An Ethical Way To End the War in Iraq

What a busy summer it has been! I was unexpectedly busy at work; and several visits by friends and family, an Adult Education task force at church, and myriad other things have kept me busy. I certainly haven't been blogging.

I want to re-commit to putting my thoughts in writing this fall, despite an ongoing busy schedule. Many things fill my mind, and it helps to give them some organized expression. I'm going to start with Iraq.

The surge failed miserably even by the administration's metrics, so it's even more obvious that it's time to end our Yosemite Sam blustering and return as a serious player to the table of nations. Our immaturity is obvious to the world, so the best solution is to grow up instead of continuing to act childishly. (I believe I got that advice from my mother more than once.)

The question that arises is how to exit without leaving behind a situation for the Iraqis that is even worse than the desperate circumstance they're in now. My impression, having listened to a number of experts, is that our presence is a catalyst for a good deal of the violence, so our exit might well reduce the intensity of the civil war--or at least not increase it. But as Christians, we should want much more for the Iraqis than what they have now.

The Network of Spiritual Progressives has assembled the best plan I have seen for an ethical exit from Iraq--a plan that has the best chance of making Iraq a respectable, nonviolent nation. (Ironically, the same group assembled the best plan for avoiding war with Iraq--while ending or changing Saddam's regime--in 2003.) The group created a full-page ad detailing this plan, and published it in The New York Times in the early summer.

1. Repentance. The first step--a step missed by even most anti-war politicians--is that we must repent. We must admit that it was wrong to invade Iraq, and we must ask and earn forgiveness for our actions.

And in repenting on behalf of all Americans, including those who are not religious, the president (or Congress) should acknowledge that this entire society has mistakenly adhered to the view that safety and security can be achieved through domination or control of others, but that a better path to safety and security is to treat others withgenerosity, kindness and genuine concern for their well being.

2. Replace U.S. and British forces with an international peace force acceptable to the Iraqi people. This can't happen while we are occupying Iraq, but it can happen if we get out. This force would be

composed primarily of Muslims from non-neighboring states, but also non-Muslims from other states not engaged in violence or economic boycotts against the Iraqi people, could provide security and fill the power vacuum and conduct a plebiscite so that the Iraqi people themselves could determine their own future. The U.S. should give all our Iraqi military bases to this force, leave no forces behind as “advisors” or deployed in neighboring states ready to re-intervene. And we should require that all U.S. corporations operating in Iraq give at least themajority of their Iraq-derived profits to the task of Iraqi reconstruction.

3. Rebuild Iraq and launch a Global Marshall Plan.

True repentance requires the works of repentance. . . It is not enough to simply say “We’re sorry!” So the U.S. must commit the hundreds of billions needed to fully rebuild Iraq.

Yet the rebuilding of Iraq should only be part of a larger Global Marshall Plan which the U.S. should announce now—to commit at least 1% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the U.S. each year for the next twenty years toward the goal of eliminating global and domestic poverty, homelessness, inadequate health care, inadequate education, and for repairing the environment. Just as the first Marshall Plan allocated 1.5–2% of GDP after the Second World War to the rebuilding of Europe, this second Marshall Plan, extended to the rest of the world, will provide far more homeland security for the U.S. than the currently planned military spending that will squander our resources.

This is a workable plan. One percent is around $150 billion annually--approximately what we're spending annually on the war with no positive results. I pray that the Democrats come to their senses and cut off funding for the war and divert it into reconstruction.

The Human Cost of Farm Subsidies

We Americans like prices to be cheap, and we don't tend to look at the full cost of what we are buying. A case in point is illustrated by an article in the New York Times Magazine entitled "You Are What You Grow."

"A few years ago, an obesity researcher at the University of Washington named Adam Drewnowski ventured into the supermarket to solve a mystery. He wanted to figure out why it is that the most reliable predictor of obesity in America today is a person’s wealth. For most of history, after all, the poor have typically suffered from a shortage of calories, not a surfeit. . . .

