This is a critical debate which evokes significant differences among secular and spiritual progressives. I hope you’ll let me know your reactions to it.
Editorials & Actions
The Libyan Revolution
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While Juan Cole’s article (below) may be a bit too quick to declare that the Libyan revolution has succeeded, given the ongoing fighting in Tripoli and the possibility that there still might be an ongoing civil war for months or longer, and even though it plays down tribal rivalries and tensions that have always been part of the Libyan scene in the past hundred or more years, Cole does provide us with a very useful analysis as well as a critique of those in the liberal or progressive world who dismissed the whole struggle as nothing but another example of Western imperialism. Sometimes even the Western powers can do good things, and a sophisticated spiritual progressive always seeks to understand the complexities rather than embracing one dimensional analyses. And this one could be wrong also! That’s how we have to approach the world–with open heart, genuine caring about the well-being for others, and modesty about how much we know about the details of any given situation and how best to be helpful. That’s why, in calling for the overthrow of another dictator, Asad of Syria, I placed that call within the framework of a commitment to non-violence, hoping that there could be in Syria a less violent resolution to the conflict than has happened so far in Libya, and Libya is not over yet!
2011
The American Empire’s Terrorist Network
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The United States of America is the biggest and worst terrorist nation of the world. And most Americans approve enthusiastically. Those two statements need careful corroboration. They need a careful reading of history.
2011
Blood Brothers
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A work of taut and absorbing beauty, Christopher de Bellaigue’s “Rebel Land” documents the author’s exploration of the area known as eastern Turkey, where history is simultaneously elusive and oppressive, cloaked and hiding in plain sight. From the weather-beaten ruins of a church; to a slip of the tongue over drinks; or to a conversation where commission, at least of a conceptual sort, is betrayed by an important omission in one’s account of a massacre that occurred almost one hundred years ago–in places like these, history hangs in the air.
Editorials & Actions
Call the White House: We Need a Real End to the Afghanistan War!
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Osama bin Laden is dead. Al-Qaida is relatively crippled. We don’t need to continue fighting in Afghanistan.
Last night, President Obama announced a plan for Afghanistan that will leave nearly 70,000 troops on the ground at the end of his first term. That’s still almost double the number of troops President Bush had in Afghanistan.
Editorials & Actions
A Pakistani Speaks Out
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A three-way conversation about the United States and Pakistan with Shaykh Kabir Helminski, Rabbi Michael Lerner, and Abbas Bilgrami, the director of a natural gas distribution company in Pakistan.
Articles
Tikkun’s Spiritual Response to the Assassination of Osama bin Laden
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The sort of raucous celebration of Osama bin Laden’s killing that took place outside the White House and in the media erodes our moral and spiritual center. Self-defense is sometimes necessary in this violent world, but let’s remember that a strategy relying on killing the “bad guys” is as futile as trying to end malaria by killing every mosquito on the planet. Drain the swamps of hatred! And violence isn’t the path for that! Now that Osama is dead, lets get our troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan NOW!
2011
Napoleon’s Dictum
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Some people condemn the “Libyan intervention” because there is no similar action against Bahrain or Yemen. Sure, it is a case of blatant discrimination. But that is like demanding a murderer go unpunished because other murderers are still free. Two minuses make a plus, but two murders do not become a non-murder.
Editorials & Actions
Violence in Libya
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It’s not enough to oppose violence. That’s the deep weakness of an anti-war movement that focuses only on what it is against. The world needs to hear what we are for.
Editorials & Actions
Is Intervention in Libya the Morally Correct Thing to Do?
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Progressives have sharp differences with each other on whether the Libyan intervention by the United States and other Western countries is morally justified. Here we present a variety of such perspectives.
Articles
Educating for Peace
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Overcoming violence is one of the great intellectual, moral, and spiritual challenges we face as a human community — yet U.S. schools rarely see peace-building as their goal. It’s time for us to rethink our understanding of the purpose of education.
Articles
Toward a Counter-Imperial Faith
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Christians in Egypt joined with Muslims during the February 2011 protests that drove U.S.-backed Hosni Mubarak from power. Will U.S. Christians now find the courage to follow their lead and stand with the pro-democracy movements in Egypt, Libya, and beyond?
Activism
From the Vietnam War to Species Suicide: Thoughts on a 50th High School Reunion
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There may be nothing more devastating than the phenomenon of “generational betrayal.” The clash between what we had grown up believing and what we experienced destroyed our individual internal moral universes and fatally divided our generation.
2011
Libya: Acid Test for Nonviolence?
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Open warfare has already broken out in Libya: the scale and stage of the violence are extreme. Yet there is still a way to respond that, while extremely difficult to pull off, could be called nonviolent.
2011
The Imperial War for Drugs
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AMERICAN WAR MACHINE: DEEP POLITICS, THE CIA, GLOBAL DRUG CONNECTION, AND THE ROAD TO AFGHANISTAN by Peter Dale Scott, Rowman & Littlefield, 2010