The Christian communities in Iraq can trace their history back to the early days of their faith. Most are Chaldeans, a small sect which is autonomous from Rome but which recognises the authority of the Pope. There are an estimated 500,000 ethnic Assyrians indigenous to northern Iraq, south-east Turkey, north-east Syria and north-west Iran. This group is so ancient that some of its members still speak Aramaic, the language of the New Testament. The country’s other major Christian community is also Assyrian,
and its Ancient Church of the East, having embraced Christianity in the first century AD, is believed to be the oldest Christian denomination in Iraq. Christians in Iraq: The First Shall be Last
George Bush (and the U.S. military) destroyed the largest Christian community in the Arab world.
Since the U.S. invasion in 2003, over 1 million Christians have been exiled from Iraq, leaving only around 300,000 left in the country today. Iraqi Christians are raped, murdered and driven from their homes – and
the West is silent.
Why would a "Christian President" destroy Christianity in Iraq and establish a muslim theocracy? Perhaps this was only an unintentional result of the war in Iraq. Perhaps. (The same thing happened in Afghanistan. Coincidence?)
For the first time in more than 1,000 years, reports the Washington Post today, “the plains of Nineveh and its provincial capital of Mosul have been virtually emptied of Christians.” Where there had been religious and cultural diversity for centuries, the destruction of Iraqi society brought about by US intervention
has left only the most hardened of extremists to terrorize what is left of the population. Already six in ten Christians have fled Iraq, leaving churches empty and a way of life that dates to the time of Christ a distant memory. Millions of Christians Are in Mourning This Christmas
John Whitehead: What do you think of George W. Bush as the Christian president? Frank Schaeffer: He is arguably the worst president in the history of the United States. He is unfit for the office of president of the United States. He has trouble speaking the English language and articulating a point of view. Second, he has led us into a war—in which my son, by the way, fought—on false pretenses. That is a terrible thing.
Bush is personally responsible for the displacement of the Christian minority in Iraq. It was the last large Christian minority anywhere in the Middle East, and it has been destroyed. It is ironic that someone who proclaims he is a Christian president has single-handedly started a war that has undone the last Christian minority in the Middle East. Now it is wall-to-wall Islam from Tehran all the way to the Mediterranean with the exception of Israel. There is not one place outside of Syria that still has that intact Christian minority now. [Interview]
America missed her opportunity to "reconstruct Iraq."
"Liberty under God" is the only principle that will bring international peace.
The U.S. Federal Government has had a continued relationship with Saddam Hussein since the 1950's. As we pointed out in our Foreign Affairs page, America's Founding Fathers did not believe in this kind of perpetual foreign intervention:
The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible." — Washington, Farewell Address (1796) [Washington’s emphasis]
I deem [one of] the essential principles of our government, and consequently [one] which ought to shape its administration,…peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none. — Jefferson, First Inaugural Address
(1801)
The federal government wants credit for "fixing" the problems in Iraq, when those problems were created by the federal government in the first place. We must get the federal government out of the "entangling alliance" business.
U.S. Foreign Policy is largely a tool of large business interests, and U.S. policy toward Iraq is an extension of U.S. oil industries. See the connections here:
When War Gets Personal An insight into President Bush's motivation may have been provided by the President himself during a fundraising speech. He pointed out that Saddam Hussein "is a guy who tried to kill my dad at one time."
It is extraordinary that anyone would think Americans are safer as a result of Bush invading two Muslim countries and constantly threatening two more with military attack. The invasions and threats have caused a dramatic swing in Muslim sentiment away from the US. Prior to Bush’s invasion of Iraq, a large majority of Muslims had a favorable opinion of America. Now only about 5 percent do.
A number of US commanders in Iraq and many Middle
East experts have told the American public that the three year-old war in Iraq is serving both to recruit and to train terrorists for al Qaeda, which has grown many times its former size. Moreover, the US military has concluded that al Qaeda has succeeded in having its members elected to the new Iraqi government.
And now with the triumph of Hamas in the Palestinian election, we see the total failure of Bush’s Middle Eastern policy. Bush has succeeded in displacing secular moderates from Middle Eastern governments and replacing them with Islamic
extremists. It boggles the mind that this disastrous result makes Americans feel safer!
Article II Sec. 4 of the Constitution states that: "The President, Vice President and all Civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." International Law Professor Francis A. Boyle of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign says that waging a war of aggression is a crime under the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment and
Principles. "It's very clear," he adds, "if you read all the press reports, they are going to devastate Baghdad, a metropolitan area of 5 million people. The Nuremberg Charter clearly says the wanton devastation of a city is a Nuremberg war crime."
"We sentenced Nazi leaders to death for waging a war of aggression."
Patrick Henry, March 23, 1775: There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free--if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending--if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained--we
must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of hosts [armies] is all that is left us! They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength but irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual
resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. The millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations,
and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable--and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come.
It is in vain, sir, to extentuate the matter.
Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace--but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and
slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
Some historians believe that at the end of the Upper Paleolithic Period (around 12,000 BC), Asiatic groups crossed the Bering Land Bridge into what is now western Alaska. So "Native Americans" are really Chinese (a great
over-simplification), and Europeans took over America from these Chinese people.
Now imagine that the Communist Party of China wants to "take America back," and invades the U.S., setting up military bases throughout the land, and organizing a "Coalition Government" with communist sympathizers and Communist front organizations.
I assume you would join me in saying that the Chinese Communist Party has no
legitimate right to be here and is not our legitimate government. We would immediately be declared "insurgents," and if we picked up our muskets like Patrick Henry did, to fight against the Chinese Communist Redcoats, we would be called "terrorists."
The United States federal government has invaded Iraq with no more legitimacy than a Chinese invasion of the U.S., and no more legitimacy than the Soviet Union invasion of Afghanistan. Like these communist nations, the United States is now officially atheistic, and it is illegal for
teachers in our local schools to teach schoolchildren that the Declaration of Independence (1776) is true, that there is a God, our rights come from Him, and our nation will be blessed by the Providence of God if we observe "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God." This is all illegal in this now-atheistic America. Ironically, this atheistic government did not overthrow a Christian government in Iraq, but a secular one, and replaced it with an Islamic Theocracy. A government report published during the Reagan Administration concluded,
"If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war."
Truth is surely stranger than fiction.
The federal government has invaded Iraq, and the federal government has declared war on America.
True Americans will not support these wars.
The war in Iraq was (and is) an expensive, provocative, ineffective and unverifiable way of eliminating the threat [of WMD]. The waging of total war caused tens -- perhaps hundreds -- of thousands of civilian deaths; cost more than $1 trillion, increasing the deficit and adding to our economic strain; and included torture, extrajudicial killing and other illegal activities, undermining the United States' ability to credibly promote human rights and democracy. Frida
Berrigan: Pro-Nuclear Pundits Debunked
Send Missionaries, Not Marines
Update: October, 2010 Study: Wars could cost $4 trillion to $6 trillion - Stripes Central Joseph Stiglitz, who received the 2000 Nobel Prize for Economics, and Linda Bilmes, a public policy professor at Harvard University, said the number of veterans seeking post-combat medical care and the cost of treating those
individuals is about 30 percent higher than they initially estimated.
