Category: American Empire/Foreign Policy

Sec. of State Mike Pompeo’s Policies “a product of ideology compounded by ignorance”

Consortium News has a recent article  by Lawrence Davidson,  emeritus professor of history, discussing the role that Mike Pompeo’s zealous evangelicalism plays in shaping his policy vision as the U.S. Secretary of State.

It’s scary, folks…very scary.

The frighteningly common notion that America’s problems can be solved by placing more “Christians” (that is, my kind of Christians; not your kind of

Pompeo talks to reporters on his recent flight to the MIddle East

Christians) in government repeatedly leads to incompetent leadership and horrific policies.

But that doesn’t stop true believers in the exceptionalism of “Christian America” from committing the same mistakes over and over again.

Secretary Pompeo is yet another example of everything that can go wrong with American evangelicalism.  His corrupted theology is affected nations around the world, exposing them to the dangers I explain, condemn and try to correct in my book, I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America.

The article is entitled, “Mike Pompeo’s Deranged Foreign Policy.”  I have copied an excerpt below.  You can read the entire article here.

“U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo started out the new year—the date was Jan. 10—preaching “the truth” about U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, and for reasons we will get to below, he chose to do so at the American University in Cairo. He implied that he was particularly capable of discerning the truth because he is “an evangelical Christian” who keeps a “Bible open on my desk to remind me of God and His Word, and The Truth.” This confession indicates that Pompeo is wearing ideological glasses through which he cannot possibly see the world, much less the Middle East, in an objective fashion. We can assume that the decidedly unthinking and amoral president he serves has no problem with this prophet in the State Department because Pompeo is one of the few cabinet ministers whom President Donald Trump has not fired. 

“So what are Pompeo’s versions of foreign policy truth? In terms of his Cairo pronouncements, they are twofold. First, as is to be expected of a man of his temperament (he declared: “I am a military man” who learned his “basic code of integrity” at West Point), he has identified the true enemy of the civilized world. And, again not unexpectedly given his Christian zealotry, the enemy is of Muslim origin. It is the “tenacious and vicious” cabal of “radical Islamism, a debauched strain of the faith that seeks to upend every other form of worship or governance.

“This initial “truth” is noteworthy for what it does not take into consideration, such as traditional U.S. alliances with brutal and corrupt military or monarchical dictatorships. Any move to reduce support for such regimes in the Middle East is, in Pompeo’s view, a “misjudgment” that must have “dire results.” As long as these dictatorships oppose what Pompeo opposes, their brutality and corrupt

nature can be judged acceptable. For example, Pompeo praised his host, the military dictator of Egypt, Abdel Fattah Saeed Hussein Khalil El-Sisi, who is an

Secretary Pompeo with Egypt’s military dictator Abdel Fattah Saeed Hussein Khalil El-Sisi

archetypical example of this murderous breed of ruler. He praised El-Sisi exactly because he has joined the U.S. in the suppression of “Islamists.” The Egyptian dictator, in Pompeo’s words, is ‘a man of courage.’

“Pompeo’s second “truth” is the self-evident fact of American exceptionalism. He told his listeners that “America is a force for good in the Middle East.” Pompeo does not articulate the reference, but his claim taps into the Christian image of the U.S. as “a shining city on the hill”—a God-blessed light unto the nations. This was one of Ronald Reagan’s favorite themes. 

“As proof of American’s alleged beneficence, Pompeo makes a series of dubious claims about the behavior of the United States government. Here are a few. Comments within brackets are those of this author: 

“For those who fret about the use of American power, remember this: (No.1) America has always been, and always will be, a liberating force.” [Since World War II we have been liberating dictators from their own rebelling people.] (No.2) “We assembled a coalition to liberate Kuwait from Saddam Hussein.” [The subsequent two Gulf Wars plus the U.S. imposed sanctions regime killed at least half-a-million Iraqis.] (No.3) “And when the mission is over, when the job is complete, America leaves.” [Unless the “liberated” countries’ government wants Washington to establish bases which, it seems, they almost always do. The U.S. now has some 800 military bases in 70 countries around the world.] (No. 4) The U.S. and its allies helped destroy most of ISIS, and in the process “saved thousands of lives.”[There is no official number for the civilians killed in the so-called war on terror, of which the campaign against ISIS is but a part. However, there is no doubt that, to date, it is at least in the high hundreds of thousands. ] (No.5) “Life is returning to normal for millions of Iraqis and Syrians.” [Unless you have a really perverse definition of “normal,” this is a total fantasy.]”

