"Proclaim Peace" Season 2, Episode 21 // The Hardest Peacebuilding Lesson: Love the People You Resist, With Matthew Tueller
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Former U.S. diplomat Matthew Tueller joins Jen and Patrick to go through a wide-ranging reflection on peace, public service, and the hard moral questions raised by scripture and conflict. He explains how his years in the Middle East, especially Iraq and the Nineveh Plain, shaped his understanding of common ground, truth-telling, and the limits of power. They review Jonah and Zechariah to explore how ancient texts speak to modern peacemaking, forgiveness, and the discipline of seeing enemies as fully human.
Chapters
(3:50) How a diplomat defines peace
(6:21) A diplomat's role: advancing US interests, not activism
(7:48) Nineveh, Assyria, and why the story mattered
(13:15) Jonah as political satire
(16:06) The Lord's unanswered question and holding up a mirror
(21:15) Iraq, Mosul, ISIS, and the Yazidis
(31:01) Good people and small acts of repair
(36:09) Patience in diplomacy and the turn to Zechariah
(37:36) Zechariah and rebuilding Jerusalem
(40:45) "Speak truth to your neighbor": honesty as a diplomat's value
(44:01) Takeaways for listeners
(45:40) Finding peace and closing
Transcript
Patrick Mason (00:00)
Hi everyone and welcome to the "Proclaim Peace" podcast, where we are studying the old testament this year to pull out principles and practices of peacemaking. I'm Patrick Mason. I'm here with Jen Thomas. Jen, how are ya?
Jennifer Thomas (00:11)
I'm doing well, Patrick, and I'm excited about the conversation we're about to have. I think sometimes we tend to want to make peacemaking super easy or facile. And one of the things we're jumping in really deeply today is what does it look like in settings where you might not be able to come to quick resolution or where conflict is deeply, deeply entrenched in a society. And what is the value of continuing to to work to bring peace in settings like that?
Patrick Mason (00:34)
Yeah, exactly. I think sometimes we want to point to the heroic stories, the the big victories with I love me, some civil rights movement, know, or or Gandhi or something like that. and those are all great. Those are real stories, but there's also as as many, if not more, stories of people peace builders who are doing incredible work on the ground day after day after day, tirelessly, with faith, with hope, with patience and perseverance.
They don't win a Nobel Prize or they don't transform their society. They don't maybe things get worse, right? and so what what does it mean to be a peace builder, to try to bring people together when some of these conflicts are truly, you know, we we use the phrase sometimes intractable conflict. And not every conflict is intractable, but some are pretty darn close.
Jennifer Thomas (01:19)
Yeah. And and I think that's one of the reasons that the Old Testament has been such a rich resource for us this year is that I think it's allowed us to look at kind of conflicts in unique ways or also often what's laid out in the Old Testament are intractable conflicts that have that endured over time. And I think today we have a really unique lens that we are going to apply to conflict looking at both the story of Jonah and the book of Zechariah and asking, giving our listeners the opportunity to think about these scriptures very differently and think about I I think in ways that I sort of felt called to repentance. I was like, hey, I I had a new way of thinking about the story of Jonah and I'm I'm gonna carry that with me for a while, I think.
Patrick Mason (02:01)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, sneak preview. It's not just about the whale.
Jennifer Thomas (02:05)
It's not about the whale.
Patrick Mason (02:07)
And so yeah, I'm excited too. It's for me, some of my favorite episodes are where we have conversations about scriptures either that I've never really paid much attention to or or that like just shed a whole new light or perspective on on scriptures. And and I think that's certainly the case today.
Well it's my pleasure then to to introduce our guest and we're really grateful to to have him. Matthew Tueller is retired from a very distinguished career as a Foreign Service officer for the United States of America. He was an American diplomat who served literally for decades in the Middle East. He was US ambassador to Iraq, to Kuwait, to Yemen.
He served in multiple countries all across the the Middle East. I actually got to know Matt when we both lived in Egypt together. when I was teaching there and he was working in the embassy there, he was the number two at the embassy, and they opened their home to us and and to the young single adults in the area and and so forth. So we got to know each other and in the branch there. But Matt really I I sort of got to know this kind of later, that he was genuinely one of the most respected diplomats in the entire American Foreign Service. and and again served as U.S. ambassador to Iraq during a very pivotal and high conflict time with with the United States. So he's retired now and and and and lives in Utah. we're we're just really grateful that he's he would spend some time and come and and talk about his experiences and and how some of his insights were shaped by his reading of the Old Testament.
Patrick Mason (03:36)
Matthew Tueller welcome to the Proclaim Peace Podcast.
Matthew H Tueller (03:39)
it's good to be with you. Thank you for the invitation.
Patrick Mason (03:41)
Absolutely. Well, there's so much to talk about. I can't wait to dive in. But before we do that, we wanna ask you how it is that you define peace?
Matthew H Tueller (03:50)
Well, if I approach it from my professional background, of course, absence of war is one starting point. But I think as a diplomat often what you're doing is you're trying to use certain skills or methods to create a common ground, collective action, commonality of interest, with the idea being that acting collectively is always better than than acting alone. And so I think the more you have common ground as you approach life, as you approach problems, the more you will avoid the almost inevitable human tendency towards conflict.
