A DOG THAT QUACKS LIKE A DUCK?

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, Massachusetts
Veteran’s Day Sunday November 9, 2003


There’s an interesting article in this week’s Newsweek magazine on “God and Health,” which reports (among other things) that people who attend church at least once a week live, on average, eight years longer than people who don’t attend church at all. And notwithstanding the old joke that it only SEEMS longer, when you read a little more closely you discover that regular churchgoers are also 78% more likely to have quit smoking, 39% more likely to have stopped drinking, 54% more likely to exercise regularly, and 131% less likely to feel depressed. So there’s nothing particularly miraculous about these statistics: regular church attendance is simply a good habit which tends to encourage a lot of other good habits. But there are no guarantees; I can’t promise you that by choosing now to spend an hour every week here in this room with me you are assured of an extra eight years at the end of your life. You have to read the small print at the bottom of the prospectus: past performance is not predictive of future results. Still, you’ve got to like the odds...especially since it requires such a modest initial investment, and pays additional dividends almost immediately.

Of course, there are some activities in life that are inherently risky, no matter how well prepared or equipped one may be. There’s a headstone down in the cemetery at the bottom of the hill here that Parker and I often walk by as we are out getting our recommended 40 minutes of moderate cardio three times a week. It belongs to Captain John F. Kazanowski, U.S. Army Special Forces, born June 4th, 1938 (which would make him a Gemini), died October 7th, 1969. I don’t really know that much more about Captain Kazanowski, other than that his middle initial stands for “Francis” and although he was born in Carlisle, his family apparently no longer lives here. And I also know (because I can do the math) that he was 18 years old in 1956 (the year that I was born), and only 31 when he was killed in action in Kontum, South Vietnam, two weeks prior to my 13th birthday. And I was likewise able to find out (thanks to Google) that he was married, that he died as a result of small arms fire, that his body was recovered, that he apparently served in the Reserve as well as in the Special Forces, for a total of eight years, and his name is located on panel 17W, line 47 of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington D.C. I have no idea what he looked like, or what his political sympathies were. I can guess about his religion (or at least the religion of his parents), but it would still be just an educated guess. I don’t know anything about his interests or hobbies, or what his friends thought of him; I don’t really even know whether or not he was a good soldier. But someone doubtlessly knows all these things, and as a historian I could potentially discover them all as well, if I were simply willing to take the time and make the effort to do the research. What I can never know, and what no one can ever know, is what kind of man John Francis Kazanowski would have become had he lived beyond the age of 31; what he would have done with his life at age 47, for example, (the age I am now), or at age 65, had he not been killed in action. I know this as well: it was in no small part because of the experiences of people like Captain Kazanowski, who fought and died serving our country in Southeast Asia when I was still a child, that I decided when I turned 18 to pursue this profession rather than his.

I also suspect it’s no big secret to any of you how I feel about the current war in Iraq. But I want you all to know that I’m not opposed to this war simply because I’m just another knee-jerk, bleeding-heart liberal peacenik. I’m also an historian, someone who has actually even taught military history at the University level, so I understand that there are times when wars are necessary, and even justified. And I also have a great deal of respect for our men and women in uniform, who are unquestionably and without a doubt the best trained, best equipped, most powerful and professional fighting force in the history of the world, and who have volunteered to risk their lives by putting themselves in harm’s way, on the orders of our Constitutionally designated Commander in Chief, in order to defend this country’s security and interests in the world. So at the end of the day, even though I AM basically just another knee-jerk, bleeding-heart liberal peacenik, when I express my doubts about the legitimacy of this war, and question the President’s motivations for starting it, I am in no way doubting or questioning the integrity of our men and women in uniform, who are simply attempting to do their duty to their country and their fellow citizens, just as I am attempting to do mine. And although there are times when I wish that some of them (General Boyken, for instance) would concentrate a little bit more attentively on the specifically military aspects of their duties, and leave the theology to people like me, this is not one of those situations where I take any sort of pleasure or satisfaction whatsoever in being able to say “I told you so.” Because these are real people’s lives that are at risk here. And when we forget that, we all fail in our duty.

I want to pause here and say just a word or two about the title of this sermon. I first heard this phrase (or something close to it) during a radio interview with reporters Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, who are the authors of The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron. And immediately my ears perked up, since (having attended both the University of Washington and the University of Oregon), I have at various times in my life been both a “Dawg” and a “Duck” -- as well as an Oregon State University Beaver, two types of Viking, and a Crimson (whatever that is)...and thus there have been moments (generally brisk Saturday afternoons in autumn) when, not only have I been confused about which hat to wear, but I’ve also been uncertain about whether I should bark, or quack, or simply slap the surface of the pond loudly with my tail before diving to safety beneath the water. Of course, this particular interview I was listening to had nothing to do with college football. Rather, the reporters were recounting how one Enron accountant had described his job of making prepaid commodities futures contracts (which are essentially debt and therefore liabilities) appear as earnings on the company balance sheet -- “making a dog look like a duck.” Because as we all know, if it looks like a duck, and sounds like a duck, it’s supposed to be a duck. But they weren’t ducks. They were dogs. And as we all well know, when somebody finally got around to letting the dogs out, the whole thing came crashing down...and a lot of people got bitten. And now a lot of these same people want to know why Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling and all their crooked corporate cronies aren’t in the hoosegow (instead of merely the doghouse)...but you know, that’s not going to give people back their pensions, or their health insurance, or their homes or their livelihoods. Revenge is a very superficial form of payback. It’s much better when the people who have suffered actually get paid back what they have lost -- what in my line of work we call “Restorative Justice” (as opposed to “Retributive Justice”).

