I love the idea of a New Marshall Plan to help alleviate poverty in the world.  I believe that the War on Terror is, to a large degree, a war of ideologies, not unlike the Cold War.
          Immediately following World War II, American and Soviet forces basically froze in place along the lines they held when Germany surrendered in May of 1945.  Obviously, at the time, most of Europe was a complete disaster area, a recipe for radical governments.  Many European nations had tried various forms of socialism between the wars, with varying degrees of success, and there was a considerable flirtation with communism.  During WWII, communists in France, Italy, Greece, and Yugoslavia were among the front-line members of the Resistance to the Nazis in each of those countries, and their efforts did not go unnoticed by the local populations.  When the war ended, there was a very real possibility in all of these countries that communists would at the very least become part of coalition governments.  In Yugoslavia, this quickly became the reality, as communist Josef Tito was a national hero for his leading role in the Resistance. In all of the countries overrun by the Soviet Union, the Soviets had given lip service to the idea of free and fair elections, but in reality, after suffering over twenty million dead in the war, they were determined to have a buffer of friendly states between them and Germany.  One by one, in Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and in the part of Germany they controlled, communist governments were either "elected" or installed.  There was nothing that the Americans could do about it, short of going right back to war, an idea that appealed to no one, with the possible exception of General George Patton.
          In Greece, a civil war erupted between the communists and the royalists.  In Italy and France, communism was a very real alternative to their war-ravaged people.  By 1947, the United States, who had emerged from the war largely unscathed and the richest nation on earth, had decided to invest many billions of dollars in the rebuilding of Western Europe, through what was known as the Marshall Plan.  This action committed money where it was needed most, and is largely credited with defeating communist inroads in every Western European country that it was gaining strength.
          Now I know that it is a common response to say that throwing money at poverty is a typical liberal solution, and it has been proven that in most cases, it doesn't work.  The United States government, both Democratic and Republican administrations, throws massive amounts of money to some pretty strange bedfellows overseas when it thinks it is in our national security interests to do so.  We gave literally billions upon billions of dollars to the same guys we're trying to kill right now because they were doing to the Soviets in Afghanistan what they are doing to us now in Iraq.
          The War on Terror is more closely aligned to global poverty than it is to the folly in Iraq.  This will only be true however, if we as a nation act in a morally just way to the poor on this earth, following the teachings of Jesus Christ and the prophets that came before Him.  The poorest nations have always been ripe for radical ideas and upheavals, just as they were ripe for communism's appeal to level the social structure.  When you are desperately poor, leveling the field sounds pretty good.  Our solution to the temptation of communism in the Third World, which is still gloated over by many in this country, was in many cases to install repressive authoritarian dictatorships, some civilian, some military, and give them massive amounts of money to keep control over their subjects.  These dictators bought billions of dollars worth of American military hardware, and squirreled much of the rest of the loot away in Swiss bank accounts, leaving their countries destitute, but not communist.
          Now that communism has been discredited and defeated as a political and economic system, the new peril is radical Islamism.  The poor people on this earth are still vulnerable to radical ideologies, and in this case the rival ideology has a spiritual element to it, whether it is flawed or not.  We defeated the political system of communism not on the battlefield of war, but on the battlefield of economics, because ultimately capitalism proved to work better than communism.  We will never defeat radical Islamism on the battlefield, despite our ridiculously overwhelming military advantage.  You can't bomb an idea.  You can't "Shock and Awe" people who consider it an honor to be blown up by one of your bombs.  Sure, you can take out a dozen or so of these guys here and there, but the "collateral damage" caused, both physical and psychic, creates a new set of jihadists for every set that you kill.  You most certainly can't "wipe the Middle East off the map," as has been suggested by some of the more irrational callers to right-wing talk shows–even the hosts of those shows agree that you can't.  There is no army to fight.  There are no battlefields.  There are no tanks, or navies, or planes (except ours). It is a desperate ideology/theology, and it must be defeated by a better theology.  I'm not talking about a Christian military solution, i.e., another Crusade. I'm talking about the teachings and principals of Jesus Christ.  The only killing we need to do is with kindness. This is where the New Marshall Plan comes in.
