Shaming Russia

“How can people go sit at a table with a regime that bombs hospitals and drops chlorine gas again and again and again and again and again and again, and acts with impunity? Are you supposed to sit there and have happy talk in Geneva under those circumstances when you’ve signed up to a ceasefire and you don’t adhere to it? What kind of credibility do you have with any of your people?”

–John Kerry, U.S. Secretary of State, at the United Nations during talks on Syria

The recent talks followed air strikes which killed workers attempting to bring relief supplies to besieged Syrian civilians, despite an agreed upon ceasefire. The United States has blamed Russia, either for the strikes or allowing their Syrian allies to carry them out.

John Kerry is a diplomat’s diplomat. He continually remains civil and courteous even to those who must frustrate him to the point of insanity. This time, however, he could not contain his anger.

Until now, he’s managed civil negotiations with Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister. He wants Lavrov and his country, in the interests of simple humanity, to reign in their protegé, Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s leader. Assad has committed atrocities against his people surely surpassing Russia’s own Ivan the Terrible.

Russians support Assad because they wish to retain their airbase and Mediterranean port in Syria. What to do?

Considering what happened when U.S. troops invaded Iraq, few Americans wish to commit their troops to Syria. The United Nations is hamstrung from acting because of Russia’s veto in the Security Council.

One suggestion is for American planes to bomb Syria’s airfields, preventing planes from using them to bomb civilians. Such actions are an act of war against a country not directly harming us.

Perhaps the heroes are those who come back, yes, again and again to seek a solution. If the atrocities committed in that small country continue, they refuse to allow the world to forget. Let the shaming continue.

The Call to Be Pro-Truthers

The Economist (September 10, 2016) noted that politicians have always lied, but current trends suggest that in today’s world, truth has been left behind entirely. We see it in political campaigns, not only in the United States but in other democracies, as in Britain during the vote to leave or stay in the European Union.

We see it also in misinformation deliberately fed into the internet, as Russia has been accused of doing in feeding falsehoods to the world through social media.

One reason for the influence of false information, suggested by The Economist, is “magical thinking.” In a time of terrorism, new diseases, and other threats not easily controlled, people are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories and fringe ideas. For some of us, they provide neat answers to complex questions. An unsubstantiated speculation “feels” right, whether or not it’s backed up with facts.

Another reason for the prevalence of falsehood is how we now choose to receive our news. Social media is helpful in putting more information at our fingertips, but little of it classifies as investigative reporting. It does have the ability to spread unsubstantiated rumor as the truth to millions in seconds.

What can be done? Checking a rumor with a reputable fact finding site is helpful. However, until we practice the hard discipline of reading more from reputable sources (online or in print), democracy will be threatened by demagogues and hucksters out for their own gain.

Sicily, Early 2000’s, Before the Trickle of Boat People Became a Wave

Before the Afghan and Iraqi conflicts, I wandered through a market place in Sicily, the Mediterranean island nestled off the coast of Italy. A few of the sellers appeared to be recent immigrants from sub Saharan Africa and stood out in that European culture.

Years before, I listened to a speaker in a U.S. State Department seminar. He warned of huge pressures building in African and Near Eastern communities. Europe, he said, would experience a wave of boat people surpassing all previous population movements.

The speaker was correct. In Sicily, I had witnessed the beginnings of those waves of immigrants. The subject of immigration has now roiled the electorate on both sides of the Atlantic.

The United States was built by immigrants, from the first settlers in Jamestown and Plymouth to today’s immigrant harvesters in our orchards and our knowledge workers at Microsoft and Intel. We have depended on immigrants and continue to do so.

With a culture of immigration, the United States has proved a better integrator of immigrants into society than has Europe. It has reaped the rewards of new entrepreneurs and vibrant communities.

Any nation must allow an honest discussion about effects of an overwhelming tide of newcomers. Yet, compassion for the vast majority who flee from awful brutality, who are themselves the targets of terrorism, compels us to develop humane policies.

We can work with all countries where desperate people seek refuge. Some nations like Jordan, one of our allies in the Middle East, cope with refugee numbers massively out of proportion to their small native populations.