Patrick Mason (04:22)
Nice. I like that a lot, the the the search for common ground. before we get into some of the specific topics and some of the scriptures, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about just your give us a little mini biography, in the sense of like how it was that you chose to enter public service and especially the the diplomatic core.
and and where that you we could be here for an hour just talking about, your professional experiences, but but just give us a sense, especially 'cause people think about, different forms of peace building, different avenues of of peace building. How is it that you chose to to to enter into the public service this way?
Matthew H Tueller (04:58)
My father was a foreign service officer, so along with my siblings, we grew up in a number of countries, Ireland, Austria, Morocco, Venezuela, Panama, Philippines, Spain. So moving around in those different cultures, I from a very young age thought that that was really not only intellectually challenging, but also would provide some some deeper meaning to life. So I was very interested in public service. And I think often growing up in that type of life, you almost automatically develop an outlook or a mindset that lends itself to effective diplomacy, what we often call third culture kids, an ability to stand outside and see both sides of a problem, to ask, well what would the other side say? How do they see that? I entered the Foreign Service with the State Department after finishing graduate school and spent really all of my career in one form or another within the portion of the State Department, the NEA Bureau that deals with with the Middle East, broadly the geographic region that spans from Morocco to Iran. So I served in multiple times in in Saudi Arabia, in Kuwait, in Egypt, in Yemen, Jordan, Qatar, and then quite a while in Iraq and so I think what I hope today to do is specifically talk about some of the experiences in Iraq, which I think most Americans will immediately associate Iraq as a place of of brutality, of conflict, and some of the worst of humanity. it was an honor, it was a privilege. one thing I want to caveat as I go into this: as a diplomat, you're not some sort of peace activist.
As a US diplomat, because we are a superpower with interest around the world, you often are trying to prevent conflicts that could drag the US into it. But my job as a US diplomat was to promote and advance US interest. If it made the US stronger, safer, more secure, that's what my job and what my oath of office involved. generally, that was pretty consistent with sort of seeking for for peace, but not always.
Jennifer Thomas (06:56)
So I actually really appreciate that you started with that tension because I I think it's really easy for us to be naive about what it takes to bring peace and and what particularly diplomacy is. And so I appreciate you sort of framing that for us. I also love the way you talked about third culture kids. I think that is potentially one of the best ways that you could describe what Patrick and I are trying to do with this podcast is we're trying to help people become third culture kids who are approaching the world and with a kind of a new eye and saying, Hey, why are people doing things the way they're doing and how can we be more curious about that and seek to bring find common ground. So I really appreciated that framing. But I want you to do exactly what you've just promised us to do and share with us a little bit about how your experience in the Middle East and particularly Iraq links to some of the texts that you're reading this year in the Old Testament and why you think that's relevant to this idea of peacemaking.
Matthew H Tueller (07:48)
Well, one of the scriptures I chose is the book of Jonah. And of course we all know Jonah and we associate him with the story of the of the great fish. But we know that he was sent off by the Lord to go to Nineveh. Now here I don't want to go down too much of a rabbit hole, but I I do want to talk about Mesopotamia and the empires that arose and fell, and particularly the significance of Assyria and Nineveh, and perhaps why it frames and makes this story of Nineveh so interesting, and perhaps why it would have had a different meaning to the people who first heard it than it it does to us today. Mesopotamia, of course, we know is the land of the two rivers, and it's a place of first, the the first cities, the first writing the first use of a lot of technology that enabled communities to be built. In fact, in the Nineveh is the area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent that is bordered on the north by the Zagros Mountains, and it's this tremendously fertile area. And ultimately as residents control that area, the amount of wealth available to them was just astonishing. Nineveh arose as the Assyrians who had had two previous iterations of building empires in what historians call the Neo-Assyrian Empire, and the first really sort of true empire that emerged out of Mesopotamia established its capital city on Nineveh. On the
west bank of the Tigris River, just near the foothills of the of the Zagros Mountains. It was the greatest city of its time, largest city. I think the archaeologists estimate that the wall that went around it was twelve kilometers. Present day Mosul, and we'll come back to Mosul for those who have followed at all, the history of our conflicts in Iraq and particularly the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and why Mosul became so important to the U.S. and so difficult to address in terms of peacemaking. But the Assyrians were a terror in the time. They were known as they had the first standing military. The militaries before generally were farmers who were called in to lend service during the period between harvest and planting. But they devised the technology of a standing army, of foot soldiers, of chariots. And of course that required taxation and it required continuous expansion in order to extract the resources needed to build and maintain this empire. The Syrians in a way were the first or a precursor not just of what we tend to think of as government in a nation state, but really sort of a totalitarian state. It was a state that controlled every aspect of people's lives.
