They Wore Hoods

There are two sets of photos from Iraq in which men are wearing hoods on their heads that are troubling. The famous photos of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib is one of them. They were paraded around in front of women naked except for the hood. To be on display before women in that way is very shameful to a Muslim. But, that's of course not all. They were forced to simulate or actually perform sexual acts on other men in front of women. I think anyone would find that degrading, even exhibitionists, because this was forced. They had no choice. Now, who's in the wrong here? It's pretty easy to say that the American soldiers were. There's no question that they did it, because they're in the pictures. Maybe it's because I work for a government agency, but I know that you never get in a photo doing anything questionable. Were these GIs so naive that they didn't know that photos can come back to haunt you? The pictures themselves are troubling enough, but what were the soldiers thinking? That they were on a trip to Disney Iraq? Just imagine what other pictures are being taken over there. Hey, mom, this is me kicking in the front door of a suspected terrorist's house. This is me pointing my rifle at a little kid's head. This is me kicking the shit out of the man of the house.

The other sets of photos involve hoods too. It's the pictures of the men that beheaded Nick Berg. There were 5 of them with their faces covered by keffiyeh. I can understand why 4 of them were hiding, but why was the guy that did the cutting hiding? The title of the video said that it was al-Zarqawi who did the killing. If it really was al-Zarqawi, like the CIA believes, then why hide your face? You already said it was you. If it wasn't him, then at least it makes sense to hide your face. That's really puzzling to me. What's up with all the anonymity? If they had any courage they would have done it on camera without hoods. That way they would be saying, this is who we are, and we dare you to try to catch us. The way they did it just makes them look like publicity seeking cowards. If they're going to take on the Evil Empire that they believe we are, they should at least be up front enough to tell us who they are. I've got to say that Al Qaida have turned chicken in the past few months. The guys that flew into the WTC and the Pentagon were kamikazis. They were willing to die for what they wanted to accomplish. The Al Qaida fighters in Afghanistan, Chechnia, and Kashmir were (are) putting their lives on the line for their beliefs. But, this latest twist is just like regular criminals. They want to be alive after the smoke settles. Madrid was not a suicide operation. Neither was Nick Berg's murder. They hid behind hoods.

So, hoods were all over Iraq lately. Neither case was honorable.
- posted by Marcos @ 8:22 PM (0) comments

 
Jesus Seminar

Last night and today the minister at my church, Davidson Loehr, presented a seminar on Jesus. He is one of the fellows (members) of the Jesus Seminar. That's a group of Biblical scholars and theologians that are working on investigating the historical Jesus. They have produced some books about the authentic sayings of Jesus, and the authentic acts of Jesus. Their picture of Jesus is very different from the Jesus of mainstream Christianity. What they believe has been known in scholarship circles for about 100-150 years, but the laity hasn't been let in on it. I think that's because of two reasons: 1) The laity don't want to have their image of Jesus challenged, and 2) The clergy aren't courageous or strong enough to challenge the laity. So, you have ministers who know what they're preaching from the pulpit to be untrue or at the least misleading.

The Seminar believes that it is well established that Jesus was illegitimate. There are very good reasons for believing that, and I believe they are right. They believe that the Christianity of St. Paul is nothing like what Jesus actually taught. They believe that Jesus was kind of an itinerant Cynic sage that taught something called the Kingdom of God. His teaching was that the Kingdom could only be brought about by people trying to treat each other as children of God. He didn't believe that God was about to end the world, and separate the sinners from the saved. Jesus thought that instead of us waiting for God to act, that God was waiting for us to act. It's the kind of belief that I'm partial to. It's quite impressive and Davidson is a good presenter. I had attended the same Seminar that he put on about 3 years ago, but there were some differences. I must say that a lot of it was stuff I had already learned about on my own, but there was enough new stuff to make it worth the investment.

From time to time the Jesus Seminar goes on the road, and if I get the chance to see one, I'll definitely go. Other members of the Seminar that are more well know are John Crossan, Marcus Borg, and Walter Wink. I strongly recommend that anyone with the opportunity to check out this work should.
- posted by Marcos @ 8:04 PM (0) comments

 
Jesus and 9-11

In the Gospels Jesus tell his followers to resolve any disputes with their brothers before going to the temple. In fact, he says that if there is some dispute with your brother you should leave the temple, right things with your brother, and then return. How would that apply to us after 9-11?

According to Jesus, we should have approached Al-Qaida and tried to set things right with them, before we went to the temple to sanctify our war on terror. Of course, that's a tricky way of making the war on terror unnecessary. But, that's just the way Jesus seemed to think. He would say things that seemed simple, but in the doing you discover that he had greater things in mind.

Could we have made contact with Bin Laden and worked things out? Seriously? I don't know the answer to that, because we didn't. What would it mean for US foreign policy to really follow Jesus' advice? If there was some beef we had with another country, we would go to them and resolve the problem before going to the temple. In other words, before going to the temple and righteously declaring our indignation. Has any country ever tried that? If they have, it certainly hasn't made the history books. But, history books aren't chock full of peaceful stories.

What a turning-upside-down world view that would be, to follow Jesus' advice! The ironic thing is that our President claims to be doing God's work in his battle against evil. The loftier you claim your goals and ethics to be, the harder you fall when you come out simply human. That's happening to us now in Iraq with the abuse revelations. It wouldn't have been near as bad, if our President hadn't made our mission such a moral one. So, we're falling off of the high ground, and we haven't hit the bottom yet.

Maybe righting things with our brothers wouldn't have been such a bad thing after all.
- posted by Marcos @ 5:11 PM (0) comments

 
Neoliberal Mercenaries

There have always been mercenaries in war. Soldier of Fortune magazine has been popular for real mercenaries and wanna be's for a long time. Even the notion of a professional army like most countries have is a kind of mercenary operation. When you have individuals from West Virginia (Jessica Lynch and Sabrina Harmon) joining up just so they can pay for college, I believe you have mercenaries. However, that's one kind of mercenary, and the outside contractor phenomenon is entirely different. Now, we not only hire soldiers, we hire interrogators and inteligence analysts, truck drivers and supply clerks. There are a large number of contractors over in Iraq that aren't soldiers in the usual sense of the word. This is the privatization of war. Now, that might be a good thing for those getting the contracts, but how do you as a government make sure they do your bidding. Might they not come to be armies in the cause of some other goal than your foreign policy? I think we're seeing this right now in Iraq. The contractors are much freer to carry out more "aggressive" interrogation techniques than the military. We told them we wanted information, and they went about getting it for us in the most cost-effective way. I mean the bottom line is getting results for the customer, right? Are you gonna quibble over how exactly you satisfied the customer? Can we as a nation allow our government to sell the achievement of our interests to a group of corporations with profit as the motive? We're walking on mighty thin ice here, and I think it just cracked.
- posted by Marcos @ 4:40 PM