Europe and the United States also must own the colonialism and the oil wars that contributed to the economic hardship and brutality that have sent so many men, women, and children fleeing.

Has the Current Presidential Campaign Discussed Military Policy in Depth? Or Discussed Any Policy in Depth?

According to a recent interview with General Martin Dempsey, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the answer is “no.” (“Notes from the Chairman,” Foreign Affairs, September/October 2016.)

“I think that the discussions have been superficial and emotional,” Dempsey said. “What we need are conversations that have real depth to them. Talking about what’s going to happen in the first 60 or 90 days of a presidency just doesn’t get it done for me.”

Issues discussed in the interview included Dempsey’s assessment of risks from large state actors, like Russia and China, as well as from non-state actors like ISIS and lone wolf terrorists. Looking at such an unprecedented collection of risks, Dempsey derided our seeming inability “to take a longer view—say 20 years. . . . we tend to look at things one year at a time.”

Too often we treat complex issues, not just military ones, in simplistic, sound byte fashion. Text less, read more, think more. (How’s that for a sound byte slogan?)

Between Literary and Commercial, Religious and Secular, Plot and Character, and Other Conundrums

In “Literary Lust vs Commercial Cash” (Writer’s Digest, December 2006), the successful author, Jodi Picoult, commented on her struggle between writing commercial or literary fiction.

“At some point in your career, you’ll be forced to choose either the commercial path or the literary one.” The reason, she said, has less to do with writing and more to do with marketing.

Similar to Picoult’s dilemma between literary and commercial (she manages to write books that are both) is my dilemma between marketing myself as a “religious” writer or as a writer of international mysteries and family relationships. My books aren’t what are termed “inspirational” even though religious choices exert influence on the main characters, if only made in a distant past.

My intended audience is the “spiritually engaged news junkie” as well as the reader who just prefers fiction with an international element.

Some of the audiences I’m aiming for are Christians who don’t normally read “Christian” books. They prefer certain secular books that, to them, present deep truths in a more subtle fashion.

I also write for tolerant unbelievers who don’t mind a character wrestling with life’s perplexities within a faith context.

In terms of character and plot, I enjoy the type of hybrid novels written by Charles Todd, writer of the Inspector Ian Rutledge series. These novels are not strictly a detective series. They are character mysteries about a British detective afflicted with post traumatic stress disorder due to service in World War I.

For myself, I’m still searching for that hybrid connection between authentic faith and a messy world, one that doesn’t always color between the lines.

If the Nation Goes to War, Everybody Goes to War

The draft for service in the United States military ended in 1973. Since then, the nation has relied on a volunteer force, despite fighting the longest war in U.S. history, the double Afghan/Iraq conflicts. U.S. military personnel were severely strained, leading to damaging multiple tours of duty for a tiny minority of Americans.

“By rescinding their prior acceptance of conscription, the American people effectively opted out of war . . .” Andrew J. Bacevich wrote in Foreign Affairs (“Ending Endless War,” September/October 2016). The shortcomings of this policy are, he said, “glaringly apparent.”

Less than half a percent of Americans serve combat tours, while the vast majority of Americans attend to shopping and lives as usual. They didn’t even push Congress to roll back the tax cuts of the early 2000’s, greatly reducing our ability to pay for the Afghan/Iraq conflicts.

Usually, when the nation fights a war, citizens at least share the burden by paying more taxes to support the efforts, but not in this case. Obviously, such irresponsibility greatly increases our national debt, leaving less money for everything from building roads to research into conquering new diseases like the Ebola and Zika viruses.

From now on, Bacevich said, we should use military force only as a last resort. The American people should be fully engaged in supporting it, not just a few uniformed personnel. Allies should do their part for their own security.

He recommends several steps to remedy the unequal sacrifice of those who serve. One is a requirement that American citizens pay for wars in which they send their soldiers to die. Another is a military reserve that mirrors American society in “race, gender, region, and, above all, class.”

If we all share the sacrifice of military action, we might use it more wisely.

Why Has Democracy Slowed in Africa?

