Dithering is Conservative

President Obama has come under criticism from a number of his political opponents for failing to act quickly on a strategy for the war in Afghanistan. Recently former Vice-President Dick Cheney criticized the Obama administration deliberation as “dithering” on deploying more U.S. troops to Afghanistan. Cheney urged President Obama to “do what it takes to win.” While accepting an award from a conservative national security group, the Center for Security Policy Cheney noted, "Make no mistake. Signals of indecision out of Washington hurt our allies and embolden our adversaries."

While it is easy to criticize that Cheney’s desire is for the President to finish one of two wars he and former President Bush started and were unable to end on their watch, the fact that he felt embolden to give these remarks before an audience at the Center for Security Policy indicates Cheney felt he was speaking to like-minded brethren; his militaristic, bellicose stance being indicative of the standard “party line”—peace through strength—that would be favorably received as he preached to the conservative “choir.”

This more militaristic response by conservative has become a staple of Republican foreign policy since the Reagan administration. It seems that every four years Republican presidential hopefuls engage in playing the old TV game show To Tell the Truth where each candidate tries to convince voters that they best embody the spirit of Ronald Reagan. During a FOX News presidential debate in November 2007 Rudy Guiliani noted that “Ronald Reagan won the Cold war without firing a shot, but it was because he pointed a thousand missiles at Soviet cities.”
The problem for conservative like Cheney is that if Reagan were President they might have to urge him to not dither on Afghanistan.

The Reagan “myth” of a gunslinger staring down his enemies until they blinked, so forcefully proclaimed by many right-wing pundits, does not match the Reagan whose actions rarely corresponded to the proclivities claimed by his admirers. In fact, in his day, Reagan was often criticized by hawkish conservatives for not acting more forcefully. Near the end of his tenure in office, and during heightened tension in Latin American, Reagan refused to send US troops to Nicaragua and constantly battled with military and congressional hawks over this issue noting, ”Those sonuvbitches won’t be happy until we have 25,000 troops in Managua , and I am not going to do that.”

In June of 1985 TWA Flight 847 was hijacked by Hezbollah terrorists, an act that also lead to the death of an American serviceman onboard the flight. Urged by many of his aides, most notably the hawkish Pat Buchanan, Reagan refused to use force to respond to terrorism. Reagan told biographer Lou Cannon that “killing civilians in a strike against terrorist would be an act of terrorism itself.” Two days after the hijacking Reagan had to overrule a military response to an attack on Marines in El Salvador. Cannon notes that “Reagan asked [National Security Advisor Robert] McFarlane whether an attack could be carried out without killing civilians.” Avoiding “collateral damage” (a term coined during the first Gulf War and first Bush administration for civilian deaths) was a major part of the Reagan decision process and a far car from the “shock and awe” tactics of G.W. Bush, Cheney and other conservatives who claim the Reagan legacy.

On October 23, 1983 229 servicemen, including 220 Marines, were killed by a suicide bomber in Beirut. While the official U.S. response was that the U.S. would not be “cowed by terrorists,” in February of 2004 U.S. service personnel in Lebanon were “redeployed” to ships offshore. Such a response by the President today would most certainly be labeled as an example of “cutting and running” by conservative critics.

Why We Must Condemn Torture (including Waterboarding)

A recent survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life indicates that the more often people go to church the more likely they are to support the use of torture (or the coy euphemism “enhanced interrogation tactic”) against suspected terrorists.

Of people that attended church at least once a week 54% said that torture was “justified” or “sometimes” justified, as compared to 42% who seldom or never attend services. White evangelical Protestants were the most likely to support torture, with 60% justifying its use. This compares to 49% of the general population. By contrast 30% of mainline Protestants (those that evangelicals usually label as “liberal”) said torture was never justified (as compared to 25% of the general population). Only 12% of evangelicals saw torture as never justified.

Since President Obama released the CIA memo revealing the use of waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques a few weeks ago, the issue has stirred a great deal of controversy, prompting the Pew Forum survey. President Obama, in a recent press conference, failed to use the term “crime” (which would certainly have lead to criminal proceedings) but has left the door open to further investigation. In September 2005 nine Army reservists were convicted of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. The only officer convicted, Lt. Col. Steven Jordan, had his courts-martial conviction thrown out by the Army in January 2008. The content of the CIA memo seems to indicate that the actions of the nine at Abu Ghraib (portrayed by the army as rogue soldiers acting outside the chain of command) as well as by those at Guantanamo Bay and other sites were part of a systematic approach to intelligence gathering that was sanctioned at the highest levels of the Bush White House.