          The seeds of this plan are already in the planting stage.  The first step in any recovery program is the admission that one has a problem.  The Western world is finally awakening to the enormous problem of the have-nots, and more importantly, to the direct effect that this problem is having on them.
          The War on Terror has obviously siphoned off not only funds available for alleviating poverty, but attention and energy as well.  There are those who would say that you couldn’t fight a War on Terror and a War on Poverty at the same time.  Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Chancellor of the Exchequer (the equivalent of our Treasury Secretary) and new Prime Minister Gordon Brown have understood very well that they are intimately related.  They have both been at the forefront of the initiative to relieve the crushing debt burden of the world's poorest countries, while being simultaneously at George W. Bush's side in fighting terrorism.
          It has been pointed out that many of these jihadists and a majority of the 9/11 hijackers were not poor, were by and large educated, and were from middle class families, and this proves that the problem of Radical Islamism is not related to poverty issues.  My answer to that is that they were also by and large Saudis, and could afford to go to universities instead of straight into the work force or worse.  It is the men who are well off enough to go to these universities that get educated by the most fundamentalist Wahhabi imams, and come out radicalized.  It is also the middle class from Muslim communities in both the Middle East and in Europe who can afford to send their sons to madrassahs in Pakistan for intensive training in the Koran.  The "good" madrassahs are the equivalent of sending your kid to Bible College.  The "bad" madrassahs are the equivalent of sending your son to a right-wing militia training camp with classes taught by David Duke and Timothy McVeigh.  There isn't really a functional equivalent in the United States, with the possible exception of the Ku Klux Klan of a bygone era.  The point is the poorest people in the Developing World are mainly stuck where they are, and to the extent that they can be made into exportable jihadists depends on the largess of the terrorist financiers.
           History has taught us that poverty is not a condition that government or politics is going to "fix."  In this country the Left and the Right have taken swings at the issue of poverty and all have struck out.  The Left would like to attack poverty through governmental social programs like Welfare, Head Start, free school lunches, subsidized childcare for working mothers, more subsidized healthcare for the poor, and subsidized affordable public housing.  The Right hates that word "subsidized," and considers it a synonym for "dependency."  History has borne this out to a reasonable extent.  The Workfare programs conceived of and started by largely Republican governors have been viewed by most people on both sides of the aisle as an improvement over the Welfare system.  There is truth to the claim that too much governmental help in the lives of the poor creates a cycle of dependency.  But there is also a tendency on the Right to believe in simple mantras and catch-all phrases like "everyone in America is allowed the chance to succeed," and "the poor just need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps," when the problem is much more difficult and complicated than that.  There is a tendency to paint all poor people with the same brush–as if it's mainly their fault that they are in the position they are in.  Some, yes; many more, no.  Drug abuse, alcoholism, parental abandonment of children, spousal abuse, and gang violence all do exist among the poor; these things can be a cause of poverty, or the very same things can be a result of poverty.  The children of poverty don't deserve to be punished for the sins of their fathers (and mothers).
          George W. Bush made a big deal about faith-based initiatives, which was good, but then did very little to support them.  His mind was apparently preoccupied with other things.  There are over three thousand references to poverty and the poor in the Bible.  Jesus's teachings on our responsibilities to the poor are numerous and very clear.  The Global Marshall Plan proposed by Rabbi Michael Lerner would ask every Western nation to devote 5% of their Gross Domestic Product for the next twenty years to alleviate world hunger and poverty.  This idea will almost certainly never get off the ground in this country because our government, both the administration and the Congress, is convinced that we the people would rather they spend the money on missiles, new plutonium research, new research in chemical and biological weaponry, bigger, faster, and more lethal airplanes, and new bases for our troops overseas.  As Christians, we represent one of, if not the largest voting bloc in America.  If we spoke as one on this most Christian of issues, it would definitely be heard in Washington.  As simplistic as it may sound, what would Jesus prefer us to spend the money on?

