Foreign Policy and the Elliptical Trainer

The extent of my involvement in the foreign policy of the United States has been limited to simply not tarnishing the reputation of America while being some obnoxious version of the grand American stereotype while abroad. Other than that I haven't done a significant amount of international travel in a number of years and so I am less likely to speak intelligently about the topic from a first hand perspective. Having said that, because of what is going on in the Middle East (specifically between Gaza and Israel) as well as fairly recent announcements by president -elect Barack Obama, I thought I would post a few thoughts.

Foreign Policy and the Gym

Recently, I was at the gym trying to get back into my workout, which I have been nearly entirely absent from since last Thanksgiving. This mostly consists of running on an elliptical trainer for 30 minutes over lunch, listening to music (lately that means worship music by: Tim Hughes and Josh Baldwin) while watching -slash- reading the closed captioning on Fox New and CNN (which happen to be two channels right next to each other on the TV connected to the elliptical trainer.) I switch back and forth and watch for anything new. Fox has a neat show called “live desk” which riffles through the latest at light speed so they can offer a 20,000 foot view of anything current in a timely manner, while CNN does a lot of political interviews and commentary. The topic on everyone's political mind: foreign policy.

For the uninitiated, if you followed the campaign agenda of Barack Obama on a number of political topics, a big one was U.S. Foreign Policy and Iraq. The popular phrase throughout the campaign was that we needed an “exit strategy for getting out of Iraq.” Most of the folks I know personally want to get out of Iraq. Obama as recently as Thanksgiving has said it is a war he feels we didn't need to be involved in.

Skip this next paragraph if you already know about the UN 18th Resolution on Iraq:

For the record, it was the U.N. who set the plan in motion to enter Iraq and unseat Sadam Hussein if he didn't allow unfettered access and compliance with U.N. requirements: it's all in the 18th U.N. resolution on Iraq. Unfortunately, the U.S., Spain and the UK were the lead partners on following through on that U.N. promise to Sadam and it was the rest of the U.N. that threw us under the buss... but I digress... go read about the 18th resolution if you want to validate this yourself.

No matter how we feel about the Iraq situation, Obama has said he wants a plan that focuses on an exit strategy and I think most people are ready for that mostly because they like the idea of getting out of Iraq. With regard to Israel, Obama just recently spoke up about that particular Middle East situation. It would seem that Obama, while generally and seemingly respectfully leaving foreign policy statements to the seated U.S. president, is willing to verbally condemn Hamas attacks on Israeli communities that boarder Gaza. Personally, I was glad to hear that.

Hamas and Israel: An Israeli Perspective

It is good that I listen to positive and uplifting worshipful music while I run. This is mostly due to the fact that if I was just simply watching the news, I think my workouts would end early mostly because of the depressing nature of the news on a regular basis. After a quick workout I head back to the showers and typically there is someone else getting ready to head back to work and we start up a little chat about work, or weather or whatever.

The other day I ended up chatting with this young guy who had spent the last five years in the New York City area but is actually from Tel Aviv, Israel. I politely asked if he had any friends in harms way during the current conflicts and he said that his friends and family, so far, were all safe. Fhew! i was glad to hear that. After a bit of chatting I could sense that he was reluctant to share his real feelings on the issue. This might have had something to do with the fact that the news always seems to report the fighting as if Israel is the aggressor. You hear stuff like, “The U.N. is considering sanctioning Israel for crimes against humanity for not allowing the Red Cross to pass into Gaza,” or “Israel was non-compliant with the U.N. cease-fire demands.” What you don't often hear is that the day the U.N. passed its little cease-fire resolution, Israel did cease-fire... until it was pummeled by 30 rockets from Hama terrorists in Gaza that morning, at which point it stopped the traffic across the boarder and sent solders into harms way on the ground in Gaza to deal with those sites were the rocket fire was launched. Once the boarders were opened again a Hamas “soldier” shot a rocket into a Red Cross aid truck killing the driver. At that point groups like the Red Cross stopped trying to cross into Gaza (this time without complaining about Israel stopping traffic.)

To my new friend at the gym I decided to lay my cards out for him:

“I am absolutely nowhere near having the right to any real opinion on what is going on over there. I feel bad for Israel. They are surrounded by Hamas in Gaza or Hezbollah in Lebanon, as well as other groups who have unapologetically declared that Israel will be removed from the face of the earth. Why do their neighbors seem to have it in for them?”

My new friend seemed to breath a sigh of relief and relax just a little. He replied:

“I don't know. Nobody knows. This isn't a day where fighting might result in land-rights or the securing of some resource. There is nothing to gain. There is hate. And removing Hamas will not solve it. There are too many others filled with these same feelings about Israel. Remove one and another springs up.”

I felt pretty bad for this guy and that situation. People around the world can get pretty upset about Americans too, but most often it is just a prejudice stereotype that drives people to hate. If you think I am wrong, check out the online episode of the ABC show "What would you do?" about Americans visiting Paris. As a Christian, I understand the religious history behind the regional fighting. And while I believe that is still a factor, I think the average person mostly deals in stereotypes when they are dealing with that sort of categorical hate. Sadly, the same ignorant stereotyping exists generally for “all things spiritual” when the topic of the Middle East battles comes up. It goes something like this,

“See, this just proves that religion is good for nothing other than giving people a reason to hate the person who isn't like them.”

