Politick

More on the Christmas Star

Some non-Christian Yelnick readers found the Star of Bethlehem post too cryptic, as lacking a lot of background that people raised in Christian countries take for granted. Let me try to make amends.

Was the Star of Bethlehem the Shekinah?

One of the odd pleasures of traveling is to find books with ideas that are not common in the home country. My first vacation to Australia brought me into the very active subculture of British investigation of the Freemasons, and their connection to the mysterious Knights Templar of the Great Crusades. On my return to NZ, I found a further work by the same authors, exploring even earlier connections between the Freemasons, the Templars and Solomon's Temple. (This is about to be brought into the popular imagination, as the same topics are rumored to be the subject of the sequel to The Da Vinci Code.) In the course of their analysis, they propose yet another candidate for the Star of Bethlehem, one that ties much better into Jewish tradition than the mainstream candidates.

View From London at Christmas

After all the hard core political mumbo jumbo about elections and war, it is time for some kinder, gentler political posts. And what could be more wonderful than Christmas in London?  It is said in song and movies that the place to be from Thanksgiving to Christmas is New York City, which comes alive during the holidays.  London gives 'ole New York a run for the money. The atmosphere is festive, the crowds enormous, and the decorations sparkling.  One can easily imagine the arcades, such as Piccadilly Arcade, being garlanded and lit down the ceiling.  Scale this up, and image whole streets dressed up like this little arcade.  Regent Street in particular was arched by blue and red lights all the way from Oxford Street to Piccadilly Circus. 

The concept of seasonal window displays was started at Selfridges.  We visited there first.  We also went on to Harrod's and Fortnum & Mason, but Selfridges won hands down. Particularly nice was the seasonal music provided by the venerable Salvation Army Band. 

And this leads into the soft political message of the season.  Political correctness is denuding Christmas of its festive spirit, by removing its spiritual core.  Without the seasonal hymns, the Salvation Army becomes just another peddler one must block and tackle through to shop in the crowds.  A lot has been written on this topic, and no more will be added today, except to say it was a refreshing change to still experience what in the US is fast becoming lost: a Christmas with Happy Christmas not Happy Holidays, a season which respects the traditions and does not replace them with a Disneyfied amalgam of marketing iconography stripped of any intrinsic meaning or values other than be happy, buy more!

View from Bosnia of Iraq: Too Soon to Tell

The blogsphere and smogsphere (political punditry) are besides themselves with pronouncements on Iraq: it is a quagmire, it is getting better, Bush made a mistake, Kerry will cut-and-run, etc.  A friend of ours sent us some sensible thoughts from the Balkans:      

The US election debates on foreign policy recalls the statement allegedly made by Mao Tse Tung's foreign minister, Chou En Lai, when asked about the French Revolution's outcome.  He replied, "It's too soon to tell."  Forgetting this wise, Chinese long view of history, people are making an awful lot of sweeping statements here about Iraq rather soon after it has happened.

A lot can be learned from our recent attempt at nation- and coalition-building in Bosnia where, nearly ten years after the Dayton Agreement, the international community is still heavily engaged.  It is trying to withdraw, but finding it difficult.  It is also more or less now engaged on unraveling or at least modifying one of they key tenets of Dayton: the division of the country into ethnically-based entities and cantons.  We can also perhaps learn from Kosovo, where the international community has no good way out of a bind it's in.  It intervened in a conflict as a "humanitarian intervention" and now finds itself seeking the impossible: a solution between two parties, one expecting independence and the other expecting the province to remain part of a country, that will satisfy both sides.  After five years of United Nations administration, the electricity still goes off for twelve hours a day and the natives grow increasingly restless.

Both these situations are, in the main, creations of the people who now, speaking for Kerry, criticize the Bush administration.  That's politics.  The positions are put into high contrast, whitewashing the more subtle lessons of the war.  What nobody says, this being a political year, is that there are many situations that admit of no easy answers.  Iraq is one of those. 

Whether or not the current administration planned the peace well, one cannot deny they did a good job planning the war.  They won in three weeks in a campaign of maneuver that will be studied in military academies for years to come.  The United States Marine Corps moved farther from the sea faster than it ever had in history.  There was a lot of hard fighting along the way, even in Baghdad, quelled by a lot of individual initiative and bravery.  In so doing, they removed an evil tyrant, and there is something to be said for that. 

