At Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, there's an obligatory pass-fail one-credit course, "Map of the World," that covers "the evolution of the modern political map of each region and major nationalist, ethnic, boundary and territorial conflicts and tension areas." Even if it takes a student four years, noone graduates without passing "Map of the World."
The current debate over the nuclear agreement with Iran suggests that Georgetown should open the class to Congress to introduce members to the world far beyond our powerful, privileged "American Exceptionalist" borders. Perhaps no one should be permitted to vote on critical international issues without passing "Map of the World."
“The pride and self-righteousness of powerful nations,” wrote theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, “are a greater hazard to their success than the machinations of their foes.”
Today, I find something profoundly un-American happening in Washington, something profoundly unsettling about the tone taken by opponents of the agreement negotiated between the P5+1 and Iran.
“He was impregnably armoured," Graham Greene wrote of Alden Pyle in The Quiet American, "by his good intentions and his ignorance.”
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As Congress adjourns, America has roughly, as Jim Wallis of Sojourners wrote, "Fifty days to choose diplomacy and peace over a belligerent and habitual rush to war. Making peace is hard work; making peace with enemies requires perseverance, discipline, and firm resolve."
“Who is truly mighty?" the Talmud asks. "He who turns his enemies into friends.”