New Year’s Eve, and “fools rush in where angels fear to tread,” as the English poet Alexander Pope opined exactly 300 years ago. Being widely regarded as a simpleton, I will venture to prove Pope right. Here are some predictions for 2010.
     U.S. politics and economics           
          President Barack Obama’s second year will be as rocky as his first. He may sign his health insurance reform bill into law, a good thing, but he is likely to  lead the nation into another surrogate war in Yemen -- "necessary," perhaps, but not so good. And the economy will not improve enough – for the President is not being well-served by his primary economic advisors -- to prevent significant Democrat losses in November. Because U. S. homeland security remains woefully weak at critical points, at least one terrorist event will be successful in 2010.
    International relations
            Nobel Peace Prize notwithstanding, President Obama will see little progress in the proposed Palestinian-Israeli peace talks and Israel will continue to expand its East Jerusalem and West Bank settlements. Iran will further expand its nuclear facilities and repress its liberal opposition. In spite of well-publicized opposition protests, the Iranian government will not be overthrown in 2010.
          Both Russia and China will remain intransigent on human rights issues. India’s economy will continue robustly, but its messy democratic processes will limit its international clout. Relations with Islamic nations will remain generally good, but again at the expense of human rights. International pressure, such as it is, on Zimbabwe will not be effective unless President Mugabe dies (Like me, he is in his 80s.)
          Because of Barack Obama’s “full plate,” U. S. relations with problematic Latin American states will remain on the back burner. Drug wars along the Mexico-U.S. border will continue to escalate. And little or no progress will be made in the area of climate change.
          [A second installment, focusing on matters spiritual, will follow tomorrow…]

            

          I don’t know how many of you link to the Good News Network (www.goodnewsnetwork.org). Its name indicates its focus. Assuming that some of you are unfamiliar with it, I will reproduce today their list of the Top Ten Good News Stories of 2009. It’s not the list I would have produced, nor are its priorities mine, but so what? Good news of any kind is always welcome.
   1.  Miracle on the Hudson. Captain “Sully” Sullenberger and crew landed flight 1549 in the Hudson River, saving the lives of all 155 passengers.
   2.  Miami Banker Gives Away Millions.  Leonard Abess, Jr. sold his stake in his bank and gave $60 million of the proceeds as bonuses to everyone on his staff, including 72 former employees.
   3.  First African-American President Inaugurated. Even for Republicans this seemed to mark a hopeful new level in race relations for the United States.
   4.  Crime Plummets in America. Amidst the economic downturn, cities like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and even Detroit saw murder rates drop dramatically. Property crime also decreased.
   5.  Passenger Spots Jet Fuel Leak. Staff Sergeant Bartek Bachleda spotted a fuel leak during take-off and alerted the aircrew, saving the lives of more than 300 airline passengers flying from Los Angeles to Tokyo.
   6.  Banks Repay Bailout Money. Twelve big financial institutions repaid $113 billion loaned to them by tax payers via TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
   7.  Co-Workers Rally to Save Jobs. Faced with the need to cut costs, executives and workers at Beth Israel hospital in Boston agreed to give up part of their pay and benefits to ensure that no one got laid off.
   8.  Global Child Mortality Down. Death rates of children aged five and under have dropped by 60% over the past half-century, and by an impressive 28% since 1990.
   9.  Breakthrough in Multiple Sclerosis. An Italian doctor, ministering to his wife who contracted MS at age 37, believes that MS is not an autoimmune disease, as has been thought, but a cardiovascular illness. 
  10. Humpback Whales Make Comeback. Conservation efforts since the 1960s ban on whaling has allowed humpback whales, which had dwindled to 1,400 at that point, to grow to 19,000 today, removing the whales from the endangered species list.

          Colorado friend Dave Frahm recently drew my attention to Psalm 138:8,  "Your love, Lord endures forever -- do not abandon the works of your hands." This in turn has moved me to reflect on the entire psalm.
          Psalm 138 is entitled "A Psalm of David," but early Jewish editions add "or of Haggai, or Zachariah," late Hebrew prophets. And in truth, the psalm is best understood as an expression of the gratitude and confidence of Israel after their return to Judea following their captivity in Babylon. This was several hundred years before the time of Jesus.
          The psalm is written in the first person, "I," which certainly suits the individualistic mentality of the modern West, and the particular way in which many Christians interpret Jesus' "good news."  But it is also helpful to read the psalm from the perspective of the redeemed community. And even more exhiliarating and mind-stretching to read it as a member of the human race, H. sapiens. 
          Jews, Christians, and Muslims believe that God created the human race, and indeed the whole world and the universe, and pronounced the result "very good." Not perfect, mind you, but very good in the Aristotelian sense of being well suited for its God-ordained purpose. With this in mind, I take a second look at the psalmist's prayer, "Do not abandon the works of your hands." 
          Fear of abandonment is a frequent element in nightmares. On the Cross, Jesus himself momentarily expressed his sense of God's abandonment. But the psalmist's prayer, "Do not abandon the wroks of your hands," is really an expression of confidence and gratitude. The psalmist could not conceive of God abandoning his creatures. And in this he was correct. Jesus affirmed this in his parable of Luke 15: God relentlessly pursues the lost sheep "until he finds it." And as far as the non-human creation is concerned, Jesus also assured us that God cares for the lowliest flowers of the field and the tiniest birds of the air.
          If God will not abandon the works of his hand, what does this suggest about the destiny of the human race? My belief -- based not solely on Psalm 138 but on Jesus' revelation of the character of God and a surprising number of New Testament texts, is that H. sapiens in toto, along with the rest of God's creation, is destined for salvation or, as I entitled my recent book, "The Renewal of All Things."
          Such a vision of the future raises as many questions as answers -- and I cordiall invite dialogue -- but it encourages me enormously as I approach the end of 2009, with all its bloodshed, and the beginning of a new year.

