How should America react to the ISIS-produced video beheadings of journalists?

Photo credits: public domain.

In a recent email conversation, a friend and I exchanged concerns about the flare-up of violence throughout the Middle East and where it might lead. My friend despaired of ever understanding the roots of war in that area. In reply, I noted the readiness to kill one another off for religious differences among various sectarian factions in the area.

All too often leaders of the opposition party in the U.S., media reps, and ranting Facebook or other social media participants plunge in to take sides in one conflict or another, frequently offering unqualified recommendations for intervention by the United States. That’s why it’s always such a relief to read NY Times op-ed columnist Tom Friedman’s analysis of foreign affairs. Friedman has the intellect and knowledge to grasp the complexity of Middle East conflicts and offer a few wise insights, even in response to the evil forces motivating the ISIS beheadings of journalists.

Friedman writes:

President Obama has been excoriated for declaring that “we don’t have a strategy yet” for effectively confronting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. In criticizing Obama for taking too much time, Representative Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told “Fox News Sunday” that “this ‘don’t-do-stupid-stuff’ policy isn’t working.” That sounded odd to my ear — like we should just bomb somebody, even if it is stupid. If Obama did that, what would he be ignoring?

First, experience. After 9/11 that sort of “fire, ready, aim” approach led George W. Bush to order a ground war in Iraq without sufficient troops to control the country, without a true grasp of Iraq’s Shiite-Sunni sectarian dynamics, and without any realization that, in destroying the Sunni Taliban regime in Afghanistan and the Sunni Baathist regime in Iraq, we were destroying both of Iran’s mortal enemies and thereby opening the way for a vast expansion of Iran’s regional influence. We were in a hurry, myself included, to change things after 9/11, and when you’re in a hurry you ignore complexities that come back to haunt you later.

There are no words to describe the vileness of the video beheadings of two American journalists by ISIS, but I have no doubt that they’re meant to get us to overreact, à la 9/11, and rush off again without a strategy. ISIS is awful, but it is not a threat to America’s homeland.

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"Only politicians and defense contractors want this war"

Syrian President Bashar Assad

US President Barack Obama

We should all be engaged in some hard thinking this week as the Obama Administration goes all out to convince us that launching a war with Syria is the "last resort" available in responding to Assad's alleged use of chemical weapons on his own people.

Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass puts the matter into perspective:

Dogs aren't as beloved in Syria as they are here. In the Middle East, our four-footed friends are generally considered unclean. They don't live inside houses. They're not allowed near a kitchen.
And they don't legislate war policy or decide the fate of millions of people.
 
But watching President Barack Obama stumble through his news conference from the G-20 summit last week and trying to talk us into war with Syria, I couldn't help thinking about dogs.

It was a stupid thought, yes, but I didn't put it there. One of the president's men put it there. A guy named David Axelrod, who brought it up on Twitter.

Axelrod, the Democratic mouthpiece of Chicago mayors, is the guy who aligned himself with an inexperienced Illinois legislative back-bencher and ended up installing him in the White House.

And after the president announced he would seek congressional approval for military strikes against Syria, Axelrod signaled his journalists by spinning them a tweet.

"Big move by POTUS," read Axelrod's tweet. "Consistent with his principles. Congress is now the dog that caught the car. Should be a fascinating week!"

Consistent with his principles? Like the drone strikes? Like the NSA surveillance? Like the IRS investigations of conservative groups? Like no answers about the dead from Benghazi? All those principles?

If Axelrod thought last week was fascinating, this week should be even more entertaining. The president doesn't have the votes in Congress for his war in Syria, but he'll try to make his case in a national television address scheduled for Tuesday.

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Syria: a moral crisis requires a moral response

Courtesy of http://omar660.tripod.com/id34.html.

We're talking here about Obama's mistake in issuing a red line dare to the Assad regime in Syria. According to U.S. intelligence reports, Assad took the dare and used chemical weapons against his own people. In response to this tragedy, President Obama and many of his Left Wing followers have suddenly morphed from doves into hawks.

When madness seems to be enveloping the minds of previously sensible people, including the mind of our Nobel peace prize-winning president, it's always a relief to take a time out, breathe deeply, and read what Jim Wallis, the editor of Sojourners Magazine, has to say about the matter at hand:
 
When a head of state is responsible for the deaths of 100,000 of his people and has used chemical weapons against innocent civilians -- the world needs to respond. In one massive attack, the evidence appears to show that 1,429 people, including 400 children, suffered horrible deaths from chemical weapons banned by the international community. That is a profound moral crisis that requires an equivalent moral response. Doing nothing is not an option. But how should we respond, and what are moral principles for that response?

