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Martin the Warrior

In a moment of inexplicable weakness, Kathy and I relented on our “No Pets” policy. Admittedly, Rachel wore us down, week after week and month after month, wailing about how much she wanted a kitten. When I saw that Kathy was starting to weaken, I knew I needed to act.

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Don’t get me wrong. I like kittens … indeed, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t (even my neighbor, who pretends to hate them). The problem with kittens is that they grow up to be cats. Some would say that about children, with a few notable exceptions. Let’s face it … a full-grown cat (or human) is substantially less charming than its younger counterpart.

But actually, I like cats. I’ve never been owned by one, but I enjoy their simple-minded ferocity and unabashed selfishness. I know how to handle cats and they usually enjoy my company, if only because I once worked at a seafood retailer. Many people aspire to be like cats … taking what the world offers without concern for anyone else’s rights and giving only when it suits them.

My wife is a bit on the jumpy side. I am constantly startling her by simply walking into a room. I knew from the outset that a small prowling feline in the house was a bad idea. With the stress of five young children and a rather weird husband, I often worry that Kathy is ‘on the edge’. I really don’t think we need a cat around the house to push her over that edge and into residence at the “Whispering Pines Home for Nervous Moms”.

Rachel loves all animals, almost without exception. As neighbor after neighbor capitulated to the onslaught of pet acquisition, I knew we needed to take some kind of action. “I’d even take an Ant Farm!” cried Rachel in a pitiful, quavering tone.

One of the things I dread is the long period of time after the novelty of a pet has worn off but before the pet moves on to their eternal reward. For many pets, this period occupies 98% of their lives; I was determined to find an animal which would be short-lived. Cats, I am told, can live to be more than 14 years old (although not, I later heard, on the Duckabush). The prospect of buying a kitten for Rachel was overshadowed by the likely ten-year period in which the cat was no longer appreciated by the children yet hung around the house, shedding fur and expecting a free handout.

Enter Martin. Here he stands, a juvenile Guinea Pig with a life expectancy of 3-8 years (considerably less, if he bites Daniel again).

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We picked him up at the Pet Smart store in Silverdale, along with $130 in accessories (who knew a Guinea Pig needed accessories?). He is installed in a cage in the living room and seems content as long as he gets out from time to time. He likes watermelon and most leafy greens … he’ll eat as many clover stalks as the kids can harvest.

Given the opportunity, he will hide under or behind furniture (not surprising in a rodent). He is surprisingly timid with respect to strange surfaces … he will often remain completely still when placed on something with unusual texture. He won’t jump down from anything higher than about 5″ — not much of a mountaineer, our Martin. Lately I have taken to putting him on the Jungle Climber … being plastic, it is easy to clean if he decides to relieve himself. We have learned not to let him burrow into my shoes — it is very hard to get him out!

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He seems to enjoy being held and is particularly fond of Rachel … they both know how to wrinkle their noses in a similar manner. Martin and I have an understanding: he doesn’t bite me and I don’t stake him in the forest as bait for cougars. This is a hardship for Martin, since Guinea Pigs experience the world in terms of Moh’s scale of hardness, as measured against their teeth. I suspect that in Guinea Pig society, a gentle nip is like a handshake; I’m sure he feels regularly snubbed by our failure to bite him.

Already it seems as though his novelty is wearing off (although Sarah still squeals with delight whenever we take him out). Within a few more weeks, Kathy will have become the proud owner of a Guinea Pig, as the attention of the children moves on. Strangely, though, I am quite fond of him … he has grown into his name and into being, in a small rodent-ish way, a member of the family. Each morning when I leave, he is the only one awake to see me off; in the evenings, he is usually still bustling around his cage when I go to bed.

Truth is, I always wanted a Guinea Pig. I like the idea of a docile, contented rodent affectionately nosing about the corners of the room. Admittedly, now that I own the house, I’m a little more worried about pets being house-broken than I was when I was growing up. But there is something amazing about rubbing shoulders (or ankles) with an animal … it must have been very cool to live in the Garden of Eden.

I’ve always suspected that the references in the Scripture to the “lion lying down with the lamb” are more than allegorical. I guess we’ll have to go there to find out … as I often say, “This would be a GREAT day for Jesus to return!”

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War is Oil

This morning as I turned onto 104 toward the Hood Canal Bridge, I found myself behind a little station wagon with a number of stickers on its back. Most prominent was a “Peace” symbol, centered in the rear window. Next I saw a “Honor Mother Earth” bumper sticker, written in flowery script. A multicolored “Positive” window cling decorated the bottom left of the dusty Corolla rear window.

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(This is the car — you’ll have to take my word for it with respect to the stickers.)

