What Happens When U.S. Embassies Close?

 

Twenty-two U.S. embassies, as of this writing, are affected by new intelligence which indicates terrorists are planning attacks on American interests. The embassies will close August 4, a few days before the end of the Ramadan fasting period for Muslims, and perhaps other dates as well.

U.S. embassies close not only to protect their staffs but also to prevent injuries to the public. An embassy is a busy place. Those seeking visas, usually to visit or study in the U.S, may be so numerous that they must wait hours in long lines at some embassies. American citizens also visit to renew passports, receive notarial services, or to register new-born children.

To announce a closure does not mean everybody stays home. The majority of the staff in an embassy is usually non-American. Most embassy work is not classified. This includes maintenance of the embassy and housing for Americans assigned to work there. Foreign service nationals, or locally hired staff, as they are now called, also perform skilled work because of their language abilities, knowledge of the country, and continuing contact with local government. They often work their entire adult lives for the embassy and develop valuable contacts for their American employers. Many local staff are asked to stay at home when the routine work at the embassy is shut down.

During the times I served in embassies in the Middle East, I don’t remember a closure in which I stayed home. As one who served American citizens, I needed to be there for emergencies and often to notify our citizen warden networks if new information came in.

I hated when an embassy closed because it meant a double work load the day we opened again.

Automobile Age Dirge

 

Automobiles became more than a plaything for eccentrics when Henry Ford mass produced his Fords beginning with the Model T in 1908. Motorized vehicles were sold at prices that the average American family could afford. The automobile age began.

In 1956 President Dwight Eisenhower signed the Federal Aid Highway Act (FAHA). Controlled access “Interstates” soon covered the landscape. American families moved out to suburbs and the malls. The 1950’s and 60’s were the apex of the automobile age. Americans who came of age during the first decades after World War II abandoned walking, mass transit, and the shops and houses of Main Street.

Changes crept in, hardly a ripple at first. A few, mostly younger people, turned their backs on the suburban lifestyle and returned to the cities. As the twentieth century gave way to the twenty-first, their numbers increased. Access to walking and mass transit became assets for selling homes. Some workers even commuted by bicycle. The housing in newer suburbs became denser and included sidewalks and community parks.

Instead of freedom, automobiles now conjure visions of traffic jams, painful gas prices, and the use of scarce financial resources for car payments. Meanwhile, Americans who came of age during the automobile era face adjustment. Many never developed habits of physical exercise and are uneasy with walking or taking mass transit. Yet, poor eyesight and other health problems lead to inability to drive their beloved cars.

Neal Peirce in a Washington Post column suggested “multigenerational cities.” The Atlanta Regional Commission (where I used to work) promotes the concept. It encourages lifetime communities of mixed housing (including larger houses with “mother-in-law” apartments), safe walking, and access to mass transit.

Is the automobile, darling of several generations, relinquishing the throne? Perhaps the computer age and the home-office have usurped its crown.

 

Christians and Culture: A Fourth Way

 

Is Christianity on the way out, not to be taken seriously, as some have alleged? Whatever your opinion, few deny that Christian faith does not easily coexist with Western culture at the present time.

James Davison Hunter, a professor at the University of Virginia, wrote To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World. Recently, he spoke to a symposium at Seattle Pacific University and suggested three ways Christians wrongly engage our present culture.

The first, the “purity from culture” way, pits Christians mostly in opposition, expressing themselves in anxiety, anger, or fear. Its adherents withdraw from the culture.

The second Hunter called the position of  “relevant to culture.”  This position, he says, risks the church and the world becoming indistinguishable.

The third is similar to the first. Hunter calls it “defensive against” the world. Instead of withdrawing, however, Christians become hostile to the world. They aim to win at all cost, often politically.

Hunter suggested a fourth way: “faithful presence in the world,” which emphasizes the practice of faith. In this mode, Christians become a presence in the world as they live out faith, hope, and love toward all, including their enemies. This presence is lived out in families, communities, classrooms, marketplaces, and workplaces.

In a talk with his disciples, Jesus said that neither he nor his disciples belonged to the world. However, he did not ask that his disciples be removed from the world. Hence the phrase “in the world but not of it,” another way of indicating “a faithful presence.”

