Category Archives: anti-war

What War Would Jesus Start?

For a supposedly Christian nation that was presumably founded upon Christian values, the United States has a rather bellicose history that is entirely incongruous with the Christian message of loving your enemy and turning the other cheek. As easy as it was for most of us to have been caught up in the patriotic fervor of striking back at the stronghold of the 9/11 hijackers, that response was fundamentally un-Christian. Not only does Jesus say that one must turn the other cheek but that one must likewise love those that are engaging in the cheek slapping. That’s a pretty difficult message for anyone to accept. But if you are a Christian it is pretty unambiguous. Even if the message is honored at the individual level it must likewise be honored at the collective level. It is a rather large feat of cognitive dissonance to believe one man may not kill another man but that 100 men acting in unison may justifiably kill another 100 men. War is simply the collective actions of individuals. If it is wrong for the individual to kill then it is wrong for the collective to kill. If it is commanded that the individual love his enemy then it is commanded that the collective love their enemy. If you are a Christian and believe the US is justified in going to war against Syria then you need to reexamine your beliefs. You cannot simultaneously believe in the divinity of Jesus and pick and choose which of his commandments you will adhere to.

Now that I’m done chastising the pro-war Christians don’t think the pro-war non-Christians are getting off so easy. Even if you do not accept the divinity of Jesus, this particular directive of his, of loving your enemy, contains within it an essential lesson that is theologically neutral. What is that message? That in order to break the cycle of violence someone must be the first to actually break that cycle. Someone must step forward and say, “I have been wronged, but I refuse to respond in kind.” The ability to make a conscious decision about our behavior that runs counter to every instinct built into our being is one of the defining characteristics of humanity. “Mind over matter” is what separates us from the instinctually driven animal world. A dog bitten will bite back; he knows no other response. Two dogs caught in this cycle will continue until both are nearly destroyed or one dies. Are we mindless animals unable to rise above our base instincts of an eye for an eye? Or are we intellectually superior to our enemies such that we alone are capable of recognizing the merry-go-round we are on and realize the only way to get off is to simply jump and say “no more.”

So, Jesus’ message of “love your enemies” and “turn the other cheek” is not so much a commandment as it is a key. With this key we have the means to unlock the cycle of violence and finally bring true peace to the world. A peace based on mutual respect and understanding. Such a peace is preferable to the global peace currently being proffered by those running the United American Empire, namely the “peace” that exists between well-armed prison guards and their prisoners.

No Country for Assad’s Men

On August 31 President Obama revealed to the world that when it comes to executive decision-making he has apparently taken a page from the book used by President Bush. Just as Bush justified interventionism in the economy by proclaiming that he must “abandon free market principles to save the free market” so too does Obama likewise make the oxymoronic case that in order to maintain peace we must go to war.

Our “leaders” are only as powerful as the support we give them; upon its withdrawal they are as but infants.

So, it is off to war in Syria then. The reasoning Mr. Obama laid out was one part demagoguery, two parts fear mongering. He opened with the age-old politician’s ploy of invoking “the children”. He thusly reminds us of the deaths of several hundred children in the recent Syrian gas attacks. However this example is somewhat hypocritical considering the US government has killed at least a hundred children with its overseas drone strikes alone, to say nothing of the children “gassed to death by their own government” at Waco Texas in 1993. Say what you will of the leaders at Waco, certainly their children did not deserve to be burned alive by their own government.

He then segues into the same tired justification trotted out for all preemptive wars: the risk of what “might” come to pass. If we do nothing, then: it might make a mockery of prohibitions on chemical weapons, it might endanger our allies, it might lead to more chemical weapons. Might, might, might. Here’s a “might” for you Mr. President. If we keep our nose out of other country’s business then they “might” just figure out how to solve their own problems, without our help. The losing side “might” not blame us for their loss, in which case the US “might” not once again become the target of homicidal rage.

