Either War is Finished or We Are

The title of this entry are words attributable to Herman Wouk's stalwart American Navy officer in War and Remembrance. The book is a masterpiece of a historical novel in my opinion. Wouk weaves a theme of American character & industry, World War, the plight of the Jews and ultimately a theme of a chance for peace and hope emerging from ashes.

In many ways the world of pre and even early World War II is a time which I may have been more at home than I feel today. The transatlantic crossing on ocean liners, America as a reluctant participant on the world stage, a respect for and interest in ideas and oratory and discourse of all kinds... a world before television turned our homes into mini-theaters. A time when university meant education more than career preparation. A time when people read. A time of sweeping convulsions from new political and economic realities and theories. Communism, Socialism, Nazism, Fascism all came to full and often violent expression in this time. Democracy was still new and fragile in much of Europe and was, unfotunately, overcome by internal political and economic forces in too many of Europe's old time nations.

Wouk's Captain Henry leads a remarkable life. He is the naval attache in Germany at the start of World War II. He meets Hitler and Mussolini. He makes an astute intelligence conclusion and report and as such is sought out by FDR and comes to know FDR and Harry Hopkins. He visits London at the height of the blitz and meets Churchill and tours the chain home stations and sees the RAF in action. He serves as a Lend Lease officer on two occasions in the Soviet Union and is in Moscow during the German march on that city. He meets Stalin. He is assigned battleship command at Pearl Harbor only to arrive a day or two after the surprise attack. He commands a treaty cruiser at the battle of Midway and at Guadalcanal. He returns later to the Soviet Union as a special emissary for Lend Lease where he tours Leningrad during the German seige and Stalingrad shortly after the Germans are annihilated there. He is present in Tehran when Churchill, Stalin, and FDR meet together for the first time. And he visits the Manhattan project installations at Oak Ridge shortly before returning for a brief time to oversee landing craft issues for the Normandy invasion. He meets and gets to know Eisenhower and all the big military brass. He then is assigned to the Pacific and serves at Leyte Gulf, Iwo Jima, and other battles. Just after VE day he becomes Harry Truman's naval aide and is present with all the heads of state at Potsdam at the conclusion of the European war. And other characters are present at Pearl Harbor, the invasion of Poland and seige of Warsaw, the massacre of the US Air Force in the Phillipines, and more. You hit all the high spots and Wouk tells a great story with the people of his novel along with a remarkably accurate historical account of the war.

Captain (and later Admiral) Victor Henry writes about the incredible folly and command mistakes and bad decisions at the Battle of Leyte Gulf during 1944. He speaks of the end of an era in which battleships dominated the seas and even how a battle like Leyte Gulf was obsolete only a few years later. At the time Wouk wrote the book the cold war was at full simmer and the US and USSR had enormous massed nuclear arsenals sitting at 30 minutes notice - ready to destroy countries, continents and perhaps all of civilization. He spoke of the incredible folly and stupidity of launching the giant navies of Leyte Gulf and the consequences for those that bore the brunt of mistakes and bad decisions and then concluded that a nuclear Leyte Gulf would be the end of all we know. And then the words, "either war is finished or we are."

Well, it seems that war is not finished. It is fair to point out that in the first half of the 20th century there were two all out everyone choose a side wars that left entire generations of some countries dead. And before that there were the Napoleonic wars and the American Indian wars that lead to the virtual extinction of many native American tribes and there were the Crusades, invasions of the Mongolian Hordes, Romans, Assyrians, and on and on and on - countries and cultures fighting to the death. Since the end of World War II there have been all kinds of wars and conflicts, but somehow we have managed to avoid an all out fight between those that are really armed to the teeth. So, while war hasn't ended, maybe we've taken a few tentative steps down a path toward a better future.

SPOILER ALERT - The end of Wouk's book is worth repeating. One of the characters, Berel Jastrow, is a Polish Jew that fought in WW I, ran a business in Poland, was a refugee early in WW II, joined the Russian army briefly, was captured by the Germans and forced into labor camps including Auschwitz and in roving camps exuming and covering up German massacres in the Ukraine, escapes and then fights as a partisan against the Nazis and eventually is killed - buried in a shallow unmarked grave. It helps to understand this to understand Wouk's ending. Also, Wouk speaks of the initial nuclear weapons as revealing the light of the sun here on earth for the first time.