Mt. Ararat

             Like many cities in the southern part of the U. S., Lynchburg is a conservative religious city and its interests are not necessarily what one will find in other parts of the country.
           For instance, the front page banner headline in today’s The News & Advance heralds the search for Noah’s Ark by a professor at Liberty
University, the institution the late Rev. Jerry Falwell founded.         
          A little further down, still on the front page, is a report of former President Jimmy Carter’s missionary trip to the Dominican Republic, where he is urging the Caribbean republic to eliminate malaria.         
          Two other front-page stories with much smaller headlines review the recently thwarted terrorist attack aboard Northwest’s Amsterdam to Detroit flight (continued on page 7), and possible cuts to the Medicare program (also continued on page 7).         
          Page 2 features a story about people who are dumping their garbage on federal lands, and an international report about the ongoing protests in Iran.
          Page 3 has a single story – presumably for the benefit of those of us who have migrated down from northern New Jersey -- the death of Percy Sutton, the Harlem civil rights activist, entrepreneur, and power broker. Son of a former slave, Sutton also served in the famed Tuskegee Airmen of World War II.         
          Page 4 is the editorial page. Page 5 reports on a teenage killed in a car wreck. Page 6 is obituaries.  Page 7 continues the stories from Page 1. And page 8 (the business page) announces that a local boarding kennel is staying productive even during the current recession.          
          As Walter Cronkite would say, “And that’s the way it is,” in Lynchburg, Virginia on Monday, December 28^th, 2009.

             It’s not quite the year’s end, but today seems a suitable time for me to pay honor to notable people who died in 2009 and who have impacted me in greater and lesser degrees.         
          Most influential in my life are thinkers and writers such as theologians Stanley Jaki at Seton Hall, the Belgian Edward Schillebeeckx, and the German Martin Hengel. Less influential was Richard John Neuhaus: too conservative for me. I managed to read most of John Updike’s books, most recently the one set in Paterson, In the Beauty of the Lilies.  Other authors important to me who died this year were the African-American historian John Hope Franklin, the economist Paul Samuelson, and the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.         
          Fellow missionaries have greatly influenced me, as you might imagine. Among my missionary friends who died this year were Larry Cardwell, Roy Robertson, and Bob Boardman; and missiologists Ralph Winter, Art Glasser, and Kosuke Koyama.         
          I have been marginally aware of broadcasters like Paul Harvey, Walter Cronkite, and columnists Robert Novak, Irving Kristol, and William Safire, but I can’t say they impacted me much. Same for politicians Corazon Aquino, Robert McNamara, Ted Kennedy, and Jack Kemp, though I had a high regard for them.       
          Entertainers probably had the least impact on my life. The Lone Ranger (John Hart) was big in my early youth, but I soon outgrew him. Celebrities such as blues singers Sam Taylor, Mike Seeger and Les Paul, actress Farah Fawcett, and the incomparable Michael Jackson meant little to me (though my wife Georgia was a Jackson fan). On the other hand, I admired Robert Short, author of The Gospel According to Peanuts.             
          Finally, I must mention the evangelist Oral Roberts, whom I respected; Amin al-Hafiz, who was president of Syria during the time I lived in the Middle East; the great quantum physicist Aage Niels Bohr; and Jack Dreyfus, with whom I made my first mutual fund investment.

           
          As we age most of us become conscious of memory loss, especially short-term loss. Although it’s a mere annoyance to some, it horrifies those who fear it may be a prelude to Alzheimer’s disease or some other form of dementia.         
          Now, as the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) reports, scientists believe they have uncovered one of the mechanisms that enables the brain to form memories. This development, they say, could give a greater understanding of the memory loss experienced by people with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia and lead to new treatments.
          Synapses are where brain cells connect with one another. A strong synapse is needed for cementing a memory, a process that involves the production of certain proteins. The deteriorating health of synapses is one of the features of people who succumb to Alzheimer’s.
          The new discovery, in short, is that the production of proteins required to cement memories only happens when the RNA of a nerve cell is switched on. Until it is required, the RNA is “silenced” by a molecule which itself contains certain proteins. Apparently the challenge to scientists now is to identify the specific protein or proteins that paralyze the release of RNA at the synapse.         
          Current estimates are that 115 million people around the world will suffer from dementia by the year 2050. I won’t be one of them – I’ll be long gone by that time – but it is encouraging to believe that a cure for Alzheimer’s may be found by that time.

