Editor's NOTE:
What's wrong with this picture? How can a nation which is effectively bankrupt, facing over 14 trillion dollars in national debt (the highest in the world), think it can spend in excess of 1 trillion dollars annually on its national security state? This represents over 66% of the annual discretionary budget of the United States, most of which is in truth not only unnecessary but immoral!
The situation increasingly resembles the last dieing days of the Roman Empire. Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty was correct over 25 years ago when he wrote his book; The Secret Team: The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United States and the World which was apparently censored by the CIA. At that time he indicated that the United States had been taken over by a "high cabal" on November 22, 1963 and it has undoubtedly been in control ever since.
Americans citizens must--through the use of all available non-violent means--try to stop the permament US warfare state before it is literally too late. Failure to do so makes us complicit in the immoral actions of our nation carried out in our names and with our tax dollars. Write your Congressional delegations and the President and express your strong opposition today.
I salute the courage and moral commitment of Ray McGovern for doing what we should all be doing. Please read his piece below.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
Standing Up to War and Hillary Clinton
By Ray McGovern
Consortiumnews
February 23, 2011
It was not until Secretary of State Hillary Clinton walked to the George Washington University podium last week to enthusiastic applause that I decided I had to dissociate myself from the obsequious adulation of a person responsible for so much death, suffering and destruction.
I was reminded of a spring day in Atlanta almost five years earlier when then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld strutted onto a similar stage to loud acclaim from another enraptured audience.
Introducing Rumsfeld on May 4, 2006, the president of the Southern Center for International Policy in Atlanta highlighted his “honesty.” I had just reviewed my notes for an address I was scheduled to give that evening in Atlanta and, alas, the notes demonstrated his dishonesty.
I thought to myself, if there’s an opportunity for Q & A after his speech I might try to stand and ask a question, which is what happened. I engaged in a four-minute impromptu debate with Rumsfeld on Iraq War lies, an exchange that was carried on cable TV.
That experience leaped to mind on Feb. 15, as Secretary Clinton strode onstage amid similar adulation.
The fulsome praise for Clinton from GW’s president and the loud, sustained applause also brought to mind a phrase that – as a former Soviet analyst at CIA – I often read in Pravda. When reprinting the text of speeches by high Soviet officials, the Communist Party newspaper would regularly insert, in italicized parentheses: “Burniye applaudismenti; vce stoyat” — Stormy applause; all rise.
With the others at Clinton’s talk, I stood. I even clapped politely. But as the applause dragged on, I began to feel like a real phony. So, when the others finally sat down, I remained standing silently, motionless, wearing my "Veterans for Peace" T-shirt, with my eyes fixed narrowly on the rear of the auditorium and my back to the Secretary.
I did not expect what followed: a violent assault in full view of madam secretary by what we Soviet analysts used to call the “organs of state security.” The rest is history, as they say. A short account of the incident can be found here.
Callous Aplomb
As the video of the event shows, Secretary Clinton did not miss a beat in her speech as she called for authoritarian governments to show respect for dissent and to refrain from violence. She spoke with what seemed to be an especially chilly sang froid, as she ignored my silent protest and the violent assault which took place right in front of her.
The experience gave me personal confirmation of the impression that I reluctantly had drawn from watching her behavior and its consequences over the past decade. The incident was a kind of metaphor of the much worse violence that Secretary Clinton has coolly countenanced against others.
Again and again, Hillary Clinton – both as a U.S. senator and as Secretary of State – has demonstrated a nonchalant readiness to unleash the vast destructiveness of American military power. The charitable explanation, I suppose, is that she knows nothing of war from direct personal experience.
And that is also true of her husband, her colleague Robert Gates at the Defense Department, President Barack Obama, and most of the White House functionaries blithely making decisions to squander the lives and limbs of young soldiers in foreign adventures — conflicts that even the top brass admit cannot be won with weapons.
The analogy to Vietnam is inescapable. As White House tapes from the 1960s show, President Lyndon Johnson knew that the Vietnam War could not be “won” in any meaningful way.
Nonetheless, Johnson kept throwing hundreds of thousands into the battle lest someone accuse him of being soft on communism. I had an inside seat watching Johnson do that. And I did nothing.
Now, with an even more jittery president, a hawkish Secretary of State, the much-acclaimed field marshal David Petraeus, and various Republican presidential hopefuls – all jockeying for political position as the 2012 election draws near – the country is in even deeper trouble today.
No one on this political merry-go-round can afford to appear weak on terrorism. So, they all have covered their bets. And we all know who pays the price for these political calculations.
This time, I would NOT do nothing.
My colleagues in Veterans for Peace and I have known far too many comrades-in-arms and their families whose lives have been shattered or ended as a result of such crass political maneuvering.
Many of us veterans know more than we wish to know about war and killing. But — try as we may with letters and other appeals — we cannot get through to President Obama. And Secretary Clinton turns her own deaf ear to our entreaties and those from others who oppose unnecessary warfare, a pattern that she also followed in her days as a U.S. senator from New York.
See No Evil
In the summer of 2002, as the Senate was preparing to conduct hearings about alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq and the possibility of war, former Chief Weapons Inspector in Iraq and U.S. Marine Major, Scott Ritter, came down to Washington from his home in upstate New York to share his first-hand knowledge with as many senators as possible.
To those that let him in the door, he showed that the “intelligence” adduced to support U.S. claims that Iraq still had WMD was fatally flawed. This was the same “intelligence” that Senate Intelligence Committee chair Jay Rockefeller later branded “unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent.”
Sen. Hillary Clinton would not let Ritter in her door. Despite his unique insights as a U.N. inspector and his status as a constituent, Sen. Clinton gave him the royal run-around. Her message was clear: “Don’t bother me with the facts.” She had already made up her mind.
I had a direct line into her inner circle at the time, and was assured that several of my op-eds and other commentaries skeptical of George W. Bush’s planned invasion were given to Clinton, but no matter.
Sen. Clinton reportedly was not among the handful of legislators who took the trouble to read the National Intelligence Estimate on WMD in Iraq that was issued on Oct. 1, 2002, just ten days before she voted to authorize war.
In short, she chose not to perform the due diligence required prior to making a decision having life-or-death consequences for thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. She knew whom she needed to cater to, and what she felt she had to do.
But, bright as she is, Hillary Clinton is prone to huge mistakes — political, as well as strategic. In dissing those of us who were trying to warn her that an attack on Iraq would have catastrophic consequences, she simply willed us to be wrong.
Clearly, her calculation was that she had to appear super-strong on defense in order to win the Democratic nomination and then the presidency in 2008. Just as clearly, courting Israel and the Likud Lobby was also important to her political ambitions.
Blair Admits Israeli Role
Any lingering doubt that Israel played a major role in the U.S.- U.K. decision to attack Iraq was dispelled a year ago when former Prime Minister Tony Blair spoke publicly about the Israeli input into the all-important Bush-Blair deliberations on Iraq in Crawford, Texas, in April 2002.
Inexplicably, Blair forgot his usual discretion when it comes to disclosing important facts to the public and blurted out some truth at the Chilcot hearings in London regarding the origins of the Iraq War:
“As I recall that [April 2002] discussion, it was less to do with specifics about what we were going to do on Iraq or, indeed, the Middle East, because the Israel issue was a big, big issue at the time. I think, in fact, I remember, actually, there may have been conversations that we had even with Israelis, the two of us [Bush and Blair], whilst we were there. So that was a major part of all this.”
According to Philip Zelikow – a former member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, and later counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice – the "real threat" from Iraq was not to the United States.
Zelikow told an audience at the University of Virginia in September 2002, the "unstated threat" from Iraq was the "threat against Israel.” He added, "The American government doesn't want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell."
But it wasn’t as though leading Israelis were disguising their war aims. The current Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu published a pre-invasion piece titled “The case for Toppling Saddam” in the Wall Street Journal.
"Today nothing less than dismantling his regime will do," Netanyahu declared. "I believe I speak for the overwhelming majority of Israelis in supporting a pre-emptive strike against Saddam's regime."
The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reported in February 2003, "the military and political leadership yearns for war in Iraq.”
As a retired Israeli general later put it, "Israeli intelligence was a full partner to the picture presented by American and British intelligence regarding Iraq's non-conventional [WMD] capabilities."
In the United States, neoconservatives also pushed for war thinking that taking out Saddam Hussein would make Israel more secure.
These Israeli leaders and their neocon allies got their wish on March 19, 2003, with the U.S.-U.K. invasion.
Of course, pressure from Israel and its Lobby was not the only factor behind the invasion of Iraq — think also oil, military bases, various political ambitions, revenge, etc. — but the Israeli factor was critical.
A Calculating Senator
I’m afraid, though, that these calculations aimed at enhancing Israeli security may ultimately have the opposite effect. The Iraq War and the anti-Americanism that it has engendered across the Middle East seem sure to make Israel’s position in the region even more precarious.
If the Iraq War does end up making the region more dangerous for Israel, the fault will lie with Israel’s hard-line leaders, as well as with those American officials (and media pundits) who so eagerly clambered onboard for the attack on Iraq.
One of those U.S. officials was the calculating senator from New York.
In a kind of poetic justice, Clinton’s politically motivated warmongering became a key factor in her losing the Democratic presidential nomination to Barack Obama, who as a young state senator in Illinois spoke out against the war.
Though she bet wrong in 2002-03, Clinton keeps doubling down in her apparent belief that her greater political vulnerability comes from being perceived as “weak” against U.S. adversaries. So, she’s emerged as one of the Obama administration’s leading hawks on Afghanistan and Iran.
I suspect she still has her eye on what she considers the crucial centers of financial, media and other power that could support a possible future run for president, whether in 2012 if the Obama administration unravels or in 2016.
Another explanation, I suppose, could be that the Secretary of State genuinely believes that the United States should fight wars favored by right-wing Israelis and their influential supporters in the U.S.
Whichever interpretation you prefer, there’s no doubt that she has put herself in the forefront of American leaders threatening Iran over its alleged “nuclear weapons” program, a “weapons” program that Iran denies exists and for which the U.S. intelligence community has found little or no evidence.
Bête Noire Iran
As a former CIA analyst myself, it strikes me as odd that Clinton’s speeches never reflect the consistent, unanimous judgment of the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, issued formally (and with “high confidence”) in November 2007 that Iran stopped working on a nuclear weapon in the fall of 2003 and had not yet decided whether or not to resume that work.
Less than two weeks ago (on Feb. 10), in a formal appearance before the House Intelligence Committee, National Intelligence Director James Clapper testified:
“We continue to assess Iran is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons in part by developing various nuclear capabilities that better position it to produce such weapons, should it choose to do so. We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons…."
