Real Captains and Jewish Mothers

The "captains" responsible for the Iraq war are beginning to look less like the real thing and more like blustery, befogging captain-wannabes. Real captains, were starting to realize, dont lead by misleading, or chart a true course by spinning the data or substitute a go-it-alone self-righteousness for doing whats right.

By STEPHEN SWECKER
Editor, Zion's Herald

Thanks to Prof. Walter Brasch for the following morality tale:

"In the Jewish culture, the story is told about the son who had done quite well in business and thought he should be entitled to owning a boat. Not just any 21-footer, but a 41-foot yacht. With teakwood floors and cabinets. With a flybridge, radar, and global navigation systems. Even took a Coast Guard safe boating course. Hired two deckhands to care for his boat. Joined the local yacht club. And, to make sure he looked the part, he went out and bought a captain's jacket and a captain's hat. He looked the part. He even acted the part.

"When everything was in place, he went to his parents home, then took them in his Mercedes to the yacht club, first for lunch, then onto his newest purchase. His parents, who had worked and struggled their entire lives to be part of the middle class, were pleasantly surprised at their son's success. Aboard this marvel of the bay, the son said he was now a captain.

"His mother was proud, as are all Jewish mothers. But she looked at him. With his new boat, and his new uniform, he really looked like a successful captain. To your father you are a captain, she said. To me, you are a captain. Her son beamed, for all Jewish sons like approval, especially from their parents. But to another captain, she asked, are you a captain?"
(Walter Brasch, Counterpunch, July 14)

Analogies to Walter Braschs story come naturally as revelations of dissembling by U.S. government "captains" continue to unfold. For example, it is clear to all but their most uncritical defenders that key intelligence regarding Iraqs nuclear capabilities was manipulated to paint a much more dire picture than facts warranted and to justify an illegal war of aggression. As a result, the "captains" responsible for the war are beginning to look less like the real thing and more like blustery, befogging captain-wannabes. Real captains, we're starting to realize, don't lead by misleading, or chart a true course by spinning the data or substitute a go-it-alone self-righteousness for doing what's right.

The more we learn about the build-up to the war on Iraq, in fact, the more apparent it becomes that our captains, while wearing the superficial trappings of leaders (and looking pretty darn good, too!), may not belong on the same boat as the real item. Despite their vaunted moral clarity, these are not moral leaders. Their ill-advised war is just part of the problem. Their tax protection of the wealthy and stunning disregard for the nation's fiscal future do not measure up to the civic standard of basic concern for the common good. That much, at least, we have been able to assume in our elected leaders for most of our nations history. Include ongoing attempts in the name of security -- the Patriot Act -- to roll back or work around laws that protect our civil rights, and you have the makings of rule by an authoritarian elite, something we in this country have never known.

In that regard, the intransigence of the UN and the European Union leaders in opposing the Iraq war may have been more instructive than we realized at the time: Not only were they responding negatively to a policy they couldn't support, but by standing up to the most powerful nation on earth, they were saying, in effect, "Who are these guys who think they can run roughshod over the rest of the world community? This isn't the America whose fair-minded leadership and democratic values have been the world's lodestar and guiding light. Who put them in a captain's uniform, anyway?" Who, indeed.

What we're experiencing is not politics as usual. Anyone who believes otherwise, and who faults those of us in the religious community who dare to "mix politics and religion," needs to ponder the reality that sober people on all sides of the political spectrum are starting to recognize:

The fragile veneer of democracy that protects both our civil liberties and our religious freedom rests upon the perceived integrity of the system itself. When our captains, for whatever reason, fail to protect that integrity, the veneer cracks, the rule of law wobbles and the trust on which the body politic rests totters. Under those conditions, it matters little whether we are conservatives, liberals or unreconstructed Bull Moosers. The terra firma of freedom on which we stand has begun to shake beneath our feet. All our feet.

For that reason, those in the religious community who cry out to heaven for the dissembling to stop and for the return of a modicum of public humility and truth-in-leading are simply doing their jobs. They are our watchful Jewish mothers asking us to see ourselves through the eyes of real captains who know the difference between merely looking ship-shape and actually steering the ship of state through stormy waters.
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