Now where it comes up in the Old Testament, and for those who are reading in Isaiah or later in some of the scriptures after the dispersal of the defeat of Israel, it was the Assyrians who defeated Israel, the ten tribes, and did what they did to at least dozens, if not more, of other territories that they conquered. They took all of the leaders, the elite, the educated people, those with skills, and deported them. And dispersed them around in order to use them to good effect. And so that's hence we have the ten lost tribes. That was the Assyrians modus operande. they actually also attacked the kingdom of Judah and this is going to get a little obscure but the account of the Judean city of Lakesh is really interesting. It appears in the Old Testament and talks about how it was totally defeated and all the people killed and all of the things that that the Assyrians were known to do. But the archaeological remains of Lakish have been unearthed and it perfectly verifies the scriptural account. But what's really interesting, if you visit the British Museum in London or parts of the Baghdad Museum or areas where there were these friezes that decorated the palace. It actually also there are freezes that refer specifically to the defeat of Lakish and it shows the ramp being built that's described in the Old Testament account of the siege engines. It also has, and this decorated their palace, vivid images of the residents being impaled on stakes, of having their skin flailed, of having been decapitated and the heads mounted around, because part of the Assyrian methodology was this propaganda of terror, of to suppress any possible rebellion by terrorizing people as far as the consequences. Now as a footnote here, what happened with Jerusalem, we recall from the scriptural account, they actually also besieged Jerusalem and were preparing to take it when suddenly, at least in the account of of the kingdom of Judah, the angel of death hit the tribe and a large number of the Assyrian army investing the city of Jerusalem fell ill and they marched up and and left. And of course much of a lot of Isaiah is dealing with these tensions of you're trying to turn to Egypt in order to deter this great threat that's coming from Assyria. All right, so the Assyrians were this terror. They were truly the bad people, the worst people of of the day. There was nobody imaginably worse than the Assyrians.
Patrick Mason (12:51)
There were there were reasons for people in Israel and Judah to to be scared of them, right? And and to think of them as evil.
Matthew H Tueller (12:58)
Right. And also what we see in a lot of the efforts of the prophets, including Isaiah, is warning the people against some of the bad decisions on the part of the political leaders who thought that they could maybe make arrangements, deter, make alliances. There was just no dealing with the evil of the Assyrians. So let me turn to the book of Jonah. I kind of like Jonah and let me just suggests that one way of reading Jonah, and perhaps one that y you haven't encountered before, is actually to read it as political satire, something the writer maybe the Voltaire of the day with Jonah playing the part of Candide. it's darkly funny in a way. Here is this so-called prophet, a figure that you're supposed to revere and respect, and as soon as he gets a commandment from the Lord to go to Nineveh, well he turns in exactly the opposite direction.
And takes off to escape that. And he later reveals that the reason he left was not because he was fearful of going to Nineveh and how his message might be received, but because he was afraid that the Lord was actually going to do what the Lord eventually did, which was cause repentance amongst the people of Nineveh. And Jonah just couldn't countenance that. So that's why he fled in the first place. Then we get this really, really strange story after he is sent back to Nineveh and shows up and in chapter three delivers an eight word sermon to the city and the people repent and the king orders them all to put on ashes and fast and and and Jonah is just we we learn he's appalled by this, that they've actually repented and the Lord isn't going to destroy them.
Jennifer Thomas (14:25)
So can I just ask, he is so horrified by these people and sees them as so evil are you saying that the fact that repentance is going to be extended to them just feels to him wrong and he doesn't want to be a part of it?
Matthew H Tueller (14:36)
Wrong part of it. Wrong he doesn't want it. He does not he wants to see these he he wants he wants to pre he wants fireballs flying out of the sky and destroying the city of Nineveh. Now you want them to have a path of grace,
Jennifer Thomas (14:48)
He does not want them to have a path of grace, right? Because they've been enemies, right?
Matthew H Tueller (14:53)
right? Nineveh will eventually be destroyed, but not now and not as a result of Jonah. So then continuing my view that perhaps this is meant to be sort of political satire aimed at the pieties and arrogance of the political and religious leaders of Judah, who are so comfortable in the sense that we are the chosen people.
Jennifer Thomas (15:15)
We are the righteous ones.
Matthew H Tueller (15:17)
Our God is the most powerful God, we're better than everybody else. And Jonah, the story, in a way, exposes that. Because after the people of Nineveh repent, he goes out and he sits in a funk on the hillside.
Jennifer Thomas (15:30)
He's bummed. Yeah.
Matthew H Tueller (15:31)
Really, really angry. Now the Lord in some show of compassion or mercy allows a plant to come up and provides him some shade. And for a while he's happy with that, until the Lord sends a worm that destroys the plant. Jonah is really it's adding injury to the insult and this plant that was shading him is is taken away, and the easterly wind comes up and and bakes him as he's sitting over looking out over the the city of Nineveh. And I've been there, I've been on all these hills, I've visited the city many times. I know how hot and unpleasant the plains of Nineveh can get. But then the Lord comes to him, and it's that last verse that I sort of throughout to you is suggested something to read from. where the Lord says, And should I not spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein there are more than six score thousand people, cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand, and also much cattle. And the Lord is saying, Here are these people, many of them just innocent people, children, animals.
Jennifer Thomas (16:29)
They're not responsible. Yeah.
