Hard questions

 

As Operation Iraqi Freedom morphs into Operation New Dawn, we cannot forget that at least 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died violent deaths.

After seven and a half years, the United States has ended its combat mission in Iraq. Only 50,000 American troops remain there to assist Iraq’s Security Forces, support Iraqi soldiers in targeted counter-terrorism missions, and protect American civilians. “Now, it’s time to turn the page,” President Barack Obama told the nation in an Oval Office address on August 31.

But turning the page to the challenge of a rickety economy should not mean allowing memories of this war to slide into a black hole. There are many questions about the invasion of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, but surely the most important is: was it a just war? This was the question when the war began and it is still the question now. How can we move on without confronting it squarely and honestly?

Back in 2003 there was a fierce debate over whether toppling the repulsive regime of Saddam Hussein could be justified ethically. Pundits debated the four traditional criteria for a just war: success must be probable, the cause must be just, war must be the last resort, and the benefits of victory must be proportionate to the evils of war.

By the end of 2003, we were already in a position to answer the first three of these questions. Had there been a reasonable chance of success? Absolutely. Before, during and after, there was never the slightest doubt about the immediate outcome. On May 1, when President Bush stood on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln under a banner announcing “Mission Accomplished”, Operation Iraqi Freedom was an overwhelming victory with minimal casualties for the Allies.

Had it been a just cause? True, the Iraqi people were no longer in thrall to a barbaric dictator – but that was a side-effect of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The main aim of the war had been to defang and dethrone a mortal threat to world peace. But despite Saddam’s insane bluster, and to the embarrassment of President Bush and Prime Minister Blair, he possessed no weapons of mass destruction.

Had there been other effective avenues to confront the danger? Probably. Since there was no imminent danger of the deployment of those fabled WMDs, it is conceivable that United Nations sanctions would have eventually toppled the regime without an invasion.

Now that the war is over and we can do a balance sheet of its debits and credits, we also need to apply the fourth criterion: did recourse to arms produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated?

Most of the media coverage of the conclusion of Operation Iraqi Freedom in the past week has failed to face this essential issue. Are the Iraqi people better off?

By some criteria, the answer is Yes. It may be surprising to readers of Western media who shudder at the appalling news of suicide bombers in markets and police stations, but Iraq’s economy has improved substantially. The estimated GDP growth in 2009 was 4.5 percent.

Before the war, there were 4,500 internet subscribers in the whole country. In January, there were 1.6 million. Before the war, there were 833,000 telephone subscribers; in January there were 1.3 million landlines and 19.3 million cell phones. Direct foreign investment in 2004 was running at about US$10 million per month. By late last year, it was about $100 million per month.

Iraqi optimism about the future has grown. In February 2009, a survey showed that 84 percent of Iraqis thought that security was “good” or “very good”. In the same month, 64 percent thought that Iraq should be a democracy, compared to only 19 percent for an Islamic state, and 14 percent for a “strong leader”.

On the debit side of the quality of life ledger, of course, fewer than half of Iraqis are satisfied with their supply of electricity, clean water and medical care. Education and justice are shaky.

But surely the main index of whether Iraqis are better off must be how many perished in the wake of the invasion. The website Iraqi Body Count estimates that between 97,700 and 106,600 Iraqi civilians have died violent deaths since 2003. More than 20,000 of them are still unidentified.

The actual number is disputed, but IBC’s figures are based on documented deaths, not statistical estimates. They include only civilians, not combatants. It is probably the most reliable – and conservative -- of all the estimates and has been quoted by relief agencies, WHO, UNHCR, the World Bank and the IMF, the BBC, Economist, and other media. Even the report of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction to the US Congress used its figures.

These numbers are almost impossible for us to grasp in comfortable countries like the US and Australia. A figure of 100,000 Iraqi civilians out of a population of 29 million is roughly equivalent to 1 million Americans in a population of 307 million. A million violent deaths in seven years in the US are simply unimaginable. Only 3,000 people died in the 9/11 attacks and this was the cause of unparalleled grief. For every death in Iraq, there were mothers and fathers and wives and children rent by sorrow and despair.