Getting Away Has Almost Gone Away

 

We used to “get away” in days when phones did not go with us, and we couldn’t plug in our iPads at Starbuck’s and motels and highway rest stops. Today, getting away requires discipline and planning. My husband and I sometimes take time off the grid. We go to the side of a mountain we know about which has no digital access. I am happy to report that we not only survive these digitless days but actually enjoy face-to-face conversations with each other.

Another discipline of mine is digitless Sundays. Okay, I cheat and play Free Cell and check news and my email once in the evening. But the relaxing day of ignorance is blissful, a time to get it together in slow motion. My husband I converse and sometimes take a walk. I read, think, and note ideas in long hand on my steno pad.

Current research suggests a harmful effect to the brain with too much use of digital media. I can understand, watching my stress level build while I wait impatiently for the latest weather report to come up or the email to delete so I can check the next one.

Consider roughing it on your next getaway. Leave the electronic stuff behind, or at least limit your access to it.

Cyberwar: Gentlemen (and Women) Who Read Each Other’s Mail

 

“Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail.” So Henry Stimson, Secretary of State under U.S. President Herbert Hoover is reported to have said. He closed the code-breaking office in the Department of State in 1929. However, by World War II, code-breaking was an acknowledged part of defeating the enemy, even if it meant reading private mail. Unprecedented changes to the way information is passed today mean that the boundary between public and private information blurs even more.

The American and French Revolutions took years to unfold. The revolutions known as the Arab Spring took days, spurred by Twitter and other social media.

Spies in past wars, like the Napoleonic military campaigns or the more recent Cold War, stole secrets and slipped them to the other side. Information about troop movements or knowledge of the atomic bomb passed to a well-defined enemy. Today’s hackers extract information through cyberspace. Malware is planted on another nation’s computers.

We hesitate, bewildered by what should be allowed and what shouldn’t. For good reasons, we don’t want our privacy invaded or spied upon, yet, we wish we had known more about the Boston Marathon bombers before they left their deadly pressure cookers.

Both the enemy and the new war zone in cyberspace remain shadowy and ill-defined. How do we define them? What are the new rules?

Coups in Tennessee and Egypt

All the ingredients of a political thriller simmered: a corrupt state governor accepts money for political favors. A new governor of another party is elected, but the inauguration is days away. The current governor appears set on transacting as many illegal acts as he can for bribes before the end of his term. Those acts include the pardoning of convicted felons, even murderers.

Then: a coup, of sorts. Members of both parties, those of the corrupt governor and those of the governor-elect, appalled that public safety is threatened, agree that the acts must be halted. They swear in the new governor in a suddenly-called, early ceremony.

The story is true. It happened in 1979 in my native state of Tennessee. Keel Hunt recounts the story in his book, appropriately titled Coup. The governor was Ray Blanton. The governor-elect was Lamar Alexander.

During a day of decision, the leaders of both political parties secretly discussed, parried, and analyzed. Was it allowed by the state constitution to administer the oath to the governor-elect days before the set inauguration? Alexander believed strongly in operating within the law and wanted nothing that hinted of illegal seizure by his party. He refused to be sworn in early unless leaders of both parties agreed to it. Finally, all agreed, and Alexander was sworn in early. Whatever felons Blanton might have released remained in prison.

Coup is heavy on local history, an endless parade of local characters, but fascinating for those of us who grew up with their stories. The memories of a bygone era are bittersweet: courthouse political speeches and face-to-face campaigning before the days of social media, as well as the effective but sometimes questionable old boy network.

Contrast this extraordinary desire to stay within the law, even when public safety is in peril, with Egypt, where power recently was seized by the military. Egypt and Tennessee operate in vastly different spheres. More differences than similarities are involved. Yet, we can be proud of a group of politicians, including one who had just won an election, for their concern for lawful process.

We are a nation of laws and not of men, said John Adams, second president of the United States, who left office after losing election to a second term. No matter that we sometimes fall short. May the Egyptians soon know such a striving for a nation of laws and not of men.

