Ground for tragedy
McQuaid, Kim
But memory is short. Given the bloodshed and the bitterness of the whole Middle East malaise. The intricate web must be of the war in Spain, perhaps forgetfulness is blessed. Could ...
...I know that they know things I do not know yet, and they know them from a RIGHT ATTENTION perspective I will not have for years, if I REFLECTIONS ON TIME'S MERCY ever do...
...KIM McQUAID Hatred, as a Mussolini or a Hitler or a Tojo well understood - and as a Khomeini or a Qaddafi understands now - is a (For the past year, Kim McQuaid was Washington Visiting much stronger short-term glue than love...
...which involved grown-up bad breath and old it would be good to do it as well as The serenity of the old is too often the whiskery kisses, and occasional boring they seem to have...
...The third world is the Balkans of our era...
...Yaron, however, is not just any officer...
...supplies Israel, this assignment is one of the most important - WELCOMING THOUGHTS and, at the moment, one of the most delicate - an Israeli The recent release of Father Lawrence Martin Jenco, after officer can receive...
...Not and dreams...
...Would-be nation-builders want, above all, to avoid not undergoing a "national liberation struggle" a la 1776, the the all-too-real alternatives of unification or disaster...
...To avoid ad hocery, crisis-mongering, and Vietnam-style idiocy, we need to cease moral posturing and start thinking...
...When hatred is wedded to fear, a combination is day...
...Republic of South Africa, India, and the China of the Red We need, for example, to understand that South Africa is Guards...
...Add a racist ideology to this picture, a fear and our side at all . . . and then to back off from the action hatred of more-or-less easily identifiable and punishable furiously protesting that we weren't ever really in favor of all "others," and nation-building and national strength can bethat at all...
...policy Ortega...
...Would-be and exercising an all-important unity of command at the cen- nations are much too concerned with short-term survival to ter, will remain a constant resort in the many regions of the care very much about, say, the Enlightenment ideas and ideals third world...
...Now They are as different as they could be...
...socialism in any of their many forms...
...It is time to prepare threatened from within and without...
...But most nations and nation-builders there are too tribalistic religiosity of Beirut, moreover, has its counterparts concerned with survival to care much about the nuances of in recent events in Cambodia, Ethiopia, Angola, Iran, the imported ideals...
...It takes...
...It must address what Jenco calls "the tragedy THE RELEVANCE OF FASCISM of Lebanon," and the Lebanese peoples' "great desire for healing" and peace between Christians and Moslems...
...Yaron was found to have learned that soft-spoken Servite priest have focused attention on the mys- the massacres were underway, but to have neither reported terious intersection between politics and prayer, where the art them nor attempted to stop them...
...the sinners one African tribe, a la Mugabe's in Zimbabwe, enjoys over-, (Qaddafi of Libya and the "clerical fascist" ayatollahs of Iran whelming numerical dominance...
...One need not be tortured, starved, or beaten...
...and where no survival" or "national unity" do not hold water...
...He is plainly a life-long extrovert...
...What we need to understand is that racialism and dictatorFascism remains relevant because strong nationalisms are ship are nothing new in the world, specifically as major tools rare in much of the third world - where boundaries often for nation-building...
...It is not Good versus Evil contending in the arena, with us up in the stands eating popcorn and rooting for "our" side...
...History is no romantic fairy tale written for our particular benefit...
...The bloody, world...
...bitterness of our day - the civil wars in Central America, for This is a program easy to outline, vexing to implement...
...or Wholesale violations of the rights of minorities were a key village, laced with hefty dollops of jihad-prone religiosity...
...Where from a Uganda to a Nigeria before the Biafran civil war, or megalomaniacal elements enter into the picture too insistently, perhaps an unstable version of one-party-state Zimbabweor slaughter is too highly visible, the rationales of "national Rhodesia (with whites much more numerous...
...separates me from my image of age, the pleasant way, and plays with the chil- Here you have both aged liveliness and one formed in childhood, is a couple of dren...
...Who is the Islamic Jihad, other than "a shadowy from the Spanish case whatever recollections might serve our group...
...In view of the military aid the U.S...
...powers,,and where mores remain those of clan, tribe...
...Or a natural rights/ Professor of U.S...
...Or Hegelian dialectic sion, hypocrisy, cynical power grabbing and re-grabbing, and the labor theory of value...
...tion...
...Jenco said while still in Wiesbaden, "to have hugs and kisses, General Yaron and his superiors are hereby nominated to to love again, to rediscover I have dignity as a person...
...not in Nicaragua or South Africa now...
...or withholding all companionship day in, day out, for months on end...
...wishful thinking of the young...
...It suggests that incident of terrorism in Lebanon, looking at it as one symptom fascism - the racist autocracy of yesterday married to the 15 August 1986: 421 technology of today - will be more relevant to the future come to mind) are freely equated with Hitler, Mussolini, and circumstances of more of our world than democracy or Tojo in their worst moments...
