Global Blowback

By: William F. Jasper
The New American
April 28, 2008, original HERE...

Long before 9/11, Osama bin Laden’s terrorist activities around the world were being cited as a classic case of “blowback.” Quite obviously, the CIA’s support for bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and other radical Islamists in Afghanistan in the 1980's, ostensibly to counter the Soviets, had indeed helped spawn a virulently anti-American global terror network that was returning to haunt us.

Unfortunately, aiding al-Qaeda is far from the only “mistake” of this sort to be made by our government. In fact, the top policymakers at the State Department and National Security Council — in both Republican and Democratic administrations — seem to have a perverse proclivity for backing some of the most brutal terrorist organizations and terror-sponsoring regimes, time after time after time.

Here are a few disturbing examples of the absurd and indefensible “war on terror” policies that are aiding our enemies and undermining our security — and that are certain to bring a torrent of deadly blowback to America for years, if not decades, to come.

Kosovo: In Kosovo, President Bush has continued the Clinton policy of supporting Hashim Thaci, the Islamo-Leninist leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) terrorists. Thaci came to power in this province of Serbia as a result of our military intervention on behalf of the KLA. For years now, the KLA has been carrying out a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Orthodox Christians who still live in Kosovo. Thaci is also the head of the Drenica Group of the fearsome Albanian mafia. Under his leadership, hundreds of Christian churches and monasteries, many dating to Medieval times, have been desecrated and destroyed. Christians have been murdered, robbed, persecuted, and driven out. Kosovo, the cradle of Serbia’s Orthodox Christianity, has been transformed into a Marxist-Islamic thugocracy. President Bush’s recognition of Kosovo’s claim of independence in February of this year will accelerate the radical Islamification of Europe.

Albania: The Bush administration is intensifying the love affair begun by President Clinton and Secretary Albright with the Albanian regime of Sali Berisha. During his historic trip to Albania in 2007 (the first by a U.S. president), President Bush praised Albania as “a model of religious tolerance” and congratulated Berisha for his desire “to fight corruption.” Religious tolerance? Virtually all non-Muslims have been driven out of Albania under Berisha, who is broadly recognized as one of the most corrupt rulers in Europe. As president of Albania from 1992-1997, Berisha welcomed Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda cadres into Albania. Now the country’s prime minister, Berisha is the beneficiary of U.S. and NATO assistance, even as he continues to back Islamic terrorists in neighboring Bosnia and Kosovo.

Iraq: The U.S. government has sacrificed the lives of thousands of American troops, along with hundreds of billions of dollars, to back the government of Nouri al-Maliki. But the Maliki government is closely allied with Iran — which, the administration tells us, is our deadly enemy. In Iraq’s violent inter-sectarian and intra-sectarian violence, the administration is backing “good” Sunni and Shia factions, which have terrorist pedigrees equally as vulgar as those of the “bad” Sunni and Shia factions we are opposing. Hence we find the U.S. military arming and training the Iranian-backed Badr Brigades and other forces of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). In fact, our underpaid soldiers are now tasked with literally handing out truckloads of cash in stacks of hundred dollar bills to Iraqi militia members, many of whom are members of (or allies of) al-Qaeda and other groups that are killing our troops. In a February 19, 2008 article entitled “Money Day in Baghdad,” U.S. News & World Report correspondent Alex Kingsbury describes the U.S. “microgrants” program, in which a U.S. Army captain with a backpack jammed full with $110,000 in hundred dollar bills hands out packets of $2,500 to (supposedly) worthy recipients.

That, of course, represents but a molecule compared to the billions of dollars that were flown into Baghdad on C-130s in the first couple years of the war; literally hundreds of tons of hundred dollar bills stacked and shrink-wrapped on pallets — that disappeared without any accounting. According to an investigation last year by the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, the total of “lost” cash may be more than $12 billion. But that’s just part of the price of placing “moderates” in Iraq’s government, right? Moderates like terrorist Member of Parliament Jamal Jaafar Mohammed, who was convicted of helping plan the 1983 suicide bombing of the U.S. embassy in Kuwait. Or Abdul Aziz al-Halim, a leader of both the radical SCIRI mullahs and the United Iraqi Alliance, which dominates the Maliki government. Jamal Jaafar Mohammed and Abdul Azziz al-Hakim are two of Iran’s most ardent supporters in the Maliki regime.

It was precisely these same kinds of interventionist policies (by the usual coterie of policy elites at the State Department, the National Security Council, and the CIA) during the 1980s that produced the Saddam Hussein threat. Saddam, we were told way back then — against all evidence to the contrary — was going to be our great ally against revolutionary Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini. Billions of dollars in military, technical, and financial aid were showered on “ally” Saddam by the “Bush 41” foreign-policy team during the Reagan-Bush years.

We know, of course, what that toxic alliance with Saddam ultimately begat: not one, but two major wars in Iraq — to make the world safe from Saddam.

It was during that same period that the same omniscient brain trust devised the grand strategy that produced the al-Qaeda threat. With the ostensible object of checking the Soviet takeover of Afghanistan, our CIA-State Department went shopping for Mujahedeen allies. But instead of supporting the proven pro-American, anti-communist forces under Younas Khalis, Abdul Haq, and Abdul Qadir, they lavished aid instead on the most virulently anti-American Muslims, such as Gulbadin Hekmatyar (a cutthroat warlord who killed more of his fellow Afghans than he did Soviets), and the al-Qaeda Arabs under the command of the fanatical Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri.

