Religion or Civilization: Why Democrats should support the war in the Middle East.

In 2003, when US marines first invaded Iraq,   I looked on with familiar sadness as death and destruction were brought to me live via CNN, Fox Noise, MSNBC and others. At the time I thought the old PBS line  “This program is made possible with support from viewers like you,” should be shown as  fitting reminder to the American people that each  of us were morally responsible for suffering caused by the actions of our military, and that by being apathetic or voting for a hawkish pro-war Republican we were saying that the cause of wrenching Iraq from the hands of a brutal , rogue dictator was worth the price it would be paid in human tragedy; that above  the scars of war ten, fifteen, or thirty years from now a beautiful civilization would spring forth once again between the Tigris and Euphrates and that this would be worth the fatherless children, amputated lives, and bitter hatred toward the sources of that  anguish. Feeling that such a radical social transformation was not possible I opposed the war with a deep indignance, considering it to be the Vietnam of my generation.

Five and 1/2 years later with extremist violence in Iraq still on-going and U.S. withdrawal sure to leave an explosive power vacuum we must ask ourselves that same moral question that we did in Vietnam. Now that we have come to set the stage for Iraqi westernization, how are we to act if our leaving will eventually mean that over 700,000 people, and a handful of American soldiers in comparison  have died as a direct result of our invasion. As Sen. John Kerry so wisely put in his youth ” how do we ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam.”  Are we to let so many Iraqis die by our hands in vain? How will history judge us if we do not continue fight this fight, more importantly, what will be our history?

Let us make no mistake, the gauntlet is off and there is no going back. It is not unreasonable to say that the scourge of Islamic extremism is now an ever present danger in every nation on Earth. At the heart of this campaign is dark form of cultural and religious extremism equivalent to the Catholics during the crusades and the National Socialism of the early 20th century. Radical Islam yearns for world domination and the imposition of wacky religious laws that are based on twisted distortions of the Quran. They feed of of the economic stagnation of many Middle Eastern countries to breed hatred toward Israel and the West. We must push forward with all we have or not push at all. The Islamic extremists are right about one thing, there is a conspiracy to secularize the Middle East and to subvert Islamic theocracies, and I think it’s about time all Democrats got on board. Barack Obama and his army of lets-all-just-respect-each other-and-talkocrats need to buck up and defend the fort.  If sending in 40000 more US troops into Pakistan and Afghanistan means that we make headway against the rising tide of Islamic Extremism, then I say that this is a moral cause not unlike fighting Hitler during WWII, or with  much irony, Catholics during the crusades. While we are there, perhaps we can pass out copies of  The Origin of Species.

A friend and fellow Democrat told me something promising today over lunch, he said that when he goes home to visit his cousins in Pakistan, he finds that more and more of the people around him are Atheists.  Rejection of religion is the only rational insight to have when you see hoards  of barbarians blowing themselves up in the name of some socially reproduced  delusion called “god,”  or in Arabic “Allah.”

The question one must ask him or herself  when considering  whether the U.S. involvement is warranted must go beyond pretensions of pacifism, or blind faith in the milk of human kindness. The question is one of a combination of ethical judgment in the spirit of Jeremy Bentham, and practical wisdom of Winston Churchill. Bentham argued that “that which is ethical  minimizes pain and maximizes pleasure for the largest number of people.”  Churchill continuously warned British prime minister Neville Chamberlain of the danger the rise of National Socialism posed to Europe and the world many years before  the ruthless Hitler violated the Warsaw pact by annexing Czechoslovakia. If Chamberlain and the isolationist United States had heeded his call for action the world could very well have avoided a long and brutal war which caused human suffering on a truly unimaginable level. Alas, this is the argument for the neoconservative doctrine of  pre-emption, a dangerous ideology which must measure the need for intervention with the imagined need for intervention, or the call for war in the name of military-industrial, or other economic reasons.