“We continue to judge Iran’s nuclear decisionmaking is guided by a cost-benefit approach, which offers the international community opportunities to influence Tehran.”
Who’s in Charge Here?
Yet, in her determination to come across as hard-line, Clinton has undercut promising initiatives that might have constrained Iran from having enough low-enriched uranium to even be tempted to build a nuclear arsenal.
Last year, when – at the urging of President Obama – the leaders of Turkey and Brazil worked out an agreement with Iran, under which Iran agreed to ship about half of its low-enriched uranium (LEU) out of country, Clinton immediately rejected it in favor of more severe economic sanctions.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva were left wondering who exactly was in charge in Washington — Hillary and her pro-Israeli friends, or Obama.
Brazil released a three-page letter that Obama had sent to Lula da Silva a month earlier in which Obama said the proposed uranium transfer “would build confidence and reduce regional tensions by substantially reducing Iran’s” stockpile of low-enriched uranium.
The contrast between Obama’s support for the initiative and the opposition from various hardliners (including Clinton) caused “some puzzlement,” one senior Brazilian official told the New York Times. After all, this official said, the supportive “letter came from the highest authority and was very clear.”
It was a particularly telling episode. Clinton basked in the applause of Israeli leaders and neocon pundits for blocking the uranium transfer and securing more restrictive U.N. sanctions on Iran – and since then Iran appears to have dug in its heals on additional negotiations over its nuclear program.
Secretary Clinton is almost as assiduous as Netanyahu in never missing a chance to paint the Iranians in the darkest colors – even if that ends up painting the entire region into a more dangerous corner.
More Hypocrisy
On Feb. 15, Clinton continued giving hypocrisy a bad name, with her GW speech regarding the importance of governments respecting peaceful dissent.
Five short paragraphs after she watched me snatched out of the audience Blackwater-style, she said, “Iran is awful because it is a government that routinely violates the rights of its people.” It was like something straight out of Franz Kafka.
Today, given the growing instability in the Middle East – and Netanyahu’s strident talk about Iran’s dangerous influence – it may take yet another Herculean effort by Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen to disabuse Netanyahu of the notion that Israel can somehow provoke the kind of confrontation with Iran that would suck Obama into the conflict on Israel’s side.
At each such turning point, Secretary Clinton predictably sides with the hard-line Israeli position and shows remarkably little sympathy for the Palestinians or any other group that finds itself in Israel’s way.
It is now clear, not only from the WikiLeaks documents, but even more so from the “Palestine Papers” disclosed by Al Jazeera, that Washington has long been playing a thoroughly dishonest “honest-broker” role between Israel and the Palestinians.
But those documents don’t stand alone. Clinton also rejected the Goldstone Report’s criticism of Israel’s bloody attack on Gaza in 2008-09; she waffled on Israel’s fatal commando raid on a Turkish relief flotilla on its way to Gaza in 2010; and she rallied to the defense of Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak this month when Israeli leaders raised alarms about what might follow him.
Just last week, Clinton oversaw the casting of the U.S. veto to kill a U.N. Security Council resolution calling on Israel to stop colonizing territories it occupied in 1967. That vote was 14 to 1, marking the first such veto by the Obama administration. Netanyahu was quick to state that he “deeply appreciated” the U.S. stance.
Silent Witness
In the face of such callous disregard for what the Founders called “a decent respect for the opinions of mankind,” words failed me — literally — on Feb. 15.
The op-eds, the speeches, the interviews that I and others have done about needless war and feckless politicians may have done some good but, surely, they have not done enough. And America’s Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) is the embodiment of a Fourth Estate that is dead in the water.
I counted about 20 TV cameras at the Clinton speech and reporters galore. Not one thought to come outside to watch what was happening to me, and zero reporting on the incident has found its way into the FCM, save a couple of brief and misleading accounts.
A Fox News story claimed that “a heckler interrupted” Clinton’s speech and then “was escorted from the room.” Fox News added that I "was, perhaps, trying to hold up a sign." CNN posted a brief clip with a similar insistence that I had “interrupted” Clinton’s speech, though the video shows me saying nothing until after I’m dragged away (or “escorted”) when I say, “So this is America.” There also was no sign.
Disappointing, but not surprising. I guess I really do believe that the good is worth doing because it is good. It shouldn’t matter that there is little or no guarantee of success — or even a truthful recounting of what happened.
One of my friends, in a good-natured attempt to make light of my arrest and brief imprisonment, commented that I must be used to it by now.
I thought of how anti-war prophet, Fr. Dan Berrigan, responded to that kind of observation in his testimony at the Plowshares Eight trial 31 years ago. I feel blessed by his witness and fully identify with what he said about “the push of conscience”:
“With every cowardly bone in my body, I wished I hadn’t had to do it. That has been true every time I have been arrested. My stomach turns over. I feel sick. I feel afraid. I hate jail. I don’t do well there physically.
“But I have read that we must not kill. I have read that children, above all, are threatened by this. I have read that Christ our Lord underwent death rather than inflict it. And I’m supposed to be a disciple."
“The push of conscience is a terrible thing.”
As Fr. Berrigan clearly understood, the suffering of the victims of war is so much worse than the shock and discomfort of arrest.
For her part, Sen. and/or Secretary Clinton seems never to have encountered a war that she didn’t immediately embrace on behalf of some geopolitical justification, apparently following Henry Kissinger’s dictum that soldiers are “just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.”
And beyond even the human suffering of those caught up in war, there’s what’s in store for the rest of us. As recent rhetoric and disclosures of leaked documents have made clear, what lies ahead is a permanent warfare state, including occupation of foreign lands and new military bases around the globe -- unless we have the courage to stand up this time.
Also to be expected will be the curtailment of our rights at home. “A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny,” wrote Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn — one who knew.
Perhaps we need to bear in mind that we are part of a long line of those who have taken a stand on these issues.
As for those of us who have served abroad to protect the rights of U.S. citizens — well, maybe we have a particular mandate to do what we can to keep protecting them.
For us Veterans for Peace, we’ve been there, done that. And so, enough already!
Showing posts with label Ray McGovern. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ray McGovern. Show all posts
Friday, February 25, 2011
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Excusing Torture at ‘Justice’
Editor's Comment:
Ray McGovern's piece below demonstrates a great deal more about what is wrong with Roman Catholicism today than it does the poor grasp a senior member of the US Justice Department [Thomas Perez, assistant attorney general for civil rights] has of his alleged "Catholic" faith. The tragic fact is that since the Second Vatican Council there now exists almost "3" generations of self-confessed "Catholics" who have no idea what traditional orthodox Roman Catholicism teaches about anything. Thomas Perez is apparently one among a virtual plethora of such individuals.
Traditional Roman Catholic moral theology as understood in the Aristotelian/Thomistic synthesis of St. Thomas Aquinas (see Summa theologiae) is strongly biased against capital punishment and torture. This is based in Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition and constant magisterial teaching something that prior to 1965 well catechized Roman Catholic adults could generally articulate quite well--no longer.
It should be understood however that the Roman Catholic Church prior to Vatican II never stated categorically that capital punishment should be illegal, recognizing that under certain dire circumstances it might be necessary while in the main undesired or even contraindicated unless absolutely necessary in order to protect the innocent.
Effect of Post-Conciliar "New Theology"
Since 1965, the situation with respect to "Catholic" moral theology has been confounded for a variety of reasons due at least in part to the invention and promulgation of the so-called "New-Theology" (by dissident Theologians) which is in many ways unorthodox if not out-right heretical--although that is a subject not germane to this topic or this blog. Interested readers may consult this site instead. Suffice it to say that it has been almost universally negative.
Post-Vatican II Popes
For those readers with greater interest in the moral theological literature produced by the Magisterium subsequent to Vatican II, the encyclicals of several popes have in large part stressed the fact that 1) capital punishment is unnecessary to protect the public, 2) it is often a reflection of the desire for revenge rather than justice and 3) it is incompatible with basic human dignity due primarily to man's creation in the Imago Dei "Image of God" and the full meaning of the Incarnation of Christ as a complete life-giving gift of self for the other (man).
In a very real sense, to intentionally kill or harm (as in torture) another human being is to attack God as He is "Imaged" in the human person--unless very specific criteria are met e.g only when necessary to protect the victim from death or serious harm as in the Just War Doctrinal Tradition which holds that war should be avoided at almost all cost and considered only as a last resort and with appropriate proportionality. Interested readers should also consult for example; Veritatis splendor and Evangelium vitae for further details.
Human Dignity is Grounded in the Imago-Dei
In any case the fundamental underlying (touchstone) concept is that capital punishment and torture are incompatible with basic human dignity grounded as it is in the Imago-Dei that is, the Image of the Triune God, literally stamped as it were into every human being (Gen 2:7; Wis 9:2-3). I will admittedly oversimplify by saying the following but such are the requirements of the time in which we live: nothing that degrades the Image of God in each person is morally permissible from the orthodox/Traditional Roman Catholic perspective and it is here that so much of the so-called “new moral theology” (read moral heterodoxy) has gone astray.
Input from Natural (Moral) Law
An understanding of the Natural Moral Law which flows from the "nature" (or as moral philosopher's say the quiddity or "whatness") of human being is extremely helpful here. Traditional Roman Catholic moral philosophers teach that the "ought" of human behavior flows from and is circumscribed by the "is" of human nature. It is in the ontological (metaphysical not embryological sense) specialness of what it means to be human that we find the proscription against capital punishment and torture.
Traditional Roman Catholic teaching holds that Jesus Christ (through the power of the incarnation, the one true hybrid God/man) serves as an example for human beings in way of understanding or teaching mankind the true meaning of humanity in all its fullness. That is, God has said everything He has to say to us in Jesus Christ. Put another way it is in the fullness of Christ’s humanity that we find the answer to the meaning of our own humanity. His is the humanity to which we all must aspire.
Input from Sacred Scripture
The following example is illustrative. When Christ was confronted with the woman caught in adultery, the crowd expected Him to follow the Old Testament (Leviticus ) prescription of "stoning adulterers to death ", yet Christ said: "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" (John 8: 3-11) and the crowd dispersed. Christ softened the Judaic (Old Testament) Law which allowed capital punishment under the rubric of an "eye for an eye" in the trajectory of greater mercy by teaching that it was not necessary to punish the perpetrators of seriously immoral acts by subjecting them to the death penalty. He taught that the New Law of mercy (Love) was perfect where the Old Law was necessary but in a sense insufficient.
Christ told the woman in question, “I do not condemn you, go and leave your life of sin.” (John 8: 11), the point being that the emphasis was on the repenting (turning away) of the sin of adultery and beginning anew. Christ was asserting that it was necessary that the sinner undergo a total conversion/transformation of heart (spirit) which would be demonstrable in how he/she lived thereafter. In the secular criminal justice system this might be compared to the more modern notion of rehabilitation of criminals rather than condemning them to death or perpetual imprisonment.
