Myths of Love, Peace, and Cynicism

I was a Christian for forty years, and depending on how I want to slice it I still might be. I stumbled on what became the obvious, however: that it was not true in the sense that I had been trained, and that the Bible had trained me, to require it to be. But the details of that are more numerous than the sands of the sea, and I do not think even Abraham's descendents and I could count them all.

But there is something still compelling about noble myths, and it would be heartwarming to be able to participate in something larger than the universe again. It would be nice to live in a divinely ordered, divinely contained world. How secure and wonderful to be so significant. I think that the need for such comfort is deeply rooted in the human psyche, and that is why myths of every sort, whether religious, environmental, nationalistic, egotistical, evolutionary, ad infinitum, will continue to be endemic to our species. I am not above it, either, for even during moments of debilitating cynicism I am therein taking comfort in a grand myth of understanding, of seeing through meaning itself, as though it were within my grasp.

I think we need to give ourselves a little leeway to take comfort in our myths. The sad part is, though, that our myths alienate us and put us in competition with people whose comfort lies in myths that are seemingly incompatible with our own. Our myths divide us, put us into clans, set us in competition, and put us at odds. Our myths, even peaceful and loving ones, are ultimately what justify our aggressions, our protectionisms, our hostilities. Our gods endorse us and condemn our competitors. Of course, we do not frame it that way: “I came not to condemn the world," for example. "He who rejects me is condemned already.” How gracious are our gods. How pitiful our enemies. Our frame wholly validates our de facto rejection of those who are alien and threatening to our zones of comfort and identity.

But we cannot afford to dwell on this darker side of our myths of peace and love, else we expose our in-groups of significance as terrifyingly bankrupt. At least on our better days the light that is in us is not too dark. And that is true of the people of any myth, even mine.

Supreme Court justice for Guantanamo Bay

A friend of mine was upset yesterday that the Supreme Court had ruled to grant Guantanamo detainees the right of habeas corpus. How outrageous, he said, to grant such rights to “jihadists,” to “thugs who killed 3000 on 9/11.”

Let’s not forget, however, that hundreds of Guantanamo detainees weren’t jihadists or involved in the 9/11 attacks. Many were innocent men and the majority consisted of men whose greatest crime was to defend their country against invasion. We invaded Afghanistan. How likely is it that the majority of the human beings we captured in that invasion were 9/11 operatives or militant jihadists? Even those who picked up weapons against us during the invasion had the right to defend their country and were due POW status. Instead our government devised a category in which it defined all detainees as having neither civilian nor POW rights. It declared by fiat that Guantanamo Bay was something like “within the sovereignty but not under the jurisdiction of” the United States so that it could presume itself within legal boundaries to treat these human beings like “jihadists” and “hajis” without any accountability.

Yesterday’s Supreme Court decision means that innocent men can finally not be presumed guilty without trial and held in prison without sufficient legal recourse. It means that de facto POWs may finally be under the lawful and humanitarian protections of the Geneva Conventions. It also means that sworn militant jihadist enemies of the United States can be tried and executed in a way that dignifies us as a just society.

My friend was disturbed that we were now granting soldiers captured in war access to our legal system. But these men were not granted POW status by our government. They were defined as being in the new category of “enemy combatants,” a category devised ad hoc specifically to deny them the legal protections due to prisoners of war. But now that the Supreme Court rules to grant them non-POW rights, defenders of Guantanamo policy are eliciting this prisoner of war comparison. It is a classic case of having cake and eating it, too. The prisoner of war comparison was effectively nullified when the United States defined its “enemy combatant” category as an antidote to granting its “detainees” prisoner of war status.

If we do not want to dignify Guantanamo inmates as either prisoners of war or as having civilian legal rights, then what do we want to do with them? Dehumanize them as “jihadis” so that we can sooth our consciences about holding POWs and innocent men without charge and without trial indefinitely? My friend claimed that the Supreme Court decision was absurd, but the absurdity that I see is for the state, any state, to define human beings in such a way as to claim absolute power over them. As applied to this case the absurdity is to deny men both POW status and the right to trial yet claim that the state has a right to incarcerate them because they are POWs and guilty of crimes. How much more poignant can absurdity be?

