[This is the fourth part of the Mutinyblogging series, a salute to this terrible movie and the MST3K episode it spawned --- Earlier parts here, here, and here]
"It has to be noted that Captain Santa Claus really is failing here" - Mike Nelson
I
When watching certain episodes of MST3K, I sometimes wonder whether the dementia that gave birth to this terrible movie owes its origin more to either drugs or religion. With Space Mutiny, I'm still not sure. Everything from the costumes to the continuity problems to the recycled Battlestar Galactica clips suggests drugs, but other parts of the movie hint at a more religious influence. At its core, religion functions by selling hope, and as this movie's fight scenes are so far-fetched and absurd ("You know, they shouldn't have set their phasers to miss"), the hope that they would win seemed to be the only weapon they needed.
As the hero of the movie, Brick Hardmeat... David Ryder was a savior, someone meant to be superhuman, god-like. On the other hand, the captain of the flying warehouse was a softy old guy who really happened to resemble Jolly Old Saint Nick. I have no idea if that was intentional (for my own safety, I try not to think about this stuff too hard), but it made me think of that common excuse that Christians use to explain away very un-Christian behavior - Jesus is cool and all, but when shit goes down, you really need someone who can kick some ass. Ryder's ability to stop the mutiny by killing all the mutineers on the ship was pure wingnut fantasy.
Religion is the psychological suit of armor that people wear as they fight their enemies, both internal and external. The real horrors of war and the tragedies that people face throughout life require that. Not for everyone, but for most. And the severity of these travails can often drive some to extremes. Although this is a few paces off from what atheists like Christopher Hitchens sometimes conclude about religion. Religious fanaticism causes war, right? Well, yes, but that's only half the story. War causes religious fanaticism as well. And while I really enjoyed reading Hitchens' latest book on religion God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, I couldn't help but wonder if he believes that the other half of that equation doesn't exist.
"Religion poisons everything... Violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children: organized religion ought to have a great deal on its conscience."
"The largest single change for the better in U.S. foreign policy, and one that could be accomplished simply by an act of political will, would be the abandonment of the so-called War on Drugs. This last relic of the Nixon era has long been a laughingstock within the borders of the United States itself (where narcotics are freely available to anybody who wants them and where the only guarantee is that all the money goes straight into criminal hands). But the same diminishing returns are now having a deplorable effect on America's international efforts."
- Christopher Hitchens
Like drug abuse, religious fanaticism begins with powerlessness - an inability to cope with the status quo. Hitchens reminds us that people who drink alcohol or use other recreational drugs often look down upon those who flirt with the danger of becoming a radical religious nut - just as many religious people look down in reverse upon those who flirt with the danger of addiction. Numerous people have ranted like Hitchens does about religion, but instead against alcohol and drugs, the damage they do, and how drug dealers ought to have a great deal on their consciences. He recognizes that the War on Drugs is a profound failure, but he's also decrying religion in the same way that people once railed against alcohol and brought about alcohol prohibition.
To be clear, he doesn't support the banning of religion, but I'm not entirely clear whether he thinks a religious belief can be a rationale for war:
I am not here going to elaborate a position on the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in April 2003. I shall simply say that those who regarded his regime as a "secular" one are deluding themselves. It is true that the Ba'ath Party was founded by a man named Michel Aflaq, a sinister Christian with a sympathy for fascism, and it is also true that membership of that party was open to all religions (though its Jewish membership was, I have every reason to think, limited). However, at least since his calamitous invasion of Iraq in 1979, which led to furious accusations from the Iranian theocracy that he was an "infidel," Saddam Hussein had decked out his whole rule - which was based in any case on a tribal minority of the Sunni minority - as one of piety and jihad. (The Syrian Ba'ath Party, also based on a confessional fragment of society aligned with the Alawite minority, has likewise enjoyed a long and hypocritical relationship with the Iranian mullahs.) Saddam had inscribed the words "Allahuh Akhbar" - "God Is Great" - on the Iraqi flag.
Hitchens supported the invasion and often belittled those who challenged his rationale. To this day, he still believes, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that Saddam Hussein had a working relationship with Al Qaeda. But Saddam's shift was not a result of any newfound devotion to Islam. It was a way to solidify support among a populace for whom a decade of war had led to a greater reliance on the hope that religion offers. He was more salesman than prophet. Hitchens is certainly right to be concerned about religious fanaticism, but the evil of religious fanaticism and the evils of war itself were two separate things that needed to be weighed against each other. Unfortunately, when you forget that religious fanaticism can also be caused by war, you will eventually become as impotent in fighting it as we've become in fighting that other war against drugs.
