Romanian Catholic Statement Against War With Iraq,
by John Michael Botean,
Bishop of the Romanian Catholic Diocese of St. George in Canton, Ohio

March 7, 2003

Beloved brothers and sisters in our Lord, Jesus Christ,

Great Lent, which we now begin, is traditionally a time in which we take stock of ourselves, our lives, and the direction in which we are headed. In the common language of the Catholic Church, it is a time for a deep "examination of conscience" as we fast, pray, and otherwise attend to the call for repentance issued by the Church for the forty days before we celebrate the Resurrection of her savior, Jesus Christ.

A serious examination of conscience requires that we recognize that there are times in the life of each Christian when one's faith is seriously and urgently challenged by the events taking place around him or her. Like it or not, these challenges show us just how seriously—or not—we are living our baptismal commitment to Christ. Most of us, most of the time, would prefer to keep our heads in the sand, ostrich-like, than to face truths about ourselves. This is why the Church has found it so vitally necessary to have seasons, such as Lent, during which we must pull our heads out of the sand and take a good, hard look at the world around us and how we are living in it.

We cannot fail, as we examine our consciences, to take into account the most critical challenge presented to our faith in our day: the fact that the United States government is about to initiate a war against the people of Iraq. For Romanian Catholics who are also United States citizens, this raises an immediate and unavoidable moral issue of major importance. Specifically stated the issue is this: does the killing of human beings in this war constitute murder?

The Holy Gospels reveal our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ to be nonviolent. In them, Jesus teaches a Way of life that his disciples are to follow, a Way of nonviolent love of friends and enemies. However, since the latter half of the fourth century the Church has proposed standards that, if met, would make it morally permissible for Christians to depart from that way in order to engage in war. These standards have come to be known in popular language as the "Catholic Just War Theory."

According to this theory, if all of the conditions it specifies are adhered to, the killing that is done in fighting a war may be justifiable and therefore morally allowable. This theory also teaches that if any one of the standards is not met, then the killing that occurs is unjust and therefore morally impermissible. Unjust killing is by definition murder. Murder is intrinsically evil and therefore absolutely forbidden, no matter what good may seem to come of it.

The Church teaches that good ends do not justify the use of evil means. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states this principle succinctly: "One may never do evil so that good may result from it." (1789) One contemporary example of this would be abortion. Abortion is intrinsically evil; hence regardless of the good that may seem to issue from it, a Catholic may never participate in it.

Paragraph 2309 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church states: "The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy " (emphasis added). Since war is about the mass infliction of death and suffering on children of God, Christians can enter into it and fight in it only if the war in question strictly meets all the criteria of the just war theory, and only if these same standards are likewise meticulously observed in the course of fighting the war. Vague, loose, freewheeling, conniving, relaxed interpretations of Catholic just war theory and its application are morally illegitimate because of "the gravity of such a decision."

"The evaluation of these conditions of the just war theory for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good," states the Catechism. (2309) However, the nation-state is never the final arbiter or authority for the Catholic of what is moral or for what is good for the salvation of his or her soul. What is legal can be evil and often has been . Jesus Christ and his Church, not the state, are the ultimate informers of conscience for the Catholic.

This is why the Church teaches as a norm of conscience the following: "If rulers were to enact unjust laws or take measures contrary to the moral order such arrangements would not be binding in conscience." ( Catechism 1903) She also warns "Blind obedience [to immoral laws] does not suffice to excuse those who carry them out" ( Catechism 2313). When a moral conflict arises between Church teaching and secular morality, when contradictory moral demands are made upon a Catholic's conscience, he or she "must obey God rather than man" (Acts 5:29).

Because such a moment of moral crisis has arisen for us, beloved Romanian Catholics, I must now speak to you as your bishop. Please be aware that I am not speaking to you as a theologian or as a private Christian voicing his opinion, nor by any means am I speaking to you as a political partisan. I am speaking to you solely as your bishop with the authority and responsibility I, though a sinner, have been given as a successor to the apostles on your behalf. I am speaking to you from the deepest chambers of my conscience as your bishop, appointed by Jesus Christ in his Body, the Church, to help shepherd you to sanctity and to heaven. Never before have I spoken to you in this manner, explicitly exercising the fullness of authority Jesus Christ has given his Apostles "to bind and to loose," ( cf . John 20:23), but now "the love of Christ compels" me to do so (2 Corinthians 5:14). My love for you makes it a moral imperative that I not allow you, by my silence, to fall into grave evil and its incalculable temporal and eternal consequences.