Combat U.S. Propaganda by Knowing the Facts

“Maduro is a dictator” is the latest product being churned out by the U.S. propaganda mill.

The best way to sift through the noise is to find alternative reports that offer details from the ground.  Here are links to two such sources debunking the myths of the American government and our media monopoly.

One, an article by Pascualina Curcio, “Venezuela: Is President Maduro ‘Illegitimate’? 10 Facts to Counter the Lies.”

 

Two, a video report by Abby Martin, “Venezuela’s Constituent Assembly: Dictatorship or Democracy?”

Read and listen and then ask the question:  is it more than a coincidence that American media feeds us a message resulting in public support for another U.S. instigated coup?

Then remember, what were the consequences of our other recent efforts at regime change in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Libya?

I’ll remind you:  they were not good.

Tell Your Elected Officials, “Hands Off Venezuela!”

The Alliance for Global Justice has created an online petition and letter writing campaign that allows you to easily tell your elected representatives that you oppose the current U.S. coup attempt in Venezuela.

You can sign the petition here as well as call or send a letter to your members of Congress.

Regardless of one’s opinion of the Bolivarian Revolutionary governments in Venezuela, Hugo Chavez or Nicolas Maduro, the U.S. has no business overthrowing foreign governments because we don’t like their policies.  There are many other avenues for addressing such issues.

Whether America likes it or not, or will admit it or not, Maduro was democratically elected by the people of his country.

But, of course, the U.S. has a long history of overthrowing democratically elected governments around the world whenever they possess abundant natural resources and the nation’s leaders dare to diverge from the mechanisms of U.S. economic control.

Check out this recent piece from MPN News, “US Backs Coup in Oil Rich Venezuela, Right-Wing Opposition Plans Mass Privatization and Hyper-Capitalism.”

Let your voice be heard.

 

Why Christians Should Care About Venezuela. It’s Class Warfare, Folks.

What we are witnessing in Venezuela today is a classic demonstration of the most extreme expression of class warfare. (See my recent series on the class war in America here, here and here).

Let’s begin with two observations:

One, starting with the election of Hugo Chavez in 1999, the Venezuelan government has put an extraordinary amount of energy into improving the quality of life for its poorest members.   International capitalists haven’t approved of their methods, but then, they weren’t elected by the Venezuelan people.

Check out this article from The Guardian to see statistics on the dramatic improvements brought about by the Chavez-Maduro party in Venezuela’s levels of education, health care, poverty, infant mortality and unemployment.

Two, Americans in general, and Christians in particular, need to break out of our simple-minded binary (either this or that) way of thinking.  The world is more complicated. It rarely offers only two possibilities, e.g.  it’s either this way or the highway; it’s always America against the world; vote either Republican or Democrat; you either support another American coup in Venezuela or you are a communist who thinks there is nothing wrong with Maduro.

Christians must think differently!  

As citizens of God’s kingdom, we know that there is always another alternative.  We are obligated to look at this world through the radically alternative lens of Jesus Christ and his gospel.  This requires nuance, an understanding of alternatives, and stepping outside of the conventional “wisdom.”

So, an alternative option in this current situation is opposition to any and every U.S. attempt to manipulate and control the internal politics of a foreign country.

It doesn’t mean that we are blessing everything that the Bolivarian Revolution has done in Venezuela, but it must mean that as followers of Jesus (a) we applaud the government’s attempts to prioritize the needs of the poorest members of Venezuelan society, and (b) we oppose any actions intended to reestablish domination by wealthy elites inside the country and/or foreign, corporate powers like the U.S.A.

Jesus Christ never bludgeoned anyone into following him.   HE is our one and only model in life, not the realpolitik of American “strategic interests.”  Using force, deception, or cheating to get our way is not the way of Jesus Christ.