...cultural, and political conundrums raised by this protracted Nor does this ugly truth only pertain to the past...
...Not in Vietnam or Cam- course of this century is to confuse probabilities with desires bodia or Iran then...
...Of several minds: John Garvey tory things...
...Both of them are that radiating serenity which you some- barrier to fun...
...These are areas where socio-cultural, political, that made both modern democracy - and modern democratic and economic cohesion of any sort is a process constantly socialism - possible in the first place...
...it does not spell out toward Lebanon and its warring factions...
...the party spirit:- • Israel has just named Major General Amos Yaron to be military attache to the U.S...
...They are, in other words, ourselves for that grisly, tragic, but also likely fact...
...the sun and the human face...
...History at University College, Dublin...
...a simple cloth blindfold to screen out Senate hearings will be held next month...
...What could result from success covers a multitude of sins...
...Could untangled, the mutual interests discerned, and.perhaps even those events of fifty years ago help us face the bloodshed and the irreconcilable goals frankly acknowledged...
...The Israeli announcement of of the-possible and the art of the impossible meet...
...groups around common symbols of unity and pride...
...Politics, third-world style, is often - a lot more often - droves and flocks and myriads of "teams" all playing different games by different rules, all allying or un-allying with one "The Left-Wing Movement, which overthrew the Center another on the basis of interests rather than ideals held-inCoalition, was usurped by the People's Popular Front, common, and all demanding that the audiences on the scene which in turn succumbed to the Right-Wing Faction and has (who are not comfortably separated from the action but, innow been replaced by the National Liberation Party- stead, smack in the midst of it) do their bidding or else...
...Particularly if the sinners a successful uprising in South Africa might well be anything be deemed to be Fathers of their countries...
...But national reflection must not be limited to the personal, how- GROUND FOR TRAGEDY ever powerful...
...the only merit of which they can boast is to see more clearly than others, to reason more exactly, and to outmaneuver in their own minds and hearts the machinations of ETC...
...results looks a lot more like a riot in a bar than it does like the Commonweal: 422 Super Bowl or the World Series...
...aged serenity, not necessarily contradic- decades - it doesn't seem like so much 1 S August 1986: 423...
...Have Father Jenco's captors tacitly responded to the present purposes - of revolutionary enthusiasm or revolutio- seriousness of the ecclesiastical diplomacy carried out by nary betrayal, of clerical or Communist manipulation, of Anglican envoy Terry,Waite and New York's Cardinal John foreign intervention or international solidarity, of heroic resis- O'Connor - or are they as unwilling to, acknowledge the tance or fratricidal brutality...
...Lack of presence, conversation, or touch is all it takes...
...It is the spawning ground for tragedy that may draw superpowers into wider wars which none intends...
...his appointment deftly omitted all mention of Yaron's "I am so grateful to God to be present with my family," Lebanese service from the list of his military assignments...
...Nation-building today Of course, human tenacity, resourcefulness, the ability to transcend circumstances, to hope, and to forgive are also crucial parts of the story of Father Jenco and his family...
...clothing, a bed, a chair...
...Or to discover suddenly that the third-world heroes come comparatively quick achievements...
...lucidity...
...workable equations of sovereignty, survival, and civilization...
...is fragile...
...The receive the First Annual Kurt Waldheim Selective Memory items on Jenco's list of thanks is a reminder that human dignity Award...
...At least we might try to keep the comMauriac in 1937: "The only raison d'etre for writers, and plexities in view for public consideration, even amidst the especially Catholic writers, in the midst of civil wars, is their celebration of a captive's long=awaited return...
...The intricate web must be of the war in Spain, perhaps forgetfulness is blessed...
...I have noticed that these two old men sit together often, as different as they are, watching what everyone else is doing...
...He nearly nineteen months of captivity in Lebanon, has given is one of two Israeli military leaders who were relieved of Americans more than a proper cause for thanksgiving, as command after the Phalangist massacres in the Sabra and welcome as that may be...
...Abstract and inclusive nationalities such as that of the trying to make their countries strong by any means available United States will remain the decided exception...
...If you have to live to be that have, but you seldom really encounter...
...lack of Justice Robert H. Jackson to the position of chief justice...
...Before running into a in their mid-nineties...
...To believe that habits of mind like democracy cal Marxist-Leninism, as Communist nations sometimes try to or democratic socialism (or even Soviet-style Communism) apply it, are largely irrelevant to much of what will transpire in can be imported into a third-world country and put to work the the third world for the remainder of this century and most of the way that a computer can be programmed to store, process, and next...
...The tides will not stop...
...against legitimating terrorism by engaging in negotiations...
...nations" still learning how to be nations...
...note: this last sentence is an aphorism and that I am in my forties I have an inOne is sly and funny, jokes easily, takes is to be copied down in your special between status: I know now that what an active part in the liturgy, flirts in a notebook before it gets away...
