Where to start?
I was interested in participating in this exercise partly because I had avoided Wallis' book like the plague and wondered if maybe I was missing something.
I had avoided it primarily for two reasons. One, the shrill campaign to get people to buy the book and propel it into the Amazon and New York Times best seller lists. I complained about that at the time and wondered whether Wallis thinks the end justifies the means (hypocrisy alert...) Two, he's pretty much an unrepentant bleeding heart liberal and dressing up his views in the guise of bipartisan politics bashing wears thin very quickly.
Again, as I've noted earlier there should really be a long pause between the two parts of the subtitle "Why the Right Gets It Wrong... ... ... ... ... ... and the Left Doesn't Get It". Through eight chapters there's precious little of the latter, and in chapter eight there are exactly (let me count here, carry the two, subtract the five...) zero words about the left and its abject failure to present a viable alternative to Bush's plans (apart from crossing its fingers and wishing upon a star, that is).
Another thing that bugs me harks back to something Brian McLaren says often. Which is that when arguing our point of view, we often compare our best to our opponent's worst. McLaren says we should guard against that and I agree. Yet Wallis, a good friend of McLaren's by all accounts, does this relentlessly, always taking the poorest possible view of his opponent and portraying his own motives as pure and spotless. In this way he comes across as more of a typical politician than a religious leader. (I too may violate this "rule" in this post, but then I'm not asking you to shell out $20 for a book...)
Reading the book it's pretty evident that Wallis had no real editor. Every chapter rambles from topic to topic with endless repetition and endless repetition. By the way, have I mentioned the endless repetition? Tightly edited, this book could have run to about 150 pages instead of 374. Content-wise, I get the impression for some reason (call me gifted) that he doesn't like George W. Bush. Just a hunch. By the time we get to an actual chapter of the book dedicated to the Iraq war, we've already been through endless diatribes on the subject so the topic itself seems stale and redundant by the time we actually get here.
But hey, enough of an introduction.
I remember driving to work with my carpool buddy in the month before the invasion. We both agreed it had all the potential to be another Vietnam, and would likely be a very bad move. We figured the military would win the "war" part easily enough and then winning the "peace" part would be a much longer and messy process. We were obviously right. I don't think we were the only geniuses in the world who figured that out. If (a big if, obviously) one believed that invasion was a viable course of action, then the only way to make it work was to do it and stick to the plan relentlessly, through the pain and anguish and suffering. Would people die? Absolutely. Would it be worth it? I guess that's the 64 million dollar question.
So what was the point of this war anyway?
Even Wallis is in agreement that Saddam had to be removed. The catalogue of human rights abuses was beyond the pale and showed no signs of stopping despite ever increasing international scrutiny. At this point it only remains to determine the method by which Saddam would be removed. The idealists (generally left and pacifist) favored the "sit back and hope the UN magically morphs into a body capable of any kind of action" approach. The pragmatists (generally conservative and willing to intervene militarily) favored the "you have to break eggs to make an omelet" approach.
What are the religious values associated with each position? It's a lot muddier than Wallis claims. Certainly in the US, a large majority of self-identified religious people endorsed the war by voting Bush back into office. He got a large percentage of evangelical voters, but actually won the Catholic vote by a small margin, a slight improvement over the 2000 election. All that despite the war being roundly denounced by the Pope. If anything, this goes to show that the war was not a big influence in how religious people voted. Even the Popes old and new were conflicted, condemning Kerry for his stance on abortion.
The pacifist religious position leans a lot on Jesus' teachings on turning the other cheek, and there's a lot to commend that. However, Wallis also like to delve into the Old Testament, citing the prophets, and by implication claiming the same status for himself. However, once you go to the OT, you open up a huge can of pacifist worms, because there's a heck of a lot of God-sanctioned smiting going on there. It's a bit disingenuous to arm wave that away with a, "Well, Jesus changed the whole game".
This chapter is as curious for what Wallis doesn't say as what he does. He goes on at length about Bush and the US government and unilateralism. The fact is this was not a unilateral act. The US may not have had a lot of allied troops in place, and a lot of the big names were missing, but the coalition had actually shrunk to 32 nations by mid-2004.
Admittedly, the 22,000 troops from these 32 nations are dwarfed by the 140,000 or so of the US, but to imply that this was a unilateral action is simply not true. And most of all, what of Bush's staunchest ally, Tony Blair? Say what you will of Bush's alleged defective mental capacity, the same can not be said of Blair. He learned a lot watching Bill Clinton outmaneuver his opposition and he plays the game even better, all while demonstrating impeccable personal morality (something Clinton found impossible).
Bush and Blair both faced elections within a couple of years of the start of the war. There is no way on earth that either of them believed that this operation would be over and done by the time each of them had to go to the polls. I believe their primary goal was (and remains) to change the face of the Middle East by turning Iraq into a model democratic state. The tricky part is that, while this goal may be fairly transparent, you can't just get out there and tell the world that's what you're up to. Who wants to play poker with their five cards face up? Hence the canard of WMDs and extending the war on terror.
I don't think it ever mattered to Bush and Blair whether WMDs were found or not - except for handling the political spin. (However, they were a real threat. Saddam acted as if he had them, leading the UN and its inspectors down a carefully orchestrated garden path. He must have thought he was being pretty damn clever. And given the utter incompetence and ineffectuality of the UN, he was probably laughing up his sleeve all the way to the torture chamber every day.) The goal appears to have been to do exactly what was achieved - win the military war and get the process of democracy moving before the US and UK elections, hoping to retain office despite taking a hit at the polls and then moving on to get Iraq into as decent a democratic shape as possible.
Well, Bush won more handily than even he could have expected, and Blair looks poised to do the same in a week's time. Even if he loses to the conservative party, they are just as likely to keep on with the plan anyway. Read, for instance, this story from the BBC. From that article, here's a hint that a democratic Iraq is the key to a different kind of Middle East:
"Ministers are beginning to construct a case that Iraq was the first domino that will lead to the fall of dictatorships all over the Middle East.
But Mr Blair won't win many votes on the issue that has defined his second term as Prime Minister."
Not that he probably needs to. It will be very interesting to see how the UK election turns out next Thursday.
It's interesting that Wallis chooses to end the chapter with four pages describing his last ditch meeting with Blair, but fails to provide any resolution about why it failed or what Blair's reaction was to the plea. Nor does he, at any point that I recall, chastise Tony Blair for his support of Bush. The lack of questioning about his support for the war is curious, much like the story of the dog that barked in the night.
Wallis is not above using overstated claims to make his point, either. On page 122 he notes that "reliable accounts say as many as 100,000 Iraqis have lost their lives". Well, apparently they aren't as reliable as he hoped. Even the hardly pro-Bush Iraq Body Count only claims between 21,000 and 24,000 total so far which includes actions by insurgents such as suicide bombings. More than 20,000 lives lost isn't anything to be happy about, but it's 10,000 a year, or about 0.1% of the population over the two years. What was the death toll per annum under Saddam and his lackeys? From
1979 to 2003 one estimate puts the number at an average of about
16,000 per year, with occasional peaks for the genocide of Kurds and thinning
out of Shia Muslims.
Just as a point of reference, compare that with the Irish potato famine of 1846-1850 where one million of an eight million population died for a 12.5% total or 2.5% per year, and the population continued down to a mere 5 million after that.
So after all that, what can I conclude?
I think merely that the war isn't as bad an idea as Wallis thinks. It may not have been the best approach, but it may well succeed at changing the face of the Middle East.
Is that playing God?
Well, when has politics not been about playing God?
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