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TechnoratiSay No to War in Afghanistan and Pakistan
The escalation of war in Afghanistan may be only a stalking horse for an even larger war in Pakistan as the United States seeks to secure the nukes there that might fall into the hands of terrorists. These newly proposed wars are only the Obama phase of what is likely to be an endless 21st-century crusade called "the war on terrorism."
Yet what we justifiably fear - terrorists acquiring a nuclear weapon and detonating it in the United States - cannot be prevented by the United States imposing itself on one country after another in the Middle East or elsewhere. A more plausible strategy is to address the grievances and problems that lead people to want to strike out against the West in general, and the United States in particular.
The Western impact on traditional societies often has been destructive. While helping to develop a small middle class, the penetration of American corporations, the Western global media and the capitalist marketplace often increase the poverty and destitution of the majority, result in phony elections that discredit the very notion of democracy (to wit, the most recent and globally discredited presidential election in Afghanistan), and are perceived as fostering an ethos of individualism, materialism and selfishness. People around the world watch in horror as Western capitalist values permeate their society and play a major role in undermining or destroying the religions and forms of cultural, communal solidarity, within which people enjoyed a sense of higher purpose and brought meaning to their lives.
Westerners correctly note that many of those traditional societies have had a strong downside: They are based on authoritarian and patriarchal practices that are themselves oppressive. But the way to challenge those effectively would be to support the development of the kind of spiritual and religious renewal that deepens one's sense of awe and wonder at the universe, and increases sensitivity to the needs of the environment, educates girls, empowers women, validates individual freedom within (not counterposed to) commitment to a community, and affirms the humanity of others in different spiritual and religious traditions.
The extremes of materialism and ultra-individualism that typically accompany the capitalist marketplace have demonstrable consequences: the weakening of family ties; the prevalence of pornography and the cheapening of sex into yet another commodity for sale and manipulation in the competitive marketplace; the elimination of an economic safety net; the obliteration of spiritual consciousness in favor of the accumulation of money and power; and the pursuit of "progress," which translates into endless exploitation and degradation of the environment of planet Earth.
It's time to abandon the strategy of global domination (military, economic or cultural) and seek homeland security through an ethos of generosity and genuine caring for the well-being of everyone on the planet and of the planet itself.
First step: When President Obama comes to San Francisco's St. Francis Hotel on Tuesday, tell him to just say "no" to the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and instead launch a domestic and global Marshall Plan with the G-20 countries, each one dedicating 1 to 2 percent of its gross domestic product each year for the next 20 years, to once and for all end global and domestic poverty, homelessness, hunger, inadequate education, inadequate health care, and to save the global environment. This is what the Bible means when it instructs us: I have set before you life and death - choose life!
22 Comments so far
Show All"May be" a larger war?
But we have been bombing in Pakistan - not to mention Iraq. I suppose that certainly existing war may become "even larger".
I hate to find myself once again trying to imagine what other people think, but I see little reason to believe that taking nuclear weapons from Pakistan is a primary goal of US aggression there.
That makes no sense:
1. Intelligence agencies can and have told their comandantes that aggression in the region decreases stability and increases the odds that nuclear materials fall into the hands of people motivated to use violence to negotiate. Moreover, it greatly increases the odds that the entity with whom those people wish to negiate is the US.
2. The above is fairly obvious on reflection, and full-time policy wonks and their analysts have time to reflect.
3. US foreign policy, as presented to the US public, ignores the above constantly.
I cannot avoid concluding that the US government is quite willing to lose a large city to nuclear attack for the privilege of grabbing a near-monopoly on hydrocarbon resources to lever towards extended economic empire.
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Let those of us against such measures not underestimate the gravity of the forces we oppose.
From the article:
"It's time to abandon the strategy of global domination (military, economic or cultural) and seek homeland security through an ethos of generosity and genuine caring for the well-being of everyone on the planet and of the planet itself."
Couldn't agree more that the quest for global domination is the fundamental error in the United States' stance toward the world. After 8 years of George W. Bush's reckless, swashbungling ways, we really should get over ourselves.
On page 168 in his book, "The Assault on Reason", Al Gore convincingly argues why striving for dominance is counterproductive:
“The consequences of an emerging national strategy that not only celebrates American strengths but also appears to glorify the notion of dominance could actually strengthen the very enemies we seek to defeat. If what America represents to the world is leadership in a commonwealth of equals in which we are preeminent, then our friends will be legion. But if what we represent to the world is empire, then it is our enemies who will be legion."
Here is a novel idea: just say no to the Democrats in 2012 and vote Third Party platform.
It is reassuring. to find a Jewish voice (Rabbi Lerner) fighting for real peace in Israel and around the world.
Is it possible that this learned man is unaware that it is impossible for there to be lasting peace and prosperity in a capitalist world? I think not. He surely knows that in theory and practice, capitalism ensures an eternity of poverty and war.