Humanly speaking, I would much prefer to keep silent. It would be far, far easier for me and my family simply to let events unfold as they will, without commentary or warning on my part. But what kind of shepherd would I be if I, seeing the approach of the wolf, ran away from the sheep ( cf . John 10:12-14)? My silence would be cowardly and, indeed, sinful. I believe that Christ, whose flock you are, expects more than silence from me on behalf of the souls committed to my protection and guidance.

Therefore I, by the grace of God and the favor of the Apostolic See Bishop of the Eparchy of St. George in Canton, must declare to you, my people, for the sake of your salvation as well as my own, that any direct participation and support of this war against the people of Iraq is objectively grave evil, a matter of mortal sin. Beyond a reasonable doubt this war is morally incompatible with the Person and Way of Jesus Christ. With moral certainty I say to you it does not meet even the minimal standards of the Catholic just war theory.

Thus, any killing associated with it is unjustified and, in consequence, unequivocally murder. Direct participation in this war is the moral equivalent of direct participation in an abortion. For the Catholics of the Eparchy of St. George, I hereby authoritatively state that such direct participation is intrinsically and gravely evil and therefore absolutely forbidden.

My people, it is an incontestable Biblical truth that a sin left unnamed will propagate itself with lavish zeal. We must call murder by its right name: murder. God and conscience require nothing less if the face of the earth is to be renewed and if the salvation offered by Our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ is to reach all people, including us. We have no choice before the face of God but to speak unambiguously to the moral situation with which we are confronted and to live according to the Will of Him who gazes at us from the Cross ( Catechism 1785).

Let us pray for each other and take care of each other in this spiritually trying time. To this end our Church is wholeheartedly committed to the support of any of our members in the military or government service who may be confronted with situations of legal jeopardy due to their need to be conscientious objectors to this war. Let us also pray in earnest with the Mother of God, who knows what it is to have her Child destroyed before her eyes, that the destruction of families, lives, minds and bodies that war unleashes will not take place.

Finally, my brothers and sisters in Christ, be assured that Our Lord is aware that our "No" to murder and our prayers for peace are our faithful response to his desires. He will remember this forever and ever, and so it is to him we must now turn, in him we must now trust.

Amen.

Sincerely in Christ-God,

+ John Michael

(Most Reverend) John Michael Botean
a sinner, bishop

Report of the Committee on Women in the Military and in Combat
From the Minutes of the Sixty-eighth General Assembly (2001):

http://opc.org/GA/WomenInMilitary.html
1. That the Orthodox Presbyterian Church is opposed to any possible future drafting of women into combat service, in time of war or peace, under any and all circumstances, for the reason that such governmental actions would be contrary to the Word of God.

2. That the Orthodox Presbyterian Church is opposed to the inclusion of women in combatant military units, or in units which during wartime, have a high degree of potential involvement in combat and possible capture and potential risk of rape, even if their command is not designated a combat element, and that such inclusion is contrary to the Word of God. (This does not rule out, however, female personnel, serving in non-combatant assignments, such as field medical units or on hospital ships, which can come under hostile fire.)

3. That no Orthodox Presbyterian Church Chaplain who is endorsed for military service by his presbytery through the instrumentality of the Presbyterian and Reformed Joint Commission on Chaplains shall be required to advocate, support, or agree with any philosophy and effort to include women in military combatant units, nor can he be required by any superior line or staff officer to teach or advocate such a philosophy and effort, nor shall he be forbidden to provide the biblical counsel contained in this report.

John McCain

McCain: Iraq War Can Be Won by 2013

Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), speaks at the Greater Columbus Convention Center, May 15, 2008, in Columbus, Ohio. (Associated Press)

Updated 11:39 a.m.
By Michael D. Shear
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Sen. John McCain predicted today that the Iraq war would be won and most American troops would come home by 2013 if he is elected president, joining his Democratic rivals for the first time in offering a timeline for a large-scale military withdrawal.

McCain said only a small contingent of troops, in non-combat roles, would remain in Iraq five years from now. He said the drawdown would be possible because al-Qaeda in Iraq would be defeated and a democratic government would be operating in the war-torn country.