Michael Gerson was for six years a speech writer for former President Georgia W. Bush. He now is, among other things, an op-ed columnist for the Washington Post. Here is an abbreviated version of his column today:


          Christmas carries a different message. A child of questionable parentage, born into humble circumstances in a provincial backwater, begins a short life that ends with an execution. Yet it is somehow the hinge of history. Christmas tilts the universe toward the humble. It asserts that every child, in every stable, deserves angel choirs and the tribute of kings. It means that no life is too minor to matter; that the stars are warm and sheltering, that desperate prayers are heard and heeded; that every quiet, unnoticed death disturbs the cosmos.
          It may, of course, not be true. I'll own up to occasional doubt. I also admit to doubt about my doubts. Precluding a hope, just becasue we hope for it, is not rationality; it is a prejudice. Perhaps our deepest desires exist for a reason: they are meant to be fulfilled. Perhaps we are not tortured by our hopes, but led by them. The message of Christmas seems scandously unlikely to su, just as it did to sophisticated Romans at the time. But if it is true, nothing is more important. If it is true, proverty and suffereing have been shared and dignified by God himself. If it is ture, hope and memory do not end in a grave. God, let it be true.

          A recent article in the Washington Post highlights the ministry of Baba Ramdev (left). With an average of 25 million viewers, the guru's daily two-hour show is the most-watched TV show in India. And thousands of people travel to his ashram every day to catch a glimpse of him or to  touch his feet. His mission is to promote yoga and rid people of their dependence on expensive modern medicines. 
          Whether by yoga or other means, not only Indians but Americans and other Westerners are increasingly disenchanted with modern medicines and are seeking alternatives. The Chinese, for example, have been systematically been researching herbal properties since 2,500 B.C.  Since moving here to Lynchburg my wife, Georgia, has been finding relief from her chronic fatigue through Chinese herbal medicines and acupunture, administered by an immigrant doctor, Li Yueling, with degrees from Beijing University of Oriental Medicine.
          Globalization takes American research and products to every corner of the globe. But globalization is two-way traffic. Increasingly, Americans are being exposed to the products -- some of them quite ancient -- of other countries and peoples. I think this is a good thing.

Iraqi Christians celebrating Christmas in pre-war days


          Correspondent Michael Hastings reports that Christians in Iraq are preparing for a muted Christmas this year. The Chaldean archbishop of Kirkuk says that none of the nine churches in his district has scheduled a Christmas mass this year. "this is the first time we have had to cancel our celebrations," he notes. 
          And in Basra, at the other end of Iraq, the Chaldan bishop has asked Christians not to publicly celebrate the feast of the Nativity, so as to avoid offending Shiite Muslims whose Ashura holiday falls two days after Christmas this year.
          The pastor of Baghdad's Syrian Catholic Church agrees. "We are in solidarity with the people of Basra," he says. "We are afraid. We need to stop the bloodshed. We are going to pray, but not celebrate."
          Since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iraq's Christians has faced constant persecution, Michael Hastings reports, including dozens of church bombings, executions, kidnappings and forced expulsions. Hundreds of thousands of Christians remain in Iraq, but many live in isolated conclaves. Many Christian families have sought refuge in the autonomous Kurdish region in the north.

          
          In the world today there are approximately one milliion non-literate adults. That's about one quarter of the world's population. Women comprise two-thirds of all non-literates. Over half of all non-readers live in China and India; and Africa has a literacy rate of less than 60%.

          From a Christian missionary’s perspective this is very significant, since most missionaries depend on people being able to read the Bible. There is an alternative  movement underway today to communicate the Gospel by oral story-telling.

          In the United States functional illiteracy is very real. Fifty-eight percent of the U.S. adult population never reads another book after high school. Surprisingly, perhaps, the same is true for 42% of college graduates.

Functional illiteracy also is evident in American prisons.

          Paul Krueger tells a story about trying to preach to prisoners about forgiveness. He began by reading three verses from the Bible, and asking, “What did the first verse say to you?” He was met with blank stares.

          He then tried a different tack. From memory, he told the Old Testament story of Joseph and his brothers. Then he asked the prisoners what they remembered. “To my amazement,” he reports, “they got the story 95% accurate, and could answer questions about Joseph’s responses, what they learned, and how the story might make a difference in their lives.”