President Bush, as early as 2005 and repeatedly thereafter, claimed that the US does not torture. Secretary of State Rice condoned the practice of waterboarding and Vice President Cheney, in an interview with ABC News in December 2008, defended practice and admitted to “helping to get the process cleared .” When asked if the practice of waterboarding was appropriate, Cheney replied, “I do.” The CIA memo indicates that the members of the Bush Justice Department, under the direction of Attorney generals Ashcroft and Gonzales were instructed to write guidelines clearing certain techniques and therefore rendering them legal. One such memo, written by former Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee in 2002, advised the C.I.A. that "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment was at times allowable under U.S. law, and authored, co-authored and signed other memos on "extraordinary rendition" and "enhanced interrogation." The release of that memo has stirred calls for the impeachment of Bybee, now a Federal Justice on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Former Attorney General Gonzales, in November 2004, called the Geneva Convention, the international code that protects servicemen (including our own) from torture and abuse “quaint” and “obsolete.” The statement prompted criticism from human rights groups and families of American GIs noting that if the US is can disregard the practices of the Geneva Convention what prevents other nations or combatants from disregarding them with our service personnel. The CIA memo certainly calls into question the extent to which former President Bush knew about and even authorized the practices of torture during his administration.

Waterboarding seems to be a central issue here so let’s deal with that. Waterboarding IS torture (I will deal with this issue in a moment), but two considerations seem important in light of the Pew results. First, the use of waterboarding is being defended by many (including Cheney) because it has been effective. This has been the justification most likely to be seen on FOX News (where more evangelicals get their news then other station—OK maybe not but it seems like it). The Pew question on whether torture is “justified” begs the question—on what grounds? The Cheney answer, the FOX answer, and apparently the evangelical answer, is that it has prevented further attacks. The validity of that statement is highly questionable but assuming it is—does this condone the practice by Biblicists? The logic of its defenders essentially comes down to Machiavellian principle of the “end justifies the means.” It is political pragmatism that notes that the chief end of government officials is to keep its citizens safe and thus any means that accomplishes this end is permissible and deemed beneficial (maybe even moral) if it produces such results.

This defense suffers from two flaws. First, would we allow other nations to use that tactic against US citizens. For example, if Iran were to engage in the torture of Roxana Saberi, the American journalist being held in suspicion of espionage, upon what basis could the US (including evangelical Americans) wage protests? The pragmatic methodology being defended by many evangelicals is a defense of the erosion of moral absolutes that we typically decry when it comes to issues such as abortion or gay rights / marriage. We appear to as moral absolutists on certain issues (esp. when they don’t effect us directly), but on issues of safety and security (with its more direct effect) we become pragmatists. The late Christian philosopher Francis Schaeffer noted that it would be the desire for “personal peace and affluence” that would lead to the rejection of moral absolutes in the West. I am sure he didn’t suspect the defenders of biblical truth to be the ones that would help grease the skids of rejecting biblical absolutes.

Also, the pragmatic argument is not biblical in that it rejects the sovereignty of God over results. The Bible clearly teaches that the disciples of Christ are to be faithful to the process of doing righteousness, but that we are not held accountable for the results of the actions. Believers are not judged on results since results are come under the sovereign auspices of God. What disciples are called to do is be faithful to the process. By reducing the justification of torture to results Christians are clearly violating faithfulness to the idea of the image of God in others and the commandment to love our enemies. To defend the torture of others one must first objectify or dehumanize the one being tortured—a result that is always a part of the sin nature.

Now, is waterboarding torture? Despite Sean Hannity claiming he would undergo the procedure (and Keith Obermann chiding him to do so) the process IS torture. The technique has a long history (at least to the Spanish Inquisition). In 1947, following WW II, an international tribunal labeled the technique a war crime and hanged several people convicted of using the technique (including those that used waterboarding on American soldiers). The United States found sufficient moral outrage at the technique to support the death penalty for those who used it against our service personnel, but found such statues “quaint” and “obsolete” when we desire to use them. For evangelicals, which claim that the United States is a “Christian nation,” the support of such techniques and unquestioning support of those who authorized them, constitutes a violation of the very principles claimed to be the moral basis of the nation.

It should be noted that the clearest characteristics of the sin nature is the desire to be God and define right and wrong for ourselves (Gen. 3:5). Brethren, the only justification for the support of torture is to nurture this fundamental characteristic of the sin nature through the use of biblical or patriotic sounding rhetoric which, in the end, supports the desires of our sinful hearts. In the end our moral motivations becomes the same as the worldly motivations that we say we reject. We cannot expect the world to respect an argument for moral absolute and the image of God in the unborn if we continue to deny moral absolutes clearly stated in the Bible when it comes to the treatment of enemies. As Biblicists we must condemn the technique and investigate its practice.