It is only a story, Berel Jastrow was never born and never existed. He was a parable. In truth his bones stretch from the French coast to the Urals, dry bones of a murdered giant. And in truth a marvelous thing happens; his story does not end there, for the bones stand up and take on flesh. God breathes spirit into the bones, and Berel Jastrow turns eastward and goes home. In the glare, the great and terrible light of this happening, God seems to signal that the story of the rest of us need not end, and that the new light can prove a troubled dawn.

For the rest of us, perhaps. Not for the dead, not for the more than fifty million real dead in the world's worst catastrophe: victors and vanquished, combatants and civiliams, people of so many nations, men, women, and children, all cut down. For them there can be no new earthly dawn. Yet though their bones lie in the darkness of the grave, they will not have died in vain, if their remembrance can lead us from the long, long time of war to the time for peace.

Faith without Perfect Understanding

I finished up the Miller book, Searching for God Knows What. The book is good in that it challenges me and it forces me to think through a number of issues.

Miller's fundamental premise is that God/Christ calls us to a relationship rather than laying out a propositional or formulaic theology. It contends that Christianity is not primarily "idea" driven and that the Bible doesn't particularly explain a theology. He contends that man is fallen/separated from God and that what we need most is to return to him and be in relationship with him.

I understand what Miller is saying.

He uses some really great metaphors in the book to explain our nature. A short version of the metaphor is that we live as though we are in a life boat. The challenge is that while there may be 10 in the life boat, there is reason to believe that the life boat might really only support 7 or 8 of us. Therefore, we are in a constant state of fear causing us to compare ourselves to everyone around us..... and desiring to move up in the pecking order based on some cultural value system. He says we do this because we get our definition from others - from outside ourselves. He even seems to say that this is proof that we were made to be given our definition by others and that when we lost our intimacy or relationship with God we turned to look for another source.

I think his metaphor is a good picture of our psychological make up. I sense that same fear and desire to compare and rank and compete against others. However, while I observe the phenomenon in myself and others, I don't know that it is separation from God that produces this state. It might be, but the proofs are actually "faith" or "belief."

Miller also spends a fair amount of time describing what it will be like to be back in perfect relationship with Christ/God in heaven. While it may be true that this is what will happen, I simply can't understand what that state might be like, regardless of Miller's descriptions.

For if man is fallen and separated from God.... what would prevent man from falling again after entering heaven? If our understanding of free will is in any way accurate, then do we all freely choose to submit completely to God in heaven? Or does free will not exist for us in heaven? And if not, then what will we have become? Not human in any sense that I can understand. And if free will has never really existed, then what is the story of the fall all about and why did God establish creation in this fashion? So, I always end up back at the impossible when I try to consider the whys behind creation, heaven, sinfulness, redemption, grace, and more.

And I can't make my mind "believe" things I can't begin to understand. However, that doesn't mean that I don't have faith. Faith in things unseen and faith in things not understood.

On a personal note, this is the 2nd of Miller's books that I have read. In this one I miss his sense of humility and willingness to "not know" everything. This time he lays out a belief system that sounds as if it is completely certain of understanding God/Jesus' desire for redemption through a relationship. His conviction is admirable, but also a little oppressive in his use of absolutes.

In the meantime, I picked up a novel that is on my shelf and is one of my favorite stories of all time. I have read War and Remembrance by Herman Wouk multiple times and still enjoy it each time.

Gore - Competent, Articulate, Statesman, Boring

I finished Gore's new book The Assault on Reason. The arguments are logical, compelling, and worth reading. If you thought the Bush administration was just bad, but going to be gone soon, this book might change your mind. According to Gore, while they may be gone relatively soon, they have started down a path that threatens our safety, our respect for law, and the future of our democracy.

In many ways, I'd prefer to have Gore as a candidate for the presidency over the current motley bunch.

However, this book is another example of why it is so hard for him to win. He's pretty boring. He takes twice as long to say something as he needs to.