McCain's speech described in detail the "conditions that I intend to achieve" by the time his first term in office ends. He said he will "focus all the powers of the office, every skill and strength I possess," to make that future a reality.

McCain previously had resisted offering target dates for troop withdrawals, saying that to do so would be tantamount to giving terrorists a timeline for defeat. During the Florida primary, he blasted former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney for what he said was support of a withdrawal timeline. Democrats, meanwhile, pilloried McCain for saying American troops could remain in Iraq for up to 100 years -- a reference McCain later likened to the presence of U.S. bases in Germany or South Korea.

Just last month, McCain said that "to promise a withdrawal of our forces from Iraq, regardless of the calamitous consequences to the Iraqi people, our most vital interests, and the future of the Middle East, is the height of irresponsibility. It is a failure of leadership.''

But the speech he gave this morning envisioned an America that, by 2013, "has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom. The Iraq war has been won."

By that time, McCain said, "the United States maintains a military presence" in Iraq, "but a much smaller one, and it does not play a direct combat role."

Asked to make a withdrawal timeline pledge during a debate last September, Democratic Sen. Barack Obama declined, saying that "it's hard to project four years from now and I think it would be irresponsible. We don't know what contingency will be out there."

But more recently, Obama has said he will remove all combat brigades from Iraq within 16 months of becoming president and will leave "some troops" in Iraq to protect U.S. embassy personnel there and carry out targeted strikes on terrorists.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said during the same debate last year that it was her "goal" to have all of the U.S. troops out of Iraq by 2013, though more recently she has said she would begin a phased withdrawal immediately.

McCain's advisers this morning sharply disputed any similarity between their candidate's goals for Iraq and the positions of Democrats. They said McCain's promise is to win the Iraq war by the end of his term, while his rivals vow to begin pullouts regardless of the conditions in the country.

"There is no similarity," said McCain adviser Steve Schmidt.

Immediately after the speech, McCain disputed the idea that he was setting a firm date for withdrawal of troops from Iraq, telling reporters that he is "promising that we will succeed in Iraq" but not promising that troops will come home if that success has not materialized.

"I'm not putting a date on it. It could be next month. It could be next year," he told reporters on the Straight Talk Express bus. "I said by the end of my first term we will have succeeded in Iraq...This is what I want to achieve. This is what I believe is achievable."

He repeated his comments from throughout the campaign that setting a date for withdrawal would lead to "chaos, genocide and we will be back with greater sacrifice."

Aides later stressed that the difference is that Democrats want to withdraw troops without any regard to the military situation in Iraq. They said a president McCain would leave troops in Iraq beyond his first term if the military situation demanded it.

"He's not saying win or lose, they come home in four years," said Mark Salter, a top McCain aide.

In the speech, McCain also described the America he hopes will exist after four years of his administration.

In that future America, he said, taxes are lower, congressional earmarks are eliminated and robust economic growth has returned. He promised a new international "League of Democracies" that will have stopped the genocide in Darfur. He said construction will have begun on 20 new nuclear plants and there will be a free-market plan to reduce greenhouse gasses. And he promised to have secured the country's southern border and offered a temporary worker program to illegal immigrants.

To accomplish those goals, McCain pledged cooperation with Democrats, saying that he will "listen to any idea that is offered in good faith and intended to help solve our problems, not make them worse."

McCain disavowed "signing statements" often used by President Bush to alter the implementation of laws, saying that "I will not subvert the purpose of legislation I have signed by making statements that indicate I will enforce only the parts of it I like."

And McCain said he will ask Congress to hold regular question-and-answer sessions with him, much like the feisty exchanges that take place regularly between the British Prime Minister and members of the House of Commons.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/05/15/mccain_outlines_troop_withdraw.html?hpid=topnews

Constitution Party stunner II: Keyes won't back Chuck Baldwin for president, suggests party used him

Obama Is Not Jesus Christ

Ethan Allen
Rogue Government
May 14, 2008

A disturbing pathology has emerged from the Obama campaign in the last few months, and only seems to be gaining strength among his followers, and that is a sincere belief that only Obama can save us from our current problems. Blind faith in leaders is nothing new, and has been a social phenomenon in politics and religion for thousands of years. However, in current times when people are more cynical about their leaders, you’d think this ‘kneel and pray to the glorious leader’ stuff would be left in the history books. But it would seem that Obama’s supporters are so enraptured by his charisma that they’ll drop to their knees and cry, or even pass out at his mere presence.