Is it possible that a Rabbi (or Priest, or Mullah) could be our leader? I think not. Those who spread the seeds of superstition are clearly unfit to lead us forward. That will be the job of a Leninist party. If you care about the human future, you will go about building it. All other proposals are distractions.
That's hilarious. Thanks. I was in a down mood.
I might have found it funny too, but there are far too many people who actually *believe* such crap and would write it with genuine zeal.
You call it crap, but why? What do you propose? In advance, I know that there will be no credible response simply because there are no capitalist solutions, even in theory, to the basic problems of war and poverty. None. Maybe you just don't want to know this critical truth? But I am not grousing, I am pointing toward the ONLY known solution: an international communist economy. Further, there is ONLY one known way to get there; through proletarian seizure of power under Leninist leadership. You will never be able to defeat this argument, but I encourage you to try. Maybe by doing so, you can back yourself into the leadership of this desperately needed movement.
I called it hilarious, and it is. In college I was a serious student of Marxist economics, studying economic theory (and reading all 3 volumes of Capital) with Duncan Foley, and political economy with Bettina Berch. Now that you know I'm not some Merkin talking through my hat, I'll tell you what I find hilarious.
1) You say there can't be peace under capitalism, and you're right about that for all the reasons Marx delineated -- need for expansion + competition for resources and emerging markets = war, etc. OK so far. But you (and Marx, and Lenin) say that power must be seized, which, since the people in power don't just say "Oh, oh, don't hurt me, here, take my wallet and credit cards, and here's my PIN number!" and tend to fight back with their vast military power, is also an equation of war. Marx and Lenin weren't around for a) nuclear weapons; and b) the willingness of the ruling class to use them, even on civilians (see Hiroshima, Japan, 1945). So if war is one of your principal objections to capitalism, you have to face up to the fact that Marxists are no longer coming in the front door, or if they maintain insistence that they must, then they are making war a requirement every bit as much as the capitalists, and with the knowledge that mass extermination will be the price.
2) Leninism doesn't apply here. Leninism is an evolution of Marxism for the early industrial economy, whereas Marx calculated his theories for the fully developed industrial economy. You don't need me to explain Leninism in detail, because you are the Master, but to any degree to which it could still apply, it doesn't apply to the existing global neo-liberal ruling class. Many formerly fully developed industrial economies, those of the neo-liberal ruling class, are now post-industrial management and constabulary economies (see America, United States Of, and Britain, Great).
You, like all materialists, are also completely overlooking the role of non-material determinants to political behavior. Weapons of mass destruction are now in the hands of religious fanatics who don't give a feather or a fig for making decisions on the rational model. The only concept around which religious fanatics are united is that Marxists are evil and must be killed. Before you go supporting Hamas, Hizbollah, Iran, and other religious extremist violence-based social systems simply because they're anti-Western, take a quick look at their track record with proponents of worker-empowering movements. Very bloody. See political prisons of Iran, Islamic Republic Of., as well as marked and unmarked graves throughout the Islamic world, as well as those to develop soon in America should the heavily armed evangelical Christians ever catch whiff of your intention to "seize" power here.
Leninism is, like, so 20th century, dude. Until a serious body of theory emerges to generate Marxist outcomes from proletarian responses to contemporary ruling class economies and fundamentalist religious-based political structures, including the recognition of weapons of mass destruction as having rendered violent working class agitation counter-revolutionary, you're going nowhere with your philosophy.
That was pretty easy. Write back when you have a serious question, Vlad.
Wow, a learned reply! It is so bad out there that I don't even expect them. ...And you certainly trump my educational credentials. I don't have any teachers whose name you would recognize, and have never taken a real philosophy class. Still, your criticism is so flawed that lowly me can tear it to pieces, and, worse yet, you offer no alternative besides conveniently waiting around for some new theory to arrive. The reason it was "pretty easy" is because you did a very sloppy job. Your logic is flawed in more ways than I can cover before I join the toilers for today, but here come a few arrows.
Marx articulated and proved the class nature of society, and realized that only the minimally propertied toilers of society have the ability to represent the human masses, and must do so for society to achieve universal peace, sustainability, equality and affluence. There was no other way then, and there is no other way now - as you have essentially admitted. But, oh no! At least according to your lazy Philistine theory, It would be disruptive to have a workers revolution. We had better just ride out the CERTAIN endless wars of capitalism! By all appearances, a successful proletarian revolution in the USA would essentially end war in the world, anyway.
Perhaps you should have read further into the 1900s, rather than stopping at stopping with Marx's epic work. Note that I used Leninism to describe the nature of the leadership of the workers' movement. Unless you have new information (not!), there will be no successful proletarian revolution without a Leninist party at the head, as was adequately proved in and around the Russian Revolution.