For Christians, I would suggest there are two principles that should guide our thinking. Other people of faith and moral sensibility might agree with this two-fold moral compass.

1. Our first commitment must be to the most vulnerable and those in most jeopardy. Two million Syrian refugees have now had to leave their country and fully a third of the Syrian people are now homeless in their own country. Lebanon, a country of 4 million people, now has nearly 1 million Syrian refugees. Humanitarian organizations are calling this the worst crisis in two decades. Our Scriptures tell us that our first and deepest response should always be to the most vulnerable who are so often forgotten by the world. The world must respond to those millions of vulnerable and jeopardized people. Faith communities all over the world must respond and call upon our governments to do so as well. The U.S., U.K., and other concerned nations must do that -- immediately. And the international faith community should lead the way for a global response to millions of people in deep distress and danger.
   
2. The other task for people of faith and moral conscience is to work to reduce the conflict. Conflict resolution is always the first goal of peacemakers, whom Jesus calls us, as Christians, to always be. How do we act in ways that could lessen violence rather than escalate it? How do we unite the world community against the regime of Bashar al-Assad, put him on trial in absentia to prove that he used chemical weapons against innocent civilians, bring his criminality to the United Nations and other international bodies, and then surround him with global rejection, isolation, and punishment? How do we use this opportunity of his criminal behavior to pressure and even embarrass those nations who have supported him to support him no more?

These two principles make many of us in the faith community wary of the proposed military strikes that are now being considered by the White House, Congress, and others. Why?

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Syrian activist nails the difference between vengeance and justice in Qadaffi’s death

Photo courtesy of newson6.com

Scanning the mostly shallow online news coverage this morning celebrating Qaddafi’s violent death, I was heartened to read David Kirkpatrick’s report from Tunisia on the front page of the NY Times. Kirkpatrick quotes a Syrian activist who points out the difference between vengeance and justice in how Qaddafi died – a distinction American and other world leaders appear to have forgotten since 9/11.

Kirkpatrick writes:

TUNIS — Like the flight of Tunisia’s dictator or the trial of Egypt’s, the capture of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi on Thursday afternoon captivated the Arab world, giving a renewed sense of power and possibility. But the photographs of his bloody corpse that circulated just moments later on cellphones and television screens quickly tempered that exhilaration with a reminder of the many still-unresolved conflicts that the Arab Spring has also unleashed.

“This isn’t justice,” Mustafa Haid, 32, a Syrian activist, said as he watched Al Jazeera’s broadcast in a Beirut office. Colonel Qaddafi should have been put on trial, his crimes investigated, Libya reconciled to trust in the law, he said, as though he still hoped better from the regional uprising that began with peaceful displays of national unity in Tunis and Cairo. 

Across the region, Colonel Qaddafi’s bloody end has brought home the growing awareness of the challenges that lie ahead: the balancing of vengeance against justice, impatience for jobs against the slow pace of economic recovery, fidelity to Islam against tolerance for minorities, and the need for stability against the drive to tear down of the pillars of old governments. 

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Secretary Clinton Energizes American Diplomacy in Asia and Middle-East

Secretary of State Clinton met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah on Wednesday. Photo credits: Getty Images, courtesy of NY Times.

It’s been years since American diplomats displayed as much energy recently shown by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton first in her Asian trip followed soon by her foray into the troubled Middle-East.

Mark Landler in the New York Times reports today:

RAMALLAH, West Bank — A day after announcing a new diplomatic initiative in the Middle East, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton traveled here Wednesday to show support for the Palestinian authority, saying she had pressed the Israeli government to open border crossings to war-torn Gaza.

“We have obviously expressed concern about the border crossing,” Mrs. Clinton said after a meeting with the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. “We want humanitarian aid to get into Gaza in sufficient amounts to help alleviate the suffering of the people in Gaza.”

Mrs. Clinton also spoke out against Israeli plans to demolish houses belonging to Palestinians in East Jerusalem. She said the orders, issued by the municipal authorities, were “unhelpful” to the peace process.

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