Obamamessiah.blogspot.com actually catalogues images and articles pertaining to this fad, and some of the pictures and rhetoric being pitched around, both by the media and by some of Obama’s supporters, is truly disturbing. The lemmings mentality of some of Obama’s hardcore supporters is easy to scoff at, but the diehard cultish aspect of it should frighten every freedom loving American who values individual rights and the power to remain free of group think.

In another spin piece, Obama’s raging popularity has been equated to the ‘Ron Paul phenomenon’, as if Ron Paul’s campaign was based soley on the cult of personality of a soft spoken 72 year old Congressman from Texas. If Ron Paul supporters had been looking for a loud, over confident leader with a rock star image to save them, they certainly picked the wrong guy. But the media is determined to quantify and properly analyze Obama’s success, as if they believe they can ride the coat tails of a public relations vehicle they themselves concocted.

There’s also the ‘Yes, We Can’ PR campaign, with its own catchphrases and accompanying music video. The platform of his campaign seems to impress us with the need to change things and find solutions to our problems, but is uncomfortably sterile when it comes to addressing either the problems or the solutions. Everything is done in broad strokes and with ‘big ideas’ instead of common sense and detailed problem solving. Is this the kind of canvas Jesus would paint on?

But it gets even weirder with the Obama waffle fiasco. While campaigning in Pennsylvania, Obama stopped to eat at a diner where a waitress snatched up the remains of Obama’s breakfast and gave it to a ‘loyal fan’, who promptly put up an auction on Ebay to sell the half-eaten breakfast. The starting price for Obama’s breakfast was set at $10,000. Thankfully, sanity prevailed and the asking price was too high, and ended up selling for $.99 to the winning bidder. ‘Obama is president’ style web domains are currently going for hundreds of thousands of dollars on Ebay.

Google searches for ‘Obama savior’ or ‘Obama messiah’ will bring up a plethora of sites, both tongue in cheek and many which are legitimately praising Obama as the only candidate who can save us all. However, a little pressing and determined questions for logical solutions to the war in Iraq, the deficit, or even basic tax and spend policies will reveal the emptiness of Obama’s rhetoric. But like most messiah figures, the power of their words and imagery are usually far more potent than the realization of their ideas.

Barack Obama might be related to Dick Cheney or Brad Pitt, but blood descendent of Jesus Christ he is not. But I guess it’s only a matter of time before the media finds a way to use some ILM magic tricks to show us Obama walking on water.

Bush Commits Political Treason

Will Bunch
Philly.com
May 15, 2008

I’ve seen a lot of sad things in American politics in my lifetime — the resignation of a president who became a national disgrace after he oversaw a campaign of break-ins and cover-ups, another who circumvented the Constitution to trade arms for hostages, and yet is now hailed as national hero. And those paled to what we have seen in the last seven years — flagrant disregard for the Constitution, the launching of a "pre-emptive" war on false pretenses, and discussions about torture and other shocking abuses inside the White House inner sanctum.

But now it’s come to this: A new low that I never imagined was even possible.

President Bush went on foreign soil today, and committed what I consider an act of political treason: Comparing the candidate of the U.S. opposition party to appeasers of Nazi Germany — in the very nation that was carved out from the horrific calamity of the Holocaust. Bush’s bizarre and beyond-appropriate detour into American presidential politics took place in the middle of what should have been an occasion for joy: A speech to Israeli’s Knesset to honor that nation’s 60th birthday.

But here’s what he said:

JERUSALEM (CNN) – In a particularly sharp blast from halfway around the world, President Bush suggested Thursday that Sen. Barack Obama and other Democrats are in favor of "appeasement" of terrorists in the same way U.S. leaders appeased Nazis in the run-up to World War II.

"Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," said Bush, in what White House aides privately acknowledged was a reference to calls by Obama and other Democrats for the U.S. president to sit down for talks with leaders like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

"We have heard this foolish delusion before," Bush said in remarks to the Israeli Knesset. "As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American Senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

As a believer in free speech, I think Bush has a right to say what he wants, but as a President of the United States who swore to uphold the Constitution, his freedom also carries an awesome and solemn responsibility, and what this president said today is a serious breach of that high moral standard.

