The culture wars have claimed another victim.

I find it very difficult to understand how someone can call themselves a Christian and use that position to justify murder. It is hard enough for me to understand how nations that call themselves Christian can start wars. When an individual takes a gun, points it at another human being, and pulls the trigger, they are not doing God’s will.

It does not matter what the circumstances are.

It does not matter what the person has done.

There are no exception clauses to “thou shalt not kill”.

The nonviolence of the early Christian Church was legendary and ultimately so impressed the Romans that they stopped killing Christians and converted to Christianity themselves.

Jesus came to earth to share a new gospel of love. He came to deepen the understanding of those who saw God as capricious and vengeful. Jesus told us that God is a tender Father, a shepherd, and our guardian.

Those who seek to violently act in His name, are taking His name in vain. They are underestimating God’s power and completely missing His message. They are assuming that because they see sin in the world, that somehow God needs their help.

God doesn’t need their help.

God not only doesn’t ask us to be executioners, He doesn’t even want us to be judges.

He asks us to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. He asks us to be peacemakers. He asks us to turn the other cheek and walk with those with whom we disagree until at least we understand them.

Those who demonize their opposition suffer from self-righteousness. They will find out soon enough that God loves everyone, and the simple sinner who humbly repents will find himself closer to God than the righteous man who condemns the unrighteous.

God reserves judgment to Himself and those who seek to usurp that role will discover soon enough how wrong they were.

A quick summary of the most recent conflict is that the British pulled out of Basra in December turning the area over to local militia. The current fight was predicted by many (including me). It is between Shiite groups for control of a very valuable distribution point for Iraqi goods (read oil). Many of those Shiite groups make up the current government coalition.

The Iraqi government has made an effort, with the help of American and British air power, to bring order back to the area, but so far the militia are winning.

This again begs the question of American presence in the area. The troop surge and associated “incentives” (guns and money) encouraged rival groups to focus their efforts on al Qaeda in Iraq rather than each other. It also worked to the degree that major political figures like Moktada al-Sadr were willing to stand down in return for making some money. The hope was that during this short period of political calm, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, could begin dividing up enough of the political pie in Iraq so that folks like al-Sadr would decide that there was more money to be made by being in the government rather than out of it.

Well that didn’t happen. In fact al-Sadr pulled his group out of the government and the most recent violence started with a call by al-Sadr for a general strike to demonstrate to the rest of the country that he is someone with political power. The government responded by sending in troops and the rest will shortly be history.

Here’s what the history will look like, “British pull-out from Basra delayed after rise in rocket attacks” and “U.S. forces drawn deeper into faceoff with militias”. Faced with a challenge, the Iraqi government has asked both the British and Americans for more troops. As long as we respond, we prop up a government that has not been able to demonstrate that it has the ability to keep peace even between it’s own elements.

President Bush has said that he sees this as a defining moment for the al-Maliki government. Yup just like the Tet offensive was the defining moment for the government of South Viet Nam.

This is not a struggle that is going to be won militarily, yet our government continues to define this conflict in those terms.

The solution in this area is going to be a political one where all sides determine that there is more to be gained by compromise than by bloodshed. Unfortunately, the deep seated differences between rival factions may require conflict before compromise can be won. As long as we are there, we perpetuate the status quo and inhibit the progress that has to come if there is ever going to be a government that doesn’t require US force in order to govern.

The President was on television again today telling half the story about the wiretap bill that the house refused to pass. 

Here’s the rest of the story. 

This is all about extending the President’s power to wiretap US citizens without court approval.  The President says that this is only about looking for terrorists, but the whistleblowers which brought this who issue to the public’s attention have testified that the equipment installed by the government at the phone companies allows the government to listen to all traffic that goes through the Internet.   

There is a law on the books which gives the President the ability to request spying on US citizens, but requires court approval.  The spy activity can begin before the approval is obtained, but the agency doing the spying must send a letter to the supervising court letting them know that they have begun the activity and will be seeking approval.  The FBI has already admitted that it so fumbled this process that it lost track of how many requests it had made, and as a result could not confirm that it was in compliance.  In other words they have already proven that they can’t be trusted to follow the legal process. 

The last shoe to drop in this whole process is immunity for the Telco’s which cooperated.  They knew that this was against the law, and are seeking immunity for breaking the law at the government’s request.  By the way, they didn’t all cooperate.  Qwest refused and lost some government contracts as a result.  The President had the gall to suggest that Congress had to provide immunity to make sure that these companies would cooperate in the future.  We don’t want them cooperating if it involves breaking the law.  We want these companies to be held liable, and as a result to hold the government liable to prove that all requests are compliant with the law.   Otherwise this all comes down to the big lie that this government has been telling for the past seven years.  Trust me.  I can’t tell you what I’m doing, but I’m doing it to protect you from terrorists. 