However, even during the late 1990s, after the Clinton State Department had declared al-Qaeda to be a terrorist organization, our CIA continued knowingly to arm, train, and finance al-Qaeda’s most violent subcontractors in Bosnia, Albania, Kosovo, and Macedonia, even as those open bin Laden allies carried out terrible atrocities and built their global terror networks. Incredibly, the Bush administration has continued arming and supporting the same sadistic thugs to this day.

Countless victims in these lands have already experienced the awful reality of blowback resulting from the fateful decisions of our government to side with the terrorists. On September 11, 2001, America received a bitter lesson in how terrible blowback can be, as terrorists who had once been hailed as our allies brought death and destruction to our shores. How many more deadly attacks will be unleashed upon us in the future by terrorists whom our government today supports as allies?

NOTE:

The killing of innocent human beings is always and everywhere immoral under the "golden-rule ethic." Therefore the attacks on 9/11/01 were highly morally illicit. Nevertheless, it is true that the United States government has for decades interfered in the Middle East and the Balkans in such a way as to cause further instability there. The result has been what Chalmers Johnson and others in the US intelligence community have called "blowback." That is to say, our "meddling" in the affairs of other nations--however well-intended--created severe hatred for America which has resulted in horrible violence against our people. The elites who have controlled the levers of power in the US however have managed to emerge unscathed while thousands of innocent Americans have born the brunt of reprisals.

It is past time that those who wielded US foreign policy for the past several decades be held accountable for their actions/transgressions abroad. The American people must demonstrate their opposition to the imperialism/militarism of those who have enacted these unwise and immoral policies in our names.

--Dr. J. P. Hubert

Yes, it is Apartheid

By Yossi Sarid

25/04/2008, original HERE...
Haaretz.com

The anchorwoman was clearly shocked: I don't have time now to respond to what you have said, she told the former U.S. president, allowing Jimmy Carter to make a narrow escape from her clutches. Then she added that she did not want to imagine what would happen to him if he bumped into her colleague from the security affairs desk in Channel 2's dark alley. And the pundit sitting there, sunk in deep thought as always, nodded his heavy head, confirming: He's lucky, the bastard, that we didn't gang up on him and cut him to shreds.

That's how it is here: The rulers set the tone, and the media begins to gripe: Not only did Carter's mission not help, it did damage. He alone was the reason Gilad Shalit was not ransomed out of captivity during the holiday. That's what happens when an enemy of the human race, the twin of the Twin Towers' bin Laden, sticks his nose where it does not belong.

Let's let old Carter be, so he may let sleeping warriors lie; he will not be back. The contents of his words, however, should not be ignored. "Apartheid," he said, "apartheid" - a dark, scary word coined by Afrikaners and meaning segregation, racial segregation.

What does he want from us, that evil man: What do we have to do with apartheid? Does a separation fence constitute separation? Do separate roads for Jewish settlers and Palestinians really separate? Are Palestinian enclaves between Jewish settlements Bantustans?

There is no hint of similarity between South Africa and Israel, and only a sick mind could draw such shadowy connections between them. Roadblocks and inspections at every turn; licenses and permits for every little matter; the arbitrary seizure of land; special privileges in water use; cheap, hard labor; forming and uniting families by bureaucratic whim - none of these are apartheid, in any way. They are an incontrovertible security necessity, period.

The white Afrikaners, too, had reasons for their segregation policy; they, too, felt threatened - a great evil was at their door, and they were frightened, out to defend themselves. Unfortunately, however, all good reasons for apartheid are bad reasons; apartheid always has a reason, and it never has a justification. And what acts like apartheid, is run like apartheid and harasses like apartheid, is not a duck - it is apartheid. Nor does it even solve the problem of fear: Today, everyone knows that all apartheid will inevitably reach its sorry end.

One essential difference remains between South Africa and Israel: There a small minority dominated a large majority, and here we have almost a tie. But the tiebreaker is already darkening on the horizon. Then the Zionist project will come to an end if we don't choose to leave the slave house before being visited by a fatal demographic plague.

It is entirely clear why the word apartheid terrifies us so. What should frighten us, however, is not the description of reality, but reality itself. Even Ehud Olmert has understood at last that continuing the present situation is the end of the Jewish democratic state, as he recently said.

The Palestinians are unfortunate because they have not produced a Nelson Mandela; the Israelis are unfortunate because they have not produced an F.W. de Klerk.

Manifest Destiny and Israel: Hidden Agenda

By URI AVNERY
Counterpunch.com
April 15, 2008, original HERE...

NEXT MONTH, Israel will celebrate its 60th anniversary. The government is working feverishly to make this day into an occasion of joy and jubilation. While serious problems are crying out for funds, some 40 million dollars have been allocated to this aim.

Bur the nation is in no mood for celebrations. It is gloomy.

From all directions the government is blamed for this gloom. "They have no agenda" is the refrain, "Their only concern is their own survival." (The word "agenda", with its English pronunciation, is now fashionable in Israeli political circles, pushing aside a perfectly adequate Hebrew word.)

It is hard not to blame the government. Ehud Olmert speechifies endlessly, at least one speech per day, today at an industrialists' convention, tomorrow at a kindergarten, saying absolutely nothing. There is no national agenda, nor an economic agenda, nor a social agenda, nor a cultural agenda. Nothing.

When he came to power, he presented something that sounded like an agenda: "Hitkansut", an untranslatable word that can be rendered as "contracting", "converging", "ingathering". That was supposed to be a historic operation: Israel would give up a large part of the occupied territories, dismantle the settlements east of the "Separation" Wall and annex the settlements between the Green Line and the Wall.

