Any viable alternatives for Libya?

A Libyan rebel fighter runs up a burning stairwell during an

effort to dislodge some ensconced government loyalist troops

who were firing on them from an upstairs room during

house-to-house fighting on Tripoli Street in downtown Misrata.

April 20, 2011. Chris Hondros/Getty Images.

The same day he took this photo, Chris Hondros died

during the fighting in Misrata.

The Libyan War has been an interesting international affair to follow, to say the least. There were so many different layers that combined at once. There was the so-called "Arab Spring," the military intervention, a dictator who had completely lost all sense or reality and sanity, the possible massacre of citizens, the a popular rebellion where citizens built their weapons out of whatever they could find, the lack of clear American leadership, the lack of overwhelming European military strength, and finally a rebel's victory that didn't end in house-to-house fighting in Tripoli. I look forward to reading future books using this war as a case study. Every side will have something to say. Every side in international relations will pick and choose which facts they will research in order to justify their political slants and predispositions, from the realists to the neo-liberals to the neo-marxists.

As the NATO-led military intervention started to bomb the Libyan military in order to stop a most-likely bloody attack on Benghazi, I read my former St Andrews professors decry any form of military intervention. Oddly, they mocked the United States for losing a fighter jet and mourned the death of Libyan soldiers who had driven tanks, even though these professors had said nothing beforehand about the Libyan citizens Qaddafi's military had killed. It seemed as though everyone in the Peace Studies community disapproved of NATO for its 'neo-colonial' actions, even though the Arab League had asked for the intervention. There was a black-and-white notion that dropping bombs on tanks moving towards Benghazi was the same as dropping bombs onto civilians. If the Arab League and NATO had followed the Peace Studies' advice, thousands upon thousands of Libyan citizens would have died. For me, these criticisms reminded me of everything I disliked most about Peace Studies.

What would the Peace Studies scholars have us do? Were there any viable alternatives for Libya when Qaddafi's tanks were on the outskirts of Benghazi? Most certainly, it would have been nice if before the war even began, perhaps several years ago, there had been an ongoing peace process that would have created a government that listened to the people. But once the bullets started killing civilians, it was too late for that type of slow, difficult peace process and nation building. Foreign governments needed to make decisions within hours that would have consequences immediately, even if that decision was to do nothing. I wholeheartedly reject the idea that peace workshops where each side sat together in a room and discussed their demands, hatreds, fears, and hopes for the future would have had any benefit when Qaddafi was fueling his jets and tanks for another offensive. If anything, these types of peace process workshops would have been a stall tactic for one side or the other as they prepared for another offensive. I am unconvinced that any peace workshop can have any significant impact on a society as long as a shooting war exists. Even Peace Studies' greatest achievement through workshops, a partial contribution to the Oslo Peace Accords, was ultimately a failure. I'll admit that stopping a war isn't enough to ensure a just peace, but stopping the shooting is a little bit more than just important.

Yes, I had multiple problems with the Libyan intervention. As a realist, I do not like the notion of using military action for humanitarian missions when there is no strategic objective. The United States was already in two wars with our personnel and resources spread across the globe, and I was concerned about a possible 'mission creep' that would suck our blood and treasure into another country's civil war. I was happy to see the British and French take the largest brunt of the air campaign, even if the United States provided a large number of cruise missiles in the beginning phase of the war. The war was in Europe's strategic interest, and France should have been afraid of a lingering civil war in the southern Mediterranean. At first I was concerned that once military action started that NATO wouldn't have made decisive moves the end the war quickly. I believe that a limited war will likely lead to more deaths and misery than a swift and decisive war. In particular, I was worried that the rebels wouldn't have proper arms, training, and guidance in order to overrun Qaddafi's military. Thankfully, the French gave the rebels fresh arms. Also, there were reports that Special Op personnel with British accents were training and leading the rebels. Most importantly, Tripoli fell swiftly without a bitter last stand. Overall, the military intervention went as well as it could have gone, considering that war is an inherently messy affair. Now the bigger problem will be building a government to replace Qaddafi. Now would be a good time to have peace workshops so that the local community can have more ownership in their government and society. It's up to the Libyans to build their own country and take responsibility for its success or failure.

The Petrol Paradox

Marshall Ramsey. The Clarion Ledger.

When I read news articles about the economy and think about my current unemployment, I try to think of where future growth might come from. Even if I did get a job tomorrow, there would still be millions of other people who want a job. If there is supposed to be a sustained recovery within the next year or so, which sectors of the economy will grow? Housing and construction don't seem very likely. Housing prices are still around a third lower than they were before the Great Recession started, and there is still a glut of office space so that building more would be foolish. The United States could export more manufactured goods or services, but to where? The euro zone faces great uncertainty with its currency, and emerging markets like China are difficult to enter without the Chinese government meddling and preventing competition with their favored companies. Maybe American businesses could expand to Brazil and India, but how many jobs would that create in the US? However, even if certain sectors of the economy gained traction and began to expand and hire new workers, the price of gasoline could put the brakes on any growth.

An article in The Atlantic explained that the economic recovery earlier this year sputtered because high oil prices caused consumers to reduce their spending on other goods. Some politicians and economists blamed the higher oil price on the Arab Spring and the Libyan revolution, but that is only a small part of the bigger picture. Yes, because the world is consuming as much gas as it can produce, even a small drop of oil supply will increase prices dramatically. However, high demand from India and China are the main reasons why oil prices have remained high. When the economy began to recover, more people had more money so that they went to more places. They bought more products, which needed to be delivered, which required gas for the trucks. But once people had to spend more money filling their gas tanks, they didn't have enough money to then buy the products that caused the expensive gas. The economy sputtered and flirted with a double-dip recession. If the economy recovers again, we'll have the same problem unless the recovery is robust enough to handle gas prices higher than $4 per gallon.

