Karzai, Obama, and Opium

Lately I keep reading the history of opium from different sources. A lot of this has to do with the Opium Wars (18th century, Britain v. China, with America supporting and benefitting from Britain's victory) which comes up in research for my work-in-progress, The U.S. War Against Asia. This morning, in prepping for the day, I was reading the section on opium in A History of Hong Kong by Frank Welsh. Opium is the world oldest historically known medicine; it actually works (unlike some marginally effective products peddled by pharmaceutical corporations); it and its effective derivatives are illegal without a prescription in the U.S.; prescriptions are hard to come by, as doctors are closely monitored by regulatory agencies.

Hamid Karzai, President of Afghanistan, apparently threatened to join the Taliban. He said it in private, apparently, but surprise, the news leaked out. This sent the Obama administration, and its nut-cracking Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, into a panick. On the one hand they think Karzai is just trying to get a better deal from the U.S. On the other hand it is bad for U.S. propaganda, and giving him a better deal would mean having less control over a puppet they want more control over, not less.

I think Hamid Karzai is smarter than you think. He knows that the U.S. has a long history of assassinating or otherwise replacing puppets who seek too much autonomy (see history of Vietnam). He knows he can, with luck, dodge Taliban assassins, or CIA assassins, but almost certainly not both at the same time.

So there is only one reason Karzai would be thinking of joining the Taliban: he knows they are winning the war.

The fact that the Taliban is winning the war is quite remarkable. It is not due to their expertise on the battlefield. According to numerous sources, most of the Taliban can't hit a target at any appreciable distance. Most of them need, but don't own, corrective lenses, a result of the poverty and backwardness of the nation. Using their most commonly available weapon, the Kalashnikov automatic rifle (AK-47), they are unable to precisely line up the two sighting marks with their targets, which requires being able to focus at three distinct distances at once. Kalashnikovs were designed to be reliable, but in achieving that goal they have a lot of play in them. They were designed to spray bullets at close range, not hit targets hundreds of yards away.

So why are the Taliban winning the war? Because the U.S. and its scuzbag allies are foreign invaders! No one likes them, really, not even Karzai and his clan. If the Taliban had folded early on, then Karzai would be just another third world despot hated by his own people. Instead, he is a third world despot shot at by his own people.

The U.S. military used to worry that someone would equip the Taliban with weapons like surface-to-air missiles that would blunt U.S. air power and thus make U.S. ground gunmen far less effective. Apparently now they have to seal the border to prevent eye glasses from getting through. Expect Obama and the Gang to announce soon that Iran is building secret underground factories to manufacture enough glasses for the Taliban to shoot straight. International sanctions will be needed.

Back when Barack Obama was just another sleezy politician lying to people to try to get elected President, I wrote (See Barack Obama: Will He Dick Nixon Us?, July 8, 2008): "The most likely scenario at this point is that Barack Obama will become President. I am capable of hope; I hope he is a good President. But I won't be surprised if he just muddles through like most of our past Presidents. I won't even be surprised if he expands the war and is a failure on domestic issues."

Obama expanded the war, not only in Afghanistan but to Somalia; it has been a mixed bag on domestic issues. The Republicans of course, and the Tea Party folk (many of whom are not to keen on the Republican Party), are Obama's Taliban. Obama loves power as much as any American politician. If he thinks the Tea Party movement is going to sweep the field, don't be surprised if he has a secret meeting with his most trusted advisors and says, "Maybe I should join this Tea Party thing and become its leader." And don't be surprised if word leaks out.

As to opium, we should make it legal to grow opium poppies in the U.S., and make opium (but not morphine or other strong derivatives) an over-the-counter, legal product. That would do more to cut U.S. medical bills than any Obamaesque top-down bureaucratic scheme. The world's oldest effective medicine should not need a prescription.

On Good Works

In the arguments between Protestant and Roman Catholic Christians there are a number of big issues. One is whether the Pope, or whoever happens to be Bishop of Rome, was ever meant by Jesus Christ to be the dictator of the Christian faithful [see Was Peter the First Pope?]. Another is whether during the ritual of Communion the bread and wine are simply symbols, or are actually tranformed into the body and blood of Christ. Today, this year's Easter Sunday, I want to take on the Faith v. Works issue. Protestants, starting with Martin Luther, hold that man can enter Heaven by Faith alone. Catholics hold that people must have faith, but must also perform good works to go to heaven.