II
It was our last day in Cairo. My old Microsoft co-worker, Mourad, had been a phenomenal host, but he had to work that day, so Dana and I were being taken around by a tour guide named Eman who Mourad had hired through his father's company. Eman wore a headscarf, but like many others in Egypt today, she wore hers more for style than Sharia. The driver was a young man in his 20s, tall and thin with bushy hair. He spoke little English. Occasionally, Eman would speak to him in Arabic, he'd nod and continue driving.
Among our destinations that day were the Synagogue of Old Cairo, the Hanging Church, the Church of St. George and the Mosque of Amr Ibn El-Aas. These are structures that have stood within walking distance of each other for centuries. Their histories mark the history of religions coming and going throughout the years along the banks of the Nile.
Neither Dana nor I can claim to be Biblical scholars, but we found a number of things that Eman told us to be quite different from things we'd long thought we'd known about the various faiths represented within these ancient city blocks. Were we taught incorrectly? Was she? Does anyone really know what the truth is about anything that happened over 1000 years ago? Seeing these religions from afar, as we do in the United States, allows us greater ability to treat the stories of their evolution as abstractions, rather than as part of the actual history of humanity.
Following the religious-historical part of the day, our final destination was the Khan el-Khalili Bazaar, a marketplace with an interesting history:
How could a market in Egypt be responsible for the founding of the United States? Khan el-Khalili, once known as the Turkish bazaar during the Ottoman period, is now usually just called the 'Khan', and the names of it and the Muski market are often used interchangeably to mean either. Named for the great Caravansary, the market was built in 1382 by the Emir Djaharks el-Khalili in the heart of the Fatimid City. Together with the al-Muski market to the west, they comprise one of Cairo's most important shopping areas. But more than that, they represent the market tradition which established Cairo as a major center of trade, and at the Khan, one will still find foreign merchants. Perhaps, this vary market was involved in the spice monopoly controlled by the Mamluks, which encouraged the Europeans to search for new routes to the East and led Columbus, indirectly, to discover the Americas. During its early period, the market was also a center for subversive groups, often subject to raids before the Sultan Ghawri rebuilt much of the area in the early 16th century. Regardless, it was trade which caused Cairo's early wealth, even from the time of the Babylon fort which was often a settlement of traders.
It's certainly a bit of hyperbole to suggest that this little marketplace was the reason that the Americas are populated by hundreds of millions of white European settlers today. But this region, and by extension the world in general, has been shaped significantly by who controls the levers of trade and how they've been able to wield that power.
I wasn't expecting to spend much money in the market - maybe get a T-shirt or something to remember the trip by. I normally don't like shopping much, but it was certainly a nice change of pace to be at a shopping center that didn't have a Starbucks in it. We walked into a store with lamps hanging from every square foot of the ceiling. At some point between the last time I'd talked to Dana and that moment, she'd decided she wanted to buy a lamp. Looking up at the ceiling, I knew the 150 Egyptian pounds or so I had in my wallet wasn't going to cut it.
The store owner was a tall, well-built man who looked to be in his early 40s. Like many other Egyptians we'd met on the trip who had something to sell us, he was extremely friendly and went out of his way to assure us that he loved Americans. As we pointed out one of the hanging lamps, he reached out for a long pole that he used to unhook the lamps from the ceiling. After like a 2 minute struggle with the wire holding up the lamp, he lowered it down to us.
Eman seemed eager to have me haggle with the guy, as if it were one of the joys of her job to see folks like me dive into a cultural tradition we're not terribly familiar with. Haggling is something we occasionally do, but generally not over things that fit in a suitcase. As Dana was inspecting it, I was mentally preparing myself for the tightrope act between getting totally ripped off or possibly upsetting my wife by refusing to pay enough for something she wanted (as an extremely important side note, Dana was a total champ on this whole trip, as she had to deal with things much more annoying than this, including the guy who pulled us into his perfume shop and made her sample all of his wares).