          Today Krueger directs Discipling Oral Learners in Prison and around the World for The Navigators. To learn more about this effective ministry, or contribute to it, you can contact paul.krueger@navigators.org 

          Winter north of the equator officially begins about noon today. But for investors in the stock market winter has been around for awhile. The Wall Street Journal today points out that there is no calendar decade in almost 200 years of American stock-market history that has been as bad for investors as the years 1999-2009.
          During the past decade stocks on the market have lost an average of one-half of-one-percent per year. Investors would have been better off putting their money virtually anywhere beside Wall Street -- a sharp reminder that the stock market can, and does, sometimes go through extended periods of decline.
          Of course, America is built on the free-market system, so investors must take the downs as well as the ups.  Younger people will have ample time to see their investments recover, but those moving into their retirement years have been especially hard hit. Even so, we elders are far better off, even in these wintry times, than the vast majority of the human family. And for this we should be both thankful and generous to those less fortunate than ourselves. 
         

          It seems a shame that in the midst of what probably will prove to be the worst snowstorm of the season we have to deal with something as trivial as health care reform in the USA, but the Senate says it must be done by Christmas, so if I don't get my two cents worth in now, I may never be able to.
          The first thing I note is that the mere fact that the Senate passes its bill by Christmas, that's only the beginning of the process. The Senate's bill has to be compromised with the bill previously passed by the House of Representatives, and that will take more time. And, assuming a compromise bill is passed and signed by the President, most of its provisions will not take effect for another four years. Still, we might as well get started, for health care reform is something that Americans for at least 60 years have been talking about. And it is needed.
          I regard the argument that the Senate should not be pressured and rushed into signing a 2,000-page bill by Christmas as disingenuous. No Senator ever reads every line of a bill before voting and all Senators are already over-familiar with the essential elements of the bill -- they have been discussing and debating it for the past nine months.
          Basically, I favor the Senate bill and whatever eventually materializes, in spite of the evident flaws and compromises, for three reasons (among many, for and against). First, it guarantees that nearly all of the American community will have health insurance. Such provision is long overdue. Untreated disease impacts not only the immediate sufferer but all of us, directly and indirectly. At present every American taxpayer pays a little more than a thousand dollars a year in taxes to cover the costs of uninsured people who utilize hospital emergency rooms.
          Second, it eliminates the present practice of insurance companies of refusing compensation for preexisting conditions, a practice I believe is unconscionable. (By mid-life virtually everyone has a preexisting condition). As I have said more than once before in this blog, history clearly shows that the private sector cannot be relied on to reform itself. That's just not the nature of the capitalist, free-market system.
          Third, I have done some calculations of my own and have concluded that the projected costs are sustainable and bearable from the perspective of community/family as over against individualism. The people pushing for the present reform bill insist that it does not add to the nation's debt. I doubt that rhetoric. I suspect that such a conclusion comes from robbing Peter to pay Paul. 
          But if I take a "worst case" scenario and assume that the entire $871 billion
-over-ten-years cost of reform will come from the taxpayer's pocket, that turns out to be about $1,120 for a tax-paying family of four per year -- about the same that the typical family now pays in taxes to cover the uninsured.    
 

         

          Ben Bernanke is TIME magazine’s Man of the Year, but my vote would have gone to two lawyers, Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck (left and right, in photos).          
          The duo are co-founders of the Innocence Project, which to date has been primarily responsible for freeing 248 wrongly convicted prisoners – 105 of them from Death Row! James Bain, the one released this week, had been in prison for a mind-boggling 35 years!  The Innocence Project does most of its work pro bono.
          Scheck is a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. He is a recipient of the Robert C. Heeney Award, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers’ most prestigious award. It is given annually to the one criminal defense attorney who "best exemplifies the goals and values of the Association, and the legal profession."          
          Neufeld is Scheck’s law partner.  In May 2006 one of his clients, Earl Washington Jr, was awarded $2.25 million after suing the estate of a Virginia State Police investigator. The jury found that the investigator fabricated the confession that caused Washington to be sentenced to death for a 1982 rape and murder.  

The Noble Qur'an

          Being somewhat contrarian by preference, I’ve been re-reading the Qur’an this Christmas season. Ordinarily I read the Qur’an during the summer months. The Qur’an is about the length of the Christian New Testament. The Qur’an has 114 Sûras, or Chapters, most of them originating in Mecca, Muhammad’s home town, and the remainder in Madinah, the city to which he and his followers emigrated.         
           Being somewhat contrarian by preference, I’m also reading the Qur’an this time from the end to the beginning. This is because the editors of the Qur’an arranged the chapters more or less according to length, with the longer ones, written in Madinah, at the beginning, and the shorter ones, which are in most cases the earlier ones, toward the end.         
          These early, shorter Sûras are very revealing of Muhammad’s character. And for the most part what they reveal is quite positive. The early Muhammad was most tolerant: “Unto you your religion and unto me my religion” (Sûra 109).
          Muhammad began to “recite” what he received by God via the archangel Gabriel as a “warner,” a prophet calling the errant clans of Mecca to repentance. He regarded them as having been corrupted by their wealth and power. In this sense he was what we might recognize today as a liberation theologian.         
          He proclaimed that true religion was, on the one hand, the sole worship of God (Allah); and on the other, the obligation to respond to the needy – the widows, orphans, and other poor. His message was not unlike that of James, one of the New Testament writers.         
          These early Sûras reveal that Muhammad was no saint, but he had a powerful conviction that God is merciful and forgiving toward those who sincerely submit to Him. For him a Muslim is one who has been granted inner peace and peace with God through such surrender. (The word Islam is akin to the Arabic word for peace.
          Muhammad also had a vivid sense of Hell, which he proclaimed to be the destiny of those who defied God and rejected the warnings of God’s messenger. God’s mercy and forgiveness, though very real, are conditional, Muhammad assumed. I once assumed this also, but no longer.

