Creating, collecting, and sharing thoughts and ideas. And learning along the way.
Last week, I toured the great Mogul compound of Fatehpur Sikri, near the Taj Mahal. My Indian guide mentioned in passing that in the late 1500s, when Afghanistan was part of India and the Mogul Empire, the Iranian Persians invaded Afghanistan in an effort to “seize the towns of Herat and Kandahar” and a great battle ensued. I had to laugh to myself: “Well, add them to that long list of suckers — countries certain that controlling Afghanistan’s destiny was vital to their national security.”
There were already plenty on that list before, and there have been even more since. As America now debates how to extract itself from Iraq and Afghanistan, it is worth re-reading a little Central Asian history and recalling for how many centuries great powers — from India to Persia, from Britain to Russia, and now from America to Iran, Turkey and Pakistan — have wrestled for supremacy in this region, in different versions of what came to be called “The Great Game.” One can only weep at the thought of how much blood and treasure have been expended in this pursuit and how utterly ungreat this game has been in retrospect. No one ever wins for long, and all they win is a bill.
It is with this bias that I think about the debate following President Obama’s decision to withdraw all U.S. forces from Iraq, on schedule, at the end of this year — a decision that has been greeted with much huffing and puffing from hawkish Republicans about how Obama will be remembered for losing Iraq to Iran. Iraq will now fall under Iran’s “influence,” they proclaim, and none of us will ever be able to sleep well again.
Please put me down in the camp that thinks Obama did the right thing and that Iran’s mullahs will not be the winners.
Why? Well, for starters, centuries of history teach us that Arabs and Persians do not play well together. Yes, Iraq has a Shiite Muslim majority and so does Iran. But Iraqi Arab Shiites willingly fought for eight years against Persian Iranian Shiites in the Iran-Iraq war.
Moreover, I am certain that in recent years America’s lingering troop presence in Iraq actually gave Iran greater influence in Baghdad. The U.S., however well intentioned, became a lightning rod that absorbed a lot of Iraqis’ frustrations with their government’s underperformance, and the U.S. “occupation” drew all attention away from Iran’s shenanigans inside Iraq. Iraqis are a proud people. Once our troops are gone, Iraqi Arabs will surely focus entirely on their own government’s performance and on any Iranian or other attempts to try to be the puppeteer of Iraqi politics. Any Iraqi leader seen as Tehran’s lackey will have problems.
Indeed, once we’re gone, I actually think the dominant flow of influence will be from Iraq toward Iran — if (and it is still a big if) — Iraq’s democracy holds. If it does, Iranians will have to look across the border every day at Iraqis, with their dozens of free newspapers and freedom to form any party and vote for any leader, and wonder why these “inferior” Iraqi Arab Shiites enjoy such freedoms and “superior” Iranian Persian Shiites do not.
“Iran’s interests were served by the Arab status quo ante — ideologically bankrupt regimes brutalizing disenfranchised populations,” argues Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment. “The more representative governments there are in the Middle East, the more it highlights the fact that the Islamic Republic of Iran is a salmon swimming upstream against the current of history.”
Some say Iran was the geopolitical winner of the U.S. intervention in Iraq. I’d hold off on that judgment, too. “The Iranian regime is at its lowest moment of influence in the region — 14 percent popularity in the latest Zogby poll,” remarked Abbas Milani, who teaches Iranian politics at Stanford. What you see today if you look underneath the Islamic revolutionary facade in Iran, added Milani, “is a flourishing of painting, films and music, driven by technology. It is a society seeking its own bottom-up blend of Islam and modernity. The regime has no role in this.”
Just as I don’t buy the notion that we need to keep playing The Great Game in Iraq, I also don’t buy it for Afghanistan.
“If the U.S. steps back, it will see that it has a lot more options,” argues C. Raja Mohan, a senior fellow at the Center for Policy Research, in New Delhi. “You let the contending regional forces play out against each other and then you can then tilt the balance.” He is referring to the India, Pakistan, Russia, Iran, China and Northern Alliance tribes in Afghanistan. “At this point, you have the opposite problem. You are sitting in the middle and are everyone’s hate-object, and everyone sees some great conspiracy in whatever you do. Once you pull out, and create the capacity to alter the balance, you will have a lot more options and influence to affect outcomes — rather than being pushed around and attacked by everyone.”
America today needs much more cost-efficient ways to influence geopolitics in Asia than keeping troops there indefinitely. We need to better leverage the natural competitions in this region to our ends. There is more than one way to play The Great Game, and we need to learn it.
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EZEKIEL 3:16-6:14 | HEBREWS 4:1-16 | PSALM 104:24-35 | PROVERBS 26:27
Ezekiel continues to receive instructions on his commission to go to his people. His task is to be that of a watchman’s: warning people to turn back from evil. So great is this responsibility on Ezekiel that were he to not do his bidding in warning the people, the Lord says to him that their blood would be on Ezekiel’s hands! The people may exercise their freewill, by all means, but not before they are fully aware of what their choices are!
Next, Ezekiel receives detailed instructions on symbolizing the siege of Jerusalem, with Ezekiel personifying the city of Jerusalem and her many travails. Following that, we see the razor of God’s judgment upon his people. Suffice to say, this is not a people to be envied; this is a people to be pitied—for the grievous things that are to soon befall them.
