I Need Another Battle

A personal reflection

After weeks of total outrage, my anger has left me. I am content that I came out of the battle unscathed. And though perhaps I didn’t win my war, at least I emerged with the moral victory on my side and with the reassurance that many supported my cause.

But something else has happened too. All these weeks I had been wide awake, combattive, full of adrenaline and inspired by a fierce creative spirit. And now all that has gone too; it has left me empty to the point that, somehow, I want my battle back.

I am looking to the world around me with great mildness. What a joyful world it is, so totally filled with irrelevance and people just running around to buy their groceries and all their useless things, waking up and going to sleep again. Nothing stirrs me up.

I was happy to write my sharp convictions of the Bush Administration, day after day, but now I don’t really care. Let him be. One day, he’ll be gone.

I had arrived at some big questions about the mishaps of history, about the arrogance of ancient religious institutions and their lasting impact on our present day perceptions of right and wrong. I wanted to challenge every selfish drive for power as a mere end in itself (including the abuse of God as an excuse for it). Well, tomorrow is another time.

I was adamant to face the madness of our world and strike it down, if only I had the means to do it. Hm, indeed, I don’t.

So do I need to wait for the next battle to restore me on my feet? There is much for me to do. I have many missions to fulfill. But they do require my energy, my creativity, and my firm belief that, out there, there is a cause to win.

Perhaps it is only natural to feel exhausted and empty, even after a victory of some sort. Is this what women feel who experience postnatal depression? Most likely, time will do the trick. And I am probably not alone. So perhaps I should seek out some other battle and side with the party most sympathetic to my own convictions, and up goes my adrenaline and in comes new creativity.



It is true, isn’t it, that much of what we project to the outer world, must have some root in what is going on in our inner selves. I am too content, at this moment, to disturb the tranquility of our Planet’s rotation and everything on it just for the sake of differences in opinion or even for the sake of my Great Ideas. That was yesterday, when somebody else’s crazy ideas came in my way.

So please, disturb me. Make me crazy. Put your ideas in front of mine. Let’s have a good and decent war of the minds.

Where will the Madness take us?

I still remember a world in which being ‘mad’ meant: having fun, making jokes, provoke, stirr – all of this essentially to the benefit of our mental health, nothing less – nothing more. But in our present time a madness has emerged that seems vicious rather than funny and that has firmly infiltrated the minds of so many people – in many parts of the world – to the point where we seem to have lost all ability for reason and normal human restraint.

The M word
The totally unjustified outrage directed at the Pope for remarks which under normal circumstances would have passed entirely unnoticed, is only one example. "What should he apologize for?" someone asked. "There is freedom of speech, and what he said is objectively true." It is almost as if calling the M(uslim) word in itself is accepting the risk of some wild and vicious revenge. Why? I was proud, many years ago, to live in a Muslim country, showing normal curiosity (and respect) as to the customs and lifestyle of my Muslim friends, having normal discussions about our similarities and differences, taking a point here and giving a point there. But these days I have to tiptoe my way through the subject.



And the M(uslim) word is not the only madness visiting us. In my own country, The Netherlands, people lost their mental sanity some four years ago when a popular politician was assassinated by a mentally disturbed and very isolated single individual. Obviously, it was a horrible crime, and personally I greatly regret the loss of this politican. But ever since that fateful shot, a distinct madness has governed our public life that only very few firm minded and reasonable people have been able to counter.

In a way, it is not always easy to pinpoint exactly what the madness is, and this – in my mind – only illustrates the gravity of the situation.

Fear of complexity?
Perhaps my bewilderment about the prevailing atmosphere of our time has everything to do with the expectations which governed my youth and which for a long time have guided my sense of progress. To me, our present day hysteria and lack of reason but also the ease with which our world leaders are prepared to resort to irrationality and simple solutions to complex questions is at great variance (to put it mildly) with the reasoned development of policies and of public debate as it prevailed, say, two to four decades ago. In my own mind, madness struck right at the time when every sense of the ‘Res Publica’ was lost to individualism and materialism gone out of hand.

A spoiled child has awakened in us that can only respond to immediate rewards – or the lack of them –, that harbors fears (and silly joys) without the actual capacity to distinguish between the real and the unreal, between the rational and virtual. It is that same child that resorts to intimidation and the use of violence; the child that has become a US President and a President of Iran; it is the child with guns and explosives in Iraq, the child who wants to believe in some Great Designer of Life and Dreams, the child who thinks that mobile phones grow on trees and who thinks he simply has a right to use them in abundance, regardless of need and actual contribution.



New leadership
There is, obviously, a great need for reason and restraint to regain control of our own minds and for new – well structured – visions of a good future that can inspire all of us, at left and right, as Muslims and Christians and everyone else. But most of all we should wish for decent leadership that will put the spoiled child to rest; we urgently require leadership that can set the right example and create a new agenda for the ‘Res Publica’ that interests all of us, without fear, without ignorance, and above all: without the desire to satisfy just oneself. Only then will madness again be fun and health inspiring.

Five year Remembrance: how to end a War on Terror?

Some five years after the most atrocious terrorist attack ever, officials of the US Administration are still busy defending the War that was waged in its aftermath. What they should be spending all their energies on instead is making a defense to end it.