A drone over Afghanistan

          The final element in just war theory is that (6) a just war must be proportional. That is, the universal benefits must outweigh the costs. By “universal,” theorists mean the benefits and costs to both sides.           
          All wars, of course, are disproportional to one side or the other. And it is assumed that the costs to the losing side will outweigh the benefits. But sometimes even the costs to the winning side are greater than the benefits. It such cases the war cannot be said to be justified.         
          But I want to extend the discussion to speak of proportionality in general terms. In the days of ancient Israel a single man (David) could represent the whole nation and by defeating another single warrior (Goliath) win a war. Later in history armies fought against armies and civilians were generally spared.         
          Not so in modern times. One has only to mention Dresden and Hiroshima. As President Obama acknowledged in his Nobel speech, “In today’s wars, many more civilians are killed than soldiers.” Already the U.S. has lost more soldiers and maries than civilians killed on 9/11, and the end is not in sight.          
          Now America’s military is utilizing drones (unmanned, remotely controlled aircraft) against al-Qa’eda. This significantly lowers the risk to U.S. airmen. But in attempting to target a single terrorist leader from 20,000 feet, a bomb aimed from a drone inevitably kills dozens of non-combatants. It is impossible to justify this disproportionality by reference to any Biblical (or Qur’anic) precept.         
          To summarize, Obama’s War fails to fulfill at least four of the six elements of a just war, and is ambiguous on a fifth. I think the time has come to abandon altogether the pretence of a “just war.”  Both sides will justify its wars, and neither side will conduct its wars in truly just fashion.          
          This does not mean that “anything goes.” As President Obama justly observed, “When force is necessary, we have a moral and strategic interest in binding ourselves to certain rules of conduct.”

          (4) A just war must be the last resort, after all other alternatives have been exhausted. Applied to Iran, it could be argued that President Obama is trying to fulfill this fourth element of just war theory by making diplomatic efforts. But Afghanistan?
          Where in the public record does it show that former president George W. Bush exhausted all alternatives to war before invading Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11? The Taliban were still in power at that point and diplomatic overtures could have been made. Later, after the Taliban had been defeated and Osama bin Ladin had retreated to the mountains of Pakistan, other alternatives to war were never pursued by either Bush or newly-elected President Obama.
           
          If a war is to be just, (5) there must be a high probability of success. A state cannot “waste” human and other resources. This, of course, is the biggest bone of contention today.          
          Given the success of the “surge” in Iraq, President Obama expects some level of success in the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan as early as July 2011.. But Obama has significantly “scaled down” the definition of success against the Taliban. (Oddly, success in defeating al-Qa’eda in Pakistan does not come up for public discussion.)         
          At this point it is impossible to determine whether by July 2011 success will have been achieved, and therefore impossible to know whether – on this point – the war has been just.         
         [final installment of this series tomorrow…] 

          Granted that the United States justly goes to war against Afghanistan because of the latter’s provision of safe haven for the aggressor al-Qa’eda, the next element of traditional just war theory is that (2) the intention behind going to war must be just. That is, it must not disguise an actual motive of, for example, increasing a nation’s egotistic power, or plundering another nation’s wealth.
          Are there no hidden motives in Obama’s War? Only the most naïve among us would deny that the U. S. policy in the Middle East is premised on guaranteeing permanent and unrestricted to oil. Securing peace in the Middle East, whether in connection with Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or the war against terror, personified by Osama bin Ladin, is understood by American statesmen in these terms. But it is politically incorrect to say so publicly. This hidden motive compromises the “justness” of the war in Afghanistan. To be deemed “just,”
          Another motive, not quite so hidden, is America's determination to maintain its public role as (in President Obama's words) "the world's sole military superpower.

