"All Slaw, No Ribs" (a meditation on "history's unmarked grave of discarded lies")
a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the Second Congregational Meeting House on Nantucket Island.
Sunday September 8. 2002
READING: Romans 12: 9-21 “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good”
***
There was a cartoon in the New York Times a few weeks ago, which I liked so much I cut it out and pasted it into the flyleaf of my diary, and have been chuckling over it ever since. A group of politicians are sitting around a table, while their leader stands and addresses them: “Gentlemen, the time for empty rhetoric is over, and the time for hollow threats has begun.”
Like many of you, and indeed, I imagine, many people throughout the entire world, I’ve been reflecting quite a bit these past few weeks about the events of last September 11th, and the ways in which the world has changed in the last twelve months as a result of those events and our responses to them. I’ve been reading and listening to other commentators, comparing their reflections to my own, wondering what it the world I was going to say here publicly as we approach the first anniversary of that terrible day. It’s difficult for me to characterize the full range of my emotions, much less my thoughts, as I go through this process of reflection, but occasionally I will stumble across something, like the Times cartoon, which just seem to crystalize, in an instant, the entire realm of my thought and feeling. For example, Daniel Schorr’s observation at the conclusion of his National Public Radio commentary yesterday, that Americans now seem to him “sadder, but not much wiser” than we were a year ago. Or Maureen Dowd’s clever comparison, also in the Times, of the President’s recent penchant for empty rhetoric to a bad Texas barbecue: “All slaw, no ribs.”
But neither of these professional journalists could match the heartfelt eloquence of an anonymous radio talk show caller, who said, in effect, that he felt that America had squandered a great opportunity in the last twelve months, frittering away the tremendous sympathy and good will that existed toward us in the aftermath of September 11th through our arrogant, bellicose posturing and self-righteous unilateralism.
I wish that I could remember more of this caller’s precise words, because he articulated my own sentiments almost exactly. These days I generally feel far more terrified by the policies of my own government than by any imaginable threat to my personal safety posed by Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein. And this in turn leaves me wondering whether I am just somehow out of touch with reality, or if perhaps instead it is our leaders who have lost touch with what is real, with what really matters, and who need to be brought back to their senses by sensible men and women who understand that sometimes the cure is worse than the disease, especially when the diagnosis is wrong, the treatment ineffective, and the cost of the prescriptions prohibitively expensive for the majority of us who still lack access to affordable health care.
In the past twelve months we have neither brought the terrorists to justice, nor have we brought justice to the terrorists. Instead, we have seen the erosion of our Constitutional civil liberties here at home, and the initiation overseas of an open-ended war of potentially unlimited duration against an ill-defined enemy who seems to change with the President’s mood, or at least his latest polling numbers. As our enemies have multiplied, our allies have steadily backed away from us, or in some instances have used the excuse of “the war against terror” as a vehicle for settling old scores of their own. It all seems like a bad dream, or worse: a badly-written sequel to a made-for-TV docu-drama in which an ensemble cast of washed-up, second-rate supporting actors attempts to reprise the roles that initially made them celebrities a dozen years ago, while a new generation of aspiring wannabes clings desperately to their coat-tails in the hope of acquiring fame and fortune for themselves.
And I’m starting to feel another rant coming on...
But rather than succumbing to that temptation, maybe it would be best just to stick to the facts. Ten days after the terrible attacks against the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, President Bush went before a joint session of Congress and delivered a speech which many observers felt at the time both redefined and revitalized his presidency. Prior to September 11th, you may recall, the Bush Administration appeared to be floundering. Its legitimacy was already questionable as a result of the controversial, disputed election which had brought it to power, and its agenda and accomplishments were anything but remarkable (at least in a positive sense): a big tax cut for wealthy Americans, outspoken efforts to roll back environmental regulations and open up protected wilderness areas to oil exploration and other forms of commercial exploitation, an expressed desire to repudiate certain international treaties, most notably the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, which prohibited the development and deployment of an expensive and unproven missile-defense system, which the President asserted was essential to protecting our nation from the threat of nuclear attack. Plus the usual assortment of worn-out ideas like only appointing right-to-life judges to the federal bench, judges who will “interpret” the constitution rather than changing it, taxpayer-funded vouchers for religious schools, government support for other “faith-based” initiatives, so-called tort-reform (which would effectively deny ordinary people access to the courts), corporate deregulation, and all the rest.