How can this figure be ignored? As the staff of Iraq Body Count put it in a letter to the British government’s inquiry into the lessons of the war:

“One of the most important questions in situations of armed conflict and in the laws of war is whether the use of force has been a proportionate response to the threat that prompted it. It is impossible to establish the wisdom of actions taken - even if in hindsight and without a view to apportioning direct blame – if the full consequences in human welfare are not taken into account. Casualty data are perhaps the most glaring indication of the full costs of war.”

For the most part, the invading troops were not directly responsible for these deaths, but the power vacuum after regime change was a trigger for internecine slaughter. These calamities were foreseeable, but the Bush Administration’s horizon had only been regime change. After that was a new dawn of free elections and an orderly parliamentary democracy. If this was optimism, it was ignorant optimism. If it was naïveté, it was reckless naïveté.

A soberly-written report from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction to the US Congress, Stuart W. Bowen, Jr, suggests that the Bush Administration had been negligent in basing its skimpy planning on a “liberation model”:

“From the outset, the Pentagon’s leadership believed that victory would be swift and that a new interim Iraqi authority would quickly assume power. They planned on Iraq’s police providing postwar security and anticipated that Iraqi oil revenues would fund most relief and reconstruction projects. When Iraq’s withering post-invasion reality superseded these expectations, there was no well-defined ‘Plan B’ as a fallback and no existing government structures or resources to support a quick response (page 324)”

Politically, it is too divisive for President Obama to state clearly that the Iraq War was unjust. But somehow, sometime, America’s share of responsibility for those civilian deaths must be acknowledged. Until then, the sombre and statesmanlike words in Obama’s address last week will be hollow: “Throughout our history, America has been willing to bear the burden of promoting liberty and human dignity overseas, understanding its links to our own liberty and security.”

Does anyone really believe that 19 million cell phones are ample compensation for 100,000 civilian deaths?

By: Michael Cook is editor of MercatorNet.

Technorati Tags: Iraq,just war,Quran,Imam,Mosque,New York,Florida

Younger working class miss out on jobs, marriage, religion

Younger working class people are drifting further away from middle class America and traditional values because they cannot find work in the changing job market. The social and political implications may be drastic.

That’s the gist of an article in the Wall Street Journal last week by sociologists Andrew J. Cherlin and W Bradford Wilcox. I am a week behind with this but the trends are not going to disappear any time soon.

Wilcox and others have drawn attention to the dilemmas of the working class before, noting for example how the “mancession” could increase the “divorce divide” between middle America and those further down the socio-economic scale.

(BTW, we are using “working class” here as shorthand. Cherlin and Wilcox say that that the real class divisions in society today are based on education.)

Now he and Cherlin point out that because younger members of this class can’t earn enough in the lower-skills jobs still available, they are not even getting married. That’s because, like most Americans, they believe that a couple isn’t ready to marry until they can count on a steady income.

Thus, in the early 1990s, 10 per cent of working class women were cohabiting when they gave birth; by the mid-2000s that figure had risen to 27 per cent -- the largest increase of any educational group. Since cohab relationships are more likely to break up, their children will pay the price.

Unmarried and without steady incomes, working class men and women are abandoning religion as well. The drop off has been greatest among whites. “In the 1970s, 35% of working-class whites aged 25-45 attended religious services nearly every week, the same percentage as college-educated whites in that age group. Today, the college-educated are the only group who attend services almost as frequently as they did in the 1970s.”

Some observers might say that there's nothing alarming about the working class's retreat from marriage and organized religion. It's true that not everyone wishes to marry or to worship, and that family and religious diversity can be valuable.

But the working class is not a cultural vanguard confidently leading the way toward a postmodern lifestyle. Rather, it is a group making constrained choices. For the most part, these are people who would like to marry before having kids but who don't think they are economically ready.

