Latest (horrifically unamerican) War Pretexts

[Moses]

www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/bminiter/?id=110006055
THE WESTERN FRONT [/color]
God and Good Government
Are American soldiers doing the Lord's work in Iraq? You bet.
BY BRENDAN MINITER
Tuesday, December 21, 2004 12:01 a.m.

The most surprising thing an American military officer told me about his work in Iraq came in a statement he later asked to retract. And it strikes me as something worth thinking about in this Christmas season as we go through the annual ritual of pulling crèche scenes from courthouse lawns across America. In the debate over faith in the public square there is rarely an acknowledgement that there is a link between morality and government.

After describing the good works his men were doing by rebuilding schools and providing food and medicine to Iraqis, the officer summed up this list by saying "We're just doing the Lord's work." At the time the comment seemed perfectly appropriate. I do not know the officer's faith or even if he is a Christian. But his meaning was clear: His men were performing vital humanitarian work in addition to taking on insurgents. The surprise came a few minutes after the interview, when a public information officer asked to retract the comment. Apparently in the post-interview debriefing someone got scared that it could be misconstrued. The officer did not mean to imply that he was doing the Lord's work at all, I was assured.

But that is exactly what he meant and exactly what he is doing. After all there is a moral component to a policy that frees a people from a dictatorship, restores civil order and protects against a violent group of insurgents. The officer was right, however, to worry that a secular media might twist such a statement into "proof" that American soldiers were proselytizing in a Muslim country. After all, President Bush was hounded by the press for simply using the word "crusade" while talking about vigorously pursuing the war on terror.


However, nowhere is the moral component of public policy more apparent than Iraq. What U.S. troops found when they overturned Saddam Hussein's regime was a society governed by a thoroughly corrupt and manifestly immoral group of thugs. [That is, there was a thoroughly corrupt and manifestly immoral group of thugs behind the Iraq war, such as the author and his publication] We've heard the tales [yes, we have heard plenty of tales from the likes of Mintner et al] of rape rooms, mass murder and other despicable and nearly unimaginable tortures. What has not made it into the public debate is the larger impact the rule of these monsters had on Iraqi society. [Yes, look at the impact these monsters, the corrupt thugs behind the Iraq war, are having on Iraqi society] Americans may be surprised by the extent of the insurgency, but we shouldn't be. Being ruled by an immoral elite destroys the fabric of a civil society. [He is sure of this, because they are doing just that, deliberately, to the USA, and laughing up his sleeve as he writes this, his "faith" being that of the stupidity and manipulatability of American "Christians"]

After decades of Saddam's debauchery, it is civilization that has to struggle to reassert itself. While we may fear that a class of clerics will win January elections and write Islam into Iraq's civil law, we should be equally fearful of setting up a government that does not recognize a larger moral system than itself. [He reveals here that the neocons favor world-wide theocracy, and disfavor secular government, the very foundation of the United States of America] That was the essence of Saddam's regime--that the ruling elite was above any accountability. [And those traitors who brought about this war and the deliberate destruction of the USA are above accountability]

As Saddam and his henchmen stand trial for sins against their countrymen, they are finding they are in fact subject to the laws of decency that must govern human behavior. In Iraq, returning to moral principles is helping restore good government. [So he must love the Iranian theocracy]


Secularists would like to convince us in America that religion is somehow incompatible with the principles of a free society. [Bullnuts- he is pushing a hotbutton to bring Christians along in the destruction of not only their county, but their religious diversity, and Christianity itself] And that the display of faith in public is somehow equal to forcing religion on the general public. In fact, Mr. Mintner, you reveal here your complete lack of familiarity w/ Christianity. Not praying in public, not displaying one's religion in public, is a major tenet of Christianity. What religion are you, Mintner?] Yet until a real life Santa Claus steps forward to take the seat of power, the real fear is that governments will fail to recognize that they are not the final arbitrators of right and wrong and that morality matters. That's why democratic elections are so important--a leader who must face the electorate now and again comes to understand the limits to his power.

Are Americans soldiers doing the Lord's work in Iraq? To the extent that they are helping to set up a government that will be administered by a free people, the answer has to be yes.