Now, two years and one war later, nothing of this remains, even the word has been forgotten. The only game in town is the "negotiations" with the Palestinian Authority, which were a farce to start with. Like actors on the stage drinking from empty glasses, all parties pretend that there are negotiations going on. They meet, embrace, smile, pose for photographs, convene joint teams, hold press conferences, make declarations - and nothing, absolutely nothing, really happens.

What is the farce for? Each of the participants has his own reasons: Olmert needs an agenda to fill the void. George Bush, a lame duck who leaves behind him nothing but ruins in every field, wants to present at least one achievement, fictitious as it may be. Poor Mahmoud Abbas, whose continued existence depends on his ability to show some political achievement for his people, clings to this illusion with all his remaining strength. And so the farce goes on.

* * *

BUT ANYONE who believes that the government has no agenda, and that the State of Israel has no agenda, is quite wrong. There certainly is an agenda, but is hidden. More precisely: it is unconscious.

People say that ideology is dead. That, too, is a mistake. There is no society without an ideology, and there is no human being without an ideology. When there is no new ideology, the old ideology continues to operate. When there is no conscious ideology, there is an unconscious one, which can be much more potent - and much more dangerous.

Why? A conscious ideology can be analyzed, criticized, opposed. It is much more difficult to fight against an unconscious one, which directs the agenda without giving itself away.

That's why it is so important to locate, uncover and analyze it.

* * *

IF YOU ask Olmert, he will strenuously deny that he has no agenda. He has a perfect agenda: to make peace (which is nowadays called "permanent status"). And not just any peace, but a peace based on "Two States for Two Peoples". Without such a peace, Olmert has pronounced, "the State is finished".

In that case, why is there no negotiation, only a farcical pretense? Why does the massive building activity go on, even in the settlements east of the Wall, well within the area that government spokespersons propose for the Palestinian state? Why does the government carry out dozens of military and civilian actions daily that push peace even further away?

According to the government itself, and contrary to what it said at the beginning, it has no intention of achieving peace in 2008. At most, perhaps, maybe, there will be a "shelf agreement". That is an original Israeli invention, meaning an agreement that would be put on the shelf "until conditions are ripe". In other words, meaningless negotiations for a meaningless agreement. Now they say that there is no chance even for that, not in 2008, not in the foreseeable future.

There is no escape from the inevitable conclusion: the government is not working for peace. It does not want peace. And, also, that there is no effective parliamentary opposition pressing for peace, nor any pressure from the media.

What does all this mean? That there is no agenda? No, it means that behind the fictitious agenda, which appears in the media, there hides another agenda that does not meet the eye.

* * *

THE HIDDEN agenda is opposed to peace. Why?

Conventional wisdom has it that the government does not pursue peace because it is afraid of the settlers and their supporters. The peace that is being talked about - the peace of Two States for Two Peoples - demands the dismantling of dozens of settlements, including those which harbor the political and ideological leadership of the whole movement. That would mean a declaration of war on all the 250 thousand settlers, apart from those who will leave voluntarily for generous compensation. The current argument is that the government is too weak for such a confrontation.

According to the fashionable formula, "both governments, the Israeli and the Palestinian, are too weak to make peace. Everything must be postponed until strong leaderships emerge on both sides." Some people add the Bush administration to the count - a lame duck president cannot impose peace.

But the settlements are only a symptom, not the heart of the problem. Otherwise, why doesn't the government freeze them, at least, as it has undertaken again and again? If the settlements are the main obstacle to peace, why are they being enlarged even now, and why are new settlements still being set up, disguised as new "neighborhoods" of existing settlements?

Clearly, the settlements, too, are in reality only a pretext. Something more profound is causing the government - and the entire political system - to reject peace.

That is the hidden agenda.

* * *

WHAT IS the heart of peace? A border.

When two neighboring peoples make peace, they fix, first of all, the border between them.

And that is precisely what the Israeli establishment opposes, because it negates the basic ethos of the Zionist enterprise.

True, at different points in time the Zionist movement has drawn up maps. After World War I, it submitted to the peace conference the map of a Jewish state extending from the Litani River in Lebanon to El-Arish in the Sinai desert. The map of Vladimir Ze'ev Jabotinsky, which became the Irgun emblem, copied the borders of the original British Mandate on both sides of the Jordan. Israel Eldad, one of the Stern Group leaders, distributed for many years a map of the Israeli Empire that reached from the Mediterranean to the Euphrates and included all of Jordan and Lebanon, with great chunks of Syria and Egypt thrown in. His son, the extreme right-wing Member of the Knesset Arieh Eldad, has not given up this map. And after the Six Day War, the map favored by the right-wing covered all the conquests, including the Golan Heights and the entire Sinai peninsula.

But all these maps were only games. The real Zionist vision does not recognize any maps. It is a vision of a state without borders - a state that expands at all times according to its demographic, military and political power. The Zionist strategy resembles the waters of a river flowing to the sea. The river snakes through the landscape, goes around obstacles, turns left and right, flowing sometimes on the surface and sometimes underground, and on its way takes in more springs. In the end it reaches its destination.

That is the real agenda, unchanging, hidden, conscious and unconscious. It does not need decisions, formulations or maps, because it is encoded in the genes of the movement. This explains, among other things, the phenomenon described in the report of senior prosecution lawyer Talia Sasson on the settlements: that all the organs of the establishment, the government and the military, without any official coordination but with miraculously effective cooperation, acted to set up the "illegal" settlements. Every one of the thousands of officials and officers who spent decades involved in this enterprise knew exactly what to do, even without receiving any instructions.

