Madeleine Albright surpasses any super hero, any rock star, any TV star, any movie star that I've ever seen/heard/read about in popularity with me. She is fabulous; so cool, so calm, so intelligent, so knowledgeable....You get the idea. Thus, I just had to read her latest book; and, I was richly rewarded. One might find it odd that an avowed agnostic would bother reading a book that has "The Almighty" in its title. I had no qualms about picking up the book. Partly due to my respect and trust in Ms Albright and partly due to the subtitle of the book "Reflections on America, God, and World Affairs". It has always been obvious to me that religion has played a leading role in America and world affairs. Let's dive right in.
There are nineteen chapters in the book (plus 16 pages of sources and another 6 pages of acknowledgments that made fascinating reading--especially her acknowledgment of having consulted Republican Senator from Kansas, which made me feel really good about her having mentioned him in two places in the book ), divided into three sections: One: God, Liberty, Country; Two: Cross, Crescent, Star; and Three: Final Reflections. Within those three sections, the author leads one through the role of religion (Ms A, by the way, believes there should be one) in politics and government, through the conflict among the three Abrahamic religions, and finally through her thoughts on how the world can become a more serene place through correct diplomatic choices--some of which, of course, are not in the hands of Americans.
Early in Part One, the author (who teaches one course on foreign policy, each semester, at Georgetown University) writes, "Increasingly, in the classes I teach and in discussions with friends and colleagues, I have solicited thoughts about the impact of religion on current events....My students tend to equate religion with ethics and so frame their responses in moral terms." I find it sad that the students would equate the two, but the author does not dwell on that. She continues by addressing the responses she gets from people of various ethnic backgrounds. "The foreign students I teach are an eclectic group....They are most divided, not surprisingly, by questions of right and wrong in the Middle East."
"My friends who are experts on foreign policy--a somewhat older group--are focused on the threat posed by religious extremists, including the possibility that terrorists will gain access to weapons of mass murder. They are alarmed, as well, about the gap in understanding that has opened between predominately Islamic societies and the West."
The author continues by providing sketches of the reactions of Arab leaders, religious scholars, political activists (of multiple parties), all to whom she spoke, and her own response as a daughter of Czechoslovakia. After a couple of preparatory paragraphs fleshing out some history of her own life, she writes, "There are days now when it is hard to pick up a newspaper. I think the U.S. government has thoroughly botched its response to international terror, damaged America's reputation, and substituted slogans for strategy in promoting freedom. I willingly concede, however, the difficulty and complexity of the problems the Bush administration is facing. I have often said that those who have never held the highest jobs in government do not know how hard these jobs can be, and that those who retire from them tend to forget quickly. Critics have an obligation to be fair and to offer constructive ideas. That is the purpose of this book."
The author certainly is fair in her book and some of the ideas are truly constructive, and a couple of her suggestions are out of the hands of the U.S. I would really like to give you the flavor of the book (which, to me, read like an exciting novel); but, as I marked over 30 passages that I found interesting enough to address in this review, I realize that it is unreasonable to address them all. I will give a few excerpts and let it go at that--hoping that you will avail yourself of the opportunity to read the book, yourself.
"History would be far different if we did not tend to hear God most clearly when we think He is telling us exactly what it is that we want to hear." Ms A goes on to present the case of the Philippines. "[President] McKinley liked to conceive of the expansion of American power as part of a divine plan, but although the war against Spain was successful and quick, consolidating control over the Philippines proved difficult and slow." Ms A then goes into more detail of how the U.S. took over the Philippines, and how our leaders refused to call it what it was: Imperialism. She leaves it to the reader to draw a parallel between our current troubles in Iraq and the oh-so-similar troubles that we went through in the Philippines.
"At the turn of the twentieth century, a young senator from Indiana, Albert Jeremiah Beveridge, became famous for an oration, 'The March of the Flag,' that he gave repeatedly in public appearances and on the Senate floor. 'The Philippines are ours forever,' exulted the senator, 'and just beyond them are China's illimitable markets. We will not retreat from either....We will not abandon one opportunity in the Orient. We will not renounce our part in the mission of our race, trustee under God, of the civilization of the world'." Wow! That sounds so familiar!