The controversy is a good example of people overreacting to a historical situation, and then setting their beliefs in cement. Martin Luther was not the first Protestant (or heretic, if you take the Catholic view); he was the first to live to tell about it. He did not like the Roman Catholic version of good works, which insisted that they consisted of cash payments to the Church. This took a variety of forms, including selling indulgences [see also Catholic defense of indulgences] but the money for all this seldom went to charity. Rather it supported the rather lavish life styles of bishops, cardinals, and the Pope.

Luther reacted by saying that Faith alone determined whether people were in God's grace and got into heaven. On the one hand this was an act of self-denial, for Luther was (or had been) a beneficiary of the heaven-for-sale system.

But Luther had misidentified the problem. The problem was not good works; the problem was the substitution of a system of extortion for a system of good works. And not only did Luther and his Lutherans fail to correct this initial reaction, it became worse with John Calvin and his followers. Protestant sects in the 1500's (most of them) adopted, as a theological position, that people with money had no obligation to give to charity. This, of course, appealed to certain people with money. It was the basis of the Protestant work ethic: work or starve, for there will be no charity for the unfortunate. In the most extreme Calvinist interpretation a man could behave rather badly and still get into heaven solely because he held the correct faith.

While the Catholic Church did little in the way of reforming its theology, during its internal reformation in the 1500's, in response to Protestant criticism, the Church did make an effort to do more genuine charitable work, and has continued supporting its charitable arms to this day. In the United States, Catholic Charities is a big organization.

Many modern Protestant churches have their own interpretation of the good works issue: good works may not be necessary to get into heaven, but they are a basic part of being good humans.

Islam, more than any other religion I know of, emphasizes the donation of money to charity by its wealthier members. This is one reason it is so popular in poorer communities around the world.

For those of us who know there is no heaven and no hell, the question is how we should act here in everyday reality. Most of us see a value in charity. Sometimes it is rationalized in social terms: feed the hungry, and they don't need to steal food. Modern economies have shown us that economic tragedy can happen to almost anyone. Feeding economic unfortunates creates a culture where, if you become unfortunate yourself, you can depend on others to feed you. But most of all, it just feels good to help other people. It makes you feel competent and useful. It is a basic human function; to not be charitable is to not be fully human.

I have met vitriolic American "Christians" who believe that they should not give to charity. The idea that God and Jesus Christ actually prohibit Christians from doing good works is bizarre and must reflect an underlying social or mental pathology.

Fundamentalist Christians Endorse One Son Policy

[Antioch, Ohio] The Congregation of Christian Fundamentalists, a global organization whose membership includes many Christian sects that believe that the Bible should be interpreted as literally true on a word-by-word basis, today recommended that Christian families imitate God by having only one child per family, a son.

"We take the literal word of the Bible literally," said Reverend Thudpucker, spokesman for the Congregation. "We do expect a degree of controversy because few Christian Churches have been literalists on this point. It will be up to each individual denomination to ratify this finding."

"God had only one Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus said to follow him, and he clearly put an emphasis on ministry, not on family life or procreation. God had no female children. However, he did need the Mary, Jesus's mother, to participate biologically in the creation of Jesus, who thereby was both Man and God and a fit sacrifice to redeem the sins of Mankind. Women have a role in creating the one son per Christian family that we are recommending."

Thudpucker refused to comment on the current controversy about Pope Benedict XVI. "The Catholic Church is none of our business. The Pope and his predecessors just bend and shape the words of the Bible like it's wax, and they have ended up worshipping an Idol of their own making."

Asked about the Biblical admonition to "Go forth and multiply," Thudpucker said: "It says to go forth and muliply until the earth is filled. Which it pretty much is. The example of Christ our Lord was to have no children at all. But Christ is God, so he really did have a Son, himself. So Jesus Christ had one son. It is all there in black in white in English in the Bible. You reporters should try studying that."