An article in The Economist (August 20, 2016) discussed the perceived slowing of democracy in Africa. Some African nations, like Nigeria, are more democratic than they were a few years ago, but others have backtracked. The president of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, changed the country’s constitution so he could run for a third term. Other leaders appear to ignore constitutional safeguards.

Democracy is a young movement in most African nations. Representative institutions in Europe began centuries ago. The American colonists built on them, beginning in the 1600’s.

Terrorist incidents in Africa have created opportunities for more autocratic leaders. Armies have grown and become more influential in African politics.

China is exercising more influence in Africa and serves as an example of a country with economic success that is not a democracy.

However, three changes in the African landscape may eventually increase democracy’s attraction. One, the population is younger and becoming more educated, making it more likely to favor political reforms.

Two, the population is urbanizing. Urban centers are more likely to elect progressive leaders.

Three, the digital age has come to Africa. Corrupt practices can be better monitored. Rigging elections, for example can be offset by smartphones recording votes as they are tallied, making numbers harder to manipulate later. The internet encourages citizen involvement.

The Economist article ends on a high note. This time, the move for more democracy doesn’t come from well-meaning donor nations but from Africans themselves, giving it a firmer foundation for success.

Revisiting the Melungeons, Spur to a Story

When I was growing up in Tennessee, I was fascinated by legends about the Melungeons. The legends told of a mysterious people, with European practices, already in the Appalachians when the earliest white settlers arrived.

Speculation abounded, even as the group was shunned, a dark people, looked down on by many of the newcomers. Were they descendants of whites married to native Americans? Descendants of shipwrecked Portuguese sailors off the coast of North Carolina? Descendants of free blacks married to native Americans? Descendants of the Lost Colony of Virginia, which vanished from history at the end of the 16th century? Or even descendants of European Jews escaping persecution?

Imagine my surprise when I picked up a copy of The Economist (August 27, 2016) to find an article on the Melungeons. The author had traveled to “Snake Hollow . . . between the ridge and Powell Mountain and hard on Tennessee’s northeastern border.” Stories from that neck of the woods don’t often make it into the pages of an international magazine. The article concludes with a quote from the president of the Melungeon Heritage Association: “The Melungeons . . . are part of the fabric of Appalachia. The fabric of America.”

A few years ago, I put the Melungeons into a story of mine, Quiet Deception, a hybird mystery/romance set on the mythical college campus of Adair in one of my favorite places, the Appalachians of east Tennessee. I called them the Painter Mountain people. One of the Painter Mountain people attends Adair, the first in her family to enter college. Her sympathetic understanding of the distraught main character gives this character an incentive to find answers to two mysteries, including a possible origin for some Painter Mountain people. . . .

Hope for a New National Story?

David Brooks, a columnist for The New York Times, recently offered hope for a new national story.

Brooks chided himself for not listening to those outside of his own bourgeois circle. He promised to listen to those Americans who see the American dream as out of their reach and have cast their protest votes accordingly.

His message of hope emphasized the community. At this level, no matter the dysfunction on the national level, local citizens aid the homeless and the hungry, mentor high school dropouts, and work with those soon to be released from prison to integrate them into society.

Having recently attended a local meeting to update citizens on programs to help the homeless in our community, I agree with Brooks. Local groups here run a food bank (including a garden for fresh produce), hold a work day for providing minor repairs on houses of the less well-off, and contribute to a fund for medical needs, among other causes.

Brooks says: “I don’t know what the new national story will be but maybe it will be less individualistic and more redemptive. Maybe it will be a story about communities that heal those who suffer from addiction, broken homes, trauma, prison and loss, a story of those who triumph over the isolation, social instability and dislocation so common today.” (As quoted in The Seattle Times, May 1, 2016.)

Five Favorite Books

My list of favorite books varies according to what I’m currently reading, but here I list, in no particular order, five books that gave me new insights.

Gary Sick, All Fall Down. Gary Sick was part of Jimmy Carter’s presidential team. He outlines in detail the thinking and events that led to the Iranian student takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran, in 1979. Our relationship with Iran since then has been, to say the least, tortured. I referred to this book while researching for my novel, When Winter Comes.

