Reading notes

The best part about John Kerry releasing his military records today is that he did so to silence the Republicans who were hounding him. Nothing show-off about it. Their plan seems not to have been wise: Mr. Kerry’s record, when lined up alongside Mr. Bush’s near-lack of same, paints a rather stark contrast between character/heroism and … something else.

Records of John Kerry’s Vietnam War service released Wednesday show a highly praised naval officer with an Ivy League education who spoke fluent French and had raced sailboats — the fruits of a privileged upbringing that set him apart from the typical seaman.

With Republicans questioning his service in Vietnam, the Democratic candidate for president posted more than 120 pages of military records on his campaign Web site. Several describe him as a gutsy commander undertaking a dangerous assignment in Vietnam and detail some of the actions that won three Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star and a Silver Star.

I may never be able to be excited about John Kerry, but the fact that he’s (1) intelligent and (2) has a real depth of character lets me rest easy that defense decisions he makes as president — whether or not I can agree fully with them — will be informed both by intelligently-parsed intelligence and plenty of experiential wisdom.

Thank you. Sir.

[via Daily Kos]

In the United States, several million people have succumbed to an extraordinary delusion. In the 19th century, two immigrant preachers cobbled together a series of unrelated passages from the Bible to create what appears to be a consistent narrative: Jesus will return to Earth when certain preconditions have been met …

What makes the story so appealing to Christian fundamentalists is that before the big battle begins, all “true believers” (ie those who believe what they believe) will be lifted out of their clothes and wafted up to heaven during an event called the Rapture. …

We can laugh at these people, but we should not dismiss them. That their beliefs are bonkers does not mean they are marginal. American pollsters believe that 15-18% of US voters belong to churches or movements which subscribe to these teachings. A survey in 1999 suggested that this figure included 33% of Republicans. … The people who believe all this don’t believe it just a little; for them it is a matter of life eternal and death. …

The electoral calculation, crazy as it appears, works like this. Governments stand or fall on domestic issues. For 85% of the US electorate, the Middle East is a foreign issue, and therefore of secondary interest when they enter the polling booth. For 15% of the electorate, the Middle East is not just a domestic matter, it’s a personal one: if the president fails to start a conflagration there, his core voters don’t get to sit at the right hand of God.

As I understand it, the larger system of thought from which these beliefs come is called dispensationalism, within which the belief George is writing about — a pretribulational rapture — is foundational.

That this dispensational thought didn’t exist in its current form before 1830, isn’t obvious in biblical texts, and certainly isn’t part of Church history and the Creeds makes me wonder why it’s caught on as it has, especially among those who otherwise aim to be punctilious. Using these criteria, isn’t dispensational thinking comparable to LDS thinking (Mormonism) in terms of its sufficient or insufficient basis for believability?

Most of the Church Universal considers dispensationalism “at variance with established religious beliefs,” which makes it, at least according to the dictionary, heresy. Whether heresy or not, as a practical theological matter I consider dispensational thinking bad news because it leads many of its adherents — no matter how otherwise sincere — to support U.S.-led injustices like inciting violence in the Middle East, which, if God’s revelation to us in Jesus means anything, opposes and grieves his Spirit.

(Disclaimer: I am no expert on either dispensational hermeneutics or LDS. Nor, given what I have learned so far, do I see any compelling reason to become one. I grant that YMMV.)

[via comment to Billmon]

I love Billmon. I find his skillful and deeply informed analyses simultaneously encouraging (because clear thinking is such a rarity these days) and depressing (because clear thinking is such a rarity these days):

I think the invasion of Iraq may go down in history as one of those decisions — like Germany’s decision to back Austro-Hungary’s ultimatum to the Serbs, or the U.S. decision to cut off oil shipments to Japan unless it withdrew from China — with consequences that extend far beyond what the makers of those decisions ever expected. The neocons, who have been failing upward for the past three decades, may have finally created a mess too big to be cleaned up. …

The neocons may have screwed the pooch (to borrow a bit of pilot slang from Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff) so ferociously the poor beast can’t be patched back up again. Instead of World War IV, America may find its been dragged into a Middle Eastern version of the Thirty Years War, if not the Hundred Years War. …

We seem to have reached the point where a half-baked strategy for endless war in the Middle East is actually easier to sell politically than a sensible energy policy, an end to America’s fawning subservience to worst instincts of the Israeli national security state, and a focused, relentless campaign to destroy Al Qaeda while drying up the pools of hatred in which jihad festers and grows. …

For libertarian conservatives, the great fear is of a state that gradually overwhelms and crushes human liberty. For progressives, it’s a state that ignores the needs of the weak and the powerless at home, while acting as an engine of oppression in the developing world. Thanks to the war in the Middle East, it looks like both of our worst fears could come true. Thus, the idea of a coalition of both ends against the middle.

Thanks, B. Your efforts make me smarter and, if I integrate the information well, wiser.

David Corn, in his post-60 Minutes assessment (aired last Sunday, April 18) of Bob Woodward’s new book, Plan of Attack, reports nearly the same response I had, saying “The Woodward book is not a full-fire blast like Richard Clarke’s book. But it is in several ways more disquieting.”

Indeed. The Administration behavior Woodward reports chills me to the bone.