Because this is what the Lord says: 14 “I will make you a ruin and a reproach among the nations around you, in the sight of all who pass by. 15 You will be a reproach and a taunt, a warning and an object of horror to the nations around you when I inflict punishment on you in anger and in wrath and with stinging rebuke. I the LORD have spoken. 16 When I shoot at you with my deadly and destructive arrows of famine, I will shoot to destroy you. I will bring more and more famine upon you and cut off your supply of food. 17 I will send famine and wild beasts against you, and they will leave you childless. Plague and bloodshed will sweep through you, and I will bring the sword against you. I the LORD have spoken.”
But even in the midst of the great destruction that is to befall Jerusalem and the final fall of the Temple, there is a small element of pity that the Lord will show in the sparing of a few. The Lord says, 8 “‘But I will spare some, for some of you will escape the sword when you are scattered among the lands and nations. 9 Then in the nations where they have been carried captive, those who escape will remember me—how I have been grieved by their adulterous hearts, which have turned away from me, and by their eyes, which have lusted after their idols. They will loathe themselves for the evil they have done and for all their detestable practices. 10 And they will know that I am the LORD; I did not threaten in vain to bring this calamity on them.”
Turning now to our reading of the book of Hebrews, we find the author exhorting his Jewish audience to consider the many privileges of grace and mercy under the gospel that are greater than any to be had under the Mosaic Law. This is an audience that needs reassurance that giving up their strict observances of Jewish practices will not be to their detriment. The writer, therefore, speaks of the observance of a more perfect Sabbath under this new gospel: it is one of perfect rest and peace in the knowledge that the price of one’s sins has been made already by way of the perfect sacrifice of the Lamb of God, also known as, Jesus Christ, i.e., God himself incarnate.
Is that too radical a notion to accept? It must have been a bit unsettling to the average Jew of the day who wasn’t entirely sure about Jesus being the long-awaited Messiah. Could it be that the Messiah has already come and gone? You mean to say, the plan has changed now, in that both Jew and non-Jew are entitled to same privileges—and in this new dispensation of grace, there is no need to continue with old practices of offering sacrifices, observing feasts and Sabbaths, and the many other practices to approach God, the Almighty? Yes, you got that right, is what the author of the book of Hebrews is saying. You got that right, indeed!
The writer then speaks to the greatness of the word of God—which in recent times, as of the writing of this book, was in the person of Jesus Christ himself—that has supernatural powers of discernment. He says: 12 For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. 13 Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.
To think that we have the privilege of approaching God directly was certainly a daunting thought to a people used to approaching God via a priest. Consider the Jewish audience this letter is directed to. To a people who were accustomed to going into a Temple and approaching a priest to offer up atonements and offerings, this was indeed a radical concept to consider the complete dismantlement of the Judaic practices of worship.
The writer, therefore, is using a familiar analogy of a priest, only he points to the perfect and ultimate priest to be Christ himself. He says: 14 Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. 16 Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
Does that make you feel somewhat better now, is what the writer seems to be saying to his Jewish readers. Yes, you can keep your Jewish identities, but you must relearn some new concepts that will allow you to continue with your practices and observances, but in a completely new light. Here are some ways to rethink previously held beliefs:
The Sabbath is not just a day of rest—it is a rest in the peace that has come through the knowledge of the grace of God that has taken care of all your sins. The approaching of a priest is not a routine matter of your weekly trip to the Temple— it is a bold privilege of approaching Jesus Christ, the High Priest who is there for you at any time at all, to minister to your every need, and to comfort you. So, yes, come to the High Priest with “confidence”, and “receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” Is this a radical concept, or what? It is completely mind-blowing, if you were a Jewish person in the first century reading this letter!
We’ll turn now to our reading of the psalms, and find in these verses, a most humble acknowledgment of the psalmists’ praise to the Almighty’s omnipotence. David says:
27 All creatures look to you
to give them their food at the proper time.
28 When you give it to them,
they gather it up;
when you open your hand,
they are satisfied with good things.
29 When you hide your face,
they are terrified;
when you take away their breath,
they die and return to the dust.
30 When you send your Spirit,
they are created,
and you renew the face of the ground.
May it be that like David, we are also quick to offer up these words of praise and thanksgiving:
33 I will sing to the LORD all my life;
I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.
34 May my meditation be pleasing to him,
as I rejoice in the LORD.
Finally, a verse from the book of Proverbs, in which Solomon, the wise king of Israel, speaks to the futility of seeking revenge. He says:
27 Whoever digs a pit will fall into it;
if someone rolls a stone, it will roll back on them.
The first of November has come in quite sneakily as far as I am concerned. I suppose the last several weeks have been packed so tightly that the days have folded into weeks and months in a very smooth and seamless manner… which is not an undesirable thing at all considering that the events of the past few weeks have all been very gratifying at home and work.
Yet, despite the smooth passage of time, one occasionally encounters moments when time itself seems to stand still. I am experiencing just one of those moments this afternoon! I took a walk around campus a little while ago, and cannot begin to describe the beauty of nature that I was enveloped in. The air was crisp, and the sky was the bluest of blue, but what was absolutely stunning was the sun shining down on the trees that looked as though they were going up in flames. Flames of bright red to pale pink even, browns as pale as copper to darker shades of chocolate, but more than anything else, every hue of yellow known lit up the horizon every direction I turned.
Every autumn, I am struck by the glory of this season; the sheer brightness of the foliage is almost unreal, and the sunlight highlights every color to its sharpest hue. One can only take in sharp breaths at the particularly beautiful sights, and bask in the reality of the moment– a moment washed in gold.
What a lovely way to usher in November! This is one of several pictures celebrating the colors of the season. All pictures taken with my phone-camera, and are untouched.