Matthew H Tueller (16:31)
Now what I find so compelling about this story, and I like other parts in the scriptures, where there's an unanswered question, the story ends there with a question from the Lord. And why I find that compelling is when you have that unanswered question, it's an invitation on the part of the Lord to hold a mirror up to yourself. there are other accounts that I think have similar appeal to me in terms of that. I think about the woman taking in adultery or after the Savior is sort of told people he who has wrought sinned through the then the Lord busies himself doodling the sand and in that silence those people are invited to look at themselves and consider whether they are in a position to condemn this woman. And when the Savior finally looks up and sees they've all gone, says, Where are are they? And then he says, Neither do I condemn thee, go thy way and sin no more. Or the parable of the prodigal son. Prodigal son is also a parable that ends on an unanswered question.
After all this, the older son who's come out of the party angry and upset and feeling that this is just isn't right that his younger brother has and the father says, Won't you come inside and join? And then it ends. We don't know what the what the son ultimately did, just as we don't know what Jonah's answer is. So the Lord presents to Jonah this question that in a sense is a trap. either way that Jonah answers it.
He's either answering it, yeah, go ahead and destroy them, and saying you've shown compassion and mercy to me, but you shouldn't show it to these to others. Or he says, No, you should not destroy them, and then it exposes his own hypocrisy and his his true feelings. So the the space that we're allowed to have in these questions, and it goes back to my sense of what that third culture kid opportunity is is to look from outside and consider hold the mirror up to yourself. What are your own cognitive biases? What are the things that you are bringing to the table that are perhaps are you willing? The Lord's question is to accept that his compassion extends to people that you think should be punished, that you think should be destroyed, that you hate.
Jennifer Thomas (18:40)
And and in I think all of the questions you've listed, are you willing to see the deep value in the people on the other side of that question? Whether it's the people of Nineveh, whether it's woman in adultery, whether it's the prodigal son, are you willing to see that those people are as valuable to me as you are and they are as worthy of my love as you are? Which I think is hard when especially when you're in enmity with that person.
Matthew H Tueller (19:04)
Well and and for those who are receiving this this story, there could have been no more straw man set up than Assyrians, that are are you willing, should I not spare Nineveh the question from the Lord.
Patrick Mason (19:17)
Yeah, and I I love the way you frame that because I think that's exactly right. In terms of the way that it it reverberates back to us, right? at at the end of the story, it's not about Jonah at all. it's it's it's about our response to this. We're invited to to put ourselves in that in that place. And it anticipates what Jesus is gonna teach, you know, in the Sermon on the Mount in terms of love your enemies.
Sometimes as Christians we've said that so many times that that we forget how radical that is. But but that means like, do you love Nineveh? What whatever the Nineveh is in in your mind, in your conceptualization, in your real experience. I mean, I like you said, the the Assyrians were genuinely bad. It it
Jennifer Thomas (19:53)
This isn't imaginary. Yeah.
Patrick Mason (19:54)
wasn't just like another political party that had different ideas about tax rates or or something like that. I mean, they did horrific things, truly evil things in terms of their treatment of other human beings.
Can your conceptualization of God's compassion extend towards that? We might say like Nazis, or you know, you know, we'll we'll talk more about your experience, Al-Qaeda, or terrorists, or other things like that. Does God's compassion stretch that far? I mean, that's that that's actually a pretty radical question that the God is asking Jonah there. So how do you, Matt, I mean, you let's so let's fast forward to your experiences. You says you've you said you visited this place many times, surely you reflected on this. It it it probably made your work in Iraq even more meaningful to to think about these are these are lands where these conversations have have been happening literally for millennia. what did that mean for you to to think about this story in light of some of your experiences in in Mosul and and Northern Iraq?
Matthew H Tueller (20:43)
Okay. Well, of course, I hate to sort of bra you know, paint with a broad brush when it comes to cultures and civilizations. But the fact is, is in the Middle East, in the Arab countries, each country sort of holds others up to certain stereotypes and says, you know, this what Egyptians are and
Patrick Mason (21:11)
That's only in the Middle East. That doesn't happen anywhere else. Right.
Jennifer Thomas (21:12)
Yeah, we don't do that here at all. Yeah.
Matthew H Tueller (21:15)
But in the Middle East, Iraqis are known as being brutal and violent and very fearful. And of course it comes out of this culture of Mesopotamia where literally you said millennia of the nature of the geography and the land and the landscape shaping the people and and the neighborhoods, just constant conflict. It really is a history and up until the Assyrians and when we get to Zechariah, I'm suddenly going to introduce the reason Zechariah is important because some people from outside of Mesopotamia, in this case the Persians, have come and given comeuppance to the Babylonians, who had destroyed Jerusalem and carried the people of the kingdom of Judah. But Nineveh is this critically important area that in twenty fourteen, after we had initially withdrawn our military presence from Iraq, led to the country suddenly falling into a crisis that perhaps could have and should have been foreseen, as remnants of Saddam's regime allying themselves with Sunni Arabs who felt that they in the new government that was emerging were going to be subjected to a Shia religiously colored regime. And of course they knew what they had done to the Shia, and so they were quite fearful that this would now be done to them.
