Barack Obama and the Niebuhr brothers and the debate over Syria today!

Much has been made lately over the quandary that president Obama seems to find himself in over the Syrian conflict. In his press conference at the conclusion of the G-20 meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia he stated unequivocally that he was a reluctant warrior who had been elected to end wars involving America and not to enter into any more of them on his watch. Obama has not been the only one who noted this trait of the president as several news sources have used almost the exact same terminology to describe the presidents dilemma.

And that dilemma is well founded in the presidents background involving the history of the church that he attended before the reverend Jeremiah Wright event drove him from it back during his first presidential election in 2008. One of the things that the Wright scandal was famous for was Wrights comments that the United States was to be condemned for some of the things that had happened surrounding the attack on the World Trade Center back on September eleventh, 2001. Wright had used the phrase “God damn America� in this context and the conservative right seized on this as a wedge issue to attack Obama with. Obama stuck with his pastor and to his beliefs until Wright became even more radical in his statements, forcing Obama to disavow them and to leave the reverend Wrights church. The last we heard, the president now attends the non denominational church at Camp David when he goes to church at all.

But Barack Obama has not lost the tenants of his faith, and among those tenants was the debate held between the theologians Richard and Reinhold Niebuhr back during the nineteen thirties when they discussed whether the United States should intervene in a conflict in the far east well before the second world war and during a period when this nation was in the grip of a prevailing isolationism that both prevented our entry into the League of Nations at the conclusion of the first world war that many think helped to lead to the second world war. The Niebuhr brothers debated whether the Christian church had lost its way with the rise of the nation state and the conversion of later Roman emperors to Christianity. Richard made the case for doing nothing in the Sino-Japanese conflict of 1932 while Reinhold made the case for possibly doing something to aid in the cause. Both men quoted scripture to aid their arguments but came to differing conclusions about what the nation should do. In the end, following the national isolationist trend of that time, nothing was done.

The point of this visiting of twentieth century theological and political history is that Barack Obama is also well aware of the Niebuhr brothers arguments and they are probably having an affect on him as we write this piece. To say the least, president Obama is a torn man and it is remarkable really that this is so during a time when national and world leaders are supposed to be very decisive in their actions and in their deeds. Much of the nation admires Barack Obama because of the stand that he took back 2002 when he stood on the Illinois senate floor and voiced his opposition to our entry into what has become known as the disastrous second Iraq war engaged in by the very light thinking George W. Bush. Much of the fierce opposition to what goes on in Syria today comes from what we found out after the Bush administration had taken us on the foray into Iraq back in the spring of 2003. And, what would have shocked the Niebuhr brothers if they were still alive would have been the comments made by the second Bush that God had told him to make the attack. The nation, as a direct result of Bush’s follies, is very opposed to not only Syrian intervention but, we think, any sort of intervention at all practically anywhere short of something like an attack on the nation resembling September eleventh or December seventh, 1941. The strain of isolationism runs deep in the American character and dates all the way back to George Washington’s admonition to “avoid entangling alliances� with any foreign powers. The greatest generation who fought world war two and Korea and who bought into the idea of the United Nations and globalism has almost died away. It was pointed out that it was the leaders of that generation still left in the congress who eased the way for Bush’s attack on Iraq with their wise words and that there is nothing like them in the current congress today. So many of the conservatives who oppose the entry into Syria have never even been to the Europe that the greatest generation helped to save.

This writer attends a Bible study which is currently being run by a pastor of the United Church of Christ. This individual stated very proudly that Barack Obama is still considered a member of his denomination and that he is also proud of the fact that the president is torn about our involvement in Syria today. He would want it no other way and, following in the Niebuhr brothers tradition, that a vigorous debate should be taking place across this nation today about what this nation should do. If nothing else, it shows that we have a far different president in the White House than we had just over four years ago who is mindful of the nations feelings and also wishes to convince them that the action that he is espousing is the correct one to take. If we do nothing in Syria then we can only blame ourselves as a body politic if something even more dreadful comes about.

Back in 1932, Reinhold Niebuhr wrote this:

“A truly religious man ought to distinguish himself from the moral man by recognizing the fact that his is not moral, that he remains a sinner to the end. The sense of sin is more central to religion than is any other attitude.... this does not prove, however, that we ought to apply the words Jesus, "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone," literally. If we do we will never be able to act. There will never by a wholly disinterested nation. Pure disinterestedness is an ideal which even individuals cannot fully achieve, and human groups are bound always to express themselves in lower ethical forms than individuals. It follows that no nation can ever be good enough to save another nation purely by the power of love. The relation of nations and of economic groups can never be brought into terms of pure love. Justice is probably the highest ideal toward which human groups can aspire. And justice, with its goal of adjustment of right to right, inevitably involves the assertion of right against right and interests against interest until some kind of harmony is achieved. If a measure of humility and of love does not enter this conflict of interest it will of course degenerate into violence. A rational society will be able to develop a measure of the kind of imagination which knows who to appreciate the virtues of an opponent's position and the weakness in one's own. But the ethical and spiritual note of love and repentance can do no more than qualify the social struggle in history. It will never abolish it.� http://www.ucc.org/beliefs/theology/must-we-do-nothing.html

IOVHO,

Regards,

Joe