This paradox makes me wonder how much more the world economy can grow with the current amount of natural resources that we produce. Can we really produce more oil or other types of energy in order to support emerging economies? There's natural gas, but it's not like we're putting it into our cars. Perhaps we should, but it'd be slow and expensive to convert our cars and transportation systems. In the meantime, the lack of cheap and efficient energy will hamper growth. If wealthy nations found ways to pay for the more expensive energy, the poorer nations would lose out because they wouldn't have enough money or resources to buy energy and other necessary products, such as food. There could be more revolutions, like the Arab Spring, or famines. Or there could just be quiet misery. Therefore, I suspect that the next couple decades will be more tumultuous and dangerous than the past decade.

CNN or Onion?

Example of Onion.com mockery of news/culture.

Last fall, a friend of mine said, “Every day, CNN.com and Onion.com look more alike to me.” It got me thinking, and I decided to see for myself if articles on CNN.com really did look like they were from the Onion.com. I was surprised when the titles really did seem similar, especially when CNN did fluff pieces that were assumedly published to get higher readership numbers. Therefore, I created a game “CNN or Onion.” I would give friends a list of actual article titles, and they would have to say whether the article was from CNN or the fake-news Onion. It’s actually a much harder game than I first anticipated. Of course, I could probably play the same game with FoxNews or MSNBC, but I follow CNN and wish it would run more serious news stories and not get drawn into a ratings war with the partisan news networks (i.e.- talk more about unemployment than about Sarah Palin’s bus tour).

So, here is my first round of my new favorite game. Can you guess which articles came from CNN and which came from Onion? Here’s a hint: 11 are from CNN, 9 are from Onion.

1) Zuckerberg Kills What He Eats. Should you?

2) Kirk Cameron: Dead Birds Aren't the End of the World

3) U.S. Economy Continues Campaigning for Barack Obama

4) Witches, Fortune Tellers May be Taxed Under New Romanian Labor Laws

5) John Edwards Pays $30 to Register Edwards2016.com Just in Case

6) Zombie for Garden? SkyMall Has It

7) Slurpee Summit for Obama, Boehner?

8) Unemployed Dad Channels All Energy into Creating, Running Haunted House

9) National Dating Standards Lowered

10) Ratko Mladic’s Lawyers Bargain Genocide Charges Down to 8,000 Counts of Manslaughter

11) Betty White's New Show: Punking Young Folk

12) Overheard: Your braaaiins on Zombies

13) Obama's Aunt Sends Him Article Mentioning United States

14) Detective Trying to Get Into Mind of Litterer

15) Norwegian Boy Fends off Wolves with Creed Song

16) Where Do Pets Go After They Die?

17) GoDaddy Chief Defends Elephant Kill

18) Jay Cutler Proves Naysayers Wrong by Defeating Worst Team Ever to Make Playoffs

19) 100 Percent of College Football Players Receiving Benefits of Being College Football Players

20) All You Know about Popularity is False

1415, Henry V's Year of Glory: don't read this book, just read my notes

I bought the book 1415 just before leaving St Andrews with a gift card that a friend gave me for my birthday, and I figured it’s about time that I finally get around to reading this book. When I first started reading it, I thought it would be a fascinating page-turner that I would recommend to everyone. While describing the Duke of Orleans’ murder in 1407, the first few pages read like a vivid novel based upon historic events. I got excited. I thought the rest of the book would also read like a novel as the historian depicted the day-by-day events of the year 1415. Once I read the first fifty pages, I realized that the book wouldn’t be as interesting. Still, I was fascinated to read the behind-the-scenes political developments. Though I would suggest that others don’t read this book because they’ll think it’s boring, I’m very glad that I read the 600+ page, exhaustive history book. I’ve learned so many details that I wouldn’t have learned reading any other book about Henry V or the Battle of Agincourt. For instance, I learned how the English made enough arrows for the campaign. No one else would really like to read that, I’m sure. Instead of reading this book, those who want to learn a little bit about this year should read my notes instead.

The writer, Ian Mortimer, isn’t a huge fan of Henry V. Though many other historians consider Henry V one of the greatest English kings in history, Mortimer greatly criticizes him. In the conclusion, he wrote:

“While his organizational skills were extraordinary, and his determination to prove himself in war is awesome, his principal achievements were due as much to good luck as good judgment; and his perspective in pursuing his ambitions was prone to two fundamental weaknesses. The first of these weaknesses was the ill-defined objectives and time limits of his vision: he plunged England into a potentially endless and unnecessary war for the sake of demonstrating the legitimacy of his dynasty. The second wakens was his religiously inflated ego. He strikes me as a deeply flawed individual, undermined by his own pride and overwhelmed by his own authority.”

While reading through this book, the author’s distaste for Henry’s religious nature was obvious. The king dedicated lots of money to pay for monasteries and nunneries in England, perhaps to gain God’s favor since his father had been an usurper so that this line. There were rumors in England that Henry V didn’t deserve God’s ‘divine right’ to rule England since other members of the royal family had a better claim to the throne. If Henry didn’t deserve the right to rule England, then he had even less right to rule France as he claimed. The main purpose for invading France was to give himself the opportunity to risk his life in a pitch battle and prove that God was on his side. After his lopsided victory at Agincourt, no one in Europe challenged him again. It was a huge risk that almost ended in disaster, but the payout was enormous. Little poor England became a much more important player in European politics even though France and Germany were larger and wealthier.

The most dramatic example of Henry V’s religious devotion came on the 28th of August during the siege of Harfleur. His army was camped around the small port town and shelled the walls and buildings day and night. The inhabitants couldn’t sleep because at any moment a large stone ball could slam into their house or a nearby house; if nothing else the screams would wake everyone up. Meanwhile, along the English lines men were dying from dysentery. The English didn’t build a descent latrine that could handle the feces and other waste from thousands of soldiers, so men had horrible diarrhea. Though this siege was supposed to demonstrate that Henry had God’s favor, the dysentery outbreak didn’t help his case. Still, on this day in late August he attended a mass at 9 am in a nearby chapel with a choir the king brought with the army. The image of Henry listening to beautiful hymns and anthems while his cannon echoed across the battlefield just downhill from him is one of the most interesting scenes in the whole book.