Jennifer Thomas (22:31)
Fearful turnabout would be fair play. Yeah.
Matthew H Tueller (22:35)
And and with with good reason. the non-Arabs and of course when you talk about Iraq most people say okay there's the Shia and Sunni Arabs and then there are the Kurds as non non-Arabs. But the Nineveh Plain and Iraq as a whole, but particularly Nineveh, the province of Nineveh, Mosul is the present-day capital city of that province in the Nineveh Plain, is populated by Christians, by Yazidis, by Shabak, by Kakai, by Turkoman, and just this wild diversity of ethnic and religious groups that all constantly are playing sort of this multi-dimensional chess.
And how they survive within the context of a politics that has always been dominated by the need to oppress and fear and do to the other before they do to you. This, you know, deterrence generally doesn't work because there's this preemptive mode of the violence. ISIS swept across that in the vacuum created after our departure and very quickly seized a tremendous swath of territory that they governed in northern Syria and northern Iraq and made Mosul the capital of the Islamic caliphate. I don't want to go into too much detail about just sort of how of cruel and oppressive this was, but it was it was horrible in terms of the human rights impact and particularly some of the groups that were most vulnerable, Christians and the Christian villages of the Nineveh plain were depopulated, many having to flee into the Kurdish region where Kurdish regional government provided them haven. But I want to talk particularly about the Yazidis. they may not sound familiar to you, but it's quite an important group, a religious ethnic group in headquartered in in northern Iraq. they are a monotheistic religion, but they're accused by Muslims and others of being devil worshippers simply because their main they have seven angels that they worship. they are the ultimate other in terms of sort of a group that always has been sort of repeatedly subjected to oppression, slavery, genocide and and every sort of imaginable atrocity.
And Sinjar, if that is familiar to you, not not just the town of Sinjar, but the mountain of Sinjar in the mountain range that runs across that part of the Nineveh plain into northern Syria. And as Sinjar was overrun and occupied by ISIS, probably about two hundred, two hundred and fifty thousand Yazidis had to flee from that area and found themselves dispossessed, many, many being killed.
We are still unearthing mass graves around Sinjar. I think that up to now, eight to seven thousand recovered in mass graves, but many, many more because all of the men, young boys and others were were killed. The women were taken into sexual servitude. ISIS fighters were able to have the Yazidi women as sexual slaves because they were not people of the book and so they weren't protected or granted the privileges that otherwise would have been afforded to them had they been Muslim, Christian, or or Jewish. Even today, and this is now twelve years since Sinjar was overrun, there's still thousands of Yazidi women who are probably still being held in strongholds of of ISIS in some of the camps that they escaped to in northern Syria. one of the tragedies of this of course is that these women even if they were ultimately liberated as we defeated ISIS in various area areas and they fled. If they had
Jennifer Thomas (26:01)
Didn't have anywhere to go.
Matthew H Tueller (26:02)
nowhere to go, particularly if they had children, because under the Yazidi religious provisions and the religious leadership would not accept these children into the Yazidi community. Their fathers were not Yazidi. Germany has taken many hundreds of these women in, but I was for a variety of reasons, we had strategic reasons to try to stabilize the Nineveh Plain, and we were in competition with Iran, which wanted to use its Shia-affiliated militias in order to depopulate those areas, particularly the Yazidis, Christians, Kurds and others, because Iran was seeking to establish strategic lines of communication across the Nineveh Plain into Syria so that they could maintain their strategic support for Syria at that time an ally.
And then Lebanon, their really important stronghold on the Mediterranean. So we were locked in a strategic battle with with Iran in terms of this. But we were also deeply involved in a humanitarian crisis. I prioritized a lot of our efforts, and when I say I did, let me make clear that I was conducting an orchestra of dozens, if not hundreds, of US government officials.
Who were involved in all aspects of trying to work on the issues that flowed from this humanitarian crisis. We could not get many of the Yazidis who were sitting in refugee camps and I'd visit these refugee camps. They could not return to their places in Sinjar. And the reasons were complex. And if you started pulling one thread, another one would come out. They couldn't return because there was no security.
Because security was not in the hands of the federal Iraqi government. It was in the hands of these very religious extremist Iranian aligned militias. There were no jobs available for them, there was no infrastructure, the federal government was not providing schools, there was no medical care, there was no municipal services in Sinjar or elsewhere. I spent days sometimes in some of these camps, Sheikhan camp outside of the Kurdish region, and sitting with a family where the father just clearly deeply, deeply depressed because he was not able to provide for his family, couldn't do anything, he'd been a farmer. two of the children both suffered from severe cases of cerebral palsy and the oldest son, who was sort of my interpreter and guide during the day, I asked him what he wanted to do in his life and he said he wanted to be a medical doctor.
