3.4.26 Political risk of the Iran conflict, Nepal’s election, and a graphic novel about courageous faith

Good morning, the policy and politics of the war with Iran.

It's defensive in nature and in design and in necessity.

Washington Wednesday coming up with Hunter Baker, also today World Tour and later a martyr

story for a new generation.

It makes you evaluate your own life and realize, you know, I can do more.

Your world commentator, Janie B. Cheney, on the value of an analog education.

It's Wednesday, March 4th.

This is the world and everything in it from listener-supported world radio.

I'm Lindsay Masks.

And I'm Nick Einker.

Good morning.

Up next, Kent Covington with today's news.

The Pentagon says the U.S. military, along with the Israelis, have largely devastated

Iran's navy and air force, among other things.

Admiral Brad Cooper with the U.S. Central Command said U.S. forces have struck more than

2000 targets.

We have severely degraded Iran's air defenses and destroyed hundreds of Iran's ballistic

missiles, launchers and drones.

And in simple terms, we're focused on shooting all the things that can shoot at us.

Cooper added that, his words, thus far, we have destroyed 17 Iranian ships, including

the most operational Iranian submarine, that now has a hole in its side.

For decades, the Iranian regime has harassed international shipping.

Today, there's not a single Iranian ship underway in the Arabian Gulf, straight-of-more

moves, or Gulf of Oman.

And we will not stop.

And he said that in retaliation, the Iranian regime has launched more than 500 ballistic

missiles and over 2000 drones, firing them off largely indiscriminately at targets all

over the region.

One of those retaliatory strikes included a drone attack against the U.S. Embassy and Saudi

Arabia.

Secretary of State and Acting National Security Advisor Mark Rubio.

They drone, unfortunately, struck a parking lot adjacent to the chancellery building

and then set off a fire in that place, all personnel are accounted for as you're aware.

He again stated the case for taking this action at this time, he said President Trump

acted on the timeline that provided the greatest odds for success.

You're seeing a pliarana and you'll see it in the days to come.

We will systematically take apart the missile program.

We will destroy their ability to sponsor terrorism, by the way.

We will destroy their factories.

We will destroy their navy."

Rubio on Tuesday briefed Congress about the military action in Iran.

Democratic leaders continue to claim that the President acted unlawfully by ordering

the military action without seeking approval from Congress, House Minority Leader Hakeem

Jeffries.

It's now the Congress's responsibility to go on record because Donald Trump has unconstitutionally

and illegally chosen to launch a war.

But the administration says that is not so and that it is in full compliance with the

War Powers Act which gives the President this authority.

Elsewhere in the Middle East.

Israel hit the Lebanese port city of Sa'din yesterday.

The Israeli military said it was targeting members of the Lebanon-based terror group

Hezbollah.

As of Tuesday night, no word on any casualties.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu heard there warning the Lebanese government

and people that Hezbollah is dragging them into a war over the weekend death of Iranian

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Amanayi, something Netanyahu said has nothing to do with them.

On Capitol Hill, members of a Senate panel grilled Homeland Security Secretary Kristi

Nome for more than four hours, sparring with her and one another on immigration enforcement.

Rolls-Harris and Waters has more.

In one fiery exchange, GOP Senator Tom Tillis noted that President Trump placed borders

our Tom Holman in charge of operations in Minnesota in January.

That came after a pair of fatal shootings involving federal agents, souring public perception

of immigration enforcement.

Who does Tom Holman work for?

You are the president.

The president.

Okay.

Why is that?

Because I believe the president recognized that you weren't getting it done in Minneapolis

and you're putting us further away from pointing to this.

We're beginning to get the American people to think that deporting people is wrong.

It's the exact opposite.

The way you're going about deporting them is wrong.

Nome defended ICE operations and while she expressed regret for protester deaths, she

did not apologize for them.

She also called out Democrats for blocking funding to the rest of DHS in their efforts

to extract reforms.

More than 100,000 dedicated DHS employees are once again being asked to work without pay

for the third time in just five months.

Members of both parties question Nome about multimillion dollar spending on advertising

and stalled FEMA payments.