But one thing caught my attention and (I must admit) irked me: centered on the bumper was a black sticker with these words emblazoned in white:


Attack Iraq
No!

Apart from grammatic issues (I should be among the last to throw stones), I am always amused (and a little saddened) by the anti-war rhetoric I see and hear around me. It ranges from a naﶥ “Peace” mentality to a frothing hatred of all things military; for such minds, all war is automatically evil. Somehow the need to critically think and evaluate has seemingly been short-circuited in the pursuit of saccharin political-correctness.

What kind of war would such a person believe is justified? The driver of the little car was a small woman in her late 30′s, thin and pinched with her hair tied back in some kind of a ponytail; “Granola” was the word that came to my mind when I saw her. How would she respond, I wondered, if enemy troops were quartered on Port Townsend? If she was conscripted into unpaid laundry-duty washing foreign uniforms and her little Corolla was confiscated, would her “Peace”-loving philosophy go with it?

In much of the world, individual freedom is severely restricted. People live under appalling conditions with little hope for the future. The fear of arrest and imprisonment or death aprart from justice looms over a majority of the world’s population in a way that is very foreign to North American experience. In a country that stands as a rare exception to this global rule, it is bitterly ironic that many of our citizens appear to despise the shield that preserves the (rapidly diminishing) individual freedom and justice we retain.

I work in a city that is known for its liberal tendencies, for a company that is characterized by leftist politics. In the elevator of my building there are whiteboards, where people tend to express themselves in various ways, silly and serious. Yesterday someone wrote, “War is … ” on the whiteboard, below which someone else had added, “OIL”.

I’m not a political analyst, and I actually failed the 300-level Macroeconomics course I took in college. (This event, among others, precipitated my decision to major in Computer Science instead of Economics). I do not dismiss the extent of our nation’s dependency on oil and our strong motivation to ensure a reliable flow of that substance, particularly after Clinton’s liquidation of much of the oil reserve. But it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to look at gas prices at the pump before and after the war against Iraq … if we waged that war for oil, there sure doesn’t seem to be an immediate payoff!

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This is the cheapest gas price I have found in more than a month!

On the way home yesterday I passed a convoy of military vehicles. I thought of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have laid down their lives (in some cases, not to take them up again) to prosecute a war against thugs and criminals of the worst sort.

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The granola woman and her friends would probably have us leave the Iraqi people to themselves and turn a blind eye to injustice and oppression throughout the world. But there is more to morality than being ‘nice’. Sometimes, if you care about your fellow man at all, you must take action to protect other people. It is certainly true that no country, however well-intentioned, can be entirely trusted to interfere in the affairs of other nations. But if we will not intervene, who will? Who can be trusted to help the people of Iraq build a government that will not betray them into slavery again? Certainly not the French or the Germans, whose foreign policy seems crassly profit-driven.

As you approach the Hood Canal bridge from the west, there is a long hill with a 40 mph speed zone at the bottom. Shifting from 60 to 40 is hard enough in normal conditions … it is particularly difficult down such a sharp hill. The police, well aware of this tendency, set up one of those radar signs that tell you how fast you are going. When Granola-Corolla-girl saw the sign, she slammed on the brakes and dropped to 31 mph, as did I, necessarily. I wonder if she chooses her philosophy the same way she drives … without much foresight and prone to overreaction. I can only imagine the thought-process goes something like this:

1) War is bad; I know this from watching TV … look at all those people being shot and killed!
2) We must outlaw all war!
3) I will put stickers on my car until everyone can just be nice to each other!

Pacifism is not a comfortable position. I have some respect for someone who has thought through the ramifications of such an orientation. A true pacifist must be prepared to suffer and die (often quickly and in large numbers) to enact any change in the way the world is run. Against a sufficiently evil and ruthless enemy (like, say, Al-qaeda), pacifism is helpless and useless. Such enemies will respond only to deadly force … and people with the moral courage to apply it are necessary to defend and promote internationally the freedoms which we love and enjoy.

But perhaps I misrepresent the pacifist position. It has been 15 years since I studied “Warfare and Ethics” under Hans Tiefel at the College of William & Mary. So I broke out some of my old ethics texts and reviewed some of the literature. It turns out that there are four classifications of pacifists, at least according to Douglas P. Lackey in “The Ethics of War and Peace”:

  • Those who believe killing is morally wrong
  • People who believe violence is morally wrong
  • Private pacifists … personal violence is wrong, political violence is occasionally permissible
  • Public pacifists … political violence is always wrong, personal violence is occasionally permissible

Most of these philosophical positions are fraught with logical inconsistency or fail to be useful in the real world. As a Christian, I look to the Bible for meta-ethical and ethical guidance … it is difficult to reconcile extreme pacifism with the collective thrust of scriptural teachings. While the Bible certainly stresses the value that God places on life, there are a number of examples of violence sanctioned and in some cases commanded by God.