I know spiritual and non-spiritual people who over-identify with that stereotype as well while they both attempt to disassociate themselves from religion. Oddly enough, “spiritual” Christians do this because they generally believe christian + religious = bad, while they think they can identify with the person without faith by agreeing that christian + spiritual = good. The bottom line is that for most people without faith, there is only a semantic difference between spiritual and religious. If you are christian then you are likely spiritual or religious and christian + religious = christian + spiritual = bad. Why? because of this stereotype. I believe in my heart it is better to address the general problem with “stereotypes” rather than trying to convince someone christian + spiritual is different than christian + religious.

My opinion: stereotypes are good for one thing: humor. If we can't laugh at extreme and ridiculous examples of ourselves then we are taking ourselves too seriously. But outside of taking our self-righteousness down a peg, stereotyping is never good, in any other case. A few quick Christian facts to validate my point: the Russian language was first turned into a written language by a missionary ( a good thing); The Red Cross was pioneered by brave Christians willing to run out into battlefields in the middle of fighting to save peoples lives (also good); Some of the worlds most cherished art was commissioned by people of faith painting about Christian topics (a very good thing). I could go on.

This takes me to the entire Middle East and the fact that Obama's Foreign Policy will take its first steps there. Well-meaning guys like Nicholas D. Kristof (world traveler and op-ed / writter guy for the New York Times) in predicting the coming Foreign Policy of America under Obama have said stuff like affirming that he will get us out of Iraq, or incorrectly stating that Pakistan already has nuclear weapons, or that Obama will likely perform nation-building activities in Afghanistan and Pakistan including negotiating with the Taliban, rather than sending in more troops or dropping bombs on Taliban-infested communities. With regard to the situation in Gaza, he has said that the “Israeli assault in Gaza is likely to create more terrorists in the long run.” (There is that Israeli aggression perspective again) Surely these are the popular things to say, that fighting terrorists actually creates more terrorists. I am not sure what his proposed alternative is, but that is also not the point of why I am writing this. I would like to take a look at what Obama is actually saying about the Middle East.

Around this last Thanksgiving Barbara Walters interviewed Barack Obama. In that interview she asked a few questions about the Middle East. Specifically she ask about...

Iraq:

Obama replied that we need an exit strategy for Iraq, which he said must include establishing Iraq as a stable element in the Middle East and specifically monitored to ensure that it does not become a breading ground for future terrorists. While it was not in the interview, Obama has announced a plan to build a permanent presence in Iraq with a world-class military / political / embassy to house potentially hundreds of Americans in the region. This would be a new base or headquarters in the Middle East. For those who were convinced we would leave soon after he came into office understand that stability and continuing to participate in fighting terrorist activity and growth in Iraq might just be an excuse for America never leaving Iraq. This is a wait-and-see-what-he-does kind of scenario.

Afghanistan:

At this point, Obama didn't mention anything about nation-building, though I imagine it will be in the cards, as it is today. Since the U.S. entered Afghanistan we have gone from fighting back the Taliban, to establishing the U.S. reconstruction team that has built dozens of schools across the country, and now a slow down in reconstruction to return focus to holding back new Taliban resurgence. Again, for what ever reason, writers like Nicholas Kristof decide to Bush-bash and contrast U.S. military dollars with the dollars a guy from Montana is personally raising and spending to rebuild schools in Iraq, but he doesn't bother to mention the success of the U.S. Reconstruction teams actively at work. How this type of journalism has gotten popular is a bit beyond me. I am not defending Bush here as much as I am frustrated at this one-sided sensationalistic journalist style. Kristof would have us believe that “schools are a much more effective bang for the buck than missiles or chasing some Taliban around the country.” He is pitting one activity against the other as if this is an “OR” and not an “AND” scenario. So what does Obama think? Well, the Navy who plays a big roll in the U.S. Reconstruction team, says that they are continuing to build schools. At the same time they say that in some areas with new Taliban activity, the school building is slowing down. These are areas where the answer seems to be increase the military presence so that school and community construction can return (an “AND” response.) Obama seems to agree with this. According to his interview, once in office he will dispatch at least 3 additional battalions into Afghanistan. And rather than negotiate with the Taliban, Obama says he will work to return our military focus to hunting down the Taliban and specifically hunting down Osama Bin Laden. Kristof has some ideas and opinions, but in the end I think he is just serving the “Scoop De Jur” and not actually reporting or performing any reasonable analysis on news for that matter.

What I find quite interesting from that same interview is the idea that Obama dispels the myth that he intends to move at the speed of a miracle worker (as Barbara explains that it seems to be the expectation of many.) He responded to a question about not being able to rise to such a level of unreasonable expectations by saying that he feels people will be happy if they see progress. If people want and expect change i.e. outcomes, Obama is hoping that a reasonable pace toward that change in the form of some kind of progress will satisfy the American people. He said the same of his nearly 1 trillion dollar bailout plans. He hopes people reset their expectations to match the rate at which economies actually move: slowly and patiently. Sadly I think many people are a little bit ignorant and expect Obama to enter office with an ace up his sleeve that suddenly turns the entire economy around, achieves peace and stability in Iraq, brings the troops home, negotiates peace with the Taliban and pacifies Hamas (or calms crazy aggressive bully Israel if that is your political perspective.)

In my book, and based on some lessons from history and economics, that is the description of a miracle worker.