John Lewis Gaddis, George F. Kennan: An American Life. One of the best biographies I have ever read. It won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography. It opened up for me a part of twentieth century American history that still influences us today.

Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. This book, published in 1996, describes the author’s perspective on major civilizations in the world today and their differing world views.

Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning. A little book that arose out of Frankl’s experience in the death camps of the Holocaust. He explains not only the philosophy that helped him survive but gave him meaning afterward.

Elizabeth Elliot, A Slow and Certain Light. Elliot was the widow of Jim Elliot, killed while serving as a missionary to the South American Auca tribe. I began reading and rereading this book during a period of purposelessness, a time I thought would never end. It gave me hope until something better arrived.

Dancing with the Candidates

We want to fall in love with our candidates, idolize them, and take selfies with them.

Unfortunately, star power has little to do with governing ability.

Henry Kissinger, U.S. Secretary of State under President Richard Nixon, spelled out a cynical view of political candidates: “the typical political leader . . . is a man with a strong will, a high capacity to get himself elected, but no very great conception of what he is going to do when he gets into office.”(quoted by Niall Ferguson, Foreign Affairs, “The Meaning of Kissinger,” September/October 2015).

Can we judge, then, how our candidates will govern if elected? Try asking these questions:

Will they see themselves as public servants, elected to serve the people, not themselves?

Will they appoint men and women of both ability and character to serve under them?

Will they know how to persuade other nations to our policies, even nations who may not like us but whose alliances we need?

How is their character, their staying power, when the chips are down, when the unexpected happens?

Can they stand to be unpopular after the honeymoon ends and a fickle electorate falls out of love with them?

Why I Loved THE AMERICAN MISSION

The American Mission, by Matthew Palmer, is the story of a young U.S. diplomat in Africa. The diplomat, Alex, suffers from post traumatic stress disorder after witnessing a massacre he was unable to stop, in Darfur, one of the troubled regions of Sudan.

The disorder has damaged Alex’s career. In his new assignment, he deals with a corrupt African government, as well as his own betrayal by some of his colleagues, and his progress toward redemption.

I loved the story for many reasons. Readers love a decent but damaged hero who struggles to overcome the forces of evil. As a former U.S. Foreign Service officer, I also personally identified with the settings.

Finally, someone has written a realistic story (with certain novelistic liberties, of course) about the U.S. Foreign Service. Palmer has taken U.S. diplomats out of the realm of striped pants cookie pushing and created a more realistic picture of what they do.

Matthew Palmer should know. He is, in fact, still an active Foreign Service officer. I watched a video interview with him about his newest book, The Wolf of Sarajevo, which I look forward to also reading. Palmer, of course, can write realistically about diplomats in the Balkans, as well as other places, because he served there.

Palmer said he cringes at popular perceptions of diplomats in the literary world. He had difficulty getting his novels accepted by a publisher. Publishers had problems with the “foreign” element of the story. A story about Americans in Africa? they asked.

I sympathize. In pitching my novels, at least two editors told me they would have difficulty pitching a story set in a foreign locale to their American readers.

This perception is changing. Several such novels have become popular with American audiences. (Books by Khaled Hosseini, set in Afghanistan, come to mind. In a lighter vein, The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith are popular.)

Even U.S. political campaigns seldom explore foreign policy in any depth. Perhaps the publishers and the politicians are missing a newer population, more interested than they had supposed in countries beyond our shores. After all, Americans should know about the countries where they send their soldiers to die.

How Religious Pluralism Strengthens Faith

Peter L. Berger, a professor at Boston University, wrote an article, “The Good of Religious Pluralism” (First Things, April 2016).

What’s good about it? Doesn’t pluralism undermine faith?

Berger says no and lists four benefits of religious pluralism:

It becomes more difficult to take a religious tradition for granted. Acts of decision become necessary.

Freedom is a great gift, and pluralism opens up new areas of freedom.

If pluralism is combined with religious freedom, all religious institutions become in fact voluntary associations (whether religious believers find this theologically congenial or not).