Of course, there are differences of opinion on how America should handle Iran, and that’s why we’re having an election here at home, to sort these issues out — hopefully with respect and not with emotional and inaccurate appeals. Not only is the president’s comment a gross misrepresentation of Barack Obama’s stance on the issue, but ironically, it comes just a day after his own Secretary of State, Robert Gates, said of Iran: "We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage . . . and then sit down and talk with them." Is Gates a Nazi appeaser-type, too? And Bush has been hardly consistent on this point, either. Look at his own dealings with oil-rich Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, linked to deadly terror attacks like Pan Am Flight 103.

But what Bush did in Israel this morning goes well beyond the accepted confines of American political debate, When the president speaks to a foreign parliament on behalf of our country, his message needs to be clear and unambiguous. Our democracy may look messy to outsiders, and we may have our disagreements with some sharp elbows thrown around, but at the end of the day we are not Republicans or Democrats or liberals or conservatives.

We are Americans.

And you, Mr. Bush, are the leader of us all. To use a diplomatic setting on foreign soil to score a cheap political point at home is way beneath your office, way beneath your country, and way beneath the people you serve. You have been handed an office once uplifted to great heights by fellow countrymen from Washington to Lincoln to Roosevelt to Eisenhower, and have plunged it so deeply into the Karl-Rove-and-Rush-Limbaugh-fueled world of political destruction and survival of all costs that have lost all perspective — and all sense of decency. To travel to Israel and to associate a sitting American senator and your possible successor in the Oval Office with those who at one time gave comfort to an enemy of the United States is, in and of itself, an act of political treason.

In another irony, this comes from an administration that has already committed such grave abuses that its former officials are becoming fearful of traveling overseas, lest they be arrested for war crimes. Despite the alleged crimes and misdemeanors of the Bush administration, the Democrats who control the House have until now been restrained in their use of the impeachment process, hoping that the final eight months of our American nightmare can pass by quickly. Indeed, one has to wonder how much of Bush’s outrageous statement this morning arose from fear — fear that a President Obama will go after his wrongdoing in 2009.

Today, it’s a whole new ballgame. I believe this treacherous statement by a U.S. president in Israel is a signal to the Democrats in the House in Washington, that it’s time to play its Constitutional role in ending this trauma, before even greater acts against the interest of America are wrongly committed in our name

The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg conducted what he's calling an "interview" with Barack Obama regarding Israel, but it sounded much more like an inquisition. Goldberg repeatedly demanded that Obama swear his devotion to Israel and affirm prevailing orthodoxies ("I'm curious to hear you talk about the Zionist idea. Do you believe that it has justice on its side?"; "Go to the kishke question, the gut question: the idea that if Jews know that you love them, then you can say whatever you want about Israel, but if we don't know you –- Jim Baker, Zbigniew Brzezinski –- then everything is suspect. There seems to be in some quarters, in Florida and other places, a sense that you don’t feel Jewish worry the way a senator from New York would feel it"; "Do you think that Israel is a drag on America's reputation overseas?"; "If you become President, will you denounce settlements publicly?"). Afterwards, Goldberg pronounced himself satisfied: "Obama expressed -- in twelve different ways -- his support for Israel to me."

Marty Peretz, after a telephone conversation with Obama devoted primarily to Israel, similarly clears Obama of any suspicions of disloyalty, approvingly noting that Obama "recognizes" that Israeli settlements of the West Bank are not "the core problem" for the conflict with the Palestinians (to Peretz, such settlements "are very much a side-issue"). Peretz further decrees that Obama's "exhilarating experience with American Jews and with their bonds to the dream and realities of Israel" was evident in both Goldberg's interview and in Obama's call with Peretz.

Needless to say, Obama's vows of devotion to Israel were not enough for the right-wing polemicists who endlessly play on the fears of American Jews and exploit Israel-related issues for political gain. GOP leaders in the House -- such as Minority Leader John Boehner -- issued highly inflammatory statements regarding Obama's interview with Goldberg, condemning Obama for describing Israel as a "constant sore" when, in fact, Obama used that term to describe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- not Israel (that lie by Boehner and others was so severe that Goldberg, to his credit, embraced Andrew Sullivan's description of Boehner's statement as a "flat-out lie" and added that it was "mendacious, duplicitous, gross, and comically refutable").

