Road Maps and Trade Routes

One of the sillier things Nancy Pelosi did shortly after becoming Speaker of the House last year was to meet with Syrian President Bashar Assad and declare “that the road to Damascus is a road to peace." Shades of Hanoi Jane! Not that her foreign policy meddling did any real harm, on the contrary it served to highlight an emerging a new order in the Middle East that could finally bring peace to a region that has frustrated the best diplomatic efforts of every US president since Harry Truman. If, as seems increasingly likely, Iraq can be stabilized as a peaceful and responsible player then Syria and Iran will be the sole remaining recalcitrants. Turkey, Jordan, and Egypt have all long since made their peace with Israel. Now Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Arab League have decided that a settlement establishing Israel as a permanent regional power is in everyone’s best interest and are taking an active role in trying to make it happen. If they follow it up with efforts to tone down the anti-Israeli rhetoric in their media this could be the most positive development since the founding of the Jewish state. The Iraqi if is a big one but if 2008 produces anything like the progress of 2007 prospects look pretty good. Barack Obama is a potential loose cannon. Of all the presidential candidates he is the most determined to pull American troops out precipitously regardless of consequences. A Vietnam style mad rush for the exits is the single greatest risk for a catastrophic collapse into chaos that could rapidly spread. By now it has become obvious to everybody except Iran, Syria, and Obama that it is in everyone’s security interest to see a strong, stable and peaceful Iraq emerge from the ashes of the Saddam Hussein regime. My guess is it will be years yet before all this is sorted out and there is still a critical need for policies that will have positive effects over the long term. The two players that have the most to offer here are the US and the European Union. The single most effective tool they have is trade. Every major country in the Middle East save possibly Turkey has a stagnant economy and massive demographic problems with increasingly well educated, youthful underemployed populations, oil revenues not withstanding. They need the prosperity that comes with trade. Both the US and the EU have spent years negotiating more liberal trade with corresponding benefits all around. Unfortunately John McCain is the only current presidential candidate inclined to continue it and even if he is elected anti-trade talk in congress is likely to present major obstacles. The good news is the EU is the nearer and more important trading partner and is actively negotiating improved political, economic, and social relations with no fewer than ten countries around the Mediterranean, including Syria. It’s a shame that the US appears to be ready to take a back seat on this. America’s economic interest will be harmed most. We will be debating the wisdom of invading Iraq for many years but it is looking as though George Bush may be about to accomplish what six decades of diplomacy have failed to do. He had a lot of help but it was he who took the fullest responsibility for changing a status quo that was going not exactly nowhere but certainly not anywhere very fast. He could still fail but it’s looking more and more likely that he will leave office with prospects for peace in the world the best they’ve ever been. North Korean nuclear ambitions look a lot more manageable. Iran is almost completely isolated. Syria is her only ally and Syria’s own neighbors are warning her that Iranian hegemony would be a dangerous beast. Sounds like quite a Bush legacy to me.