Pluralism influences individual believers and religious communities to distinguish between the core of their faith and less central elements.

Religious pluralism, it seems, encourages personal commitment to a faith rather than blind obedience.

What’s So Great About the Forty-Hour Work Week?

My current work in progress is the third in a series. A new mother puts her career on hold to start her children “on the right path,” as well as provide a break from her stressful job. Now she’s going back to work, and her husband is considering taking off a couple of years from his career to parent them full time until they’re a little older.

The career theme pops up in my writing, both blogs and novels.

I keep returning to the need many of us have, whether parents or not, to take a rest from our careers. We want to do something different or pursue an idea or take care of others. The sabbatical is a part of some professions because it is deemed worthwhile.

Obviously, barriers prevent most working people from taking sabbaticals. Money is the main obstacle. A single person needs a hefty bank account, usually impossible for most singles without a spouse to back them up. And even couples struggle on one income, with rents or house payments taking a significant percentage of their earnings.

Second is the impossibility for most folks of having a job waiting, certainly the same job, if they decide to take a “sabbatical.” The work must go on. Somebody must do it. Employers may also see a request for a year or so of leave as evidence of laziness or lack of dedication. Certainly, it rarely makes the supervisory job easier.

Also one must consider career advancement. Leaving for a year or two or more can put one behind the power curve for career development.

We need new career models, not the one formed during the suburban decades of post World War II, centered on the single male breadwinner.

Innovative employers could consider changes in career models. Now that we live longer, some of that longer retirement could be used in the middle of life rather than all on the elderly side. Employees might work more years if they have breaks in between paid work. “Retirement” might come to mean merely a longer break.

America’s Gift to Exiles

The country of Turkey, a NATO ally, has issued an extradition order to the United States for Fethullah Gülen, a Turkish national living in Pennsylvania.

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, recently put down a coup attempt by Turkish military officers to overthrow him. Europe and the United States condemned the coup, an attempt against a democratically elected leader.

In 1999, Gulen broke with Erdogan in an apparent power struggle and took refuge in the United States. Many Turks, including Erdogan, believe the coup was masterminded by Gulen. They want him brought back to Turkey for trial.

Some have deplored the harshness with which Erdogan is dealing with suspects in the coup plot, suggesting Erdogan is using the coup as a means to consolidate power, even become a dictator. They also wonder if Gulen could receive a fair trail in Turkey, if he is indeed guilty of the charges. Is Erdogan merely using his current popularity for putting down the coup as a way to get rid of an old antagonist?

The United States says it is considering the extradition request and has asked for absolute proof that Gulen is indeed guilty. He says he had nothing to do with the coup.

This is not the first time dissidents have sought refuge in the United States. More recently, Yu Jie, a Chinese dissident, settled with his wife and son in Washington, D.C. to continue his writing. Yu Jie, a Christian, writing in First Things (August/September, 2016), cites Christianity’s growth in China and predicts that “Christianity is China’s future.” This is probably not the future desired by current Chinese leaders.

Gullen’s fate is still to be decided as of this writing. Has he been guilty of aid to a coup against a democracy? Or is he one of a long line of persecuted dissidents the country has taken in, from religious nonconformists to political exiles?

Another Shooting, Closer to Home This Time

A young man, apparently angry at being dumped by his girl friend, killed her and two other young people and seriously wounded a fourth. This one took place only a ferry ride away from where I live.

According to reports, when his girl friend did not agree to restart their relationship, the young man purchased an AK-15 assault rifle and a manual on how to use it. He later returned for more ammunition.

At a gathering of alumni of a local high school, the young man saw his former girl friend with another man.

He returned to his car and studied the manual. Then he came back to the gathering with the AK-15 and shot his former girl friend and others that he knew as they ran for cover. The police later caught him as he sped down Interstate I-5.

Young men have always had trouble controlling jealousy. Before, they broke up parties with fist fights. Why does any young man, too young to legally purchase a six pack of beer, now choose an assault rifle to vent his anger?

