rain and the rhinoceros

One of the best journalists in the U.S. Amy Goodman recently interviewed the so-called “intellectual rock star” Slavoj Zizek on Iraq, Bush, and the War on Terror. You can watch, listen, or read the transcript of Part I and Part II.

I hope the ambassador is wrong on this…

US, Vatican share goals in Iraq, American ambassador says

Rome, Mar. 26, 2008 (CWNews.com) - The new US ambassador to the Holy See says that Pope Benedict XVI and President George W. Bush will explore their common goals– including the pursuit of religious freedom, human rights, and a stable democracy in Iraq– when they meet during the Pontiff’s visit to Washington in April.

In an interview with Vatican Radio, Ambassador Mary Ann Glendon said that the Pope and the President had found ample common ground in previous discussions. “They hit it off, so to speak,” she reported.

Questioned about the war in Iraq, and the Vatican calls for further efforts to safeguard the Christian minority there, the US envoy observed that after the death of Archbishop Paul Faraj Raho, the US and the Vatican issued statements that were “very much in the same vein– condemning the violence, condemning terrorism, and especially condemning religion as a pretext for terrorism.” The situation in Iraq is difficult, however, she said, because “there are elements in society that are determined to defeat the common aim of the United States and the Holy See.”

Acknowledging that there was “some initial disagreement” between the Vatican and the US regarding the war in Iraq, Glendon said that today the two parties share a common goal there: “to promote the building of a free and democratic and stable society where persons of all religious faiths will be protected.”

Article from Catholic World News

All lyrics by Bruce Cockburn and images from AfterDowningStreet.org

Tell the universe what you’ve done
Out in the desert with your smoking gun
Looks like you’ve been having too much fun
Tell the universe what you’ve done

Tell the universe what you took
While the heavens trembled and the mountains shook
All those lives not worth a second look
Tell the universe what you took

You’ve been projecting your shit at the world
Self-hatred tarted up as payback time
You can self destruct-that’s your right
But keep it to yourself if you don’t mind

Tell the universe where you’ve been
With your bloodstained shoes and your dunce’s grin
Got to identify next of kin
Tell the universe where you’ve been

Everything’s broken in the birthplace of law
As Generation Two tries on his tragic flaw
America’s might under desert sun
I saw her frightened eyes behind the muzzle of her gun

Uranium dust and the smell of decay
Sewage in the street where the kids run and play
Not enough morphine and not enough gauze
Firefight in darkness like snapping of jaws
This is Baghdad
This is Baghdad
This is Baghdad
This is Baghdad
This is Baghdad
This is Baghdad
This is Baghdad

You couldn’t see the blast-the morning was bright-
But some radiant energy flared up into the light
Like the sky throwing its hands up in a horrified dismay
Or the souls of the dead as they sped on their way

Carbombed and carjacked and kidnapped and shot
How do you like it, this freedom we brought
We packed all the ordnance but the thing we forgot
Was a plan in case it didn’t turn out quite like we thought
This is Baghdad
This is Baghdad
This is Baghdad
This is Baghdad
This is Baghdad
This is Baghdad
This is Baghdad

L ron N ron every kind of ron con
Neocon old con got to put the brakes on
Slow down fast

Lights out veins plugged zap it with another drug
Genejacker pharma thug say hello to superbug
Slow down fast

Shills and hawkers and rockers with walkers
Bombs in the lockers and brain dead mockers
Slow down fast

One-eyed sun leering through the haze
Hordes of loveless marching while the little drummer plays
Nail in the coffin rats in the maze
Dancing arm in arm towards the looming end of days
Got to slow down

Oil wars water wars tv propaganda whores
Fire alarm met with snores no one gets what’ gone before
Slow down fast

Flagwave hammer slave gonna be a close shave
Stay brave jump the grave got to save what we can save
Slow down fast

Got to slow down fast
Slow down fast
CSIS won’t you tell me what you’ve got on me?

As I stare into the flames
filled up with feelings I can’t name
Images of life appear –
regret and anger, love and fear
Dark things drift across the screen
of mine behind whose veil are seen
love’s ferocious eyes, and clear
the words come flying to my ear
Go on — put it in your heart –
Put it in your heart
Terrible deeds done in the name
of tunnel vision and fear of change
surely are expressions of
a soul that’s turned its back on love
All the sirens all the tongues
The song of air in every lung
Heaven’s perfect alchemy
put me with you and you with me
Come on — put that in your heart
Come on, put it in your heart
All the sirens all the tongues
The song of air in every lung
Heaven’s perfect alchemy
Put me with you and you with me

Come on, put it in your heart
Come on, put it in your heart

In his provocative article, “Communion and Otherness,”1 Zizioulas states not without a tone of lament, “The world at this moment is dominated by Western culture.”2 In a time when Western political and economic systems dominate and exert themselves on the world, Orthodoxy cannot afford to become merely another “‘exotic’ religion offering refuge to those seeking mystical and other extraordinary experiences.”3 Instead, following the ancient church as a model, Orthodoxy, especially those members living in the West, must engage and strive to transform culture. Zizioulas urges the Orthodox church “to relate tradition to the problems of modern Western man, which are rapidly becoming the problems of humanity in its global dimension.”4 The individualism that is rooted in the “very foundations of this culture” regrettably views the happiness and rights of the individual so highly that it makes “protection from the other. . . a fundamental necessity.”5 As a result, “we are forced and even encouraged to consider the other as our enemy before we can treat him or her as our friend.”6 Acceptance of the other is always conditional on the basis that this other does not “threaten our privacy or insofar as he is useful for our individual happiness.”7In Zizioulas’ assessment the values and ideals of Western culture, heralded by the United States in particular, actually perpetuate fear of the other.