That is the reason for David Ben-Gurion's refusal to include in the Declaration of Independence of the new State of Israel any mention of borders. He did not intend for a minute to be satisfied with the borders fixed by the United Nations General Assembly resolution of November 29, 1947. All his successors had the same approach. Even the Oslo agreements delineated "zones" but did not fix a border. President Bush accepted this approach when he proposed a "Palestinian state with provisional borders" - a novelty in international law.

In this respect, too, Israel resembles the United States, which was founded along the Eastern seaboard and did not rest until it had reached the Western shores on the other side of the continent. The incessant stream of mass immigration from Europe flowed on westwards, breaching all borders and violating all agreements, exterminating the Native Americans, starting a war against Mexico, conquering Texas, invading Central America and Cuba. The slogan that drove them on and justified all their actions was coined in 1845 by John O'Sullivan: "Manifest Destiny".

The Israeli version of "Manifest Destiny" is Moshe Dayan's slogan "We are fated". Dayan, a typical representative of the second generation, made two important speeches in his life. The first and better known was delivered in 1956 at the grave of Roy Rutenberg of Nahal Oz, a kibbutz facing Gaza: "Before their [the Palestinians in Gaza] very eyes we turn into our homestead the land and villages in which they and their forefathers have lived This is the fate of our generation, the choice of our life - to be prepared and armed, strong and tough - or otherwise, the sword will slip from our fist, and our life will be snuffed out."

He did not mean only his own generation. The second, lesser known speech is more important. It was delivered in August 1968, after the occupation of the Golan Heights, before a rally of young Kibbutzniks. When I asked him about it in the Knesset, he inserted the entire speech into the Knesset record, a very unusual procedure in our parliament.

This is what he told the youth: "We are fated to live in a permanent state of fighting against the Arabs For the hundred years of the Return to Zion we are working for two things: the building of the land and the building of the people That is a process of expansion, of more Jews and more settlements That is a process that has not reached the end. We were born here and found our parents, who had come here before us It is not your duty to reach the end. Your duty is to add your layer to expand the settlement to the best of your ability, during your lifetime ... (and) not to say: this is the end, up to here, we have finished."

Dayan, who was well versed in the ancient texts, probably had in mind the phrase in the Chapter of the Fathers (a part of the Mishnah, which was finished 1800 years ago and formed the basis of the Talmud): "It is not up to you to finish the work, and you are not free to stop doing it."

That is the hidden agenda. We must haul it up from the depths of our unconscious minds to the realm of consciousness in order to face it, to reveal the terrible danger inherent in it, the danger of an eternal war which may in the fullness of time lead this state to disaster.

Approaching the 60th anniversary of the state, we must draw a line under this chapter of our history, exorcise the dybbuk and say clearly: yes, we have ended the chapter of expansion and settlement.

This will enable us to change the course of the river. To put an end to the occupation. To dismantle the settlements. To make peace. To effect a reconciliation with the neighboring people. To turn Israel into a peaceful, democratic, secular and liberal state, that can devote all its resources to the creation of a flourishing, modern society.

And first of all: to agree on a border.

NOTE:

As I have written in the past, if Israel wished to make peace with the Palestinian Arabs she could agree to properly compensate the refugees who were forcefully expelled from the Palestine Mandate during the Nakba, remove all illegal settlements from the occupied territories and apologize for the killing of thousands of Arab Palestinians during the creation of modern Israel. The latter should include a realistic and just compensation to the descendents of those who were killed.

The incontrovertible fact is that modern Irael was created through violence and the breaking of international law. What was done by the Irgun (pre-Israeli military) was gravely immoral and contrary to basic human rights. That in no way excuses the Palestinian Arabs alive today from responding to the current inhabitants of Israel with violence and terrorism any more than it does the IDF from terrorizing the Palestinian people of Gaza and the West Bank.

The only way in which a lasting peace can be won in Palestine is for Israel and the Palestinian Arabs to admit their respective contributions to the ongoing violence including their past transgressions. The truth must first be recognized and agreed to, then can come repentance for past failures, reconciliation and forward progress for both parties in peaceful co-existence. As long as either side refuses to admit to established fact (historical and present reality) no genuine progress will be made.

Dr. J. P. Hubert

The Coming War with Iran: It's About the Oil, Stupid

By Joe Lauria

14/04/08 Huffington Post.com -- World civilization is based on oil. The world is running out of oil. The oil companies and governments are not telling the truth about how close we are to the end. Dick Cheney knew about peak oil back in 1999 when he spoke to the London Petroleum Institute as Halliburton CEO. He predicted it would come in 2010. After that it's just a matter of years before it runs out. Whoever controls the remaining oil determines who lives and who dies.

Sixty percent of this oil is under a triangular area of the Middle East the size of Kansas. In that speech Cheney said: "The Middle East with two thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies."

This small Middle East triangle encompasses the northeast of Saudi Arabia, all of Iraq and the southwestern part of Iran, along with Kuwait, Qatar and the Emirates. The US controls Iraq. It has friendly governments in the other states.

Iran is the exception. The US now surrounds Iran.

Controlling an area the size of Kansas shouldn't be a problem for the U.S. military, except that it is heavily populated and many people in the triangle don't want the Americans there and are willing to fight.

It's been known for at least thirty years that America needs alternative energy sources. But instead of an alternative energy plan we got the invasion of Iraq by oilmen wedded to a dying business, willing to kill hundreds of thousands to cling to the last drop. The US is never leaving the region or withdrawing from Iraq. McCain is right about staying, but 100 years is too long. The oil won't last that long.