Mr. Miniter is assistant editor of OpinionJournal.com. His column appears Tuesdays.

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In my theocracy, Mr. Miniter would be sent to a re-education camp. He violates every tenet of Christianity, and does so knowlingly, deliberately, and with malice.

[Moses]

JAMES CARROLL
The politics of the Christmas story
By James Carroll  |  December 21, 2004

THE SINGLE most important fact about the birth of Jesus, as recounted in the Gospels, is one that receives almost no emphasis in the American festival of Christmas. The child who was born in Bethlehem represented a drastic political challenge to the imperial power of Rome. The nativity story is told to make the point that Rome is the enemy of God, and in Jesus, Rome's day is over.

The Gospel of Matthew builds its nativity narrative around Herod's determination to kill the baby, whom he recognizes as a threat to his own political sway. The Romans were an occupation force in Palestine, and Herod was their puppet-king. To the people of Israel, the Roman occupation, which preceded the birth of Jesus by at least 50 years, was a defilement, and Jewish resistance was steady. (The historian Josephus says that after an uprising in Jerusalem around the time of the birth of Jesus, the Romans crucified 2,000 Jewish rebels.)

Herod was right to feel insecure on his throne. In order to preempt any challenge from the rumored newborn "king of the Jews," Herod murdered "all the male children who were 2 years old or younger." Joseph, warned in a dream, slipped out of Herod's reach with Mary and Jesus. Thus, right from his birth, the child was marked as a political fugitive.

The Gospel of Luke puts an even more political cast on the story. The narrative begins with the decree of Caesar Augustus calling for a world census -- a creation of tax rolls that will tighten the empire's grip on its subject peoples. It was Caesar Augustus who turned the Roman republic into a dictatorship, a power-grab he reinforced by proclaiming himself divine.

His census decree is what requires the journey of Joseph and the pregnant Mary to Bethlehem, but it also defines the context of their child's nativity as one of political resistance. When the angel announces to shepherds that a "savior has been born," as scholars like Richard Horsley point out, those hearing the story would immediately understand that the blasphemous claim by Caesar Augustus to be "savior of the world" was being repudiated.

When Jesus was murdered by Rome as a political criminal -- crucifixion was the way such rebels were executed -- the story's beginning was fulfilled in its end. But for contingent historical reasons (the savage Roman war against the Jews in the late first century, the gradual domination of the Jesus movement by Gentiles, the conversion of Constantine in the early fourth century) the Christian memory deemphasized the anti-Roman character of the Jesus story. Eventually, Roman imperialism would be sanctified by the church, with Jews replacing Romans as the main antagonists of Jesus, as if he were not Jewish himself. (Thus, Herod is remembered more for being part-Jewish than for being a Roman puppet.)

In modern times, religion and politics began to be understood as occupying separate spheres, and the nativity story became spiritualized and sentimentalized, losing its political edge altogether. "Peace" replaced resistance as the main motif. The baby Jesus was universalized, removed from his decidedly Jewish context, and the narrative's explicit critiques of imperial dominance and of wealth were blunted.

This is how it came to be that Christmas in America has turned the nativity of Jesus on its head. No surprise there, for if the story were told today with Roman imperialism at its center, questions might arise about America's new self-understanding as an imperial power. A story of Jesus born into a land oppressed by a hated military occupation might prompt an examination of the American occupation of Iraq. A story of Jesus come decidedly to the poor might cast a pall over the festival of consumption. A story of the Jewishness of Jesus might undercut the Christian theology of replacement.

Today the Roman empire is recalled mainly as a force for good -- those roads, language, laws, civic magnificence, "order" everywhere. [See "The Western Front" article above] The United States of America also understands itself as acting in the world with good intentions, aiming at order. "New world order," as George H.W. Bush put it.

That we have this in common with Rome is caught by the Latin motto that appears just below the engraved pyramid on each American dollar bill, "Novus Ordo Seculorum." But, as Iraq reminds us, such "order" comes at a cost, far more than a dollar. The price is always paid in blood and suffering by unseen "nobodies" at the bottom of the imperial pyramid. It is their story, for once, that is being told this week.

James Carroll's column appears regularly in the Globe. <br>