Let's assume that Americans wanted
to invest $3 trillion in Iraq. People like you wanted to invest $10,000 in Iraq, along with another $10,000 for your wife, and $10,000 for each of your children. You were willing to take this money out of your retirement, or out of your children's college fund, to invest in Iraq. You really wanted to help Iraq.
Would you have spent this money on bombs to blow up Iraqi neighborhoods? Or would you have invested that money in a different way?
Let's get some historical perspective.
Al-queda is not the first group of terrorists Americans have
had to deal with. President Thomas Jefferson dealt with terrorists during his administration. Those terrorists were called "Indians." Not all Americans treated all Indians in a consistently Christian manner, and not all Indians were terrorists, but many Indians attacked not only American settlers, but other Indians as well. In 1779, Jefferson explained to Sir Guy Carleton, the Governor of Canada:
"The known rule of warfare of the Indian Savages is an indiscriminate butchery of men, women and children."
This is an echo of the Declaration of Independence, which said King George III
has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions
Jefferson and America's Founding Fathers knew how to deal with terrorists from false religions. Jefferson compiled a collection of his favorite teachings of Jesus Christ in order to civilize the Indians. Congress appropriated funds
to various missionary agencies to Christianize the heathen. This was good foreign policy.
Kevin Craig opposes coercing taxpayers into funding missionary agencies, but the direction of America's Founding Fathers is a direction we must follow today.
The Bush administration initially estimated that the cost to taxpayers of rebuilding Iraq after a U.S. invasion would be only $1.7 billion. After the postwar costs to U.S. taxpayers soared over $100 billion, the Bush team "fixed" the problem by removing all traces of the earlier low estimate from government web pages. —James Bovard, "Bush's Top Ten Farces"
Estimates of the total cost of our war against Iraq vary widely. When this webpage was first being written (2005) the estimate was in the neighborhood of $300 Billion. In 2008 we updated this page. Today the total cost is placed at $3 Trillion.
What would Thomas Jefferson and America's Founding Fathers have done with 300 billion
dollars (besides return it to taxpayers)? What could be done with $3 Trillion?
With 30% less ($2 Trillion) we could recruit a million Christian Capitalist missionaries. We could spend $100,000 training each of these missionaries in the principles of "Liberty under God": the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and Capitalism. Missionaries would also learn Iraqi culture and language.
1,000,000
number of missionaries
$100,000
training per missionary (constitution, capitalism, Iraqi culture)
$100,000,000,000
educational expenses
Jefferson would recommend paying these missionaries so that they could devote their full efforts to intensive study to gain these essential competencies.
1,000,000
number of missionaries
$400,000
training expenses
$400,000,000,000
wages (and expect disciplined learning)
These missionaries would then be qualified to impart the principles of "Liberty under God" to the people of Iraq, and would be paid for one year of service, and would be expected to raise private support for a second year.
1,000,000
missionaries
$500,000
stipend for one year
$500,000,000,000
wages
Each missionary would be given $1,000,000 to "bribe" Iraqi civilians into attending classes on Christianity, Capitalism and constitutional government. Terms: successfully complete this year-long college-level course on Christianity, Capitalism, and the Constitution, and we will invest one million dollars in your business. We will help you start a business if you don't have one. If the management of the company you work for will complete this course, we will give you $1 million in stock. This "bribe" would represent an extraordinary
amount of start-up capital for small Iraqi businesses. Such businesses would be allowed tariff-free trade policies with U.S. markets. To put it mildly, these businesses would raise the standard of living for Iraqis and put a human face on Americans.
Total investment in Iraq: $2 trillion, one-third less than the Bush war. But this program of indoctrination and investment would truly create a New America in Iraq. Millions of Iraqi civilians would learn the principles of "Liberty under God," the principles that made America the greatest and most admired nation in the history of the world. Imagine the effect this would have in the Middle East.
Instead, both Republicans and Democrats approved using $3 Trillion dollars of your
money to systematically convert one Iraqi neighborhood after another into rubble and dust, killing thousands of innocent Iraqi non-combatants in the process, and angering adherents of false religions around the world.
Saddam Hussein permitted Christians to evangelize in Iraq. He certainly would have approved an infusion of $2 Trillion U.S. Dollars into the Iraqi economy. He may have been a dictator, but he was no fool. He would have known that with an investment in the spiritual character of the people of
Iraq, along with trillions invested in Iraqi businesses, Iraq would have become one of the freest and most affluent nations in the world. Saddam could have taken a great deal of credit for this.
He would have had to. Because this evangelistic program would have converted most of his minions into Christian libertarians.
Iraqi writer Kanan Makiya, whose book Republic of Fear remains the definitive account of Saddam's Iraq, estimates that in 1980, one-fifth of the economically active Iraqi labor force was a member of the army, the political militias, the secret police, or the police. One in five people, in other words, was employed to carry out institutional violence. The result was a country in which the families of political victims received their body parts in the mail; in
which tens of thousands of Kurds could be murdered with chemical weapons; and in which, as Saddam's truncated trial demonstrated, the dictator could sign a document randomly condemning 148 people to death—among them an 11-year-old boy—and feel no remorse or regret whatsoever. As his defense team argued, he believed this was his prerogative as head of state.
And probably most Iraqis believed it was their duty to submit to Saddam's prerogatives.
The federal government believes that it can overthrow one dictator (at a cost of over $10,000 for every man, woman and child in America) and bring the religion of "democracy" to Iraq. This is blind faith in the State, especially in a nation where 20% of the people are willing to work for the regime, carrying out its murderous edicts.
The religion and culture of the people are more
important than the uniform worn by the dictator. The United States Federal Government merely replaced the uniform of a secular dictator with the robes of theocratic muslim clergy. The hearts of the people were not changed. The religion of Iraq was not changed. Iraq still does not understand "Liberty Under God."
Government Tentacles of Atheism and Immorality
The U.S. war against Christianity extends around the world, not just in Iraq or the Middle East.
The U.S. Government is so large that most people have no idea what it's doing and where it's doing it.
Originally, the Constitution created a government with two important features:
The purpose of civil government was to promote Christianity. See the evidence from America's Founders here.
The Constitution allows the federal government to act only in areas which have been strictly enumerated in the Constitution.
Today the purpose of the U.S. government is to destroy Christianity. It does this through a panoply of government agencies which have no warrant in the U.S. Constitution.
3-4-5
Use the mnemonic "3-4-5" to think about the scope of your government.
There is also something known as The Fourth Branchof government. "The Bureaucracy." The "Administrative State."
5
A "Fifth Column": The Government also pursues its policy objectives through mis-named "NGO's" - "Non-Governmental Agencies." This provides a bureaucratic form of "plausible denial." These government-funded NGO's promote abortion, global warming mythology, homosexuality, and many other cults and practices of the
religion of Secular Humanism.
The following is a catalog of government tentacles, to gain an overview of all that "the government" is doing.
We must always keep in mind that at present the government is committed to being a "secular" government, which is to say, an atheistic government, that its religion is the religion of Secular Humanism and "pluralism," which is an outright denial of the truth of Christianity.
Around the world, agencies of the U.S. Government are promoting atheism and immorality.
Our goal should not be to change government funding from atheistic agencies to "Christian" agencies; to use the coercive power of the U.S. Federal Government to impose Christianity and threaten vengeance and punishment to those who engage in immorality, but to eliminate the tentacles that now encompass not just America, but the entire Globe.