          (3) the war must be initiated by a public declaration from a proper authority. Not just anyone can declare a legitimate war.  This provision has been fulfilled by the USA, which has a two- century-old Constitution that spells out the conditions for declaring war.
          It is less clear that this element has been fulfilled by al-Qa’eda or the Taliban. Al-Qa’eda is not a political state in the usual sense, and the Taliban once ruled Afghanistan but does so no longer. But 21^st century wars do not fit the traditional paradigm. Both the Taliban and al-Qa’eda consider their cause truly just – not merely a disguise for unjustified motives. It may be that this third element of just war theory is not longer pertinent.
          [to be continued…]  

Boston Tea Party of 1773

         
          “Obama’s War” – he says it is a "necessary" war; but is it a j"ust war"? According to traditional just war theory, (1) “The cause that leads to war must itself be just, and the primary just cause is generally assumed to be the resistance of unwarranted aggression.”          
          From an American perspective, this is an easy one: al-Qa’eda’s attack on America on 9/11 was blatantly unwarranted aggression, and the Afghan Taliban’s provision of a safe haven for al-Qa’eda was equally unwarranted. Hence, the Afghan war (“resistance”) is justified.         
          From an al-Qa’eda and Taliban perspective, however, the West, led by the United States, has been waging unwarranted, brutal aggression against Islam and the Islamic way of life for two centuries, exploiting Islamic nations and sabotaging Islamic values. So it is well justified for al-Qa’eda to wage holy war and for the Taliban to assist al-Qa’eda in any way possible.         
          This is one reason just war theory is untenable: each side defines unwarranted aggression differently, and therefore each side assumes resistance is justified.There is no objective arbiter to determine which set of “values” is morally superior. One cannot appeal to the Bible or the Qur’an as being objective, because both scriptures are said to be divine revelation.         
          So contending parties ultimately fall back on von Clausewitz’s dictum: any war is simply an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfill our nation’s will.          [to be continued…]  

            


          The famed Prussian general and “philosopher of war,” Karl von Clausewitz (left) defined war as “an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfill our will.” Receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, President Barack Obama delivered a speech primarily designed to morally justify war. I criticize the “just war” theory – a Greco-Roman-Christian concept developed over time by Aristotle, Cicero, and Augustine – frequently, and some readers have complained that I haven't made clear what the theory actually says. So let me say that the just war theory has six basic components (although in his Nobel speech Obama referred to only some of them). The six are: 

1.      The cause that leads to war must itself be just, and the primary just cause is generally assumed to be the resistance of unwarranted aggression.

2.      The intention behind going to war must be just. That is, it must not hide another actual motive, e.g., increasing a nation’s power, or exploiting another nation’s wealth.

3.      The war must be initiated by a public declaration from a proper authority. Not just anyone can declare a legitimate war.

4.      A just war must be a last resort, after all other alternatives have been exhausted.

5.      There must be a high probability of success. A state does not have the right to “waste” human and other resources.

6.      A just war must be proportional. That is, the universal benefits must outweigh the costs. By “universal,” theorists mean the benefits and costs to both sides.

       In his Nobel speech President Obama was defending the U. S. action in Afghanistan as a just war. In tomorrow’s blog I will evaluate whether this is the case.

         
          President Obama is frequently criticized for his speeches. Action, not rhetoric, is what makes a difference, the critics say. I wonder if that is actually true, however. Has Jesus' sermon on the mount made not difference in world history? Was not Paul's lecture on Mars Hill a milestone in the history of Christianity? Here are a few notable sentences from Obama's Nobel Peace Prize speech:   

            “We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes.” 

            "In today's wars, many more civilians are killed than soldiers."

            Quoting Martin Luther King, Jr., “Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones.” 

           Nevertheless,  “To say that force may sometimes be necessary…is a recognition of history, the imperfections of man, and the limits of reason.” 

            “So yes, the instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace.” 

            Quoting John F. Kennedy: “Let us focus on a practical, more attainable peace, based not on a sudden revolution in human nature, but on a gradual evolution in human institutions.”
 
            “When force is necessary, we have a moral and strategic interest in binding ourselves to certain rules of conduct.”
 
            “No Holy War can ever be a just war.” 

            “We do not have to think that human nature is perfect  to still believe that the human condition can be perfected.” 

           “We can acknowledge that oppression will always be with us, yet still strive for justice.” 

          The Kennedy quote above comes closest to expressing my own views on the nature of peacemaking.

          We are back home after a four-day trip to Atlanta. I am ready to resume blogging after this brief respite. However, first I want to pay tribute to Dr. Arthur F. (Art) Glasser, left. I have learned from missionary Glenn Schwartz that Art died on December 8th at age 95. Although not well known among the millennial generation, Art was revered by those of my generation.
          I owe a debt of gratitude to Art, for it was he who prodded -- and prodded -- me to write my first book, Karl Barth's Theology of Mission. And it was he, along with Dr. Klaus Bockmuehl, who did not rest until it was published. At the time, Art was Dean of the School of World Mission at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, California. But before that he had been a missionary to China and a mission executive with the famed China Inland Mission.
          Art also had a life-long association with The Navigators. He had met Dawson Trotman, founder of The Navigators, when he (Art) was serving as a navy chaplain in World War II. When Trotman decided to expand the Nav mission overseas, beginning with China, it was Art who led him around China and paved the way for Trotman's lectures to pastors and missionaries. It was only natural that Trotman would ask Art to initiate the Nav work in China, just as it was expected that Art would feel it necessary, in those revolutionary days, to remain with the China Inland Mission.
          Art was a valued early mentor to me. We spent a summer together at Inter-Varsity's summer training program in upper Michigan. Later in life, when I served as general secretary of the World Evangelical Alliance, Art and I frequently shared the platform at various evangelical and ecumenical conferences.  Missionaries looked to Art for inspiration and practical wisdom and many, like me, mourn his passing.

