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"We'll end the war just as soon as..." is the rhetorical parent of empire-crushing quagmires. The conditional changes as needed, because it needs to stay fresh to stay plausible. One president will claim that the right enemy leader needs to be killed, another that more troops need to be temporarily added.

Strategic changes can change the tide of a military conflict but Afghanistan is now an eight-year-old war. We're not battling some other empire for control of territory. The fighters shooting at American soldiers are Afghani. They will still be there when we leave, whenever we leave. They are Afghanistan's future whether we like it or not. The only real question is whether we'll leave as friends or as enemies. Thirty thousand additional U.S. troops will be 30,000 additional U.S. rifles aimed at 30,000 more Afghanis who simply don't want us there. Eighteen months will be eighteen more months of Afghan seething over the corrupt U.S.-backed Karzai government.

I'm no fan of the Taliban. But it's hard to imagine being the country being ruled by anyone else when the U.S. troops eventually do pull out. Ten years of war will have insured another generation of radicalized Aghani youth. And what about America? A whole generation got interested in politics because of a bright young president promising change, yet here we have the same tired quagmire playbook. It's a shame.

Over on Quaker Oats Live, Cherice is fired up about taxes again and proposing a peace witness for next year:

My solution: Quakers, Mennonites, Brethren, and whomever else wants to participate refuses to pay war taxes for a few years, and we suffer the consequences. I think we should campaign for a war-tax-free 2010 in all Quaker meetings and Mennonite/Brethren/etc. communities. What are they going to do--throw us all in jail? Maybe. But they can't do that forever. No one wants to pay their taxes for a bunch of Quakers and other pacifists to sit in jail for not paying taxes. It doesn't make sense.

A commenter chimes in with a warning about Friends who were hit by heavy tax penalties a quarter century ago. But I know of someone who didn't pay taxes for twenty years and recently volunteered the information to the Internal Revenue Service. The collectors were nonchalant, polite and sympathetic and settled for a very reasonable amount. If this friend's experience is any guide, there's not much drama to be had in war tax resistance. These days, Caesar doesn't care much.

What if our witness was directed not at the federal government but at our fellow Christians? We could follow Quaker founder George Fox's example and climb the tallest tree we could find (real or metaphorical) and begin preaching the good news that war goes against the teachings of Jesus. As always, we would be respectful and charitable but we could reclaim the strong and clear voices of those who have traveled before us. If we felt the need for backup? Well, I understand there are twenty-seven or so books to the New Testament sympathetic to our cause. And I have every reason to believe that the Inward Christ is still humming our tune and burning bushes for all who have eyes to see and ears to listen. Just as John Woolman ministered with his co-religionists about the sin of slavery, maybe our job is to minister to our co-religionists about war.

But who are these co-religionist neighbors of ours? Twenty years of peace organizing and Friends organizing makes me doubt we could find any large group of "historic peace church" members to join us. We talk big and write pretty epistles, but few individuals engage in witnesses that involve any danger of real sacrifice. The way most of our established bodies couldn't figure out how to respond to a modern day prophetic Christian witness in Tom Fox's kidnapping is the norm. When the IRS threatened to put liens on Philadelphia Yearly Meeting to force resistant staffers to pay, the general secretary and clerk said all sorts of sympathetic words of anguish (which they probably even meant), then docked the employee's pay anyway. There have been times when clear-eyed Christians didn't mind loosing their liberty or property in service to the gospel. Early Friends called our emulation of Christ's sacrifice the Lamb's War, but even seven years of real war in the ancient land of Babylonia itself hasn't brought back the old fire. Our meetinghouses sit quaint, with ownership deeds untouched, even as we wring our hands wondering why most remain half-empty on First Day morning.

But what about these emerging church kids?: all those people reading Shane Claiborne, moving to neighborhoods in need, organizing into small cells to talk late into the night about primitive Christianity? Some of them are actually putting down their candles and pretentious jargon long enough to read those twenty-seven books. Friends have a lot of accumulated wisdom about what it means the primitive Christian life, even if we're pretty rusty on its actual practice. What shape would that witness take and who would join us into that unknown but familiar desert? What would our movement even be called? And does it matter?

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Anyone interested in thinking more on this should start saving up their loose change ($200 commuters) to come join C Wess Daniels and me this November when we lead a workshop on "The New Monastics and Convergent Friends" at Pendle Hill near Philadelphia. Methinks I'm already starting to blog about it.