But after the 11th, none of those things seemed quite so important any more. And in his speech to the Congress, President Bush drew upon the anger and grief that we all felt as a nation in order to outline a dramatic plan of attack that would “starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place until there is no refuge or no rest.” He described America as “a country awakened to danger and called to defend freedom,” and asserted that “our war on terror...will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated.” He suggested that the goal of these terrorist groups was nothing less than “remaking the world and imposing [their] radical beliefs on people everywhere,” that they “want to overthrow existing governments in many Muslim countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordon,” and that the reason that they hate America is because “they hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.” He appealed for “every nation to join us,” asserting that “what is at stake is not just America’s freedom. This is the world’s fight. This is civilization’s fight. This is the fight of all who believe in progress and pluralism, tolerance and freedom.”
Yet he also made it clear that this war was not only against the terrorists themselves, but also “every government that supports them,” adding that “we will direct every resource at our command -- every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence, and every necessary weapon of war -- to the destruction and to the defeat of the global terror network,’ and that “every nation in every region now has a decision to make: either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorists will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.”
The President also used that speech to announce the creation of a Cabinet level “Office of Homeland Security,” and to call our armed forces to alert, with the admonition “the hour is coming when America will act, and you will make us proud.” But the most haunting portion of the speech, at least for me, both at the time and especially now, in retrospect, was the moment when George “Dubya” Bush looked into the teleprompter and read these words: “These terrorists kill not merely to end lives, but to disrupt and end a way of life. With every atrocity, they hope that America grows fearful, retreating from the world and forsaking our friends. They stand against us because we stand in their way. [But] we’re not deceived by their pretenses to piety. We have seen their kind before. They’re the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions, by abandoning every value except the will to power, they follow in the path of fascism, Nazism, and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way to where it ends in history’s unmarked grave of discarded lies.”
Can you see where I’m going with all this?
Since September 21st, we have already overthrown one “hostile” regime which we felt stood in our way, and the President now has his sights firmly fixed on another. In Afghanistan, the destruction of the Taliban was no doubt well deserved, but it hasn’t exactly been replaced by a democratically elected government of freedom loving progressive pluralists. We’ve killed, perhaps, a few hundred actual terrorists (I’m not sure anyone really knows how many), and of course, unavoidably, a few thousand Afghan civilians alongside them; captured and detained thousands more (who, once again, may or may not have actually had anything to do with al Qaeda), no doubt in the process creating a dozen potential future terrorists for every one we’ve managed to eliminate, and plunging that nation into yet another generation of civil war. The economy there is in shambles (not that it was in that great of shape beforehand), Osama bin Laden is still at large, are as most of his top aides and accomplices, and no one seems to know where in the world they might be found.
The notion of now invading Iraq has been almost universally resisted, if not rejected outright, by even our most loyal allies; not even our own generals think it is a good idea, and for good reason. Politicians who oppose the proposed invasion on policy grounds do so because they are worried about what might happen in Iraq after we’ve won the war; there were good reasons that the President’s father decided not to capture Baghdad a decade ago, and few of them have changed today. But the professional soldiers also understand that waging war a continent away, without the support of local allies or even convenient bases, is not an easy thing to do; that it is just as easy to lose a war as it is to win one, especially if you try to do it on the cheap. Empty rhetoric is one thing, but hollow threats inevitably blow up in your face if you try substituting bravado for real power.
The most distressing thing for me, however, has been the assault on our Constitution here at home by those who have sworn to preserve, protect, and defend it. Due process, Habeus Corpus, the right to counsel, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, protection from cruel and unusual punishment, the list goes on and on; I could probably cite hundreds of specific examples if you were willing to sit here and listen to them, and still it would only scratch the surface. Attorney General John Ashcroft would have us believe that these sacrifices are necessary in order to preserve our “Homeland Security.”