Many Christians turn to the collection of ideas known as “Just War Theory” for insight into the cases where war is morally permissible (or even morally obligatory). So let’s review the basic tenets of that theory, as originally described by Aristotle and refined by Augustine and Aquinas:

A nation must only embark on a war in a just manner … jus ad bellum. A prospective war must meet the following criteria:

  1. it must be overseen by Competent Authority
    • a controlled use of force by persons under a chain of command
    • it must have an identifiable political result (change in government policy, alteration in form of government, extension or limitation of a government’s authority)
  2. it must be primarily purposed by a Right Intention
    • desire for moral right — not for love of violence, or hatred of enemy
  3. there must exist a Just Cause
    • war may be waged for one or more of the following reasons:
      in national self-defense, as a direct response to a wrong received or aggression
      in collective self-defense, as a direct response to a wrong received or aggression enacted against an ally
    • to intervene on behalf of a nation’s people where a government has forfeited its moral sovereignty by failing to provide physical safety or freedom from alien domination for its citizens
  4. it must satisfy reasonable Proportionality
    • a war must be expected to produce substantially less evil than if it is not fought
    • evil is measured in terms of death, injury, physical & psychological suffering, misery, sustained violation of rights
    • war must not be waged if it is disproportionally harmful in consideration of its cause

War must be waged in a just manner … jus in bello

  1. Necessity
    • military forces should cause no more destruction than necessary
    • if an alternative to a military operation exists that offers less destruction and a comparable probability of the achievement of an objective, that alternative must be preferred
  2. Proportionality
    • the amount of destruction must be proportionate to the importance of the objective
    • some military objectives are ruled out because they cannot be important enough to justify extreme destruction
  3. Discrimination
    • military force must be directed only at military objectives
    • noncombatants civilian life and property should not be subject to military force

And of course, a war must have a certain result, in order to be considered “just” in hindsight:

  1. Establishment of Just Peace
    • there must be reasonable success in establishing a peace that will not excessively violate the rights of the enemy nation’s citizens or those of third-party nations

So we must consider the existing war against Iraq, (or perhaps more accurately, the war against terrorist forces using Iraq as their base). As far as I can see, the preconditions of jus ad bellum are satisfied … our Commander-in-Chief constitutes Competent Authority. We are clearly using considerable restraint in contolling the use of force to achieve a political result; that is, the establishment of a representative government in Iraq and the elimination of a overtly hostile enemy. Our nation seems determined to wage this war for a Right Intention, that is, to relieve the oppression of the Iraqi people and establish liberty and justice in some recognizable form in that country. In spite of the daily attrition of our soldiers, our soldiers seem to maintain a love and compassion for the Iraqi people. There is evident Just Cause to wage this war … Iraq’s initial attack against our ally Kuwait should not be forgotten in light of Saddam Hussein’s failure to live up to the treaty that was signed at the “conclusion” of that first “Gulf War”. The former Iraqi government’s open subsidy of terrorist attacks against Israel also seems to qualify as aggression against an ally. But perhaps most of all, we are in Iraq because of the plight of the Iraqi people, some of whom were brutally gassed by their own government. The superior technology and military capacity that our nation enjoys have allowed us to wage this war with an expectation of favorable Proportionality in terms of the good that is done for millions at the cost of a few thousand lives. While I do not attempt to diminish the sacrifice of our soldiers, this war has produced an astonishly small number of casualties, when considering the “butcher’s bill” of other past wars. Our casualties in the entire war so far have been less than in most single battles of the Civil War, for example.

The war seems to be waged in a just manner, as well. Our commanders seem to constantly satisfy the requirements of Necessity, Proportionality and Discrimination in their attempts to bring the war to enemy combatants while preserving civilian life. The restraint and courage of our soldiers is remarkable, particularly considering the cowardly terrorist tactics of our enemy, which are calculated to provoke a response that is not Necessary, not Proportionate, and non-Discriminatory. The recent beheading of a civilian contractor is a fairly typical example of such tactics.

Recent abuses in the handling of prisoners has highlighted the need for close attention in the management of such a war (jus in bello) … but does not justify the abandonment of this war, as some would urge. Our nation has a brief opportunity to establish freedom in an unlikely spot; we should grab such chances with both hands and hold on tightly.

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Work in the City

This is the building where I work — it is called the “PacMed” building — named for the Pacific Medical Center that still occupies a portion of the complex.

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It has a nice view of the city of Seattle from the 7th floor. Sadly, this is NOT a view from my window — but it is a view from a conference room where I often meet. I try to get a chair facing the window in case the meeting is boring (and most meetings are).