"Drewnowski gave himself a hypothetical dollar to spend, using it to purchase as many calories as he possibly could. He discovered that he could buy the most calories per dollar in the middle aisles of the supermarket, among the towering canyons of processed food and soft drink. . . . Drewnowski found that a dollar could buy 1,200 calories of cookies or potato chips but only 250 calories of carrots. Looking for something to wash down those chips, he discovered that his dollar bought 875 calories of soda but only 170 calories of orange juice.

Contrary to what one might assume, the reason for this disparity, as Michael Pollan explains in the article, is not the free market but rather government subsidies. The Farm Bill comes up for renewal every five years, but with little fanfare. It has primarily been seen as a chance for big-city congresspeople to trade a vote with a rural representative. Yes to corn subsidies, yes to a freeway project.

Pollan points out that things are a bit different this time. Public health officials realize that the obesity epidemic will not abate until farm subsidies quit making unhealthy foods unnaturally cheap. And some who watch the wave of illegal immigration realize that this problem will not subside until Mexican farmers are no longer put out of business by subsidized wheat and corn from the U.S. Even free trade hawks realize that global free trade agreements will be stalled until the issue of subsidies to U.S. and European farmers is resolved.

"Like most processed foods, the Twinkie is basically a clever arrangement of carbohydrates and fats teased out of corn, soybeans and wheat — three of the five commodity crops that the farm bill supports, to the tune of some $25 billion a year. (Rice and cotton are the others.) For the last several decades — indeed, for about as long as the American waistline has been ballooning — U.S. agricultural policy has been designed in such a way as to promote the overproduction of these five commodities, especially corn and soy.

"That’s because the current farm bill helps commodity farmers by cutting them a check based on how many bushels they can grow, rather than, say, by supporting prices and limiting production, as farm bills once did. The result? A food system awash in added sugars (derived from corn) and added fats (derived mainly from soy), as well as dirt-cheap meat and milk (derived from both). By comparison, the farm bill does almost nothing to support farmers growing fresh produce. A result of these policy choices is on stark display in your supermarket, where the real price of fruits and vegetables between 1985 and 2000 increased by nearly 40 percent while the real price of soft drinks (a k a liquid corn) declined by 23 percent."

. . . .

"To speak of the farm bill’s influence on the American food system does not begin to describe its full impact — on the environment, on global poverty, even on immigration. By making it possible for American farmers to sell their crops abroad for considerably less than it costs to grow them, the farm bill helps determine the price of corn in Mexico and the price of cotton in Nigeria and therefore whether farmers in those places will survive or be forced off the land, to migrate to the cities — or to the United States. The flow of immigrants north from Mexico since Nafta is inextricably linked to the flow of American corn in the opposite direction, a flood of subsidized grain that the Mexican government estimates has thrown two million Mexican farmers and other agricultural workers off the land since the mid-90s. (More recently, the ethanol boom has led to a spike in corn prices that has left that country reeling from soaring tortilla prices; linking its corn economy to ours has been an unalloyed disaster for Mexico’s eaters as well as its farmers.) You can’t fully comprehend the pressures driving immigration without comprehending what U.S. agricultural policy is doing to rural agriculture in Mexico."

Yet any changes will no doubt be attacked as an assault on the free market. Let's begin focusing on fair trade, fair prices for farmers here and elsewhere, and healthy food for all.

It's Official: "Abstinence Only" Does Not Work

Our local Portland newspaper, The Oregonian, has its faults--tending to be biased toward anything corporate, and acting as the Portland Police Bureau's mouthpiece in the ongoing problem of brutality in that agency--including a number of cases that received no coverage.

However, they tend to be right on the target on social issues, and an editorial in today's edition hit the nail on the head.

"Oregon never embraced the "abstinence-only" movement funded by the Bush administration. It never decided, as a matter of state policy, to fight teen pregnancy and promiscuity by treating premarital sex as a sin and contraceptives as contraband.