Secretary Nome will testify to lawmakers at the other end of the Capitol later this morning.

Reporting for World, I'm Harrison Waters.

The FBI says it is investigating a deadly weekend assault in Texas as a potential act

of terrorism.

The gunman killed three people and entered at least a dozen others when he opened fire

on a bar in Austin.

Authorities say the suspect fired the first shots from his SUV at people on the sidewalk

and inside the bar before getting out of the vehicle and firing on others.

Police fatally shot him at the scene.

Republican Senator John Cornan of Texas said there are plenty of clues regarding his motivation.

The things like the sweatshirt he was wearing and the t-shirt underneath with the Iranian flag

on it, sure seems to point to radicalize the individual.

The suspect, 53-year-old Gianga John reportedly first came to the U.S. from Senegal in 2000

and became a naturalized citizen in 2013.

Voters went to the polls in primary elections in several states on Tuesday, former Democratic

governor Roy Cooper and ex-Republica National Committee chairman Michael Wattley have won

their respective party nominations for a North Carolina U.S. Senate seat.

But when the clock struck midnight, a big race in Texas was still too close to call, incumbent

GOP Senator John Cornan is trying to fend off a challenge by Republican Texas attorney

general Ken Paxton.

I'm Kent Cuffington and straight ahead, Washington Wednesday with Hunter Baker, plus remembering

a modern-day martyr in Pakistan.

This is The World and Everything In It.

It's Wednesday the 4th of March.

Glad to have you along for today's edition of The World and Everything In It.

Good morning.

And I'm Nick Eichert, time now for Washington Wednesday.

Well today the World Editorial team is gathered for a staff retreat and so as we build today's

program we're doing it a good bit differently.

Typically our team members work remotely, we're a close team relationally but we do work

in different places around the country.

But we are today in our retreat center and we've got several friends, I can't count exactly

how many but we have many, many people in the room.

So welcome to you folks and thanks for coming on out.

And so also in the room with us is Hunter Baker.

He is a political scientist.

He is a contributor to world opinions and he's our regular Washington Wednesday analyst.

Good morning to you Hunter.

Good morning.

Well clearly Hunter the story of this week and I think as we expected to be likely subsequent

weeks is the war with Iran.

So let's get right to the intersection of American politics and global foreign policy.

And so I would frame up the first part here of the conversation like this Hunter.

As you see it, what kind of risk is President Trump taking here politically with this war

with Iran?

He's taking an immense risk.

You may remember, I certainly do, I remember being in college at the time of the first

Gulf War and George H.W. Bush came on broadcast to the entire nation and those of us here

you may remember what Bush said was this will not be another Vietnam, right?

That was reminding, reminding everybody.

And of course that was a relatively short engagement that we kind of completed and walked

on from.

Then we had the second Gulf War, which was an entirely different situation altogether.

We spent multiple trillions of dollars on that affair several years and many American

lives lost.

And so as Donald Trump approaches this engagement with Iran, people are going to be having similar

questions.

They're going to be wondering, is this going to be something that happens quickly as

he seems to have promised?

Or is it going to drag on and consume a great deal of American blood and treasure?

Do you have a good definition for what drag on actually means?

I mean, we heard him say just a couple of days ago that it could go four to five weeks

maybe a little bit longer than that.

What do you think just as a political scientist, the American people's tolerance for a

dragged on war would be?

I think a lot, not a lot more than that.

And I think that the thing that really people are going to be watching is this question

of whether we commit American troops.

Nobody, and I mean nobody, I think, wants to see large numbers of American troops in

the Middle East again.

And so the fear is that he'll be unable to achieve the kind of political result that

he wants in Iran and will have to move into a kind of an occupation mode.

Well, Hunter, it's a midterm election year and let's assume that the war goes well,

however that's defined.

Do you see the president's party and we have to emphasize that, of course, the president's

not on the ballot, but do Republicans generally benefit from a Trump's success on the battlefield

and then look at the same question if you would assuming that the war goes badly.

Well, there's an expression that many of us will remember.