The shopkeeper started out at 430 pounds, and I replied that I only had about 150 pounds to spend. He shot back with something silly like 380 and I said I might be able to do 200, but no higher. He came back with 350 and I told Dana we could find something at another store. The deal was done at 220 (about $40 - the shopkeeper led me across the market to the nearest ATM). I was actually pretty damn proud of myself, although I wondered if I'd see the same lamp hanging in the window of Pyramid Imports for $10.
Haggling is the lowest common denominator of a free market. It allows for the power of supply and demand to play out at the most micro of levels. While some find bargains and others get taken, the aggregate of this process reveals the truth as to how much value a commodity really has. But there's one important requirement within that system. The seller, and especially the buyer, must know all of the facts about the commodities being exchanged, be operating from a rational basis, and have full control over their own decisions. A system where the buyers are encouraged to be as ignorant as possible, or one where they must operate out of fear, is the one that the sellers strive for. What I never understood about the Middle East was how much this way of doing business is related to why there's so much religion.
III
Faith itself has its own marketplace, one where supply and demand interact and the currency isn't just money, but often one's free will or their ability to reason. Not to say that everyone who's religious has given up either of those things. Many people who have faith in a higher power believe that he wants us to have free will and he wants us to discover what science can allow us to discover. But the people who give up their free will and their ability to reason are the easier ones to control.
In the beginning of Reza Aslan's book, No god but God, he describes the history of Mecca in the time before Muhammad. Even then, the Ka'ba, the giant rock in the middle of the Arabian desert that Muslims make their pilgrimage to, had meaning:
The Quraysh's dominance of Mecca began at the end of the fourth century C.E., when an ambitious young Arab named Qusayy managed to gain control of the Ka'ba by uniting a number of feuding clans under his rule. Clans in the Arabian Peninsula were primarily composed of large extended families that called themselves either bayt (house of) or banu (sons of) the family's patriarch. Muhammad's clan was thus known as Banu Hashim, "the Sons of Hashim." Through intermarriage and political alliances, a group of clans could merge to become an ahl or a qawm: a "people," more commonly called a tribe.
...
Qusayy's most important innovation was the establishment of what would become the foundation of Mecca's economy. He began by strengthening the city's position as the dominant place of worship in the Hijaz, collecting all the idols venerated by neighboring tribes - especially those situated on the sacred hills of Safah and Marwah - and transferring them to the Ka'ba. Henceforth, if one wanted to worship, say, the lover gods, Isaf and Na'ila, one could do so only at Mecca, and only after paying a toll to the Quraysh for the right to enter the sacred city. As Keeper of the Keys, Qusayy also maintained a monopoly over the buying and selling of goods and services to the pilgrims, which he in turn paid for by taxing the city's inhabitants and keeping the surplus for himself. In a few short years, Qusayy's system had made him, and those ruling clans of Quraysh who had managed to connect their fortunes with his, enormously wealthy.
It's not clear whether the taking of the idols was done through haggling or by force, but it's certainly evident what their value was. Mecca became the place where people came to do business. There's uncertainty among the historians over how large the trading post at Mecca truly was, but not over why it had significance. The yearly pilgrimages to the Ka'ba gave the Quraysh a steady flow of buyers year after year.
The point is that this trade, modest as it may have been, was wholly dependent on the Ka'ba; there was simply no other reason to be in Mecca. This was a desert wasteland that produced nothing. As Richard Bulliet notes in his wonderful book The Camel and the Wheel, "the only reason for Mecca to grow into a great trading center was that it was able somehow to force the trade under its control." Indeed, that is precisely what Mecca had managed to do. By inextricably linking the religious and economic life of the city, Qusayy and his descendants had developed an innovative religio-economic system that relied on control of the Ka'ba and its pilgrimage rites - rites in which nearly the whole of the Hijaz participated - to guarantee the economic, religious, and political supremacy of a single tribe, the Quraysh.
The Quraysh had built a dynasty, and the results were fairly predictable.