Anyone who wants to understand this world with the mind of Christ; to embrace his/her role as a citizen of God’s kingdom, now living in America; to grasp Jesus’ call to live lives of peaceableness and non-violence, will always oppose, in words and actions, any American attempt to spread more violence, war and social unrest by forcing its will onto other people in the world for its own selfish purpose.

Below are several brief videos offering a picture of the widespread, popular support Maduro has among the poor of Venezuela.

Here and here are two longer videos (about 30 minutes each) offering more detailed discussion of what is happening in Venezuela from long-time students of Venezuelan politics at The Real News.

 

Another U. S. Coup Unfolding, This Time Against Venezuela

The U.S. has ramped up its hostilities against the democratically elected government of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela.  America’s clandestine

President Nicolas Maduro

attempts at Maduro’s overthrow have culminated in open calls for a coup against him.

To be fair, CNN did publish a report describing American involvement in the recent attempt to kill Maduro; see the article “US officials secretly met with Venezuelan military officers plotting a coup against Maduro.”

Juan Guaido has Trump’s support

Trump has publicly “recognized” an opposition leader, Juan Guaido, as Venezuela’s real president.  Guaida unilaterally declared himself president with American support, despite the fact that he has never run for president and has never been elected president.  (Wow, is that how it works?  Maybe I should declare myself president?)

Maduro, on the other hand, has achieved both of these things, with a significant majority of the Venezuelan vote.

John Bolton, the current National Security Advisor, recently called Maduro “an illegitimate” leader who needed to be removed from office.

President Trump has imposed crippling sanctions against Venezuela which have helped to devastate its economy.  Check out the State Department’s website listing U.S. sanctions against Venezuela going back to 2014.

Economic sanctions can be seen as an act of war.

Listen to Maduro supporters reject America’s anti-democratic shenanigans:

What is happening now is the culmination of a long-standing American attack against a country that (a) elected to install a leftist government by a popular vote, (b) to nationalize its biggest industries rather than watch its natural resources continue to be exploited for American corporate profits, and (c) to shake itself free of the American Empire.

But as any good slave should know,  shaking your fist at “the master” is always a no-no.  And the America master will not stand for such disrespect.

If you have not been following recent events in Venezuela or know only the things repeated by American-based media, then a good way to catch up and become properly informed is to watch this video by the journalist Mike Prysner.

Mr. Prysner, who has spent considerable time in Venezuela, unlike the

Mike Prysner attending a Venezuelan political meeting

typical U.S. reporter, thoroughly addresses and debunks the most common pieces of misinformation, aka propaganda, being spread about Venezuela’s current problems.

If you are as disturbed as I am by America’s oppression of innocent people around the world, and the the rank hypocrisy of our government’s claims to “defend freedom” around the world, then please watch the video above and call your elected representatives.

Tell them to leave Venezuela alone!

National Budgets as Weapons of Class Warfare

(This is the final installment in my series on class warfare in America and the church’s failure to address its immorality.)

Budgets are moral documents.

How we budget our money, whether personally or as a nation, is determined by our priorities.  And our priorities are an expression of our ethics, our moral concerns.  As Jesus reminds us, your treasure is invested where your love is directed (my paraphrase; Matthew 6:21; Luke 12:34).

What we care about determines where and how we spend our money.

Which raises two important questions accompanied by a few implications concerning the politics of rising deficits and the ethical significance of Christian support for conservative  politicians.

First, what does it say about this country when approximately 25 cents out

President Trump signs the Republican tax plan

of every tax dollar is spent on the military-industrial complex?

For 2019, the total amount of defense spending is budgeted to be $951.5 billion; nearly 1 trillion dollars.  The military alone will receive $688.6 billion of that money.

When that budget item is combined with various other tidbits, such as our 800 military outposts in some 70 countries around the world, and our standing as the #1 manufacturer and exporter of military armaments around the world, it is hard not to conclude that the U.S. finds its moral raison d’etre in the maintenance and expansion of the American Empire, no matter the cost in human lives.

How else can we explain our persistent, even habitual, addictive, military interventions across the globe?  According to The National Interest, the U.S. “engaged in forty-six military interventions from 1948–1991, from 1992–2017 that number increased fourfold to 188.”