The day-to-day narrative about Henry’s reign included several boring days that seemed to tell the reader the same thing over and over again. Basically, these days included items written in the ‘Issue Rolls,’ the receipts and documentation for royal payments. There would be a few pounds here or twenty pounds there to pay for delegations going to France or for the head chef to cook dinner. Today there are very few primary sources that describe what happened in the English government at this time, but the Issue Rolls give a very detailed account of what happened every day. Whereas personal letters often lied about how people felt, these payments give historians clues about how Henry felt about his peers. For instance, he gave a lot of money to the Thomas Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel, which suggests that the king and him were good friends. In fact, the records indicate that the king wasn’t closer to anyone else other than his own brothers. There were also very few references to women in the Issue Rolls, except for the king’s stepmother, Queen Joan. This lack of gifts or payment for women suggests that Henry did not associate much with women. The king was known for his celibacy after becoming king, and the records tend to verify that he did not have any close or intimate relationship with women other than his wife while he was king (that marriage, of course, was more political than personal… he wasn’t exactly celibate before he became king, though). The Issue Rolls also hint at the behind-the-scene diplomacy and espionage that occurred during the war. During the medieval era, the kings’ secrets were so well kept that we still don’t know what actually happened in several cases. However, a historian can speculate about what happened while looking at the fine print in the Issue Rolls. Henry’s diplomatic missions with the John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, in France were secret, but historians can assume that royal payments made to certain Englishmen for ‘traveling in France’ on royal business indicate that these men were creating a secret alliance with the French duke. Because of these negotiations, John the Fearless did not oppose Henry when the English invaded. There is also evidence that certain French lords helped Henry as he marched across northern France, which was probably the fruit of careful espionage and secret negotiation. Now we can only speculate while looking at the Issue Rolls as to what was going on behind closed doors during this war.

This day-to-day narrative also showed how King Henry had to take a direct role in ruling his country. There was no Department of Defense or administration of bureaucrats that managed the day-to-day operation of a military campaign. The king’s council, including prominent clergymen and the king’s brothers, made numerous small decisions which were critical to Henry’s success at Agincourt. It’s hard to imagine an British Prime Minister or an American President taking such a direct role in running a military campaign today. No doubt Henry’s years fighting rebellions in Wales prepared him to fight in France.

I’m was a bit surprised that the clergymen were so powerful. It seems odd today that cardinals and archbishops were helping the government’s day-to-day operation and military planning. It is also weird that Henry went to the clergy to ask them to finance his war. The church was incredibly powerful and wealthy at this time and had the ability to finance a war with their own property. Many of the clergy were the sons of lords and were not in line to inherit their fathers’ wealth; the church was a good alternative. The church was willing to pay for an army to invade France, but I wonder what charity the clergy gave for the poor people in England.

The power of the church is also evident in the Council of Constance. During this meeting of clergymen from all over Europe, the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund sought to end the church’s schism and bring the Catholic Church back under one pope. At the beginning of the year there were 3 popes. According to church rules, the cardinals and archbishops did not have individual votes but contributed to their nation’s vote. In political issues, ‘nations’ weren’t important. Europe was divided into kingdoms and fiefdoms, not ‘nations.’ However, ‘nations’ were very important in ecclesiastical issues. The English delegation fought for the right to be considered as a single nation. This designation would give them a very powerful position. Otherwise, they would have been grouped with the German nation and would have been greatly outnumbered. When the church recognized England as its own nation, it gave immense amount of power to the small number of English representatives. The other nations included the Germans, Italians, Spanish, and French. It’s interesting that the modern system of nation-states has roots in the medieval Catholic Church.

The final note I’ll mention is this blog is about how medieval armies dealt with the corpses of prominent lords. The army often did not bother to transport the whole body back home in a box. Instead, they carried a large cauldron with the soldiers. When someone prominent would die, the soldiers would take out the heart and preserve it. Then, they would boil the corpse in the large cauldron. The flesh would fall off the bones like moist beef in a stew. Soldiers would have to pull the flesh and organs off the bone as the body cooked. Afterwards, these soldiers would ship the bones and preserved heart back home where the lord would be buried. I can’t imagine the smell of this cauldron after a battle.

So, there you have my notes. If you want to know anything else, give me a call.

Academic Value of a Royal Wedding

Prince William and Princess Kate on their wedding day.

In the US, sports can bring a lot of publicity to a university if a team does well. For instance, no one really knew about Virginia Commonwealth University until they got into the NCAA men's basketball Final Four... and thus ruined my bracket... earlier this year. When I hear about different universities across the country, I usually associate them with how they've done in sports. Of course, a good team doesn't mean the university has good academics. Still, the exposure can help graduates from that university. Potential employers don't have to look confused and ask where a university is when they've already heard about them on ESPN, even if the team didn't do so well. For instance, no one has ever heard of Mississippi College outside of Mississippi, so no one knows if it is a good school or not. However, some people have heard of the University of Southern Mississippi because of Brett Favre, regardless of how the school has done academically (just today I heard someone who knew little about Mississippi bring up Brett Favre when hearing about USM). Some universities, like Harvard and Yale, have excellent reputations across the nation without good teams, but most universities are known better for their sports than their academics, for better or worse.