Efforts at Christian Reconstruction and social healing should be undertaken by voluntary associations in the Free Market. This requires a complete transfiguration of our view of "society." A Christian view of "society" distinguishes society and state. Social order for the Christian begins with a regenerated heart, which
leads one's family, influences one's neighbors, shapes local schools, determines the ethical practices of businesses and corporations, and demands Christian values in media and entertainment.
Working from the individual, from the "bottom up," Christianity creates a Godly and humane society, without much help from "the State." Imposing a Godly society on unconverted people using the coercive power of the sword is repudiated by the Bible.
This catalog of Government tentacles is vastly abbreviated. Its purpose cannot be exhaustive identification of all the tentacles. The important point is to see how broad the scope is. Every area of life and thought is being reconstructed by these atheistic agencies. This is the outworking of a secular, non-Christian worldview, which views Caesar as Savior. There may be well-intentioned Christians working in the organizations listed below, and not everything done by these agencies
would go undone if these agencies were abolished; some genuinely humanitarian activities are performed by some of these agencies, and Christians would undoubtedly take up the slack and solve the problems which these agencies purport to solve. But this catalog represents hundreds of billions of dollars spent on largely wasted (at best) efforts, or worse, successful promotion of atheism and immorality in the quest for a Humanistic world.
"Reforming" a tentacle here or
there, or even amputating one tentacle here or another there, will not stop this beast. Individuals must develop a Christian worldview, and the entire Octopus must be destroyed.
First we'll survey domestic tentacles of atheism and immorality, then we'll look at the global reach of Washington-funded tentacles.
Executive Agencies are charged with the day-to-day enforcement and administration of federal laws. These agencies were created by Congress to deal with specific areas of national and international affairs.
Boards, Commissions and Committees are created by Congress in the form of an amendment to an existing act, to advise the President and Congress on specific topics.
Quasi-Official Agencies are not officially Executive Agencies but are required by statute to publish certain information on their programs and activities in the Federal Register.
Finally, we have to examine the effect of Federally-Funded NGO's ("Non-Governmental Agencies") as well as International NGO's. At one point we had begun a catalog of NGO's, like the abbreviated catalog of government agencies above. But Helmut Anheier et al, in their work Global
Civil Society place the number of internationally operating NGOs at 40,000. And that was back in 2001. [Global
Civil Society 2007/8]
The World Bank, defines NGOs as "private organizations that pursue activities to relieve suffering, promote the interests of the poor, protect the environment, provide basic social services, or undertake community development". A World Bank Key Document, Working With NGOs, adds, "In wider usage, the term NGO can be applied to any non-profit organization which is independent
from government. NGOs are typically value-based organizations which depend, in whole or in part, on charitable donations and voluntary service.
By the way, which leader of the World Bank did you vote for? To say an NGO depends "in part" on charitable donations is to say it depends "in part" on government funding, which is to say, your paycheck. But as "the smoking man" on X-Files used to say, "Access. It's all about access." Even if privately financed, an atheistic NGO will be granted access where a Christian NGO would not.
Over the last few decades,
federal funding has been given only to NGO's that promote secularism and non-Christian morality. There have recently been efforts to get "faith-based" NGO's funded which promote, e.g., abstinence rather than condoms. "Secularist" and "pluralist" forces have fought these appropriations tooth and nail. In the long run, the best approach is to eliminate federal funding for everyone's NGO.
Here is a short list of NGO's affiliated with the United Nations,
which receives funding taken from your paycheck.
You might even want to make a donation to some of these organizations. Others offend you. It is wrong for the government to threaten you with prison if you don't "contribute" to a federal budget which funds -- directly and indirectly -- these agencies and a hundred thousand others like them which are destructive of your conscientiously-held values.
GONGOs are government-operated NGOs, which may have been set up by governments to look like NGOs in order to qualify for outside aid or promote the interests of the government in question;
QUANGOs are quasi-autonomous non-governmental organizations, such as the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). (The ISO is actually not purely an NGO, since its membership is by nation, and each nation is represented by what the ISO Council determines to be the 'most broadly representative' standardization body of a nation. That
body might itself be a nongovernmental organization; for example, the United States is represented in ISO by the American National Standards Institute, which is independent of the federal government. However, other countries can be represented by national governmental agencies; this is the trend in Europe.)
CSO, short for citizen sector organization or citizen society organization;
Which is Worse: A "Corrupt" NGO or an "Effective" NGO? Many NGO's have an explicitly anti-Christian purpose, or a purpose that would appall the men who signed the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. Other NGO's have a more reasonable, less destructive purpose, but your taxdollars are swallowed up in their administrative waste and corruption.
Statement before the US House International Relations Committee, December 7, 2004 Mr. Chairman: President Bush said last week that, "Any election (in Ukraine), if there is one, ought to be free from any foreign influence." I agree with the president wholeheartedly. Unfortunately, it seems that several US government agencies saw things differently and sent US taxpayer dollars into Ukraine in attempt to influence the outcome. We do not know exactly how many millions – or tens of
millions – of dollars the United States government spent on the presidential election in Ukraine. We do know that much of that money was targeted to assist one particular candidate, and that through a series of cut-out non-governmental organizations (NGOs) – both American and Ukrainian – millions of dollars ended up in support of the presidential candidate, Viktor Yushchenko.
Foreign aid fails in part because of pervasive corruption. A 2003 report from a leading Bangladesh university estimated that 75 percent of all foreign aid received in that country is lost to corruption. Northwestern University political economist Jeffrey Winters estimated that more than 50 percent of World Bank aid is lost to corruption in some African countries. President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria announced in 2002 that African leaders “have stolen at least $140 billion from their people
in the decades since independence.” An African Union study pegged the takings at a much higher rate, estimating Africa’s toll from corruption at $150 billion every year. Lavish automobiles are so popular among African government officials that a word has come into use in Swahili – wabenzi – for “men of the Mercedes-Benz.” Investment guru Jim Rogers, who recently drove around the globe, declared,
Most foreign aid winds up with outside consultants, the local military, corrupt bureaucrats, the new NGO [nongovernmental organizations] administrators, and Mercedes dealers. There are Mercedes dealers in places where there are not even roads.
"He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out their substance." Declaration of Independence, 1776
Governments around the world swallow up half of the world's wealth. Can you imagine how the world could be improved if people were allowed to keep their money out of the government coffers and donate that money to churches, non-profit agencies, and other organizations that are held accountable by the Free Market and achieve many times the good results at a fraction of the cost of government agencies? When families spend their money in "the pursuit of happiness," the money is spent more wisely
and more humanely than when the government re-distributes family money to various bureaucracies and NGO's.
"The Government" -- as a way of achieving social objectives and a vehicle for social change -- is not a friend of any disciple of the Executed Christ.
July, 2015: The United Nations supports pro-family policy; The United States Opposes it.
“[T]he
United States lobbied [against it] with great energy,” says Slater, noting that pushing the LGBT agenda abroad has become a “primary
objective of our nation's foreign policy.” She even reports that our delegation
threatened to withhold foreign aid to developing nations if they affirmed the natural family. The West, the Family, and the Big Picture - Breakpoint.org
THE UNITED STATES IS The Enemy of God and Humanity
Victim of U.S. Bombing "It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones." Luke 17:2
.