And yet he was living in a camp where he wasn't even getting primary education. So as the US government, we were doing everything we could. But we were also trying again to go back to what diplomacy about is often these problems require collective action. You need non-governmental organizations, you need international organizations, you need governments who are supportive. The Turkish government did not want to see some of these problems solved because elements of the Yazidi militia were aligned with the PKK, a Turkish Kurdish terrorist group. Syria, of course, in northern Syria was in the hands of a separate Kurdish Syrian Democratic Alliance that we supported, but they did not want to accept these people or help them. The Kurdish government in northern Iraq, divided between the Kurdish parties in Erbil and Sulaimaniyyah, all had their own agendas.
The truth of the matter is, and in saying this part now, I don't want to say it in a way of rolling my eyes, but maybe a little bit of a lift of an eyebrow is even the Yazidis suffered from deep internal divisions, and these were often exploited by their opponents. Their religious leadership was in direct competition all the time with their political leadership. The religious leadership was the Baba Sheikh. The prince of the Yazidis, the political leader was the Emir. I would meet with them and I would engage in endless conversations to say, we can help if you will simply do this.
But they couldn't find themselves ways to cooperate to act collectively between the two of them. I will say, and I should make mention of Nadia Murad, one of the Yazidi women who was trafficked, sexually managed to escape, founded Nadia's appeal and won a Nobel Prize. so if you ever if people are interested or want to look, how do you help Yazidis, particularly the woman Nadia's appeal, does an awful lot of good work. a group of independent Yazidis, many based in Europe, formed an organization called Yazda, again to commemorate the genocide and try to build up community strength so it wouldn't happen again. Now I'm only mentioning the Yazidis because that's one little slice of this. There were other groups. I've talked about Kurds and Shabaks and Kakis and all of these groups that are subjected to this. But I'll have to say that I it's almost indescribable at times what you would see in terms of how people can treat other people, the things they will do to each other if allowed to. And in fact if the incentives are such that to actually prevent, as the Assyrians did, a province rising up against you or a governor or a son or brother threatening you, the best way to do it is preemptive violence and the totalitarian use of of fear and intimidation in order to maintain authority.
Jennifer Thomas (31:01)
So these feel like they're I think you've just done such an amazing job of helping us understand deeply entrenched political realities. And I think that for many of us, while we've lived in a culture that is not perfect, and certainly has its own history of violence, we haven't lived with that same level of, you know, the only way that I can move through the world is to exact vengeance or, you know, hit first before I get hit. but I think most of us worry that we're moving probably in the wrong direction in that regard. And so I would just love for you to tell us how do you feel like what lessons did you learn about what good people in those communities can do to sort of alter the course of events and and to, you know, do small acts of repair matter? And how can they move to sort of alter the course of events and and to you know, do small acts of repair matter and how can they move towards incremental societal change and push us in the right direction away from this level of
Matthew H Tueller (32:00)
Yeah. And the truth is is there are good people. And there are people who, you know,
Jennifer Thomas (32:02)
Yeah, I'm sure you met many.
Matthew H Tueller (32:04)
they are for whatever reason compelled, sometimes even risking their own lives or or or the lives of their family, to do something about what they see around them. and they are able to look beyond that identification that that limbic system in the brain that we love to get tickled that says, my tribe, my people, and I want people that that hate that hate
Jennifer Thomas (32:24)
My people, my war, yeah.
Matthew H Tueller (32:27)
those other people better than than than somebody else. And it was always wonderful to encounter those people. And I mentioned Nadia Murad and others who who were doing that. And there were also some political leaders who found ways to try to straddle the divides. not often successfully, given the realities of how sort of you know in in in the Middle East often these games it's it's all in. you know, there's no sort of half and half.
Jennifer Thomas (32:55)
Mm-hmm.
Matthew H Tueller (32:56)
So the lessons I learned often were these people who had the ability, and it always humbled me to see that they could practice some of these skills that I over forty years as a diplomat had work to try to to perfect through long years of apprenticeship as a diplomat. It's it goes much deeper than just saying, okay, I'm not going to do these things that might offend my host.
Jennifer Thomas (33:19)
Not gonna step on the crack, right?
Matthew H Tueller (33:21)
It's that ability to examine your own cognitive biases and see how am I reading or understanding what's going on around me. And it's so meaningful when you encounter somebody else who has that, if you are working and trying to perfect that in yourself. It's almost as though in in the midst of somewhere where you're totally at lost and you find somebody who speaks your language. And so diplomacy is often about trying piece by piece.
Finding those individuals, those communities, and stitching them together so that again what I refer to diplomacy is often really about trying to act collectively against the instincts to act in the interest of a more narrow identity that you might have. And believe me, in the Middle East and particularly in Iraq and in Nineveh, these narrow identities, I haven't talked much about the Christian communities, but I spent a lot of time with trying to bring back some of those Christian communities that had been dispersed.
Now I should say of all of the people perhaps that I worked with that I found left me more humbled in terms of saying, here's a man who speaks this language of being able to hold a mirror up and and look was up until earlier this year when he stepped down, well deserved, but the Chaldean patriarch and the Chaldean Church is in full communion with Rome and so he had been elevated earlier by Pope Francis to be a cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church, so Cardinal Luis Sacco, who stepped down in March of this year. When I considered the 50 years in which he served in the priesthood, what he had seen, and the tragedy that he saw to his own community, because these Christian churches in Iraq are deeply, deeply tied to the land.