"Christian" Fundamentalism is Judaized (Law of Christ [Love] is Removed)
Traditional Christianity therefore, properly understood (in contradistinction to much of "Christian" Fundamentalism which has Judaized traditional orthodox Roman Catholicism into an almost unrecognizable conterfit) has a very great bias against capital punishment (and a virtual sanction against torture as well) on the basis of the direct teaching of Jesus Christ. This strong bias against the death penalty can only be overcome by objective factual circumstances in which virtually no other option exists by which to protect the populace from murderers, a reality which almost never exists today in light of the modern penal system. In practice, the death penalty too often does represent revenge rather than the fair administration of justice or the necessary requirement to protect the population from the threat of murder or serious bodily harm.
False Arguments for Torture
Even if torture produced valuable information by which further crimes could be avoided (which thankfully it has not been demonstrated to do, rather, victims of torture say whatever they think will stop the torture), it would remain morally wrong to engage in torturing human beings, again on the basis of the Natural Law and direct scriptural (New Testament) injunction as well as over 2000 years of orthodox/Traditional Roman Catholic teaching albeit at times very imperfectly applied. To say that torture is acceptable because it provides important information with which to avoid future attacks is not only false but is to invoke rank Utilitarianism which is no moral philosophy at all.
Failure of Roman Catholic Church to be "Salt and Light"
The loss of Roman Catholic orthodoxy subsequent to Vatican II has seriously/negatively impacted the common morality of America and the world such that assistant attorney general Perez is not an aberation among self-professed "Catholics." This is the fault of the post-conciliar "Catholic" Church in failing to preach the full Gospel of Jesus Christ as faithfully handed down for over 19 centuries.
In large part I agree with Ray McGovern that it is inappropriate of Mr. Perez to associate his remarks with anything having to do with the Roman Catholic Faith given his unwillingness to either state his personal opinions clearly or to refer specifically to Traditional Roman Catholic teaching on justice.
_______________________________________________
Excusing Torture at ‘Justice’
By Ray McGovern
January 26, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- On Sunday, I attended an informal talk given in a parish hall by the Justice Department’s Thomas Perez, assistant attorney general for civil rights. His topic: “The way his work for justice is defined by his faith.”
During the Q&A after his talk, I had a chance to pose some questions:
Question: “Thanks, Tom, for making yourself available to us. You raise the issue of torture, and intimated that there is consensus among Catholics that torture is wrong. Polling conducted two years ago indicates that this is far from the case.
[According to the Catholic News Agency, a survey by the Pew Center Forum on Religion & Public Life found that Catholics are more likely than the general U.S. population to favor the use of torture against suspected terrorists. More than half the Catholics surveyed said that torture could be often or sometimes justified, while another 27 percent said the practice could rarely be justified. Only 20 percent said it could never be justified.]
“You are head of the Civil Rights Division at Justice. I am sure you would agree that a person’s right not to be tortured is a civil right.
“Your immediate boss, Attorney General Eric Holder, has stated in testimony to Congress that waterboarding is torture. President Obama has said the same thing.
“Now the president… that is, former President George W. Bush… has written a book in which he brags about authorizing waterboarding and says he would do it again. Former Vice President Dick Cheney earlier endorsed waterboarding.
“Like you, Tom, I went to a Jesuit high school, and I know what a syllogism is. If waterboarding is torture, and those who authorized it now admit that and brag about it, is not your boss Eric Holder bound by his oath of office to prosecute those who admit to having authorized torture?
“I refer here not only to those tortured at Guantanamo, at the huge prison complex at Bagram, Afghanistan, and at ‘black sites’ around the world where my former colleagues at CIA were given carte blanche to ply their trade.
“I refer also to American citizens like José Padilla, born, like me, in New York City, who was deprived of his civil rights and subjected to the cruelest forms of debilitating torture right here in the U.S.A.
“Again, you are head of the Civil Rights Division at Justice. You have talked a good bit about conscience. Your boss, the attorney general, appears unwilling to see to it that the law be faithfully executed. Has your faith or your conscience led you to raise this subject with Eric Holder?”
Perez: “It’s a matter of prosecutorial discretion. We have discussed these matters, and I am not about to reveal information on those discussions.”
Question: “Your talk is billed as a discussion of how your faith defines your work for justice. I am not asking you to reveal information about the discussions you have been part of at the Justice Department; I am asking you how you come at the issue of torture from a faith perspective.”
Perez: “You are very clever, but I am not going to let myself be drawn into this discussion. Next questioner.”
Perez had begun by expressing appreciation for the education he had received from the Jesuits at Canisius High School in Buffalo – a sentiment I share from my four years at Fordham Prep in the Bronx.
As far as moral theology and justice are concerned, though, it appears that Perez was exposed to the same dictum at Canisius as I was at Fordham. Moral theology? Ethics? Simple. The whole deal is to: Do Good, and Avoid Evil.
It was not until the mid ’80s, when I completed a certificate in theological studies with the more up-to-date Jesuits at Georgetown, that I learned that the Do-Good-and-Avoid-Evil proposition was only half correct. Jesus of Nazareth called us to do good, certainly. But not to avoid evil; rather, to confront it.
This shows through clearly in the first chapter of the first Gospel written (Mark 1:16-28). After recruiting his fisherman freshman to enroll in Discipleship 101, Jesus brings them into the synagogue at Capernaum and provides a vivid illustration of what we are called to do in the face of evil – confront it.
His message: No confronting of evil, no true discipleship.
Making It at Harvard Law
Distinguished Catholic jurists who preceded Perez at Harvard Law School – for example, “where-does-the-Constitution-say-executions-have-to-be-painless” Antonin Scalia and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales – have amply demonstrated the validity of Lord Acton’s dictum about how power corrupts.
Perez’s response suggests to me that some of this may have rubbed off on him as well.
I am grateful for the insights gained during my years of theology at Georgetown (coincidentally, the same years Perez spent at Harvard Law). The one theme wending its way through all the courses was this: what Yahweh of the Hebrew and Jesus of the Christian scriptures care about, above all else, is that we do Justice – that disciples are called unambiguously, to Do Good and CONFRONT (not merely Avoid) Evil.
I was not surprised that Perez found my question unwelcome. I was surprised that he answered it so dismissively.
His reaction left the impression that, during whatever deliberations on executive accountability for torture he has been party to, he has held his nose in silence – like his seniors of malleable conscience at Justice and the White House, who choose to duck, rather then confront human rights abuses involving U.S. officials.
Worse still, his taking refuge in “prosecutorial discretion” is legally flat-out wrong.
Does he not know that the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment adopted by the UN General Assembly on Dec. 10, 1984, (now signed by some 150 nations – including the U.S., which also ratified it on Oct. 21, 1994) has been and remains the supreme law of the land? The Convention makes no allowance for “prosecutorial discretion.”
If evidence of a violation arises, the signatories are obliged to promptly investigate any allegation of torture and, if appropriate, prosecute. The Convention’s description of torture certainly includes waterboarding. And, as already mentioned, Attorney General Holder and President Obama have conceded the point.
(For that matter, even if waterboarding – best defined as “contrived drowning with intentional resuscitation” – were somehow not to be deemed torture, it would certainly constitute the “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment” for which the Convention Against Torture also requires investigation as a matter of law.)
The Convention defines torture as “Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person, information or a confession….”
The Convention also declares torture an extraditable offense, and endorses the concept of universal jurisdiction to try cases of torture where an alleged torturer cannot be extradited.
Jesus and Empire
This may sound somewhat harsh, but it struck me that if Perez was not open to addressing “the way his work for justice is defined by his faith,” he ought not to have appeared under that rubric.
Comparisons can be invidious. And the one that follows is probably a bit unfair. But the exchange with Perez reminded me of another person of Christian faith, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, to whom CBS’s Leslie Stahl posed a difficult question on May 12, 1996.
Referring to the effect of the sanctions against Iraq, Stahl noted: “We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?”
Albright: “The price, we think the price is worth it.”
In an address eight years later at the Yale Divinity School, Albright elaborated on her realpolitik approach to matters of state. She asked what would have happened if after 9/11 the president had said, “Resist not evil. Whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.”
Albright’s exegesis: “I suspect most of us would think it a preposterous prescription in a time of national crisis.”
She went on to speak of the dilemma that “we each face in trying to reconcile religious beliefs with professional duties,” and came down squarely on the side of “professional duties.”
Not stopping there, Albright went on to misquote Scripture in claiming that the president, in vowing to rid the world of evil, echoed the words of Jesus, “You are either with us or against us.”
In a gratuitous allusion to her empire-centric approach, the former secretary of state went on to endorse Vice President Dick Cheney’s “sincere” religious beliefs. She singled out as a “good thing,” his controversy-provoking Christmas card the year before (2003), which bore the inscription: “If a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?”
Stanley Hauerwas, a Yale alumnus, now professor of theological ethics at Duke Divinity School, was moved to comment on Albright’s speech in a Yale Divinity School publication.
He noted that much of what she said was designed to “underwrite the assumption that we cannot follow Jesus and pursue the limited justice possible in foreign affairs.”
But wait. Was not “His” message a direct challenge to empire – in his day the Roman Empire and religious and civil collaborators in the Roman occupation? Isn’t that why the religious and civil authorities put their heads together and ended up torturing and executing him?
Had Jesus allowed himself to be co-opted by the empire and its Quislings, had he chosen to divorce his nonviolent but challenging vision of justice from the politics of the day, he could have died peacefully in his bed – as did the leaders of the institutional church in Nazi Germany.
And we can too. All that is required is a mind-trick to convince ourselves that Jesus did not really mean to say what he said, that he did not really mean to do what he did in exposing the evils of empire.
And help is at hand. It is easy to find a pastor preaching a domesticated Jesus – an ahistorical Jesus far more interested in “piety” than justice. I still find myself wondering how the Cheneys’ pastor reacted to their Christmas card.
Sinning for Us
Often it takes a compassionate but truth-telling outsider to throw light on our country, its leaders, its policies. Bishop Peter Storey of South Africa, who walked the walk in his courageous, outspoken resistance to the apartheid regime (and was chaplain to Nelson Mandela), provides this prophetic word:
“I have often suggested to American Christians that the only way to understand their mission is to ask what it might have meant to witness faithfully to Jesus in the heart of the Roman Empire.
“Certainly, when I preach in the United States I feel, as I imagine the Apostle Paul did when he first passed through the gates of Rome – admiration for its people, awe at its manifest virtues, and resentment of its careless power.
“America’s preachers have a task more difficult, perhaps, than those faced by us under South Africa’s apartheid, or by Christians under Communism. We had obvious evils to engage; you have to unwrap your culture from years of red, white, and blue myth.
