Let Islam be Islam and America be America!

Allowing Islam to be Islam is an important new principle that can help change U.S. foreign policy and reduce warfare in the 21st century. Since I’ve been teaching about Islam and other world religions to sixth graders since 2001, this focus on Moslem beliefs and practices is a familiar subject. Every fall I begin the year studying ISLAM partly because American kids have great curiosity about it and also because of its great complexity and depth.
If the United States wants to avoid that ‘clash of civilizations’ Samuel Huntington warned us about — and which Bush and Bin Laden are bringing closer — we have to figure out “what IS Islam?” This question is more vital than “why do they hate us” and answering it will help us deal peacefully with Moslems globally. The Prophet Muhammed, may his name be blessed, received some explicit instructions from Jibril (Gabriel) — including praying 5x per day, making the hajj to Mecca, and fasting during Ramadan month. Many individual Moslems will actually obey these and other prescriptions from the Islamic pillars of practice. The US consistently enrages some Moslems when our foreign policy prevents them from carrying out these sacred actions prescribed in the holy Qur'an. Islam is by far the youngest of the three “western” Abrahamic religions that actually began in the Near East. Still without a “Reformation,” many Moslems are determinedly serious about carrying out the prescriptions of the Prophet, and this intensity is difficult for non-Moslems to appreciate.
The bipartisan 9/11 Commission Report stated that “the American homeland is the planet,” meaning an attack on American interests overseas is the same as a terrorist assault in North America [p. 362]. But if we have to consistently intervene to protect our “foreign” homeland — call it empire! — using military force, we encounter significant opposition by uprooting Moslem daily life. Thrusting troops into Panama, or stationing divisions in Germany or South Korea, works out globally, but having troops anywhere in Saudi Arabia near the Ka’aba becomes a problem. Our invasion of Iraq and ongoing bloody occupation there disrupts required Moslem daily practices. What about the mosques we’ve accidentally damaged, the civic destruction in the two battles for Fallouja, and the tens of thousands of Moslem women and children killed as collateral damage? We need to review our foreign policy principles, cease imagining the whole planet as part of our “homeland,” and admit to limits on our enormous power.
Andrew Bacevich, author of the acclaimed The New American Militarism (Oxford, 2005), recently posited 5 principles to guide American actions abroad; one of them is to husband your economic and military resources. Steering clear of reckless invasions or selective airstrikes (Cheney’s plotted cruise missiles vs. Iran) does not mean passive isolationism. As von Clausewitz famously stated, the THREAT of using force is usually more influential than outright attack. When we do attack this squanders our advantages, reveals the shocking limits of power, and damages the American planetary empire’s longevity.
Bacevich also advocates our need to reinvent that “containment” strategy which was so successful against the USSR. Thus we see the necessity of letting Islam simply be Islam, a 1300 year old “younger” Abrahamic religion with all the monotheistic aspects that go with that tradition. A new strategy of CONTAINING Islam by forgoing military intervention allows Moslem moderates time to calm the stresses of western modernity on their belief system. It gives the 1.4 billion Moslems the security to know they can carry out their sacred activities without an external threat, and WE can husband our resources.
Just as my students find Islam quite mysterious and complex, so do many Mohammedans find America enigmatic, violent, and imperialistic. As we struggle to understand them, let’s give them time to develop and to co-habit with a restrained American influence on our shared planet.

Fighting the Real Fight

Scholar Andrew Bacevich’s fine piece “Fighting the real fight” matters [LA Times, Nov. 6]! He’s absolutely correct — the USA has to move forward with a new foreign policy based on principles AND on a global “containment” strategy. George Kennan’s containment strategy won the Cold War for us, so perhaps we need to look at isolating, outwitting, and out-creating what Bacevich terms “Islamic radicalism.”
One of Bacevich’s five new international principles begins with this idea: “Let Islam Be Islam” We have to try to do this, and accept that the peoples of the earth aren’t waiting with bated breath for Americans to “fix” their problems. It isn’t the western civilized white man’s burden to cram democracy or modernity into the Middle East. Why should we ever imagine we can understand, much less change, the minds and hearts of 1.4 billion faithful Moslems??
Let us husband our resources and redeploy our men out of Iraq!