When I tell friends and potential employers that I went to the University of St Andrews, many of them know about the school because the Scots invented golf there and because the British Open is there every five years. Even though British universities don't have sports, most Americans still know about my alma mater because of sports. Those who know about the school and my Masters in International Relations often tell me, "Oh, that's a very lucrative degree." However, one of my friends recently told me that in her country no one knew about St Andrews, either for academics or sports or whatever. She had to explain that St Andrews is a Scottish university. The recent royal wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton changed that. Because several news reports and even a made-for-tv movie told the story about how the couple met at St Andrews while studying there, she didn't have to explain her education anymore. It helped her get traction in conversations with potential employers. While a lot of people complained about how much money the couple spent on the wedding as the British government wants to cut funding for public services, the expensive royal wedding added value to my Masters degree. Now in interviews I can now possibly stand out from other candidates because I can tell potential employers that the future king and queen attended my university. It has nothing to do with academics, but at least I don't have to explain where the university is.

More efficient, but without the jobs

Joe Heller. Green Bay Press-Gazette.

A lot of people who haven't looked for work in this economy while unemployed don't really understand what it's like for the rest of us. In one of my temping gigs, I worked with a woman in a corporation's Human Resources department. She told me about the 'good-ole'-days when there were signing bonuses; a job search would only last for a couple weeks. That seems like a fairy tale now. I know of multiple people, especially those who are overqualified with Masters degrees, who have spent years looking for stable work. Talking with this woman was comforting because we had the same experiences. She spent a while looking for work before getting hired and had multiple conversations with people who simply didn't understand what unemployment means now. I've had the same conversations over and over. People tell us, "Well, you need to do ________ or apply at ________ or talk to ________ or whatever. Then you'll get a job." Since I've applied to 500 jobs and have tried to network for a while, I can usually say, "I've already done that." Sometimes I can even say, "I've done that multiple times." The HR lady had the same conversations. These people are trying to encourage us, and they usually become frustrated with us. They tell us, "Well, you should have a job then." We say, "Nope." This experience reminds me of Job and his three friends, the 'miserable comforters.' They tell him to humble himself before God, admit his sins, and then God would restore him. He tells them that he is blameless before God, but the 'comforters' say he can't be blameless because he is suffering. In the same way, I sometimes feel as though others may think that I'm not trying to find a job hard enough because I haven't found a stable job yet. I felt great comfort that the HR lady had been through the same problems.

There are some suggestions I haven't tried, and soon I will try most of those new things in addition to what I've been doing. I pray something works out.

I recently found an article in Time about the current state of the economy. The United States is now producing the same amount of goods and services that we were making before the Great Recession began in 2007 (GDP is around $13.5 trillion). However, we are producing this amount of goods and services with 7 million fewer employers. The number of unemployed workers has doubled. This official number of unemployed doesn't include the millions who have become so discouraged that they stopped looking for work or those who (including yours truly) technically have part-time jobs but still can't support themselves. Most of the new jobs in this economy are part-time jobs that pay less than $19,000 annually. If we included the number of unemployed and under-employed and discouraged, there are around 24 million people who want a full-time job but can't find one.

Still, when I turn on the news I hear more about Donald Trump and American Idol than I do about the job market or why the government has failed so miserably to do anything about creating sustainable job growth.

When I think about the line "thy kingdom come" in the Lord's prayer, I've been thinking more and more about what employment and job hunts would look like if God's Kingdom was fully here. Praying for His Kingdom to come has a different meaning for me now.

DC Metro, How I Loathe Thee, Let Me Count the Ways

Never in my life have I had the option to choose between public transportation or driving. While growing up and studying in Mississippi, I had to drive. No one uses the bus system unless there is absolutely no other choice, and I sometimes forget that not everyone has a car (I'm still baffled that some of my European friends still don't know how to drive even though they're in their mid-20s). I heard a lot of people complain about the lack of public transportation, yet I wholeheartedly oppose the idea of bringing a significant public transportation system to Mississippi. The state is simply too rural for a large system to be efficient and cost effective. There are only 3 million people covering an area about the size of England. In Scotland, I had a love/hate relationship with public transportation. With my student discount I could get great deals on bus and train tickets, but otherwise the tickets would be horribly expensive. Taking the train might be more cost effective only if there is a heavy tax on petrol. Yet that would mean that getting from place to place would always be horribly expensive. I noticed that many Europeans don't travel across long distances as much as Americans do. For instance, while working in France my German friend told me that his home was about 6 hours away from where we were working in France, I said, "Oh, so you can drive home for the weekend with no problem." He was shocked, "Of course not. Who would drive that far?"

Before coming to DC, my brother-in-law asked me if I would take my car. I told him of course I would take the car. He thought that DC was a city like New York where everyone just used the subway system. Now that I've been in DC for a while, I've learned that most everyone drives from place to place instead of taking the metro. Those who take the metro regularly are usually college students, government interns, those who work in an office building somewhere between Dupont Circle and Union Station, and those who live within walking distance to a metro station. The metro system is also pretty good for tourists going to monuments and sports fans going to games. Yet the total number of riders is incredibly small considering the size of DC. In 2010, the metro had a daily ridership less than 600k. I'm not sure if 'ridership' means one-way trips or two-way trips, but either way that is a low number considering that the District population is 600k and the metro population is 5.4 million. Depending on how many of those 5.4 million are employed, I've figured that about a third of workers use the metro to get to and from work (I'm assuming 840k use the metro to get to and from work, which is a generous number). One third seems about right after talking to friends and family here. People choose to drive in DC for different reasons. First, the trains can be just as slow and unreliable as traffic. The metro can be especially problematic during rush hour when certain lines, like the Orange, are well beyond capacity. Since multiple lines share the same tracks, they get so crowded that they can't fit any more trains into the system. Then trains have to stop and wait for other trains to get out of the way, but then that causes more congestion. Once, I was on a train that had several more stops, but the HQ told the train to skip those stops and take everyone to the end of the line because the line behind us was too congested. Everyone who wanted to stop somewhere else at a certain time was shit out of luck. Shuttles could take them to their stop, but that takes a lot of time. Second, the metro doesn't go many places. If you don't work in one of DC's major office building districts, the metro makes no sense. There simply aren't enough lines to take people from where they actually live to where they actually work. Third, if you drive to a metro station, by the time you park and walk to the train you could have already driven at least part of the way to work. That's especailly true if the driving commute is 30 minutes or less. At least those are some of the reasons why I'm not a huge fan of the metro system.