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy by Ronald Reagan. He was associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was a columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments, including Stanford University, where he was Senior Research Fellow in the Hoover Institution, George Mason University where he had a joint appointment as professor of economics and professor of business administration, and Georgetown
University where he held the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy in the Center for Strategic and International Studies. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books are The
Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost. Roberts says:
Americans need to understand that they have lost their country. The rest of the world
needs to recognize that Washington is not merely the most complete police state since Stalinism, but also a threat to the entire world. The hubris and arrogance of Washington, combined with Washington’s huge supply of weapons of mass destruction, make Washington the greatest threat that has ever existed to all life on the planet. Washington is the enemy of all humanity. How
America Was Lost
Really? Can this astonishing claim be supported by the evidence?
Isn't North Korea or Iran more evil and more dangerous than the federal government of the United States?
The United States fosters Violence
North Korea may be more evil, but it is not more dangerous. You are more likely to be deprived of your life, liberty or property by an agent of the United States than by a North Korean or a recruit for ISIS. The United States already has a track record for staggering violence, and gives every indication of being willing to unleash even more unimaginable violence on you and your world.
The United States has killed, crippled or made homeless tens of millions of innocent non-combatant civilians around the world in just the last 50 years.
FDR provoked Japan to attack so that the U.S. could prevent Japan from conquering Asia, to benefit Mao and his efforts to set up communism in China, which ultimately cost the lives of 76 million Chinese.
September, 2020: Tens Of Millions Of People Displaced By The ‘War On Terror’ A new report from Brown University’s Costs of War project has found that at least 37 million people have been displaced as a result of America’s so-called “war on
terror” since 9/11, a conservative estimate of a number that may actually be somewhere between 48 million to 59 million.
The United States will not allow weaker nations to
democratically elect a government which resists U.S. hegemony
or threatens the "petrodollar." The
US, Crusader for Democracy?
The United States fosters Ignorance
This comes as no surprise to anyone who looks at the United States from a Christian worldview.
The United States Supreme Court once boasted that the United States was "a Christian nation."
The Supreme Court repudiated that long-standing heritage decades ago, and is now engaged in a War on God and Christian morality.
The federal government will not even allow public school teachers to teach students that the Declaration of Independence is really true, because that document is based on the Christian worldview. Students can only be told that some folks a long time ago used to believe it was true. While most public school students know that Barack Obama is the President of the United States, most cannot name the Vice President, their Congressman or Senators,
or summarize even the most basic features of American government as laid out in the Constitution.
Jefferson said, "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.
America's Founders would say the United States is a "tyranny."
Of course, nearly half of all students in inner cities drop out of school before finishing high school, and half of those who finish school are functionally illiterate.
Every single person who signed The Declaration of Independence (1776) and the Constitution (1787) would take immediate steps to repeal the Constitution and abolish the government it created.
A True American Accepts His Duty to Abolish Tyranny
The Declaration of Independence says we have a "duty"to "abolish" any government that becomes a threat to the unalienable rights with which we were endowed by our Creator. We have for too long neglected that duty. The United States denies the existence of the Creator, and is the largest threat to the rights of billions of human beings around the world. Without muskets or violence of any kind, the United States
must be abolished. You are not a "good American" if you disagree. You show no respect to America's Founders if you disagree. (Or, you are a victim of educational malpractice.)
Abolish the USA - The economy of the new nation of Missouri would be the size of Poland, slightly smaller than that of Saudi Arabia.
Gallup International’s poll of 68 countries for 2014 found the US as the greatest threat to peace
in the world, voted three times more dangerous to world peace than the next country.
Among Americans, we overall voted our own nation as the 4th most dangerous to peace, and with demographics of students
and 18-24 year-olds also concluding the US as the world’s greatest threat.
If he could travel through time, your favorite Founding Father would be amazed at our technology, but when looking at our culture and government, he would go from amazement to disappointment. He's shocked. Horrified.
He asks what you've been doing about it. He reminds you that his generation risked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to resist a government that they called a "tyranny," but the "despotic" reign of King
George III was a kindergarten class compared to the vile, murderous, atheistic, imperialist, planet-suffocating tentacles of the regime we call "Washington D.C."
"Have you taken up arms?" he asks.
"Oh, no," you answer.
"Wait," I interrupt. "There's more."
I point out that just during the last 50 years, the
government created by the Constitution has done the following:
Secularized the Oath of Office, effectively replacing "so help me, God," with "so help me, Government."
This is a serious issue, even though most people regard the oath of office as a "mere formality."
Courts have recently ruled that a Christian, whose ultimate allegiance is to God as King, Judge, Lawgiver, and Savior, cannot take the oath to "support the Constitution."
Even a Christian who was born in the U.S. and therefore automatically a citizen cannot become an attorney, nor a public school teacher, certified elevator inspector, or draftsman for the County of San Diego, or any other employment which requires an oath to "support the Constitution" (cases)
America's Founders would be outraged at all this. This one issue would be enough in their minds to commence a revolution.
Biblically speaking, a secular oath is an act of idolatry -- especially a secular oath of allegiance to a "secular" (atheistic) state.
"The LORD will not hold them guiltless who take His Name in vain" (Exodus 20:7). North Korea does not take the Lord's Name in vain. "In God We Trust?"
Banned the Bible from "public" schools
Schools were created 400 years ago to make sure everyone in town could read the Bible. "Common schools" were the product of the Protestant Reformation, with its banner of "Sola Scriptura."
Even the Ten Commandments have been banned. A private organization cannot spend money to print the Ten Commandments on a poster which will hang passively and quietly on a classroom wall, at no expense to the taxpayers, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled.
The U.S. Government says children cannot be taught the Bible as the authors of the Bible would teach the Bible. Students can only be taught the Bible as atheists would teach the Bible: that the Bible is an irrelevant artifact of the past, no different from any other "holy book."
Legalized the murder of 50 million children simply because they are inconvenient and cannot defend themselves. (Roe v. Wade, 1973)
Killed, maimed, or made homeless TENS OF MILLIONS of innocent non-combatant non-white civilians around the world.
A million killed in Vietnam
800,000 in Laos, and another 800,000 in Cambodia.
A million in Iraq
Before I was born, the U.S. played a significant role in unnecessarily killing tens of millions of people in World War I, World War II, and the Korean War. None of those wars were "just wars."
The National Debt is One Thousand Times (1000x) greater than it was 100 years ago. All the goodies -- the TV, the microwave, the car -- were created using "false weights and measures," not gold and silver, as explicitly required by the Constitution, and the purchasing power for all these luxuries was stolen from the poor.
Apostasy: What is even more astonishing and reprehensible is that the U.S. Supreme Court once acknowledged that the United States was a Christian nation. North Korea was never a Christian nation like this.
Jesus warned:
45 But if that servant ... begins to beat the male and female servants, and to eat and drink and be drunk, 46 the master of that servant
will come on a day when he is not looking for him, and at an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him in two and appoint him his portion with the unbelievers.47 And that servant who knew his master’s will, and did not prepare himself or do according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes.48 But
he who did not know, yet committed things deserving of stripes, shall be beaten with few. For everyone to whom much is given, from him much will be required; and to whom much has been committed, of him they will ask the more. 49 “I came to send fire on the land, and how I wish it were already kindled!” Luke
12:45-49
At this point your favorite Founding Father is not just horrified, he's angry. Outraged. Fuming.