This military campaign also raises the question:  If we can intervene in Kosovo on humanitarian grounds, a rather shaky doctrine under international law and a conflict for which we also could not get the backing of the U.N. Security Council (until afterwards), why were we not justified in doing the same in the face of a much-worse situation in Iraq?

The speed of the campaign, which was unexpected, also appears to have affected the aftermath, for it left large parts of the country untouched.  Unlike Germany and Japan after the Second World War, the military campaign did not leave the country flattened.  Unlike Bosnia, where the parties were depleted by the fighting, and unlike Kosovo, a tiny place where the losing party left, the campaign allowed a lot of combatants to shed their uniforms and slip back into society.  That they're disgruntled, angry, and belligerent is without a doubt.  That anyone, from any administration, could have anticipated all this seems more doubtful. 

As for the larger question of whether this was worth doing, perhaps that is the one we should be asking ourselves.  But the answer to this question may be the Chinese one:  it's too soon to tell.

View from Masada

Masada is the most visited site in Israel. It holds a special place in the heart of the Jewish State, much like the Alamo once did to Americans. In both cases, a small brave group of freedom fighters held out for as long as they could against a great Imperial power. At Masada, history has captured one of the most stirring speeches for freedom in any age (see the attached Masada photo album for more of this fascinating moment of history). After the Alamo, the US went on to win Texas and continue in its Manifest Destiny to control the continent from sea to shining sea. After Masada, the Jewish State was eradicated and the Jews once again dispersed, not to return for almost two millennia. Why then the special appeal of Masada, and what does it say about the current conflict in the Middle East?

View from London (of America) During the Olympics

In London, all roads soon lead to Trafalger Square. This summer, it was infested with more tourists than pigeons. (One wonders if the homeless pigeon may too become extinct, or, whether Blair has found one way to tackle the homeless problem.) The English are friendly as always, but what is below the surface? Only 30% or so support Blair's Iraqi policy, and the country is inexorably being pulled towards the EU and the Continent. Perhaps the 70% quietly hope for the return of the pigeons, if only they could drop their guano exclusively on the gringoes? That, however, wouldn't be sporting, and the British above all believe in the Rule of Law, as onetime brilliantly expressed in the Olympics.

The Olympics after all were restarted to demonstrate the power of the Rule of Law. Athletes of nations competed within rules. The Olympics were a showcase of the Victorian Ideal, that principles of civic virtue and good government could be expressed in sport and thereby spread to the rest of the world. The Olympics Movement succeeded beyond the organizers' dreams, with over 200 nations competing at the latest summer games in Athens - many of whom would not exist but for the efforts of Britain (and the United States) to free them. It is thus sad that at the very peak of success the Olympic ideals are breaking down, with achievement trumping the rules. In this developing tragedy is encapsulated the current world dilemma of the United States.

View from Ground Zero

It seemed altogether fitting and proper to visit the site of a great battlefield of the War on Terror on Memorial Day, a day first conceived of and dedicated to the proposition that all Civil War fallen should be honored. The battle that rages is how to rebuild the site: replace the office space, return the city street life to the area, add a monument to the fallen? A few minutes in the site make it clear that dedicating a new memorial would not consecrate nor hallow this site any more than the fallen already have by their great devotion to duty. The site is a monument to industry, and is already showing the signs of returning to its former state.

View From Nagasaki

It was threatening to rain when we got to Nagasaki, a picturesque town at the western tip of Japan, the tip nearest to both Korea and China. When Japan withdrew from the world in 1636, and to enforce the ban on Christianity that had begun in 1587, an artificial island was built off Nagasaki harbor called Dejima, to house the remaining Portuguese. Dejima became Japan's only window to the Western World for 200 years. It is ironic that one of the most Western cities in Japan was the site of the second original Ground Zero.

View From Jerusalem

You feel the weight of history in Jerusalem, some of it recent. Saturday is the Sabbath for one faith, but just another day for the others. Yelnick visited last Saturday, at the front lines of the New World Order.