Warriors and Cost

 

I’m reading What It Is Like To Go To War, by Karl Marlantes. It is an in-your-face, blunt, disturbing picture of the suffering we require of our warriors when the nation’s leaders decide to send them to war. Facing war through the eyes of a soldier who’s been there and doesn’t pull any punches teaches the rest of us things we need to know. As we wrestle with the debris of our past wars and the possibility of future wars, we need an accurate assessment of war’s costs.

For Marlantes is not a pacifist. He recognizes that a government must secure its people against enemies.  He asks that we understand the suffering of war, even a war we choose in order to protect our country.

To train young people to kill is against every moral precept that we otherwise attempt to instill in a civil society. It doesn’t matter if we believe the cause is valid. To order a person to kill, violates the moral code of civilized people.

To tell a warrior that killing to protect your country is different from other killing, so he need not feel guilty about it, forbids the soldier to weep when he needs to weep. Any time one takes life, one needs to sorrow and grieve. An enemy’s life is just as valuable to him and his loved ones as any other life.

Benghazi, Libya, June 1967: U.S. Mission Attacked and Burned

 

The following is from a recounting  by John Kormann, officer-in-charge at Embassy Benghazi during the 1967 attack.

“The most harrowing experience of my Foreign Service career occurred in Benghazi at the outbreak of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Convinced by propaganda broadcasts that U.S. Navy planes were attacking Cairo, Libyan mobs . . . attacked the Embassy. . . . A detachment of soldiers provided by the Libyan Government to protect us was overwhelmed. The embassy file room was full of highly classified material, which we desperately tried to burn. . . . The mob finally battered its way in. They pushed themselves in through broken windows and came at us cut and bleeding.

“We were well armed, but I gave orders that there be no shooting, so we met them with axe handles and rifle butts. Dropping [t]ear gas grenades, we fought our way up the stairs and locked ourselves in the second floor communications vault. We were able to continue burning files in 50-gallon drums on an inner courtyard balcony . . . The mobs set fire to the building. The heat, smoke and tear gas were intense, which while terrible for us, blessedly forced the mob from the building. We only had five gas masks for 10 people and shared them while we worked. . . .”

[The embassy staff was able to extinguish some of the fires after the attackers were forced out by the flames.]

“At one point the mob used a ladder to drop from an adjoining building on to our roof, catching us trying to burn files. . . They cut the ropes on the tall roof flag pole, leaving the flag itself hanging down the front of the building.”

[An Army Military Assistance captain braved rocks from below and managed to raise the flag.]

“The reaction among my people was profound. I could see it in their eyes, as they worked on with grim determination under those conditions to burn files . . .

“I took a photograph of President and Mrs. Johnson off the wall, broke it out of the frame and wrote a message on the back to the President saying . . . that we have tried our best to do our duty. Everyone signed it.”

This attack ended more happily than the attack of September, 2012 in Benghazi. After several unsuccessful attempts, British troops were finally able to reach the site and take the Americans to a British base on the outskirts of town.

Tempted by Euphoria

 

We’re familiar with election night euphoria that afflicts the winners. Prosperity, peace, and happiness are ours, all because our party was elected.

Inevitably, the rosy glow gives way to the hard task of governing. Blessed is the elected official who governs for the long haul, who is prepared to understand the temporary nature of popularity. In a democracy, one is wise who governs from the middle. Such a leader realizes that the out group cannot be ignored. Their views must be respected, even by a victorious candidate.

Mohamed Morsi, who a year ago was feted as the first democratically elected president of Egypt, ever, now has been removed by the army. It’s hard to rejoice when the military of any country seizes power. Yet, in a fragile democracy, Morsi, from all accounts, chose to act as though all Egypt was at his feet. He governed in an autocratic style, decreeing that his decisions in “sovereign matters” weren’t subject to judicial review. In November, he took total executive power for himself and pushed through an Islamist constitution.

Let us pray that this takeover is of short duration.  Egypt needs another George Washington, who turned down a chance to become a king. Egypt has known enough pharaohs in its millennia of history.

Nationhood In The Facebook Age

 

A couple of years before he died, the diplomat Richard Holbrooke wrote: “The United States is still great. It deserves leadership worthy of its people, leadership that will restore the nation’s pride and sense of purpose. That task must begin at home, but the world will be waiting and watching.” (Foreign Affairs, September/October, 2008.)