Open Letter to my Santa Barbara Representative to Congress, Lois Capps (D)

“MRS CAPPS, WHY WON’T YOU SUPPORT IMPEACHMENT PROCESS AGAINST BUSH AND CHENEY?”
AN OPEN LETTER TO U.S. Rep. Lois CAPPS, Sept. 26, 2007 —
Dear Mrs. Capps,
Recently I’ve been getting numerous emails from you and your office. One of them offered an online survey to rate how you and this Democratic 110th Congress are doing. Like many of your constituents, I dare to predict, I rated this Congress’s performance as “poor.” And today the national approval rating for this Congress hovers around a very low 22%.
Mrs. Capps, I’ve voted for you in every Congressional election. I’ve supported your generally effective representation in the House, and you have been a “good” representative for us living in Santa Barbara. However, like Speaker Pelosi and Sen. Harry Reid, you seem to be unaware that this President ignores you, and actually scorns your third branch of the U.S. government, the U.S. Congress. Only direct and constitutional action by Congress will control our incompetent and belligerent leaders. Even the initiation of the simple process of impeachment proceedings against Mr. Bush and V.P. Cheney will hamper these neo-imperialists from lashing out at some other country. Iran of course immediately comes to mind.
In response to my email, you have declined to cosponsor a House bill that would begin a path to impeachment proceedings. In a recent email to me you wrote, “I believe Speaker Pelosi is acting in what she believes is the best long term interests of our country… I have decided to respect the Speaker's decision on this issue and not cosponsor any impeachment legislation at this time.”
I believe you read polls which indicate that more and more Americans have gotten resigned to the war issue, and that they’re waiting for the Nov. 2008 elections to deliver us a new president. But you and the Democratic majority have been elected to pull our army out of Iraq now, and to constrain Mr. Bush for the rest of his 16 months in office. You also wrote me how you “completely share that frustration” most of us have with our continuing bloody occupation of Iraq. Yet you remain opposed to beginning the impeachment process, which can only start in your House of Representatives, according to the U.S. Constitution.
As our representative, many Santa Barbarans and I look to you for moral as well as political leadership. The people want their army out of Iraq, and our military leaders are telling us we’re wearing out the armed forces. It’s cruel to ask our brave soldiers to make THREE deployments to Iraq, and extend the third tour to 15 months!
I am dismayed that you and most of the Democrats, including most of the contenders for the presidential nomination, are deceiving the American people with an anti-war sham. You, and the new Democratic majority in the 110th Congress, were clearly elected to get us out of our odious occupation of Iraq.
Like most Americans, I don’t care about the “200 hearings” you Democrats have held about the “quagmire” of Iraq. As the co-equal third branch of government the Constitution assigns you the task to “balance” the power of the executive branch. Your only effective tool to constrain this President and his bellicose Vice President is the wholly legal and measured move to begin impeaching him in the House now. Mrs. Capps, I beg you to reconsider your decision NOT to cosponsor impeachment proceedings. American constitutional democracy requires a separation and balance of powers, but our current executive branch is wildly out of control, and may well strike militarily at Iran without Congressional approval. Only Congress is given the power to declare war on another country (U.S. Constitution, Article 1).
Without the check of impeachment, the useless killings will go on uncontested, and our soldiers will continue to die for political considerations at home. This is a failure of our constitutional democracy. I hope you will reconsider your refusal to act directly against the illegal war policies of this imperial executive branch by supporting the impeachment process.

Rep. Capps and Democrats Won't End this War!