Unlike the regular metro map, this map

shows how far the stops are from each other

and where the lines actually go.

There are some advantages to the metro. For instance, I enjoy reading on the metro. Once I get on the metro, I don't have to worry about traffic anymore. Since I get on at Greenbelt at the end of the green line, I usually can find an empty seat. The metro would also be nice if I lived much closer to a stop and had a bike since commuters can take their bikes with them (a lot of people hate the busses, but a bike is a good alternative to the bus). The metro is also good for when there isn't enough parking where I might work.

For a while I thought the biggest advantage to taking the metro was the price, especially with gasoline at $4 per gallon or higher. However, I've begun to notice how all the metro fees add up, especially during rush hour when the price gets jacked up. One night I sat down and did the math to figure out if the metro was really cheaper than driving. I calcualated the cost from my uncle's house in Maryland and from my friend's house in Virginia to a place I've done some temp work in Arlington.

From Maryland Suburb to Arlington

Metro:

Total rush hour metro fare- $10.40

Parking- $4.25

Driving to and from metro station- $6.20

One day's commuting cost- $20.85

Driving:

Driving to and from work- $10.60

Parking- $8.00

One day's commuting cost- $18.60

From Virginia Suburb to Arlington

Metro:

Total rush hour metro fare- $7.70

Parking- $4.50

Driving to and from metro station- $4.00

One day's commuting cost- $16.20

Driving:

Driving to and from work- $7.00

Parking- $8

One day's commuting cost- $15.00

In addition to being slightly slower than driving, I was amazed to find out that taking the metro is slightly more expensive than driving. That's the main reason I'm peeved about the DC metro. Yes, it's much cheaper when it's not rush hour, but I have to be at work at a certain time. There are different factors that could make driving or the metro better. For instance, the company I temped for gives its regular employees a discount on the parking garage. That would make a huge difference. Other employers, especially the federal government inside the District, gives some employees money for their metro fares. One might think that my calculations would be different if the price of gas went higher or if car maintenance was more expensive, but that's not so much the case. I still have to drive back and forth from the metro station, so higher gas prices wouldn't make the metro cheaper.

For the time being, I'll continue to use the metro if I'm commuting from Maryland because I'm not very familiar with how heavy traffic can get on certain roads. The metro is the safer bet for now. However, if I'm in Virginia, I'll probably drive to and from work depending upon where that work is.

Don't Expect Me to Wear Black for Bin Laden

Photo I took of the tv while waiting for the President to speak.

I was already wearing my pajama pants, laying in bed, and watching Hulu before I quickly checked my Twitter feed one last time. I knew the President was going to make an important announcement, but it was getting too late for me to keep watching CNN as the announcement kept getting pushed back further and further. Still, I was absolutely shocked to read on Twitter that Osama bin Laden (OBL) was dead. I quickly got up and turned CNN back on. I thought that we must have found his body somewhere in the mountains between Afghanistan or Pakistan, and I was shocked again to learn that American soldiers had killed him in a compound in an Islamabad suburb. Just as I will always remember where I was when I first heard about attack on the World Trade Center, I will always remember where I was when I first heard OBL was dead. There was a sudden release of emotions at this moment. It’s hard for me to put labels on these emotions. I could use words like ‘relief,’ ‘excitement,’ ‘awe,’ ‘mourning,’ ‘confusion,’ and so forth. All of these emotions fell onto me at once from different directions like a floodplain getting slammed with water from multiple rivers. How could I find one word to describe my emotions, and how could someone else criticize me for what they perceive as ‘hatred’ in this moment? Many of the emotions I felt had nothing to do with OBL. I was excited that we now had the political and moral opportunity to leave Afghanistan and to stop spending American blood and treasure in a strategic backwater that is of little to no importance for America but is of great importance for Pakistan and India (which is why I suspect some in Pakistan would want to hide OBL; the United States would waste time looking for him while keeping India out of Afghanistan). Also, Americans have spent months debating how the federal government could get back on budget, whether through spending cuts or tax hikes. Now we can stop spending $2 billion a week in Afghanistan. I felt anger towards Pakistan for being either incompetent or complicit in this whole matter. I was also angry with the American Congress for giving Pakistan billions of dollars for being our ‘ally.’ I felt awe because I was witnessing the culmination of 10 years of a military operation. While France and Britain struggled to oust a weak tyrant on the southern Mediterranean coast because they don’t have enough bombs, the American intelligence community and military were able to pull off an incredible operation. I was stupefied. I had witnessed the fall of the towers, the beginning of the Afghan War, the mistakes along the way, and now the death of OBL. How could I not feel a rush of emotions at this moment? To feel nothing would be inhuman. A friend in Virginia texted me and asked if I’d go with him to the White House. If the Presidential announcement had been made at 8:30 or 9:30 pm, I would have gone. I may have chanted ‘USA’ with others, or I may have prayed or cried. I have no idea what emotions I would have felt at that moment, especially in a large crowd during a historic event. I grew up seeing that photo from 1945 when a sailor kissed a nurse after Japan surrendered. Here was my chance to participate in a similar event. As it was, it was already late. I was tired. I simply went to bed. I still wish I could have gone to the White House to join the crowds there.

