Author: Andrew Sullivan

A longtime reader sent an email as part of a conversation we’d been having. I reprint it, despite its great length, because it’s powerfully written, and I disagree with much of it. But I disagree with it less than I did a year ago. See what you think:

I supported the action in Afganistan. Everyone – the whole world – realized that that action was necessary. Hell, even Dennis Kucinich supported it. There was no other choice. And had we prosecuted the action in Afganistan competently, and to the end, by securing the peace and rebuilding the country, we might have come out of the war on terror with our heads held high and with the world’s respect and even admiration. Certainly our action there, and the related pressure on Pakistan, resulted in the most important single victory in the war on terror to date: the unmasking of the A. Q. Khan network. But we never finished in Afganistan. We let bin Laden escape. We did not and have not secured the country, or rebuilt it. Why? Well, why have we not secured or rebuilt Iraq? There is a reason. This is not just criminal negligence. This is a pattern.   

I opposed the war in Iraq from the beginning. It smelled. It smelled to high heaven. This was no action in response to 9/11. This was something else. Some grand design for restructuring the Middle East, for "draining the swamp". A war of revenge against the man who ordered the President’s father assassinated. Unfinished business. Oil. Yes, all those and more, as Wolfowitz admitted, but none of them would do as a trigger, so WMD was chosen. WMD was the one excuse that would work, the one threat that, tied to 9/11, would inspire action and overwhelm and silence opposition.

But the real motivation for the war in Iraq, Andrew, was the consolidation of Republican power here at home. Iraq was to be George W. Bush’s great victory, and Karl Rove’s hammer. The victory of the Republican right was to be complete and permanent. Bush and his crew knew the WMD excuse was fraudulent. As Zinni said, he knew, and they had the same information he had. But they did believe the old stockpiles, or some portion of them, were still there, moldering in Saddam’s secret bunkers, and would provide all the evidence needed to justify their war, cover their lies, and secure their political triumph. The shame of the election of 2000 would be history, Bush would become the image of the man he always wished to be, and Rove would secure the Republican realignment.

But Bush’s great victory has turned to ash, and Rove’s hammer to a dagger he holds by the blade. One could write a book (and no doubt many will) on the Oedipal complex that drove Bush the son to surpass the father, and fail. A Greek tragedy played out in real life, right before our eyes. And could Shakespeare have bettered the cast of characters we have lived with these last six years, or the themes, or the plot? My God, what a play! He would be writing furiously even now. One play? No. Three, perhaps: Bush the Second, Parts I, II and III. We are in the middle of the third play. The end is coming.

I’m not being facetious. The horror and terror of tragedy is its inevitability. The audience sees what the characters cannot. And the audience knows that they too suffer, like the characters they watch. The play is a mirror. The war in Iraq has been our tragedy, our mirror. Perhaps, if we are lucky, our catharsis. But we are not yet to that stage, which comes after. We are still in the midst of the horror, unable to look away from the mirror. You stare into the face of Abu Ghraib. Me? What do I stare at? And all of us. We are living one of the great stories of history, Andrew.

Did I really know all this back then? Yes. Not so clearly, or at least, I would not have been able to express it so simply. Many people saw it, people of good faith, not just mindless Bush-haters or partisans. And every suspicion I had, and shared with those others, about Bush, and Rove and the rest, and about their motivations and methods, has proved out, and then some. And there is, I know, future revelations yet to come. None of it surprises me.

I’m only surprised that you are surprised. I think, Andrew, you were blinded by idealism, the desire to slay the monster Saddam. Have you read the Gilgamesh Epic? Or Castenada? We are betrayed, not by our faults, but by our strengths. Because that’s where we’re truly blind. Thus you. And me. And Bush. The difference is of degree, not kind. But that difference of degree is crucial. Bush doubts nothing. He is trapped in a rigid arrogance, a self-righteousness based ultimately on low self-esteem and fear of failure. Fear is his basic spiritual signature. You refused to doubt, because you love the ideal. We love you for that. But that’s also your blind spot. Yet you have never been trapped like Bush (or Rumsfeld or Gonzalez or Yoo) because, quite simply, you are far more humble, far more secure in your own being and in your trust of the Divine. Your humanity is alive and kicking, while theirs is deeply compromised. And me? Good question. I doubt much, and it has served me well. But I have not trusted enough, and that has not. That is my confession. And so we struggle, Andrew.