“AN OPEN LETTER TO U.S. Rep. Mrs. Lois CAPPS, 23rd Congressional District, Democrat California
I have voted for you in every Congressional election, and for your late husband, Walter Capps, before that. I’ve supported your good work and generally effective representation in the House. However, because of your honest Sept. 7 email reply to my August 31st email, quoted below, I will now vote against you in November 2008, and I’ll try to convince fellow citizens that you and the Democrats now endorse Bush’s futile Iraq occupation policy. The Democratic Party will not lead us out of this conflict.
My email was basically a copy of my Letter to the Editor printed in the Santa Barbara News-Press on August 30, as I indicated to you, and it had the tiny subheading, “That [Iraq] war is lost DOES parallel Vietnam.”
I asked you straight out to support the twin impeachments of VP Cheney and Mr. Bush. You responded in a thoughtful but cautiously guarded way, mentioning how you “completely share that frustration” most of us have with the continued senseless occupation of a foreign country which never attacked the USA. But you remain opposed to beginning the impeachment process, which must originate in your House of Representatives.
You defend your pro-occupation position by cowering behind Speaker Pelosi’s reiterated commitment not to go after the President or the true warmonger, Mr. Cheney. You wrote to me that, “I believe Speaker Pelosi is acting in what she believes is the best long term interests of our country… I have decided to respect the Speaker's decision on this issue and not cosponsor any impeachment legislation at this time.”
My beef with you, and with most of the Democrats including all the contenders for the presidential nomination, is this anti-war/anti-occupation sham. You, and the new Democratic majority, were clearly elected to get us out of our odious Middle Eastern morass. I’m also very disappointed that you allow Mrs. Pelosi to make moral choices for you. Currently, Mrs. Clinton and most Democratic Party leaders openly admit we will have our men fighting and dying for nothing until at least 2009, and this means we should assume 2011 at best.
In my Aug. 30 letter, I pointed out to you that after the 1968 election, in which Nixon, like you Democrats, also had promised to end a war paralleling our current imbroglio, Kissinger and Nixon drew it out for several extra years to 1974: “thus killing off even more of our soldiers as well as Vietnamese citizens.” You do not address this point at all.
Just like Vietnam, there is now tacit but complete admission that we’ve lost this war. The administration no longer speaks of installing a friendly democratic regime in Mesopotamia. Mrs. Capps, does Mr. Bush realize this isn’t a football game, we’re not “kicking ass” as Bush recently claimed in Australia, rather, we’re losing Britain’s help, the vaunted “surge” isn’t really working, and we admit we’ve LOST when the president cautiously speaks of “drawing down” our troops to about 130,000 in mid-2008. Uh, that’d be just in time to help Republican pro-war candidates in the November ’08 election, and would actually just be a return to the original occupation number of 130,000 before the surge. PM Howard of Australia will keep just 500 fighting soldiers in Iraq, but the administration spin machine plays this up as a victory while PM Brown of the UK wants out very badly. The UK just pulled out of Basra Palace; Brits will be out of Iraq by mid-2008.
Like most Americans, I don’t care about the “200 hearings” you Demos have held about the “quagmire” of Iraq. Bill Moyers and others have shown that “impeachment” is not revenge or anger, it’s a Constitutionally-approved means for the Legislative Branch (that’s you) to check the power of our Executive Branch, i.e. this imperial presidency. American constitutional democracy requires a separation of powers, right now the bellicose executive branch is unconstrained and runs amok across the planet. Even without conviction, a serious impeachment process will harness Cheney-Bush belligerence and restrain them from attacking Iran, which they’re certainly dying to do. Without impeachment, the useless killings will go on, our soldiers will continue to die for political considerations at home, our constitutional democracy fails, and the moral stain on America’s soul continues to grow.

View of Bush from Britain, late August

The British publication The Guardian, regarded as one of the finest newspapers in the world, led off its Aug. 23rd international edition with this huge headline: "Bush: there will be no pullout from Iraq while I'm president." The editors were paraphrasing — and mocking — the free world’s leader when he gave a speech to army veterans in Kansas on August 22.
This extremely influential European newspaper added accurate quotations from our leader, also in large-print type: “[US military] The greatest force for human liberation the world has ever known” and “In Vietnam the price of America’s withdrawal was paid by millions of citizens.” The Guardian thereby ridiculed the president for his Vietnam parallel and poured scorn on his intelligence and his leadership. It seems very clear that British Prime Minister Brown, whose reduced forces are taking a hellacious pounding in Basra, will pull out their last 5000 soldiers as soon as possible.
One part of Mr. Bush’s Vietnam parallel does seem to apply: after the 1968 election our shambolic retreat from Vietnam was supposed to be swift, but Nixon and Kissinger drew it out for several extra years, thus killing off even more of our soldiers and Vietnamese citizens. Like Vietnam, WE HAVE ALREADY LOST THIS WAR! As soon as the spineless Democrats in the House of Representatives regain their courage, or look at their deserved 18% approval rating, they must begin impeachment proceedings against our inept president and his wicked sidekick, Mr. Cheney. Where is the Democratic Party leadership on this issue??