People who are younger won't, but this expression was, heart is in ship ends at the water's

edge.

I don't know if people will remember that.

Heart is in ship ends at the water's edge.

I think a lot of people have forgotten it.

That used to be kind of a common statement of American foreign policy.

And we are in a totally different era now, which is really, really bad for the country.

Our political culture has suffered somewhat since that time.

And so unfortunately, the ideal situation would be that Republican and Democratic legislators

would be sitting in some sort of socratic stance, you know, evaluating the arguments

for and against.

And I'm afraid that that is just not the situation.

Let me ask you this.

Do you think that Iran is different from, let's say, an Afghanistan or an Iraq?

We've got some history there.

The Iranians in 1979 overran our embassy and took American hostages for 444 days.

I'm old enough to remember this stuff.

Does that change the calculus at all with a known bad guy who has been a bad guy for

that long?

What I would say about Iran is Iran is in many ways a more frightening adversary.

And the reason I would say that is is that, so of course, we saw their determination

with the revolution in 1979 and taking American prisoners.

But if you look at our own war on terror, Iran cooperated with us in a few places, but

generally speaking, what they did during the war on terror was to try to make America miserable.

They tried to cost us a lot of lives, cost us a lot of money.

Not because they loved Iraq, for instance, but they wanted to make sure that the Americans

did not establish a long-term presence in the Middle East.

And so they did all that they could to hurt America during that time, and they were pretty

effective in doing so.

And to tie back to the political question, they understand that American involvement

in foreign countries is subject to the political debate within our country.

And so if you can increase the cost in lives, in money, and just sheer humor and suffering,

then you can reduce American commitment.

So when we talk about Iran outlasting or making calculations, a lot of them are dead.

Who are we talking about?

Who's doing this calculation?

That's a good question.

We have engaged in what is called a decapitation attack in which we have removed a significant

portion of the leadership of the Iranian regime.

But what needs to be understood is this is a highly ideological state, and they have supposedly

tried to duplicate that leadership for levels down, and at the same kind of level of determination.

Hunter, I want to know how does a conflict like this, a war like this fit or conflict with

the no-forever wars brand that helped define the president's movement?

I think there's no question that the only way that you get to a Donald Trump presidency

is with the failure in the Middle East, with the war on terror.

And so what Trump has to do is to avoid falling into that same kind of trap that engulfed

the last Bush administration.

Hunter, the war has raised concerns over possible terror attacks here at home, especially

during a government shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security.

So far, we've heard of at least one suspected attack that took place in Austin, Texas.

In a Senate Homeland Security oversight hearing, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham also

connected the dots.

I wonder how many people are like that here, waiting to pounce.

And DHS doesn't have appropriated funds.

This is insane.

How do you see this affecting the DHS funding debate?

Does it change the calculus on holding up funding if you're a Democrat?

This gets back to what I was talking about with the deal of the Socratic Legislator.

If you were just sort of dealing from a stance of pure reason, you would say, we've engaged

in hostilities with Iran.

Iran is a major sponsor of terror.

Now is exactly the wrong time to have a shutdown affecting the Department of Homeland Security.

And so maybe you pull back on your strategy.

I can absolutely understand why Democrats were using this point of leverage in trying

to get the changes that they wanted in ICE, but the calculus has changed.

And now we need the Department of Homeland Security operating at its very best, and it's

the wrong kind of strategy to be pursuing now.

Nevertheless, I think that currently they're still going that direction.

I expect the mainstream media will be all over that, right?

They should be.

They should be.

I mean, honestly, this is where a journalist is.

I mean, this is where a good journalist should be saying we cannot be engaged in effectively

a war with the number one sponsor of terror in the world and not have our Department of

Homeland Security operating.

Hunter Baker is provost at North Greenville University.

Thanks for coming all this way to be with us and let's thank Hunter Baker for washing

in Wednesday.

Thank you.

Additional support comes from free Lutheran Bible College, grounding students in the Word

of God for life in Jesus Christ, on campus and in person in Plymouth, Minnesota, flbc.edu

slash world.