But I agree with Benjamin Franklin, that “They that would give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Throughout our history heroic men and women have willingly risked and sacrificed their lives in order to protect the freedoms enshrined in our Constitution and its Bill of Rights. So how can anyone credibly suggest that we must now sacrifice those rights in order to protect our lives and preserve our “Freedom?” It makes a mockery of everything that this nation stands for, everything that Americans for over two hundred years have fought and died to defend.
Please don’t misunderstand me. I hope that no one goes away from this place today thinking that I have suggested that our nation should have simply turned the other cheek, and walked away from the attacks of a year ago. I believe now, as I believed a year ago, that America should continue to devote its resources to tracking down Osama bin Laden and the other actual perpetrators of this crime, and bringing them to account for their crimes before a fair, objective public tribunal of Justice. I believe that we best defend our freedoms and our democratic way of life by practicing them ourselves, and inviting others to join with us in an authentic coalition against “terrorism of global reach.”
But I also understand that when the only tool in your toolbox is a hammer, every problem begins to look like a nail. And the best solution to a problem like, lets say, a nail sticking into the bottom of your foot, is not necessarily to find a bigger hammer. When we answer violence only with violence, when we respond to global terror by becoming terrorists ourselves, we in effect become our own worst enemies. We accomplish the mission of the terrorists for them; we destroy the very thing we seek to protect.
As we approach the anniversary of the attacks of last September 11th, it seems essential to me that we honor the memory of those who lost their lives that day, not by renewing vows of revenge, but rather by remembering the values and ideals that our country has historically stood for: liberty, equality, justice, democracy, freedom... and renewing our commitment to practicing them in our own lives. Because if we allow ourselves to become distracted from those values by our own anger and grief, we will indeed have become our own worst enemy...an enemy whose proven “weapons of mass destruction” threaten not only the safety of our own lives, but the lives of all who hope only to live in peace with us upon this tiny and fragile planet.
at the Second Congregational Meeting House on Nantucket Island.
Sunday September 8. 2002
READING: Romans 12: 9-21 “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good”
***
There was a cartoon in the New York Times a few weeks ago, which I liked so much I cut it out and pasted it into the flyleaf of my diary, and have been chuckling over it ever since. A group of politicians are sitting around a table, while their leader stands and addresses them: “Gentlemen, the time for empty rhetoric is over, and the time for hollow threats has begun.”
Like many of you, and indeed, I imagine, many people throughout the entire world, I’ve been reflecting quite a bit these past few weeks about the events of last September 11th, and the ways in which the world has changed in the last twelve months as a result of those events and our responses to them. I’ve been reading and listening to other commentators, comparing their reflections to my own, wondering what it the world I was going to say here publicly as we approach the first anniversary of that terrible day. It’s difficult for me to characterize the full range of my emotions, much less my thoughts, as I go through this process of reflection, but occasionally I will stumble across something, like the Times cartoon, which just seem to crystalize, in an instant, the entire realm of my thought and feeling. For example, Daniel Schorr’s observation at the conclusion of his National Public Radio commentary yesterday, that Americans now seem to him “sadder, but not much wiser” than we were a year ago. Or Maureen Dowd’s clever comparison, also in the Times, of the President’s recent penchant for empty rhetoric to a bad Texas barbecue: “All slaw, no ribs.”
But neither of these professional journalists could match the heartfelt eloquence of an anonymous radio talk show caller, who said, in effect, that he felt that America had squandered a great opportunity in the last twelve months, frittering away the tremendous sympathy and good will that existed toward us in the aftermath of September 11th through our arrogant, bellicose posturing and self-righteous unilateralism.