Incompetent, Unlucky, Stupid - Doesn't Really Matter

He received a warning about an impending terrorist attack on US soil in August 2001 and did nothing about it.

He and his administration had a fixation on finding a reason to go to war with Saddam from the earliest days of the administration. He and his administration manufactured a connection between Iraq & al Quaeda after 9/11. He and his administration ran around all over the place indicating that unless we attacked Iraq, there would be mushroom clouds over US cities. He and his administration said we would be welcomed as liberators. It turns out that there was no connection, no nuclear program, and no real welcome.

He and his administration have multiple times claimed the mission was accomplished, the insurgency was in the last throws, the media just showed the bad news, there were enough troops, and that you go to war with what you've got rather than what you want. Well, the mission is not accomplished, the insurgency is well dug in, the media was actually restrained and mislead and is still denied information or access in substantial ways, the military leadership had told the administration that a larger occupying force would be needed, and that our troops were sent to war without body armor.

He said that if anyone in his administration was involved with leaking the name of Valerie Plame they would be fired. Well it turns out that Richard Armitage and Scooter Libby both spoke to reporters about Valerie Plame and the Vice President may have done so..... and then we find out that he "authorized" some or all of these individuals to make such disclosures.

He and his administration pushed a huge increase in corporate welfare through the Medicare prescription drug benefit. The bill was written by insurance and pharmaceutical companies and is costing vastly more (100 times) than was told to Congress. And it turns out that the administration official in charge knew the facts that it was going to be massively more expensive than told to the people or the Congress.

He inherited a huge surplus and is now presiding over the biggest annual debt (by any measure) in our history.

I could go on and on, but this gets the basic idea across. The military is on the verge of being broken. Our debt threatens our economy for years to come. We've lost our moral leadership position in the world. We've created so many problems in Iraq that it defies all understanding.

So my point is this. We elect presidents because we expect them to be right. We elect them with the hope that we will be better off as years go along - safer, richer, healthier, whatever. Personally, I would prefer that presidents be open, honest, deliberative and reasoned and that such a process would lead to making right decisions in providing leadership. Some would prefer that the president be motivated more by faith, intuition, principles, or just plain good luck. That's not my preference. Regardless, it turns out that he and his administration have been wrong about a lot of important issues.

Whether you think he lies or you think he is dealing with a lot of difficult situations not of his making, the reality is that most of us think it is wrong for us to be engaged in a war in Iraq, wrong to participate in torture, wrong to have lost our focus on hunting down Osama Bin Laden, wrong to be loading down future generations with massive debt in order to finance a massive corporate welfare system, and more.

We elect our presidents to be right. Unfortunately, we don't have much recourse between now and the next election.

Curiosity and Humility

I've finished several books in the past couple of weeks and all are worthwhile.

I finished up Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Infidel and it is a spellbinding true story. In addition, it is an eye opener. I think most people would believe that much of the world treats women horribly. And I think that many that I know are either fearful of or contemptuous of the spreading radical Islamic cancer. However, it is one thing to kind of know it or sense it and it is another thing to read the vivid description of a young girl having her genitals mutilated against her will. It is another thing to read a first hand account of the incredible psychological influence of well organized and politically motivated Islamic groups. If you haven't read this book, you ought to do so. I don't know that I come to the same conclusions as the author, but anyone that says Islam is peace needs to have that idea challenged by this book. One of my conclusions from reading this is that I am incredibly thankful that I did not grow up amidst the chaos of east Africa or the cauldron of Islamic fundamentalism. And I am even more thankful that my daughter did not grow up in either of those environments.

Last weekend I stumbled upon a book by Oliver Thomas called 10 Things Your Minister Wants to Tell You: (But Can't, Because He Needs the Job). It is a most refreshing book, especially for a Baptist minister to have penned. It actually says that the Bible doesn't really say much about homosexuality and that we pull the "abomination" stuff from the same area where it says we ought to stone and cast out and mutilate all kinds of folks for all kinds of reasons. And for some reason we've managed to hang onto this one. It also says that systematic exclusion of women from church service is wrong; there are various interpretations of end-times and the post-millenialism of Jenkins and Lahaye fame is both new and not supportable; the creation stories of Genesis are conflicting and incomplete and not intended to really explain how creation happened, but why; and several other juicy ones that I'll let you discover if you choose to read this very short little book. Personally, I thought it was great. To me, it mostly said that as Christians we are allowing ourselves to become dominated by controversial and exclusionary and unsupportable beliefs, rather than carrying out Jesus' message of social justice, kindness, love, and mercy. I'm sure there are conservatives poking pins in little Oliver Thomas voodoo dolls.