The problem in Mecca was that the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few ruling families had not only altered the social and economic landscape of the city, it had effectively destroyed the tribal ethic. The sudden tide of personal wealth in Mecca had swept away tribal ideals of social egalitarianism. No longer was there any concern for the poor and marginalized; no longer was the tribe only as strong as its weakest members. The Shaykhs of Quraysh had become far more interested in maintaining the apparatus of trade than in caring for the dispossessed. How could the Law of Retribution function properly when one party in a dispute was so wealthy and so powerful as to be virtually untouchable? How could intertribal relations be maintained when the Quraysh's ever-expanding authority placed them essentially beyond reproach? It certainly didn't help matters that as Keepers of the Keys, the Quraysh's authority in Mecca was not just political or economic but also religious. Consider that the Hanifs, whom the traditions present as severely critical of the insatiable greed of their fellow Meccans, nevertheless maintained an unshakable loyalty to the Quraysh, whom they regarded as "the legitimate agents of the Abrahamic sacredness of Mecca and the Ka'ba."
With the demise of the tribal ethic, Meccan society became strictly stratified. At the top were the leaders of the ruling families of Quraysh. If one was fortunate enough to acquire enough capital to start a small business, one could take full advantage of the city's religio-economic system. But for most Meccans, this was simply not possible. Especially for those with no formal protection - such as orphans and widows, neither of whom had access to any kind of inheritance - the only option was to borrow money form the rich at exorbitant interest rates, which inevitably led to debt, which in turn led to crushing poverty and, ultimately, to slavery.
This was the world that Muhammad was born into in the 7th century A.D. He was a Qurayshi merchant before he was a prophet, and as the story goes, after he is summoned by God to do so, he begins protesting against the worshiping of so many false idols and of the inequalities of the system. His message to the people was that there's "no god but God." The Jews and the Christians were worshiping the one true God and those in Mecca should defy the Quraysh and do the same. This message didn't play well with the folks who had the keys to the Ka'ba and its various idols, so Muhammad and his followers (the Ummah) were eventually sent packing.
They settled in the oasis of Yathrib, which is today called Medina. They still battled the Quraysh, and sometimes the other tribes of Yathrib, yet the Ummah survived. While the Quraysh were able to banish Muhammad, they couldn't banish the discontent that gave him a following. Eight years later, Muhammad came back to Mecca triumphant, where he stood at the Ka'ba and destroyed the false idols that gave the Quraysh their power. The religion of Islam was born.
It's a common belief that the spread of Islam across Africa, Asia, and Europe in the century following Muhammad's death was the result of violent conflict. It is often portrayed as a barbaric faith, one where people were forced to convert or be killed. Hopefully, our experience in Iraq has taught us that subjugating so many people against their will at a time when people fought wars with camels and elephants would have clearly been an impossible task. Islam spread because the messages attributed to Muhammad were seen as the proper antidote to the particular ills of that time. The religion of Islam was essentially a new system of justice, one adapted to a world where increased commerce had rendered the old tribal customs obsolete. The demand for a better system is what led to the spread of Muhammad's teachings.
Of course, once Islam became the entrenched religion throughout much of that part of the world, it was bent and twisted to fit the various cultural tendencies of the regions where it spread. Hundreds of different and often contradictory hadiths - translations of Muhammad's message - were introduced as the official word of Allah throughout the Middle East and Asia. Women continued to be forced into subservience, slavery was still acceptable, Jews and Christians were persecuted. And the religion has continued forward through the years, with 1 billion adherents today, many of whom still find true peace of mind in its teachings and live lives free of bigotry and the desire to subjugate. None of this history either excuses or indicts the religion of Islam. It simply demonstrates the point that religion is inherently neither good nor bad, even if it has the potential to be catastrophic when taken to an extreme.
Going back to Hitchens, he makes this extraordinary claim:
In all the cases I have mentioned, there were those who protested in the name of religion and who tried to stand athwart the rising tide of fanaticism and the cult of death. I can think of a handful of priests and bishops and rabbis and imams who have put humanity ahead of their own sect or creed. History gives us many other such examples, which I am going to discuss later on. But this is a complement to humanism, not to religion.
This is a distinction I just don't buy. If religion can be blamed for the bad things that people do under its influence, we must also credit what good is done under it as well. Religion has the potential to motivate good deeds or bring about peace of mind just as it has the potential to push a fragile mind over the edge.
VI
For the past few decades, the United States has fought a losing battle against drugs. The main strategy we've used in this war is to try to cut off the supply of drugs from wherever they originate. We spray chemicals on Colombian coca farms. We plow opium fields in the Helmand Province of Afghanistan. We indict Canadians who sell marijuana seeds over the internet. We put cold medicines behind the counter of our drug stores because they can be used to make methamphetamines. We throw doctors in jail who aren't as careful as we think they should be in keeping people from diverting prescription drugs to the black market.
