 any years ago—decades,
actually—I viewed a foreign film titled “The Valley Obscured by Clouds,” a
story about the search for a particular valley in some remote region of
the earth that was so hidden it was only shown on maps as “the valley
obscured by clouds.”
After trekking through jungles and across deserts and over mountains, the
seekers come to the last mountain range they can see, sure that the valley
must be just over those peaks. But, of course, once they get to the other
side of those mountains, then the valley must be over that next range that
comes into view…and so on. Needless to say, the valley represents the
Garden of Eden, paradise, land of innocence and eternal bliss.
It wasn’t much of a movie, but I took from it a quote that has stuck with
me all this time: finally realizing that they’ll never find that valley,
one of the characters says: “There are many doors through which we may
leave the Garden. Once we’ve left, there is no door through which we can
ever return.” In other words, once innocence is lost, it can never be
regained; after our fall, we must simply pick ourselves up, dust ourselves
off, and ease back down the road.
Some say America
lost its innocence with Kennedy’s assassination or Nixon’s presidency;
others count it from the end of our terrible misadventure in Vietnam.
Certainly, by 9/11, our innocence was long gone.
The trauma of that
terrible day presented a ripe moment to educate the soul of the nation: we
had lost our sense of invulnerability, of invincibility. But instead of
deepening our kinship with the world as it responded to our suffering,
those behind the President elected to pursue what they called “a war to
rid the world of evil” and we allowed ourselves to be manipulated into
buying it, thereby squandering the good will that was ours after 9/11.
There have always
been people hating other people, often in response to the smashing of
their innocent hopes and ways and expectations. Encouraging much of such
hatred have been historical and religious texts: not so much the words on
the page but their selective interpretation by zealots with personal axes
to grind and naive recruits talked into serving them.
These days, much
of the world hates America—which will be further provoked by the
winner-take-all effects of economic globalization and by our increasing
imperialism. Our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are boosting the numbers and
the resolve of even more born-again haters; yet, as someone has noted,
trying to fight today’s stateless, nihilistic type of terrorism with an
army is like trying to stop an attack of mosquitoes with a machine gun.
Having one’s
dreams or hopes destroyed is humiliating, and humiliation turns to hatred
and hatred to rage and rage to violence. Such acts of desperation give the
alienated a renewed sense of dignity and purpose, something even to die
for: ideals they believe to be pure, coming from new narratives of loss
and redemption to overcome their defeat, their version of the phoenix
rising from the ashes, of the Christ resurrected after the Cross. Thus,
the weak become stronger, more committed to their holy cause, believing
they’ve found a way back into the Garden.
You may think I
have been describing the motivation behind those terrorists that hate us.
But, as well, this describes America, for we have fallen and must recover.
For me, our loss of innocence came with Vietnam and the terrible image of
desperate people making futile efforts to get aboard helicopters as they
lifted off the roof of the American embassy. And so, one of the most
powerful factors behind our post-9/11 war fever was in response to that
earlier humiliation, that loss of innocence. Much as we would want the
memory of Vietnam to fade, it remains a fixture in our collective psyche:
even after 9/11, more tourists visit the Vietnam War Memorial each year
than visit the White House, the Washington Monument and the Jefferson
Memorial…combined (which is, also, why the war records of presidential
candidates still matter).
“New York Times”
columnist Thomas Friedman suggests that—especially now that we know the
deceit behind our invasion of Iraq—that we rushed ahead because we had to
make war against someone serious after our defeat in Vietnam (which was
followed by other attacks on American interests that we let slide). “Never
mind,” Friedman writes, “that the object of our vengeance had little to do
with the insult at hand; the appearance of triumph was needed to lay to
rest the psychological and cultural fallout of those earlier defeats.”
America, as then,
is a now a nation in trauma, so Americans must mourn and recover, must try
to make sense of what has befallen us by constructing a new narrative of
loss and redemption, an explanation that somehow snatches victory from
defeat.
Today’s dominant
narrative has been developed over the past twenty years by those who are
now the primary forces behind our foreign and military policies: it is
called the “Project for the New American Century.” Household names like
Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle and Cheney oversaw the development of a
strategy to secure American global domination for decades to come by
combining the expansion of U.S. military bases around the world with a
doctrine of pre-emptive war and the development of new nuclear weapons, a
belligerent extremism of apocalyptic proportions.
Their vision of
American empire received little attention when it was first reported
before the election in the fall of 2000, largely dismissed as the work of
hard-line ideologues. The report, itself, admitted that achieving their
vision would take a long time absent “a catastrophic and catalyzing
event—like a new Pearl Harbor.” A year later came 9/11, for them the best
thing that could have happened.
Capitalizing on
the fear of terrorism, they have rushed forward with their strategy which
even the supportive “Wall Street Journal” describes as: “pushing U.S.
forces into far more remote and far more dangerous corners of the world.”
There are now American troops in over-130 countries, permanent bases in
40, and pressure being applied to a number of other nations for them to
house additional U. S. military bases.
This fear of
terrorism continues to be exploited: color-coded warnings of terror
threats and more civil liberties threatened by the USA Patriot Act
regularly reminded us that we are vulnerable victims. It’s not surprising,
then, that—out of such fear—we willingly grab onto the arrogant belief
that, by the grace of America’s Christian God, ultimately we cannot be
defeated, the same hubris that always accompanies a justification of
empire by dominating the world through military might. But, of course, as
even former-Republican political pundit, Kevin Phillips, warns: “God does
not march under the American flag. We will come to regret pretending that
he does.”
Whether sincere or
cynical, there is nothing more dangerous to the national psyche than a
sense of righteous victimhood fueling a vengeful nationalism, that most
insidious of civil religions, whose adherents are most likely to be
carried away by furious emotion. As one writer put it: “democracies may go
to war less willingly than autocracies but, when they do, they have a
tendency to fight with fewer restraints and to aim for total domination.”
