PublicChristian

Quotes from the e-newsletter I get from Information Clearing House.

… the United States, for generations, has sustained two parallel but opposed states of mind about military atrocities and human rights:
one of U.S. benevolence, generally held by the public,
and the other of ends-justify-the-means brutality sponsored by counterinsurgency specialists.
Normally the specialists carry out their actions in remote locations with little notice in the national press. That allows the public to sustain its faith in a just America, while hard-nosed security and economic interests are still protected in secret.
-Robert Parry, investigative reporter and author

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There’s a lot of hunger in Zimbabwe –
a lot of economic distress –
a lot of political violence –
and enormous corruption.

As an American woman walks to work she carries bread in her pack, and hands it out to the begging children she passes.

Hold your hand out, child,
hold your hand out and I’ll fill it
I know it’s not much, but will it do?

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I wonder …
Whether shadows of the dead sit somewhere
    and look with deep laughter
On men who play in terrible earnest the old, known,
    solemn repetitions of history?

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This is a pretty good “translation” of the Declaration, though she does have a couple of points of her own to emphasize that are not quite there in the original. I do recommend this for any and all who want a refresher on what the Founders were thinking as things got officially under way. (I added numbers to the list of offenses.)

Sometimes one group of people decides to split off from another group, and to become an independent country, as the laws of Nature and of God say that they can. But when this happens, if they want other people to respect them, they should explain why they are splitting off.

We think these things are obviously true:
That all men are created equal » Continue Reading »

It’s just simple truth. Of course we honor those who serve or have served in uniform. We honor them directly, and also we will insist that they be treated decently by the powers that send them into conflict. That is just elementary human decency.

We honor our war dead this Memorial Day weekend. The greatest respect we could pay them would be to pledge no more wars for erroneous and misleading reasons; no more killing and wounding except for the defense of our country and our freedoms.

We also could honor our dead by caring for the living, and do better at it than we are right now.

This is the lead-in to a Memorial Day article by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship (at Truthout).

Sen. Obama is certainly not quaking in fear of right-wing slander, like so many have for so many years. Today he answered Bush who the other day compared Obama to Hitler-appeasers of the 1930’s.

At about 2:45 into a clip of his speech Obama says,

If George Bush and John McCain want to have a debate about protecting America, that is a debate I’m happy to have … and that is a debate I will win, because George Bush and John McCain have a lot to answer for.

They do indeed. It seems to me we are living under a regime of war-makers, who have quickly and frequently lied to us to justify their behavior. In fact, we all know that – they have lied to us repeatedly and very publicly, often in direct support of their desire to spread war to yet more places on our planet.

But the New Testament » Continue Reading »

She was beautifully, delicately made,
So small, so unafraid,
‘Till the bomb came.
Bombs are the same,
Beautifully, delicately made.
– C. S. Lewis

The Senate proposal to allow debate on a resolution against escalation won 56-34. Clearly a majority of Senators are willing to talk openly about this escalation. But the motion needed 60 votes in this case, so the Republican minority were again able to protect themselves from a public airing of truth.

Nebraska State Paper reports that Sentor Ben Nelson (D-NE) spoke plainly about the effect of this Republican hypocrisy.

“… the United States Senate … has failed the American people. Blocking an up-or-down vote on this resolution prevents the Senate from expressing its opinion on the most pressing issue facing the nation: the proposed deployment of troops to the crossroads of civil war in Iraq.â€?

He noted Democrats had offered “several proposals to allow votes on different resolutions. All offers have been rejected. And now, again, the [Republican] minority has obstructed an up-or-down vote on the resolution passed by the House of Representatives yesterday.�

Nelson does have the ability to be explicit and clear.

“We owe it to the American people … to [make] clear that we do not support or that we do support putting our troops in harm’s way in the middle of a civil war or a war that is simply between Shias and Sunnis, Shias and Shias, and other civil groups within the community … We don’t have to understand 1,400 years of this battle to know that this is inappropriate to put our troops into the middle where it’s impossible to identify the enemy”

Here’s what the House actually passed [pdf, link fixed] yesterday, with the support of 17 Republicans.

Seems pretty straightforward to me.