My friend appealed to Justice Scalia’s statement that the majority’s ruling will result in the death of Americans. Currently, however, Americans are dying because President Bush keeps them in Iraq. Of course, those lives do not matter for rhetorical purposes, do they? But to the point: Since when does granting men either POW status or the right to trial jeopardize the United States? Protection from the abuse of government is the preeminent mythical principle that has emboldened Americans throughout history to defend themselves against enemies whom they perceived to commit such injustices as arbitrary incarceration. Our national idealism dictates that justice is better served by trial than by stripping human beings of basic human rights. This was demonstrated, for example, in our sense of justice for trying Saddam Hussein. What makes us think that, after charging and trying Hussein, our national sense of justice does not dictate either that we grant our captives POW status or grant them the right to trial? Who do we think we are? Who do we think our captives are? Are they dogs? Are they worse than dogs? Are they sub-human “jihadis” and “hajis”? Yes, let us dehumanize them so that we can feel justified in exacting our hatred. Never mind that the majority of them had nothing to do with al-Qaeda and were defending their country from invasion. Never mind that many of them were neither soldiers nor combatants when we captured them.

In my opinion, it is past time that we humanized these people with the dignity of the legal system, seeing that we denied them prisoner of war status. Had we the decency to dignify them as prisoners of war from the start this never would have gone to the Supreme Court in the first place. This case was not about counterparts to World War II POWs. It was about granting rights to men who were not protected by either national or international law. It was not largely about thugs who killed 3000 people on September 11, 2001. It was about other men who should have been granted POW status for defending against an invasion of their country and others again who were innocent even of that. As far as 9/11 international criminals go, it was about finally charging them with their crimes in a way that dignifies us as a just society. The damage that has been done to America stems from the indignity of presuming hundreds of men who had nothing to do with 9/11 as guilty of being “thugs of 9/11” and straining at every legal and moral gnat to hold them without trial, without charge, and without even the dignity of prisoner of war status.

My friend was indignant at the “liberal justices” for how their majority decision would damage America. But the damage done to America this time was done by its highest leaders when they acted on an ad hoc presumption of the state's absolute power over human life.

Lesser of two evils. Greater of two goods.

I would be happy to see either McCain or Obama as president. But I would be heartbroken to see either one, too. What bothers me about McCain is that the Israeli stranglehold over Palestine has no chance of being broken with him, and until that stranglehold is broken, no peace is possible for the Middle East. We need an administration that will put real pressure on Israel to relinquish the West Bank settlements, and I think Obama would be less beholden to the Jewish lobby. But that lobby is powerful, and Obama’s presidency could conceivably be overwhelmed by it if he were to give priority to Middle East peace. On the other hand, if he were to succeed, as Carter did between Israel and Egypt, that would be worth the all-consuming fight.

Another thing that bothers me about McCain is his position on the Iraq War. I think that his judgment on such things is vastly better than that of Bush—I do not agree with Obama that McCain’s presidency would be George Bush’s third term, though there are, of course, germs of truth to the claim, at a high level—but he seems to have sincerely confused the Iraq War with the war against al-Qaida. In my view, the Iraq War is a wash, and nothing short of withdrawal will resolve the problems there. The choice is not between surrendering and not surrendering, but between realizing that it is a lost cause, on the one hand, and wasting even more lives and money on it, on the other hand. Sometimes cutting losses is the wiser choice, and this is one of those times. The only thing that more time in Iraq is going to accomplish is to make the no-bid contractor corporations and Iraqi politicians richer in American money. It will not resolve the political feuds that are boiling beneath the surface, waiting to erupt when America leaves. So long as America stays the cork on the volcano will hold back the eruption, but America cannot stay in force enough forever, and when we leave, whether now or twenty years from now, the volcano will erupt. McCain underestimates how much “I will never surrender in Iraq” sounds like the obstinacy of George Bush. He is going to have to demonstrate more flexibility of judgment than that in his rhetoric if he does not want to turn me against him.

What bothers me about Obama is his opposition to a ban on partial-birth abortion and his general support of the abortion lobby and abortion laws, as they stand. I am willing to concede on embryos, but not on fetuses, and it may be this issue that finally makes me decide not to vote for Obama, after all. In any other election I would also be troubled by the amount of money Obama would be prone to spend, but if spending will be on either the War or social programs in any case, I would rather it be spent on helping people than on killing them. Republicans have proven unworthy of the spend-thrift image to which they even still lie to lay claim. In contrast to what Republicans have become in fact, despite their rhetoric of conservatism, there is much about Obama that is more appealing, but the fetus holocaust is the Achilles Heel that even the evil of the Republican Party cannot overshadow.

I like both Obama and McCain for many things. But Palestine, the War, and abortion may loom too large for me to be able to vote for either one of them. My fear is that America is too evil to vote for Obama (in terms of racism), and too evil not to vote against him (in terms of abortion). And it is too evil not to vote against McCain (in terms of Palestine and Iraq). Since there is nothing particularly evil about not voting for McCain, I suppose that voting for Obama is both the lesser of two evils and the greater of two goods. My heart would ache were America not to elect Obama because he is black. It would also ache were it to elect him as the morally superior candidate who supported the slaughter of humans in utero.

But at least it is not Hillary. That is a moral victory of sorts, in its own right.