Iran is next. Lieberman set up Petraeus to testify last week that Iranian-backed groups are murdering hundreds of American servicemen in Iraq. On Friday Gates called Iran's influence in Iraq "malign" and Bush said if Iran keeps meddling in Iraq "then we'll deal with them." They are building their case for war with resolutions in the Senate and at the UN. It's only western Iran, from the Iraq border to 150 miles inside the country that the U.S. will have to occupy. That's where Iran's oil is. But the U.S. will have a nasty battle on their hands in Iran even if they restore a Shah-like puppet in Tehran 30 years after the revolution.

The Saudis would not mind seeing the Iranian regime go. But the Saudis may also be on the list. The US may have to destabilize and control Saudi Arabia some day too. The Wall Street Journal a few years ago revealed that in the 1970s under Nixon, Kissinger had plans drawn up for the US invasion and occupation of the Saudi oil fields. Those plans can be dusted off.

The American oil wars are being launched out of weakness, not strength. The American economy is teetering and without control of the remaining oil it will collapse. There will be massive chaos in any case, when only enough oil remains for the American elite and whomever they choose to share it with.

That will leave an oil-starved China and India, both with nuclear weapons, with no alternative but to bow to America or go to war.

It's not about greed any more. It's about survival. Because the leadership of this country was initially too greedy to switch from oil to solar, wind, geothermal and other renewable alternatives, it may now be too late. Had the hundreds of billions of dollars poured into the invasion and occupation of Iraq been put into alternative energy the world might have had a fighting chance. Now that is far from certain.

What is certain is that these wars are not about democracy. They are not about WMD. The coming one will not even be about Iran's nuclear weapons project. It's about the oil, stupid.

NOTE:

I have for some time been writing that our presense in the Middle East has to do with only 2 basic issues; the problem of diminishing world oil reserves and the Zionist desire to create a greater Israel through aggressive land grabs. Lauria in my view is correct in large part about the reason for a likely war with Iran.

Not to be discounted however is the constant Zionist drumbeat in favor of a preventive attack on Iran aimed almost exclusively at the United States. Hillary Clinton's recent saber rattling vis a vis Iran only fortifies what was already apparent.

The most idiotic part about Israeli concerns with respect to an attack on the Jewish state by Iran is that Israel has both a superior conventional military force and of course several hundred nuclear weapons with which to "wipe Iran off the map" should she be attacked.

--Dr. J. P. Hubert

'Compassion Forum' and the Child in the Womb

By Deacon Keith Fournier
4/14/2008
Catholic Online, original HERE...

The "Compassion Forum" showed that even professed Christians can be tragically wrong on some of the most vital issues.

LOS ANGELES (Catholic Online) - Messiah College in Grantham Pennsylvania, the State where the next, and possibly decisive, Primary election will be held, hosted the first ever “Compassion Forum” to address “Faith in Public Life” on Sunday evening.

The event presented an opportunity for the two Democratic contenders for the presidency to discuss how their professed Christian faith informed their political participation and would influence their leadership if they should attain the highest office in the land.

At the end of the forum it was announced that Senator McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, was unable to attend. However, the host added that another forum including the Senator will be held.

So, the night belonged to Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barack Obama.

Given the landscape of this volatile topic, such an event had great value. It certainly presented a Democratic party which has finally realized the vital importance that faith, and the values informed by faith, has for much of the American electorate and the historic role that such faith informed values have played in the American experience.

In the past election cycle, this entire topic was presumed to be an area reserved for more for some Republicans. However, with the demise of the so called “religious right”, a topic which I have addressed at length, the field is now open for a new discussion and a new look at a social justice and human rights agenda as it is properly informed by religious values.

The forum was hosted with real professionalism by CNN's Campbell Brown and Newsweek's Jon Meacham. The two hosts posed most of the questions but later relied upon a select group of ministers from various religious traditions and activists such as Jim Wallace of Sojourners, an evangelical Social Justice outreach.

With far ranging topics spanning such existential questions as “Why does a loving God allow innocent people to suffer” to surprisingly blunt issue focused questions such as “Do you believe that life begins at conception”, the forum was well worth watching.

It showcased the very real role that faith plays in the life of both Democratic contenders. It also showed this editorialist what history has long proved, that even professed Christians can be tragically wrong on some of the most vital issues, especially when their Christianity is not anchored in the 2000 year history of the Apostolic Tradition.

Senator Clinton was first up. This time, she requested it, having won the coin toss. She personally described her own Christian faith and attempted to explain her experience of the work of the Holy Spirit in her personal life. It was a bit awkward in its manner but probably sincere.

On the day of this “Compassion Forum”, the Clinton Presidential campaign had released a new advertisement where the candidate spoke of her efforts to "climb the mountain," saying "I don't think that I could have made my life's journey without being anchored in God's grace and without having that, you know, sense of forgiveness and unconditional love... "

In the advertisement the candidate continues with these words “...some of my struggles and challenges have been extremely public...And I have talked about how I have been both guided and supported through those, trying to find my own way through, because, for me, my faith has given me the confidence to make decisions that were right for me, whether anybody else agreed with me or not."

During her time at bat in this “Compassion Forum” she continued in this verbal vein, using many of the same words revealed in the advertisement.

She also pledged to surround herself with people who do not agree with her on some of the fundamental issues which are touched upon and informed by faith. It was no accident that the camera panned on several occasions to the former Mayor of Boston, Ray Flynn, a Pro-life Democrat who is a surrogate for the Senator, as if to underscore her point.

As long as the questions stayed somewhat generic and “personal” in their religious tone, the candidate acquitted herself well, espousing a kind of personal evangelical Christianity with a commendable concern for, at least some, of the poor.

