Sunday, Oct. 1, 2006 | 7:33 a.m.
For the sin which we have committed against Thee ...
Tonight is the beginning of the holiest day of the year for the Jewish people. Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, lasts until sundown Monday night. For the 24-hour period, Jews around the world will fast, refrain from work of any kind and spend their night and day in their synagogues, praying to God for forgiveness for all of their sins that were committed in the prior year.
For some, all 24 hours are needed to atone, and for others more time may be necessary. But, for most of us, at least we like to think about it this way, just a few minutes are all that is needed to make things right. Nevertheless, we spend the time reflecting, contemplating and considering how we have lived our lives and, more important, how we want to live our lives.
This Yom Kippur is a little different because I believe that each of us, Jew and non-Jew, should be considering how we have spent this last year as citizens of the greatest country on Earth. For we have not done our best - or anything close to our best.
Consider the latest news about Bob Woodward's new book in which he claims that President George W. Bush turned either a blind eye or a deaf ear to the pleas of his experts that we did not have enough troops in Iraq to react to the insurgents who - as history has already proved - were poised to make American and Iraqi lives a living hell.
It got so bad, we are told, that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and then-National Security Adviser Condi Rice weren't talking to each other. That the president of the United States had to tell Rummy to return the lady's phone calls should give every American the kind of glimpse into the Bush administration's dysfunctionality over this war to shake whatever confidence we have left that the Bush White House has a clue what it is doing.
Tonight, we will be asking God to forgive us for the sin of arrogance, for being stiff-necked at times when we should be welcoming other ideas and viewpoints. In atoning for my own sins I will not be able to keep myself from asking for forgiveness for the kind of arrogance and stiff-necked refusal to consider any ideas but their own that is now so clearly evident of the Bush administration.
The benefit of the doubt with which the American people have been so generous in giving this president's wartime adventures the thumbs up has all but disappeared in light of Woodward's well-documented accusations. The truth is that arrogance is responsible for the mess we are in. Not bad luck, not bad planning and not just bad people - but the arrogance of an administration that refused to listen.
I suppose we can forget about the sin of violence, but what about the sin of being weak-willed? For this we can blame our leaders on the Democratic side of the aisle. There is little doubt that President Bush was going to war with Iraq whether the people wanted it or not. But it was up to the Democrats and, yes, other like-minded Americans, to express their own leadership on this issue.
But, because they were branded as unpatriotic by the arrogant bunch, they turned tail and ran away from the kind of debate that would have called to account the shortcomings of the administration and which would have shed serious light on the mistakes of willful people who have gotten us into this unsolvable mess.
Do you think we have been xenophobic? What about showing zeal for bad causes? Anyone want to fess up?
There is plenty of blame to go around, so no one escapes the need to atone for the kind of sins that don't just hurt people's feelings. These sins have hurt, maimed and killed thousands of U.S. servicemen and women and civilians as well.
And what about that blowup that we have all seen President Bill Clinton have during an interview with Chris Wallace? That was the first time I have heard any Democrat or any well-known American, for that matter, take on the Bush administration and its mouthpieces for manipulating the media's coverage of the hunt for Osama bin Laden.
Even in the face of overwhelming odds designed to shut us up and shut us down, those of us who disagree with our leadership - on whatever issue we have at the time - are just as sinful in the eyes of God as those who run roughshod over us in the name of national security. This country was founded and has survived because our citizens have been unafraid of shouting back at injustice, ineptitude and insensitivity to the plight of those less fortunate.
What happened that made us bite our tongues for so long?
And now the latest news from the Senate is that Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Pete Domenici finally showed his colors by introducing a bill that will change dramatically the rules regarding Yucca Mountain. For as long as the Screw Nevada bill has been on the books, it was a matter of law that Nevada would never be a site for the temporary storage of high-level nuclear waste.
Domenici is trying to change all that by taking the nuke waste issue out of the budget, off the books and out of the consciousness of human beings who are used to people doing nutty things but not such blatantly nasty things.
The cynicism surrounding the Yucca Mountain project - not to mention the lies and deceit - is enough to force all of us before our maker to seek forgiveness for even allowing these people to exist in positions of leadership.
I suppose I could go on and on, but I think you get the picture. In the end, the right people are going to atone because we are the ones - the people with the weak voices, the people who are willing to accept what government tells us is true even when our hearts and minds say it isn't so, and the people who know that Woodward is right but who don't want to admit it for fear that we would also have to admit how wrong we have been to trust the folks in Washington - who have to live with the heartache.
The only caveat is that the people who need to atone are not just the Jewish people whose day it is to do such things. No, we have an entire country full of people who should be seeking forgiveness.
To do less is to accept that which has turned out so wrong and will continue to be, so long as arrogance and a weak will continue to define our leaders in Washington.
Contemplate that all day tomorrow and you, too, will hunger for a taste of something better.
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