But beyond the outright lying, right-wing condemnation of Obama's desperately pro-Israel remarks is highly revealing. David Frum complained yesterday that while Obama embraced the notion that "the Zionist idea has justice on its side," he followed that up with a "disclaimer." What was the "disclaimer" that so upset Frum? This:

OBAMA: That does not mean that I would agree with every action of the state of Israel, because it's a government and it has politicians, and as a politician myself I am deeply mindful that we are imperfect creatures and don’t always act with justice uppermost on our minds.

All of this is grounded in the unexamined premise that failure to love Israel with sufficient passion or to be sufficiently devoted to its interests ought to be disqualifying by itself -- presumably since, as everyone knows, the Founders intended the first obligation of the U.S. President to be to preserve Israel's security, just as George Washington said in his farewell address:

In the execution of such a plan, nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave.

Obama's declared position on Israel fails to reassure friends of Israel because it is so incongruous with the other things he says and thinks . . . He may consider himself Israel's friend. But he will be a dangerous friend -- made all the more dangerous by the reluctance of many in the pro-Israel community to ask searching questions of this supremely evasive politician.

But what's most striking about the reaction is how explicit this strain of neocons has become about the fact that being "pro-Israel" is their overriding political concern. It also reveals, yet again, that there is no issue that permits less free debate than ones related to Israel.

Barack Obama runs around proclaiming his devotion to this other country; virtually wraps himself in its flag; vows to shun its enemies (who are not our enemies); is forced ritualistically to "express[] -- in twelve different ways -- his support for Israel" to the likes of Israel-centric war supporters like Jeffrey Goldberg and Marty Peretz; tells Palestinians to their faces that -- to use his words -- "if you're waiting for America to distance itself from Israel, you are delusional"; affirms every one-sided piety applied to Israel-related issues; has compiled large numbers of prominent Jewish supporters for whom Israel is a top, if not the top, issue; and still . . . the dominant narrative among neocons and in the establishment media is that, deep down in his heart, he may be insufficiently devoted to Israel to be President of the United States. Has there ever been another country to which American politicians were required to pledge their uncritical, absolute loyalty the way they are, now, with Israel?

UPDATE: As I noted recently, Dwight Eisenhower, when he was running for re-election in 1956 and simultaneously trying to contain growing instability in the Middle East as a result of tensions between Israel and its neighbors, wrote a letter to an adviser as follows:

Of course, nothing in the region would be so difficult to solve except for the underlying cause of the unrest and dissension that exists there -- that is, the Arab-Israel quarrel. This quarrel seems to have no limit in either intensity or in scope. Everybody in the Moslem and Jewish worlds is affected by it. It is so intense that the second any action is taken against one Arab state, by an outsider, all the other Arab and Moslem states seem to regard it as a Jewish plot and react violently. All this complicates the situation enormously.

As we began to uncover evidence that something was building up in Israel, we demanded pledges from Ben-Gurion that he would keep the peace. We realized that he might think he could take advantage of this country because of the approaching election and because of the importance that so many politicians in the past have attached to our Jewish vote. I gave strict orders to the State Department that they should inform Israel that we would handle our affairs exactly as though we didn't have a Jew in America. The welfare and best interests of our own country were to be the sole criteria on which we operated.

What is most striking is that most of the Prohibited Views are held by the majority of the American public, which believes (.pdf), for instance, that the U.S. should withhold aid to Israel if it resists American pressure to resolve the Palestinian dispute (65%) and that the U.S. should not favor either side in the conflict (73%). As Pew's Andrew Kohut put it after surveying polling data: "average Americans see shades of gray in the Middle East conflict, and their sympathies notwithstanding, they favor a neutral role for the United States" (h/t M&W). Ample polling data from recent years supports similar conclusions about public opinion on these issues.

Yet no politician dares to express these majoritarian views. Right-wing neocons with clearly fringe views have succeeded in making the mainstream views -- the ones held by most Americans -- off-limits to mainstream political leaders, upon pain of being subjected to the sorts of toxic "anti-Israel" accusations of the kind now being baselessly directed at Obama.