And not just at "the government."
But at ordinary Americans who are lost in info-tainment, porn, and a video wasteland.
The following reasons not to trust the U.S. Government are from an article entitled "World's Most Evil and Lawless Institution? The Executive Branch of the U.S. Government" in AlterNet / ByFred Branfman. I don't know why
Branfman limits his discussion to the Executive Branch. The Congress could have stopped all this evil. It didn't. The Supreme Court could have issued an opinion as to its Constitutionality, as well as its morality. It didn't. It's not just the Executive Branch that we can't trust, nor is it just the U.S. Federal Government that we can't trust; it's the entire concept of a monopoly of violence entrusted to depraved men. By definition, every "government" is a criminal enterprise.
It is a matter of indisputable fact that the U.S. Executive Branch has over the past 50 years been responsible for bombing, shooting, burning alive with napalm, blowing up with cluster bombs, burying alive with 500-pound bombs, leveling homes and villages, torturing, assassinating and incarcerating without evidence more innocent civilians in more nations over a longer period of time than any other government on earth today.
Americans keep this secret because facing it openly would upend our most basic understandings about our nation and its leaders.
A serious public discussion of it would reveal, for example, that we cannot trust Executive Branch leaders’ human decency, words, or judgment. And more troubling, acknowledging it would mean admitting to ourselves that we have been misleading our own children, that our silence has robbed them of the truth of their history and made it more likely that future leaders will continue to commit acts that stain the very soul of America.
Can Americans Trust
the U.S. Executive Branch?
Columnist George Will recently summarized the fundamental issue underlying not only Edward Snowden's recent whistleblowing, but all controversies about U.S. Executive Branch behavior: "The problem is we're using technologies of information-gathering that didn't exist 20 years ago... and they require reposing extraordinary trust in the Executive Branch of
government."
Former Bush aide Matthew Dowd chimed in on the same talk show, saying "what they're saying is trust us, trust us." Trust is indeed the only basis for supporting a U.S. Executive which hides its activities from its own citizens.
But can we trust the Executive’s Branch’s commitment to truth, law and democracy, or even basic human
decency? Judging its actions, not words, over the past 50 years is the key to deciding this issue. And we might begin with some basic questions:
How would you regard the leaders of a foreign power who sent machines of war that suddenly appeared over your home, dropped bombs which killed dozens of your neighbors and your infant daughter, wounded your teenage son, destroyed your home, and then forced you into a refugee camp where your older daughter had to prostitute herself to foreigners in order to support you, your wife and legless son? (U.S.
Executive Branch officials created over 10 million refugees in South Vietnam.)
What would you think of foreign leaders who occupied your country, disbanded the military and police, and you found yourself at the mercy of marauding gangs who one day kidnapped your uncle and cousin, tortured them with drills, and then left their mangled bodies in a garbage dump? (U.S. Executive Branch officials occupied Iraq, disbanded the police, and failed to provide law and order as legally required of Occupying Powers.)
How would you view a foreign power which
bombed you for five and a half years, forced you and your family to live in caves and holes like animals, burned and buried alive countless of your neighbors, and then one day blinded you in a bombing raid that leveled your ancestral village, where you had honored your ancestors and had hoped after your death to be remembered by your offspring? (U.S. Executive Branch leaders massively bombed civilian targets in Laos for nine years, Cambodia for four years.)
What would you think of foreign assassins whom as Jeremy Scahill reports in Dirty Wars,
broke into your house at 3:30am as a dance was coming to an end, shot your brother and his 15-year old son, then shot another of your brothers and three women relatives (the mothers of 16 children) denied medical help to your brother and 18-year-old daughter so that they slowly bled to death before your eyes, then dug the bullets out of the women's bodies to cover up their crimes, hauled you off to prison, and for months thereafter claimed they were acting in self-defense? And how would you feel toward the leaders of the nation that had fielded not only
these JSOC assassins but thousands more, who were conducting similar secret and lawless assassinations of unarmed suspects while covering up their crimes in many other countries around the world? (3)
How would you view the foreign leaders responsible right now for drone attacks against you if you lived in northwest Pakistan where, a Stanford/NYU study reported after a visit there,
"hovering drones have traumatized millions living in these areas. Drones hover twenty-four hours a day over communities in northwest Pakistan, striking homes, vehicles and public spaces without warning. Their presence terrorizes men, women and children, giving rise to anxiety and psychological trauma among civilian communities. Those living under drones have to face the constant worry that a deadly strike may be fired at any moment, and the knowledge that they are powerless to protect themselves."
These are not rhetorical questions. Every one of these acts, and countless more, have been committed by the U.S. Executive Branch over the past 50 years, and will continue indefinitely until it is transformed. If we judge them by their actions, not words, we must face the following facts:
The U.S. Executive Branch killed in Vietnam from a U.S. Senate Refugee Subcommittee estimated 415,000 civilians to the 1.2 million civilians later estimated by Robert McNamara, to the two million civilians estimated by Nick Turse. And it wounded at least 1,050,000 civilians and refugeed at least 11,368,000, according to the Refugee subcommittee (3); assassinated through its Phoenix
Program an officially estimated 26,000 civilians, and imprisoned and tortured 34,000 more, on unproven grounds that they were "Vietcong cadre"; created an estimated 800,000-1.3 million war orphans and 1 million war widows; and after the war ended left behind Agent Orange poisons, unexploded cluster bombs, and landmines, creating an estimated 150,000
deformed Vietnamese children; and killing and maiming 42,000 peacetime victims.
The U.S. Executive has, in Laos, conducted nine years of bombing which has been estimated by Laos' National Regulatory Authority to have killed and wounded a minimum of 30,000 civilians by bombing from 1964-'73, and another 20,000 since then from the unexploded cluster bombs it left behind. It also created over 50,000 refugees after it had leveled
the 700-year-old civilization on the Plain of Jars.
The U.S. Executive has, in Cambodia, killed and wounded tens of thousands of civilians by carpet-bombing villages from 1969-'75. All told, after Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger secretly bombed and invaded Cambodia, waging a war that made the U.S. Executive responsible for casualties on all sides, the U.S. Senate Refugee Subcommittee estimated that 450,000 persons had been killed and wounded, and 3,990,000 made refugees. (4) Historian Michael Clodfelter has estimated that 600,000 Cambodians died from all causes during the U.S. Executive's aggressive
war.(5)*
The U.S. Executive under Bill Clinton in Iraq, John Tirman reports in The Deaths of Others, imposed an embargo so severe that "UNICEF estimated that 500,000 children under five years of age had died as a result of the war and sanctions from malnutrition, diseases for which cures were available but medicine in Iraq was not, and poor health at birth due to prenatal effects on mothers." (6) Dennis Halliday, Assistant UN Secretary General, declared that "I
had been instructed to implement a (sanctions) policy that has effectively killed over a million individuals."
And after invading Iraq in 2003, the Executive under George W. Bush, as the Occupying Power, was legally responsible for maintaining law and order. Its war was also an aggressive war as outlawed at Nuremberg. It thus bears both the moral and legal responsibility for the deaths of more than 130,000 Iraqis(Iraq Body Count) to 654,965 (Lancet
Scientific Journal) to 1,220,580 (Opinion Research Business), hundreds of thousands more wounded, and more than officially estimated 5 million refugees.