For each of those drugs, we also try to shut down the organized crime groups that control the distribution. With billions upon billions of dollars being spent every year on illegal drugs by Americans, drug dealing organizations exists wherever there are customers - in large cities, in suburbs, in small towns. The ranks of these organizations are filled with those for whom the risk of arrest does not outweigh the potential financial gain.
This war has been a disaster on both fronts. Internationally, our actions in South America to destroy coca harvests have led to greater anti-American sentiment in the northern Andes and even the election of a former coca farmer to be President of Bolivia. Cocaine production continues on that continent largely undisturbed.
In Afghanistan, our attempts to destroy the opium farming have allowed the Taliban to set up a protection racket and profit from the trade. As a result, they once again have control over much of the country.
And in Mexico, the cartels who control the drug distribution networks profit most directly from the millions of Americans who defy the prohibition. These networks have such influence that there have been times when Mexican law enforcement officials weren't even bothering to pick up their government paychecks because they were so well paid by the cartels. And their influence has only gotten stronger since they've been able to take over the distribution of methamphetamines in recent years.
The results from the drug war in Mexico are the most stark and the most ominous. While the drug war is hardly even discussed in the American political arena, it was the primary issue in Mexico's most recent Presidential contest. Felipe Calderon came into office promising his people (and more importantly, the government in Washington DC) that he'll be tougher on the drug cartels. This brought cheering from Lou Dobbs, but a collective groan from those who have a clue about what's happening there.
Many people like to blame NAFTA or the Mexican government for why so many Mexicans now reside in the United States - many illegally - but the truth is that the effect that the drug trade and the drug cartels have on Mexican society outweighs all other factors. Last year alone, thousands of people were killed in violence by the cartels. The money that is brought into these organizations never goes towards initiatives that can help alleviate the long-running economic problems that have crippled that nation. Instead, it goes towards whatever it takes to keep that cartel in business. And when we send more money to the Mexican government to fight them, they simply buy more guns and more law enforcement officials in order to fight back. Just as in Afghanistan, our drug control efforts don't just fail, they actually make the overall situation we deal with considerably worse.
Here in the United States, we've passed another grim milestone in this national disaster. Over 1% of the American population now resides in prison. The nation that once stood out in the world as a beacon of liberty now has 25% of the world's prison population. And this happened at a time when the incidence of most violent crime actually dropped. Despite the fact that you never hear anyone in the traditional media say it, the drug war is what's driving this trend. It's estimated that around 800,000 Americans make their living in the drug trade. Thanks to "tough on drugs" politicians, many of them face lengthy mandatory sentences if caught. These are the people who fill our prisons today, much more than rapists or murderers. Yet these organizations will never go away - because the demand for what they're selling will never go away.
Our belief, born of fear, that we must protect us from ourselves when it comes to the use of mind-altering substances is having repercussions that are far worse than if we simply let adults exercise their own best moral judgment. What should be obvious by now is that trying to criminalize the use of these substances is futile. Governments throughout time have never been able to stand between a man and his peace of mind. Man has used mind-altering substances since the beginning of human consciousness.
At the founding of our nation, it was regarded as an absolute right to be able to worship in any way one chooses. But what's the real difference between using a mind-altering drug and allowing oneself to have certainty in the unknowable? What's the difference between finding solace in faith and seeking it through an expansion of one's own mind? In fact, psychedelics and mood altering drugs have often been integral components of religious ceremonies and spiritual traditions throughout the world.
Recently, a study was done which demonstrated just how similar the two can be:
For the US study, 30 middle-aged volunteers who had religious or spiritual interests attended two eight-hour drug sessions, two months apart, receiving psilocybin in one session and a non-hallucinogenic stimulant, Ritalin, in the other. They were not told which drug was which.
One third described the experience with psilocybin as the single most spiritually significant of their lifetimes and two thirds rated it among their five most meaningful experiences.
In more than 60 per cent of cases the experience qualified as a "full mystical experience" based on established psychological scales, the researchers say. Some likened it to the importance of the birth of their first child or the death of a parent.
I find it extraordinarily incongruous that in a country where we cherish our freedom of religion that we also overwhelmingly demand that the drugs that can induce these kinds of spiritual outcomes must remain illegal. Why is it that the freedom of thought that lies at the core of why religious freedom is important is only valid if the seeds for those thoughts are generated by other men? Why is it that thoughts that are generated from our own minds are so much more dangerous to society?