UPDATE III: An email correspondent who is well-versed in all matters Israel writes to say that I'm being unduly harsh towards Goldberg (because he conducted a pro-Obama interview designed to elicit answers that would resolve these slurs) and towards Obama (because he actually made many arguments that deviated from standard AIPAC cant, albeit in a way that, as is Obama's wont, was politically shrewd). Those interested can read his thoughtful email here.

Just to be clear: I don't have any problem with Goldberg aggressively questioning Obama on Israel or any other topic of significance. But what Goldberg did struck me more as a ritualistic demand for fealty pledges than it did an actual "interview," but my email correspondent argues otherwise.

It’s Not Audie Murphy’s Military Anymore

Rev. Charles Roberts
JBS
May 15, 2008

To the majority of American men and women of the Baby Boom generation, and their parents, the icon or archetype of the typical American soldier is that of World War II hero Audie Murphy. The qualities of humility and personal integrity were personified in the life of that poor Texas farm boy who became a true American hero.

The American culture that helped nurture and produce a man like Audie Murphy, and millions of other lesser-known men who served their nation with honor, is sadly a thing of the past.

This is reflected in the current state of America’s military where the average "man-in-uniform" is no longer the hard working farm boy from rural America, but with alarmingly increasing frequency a criminal with values and moral commitments vastly different from a man like the late Audie Murphy. This state of affairs has a striking parallel to another nation’s military: that of ancient Rome.

In the years that immediately preceded its decline and fall, Rome fought wars of aggression and expansion with legions populated by mercenaries, criminals, and aliens seeking citizenship.

Certainly there are many fine men and women who serve in our nation’s armed forces. Americans need to be aware, however, that when they are asked to pay for and support "our nation’s military," they are, in reality, being asked to support a growing number of people who neither qualify for nor deserve that support.

Programs the Government Claims Are Aimed At Foreign Enemies are being Used Against American Citizens

George Washington’s Blog
May 15, 2008

The U.S. government has repeatedly claimed that it was launching aggressive programs solely at foreign enemies, and then launched them at American citizens. For example:

• In 2002, the Pentagon announced that it was considering spreading false propaganda in the foreign press. However, the military has spread propaganda within the U.S. in an operation so aggressive that one participant, a military analyst, called it "psyops on steroids"

• For many years, the government has claimed that it was only spying on foreigners. But it is now clear that the government is massively spying on American citizen’s home and cellphone calls, email and internet usage, credit card and other financial transactions, and just about every other facet of our personal lives

• The Patriot Act is supposed to be aimed at stopping America-hating terrorists. Instead, it is being used to prosecute acts having nothing to do with terrorism, and to harass normal, law-abiding Americans

Can anyone see a pattern here?

Given the above, should we believe that the following programs will just be limited to foreigners?

• The Air Force is seeking to dominate all computers and the Internet, to be able to take over control of every computer, and to turn computers into "zombies" that can be forced to execute Air Force commands. This is supposed to be aimed at enemy states and "rogue individuals". See this summary.

• The Pentagon is running an artificial intelligence program to see how people will react to propaganda and to government-inflicted terror. The program is called Sentient World Simulation:

"U.S defense, intel and homeland security officials are constructing a parallel world, on a computer, which the agencies will use to test propaganda messages and military strategies.

Called the Sentient World Simulation, the program uses AI routines based upon the psychological theories of Marty Seligman, among others. (Seligman introduced the theory of ‘learned helplessness’ in the 1960s, after shocking beagles until they cowered, urinating, on the bottom of their cages.)

Yank a country’s water supply. Stage a military coup. SWS will tell you what happens next.

The sim will feature an AR avatar for each person in the real world, based upon data collected about us from government records and the internet."

• And as former former Congressman Dan Hamburg and others have pointed out:

Beginning in 1999, the government has entered into a series of single-bid contracts with Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) to build detention camps at undisclosed locations within the United States. The government has also contracted with several companies to build thousands of railcars, some reportedly equipped with shackles, ostensibly to transport detainees."

But many people have pointed out that the laws governing the program are so vague that they could lead to the imprisonment of American citizens for simply speaking out against the government (see also this).

Actions which the government claims were launched against non-U.S. citizens have in the past been used against Americans within the United States. Why should we believe any differently about its new, even more tyrannical programs?