Two slogans

This time around, I have two somewhat different topics at the top of my brain, competing for attention—namely, the one I was working on, and the one that forcefully presented itself to us a number of days ago in a one-room Amish schoolhouse. Each is summed up in a simple slogan: “failure is success.”

Failure is success

You’ve probably heard the “doublethink” slogans from George Orwell’s masterpiece, “Nineteen Eighty-Four”: “war is peace,” “freedom is slavery,” “ignorance is strength.”

Let me add “failure is success” for the strategists of the Bush administration.

Here’s what I mean by that. I suspect (and I’m not the only one who suspects this) that the Bush administration has, in fact, no intention of withdrawing its military presence from Iraq in any truly meaningful way.

Ever. And the massive, multi-billion dollar permanent bases currently being built there bear that out.

Quite the contrary, the neoconservative ideology that drives the administration’s foreign policy actually requires that the U.S. maintain a constant and growing presence (specifically, military presence) in the Middle East (specifically, in Iraq). To make that happen, we dare not ever actually succeed in quelling the insurgency—if we did, our ostensible purpose for being there would disappear, and the American people would begin asking, quietly at first, if they could please have their children, parents and spouses back.

So every new explosion, every assassination, every beheading video that crops up gives the American—or more precisely, the Bush—occupation a new lease on life. More money can be requested, more troops deployed, more “sacrifices” called for.

(By the way, I still haven’t been able to get anyone to give me a clear answer regarding what “sacrifices” our top, say, five-to 10-percent of wealth and power holders have been called to make... but that’s a different issue.)

It follows, therefore, that the multiple American failures that have plagued Iraq since the invasion—the failure to properly conduct the reconstruction, the failure to provide reliable basic services, the failure to curb corruption or sectarian tension or bureaucratic squabbling—all of which have contributed to the vitality of the insurgency, have in fact been beneficial to the Bush regime’s goals.

So in this way, what a normal person might regard as mistakes, defeats or setbacks are, relative to the neoconservative game plan, successes.

Peace absorbs terror

The shooting was on Monday.

Tuesday evening, I dropped my daughter off at her Girl Scouts meeting and went to a nearby restaurant for a cup of tea. The TV was tuned to CNN, and of course the buzz was all about the tragic deaths in that one-room Amish schoolhouse.

The anchorwoman was interviewing an Amish elder, who was speaking simply and sincerely about, of all things, forgiveness. He spoke of the pain the community was experiencing, but he also spoke of the need to reach out to the family of the gunman, and of the strength that the community derived from its collective faith. The anchorwoman was obviously deeply affected by the man’s words, and I could feel that the other people in the restaurant who were listening were touched as well.

Never in my life have I seen a more concrete example of God’s grace in action, or a more compelling testimony to the effects of living with a deeply rooted and pervasive faith.

Some people might think that the gunman selected the school because of its defenselessness. The irony is, in one sense, he couldn’t have picked a place that was more fortified, or a people that were better prepared.

This is what I was thinking of when I coined the Delightist slogan “peace absorbs terror” ( see www.delightist.org ). Despite the severity and viciousness of this attack, the essential nature of the Amish community remains unshaken and unaffected. This kind of profoundly centered faith actually absorbs violence directed against it, and transforms the suffering into something that can change the lives of those who witness it. Gandhi knew this, of course.

If only George W. Bush did.