Those figures are incredible.

In light of the recent revelations regarding the mind-boggling, fiscal fumblings that pass for book-keeping at the Pentagon (see post #2), I suspect that no one has the slightest idea how much money has been spent on these continuously bloody exercises in global, American muscle-flexing.

But I do know this:  between 2001 to 2014 the wars and continued U.S. military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq alone cost the U.S. $1.6 trillion.  Spending on all of America’s post-9/11 wars reached $5.6 trillion by 2018.  A large portion of that expense is made up of the interest payments required to service the debt created by those wars.

Yep, America fights its wars, in large part, with borrowed money.

So, when was the last time Congress tried to stop another U.S. military intervention, another war, or another bombing campaign because we could not afford it; because it was another “unfunded mandate” not included in the budget; because it would grossly inflate the ballooning national debt?

To the best of my knowledge, this has never happened.  We always seem to find the money necessary for more war, which speaks volumes about the blood-thirsty American character.

Second, the national debt has become the most grotesquely manipulated budget item in our national conversation…but NOT for the reasons many suppose.

Ever since Ronald Reagan implemented the voodoo economic formula of “tax cuts for the rich + massive military spending = a growing national deficit” conservatives have eagerly used their feigned hysteria – feigned because they never complain when Republican presidents are creating this debt; in fact, as with the recent Trump tax overhaul, they applaud the creation of more debt – over the national debt as an excuse to cut the budgets of government social programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start and others.

The Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell – one of the more manipulative, cynical politicians ever to sully the halls of Congress – is

Sen. Mitch McConnell

already at it.

Not long after Congress passed both Trump’s disastrous new budget and his tax overhaul last year, Sen. McConnell began trumpeting the predictable, and wholly fallacious, lament that the growing national deficit is due to “the three big entitlement programs that are very popular, Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid.”

But his conservative mantra bemoaning our “entitlement” programs as wholly responsible for the national debt is the Republican (and weak-kneed Democratic) equivalent of Chicken Little flailing her wings and crying, “They sky is falling!”

Not only is this warning a lie, even if it were true, it would be a predictable result of our immoral budget priorities, inhuman spending decisions flaunted by Congressional conservatives every time they take out their fiscal crowbars and pull the sky down onto the heads of America’s weakest members.

Let’s think clearly about this issue:

  • America does have a growing debt, but let’s be honest. That debt grows faster during Republican administrations.  That claim is not partisanship; it’s just a fact.  (I know, analyzing national debt is complicated. I am not suggesting that budget priorities are the sole cause of the national debt.  But because conservative arguments always make it the #1 issue, I make it my primary focus.)

Sorry for the poor quality of the following image.

This is class warfare.  It is the weaponization of our national budget, using it to bludgeon the poor while enabling the rich.  It is the very behavior that God’s Old Testament prophets condemned as deserving of God’s judgement.

Some of the richest members of our society – remember that Congress is composed largely of millionaires (see post #1) – decide to give more and more of our tax dollars to support the expansion of American Empire and protect its multi-national, corporate investments around the world.  (Read The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government, by David Talbot, for a shocking account of the CIA’s history of shameless dirty-work performed in obedience to America’s richest, corporate task-masters.)

At the same time, those millionaire politicians ask the richest Americans to contribute less and less to assist the country’s most needy members.  See here and here about the vast level of economic inequality in America and the global economy.)

Then these very same millionaires have the unmitigated gall to accuse senior citizens and the poor of inflating our debt burden and insisting that the only solution is to cut their benefits.

Really?!  Are you kidding me?

To make matters worse, most evangelicals, who overwhelmingly vote for conservative, Republican candidates, mindlessly support this God-forsaken economic hocus-pocus.

Not only is it all a tawdry display of narcissistic political theater, it is a heartless strategy to balance the budget-breaking expense of American Empire on the trembling backs of society’s weakest members; to rip food from the mouths of children whose only healthy meal comes through a school lunch program in order to shovel new, despoiling delicacies into the voracious, gaping maw of the American war machine, endlessly thirsting for more blood.

I am sorry, but I must be emphatic.