The next morning I got on facebook and saw a rush of criticism, mostly from Europe. One friend said that the people outside the White House chanting needed to stop and think. I wonder if she meant ‘think like a German.’ Fact is many of those people were thinking. Many of them were probably incredibly intelligent young people working as interns on the Hill. Some weren’t so smart, I’m sure. Some were most definitely drunk since they had just left an NHL playoff game just a couple blocks down from the White House. It’s hard to gauge the emotion or logic of large crowds like this one, so criticizing it becomes an even trickier endeavor. Personally, I was pissed when I read what my European friends and professors had written. For a year I had listened to lectures and debates about the evils of war and how peace workshops, negotiations, international criminal courts, and a new international system were sufficient answers for the world’s problems. I spent many hours trying to make sense of these ideas, but I still disagreed. As Aristotle said, it is the mark of an intelligent mind to consider an idea without accepting it. I tried my best to have an intelligent mind in these matters, and I am grateful that I was forced to reconsider my own political beliefs. Yet this endeavor only strengthened my realist international perspective. Workshops and peace negotiations are nice, but they are not always viable options. They’re great for preventing a shooting war long before it starts. However, once that war starts, all the ideas I’ve heard from Peace Studies fly out the window. In my immaturity last year, I developed a bitterness that overflowed the day after OBL died. I wanted a philosophical fight with someone, and I sought it. I uploaded the cover from the New York Daily that ran the headline “Rot in Hell” with OBL’s photo. After an hour I realized my immaturity and took the photo down. I needed to be civil and polite. I’m not sure how exactly to disagree with someone politely while still asserting my own position. I’m not sure if I have the maturity to do this. I do recognize that I need this maturity.

In this context, there is one quote I read on facebook that I would like to further address as civilly as possible. Originally, it was presented as a quote from Martin Luther King Junior (MLK), and here it is:

I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

It is a bit telling that this quote really isn’t something MLK said. It’s two quotes from two people mashed into one. MLK only said the bit after, “returning hate for hate multiplies hate.” The first sentence is from someone else, and I’m not sure from whom. Maybe Jessica Dovey or Janet Oeverland or someone else? This distinction actually helps me understand the passage more. Originally, I was confused as to why MLK would say that he wouldn’t rejoice/celebrate the death of someone. There are several theological problems with this statement, and as a minister with a doctorate degree I would have expected MLK to understand these problems. For instance, every Christian funeral is a celebration. Death is a time for rejoicing. Why would he not celebrate death? The second bit does make sense from a Christian perspective. It is a reworking of an older Christian teaching from Jesus. Yet combining the two statements into one shows how many people today, especially in European academic circles, try to mix and match religious beliefs with secular ones while never understanding the nuances of religion. As I studied Peace Studies, I saw the same problem. ‘Positive peace’ and ‘negative peace’ appeared as secular alterations of old Christian beliefs of ‘just peace’ and ‘unjust peace.’ However, without a good and just God in the philosophical framework, these secular alterations with economic details lost their viability for me. Still, combining these statements together after OBL’s death is very interesting. It shows a belief that ‘hatred’ was applicable to the current situation, especially for those who went to the White House. This then leads into a belief that emotion is an important factor in war. I disagree with both statements with certain caveats.

During my undergrad years when I wrestled with the idea of Christian pacifism (as opposed to secular pacifism), I came to the conclusion that ‘hatred’ isn’t a very powerful force in war. When I look back at my writings, this idea really developed as I wrote my first novel. Anyone who goes to war because of his ‘hatred’ toward someone else is insane. He isn’t thinking logically. He needs to calm down and stop thinking emotionally. It would be nice if this was the case, that nations go to war because of hatred. Then stopping the war would be simple: stop the hatred. Stopping hatred would mean educating others about logical, sensible solutions. They need to take the negative emotion out of the situation and replace it with positive emotions. Some of what I studied at St Andrews was dependent upon these assumptions. This positive emotion could be called ‘love.’ However, as when I originally wrote my first novel, I do not believe that hatred is a significant force for most actors in a war. Certainly, at least some actors feel hatred towards their enemies. Yet removing the emotional, illogical hatred does little to nothing to stop the war; it will continue and may even become worse since those who act without any emotion can be much more cruel (i.e.- like machines that have no ‘off’ button). For me, the most dangerous and deadly emotion is ‘love.’ This position contradicts what modern post-Second-World-War culture has taught me. “All we need is love,” is bullshit as far as I’m concerned. More love will lead to more war. Almost no one goes to war because of hate; they go to war because they love. Think about OBL. The United States did not go to war with him and kill him because they hate him. Many hated him, more or less, long before 9/11. Yet they did nothing. It was only when OBL threatened what Americans love, their ability to go to work without the fear of death, that America went to war with him. Nations and peoples go to war not because they hate someone but because they love something else more. Love, not hatred, causes war.

Of course, there are still the Christian teachings about love to which MLK and others allude. At this point we must define this Christian ‘love.’ It is not a love for all things. It is a love for God and for what He loves, not for what we love. We may love our security and wealth, but God loves other things more. This is the backbone of Christian ideology and Christian pacifism. When secular ideologies remove God from their formulas while still holding onto Christian teachings (such as just peace), the philosophical body falls collapses without the spine. This is one reason why Christian pacifism has always made much more sense to me than secular pacifism (however, I am still not a pacifist since I have certain Calvinist beliefs, which I have mentioned in another blog post).