In contrast, college-educated Americans—the winners in our globalized economy—are now living more traditional family and religious lives than their working-class peers. More than 90% of college-educated women are married when they give birth.

What will be the effects of this working class drift?

Will their social disengagement leave them vulnerable to political appeals based on anger and fear? Will their multiple cohabiting unions and marriages prevent their children from developing a sense of attachment to others?

This, surely, is a gap that has to be bridged -- in other countries as well.

By: Carolyn Moynihan

 

Technorati Tags: employment,marriage,religion,working class

Can you hear us now?

When Melinda Tankard Reist’s latest book, Getting Real: Challenging the sexualisation of girls, was published last year, a reviewer described it as a “collective shout against the pornification of culture”. “I liked the phrase so much I decided to give it to a new grassroots campaign I’d been thinking about,” says the Australian advocate for women and girls. Here she talks to MercatorNet about the impact that campaign is having.

Mercatornet: What is your overall aim in confronting the pornification of culture?

Melinda Tankard Reist: The aim of Collective Shout: for a world free of sexploitation is to name, shame and expose advertisers, corporations and marketers who objectify women and sexualise girls to sell products and services. We are at the forefront of nation-wide action to pressure them to recognise their corporate social responsibility not to depict women and girls in ways that harm them.

Our overall aim in confronting various forms of objectification is to make them unacceptable. We want companies to think twice before using exploitative, hyper-sexualised imagery of women. We also want them to think twice before marketing inappropriate sexualised toys, games, clothes and other products to children. We want them to recognise what the research says about the connections between over-sexualised imagery and negative physical and mental health outcomes in young people and children especially.

We also oppose the ultimate outworking of repackaging little girls as sexually interesting, which is the global trade in their bodies. We challenge anything that treats the bodies of women and girls as appropriate elements of sexual commerce and fuels the global industries of pornography and prostitution.

How long have you been fighting this issue personally? Who else are you working with?

I have been interested in this issue for a long time. It is connected to so many human rights violations against women around the globe. Last year my book on the subject, Getting Real: Challenging the sexualisation of girls, was published (Spinifex Press 2009). One of the contributors described it as a “collective shout against the pornification of culture”. I liked the phrase so much I decided to give it to a new grassroots campaign I’d been thinking about. I felt it was time to harness the widespread concern on the issue into an organised and strategic campaign.

Collective Shout’s team comprises researchers, child advocates, eating disorder specialists, academics, journalists and campaigners and advocates. We join forces and collaborate with other groups working on the same issues, both in Australia and internationally. We also have the support of prominent experts in the field.

What have been some of your main campaigns, and what success have you had?

We have had a combination of ‘instant response’ campaigns against certain products and advertising, as well as more thought out, longer term campaigns which are ongoing. The former include successful campaigns against sexualised clothing (Best&Less push up bras for tween age girls, Cotton On’s sexualised baby clothing), a bus advertising a strip club using a large image of a prone semi-naked woman, and an on-line rape simulation game for boys. Other campaigns have been against Supre for a range of sexual slogans on tween girl t-shirts and against menswear store Roger David for t.shirts depicting women bound, gagged and semi-naked.

We regularly campaign against sexualised advertising. Our members post various action items on the website. We have an on-going campaign against porn in corner stores, milkbars, 7-11s and petrol stations, much of it containing illegal content which promotes sex with under-age girls, rape and incest. We are calling for an overhaul of our classification system, which has failed us.

We are about to launch a campaign against Lynx (LynxStynx) for its highly offensive sexualized depictions of women as mindless sexual robots. We will highlight the hypocrisy of Lynx being owned by Unilever which also owns the Dove ‘real beauty’ campaign. We will also soon launch a campaign called ‘Bye Bye Bunny’ to expose the mainstreaming of Playboy, and another called “Crossed Off” which will be a list of brands and products not to purchase this Christmas – ie cross them off your Christmas list.

How useful has the internet and social networking been?