“You have to expose and confront the great disconnect between the kindness, compassion, and caring of most American people and the ruthless way American power is experienced, directly and indirectly, by the poor of the earth. You have to help good people see how they have let their institutions do their sinning for them.
“This is not easy among people who really believe that their country does nothing but good. But it is necessary, not only for their future, but for us all.
“All around the world there are those who believe in the basic goodness of the American people, who agonize with you in your pain, but also long to see your human goodness translated into a different, more compassionate way of relating with the rest of this bleeding planet.”
Finally, let me add something I have learned thanks to the candid comments of my atheist friends.
“Hey, Ray,” one wrote, “please, not so heavy on this Judeo-Christian heritage you keep citing. I don’t buy any of it, but wake up: on torture it is not at all necessary to be a person ‘of faith.’
“It is abundantly clear to this atheist, and to most of us, that it is simply impermissible for human beings to torture one another. Humans do not do that to other humans. Period.”
I see the truth in that. At the same time, it does seem to me that we who claim to follow a courageous dissident activist who was tortured to death may have extra incentive to do all we can to prevent others from being subjected to “Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.”
Ray McGovern's piece below demonstrates a great deal more about what is wrong with Roman Catholicism today than it does the poor grasp a senior member of the US Justice Department [Thomas Perez, assistant attorney general for civil rights] has of his alleged "Catholic" faith. The tragic fact is that since the Second Vatican Council there now exists almost "3" generations of self-confessed "Catholics" who have no idea what traditional orthodox Roman Catholicism teaches about anything. Thomas Perez is apparently one among a virtual plethora of such individuals.
Traditional Roman Catholic moral theology as understood in the Aristotelian/Thomistic synthesis of St. Thomas Aquinas (see Summa theologiae) is strongly biased against capital punishment and torture. This is based in Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition and constant magisterial teaching something that prior to 1965 well catechized Roman Catholic adults could generally articulate quite well--no longer.
It should be understood however that the Roman Catholic Church prior to Vatican II never stated categorically that capital punishment should be illegal, recognizing that under certain dire circumstances it might be necessary while in the main undesired or even contraindicated unless absolutely necessary in order to protect the innocent.
Effect of Post-Conciliar "New Theology"
Since 1965, the situation with respect to "Catholic" moral theology has been confounded for a variety of reasons due at least in part to the invention and promulgation of the so-called "New-Theology" (by dissident Theologians) which is in many ways unorthodox if not out-right heretical--although that is a subject not germane to this topic or this blog. Interested readers may consult this site instead. Suffice it to say that it has been almost universally negative.
Post-Vatican II Popes
For those readers with greater interest in the moral theological literature produced by the Magisterium subsequent to Vatican II, the encyclicals of several popes have in large part stressed the fact that 1) capital punishment is unnecessary to protect the public, 2) it is often a reflection of the desire for revenge rather than justice and 3) it is incompatible with basic human dignity due primarily to man's creation in the Imago Dei "Image of God" and the full meaning of the Incarnation of Christ as a complete life-giving gift of self for the other (man).
In a very real sense, to intentionally kill or harm (as in torture) another human being is to attack God as He is "Imaged" in the human person--unless very specific criteria are met e.g only when necessary to protect the victim from death or serious harm as in the Just War Doctrinal Tradition which holds that war should be avoided at almost all cost and considered only as a last resort and with appropriate proportionality. Interested readers should also consult for example; Veritatis splendor and Evangelium vitae for further details.
Human Dignity is Grounded in the Imago-Dei
In any case the fundamental underlying (touchstone) concept is that capital punishment and torture are incompatible with basic human dignity grounded as it is in the Imago-Dei that is, the Image of the Triune God, literally stamped as it were into every human being (Gen 2:7; Wis 9:2-3). I will admittedly oversimplify by saying the following but such are the requirements of the time in which we live: nothing that degrades the Image of God in each person is morally permissible from the orthodox/Traditional Roman Catholic perspective and it is here that so much of the so-called “new moral theology” (read moral heterodoxy) has gone astray.
Input from Natural (Moral) Law
An understanding of the Natural Moral Law which flows from the "nature" (or as moral philosopher's say the quiddity or "whatness") of human being is extremely helpful here. Traditional Roman Catholic moral philosophers teach that the "ought" of human behavior flows from and is circumscribed by the "is" of human nature. It is in the ontological (metaphysical not embryological sense) specialness of what it means to be human that we find the proscription against capital punishment and torture.
Traditional Roman Catholic teaching holds that Jesus Christ (through the power of the incarnation, the one true hybrid God/man) serves as an example for human beings in way of understanding or teaching mankind the true meaning of humanity in all its fullness. That is, God has said everything He has to say to us in Jesus Christ. Put another way it is in the fullness of Christ’s humanity that we find the answer to the meaning of our own humanity. His is the humanity to which we all must aspire.
Input from Sacred Scripture
The following example is illustrative. When Christ was confronted with the woman caught in adultery, the crowd expected Him to follow the Old Testament (Leviticus ) prescription of "stoning adulterers to death ", yet Christ said: "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" (John 8: 3-11) and the crowd dispersed. Christ softened the Judaic (Old Testament) Law which allowed capital punishment under the rubric of an "eye for an eye" in the trajectory of greater mercy by teaching that it was not necessary to punish the perpetrators of seriously immoral acts by subjecting them to the death penalty. He taught that the New Law of mercy (Love) was perfect where the Old Law was necessary but in a sense insufficient.
Christ told the woman in question, “I do not condemn you, go and leave your life of sin.” (John 8: 11), the point being that the emphasis was on the repenting (turning away) of the sin of adultery and beginning anew. Christ was asserting that it was necessary that the sinner undergo a total conversion/transformation of heart (spirit) which would be demonstrable in how he/she lived thereafter. In the secular criminal justice system this might be compared to the more modern notion of rehabilitation of criminals rather than condemning them to death or perpetual imprisonment.
"Christian" Fundamentalism is Judaized (Law of Christ [Love] is Removed)
Traditional Christianity therefore, properly understood (in contradistinction to much of "Christian" Fundamentalism which has Judaized traditional orthodox Roman Catholicism into an almost unrecognizable conterfit) has a very great bias against capital punishment (and a virtual sanction against torture as well) on the basis of the direct teaching of Jesus Christ. This strong bias against the death penalty can only be overcome by objective factual circumstances in which virtually no other option exists by which to protect the populace from murderers, a reality which almost never exists today in light of the modern penal system. In practice, the death penalty too often does represent revenge rather than the fair administration of justice or the necessary requirement to protect the population from the threat of murder or serious bodily harm.
False Arguments for Torture
Even if torture produced valuable information by which further crimes could be avoided (which thankfully it has not been demonstrated to do, rather, victims of torture say whatever they think will stop the torture), it would remain morally wrong to engage in torturing human beings, again on the basis of the Natural Law and direct scriptural (New Testament) injunction as well as over 2000 years of orthodox/Traditional Roman Catholic teaching albeit at times very imperfectly applied. To say that torture is acceptable because it provides important information with which to avoid future attacks is not only false but is to invoke rank Utilitarianism which is no moral philosophy at all.
Failure of Roman Catholic Church to be "Salt and Light"
The loss of Roman Catholic orthodoxy subsequent to Vatican II has seriously/negatively impacted the common morality of America and the world such that assistant attorney general Perez is not an aberation among self-professed "Catholics." This is the fault of the post-conciliar "Catholic" Church in failing to preach the full Gospel of Jesus Christ as faithfully handed down for over 19 centuries.
In large part I agree with Ray McGovern that it is inappropriate of Mr. Perez to associate his remarks with anything having to do with the Roman Catholic Faith given his unwillingness to either state his personal opinions clearly or to refer specifically to Traditional Roman Catholic teaching on justice.
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Excusing Torture at ‘Justice’
By Ray McGovern
January 26, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- On Sunday, I attended an informal talk given in a parish hall by the Justice Department’s Thomas Perez, assistant attorney general for civil rights. His topic: “The way his work for justice is defined by his faith.”
During the Q&A after his talk, I had a chance to pose some questions:
Question: “Thanks, Tom, for making yourself available to us. You raise the issue of torture, and intimated that there is consensus among Catholics that torture is wrong. Polling conducted two years ago indicates that this is far from the case.
[According to the Catholic News Agency, a survey by the Pew Center Forum on Religion & Public Life found that Catholics are more likely than the general U.S. population to favor the use of torture against suspected terrorists. More than half the Catholics surveyed said that torture could be often or sometimes justified, while another 27 percent said the practice could rarely be justified. Only 20 percent said it could never be justified.]
“You are head of the Civil Rights Division at Justice. I am sure you would agree that a person’s right not to be tortured is a civil right.
“Your immediate boss, Attorney General Eric Holder, has stated in testimony to Congress that waterboarding is torture. President Obama has said the same thing.
“Now the president… that is, former President George W. Bush… has written a book in which he brags about authorizing waterboarding and says he would do it again. Former Vice President Dick Cheney earlier endorsed waterboarding.
“Like you, Tom, I went to a Jesuit high school, and I know what a syllogism is. If waterboarding is torture, and those who authorized it now admit that and brag about it, is not your boss Eric Holder bound by his oath of office to prosecute those who admit to having authorized torture?
“I refer here not only to those tortured at Guantanamo, at the huge prison complex at Bagram, Afghanistan, and at ‘black sites’ around the world where my former colleagues at CIA were given carte blanche to ply their trade.
“I refer also to American citizens like José Padilla, born, like me, in New York City, who was deprived of his civil rights and subjected to the cruelest forms of debilitating torture right here in the U.S.A.
“Again, you are head of the Civil Rights Division at Justice. You have talked a good bit about conscience. Your boss, the attorney general, appears unwilling to see to it that the law be faithfully executed. Has your faith or your conscience led you to raise this subject with Eric Holder?”
Perez: “It’s a matter of prosecutorial discretion. We have discussed these matters, and I am not about to reveal information on those discussions.”
Question: “Your talk is billed as a discussion of how your faith defines your work for justice. I am not asking you to reveal information about the discussions you have been part of at the Justice Department; I am asking you how you come at the issue of torture from a faith perspective.”
Perez: “You are very clever, but I am not going to let myself be drawn into this discussion. Next questioner.”
Perez had begun by expressing appreciation for the education he had received from the Jesuits at Canisius High School in Buffalo – a sentiment I share from my four years at Fordham Prep in the Bronx.
As far as moral theology and justice are concerned, though, it appears that Perez was exposed to the same dictum at Canisius as I was at Fordham. Moral theology? Ethics? Simple. The whole deal is to: Do Good, and Avoid Evil.
