1994:
“Once you got to Iraq and took it over, and took down Saddam Hussein’s government, then what are you going to put in its place? That’s a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq you can easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off. Part of it the Syrians would like to have to the west. Part of eastern Iraq, the Iranians would like to claim, fought over for eight years. In the north you’ve got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey. It’s a quagmire.”
–Dick Cheney, former member, U.S. House of Representatives from Wyoming
2014:
“We have been engaged in the Islamic world at least since 1980, in a military project based on the assumption that the adroit use of American hard power can somehow pacify or fix this part of the world. We can now examine more than three decades of this effort.
Let’s look at what U.S. military intervention in Iraq has achieved, in Afghanistan has achieved, in Somalia has achieved, in Lebanon has achieved, in Libya has achieved. I mean, ask ourselves the very simple question. Is the region becoming more stable? Is it becoming more democratic? Are we alleviating, reducing the prevalence of anti-Americanism?”
–Andrew Bacevich; Professor of International Relations and History at Boston University
Give weapons to the moderate forces in Syria? How do we keep the weapons from falling into the hands of the region’s extremists, as may be happening now in Iraq. Once provided, weapons cannot be recalled like peanut butter jars from a factory that we discover has sprouted salmonella.
You may see the term “Tiananmen Square” frequently in the news this next week. A quarter century ago, a movement in that square in Beijing, China, for more democracy, was crushed by authorities in June, 1989. Hundreds of students are estimated to have been killed, perhaps more.
Spring, 1989, had seen the movement in China smothered by the military. However, in November of that same year, the barrier between East and West Germany in Berlin—”the Wall”—fell.
How about our democratic allies? What kind of people do these countries appoint as ambassadors TO the United States? According to a recent study of ambassadors from NATO countries (May 2014 issue of The Foreign Service Journal), not a single one serving at the time was politically appointed.
The characters in Tender Shadows differ in background and purpose and choices. They mirror society in the early twenty-first century. They include the digitally adept and the digitally challenged, the athletic and those who struggle to keep off extra pounds, the confident and the searchers.
Flying in a small plane over one of Saudi Arabia’s deserts in 1991, I read of the first attempt of the old Russian guard to bring back Soviet Russia after Gorbachev’s pivot toward the West. Boris Yeltsin, showing courage he lacked later in bringing true democracy to his country, stared them down and won the day. Russia appeared once more set on the road to what we call Western liberalism.
When circumstances beyond our control and not of our making place us in bad, even horrible situations, we can remember the lessons of Viktor Frankl. Imprisoned in a German concentration camp, at the mercy of those who hated his race, Frankl continued to develop his inner thoughts and ideas. After release from the camp, Frankl expressed those ideas in a book read by millions, Man’s Search for Meaning.
The Nazis came to power in Germany in a society of educated, middle class citizens. An unsuccessful war and economic problems led a significant proportion of the population to look for simple solutions like blaming Jews. Instead they might have examined issues like the world wide recession and its effects on Germany. They might have found a way to deal with the heavy debt placed on the country by the treaty that ended World War I. Instead, they allowed themselves to be caught in the hyper nationalism championed by the Nazis.
This period was a beginning, not of leaving my faith, but of finding a more mature faith. Before in my world, Christians were Christians, and the rest was everybody else. Now I began to see graduations within the Christian community as well as in the community of “others.” I found that I could disagree but respect those who differed with me. I am, as the apostle Paul said, still working out my own salvation with fear and trembling.
I also came to understand that some people who called themselves Christians have committed grievous sins against others. We worship Jesus who, though equal with God, humbled himself to become like us. Yet, in our arrogance, we scream at the different others as though we are God and know perfection. Now I am more aware of my own potential for error and am more willing to listen to other viewpoints.
I find no fault in Jesus, but I fear that we have clung, not to Jesus and his radical love, but to something less, Christianity as a mere civil religion. Perhaps that is why Christianity is no longer the default religion in the Western world.
1) How much more influence does a citizen gain who spends a great deal of money on a candidate compared with an average citizen who merely casts a ballot? Can votes be “bought” in the sense of understood favors toward certain policies if one accepts money for a campaign?
5) Has money trumped political parties? Do wealthy individuals have more power to win elections than Democrats or Republicans or other political parties?
Jesus is crucified, his body taken away.