"Oregon instead supports comprehensive sex education that encourages abstinence without enshrining it. The approach has paid off. The state's pregnancy rate for girls under 18 has plummeted by almost 50 percent since 1990 and remains well below the national average, equaling fewer young families stuck in poverty and thousands of abortions prevented.

. . .

"The federal government threw about $1.5 billion into abstinence-only programs over the past decade, with a sharp increase in spending under the Bush administration. These programs teach teenagers to abstain from sex until marriage. They avoid facts about contraceptives, under the theory that this information undermines the abstinence message.

"Unfortunately, the programs don't do much good. A much-anticipated national study, authorized by Congress in 1997 and released this month, found that abstinence-only programs don't keep teenagers from having sex."

The study stated that about half of students lost their virginity by age 18, and that percentage did not change in areas that had abstinence-only education. I've seen other, more anecdotal, evidence that sexual activity among teens is actually significantly higher in the Bible belt, where schools are most likely using abstinence-only approaches. Pregnancy, STDs, and abortions certainly occur at higher rates in those states.

The editorial also mentions the fact that I have seen in other places--but rarely in the corporate media: today's teens are statistically less likely to get pregnant than their parents' generation. This is presumably my generation--Generation X or the 13th Gen. This is worth keeping in perspective. The 24-hour media sometimes make things seem worse than they really are.

Get Them Out Tomorrow

Seldom these days does a member of the corporate media speak with such clarity, passion, and righteousness as Anna Quindlen did in a column in a recent issue of Newsweek:

Tomorrow. That's when the United States should begin to bring combat forces home from Iraq. Today would be a better option, but already it's tomorrow in Baghdad, in the Green Zone fortress Americans have built in the center of the city, out in the streets where IEDs are lying in wait for passing soldiers and every marketplace may be the endgame for a suicide bomber.

More excerpts:

America finds itself back where it began, before more than 3,000 U.S. soldiers died, before hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed or maimed. When George W. Bush was bound and determined to send troops to Baghdad, most of his European allies counseled more diplomacy, more attempts to shape Iraq from the outside, more involvement from other Arab nations. The answer to the mess the administration has made since then is to go back. It should go back to the solutions it rejected in favor of international chest thumping, chest thumping that has now cost thousands of American families their sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, and has cost the people who engineered that plan nothing in terms of personal loss.

. . .

The people who brought America reports of WMDs when none existed, and the slogan "Mission Accomplished" when it was not nor likely to be, now say that American troops cannot leave. Not yet. Not soon. Not on a timetable. Judge the truth of that conclusion by the truth of their past statements. They say that talk of withdrawal shows a lack of support for the troops. There is no better way to support those who have fought valiantly in Iraq than to guarantee that not one more of them dies in the service of the political miscalculation of their leaders. Not one more soldier. Not one more grave. Not one more day. Bring them home tomorrow.

Amen. Would that the Lord would send more such prophets.

Church Leadership as a Community Project

We installed a new elder at church today. I always reacted negatively when people in my previous tradition used the term 'install' in this context, as they used the term to avoid thinking of the concept of ordination. But in this case, it was an installation: the gentleman was already an ordained elder who had served another Presbyterian church in the past. For Presbyterians, elders and deacons are considered fully ordained ministers; and once you're ordained, you're ordained for life. If you move to a new church, you bring your ordination with you.

But active service as an elder or deacon is limited to three-year terms. Warren was asked to serve out the term of an elder who had to resign due to changing job duties, but all Presbyterian churches have a yearly rotation of fresh elders and deacons who are replacing others whose three year terms have ended. The body of actively serving elders is called "Session."

It's a healthy way to keep fresh leadership in the church. Our church nominates elders and deacons who reflect the congregation--women and men; young and old (including one youth group member serving on Session most of the time). While it's not a public thing due to Presbyterian politics and respect of individuals' private lives, I assume that some of the elders are gay or lesbian. So Session is continually recharged with fresh faces and fresh perspectives.

