Anyone whose ideological roots are in the Old Right and who goes into print against the latest military crusade starts getting letters from conservatives. These letters begin with some variation of "if liberals like you . . . ." The critics do not have in mind nineteenth-century liberalism. They assume that anyone who opposes war is a pacifist, and that all pacifists except the Amish are leftists. Why is this? For that matter, why is it that the outraged letters always come from conservatives? Why don't we get letters from outraged liberals? In all of America's military crusades, liberals in Congress and the White House vote for the war. Usually, the Left initiates this country's entry into war: World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam. Toss in Somalia and the Balkans as side-shows.
J. Gresham Machen Was Right About the Gulf CrisisWhen evangelicals such as Dean Curry (A World Without Tyranny) encourage us simply to absorb a Reagan/Bush-style foreign policy as properly Biblical, the heroic defender of Protestant orthodoxy, J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937) highlights our sad captivity to the foreign policy status quo.
Machen is not only known for his passionate and principled defense of Biblical orthodoxy against Protestant apostasy but also for his intense concern for the public issues of his day.
Machen openly interacted with questions regarding state education, freedom of expression, and social progress. He spoke out against the "alarming bureaucratization of the United States" and Christianity's opposition to "soul-killing collectivism." He stridently opposed the proposed Child Labor Amendment -- "a heartless cruelty masquerading under the guise of philanthropy" -- and even testified before Congressional committees against the effort to establish a Federal Department of Education.
 My Son, That The State Will Not Draft Or Ever Have Enlisted In The Empire's Follies Abroad.
Remember The Slaughter Of WWI? Blame Wilson; A Great Article By My Friend Scott Horton!
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/horton.php?articleid=5711
This is a homily that was delivered on 26 November 1981 in the course of a service for Catholic members of the Bundestag in the church of St. Wynfrith (Boniface) in Bonn. The readings provided for the day by the lectionary were 1 Peter 1:3–7 and John 14:1–6. At first sight they seemed to be out of keeping with the subject, but on closer inspection they showed themselves to be unexpectedly fruitful.]The epistle and gospel that we have just listened to have their origin in a situation in which Christians were not citizens of a state who were able to shape their own lives but the persecuted victims of a cruel dictatorship. They could not share in responsibility for their state but simply had to endure it. It was not granted to them to shape it as a Christian state; instead their task was to live as Christians despite it. The names of two emperors in whose reigns tradition dates these two passages are enough to cast light on the situation: they were Nero and Domitian. Thus the first letter of Peter describes Christians as strangers within this state (1:1) and the state itself as Babylon (5:13). By doing so it indicates very impressively the political position that Christians were in; it corresponded more or less to that of the Jews living in exile in Babylon who were not responsible citizens of that state but subjects without any rights, and who thus had to learn how they might survive in it, not how they could build it up. Thus the political background of today’s readings is fundamentally different from ours. Nevertheless they contain three important statements which are significant for political activity among Christians.
KABUL, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai said his country wants longer, stronger ties with the United States, including a long-term "strategic security relationship."
Karzai, appearing at a news conference with U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in Kabul, Afghanistan, made the remarks when asked about reports of the forging of bilateral security agreements and the establishment of permanent U.S. military troop presence in the country, a reference to bases.
FORT HOOD, Texas -- President Bush yesterday likened the toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad two years ago to the fall of the Berlin Wall and called it part of a "global democratic revolution." "Many of you have recently returned from Iraq," Mr. Bush told 25,000 cheering soldiers on a sun-drenched field. "Others are preparing to head out this fall -- some for a second tour of duty." "Whether you're coming or going, you are making an enormous difference for the security of our nation and for the peace of the world," he added. "I came here today to thank you in person for your courageous choice of service." The troops shouted "hooah," their all-purpose expression of approval, and chanted "USA! USA! USA!" They seemed heartened by the president's report that Iraqis are replacing U.S. forces as that country's primary peacekeepers.
Just two years ago conservatives were busy scolding the Pope for his refusal to back our invasion of Iraq. One conservative media favorite even made the sickening suggestion that the Pope was the enemy of the United States because he would not support our aggression in the Middle East. The Pontiff would not ignore the inherent contradiction in being pro-life and pro-war, nor distort just war doctrine to endorse attacking a nation that clearly posed no threat to America – and conservatives resented it. September 11th did not change everything, and the Pope understood that killing is still killing. The hypocritical pro-war conservatives lauding him today have very short memories.by Rep. Ron Paul, MD
I. Deaths of States Rothbard the “Pro-Communist” In 1975, Murray Rothbard penned two essays on the fall of the Saigon government, a government largely invented, bankrolled, and sustained by the United States. This invention was part of the American project of incorporating Southeast Asia into a kind of US-directed “Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.” [1] The US had of course objected, in the 1930s, to the Japanese version of such a project. The two articles on the collapse of the Republic of South Vietnam have caused much angst among those conservatives and libertarians who never managed to question any important assumptions about the Cold War. This angst reverberates down the halls of time. Its echo, for some reason, is with us still.
by Joseph R. Stromberg
Afghanistan's defence minister on Tuesday gave one of the clearest signs yet that Kabul is open to permanent basing of US forces in the country, saying his government was in discussions with the US that could include air bases in Afghanistan after the current nation-building process ends.General Abdul Rahim Wardak said the details of what would constitute a long-term US presence were still under discussion. But he signalled Kabul was eager for “enduring arrangements” that could include permanent air bases or “pre-positioned” military equipment that would be used by rapidly deployed US forces in a crisis.
Chalmers Johnson, author of Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire and Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic, and the guest on my March 26 radio show [ stream] [ download mp3], spent decades as what he now calls a " spear-carrier for empire." According to Mr. Johnson, we have "[t]o a certain extent … been at war since 1940." When the U.S. government told him that our military dominance of much of the planet was strictly for the purposes of "containing communism," he believed them and presumably taught his University of California students the same. He was even employed for six years as a consultant to the Central Intelligence Agency.
WASHINGTON - President Bush said Monday that seeing Iraq through reconstruction to a stable and secure democracy is a worthy cause that the United States will press regardless of whether its coalition partners remain there.
It's a risky but bold move by the Bush administration, considering India and Pakistan almost engaged in their fourth war - a possible nuclear one - just three years ago over the Kashmir territorial dispute. Both nations are hypersensitive to the US playing favorites and tipping the regional balance of power.Note: In twenty years or so the U.S. will look back on Pakistan as a terror state and not an ally, just remember we armed them!!! (Rick)
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