WEEKLY WARNING WORDS
February 11, 2004 - Week 21 - Too Foreign Foreign Policies
BY DR. BRUNO J. KEITH
The great medieval idea in Christian West Europe was considered ideal as long as one religion and one government ruled the state, and each state could force each citizen to abide by laws of enslavement. Why should the sovereign not have the right, even duty, to demand a confession of faith in God and King and the universal tie between the 2 laws of good citizenship?
One God, one King, one Nation for all people of a conservative frame of mind, or no mind, would then make the one power vulnerable if the other was threatened by revolutionary attacks. Especially Latino history in the Old and New World is testimony to the dangers complementing the unison between Church and State. Reality checks warn of the union of state with church which eventually causes despisal of both, deadly hatreds and bloodshed in the end.
Following Thomas Jefferson's anti-Thomism, we should subscribe to one revolution per decade to fertilize our food plants with the blood of tyrants. Watch out, George II! In Jeff's enlightened opinion, religion only remains unattacked if unattached to states and their rights. No grip - no gripe against divinity, divine rights and our many cults, faiths and belief systems even if humanity in awe, fear and desperation had to create its god in its own image.
Accepting one of those vague, distant, incomprehensible and unknowables as state director, leads to vulnerable local and foreign idiocies. Not even bookburning can rebuild political realism which will always be devastated by prophets, priests and preachers. Confessions confuse voters unless you pray for the destruction of humanity to which Bush is coming as close as the bloodiest mullahs and ayatollahs of militant mosques. (Helpless parents though may abuse religion by utilizing it to tame the spirit of their children.) Youth must be honored if it can believe in the magic of the Grand Wizard who rules His Universe with fairness and justice. But no true statesman can expect much help from above.
Turkey, too, is a country of true-believers (see www 4th week, October 15, 2003). It has been a brave soldier-ally since our "police action" in Korea. Its government, if not its people, demonstrated independence, smartness and defiance of its own religious subjects and good-neighborly Muslim terrorists by cooperating fully with US and even with Israel in not the half-hearted, make-belief way of insincere Jordan and Egypt whose official papers always condemn Israel for its punitive reaction to suicide-bombing but hardly ever curse the dastardly deed, so often executed by specially-trained children and women.
Yet, there remain a few obvious flaws in Turkey's burnished armor:
1. That nation is controlled by military dictators who resumed power even after the democratic election of more fanatical Moslems and their mosque masters.
2. Turkey refuses to apologize for mass murders of its Armenian subjects, in particular for the 2 major holocausts before 1900 and early in World War I.
3. Turkey still suppresses its Kurds of a different Sunni sect who want to enjoy their peculiar ancient culture. They will remain thorns in Turkey flesh if they remain a poor and hopeless mass of mountain populace, distributed across Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Russian-Armenia.
It should become our policy (as actually considered at Versailles and sèveres peace treaties) to use our influence to found a relatively strong, autonomous (and later independent) nation which can keep four belligerent Muslim nations from hurting each other.
If a Kurdistan can keep parts of the Middle East from attacking eachother, they may there also educate a new Sultan Saladin who will guarantee peace between Arabs and their Israeli cousins. Can we expect that much insight and goodwill in the arsenal of Bush II?
Week 22 - Feb 18, 2004 - Security First, Nothing Second