It says they want to support the troops (in distinction to the behavior of the Republican-dominated House of recent years, which would not provide the armor and equipment the troops need, and the President who consistently cuts support for veterans’ programs).

And it says they disapprove of Bush’s escalation of this going-nowhere war.

Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That–

(1) Congress and the American people will continue to support and protect the members of the United States Armed Forces who are serving or who have served bravely and honorably in Iraq; and

(2) Congress disapproves of the decision of President George W. Bush announced on January 10, 2007, to deploy more than 20,000 additional United States combat troops to Iraq.

Not only is it straightforward – it is eminently sensible.

Now the Senate will take it up. Here’s Majority Leader Reid:

“Americans deserve to know whether their senator stands with the president and his plan to deepen our military commitment in Iraq, or with the overwhelming majority of Americans who oppose this escalation … Let us be clear: Anyone voting ‘no’ tomorrow (Saturday) is voting to give the president a green light to escalate the war.

During the first week of February, McCook NE (pop 8000) lost a 20-year-old guard specialist (post-humously promoted to Sgt) to an IED in Iraq. I wanted to try to put a little blame for that loss where it really belongs, but without dragging the young man or his family into it. Here is my letter to the editor as published about Feb 8.

If our leaders are going to take us to war, we justly demand that they meet some unavoidable basic standards. Absolute perfection is way too much to ask, but there are indispensable basics.

1. We need from them honesty, straightforwardness with us, accountability to us.

2. We need them to be extremely well-informed about what they are doing and why and how.

3. We need them to be very highly competent in all the related diplomacy, in the war-planning, and in overseeing the actual operations.

Our government has had these three opportunities to connect with the demands of reality. Unfortunately, what we’ve gotten from them is three strikes. In baseball, that would mean it’s somebody else’s turn.

A highwayman is as much a robber when he plunders in a gang
as when single;
and a nation that makes an unjust war
is only a great gang.

- Benjamim Franklin

Sometimes I worry a bit that I am so unwilling to support people who run for office as Republicans in today’s political environment. Am I being a bit bull-headed and inflexible?

Uhmmm.

No. I don’t think so.

I feel very strongly that they are getting just as much support from me as they have earned by their public (and private-becoming-public) behavior. They’ve given us law-breaking Presidents (several in the last few decades), and recently a flood of law-breaking White House officials, law-breaking Senate and House leadership, corrupt and indictable state government and state party officials all over the country. They treat us with contempt and dishonesty day after week after month after year. (While the so-called Christian Right stands worshipfully in the wings applauding – grrrrr!.)

Am I supposed to feel guilty for not supporting people who run for office in order to protect and increase the power these law-breakers hold? I think not.

Of course, I need not wax too vehement here. There are lots of Republicans who are feeling somewhat the same.

Here is Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel (a prominent Republican) saying it. He’s even hinting he would be willing to run for President as an Independent because he is so unenthusiastic about running as a Republican. I mean, hey, this guy is from Nebraska, where you practically have to show your Republican party ID card to join a church – any church!

These quotes are from CBS, January 21.

… as the new chairman of the Republican Party said in his acceptance speech two days ago, [the Republican Party] needs to get back to what it once stood for,” Hagel, a Vietnam veteran, continued. “The party that I first voted for on top of a tank in Mekong Delta 1968 is not the party I see today.”

… Earlier, Hagel said on C-SPAN that he would consider running for president as an independent, but he told Bob Schieffer that he will stay a Republican. What it means to be a Republican, he said, is what should change.

And he’s still being a thorn in the side of the Administration regarding its management of the occupation of Iraq and Bush’s intention to escalate our investment of young American lives over there – or at least he talks like a thorn in the side.

“I want every member of the United States Senate to have to take a position on this,” Hagel said. “We have kids dying every day.”

Even though Vice President Dick Cheney says talk of resolutions undercuts the troops, Hagel said he would have welcomed similar congressional action when he was fighting in Vietnam.

“We’re Article 1 of the Constitution,” he said. “We are a co-equal branch of government. Are we not to participate? Are we not to say anything? Are we not to register our sense of where we’re going in this country on foreign policy?

Bottom line is this. Our young men and women and their families, these young men and women who are asked to fight and die deserve a policy worthy of those sacrifices.”