It was not until the mid ’80s, when I completed a certificate in theological studies with the more up-to-date Jesuits at Georgetown, that I learned that the Do-Good-and-Avoid-Evil proposition was only half correct. Jesus of Nazareth called us to do good, certainly. But not to avoid evil; rather, to confront it.
This shows through clearly in the first chapter of the first Gospel written (Mark 1:16-28). After recruiting his fisherman freshman to enroll in Discipleship 101, Jesus brings them into the synagogue at Capernaum and provides a vivid illustration of what we are called to do in the face of evil – confront it.
His message: No confronting of evil, no true discipleship.
Making It at Harvard Law
Distinguished Catholic jurists who preceded Perez at Harvard Law School – for example, “where-does-the-Constitution-say-executions-have-to-be-painless” Antonin Scalia and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales – have amply demonstrated the validity of Lord Acton’s dictum about how power corrupts.
Perez’s response suggests to me that some of this may have rubbed off on him as well.
I am grateful for the insights gained during my years of theology at Georgetown (coincidentally, the same years Perez spent at Harvard Law). The one theme wending its way through all the courses was this: what Yahweh of the Hebrew and Jesus of the Christian scriptures care about, above all else, is that we do Justice – that disciples are called unambiguously, to Do Good and CONFRONT (not merely Avoid) Evil.
I was not surprised that Perez found my question unwelcome. I was surprised that he answered it so dismissively.
His reaction left the impression that, during whatever deliberations on executive accountability for torture he has been party to, he has held his nose in silence – like his seniors of malleable conscience at Justice and the White House, who choose to duck, rather then confront human rights abuses involving U.S. officials.
Worse still, his taking refuge in “prosecutorial discretion” is legally flat-out wrong.
Does he not know that the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment adopted by the UN General Assembly on Dec. 10, 1984, (now signed by some 150 nations – including the U.S., which also ratified it on Oct. 21, 1994) has been and remains the supreme law of the land? The Convention makes no allowance for “prosecutorial discretion.”
If evidence of a violation arises, the signatories are obliged to promptly investigate any allegation of torture and, if appropriate, prosecute. The Convention’s description of torture certainly includes waterboarding. And, as already mentioned, Attorney General Holder and President Obama have conceded the point.
(For that matter, even if waterboarding – best defined as “contrived drowning with intentional resuscitation” – were somehow not to be deemed torture, it would certainly constitute the “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment” for which the Convention Against Torture also requires investigation as a matter of law.)
The Convention defines torture as “Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person, information or a confession….”
The Convention also declares torture an extraditable offense, and endorses the concept of universal jurisdiction to try cases of torture where an alleged torturer cannot be extradited.
Jesus and Empire
This may sound somewhat harsh, but it struck me that if Perez was not open to addressing “the way his work for justice is defined by his faith,” he ought not to have appeared under that rubric.
Comparisons can be invidious. And the one that follows is probably a bit unfair. But the exchange with Perez reminded me of another person of Christian faith, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, to whom CBS’s Leslie Stahl posed a difficult question on May 12, 1996.
Referring to the effect of the sanctions against Iraq, Stahl noted: “We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?”
Albright: “The price, we think the price is worth it.”
In an address eight years later at the Yale Divinity School, Albright elaborated on her realpolitik approach to matters of state. She asked what would have happened if after 9/11 the president had said, “Resist not evil. Whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.”
Albright’s exegesis: “I suspect most of us would think it a preposterous prescription in a time of national crisis.”
She went on to speak of the dilemma that “we each face in trying to reconcile religious beliefs with professional duties,” and came down squarely on the side of “professional duties.”
Not stopping there, Albright went on to misquote Scripture in claiming that the president, in vowing to rid the world of evil, echoed the words of Jesus, “You are either with us or against us.”
In a gratuitous allusion to her empire-centric approach, the former secretary of state went on to endorse Vice President Dick Cheney’s “sincere” religious beliefs. She singled out as a “good thing,” his controversy-provoking Christmas card the year before (2003), which bore the inscription: “If a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?”
Stanley Hauerwas, a Yale alumnus, now professor of theological ethics at Duke Divinity School, was moved to comment on Albright’s speech in a Yale Divinity School publication.
He noted that much of what she said was designed to “underwrite the assumption that we cannot follow Jesus and pursue the limited justice possible in foreign affairs.”
But wait. Was not “His” message a direct challenge to empire – in his day the Roman Empire and religious and civil collaborators in the Roman occupation? Isn’t that why the religious and civil authorities put their heads together and ended up torturing and executing him?
Had Jesus allowed himself to be co-opted by the empire and its Quislings, had he chosen to divorce his nonviolent but challenging vision of justice from the politics of the day, he could have died peacefully in his bed – as did the leaders of the institutional church in Nazi Germany.
And we can too. All that is required is a mind-trick to convince ourselves that Jesus did not really mean to say what he said, that he did not really mean to do what he did in exposing the evils of empire.
And help is at hand. It is easy to find a pastor preaching a domesticated Jesus – an ahistorical Jesus far more interested in “piety” than justice. I still find myself wondering how the Cheneys’ pastor reacted to their Christmas card.
Sinning for Us
Often it takes a compassionate but truth-telling outsider to throw light on our country, its leaders, its policies. Bishop Peter Storey of South Africa, who walked the walk in his courageous, outspoken resistance to the apartheid regime (and was chaplain to Nelson Mandela), provides this prophetic word:
“I have often suggested to American Christians that the only way to understand their mission is to ask what it might have meant to witness faithfully to Jesus in the heart of the Roman Empire.
“Certainly, when I preach in the United States I feel, as I imagine the Apostle Paul did when he first passed through the gates of Rome – admiration for its people, awe at its manifest virtues, and resentment of its careless power.
“America’s preachers have a task more difficult, perhaps, than those faced by us under South Africa’s apartheid, or by Christians under Communism. We had obvious evils to engage; you have to unwrap your culture from years of red, white, and blue myth.
“You have to expose and confront the great disconnect between the kindness, compassion, and caring of most American people and the ruthless way American power is experienced, directly and indirectly, by the poor of the earth. You have to help good people see how they have let their institutions do their sinning for them.
“This is not easy among people who really believe that their country does nothing but good. But it is necessary, not only for their future, but for us all.
“All around the world there are those who believe in the basic goodness of the American people, who agonize with you in your pain, but also long to see your human goodness translated into a different, more compassionate way of relating with the rest of this bleeding planet.”
Finally, let me add something I have learned thanks to the candid comments of my atheist friends.
“Hey, Ray,” one wrote, “please, not so heavy on this Judeo-Christian heritage you keep citing. I don’t buy any of it, but wake up: on torture it is not at all necessary to be a person ‘of faith.’
“It is abundantly clear to this atheist, and to most of us, that it is simply impermissible for human beings to torture one another. Humans do not do that to other humans. Period.”
I see the truth in that. At the same time, it does seem to me that we who claim to follow a courageous dissident activist who was tortured to death may have extra incentive to do all we can to prevent others from being subjected to “Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.”
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
The Utter Futility of War: Veteran's for Peace Arrested at White House
Bitter Memories of War on the Way to Jail
By Chris Hedges
December 20, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- The speeches were over. There was a mournful harmonica rendition of taps. The 500 protesters in Lafayette Park in front of the White House fell silent. One hundred and thirty-one men and women, many of them military veterans wearing old fatigues, formed a single, silent line. Under a heavy snowfall and to the slow beat of a drum, they walked to the White House fence. They stood there until they were arrested.
The solemnity of that funerary march, the hush, was the hardest and most moving part of Thursday’s protest against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It unwound the bitter memories and images of war I keep wrapped in the thick cotton wool of forgetfulness. I was transported in that short walk to places I do not like to go. Strange and vivid flashes swept over me—the young soldier in El Salvador who had been shot through the back of the head and was, as I crouched next to him, slowly curling up in a fetal position to die; the mutilated corpses of Kosovar Albanians in the back of a flatbed truck; the screams of a woman, her entrails spilling out of her gaping wounds, on the cobblestones of a Sarajevo street. My experience was not unique. Veterans around me were back in the rice paddies and lush undergrowth of Vietnam, the dusty roads of southern Iraq or the mountain passes of Afghanistan. Their tears showed that. There was no need to talk. We spoke the same wordless language. The butchery of war defies, for those who know it, articulation.
What can I tell you about war?
War perverts and destroys you. It pushes you closer and closer to your own annihilation—spiritual, emotional and, finally, physical. It destroys the continuity of life, tearing apart all systems, economic, social, environmental and political, that sustain us as human beings. War is necrophilia. The essence of war is death. War is a state of almost pure sin with its goals of hatred and destruction. It is organized sadism. War fosters alienation and leads inevitably to nihilism. It is a turning away from the sanctity of life.
And yet the mythic narratives about war perpetuate the allure of power and violence. They perpetuate the seductiveness of the godlike force that comes with the license to kill with impunity. All images and narratives about war disseminated by the state, the press, religious institutions, schools and the entertainment industry are gross and distorted lies. The clash between the fabricated myth about war and the truth about war leaves those of us who return from war alienated, angry and often unable to communicate. We can’t find the words to describe war’s reality. It is as if the wider culture sucked the words out from us and left us to sputter incoherencies. How can you speak meaningfully about organized murder? Anything you say is gibberish.
The sophisticated forms of industrial killing, coupled with the amoral decisions of politicians and military leaders who direct and fund war, hide war’s reality from public view. But those who have been in combat see death up close. Only their story tells the moral truth about war. The power of the Washington march was that we all knew this story. We had no need to use stale and hackneyed clichés about war. We grieved together.
War, once it begins, fuels new and bizarre perversities, innovative forms of death to ward off the boredom of routine death. This is why we would drive into towns in Bosnia and find bodies crucified on the sides of barns or decapitated, burned and mutilated. That is why those slain in combat are treated as trophies by their killers, turned into grotesque pieces of performance art. I met soldiers who carried in their wallets the identity cards of men they killed. They showed them to me with the imploring look of a lost child.
We swiftly deform ourselves, our essence, in war. We give up individual conscience—maybe even consciousness—for the contagion of the crowd and the intoxication of violence. You survive war because you repress emotions. You do what you have to do. And this means killing. To make a moral choice, to defy war’s enticement, is often self-destructive. But once the survivors return home, once the danger, adrenaline highs and the pressure of the crowd are removed, the repressed emotions surface with a vengeance. Fear, rage, grief and guilt leap up like snake heads to consume lives and turn nights into long, sleepless bouts with terror. You drink to forget.