When analyzing the event outside the White House the night OBL died, we should not simply write off what the participants felt as ‘hatred,’ though certainly some of them felt this. After these events, there was a lot of soul-searching in the United States. Most wars or military operations in the past did not really end with the death of an individual; they ended with peace treaties or declarations of unconditional surrender or so forth. OBL’s death felt like an incredibly weird event in comparison. We didn’t want someone to die; we weren’t sad he was dead; we were hopeful for the future; we were sad for the past; we wished none of this had ever happened. We felt all these powerful emotions that cannot be easily explained or simply labeled as ‘hatred.’ This was a military victory we were not expecting. For years we put OBL into the back of our mind as we dealt with the mistakes in Iraq and with the Great Recession. We all assumed that OBL would simply die while hiding in a cave somewhere. Then all of a sudden, we’re reintroduced with this man and reintroduced with all the emotions we felt on 9/11. Many of us never really came to terms with the 3,000 people who died that day. It’s hard to come to terms with that kind of tragedy. I felt the desire to celebrate the end of an era when we could bring troops home and let NGOs deal with ‘nation-building’ and stabilization projects. When talking to many others in Washington, DC about what we felt, there was a general sense that we were celebrating a military victory, not a death. We would have rather seen OBL on trial, but this is what we had. No one mentioned hatred, though I’m sure if I kept looking I would have found this emotion. Though more focused on a military victory, these responses may not have appeared the same way overseas. Then again, Americans get criticized for not taking the time to understand other cultures (and rightly so), so I’d consider it hypocritical for some Europeans who didn’t take the time to understand my culture and my emotions to then criticize me. Perhaps Americans gloated too much and should have appeared more civil and reserve in order to prevent violence against troops and civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, but this is a Machiavellian criticism. We must appear one way while behaving otherwise. In this light, I praise the President for not releasing the OBL death photos. There’s no need for it. But it can be difficult for ordinary Americans to think about these issues immediately after hearing about OBL’s death, and I’m not sure how much I’d criticize those chanting outside the White House. They are not the ones responsible for attacks in Afghanistan and Iraq; those who choose to attack Americans and others there must take responsibility for their own actions just as I must take responsibility for my own immaturity in putting up an inciting photo on the internet.

In addition to the allusion to American hatred for OBL, the quote I mentioned earlier implied that the correct response to OBL’s death is mourning. The quote doesn’t specifically say we should mourn for OBL, but it does say we shouldn’t rejoice. Personally, I needed some emotional release after his death. Otherwise, I would have pushed all my emotions down into my psyche where they would have festered and turned into a nastier beast. The American nation needed a communal emotional release. We needed closure. That’s what happened outside the White House. This is mourning. It may not be the type of mourning my European friends and professors may have wanted to see, but it was mourning nevertheless. There are many ways to mourn, from rejoicing and crying to silent prayer. Yet should I be sad for OBL? There is an implication that all mourning should be sad or mostly sad, but that simply isn’t the case. If I’m sad because OBL is dead, then why was I trying to kill him? I can be sad that he had to die or that he tried to kill me and others, but that’s not the same thing as being sad that he is dead. Those who criticized me for wanting to celebrate outside the White House should not expect me to wear black because OBL is dead.

This discourse quickly turns into one about the role of war in our society and how we should respond to military victory. I don’t think now is the appropriate time to delve further into this debate, but I’ll give a quick synopsis. If war is always counterproductive and immoral, and if militaries should not seek to stop or kill those who are trying to kill us and others, then domestic police do not have the moral authority to stop or kill those who are trying to kill us and others. Both the military and police can and do make mistakes, but criticizing these mistakes does not mean the military or police should not have been trying to achieve their goals. Sometimes their goals may not be prudent, but criticizing those goals does not mean they shouldn’t achieve other goals or that they shouldn’t be efficient or exist. Perhaps I can elaborate another time.

But how are we supposed to respond when our enemy dies or surrenders, whether because of the police at home or the military abroad? I cannot waltz into this question without deep consideration. I suspect that after many years I will not have a complete answer because the more I understand the more I’ll reevaluate my more youthful thoughts. At a moment like this, it may be appropriate for us to consider a story or poem instead of a political manifesto. In Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part 1, Act V, Scene iv, Prince Harry has just mortally wounded his enemy, Hotspur. As the rebel dies, the prince speaks over the dead body. Here’s the dialogue:

Hotspur: O Harry, thou hast robbed me of my youth! I better brook the loss of brittle life than those proud titles thou hast won of me; they wound my thoughts worse than thy sword my flesh: but thoughts the slave of life, and life Time’s fool, and Time, that takes survey of all the world, must have a stop. O, I could prophesy, but that the earthy and cold hand of death lies on my tongue: no, Percy, thou art dust, and food for… [Dies]

Prince Harry: For worms, brave Percy: fare thee well, great heart! Ill-weaved ambition, how much are thou shrunk! When that this body did contain a spirit, a kingdom for it was too small a bound; but now two paces of the vilest earth is room enough. This earth that bears thee dead bears not alive so stout a gentleman. If thou wert sensible of courtesy, I should not make so dear a show of zeal: but let my favors hide thy mangled face; and, even in thy behalf, I’ll thank myself for doing these fair rites of tenderness. Adieu, and take thy praise with thee to Heaven! Thy ignominy sleep with thee in the grave, but not remembered in thy epitaph!

The prince is a bit more gracious to Hotspur than I am to OBL, but it is in stories and poetry like this that a society can come to terms with the events it has encountered. I have a sneaky suspicion that my grandfather wrote some sermons or essays along these lines since he regularly encountered tragedy during World War II. Maybe later I’ll find a sermon of his and post it onto the blog.

Simply brushing aside the American reaction to OBL’s death as part of hatred is a distortion of reality. Certainly, there is hatred. However, if there was absolutely no American hatred towards OBL, the United States would have done the exact same thing to him. The military would have still destroyed him and his network after 9/11. The Navy Seals would have still flown into Pakistan and killed him. There would have still been a celebration of some sort in Washington, DC and other cities for this military victory just as there were street celebrations in New Orleans after the Saints won the Super Bowl (I now think there are a lot of possible comparisons between sports victory celebrations and military victory celebrations). Perhaps the reactions may not have offended outsiders as much, but that is more of an aesthetic and cultural issue. Little to nothing else would have changed if there had been no hatred. If that is the case, then why are we so eager to equate war with hatred? From my perspective, if all wars were based upon hatred, they’d be easier to stop. It’s a myth and fantasy we may want to believe. It’s a tragedy that wars aren’t so simple.

Introduction to My Perspective on War, Peace, and Christianity

Auschwitz, Poland.

May 2008.