Stop waiting for divine guidance, and get to work! ...No need to respond unless you offer positive guidance.
Now I'm back to laughing. Thanks again for bringing this full-cycle.
On the serious side, until you can tell us how you're going to protect the earth, including its proletarian majority, from the explosive force and radioactive fallout of the ruling class's modern weapons, you're not going to make a convincing argument that revolution will improve the condition of the working class. In other words, you bet, I'm not going to take up arms, and only an insane person would. I am indeed ceding the violence to the ruling class. If that's what you're about, count me out. I live in the real world -- the one that's actually harmed by radiation, an indiscriminate killing force that cannot be contained within borders.
There are also substantial segments of the world that voluntarily live under gurus, mullahs, popes, and priestly hierarchical classes of various kinds. Class is not always materially determined. Marx's argument that post-capitalism would be a classless world was never supported with evidence, and observation in the time elapsed since his writing bears that out amply. Believe it or not, not everyone wants to be equal. Lots of people have other priorities that are not rationally based. They have a lot of weapons, and believe the next life is superior to this one, so material concerns for a better life in this world does not motivate them (a matter about which you are as oblivious as Thomas Friedman), and suicidal use of their ruler's weapons against transgressing materialists like you are their standard means of articulating that. They're just itching for an excuse to implement prophesy. Marx never even noticed them. I do.
Lastly, if you really believe that we masses must make war to end war, and that a small, enlightened group of forward-thinkers will agitate for that war, design it, initiate it, and then have the masses follow them into it "in their own interests," well, we can just put your name on the masthead of Project For A New American Century, because you just articulated the Bush Doctrine. Congratulations.
You can have the last word. There's nothing for me to accomplish here.
Yes, tell Obama to say no. That has done wonders so far.
I know, an open letter to the pres. is the answer. No way can Obama ignore that.
Let's see what the Palestinians have to say about the good Rabbi ..... see....
http://psreview.org/content/view/12/70/
Tikkun and Michael Lerner: Vanguard of the Zionist State
I could give my own critique of this charlatan, but the PSE article has more weight.
Not a good citation. The editors of that website don't identify as Palestinians, let alone "the" Palestinians:
"PSR Mission Statement The Editors
We are composed of people from many different ethnic, religious and non-religious backgrounds, women and men."
In addition, the site has not published in four years.
[Not a good citation.]
It is a perfectly good citation, and a great read to boot. Right on the money.
But, I'll provide my own critique of Lerner, just by quoting from a racist screed that he wrote, titled, pompously enough, in his inimitable style, "A Jewish Renewal Understanding of the State of Israel", you can read it at ...
http://www.tikkun.org/article.php/Israel
Here's how Lerner characterizes the murder of thousands of Palestinians and the ethnic cleansing of Palestine ..
"The Ashkenazi Jews who shaped Israel in its early years were jumping from the burning buildings of Europe--and when they landed on the backs of Palestinians, unintentionally causing a great deal of pain to the people who already lived there, they were so transfixed with their own (much greater and more acute) pain that they couldn't be bothered to notice that they were displacing and hurting others in the process of creating their own state."
Read that a few times. The Jews didn't kill the Palestinians and drive them from Palestine, they 'caused them pain', and 'hurt' them. But, get this, THEY DIDN'T EVEN NOTICE'. Why not? Because they were TRANSFIXED by their own MUCH GREATER AND MORE ACUTE pain.
But, Lerner isn't finished, he continues ...
"Their insensitivity to the pain that they caused, and their subsequent denial of the fact that in creating Israel they had simultaneously helped create a Palestinian people most of whom were forced to live as refugees (and now, their many descendents still living as exiles and dreaming of "return" just as we Jews did for some 1800 plus years), was aided by the arrogance, stupidity and anti-Semitism of Palestinian leaders and their Arab allies"
According to Lerner, the Arabs resisted the being killed by the Jewish invaders because of ARROGANCE, STUPIDITY, and ANTI-SEMITISM.
The PSR article is right on the money, the role of Lerner and his organization, Tikkun, is to co-opt any fundamental criticism of apartheid Israel from the left.
Tikkun itself is a primarily Jewish organization, however, they sponsor another primarily non-Jewish group called, in Lerner's inimitiable style, the NETWORK OF SPIRITUAL PROGRESSIVES. Again, the purpose is the same, to direct the best and most idealistic of the left into support of apartheid Israel.
There's nothing wrong with the article's approach to Lerner and Tikkun. Sums it up pretty nicely, actually, so we're not going to be arguing those points, even if there are areas where I think the article's analysis is weak, because the flaws are due to underlying assumptions that are ideological, rather than factual, in nature. That's the beauty of discourse. Please don't point out I just used a run-on sentence.