We reached the fence. The real prisoners, the ones who blindly serve systems of power and force, are the mandarins inside the White House, the Congress and the Pentagon. The masters of war are slaves to the idols of empire, power and greed, to the idols of careers, to the dead language of interests, national security, politics and propaganda. They kill and do not know what killing is. In the rise to power, they became smaller. Power consumes them. Once power is obtained they become its pawn. Like Shakespeare’s Richard III, politicians such as Barack Obama fall prey to the forces they thought they had harnessed. The capacity to love, to cherish and protect life, may not always triumph, but it saves us. It keeps us human. It offers the only chance to escape from the contagion of war. Perhaps it is the only antidote. There are times when remaining human is the only victory possible.
The necrophilia of war is hidden under platitudes about honor, duty or comradeship. It waits especially in moments when we seem to have little to live for and no hope, or in moments when the intoxication of war is at its pitch to be unleashed. When we spend long enough in war, it comes to us as a kind of release, a fatal and seductive embrace that can consummate the long flirtation with our own destruction. In the Arab-Israeli 1973 war, almost a third of all Israeli casualties were due to psychiatric causes—and the war lasted only a few days. A World War II study determined that, after 60 days of continuous combat, 98 percent of all surviving soldiers will have become psychiatric casualties. A common trait among the 2 percent who were able to endure sustained combat was a predisposition toward “aggressive psychopathic personalities.” In short, if you spend enough time in combat you go insane or you were insane to begin with. War starts out as the annihilation of the other. War ends, if we do not free ourselves from its grasp, in self-annihilation.
Those around me at the protest, at once haunted and maimed by war, had freed themselves of war’s contagion. They bore its scars. They were plagued by its demons. These crippling forces will always haunt them. But they had returned home. They had returned to life. They had asked for atonement. In Lafayette Park they found grace. They had recovered within themselves the capacity for reverence. They no longer sought to become gods, to wield the power of the divine, the power to take life. And it is out of this new acknowledgement of weakness, remorse for their complicity in evil and an acceptance of human imperfection that they had found wisdom. Listen to them, if you can hear them. They are our prophets.
The tears and grief, the halting asides, the catch in the throat, the sudden breaking off of a sentence, is the only language that describes war. This faltering language of pain and atonement, even shame, was carried like great, heavy boulders by these veterans as they tromped slowly through the snow from Lafayette Park to the White House fence. It was carried by them as they were handcuffed, dragged through the snow, photographed for arrest, and frog-marched into police vans. It was carried into the frigid holding cells of a Washington jail. If it was understood by the masters of war who build the big guns, who build the death planes, who build all the bombs and who hide behind walls and desks, this language would expose their masks and chasten their hollow, empty souls. This language, bereft of words, places its faith in physical acts of nonviolent resistance, in powerlessness and compassion, in truth. It believes that one day it will bring down the house of war.
As Tennyson wrote in “In Memoriam”:
Behold, we know not anything;
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last—far off—at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.
So runs my dream: but what am I?
An infant crying in the night:
An infant crying for the light:
And with no language but a cry.
Copyright © 2010 Truthdig, L.L.C.
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Witness at the White House Fence
By Ray McGovern
December 21, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- “Show me your company, and I’ll tell you who you are,” my grandmother would often say with a light Irish lilt but unmistakable seriousness, an admonition about taking care in choosing what company you keep.
On Thursday, I could sense her smiling down through the snow as I stood pinned to the White House fence with Daniel Ellsberg, Chris Hedges, Margaret Flowers, Medea Benjamin, Coleen Rowley, Mike Ferner, Jodie Evans, and over 125 others risking arrest in an attempt to highlight the horrors of war.
The witness was sponsored by Veterans for Peace, a group comprised of many former soldiers who have “been there, done that” regarding war, distinguishing them from President Barack Obama who, like his predecessor, hasn’t a clue what war is really about. (Sorry, Mr. President, donning a bomber jacket and making empty promises to the troops in the middle of an Afghan night does not qualify.)
The simple but significant gift of presence was being offered outside the White House. As I hung on the fence, I recalled what I knew of the results of war.
Into view came some of my closest childhood friends — like Bob, whose father was killed in WWII when Bob was in kindergarten. My uncle Larry, an Army chaplain, killed in a plane crash.
Other friends like Mike and Dan, whose big brothers were killed in Korea. So many of my classmates from Infantry Officers Orientation at Ft. Benning killed in the Big Muddy called Vietnam.
My college classmate with whom I studied Russian, Ed Krukowski, 1Lt, USAF, one of the very first casualties of Vietnam, killed, leaving behind a wife and three small children. Other friends, too numerous to mention, killed in that misbegotten war.
More recently, Casey Sheehan and 4,429 other U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq, and the 491 U.S. troops killed so far this year in Afghanistan (bringing that total to 1,438). And their mothers. And the mothers of all those others who have died in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan. Mothers don’t get to decide; only to mourn.
A pure snow showered down as if to say blessed are the peacemakers. Tears kept my eyes hydrated against the cold.
The hat my youngest daughter knit for me three years ago when I had no hair gave me an additional sense of being showered with love and affirmation. There was a palpable sense of rightness in our witness to the witless ways of the White House behind the fence.
I thought to myself, this White House is a far cry from the “Camelot” administration of John F. Kennedy, who brought me, and so many others to Washington almost a half-century ago. And yet, I could not resist borrowing a song from the play, Camelot: “I wonder what the king is doing tonight. What merriment is the king pursuing tonight…”
Perhaps strutting before a mirror in his leather bomber jacket, practicing rhetorical flourishes for the troops, like, “You are making our country safer.” The opposite, of course, is true, and if President Obama does not know that, he is not as smart as people think he is.
More accurately, the troops are making Obama’s political position safer, protecting him from accusations of “softness” on Afghanistan, just as a surge of troops into Iraq postponed the inevitable, sparing George W. Bush from the personal ignominy of presiding over a more obvious American defeat in Iraq.
Both presidents were willing to sacrifice those troops on the altar of political expediency, knowing full well that it is not American freedom that “the insurgents” hate, but rather U.S. government policies, which leave so many oppressed, or dead.
Despite our (Veterans for Peace) repeated requests over many months, Obama has refused to meet with us. On Wednesday, though, he carved out five hours to sit down with many of the fat cat executives who are profiteering from war.
It seems the President was worried that he had hurt the fat cats’ feelings – and opened himself to criticism as being “anti-business” – with some earlier remarks about their obscenely inflated pay.
Before our witness on Thursday, we read in the Washington Post that Obama told the 20 chief executives, “I want to dispel any notion we want to inhibit your success,” and solicited ideas from them “on a host of issues.” By way of contrast, the President has shown zero interest in soliciting ideas from the likes of us.
‘The Big Fool Said to Push On’
In another serendipitous coincidence, as we were witnessing against the March of Folly in Afghanistan, the President was completing his “review” of the war and sealing the doom of countless more soldiers and civilians (and, in my view, his own political doom) by re-enacting the Shakespearean tragedy of Lyndon the First.
Afraid to get crossways with the military brass, who have made it embarrassingly clear that they see no backbone under that bomber jacket, Obama has just sped past another exit ramp out of Afghanistan by letting the policy review promised for this month become a charade.
Hewing to the script of Lyndon the First, Barack Obama has chosen to shun the considered views of U.S. intelligence agencies, which, to their credit, show in no uncertain terms the stupidity of keeping U.S. troops neck-deep in this latest Big Muddy in Afghanistan — to borrow from Pete Seeger’s song from the Vietnam era.
There is one reality upon which there is virtually complete consensus as highlighted by the U.S. intelligence agencies: The U.S. and NATO will not be able to “prevail” in Afghanistan if Pakistan does not stop supporting the Taliban. Are we clear on that? That’s what the recent National Intelligence Estimate on Afghanistan says.
A companion NIE on Pakistan says there is not a snowball’s chance in hell that the Pakistani Army and security services will somehow “change their strategic vision” regarding keeping the Taliban in play for the time when the United States and its NATO allies finally leave Afghanistan and when Pakistan will want to reassert its influence there.
Should it be too hard to put the two NIEs together and reach the appropriate conclusions for policy?
It is difficult to believe that – after going from knee-deep to waist-deep in the Big Muddy by his early 2009 decision to insert 21,000 troops into Afghanistan, and then from waist-deep to neck-deep by deciding a year ago to send in 30,000 more — Obama would say to “push on.”
The answer lies in the kind of “foolish consistency” Emerson termed the “hobgoblin of little minds.” Out of crass political considerations, Obama continues to evidence a spineless persistence behind this fool’s errand. He seems driven by fear of offending other important Washington constituencies, such as the neoconservative opinion-makers, and having to face the wrath of the be-medaled and be-ribboned Gen. David Petraeus. This is pitiable enough — but a lot of people are getting killed or maimed for life.
‘When will we ever learn?’
To answer this other Vietnam-era song, well, we have learned — many of us the hard way. We need to tell the big fool not to be so afraid of neocon columnists and the festooned left breast of the sainted Petraeus — you know, the ten rows of medals and merit badges that made him so lopsided he crashed down on the witness table and was given a time-out by the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Outside the White House on Thursday, we found ourselves singing “We Shall Overcome” with confidence. And what we learned later of other witnessing conducted that same day provided still more affirmation, grit, and determination.
For example, 75 witnesses braved freezing temperatures at the Times Square recruiting station in New York to express solidarity with our demonstration in Washington.
There in Times Square stood not only veterans, but also grandmothers from the Granny Peace Brigade, the Raging Grannies, and Grandmothers Against the War. Two of the grandmothers were in their 90s, but stood for more than an hour in the cold. The Catholic Worker, War Resister League and other anti-war groups were also represented.
What? You didn’t hear about any of this, including the arrest of 135 veterans and other anti-war activists in front of the White House? Need I remind you of the Fawning Corporate Media and how its practitioners have always downplayed or ignored protests, large or small, against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Dave Lindorff summed the situation up HERE... .
A Rich Tradition
Civil Disobedience was Henry David Thoreau’s response to his 1846 imprisonment for refusing to pay a poll tax that violated his conscience. Thoreau was protesting an earlier war of aggression, the U.S. attack on Mexico.
In Civil Disobedience, Thoreau asked:
“Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward.
“It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.”
Imprisonment was Thoreau’s first direct experience with state power and, in typical fashion, he analyzed it:
“The State never intentionally confronts a man’s sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.”
Prior to his arrest, Thoreau had lived a quiet, solitary life at Walden, an isolated pond in the woods about a mile and a half from Concord. He returned to Walden to mull over two questions: (1) Why do some men obey laws without asking if the laws are just or unjust; and, (2) why do others obey laws they think are wrong?
More recent American prophets have thrown their own light on the crises of our time while confronting the questions posed by Thoreau.
Amid the carnage of Vietnam, Fr. Daniel Berrigan, SJ, posed a challenge to those who hoped for peace without sacrifice, those who would say, “Let us have peace but let us loose nothing. Let our lives stand intact; let us know neither prison nor ill repute nor disruption of ties.”