...ously promoted the distinguished Supreme Court Associate only a three-foot ankle chain linking one to a cell wall...
...Human beings, alas, tend to be terror wholesale and terror retail, and a lot of "Let's stay- better at remembering the ills they suffer from than those they alive-by-supporting-whoever-looks-like-they're-winning to- inflict...
...Take dinner table questions about school...
...It means exploring the disquieting religious, the means of nation-building on earth for a millennium...
...What does it mean that the moral power of Christianity as the Reagan administration is set Loyalist slogan of the thirties, "No pasdran," has become the...
...Where the realpolitik of racist dictatorship which leaves others (Indians and Coloreds, above all) in unenworks, or is not widely noticed, all goes well-enough, and viable betwixt-and-between situations...
...It can be assaulted by the most common depriva- • Our editorial on "Judges & Ideology" (July 11) posthumtions...
...many of the "new nations" of Europe and Asia during the The point is that they never were...
...Racist ting you the "right" output) is no less dogmatic gush than the dictatorship has been, and will remain, a constant in human teachings of a Qaddafi...
...To ignore realities like these is to cheer for the good produced which can fuel the engines of nation-building like guys on "our" side . . . until it is clear that they were never on none other...
...When I was little, age was strange and never seemed to have anything to do with I N THE small church I attend there are The other is quiet and retiring and has my life other than offer an inconvenient two very old men...
...We should comprehend, rather, that the process of secure nation-building in the third world will occupy many decades, and that it will be much more inhumane, racist, violent, and dictatorial than we would choose...
...Or would we only pick out deliver...
...that we should be like the advisors who urged Canute to order the tides to stop...
...and the We may balk at the idea that democratic or socialist ideologies creation of national missions not involving tribal Volk-ism and are largely irrelevant to much of what is transpiring in the third the drive to cleanse the land of Untermenschen...
...Is anti-contra cry chanted by the Sandinista supporters who the generally sound principle of refusing to make concessions recently filled New York's Riverside Church to hear Daniel to terrorists becoming a substitute for any overall U.S...
...What so you're still in power...
...We can ask any American "Indian" from the Canadian Arctic Lebanon's leaders failed to utilize the techniques that had to Tierra del Fuego, or any Hmong tribesman in Southeast (sometimes) succeeded in the West: secular-scientific educa- Asia...
...The future may well belong to racist dictatorship in Angola or Afghanistan either, where Soviet cognoscenti rather than to the ideological universalisms of Rousseau or delude themselves into believing that they have created "New Marx...
...The nationalisms of Bismarck, Louis consist of lines drawn on maps by once-dominant European XIV, or Peter the Great were not especially humane exercises...
...Democracy, as Americans know it, and classimilitary power...
...the organization of diverse linguistic, religious, and other "History" is not going to get nicer because we wish it to...
...According to Moorhead Kennedy, who was held hostage for TRUTH IS RARELY equivalent to beauty...
...component in that procedure, not least when nation-builders Lebanon provides a grisly lesson about what happens when saw themselves in weak or endangered circumstances...
...It is involved in a less efforts are made to advance backwards into the past in many-sided struggle which pits black against white, African search of cultural, racialist, or spiritual universalisms which tribe against African tribe, Anglo against Afrikaner, and hardly-ever were...
...This is not to say we should be conservative ostriches...
...and a truth of over a year in Teheran, this requires our nation's "growing up transcendent ugliness is that racist dictatorship has been internationally...
...For our part, we remember the challenge issued by expect answers soon...
...Not for all the Red-baiting and paeans to long-term developmental effects of free enterprise currently gospel among Reaganites...
...To assume that large or villains (whoever they happen to be at any particular mo- segments of the third world will not search for fast-paced ment) are "no longer deserving of our support" because they achievement and tend to follow a fascist path earlier trod by are no longer playing by our rules...
...Even now, the experiences of this Shatila refugee camps...
...Fascism, on the other hand, will be all-too-relevant, very reproduce abstract information (the "right" input always get- often, for either our humanity or for our political taste...
...So ruth- French Revolution, or October, 1917...
...Peoples" almost instantaneously, thanks to a lot of education Americans will ignore this stark and unpalatable truth at in the ideological finer points - and, of course, a lot more their expense...
...What results involves eva- social contract approach to governance...
...Both are in times hear that old people are supposed to cousin's backyard I had to run a course good health...
...For fascism, in the form of leaders society...
...instance, where revolutionary dreams, power politics, interna- Even as we write, contradictory statements appear in the press tional rivalry, and religious fervor all play parts faintly remi- about what messages were or were not given Father Jenco to niscent of those in civil-war Spain...
...No one should lessons...
...History may impart wisdom...
...We do fledgling national elites fail to move traditionalists towards not need to go to the Israeli-occupied West Bank to learn this...
Vol. 113 • August 1986 • No. 14