As this doctrine is dangerous to our democracy, and yet still the threat that militant Islam poses to the world is very real and very frightening, we must point to  the larger philosophical driver for the reproduction of militant Islam in the first place- religion. It is without hesitation that all of us, in good conscience and clear thought , cannot deny that at the heart of this conflict is human religiosity and that it should be fitting that  the place where the three major world religions were born is also the place that they should die.  Now this sounds harsh to the cultural and moral relativist ear of the average Democrat,  but we must remain objective and realistic about what drives , and has been the driving factor behind the scourge of war throughout human history.  Behind nearly every dark story of the suffering of war is a leader or movement which claims to be divinely ordained. Hitler claimed to have been acting under the authority of an Aryan Jesus, and even visited the head of the Palestinian army before embarking on a brutal campaign of ethnic genocide.  Mahmood Amadinejad and his theocratic overlords have repeatedly claimed divine authority in their campaign to engage in a proxy war using the Palestinian  PLO and Hamas as fronts. In WW II we had emperor Hirohito of Japan, who claimed divinity by inheritance. In Ireland we have Protestants and Catholics, in the Middle east we have Shia and Sunni. When confronted with proof of evil in tangible human suffering throughout modern history, religion answers back with nothing but dangerous superstition. It is time to wrestle our world from the hands of myths wrought in human fear. Religion is the poison which allows otherwise moral and decent people to be manipulated into purveyors of the inhumane.  And if we oppose the war in the Middle East because we are disgusted by the  endless parade of human suffering we must also oppose the core ideology which  begot  its existence.  Thus as a Democrats , We should support  the war because occupying the middle east, and installing leaders who support our interests will help facilitate the spread of  western secularism to the Middle East, which will serve as an antidote to the emergence of dangerous Islamic Theocrats, and Caliphate ideology in the future. In short, the less religion is accepted in the  Middle East, the more stable, prosperous, and peaceful it will be.

Democrats have too long  straddled the fence on this all-too-important issue, we have walked softly and now it is time to show those lunatics just how big our stick really is. Barack Obama should follow the advice of his Pentagon advisors and send in more ground support. And you, as a Democrat, and especially as an Athiest or Agnostic Democrat should stand in full support, sad that while we are temporarily increasing human misery,  in the end it will serve as a great first step toward a New World Order in which religion will be considered as quaint as burning witches. Over and Out.

Respect for Rationality largely missing from US political mainstream

Every night the eternal political soap opera machine whirs into action. Millions of Americans , filled with human hopes, and fears, and too often an acute disdain for rationality sit neutrally before their telescreens, waiting to be programmed. Enter Glenn Beck, enter Keith Olbermann, enter the era of postmodern journalism.

In a country farmhouse in rural Iowa, a man fearful of the sexualization of everyday life tunes into Bill O’Reily of Fox news, because his appeal to the moral climate of  small town christian culture is in keeping with his own. Satisfied and vindicated at hearing the “Hollywood left” chastised and villanized, he says a prayer for his family and his crops and his country at war and falls peacefully asleep.

In a Lower East Side flat, 20 minutes from the center of the media universe,  a hysterical laughter echoes through the cramped living room of a young NYU graduate student offended and demoralized by what he sees as an attack on rationality, freedom of expression, and truth. Keith Olbermann’s witty characterizations of Bill O’Reilly are to him a humorous transfusion of  rational blood into the toxic, hostile, irrational climate of American politics.

Somewhere in Georgia, an unemployed former machinist-turned militia member polishes his prized possession—a scoped M14 assault rifle passed to him through the generations. But this instrument of violence is not the only thing passed down to him from his predecessors. On a small, color television in the corner of his garage, the Aryan features of Glenn Beck maniacally oscillate from unmitigated rage to tears of defeat as the drama of American racism marches on.

A young man sits in Jamaica Queens, writing a blog for his college’s Democratic organization wondering how it is that his nation’s major source of information became an incessant middle school shouting match complete with name-calling, gossip, and intense clannishness.

It is clear that modern media had always been distorted, manipulated and influenced by economic and political elites for the purposes of social control, value impregnation, and economic gain. But the postmodern media is something even more sinister than the belated objectives of social engineering.

The main function of  modern US political media is to serve as a distraction from the realities of the political questions of our times. By turning the objective into the interpretive, fact into opinion, and distortions into topics for serious consideration we get a country where  millions of citizens seriously debate whether public health care could lead to death panels, or health insurance for illegal immigrants,  or socialized everything. This “debate”  over misinformation distracts people from serious critical questions  about American democracy and balancing the need for free-enterprise with answering the moral call to ease  human suffering.

Our irrational media has allowed irrationality into the mainstream, if only because irrational, faith-driven people are easier to herd than a questioning, skeptical populace. Why is it that in a country where 40% of the population identifies as Athiest or Agnostic that presidential candidates, if not all candidates are terrified to admit they do not “believe in God,”  which is a striking difference to most industrialized democracies with the exception of  Ireland and Italy. So who is speaking for us, the real outcasts of the American political mainstream?   Who will speak for us?