Well, that’s their
story and they’re sticking to it: believing in their exceptionalism—that
the righteous are allowed to break the rules in defense of their own
omnipotent agenda, that might makes right because God is on their
side—just like those hate-filled terrorists, we think we can batter our
way back into the Garden. Instead, we need to take a big bite of Adam &
Eve’s apple to remind us of the difference between good and evil.
America deserves
better: from our founding ideals and through our collective understanding
and by our history, we deserve better. It’s not only that we’ve been lied
to; it’s that we’re letting them get away with it. So, what should we do;
what should our religious response be? That may seem a strange question
for a political response, but recall the wisdom of Gandhi, who said:
“Those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know
what religion means.” For what we do, politically, will come from our
religious values and our ethical convictions; our actions will show what
we truly worship. After all, if our religious and ethical convictions do
not shape our public lives, what good are they?
Writing my weekly
columns in the “Pueblo Chieftain” newspaper, I receive some interesting
letters; many are positive and appreciative but, then, there are those
that disagree with me. (Hard to imagine, I know.) I received one a few
weeks ago that began: “You really, really, really need to stay on your
medication!” (I answer each letter to me—not to debate them or try to
change their mind but to thank them for caring enough to write me; I
answered that letter with: “I really, really, really thank you for your
concern about my mental health.”)
Another letter
came from a local Christian pastor who, while this was not his intent,
actually gave our liberal faith a compliment. In showing me how wrong my
thinking was on some issue, he explained his own faith like this: “I am
not a Fundamentalist,” he said, “because Fundamentalists are all belief
and no ethics; likewise,” he continued, “I am not a liberal, because
liberals like you are all ethics and no belief.” He meant, of course, that
my liberal religious beliefs did not match his “correct” beliefs, but I
was glad to see that someone outside our faith understood the great value
we place on ethics in our spiritual journey: it’s how we live our beliefs
that matters.
Albert Einstein
said: “The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people
who are evil but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.” At
the core of our liberal faith is a commitment to “do something about it;”
our ethical principles require that we act against injustice.
So, how should we
respond? Recall the song that says “let there be peace on earth and let it
begin with me.” Well, it must begin with me: if I am not at peace with
myself I cannot do justice, practice mercy and loving kindness, and walk
humbly with my God. But, by myself, that’s not enough; we must “do
something about it.”(I know many of you are; we—each and all—need to do
much more.)
If we believe in
the ideal not of imperial domination but, rather, of universal
cooperation; if we believe in the force of international law rather than
the law of unilateral force; then we need to stand on the ethical core of
our liberal faith and do something about it. We need—by our actions—to
begin writing a different narrative of loss and redemption, one that
starts to restore some of that trust and good will we’ve so arrogantly
squandered; a new narrative inspired by our Judeo-Christian roots that
mandate we seek peace and pursue justice; one that begins by offering an
apology and then asking for forgiveness before acting to atone.
Our new narrative
would counter the “Project for the New American Century” by insisting that
militarization and pre-emptive war are not the path to real security; as
noted by former President Clinton, unless we want to invade and occupy
every country in the world ruled by some non-democratically elected
demagogue, we better concentrate on making friends instead of targets. Our
new narrative would advance a vision of the world where international
institutions are strengthened rather than destroyed, where global poverty
and alienation are addressed in earnest, where human rights, at long last,
are taken seriously, and where all nations—including, especially, the
United States—limit their weapons of mass destruction and their insane
arms trading. As Noam Chomsky put it: “One simple way to reduce the threat
of terror is to stop participating in it.”
Our national
psyche is on the line. Yet, as suggested by this morning’s Reading, this
creates a new hope: that the people can save the nation—when its army and
its government cannot—by how they respond to attacks against them. Doing
nothing—responding in despair or cynicism or apathy—participates in the
terror-mongering of our imperial reach. We can do better; America is
capable of wiser, more measured, more humane applications of our
still-considerable influence and our massive power.
Our new narrative
of redemption could say: yes, terror is a crime against humanity and
terrorists are murderers and, yes, we must respond…but not in kind. We
will not seek to avenge the death of innocent Americans by killing
innocent victims elsewhere lest we become what we say we abhor, lest we
become what we are now worshipping. We will refuse to ratchet up the cycle
of violence that only creates more violence. Because “we are caught in an
inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny,” we
will build coalitions with other nations and we will do all in our power
to see justice done—at home and abroad, helping to ameliorate some of the
root causes of terror—but through the force of law, not by the law of
force.
As we read
responsively the words of Dr. King: “We must evolve for all human conflict
a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. Hatred and
bitterness can never cure the disease of fear; only love can do that.
Before it is too late, we must narrow the gaping chasm between our
proclamations of peace and our lowly deeds which precipitate and
perpetuate war. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means.”
And so, to
conclude: Yes, the world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the
people or their policies who are evil, but because of people who won’t do
anything about it. Yes, it is a daunting challenge, easier said than done,
seemingly impossible to achieve; but the impossible just takes a little
longer to accomplish, that’s all… remember what happened when the people
decided to do something about it and stood up to oppose the war in
Vietnam.
There is too much
at stake: despair or cynicism or apathy are not options: we can do
something about it; we must do something about it. (somebody say “Amen!”)
CLOSING: (from
Martin Luther King Jr., spoken in 1965 but still, unfortunately,
appropriate today)
“Now more than
ever before, America is challenged to realize its dream, for the shape of
the world today does not permit our nation the luxury of an anemic
democracy. …the hour is late. And the clock of destiny is ticking out. We
must act now before it is too late.” |