Holbrooke began his diplomatic career with a tour in Vietnam. Later, after he left the U.S. Foreign Service, various presidents called on him to perform hard tasks. The most famous were the 1995 Dayton peace talks that ended the Balkan wars.

He understood what it meant when the United States no longer won decisive victories. He was serving, even as he died, as the government’s point man on Afghanistan. He knew the limits of our power in a world where other countries were becoming strong and prosperous, too.

The complexity of today’s world means a few individuals can cause havoc. Terrorist attacks or the ending of a dictator’s power by crowds inspired through social networking—the rules have changed since the battles of the twentieth century.

The mighty British empire over two centuries ago was unable to force a ragtag bag of American colonials to do what it wanted. It wisely left the fray and allowed its former colony to go its own way.

We still have power, but we need wisdom in the use of that power. We first need to strengthen our institutions at home, to see that ordinary people can build decent lives. We win more permanent battles by the moral influence we possess than by our weapons.

New Ambassador To Libya

 

Deborah Jones is the new United States ambassador to Libya. She steps into the spot vacant since the former ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens, was killed in that country by terrorists.

Ms. Jones, sworn in by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, closed her swearing in ceremony with these words:

“Our tragedies reveal our strengths. If I were to ask those in this audience who have lost a Foreign Service friend or colleague, officer, TDY, Civil Service employee, or FSN-LES staff to an act of violence to raise your hands, I suspect many hands would go up. And I am also certain the same people would raise those same hands to volunteer for duty again, just as Chris, Sean, Anne, my mentor, Arnie Raphel, and so many others have done.

“So I hope you will join me in a virtual toast to these individuals. To Chris, to Sean, Ty, Glen, Anne, Arnie and to all those dear friends, colleagues, mentors, and family members who serve, because that’s who we are and that’s what we do. ”

 

Villains and Choices

 

My stories have villains, of course. I won a blog contest for best betrayal of a villain in my book Singing in Babylon. While portraying the villain’s evil intentions, I attempted to trace the reasons for his choice of evil. The villain chose unwisely after a wrong done to his family. A commendable trait, loyalty to family, became evil through the way he dealt with it.

Sometimes the villain is internal. Kaitlin Sadler’s early life was torn apart by tragedy in A Sense of Mission. Though she finds healing within the love of those around her, she struggles through the next few years with the inability to enjoy life to the fullest, sapped by the fear of evil that seems stronger than life. Kaitlin finally chooses to sacrifice fear for faith when she risks a new calling.

Fiction allows us to wrestle with evil through the lives of characters caught in its grip. The greatest stories give us hope that evil can be defeated through good. The recent movie version of Les Miserables depicts the thief, Jean Valjean, forever changed through one act of kindness. The kindness required sacrifice on the part of the benefactor. To turn evil to good may require such sacrifice, a giving up of possessions or of some part of the self.

Subversives

 

From the time native Americans dealt with British immigrants in the 1500’s at Jamestown and later at Plymouth, diverse peoples have migrated to the country to be known as the United States. Many of the early immigrants were Christians of various Protestant persuasions. Jews entered, too, as well as Catholics and a few atheists and agnostics. Some of the founding fathers were desists, a belief based on reason rather than revelation.

After the United States was formed, Europeans looked askance at the U.S. Constitution for not creating an established church. Surely the nation would fail, lacking any moral compass.

Instead, religion flourished in America. Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians immigrated in larger numbers, escaping turmoil in the old countries. Catholicism bothered some Protestants, with its ties to Pope and priests, but eventually Catholics were incorporated into the mainstream.

By the time of the Second World War, the majority of Americans wouldn’t have disagreed with their designation as a “Christian” nation, or at least a Judo-Christian one.

The aftermath of that war and the ones to follow again upset established suppositions. Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims joined the American mix.

Now, it seems, atheism is the latest bubble in the cauldron. As noted, atheists have been present since earlier times, but they have increased in number. According to some reports, the “angry” phase has passed, and the presence of atheism is accepted by many as a part of the mainstream.