I wish that I could remember more of this caller’s precise words, because he articulated my own sentiments almost exactly. These days I generally feel far more terrified by the policies of my own government than by any imaginable threat to my personal safety posed by Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein. And this in turn leaves me wondering whether I am just somehow out of touch with reality, or if perhaps instead it is our leaders who have lost touch with what is real, with what really matters, and who need to be brought back to their senses by sensible men and women who understand that sometimes the cure is worse than the disease, especially when the diagnosis is wrong, the treatment ineffective, and the cost of the prescriptions prohibitively expensive for the majority of us who still lack access to affordable health care.
In the past twelve months we have neither brought the terrorists to justice, nor have we brought justice to the terrorists. Instead, we have seen the erosion of our Constitutional civil liberties here at home, and the initiation overseas of an open-ended war of potentially unlimited duration against an ill-defined enemy who seems to change with the President’s mood, or at least his latest polling numbers. As our enemies have multiplied, our allies have steadily backed away from us, or in some instances have used the excuse of “the war against terror” as a vehicle for settling old scores of their own. It all seems like a bad dream, or worse: a badly-written sequel to a made-for-TV docu-drama in which an ensemble cast of washed-up, second-rate supporting actors attempts to reprise the roles that initially made them celebrities a dozen years ago, while a new generation of aspiring wannabes clings desperately to their coat-tails in the hope of acquiring fame and fortune for themselves.
And I’m starting to feel another rant coming on...
But rather than succumbing to that temptation, maybe it would be best just to stick to the facts. Ten days after the terrible attacks against the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, President Bush went before a joint session of Congress and delivered a speech which many observers felt at the time both redefined and revitalized his presidency. Prior to September 11th, you may recall, the Bush Administration appeared to be floundering. Its legitimacy was already questionable as a result of the controversial, disputed election which had brought it to power, and its agenda and accomplishments were anything but remarkable (at least in a positive sense): a big tax cut for wealthy Americans, outspoken efforts to roll back environmental regulations and open up protected wilderness areas to oil exploration and other forms of commercial exploitation, an expressed desire to repudiate certain international treaties, most notably the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, which prohibited the development and deployment of an expensive and unproven missile-defense system, which the President asserted was essential to protecting our nation from the threat of nuclear attack. Plus the usual assortment of worn-out ideas like only appointing right-to-life judges to the federal bench, judges who will “interpret” the constitution rather than changing it, taxpayer-funded vouchers for religious schools, government support for other “faith-based” initiatives, so-called tort-reform (which would effectively deny ordinary people access to the courts), corporate deregulation, and all the rest.
But after the 11th, none of those things seemed quite so important any more. And in his speech to the Congress, President Bush drew upon the anger and grief that we all felt as a nation in order to outline a dramatic plan of attack that would “starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place until there is no refuge or no rest.” He described America as “a country awakened to danger and called to defend freedom,” and asserted that “our war on terror...will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated.” He suggested that the goal of these terrorist groups was nothing less than “remaking the world and imposing [their] radical beliefs on people everywhere,” that they “want to overthrow existing governments in many Muslim countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordon,” and that the reason that they hate America is because “they hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.” He appealed for “every nation to join us,” asserting that “what is at stake is not just America’s freedom. This is the world’s fight. This is civilization’s fight. This is the fight of all who believe in progress and pluralism, tolerance and freedom.”
Yet he also made it clear that this war was not only against the terrorists themselves, but also “every government that supports them,” adding that “we will direct every resource at our command -- every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence, and every necessary weapon of war -- to the destruction and to the defeat of the global terror network,’ and that “every nation in every region now has a decision to make: either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorists will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.”
The President also used that speech to announce the creation of a Cabinet level “Office of Homeland Security,” and to call our armed forces to alert, with the admonition “the hour is coming when America will act, and you will make us proud.” But the most haunting portion of the speech, at least for me, both at the time and especially now, in retrospect, was the moment when George “Dubya” Bush looked into the teleprompter and read these words: “These terrorists kill not merely to end lives, but to disrupt and end a way of life. With every atrocity, they hope that America grows fearful, retreating from the world and forsaking our friends. They stand against us because we stand in their way. [But] we’re not deceived by their pretenses to piety. We have seen their kind before. They’re the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions, by abandoning every value except the will to power, they follow in the path of fascism, Nazism, and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way to where it ends in history’s unmarked grave of discarded lies.”