But there is one great dividing line here, between you and me on one side, and Bush and his cohort (and the Christianists and the Islamists and the scientific reductionists, and all the other -ists) on the other: the humility of a faith based on love, with its attendant qualities of acceptance, inclusion and non-violence, and the arrogance of a faith based on fear, with its attendant qualities of judgment, exclusion and, inevitably, violence. You have written of this division in your own way when you wrote of the "conservatism of doubt" vs "conservatism of faith". I truly believe this division marks the great spiritual, social and political challenge before us in the 21st century: the shift from a faith – and a world – based on the fear of God to one based on the love of God. That is an evolutionary challenge. And a global challenge. And I think that some day it will be recognized as the great theme being played out at the center of the Bush Presidency, and the American tragedy in Iraq. Fear and lies, or love and truth. It’s just that simple.   

I could have supported intervention in Iraq. Saddam was a monster. But not Bush’s intervention. If his Dad, and Powell, had put together a true global coalition, with a real commitment to pay the high price in money, manpower and years necessary to free Iraq, secure the peace and rebuild the country, yes, I could have supported it. But I knew GWB and his team would never accomplish those ends, because those ends were not his ends. His ends, and his means, speak for themselves. All the rest is lies.

The battle within faith – between a faith of certainty and order and a faith of humility and wonder – is indeed the great battle of our time. I’ve just finished the rewrite of a book on politics. Re-reading it, I realize it’s also a book about religion. The tragedy of our time is that the two subjects are now almost interchangeable.

(Photos: Joe Raedle/Getty; Brooks Kraft/Corbis, Rick Friedman, and Franco Pagetti for Time.)

I have yet another ally.

The fiance and I are headed to England for Easter and the week thereafter. Family time, mainly, in Sussex. But we’re planning on a few days in London and I know the blog has plenty of Londoners reading. I wonder if anyone has any tips on new spots to discover. I’m out of touch. If you’ve seen a great stage production in London recently, or know of a good new restaurant, or an art exhibit we should definitely check out, I’d be grateful for suggestions. I’ll write up the trip when we return, and maybe we can give a few pointers to other potential tourists as well.

"I think that it is necessary for the president and vice president to tell the American people exactly what happened… I do say that there’s been enough of a showing here with what’s been filed of record in court that the president of the United States owes a specific explanation to the American people … about exactly what he did," – Senator Arlen Specter, ratcheting up the pressure on the president and veep today.

This other WaPo piece is pretty damning. A "concerted effort" to strike back at Joe Wilson? And, as so often, Cheney is at the heart of it. Wilson, I should add, seems to me to be a low-life. But the people who go all out to attack low-lifes tend to end up on their level.

It’s our new health obsession. I don’t share the tone of slight condescension in this Observer piece from London. Exercise, diet and sleep are the three essential parts of maintaining good health and a good immune system. Some of us have to be a little more vigilant on this front than others. But everyone can benefit. In D.C., the sleeplessness is endemic. It doesn’t help good government.

The Sunday Times of London (my other corporate overlord) has a lengthy piece on the Bush administration’s apparent planning for a conventional, and even nuclear, war against the Ahmadinejad regime. They have a senior White House official confirming Sy Hersh’s piece. And Richard Perle gives good quote.

Some readers have objected to my attempt to coin a new word to describe those who would deploy the teachings of Jesus as a political ideology as "Christianists." They don’t like the analogy to Islamists, and think it imputes to politicized Christians an endorsement of terror or violence. The latter is not in any way my intent. In the war on terror, many have distinguished between Muslims and Islamists. The distinction made is between those who sincerely hold to an ancient faith, and those who are deploying that faith as a political weapon, who see no distinction between state and mosque, and who aggressively foist their religious doctrines onto civil law. And this is a critical distinction. It helps us to criticize regimes like the Taliban or Iran’s, while not tarring all Muslims with that label.