Democracy requires transparency.  Democracy requires that no one is above the law.  Democracy requires accountability.  

Without those things we have what we’ve been living through the past seven years.  Invasions based on “cooked” intelligence.  The VP insisting that Saddam was connected to al Qaeda when even the President was admitting that this was false.  Billions of dollars funneled to administration-connected companies.  Our President telling the world that we don’t torture only to later discover that his definition of torture didn’t include waterboarding.  Our Secretary of State telling the world that we didn’t have a secret interrogation process only later to admit that renditions continue to be a standard practice.  US Citizens imprisoned without access to lawyers or the ability to defend themselves against their accusers.  Widespread violations of human rights.  Widespread domestic spying.  The wounded and dead snuck back into this country under the cover of darkness.  The rich getting richer and the poor and middle class getting poorer. 

Trust me.  I can’t tell you what I’m doing, but I’m doing it to protect you from terrorists.       

This is all coming out now because the next President (John McCain, Hillary Clinton, or Barak Obama) will enforce the law and finally establish for all agencies that this country does not torture and that waterboarding is torture. So those who have used this technique want to make it perfectly clear that they did so only with the authorization of the President.

What has happened to us?

We used to be a nation of laws.

We are now a nation of lawyers.

We used to be a nation founded on principle.

We are now a nation of fear and self-righteousness.

We call ourselves a Christian nation, but there is no Christ in this policy.

It is tempting to try to justify torturing a person to save the lives of others, but that cuts to the very core of moral principle.

God gives us simple choices. Love Him and love all of those around us.

We are the ones who try to make these choices complicated.

We make them complicated because we fear that doing what we know is right will somehow leave us vulnerable. It’s at that point that we have stopped listening to God and have started listening to our fears. Unfortunately our fears can drive us to the ultimate absurdity, we kill to save lives.  To my mind that is the ultimate act of cowardice.

Here’s how Jesus defined courage, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” John 15:13.  What that means to me is that the greatest demonstration of love and courage is willingness to confront your own fears and remain commited to your values.  

My sincere hope is that the next election cycle delivers a leader who understands and can demonstrate this quality. 

The bill to extend retroactive immunity to the phone companies for participating in the government’s domestic spy program had to be pulled by Senate Majority Leader Reid.  This occurred after the Republican leadership in the Senate said that they had the votes to pass it. 

Here’s basically what is at issue. 

When the majority of long distance phone connections were made using satellites, the NSA spy agency could simply put up their own dishes to listen in on those transmissions and do all of the spying that it wanted without anyone’s permission.  Whether or not they followed the laws regarding domestic surveillance is hard to tell.  But since local and domestic long distance communications went over land lines rather than through satellites, no one was too concerned. 

The demand for high speed cheap Internet connectivity caused a rapid worldwide deployment of land-based fiber optic connections.  Those connections are faster and cheaper than satellites, so fiber is now the primary distribution mechanism for most phone communications too.  That caused a problem for the NSA, however, who now had no easy way to listen in.  So the NSA went to the phone companies and asked for permission to install equipment which would allow wiretapping the fiber.  The difference is that now there was no doubt that they were getting not only international conversations but most domestic phone traffic and most of the traffic over the Internet too. 

Most of the phone companies agreed and a few didn’t.  As phone company employees for those companies who cooperated discovered what was going on, they tried to blow the whistle.  The phone companies eventually got sued and ran to Congress seeking protection. 

The main argument for protecting the phone companies is that if they aren’t offered immunity from prosecution, they will be unwilling to cooperate with government the next time the government asks them to break the law.  Excuse me if I’m a bit naïve, but why is this a bad thing?  Just because the government is asking doesn’t automatically make something legal or ethical.   

In this time of deep divisions and culture war, there are those who feel that the government is justified in whatever it does in the name of protecting the country against terrorist attacks.  Unfortunately, the old saying regarding the corrupting influence of power has proved accurate again.  After six years of one party rule, political agenda trumps respect for the law, and you end up with abuse being confused with good intention. 

The whole argument of protecting the phone companies is disingenuous anyway.  The phone companies ARE already protected from civil suites when they cooperate with the government as long as there is either a court order, or the Attorney General certifies that a court order isn’t necessary.  When they knowingly comply with questionable government requests that don’t include these legal protections, they leave themselves liable.  In this case, that’s what some of them did.

Clearly the other motivation is that the phone companies spend a LOT of money helping elect our representatives.  Senator Reid is only one example.  So the phone companies have expectations that those representatives will vote their pocketbook rather than their conscience.  