The tragic sequence of events in the past years, including the terrible event in New York, should by now demonstrate in all clarity to everyone that – really – a War on Terror is a contradiction in terminis. It cannot be waged because when you do, it can never be stopped.

Terrorism is not about conquering new land or expanding a country’s economy, or about sorting out old differences between nations, which is what most of the true wars in history have been about. Most of all, terrorism is not about winning any war in the first place. So fighting it in a warlike fashion in actual fact is submitting one self to defeat from the start.

By now, much of what the US Government has done in its fight against terrorism has been declassified as illegal, torturous and ineffective, in short: a demonstration of atrocity that gradually equals the horror it claims to stop, this regardless the actual success in preventing new terrorists threats, which belongs to the realm of crime-fighting (not War).

The only way to end a War on Terror
is by not starting it

Terrorism is the contemporary expression of a people’s outrage against others, against – what they see as – infidels. As long as we continue to counter this simply by adding a terror of our own, we will never get to the point of truly responding to that outrage.

It is time we start to do that. It is time the Western World, the US and Europe together, reconsider every element of our today’s world that feeds the outrage of others against us, and start to make amends. Not by using intimidating language or by associating Muslims with ‘fascists’, or by ignoring the different cultural, economic and political realities in other countries, but by fundamentally questioning all these and other factors which today seem to be the core make-up of the world we wish to defend.

All of us were truly shocked on the 11th of September 2001. All of us would wish for peace – and closure. But such closure will be very difficult to achieve if we are still out to win a battle that we lost already, and not see the real challenge that we should address.

Americans are too complacent

Tagging along
George W. Bush is well in his second term, in the sixth year of his presidency. Despite unprecedented violations by the Bush Administration of international law and of even the most obvious standards of international decency and common sense, most of the American population apparently are content to tag along with little if any organized opposition. The memory of his Democratic contender John Kerry has long been buried and forgotten, and to this day the Democrats have miserably failed in developing a clear agenda of their own.

Any one speaking out?
Very few speak out. And most of those who do, are hardly heard. Especially journalists so far – in my view - have been extremely restrained in their ciriticism, setting aside good exceptions such as the editors of the New York Times, or writers in such eminent, but perhaps too intellectual magazines as The Atlantic and The New Yorker.

Only recently, the American Bar Association has raised its voice – well, barely. A bipartisan, 11-member panel of the ABA found that President Bush is not only disregarding laws. They also pointed out that Bush has used signing statements to raise constitutional objections to more than 800 provisions in more than 100 laws. All of the presidents combined before 2001 had issued only 600. Well, if that isn’t a clear complaint, what is?

The ABA furthermore reported that “...(the) federal government is failing to enforce our laws on a wide range of issues. Trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, which is clearly a treaty, have not been approved by two-thirds of the Senate as required by the Treaty Clause of the Constitution.”

Shining City far away
When Ronald Reagan spoke his last words as President of the US, in january 1989, he referred to America as a country of decency and common sense, of freedom of worship and freedom of hope. His eyes and mind looked out to the Shining City on the Hill, filled with the goodness of mankind and of Americans in particular. We’ve come a long way from that shining vision. Why? And how come the Republican Party, which surely holds the memory of Reagan in the highest possible esteem, does so little to correct the Republican Bush?

I honestly don’t have the answer, and as a Dutchman I am obviously an outsider. The only thing I know is that a lack of a clear and articulate opposition is bad – very bad - for democracy. Bush and his followers have done almost everything to quash it. I still find it difficult to grasp that sensible US citizens swallowed the catch phrase of Bush per excellence: those who are not for us, are against us. If this wasn’t an outrage against democracy – what is? It is very hard to accept any policy of a President who follows this principle, whether or not he professes to sell democracy to other parts of the world. It makes him (and his Administration) loose all credibility.

And in Europe
But I wouldn’t wish to simply bang Bush. It would be all too easy. The greatest concern of this day is not his conduct or that of his Administration – bad as they are! The greatest concern should be the development of true opposition and political stamina, including some more muscle out of Europe.



I was pleased to note that at least one notable US Democrat, former President Jimmy Carter, expressed his personal concerns very much on the same subject. Last week, he told reporters how disappointed he was about the behavior of Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister. If anyone, Blair is in the position to add some counterweight to the narrow minded course of US policies. But Blair is not doing that. I totally agree with Carter. And I would add to this my personal disappointment about the complacency of my own country's government.

“We are in a situation where the United States is so unpopular overseas, that even in countries like Egypt and Jordan less than five percent of the population supports us”, added Carter. A highly troubling achievement indeed!

Wake up call
When will America finally wake up, or will the country remain complacent even as the Bush Administration continues to slide further down the path from decency to nothing less than becoming a terror in its own right?

Let me conclude in quoting a recent press statement of Senator Edward Kennedy on the current Iraq policies of Bush cum suis:

“…..The politics of fear may have worked for the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2004, but by 2006 the American people see through them. They will judge Bush and his Congressional allies by their record, rather than their rhetoric. Americans understand that staying the course is not a plan for victory - it is a political slogan and a recipe for disaster….”

I beg all decent American citizens not to let it arrive at such disaster.