Whenever a group loses dominant status, its members may fight to retain their position by the use of laws and/or force. Such a reaction is seldom successful in this country. The freedom from religion as well as to practice any religion runs deeply. However, if Christians take the early church for their example, they will not only survive but thrive. The early church was a subversive minority in a pleasure seeking world directed by elitist power brokers. They showed their faith, not by seeking domination, but by living what they believed.

Christians have been here before. The Roman Empire knew them well.

Rescuing Evangelical

 

I can remember growing up in the South during the Civil Rights movement. Some white churches thought that the mixing of the races was a sin. They said they didn’t believe in mistreating blacks, but that God meant for the races to be separate like he had created them.

Most members of those churches considered themselves “evangelicals.” One of the legacies of that time is the narrow view of evangelicals by the media and general public which endures to this day. Evangelicals often are considered bigoted individuals. News analyses during the last presidential election constantly examined the “evangelical” vote and attempted to tie it to the Republican party.

In fact, evangelicals voted for both parties. We might consider a new definition of evangelical that excludes a political designation.

Jim Wallis, editor-in-chief of Sojourners, suggests that many of those voting for Obama were, in fact, evangelicals. Just not white evangelicals. Blacks, Hispanics, and Asian-Americans voted overwhelmingly for Obama, but many in these groups consider themselves evangelical.

Evangelical, he says, is not a political term, as we have tried to make it. It’s a theological commitment that places Christ at its center.

Maybe those of us who designate ourselves evangelicals should question whether we have been serving Caesar rather than Christ.

Fun’s Done

 

This is the age

of the half-read page

The quick hash

And the mad dash

The bright night

And the nerves tight

The plane hop

And the brief stop

The lamp tan

In a short span

The big shot

In a good spot

The brain strain

And the heart pain

The cat naps

‘Til the spring snaps

And the fun’s done.

–Virginia Brasier, “Rat Race,” The New Yorker, November 23, 1957

Life in 1957 included no email, cell phones, or digital tablets. Two-career households were not the norm. If life was a rat race then, what term would you use now to describe our frenetic lives?

Michael Hyatt suggests some positive disciplines to unwind our digital selves.

1.The discipline of rest.

2.The discipline of reflection.

3.The discipline of reading.

4.The discipline of relationships.

5.The discipline of recreation.

Classified Leaks and Trust

 

In the past, social critics wrote tracts calling for change or published underground newspapers. The more violent assassinated national leaders. Today they leak classified information to the Internet.

Debate rages as to heroes and villains, constitutional rights and the necessity to know all we can about shadowy enemies. Certainly, secrecy is harder to come by.

The line is always fine between the openness needed for democratic governance and the secrecy required for certain operations. Legitimate reasons for secrecy range from stopping terrorist actions to negotiations that are best begun in secret when officials can be open and frank. They can speak uninhibited by the hype and hyperbole of the twenty-four hour news cycle—when every syllable must be carefully nuanced.

When I worked overseas for the U.S. State Department, I wrote classified reports, but they didn’t deal with state secrets or clandestine sources. Most reported on the welfare of Americans in foreign prisons or the children of American parents, children now living with foreign ex-spouses.

These narratives concerned the anguish of individual Americans caught in painful situations. They detailed private moments, not the plots you see in spy films. The subjects deserved their privacy. As all our secrets are indiscriminately vomited into cyberspace, perhaps private moments will no longer be possible.

What happens when individualism destroys all trust in our institutions? All ability to work privately? When we no longer allow institutions to function because we no longer understand their legitimate purposes? David Brooks poses and answers such questions in a recent column. A must read.

NEETS: Not in Employment, Education, or Training

 

According to a recent article in The Economist, a quarter of 15-to-24-year-old young people in the world are NEETS, not working or preparing for work. Other youth not counted as NEETS are underemployed or working in low level jobs where they learn few skills.

Perhaps fifteen percent of this age group in the more developed countries are NEETS, their numbers increased by the recession. Particularly in southern Europe, where growth has all but stopped, the jobless rate of NEETS is much higher than fifteen percent.