Today is the extended deadline for forced flu shots for young children in New Jersey, the day schools across the state threaten to kick students out if they haven't taken the mercury-laden vaccine. Every year sees more forced and/or pressured vaccinations, many dozens now in New Jersey. The flu shot is particularly unnecessary. An average of two kids a year die from flu in the state and this flu season has only seen two pediatric deaths in the entire country. Yes, every death is a shame but why are we kicking kids out of school and spending billions of dollars in flu shots for a largely non-lethal disease.

New Jersey is also known as the state with the highest concentration of autism. I've met sane-seeming parents of special-needs kids who say the symptoms started right after a vaccination. I'm no expert but I've read enough to know the doctors and pharmaceutical companies have no clue about the cumulative effect of all these vaccinations. They took our little one Francis in to school this morning despite not having the shot. We're keeping our fingers crossed.

Other New Jersians wanting to know more can check out the New Jersey Coalition for Vaccination Choice for more about the movement to have parents these choices for their kids.

Not something I'll do every day, but over on QuakerQuaker I cross-referenced today's One Year Bible readings with Esther Greenleaf Murer's Quaker Bible Index. Here's the link to my post about today: First Month 20: Joseph rises to power in Egypt; Jesus' parable of wheat & tares and pearls. It's a particularly rich reading today. Jesus talks about the wheat and the weeds aka the corn and the tares, an interesting parable about letting the faithful and the unfaithful grow together.

As if knowing today is Inauguration Day, Isaac Penington turned it into a political reference: "But oh, how the laws and governments of this world are to be lamented over! And oh, what need there is of their reformation, whose common work it is to pluck up the ears of corn, and leave the tares standing!"

Margaret Fell sees the wheat and tares as an example of jealousy and false ministry: "Oh how hath this envious man gotten in among you. Surely he hath come in the night, when men was asleep: & hath sown tares among the wheat, which when the reapers come must be bound in bundles and cast into the fire, for I know that there was good seed sown among you at the first, which when it found good ground, would have brought forth good fruit; but since there are mixed seedsmen come among you & some hath preached Christ of envy & some of good will, ... & so it was easy to stir up jealousy in you, you having the ground of jealousy in yourselves which is as strong as death."

We get poetry from the seventeen century Elizabeth Bathurst (ahem) when she writes that "the Seed (or grace) of God, is small in its first appearance (even as the morning -light), but as it is given heed to, and obeyed, it will increase in brightness, till it shine in the soul, like the sun in the firmament at noon-day height."

The parable of the tares became a call for tolerance in George Fox's understanding: "For Christ commands christian men to "love one another [John 13:34, etc], and love their enemies [Mat 5:44];" and so not to persecute them. And those enemies may be changed by repentance and conversion, from tares to wheat. But if men imprison them, and spoil and destroy them, they do not give them time to repent. So it is clear it is the angels' work to burn the tares, and not men's."

A century later, Sarah Tuke Grubb read and worried about religious education and Quaker drift: "But for want of keeping an eye open to this preserving Power, a spirit of indifference hath crept in, and, whilst many have slept, tares have been sown [Mat 13:25]; which as they spring up, have a tendency to choke the good seed; those tender impressions and reproofs of instruction, which would have prepared our spirits, and have bound them to the holy law and testimonies of truth."

I hope all this helps us remember that the Bible is our book too and an essential resource for Friends. It's easy to forget this and kind of slip one way or another. One extreme is getting our Bible fix from mainstream Evangelical Christian sources whose viewpoints might be in pretty direct opposition from Quaker understandings of Jesus and the Gospel (see Jeanne B's post on The New Calvinism or Tom Smith's very reasonable concerns about the literalism at the One Year Bible Blog I read and recommend). On the other hand, it's not uncommon in my neck of the Quaker woods to describe our religion as "Quaker," downgrade Christianity by making it optional, unmentionable or non-contextual and turning to the Bible only for the obligatory epistle reference.

This was first made clear to me a few years ago by the margins in the modern edition of Samuel Bownas' "A Description of the Qualifications Necessary to a Gospel Ministry," which were peppered with the Biblical references Bownas was casually citing throughout. On my second reading (yes it's that good!) I started looking up the references and realized that: 1) Bownas wasn't just making this stuff up or quoting willy-nilly; and 2) reading them helped me understand Bownas and by extension the whole concept of Quaker ministry. You're not reading my blog enough if you're not getting the idea that this is one of the kind of practices that Robin, Wess and I are going to be talking about at the Convergent workshop next month. If you can figure out the transport then get yourself to Cali pronto and join us.

John S made an interesting comment at the end of my last post (all ) about live twittering tonight's Presidential Debate got me thinking about a Quaker response to the debates might be. As I've admitted I can be rather snarky and partisan. So I prepared some interesting quotes from some old Quaker tesimonies and have been sprinkling them throughout my twitter commentary. 