Both drug use and religion - as ways to find peace of mind in the world - can easily become dependencies. Neither dependency is inherently more dangerous to society in general, even though certain drug dependencies are far more detrimental to the individual. But while drug addicts may cost us more from a health standpoint, religious fanatics can cause much more damage at their breaking point.
V
Five years ago, this country invaded Iraq, even as many of its citizens were largely misinformed about a number of relevant facts. Nearly half of us believed that Saddam was involved with 9/11 and that some of the hijackers were Iraqis. Even more believed that Saddam Hussein still maintained his chemical and biological weapons stashes. And far too many of us assumed that those in the White House would be as responsible with America's national security as the leaders who'd come before them. Five years later, we have all the necessary information to put the pieces together. It's an eyesore that many of us have just stopped looking at.
There's still a debate as to whether this invasion could have worked or whether we were doomed from the second we took off towards Baghdad. Smarter war plans could certainly have been drawn up; more troops could have been sent; documents could have been written up as a plan for managing Iraq's infrastructure and systems. If we'd done those things, we'd certainly have had a better outcome (although I'd also argue that it would not have reduced the overall threat of terrorism in any real way). But by March 2003, it wasn't a mystery that the people planning it weren't focused on doing it the right way. They exhibited - and still exhibit - a belief that winning hearts and minds is done by enforcing loyalty and respect out of fear.
This mindset had manifested itself in the form of pre-emptive warfare. After 9/11, we were told that the world had become too dangerous, and that simply waiting for others to attack us was suicide. Of course, even in the pre-9/11 period, our nation's investigative bodies like the CIA and the FBI, despite the faults they had in coordinating with each other, already did attempt to track down unfolding plots by criminal organizations. But the idea of pre-emptive warfare went a step further. The idea was that anyone who merely preached that America was a dangerous force in the world was a potential threat who needed to be dealt with as soon as possible through force and intimidation.
In this environment, Iraq, Iran, and others went from being nations we needed to keep our eyes on to being "immediate threats" who could wipe out an American city in 45 minutes. The pure logistics - whether they had the resources or the political will to do anything - became irrelevant. In the meantime, the dangerous religious fanatic who proudly took credit for 9/11, Osama bin-Laden, became a lower priority target when compared to regimes who openly displayed strong anti-American sentiments. All anti-Americanism in the Middle East was seen as one giant top-down network of evil men implanting evil thoughts unto a populace unable to think for themselves. And sadly, the place that most closely resembled this crude caricature was Saudi Arabia, our very loyal friends who produced 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11, not to mention the mastermind.
But the bombs did not fall on Riyadh, they fell on Baghdad. We started the war with "shock and awe," the first strong symbolization of the failed mindset we adopted in response to 9/11. The Bush Administration explained that an overwhelming display of force would win people to our cause. Instead it began to do the opposite. It made people skeptical of our intentions. Throughout the war, instead of dashing the skepticism, this pattern repeated itself - in Fallujah, in Sadr City - and led to paranoia and rebellion. In Abu Ghraib, we certainly weren't trying to gather information from people as we sexually humiliated and tortured them. Neither is it why we have the prison at Guantanamo Bay or the others around the world that we're still learning about. These places don't exist because we need them to discover the secret information that allows us to win the war on terror. They exist because the political leaders we're trusting to keep us safe are far too preoccupied with playing mind games with insurgents instead of doing the hard work involved with reducing the overall number of people who choose to fight us.
The lesson from these past five years should be clear. Regardless of where we choose to assert our military authority around the world in the name of the "war on terror," we can't directly control people's thoughts through intimidation, but we <span style="font-style:italic;">can</span> have influence by helping establish systems that work. Many people, especially the psychopaths in the Vice President's office, still believe that we can achieve "victory" in this war by making people fear us, but we can't. The only realistic path to "victory" is to help people build the kinds of societies that take away the desire to lash out against the powerful.
After 9/11, it was often labeled as irresponsible to ask the simple question of why. Those who made any attempt to understand the genesis of that devastating act were portrayed as being more sympathetic to it. The Bush Administration repeatedly asserted that 9/11 changed everything, but as the failures in our response have reminded us, it didn't change the laws of human nature. How we reacted to that tragedy was far too often as fear-driven and irrational as the act itself.