From Boyce College, where truth comes first, every class begins with Scripture and prepares

students to live with wisdom, conviction and Christ-like faithfulness, boyscollege.com.

And from Covenant College, where students are equipped with a Christ-centered education

rooted in the reformed tradition, Covenant.edu slash world.

Coming up next on the world and everything in it, World Tour, Nepal is electing new leaders

today after deadly protests six months ago culminated in the resignation of the Prime Minister.

Citizens want a new start for the country, but change may be slow to come.

World's Mary Muncie has the story.

Today former Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli is trying to get his job back.

Oli resigned in September after a young Nepalese people organized several huge protests over

government corruption.

They turned violent and police killed 19 protesters.

Hundreds of others were injured.

Now voters in the country of 30 million are deciding who will fill the 275 seats in

the member assembly.

Over 3,000 people are running.

Some other elections have seen tens of thousands of candidates.

Challenging the former Prime Minister are the Nepali Congress parties Gagan Tapa and

Belendra Shah, who served most recently as the mayor of the capital city of Kathmandu.

Shah says he wants to help poor people get an education and health care.

He also wants to focus on job and technology growth.

About 20% of the population lives in poverty.

And Shah believes corruption in the government is to blame.

Shah at 35 years old is relatively young.

And his party is relatively new.

And that may be exactly what some voters want.

Nepali people have largely been a commodity off in a new force.

Santo Sharma Podel is the co-founder of the Tapaul Institute for Policy Research in Kathmandu.

He says corruption has been a problem at all levels of government for decades.

And each new party brings new hope.

He says there's currently high level policy corruption, like officials changing electric

vehicle policies to suit their business interests.

The politicians who barely had a good suit to start with when they started their political

career now roam around in cars that cost millions.

There's also low level corruption that affects people at home, exorbitant fees to register

a new baby or unexplained delays in building permits.

Podel's research institute did a survey of what Gen Z expects going forward.

We asked them what was the major issue that we are facing, almost three quarters of them

pointed at the political system.

So they have very low trust on the institutions themselves.

Candidates in this election have been touting their plans for rebuilding trust in the government.

But so far, it's unclear exactly how they're going to implement them.

Right now, there are a few new voting reforms in place, things like transparency rules for

campaign donations.

But the mechanisms for enforcement remain weak.

For today's election, the country deployed 300,000 additional security troops.

Podel says that isn't unheard of, and there will likely be attempts at election fraud.

But I don't expect it to happen to a level whereby the whole election result is contested.

Podel says the system needs to be gutted and rebuilt, but worries voters may be too impatient

for that.

The poll also sits between and trades with China and India.

Both of those countries, along with the United States, seen the poll as a security concern.

Without side actors interested in the elections and the country's future, there are some reports

that those forces are stirring unrest and influencing Gen Z through social media.

But Podel thinks the country would have gotten here regardless.

So the kind of frustration we are feeling we're not real, or the lack of economic growth

we had for the last 30 years was not real, or the number of people living in Nepal seeking

some livelihood in harsh conditions that's not real.

Podel blames leaders and the political structure.

He says lasting change will take time.

One young voter says she's tired of the old leaders.

She says they're deceptive by nature, and the youth should try to bring change, even

if those changes are drastic.

Reporting for World, I'm Mary Muncie.

That high-pitched squeak is as much a part of the soundtrack of basketball as the referees

whistle.

Now scientists say they finally know the mechanics behind it.

Researchers at Harvard slid basketball shoes across glass under high-speed cameras.

What appeared to be a smooth glide was anything but squeaking is basically your shoe rippling

or your shoe creating wrinkles that travel super fast and they repeat at the high frequency.

The rubber sole sticks, slips and snaps forward thousands of times per second, tiny earthquakes,

the same physics as shifting tectonic plates only beneath a shoe.

Well now that engineers understand the mechanism, they can design four and against it.

How would stealth sneakers change the game?

It's the world and everything in it.

Today is Wednesday, March 4th.

Thank you for turning to World Radio to help start your day.

Good morning.

I'm Lindsay Mast.