It’s hard to know what is more disturbing. That George W. Bush misled the public by stating in the months before the Iraq war that he was seriously pursuing a diplomatic resolution when he was not. That he didn’t bother to ask aides to present the case against going to war. That he may have violated the U.S. Constitution by spending hundreds of millions of dollars secretly to prepare for the invasion of Iraq without notifying Congress. That he was misinformed by the CIA director about one of the most critical issues of the day and demanded no accountability. Or that he doesn’t care if he got it wrong on the weapons of mass destruction. …

Bush told Woodward that he remained certain the war had been the right move because he has a “duty to free people.” … This remark — coupled with Bush’s comment that “there is a higher father that I appeal to” — does make it seem that Bush believes he is on a mission from God. That might scare some, but it would not be so problematic if Bush also believed that God expects him to engage in self-examination and critical and honest discourse before mounting an action that claims thousands of lives and if Bush took into this heart the fact that God (assuming God exists) created intellectuals, experts, skeptics and critics as well as cowboys, oil rig workers, and truck drivers (not that any of these folks cannot be fancy-pants eggheads as well).

My study and experience tells me God always expects me to “engage in self-examination and critical and honest discourse,” with him and with others, throughout my Christian walk. That Mr. Bush chooses to “eschew accountability and responsibility,” “is embedded in a world detached from critical or challenging perspectives,” and who is “incapable of self-doubt,” communicates far more than he appears to realize about how his reported inner life diverges his real inner life.

Bush came pretty close to proclaiming the fight against radical Islam the divine mission of the United States [in his Tues press conference]. He may not have meant that, but you can rest assured that is just how much of the Islamic world will view his comments, especially in light of his actions the next day on behalf of Israel. You can also bet it will be read that way by the American religious right, which sees in defending Israel a way to bring about Armageddon and the second coming of Christ.

On top of the danger and foolishness, I think the Religious Right thinking they can define and control Jesus’ second coming this way exhibits an arrogance almost beyond measure. The phrase “God is not mocked” comes to mind.

As Paul wrote in Romans (3:8):

Why should we not do evil that good may come? — as some slanderously charge us with teaching. Such [false teaching] is justly condemned by them.

In what way is this presidential behavior — and Religious Right behavior — not doing evil that good may come? That’s exactly the motivation in play here, seems to me. And I — justly, according to Paul — condemn it.

Peterson puts this passage even more clearly in The Message:

It’s simply perverse to say, “If my lies serve to show off God’s truth all the more gloriously, why blame me? I’m doing God a favor.” Some people are actually trying to put such words in our mouths, claiming that we go around saying, “The more evil we do, the more good God does, so let’s just do it!”

This “perverse” wording nearly matches what Mr. Bush said/meant in his Tuesday press conference, seems to me (transcript). And I’m not putting these words in his mouth; they’re already there. I find this translation’s particular applicability now eerie.

[via comment to Atrios]

William Saletan observes of Bush’s press conference (transcript) last night:

“And the credibility of the United States is incredibly important for keeping world peace and freedom.”

That’s the summation President Bush delivered as he wrapped up his press conference Tuesday night. It’s the message he emphasized throughout: Our commitment. Our pledge. Our word. My conviction. Given the stakes in Iraq and the war against terrorism, it would be petty to poke fun at Bush for calling credibility “incredibly important.” His routine misuse of the word “incredible,” while illiterate, is harmless. His misunderstanding of the word “credible,” however, isn’t harmless. It’s catastrophic.

To Bush, credibility means that you keep saying today what you said yesterday, and that you do today what you promised yesterday. … When the situation is clear and requires pure courage, this steadfastness is Bush’s most useful trait. But when the situation is unclear, Bush’s notion of credibility turns out to be dangerously unhinged. The only words and deeds that have to match are his. No correspondence to reality is required. …

Isn’t Bush’s shoddy thinking the kind of thing that for many of us got spanked into submission in college? I was led to believe that shoddy thinking is absolutely unacceptable in anyone who’s in a position to influence, manage, lead. So despite my tendency to think lazily if at all, I learned to think clearly. And in every job I’ve held since I’ve been expected to continue thinking clearly if I want to remain employed.

As an employer, I wouldn’t hold it against an employee for not being able to think well, or even for choosing not to think well, but I would never leave that employee in a position wherein sharp thinking skills are a job requirement — that’d be disastrous management on my part. As a taxpaying citizen of the United States, I am a president’s employer; I assess that in this case, the jobholder’s skillset is no match for the job requirements.

Three times, Bush repeated the answer he gave to Edwin Chen of the Los Angeles Times: “Had there been a threat that required action by anybody in the government, I would have dealt with it.” Outside Bush’s head, the statement was patently false: The 9/11 threat required action, and Bush failed to deal with it. But inside Bush’s head, the statement was tautological: If there were a threat that required action, Bush would have dealt with it; Bush didn’t deal with it; therefore, there was no threat that required action. The third time Bush repeated this answer — in response to a question about whether he owed an “apology to the American people for failing them prior to 9/11” — he added, “The person responsible for the attacks was Osama Bin Laden.” This is how Bush’s mind works: Only a bad person can bear responsibility for a bad thing. I am a good person. Therefore, I bear no responsibility.

Here’s where I move from unemotional smart business practice to values-based judgment: The willingness to bear responsibility is a necessary condition for human maturity. Without responsibility, one cannot be mature, and without maturity, one cannot be a leader.

[via Mimikatz]