Of course, there are some folks who would still argue that a lot of the fuzzy bookkeeping done at Enron technically wasn’t illegal...it was just misleading and (perhaps) immoral. So while it’s understandable why people may wish to express their moral outrage, anything like jail time, much less actual restitution, is simply out of the question. And this isn’t the only area of public concern where we are being asked to split hairs between the “intentional cultivation of a misperception” and an outright lie. So long as our leaders, our public servants, can keep the dogs all muzzled and their ducks in a row, we have no business scrutinizing their actions or questioning their decisions...it’s just a lot of nay-saying, or fear-mongering, or partisan political “spin.” It may even be unpatriotic, and a danger to our national security.
But for my own part, I’m a lot less concerned about the possibility that the Bush Administration may have attempted to intentionally deceive the American people about their reasons for going to war with Iraq (which, by the way, I’m pretty certain that they did), than I am worried about the likelihood that they may have unintentionally deceived themselves as well. And this, to my way of thinking, is a much bigger problem...because it’s one thing to know what you are doing, and to lie about it to others, and quite another to THINK that you know what you are doing, but instead to be rushing headlong toward disaster because you’ve been lying to yourself, and living in a state of denial. And this is an insight that goes well beyond our contemporary political situation; it’s a danger that we all need to be aware of, because it happens so easily, even to the best of us. And it’s not just confined to negative things either; people also deceive themselves about the positive things in their lives, or so exaggerate their concern about what “might” happen that they never get to enjoy what IS happening. Learning to tell the difference between “what if” and “what is” is not always easy, but it’s important, not only because it allows us to distinguish between “what might have been” and “the way things really are,” but because it also allows us to consider the question of “what next” from a place of relative certainty rather than one of wishful thinking.

Personally, I’m a great believer in the power of optimism. I believe that it’s important to have faith in what you are doing, to have hope for a positive outcome, and to be confident that you can trust that you are making decisions based on the best possible information available, having carefully both calculated the potential risks and the possible returns. And of course you need to take everything you hear with a grain of salt, and double-check everything that you can; because not only are there dogs that quack like ducks, and ducks that bark like dogs...their are also wolves in sheep's clothing, and foxes hoping to guard the henhouse, and you’ve got to be on your toes to see through their disguises, to see them for what they really are, and not merely what they tell you they are, or what we wish them to be. “Trust, but Verify” I believe the old Russian proverb goes. And the higher the stakes, the more important it is to be certain of the facts before you act.

I know that there are a lot of people in this country, the families and friends of men and women in uniform in particular, who honestly feel that we somehow break faith with our troops in the field whenever we question the policies (and politics) that have put them in harm’s way. In order for our soldiers and sailors and airmen and Marines to be able to do their jobs, they need to know that the nation stands solidly behind them, and that they have a clear mission, one that can effectively be achieved through the use of military force, as well as overwhelming material superiority, and a clear exit strategy when the mission is accomplished. This is the “Powell doctrine,” which was put into effect during the First Gulf War -- the 100 hours of ”Operation Desert Storm” -- and at the time was widely praised as having brought an end to the so-called “Vietnam Syndrome.”

But when there is no clear military objective, much less a well-thought-out mission and exit strategy...when we can’t even be certain that our leaders are telling us the truth, much less independently verify what they are saying; when asking questions is portrayed as unpatriotic, and ideological bravado has been substituted for the objective analysis of reliable intelligence, we are headed, as a nation, toward a world of hurt. The constant trickle of casualties which we seem powerless to prevent (an experience some might compare to being “pecked to death by ducks”) is only the thin edge of the wedge. Casualties are never good, but if it is obvious that they are contributing in a tangible way toward an eventual victory they can generally be borne. Simply SAYING this, however, does not make it so, and no one sees this sooner or more clearly than the soldiers in the field themselves. The first sign of declining morale will be a drop in the rate of re-enlistments, especially among members of the Guard and Reserves. Another place to look for signs of trouble is in the internal domestic politics of our nominal allies. And I’m not talking here so much about Great Britain, or even France or Germany or Russia. But look at countries like Turkey, and more importantly, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The President has declared that he wants to turn Iraq into a model of Islamic democracy, which can then become a template for emerging democracies throughout the region. And I hope that he is right. And I hope that he can pull it off. But what I fear is that instead we will see increased levels of authoritarian repression in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan (not that it could really get much worse), as the ruling elites there attempt to control ever-growing popular resentment of the on-going American military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, while the Turks and the Kurds (and the Syrians and the Iranians) continue to maneuver in order to take advantage of the chaos and promote their own political interests and aspirations. And should the pro-American ruling elites in Saudi Arabia or Pakistan somehow fall from power, that’s when the problems really begin. Because Pakistan truly does possess nuclear weapons. And the American economy truly does depend on the free flow of Saudi oil.

And, of course, underlying all of this is the fact that we must base our policy decisions on “what is,” and not on “what might have been.” No matter how desperately we might have wished otherwise, we no longer really have the option of simply pulling out of Iraq and leaving things to sort themselves out on their own. Our military is committed (some might even say over-extended), we are losing the initiative, and although the “exit strategy” is obvious to everyone, one honestly has to wonder whether or not the President, having thumbed his nose at the international community on numerous occasions, is actually capable of creating the kind of international coalition his father knew was indispensable in order to succeed in situations of this kind. And with the Presidential election now only a year away, you can be confident that the political discourse in this country will only grow increasingly acrimonious, as young American men and women continue to risk their lives, and shed their blood, in foreign lands.

[extemporaneous conclusion: civility, dialog, and the power of prayer]



READING: from A World Transformed by George Bush and Brent Scowcroft (1998)

Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in “mission creep,” and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would have instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under those circumstances, there was no viable “exit strategy” we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations’ mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gong the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different -- and perhaps barren -- outcome.