Finally, just this evening I finished up Walter Isaacson's fine biography of Einstein, Einstein: His Life and Universe. The biography is good. Einstein the person is spectacular. Non-conformist. Brilliant. Creative. Religious unbeliever. Amazed at the universe around him and blessed with enormous curiosity, powers of concentration, and willingness to question authority and dogma. When new information came to light he changed his conclusions - both in science and in politics. He was a rabid pacifist, but the rise of Nazism caused him to shed his radical pacifism. He was an opponent of Stalinist politics, but refused to go all the way to the extreme of McCarthyism.

There are several quotes from the book that bear recording here.....

Einstein's fundamental creed was that freedom was the lifeblood of creativity. "The development of science and of the creative activities of the spirit," he said, "requires a freedom that consists in the independence of thought from the restrictions of authoritarian and social prejudice." Nurturing that should be the fundamental role of government, he felt, and the mission of education.

There was a simple set of formulas that defined Einstein's outlook. Creativity required being willing not to conform. That required nurturing free minds and free spirits, which in turn required "a spirit of tolerance." And the underpinning of tolerance was humility - the belief that no one had the right to impose ideas and beliefs on others.

For some people, miracles serve as evidence of God's existence. For Einstein it was the absence of miracles that reflected divine providence. The fact that the cosmos is comprehensible, that it follows laws, is worthy of awe. This is the defining quality of a "God who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists."

Einstein's own description of the US following the fall of McCarthyism...

God's own country becomes stranger and stranger, but somehow they manage to return to normality. Everything - even lunacy - is mass produced here. But everything goes out of fashion very quickly.

And near his end....

But he knew that the aneurysm on his abdominal aorta should soon prove fatal, and he began to display a peaceful sense of his own mortality. When he stood at the graveside and eulogized the physicist Rudolf Ladenberg, who had been his colleague in Berlin and then Princeton, the words seemed to be ones he felt personally. "Briefly is this existence, as a fleeting visit in a strange house," he said, "The path to be pursued is poorly lit by a flickering consciousness."

It is the quote about humility amongst those above that resonates most with me. I will advocate for what I believe or think or observe with passion. But I believe that I have tried for most of my adult life to try to give the other view or the other side at least the benefit of a possibility. I'm proud and I'm convinced much of the time of my own rightness (hopefully not righteousness), but somewhere underneath I try to keep in mind that I might not be right or that at the very least I might learn something from other views.

The other quote that resonates with me so much is that the absence of miracles, that the structure and order of the cosmos, that when properly understood there is no "weird spookiness" to the physics of the universe; is in itself an indicator of a creator/designer/God. (It is for this reason that Einstein wrestled up to his last moments looking for a unified theory that would take all of the "weird spookiness" out of quantum mechanics.)

I remember reading my Biology textbook early in my first semester as a freshman about the enormity of the universe. I still have that textbook and can locate the passages today. (page 698 and 699 of Biological Science by William T. Keeton [2nd edition - 1972]) The passage discussed the possibility of life on other planets and went on to discuss the vast number of stars, likely planets, and statistical probability that life and intelligent life might exist on other planets. I don't know that the discussion of life elsewhere made a great impact on me, but the huge number of planets whirling through the universe impressed me. And the intricate way that life developed on Earth and the amazing biological organisms and systems that evolved got me to thinking. The grandeur and the sense of design from enormous macro concepts like the universe and galaxies all the way down to micro concepts of cells and molecules and atoms and DNA and cellular reproduction were breathtaking to contemplate. They were (and still are) awe-inspiring.

"God who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists."

That is an affirmation of curiosity and a definition of humility. I think that is why I read and why sometimes I think or write.