Can you see where I’m going with all this?
Since September 21st, we have already overthrown one “hostile” regime which we felt stood in our way, and the President now has his sights firmly fixed on another. In Afghanistan, the destruction of the Taliban was no doubt well deserved, but it hasn’t exactly been replaced by a democratically elected government of freedom loving progressive pluralists. We’ve killed, perhaps, a few hundred actual terrorists (I’m not sure anyone really knows how many), and of course, unavoidably, a few thousand Afghan civilians alongside them; captured and detained thousands more (who, once again, may or may not have actually had anything to do with al Qaeda), no doubt in the process creating a dozen potential future terrorists for every one we’ve managed to eliminate, and plunging that nation into yet another generation of civil war. The economy there is in shambles (not that it was in that great of shape beforehand), Osama bin Laden is still at large, are as most of his top aides and accomplices, and no one seems to know where in the world they might be found.
The notion of now invading Iraq has been almost universally resisted, if not rejected outright, by even our most loyal allies; not even our own generals think it is a good idea, and for good reason. Politicians who oppose the proposed invasion on policy grounds do so because they are worried about what might happen in Iraq after we’ve won the war; there were good reasons that the President’s father decided not to capture Baghdad a decade ago, and few of them have changed today. But the professional soldiers also understand that waging war a continent away, without the support of local allies or even convenient bases, is not an easy thing to do; that it is just as easy to lose a war as it is to win one, especially if you try to do it on the cheap. Empty rhetoric is one thing, but hollow threats inevitably blow up in your face if you try substituting bravado for real power.
The most distressing thing for me, however, has been the assault on our Constitution here at home by those who have sworn to preserve, protect, and defend it. Due process, Habeus Corpus, the right to counsel, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, protection from cruel and unusual punishment, the list goes on and on; I could probably cite hundreds of specific examples if you were willing to sit here and listen to them, and still it would only scratch the surface. Attorney General John Ashcroft would have us believe that these sacrifices are necessary in order to preserve our “Homeland Security.”
But I agree with Benjamin Franklin, that “They that would give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Throughout our history heroic men and women have willingly risked and sacrificed their lives in order to protect the freedoms enshrined in our Constitution and its Bill of Rights. So how can anyone credibly suggest that we must now sacrifice those rights in order to protect our lives and preserve our “Freedom?” It makes a mockery of everything that this nation stands for, everything that Americans for over two hundred years have fought and died to defend.
Please don’t misunderstand me. I hope that no one goes away from this place today thinking that I have suggested that our nation should have simply turned the other cheek, and walked away from the attacks of a year ago. I believe now, as I believed a year ago, that America should continue to devote its resources to tracking down Osama bin Laden and the other actual perpetrators of this crime, and bringing them to account for their crimes before a fair, objective public tribunal of Justice. I believe that we best defend our freedoms and our democratic way of life by practicing them ourselves, and inviting others to join with us in an authentic coalition against “terrorism of global reach.”
But I also understand that when the only tool in your toolbox is a hammer, every problem begins to look like a nail. And the best solution to a problem like, lets say, a nail sticking into the bottom of your foot, is not necessarily to find a bigger hammer. When we answer violence only with violence, when we respond to global terror by becoming terrorists ourselves, we in effect become our own worst enemies. We accomplish the mission of the terrorists for them; we destroy the very thing we seek to protect.
As we approach the anniversary of the attacks of last September 11th, it seems essential to me that we honor the memory of those who lost their lives that day, not by renewing vows of revenge, but rather by remembering the values and ideals that our country has historically stood for: liberty, equality, justice, democracy, freedom... and renewing our commitment to practicing them in our own lives. Because if we allow ourselves to become distracted from those values by our own anger and grief, we will indeed have become our own worst enemy...an enemy whose proven “weapons of mass destruction” threaten not only the safety of our own lives, but the lives of all who hope only to live in peace with us upon this tiny and fragile planet.
posted by The Eclectic Cleric at 2:45 PM
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