Berrigan saw no such easy option. “There is no peace,” he said, “because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war — at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison.”
So, if the making of peace today means prison, that’s where we need to be. It is time to accept our responsibility to do ALL we can to stop the violence of wars waged in our name. Now it’s our turn to ponder those questions.
This article first appeared at Consortiumnews.com.
By Chris Hedges
December 20, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- The speeches were over. There was a mournful harmonica rendition of taps. The 500 protesters in Lafayette Park in front of the White House fell silent. One hundred and thirty-one men and women, many of them military veterans wearing old fatigues, formed a single, silent line. Under a heavy snowfall and to the slow beat of a drum, they walked to the White House fence. They stood there until they were arrested.
The solemnity of that funerary march, the hush, was the hardest and most moving part of Thursday’s protest against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It unwound the bitter memories and images of war I keep wrapped in the thick cotton wool of forgetfulness. I was transported in that short walk to places I do not like to go. Strange and vivid flashes swept over me—the young soldier in El Salvador who had been shot through the back of the head and was, as I crouched next to him, slowly curling up in a fetal position to die; the mutilated corpses of Kosovar Albanians in the back of a flatbed truck; the screams of a woman, her entrails spilling out of her gaping wounds, on the cobblestones of a Sarajevo street. My experience was not unique. Veterans around me were back in the rice paddies and lush undergrowth of Vietnam, the dusty roads of southern Iraq or the mountain passes of Afghanistan. Their tears showed that. There was no need to talk. We spoke the same wordless language. The butchery of war defies, for those who know it, articulation.
What can I tell you about war?
War perverts and destroys you. It pushes you closer and closer to your own annihilation—spiritual, emotional and, finally, physical. It destroys the continuity of life, tearing apart all systems, economic, social, environmental and political, that sustain us as human beings. War is necrophilia. The essence of war is death. War is a state of almost pure sin with its goals of hatred and destruction. It is organized sadism. War fosters alienation and leads inevitably to nihilism. It is a turning away from the sanctity of life.
And yet the mythic narratives about war perpetuate the allure of power and violence. They perpetuate the seductiveness of the godlike force that comes with the license to kill with impunity. All images and narratives about war disseminated by the state, the press, religious institutions, schools and the entertainment industry are gross and distorted lies. The clash between the fabricated myth about war and the truth about war leaves those of us who return from war alienated, angry and often unable to communicate. We can’t find the words to describe war’s reality. It is as if the wider culture sucked the words out from us and left us to sputter incoherencies. How can you speak meaningfully about organized murder? Anything you say is gibberish.
The sophisticated forms of industrial killing, coupled with the amoral decisions of politicians and military leaders who direct and fund war, hide war’s reality from public view. But those who have been in combat see death up close. Only their story tells the moral truth about war. The power of the Washington march was that we all knew this story. We had no need to use stale and hackneyed clichés about war. We grieved together.
War, once it begins, fuels new and bizarre perversities, innovative forms of death to ward off the boredom of routine death. This is why we would drive into towns in Bosnia and find bodies crucified on the sides of barns or decapitated, burned and mutilated. That is why those slain in combat are treated as trophies by their killers, turned into grotesque pieces of performance art. I met soldiers who carried in their wallets the identity cards of men they killed. They showed them to me with the imploring look of a lost child.
We swiftly deform ourselves, our essence, in war. We give up individual conscience—maybe even consciousness—for the contagion of the crowd and the intoxication of violence. You survive war because you repress emotions. You do what you have to do. And this means killing. To make a moral choice, to defy war’s enticement, is often self-destructive. But once the survivors return home, once the danger, adrenaline highs and the pressure of the crowd are removed, the repressed emotions surface with a vengeance. Fear, rage, grief and guilt leap up like snake heads to consume lives and turn nights into long, sleepless bouts with terror. You drink to forget.
We reached the fence. The real prisoners, the ones who blindly serve systems of power and force, are the mandarins inside the White House, the Congress and the Pentagon. The masters of war are slaves to the idols of empire, power and greed, to the idols of careers, to the dead language of interests, national security, politics and propaganda. They kill and do not know what killing is. In the rise to power, they became smaller. Power consumes them. Once power is obtained they become its pawn. Like Shakespeare’s Richard III, politicians such as Barack Obama fall prey to the forces they thought they had harnessed. The capacity to love, to cherish and protect life, may not always triumph, but it saves us. It keeps us human. It offers the only chance to escape from the contagion of war. Perhaps it is the only antidote. There are times when remaining human is the only victory possible.
The necrophilia of war is hidden under platitudes about honor, duty or comradeship. It waits especially in moments when we seem to have little to live for and no hope, or in moments when the intoxication of war is at its pitch to be unleashed. When we spend long enough in war, it comes to us as a kind of release, a fatal and seductive embrace that can consummate the long flirtation with our own destruction. In the Arab-Israeli 1973 war, almost a third of all Israeli casualties were due to psychiatric causes—and the war lasted only a few days. A World War II study determined that, after 60 days of continuous combat, 98 percent of all surviving soldiers will have become psychiatric casualties. A common trait among the 2 percent who were able to endure sustained combat was a predisposition toward “aggressive psychopathic personalities.” In short, if you spend enough time in combat you go insane or you were insane to begin with. War starts out as the annihilation of the other. War ends, if we do not free ourselves from its grasp, in self-annihilation.
Those around me at the protest, at once haunted and maimed by war, had freed themselves of war’s contagion. They bore its scars. They were plagued by its demons. These crippling forces will always haunt them. But they had returned home. They had returned to life. They had asked for atonement. In Lafayette Park they found grace. They had recovered within themselves the capacity for reverence. They no longer sought to become gods, to wield the power of the divine, the power to take life. And it is out of this new acknowledgement of weakness, remorse for their complicity in evil and an acceptance of human imperfection that they had found wisdom. Listen to them, if you can hear them. They are our prophets.
The tears and grief, the halting asides, the catch in the throat, the sudden breaking off of a sentence, is the only language that describes war. This faltering language of pain and atonement, even shame, was carried like great, heavy boulders by these veterans as they tromped slowly through the snow from Lafayette Park to the White House fence. It was carried by them as they were handcuffed, dragged through the snow, photographed for arrest, and frog-marched into police vans. It was carried into the frigid holding cells of a Washington jail. If it was understood by the masters of war who build the big guns, who build the death planes, who build all the bombs and who hide behind walls and desks, this language would expose their masks and chasten their hollow, empty souls. This language, bereft of words, places its faith in physical acts of nonviolent resistance, in powerlessness and compassion, in truth. It believes that one day it will bring down the house of war.
As Tennyson wrote in “In Memoriam”:
Behold, we know not anything;
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last—far off—at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.
So runs my dream: but what am I?
An infant crying in the night:
An infant crying for the light:
And with no language but a cry.
Copyright © 2010 Truthdig, L.L.C.
________________________________
Witness at the White House Fence
By Ray McGovern
December 21, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- “Show me your company, and I’ll tell you who you are,” my grandmother would often say with a light Irish lilt but unmistakable seriousness, an admonition about taking care in choosing what company you keep.
On Thursday, I could sense her smiling down through the snow as I stood pinned to the White House fence with Daniel Ellsberg, Chris Hedges, Margaret Flowers, Medea Benjamin, Coleen Rowley, Mike Ferner, Jodie Evans, and over 125 others risking arrest in an attempt to highlight the horrors of war.
The witness was sponsored by Veterans for Peace, a group comprised of many former soldiers who have “been there, done that” regarding war, distinguishing them from President Barack Obama who, like his predecessor, hasn’t a clue what war is really about. (Sorry, Mr. President, donning a bomber jacket and making empty promises to the troops in the middle of an Afghan night does not qualify.)
The simple but significant gift of presence was being offered outside the White House. As I hung on the fence, I recalled what I knew of the results of war.
Into view came some of my closest childhood friends — like Bob, whose father was killed in WWII when Bob was in kindergarten. My uncle Larry, an Army chaplain, killed in a plane crash.
Other friends like Mike and Dan, whose big brothers were killed in Korea. So many of my classmates from Infantry Officers Orientation at Ft. Benning killed in the Big Muddy called Vietnam.
My college classmate with whom I studied Russian, Ed Krukowski, 1Lt, USAF, one of the very first casualties of Vietnam, killed, leaving behind a wife and three small children. Other friends, too numerous to mention, killed in that misbegotten war.
More recently, Casey Sheehan and 4,429 other U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq, and the 491 U.S. troops killed so far this year in Afghanistan (bringing that total to 1,438). And their mothers. And the mothers of all those others who have died in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan. Mothers don’t get to decide; only to mourn.
A pure snow showered down as if to say blessed are the peacemakers. Tears kept my eyes hydrated against the cold.
The hat my youngest daughter knit for me three years ago when I had no hair gave me an additional sense of being showered with love and affirmation. There was a palpable sense of rightness in our witness to the witless ways of the White House behind the fence.
I thought to myself, this White House is a far cry from the “Camelot” administration of John F. Kennedy, who brought me, and so many others to Washington almost a half-century ago. And yet, I could not resist borrowing a song from the play, Camelot: “I wonder what the king is doing tonight. What merriment is the king pursuing tonight…”
Perhaps strutting before a mirror in his leather bomber jacket, practicing rhetorical flourishes for the troops, like, “You are making our country safer.” The opposite, of course, is true, and if President Obama does not know that, he is not as smart as people think he is.
More accurately, the troops are making Obama’s political position safer, protecting him from accusations of “softness” on Afghanistan, just as a surge of troops into Iraq postponed the inevitable, sparing George W. Bush from the personal ignominy of presiding over a more obvious American defeat in Iraq.
Both presidents were willing to sacrifice those troops on the altar of political expediency, knowing full well that it is not American freedom that “the insurgents” hate, but rather U.S. government policies, which leave so many oppressed, or dead.
Despite our (Veterans for Peace) repeated requests over many months, Obama has refused to meet with us. On Wednesday, though, he carved out five hours to sit down with many of the fat cat executives who are profiteering from war.
It seems the President was worried that he had hurt the fat cats’ feelings – and opened himself to criticism as being “anti-business” – with some earlier remarks about their obscenely inflated pay.
Before our witness on Thursday, we read in the Washington Post that Obama told the 20 chief executives, “I want to dispel any notion we want to inhibit your success,” and solicited ideas from them “on a host of issues.” By way of contrast, the President has shown zero interest in soliciting ideas from the likes of us.
‘The Big Fool Said to Push On’
In another serendipitous coincidence, as we were witnessing against the March of Folly in Afghanistan, the President was completing his “review” of the war and sealing the doom of countless more soldiers and civilians (and, in my view, his own political doom) by re-enacting the Shakespearean tragedy of Lyndon the First.