Secure in his reasoning, he smugly asserts that he is confident the US can hold the Syrian government accountable for their actions. Since a necessary condition for being accountable to some other entity is being subservient to said entity, then clearly this President (and his predecessors) views all other countries as being subservient to US authority. The United States, in their minds, is not so much a country as it is a global empire. And an empire must keep its quarrelsome protectorates in line. In the American Empire all countries, companies and individuals are accountable to the King or his Court, err, I mean the President or Congress. Let us hope China never decides they need to hold the US government accountable for its actions by bombing US civilians into the Stone Age.

But then, there was a glimmer of hope. Mr. Obama graciously acknowledged that even though he’s sure he is King and can do whatever he desires, he’s a nice guy after all and does have that annoying Nobel Peace Prize to live up to. So, he’s going to make us a deal. He shall deign to permit Congress to debate and vote on whether we should bomb Syria. How quaint – he’s going to actually follow the Constitution for once (which clearly states war may only be authorized by Congress (Article 1, Section 8)). I wonder how he’ll proceed if the vote doesn’t go his way. If that comes to pass then we will once and for all discover whether we have elected a President or a Führer.

Ok, enough bellyaching about what we shouldn’t do. What should we do? A humanitarian evacuation. Send our naval fleet to retrieve every civilian in Syria who wishes to escape the crossfire of a civil war and immigrate to the US or any other country that will permit them entry. Without a population to support them both the rebels and the Assad government will crumble from within. Our “leaders” are only as powerful as the support we give them; upon its withdrawal they are as but infants.

Time to Raise the Hood

A common business practice is to require that all employees take some vacation time each year. It not only improves morale but also ensures that potential problems attributable to that employee will be brought to light in their absence (as co-workers unwittingly uncover latent issues). In other words, although it can be disruptive to the status quo, sometimes it is a good idea to raise the hood every now and again and make sure all is working as it should. This is nowhere more true than in government. This country has been handing out billions of dollars in foreign aid for decades. For the most part this funding is on autopilot, it’s simply rubber stamped each year as the routine process of government functioning. But there’s been a recent snag in the status quo. Some in Congress are (finally) questioning the wisdom of sending billions of dollars overseas when we face such a tremendous deficit at home. That sentiment, coupled with the recent military coup in Egypt, has brought to the forefront the legitimacy of the US continuing to send foreign aid to a country in political turmoil. Discontinuing aid should be a no-brainer even for foreign aid proponents, just turn off the money spigot until we know who is actually in charge. But alas, it is apparently not so simple after all for some senators. It turns out much of this aid is funneled right back into the home districts of many in Congress. This long obscured truth is THE dirty little secret of foreign aid.

The public has been, as they say, “sold a bill of goods” when it comes to foreign aid. The propagandized message is that such “aid” is going to help poor people overseas. In fact, the money is funneled to rich people (the well connected in foreign governments) in poor countries and to even richer people in the US. How does this money end up back here? Almost all foreign aid comes with either implicit or explicit “strings” attached that stipulate that aid must be “directed” toward the purchase of goods or services from US based corporations. And which corporations might those be? Predominantly those that are part of the “military industrial complex” – the very same crony capitalist war machines that President Eisenhower presciently warned us about over 50 years ago.

So what’s the problem with foreign aid? Is it that it spreads state of the art weaponry across the globe (weaponry that could easily fall into the hands of terrorists) resulting in a planet armed to the teeth poised at the brink of war? Is it that we are borrowing money from China to subsidize foreign governments in an attempt to bribe them into submission? Is it that food aid actually harms more than it helps by destroying farming as an occupation in countries receiving aid (who could compete with free food)? No, for those in Congress none of these deleterious effects are a problem. Why? Because “foreign aid” gets many re-elected, particularly when such aid is directed at companies in their home district (e.g. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Michigan), is rather adamant that aid not be cut off to Egypt, and by bizarre coincidence it just so happens that a General Dynamics plant is located in Michigan.