This essay is broken up into two parts. In the first section, we will make the case that the Bush administration with the help of the media8 has constructed a depersonalized and stereotyped Arab/Muslim other9 to justify a seemingly unending “war on terrorism.” In the second section, we will undertake a study of Zizioulas’ theology of the Eucharist to support our thesis that the Eucharist enacts a vision that resists all methods of depersonalization and stereotyping by opening up a set of human relations in which the other is affirmed as particular and unique. Our hope in this paper is to offer a small contribution to the recent retrieval of the social meaning of Christian worship.10

———————————————

1. The article first appeared in John Zizioulas, “Communion and Otherness,” St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 38.04, pp. 347-361. A revised form of the essay appears as the introduction of Zizioulas’ recent publication Communion & Otherness: Further Studies in Personhood and the Church (New York: T&T Clark, 2006), 1-12.
2. Zizioulas, “Communion and Otherness,” 348.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid
5..Ibid., 349.
6. Ibid., 349.
7. Ibid., 349.
8. I am fully aware that the term, “the media,” carries some ambiguity. By media, I mean to refer specifically to mainstream corporate news outlets, such as CNN or The New York Times. Analysis of other forms of media, such as the portrayal of Arab/Muslims in film, literature, theatre, photography, and art is beyond the scope of this paper and has been discussed elsewhere. See, for instance, Matthew Bernstein and Gaylyn Studlar eds., Visions of the East: Orientalism in film (Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997).
9. Of course, the Western construction of an Arab/Muslim other is hardly a recent phenomenon. Here, I take Edward Said’s basic thesis for granted. See Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon books, 1978. See also, Douglas Little, American Orientalism: The United States and the Middle East Since 1945 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001). Said’s basic thesis is that knowledge of the East in Western imagination has been generated primarily by constructs that juxtapose the East as the antithesis of the West.
10. See especially William T. Cavanaugh, Theopolitical Imagination (New York: T&T Clark, 2003) and Torture and Eucharist: Theology, Politics, and the Body of Christ (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998); Stanley Hauerwas and Samuel Wells eds., The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004); Bernd Wannenwetsch, Political Worship: Ethics for Christian Citizens (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

It is a little vulgar (okay it is really vulgar), but this comic strip is hilarious.

Over the next couple of weeks I will be posting an essay that I recently wrote in the form of a series. The full title of the paper is “The Eucharist and the ‘War on Terrorism’: John Zizioulas’ theology of the Eucharist and the refusal to reject the Other.” This is my first blogging attempt at posting a “series,” so bare with me. The following is the first post of the series and the beginning of the essay.

The tragic events of September 11, 2001, coupled with the President’s rhetoric about the shadowy nature of the enemy, played into people’s fear of the other. The Bush administration, with the help of the media, constructed a larger-than-life “terrorist enemy” and promised to rid the entire world of evil forever through the deployment of massive military force. By exploiting this fear of the other, the Bush administration gained wide support from the nation’s citizens, including many Christians, to justify the invasion of Afghanistan and later, under a related pretext, the invasion of Iraq for the second time in just over a decade.

Orthodox theologian John Zizioulas directly identifies the fear of the other with the fall of humanity. He writes, “There is a pathology built into the very roots of our existence, inherited through our birth, and that is the fear of the other.”1 Adam’s sin was the “rejection of the Other par excellence, our Creator.”2 Any hope for reconciliation with the other, therefore, relies on our first being reconciled to God. Our fear of the other is, however, reflective of a much deeper and universal fear of all otherness.3 The fear of all otherness is the fear that difference poses a threat to our individual security. Even when fear of the other is apparently overcome, when we begin to accept a particular other, for instance, Zizioulas argues that we do so only on the condition that this other is similar to ourselves. In other words, we are resistant, and indeed cannot even bare to accept, much less affirm radical difference or absolute otherness.

When we gather together in the mystery of the Holy Eucharist we enter into communion with the triune God, with one another, and with the whole of creation. At the same time, in the Eucharistic celebration otherness is radically affirmed and difference no longer leads to division. In Zizioulas’ words, in the Eucharist “difference ceases to be divisive and becomes good. . . unity or communion does not destroy but rather affirms diversity and otherness.”4 The Eucharist is thus the act in which “communion and otherness is realized par excellence.”5 This series of posts will explore John Zizioulas’ notion that communion and otherness is fully realized in the Eucharistic celebration. Building on the work of Zizioulas we will argue that the Eucharist enacts a vision or an “ethos” that resists all methods of depersonalization and stereotyping of the other by positively affirming the absolute uniqueness and particularity of each and every human person. We will show that Zizioulas’ theology of the Eucharist has a cosmic and profoundly social dimension which has implications for how the church should respond to the distorted construction of an “Arab/Muslim” other in the United States led “war on terrorism.”