And I'm Nick Eichert coming next on the world and everything in it remembering a modern

day martyr.

Shabaz Bati was the federal minister for minority affairs in Pakistan.

My population Pakistan is the fifth largest country in the world and just 4% of the population

is non-Muslim.

Bati was assassinated in March 2011 for his outspoken opposition to Pakistan's blasphemy

laws as well as his advocacy for religious minorities.

The new graphic novel Blood and Water depicts his life and how his faith inspired him.

Joining us now is the book's co-author Matt Yokum and its creator Nox Thames.

Matt, Nox, good morning.

Thank you so much.

As I mentioned a moment ago, this book is a graphic novel.

What made you choose that format for this story?

I've been in policy spaces for over 20 years looking for ways to advance religious freedom

internationally here in Washington, D.C.

But I've got two boys who are teenagers and while I write a lot of articles, they don't

usually read them.

But I saw when they were younger how the action Bible, the Bible and sort of graphic

comic style was so captivating for them.

And so when this opportunity came out to remember my friend on this 15th anniversary, this

idea of a graphic novel was presented and I thought, oh, what a fantastic way to reach

young people about this compelling story that challenges them and I really all of us to

think about how we can advocate for those who are suffering for their beliefs.

Tell me a little bit, how did you know that Bati's commitment to religious freedom was

more than just political?

The last time I saw him was in February 2011 when he was here for the National Prayer

Breakfast and the death threats were piling up a month before one of his allies that the

Muslim governor of Punjab province Salman Tussier was assassinated by his bodyguard because

he was also speaking up against the blasphemy law.

So this was clearly a life or death situation and he talked about how his commitment to Jesus

Christ gave him courage, it gave him hope, and it gave him the commitment to see this through.

And there's this haunting video taken days after he left here where he explains it.

And that's one of the last scenes in the graphic novel.

It was just this powerful testimony of someone who gave it all to Jesus.

You just don't meet people like that very often in life and such a powerful example of

what it means to really live a sacrificial life.

Matt, I'll direct this to you as the author of the book.

Tell me a little bit about the decisions that you made as you were trying to weave in the

faith component into each chapter of the novel.

Right.

As Knox mentioned, his life really was exemplified by a boldness for his faith and a compassion

for the destitute, the lost, the poor.

And so it was very obvious even to his own family that Shabbaz was different as a young person.

He saw the people who were unseen and he had a heart for them so early in life and it even

remembers the moment after a good Friday service that he had decided as a 13 year old what

he was going to dedicate his life to.

So it was easy to show what was inspiring him and then how he began to enact that as his

calling in life and all the way from early in his life through his years in college and then

his advocacy organizations that he created until finally be invited to be a minister in the

government representing the minorities until the day he died.

Knox, what do you think that Shabbaz's body would make of the situation for religious minorities

in Pakistan where he's still alive today?

Now at one level he'd be heartbroken but then he'd also be motivated to work even harder.

Pakistan has never been an easy place for religious minorities.

It wasn't then, isn't now, but he was starting to make a difference.

He was seeing laws change, he was seeing new policies implemented that was starting to

create more breathing room for religious minorities starting to ensure that their place in

Pakistan and society rose up a notch or two and he was starting a process that was questioning

whether or not this blasphemy law that they have which is the worst version of any country in

the world should remain as it is and it was because of that success that the force of the darkness

came after him. So he'd be busy, he'd be working the telephones, he'd be finding ways to advocate

for the least of these to speak up for the oppressed and to push back against this tidal wave

of persecution that risks drowning in his entire country.

Matt, I'll direct this last question at you as the author.

What was it about either the process of working on the book or the story itself that bolstered

your faith? Yeah, I think when I got into the details you realized very quickly there's more

details and incidents and episodes that he was involved in that you then you even had time to

and I think that seeing how deeply his life was invested in living out his faith was extremely

inspiring and it makes you evaluate your own life to be honest with you and realize you know I

can do more for someone to be this bold and this compassionate and to have discovered his purpose

and lived it with everything that he had it is inspirational it was part of the reason that we

wanted this to be aimed at a younger audience to serve as an inspiration to not end as a gravestone

but you know this is this is not intended to be the end of the story but the beginning of

an inspiration for the younger generation and it certainly did that for me.