Sad to say, I’m not as impressed with Hagel as many are. Seems to me he talks a lot better fight than we usually see him actually put up – and you have to wonder why.

Still, he does sometimes have a way with words! And we welcome whatever actions he takes, verbal or otherwise, in this cause of honesty and resistance.

Here are some thoughts from Maribeth Milner, copied with permission from a Democratic party listserve here in Nebraska.

First, she shares an idea from eastern Nebraska’s Congressman Fortenberry.

“Its important to not appear to be a supplicant to Iran, recognizing that nation’s aggressive influence in the Mideast and nuclear ambitions.”

Grrr! To talk to people with whom you have problems is NOT to “be a supplicant” to them. It’s just a common civilized approach to conflict-resolution, and a necessary step in efforts to avoid unnecessary war. It’s what grown-ups DO!

Then she writes her own reaction:

Never mind
that the Shia won the Iraq elections,
that they’ve implemented sharia (Shia) law in Iraq, and
that Iraq is now an ally of Shia run Iran.

Never mind
that Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapon,
that they are signatories of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (and are subject to inspections), and
that they are a few years away from running out of oil (will only have enough for domestic use).

Never mind
that Israel has at least 50 nuclear weapons,
that they are training to deploy nuclear bunker busters, and
that they are NOT signatories of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (i.e. NOT subject to inspections).

Never mind
that US military experts say there are no good military options in Iran,
that we couldn’t possibly succeed in destroying Iran’s underground facilities from the air [note... Israel bombed Iran several years ago so Iran went underground], and
that they encourage diplomacy instead (which has yet to begin).

Never mind
that we attacked an Iranian consulate in northern Iraq last week (which is an act of war), and
that military experts say one of the first things that will happen after we attack Iran is the fall of Baghdad.

So, instead of really considering our options, and their likely consequences, and conducting serious conversations across the board …

Enter 20,000 troops into Baghdad,
an admiral to oversee two desert wars and
a third carrier group into the area …

Where’s the outrage?

A real antiwar movement would end our Iraq disaster. But the middle class doesn’t care enough to protest, so the kids who go to community college will keep dying.

“The kids who go to community college” do not include the children of the elected and appointed officials who keep sending “kids” into this quagmire – cauldron. They have the money to avoid both community colleges and wars.

It’s the time of year we especially remember Dr. Martin King. We often forget how very anti-war he was about our mess in Vietnam. It stands to reason he would be at least as vocal against our invasion and attempted occupation of Iraq. And he was the kind of guy who would care particularly about “the kids who go to community college.”

Wow. Two on the same page.

The McCook Daily Gazette (my hometown paper, on Thu Jan 11) ran an op-ed critical of Bush’s escalation in Iraq that said, among other things,

“It’s unacceptable.” [to many groups in our country]

“And still he [Bush] fails to listen.”

And the editorial that day used a headline tying Bush’s war to Vietnam, and pointed out that support of the troops does not necessarily mean we support the President.

“Regardless of the president’s action, we must support troops.”

Yup.

And she (Shary Skiles, the editor) quotes both Nebraska US Senators speaking out against the escalation (Ben Nelson and Chuck Hagel).

Here’s a letter to the editor I wrote in response.

Dear Editor,

Thanks to Gloria Masoner (”Glory Daze,” Jan 11) for telling it like it is about Bush’s plans to escalate our war in Iraq.

She’s right. It’s unacceptable for Bush to put more young Americans in harm’s way “to make up for the mistakes he admits are his own.” It’s unacceptable for him to refuse to face facts, to refuse to listen to good counsel.

You support the troops by understanding what they are being asked to do, under what circumstances, and why, and by holding accountable those who give them their orders. We ARE supporting the troops when we question those who deploy them thoughtlessly or dishonestly.

And thanks to the Gazette for the editorial that day which also stressed the importance of supporting and honoring “the troops and their families during deployment, and again when the troops return home.”
If we support the troops we concern ourselves about when and how (and how often) they are being used. We also watch carefully how they are treated when they come home. This administration has practiced very poorly that kind of real support of our troops, and needs to be called on it.

Larry Harvey, McCook

I guess I’m stuck on this Bush escalation-disaster for a while.