____________________________
1John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness: Further Studies in Personhood and the Church (New York: T&T Clark, 2006), 1.
2 Communion & Otherness, 1.
3 Ibid., 2.
4 Ibid., 7.
5 Ibid., 7.

In the latest edition of Commonweal Andrew Bacevich and Matthew Shadle discuss whether or not the United States should withdraw from Iraq.
Bacevich is professor of international relations at Brown University. His latest book is The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War. Shadle is instructor of religious studies at Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa. In their debate, Bacevich responds to Shadle’s argument that the United States must keep fighting in Iraq. He states,

“There’s no doubt about it: A nation that embarks on a morally problematic war incurs stiff obligations. The war begun in March 2003 when the United States needlessly and recklessly chose to invade Iraq offers a case in point. On that score Matthew Shadle and I are in full agreement. But to suggest that the only way to acquit those obligations is to go on fighting constitutes a failure of moral imagination.”

For at least the past year the same debate has gone on in the U.S. and it is so sickening. It usually goes something like this: “Well we messed up Iraq, but we can’t just leave” or my favorite, “cut and run.” Somehow the administration (and the Democrats) have convinced the American people that the only choice we have is to stay in this war.

Bacevich responds to this:

There may be realms of human endeavor where sheer persistence transforms a dumb idea into a good one. War, however, is not among them. Bad wars don’t become good wars simply by hanging in there. In fact, persevering in a misguided war almost always makes things worse, both politically and morally. Iraq is one such war.

Bacevich lays out three alternatives that the U.S. could be doing instead of funneling more money into military surges. I found his thoughts very helpful. So I will quote him at length, but if you have a moment check out the article, No Exit From Iraq?

One possibility is to provide the wherewithal to care for the estimated 2 million Iraqi refugees who have fled that country since the U.S. invasion. Most of these Iraqis now reside in Jordan, Syria, and Egypt, nations ill equipped to provide food and shelter, clean water and adequate medical care, jobs and education. For affluent America to foot the bill for the refugees would make for a nice down payment on our moral debt.

A second possibility is to provide sanctuary in the United States for those refugees and for those Iraqis who have supported U.S. forces or worked for U.S. government agencies in Iraq. Permanent residence in the United States will mean safety and the opportunity for a new life, a wonderful way to meet our moral obligations and fully consistent with American tradition. We should open our doors and our communities to Iraq’s huddled masses.

A third option is to take the money the Bush administration is currently spending on the war and use it instead to make Iraq whole, if and when the violence there eventually subsides. Currently, the war costs American taxpayers $4 billion per week. Let’s earmark three years’ worth of war spending-that’s roughly $600 billion-for the reconstruction and repair of Iraq’s infrastructure. By rebuilding schools and hospitals, road and bridges, towns and villages, such a “Marshall Plan” for Iraq would go far toward making amends to those who have suffered as a consequence of the war.

Along the way, the U.S. government might want to issue a public apology for having collaborated with Saddam Hussein in the 1980s and for having abandoned the Kurds and Shiites who rose up against him in 1991 at our behest. We should offer affected Shiites monetary compensation-there are ample precedents for such action. To compensate the Kurds, we might support their ambitions to create a fully independent Kurdistan, offering security guarantees to ensure that these oft-abused and frequently betrayed people will be allowed to live in peace.

So what do you think? What is the United States’ obligation to the Iraqi people? We are nearly 5 years into this war without an end in sight. Can we use our imagination?

In The Know: White House Announces ‘Everything Is Great In Iraf’

A close family friend of mine, Barbara Lea, just completed a captivating art project in honor of United States women killed while on duty in Iraq. I encourage you to visit her site to see the display she calls “Born to War.”

In November’s mid-term elections Democrats gained control of the US House and Senate. Democrats were voted in because people want our troops to withdraw from Iraq. As the latest Gallop poll reports, 72% of the country does not approve of the way George W. Bush is handling the situation in Iraq. 90% of people believe it is very-extremely important for the Democrats to deal with the problems in Iraq in the next year, while only 25% are confident that Democrats have a plan. 61% of the public oppose a significant increase in the number of U.S. troops in Iraq to help stabilize the situation there.

President Bush is expected to announce his plan to send over 20,000 more troops to Iraq (a significant increase). Most Democrats in Congress have said they will actively oppose the plan to increase troop levels. However, they have also made clear that they will not stop funding for a troop increase. If the Democrats vote against troop increase but decide to vote to fund it, then their actions, though symbolic, are void of meaning.

The only way to end a war is stop funding it. Dennis Kucinich is absolutely right in his recent statement, “You can’t say you’re opposed to the war and keep funding it.” In reality Democrats will not be opposing a troop increase if they vote to fund the effort.