That is my intent with the term "Christianist" and "Christianism." The truth is: I do not recognize my own Christianity or the Christianity of millions in the blasphemous words of Tom DeLay or Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson. These individuals are political figures, using faith as a weapon to advance a political agenda that aims at policing people’s moral lives, removing people’s civil rights, and marginalizing minorities. Today, in the NYT, Garry Wills brilliantly defends Christianity and Jesus from such blasphemy and hubris. In this, I think many evangelicals and even fundamentalists quietly but overwhelmingly concur. The distinction between religion and politics was long understood among American evangelicals; and it is central to Jesus’ message. It took hubristic liberalism to galvanize American evangelicals into a politicized response; but subsequently the movement of right-wing Christianism has achieved a momentum all its own. It has even spawned a Catholic off-shoot: the theocons who also want to deploy faith for political gain and an assault on liberty. Wills is right that a left-wing Christianism would be no better. Democrats should do all they can to resist that temptation.

So: no apologies from me. People who believe in the Gospels of Jesus Christ are Christians. People who use the Gospels of Jesus Christ for political gain, and for a political program of right or left, are Christianists. And Christianism, like many "isms", is an ideology that will corrupt faith and poison politics. It has already done both, under the auspices of this president and his acolytes. It is long past time that real Christians took their faith back from these political charlatans. One first step is to deny them the name that they have so artfully coopted. It starts with language. It always does.

The British comedy series, "Yes, Minister," and subsequently, "Yes, Prime Minister," was a masterly insight into how people in government view themselves, especially the permanent civil servants who implement government directives. In Britain, these people form a professional government caste. Sir Humphrey is the master of that caste; and he had something to say about leaks of classified information that is certainly pertinent to the current American debate. Money quote:

Prime Minister: We must do something to improve my relations with the press, which deteriorated considerably when my private secretary told them I felt I was above the law when it came to official secrets.

Bernard: Yes, you may well hang your head.

PM: What’s the constitutional position, Humphrey?

Sir Humphrey: Well, in a sense, Bernard was right. The question, in a nutshell, is what is the difference between a breach of the Official Secrets Act and an unattributable, off-the-record briefing by a senior official? The former – a breach – is a criminal offence. A briefing is essential to keep the wheels turning.

Bernard: Is there a difference or is it a matter of convenience and interpretation? Is it a breach of the act if there is an unofficial, non-attributable briefing by an official who’s been unofficially authorised by the Prime Minister?

Sir Humphrey: Not if it’s been authorised by the PM, no.

PM: That’s what I say. I should decide if it’s in the national interest for something to be disclosed, not officials.

PM: Last week’s leak must’ve come from an official.

Bernard: But what if the official was officially authorised or even unofficially authorised? What if the PM officially disapproves of a breach of the act, but unofficially approves?

Sir Humphrey: Then a leak would be unofficially official, but officially unofficial.

Everything clear now?

Sy Hersh’s new piece is now posted. Money quote:

One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that ‘a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.’ He added, ‘I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, ‘What are they smoking?”

Gulp.

The children captured as "enemy combatants" in Afghanistan and subsequently released, have nothing but good things to say about their time at the camp, and America. They were sequestered from the adult prisoners and gave up no useful intelligence. Of course, most twelve-year-olds do not qualify as, in Rummy’s words, "among the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the Earth." But their treatment was humane. Money quote:

The food in the camp was delicious, the teaching was excellent, and his warders were kind. "Americans are good people, they were always friendly, I don’t have anything against them," he said. "If my father didn’t need me, I would want to live in America."
Asadullah is even more sure of this. "Americans are great people, better than anyone else," he said, when found at his elder brother’s tiny fruit and nut shop in a muddy backstreet of Kabul. "Americans are polite and friendly when you speak to them. They are not rude like Afghans. If I could be anywhere, I would be in America. I would like to be a doctor, an engineer _ or an American soldier."

Some, of course, will use this to dismiss the inhumane treatment of adult prisoners at Gitmo. That’s a non-sequitur. Moreover, it shouldn’t be news that the U.S. treats minors decently. But, given Rumsfeld’s record, it is.