Juan Cole, whose blog, Informed Comment, is a very reputable source of information about what is happening in the middle east, weighs in bluntly on Bush’s speech Wednesday night.

Bush Sends GIs to his Private Fantasyland

To listen to Bush’s speech on Wednesday, you would imagine that al-Qaeda has occupied large swathes of Iraq with the help of Syria and Iran and is brandishing missiles at the US mainland.

That the president of the United States can come out after nearly four years of such lies and try to put this fantasy over on the American people is shameful.

Stubborness, dishonesty, and sending thousands to their deaths – it is indeed shameful.

11 Rescue those being led away to death;
hold back those staggering toward slaughter.

12 If you say, “But we knew nothing about this,”
does not he who weighs the heart perceive it?
Does not he who guards your life know it?
Will he not repay each person according to what he has done?

from Proverbs 24

So from the speech tonight we learn that our President has a new and improved strategy for our occupation of Iraq – escalation. If you’re old enough, this only continues to be sickeningly reminiscent of our “Vietnam era.”

Scripture offers some wise insights now as then.

A wise son heeds his father’s instruction,
but a mocker does not listen to rebuke.
Proverbs 13:1

And now, unlike then, some of the advisors and close associates of the physical father of this President have warned him away from the road he is enslaving himself to.

A man who remains stiff-necked after many rebukes
will suddenly be destroyed—without remedy.
Proverbs 29:1

We see him stiff-necked and wooden-headed – the march of folly enacted futilely and infuriatingly right before our eyes.

With apologies to you who highly regard Oliver North, I have to say he is one of the least respected people on my list. But now he has done something respectable in a column for Human Events.

Human Events is a publication I do not recommend to you if you are interested in facts or in moral sensibility. But when the guy is right on such an important issue even when he has to oppose the President and his neo-cons – and even if Human Events is the place where he published his remarks – then it’s worth noting. [Thanks to SusanG at kos, and ThinkProgress.org for the links.]

North is talking about what he heard from top American officers and non-commissioned officers on a recent trip to Iraq.
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Robert Parham over at Ethics Daily seems pretty sure that turning Iraqi Muslims into “Christians” will not solve the problems the world faces over there.

Converting Muslims to Christianity is not the key to stability in Iraq, converting American Christians to Christianity is.

Unfortunately many US Christians have put their hope in military violence and (forced?) conversion of Muslims to Christianity.

They seem to think that if only those foreign unbelievers knew about Jesus and Christmas and “peace on earth good will to men” we wouldn’t be having these problems. If we have to invade them and force them into the right way, so be it.

pro-crusade Christians baptized the invasion as a Christian one with numerous photographs of military baptismal tanks, camouflaged Bibles and combat-fatigued soldiers in worship

Of course soldiers should be free to worship. If they want Bibles they should probably be camoflaged. But that very many churches and Christians “baptized the invasion as a Christian one” is clearly true. And it was a profoundly false and offensive baptism. It is blasphemous against Jesus and the Father Jesus taught us to worship.

The death and chaos we have thoughtlessly brought to their land is in practice a powerful hatred toward our “neighbors” in the Middle East whom we are supposed to be loving as we love ourselves.

The problem with this view is American Christians themselves. In America everyone knows about the birth of Jesus Christ and the accompanying message of peace on Earth. That knowledge is inescapable, especially at Christmas. But that knowledge hasn’t changed the bloodlust of the Christian Right, who see America as the Christian nation that it is not and violence as a missionary strategy that it isn’t.

The old standard, “let the Church be the Church,” is a very appropriate one. I have to agree with Parham. If American Christians were more Christian, Iraqi and other non-Christians would be much better off – and maybe even somewhat attracted to a more holy, more honest, more helpful kind of Christianity.

The knowledge of Jesus Christ hasn’t turned fundamentalists, evangelicals, Catholics, mainline Protestants and quasi-church attendees from their self-righteous commitment to holy war … Why do some American Christians think that converting others to Christianity would do for non-Christians what it hasn’t done for them?

I know it’s exceedingly uncool to make any allusions to the Nazi era in Germany while discussing the current American administration. That is an uncoolness I have been guilty of more than once, and have been called on more than once.

But I’m not the only one you know. Just recently (Dec 1) Robert Fisk in The Independent made an unusual type of reference to Hitler with a very blatant Bush connection. Here’s his headline.