Our campaigns are run through an interactive website, which is the lynchpin of our operations. Our Collective Shout community ‘gathers’ there, finds out what is happening and is empowered and equipped to act. We are heavy users of new forms of social media and social networking sites. Collective Shout has a twitter account and FaceBook page. I write on the issues regularly on my own website as well, and am active on twitter and FB also. Many new members find us in these ways and our message reaches a broader audience. We have been asked to establish CS overseas as a result.

Are the news media helpful?

We have a significant media profile, with media seeking comment from us most days. I am a regular on morning television. There appears to be heightened interest in and awareness of the issue.

Do you think much of the public is with you? What are the signs? Any surveys on this issue?

We don’t have statistics, however I believe much of the public is with us. Many people tell us how they are now emboldened to take action because they know they are backed by an organisation. We have had a significant sign up to Collective Shout in a short period of time. Our members are from a diverse range of backgrounds. We receive encouraging emails most days. I can barely keep up with the request for speaking engagements on the issue. I think for a long time many people held their concerns to themselves, and perhaps thought they were the only ones who felt this way. But now they feel they can express their views because they know they are not in a minority.

Are politicians taking the issue seriously? Are they taking any effective steps against sexploitation?

Some of them are, but not enough of them. We are working on educating them. There was a Senate inquiry into the sexualisation of children in 2007. Most of the recommendations have not been acted on. We will continue political engagement and lobbying until real action is taken. The (so far – could change any moment!) opposition leader committed to reviewing the classification system if elected, so we will make sure that happens. The Prime Minister (again, this could change) also indicated some concerns about sexualisation in a recent media interview, so we would hope to meet with her and take this further as well.

"The standard you walk past is the standard you set." This is one of your favorite quotes and it's a telling one. However, porn is so prevalent that tackling everything we see could be a full time job. Do we need to be selective? What can the average mum or dad do to raise standards?

That’s true. We just have to do what we can to expose the globalization and proliferation of sexual imagery and do what we can to make known the harm it is causing. I’m co-editing a new book on the subject called Big Porn Inc to be released next year.

Parents of course have a role to play in trying to protect their children from porn exposure and to talking about it with them in age-appropriate ways. But the task is much too difficult for parents on their own. We need our regulatory bodies and governments to act as well, for example on ISP filtering. There is a growing body of research on the harms caused by pornography. In Australia we are seeing a rise of child-on-child sexual assault, which the Australian Crime Commission has linked to exposure to sexualized imagery. We need Governments and regulators to acknowledge this and act.

The porn industry is largely a male affair -- right? Is this also true of the wider sexualisation of the culture? What role are women playing in this trend?

The porn industry is primarily operated and run by men. It is certainly men who produce the most hardcore, violent and degrading pornography. In terms of the broader sexualisation of culture, yes of course women are involved, especially in fashion, women’s magazines and the beauty industry. Women can participate in their own objectification and in the objectification of other women. We are trying to help them see the harm this is causing and make the necessary changes within the industries they are involved in.

Is there a need for a Collective Shout initiative from men?

Collective Shout is open to men and we have many male members. It would be great to see men refuse the pornography industry’s plan for their lives. Just last the weekend after addressing 2000 young adults at a conference in Sydney, three young men approached me and said they wanted to do all they could to battle the industry and help other young men avoid its grip.

By: Melinda Tankard Reist is a Canberra author, speaker, commentator, blogger and advocate for women and girls.

Technorati Tags: Australia,pornography,sexualisation of children

Marry, pray, love

In a book of self discovery so popular that it has been made into a movie -- Eat, Pray, Love -- the American writer Elizabeth Gilbert took herself to India to learn to pray. That was after bingeing on food in Italy and before stumbling on a new love in Bali.

Gilbert set the stage for the voyage around herself by getting a divorce. But if she had prayed with her first husband they might never have parted, as research on marital happiness shows that the couple that prays together is more likely to stay together.