Therefore let us pursue the things which make peace and the things by which one may edify another.
           –Romans 14:19


          We hear the phrase "the root causes of terror" so much–as in, "If we could just address the root causes of terror," or, "Maybe we should pay more attention to finding the root causes of terror."  This has produced much hand wringing on the Left, and a similar amount of scorn on the Right.  While alleviating poverty is part of the holistic solution to terrorism, it is by no means the only solution.  I believe that one of the root causes of dissatisfaction in fundamentalist Islam that ultimately leads the extremists in their community to acts of terror is economic and cultural globalization.  Now, globalization is a Big Word, and lots of Important Books have been written about it, and the word inspires Passion and Protest and Pronouncements by Rock Stars and Politicians, and much hand-wringing on the Left, and a similar amount of scorn on the Right.
          There are many facets to globalization, and many other books to read on the subject.  What I want to concentrate on here is cultural globalization.  In the Muslim world, there are many fundamentalists who are not jihadists, and who do not preach or advocate violence, but are very religious conservatives trying to preserve a way of life that they feel is being corrupted by outside, secular forces.  Does this sound familiar to anyone? It sounds to me like a certain group of people in this country.
          Take Mel and Norma Gabler of Longview, Texas. Actually, the Lord has taken Mel, in 2004, at the age of 90.  Understanding the Gablers of Longview is important because if you get where they were coming from, then it becomes much easier to understand the average fundamentalist Muslim.  The Gablers, staunch fundamentalists themselves of the Christian persuasion, were, up until Mel's passing, the two most powerful people in American education.  The Gablers had, for over forty years, the final say on what textbooks public schools in Texas use or don't use.  Books used in Texas public schools had to be on a list approved by the Gablers and their organization if the schools were to receive state money for their purchase.  Because Texas is the nation's largest purchaser of textbooks, the Gablers' approval could either make or break a textbook nationally.
          The Gablers emphasized a traditional curriculum of reading, math and grammar, as well as patriotism, high moral standards, dress codes, and strict discipline.  They believed that inferior, improper and blatantly destructive textbooks have been responsible for destroying confidence and pride in America, for undermining Judeo-Christian values, and for creating a society in which crime, violence, drugs, pornography, venereal disease, abortion, homosexuality, and broken families have become the norm.  That's quite a textbook.
          They criticized material that in their view encouraged change, rebellion, or protest, although they spent most of their time protesting... change.  They took a hard line on any book that spoke unkindly of free enterprise or didn't strongly condemn socialism and communism.  They objected to writers like Edgar Allan Poe for being "morbid" and "negative."  They also objected to any material that drew parallels between Christianity and other religions, or material that contained any hint of moral relativity.  Sex Education was strictly verboten.  They didn't like any book written in slang, or with "improper use of the English language," which threw out a whole host of authors from Mark Twain to Alice Walker.  They wouldn't accept any history textbook that was more than faintly critical of any American policy ever.  This was where many, many of us learned our history, because as the Gablers spoketh, so did most other states listen.
          The Gablers represent a large slice of America that feels like the evils of secular America are closing in all around them, and to have any chance of survival, moral walls have to be constructed around their schools and communities.  It is what is sometimes referred to as living inside the Christian bubble.  They wish to return to a simpler, slower, more homogenous time when men were men, women stayed in the home, and sex stayed in the bedroom of married couples.  In this scenario, the United States is the one and only virtuous country in the world, and anyone who thinks otherwise is probably an outside agitator, a communist spy, or a pervert.  The outlying radicals of this way of thinking would be the John Birch Society, right-wing survivalist militia groups, and the Ku Klux Klan.