Studies in the United States indicate that joblessness among youth adversely affects their careers all their lives. They earn less, are more subject to intermittent unemployment, and develop fewer skills. They are less able to save for old age. The longer the joblessness, the more traumatic the results and the more likely these results are to harm the next generation.

Yet, in some surveys, more than half of companies surveyed in the developed world say they cannot find enough skilled workers for their entry-level jobs. Many commentators have warned that our economy will be permanently scarred and will suffer permanent decline if we do not invest more in the education and training of our youth.

 

Activists and Observers

 

One of my characters in the novel I’m working on is a young man, an American but raised much of his life in other cultures. He wishes only to remain in the United States all of his life, to write screen plays about the country which so fascinates him. “I’m not American the way you and the others are,” he says. “I know it as an observer.”

He sees himself as an observer of his native culture, not only because he is a cultural nomad himself but because he is a writer. I believe many writers, including myself, see themselves as observers rather than activists.

I sometimes feel guilty because of my introverted nature which flees, not only from conflict, but from normal actions which call attention to myself. I would rather write an essay encouraging reconciliation between different factions than join a protest for either one. The truth is, I often understand both groups and wish I could explain them to each other.

So I write as a minority in competing groups. I began my Christian journey at the age of nine and am kept on that journey by God’s grace. Nevertheless, at times I seem an exile from both “Christian” America and from secular America. I trace the journey with my characters as they find a way to live the subversive Christian life. I play interpreter. In my more optimistic moments I dare hope to be a reconciler.

Syria? New Candidate For The Blame Game?

 

If the United States gives weapons to the Syrian rebels, they may fall into the hands of terrorists. If we don’t give weapons to Syrian rebels, Syria may become a terrorist state. If diplomatic solutions are pursued, they may fail. If we don’t act now, bad things may happen. If we do act now, different bad things may happen.

As many have said, Syria presents no good options. Ethnic conflict has developed which is difficult to put back into the bottle. It has spilled over into Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, and Israel. No doubt some options are better than others, but it may be a while before we know if we have chosen the right one. And even the right one is bound to be less than ideal.

Perhaps we should just go for the “best bad idea.” Only, it is doubtful that the ending will be as happy as the Academy Award winning tale of the rescue of six Americans from Iran in 1979.

A problem for Americans is our belief in the quick, happy ending, as in the movie. Always. A way must exist for the Syrian crisis to be resolved peacefully, democratically, and justly. Preferably in a few weeks. If not, we must find a villain.

Americans want their leaders to make perfect decisions when no such decisions exist. Sometimes, because of the unfortunate political reality of today, leaders make no decisions or make them later than they should. They know fallout is going to result whatever they do. Each political party will attempt to make political mileage out of  it.

“Politics stops at the water’s edge,” is attributed to Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg in 1947. The idea is that partisan politics stops at the water’s edge, since both parties should desire the best for the country and present a united front in facing the nation’s foreign policy problems.

Alas, Senator Vandenberg, where are you now?

 

Religious Freedom, Ours and Theirs

 

The U.S. State Department recently released the annual Religious Freedom reports. The reports measure the freedom to worship or not, according to one’s conscience, in nations around the globe.

Sudden conflict and shifts in population movements bring us into greater interaction with those whose beliefs differ from our own. We may feel threatened, even angered, by the realization that our beliefs are not as widespread as we thought.

How do we remain firm in our own beliefs while allowing others to believe differently? Allowing religious freedom does not mean that we must live an amalgamated religion, with the unique particulars of our personal faith stripped out. Such a system is like an “established” religion, eliciting lukewarm response.

The early Christians in the Roman Empire lived in a pluralistic world much like our own, yet remained firm in their faith, even in persecution. They followed a Christ who refused to use political means to bring in his kingdom, even if it meant crucifixion. Without political power, they lived their faith and attracted others. Their very powerlessness to force their religion on others was a blessing. Indeed, when they later gained power, the faith of many lost meaning, becoming merely a superficial part of their culture.

The best way to destroy the heart of a religion is to force it on others. When we act as God, we usurp his power. If he is God, he is more than capable of working through the lives we live and our nonviolent witness. We do not need to take up the sword for him or use laws and prisons as cudgels. A person sure in his or her beliefs lives by faith, not by worldly power.