The Executive has, in Afghanistan, conducted thousands of night raids familiar to viewers of World War II Gestapo movies – killing over 1500 civilians in 6282 raids in 10 months from 2010 to early 2011 alone, as revealed by investigative reporter Gareth Porter. They have also conducted numerous bombing strikes and supported a corrupt regime which has stolen billions of dollars while their fellow citizens died for lack of
healthcare and food.
The Executive has, in Pakistan and Yemen, killed an estimated 2,800-4,000 persons from drone strikes, only 73 of whom it has named. Most were killed in “signature strikes” in which the victims’ names were unknown, and who in no way threatened the United States.
Also, over the past 50 years, the U.S. Executive Branch bears a major responsibility for massive death and torture throughout Central and Latin America and in Africa. Church, human rights and others estimate that U.S.-installed, trained, equipped and advised death squads in El Salvador and Contras in Nicaragua killed well over 35,000 and 30,000 persons respectively. The U.S.-supported Rios Montt regime in
Guatemala killed an estimated 200,000. The U.S.-supported coup in Chile brought to power a regime that killed an estimated 3,200-15,000 political opponents and tortured another 30,000. U.S.
support for Indonesian government genocide in East Timor helped kill over 200,000 persons. U.S. support for terrorists led by Jonas Savimbi in Angola helped kill an estimated 1.2 million persons and displaced another 1.5 million. (7)
And how much can you trust the decency of a US. Executive that treats these millions of human beings as mere nameless, faceless "collateral damage" at best, direct targets at worst, as human garbage barely worthy of mention, as "non-people" as Noam Chomsky has observed?
We almost never ask such questions in this country, never try to put ourselves in the shoes of the tens of millions of victims of our leaders' war-making, because doing so confronts us with a grave dilemma. On the one
hand, if we would say these acts are evil if done to ourselves they are obviously also evil when done to others. But admitting that would require most of us to challenge our most basic beliefs about this nation and its leadership. And if we are members of our political, intellectual, media, government and private sector elites, it would threaten our jobs and livelihoods.
We are divided. The honest part of ourselves knows there is only one word that can adequately describe the U.S. Executive Branch’s indifference to non-American life. It is not a word
to be used lightly, for overuse robs it of its power. But when appropriate, failing to use it is an act of moral cowardice that assures its continuation. That word is evil.
If we would regard such acts as evil if done to us, they are equally evil if done to others. This is what we teach our children when we teach them the Golden Rule or that America is a nation of laws, not men. It means, simply, that if needlessly ruining the lives of the innocent is evil, the U.S. Executive Branch is the most evil and lawless institution on the face of the Earth
today, cannot be trusted, and poses a clear and present danger to countless innocents abroad and democracy at home.
We speak of “institutional evil” here because the greatest evils of our time are conducted by often personally decent, even idealistic, men and women. It is not necessary to be hate-filled or personally violent for an American to commit evil today. One need only be part of, or support the police, intelligence and military activities of the U.S. Executive Branch.
But the practical
part of ourselves, the part that needs to make a living and maintain emotional equilibrium, leads us to ignore the mass evil our leaders engage in. It is so much easier. For accepting this truth means accepting that our leaders are not good and decent people; that JSOC commandos are not "heroes" but rather lawless assassins whose very existence shames us all; that we are not being protected, but endangered by leaders who are turning hundreds of millions of Muslims against us; that we must assume that Executive officials are right now secretly
engaging in a wide variety of illegal and immoral activities that would shock and disgust us if they were revealed; and that we cannot believe a word they say when these abuses are revealed as they so regularly engage in secrecy and stonewalling, lying when discovered, covering up when the lie is revealed, and claiming it was an aberration and/or blaming it on a subordinate when the cover-up fails. (8)
The issue of trust is key since it is the only basis upon which U.S. citizens can support secret
Executive actions about which they are not informed. And the issue of trust is ultimately a moral, not legal judgment. We acknowledge that the citizen actually has a moral obligation to resist an unjust law promulgated by an immoral government, whether in the Soviet Union, South Africa, or, as we acknowledge when we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, in America.
Even when the law is used by the likes of DavidIgnatius, David Brooks, Tom Brokaw, and Nancy Pelosi and
to attack Edward Snowden, their key unstated assumption is that they trust the U.S. Executive since they know little more about its secret activities than anyone else. The moral dividing line is clear. Those indifferent to innocent human life and democracy are less angry at Executive mass murder and threats to democracy than at those who reveal this wrongdoing.
Although the principal responsibility for the millions of lives U.S. leaders have ruined lies with the Executive, most of America's other organs of
power have also participated in keeping the screams of America's victims from reaching the public. Republicans and conservatives have not only shown no concern for America's innocent victims, but heartlessly cheered on its leaders' torment of the innocent.
Bush U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, when asked by a New York Times writer about U.S. responsibility to aid the millions of refugees its invasion of Iraq had created, responded that the
refugees had “nothing to do with our overthrow of Saddam. Our obligation was to give them new institutions and provide security. We have fulfilled that obligation. I don’t think we have an obligation to compensate for the hardships of war. Helping the refugees flies in the face of received logic. You don’t want to encourage the refugees to stay.”
But particularly striking has been the behavior of centrists and liberals who know full well the horrors U.S. Executive Branch leaders have inflicted upon the innocent, espouse humanitarian values, but
simply look the other way. The Times, for example, quite appropriately ran photos and small bios humanizing each of the nearly 3,000 Americans killed on 9/11. But its editors have made a conscious decision not to humanize virtually any of the millions of non-Americans U.S. leaders have killed abroad, as has the rest of the U.S. mass media.
David Petraeus became Afghanistan commander on July 4, 2010, and proceeded to loosen General McChrystal’s rules
of engagement, triple bombing and night raids and invade southern Afghanistan, leading to a huge increase in U.S. and Taliban violence against civilians. Within months, the Red Cross said conditions for civilians were the worst
they’d been for 30 years.
A Pakistan newspaper reported that things were so bad at the Kandahar Mirwais hospital that civilian casualties “overwhelm the limited bed space. On some days, the floor is red with blood” and that “the overflow at Kandahar’s Mirwais hospital has forced hundreds of sick and injured Afghans to cross the border into Pakistan every day to seek medical treatment.” It also noted that “many Afghans are unable to get to basic
healthcare” because despite hundreds of billions in U.S. spending on war, thirty years of conflict have left the country’s health care system struggling to cope.”
The Special Representative to Afghanistan of close ally Great Britain said “David Petraeus should be ashamed of himself ... He has increased the violence, trebled the number of special forces raids and there has been a lot more rather regrettable boasting from the
military about the body count," and that “Petraeus has ignored his own principles of counter-insurgency which speaks of politics being the predominant factor in dealing with an insurgency."
But none of this reached the American public. No stories of visits to Kandahar Hospital, no interviews with Britain’s Special Representative appeared in the U.S. mass media. Instead, dozens of U.S. journalists visiting Afghanistan praised General Petraeus, and presented his sanitized version of a war in which only “militants” are killed. Petraeus’
greatest accomplishment, Time magazine columnist Joe Klein informed his readers after a Petraeus-managed trip to Afghanistan, was to turn the U. S. army into a “learning institution.”