All right, Matt Yokum and Knox Thames co-author and creator of the graphic novel Blood and Water,

the life and martyrdom of Shabbat's body. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks, Lindsay.

Good morning. This is the world and everything in it from listener supported world radio.

I'm Nick Eiker and I'm Lindsay Mast. When it comes to education the delivery method of

information matters. World's Jamie B. Cheney says that after several decades the great digital

school experiment may be near the end. I hate to say I told you so but I was not the only one.

When school districts began purchasing laptops for all their students and you can be sure

Apple and Microsoft were right there offering sweet deals I thought it was a bad idea.

So did many others even though the digital revolution was still relatively new and hopes for

the information superhighway were high. It still amazes me to have all the answers stored in

a pocket device. How many arguments have you settled with a hey Google? I'm old enough to remember

the cumbersome databases I could only access at the library and before that the card catalog.

So thanks, IT. I couldn't do my job without you. But the developing brain of a 12-year-old

is another matter. Maine was the first to adopt a statewide laptop program for 7th graders in 2002

to be expanded over time. 15 years later fortune magazine reported that student test scores in Maine

had not improved. By then school districts across the country had sunk millions into computer labs,

Chromebooks, and iPads. Now almost a quarter century after the experiment began, what's the result?

In testimony before the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation,

neuroscientist Jared Horvath had some bad news. So a sad fact our generation has to face is this.

Our kids are less cognitively capable than we were at their age.

Since we've been standardizing and measuring cognitive development since the late 1800s,

every generation has outperformed their parents. But Horvath went on to say,

Gen Z is the first generation of modern history to underperform us on basically every

cognitive measure we have, from basic attention, to memory, to literacy, to numeracy, to executive

functioning, to even general IQ, even though they go to more school than we did.

In a written report to the same committee, Horvath clarified, this is not a debate about

rejecting technology. It is a question of aligning educational tools with how human learning

actually works. Exactly. But how does human learning actually work? Every world changing

advance leads to corresponding ideas about the human mind. With the development of writing,

and later printing, came philosophical speculation about the mind as a blank slate.

The scientific revolution raised questions about the mind body problem, which the industrial

revolution answered by imagining the brain as a sophisticated machine. Today, our brains are

seen as computers processing information in basic binary code. So shouldn't computer learning

be compatible? Apparently not. The mind remains a mystery, but children should be well understood

by now. We know what comes naturally to them and what doesn't. And discipline and focus do not.

Once children grasp the ability to interpret symbols on a page as words and transfer words into

meaning, they can go from a strength to strength as long as they're allowed to take their time

and develop their comprehension skills without distraction. But distraction is the primary

temptation of a digital screen. Pushback may be coming. At least 35 states have signed on or

already enacted laws that ban the use of cell phones in class. And obvious and overdue first step.

In Missouri state representative Trisha Burns has introduced House Bill 2230, which restricts

the use of tech in the classroom through grade five and mandates cursive writing with a pencil

on paper. I just want people to come around the table and say, hey hold up, we all jumped on

board with this. And nobody had any science. I mean, we beta tested on the kids.

Burns's bill is currently in the rules committee and will soon head for the floor.

May it pass and others like it. This beta testing on young brains needs to end.

For World, I'm Janie B. Cheney.

Tomorrow crowdsourcing the problem of fraud, the government inviting Americans to help.

And how to talk to kids about sex, gender, and God's good design. That in more tomorrow.

I'm Lindsay Mast. And I'm Nick Eiker, the world and everything in it comes to you from world

radio. World's mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible says, but I will sing of your strength. I will sing aloud of your steadfast love in the

morning. For you have been to me a fortress and a refuge in the day of my distress. Oh, my strength,

I will sing praises to you. For you, O God, are my fortress. The God who shows me steadfast love.

That's the end of Psalm 59 verses 16 and 17. Go now in grace and peace.