                         Earlier this week I asked the question, “Can Big Business be trusted to do the right thing?” and cited the Bhopal, India chemical disaster of 1984 as a vivid example of corporate misbehavior.   But Jared Diamond, a professor at UCLA and the author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, a book I read with profit a decade ago, disagrees.         
          “While some businesses are indeed as destructive as many suspect,” he says, “others are among the world’s strongest positive forces for environmental sustainability.” In an op-ed piece in the New York Times he cites three corporations – Wal-Mart, Coca Cola, and Chevron – “three companies that critics of business love to hate” – as examples of his thesis.              
          Wal-Mart, for example, saves $26 million in annual fuel costs for running its enormous truck fleet by installing small auxiliary power units in its cabs so that drivers so that drivers do not have to keep their engines running during mandatory 10-hour rest stops.         
          Coca Cola, for whom water is its product’s chief component, aims at making its bottling plants water-neutral, that is, return to the natural environment water equal to the amount used in manufacturing its beverages. It also promotes recycling and working on conserving the world’s seven major river basins.
          Chevron justifies its expenditures on environmental conservation by noting that oil spills are horribly expensive; it’s cheaper to prevent them than to clean them up. Also, clean operations in one country gives Chevron an advantage when bidding on leases in other countries.          
          No doubt all this is true, but still, it begs the question, doesn’t it? The question is, Can Big Business be trusted to do the right thing? And the key word is “trust.” Professor Diamond answers, Yes, if such actions contribute to the company’s short or long term profits.          
          But what if “the right thing,” understood environmentally or otherwise, does not contribute to the bottom line, even though it might contribute mightily to the community at large? I would judge that question is still moot.                         

A street in Old Jerusalem


          Before 1967 (I'm writing now of modern times) Jerusalem was a divided city. There was West Jerusalem, controlled by Israel, and East Jerusalem -- more commonly known as Old Jerusalem, and as the site of Jesus' death and resurrection. Old Jerusalem has long been occupied by Arabs, both Muslim and Christian. In 1967 Israel took control of the entire city. 
          Today Old Jerusalem is still the home of approximately 260,000 Arabs. But that figure is steadily diminishing. Last year Israel revoked the Jerusalem residency rights of more than 4,500 Palestinians. Most of these were residents who had gone aboard to find employment and stayed abroad for more than seven years. Of course that doesn't mean they intended to stay abroad permanently. They study and work abroad with the dream of returning home to retire in Jerusalem with the extended families they left behind. Now that dream has been destroyed.
          All this is part of a political game. Israel considers all of Jerusalem to be its undivided capital. But Israel's annexation of Old Jerusalem has never been recognized internationally, and Arabs reasonably want Old Jerusalem to be the capital of the hoped-for Palestinian state. Jerusalem's future is supposed to be the object of future negotiations, and the right of its Arab residents ought not to be summarily revoked for political reasons. 

          All of us who have lived for extended periods of time in Muslim countries know that one of the core principles of Islam is jihad. But we also know that the essential meaning of jihad is not “holy war,” as most Westerners assume, but “struggle,” “effort,” “perseverance,” particularly with respect to the cultivating the inner person and serving the purposes of God in the world.         
          As the distinguished Islamic jurist, Dr. Khalid Abou El Fadl, has pointed out, Muslims believe that piety, knowledge, health, beauty, truth and justice are not possible without jihad – that is, without sustained,diligent hard work. Cleansing oneself of vanity and pettiness, pursuing knowledge, healing the ill, feeding the poor, and standing up for truth and justice even at personal risk, are all forms of jihad.         
          In that bottom-line sense I am a jihadist, or try to be. All my long life, in public and in private, I have struggled on a variety of fronts, not always successfully, but always with perseverance.         
          In the highly polemic and polarized climate of our day, to be a true jihadist is, in my judgment, to expend intense effort to understand “the other,” to be inclusive rather than exclusive in our relationships. Fundamentalists both in the Muslim and Christian worlds, want us to see things solely in black and white. So Muslims refer to America as “the great Satan,” and American Christians write off Islam as “demonic.”         
          This is a recipe for global disaster. Christians and all peoples of good will must counter the “holy war” mentality with the spiritually hard work of cultivating “the mind of Christ,” that is, in the words of St. Paul, “in humility, valuing others above ourselves.”