This has been confirmed by a new study from the National Marriage Project based at the University of Virginia: "The Couple That Prays Together: Race and Ethnicity, Religion, and Relationship Quality Among Working-Age Adults," appears in the August issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family.

Co-authored by sociologists Christopher G. Ellison , W Bradford Wilcox and Amy M. Burdette, it is the first major study to compare religion and relationship quality across America's major racial and ethnic groups. It finds that for all groups, shared religious activity - attending church together and especially praying together - is linked to higher levels of relationship quality.

African-Americans derive the most benefits from that connection because they are significantly more likely than whites or Latinos to pray together and attend church together, offsetting other socio-economic factors tied to lower relationship quality - a finding dubbed the "African-American religion-marriage paradox," says Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project and a professor of sociology at the U of V.

Narrowing the racial divide

"Without prayer, black couples would be doing significantly worse than white couples. This study shows that religion narrows the racial divide in relationship quality in America. The vitality of African-Americans' religious lives gives them an advantage over other Americans when it comes to relationships. This advantage puts them on par with other couples."

The same is true, to a lesser extent, for Latino couples, says Wilcox.

But religion may not always benefit couples. Couples holding discordant religious beliefs and those with only one partner who attends religious services regularly tend to be less happy in their relationships, the researchers found. Being on different pages religiously is a source of tension for couples across racial and ethnic lines. "That may be due to less time spent doing things together," Wilcox says, "or having different values about child rearing, alcohol use or any number of things."

A substantial body of research has shown that relationship quality tends to be lower among racial and ethnic minorities, and higher among more religious persons and among couples in which partners share common religious affiliations, practices and beliefs, explained the study's lead author, Christopher G. Ellison, a fellow of the National Marriage Project and a professor of social science at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

The study uses data from the National Survey of Religion and Family Life, a 2006 telephone survey of 1,387 working-age adults (ages 18 to 59) in relationships, funded by the Lilly Endowment and designed by Ellison and Wilcox. The overwhelming majority of respondents were married (89 percent), with a somewhat lower rate among the racial and ethnic minorities.

The respondents reported high levels of relationship satisfaction (4.8 on a 6-point scale), but African-Americans reported being significantly less happy than whites. However, after controlling for age, education and income, the racial differences disappear.

Blacks reported higher levels of church attendance, both with and without their partners. Forty percent of black respondents reported that they attended services regularly as a couple, compared to 29 percent of whites, 31 percent of Mexicans or Mexican-Americans and 32 percent of all respondents.

Home life

Blacks were also significantly more likely than the other groups to report shared religious activities like prayer or scriptural study. That difference is probably driving the relationship improvements more than shared church attendance.

"The closer you get to the home, the more powerful the beneficial effects," says Wilcox. "It makes sense that those who think about, talk about and practice their beliefs in the home, those who bring home their reflections on their marriage, derive stronger effects from those beliefs, especially compared to those who simply attend church weekly.”

One practical effect seems especially important, Wilcox suggests: "I think forgiveness is probably a pretty key dimension to the link between shared religious practice - prayer in particular - and success in the relationship." In past studies, forgiveness has been found to be a key influence on the success of relationships, home life and even workplace happiness.

Previous research linking religious involvement to improved relationship quality has ascribed the connection to three factors.

First, religious communities typically promote ethical behaviour (the Golden Rule, forgiveness) that helps define appropriate relationship conduct, encourage partners to fulfil their familial roles and responsibilities, and handle conflict in a constructive manner.

Second, family-centered social networks found in religious communities offer formal and informal support to couples and families, from financial help to models of healthy relationships, to advice from an elder about how to discipline a difficult child.

Third, religious belief seems to provide people with a sense of purpose and meaning about life in general and their relationship in particular, which increases resilience to stress.

That's particularly important for blacks and Latinos, says Wilcox, because they are more likely to experience "poverty, xenophobia, racism, neighborhood violence, underemployment, or similar factors that can stress a relationship."

None of this has anything to do with learning meditation techniques in India and is therefore unlikely to be the stuff of bestsellers and movies. But it is the stuff of real life and happiness, so people deserve to know.