Every follower of Jesus Christ, every disciple who is serious about conforming themselves to the image of a crucified, suffering Savior, has no choice but to decry the politics of America’s ever-expanding global warfare in the cold-hearted pursuit of America’s intensifying class warfare.

Voting matters.  Why do most evangelical voters use theirs to oppress the poor at home and to wreak havoc around the world?

Class Warfare in the United States.  All Hail American Empire!

(This post is part two in a series discussing America’s class war and its bearing upon Christian ethics and the church).

During the 1980 presidential primary race, George H. W. Bush famously described candidate Reagan’s “trickle-down” economic proposal as “voodoo economics.”  (See post #1).

Check out the video below:

If the first ingredient in Reagan’s cauldron of economic voodoo was tax cuts for the wealthiest who needed them the least, the second ingredient was a huge expansion in the nation’s military budget.  Check out this article by Matt Taibbi at the Rolling Stone for more on our current military spending.

More than half of the nation’s discretionary spending goes to the military-industrial-surveillance complex.  The following pie chart depicts the 2015 budget allowances.  Over half, 54% to be precise, went to the military:

The United States spends as much money on its military as the world’s next ten nations in line.  President Trump approved a $717 billion defense bill, increasing U.S. military spending by over $200 billion in 2017.

 

Remember all of this money is going to an institution that recently failed its first ever audit and is unable to account for $21 trillion.  That’s right:  $21 trillion unaccounted for by our military-industrial complex!  Haven’t heard this fact discussed much on network news, have you?

That the American public allows this kind of abuse to continue is not only a classic example of throwing good money after bad, it is the ultimate illustration of something called the Stockholm Syndrome, when kidnapping victims are gradually brainwashed into sympathizing with, and even assisting, the very criminals holding them hostage.

Similarly, the Pentagon, the Joint Chiefs, the Defense Department and U.S. arms manufacturers all conspire to hold this country hostage.

They concoct imaginary threats (like Iran), bilk the American tax-payer for hundreds of billions of dollars in ransom money every year, and then watch approvingly as the masses dig deep to hand over the military’s blood money while standing to salute the flag and sing “God Bless America.”

The entire scenario is obscene.  Especially because the spending is not motivated by the requirements of national defense, regardless of the political rhetoric used to assuage any (rare) objections or questions from the public.

The only reason standing behind our massive military budgets is the continued expansion of the American Empire, an Empire that enriches our billionaire class.

Do we really need 800 military bases in 70 countries around the world?  No.

Is it necessary for us to conduct secret drone bombing campaigns in 8 different countries?  No.

Don’t worry.  The carnage is bi-partisan.  In 2016 President Obama dropped nearly 31,000 bombs in seven countries.  President Trump, “the most hawkish president in modern history,” topped that by 9,000, dropping nearly 40,00 bombs in 2017.

At the end of the day,  all of these bombs and wars boil down to war-profiteers making more and more money.  Listen to Col. Lawrence Wilkerson lambaste the unfettered greed laying at the heart of American war-making.

Yes, American warfare boils down to billionaires making more and more money; retired generals and admirals becoming CEOs, sitting on more and more boards of directors for more weapons manufacturers; or signing six figure contracts for their “consulting work” (otherwise known as lobbying) on behalf of armaments companies like Raytheon, Halliburton, Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman.

Check out the Ten Companies Profiting Most From War.

In 1935, Marine Corp General Smedley Butler wrote the anti-war classic, War is a Racket.  He would know.  I encourage you to read the general’s short book, if you haven’t already.  Below is an excerpt:

“WAR is a racket. It always has been.

“It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

“A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

“In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.”

General Smedley’s words are as true today, perhaps more so, than they were 80 years ago.

Nearly 1/4 of every tax dollars goes to the military budget

Once again, feeding the war machine results in a massive transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the wealthiest Americans.  First, our tax dollars justify increased, military expansion.  Second, that expansion funnels hundreds of billions of dollars in profits to the CEOs and shareholders who run the burgeoning U.S. arms industry.

The rich get richer while everyone else bears the burden.

Of course, the greatest burden is the cost of war in human lives.