It’s the Economy, Stupid

With all the current talk about looming economic recession I am reminded of the Clinton campaign’s 1992 catch phrase. That election turned on the economy and it looks as though this one could too. As it did that year the talk comes with an ugly undercurrent of protectionist sentiment. Ross Perot’s famous warning to expect a giant sucking sound as jobs went south with NAFTA resonated with a lot of Americans. This time around the support is broader and I think more dangerous. Candidates from both major parties are questioning the benefits of free trade. Even Hillary Clinton has suggested a moratorium on the agreements. It’s time to recall a little history. Like a lot of Americans my parents suffered heavily during the Great Depression and I well remember hearing stories about it as a child. President Herbert Hoover is hardly remembered for anything else but history books barely mention what actually caused it. Some scholars point to the protectionist Smoot-Hawley act of 1930 and retaliation by other countries as the trigger. Some point to other factors but there is no question that international trade ground to a halt, people were thrown out of work all over the world, and that decade will be forever known for its breadlines. Germans suffered even more than most because ruinous inflation had already all but wiped out their middle class. Adolph Hitler found a ready audience for his fascist promises. Franklin Roosevelt responded with the 1934 Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act and America led the world down a path of steadily advancing trade liberalization that has continued right up until today. My parents would never have dreamed of the explosion in global prosperity that came with it. Nor would they have dreamt of a world where the prospect of another major war is as remote as it is today. The three issues are connected. Let’s take Europe for example. We are accustomed to thinking of our own economy as the world’s largest. It will come as a shock to some that it isn’t. The aggregate GDP of the European Union last year is estimated at a staggering $14.44 trillion. Ours was about $13.86 trillion, higher on a per capita basis but a bit smaller overall. Think about Europe’s past. The people of that continent were at war with each other with only brief periods of respite from the days of Julius Caesar right up to 1945. The grinding poverty they experienced was responsible for all but a fraction of the immigration that built America into the most powerful nation in the world. Then after WWII they began to integrate their economies for the first time. By the end of the cold war the wealth disparity may have been the signal factor in the collapse of the Soviet Union. Any outbreak of armed hostilities among member nations today would be as unthinkable as a border war between Texas and Oklahoma. Think about what makes our own economy so strong. It’s no coincidence that the several states are prohibited by the constitution from interfering with interstate commerce. We are a free trade zone by definition. Oregon cannot impose punitive tariffs on wine imported from California. Michigan cannot impose safety requirements on a BMW manufactured in Alabama if it exempts Buicks assembled in Detroit. The resulting flow of goods and services across state boundaries has been an economic boost interrupted only by the Civil War. It isn’t just interstate trade either. The single sector of our economy that has shielded us thus far from the current threat of recession has been exports. It’s not been much in the news but they’ve been growing at a healthy clip, especially to NAFTA countries, giant sucking sound not withstanding.

Addressing Muslims’ Image Problem

I have to admit my view of Muslims is influenced by a stereotype and it is not a pretty image. It comes mostly from the news but also from movies, books, political cartoons, and unfortunately from some of the few Muslims I have met. You know the picture: intolerant, sexist, violent, and ignorant are among the adjectives that come to mind. I realize it is unfair to paint all Muslims with that brush. If all one knew about Christians came from the nightly news one might think we were all murderers and rapists. So in recent years I have tried to make myself better informed by reading up on Islam and its history. On occasion I accept invitations to attempts at interfaith dialog. Last week I picked up a FAQ by Dr. Zakir Naik from the Islamic Research Foundation. A Plano Mosque handed it out as background reading for a class directed at non-Muslims. The FAQ is intended to dispel common misperceptions. It doesn’t. Some of it is downright offensive. I won’t conduct a point by point disputation but Dr. Naik defends polygamy partly by asserting that since there are more women than men in the world, some women have no choice but to marry a man who already has one wife. Otherwise she becomes “public property.” I’m not making this up. Worse, he insists that not wearing a veil invites molestation. I would call that blaming the victim. My wife and daughters go out in public unveiled and attractively dressed. They are most certainly not inviting molesters. He contends that western society, far from uplifting women, has degraded “them to the status of concubines, mistresses, and social butterflies…” Talk about a stereotype! I have a couple of (well intended) suggestions for Muslims like Dr. Naik who would have people like me think more positively about Islam and Muslims. Don’t be so defensive. Promote the virtues of Islam without excusing bad behavior among Muslims. Yes, Islam is a peaceful religion but most of today’s suicide assassins are Muslims. I’d like to hear what their fellow Muslims propose to do about that, not hear it dismissed as it often is with the bromide “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” If you don’t see anything wrong with terrorism you are reinforcing my stereotype. Modesty is certainly a virtue and Muslims are right to promote it but when they tell non-Muslims their women are no better than prostitutes they should not expect a sympathetic ear. Don’t pretend the hijab has never been used as an instrument of repression. Those stories about Taliban mistreatment of women aren’t all lies. Who is going to speak up? Be careful of double standards. You may not see them but your listeners do. When you decry the 1492 expulsion of Muslims and Jews from Spain as a great humanitarian catastrophe many would agree. When you see nothing wrong in the seventh century massacre and mass deportation of Jews and Christians from what is now Saudi Arabia you betray a moral inconsistency. Caliph Omar viewed the presence of unbelievers on hallowed ground as sacrilege. So did Ferdinand and Isabella. Most of all, be sensitive to the legitimate concerns of your audience. I often get the impression Muslims are only interested in monologue, not dialog. Spokesmen like Dr. Naik appear oblivious to the non-Muslim point of view. He makes me wonder if he has ever really talked to any. I would like very much to understand what so many Muslims, and especially Arabs, are so angry about. I would feel a lot better if more Muslims gave me the idea they were as anxious to understand what makes me worry about them.