This article incorporates a press release from the University of Virginia. Carolyn Moynihan wrote the introduction and the ending.

Technorati Tags: marriage,prayer,race

Welcome to the Club of Ancient Wrongs

With one war in Afghanistan, another in Iraq, a possible war with Iran, and an environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, it seems bizarre that the biggest political issue in the US is whether to build a mosque near Ground Zero, the former site of the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan.

Muslims overseas are puzzled. “The mosque is not an issue for Muslims,” says Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid, a leading Arab journalist based in Dubai, “and they have not heard of it until the shouting became loud between the supporters and the objectors, which is mostly an argument between non-Muslim US citizens!”

First of all, some facts.

Only part of the US$100 million Cordoba Initiative is a mosque which will accommodate about 1,000 for Friday prayers. The rest of it is a community centre with a library, gym, auditorium, restaurant, 9/11 memorial and so on. Second, it is not a “Ground Zero Mosque”. It is a full two blocks away from the place where more than 2,700 people died.

Third, it is not a gathering place for radical Muslims. The Kuwaiti-American imam organising the project, Feisal Abdul Rauf, may have sent mixed messages, but he claims to be promoting dialogue between Americans and Muslims. He has even written a book titled, What's Right with Islam is What's Right with America. Since we have George W. Bush’s word for it that Islam is “a religion of peace”, at least New Yorkers should believe in Mr Rauf’s good intentions.

There are two strands in the commentary defending the proposed Islamic centre.

The first is that Muslims have a right, like other Americans, to build places of worship wherever they like. In the words of President Obama, "Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country." Rabbi Arthur Waskow, a prominent Jewish leader, says: “it is not only the constitutional right of the peace-committed Muslims of the Cordoba Initiative to build a community center in Lower Manhattan, but they are ethically right and profoundly wise to lift there a beacon.”

The other is that “Demonization of the Muslim religion is what this brouhaha is all about.” It is “as irrational an act of scapegoating as blaming all ethnic Germans for the acts of Nazis,” in the words of one left-wing pundit, Robert Scheer. Even the usually sensible Economist says that “The campaign against the proposed Cordoba centre in New York is unjust and dangerous.”

But the right to free commercial activity and the right to freedom from discrimination and vilification are very blunt instruments for dealing with a “sacred site”. His opponents may be using the controversy as a way to weaken President Obama (when 20 percent of Americans think he is a Muslim) but the source of the opposition is more an inarticulate sense of sacredness than bigotry.  

If New Yorkers were really that prejudiced, why is the current Islamic centre in downtown Manhattan located ten blocks away in the basement of a Catholic Church?

Today, in most Western countries, the concept of reverence for the sacred is often dismissed or ridiculed or simply viewed with perplexity. But even a secularised sense of the sacred is a tenuous link to transcendence and an important element in forging a personal and national identity.

To take a non-political example, would Walmart ever build a mall and parking lot in Yellowstone? Will California ever sell off Redwood National Park to timber companies to balance its budget? Such proposals somehow violate places revered for their awe-inspiring beauty. Or if Mr Rauf somehow managed to shift his centre to the battlefield of Gettysburg, would the ensuing protests be due to hatred of Islam or to outrage at the violation of this hallowed ground?

And for Americans Ground Zero has been hallowed by senseless deaths, heroic sacrifice, national humiliation and an outpouring of grief.

It is hard to find words to explain why a plot of ground should be revered for memories like these. That is what poets are for. But part of being human is to be connected to places and spaces and memories. Analysing the conflict in terms of constitutional rights is utterly inadequate. Something more ancient is at work which disappears in sterile political battles over rights.

It is not pandering to prejudice to recognise that America, like other societies with a long and deep history, now has its own taboos which ought to be respected even if they are legally indefensible.

A Pakistani professor Islamic Studies at American University in Washington DC, Akbar Ahmed, understands this. A former ambassador to the US, he has a deep knowledge of both cultures.