And Democratic Party politicians, while at least voicing concern for those in need in this nation and acting honorably for a few brief moments at the end of the Indochina war, have funded the Executive's killing abroad and limited their own concerns to the wellbeing
of America's soldiers. (9)
In 1967, Chomsky wrote a landmark essay titled "The Responsibility of Intellectuals," arguing that public intellectuals — who had the time, opportunity and freedom to study the pain its leaders inflicted upon the innocent, and to convey it to the larger public—had a special responsibility to do so.
But his argument, by and large, has fallen upon deaf ears, particularly since Vietnam. Thousands of intellectuals, members of Congress,
pundits, academics and journalists have turned a blind eye to U.S. mass murder. And many even turned into "liberal hawks", supporting war against Iraq. The likes of the Washington Post’s Richard Cohen, the N.Y. Times’ Thomas Friedman, Slate’s Christopher Hitchens, The New Republic’s Leon Wieseltier, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, and many others not only urged a war that brought a living hell to Iraq, but being liberals, justified it on the grounds that it would help the Iraqi people. (See “Bush’s
Useful Idiots,” by Tony Judt.)
They even denigrated the millions of decent and honorable Americans who marched to try and head off the Iraq war. It is so easy when making a good living and having access to “official sources” to see oneself as smarter and better-informed than “naïve” students and grandmothers in tennis shoes. Hitchens, for example, called war opponents "moral imbeciles," "noisy morons," "overbred and gutless," "naive" and "foolish."
And after the war began most of
these “liberal war hawks” then turned a blind eye to the civilian carnage resulting from the war they had supported in the name of the Iraqi people, as the body count steadily rose by tens of thousands until over 5 million Iraqis were killed, wounded or made homeless. Nor did they apologize to the millions of their fellow Americans opposing the war whom they had so arrogantly maligned, and who had turned out to be so much wiser and more moral than they were.
Executive Evil in Microcosm: A Personal Report
I first encountered
U.S. Executive evil and lawlessness in September 1969, when I interviewed the first Lao rice farmers to come out of communist zones in northern Laos into American zones around the capital city of Vientiane. I was horrified as these gentle Lao, who did not even know where America was, described living under U.S. bombing for five and a half years. I interviewed people who had been blinded and lost limbs and yet were the lucky ones because they had survived. As I learned of grandmothers burned alive, pregnant mothers buried alive, children blown to bits by
antipersonnel bombs, and realized that millions of Lao and Vietnamese farmers were still being bombed, I felt as if I had discovered Auschwitz while the killing was still continuing.
As I began to research the bombing, visiting U.S. airbases in Thailand and South Vietnam, talking with U.S. Embassy officials, interviewing a former U.S. Air Force captain over a period of months, I learned it was but a handful of top U.S. Executive Branch leaders, Republicans and Democrats alike, who were solely responsible for the bombing. Neither Congress nor the
American people had even been informed, let alone offered their consent. The U.S. Executive, I learned, was a power unto its own that could not legitimately claim to represent the American people.
From May 1964 until March 1970, U.S. Executive officials constantly denied they were even bombing in Laos. When the evidence became so great that even Richard Nixon had to admit the bombing, Executive Branch officials continued to lie by denying they had bombed any civilian targets at all—even as I was interviewing over 1,000 refugees on dozens of occasions
and hearing from each that their villages had been destroyed and that they had witnessed countless civilian casualties.
One day I was shocked to feel pellets still in the body of an old grandmother and see a 3-year old girl with napalm wounds on her breast, stomach and vagina. That night I read that U.S. Air Attaché Colonel William Tyrrell had testified to the U.S. Senate that "I recall talking to refugees from (the Plain of Jars) and they told me they knew of no civilian casualties during the operation. Villages, even in a freedrop zone, would
be restricted from bombing." (10)
I couldn't believe it! How could a U.S. official look a U.S. senator directly in the eye and tell so big a lie?
I also read how the Senate had not been told of this mass bombing, how Executive officials had lied to senators even in a closed 1968 hearing. Senator William Fulbright stated at the fall of 1969 hearing that "I think the surprise that is evidenced by the chairman of the subcommittee and others, that they did not know the extent of this involvement until these hearings, is pretty clear
evidence that we were not aware of these activities, although we had had some hearings on it." (11)
Realizing that a handful of U.S. Executive Branch leaders had the power, all by themselves, to level the Plain of Jars shook me to my core. Every belief I had about America was upended. If a handful of Executive leaders could unilaterally and secretly destroy the 700-year-old civilization on the Plain of Jars, it meant that America was not a democracy, that the U.S. was a government of men, not laws. And it meant that these men were not good and
decent human beings, but rather cold-blooded killers who showed neither pity nor mercy to those whose lives they so carelessly destroyed.
On a deeper level, it meant that even core beliefs I took for granted were untrue. Might did make right. Crime did pay. Suffering is not redemptive. Life looks very different in a Lao refugee camp looking up than in Washington, D.C. looking down. In those camps I realized that U.S. Executive Branch leaders lacked even a shred of simple human decency toward the people of the Plain.
I remember once laying in my
bed late at night after returning from an interview with Thao Vong, a 38-year old Lao farmer who had been blinded in a U.S. bombing raid. Vong was a gentle soul, displayed no anger to those who had turned him from a provider of four into a helpless dependent. I contrasted him and the other Lao farmers who had been burned and buried alive by bombers dispatched by LBJ, McNamara, Nixon and Kissinger. The latter were ruthless, often angry and violent men, indifferent to non-American life—precisely the qualities threatening all life on earth. Thao Vong was
gentle, kind and loving, and he and his fellow Lao wanted nothing more than to be left alone to raise their families, enjoy nature and practice Buddhism — precisely the qualities needed for humanity to survive.
I also thought of sweet-faced Sao Doumma, whose wedding photo had so struck me, and who was killed in a bombing raid executed by Henry Kissinger seven years later. (12)
And I found myself wondering: by what right does a Henry Kissinger live and a Sao Doumma die? Who gave Kissinger and Richard Nixon the right to murder her? Who gave
Lyndon Johnson the right to blind Thao Vong? I found myself asking, what just law or morality can justify these "killers in high places" who burned and buried alive countless Lao rice farmers who posed no threat whatsoever to their nation, solely because they could?
I was also troubled by another thought: if even a Thao Vong and his fellow subsistence-level farmers were not safe from this kind of brutal savagery, who was? If I believed that a society is judged by how it treats the weakest among us, what did this say about my nation?
And
I found myself particularly reflecting on the question I found most troubling of all: beyond the issue of lawless and heartless American leaders, what does it say about my species as a whole that the most powerful could so torment the weakest for so long with virtually no one else knowing or caring? I was anguished not only about this extreme form of mass murder, but what it implied about humanity.
I shuddered in 1969 as I reflected on what I was seeing with my own eyes. I shudder today as I write these words.
One particular fact puzzled me
during my investigations of the air war. All the refugees said the worst bombing occurred from the end of 1968 until the summer of 1969. They were bombed daily, every village was leveled, thousands were murdered and maimed. But I knew from U.S. Embassy friends that there were no more than a few thousand North Vietnamese troops in Laos at the time, and that there was no military reason for the sudden and brutal increase in U.S. bombing. Why, then, had this aerial holocaust occurred?