Much as the ascendancy of the Quraysh in ancient Mecca was a regional realignment of old systems into a more centralized system, our modern world has undergone the same evolution on a global scale. Regional and national systems of commerce and justice are slowly being rendered obsolete by the new global nature of how business is being done. As the nation whose wealth and freedom has inspired people to reject closed authoritarian systems and open up to this new world, America's symbols of power have become the symbols of these changes to the rest of the world. In the Middle East, the feelings of powerlessness that result from this realignment strike right at the heart of Islam's original foundation. And as Aslan explains in his book, the battle within Islam today is about what the appropriate way forward should be - paralleling the same moderate/extremist dichotomy that describes the western world's own divide over how to deal with those in the Muslim world who choose the extremist path. On all sides, the extremists are those who convince themselves that they can intimidate others into agreeing with them.
Today, the lingering belief of our extremists that we can make people loyal to America out of fear is no longer what keeps us there. What's keeping us there now is the grim reality of who will get to rule over the mess we've made and the oil that sits beneath it. While I still don't believe that oil was George Bush's primary motivation for invading, I don't think he would've had the political capital to march to Baghdad without the industry's support. Unfortunately, these oilmen put their faith in a group of people who didn't understand the basics of running an occupation. And now we're faced with a horrendous decision. Get out now and watch the Saudis, Iranians, and others fight it out for control of that oil, or stay there until our army is broken and our economy can't sustain it any more. As the "unserious" people in 2002 and 2003 were saying, this invasion was likely to lead us into a no-win situation. They were right.
But fighting over the resources we want to control is only part of the way we bring about more conflict in the world. We also do it by fighting over the resources we want to eliminate. Recently, we saw the first rumblings of a war breaking out in South America after a cross-border raid by Colombia into Ecuador that killed a FARC rebel leader, Raul Reyes, a man accused of running a violent drug cartel. President Bush responded to the crisis by saying the following (which was also posted at the Drug Czar's blog):
This morning I spoke to President Uribe of Colombia. He updated me on the situation in his country, including the continuing assault by narco-terrorists, as well as the provocative maneuvers by the regime in Venezuela.
I told the President that America fully supports Colombia's democracy, and that we firmly oppose any acts of aggression that could destabilize the region. I told him that America will continue to stand with Colombia as it confronts violence and terror and fights drug traffickers.
President Uribe told me that one of the most important ways America can demonstrate its support for Colombia is by moving forward with a free trade agreement that we negotiated. The free trade agreement will show the Colombian people that democracy and free enterprise lead to a better life. It will help President Uribe counter the radical vision of those who are seeking to undermine democracy and create divisions within our hemisphere.
Our country's message to President Uribe and the people of Colombia is that we stand with our democratic ally. My message to the United States Congress is that this trade agreement is more than a matter of smart economics, it is a matter of national security. If we fail to approve this agreement, we will let down our close ally, we will damage our credibility in the region, and we will embolden the demagogues in our hemisphere.
Our allies, the Colombians, were clearly at fault in this incident (they even issued an official apology to Ecuador). Colombia violated an existing understanding they had with their neighbors in the service of a larger battle against drugs being led by the United States. One more regional system of justice becoming obsolete.
Yet the President comes out of this saying that our national security rests upon Congress approving his free trade agreement and continuing to give Colombia the tools to break down the old systems of justice here. Not to mention that American protectionism often makes it impossible for the farmers of Colombia to compete within these agreements. As the new reality of being the world leader in economic freedom and justice turns out to be harder work than many of us were ready for, it's often easier to just believe in our ideals of justice and liberty than to practice them.
VI
The lamp store owner in Cairo could've fed me some bullshit to get me to overpay for that lamp. But think about what power he would have had were I not a tourist with a tour guide at his side, but instead a more desperate man negotiating for something his basic survival depended upon. What if I were a laborer or farmer who would starve if the local store owner could no longer buy from me? What if the store owner had access to captive labor? In so many ways, the pursuit of profit across the globe can lead to the degradation of human rights, yet this reality remains overly simplified and abstract to many Americans.