But while the makeup of Session changes each year, ordination is for life. When not actively serving on Session, elders and deacons still serve communion, serve on the Stephen Ministry (a group of trained lay counselors), and play many other vital roles in the church. When our pastor, Peg Pfab, asked all ordained elders and deacons to come forward to lay their hands on our new member of Session, more than half of those in attendance came forward.

This is a good balance. Most of the churches I have been a part of in the past had trouble moving forward because of stagnant, self-perpetuating leadership that had been virtually unchanged for a long time. Yet a danger of elder rotation is that truly gifted leaders might not be adequately utilized. The concept of "ordained, but not actively serving on Session" frees gifted leaders to lead in other ways.

Scripture gives much latitude in these matters, but my impression of Presbyterian polity is that it is healthier than most.

Quotable

From the excellent book by Jack Rogers, Jesus, the Bible, and Homosexuality (Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), page 103:

"Perhaps the greatest irony in the marriage debate is that self-described born-again Christians, a segment of the population that is often vocal about supporting bans on same-sex marriage, seem to exhibit greater problems with their own marriages. Evangelical pollster George Barna found that during the 1990s born-again Christians had higher divorce rates than non-Christians. . . . The states of Kentucky, Mississippi, and Arkansas, which voted overwhelmingly for constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage in 2004, had three of the highest divorce rates in the United States. In contrast, the state with the lowest divorce rate is Massachusetts, a state whose Supreme Court has ruled in favor of gay marriage. There is clearly a disconnect between problems facing heterosexual marriages in the United States and the conservatives' proposed solution of banning same-sex marriage."

On page 101, Rogers quotes from an article by Lewis Smedes, "Exploring the Morality of Homosexuality," in Homosexuality and Christian Faith: Questions of Conscience of the Churches, edited by Walter Wink (Fortress Press, 1999):

"What danger to straight people is posed by homosexuals? Some say they are a threat to the family, but none tell us how. Some fear that they might abuse our children, but no facts have been adduced to show that they are any more likely to do so than heterosexual people are. Do homosexuals threaten to invade our homes, steal our property, rape our daughters? What we know is that homosexual men are murdered by heterosexual people just for being gay; what we also know is that there is no record of a heterosexual being murdered for not being gay. Why then, I wonder, in a world of violence, starving children, cruel tyrannies, and natural disasters, why are Christian people so steamed up about the harmless and often beneficent presence of gays and lesbians among us?"

This is the best popular-level book I have seen on this topic. As the former moderator of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), he uses quite a bit of ink describing the history of Presbyterian thought on three parallel civil rights issues--racism and slavery, the rights of women, and homosexuality. This material was interesting to me as a relatively new Presbyterian. Any Christian, however, will benefit from Chapters 5 and 6, which contain an excellent exposition on the biblical and sociological case for equality for gays and lesbians in the life of the church. Chapter 4, "Interpreting the Bible in Times of Controversy," while using Presbyterian examples, is an excellent resource for any church struggling with this issue.

The eight or so verses in scripture that allegedly mention homosexuality are almost always interpreted outside their literary and social context. Even if all eight of these verses were interpreted as condemnations of all homosexual behavior (which itself requires very strained exegesis), no one can credibly argue that the subject is a priority in scripture as it is for many of today's Christian conservatives. Rogers is an evangelical who takes the Bible seriously (something that many evangelicals, sadly, don't do). He was against equality for gays and lesbians in the church for many years, until he was forced to actually study the issue because of church roles he was playing. When he did a serious study of scripture, he realized that it is wrong and unbiblical to marginalize any faithful Christian.

Saddam's Execution

I stumbled across Chuck Currie's blog recently, and hope to meet him someday. He's an advocate for the poor and a United Church of Christ minister here in Portland.

Chuck has a good summary of world Christian reaction to Saddam Hussein's execution. He certainly deserves to die, but was it right to kill him? I have become increasingly convinced that to "kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong" is unreasonable, morally wrong, and against Jesus' teaching. It also does not work as a deterrent, according to studies I've heard about. And some have said that if capital punishment is wrong, it's always wrong.

Something to think about.