However, when Newsweek's Jon Meacham asked “Do you believe that life begins at conception”, the civil veneer disappeared. Senator Clinton, a member of the Methodist Church, sought to position the comments which followed within the “Methodist tradition” which she said has “struggled” with this issue.

First of all this so called “struggle” is a relatively new anomaly in the history of the Methodist tradition, which finds its roots first in Anglicanism, and then, as do all Christian traditions, within Apostolic Christianity. Up until the Anglican Lambeth conferences of the early 20th century, most major Protestant denominations
took the unbroken position of the ancient Apostolic Christian tradition, stretching back to the first centuries of Christianity, that every procured abortion constitutes a grave moral offense as the taking of innocent human life.

In addition, John Wesley, the Anglican cleric credited with the origins of Methodism, would have been surprised by Senator Clintons’ response. He was the 15th child born to a poor preacher and his wife. Certainly, his family encountered precisely the kind of situation which, in Senator Clintons “compassion” lens, would have provided a ripe terrain for making the so called “difficult” choice to terminate the young Wesley in the womb through abortion. His mother instead chose life.

The candidate then proceeded to mouth the mantra of a new verbal offensive among many, in both the Democratic and Republican Parties, who support what I call the “Wrong choice movement” telling the millions who were watching “I believe that ‘potential’ life exists at conception”. She continued “... I have concluded, our task should be that individuals should be able to make this personal decision”.

She salted her sophistry with the other mantra of the advocates of the “Wrong Choice movement” and its newly “compassionate” rhetoric by espousing her understanding that such choices are difficult, followed by her assertion that taking the life of innocent children in the womb by a form of execution should be “legal safe and rare.”

It was what followed this discussion which was even more incredible to this observer.

She pointed to her opposition to China’s forced abortion policy, a position which I certainly share. However, in a strange verbal maneuver, she then referred to another experience, telling the viewers that under the dictatorial reign of a Marxist despot, Romanian women had been somehow forced to bear a lot of children. Her effort was to apparently make some kind of moral claim of equivalency by arguing that both situations removed the free agency of the woman in the so called “choice”. The comparison was patently absurd.

When Senator Barack Obama took the stage, he fared no better on this vital litmus test of real compassion. The dignity of every human life must be just that for anyone who understands the real gravity of the issues surrounding legal abortion on demand.

After all, if children in the first home of the whole human race, the womb of their mother, are human persons - and our medical science confirms what our conscience and the Natural law have long confirmed that they are - then their intentional destruction through lethal injection, surgical dismemberment or suction is a heinous act and always a wrong choice.

His demeanor and manner in handling the initial questions concerning his personal Christian convictions seemed much more substantive and reflective than his opponents. He referred to himself as a “devout Christian” and spoke of God’s intervention in human history. He indicated that he seeks to act in a manner in his entire life that conforms to God’s will.

He bore “witness” to his own turn to the Christian faith, having been raised in a non-religious home, in a manner which I am sure delighted many who were watching. He seemed much more comfortable addressing some of the issues which arise at the intersection of faith and culture, telling the assembled crowd and the millions viewing by television "...religion is a bulwark, a foundation when other things aren't going well. That's true in my own life, through trials and tribulations. ..."

He then asserted: "I am a devout Christian ... I started my work working with churches in the shadow of steel plants that had closed on the south side of Chicago ...Nobody in a presidential campaign on the Democratic side in recent memory has done more to reach out to the church and talk about, what are our obligations religiously, in terms of doing good works, and how does that inform our politics?"

Unlike Clinton, Obama at least mentioned that there is a moral dimension to the discussion of abortion and noted that “... those of us who are “pro-choice” need to acknowledge it as a moral issue”. He spoke of what he called the “sacredness of sexuality” as he presented his views on the importance of sex education for minors. However, he also made clear that, along with abstinence, he supports the teaching of contraception to children.

The hosts asked Senator Obama the same bellwether question, whether he believed that life begins at conception. He waffled. However, he did not hide behind some perceived denominational struggle like his opponent. Instead he made a glancing reference to a leftover archaic discussion which was predicated more upon medievalist biology then the trajectory of the Christian tradition, referring to the concept of “en-soulment”.

Based on this, he indicated that he did not know the answer to when life begins. Sadly, the result was the same. He called the child in the womb, presumably for all nine months, only “potential life”.

He, like Clinton, made reference to surrounding himself with those who disagree on this issue. And, there in the audience was Pro-Life Catholic Senator Bob Casey. At that moment I thought of my friend, Professor Doug Kmiec, another Pro-Life Catholic. And I grieved for the state of things.

In some respects, Senator Obama’s treatment of the concern over the dignity of human life was more distressing to this observer; partly because it was so articulate and intelligent in its delivery. In response to questions from Evangelical Protestant Ministers, he went further, apparently supporting at least passive, if not active, euthanasia.

He articulated a real grasp of and commitment to a stewardship of the environment. He supported faith based initiatives and demonstrated a real appreciation of the role of mediating institutions in the delivery of compassion. He gave an eloquent presentation on the role of faith in the Public Square.

He presented a reflective vision of a kind of religiously informed principled pluralism. Finally, in response to a good question from Evangelical Jim Wallace of Sojourners, he committed himself to an aggressive vision for promoting the advancement of economic justice.

As a Catholic Christian, steeped in and committed to the Social teaching of the Catholic Church, I was profoundly disappointed that neither candidate was asked questions by a Catholic Christian, even though, some were in the gathered assembly.

Perhaps if they had been, the viewers would have been given more than a disconnected presentation of the growing palate of issues emerging in the evangelical Protestant community’s commendable concern for social justice.