As the world comes to a point where the fight over basic resources is starting to be seen as a pressing matter of future global security, it's important to recognize that it's always been the case. The more people who end up without basic needs or peace of mind, the more that feelings of powerlessness will manifest itself in extremism and rebellion. But the response of America's powerful hasn't been to deal with this complexity. It's been to believe in a mountain of bullshit about the realities of the rest of the world and then sell it to the American public. They encourage us to believe in false notions of capitalism and the free market, false optimism over our current military adventures, false denial of environmental and energy concerns, and worst of all, false hope that we can enjoy the fruits of globalization while still pretending that the rest of the world doesn't matter to us. And they even have the nerve to call it patriotism.
The war on terror is not a war on dissent. But it has begun to resemble an attempt to dismantle the networks of people who sell hope to others based upon a belief that America is an unjust force in the world. Sometimes this hope is within the framework of an existing religion. Sometimes it's within the framework of a political philosophy. People rightly cherish our freedom of speech here, but too many believe that it's only here that it can lead to greater liberty. Trying to kill or silence the individuals who are selling a message that America is unjust fails to reduce terrorism in just the same way that going after the drug suppliers fails to limit the amount of drug abuse in the world. You'll never dry up the supply as long as the demand exists.
Jeremiah Wright, the pastor from Barack Obama's south Chicago church, is now seen as the Presidential hopeful's main liability. The controversy surrounds the sermon he gave after 9/11 in which he characterized the attacks as a form of payback for an arrogant America that far too often speaks of justice while spreading injustice. For those in inner-city black communities, this message is neither controversial nor shocking. African-Americans in this country have seen that America far too often. And despite the fact that Wright's words aren't terribly far off from the kinds of things said by the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr, he's being portrayed as both un-American and racist. All of this goes back to the belief that it's wrong to look at 9/11 and ask why. It's too painful for many to believe that our actions can generate this level of anger and rebellion. But even with the progress we've made through the civil rights movement, America still fails its black communities, especially through our justice system. And black communities often fail themselves as well. But this long history of powerlessness makes it easier for many to understand the rationale behind striking out at the powerful.
Barack Obama is also selling hope. People are right to point out that there's a religious undertone to his campaign and to his message. He's not telling us to believe in God, however. He's telling us to believe in America. He's telling us to believe in the power of this country to overcome both the mistakes of its past and mistakes of this past decade. This country's foundation, upon the principles of freedom, was a pseudo-religious movement in itself. Much like the creation of Islam, it created a new system of justice that was an improvement over the previous one. But also like Islam, it has often failed to live up to its own lofty ideals.
People wonder why Obama stayed within that church - knowing that Reverend Wright was prone to extremist rhetoric. This disbelief stems from a failure to grasp the way supply and demand works when it comes to faith in our black communities and an incomplete view of Wright's preaching. If Jeremiah Wright does not strike a chord with the discontent and the powerlessness felt within black communities, the people of those communities will get their hope from someone else. Religious figures succeed when they tap into extremist emotions are then translate them into messages of moderation. They fail when they allow the extremism to expand. Just taking random quotes from Wright's speeches makes it impossible to know whether or not he has accomplished this on the whole over his long career.
Barack Obama has been a part of this environment for years, but he clearly never gave up his free will or his ability to reason to do so. He now preaches to a larger choir, the entire country, and his message of hope has him within sight of the White House. Because of his experiences working within a community like the Chicago's South Side, he brings a perspective to his campaign that makes him a remarkably unique candidate, but also one that we now see carries some big political risks.
In what was arguably the most controversial part of God is not Great, Hitchens spends a chapter exploring whether or not religious indoctrination can be child abuse. He gives examples of how dangerous it can be when children are forced into extreme belief systems. The real danger, though, is not the beliefs themselves, but instead the result of raising a child who enters adulthood without the ability to think for himself or herself. Trying to navigate through the adult world with one's basis for reality rooted entirely in faith is a recipe for disaster. Children are served best by being taught that they can be lied to, and for them to learn how to employ a rational basis for approaching the world.
The speech that Barack Obama gave last week in Philadelphia was in some ways a challenge to Americans. We far too often behave like a nation of children, believing in fairy tales rather than dealing with the harsh realities that face us. Obama wants us to rise up against Captain Santa Claus. For those of us who recognize the failings of the war on terror, the shaky stewardship of the world's economy, the destruction brought about by the drug war, and the dire need to unite the world under a better system for managing the world's resources and dealing with climate change, this is the kind of hope that we're in the market for.