Rarely do the rich sign up to go to war (though a few legislators tried to change that in 1935. It didn’t happen). That responsibility falls to others who have few, if any, other options for a career or for higher education.  And who knows how to begin counting the untold numbers of civilian casualties created by America’s sleek, stealth drones firing anonymously from thousands of feet in the air, killing innumerable, nameless brown people, men,woman and children, for who knows what reason.

But, don’t worry, American tax-payer.  Every bomb dropped, every missile launched is just more money in the bank for another U.S. corporation perfecting the dark-arts of human slaughter.

The final injustice of our obscene “defense” budgets (we really ought to call it an “offensive” budget) is the neglect of the American people and the social needs of our society.

In 2017, the U.S. budgeted $623 billion on national defense.  Many budget analysts argue that by reducing our defense budget down to European levels, we would have the money needed to do such things as:

  • Provide free, universal, early childhood development programs to all our children
  • Debt-free college for anyone attending a state university
  • Student loan forgiveness
  • Dramatic reductions in our rates of homeless and childhood-poverty
  • Reduce the nation’s deficit
  • Provide free health care to every American

Everything discussed here are humanitarian concerns that ought to animate every disciple of Jesus Christ.

What could be a more pungent expression of “loving your neighbor” through social engagement than working to starve the war-mongering beast of American Empire for the good of everyone, at home and around the world?

Caitlin Johnstone on the Hypocrisy of US Foreign Policy

The journalist Caitlin Johnstone has posted a good discussion, entitled “If America Stopped Destroying the World, the Bad Guts Might Win,” about the

Caitlin Johnstone

rank hypocrisy of American foreign policy, a policy that continues to work at toppling any foreign government we don’t like (which typically means that they won’t cooperate with American demands) and promulgating wars of strategic convenience when and where we choose.

She specifically addresses U.S. aggression in Venezuela and the Middle East.

This American Empire is an evil beast that no right-thinking Christian can possibly support, much less cheer onward.

No, Jesus may not have explicitly condemned Caesar or the Roman Empire, but he left us plenty of explicit ethical instruction which, when taken seriously, makes it impossible for his disciples to endorse or to approve of Caesar or to support the Empire’s bloody exercise of raw power for its own interests.

Below is an excerpt.  You can read the entire post here.

“Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters on Saturday that the government under Venezuela’s recently re-inaugurated president Nicolas Maduro is ‘illegitimate’, and that ‘the United States will work diligently to restore a real democracy to that country.’

“Pompeo’s remarks, which were echoed by Trump’s National Security Advisor John Bolton, are interesting for a couple of reasons. The first is because Venezuela’s presidential election in May of last year (which incidentally was found to have been perfectly legitimate by the international Council of Electoral Experts of Latin America) was actively and aggressively meddled in by the US and its allies. The second is that while the US government is openly broadcasting its intention to continue interfering in Venezuela’s political system, it continues to scream bloody murder about alleged Russian interference in its own democratic process two years ago.

“What is the difference between the behavior of the United States, which remains far and away the single worst offender in foreign election meddling on the

Woolsey lets the cat out of the bag on Fox News. The US meddles wherever it bloody well pleases

planet, and what Russia is accused of having done in 2016? According to a comment made by former CIA Director James Woolsey last year, it’s that the US interferes in foreign democracies ‘for a very good cause.’

“And that’s really the only argument that empire loyalists have going for them on this subject. The US is different because the US has moral authority. It’s okay for the US to continue to interfere in the political affairs of foreign nations while it would be an unforgivable and outrageous ‘act of war’ for a nation like Russia to do the exact same thing, because the US is countering the interests of the Bad Guys while Russia is countering the interests of the Good Guys. Who decided who the Good Guys and Bad Guys are in this argument? The US.”

“Cheney Was Evil,” Says Former Bush Administration Official, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson

I have not seen the new movie “Vice,” but plan on watching it soon.  I have, however, watched a conversation with retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who worked with Vice-President Cheney during the Bush administration.

Wilkerson was the chief of staff to General Colin Powell while the general was George W. Bush’s Secretary of State.  He is now an adjunct professor at William & Mary college where he teaches courses on national security.

To my knowledge, Col. Wilkerson is the only official involved in president Bush’s selling of the Iraq war who has publicly admitted how wrong he was in helping the president lead this nation into that illegal catastrophe.