The reason it's a flawed citation is because of the part you wrote, not the part the author wrote. You wrote "let's see what the Palestinians think" and then gave a link to an article that does not purport to be the view of "the Palestinians." Further, the date does matter. The article is six years old, and as elements for those authors, as well as for Tikkun, may have changed in that time as conditions have changed in their respective areas of concern, we cannot be sure this article represents the current opinion of anyone, let alone an entire nationality that the authors make clear they do not specifically represent, or of which they are even principally comprised.
It was a good article, and a bad citation.
Steve
Steve,
You used a run on sentence. LOL. See, I'm trying to match the level of triviality of your objections to the cite. I assume it was a diversionary tactic, I've seen it countless times. So, I'm surprised that you agree with the article's assessment of Lerner and Tikkun. I note that you ignored Lerner's article, which makes him look like a complete fool. Lerner's article is a howler !
It's not a triviality, and it's not a diversionary tactic. You still haven't addressed my concern with your post. You claim it is the opinion of "The Palestinians." But the article's authors do not make that claim, and they don't, because they are seeking to analyze the situation in a manner that transcends simple ethno-nationalism. The two concepts are diametrically opposed to each other. The author's claim, as well as the tone of their analysis, is the opposite of your attribution. Whereas my run-on sentence was obviously deliberate, as observed by its author concurrently with its creation, and my attempt at humor, not diversion, directed not specifically to you but towards anyone who hones in on trivialities. I was having a dull day. Sorry the attempt at humor missed its mark.
Although I agree with the article's assessment of Lerner's (and his organization's) positions, do not take that to mean I agree with their proposed solution, or that I disagree with all, or even most, of Lerner's proposals. For me to understand his politics for what they are does not make them unlikely to succeed better than most other politics for the region, nor does it make the proposals of the authors of your cited article any more likely to succeed than Benjamin Netanyahu or Alan Deshowitz. You should have noted that I found fault with the assumptions underlying their analysis. Just as Keynes noted that the problem with classical economics was not its mathematics, but that the underlying assumptions behind its mathematics were rarely, if ever, fulfilled, such is the case with almost everyone who writes on behalf of a substantial constituency regarding the Middle East situation in general, and Palestine/Israel in particular.
The biggest underlying assumption that causes problems is the one that says one group has the right to start the clock on when European colonialism destroyed an ethnocentric national homeland. The second underlying assumption causing problems says that one group gets to decide who is a European. Lerner, for all his faults, at least struggles with these concepts. Most pro-Palestinian activists dismiss them out of hand as easy to answer, and that's as arrogant as anything coming from the Zionist side. Anyone who was a member of their Junior High School Conflict Resolution Club would be able to explain to you the problems here.
You can think this over, or you can angrily dismiss me as a white supremacist colonialist. If you do the latter, we'll be able to see more clearly why we get further from peace in the Middle East, and by extension throughout the world, every day instead of closer. Don't be bamboozled into playing your own small role in Biblical prophecy. Leave that to the superstitious fanatics. Hey, that brings me to another problematic underlying assumption -- believe it or not, not every element of human history is material in nature. More of those other elements (in weight, not number) are in play in Palestine/Israel today than material ones. Self-styled peacemakers from every degree of the left-right political spectrum are going to have to face up to that, or this thing is going straight to Armageddon.
Thanks Rabbi. But you must admit, organized religion plays a huge role in this mess. I doubt more of it will help.
Thank you Rabbi Michael Lerner for this critique on American culture. It is an introspection so few Americans dare to partake in.
You are one of the leading voices of reason and spiritual thought for Jews, Christians, and Muslims. However, in most cases, the problems in the world are due to Judaism, Catholicism and Islam not being true to their own foundational values.
Maybe it is time these three Abrahamic religions come together and have a deep introspection as well. It could be the next "Vatican III" type enclave in Geneva, Switzerland.
Please allow me to expand my above thoughts. I think it important for the three Abrahamic religions to come together for an honest introspection because such an introspection would inevitably lead to a shocking conclusion.
With the essential contributions of the Islamic faith, I believe the conclusion of such an enclave would be that this warring between these very similar faiths was due to the intrinsic evil of capitalism. This would lead to a core question for the world to ponder: With the dominance and economic oppression of Global Corporate Capitalism, will peace ever be possible in the world?
Rabbi Lerner talks about the fear that terrorists induce in people. Unfortunately what is almost never discussed is the motive behind the terrorists' actions. Does Obama and his merry band of men and women believe, like Bush and Cheney, that the terrorists wish to strike out against the US because of our freedoms? Until Obama and his successors come to grips with the fact that Muslims across the world hate America because of the ever present sight of American soldiers in the Middle East along with Israel's favored status with the United States, more Muslims will continue to join the ranks of al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups as they see more troops stationed in Iraq along with more bombs being dropped on Afghan civilians as well as seeing drone missiles slaughtering Pakistani women and children.
I think this merits the definition of insanity-doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result to occur.