I'm
preparing this blog post at the end of Hanukkah 5776, which is in mid-December
2015, Christian style, or near the start of the month of
Rabi' al-awal, 1437 A.H., i.e., counting, as Muslims do, from the Hijra of Mohammed.
I
use the different dates not because they're important in themselves, but just
to remind Christians that the scientifically-calibrated Gregorian calendar may
be the best-est, most accurate, most convenient calendar, but that it's the Gregorian calendar and a calendar, not the calendar and the only one around. All God's children — or at
least Abraham's — got calendars and reckon time, but not all in terms of A.D., Anno Domini, "in the year of
our" — or the —
"Lord."
I'm
also recycling below much of a blog from "a Yule Tide" in 2009, in
which additional American troops were "gearing up for the war in
Afghanistan," and I asked readers to momentarily contemplate the much
discussed "true meaning of Christmas and wonder what The Prince of Peace
might think about that move," continuing what we used to call in
the Vietnam era, a dirty little war. I noted that, applying What Would Jesus
Say?, "hawks can always cite Jesus's saying he came not to bring peace 'but
a sword' (Matthew 10.34)" — and noted that "truth be told, we humans
have never been keen on 'Blessed be the meek' and 'resist not evil,' or turning
the other cheek to be hit, or more generally like the peace-love-dove bits of
Jesus's Sermon on the Mountain (Matthew 5.1-7.27). The kick-ass Christ as The
Rider on the White Horse of the Book of Revelation (Apocalypse 19.11 f.) is
the more relevant figure for most folk, most of the time, but He doesn't have a
holiday.
No,
Christmas is the time of the Christ-Child and the paradox of unimaginable power
getting itself incarnated in a helpless infant.
Now
in another time of tribulations (and this time with Donald Trump moving US
political discussion toward open belligerence), now in a time of civil war in
Syria, with the Great Powers and a number of lesser ones joining in — now is a
time to again consider, as some might have in 2009, one true meaning of
Hanukkah.
Among
other things, Hanukkah celebrates a successful insurrection
(167-60 B.C.E.) by a movement led by religious zealots, first for an end to
imperial suppression of their religion and then for national liberation and a
return to religious purity: a struggle to get the Greeks of the Seleucid Empire
out of Judea, and to get the Greekified, elitist
Jewish collaborators out of power or dead — and achieve a truly sovereign,
fully independent, rigorously Jewish state.
According to my old history book (Joseph Ward Swain, The
Ancient World, volume 2 [© 1950]), if not according to my old rabbis, the
struggle in Judea "was first and foremost between Hellenized and
non-Hellenized Jews" — richer, better educated city-folk following
newfangled Greek ways, versus those supporting the old ways — "with Greek
troops supporting the former and the populace following the latter
faction" (p. 202).
It was a struggle that was probably classic back in the
time of the Maccabees and certainly to become classic: state terror by the
imperial Seleucid authorities alternating with rebel terrorism against
collaborators and a "king's officer" here and there, followed by the
rebels' fleeing to the hills. Soon, "[A]ll who became fugitives to escape
their troubles joined them and reinforced them. They organized an army, and
struck down sinners in their anger," i.e., Jews who accepted Greek
culture, "and lawless men in their wrath; the survivors fled to the
Gentiles for safety …" (1 Maccabees chs. 1-2, esp. 2.23-25, 2.43-44).
And when the Seleucid Empire ran into difficulties
elsewhere and couldn't suppress the rebellion, the traditionalist Jews got
religious liberty restored, then the execution of a Hellenized, collaborating
high priest, and, fairly soon — if only for a while — "complete national
independence" (Swain 203-04).
There's a moral here for superpowers: Keep your troops
out of local conflicts, especially when those conflicts involve religion and
nationalism — to say nothing of tribal rivalries; and stay out of wars in
localities that may have strategic locations but really aren't worth fighting
for. And do not try to impose your modern ways on others, however superior your
ways might be or clearly are.
As was said back in the 1960s, "'To liberate' is a
reflexive verb": with a few blatant exceptions, you don't liberate others,
people liberate themselves. However much Americans might have wanted to
liberate Afghan women from Taliban zealotry, we could at most help those women
with their own struggle. However much some worthy rebels might want to
overthrow Bashar al-Assad and crush ISIL,
there's only a limited amount of help we in the "Zionist-Crusader godless
West" can do to help them.
Most Afghans were happy to see the Taliban removed from
power in 2001-02, but they became increasingly unhappy the longer we foreign
infidels stuck around. Afghans are as tribal and faction-ridden as the ancient
Jews, but the Afghan peoples have always managed to cooperate to expel a truly foreign
occupation.
Ditto in Iraq, at least of late.
The Seleucids were one of the successor states to the
empire of Alexander the Great, with a center of power in what is now Syria; and
the Seleucids had their problems in Afghanistan, as did Alexander before them
and the Persians before that. Afghanistan is "the place empires go to die"
— the British and Russian more recently — and the best rule there is to get in
if you must; do what you can to achieve some limited goals; and then get the
hell out. If you can help the Afghans from a distance (which you should if
you've killed a fair number of their people), do so generously.
In a nastily ironic variation on a historical theme, the
religious zealots of "the Islamic
State in Iraq and the Levant" — which includes Syria — are attempting
to establish a political entity larger than Judea under the dynasty that arose from
the Maccabees, and a state with ambitions that go beyond those of the Seleucids:
a Caliphate that could, in theory, reach from Spain to Indonesia, and more
immediately would include large hunks of Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
Back in 2009, I repeated the rule that Great Powers like
the US as much as possible should keep our troops out of countries where
they're not wanted, and should avoid sending troops to fight for one faction or
tribal grouping against their rivals. Not unless one has time, resources,
money, and troops to spare: lots of all of them. And America is running short.
For a happy Hanukkah 5776, Lessons in Foreign Policy,
aspect, we're should consider the probability that we Americans are like the Seleucid
Empire in being over-extended, stressed, and in no position for an invasion of
"the Levant" and a protracted war to suppress modern fanatics who
make the Maccabees look like a Unitarian-sponsored Scout troop. At the same
time, precisely because ISIS is both so vicious and viciously attractive to
fanatics, we will need to do something the Seleucids would not do: cooperate
with the other established states to contain ISIS and resist it with a light
enough touch that it will "burn itself out" in a military/social
parallel to the horrific ways highly lethal diseases "burn themselves
out."
Neither we, the British, French, Russians, nor for that
matter the Iranians or Saudis (or the Israelis) have much skill with delicate touches,
and the phrase is grotesque when it includes air-delivery of high explosives
and training teenagers to kill people. Still, President Obama has the right
instincts: as much as possible avoid putting military units in places where
they'll be targets for fanatics and where they will produce more fanatics by
killing fanatics (plus the inevitable deaths, wounding, and maimings summed up
in the obscene euphemism, "collateral damage); indeed, avoid putting them
in places, e.g., Saudi Arabia with its holy places, where their mere presence
is a provocation..
Like Christmas and other mid-winter holidays, Hanukkah
offers hope that once the days get short enough, the sun will return for longer
stays and spring will come. The history behind Hanukkah reminds us that
figurative winters of warfare can be pretty damn long and deadly.