Finally, I also have a hard time with the “at war” argument.  You can literally justify any “means” for the “end” of saving lives.  The most ridiculous example of that “logic” is our current involvement in Iraq.  We have laws to guide us in these times of uncertainty, and no one, including the executive branch, can hold themselves above those laws regardless of their justification. 

So I’m happy to report that at least for now, the people have prevailed thanks in part to a charge led by Presidential hopeful Chris Dodd.  The law suits against the phone companies will go forward, and we will likely have an opportunity to learn more about how extensive the domestic spy program was. 

This is the wonderful thing about truth.  As a quality of God, there can be no greater power than truth.  It will always prevail.  There may be those who feel that they can manipulate the truth to serve their own purposes, or those that feel that they can justify their actions based on some other set of principles, or those that feel that they can delay the truth past the point that it will have any affect.  At the end of the day, however, you can’t fool God.  Those who have chosen to walk in their own path, will be guided lovingly back to the path of truth, whether now or later, and suffer whatever consequences are necessary for their instruction.  We don’t always get to see this in action, but when we do, it is a beauty to behold. 

“Therefore seeing we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not; but have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.” II Corinthians 4:1-2

The biblical Jews had a lot to be afraid of. Through their history, they were conquered, enslaved, occupied, and persecuted. They had to deal with threats from the north and the south. They also had to deal with drought, disease, and internal unrest. But they sang songs like this that reassured them of God’s love and protection for them.

The nightmare of my generation was the Russians launching a pre-emptive attack with weapons we knew worked. I grew up in Omaha. We saw the B52 bombers flying every day from the nearby Strategic Air Command Headquarters. We knew that there were always some in the air because if the missiles did start falling, there would be no base or any Omaha, and the airborne planes would be part of the force that retaliated. This was so real to us that one of my neighbors built a bomb shelter for his family in his front yard.

This generation’s nightmare is a nuclear device set off by radical Islamists in a major US city.

We went to war in Iraq because of that fear. The fear that Iran is gaining some nuclear capability has us lining them up in our sites. We are throwing billions of dollars in military aid at Pakistan to keep their nuclear capability in the hands of the military. We even give money to Russia to help them gather up all of the weapons that they have scattered through the now independent parts of the collapsed Soviet Union.

So let’s say that that radical Islamists will somehow acquire nuclear materials. Could they build a bomb?

The practical answer is yes, they could blow up this very toxic material and perhaps render the city block blast area uninhabitable as a result.

Could they actually create a bomb that could result in the sort of city leveling devastation that our current weapons are capable of?

Never. Not even close.

They couldn’t even create the equivalent of the much less sophisticated bomb that we dropped on Japan.

Creating a successful atomic chain reaction which results in the explosion, is very difficult. That’s why governments have to test them over and over again in order to make sure that they have something that works.

It takes a minimum of 130 lbs of enriched uranium or 22 lbs of plutonium to make a bomb. Plutonium, though, is very difficult to obtain and very difficult to handle because it is so radioactive. Enriched uranium is somewhat more widely available and much easier to handle. But it also requires a much bigger bang to get going.

The other challenge is that the radioactive material is constantly affecting its surroundings. So the electronics needed to trigger the bomb break down after only a week of being exposed to the radioactive source.

The idea of a lone terrorist carrying a suitcase into Central Park and leveling New York City is fiction. The minimum size for this sort of home-made bomb would be an SUV. Creating it requires a large team, lots of money, lots of expertise, and some method to assemble the whole thing undetected shortly before they plan to detonate it.

If they are unable to test it, it will fail. In order to test it they probably need more like 260 or 390 lbs of enriched uranium and some sophisticated underground testing facility that they can successfully use only once because the results of their test will be immediately detected by worldwide monitors.

I’m not suggesting that we ignore our responsibility as a nuclear nation to help the rest of the world manage these dangerous materials. I also support worldwide elimination of nuclear weapons including discouraging new nations from developing their own.

What I am suggesting is that we don’t use this irrational fear to guide our policies and justify our actions. Someday our children will look at this crisis the same way that we now look at the fear that drove us to build all of those bombers and all of those bomb shelters. The B52’s are still in use. For all I know the bomb shelters might still be in use too. As I recall it was a great makeout spot.

Fear is the enemy of power, love, and good reason.

Since 9/11 we have been governed by an administration that has used fear to justify a systematic erosion of our freedoms. The most recent of these surfaced in a speech given by Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence at an intelligence conference last month.