Loving What Is Not Used Up

Material things—our clothes, our iPhones, our gourmet meals—aren’t in themselves evil, but they are finite.

The problem with material things is the emphasis we place on them. The saying “money is the root of all evil” is incorrectly quoted. The correct admonition is: “the LOVE of money is the root of all evil.”

Excesses of material things—harvested fruits or wealth—are not to be loved or hoarded but shared as well as enjoyed. The Hebrew Old Testament enjoins the people of Israel against too much efficiency. They are not to reap to the borders of their fields but to leave the leftover for the poor to gather.

Our nonmaterial resources follow different laws. They are not “used up.” One learns to enjoy music. To reach higher levels of musical understanding brings greater enjoyment and does not take from anyone else.

The good gifts don’t decrease with use, but grow with use.

If Winter Comes

“If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”
–Percy Bysshe Shelley; “Ode to the West Wind”

Many years ago, I watched a television interview with one of the American hostages of the 1979 Iranian takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. The hostage, released with the others in 1981, spoke of her ordeal. She impressed me with her courage and resilience.

Later, after I joined the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Service, I worked with another former hostage. I also served with one of the Americans who escaped capture, the basis for the fictionalized movie, Argo, winner of the Academy Award in 2013 for best motion picture.

In security seminars, required before we left for our foreign postings, other former hostages passed on to us the lessons they had learned during captivity. We were aware that, as embassy officers, we would probably be evacuated at least once or twice from a post threatened by terrorism or insurrection, if not worse, in our careers. (The magic number for me was two evacuations.)

No surprise, then, that Mark Pacer, the protagonist in my new series, beginning his State Department career in the late 1970’s, would be affected by the 1979 hostage crisis. If Winter Comes takes place from 1977 to 1981.

The hostage taking and its aftermath form a major part of the book. It’s a story of the crisis, but also of how one couple deals with the resulting threats to their marriage.

My Kind of Escape Reading

My reading is more or less divided into two camps: stretching and escape. Most of my nonfiction is of the stretching variety, magazines and books I read to learn and to encourage ideas.

My fiction tends to be of the escape variety. Recently I’ve discovered a detective series that suits my kind of escape reading. It’s Charles Todd’s Ian Rutledge novels. Rutledge is a detective from Scotland Yard, well beloved locale of many British novels.

Rutledge, however, is a wounded hero. He suffered trauma during World War I as a commanding officer for four years. In his imagination, he carries on conversations with one of the men, Hamish, a Scottish soldier Rutledge sent to his death for disobeying orders during the terrible Battle of the Somme.

Seeking to recover from what we now call post traumatic stress disorder—as well as he could recover—Rutledge suffered a broken engagement.

His investigative work is his salvation. He struggles to quiet Hamish’s sometimes accusing voice; yet Hamish provides a foil against which Rutledge can bounce off his theories as he attempts to solve complicated crimes.

Though grim deaths are a part of the plot, violence is not glorified, nor is sensuality.

I enjoy the fight for survival the hero makes, the cynical comments that are honest but not overwhelming, and especially the small lives of villagers and ordinary characters drawn well by the author.

The series is my kind of fiction: realistic, yet not drowning me in despair. Occasional kindness. An imperfect hero, yet with high standards. Bringing me out of my everyday world, but not, as my mother would say, leaving me with a bad taste in my mouth. Enough hope that I check out the next one.

Representative Government: a Dangerous Experiment

Representative government is a balancing act between our sense of responsibility and our selfish natures. This is as true of the often silent majority as it is of the elites.

When times are good, the majority are content to let the minority—the elites—run things. They are more interested in their individual lives than in what elites are doing with the country.

When times are bad, the majority rebel.

When the elites have power, they must understand that they act for all, not for themselves alone. Else, the majority may decide to throw elites out of office, the wise and the unwise, the corrupted and the dedicated.

During those times when the majority choose to reign in the elites, they must temper their anger with a grain of calm reflection. It is easy to vote angrily on one or two issues. Better to explore more deeply. Elections aren’t about  our emotions. They are about our responsibility to elect wise leaders, a responsibility many in this world do not have.