God is Not Dead…. And Neither is Christianity (One Can’t Say the Same for Christendom)

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.”
~ Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (aka Joyous Wisdom)

Poor Nietzsche—after publishing this line in 1882 it immediately became one of his most quoted and least understood statements. Nietzsche was not decrying the physical death of God but the demise of external and absolute forms of morality. In many ways the things that Nietzsche lamented are the things that many evangelical social critics are quick to point out—we live in an age where there are no absolutes, and one which many these same critics label as the emergence of a post-modern culture.

I am not sure how postmodern Nietzsche’s quote is (or even how postmodern the culture is) but a 1966 cover of Time magazine asked “Is God Dead?” Less than twenty years later the U.S. witnessed the emergence of what become known as the “Moral Majority,” and in the first decade of this millennium the “Religious Right” was said to be a major force in American politics. Apparently the answer to Time magazine’s question was a resound “NO.”

I was in a bookstore last week and there on the magazine rack I saw a recent Newsweek cover, “The Decline and Fall of Christian America.” Apparently for author Jon Meacham the inability of the Religious Right to usher enough of the faithful to the polls last November and prevent a sweeping victory by the Democrats suggests that Christianity in general, and evangelicalism in particular, is on the cultural decline in the US. This perception was not helped recently when President Obama, speaking in Turkey said, “We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation.” Jim Wallis, quoted in the Newsweek article, noted that there is still a vital role that religion will continue to play in public discourse, it just may not be the role or constitute the same message that Religious Right has presented since the 1980s.

Wallis, like many evangelicals, believes that the Religious Right was a “mistake” (his term, not mine)—a movement that sought to implement a “Christian” agenda (defined in very narrow terms) by tying it almost inextricably to the right wing of the Republican party. After the 2008 election many fiscal Republicans began lamenting their relationship to the Religious Right noting that the rigidity of the moral agenda was out of step with the mainstream and prevented fiscal conservatives from promoting the fundamental tenets on which the Republican Party traditionally stood.

Personally, I believe that the linking of a narrow moral agenda with a particular political party was both a theological and political short-sighted. Theologically, by limiting the religious debate to almost exclusively to abortion, abstinence, and homosexuality (seems like sex is a big issue for evangelicals) the church failed to look at social issues in which Christ and Scripture speak in much greater extent—poverty, injustice, environmental stewardship. The result, politically, was that many evangelicals ignored these issues (which traditionally have been more concerns for Democrats), while voting (in an almost Pavlovian fashion) for any Republican that claimed to be “pro-life,” or “pro-family.” The result was that the church helped to promote the exacerbation of many of the social sins to which Christ and the prophets condemn. In the eyes of many unbelievers the church began to be viewed as pro-war, anti-gay, anti-living wage and health-care, unenlightened and anti-scientific in general.

Which brings me back to Newsweek and Meacham, is there a decline and fall of Christian America? Assuming that the United States ever was a “Christian” nation (a notion I take exception with) the distinction needs to be made between “Christendom” (the linking of the church to the social, political, and economic mechanisms of power) and Christianity as a creed that stands in contrast and can speak truth to power. The apostle John notes this relationship in his first epistle when he writes, “Do not love the world not the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 Jn. 2:15).

Does this mean that Christianity does not have a place in public discourse—absolutely not. That place, however, may best expressed by theologian Walter Bruggermann, in his book The Prophetic Imagination, when he writes,

“The tasks of a prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around is.”

A prophetic ministry is counter-cultural and possesses the ability to speak truth to power. The prophets were not welcome by the political, religious, and economic elites of their day because they condemned the status quo of which they had a vested stake. Jesus was not welcomed by the religious leaders of His time, noting that they enjoyed social and political status by aligning themselves to the existing order (who else could get an audience with a provincial governor and expedite a capital trial and execution in less than a week?). If Meacham is highlighting the decline of Christendom then so be it—it may be the best thing for the church—for it will mean that social issues can no longer be expected to win simply because they are “Christian.” The church under Christendom often seemed more interested in maintaining access to power than access to people. In the end this emphasis has tended to cost the loss of access to both. If America is truly becoming “post-Christian” (a term that seems more cogent than post-modern) then the church's influence in public discourse will once again have to demonstrate the relevance of the gospel by winning debates on the basis of how Christianity seeks to work for the common good of all people.