          If you understand the Gablers, you now have an open window into Islamist fundamentalism. Most of these people don't want to harm us; they just want us to leave them alone.  They are very Gabler-esque in their thinking; they long for a simpler time, before Coca-Cola, and Levi's, and Britney Spears, and hip-hop, and Nikes, and Dallas, and Charlie's Angels, and bikinis, and the Internet, and Girrrl Power, and Tinky Winky, and McDonalds, and pornography, and Wal-Mart, and Raider jerseys, and Marlboros, and sex, and sex, and sex.  It is all overwhelming the fabric of their lives.  If you can imagine the shock and horror that the Gablers have felt in Longview, Texas, then you can start to appreciate the upheaval that is going on in Lahore, Pakistan, or Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, or Tehran, Iran, or Khartoum, Sudan, or Leeds, England for that matter.
          The cultural war that is raging in these places begins to explain why the imams and the ulamas are fighting a desperate battle for the souls of the youths in these countries.  Think Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson on steroids and you have that picture.  This is also why parents choose to send their sons to madrassahs, the Islamic equivalent of "get thee to a nunnery."  The same cultural backwash that Christians object to in this country is being exported to Muslim countries in the name of capitalism and free enterprise.  Add to this scenario a standard of living that is far below the West, and a feeling that the West, and the United States in particular, has exploited the mineral wealth of this region while installing repressive regimes friendly to its own purposes and goals.  On top of that, there is America's unrelenting support for Israel over the Palestinians, and finally, the invasion and war in Iraq, and there begins to emerge the "root causes of terror."  The outlying radicals of Islamist fundamentalism are the jihadists and the terrorists.  When the fundamentalists in the American South felt threatened by the rising of the blacks to equality, spurred on by the "outside agitators" of the North, who rose to defend the fundamentalists' former way of life? The outlying radicals like the Ku Klux Klan. What methods did they use to defend the status quo? Terror.
          The average conservative fundamentalist Muslim family is probably not all that different in their worldview from the average conservative fundamentalist Christian family.  Both families have a strong faith at the center of their lives.  Both see the family in a more traditional structure than their secular counterparts: the husband/father is the head of the household, and the wife is discouraged from working outside of the home, and is in charge of the care of the children.  Both would like to keep outside, secular influences from their children as much and as long as possible.  Both demand modesty in the appearance of their females, the difference here is in degree. Both are generally more patriarchal societies than their more modern counterparts.  Both, in fact, would like to slow down modernity and return to the good old days of their grandparents and beyond.
          All religious cultures, whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or Hindu, have internal battles between orthodox isolationists, and secular assimilationists.  If we as Christians understand our own battles to a greater or lesser degree to keep the worst of Hollywood and Madison Avenue out of every facet of our own lives, maybe this can allow us to have some empathy for our Muslim counterparts' lack of enthusiasm over the cultural globalization that has permeated their society.  And maybe, just maybe, this might be a warning sign that what might be good for the bottom lines of our large multinational corporations, may not be in our own best interests in the War on Terror.
          I am not advocating the closed off lifestyle described above.  We are called as Christians to be salt and light in the world, and as a follower of Jesus, nothing could be clearer than His constant determination to mingle with the lowest characters around.  I believe it is a mistake to wall ourselves off from the culture at large, but instead many of us are called to be the "Roaring Lambs" that the late Bob Briner so eloquently described in his book of the same name.
          I also think that there are many wonderful products and cultural gifts that we have given to the world, like soft-tissue toilet paper, and Louis Armstrong, and Fed-Ex, and baseball, and Martin Luther King Jr., and Thomas Edison, and the Blues, and Billy Graham, and Katherine Hepburn, and funny animation, and Jerry Lewis... well only in France.
          I don't pretend to know what is best for a culture that I have never been a part of; these are age-old problems of advance versus retreat, playing themselves out in a place that is thousands of miles away both literally and figuratively.  Progress is good–how one defines it is key.  I just think it might be a good idea for the culture capitalists to lay off this market for a while in the interests of the common good.