            I’m running one day behind schedule, but I do want to remind readers that exactly 25 years ago yesterday, a leak in an Union Carbide chemical plan in Bhopal, India released a cloud of lethal methyl isocyanate over the sleeping city. Some 2,000 were killed immediately, and another 13,000 died later. Indian health officials, not informed about the dangerous chemicals at the factory, were completely unprepared for the tragedy.
          Less than a year later, a Union Carbide plant that produced methyl isocyanate leaked a toxic cloud over  the Kanawha Valley in West Virginia. While the latter incident was not another tragedy, it was a reminder that an accident such as the one that occurred at Bhopal could happen in the United States.
           Union Carbide made a deal with the Indian government to pay $470 million in compensation in exchange for being cleared of all responsibility. But the families of some of those died received a paltry $500, while thousands of others received nothing at all.
          Meanwhile, tests have revealed the area is still filled with toxic waste that continues to pollute the vicinity and prematurely kill its residents. Indians are demanding that Dow Chemical, which bought Union Carbide, carry out a thorough cleanup of the area, but the company says it isn’t responsible.           
          Some very good friends of mine who read this blog firmly believe I am biased against big business. And they have a point. They believe the Union Carbides and Dow Chemicals of this world can be trusted to do the right thing. I believe the record shows otherwise. And I believe this has implications for civic-minded Christians.                   

         
          The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), led by Joseph Kony (photo) is perhaps the most murderous terrorist group in the world. Based in northern Uganda, it also operates from southern Sudan and the eastern Congo. It's goal is to overthrow the Ugandan government and establish a theocratic state based on the  Ten Commandments.
            During the past two decades, the LRA has abducted tens of thousands of children to serve as fighters and sex slaves. In 2005 the United Nations International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants against Kony and four other LRA leaders. Two have since been killed, but Kony  himself continues to elude capture.
          The LRA exemplifies the way religion -- any religion, past and present -- can be perverted to evil ends. Earlier this year the Ugandan army, supported by the United States new Africa Command, mounted a major offensive against the LRA. But it was poorly executed and, in revenge, Kony and his associates retaliated by murdering 900 civilians.
          The Washington Post reports that U. S. Senators Russ Feingold (Democrat) and Sam Brownback (Republican) have co-authored a bill that would commit the United States to "eliminating the threat posed by the Lord's Resistance Army...through political, economic, military, and intelligence support."
          No doubt the LRA is an evil group.  But is it the mission of America to be the world's policeman in the 21st century? I would think that the African Union is the appropriate agency for this.

          President Obama laid out his Afghanistan strategy last night to an appropriate audience of West Point cadets, but of course his speech was directed to the nation and beyond.
          His speech was relatively short and sharply focused, and yet most unsettling. The heart of his revised strategy is that within 18 months (during which time American troop levels will reach 100,000) the Afgan army and police force will have demonstrated their ability to push back the Taliban warriors. Concurrently the Afgan civil government will have limited offical corruption and demonstrated its commitment to providing basic services to its peoples.
          These are the primary "benchmarks" the President says must be met in order to begin deploying American troops back to the United States.
          But what if the benchmarks are not met by July 2011?  That is what disturbs me -- and many others, I assume -- for I am convinced that such failure is a very real possibility. The Afghan government over the past eight years has given no indication that it is able and/or willing to do what Mr. Obama and his advisors wish.
          So what is Plan B? The President himself gave no indication in his speech of what the next step must be. At least four options are available, but none of them are going to be supported by America's allies or the majority of the American people.
          From my perspective , it would seem that Mr. Obama and his advisors have some more "deliberating" to do. Without a viable Plan B, American and its allies in the war against terror are facing -- contrary to what the President maintained last night -- another Viet Nam.

A Swiss Muslim minaret with a church steeple just behind.



          Democracy has its weaknesses. The Swiss people, living in what is perhaps the world's oldest democracy, and against the advice of its federal government and parliament, as well as the Swiss Bishops' Conference, have voted to ban the building of minarets in the country.
          The vote, according to Washington Post reporter Edward Cody, "reveals an unexpected level of resentment against Muslim immigrants in a country long known for discretion and tolerance."
          Following the vote, the Swiss federal council noted that "this does not mean rejection of the Muslim community, its religion, or its culture...The federal council will make sure of that. Religious peace is an essential element that has made the success of Switzerland." Many will see such an announcement as nonsense, for the vote will surely be felt by Muslims, who constitute about five percent of the Swiss population, as a rejection of their religion and culture, and it certainly will not contribute to the religious peace of the the nation. 
           Muslims will still be allowed to build mosques and practice their religion. They just can't construct minarets Why the restriction? Because opponents, who apparently include a majority of Swiss voters now, maintain that the minarets are symbols of Islam's growing political power. 
          This is not true, of course. Minarets are simply the facilities from which the faithful are called to prayer five times a day -- although in the largest cities of Zurich and Geneva, Muslims, out of deference, actually do not exercise this option. Imagine the outpouring of criticism in the West if Muslim countries such as Egypt or Indonesia banned the construction of steeples on Christian churches!
          The Swiss Bishops' Conference correctly reacted by saying that "the decision of the people represents an obstacle and a big challenge on the path to integration through dialogue and mutual respect." I agree. In our present world of exploding populations, immigration of younger Muslims into aging Western nations will continue. The only appropriate solution is peaceful integration, not ill-conceived restrictions. And followers of the Prince of Peace ought to be taking the lead in this.