And then, to my horror, I found out. At Senator Fulbright's hearing, he
asked Deputy Chief of Mission Monteagle Stearns why the bombing of northern Laos had so intensified after Lyndon Johnson's bombing halt over North Vietnam. Stearns answered simply:
"Well, we had all those planes sitting around and couldn't just let them stay there with nothing to do." (13)
U.S. officials had exterminated thousands of people of the Plain of Jars, destroying their entire civilization, because the U.S. Executive just couldn't let its planes sit around with nothing to do. The fact that innocent human beings were living
there was irrelevant. No one hated the Lao. For Executive policy-makers in Washington, they just didn't exist, had no more importance than cockroaches or mosquitoes.
And that wasn’t all. Once the planes became available, they did in fact discover a purpose for them, as the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Refugees reported in September 1970: "The United States has undertaken a large-scale air war over Laos to destroy the physical and social infrastructure in Pathet Lao held areas. Throughout all this there has been a policy of secrecy. The
bombing has taken and is taking a heavy toll among civilians."
Once the planes became available, the people of the Plain of Jars were not "collateral damage" to military targets. They were the target.
Chomsky, who interviewed the refugees in 1970 and is the world's expert on U.S. war crimes abroad, has called the bombing of northern Laos "one of the most malevolent
acts of modern history," and N.Y. Times columnist Anthony Lewis termed it "the most appalling episode of lawless cruelty in American history." Chomsky has also stated that though U.S. leaders did not achieve their primary goal of winning militarily in Indochina, they did destroy a possible independent economic alternative to the U.S. model for developing countries.
"Malevolence."
"Lawless." "Cruel." These are not words we normally apply to the Executive Branch as an institution, or the individuals who head its powerful agencies. But if we are to decide whether we can trust the Executive Branch with our own lives we must face the truth of its evil lawlessness.
Footnotes
(1) Robert McNamara, “The Post-Cold War World; Implications for Military Expenditures In Developing Countries,” in Proceedings of the World Bank Annual Conference on Development Economics, 1991 (Washington D.C.: International Bank of Reconstruction and Development, 1991)
(2) See “Dollars and Deaths,” Congressional Record, May 14, 1975, p. 14262
(3) Kindle loc., 7078ff.
(4) “The Study Mission Report for the Subcommittee to Investigate Problems Connected With Refugees and
Escapees,” January 27, 1975, p. 31
(5) Vietnam in Military Statistics, p. 278
(6) The Deaths of Others, Kindle loc. 3653
(7) The Deaths of Others, Kindle loc. 3311
(8) The Deaths of Others, kindle loc. 5988
(9) The two times Congress has limited Executive war-making were its vote to halt bombing over Cambodia in August 1973, and when it cut military aid to Thieu from $1.2 billion to $700 million in the fall of 1974.
(10) "United States Security Agreements and Commitments Abroad, Kingdom
of Laos, "Hearings Before the Subcommittee on United States Security Agreements and Commitments Abroad of the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, Ninety-First Congress, First Session, Part 2, October 20, 21, 22, and 28, 1969, p. 514
(11) “United States Security Agreements and Commitments Abroad, Kingdom of Laos," ibid.p. 547
(12) Sao Doumma’s wedding photo appears on the cover of Voices From the Plain of Jars, recently republished, which is the only book of the Indochina war written by the peasants
who suffered most and were heard from least.
(13) ”United States Security Agreements and Commitments Abroad, Kingdom of Laos," ibid., p. 484
(14) The Untold History of the United States, p. 387, 395
(15) In The Death Of Others, John Tirman makes a convincing case that the 110,000 Iraqi dead estimated by the Iraq Body Count organization is far too law since they were limited to the relatively few deaths reported in English language newspapers, and located in Baghdad is far too low. He notes it depends upon English
language newspapers, that most murders occur outside Baghdad in areas where few journalists visit, media coverage of Iraq plummeted post-invasion, and people often do not report deaths, particularly to the Iraqi authorities they mistrust. He also makes a strong case for believing the Johns Hopkins University estimates published in the Lancet scientific journal of more than 600,000 Iraqi dead. (Kindle loc. 5797 ff.)
Some might disagree with Branfman's conclusion (U.S. = most evil), citing Communist governments like the "former" Soviet Union and Red China.
The Soviet Union was propped up by technological, economic, and military aid by the U.S. See any of the works of Charles Levinson, or of Antony Sutton, Research Fellow at the prestigious Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Start with The
Best Enemy Money Can Buy (1986) or National Suicide: Military Aid to the Soviet Union (1973). See also Joseph Finder, Red Carpet (1983).
Senator Joe McCarthy -- for all the invective against him - was right: The U.S. Federal Government was infested with commies:
The prestigious (and conservative) think-tank at Stanford University, the Hoover Institute, published a multi-volume study of de-classified State Department documents and other government records which proved beyond question that the Soviet Union would not have lasted more than a few years without technological and financial aid from the so-called "capitalist" West. Socialism does not work. It must be propped up by capitalism.
The purpose of World War II -- which was determined not by the brave men and women who fought in it, but by the communists in the Roosevelt White House, the State Department and throughout the federal government -- was to extend communism, which was at
least 10 times as lethal as Hitler. America only entered the war against German National Socialism in order to further International Socialism under Stalin.
The same is true for America's entry into the Pacific Theater against Japan: the goal was to eliminate a threat to international socialism in the Far East. FDR and his communist advisors were planning to enter WWII even as they promised to keep our boys out of war, and in Asia they opened the door to Mao Tse Tung, keeping Douglas
McArthur from closing it.
As many as 90 million human beings died in World War II, to protect Soviet Stalinism, which was guilty of murdering a nearly equal amount of human beings, and to promote Communism in Asia, which again resulted in the murder of a nearly equal amount (best estimate: 76 million murdered under Mao) of human beings. In many ways this massive global destruction of property, liberty, and human beings was led by the United States. It most certainly was aided and abetted.
Many tyrants like Saddam Hussein and the Shah of Iran are puppets of the U.S. Mao may not have been a "puppet," whose strings were directly pulled by U.S. Puppetmasters (though we don't know everything there is to know), but he was certainly unleashed on the world by the U.S.
Branfman is right to conclude that the U.S. Government is the most evil and lawless government on earth.
“American Exceptionalism”
No matter how much evil the government commits, too many Americans continue to believe it is good. Indispensable.
This basic belief in America’s good intentions is often linked to “American exceptionalism”. Let’s look at how exceptional US foreign policy has been. Since the end of World War 2, the United States has:
Attempted to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments, most of which were democratically-elected.
Dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries.
Attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders.
Attempted to suppress a populist or nationalist movement in 20 countries.
Grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries.
Led the world in torture; not only the torture performed directly by Americans upon foreigners, but providing torture equipment, torture manuals, lists of people to be tortured, and in-person guidance by American teachers, especially in Latin America.
This is indeed exceptional. No other country in all of history comes anywhere close to such a record.
"Good intentions will always be pleaded for any assumption of power. The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters ... but they mean to be masters." ~ Daniel Webster
A well-governed person, who yearns for a well-governed society, wants to place firm limits on "the government."
place the number of internationally operating NGOs at 40,000. And that was back in 2001. [