"I don't think the Muslim leadership has fully appreciated the impact of 9/11 on America,” he says. “They assume Americans have forgotten 9/11 and even, in a profound way, forgiven 9/11, and that has not happened. The wounds remain largely open. And when wounds are raw, an episode like constructing a house of worship – even one protected by the Constitution, protected by law - becomes like salt in the wounds."

Protectiveness and anger are typical of disputes over sacred sites in the Old World. Perhaps the passions in this controversy mean that America is growing up, or at least growing older. What could be more characteristic of an Old World society than fights over sacred sites?

In newer countries like Australia passions seldom run so high. I used to live in Tasmania where the indigenous people, the Tasmanian Aboriginals, had lived in complete isolation for perhaps 15,000 years. Within two generations after contact with Europeans they had all perished. It is one of the darkest chapters of Australian history, even of world history. Yet there is no fitting memorial to them, just a few wretched plaques and a hiking track named after Truganini, the last of her people.

Ancient cultures have deep feelings. Why is Jerusalem the world’s most volatile city? Because Christians, Jews and Muslims would all die to defend their sacred places. The Babri mosque in Ayodhya was destroyed in 1992 by a mob of 150,000 Hindus who believed that it had been built over the birthplace of their god Rama. Serbia fought a war rather than grant independence to Kosovo partly because the Field of Blackbirds, north of the capital Pristina, is hallowed ground where the Serbs made their last stand against the Ottoman Turks in 1389.

It is easy for unscrupulous politicians to exploit sacred sites for their own political gain, as Slobodan Milosevic did in Kosovo to rally Serbs against separatists, and perhaps Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin are doing now. But that doesn’t mean that ordinary Americans’ attachment to a sacred site should be dismissed as redneck prejudice. It’s more like the anger and exasperation you might feel if an intruding stranger made a scene at your mother’s wake.

And, to draw on the Australian experience, a sacred site can draw Western and Muslim cultures together. Arguably, Australia’s most sacred site is not on the island continent at all, but in Gallipoli, a Turkish peninsula in the Dardanelles Straits. There in 1915, thousands of Australians and New Zealanders died in a doomed attempt to capture Istanbul. Now it is a place of pilgrimage for both Australians and Turks who remember their forebears’ sacrifice and heroism.

Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey and the Turkish commander, later wrote a touching memorial which displays far more magnanimity and sensitivity than anything uttered by American politicians in the past few weeks:

“You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side now here in this country of ours... you, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land. They have become our sons as well.”

Michael Cook is editor of MercatorNet.

Technorati Tags: Ground Zero,Islam,New York

‘We insist: leave your conscience at the door’

Pharmacists dispense advice to a colleague who will not sell the morning after pill.

I recently wrote an article expressing my delight that Washington State pharmacists will no longer be forced to dispense products or provide services they find morally objectionable. My elation at the Washington victory was quickly numbed, however, when an edited version ran as a “Point of View” on the Canadian Healthcare Network website. It is one thing for the public to oppose our freedom of conscience, quite another for pharmacists to be shooting themselves in the foot.

Only 42 per cent of pharmacists who voted on the network’s site agreed that “they should have the right to refuse to sell products or provide services they consider morally objectionable”. Sadly, the other 58 per cent believe they should be forced to do what they believe to be wrong -- “Well, Mr. Smith, I hate to do this to you, but if you really insist, take this overdose and don’t bother calling me in the morning.”

My happiness at the Washington victory was further squelched by the plethora of intolerant, and in some cases highly dogmatic, statements posted by fellow pharmacists. While some offered considered views that mirrored common misgivings among the public, others shot assertions from the hip, epitomizing the very judgemental attitude they so fear in their opponents. “Pharmacists are to be non-judgemental” -- except, it seems, when criticizing one another.

A common thread running through the posts is deep consternation about conscience, showing, at the very least, that the authors have one. Yes, every living, rational, being has this capacity for self-reflection, regardless of dogmatic beliefs. But, alas, some have decided it is best to leave their conscience at the pharmacy door. They propose that we all live by one set of mores at work and another set at home.