I took the photograph in this post in 2008 when I traveled to Poland and visited Auschwitz, where Nazi Germany murdered around a million Jews during the Second World War. Visiting the concentration camp is an emotional experience. Personally, the most dramatic part of the tour was a series of long rooms with a display along each wall. These displays held personal items that the Germans took from the victims before sending them into the gas chambers. The displays included luggage, shoes, combs, and so forth. One display was full of hair shaved from the victims, and this hair would have been used for soldiers’ uniforms and other clothing. Many people know about this display before going, but it is still a shocking experience. I could smell the hair before walking into the room, and this sensation can be revolting. These displays gave a bit of perspective to the crimes that took place here, but the displays only showed one trainload’s worth of victims’ items. There were many more trainloads that had already gone through the camp before the Russians overran the Germans here.

Most people cannot grasp how much carnage took place in Auschwitz and other German concentration camps. Even when exposed to the pure tragedy, the human mind often tries to minimize the events so that it can understand what happened. The brain simply shuts down and turns tragedies into statistics. Whenever movies or plays portray the Holocaust, they often try to put a positive spin onto something that has few positive stories. Sometimes, there is a group of Jews trying to fight against the Germans so that their deaths have meaning. The public will usually not respond to a play or movie about the Holocaust unless there is this type of positive spin. For instance, those screenplays about Anne Frank which were successful were mostly the ones which emphasized her more uplifting passages and ignored the more depressing ones. One successful 1950s play ended with a line about how man was essentially good, but the screenwriter omitted the rest of the dairy entry, which had a grimmer outlook. The public has chosen to ignore the darker side of the Holocaust, perhaps because the senselessness and tragedy is too great for us to understand. It’s like looking into the sun; the Holocaust’s darkness blinds us.

Skeptics of Christianity and other monotheistic religions with a ‘good’ deity use the Holocaust as an example of why a good God cannot exist. Either God is not good or doesn’t care about humans because the Holocaust happened. The point is fair enough, but it comes at the topic with a certain angle that ignores the Judeo-Christian response. Believers in an omnipotent and good deity are not ignorant of tragedy, even if many of them cannot eloquently explain their position. The debate is not new. The first and oldest piece of Judeo-Christian literature, the Book of Job, directly addresses this issue. Yet tragedy, whether it is the death of a loved one or the murder of millions of Jews, still strains faith to a breaking point for many people, which is more than understandable. These events should make us pause and consider our position in the world order. Anyone who sees the stark darkness of war and does not reevaluate life will probably have other problems later. Though the skeptic insists that the Holocaust and other manmade tragedies show God’s lack of power, one Christian response would insist that the Holocaust shows mankind’s deep sinfulness when God has granted mankind the ability to turn against Him. Though there is much more to say on this point, the Christian confesses that we are miserable wrecks. Our mistakes, regardless of size, have a multitude of consequences. These consequences may not affect us as much as it affects others. Ergo, there is war and tragedy.

Yet much of modernity has taught us to think differently. Mankind is inherently or mostly good if only given a proper opportunity to be good. If a man commits a crime or sins, then the structures around his life must have put him into a situation which made him more prone to make these mistakes. Thus, when we see a tragedy like Auschwitz, we’re not seeing the mistakes of man as much as we’re seeing a dysfunctional structure or a broken international system. If only there had been a healthy dialogue, mutual respect, better understanding, fair economics, et cetera, then the Holocaust and wars would not have occurred. Many of my former professors at St Andrews made similar arguments in their works: they argued that the absence of certain factors, such as unjust societal structures, would have prevented various wars. In order to prevent future war, we must change society’s structures so that the mass goodness of mankind will prevent future tragedy. My perspective is a bit different. Even if certain factors did not exist before a war, the war may have still occurred, albeit with some logistical and practical differences. As an illustration, instead of using religion or economics to rally the people for war, the leaders may have used geography and strategic interests. The problem is not with society’s structures before war. The problem is the sins or mistakes of individuals, sometimes millions of individuals or just a few, that lead a society closer or further to war. For instance, many analysts believed that South Africa was doomed to civil war because of the societal structures there, but individuals made wise decisions that led to a peaceful transition of power. Alternatively, many analysts believed that Yugoslavia would remain a peaceful country after the Cold War because the ethnic groups there had become well integrated with many interethnic marriages, but then genocide occurred. Was it nationalism, religion, poverty, the fall of the Soviet Union, or some other force that caused the siege of Sarajevo? I would say ‘no’ because I believe it was the sins and mistakes of individuals that led Yugoslavia into war. Even if nationalism or religion had been different in the Balkans, war would have probably still occurred because the same individuals would have still made mistakes that moved them closer to war.

When faced with manmade tragedies like those in Sarajevo or Auschwitz or now in Libya, we face not so much the ineptitude of our society but the consequences of our own sin and mistakes. Just as the human brain has trouble understanding the darkness of the Holocaust, we often do not understand the darkness of our own sins. A simple lie only hurts a small number of people, or maybe no one at all as far as we can see. Perhaps, but when a large number of people tell small lies or commit other ‘small’ sins, the consequences can multiply and grow beyond our control. Therefore, when I say that the mistakes and sins of individuals may lead to wars, I do not simply mean the mistakes of politicians or rich businessmen. A German father may have heard a anti-Semitic joke from his son without correcting him. This joke and ignoring it may have been a small sin, but given the circumstances, it contributed to a genocide. Even today, a father may hear his son make a lewd joke about blonde women, but permitting this sin and behavior could perhaps lead to future disrespect towards women. It is my belief that everyday, individuals who are not politicians can plant seeds of peace that will someday prevent future wars and crimes. My own hope is that understanding and admitting to my sin and mistakes will create a pocket of peace around me that may spread to others. It’s better than creating a pocket of turmoil. Perhaps it is a naïve hope, but according to my Christian faith, God can take what is an imperfect attempt to bring His Kingdom to Earth and amplify it because nothing done in the name of God is ever done in vain.

When I started writing this post, I wanted to touch on other tragedies, such as natural disasters, but I’ll have to save those thoughts for another day because I don’t want to discuss too many topics in only one post.