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Although the highway is within spitting distance (not that I’ve tried) of the building where I work, it takes me about 10 minutes to actually get ON the highway when I head south. This bewildering set of ramps is one of the things I have to navigate.

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The on-ramp for I-5 southbound actually begins near Safeco Field (seen in the background). Because of the unreliability of my little bronze car, I usually wait until the traffic has cleared (8 pm or so) before I head south, on the nights when I stay with my folks in Lakewood.

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MP3 Player

I bought a cool new MP3 player that has a little camera on it — this is a picture I took with it:

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I admit, I am easily amused by technological toys; it is a characteristic I share with my brother and (I’m afraid) a lot of other men. Let’s face it — most of us never did quite get enough walkie-talkies or remote-control cars or video games. My new Archos MP3 player can take still shots, video, or voice recordings and it even has a little screen (very small, unfortunately) on which you can watch movies. A few weeks ago I loaded “Freaky Friday” onto it and watched it on the bus.

Kathy keeps asking me if I’m getting any use out of it — have I loaded up my music on it, etc. The truth of the matter is, I get a lot of fun just carrying it around. And no, I haven’t loaded up my music on it yet. But I did shoot some footage of driving up 101 (holding the MP3 player up below the rearview mirror). That section of the road is pretty curvy — driving with one hand on the wheel while taking video didn’t improve things much. I’m thinking of speeding it up several times and sneaking it into the next Refuge or Wilderness Northwest video.

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Ferry Violinist

As I settled into my usual table-booth this morning, I was surprised to hear a violin being tuned behind me, near the door of the men’s bathroom. There stood a woman in black slacks and a flowery blouse, playing a rather melancholy air in a minor key, the effect only slightly ruined by the running shoes peeping from beneath her pant-legs.

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This is a random photo of the inside of the ferry on another day — not a very good picture, I’m afraid.

I am not a big fan of violin music … it takes a very good musician to make that instrument produce sounds that my ears approve; my tastes run to simple melodies rather than complex classical compositions. But I am well-acquainted with the genre; my parents enjoy classical music and such sounds were common (at least in the background) throughout my childhood.

Most of the ferry passengers ignored the musician with stony indifference … this is, after all, Seattle. Several in the immediate vicinity were visibly annoyed, packed up their laptops and moved to another part of the ferry, darting grumpy looks at the violinist. Strangely, no one was sufficiently disturbed to speak against the noise, nor did any ferry official intervene during the 35-minute voyage.

For my part, I sat and endured it … using a laptop as I do, I am most comfortable with a table; once the ferry has loaded, all the tables are taken by others with similar preferences. Eventually the violinist moved to a more cheerful tune; her skill was sufficient to limit my discomfort … it was merely annoying rather than painful. She clearly needed the practice, so perhaps I should not begrudge her any opportunity.

I wonder what would happen if I brought in a boom box and played some of my preferred music at a comparable volume. Do the passengers withhold reproof from this woman out of respect for a musician, a desire to appear cultured, or a genuine appreciation for the music? For my part, I was not sufficiently annoyed to take the risk of a confrontation with this woman. If I were to rebuke her for disturbing my peace, I would fear a hostile reaction from her as well as public censure (in the event that my fellow passengers sided with her against me). I am not sure enough of the rules of the ferry, whether explicit or social, to make a judgment; is it morally right (or permissible) for her to play in a public but enclosed place? Is it appropriate for me to assert my “right” to peace and quiet (if such a right exists) over her “right” to express herself musically? Or is this simply a case where grace should be given … neither of these “rights” need be asserted over the other since the stakes are so low (limited duration, mild annoyance).

Respect for others’ rights takes precedence, in my opinion, over any personal “right”. I would not permit my children to sing loudly or play an instrument in a public place unless the people in that place were specifically gathered to hear them. There seems a default condition of silence which is morally superior to any non-silent expression, with a possible exception given to the public reading of scripture. Paul wrote, in his letter to Timothy and the church at Ephesus:

“Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching.” I Timothy 4:13

Strangely, reading scripture aloud is something I really like to do. One of my favorite things to do in church, or especially in a wedding, is to read the scripture. There is something really profound about participating in the public proclamation of God’s Word. While I was still serving as a Deacon at our former church, I was frequently asked to read scripture from the pulpit — it was probably the best part of that job, and something I really missed once I was no longer asked.

Maybe I should start reading from the Bible out loud on the ferry … I’ll bet THAT would generate more than stony indifference.

Or maybe I should emulate this Tai Chi man, who seeks to “foster a calm and tranquil mind” (or something) through a series of intricate slow-motion forms, or movements.

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As I watched him, I could barely restrain myself from shouting, in memory of the ungainly stork pose in the 80′s movie, The Karate Kid: “If properly done, no can defend!”

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