Like Hitler and Brezhnev, Bush is in denial

And here’s the question.

More than half a million deaths, an army trapped in the largest military debacle since Vietnam, a Middle East policy already buried in the sands of Mesopotamia – and still George W Bush is in denial. How does he do it? How does he persuade himself … that the United States will stay in Iraq “until the job is complete”? The “job” – Washington’s project to reshape the Middle East in its own and Israel’s image – is long dead …

» Continue Reading »

Here’s Abraham Lincoln, watching Union troops salute him as they march by in review. This speaks for itself.

Tall Lincoln reviews
Endless columns crunching across new snow.
They pass uncheering at the marching-salute.
Lincoln sits on his horse with his farmer’s seat,
Watching the eyes go by and the eyes come on.
The gaunt, long body is dressed in its Sunday black,
The gaunt face, strange as an omen, sad and foreboding.
The eyes look at him, he looks back at the eyes;
They pass and pass. They go back to their camps at last.
“So that was him,” they say.

» Continue Reading »

How bizarre. A woman in Colorado was threatened with $1000 worth of fines for having a Christmas wreath on the front of her house in the shape of a peace symbol.

Yes, I guess I can see that. Celebration of the season where we stress “Peace on Earth” should not be made controversial by advocating radical political notions – like, you know, peace on our earth in our day.

Here’s another good one from A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan.

After our short war against Spain in the late 1890’s, there was much controversy over the idea of imperialistic US expansion in the Philippines. The pious President McKinley argued, with most of those in his party (the Republicans) that we had an obligation to “Christianize” and “civilize” the inhabitants of the Philippines.

Bryan kept denouncing conquest as a form of grand larceny and wrote in the [Omaha] World-Herald that “preach[ing] the gospel to every creature” does not include “a Gatling gun attachment.”

Conquest is grand larceny.

Preaching the Gospel is not done well with instruments of mass killing.

What interesting ideas William Jennings Bryan had!

[See prior post on Bryan, "A Rigorously Christian Liberal"]

The ad we linked to a few days ago is scaring the US Senators who have voted for whatever Bush wants but voted AGAINST protecting our troops. They should be scared.

So there are counterattacks against the truthfulness of the ad. But here’s how it really is, thanks to MediaMatters.org (More recent article here)

AZ Republic, FactCheck.org lobbed misleading claims in attempt to debunk Vote Vets ad criticizing Allen.

The Media Matters article is pretty thorough. Here is one sample.

In her March 20, 2003, floor statement introducing the measure, [Senator] Landrieu repeatedly emphasized that the U.S. government was “underfunding our Guard and Reserve” and expressed shock at “the lack of equipment, the lack of money in this budget to fund their current operations.” She added, “For too long, the Guard and Reserve have received hand-me-downs from the Active component. … Let’s give them their rifles, their helmets, and their tactical equipment so we can, as we know we will, win this war.”

“Ma’am, we are the troops” was a response made to a woman during the Vietnam War who urged protesting Vietnam Vets to “support the troops.”

Here’s a link to a current tv ad by veterans who are asking the Republicans to quit hollering so much, “Support the troops!” and instead put their money and their votes where their mouths are. This is a very strong ad. Please watch it.

Here is the text of a newspaper ad they are running:

We pledged our lives to protect America’s freedom.

When we were called to serve in Iraq, we did not ask questions. We kissed our families good-bye and went to do our duty.

But when it comes to war,
we all depend on our elected leaders
to do their duty…
and to ask our government tough questions.

- What is our military mission in Iraq?
- Where are those weapons of mass destruction?
- Why were our American troops sent to Iraq without the proper equipment?
- When will victory come?

We have been there in Iraq. We have a lot of tough questions about this war.

And the first one is…
Why didn’t Joe Lieberman ask any of them?

Unfortunately there are LOTS of names of Senators and Members of Congress that can be substituted for “Joe Lieberman” – people whose job it is, but who have been avoiding the life-and-death questions being forced on our service-people.

You support the troops by asking the appropriate questions AND demanding answers.

Here is a page listing the real veterans and heroes who are behind these ads [Vote Vets Action Fund (VoteVets.org).]