Jennifer Thomas (35:10)
Yeah, and hundreds and thousands of years old, I assume, right?
Matthew H Tueller (35:13)
Well they are some of the earliest Christian communities and their histories can get complex and we won't get into all of that. But he would sit and lament with me and say, Matt, what does it mean to be a Chaldean in San Diego? what does it mean to be a Chaldean in the the parents, even the first generation? But what about the third generation, the fourth, if they are no longer tied to the land in Nineveh that has been where their origins and all of their history and their their leaders and their prophets done. and he was mourning this, but he had this ability also to see sort of the forces at play. So I love the fact that there were people like that and the opportunity to work with them. And again, as a diplomat, since you're often trying to piece together or apply a little layer of paint on something and then another and another and watching it dry and working on it. And this maybe transitions into the other scripture that I offered from from Zechariah, which is take take pleasure in some of the small things. Don't don't discount small accomplishments. My own experience with diplomacy was pretty much every day ends in disappointment or failure until it doesn't. But you have to be willing to sit in there day after day after day, sometimes year after year, sometimes decade after decade, to try to see whether you might make or something might make a difference.
Patrick Mason (36:40)
And and and isn't that the the the role we've we've talked about this before on the podcast, but I think this conversation puts an even finer point on it in terms of the role of of faith and hope and trust and patience, right? These these virtues as the that the peacemakers have to exert because we love to point to the successes, we love to point to to the places, the times and and ways that it worked. but but as you said, oftentimes it's just applying another coat of paint that somebody may scribble on or chip away at tomorrow. I w but before we end, and as as we move towards wrapping up, you you mentioned to to me in in a conversation, you said that there's a there's a passage from Zechariah eight that you think is about as good a a description of diplomacy as any other you know. So so again, I mean Zechariah is not a book of scripture I spend a lot of time thinking about. so so any any light that you can shed on the book of Zechariah would be terrific.
Matthew H Tueller (37:36)
Zechariah is a prophet who, again, in looking at this history of Mesopotamia, we know that Jerusalem was sacked by the Babylonians. They were taken off, destroyed. King Hezekiah had his sons and courtiers put to death in front of him, all except maybe Mulek, if you follow the Book of Mormon account.
And then he had his eyes put out. And they were carried off into Babylon and had this long period of exile. Then something happened in Mesopotamia. For the first time, a power from outside Mesopotamia, in this case the Persians, led by Cyrus, came in and overthrew the Babylonians. And we know that the fall of the Babylonians, which again fulfilling some of the prophecies of Jeremiah and others that are in the Old Testament.
Zechariah is at the tail end of a group of minor prophets, or in some cases, I don't know whether you would count Nezrah and Nehemiah actually as prophets. But these are individuals who are involved in bringing this exile destroyed community back and saying, How do we bring back this community and rebuild it? And how do we rebuild Jerusalem? How are we going to be these walls? They have these wonderful experiences where they suddenly find scriptures, for example, in the ruins of the
They say, we didn't know we had these scriptures. Look at this. We didn't know about this.
Jennifer Thomas (38:50)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, there's this whole narrative we missed, right?
Patrick Mason (38:51)
Right. That's where Josiah comes in.
Matthew H Tueller (38:56)
And and so Zechariah is coming at the tail end of this. He's about 20 or 30 years maybe after Nehemiah. And the work of rebuilding Jerusalem is kind of ground to a halt. Not just the physical work, but the people are demoralized, discouraged. This is a lot harder than we thought it was going to be. And so he's coming back, and in a way his message is, if there's one scripture in Zechariah that probably many scripture Christians are familiar with, it's I think in in chapter nine where he prophesies your king will come to you riding upon an ass. And of course that's alluded to in the New Testament in terms of Christ's triumphant entry into Jerusalem, the city that Zechariah is is working to rebuild in terms of where I find a message within Zechariah that goes to the heart of what you're doing as a diplomat, again, how do you establish this trust with with somebody who is the other? How do you bridge these cultural divides? the other the enemy often.
Jennifer Thomas (39:52)
Mot just the other, the enemy often, right? Like you're moving into spaces where people have done each other great harm.
Matthew H Tueller (39:58)
Really, and and of course that's the point of diplomacy and in time in Iraq and I can't or won't speak much about it, but I was actually sitting down frequently in Iraq with with Iranian officials where we had some back channel communications, and these were people that during the day they were actively trying to kill me. I was targeted repeatedly by by Iranians or their affiliated groups.
And yet I would sit down with representatives and we would try to work out because often in diplomacy, what you're doing, we talk about confidence-building measures. Can we test each other out on this? Can we talk about a prisoner exchange? Can we talk about this? Or if you can't talk about little tiny things, are the ways in which you can expand the set of problems and talk about it and expand it and talk about bigger, larger strategic issues that go beyond the ones that you're dealing with. In verse sixteen of Zechariah. And this is randomly cherry picking a a message. There's an awful lot in here that I find useful. But he says, these are the things that ye shall do. Speak ye every man the truth to his neighbor. Execute the judgment of truth and peace in your gates. You know, there's sometimes a little bit of a a a slur that, you know, diplomats are I think it was a British politician that in his cynical definition said a diplomat is a person who's sent abroad to lie for his country.