He is a Republican and a strong critic of the ever-expanding American empire fueled by our perpetual aggression abroad and our oppressive surveillance-security state at home.

Below is part 1 of Col. Wilkerson’s discussion of the movie “Vice,” his appraisal of Dick Cheney, and his lament over the fact that our government

Lawrence Wilkerson

now operates for the rich, by the rich who very intentionally “make a killing” (pun intended) from America’s endless lust for war.

Col. Wilkerson does not mince words, “Cheney was evil.”

Click here to watch.

Chris Hedges Challenges Us to Put Faith Into Practice

Truthdig – an online magazine that I read regularly – has published an excellent essay by Chris Hedges describing the anti-war protests of Phil and Dan Berrigan during the 1960’s movement against the war in Vietnam.  It is entitled “Resistance is the Supreme Act of Faith.”

I became a follower of Mr. Hedges’ work years ago when I read his excellent book, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, reflecting on his many years as a war correspondent.  It’s a book that I believe every American should read.

I have copied selected excerpts from the Truthdig article below.  You can find the entire piece by clicking on the title above.

“The struggle against the monstrous radical evil that dominates our lives—an evil that is swiftly despoiling the earth and driving the human species toward extinction, stripping us of our most basic civil liberties and freedoms, waging endless war and solidifying the obscene wealth of an oligarchic elite at our

Catholic priests, Phil and Dan Berrigan, leading an anti-Vietnam, anti-draft demonstration

expense—will be fought only with the belief that resistance, however futile, insignificant and even self-defeating it may appear, can set in motion moral and spiritual forces that radiate outward to inspire others, including those who come after us. It is, in essence, an act of faith. Nothing less than this faith will sustain us. We resist not because we will succeed, but because it is right. Resistance is the supreme act of faith.”

…….

 “The Berrigans, who identified as religious radicals, had little use for liberals. Liberals, they said, addressed only small, moral fragments and used their pet causes, in most cases, not to bring about systemic change, but for self-adulation. Liberals often saw wars or social injustices as isolated evils whose end would restore harmony.”

…….

 “The Berrigans excoriated the church hierarchy for sacralizing the nation, the government, capitalism, the military and the war. They argued that the fusion of secular and religious authority would kill the church as a religious institution. The archbishop of New York at the time, Cardinal Francis J. Spellman, in one example, sprinkled holy water on B-52 bombers and blessed the warplanes before their missions in Vietnam. He described the conflict as a ‘war for civilization’ and ‘Christ’s war against the Vietcong and the people of North Vietnam.’  Phil Berrigan, the first priest to go to jail for protesting the war, celebrated Mass for his fellow prisoners. The services were, for the first time, well attended.”

 I, personally, wish that churchmen like the Berrigan brothers would include a more forthright, verbal witness to Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God in their lifestyle of public resistance.

On the other hand, they at least are/were doing the work that precious few evangelicals bother to think about.

I wish that religious activists like Chris Hedges, a former Harvard divinity student, could understand that the foundation stone of spiritual death in this world is not found in temporal systems of repression, whether social, political or economic, but are rooted in the all-pervasive nature of humanity’s sinfulness.

On the other hand, he at least publicly identifies and  condemns the many evils that most evangelicals bless and embrace.

The kingdom of God on earth will never erupt from within.  It is a foreign entity, a rule from witsout, that only arrives with the resurrected Jesus.  I believe that this fact is the beginning of our only hope in life as well as in death.

But I also wish that more men and women who understand the gospel of Jesus Christ would also understand the essential, moral, spiritual continuity that ties Christian self-denial to our faithful resistance against all forms of evil, whether that evil shows itself in militarism, warfare, capitalism, nationalism, inequality, civil religion, racism, or injustice.

The church’s failure to make  this connection consistently, to think and to behave with coherence across all these areas of life, cripple our witness, stunt our spiritual development, and abandon a needy world to the merchants of half-measures.

I encourage you to read Mr. Hedges’ weighty words and think about his lessons through the lens of Jesus’ own ethics.  Perhaps, my book I Pledge Allegiance can help, if this is a new exercise for you.