Ms A quotes Martin Luther King on the subject of the damage done to America's standing overseas by the Vietnam war. "Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the hearts of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies....The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism."
Speaking of her time in government (Secretary of State, in case anyone doesn't recall), "I saw government as a practical enterprise that had to operate in a messy and dangerous world, although the realist approach struck me as cold-blooded. I did not understand how we could possibly steer a steady course without moral principles to help guide us." Notably, she did not speak of "religious principles".
"Generally speaking, a 'just war' is one carried out by a competent authority with moral intentions for a cause that is right. The effort must have a reasonable chance of success, with the expectation that it will result in no greater harm than the injury that produced it."
"As Mark Twain's harrowing War Prayer reminds us, even to pray for victory in war is tantamount to asking that horrors be visited upon the innocent of the opposing side. The duty of leadership, however, is inescapable: to try to make moral choices despite the immense difficulty of doing so, at the risk of being wrong."
"...Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the Holocaust...recalled how a group of scholars had once been asked to name the unhappiest character in the Bible....The best answer, Wiesel suggested, might in fact be God, because of the sorrow caused by people fighting, killing, and abusing each other in His name.
"This is why so many practitioners of foreign policy--including me--have sought to separate religion from world politics, to liberate logic from beliefs that transcend logic."
"Especially since the bitterly contested national elections of 2000 and 2004, commentators have made much of the role of religion in widening political and cultural divisions within America. Conventional wisdom suggests that those divisions will continue to grow. If that happens, the America I grew up in and fell in love with will become harder to recognize. I am already angered by the facile discussion of a split between so-called "red" states and "blue" states, as if we did not all pledge allegiance to the same tricolor flag."
"Many were the times I wanted to grab the Palestinian and Israeli negotiators by the ears and try to knock some sense into them."
"....I...like George Bernard Shaw's observation that 'the reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.' "
"In 2001, Colin Powell, who was then secretary of state, summarized the situation accurately. Referring to the sanctions [against Iraq], he said, 'Frankly, they have worked.' Powell noted that Hussein 'has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project power against his neighbors. So, in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq, and these are the policies we are going to keep in place.'....By early 2002, President Bush had decided to abandon them and instead prepared to invade."
"According to Vaclav Havel, 'Communism was not defeated by military force, but by life, by the human spirit, by conscience, by the resistance of Being and man to manipulation.' It was defeated, in other words, because those who opposed it were able to summon the better aspects of human nature to expose its lies and wear it down. Terrorists may still succeed on occasion in penetrating barriers designed to keep them out. But they can never succeed, unless we let them, in separating us from the values that, over the long term, hold the key to their downfall and our success."
"As I grow older, I am reminded of a good Catholic--the friend of a friend--whose chosen epitaph was 'I leave the world as I entered it: bewildered.' "
Oooohhh, Ahhhhhh is right!
Posted by: bogie | December 28, 2006 at 06:52 AM
WOW...what a gorgeous shot CC. When I enlarged it...it looked like a painting. There's something about a beautiful sunrise that just melts me....all of us. Thanks so much for posting this one.
Posted by: Joy | December 29, 2006 at 10:09 AM
I wish I got up early more often to catch the sunrise. Beautiful.
Posted by: janet | December 29, 2006 at 06:42 PM
Happy New Year!
Posted by: bogie | December 31, 2006 at 06:28 PM
Lovely! It makes it worth rising early to be able to see something so beautiful.
Happy New Year to you and HH!
Posted by: buffy | December 31, 2006 at 07:11 PM
Thank you for the comments, all, and for the good wishes. May you each enjoy peace in 2007, and all best wishes for whatever will make your 2007 one that you can look back on in satisfaction!
Posted by: Cop Car | January 01, 2007 at 10:45 AM