At its core, foreign aid is no different than other government “stimulus” programs – it simply takes money from those not in favor with the political elite (that is, us) and hands it over to those who are in favor with the political elite (the true 1%). But there is one key cost incurred by foreign stimulus not typically seen in domestic stimulus: death and suffering. These are a direct result of the weapons produced and the tyrannical regimes supported. The political unrest in Egypt has finally forced us to raise the hood and take a closer look at the wisdom of foreign aid. To those in Congress who got caught with their hand in the foreign aid cookie jar, take note: your days are numbered.

Breaking Bad

I’m old enough that I now find most entertainment to be fairly derivative and predictable. However the TV series “Breaking Bad” is a welcome exception. If you are not familiar with it but enjoy solidly unpredictable drama you owe it to yourself to look into it. The August 12 episode’s ending left the audience in a state of numbed denial [spoiler alert: stop here if you have not seen the episode yet]. The main characters have just clandestinely robbed a train of a key chemical needed to prepare crystal meth when a young boy on a motorbike happens them upon. Without a word one of them pulls out a gun and simply dispatches the boy as blithely as one would a troublesome fly. Why? Because the boy might say something which could lead to their arrest.

After the shock of witnessing the senseless onscreen (albeit fictional) death of a young innocent wore off I came to realize why this scene was so disturbing: this type of violence occurs routinely. The boy’s death is iconic of the reprehensible loss of civilian life in wars. In “traditional” wars civilians usually know where the front line is and can avoid it. Today that is impossible. The wars on “terror” and drugs occur on a global battlefield from which there is no escape. Innocence is no defense: you are just one street address typo away from no-knock raid carried out by machine gun festooned goons.

Apropos to the “preventive” murder depicted, the US repeatedly goes to war upon the same principal of “potential threat neutralization” (Spain-1898, Korea-1950, Vietnam-1965, Iraq-2003). Unsurprisingly the neocons and chicken hawks are now rattling their swords to do the same to other countries (Iran, Syria). We as a nation are engaging in the same onscreen behavior as the thieves in “Breaking Bad”: shooting first for fear of what might happen. This behavior is reprehensible at the individual level and at the national level. The moral validity of actions does not change based on the numbers that simultaneously engage in those actions.

The moral validity of actions does not change based on the numbers that simultaneously engage in those actions.

For parents there is no greater fear than contemplating the untimely death of your child. So consider what kind of a country would inflict on foreign parents our most horrid nightmare. The US has killed both directly (drone strikes) and indirectly (sanctions) hundreds of thousands of children through the cold indifference of our leaders. Former Secretary of State Madeline Albright in a 1996 interview with 60 Minutes stated that “we think the price is worth it” when asked if the confirmed deaths of half a million Iraqi children due to UN sanctions was “worth it” in relation to the goals of those sanctions. The Bush administration fares no better: he (and Congress) restarted the Iraq war (of which even low estimates are 100,000 Iraqi civilian casualties and authorized the use of torture. Likewise Obama has failed to live up to his 2009 Nobel Peace Price. He acts as a remote executioner via the deployment of the “judge, jury, and executioner” drone strikes that have killed countless civilians who are written off as “collateral damage.” Ah, yes, the ends always justify the means. Wake up America. We have “broken bad” and are now the “bad guys.” Would we tolerate Chinese drone strikes of Americans because China deemed them to be a potential “threat” ?

In terms of this country’s meddling, interventionist, blow-back prone foreign policy it doesn’t matter whether Obama or Romney wins; they will both continue our current wars and will have no qualms about starting new ones. If you are tired of the endless wars (drug and terror) and have no more desire for the blood of innocents to be on your hands by way of voting for the “lesser of two evils” (“hmmm… who should I vote for, Hitler or Stalin…”) then consider the alternative that the media is so afraid you might hear about they won’t even include him in national polls: Libertarian Party candidate for president Gary Johnson.