Jennifer Thomas (41:15)
As opposed to die, right?
Matthew H Tueller (41:18)
The truth is nothing could be more wrong. Your value as a diplomat lies completely in your ability to be absolutely truthful.
To the extent that you are not able to truthfully and accurately convey what the position of your government and how you see a different problem and have your interlocutor, who may be your enemy, convey back how they see it, it all resides on trusting that you can be truthful. The moment if I as a diplomat was perceived as being dishonest or duplicitous, my value as a diplomat was vanished.
Nobody was interested in my thoughts, my feelings. It was only could I accurately and effectively convey truthfully how the US would proceed in an issue or intended to proceed or what our values were. I've talked a lot about culture so far, and of course culture goes so deep, we we sometimes aren't aware that we are part of a culture. And in fact in the United States, we are even part of many. subcultures and the ability to have to step outside and perceive that and see what are the biases that I am bringing to this and how can I convey to my neighbor or enemy that these are my values, the things I perceive. This is how I am adjudicating this, and whether it's arising out of religion and history and how you tell yourself your history, all of these things that make up culture. But Zechariah is saying, Speak truth to your neighbor and execute the judgment of truth and peace in your gates. He goes on to say, Let none of you imagine evil in your hearts against his neighbor. Don't assume the worst about your neighbor. Don't want evil against him. Now this is really hard. And this was hard for Jonah to to accept. It was hard for the older son and the prodigal son. It is the Christian message.
And it's it's challenging. Can we overcome what is so d deeply valuable to us, how much we enjoy having that part of our brain tickled. We want to click on the message that watch so and so get obliterated in this congressional healing, watch this interview that is that is pandering to this bassist part of us. And Zechariah's message as he's struggling to rebuild the community in Jerusalem. And we know how important it was to have Jerusalem reestablished because it was going to become so important in terms of the Lord's plan and the mill the millennial mission of of the Savior. He says this all relies on speaking truth to your neighbor and don't imagine evil of your neighbor.
Jennifer Thomas (44:01)
So I was gonna ask a question to close us out, but I think you've answered it. Cause my curiosity what I was curious about is what would be the one piece of advice you'd give to our listeners about how they can can be good diplomats or be great peacemakers. And I think you've just used Zechariah to just beautifully establish that. It's like first, don't imagine the worst of others. Be curious about them. Try to understand their perspective, where they're coming from and be genuinely interested in that. And then second, I think be honest and true about your own positions. Be honest and in your communications and be truthful so that you can be a good faith actor in in situations of conflict. So I think you've just cued that up so beautifully.
Matthew H Tueller (44:40)
Yeah, I'm glad you added that second part because again that's that unanswered question that the Lord leaves hanging for Jonah. Can you hold that mirror up to yourself and and look at yourself, are are you able to say this is what is causing me to
Jennifer Thomas (44:56)
What are my real motivations? Mm-hmm.
Matthew H Tueller (44:59)
feel this way, to act this way? Can I take that first step in examining my my own motives? And when I do that, am I willing to take that step and it's interesting that in Jonah there's such a Christian message. Am I willing to say that the Lord's compassion should extend to people who don't deserve it, who should be punished, who should have fireballs fall out of the sky and destroy their city?
Jennifer Thomas (45:23)
And and I think what the message of Jonah is that what Jonah needed to realize is that was probably true of him. That none of us are stand before God pure and and and you know with perfect access to his grace, but that we need to extend it to others, understanding that we too are deeply in need of it.
Patrick Mason (45:40)
So Matt, as we wrap up here, and there's so much more we could talk about, and I'm sure you have lots, not only insights, but also stories from from a long and distinguished career. But in the midst of all of this, either back then or or or now, I mean you've you've you've seen as as you said, some of the worst things that humans can do to each other. and now in your retirement, I mean, where and how do you find peace?
Matthew H Tueller (46:03)
Well i i in the gospel, the central message of the gospel, the good news, again if we hold a mirror up to ourselves honestly, we are so lacking, so undeserving, and yet the message is is that the Lord's willing to extend compassion to Ninevites, maybe there's room in that for me as well. And I think that is why it is the good news and why we can find peace in that is that there is always opportunity for repentance and for the Lord's mercy to be extended to to each and every one of us.
Jennifer Thomas (46:39)
That's beautiful. Well, thank you so much for joining us. We are so appreciative of you sharing your experience and wisdom with us and our listeners.
Patrick Mason (46:47)
Thanks very much, Matt. That was terrific.
Jennifer Thomas (46:55)
Thanks for listening to this episode of "Proclaim Peace." To hear more, you can subscribe on a podcast app of your choice or on YouTube. You can always find full show notes or transcriptions at proclaimpeace.org.
Patrick Mason (47:08)
"Proclaim Peace" is a partnership between MWEG and Waymakers. You can learn more about Waymakers at waymakers.us. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time.