In the Catholic Social Justice tradition, the foundation of all social justice issues is the human person and his or her dignity, at every age and stage of human existence. It is only in such a holistic and integrated vision that the entirety of all the Social justice issues makes real sense.

Instead, the so called “Compassion Forum” failed to deliver.

The etymological root of the word “Compassion” is “Compassio”, meaning to “suffer with”. The Democratic Party in its new iteration has made some headway in its proper critique of some within the other major Party who seem to be more concerned about unborn children than those who are born.

However, it is never compassionate to take innocent human life, at any age or stage.

A truly just vision for the Social order, and true Compassion, must start with the dignity of every human person. It must “suffer with” those whom Mother Teresa called the “poorest of the poor”, those in the womb who have no voice but our own.

Then, it must work out from there, by creating a truly just social and economic order which protects and defends every human life, promotes human flourishing, fosters solidarity and serves the common good.

The “Compassion Forum” left the Child in the Womb out of the conversation.

Corrupt St. Augustine and Ignore St. Thomas at your Peril

The latest attempt by "Catholic" Neocon George Weigel illustrates in spades the danger of reading St. Augustine out of context and totally ignoring the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas. Tragically it has become fashionable in the wake of the second Vatican Council to all but ignore the Angelic Doctor of the Roman Catholic Church and arguably the greatest philosopher of all time.

The neo-modernist contingent also referred to as the progressivist wing clearly triumphed in the Counciliar and post-Counciliar period which now numbers some 40+ years. Whenever Traditional Catholic teaching is eschewed, one sees a repudiation of Aquinas and a simultaneous holding up of heterodox modern and neomodern imposters--usually in concert with inaccurately/incompletely quoted passages/teachings from St. Augustine.

Weigel is only one of many neo-modernist "Catholics" resorting to heterodoxy while attempting to anchor his spurious views in non-existent/adulterated Augustinian teaching. The only thing necessary to effect a complete flight from Catholic orthodoxy is; to quote Kung, Teilhard de Chardin, Rahner and the other progressivists who triumphed at Vatican II. The latter group would no doubt be surprised to see themselves grouped with the likes of the multiple "Catholic" Neocon's who have provided cover for the immoral actions of the Bush administration vis a vis preventive war.

--Dr. J. P. Hubert

Should the U.S. End Aid to Israel? Funding our Decline

By Alison Weir

04/04/08 Counterpunch original HERE...-- -- April 1st I participated in a debate in San Francisco that raised the question of US aid to Israel.

It was highly appropriate that this debate was held two weeks before tax day, since in Israel's sixty years of existence, it has received more US tax money than any other nation on earth.

During periods of recession, when Americans are thrown out of work, homes are repossessed, school budgets cut and businesses fail, Congress continues to give Israel massive amounts of our tax money; currently, about 7 million dollars per day.

On top of this, Egypt and Jordan receive large sums of money (per capita about 1/20th of what Israel receives) to buy their cooperation with Israel; and Palestinians also receive our tax money (about 1/23rd of that to Israel), to repair infrastructure that Israeli forces have destroyed, to fund humanitarian projects required due to the destruction wrought by Israel's military, and to convince Palestinian officials to take actions beneficial to Israel. These sums should also be included in expenditures on behalf of Israel.

When all are added together, it turns out that for many years over half of all US tax money abroad has been expended to benefit a country the size of New Jersey.

It is certainly time to begin debating this disbursement of our hard-earned money. It is quite possible that we have better uses for it.

To decide whether the US should continue military aid to any nation, it is essential to examine the nature and history of the recipient nation, how it has used our military aid in the past, whether these uses are in accord with our values, and whether they benefit the American taxpayers who are putting up the money.

1. What is the history and nature of Israel?

Describing Israel is always difficult. One can either stay within the mainstream paradigm, or tell the truth. I will opt for the truth.

Drawing on scores of books by diverse authors, the facts are quite clear: Israel was created through one of the most massive, ruthless, and persistent ethnic cleansing operations of modern history. In 1947-49 about three-quarters of a million Muslims and Christians, who had originally made up 95 percent of the population living in the area that Zionists wanted for a Jewish state, were brutally forced off their ancestral land. There were 33 massacres, over 500 villages were completely destroyed, and an effort was made to erase all vestiges of Palestinian history and culture.

The fact is that Israel's core identity is based on ethnic and religious discrimination by a colonial, immigrant group; and maintaining this exclusionist identity has required continued violence against those it has dispossessed, and others who have given them refuge. (emphasis mine)

2. How has Israel used our military aid in the past?

In all of its wars except one, Israel has attacked first.

In violation of the Arms Export Control Act, which requires that US weapons only be used in "legitimate self defense," Israel used American equipment during its two invasions of Lebanon, killing 17,000 the first time and 1,000 more recently, the vast majority civilians. It used American-made cluster bombs in both invasions, again in defiance of US laws, causing the "most hideous injuries" one American physician said she had ever seen, and which, in one day in 1982 alone, resulted in the amputation of over 1,000 mangled limbs.

It has used US military aid to continue and expand its illegal confiscation of land in the West Bank and Golan Heights, and has used American F-16s and Apache Helicopters against largely unarmed civilian populations.

According to Defence for Children International, Israel has "engaged in gross violations of international human rights and humanitarian law." Between 1967 and 2003, Israel destroyed more than 10,000 homes, and such destruction continues today. A coalition of UK human rights groups recently issued a report stating that Israel's blockade of Gaza is collective punishment of 1.5 million people, warning: "Unless the blockade ends now, it will be impossible to pull Gaza back from the brink of this disaster and any hopes for peace in the region will be dashed."