• 1762: Friends ought not be active in electing to offices, the execution whereof tends to lay wast our Christian testimony
• <1879: Members should maintain inoffensive, circumspect emeanour towards all men, manifesting peaceable spirit of Christ.
• <1879: Friends should avoid those heats & controversies respecting the policies and govt's of the world.
• 1874: The mere natural wisdom and will of man have no palce in the church of Christ.
• 1808: The preservation of love and unity is a duty in every state of religious attainment.
• 1853: It is upon the simplicity of the Truth as it is in Jesus that our testimony to plainness and moderation rests.
• <1879: Friends are to avoid electing brethren to civil govt as may subject them to temptation of violating testimonies.
• 1808: Friends are not to unite in warlike measures, either offensive or defensive, we are subj of Messaih's peaceful reign.
• 1843: Fds must decline acceptance of any office or station in civil govt w/duties inconsistent w/our religious principles.
• 1843: Friends warned vs. raising & circulating paper credit w/appearance of value w/o intrinsic reality.
• 1843: Friends should be open-hearted and liberal in raising funds for relief for members in indigent circumstances.
• 1843: So may we be living members of the Church militant on earth; and inhabitants of that city which hath foundations.
• 1853: The standards which the world adopts in pursuit of trade and desire for riches in not safe for disciple of Christ.
• 1853: May no Friends involve themselves in worldy concerns disqualify for right use of their time, talents & temporal substance.

The quotes are culled from "Christian Advices" (1879) and "Rules of Discipline" (1843), both published by Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. I think these are Orthodox and Hicksite respectively, but I'm not an expert in the investigative details necessary to differentiate between yearly meeting publications. If anyone knows "Christian Advices" says it's available from the Friends Bookstore at 304 Arch Street; "Rules of Discipline" is printed by John Richards of 130 N. Third Street.

The bullets and bombs have finally found their mark. It is no surprise to learn of yet another assasination attempt against Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. Details are still sketchy and conflicting but the only thing we really need to know is that this attempt was successful and that Bhutto is dead less than two weeks before Parliamentary elections that might well have brought her into power for the third time.

Pakistan is a country who's top government scientist exported atomic bomb-making across the world for decades. It still hosts Osama bin Laden. Afghanistan's Taliban are still more-or-less headquartered in its Western provinces. The standoff with India has spawned war after war over the decade, now nuclear-enabled should either country get so emboldened. Billions of dollars of United States money has left Washington for Islamabad since 9/11 and a popular politician can't even campaign there without deadly assassination attempts. Pakistan is one of the world's hot spots, a nexus of terrorism, nuclear proliferation, religious extremism. It is a very sad day today indeed.

In a stunning turnaround, U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Iran has not been trying to build atomic weapons since 2003:

A new assessment by American intelligence agencies concludes that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains frozen, contradicting judgment two years ago that Tehran was working relentlessly toward building a nuclear bomb.

First thoughts: what would the world be like if we had seen a statement like this regarding Iraq in early 2003? We know now that Saddam Hussein had long since abandoned nuclear aspirations and that his military infrastructure was so weakened by years of embargoes that it was a threat to no one. A number of us challenged the Bush Administration's experts, pointing to the weaknesses in the evidence publicly presented. It's hard to hide a major weapons program or a major alliance like the Saddam-Al Qaeda partnership. If these had been real we would have had more convincing evidence.

Sanctions and international pressure successfully stopped Saddam Hussein's ambitions against Iraq's neighbors. If the world had just waited him out, he might have eventually been deposed or even come around--who would have thought that Libya's Muammar al-Gaddafi would still be around in 2007 and that the U.S. would have full diplomatic relations with him!

Second thoughts: we've been rattling the sabers of war for four years? What if Bush had actually started a war with Iran?

Third thoughts: all indications were that the U.S. intelligence agencies have been under intense pressures to deliver assessments that fit with Administration policy: Bush wants to fight Saddam and the CIA gives him lame reasons that Congress is too weak to challenge. Does today's turnaround signal the waning of the Bush powers in these last years of his Presidency so that the National Intelligence Estimate is finally credible? Or has the White House decided it doesn't want to continue threatening war? The conspiracy-minded will note that the Iowa Caucus is exactly a month away and will ask which Republican candidate stands to gain from a stand-down with Iran.

Finally, for now, the fourth thought: Iran has had a vested interest in looking tough. What will happen there now? Fortunately this latest report paints an Iranian leadership that's rational, saying that its "decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic and military costs." Iran is still a dangerous country (as is the U.S.) so what happens now?