In the speech Mr. Kerr suggested that the legal concepts of privacy that we have come to take for granted in this country may be outmoded. His premise is that because so much of our lives are accessible through search engines like google or social networking sites like facebook, anonymity and privacy are dangerous myths. As a result, privacy should be, “a system of laws, rules and customs with an infrastructure of inspectors general, oversight committees and privacy boards on which our intelligence community commitment is based and measured.”, rather than the absolute guarantees that are currently in law and the constitution.

What Mr. Kerr missed in his argument is the fact that regardless of how publicly you choose to live your life, the government is still prohibited by law and the constitution from any unreasonable search of anything of yours that is private.

What I found interesting in this discussion is that it is being raised by an administration that is the most secretive in history.

Here’s a short list you might find interesting.

In 2001 President Bush signed an executive order gutting the Presidential Records act originally signed by Ronald Regan. The law mandated that an administrations archive of records is opened to the public 12 years after that administration leaves office. Bush added a provision giving former presidents, vice presidents, and their heirs the right to review any and all records before they are released. Courts have already found that this has the effect of keeping those records secret indefinitely.

VP Cheney still hasn’t said who the oil execs were that participated in his famous policy planning meeting, though the list was eventually leaked to the Washington Post. The Vice President has also claimed that his office didn’t fall under the Executive Branch in order to avoid Court orders to preserve email records.

Karl Rove is known to have used a Republican National Committee email address in an attempt to circumvent the executive branch records keeping requirements.

Senator Waxman has begun an investigation into which records the administration has been attempting to keep secret. Here’s his list.

The records at issue have covered a vast array of topics, ranging from simple census data and routine agency correspondence to presidential and vice presidential records. Among the documents that the Administration has refused to release to the public and members of Congress are

(1) the contacts between energy companies and the Vice President’s energy task force,

(2) the communications between the Defense Department and the Vice President’s office regarding contracts awarded to Halliburton,

(3) documents describing the prison abuses at Abu Ghraib,

(4) memoranda revealing what the White House knew about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, and

(5) the cost estimates of the Medicare prescription drug legislation withheld from Congress.

The Buffalo News wrote this editorial on January 6, 2004.

“Concealing information has become an option of first resort… More than any presidency in memory, Bush’s has what can only be called a fetish for government secrecy. Whatever justifications there may be for this predilection – and there are some – Bush’s love of secrecy does much more harm than good, in the end, to the fabric of a democracy. Long after he is gone from office, this change in public policy will be a black mark on his administration.”

I just find it curious that a government that appears to breaking new ground with regard to withholding information from the public is simultaneously seeking to extend its powers of surveillance and weaken individual privacy protections. All this while wrapping itself in the mantle of defending the country during a time of war.

The solution to the problem of fear is not to become more secretive and fearful. It’s what Paul elegantly describes in his letter to Timothy. Fear is not something that comes from God. If it doesn’t come from God, then it has no reality. Simply reject those who suggest that there are fearful powers greater than God, and embrace what God has given us, the power to live a loving thoughtful life.

There isn’t a lot of wiggle room in this sort of discussion and I suspect that all of us at one point or another have been guilty of treating others in an unkind way. The real question is what you do about it.   

My sense is that when it is a private matter, you seek forgiveness.  When it is a public matter, you express your opinion and try to change those policies which put our government at odds with our values. 

I had posted something earlier about the confirmation hearings of Judge Mukasey suggesting that perhaps we were going to see a change regarding this administrations use of torture.  Turns out that I spoke too soon. Mr. Mukasey seems to have fallen victim to the same semantic manipulations that we’ve seen from everyone else in the Bush administration from the President on down. 

This particular case, though, has Mr. Mukasey being unwilling to admit that waterboarding is torture because, he claims, that he hasn’t had sufficient time to study the technique. So I figured I would take a moment to help out Mr. Mukasey based on data in wikipedia. 

Waterboarding is a technique of simulated drowning where the victim is forced to inhale water while attempting to breathe.  This elicits a gag response which is very frightening and very painful. Those who have undergone the technique have said that it only takes a few seconds of breathing water for the victim to stop resisting and cooperate.  After that, just the threat of repeating that experience is usually sufficient to again return the victim to a “cooperative” state. The reason that waterboarding breaks a person’s will to resist interrogation is because people are afraid that they are going to die by suffocation.   What they say in order to avoid a repeat of that experience, however, is widely believed to be unreliable. 

On July 20, 2007 the President signed an executive order banning torture and including in the definition techniques which result in “the threat of imminent death”. The US is also a signatory in 1994 with virtually every other country in the world to the UN Convention Against Torture which specifically states, “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.” 

Here’s a little history of this technique. 