Afraid to get crossways with the military brass, who have made it embarrassingly clear that they see no backbone under that bomber jacket, Obama has just sped past another exit ramp out of Afghanistan by letting the policy review promised for this month become a charade.
Hewing to the script of Lyndon the First, Barack Obama has chosen to shun the considered views of U.S. intelligence agencies, which, to their credit, show in no uncertain terms the stupidity of keeping U.S. troops neck-deep in this latest Big Muddy in Afghanistan — to borrow from Pete Seeger’s song from the Vietnam era.
There is one reality upon which there is virtually complete consensus as highlighted by the U.S. intelligence agencies: The U.S. and NATO will not be able to “prevail” in Afghanistan if Pakistan does not stop supporting the Taliban. Are we clear on that? That’s what the recent National Intelligence Estimate on Afghanistan says.
A companion NIE on Pakistan says there is not a snowball’s chance in hell that the Pakistani Army and security services will somehow “change their strategic vision” regarding keeping the Taliban in play for the time when the United States and its NATO allies finally leave Afghanistan and when Pakistan will want to reassert its influence there.
Should it be too hard to put the two NIEs together and reach the appropriate conclusions for policy?
It is difficult to believe that – after going from knee-deep to waist-deep in the Big Muddy by his early 2009 decision to insert 21,000 troops into Afghanistan, and then from waist-deep to neck-deep by deciding a year ago to send in 30,000 more — Obama would say to “push on.”
The answer lies in the kind of “foolish consistency” Emerson termed the “hobgoblin of little minds.” Out of crass political considerations, Obama continues to evidence a spineless persistence behind this fool’s errand. He seems driven by fear of offending other important Washington constituencies, such as the neoconservative opinion-makers, and having to face the wrath of the be-medaled and be-ribboned Gen. David Petraeus. This is pitiable enough — but a lot of people are getting killed or maimed for life.
‘When will we ever learn?’
To answer this other Vietnam-era song, well, we have learned — many of us the hard way. We need to tell the big fool not to be so afraid of neocon columnists and the festooned left breast of the sainted Petraeus — you know, the ten rows of medals and merit badges that made him so lopsided he crashed down on the witness table and was given a time-out by the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Outside the White House on Thursday, we found ourselves singing “We Shall Overcome” with confidence. And what we learned later of other witnessing conducted that same day provided still more affirmation, grit, and determination.
For example, 75 witnesses braved freezing temperatures at the Times Square recruiting station in New York to express solidarity with our demonstration in Washington.
There in Times Square stood not only veterans, but also grandmothers from the Granny Peace Brigade, the Raging Grannies, and Grandmothers Against the War. Two of the grandmothers were in their 90s, but stood for more than an hour in the cold. The Catholic Worker, War Resister League and other anti-war groups were also represented.
What? You didn’t hear about any of this, including the arrest of 135 veterans and other anti-war activists in front of the White House? Need I remind you of the Fawning Corporate Media and how its practitioners have always downplayed or ignored protests, large or small, against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Dave Lindorff summed the situation up HERE... .
A Rich Tradition
Civil Disobedience was Henry David Thoreau’s response to his 1846 imprisonment for refusing to pay a poll tax that violated his conscience. Thoreau was protesting an earlier war of aggression, the U.S. attack on Mexico.
In Civil Disobedience, Thoreau asked:
“Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward.
“It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.”
Imprisonment was Thoreau’s first direct experience with state power and, in typical fashion, he analyzed it:
“The State never intentionally confronts a man’s sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.”
Prior to his arrest, Thoreau had lived a quiet, solitary life at Walden, an isolated pond in the woods about a mile and a half from Concord. He returned to Walden to mull over two questions: (1) Why do some men obey laws without asking if the laws are just or unjust; and, (2) why do others obey laws they think are wrong?
More recent American prophets have thrown their own light on the crises of our time while confronting the questions posed by Thoreau.
Amid the carnage of Vietnam, Fr. Daniel Berrigan, SJ, posed a challenge to those who hoped for peace without sacrifice, those who would say, “Let us have peace but let us loose nothing. Let our lives stand intact; let us know neither prison nor ill repute nor disruption of ties.”
Berrigan saw no such easy option. “There is no peace,” he said, “because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war — at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison.”
So, if the making of peace today means prison, that’s where we need to be. It is time to accept our responsibility to do ALL we can to stop the violence of wars waged in our name. Now it’s our turn to ponder those questions.
This article first appeared at Consortiumnews.com.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Wikileaks and the Diplomacy of Secrecy
Gareth Porter, Investigative Journalist and Ray McGovern, Retired CIA Analyst discuss Wikileaks
--Gareth Porter says the United States practices "coercive diplomacy" and does not want it to be disclosed to the public.
--Ray McGovern argues that Julian Assange and Wikileaks are the real deal. The documents show at the very least that the United States is no longer interested in the rule of law.
_______________________________________
What’s Behind the War on WikiLeaks
By Ray McGovern
December 10, 2010 "Information Clearing House" --WikiLeaks has teased the genie of transparency out of a very opaque bottle, and powerful forces in America, who thrive on secrecy, are trying desperately to stuff the genie back in.
How far down the U.S. has slid can be seen, ironically enough, in a recent commentary in Pravda (that’s right, Russia’s Pravda):
"What WikiLeaks has done is make people understand why so many Americans are politically apathetic… After all, the evils committed by those in power can be suffocating, and the sense of powerlessness that erupts can be paralyzing, especially when … government evildoers almost always get away with their crimes. …
"So shame on Barack Obama, Eric Holder and all those who spew platitudes about integrity, justice and accountability while allowing war criminals and torturers to walk freely upon the earth. … The American people should be outraged that [their] government has transformed a nation with a reputation for freedom, justice, tolerance and respect for human rights into a backwater that revels in its criminality, cover-ups, injustices and hypocrisies."
Odd, isn’t it, that it takes a Pravda commentator to drive home the point that the Obama administration is on the wrong side of history.
Some bloodthirsty U.S. politicians even are calling for the murder of WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange, while some in the U.S. news media favor only prosecuting him and his leakers, while insisting that "responsible" journalists should be protected.
In this view, severe punishment should be reserved for people with access to the government’s dark secrets who out of conscience decide to share that information with the people, a prospect that some pundits find objectionable.
"The government has to get better at keeping secrets," wrote the Washington Post‘s Richard Cohen. "Muzzle the leakers – but not the press."
The corporate-and-government-dominated media appears apprehensive over the challenge that WikiLeaks presents. Perhaps deep down they know, as Dickens put it, "There is nothing so strong … as the simple truth."
As part of the attempt to discredit WikiLeaks and Assange, much of the media commentary over the weekend portrayed Assange’s exposure of classified materials as very different from – and far less laudable than – what Daniel Ellsberg did in releasing the Pentagon Papers in 1971.
As a chapter of distant history – and a point of some First Amendment pride for U.S. journalists – the Pentagon Papers case and Ellsberg can now be safely defended. Not the same for WikiLeaks and Assange who today are facing a relentless assault, organized by the U.S. government and its many powerful allies.
But Ellsberg for one strongly rejects the mantra "Pentagon Papers good; WikiLeaks material bad." He continues:
"That’s just a cover for people who don’t want to admit that they oppose any and all exposure of even the most misguided, secretive foreign policy. The truth is that EVERY attack now made on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange was made against me and the release of the Pentagon Papers at the time."
As often is the case amid the pressures of the moment, it is easier for pundits and politicians to go with the flow rather than swim against the current. So they find it convenient to treat the motivations behind the WikiLeaks disclosures as reckless or self-interested. But that’s not what the evidence shows.
WikiLeaks’s reported source, Army Pvt. Bradley Manning, having watched Iraqi police abuses and having read of similar and worse incidents in official messages, reportedly concluded, "I was actively involved in something that I was completely against."
Rather than simply look the other way, Manning wrote: "I want people to see the truth … because without information you cannot make informed decisions as a public," adding that he hoped to provoke worldwide discussion, debates and reform.
There is nothing to suggest that WikiLeaks/Assange’s motives were any different.
Though mothers are not the most impartial observers, what Assange’s mother told an Australian newspaper had the ring of truth. "Living by what you believe in and standing up for something is a good thing," she said. "He sees what he is doing as a good thing in the world, fighting baddies, if you like."
That may sound a bit quixotic, but Assange and his associates appear the opposite of benighted. Still, with the Pentagon PR man Geoff Morrell and even Attorney General Eric Holder making thinly disguised threats of extrajudicial steps, it is not totally farfetched to worry about Assange’s personal safely. (Editor's bold emphasis throughout)
Again, the media is the key. No one said it better than Monseñor Oscar Romero of El Salvador, who just before he was assassinated 25 years ago, warned, "The corruption of the press is part of our sad reality, and it reveals the complicity of the oligarchy."
Sadly, that is also true of the media situation in America today.
The big question is not whether Americans can "handle the truth." We believe they can. The challenge is to make the truth available to them in a straightforward way so they can draw their own conclusions — an uphill battle given the dominance of the mainstream media, much of which has joined in the hateful campaign to discredit Assange and WikiLeaks.
So far, the question of whether an informed American public could put the country back on an honorable course has been an academic one rather than experience-based, because Americans have had very little access to the truth.
Now, however, with the WikiLeaks disclosures, they do. Indeed, the classified messages from the Army and the State Department released by WikiLeaks are, quite literally, "ground truth."
How to inform American citizens? As a step in that direction, on Oct. 23, we "Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence" (see below) presented our annual award for integrity to Julian Assange.
In contrast to Richard Cohen’s disdain for people inside government who are driven by conscience to reveal crucial information to the public, Assange accepted the honor "on behalf of our sources, without which WikiLeaks’ contributions are of no significance."
In presenting the award, we noted that many around the world are deeply indebted to truth-tellers like WikiLeaks and its sources.
A footnote: Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence (SAAII) is a group of former CIA colleagues and other admirers of former intelligence analyst Sam Adams. We try to hold up his example as a model for those who aspire to the courage to speak truth to power. (For more details, click here.)
Sam did speak truth to power on Vietnam, and in honoring his memory, SAAII confers an award each year to a truth-teller exemplifying Sam Adam’s courage, persistence, and devotion to truth — no matter the consequences. Previous recipients include:
-Coleen Rowley of the FBI
-Katharine Gun of British Intelligence
-Sibel Edmonds of the FBI
-Craig Murray, former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan
-Sam Provance, former Sgt., US Army
-Frank Grevil, Maj., Danish Army Intelligence
-Larry Wilkerson, Col., US Army (ret.)
-Julian Assange, WikiLeaks
Reprinted with permission from ConsortiumNews
Friday, June 4, 2010
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