In addition, Israel uses US military aid to fund an Israeli arms industry that competes with US companies. According to a report commissioned by the US Army War College, "Israel uses roughly 40 percent of its military aid, ostensibly earmarked for purchase of US weapons, to buy Israeli-made hardware. It also has won the right to require the Defense Department or US defense contractors to buy Israeli-made equipment or subsystems, paying 50 to 60 cents on every defense dollar the US gives to Israel."

Israel has used US aid to kill and injure nonviolent Palestinian, American and international activists, as well as American servicemen. Israeli soldiers in an American-made Caterpillar bulldozer crushed to death 23-year-old Rachel Corrie; an Israeli sniper shot 21-year-old Tom Hurndall in the head; Israeli soldiers shot 26-year-old Brian Avery in the face. In 1967 Israel used US-financed French aircraft to attack a US Navy ship, killing 34 American servicemen and injuring 174.

Israel has used US aid to imprison without trial thousands of Palestinians and others, and according to reports by the London Times and Amnesty International, Israel consistently tortures prisoners; including, according to Foreign Service Journal, American citizens.

3. Are these uses in accord with our national and personal values?

Not in my view.

4. Do these uses of US aid benefit American taxpayers?

While some Israeli actions have served US interests, the balance sheet is clear: Israel's use of American aid consistently damages the United States, harms our economy, and endangers Americans.

In fact, this extremely negative outcome was so predictable that even before Israel's creation virtually all State Department and Pentagon experts advocated forcefully against supporting the creation of a Zionist state in the Middle East. President Harry Truman's reply: "I am sorry gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism. I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents."

Through the years, as noted above, our aid to Israel has not resulted in a reliable ally.

In 1954 Israel tried to bomb US government offices in Egypt, intending to pin this on Muslims.

In 1963 Senator William Fulbright discovered that Israel was using a series of covert operations to funnel our money to pro-Israel groups in the US, which then used these funds in media campaigns and lobbying to procure even more money from American taxpayers.

In 1967 Israeli forces unleashed a two-hour air and sea attack against the USS Liberty, causing 200 casualties. While Israel partisans claim that this was done in error, this claim is belied by extensive eyewitness evidence and by an independent commission reporting on Capitol Hill in 2003 chaired by former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Thomas Moorer.

In 1973 Israel used the largest airlift of US materiel in history to defeat Arab forces attempting to regain their own land, triggering the Arab oil embargo that sent the US into a recession that cost thousands of Americans their jobs.

During its 1980s Lebanon invasion, Israeli troops engaged in a systematic pattern of harassment of US forces brought in as peacekeepers that created, according to Commandant of Marines Gen. R. H Barrow, "life-threatening situations, replete with verbal degradation of the officers, their uniform and country."

Through the years, Israel has regularly spied on the US. According to the Government Accounting Office, Israel "conducts the most aggressive espionage operations against the United States of any ally." Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger said of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard: "It is difficult for me to conceive of greater harm done to national security," And the Pollard case was just the tip of a very large iceberg; the most recent operation coming to light involves two senior officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Israel's powerful American lobbying organization.

Bad as the above may appear, it pales next to the indirect damage to Americans caused by our aid to Israel. American funding of Israel's egregious violations of Palestinian human rights is consistently listed as the number one cause of hostility to Americans.

While American media regularly cover up Israeli actions, those of us who have visited the region first-hand witness a level of US-funded Israeli cruelty that makes us weep for our victims and fear for our country. While most Americans are uninformed on how Israel uses our money, people throughout the world are deeply aware that it is Americans who are funding Israeli crimes.

The 9/11 Commission notes that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's "animus towards the United States stemmedfrom his violent disagreement with U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel." The Economist reports that " the notion of payback for injustices suffered by the Palestinians is perhaps the most powerfully recurrent theme in bin Laden's speeches."

The Bottom Line

In sum, US aid to Israel has destabilized the Middle East; propped up a national system based on ethnic and religious discrimination; enabled unchecked aggression that has, on occasion, been turned against Americans themselves; funded arms industries that compete with American companies; supported a pattern of brutal dispossession that has created hatred of the US; and resulted in continuing conflict that last year took the lives of 384 Palestinians and 13 Israelis, and that in the past seven and a half years has cost the lives of more than 982 Palestinian children and 119 Israeli children.

By providing massive funding to Israel, no matter what it does, American aid is empowering Israeli supremacists who believe in a never-ending campaign of ethnic cleansing; while disempowering Israelis who recognize that policies of morality, justice, and rationality are the only road to peace.

It is time to end our aid.

NOTE:

How is it that when America is referred to as a Christian nation it is met with howls of protest including charges of religious and ethnic bigotry and yet the fact that Israel insists upon maintaining a Jewish majority (Zionism itself is based upon racial/religious exclusitivity at its core) is simply accepted in much of the West? This is radically inconsistent and contradictory.

The fact that the modern state of Israel insists upon a permanent Jewish majority means that Palestinian Arabs will never be allowed a right of full return to the land from which they were disposessed. In the absence of a proper compensation for crimes against humanity (against the Palestinian Arabs) in the establishment of Israel, a just peace can never be achieved. The United States should insist upon a truly just settlement of Arab greivances; the fact that we do not strongly testifies to the power of the Zionist lobby which currently controls US foreign policy.

I agree with Alison Weir that American aid to Israel should be curtailed; unless its actions can be brought into line with just policies vis a vis the Palestinians. Espionage by Israel against the US in which our technology is stolen and then sold to other nations must also trigger a cessation of all American aid to Israel. This will be very difficult given the control of US foreign policy currently enjoyed by the Zionist Lobby.

--Dr. J. P. Hubert