It was originally invented during the Spanish Inquisition (1478-1834) when torture was raised to an art form. The Dutch East India company used the technique in the 1600’s during a conflict with the British over the spice trade in Indonesia.  The public outcry that followed caused a four year war between the Dutch and British. The Japanese and Germans used the technique during WWII.   The US used it during the Viet Nam war. The Khmer Rouge used the techique in Cambodia during their reign of terror from 1975-1979. 

It is embarrassing and disappointing for our country, which claims to be based on moral principles. to be included in this list.  But Vietnam was a dark period for our collective soul.  Unfortunately, we began using this technique again as a result of a 2002 authorization coming from the executive branch, specifically VP Cheney’s office according to ABC News and PBS reports.  

In a 2006 interview with Scott Hennen of WDAY, VP Cheney appeared to endorse this technique when he agreed with the Hennen statement that it made sense to “dunk” a terrorist if it saved lives. 

That is really the bottom line. 

It is something that every thoughtful person in general and Christians in particular have to sort out based on their own understanding of the scriptures, thou shalt not kill, love your enemy, and love your neighbor as yourself. 

As soon as you start to second guess God and accept circumstances where these instructions don’t apply, you are also saying that God somehow didn’t understand this particular situation and as a result these rules don’t apply.  You are saying that I am so fearful of the outcome, that I’m going to make an exception because I don’t trust that God will protect those who put their trust in Him.  You are saying, as it appears this administration has said, that we are above the law, are not bound by past agreememts, and can justify any action based on our own view of the value of the outcome. 

Fortunately all of us will be held accountable for our actions by our Creator. 

Those who support the practice of torture either directly or indirectly will have an opportunity to explain to someone who knows, why God’s laws didn’t apply to them.

Jesus used this wonderful parable to help the Jews understand that though it may appear sometimes that people may have gained an advantage by behaving unethically, God is all knowing. So those who attempt to deceive will ultimately get their just reward. We don’t have to see God’s judgment to know that it is at work. We simply have to trust that Truth is always more powerful than error.

So I am grateful that in these waning days of the Bush presidency, more and more of the tares that were planted by this administration are starting to appear.

One of them involves our phone companies and the National Security Administration.

Shortly after President Bush took office and before 9/11, the NSA went to the phone companies and asked for their records. The NSA wanted to use those records to identify patterns of communication that could potentially reveal terrorist activity. That is all fine and good, except that it is illegal.

Qwest refused because they knew it was illegal. In return for upholding the law, Qwest claims that the government punished them by awarding a hundred million dollar contract for which they were the front runner to other companies. The interesting irony is that all of this information came out during Quest CEO Joe Nacchio’s appeal of a conviction for insider trading.

AT&T and Verizon gave the NSA what it wanted (and charged them for it). They knew it was illegal too.

Once the news was leaked, AT&T and Verizon started getting sued by some of their subscribers for violating their privacy. What did AT&T and Verizon do? Did they apologize, admit their wrongdoing, and seek some monetary settlement with those they wronged?

NO!

Instead they took that huge amount of money and gave it to the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, John Rockefeller. He promptly introduced a bill which gave these companies and their executives immunity from prosecution all way back to just before they started providing this information to the NSA. That bill hasn’t gone anywhere yet, but it would be good to keep an eye out for a late night maneuver to get it buried in some other innocuous bill and quietly signed by the President.

There is certainly some delicious self-righteousness in seeing the powerful held accountable for their deceptions.

There is also a fair bit of anticipation about what else might be out there. It is Harvest time after all.

Ultimately, though, there is no joy in seeing the tares burned. It would have been much better if they had never been planted.

When you look at the Bible commentaries, there is very little disagreement about this passage.

Jesus is telling us that His expectations are that we become perfect – whole, entire, wanting nothing. The standard of “perfect” that we are to aspire to is the perfection of our Creator with whom is “no shadow, neither variableness of turning.”

So I submit for your thought a question in the context of this command – do the ends ever justify the means?

If perfect is our goal, can we ever justify a lie in order to increase the “greater good”?

Can we ever justify hate based on righting some past wrong?

Can we ever justify harming someone in order to help someone else?

Can we ever justify killing in order to preserve life?

Here’s a popular thought exercise that I’ve heard used to justify torture. Let’s suppose that someone has planted a very destructive device in a location where it could do maximum damage and you have that person in custody. Can you justify torturing them to get the information that might save lives?

I would turn that scenario around. Is there ever any situation where God is not present? And the corollary, is there any situation where God is powerless?

If not, then here is the tough question regarding perfection.  If God is all-present, all-knowing, and all-powerful; how does man working to be perfect, respond to the “terrorist” situation I just described?

How would you respond?