Holy Anthropomorphism

It’s a concept we can all agree on. We recognize it readily in others but are blind to it in ourselves. It’s one of the most dangerous failings in human nature. We assign human characteristics and failings to a God who transcends human understanding, a God who has no frailty or base motives. When we do that we invite disaster. Throughout history the habit has been responsible for much of our greatest inhumanity. We don’t recognize it when we are guilty. We don’t believe it when it is pointed out. We confuse avarice with entitlement and blame our brother for our theft of his inheritance, secure in the belief that we are in the right. God meant for us to have it. That alone has been the ruin of more families than there are birds in the sky. We are at our worst when we go to war believing God is on our side. Our enemies are God’s enemies, undeserving of the most basic obligations of human kindness or consideration. That’s how Joshua justified exterminating the original inhabitants as Hebrews occupied the Promised Land. It’s how Christians justified slaughter of every Jew and Muslim man woman or child as Crusaders entered Jerusalem in triumph. It’s how American zealots justified wanton massacres in the Indian Wars. It’s how modern Muslim extremists justify the murder of innocents with their mad suicide assassins. It is the reason I am uncomfortable with our own characterization of the War on Terror as a contest between good and evil, as though an omnipotent God could have enemies among mortal man. This week I attended the first in a series of five introductory classes on Islam at our local Mosque. I’ve been before in an ongoing effort to understand why so many Muslims are so angry, and what on earth their anger has to do with us. The Mosque offers the classes as part of a sort of community outreach program. They think if we understood Islam better we would be less apprehensive of Muslims. I’m not sure they are right about that but it is certainly worth the effort. They are most hospitable in these meetings and are anxious to make non-Muslims feel welcome, not at all the image we have of them. This latest meeting was moderately well attended with people who learned about it from ads in the paper, from a banner posted outside the Mosque, but mostly from their own church bulletins. There was a beautiful introductory recital from the Koran in Arabic by an adolescent boy, a short lecture from an Imam, and a Q&A. One question was “If we all worship the same God why are there so many religious wars?” I liked the Imam’s answer. He thinks many of these wars have been based less on religion than is advertised. Extraneous motives are often cloaked in religious guise. The question and the answer could have referred to any number of the wars we’ve had over the last two thousand years. I think many of the worst offenders are sincere in their religious conviction. They are just wrong and I wish we talked more about that. Sir Walter Scott in his classic Ivanhoe has a Knight Templar telling a hapless Jew he only touches Jews with the point of a sword. It was a common sentiment of the day and St. Louis would have approved. My church has moved past that sort of religious bigotry but I’m not sure we have really addressed the underlying issue. If we consider something evil does that give us license to disregard all common decency in dealing with it? So stated I think most of us would say not. But we don’t usually state the issue in such stark terms. We should. When we invoke religious imagery in our battles we run the risk of confusing God’s will with our own prejudices. Muslims ought to be careful about that. So should we. Maybe we all ought to tone down the rhetoric a bit.