Brown, Blair, and Bush

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's recent two-day visit with President Bush at Camp David should make it clear to Americans that the "special relationship" between the UK and the USA has finally changed — the Brits want out of Iraq, want out of the Texas cowboy's suffocating embrace, and Americans should be grateful for this significant metamorphosis with our closest ally.
While Mr. Bush vainly tried the "Gordon" gambit, just as he tried to give Chancellor Merkel a backrub at the G-8, he quickly learned the Blair lapdog is reverting to form as a Brown bulldog. After Bush's awkward rant about a worldwide WAR on terrorism, Brown riposted brilliantly with his withering comment that "terrorism is not a CAUSE; it is a CRIME" [my emphasis]. Americans must ponder this critical distinction since the way Bush has framed everything since 9/11 involves this nonsensical mantra, "a WAR on terrorism." This war framework includes running amok over Congress and our system of checks and balances, ripping apart rights of American citizens to have their emails and telephone calls remain private and without government spying, and stretches to torturing suspected "enemies" abducted by the CIA from other countries. It also means tossing anyone who opposes the USA into a catchall category of "evil terrorist," but the world is far more complex than this elementary formula admits.
PM Brown also made it clear he doesn't see Iraq — a colossal and stupid Bush error — as the central front in the misnamed war on terror; Brown noted that Afghanistan is the "frontline." The current struggles against criminals who use "Islam" as a ruse to disguise their thuggery and nationalism can no longer be waged this way. The fantasy that we could cram "democracy" down Arab throats can now be seen for what it really is: Mr. Bush trying to create an imperial Presidency which can invade countries it does not like, and cow domestic critics with the "traitor" charge. Even die-hard Republicans can see the lunacy in this. Following George Kennan on the USSR, "containment" makes sense whereas "conquer" scares all of America's friends.
Bush wants a quick fix with his overt attack on a foreign country, but Osama and Al-Qaida are mostly in other places, namely Afghanistan and Pakistan (Waziristan). The wordplay which Bush worked, identifying "Al Qaida in Iraq" as the enemy deliberately simplifies — there are scores of entities against the US invaders in Iraq, and the splinter group "Al Qaida in Iraq" is simply one of them, not to be confused with the larger organization which had never worked with Saddam Hussein's brutal regime. Brown realizes, after a 38 year protracted struggle in Northern Ireland, that these issues are not simple and will not be solved simply by the unleashing of maximum military force. And since our 160,000 troops can't pacify Iraq anyway, this failure emphasizes to the Iranian rogue regime that brute military force isn't to be feared so much. The true struggle is political and economic, NOT religious and military. Brown is well aware of this in his emphases on global poverty, AIDs, and debt.
Cheers to Brown and the Brits for helping the American people, if not their deluded lame duck leader, realize that terrorism is an abstract noun. The Imperial West terrifies parts of the globe, and as long as the American Congress and people allow our imperial President to do whatever he wants more people will turn against us globally. Prime Minister Brown is showing us a way to reorient our struggle against international criminals and bandits, and as a free people we Americans must get Congress to control our rogue leader! Let's begin by supporting Sen. Russ Feingold in his effort to "censure" Mr. Bush.

Plutocracy and Global Dominance

University of Munich sociology prof Ulrich Beck writes about the role national leaders need to play in a new and properly anxious world (The Guardian, July 13, 2007, p23). With critical issues transcending national borders like global warming, economic interdependence, massive immigration between countries, and terrorism the old single-nation approaches are doomed. He writes about the 'strait jacket of the nation-based approach,' and we should ponder his suggestion. Just take the warming climate encircling our beautiful planet. Merely reducing emissions and the carbon foot-prints of the G-8 nations will be insufficient to solve this looming catastrophe, even though a new Kyoto-like agreement will help. As, or IF, the major industrial nations manage to reduce their contributions to overheating the planet, the developing countries simultaneously race to industrialize and thereby INCREASE their emissions. Without a balanced and globally managed approach, this and other problems simply won't begin to be alleviated, much less solved.
As an American, I'm keenly sensitive to Professor Beck's comment: "The crucial question then is this: will the rich reduce their emissions so that the poor have enough room for growth?" Here we get into the crux of the intertwined issues of national sovereignty and maintenance of wealth in the mostly western G-8 lands. Many of these plutocrats — hedge managers, trustee babies, dot.com entrepreneurs, the hyper-rich, the 55% of Norwegians who are millionaires — won't stand for the logical answer to Beck's conundrum. What's the point of America's military democracy and high-tech armies if they can't protect the West's massive wealth, the right wing would ask? Transnational charismatic leadership is required — I'm looking for a Gandhi, a Lincoln, a Dag Hammarskjold! Ban Ki-moon and a corrupted UN don't cut it.
There is evidence in California that the middle and upper economic groups simply purchase yet another car — a hybrid — to use part of the time, and then feel smugly responsible. Magnetic and awe-inspiring leadership is critically urgent.
Leaders like new British PM Gordon Brown and the desperately-dreamed of successor to the current madman in the White
House need to adopt transnational economic and social policies in concert with other progressive leaders on our shared planet. All the world's children are begging for this.