alike.

—Stephen H. Webb

The Other Journal describes itself as “an intersection of theology and culture.”

The current issue focuses on the election and features interviews with Stanley Hauerwas, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Walter Brueggemann and others.

Kerry voter Hugo Schwyzer puts tomorrow’s election in perspective:

Both liberal and conservative Christians are too enamored of the power of the secular state to transform the hearts and minds and lives of its citizens and the citizens of the world. Yes, the moral character of the ruler matters. Yes, the policies of the state matter — and good Christians can differ in good conscience as to what those policies ought to be. But the God I worship had little time for great leaders when he walked the earth. Jesus was political, yes — but His politics were far more radical than anything any modern politician could possibly espouse. To claim Jesus’ endorsement for any party, any candidate, is unbiblical and profoundly offensive.

I’m tired of the question, “What Would Jesus Do?” Though a useful corrective to the self-absorbed, the question assumes that there is always a clear answer. Sometimes, the answer is clear. More often, it isn’t. I’m no bible expert, but one thing I see in the Gospel is Jesus consistently confounding the expectations of his followers. He tends to do the unexpected, the surprising, the scandalous. Even those who knew Him best were taken aback time and time again.

So do I know how Jesus wants me to vote? No, I don’t. I don’t think anyone else knows either. I know He calls us to service, sacrifice and giving. But beyond that, a humble respect for mystery does not allow me to go. I’m voting for Kerry. I want him to win. But I would never, ever, be so bold as to say that he is God’s candidate. Of course, I also categorically reject the suggestion that the incumbent is God’s favorite in this race. Ultimately, Bush and Kerry are competing to be the most powerful prince in the contemporary world’s greatest principality. And while Christians can and should take an active interest in the affairs of this world, there is no question that real justice, real transformation, and real hope cannot come from the princes of this world.

Read more here.

Andy at Among the Ruins has a post on the dilemma of voting, using Walker Percy’s novel The Moviegoer as his jumping-off point:

I just finished re-reading Walker Percy’s novel, The Moviegoer. It’s been an extremely edifying read – especially since I was guided by an extremely competent literary critic this time.

I now resonate even more deeply with Percy’s protagonist: the modern-day Hamlet, world-weary suburban playboy, Binx Bolling. I’m currently deliberating over doctoral programs (both where and what to study – assuming I’m accepted). Like Binx, vocational clarity eludes me – and it almost always has. Unlike Binx, I’m excessively scrupulous about Doing The Right Thing….

From the other direction but with the same sentiment, the authors of The Ivy Bush enlist Papa Luther in their cause by urging any and all fenceriders to “sin boldly” and help get out the vote for Kerry. (A reminder I could always use. I have a feeling Luther’s advice to me during one of my recurring Big Decision crises would be: “Less oh-so-earnest prayer; more beer.”)

It’s hard to absorb the force of these attacks. I suppose since I live in a state whose electoral votes aren’t even slightly up for grabs, I have the luxury of thinking about voting (or not voting) as my chance to make a clear statement for what’s good and true.

Unlike Andy, I don’t even have the luxury of living in a non-battleground state! But I particularly like the invocation of Luther.

In my Reformation Day post I said that one of my disagreements with Roman Catholicism was a preference for a decentralized ecclesiology (doctrine of the church) as opposed to a centralized, hierarchical one. Specifically I wrote:

For most Protestants, the local congregation is sufficient in itself for the Church to be present. The universal church is the invisible collection of all believers, past and present, living and dead. It doesn’t have an institutional expression per se. As Timothy George puts it “the invisible church emerges into visibility in the local congregation” when the Word is rightly preached and the Sacraments and rightly administered.

Thinking about this some more, this seems not quite right. To be more specific, there are many forms of church polity that steer between pure congregationalism (which is what my earlier post looks like it’s endorsing) and an episcopal form like that of the RCC. Indeed, my own ELCA tries to steer just such a middle course.

This was brought home by a post at Noli Irritare Leones comparing Quaker and Anglican ecclesiologies:

…I hold no fixed theological position about how local churches ought to relate to any larger organization. But I do know that the Trinity International University faith statement version of justifying local control makes no sense to me; there has never been a time when you had only local churches and some sort of invisible church; local churches have always, rather, been part of some larger organization. It’s so now; it was so in the time of the early post-Biblical church, and it was so in Biblical times as well. Paul certainly doesn’t speak, in his epistles, as if local congregations were all there were.

I think this is right. There has to be some way that local congregations relate to one another and are accountable to the larger Christian community. Whether this means something like an episcopal structure may be a matter of prudence rather than biblical mandate, but it seems like something like episcopal oversight was prevalent very early on in the church’s history, not something to be disregarded lightly.

A man of conscience speaking out or the continuation of the deplorable celebrity-ization of our politics? I report, you decide.

The editors of the New Pantagruel have published a roundtable on tomorrow’s election. It’s interesting how many were Nader voters in 2000. This may be reflective of TNP’s brand of orthodox Christian, anti-consumerist, anti-modern “conservatism.” (Dare we say green conservatism?)