One person writes: “If moral issues are a concern, provide a reasonable alternative…”

And, were euthanasia legalized, what might that be when Mr Smith insists on his overdose? -- “Ah, er, sorry Mr Smith, I’m afraid I cannot offer you this service, but Frankie’s Pharmacy down the street most certainly will! Have a nice day… Um, see you in the next life… I hope?”

“In some cases”, the comment continues,” you just have to separate work from home, and the professional judgment involved cannot be swayed by moral beliefs.”

Yet no one makes judgments in a vacuum. What, then, will professional judgment be swayed by: Consumerism? Feminism? Drug-company-ism? The next ideological “ism”?

Let me stress that I agree it would be unethical to deny the sick treatment. But because neither fertility nor pregnancy constitutes an illness, I refuse to pander to the feminist ideology that forces us to view and treat them as such.

It is a rather scary thought, is it not, that pharmacists should leave their morals at home. (Care to help yourself to that left over morphine in the back of the safe? How about chewing on low-dose Concerta?) Do we want robots in the pharmacy, people devoid of ethical or philosophical insight who simply follow orders and take no responsibility for their actions? Did we learn nothing from the crimes of the Nazi doctors who separated moral judgement from professional “duties”?

If reason allows us to reflect upon our professional actions in the area of therapeutics, moral conscience accompanies us always so we can discern the goodness or baseness of our own actions. So, when a pharmacist decides not to provide you with an overdose, he uses both his moral judgement and professional judgement simultaneously.

Pharmacists who refuse to dispense products they believe to be harmful are putting the health of the patient first. A pharmacist who will not sell the morning after pill, for example, chooses not to stock it because he believes that life is precious from the moment of conception. This is not a religious feeling or belief, but an ethical opinion that is just as worthy of respect as any other. P>What if a pharmacist decides to not dispense a medication simply out of caprice or bigotry? The oft-cited hypothetical example is someone who will not dispense anti-retrovirals to AIDS patients. I can only say that no pharmacist with an upright conscience would ever deny necessary treatment to a patient on a whim.

Sean Murphy of the Protection of Conscience Project has summed up well the contradictory position of those who demand ethical conformity without demonstrating “the superiority of the ethical judgements [they] propose to force upon unwilling colleagues.”

They could, he says, at least explain “how professional ethics will be improved if the only candidates admitted to professions are those who promise to do what they believe to be wrong.”

By: Cristina Alarcon is a Vancouver pharmacist and writer. She holds a Masters in Bioethics.

Technorati Tags: conscientious objection,morning after pill,pharmacists

Waiting makes the heart grow fonder

It is always gratifying when research coincides with common sense and everyday experience, as in the case of a new study showing that a relationship in which sexual intimacy is delayed is more likely to endure.

Researchers questioned 642 adults and 56 per cent of them said they had “waited until they got serious before they had sex” (quoting the Toronto Sun here). Most of them also reported that they had “a high quality relationship”.

The number was higher than for the 27% of people who had sex while dating casually and the 17% who were intimate while in a non-romantic relationship.

Professor Anthony Paik of the University of Iowa who reported the study suggested that the courtship process acts as a screening mechanism.

“The debate is ‘why can’t we have sex now?’ The expectation is that sex should occur very quickly. But doing so, you’re losing out on some information that might be useful,” he explained in an interview.

It’s almost an economic equation, he added.

“On average, the more costly the process leading into the relationship, the more likely it is to work. That’s what the data would suggest.”

Alas, he then confuses us by saying that further analysis showed it was not the early sex that caused low-quality relationships but the personalities of the people:

Certain people are simply prone to finding relationships less rewarding, and they are more likely to have sex in casual relationships, he added.

Either way, rushing into sex is not a good sign.

Article by: Carolyn Moynihan

 

Technorati Tags: abstinence,relationships