Tom Dooley
This blog is titled TOM DOOLEY, but it is actually an anatomy of the Viet-Nam War. You will see the part Tom Dooley plays, but he is not the central character, the United States Military is the primary instrument that conducted the war, but was manipulated from the beginning to effect a revival of a war in Korea, which had been sold as a 'Peace Action' by Pres. Harry Truman.
First you will see the verses of folksong, 'Tom Dooley' which was popular in the 50's and 60's and sung by The Kingston Trio, a group from New England. My source (NIEHS) had a forward: "This song tells the story of a condemned man named Tom Dooley. Many believe that Tom Dooley was not actually the guilty party in this particular case, and instead assumed the blame for others who he wished to protect -- but the overall message is still that "crime does not pay." Tom Dooley therefore is a metaphor for the criminal act perpetrated by the US Military against the people of North and South Viet-Nam, presumably in an attempt to stop the spread of Communism in that part of South Asia. -
"Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Poor boy, you're bound to die
I met her on the mountain, there I took her life
Met her on the mountain, stabbed her with my knife
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Hang down your head and cry (ah-uh-eye)
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Poor boy, you're bound to die
This time tomorrow,
reckon where I'll be
Hadn't-a been for Grayson,
I'd-a been in Tennessee (well now, boy)
Hang down (your head) your head (Dooley) and cry
Hang down your head and cry (ah poor boy, ah well-ah)
Hang down (your head) your head (Dooley) and cry
Poor boy, you're bound to die (ah well now boy)
Hang down (your head) your head (Dooley) and cry
Hang down your head and cry (ah poor boy, ah well-ah)
Hang down (your head) your head (Dooley) and cry
Poor boy, you're bound to die
This time tomorrow,
reckon where I'll be
Down in some lonesome valley
hangin' from a white oak tree
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Hang down your head and cry (ah-uh-eye)
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Poor boy, you're bound to die (ah well now boy)
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Hang down your head and cry (poor boy ah well uh)
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Poor boy, you're bound to die
Poor boy, you're bound to die
Poor boy, you're bound to die
Poor boy, you're bound to .......die
Contact NIEHS (NIH, DHHS)" ----
Only thing, the US Military did not die after the conclusion of the War, it hung on, absorbing huge sustaining funds, only to go on - and engage in more wars.
Other anecdotes to explain the war follow, first the folk singer, Pete Seeger, who I understand to have had a role as the "Pied Piper" who drew out The Kingston Trio; Peter, Paul and Mary; Joan Baez; Bob Dylan; and many others who brought the War home to Americans who were quite content to let the Draft take their sons, and only returned later as one of 50,000 names carved in granite on the Viet-Nam War Memorial on the grounds of the Capitol Mall, or as a Viet-Nam Veteran with issues like, why did we have to fight another Civil War?
PETE SEEGER
Published on NewsBusters.org (http://newsbusters.org)
PBS, the Communist Folk Singer Tribute Channel (25 in Cleveland).
By Tim Graham
Created 2008-02-25 07:39
"To those who make public fools of themselves saying that one-sided left-wing programming on PBS is an illusion, we suggest they open the Sunday Washington Post to the TV Week magazine. There on the cover is a picture of Pete Seeger, the radical-left folk singer-songwriter. "Raising His Voice: PBS Pays Tribute to Singer-Activist Pete Seeger," the cover says. Inside, readers learn PBS is offering a 90-minute documentary openly described as a "tribute." The headline is "Pete Seeger, a Force of Nature." [1] Even Seeger seems embarrassed that PBS is offering America this whitewash of his life and career:
Regrets? Seeger says he has "millions of them -- stupid things I've done here and there." His criticism of the PBS tribute is that it "didn't show any of the stupid things I've done." Director Jim Brown has known Seeger for a long time, said Susan Lacy, executive producer of the "American Masters" series, and Brown wasn't trying to make a totally balanced film. "That's not meant in a negative way," she said. "It's just that Pete Seeger is such a principled idealist, such a good man."
Post staff writer Judith S. Gillies mentioned in passing that the film would touch on Seeger's membership in the Communist Party, but the story just ran praise, including from famous liberal TV producer Norman Lear, listed as executive producer of this whitewash. In the New York Sun [2], Ron Radosh explained last summer that he was interviewed for Brown's film, with a predictable result: all his critical remarks were edited out.
Two years ago, Mr. Brown asked to interview me for the film. I was a former student and friend of Mr. Seeger's and have written critically about his life and politics. I asked Mr. Brown whether he would actually use what I said. Mr. Brown responded that Pete and his wife, Toshi, wanted a critical voice in the film and did not want just to paint him as a man without blemishes.
In my interview, I praised Mr. Seeger's contributions to music and reminisced about being his student in New York while in high school and as a counselor at Camp Woodland, a left-wing summer camp. I also asked why, after supporting Stalin's tyranny for most of his life, Mr. Seeger had never written a song about the Gulag. He often introduces his song "Treblinka" by saying how we cannot forget the past. Yet he still says nothing critical about Fidel Castro's Cuba, or any other "socialist" regimes.
Mr. Brown's film is beautifully crafted and photographed, with great footage and a lot of good folk music. But although my praise and personal memories made the final cut, my critical comments did not. When I spoke to Mr. Brown a few days ago, he told me my remarks weren't appropriate for a tribute to Mr. Seeger's spirit and his contributions to America.
Some will argue that Mr. Seeger deserves such praise. But our country has more than made up for the 17 years Mr. Seeger was blacklisted from both radio and TV. In the past decade, Mr. Seeger has received the National Medal of the Arts from President Clinton and has been feted at the Kennedy Center. A recent profile in the Washington Post style section proclaimed him a "national treasure" and America's "best-loved Commie." A few years ago, Mr. Seeger was invited to speak at the National Press Club. Just two months ago, the Library of Congress held an all-day tribute to him. After all of this, shouldn't a new documentary give its audience an accurate and honest account of his life?
Read the whole thing. Shouldn't accuracy and balance matter to PBS, and to the Congress that supposedly oversees it? Should American taxpayers subsidize films with all the objectivity and editorial integrity of a Soviet commissar?
Other Seeger posts:
-- NYT Writer Corrects Record: Pete Seeger 'Only' 40 Years Late in Denouncing Stalin [2]
-- Happy Fourth of July: Pacifica Radio Talked Communism With Pete Seeger [2]"
I hope you didn't miss the bipolar verdict by the author, Tim Graham, that Pete was awarded as much honors and tribute as the actual fighters of the Viet-Nam War. In a real Democracy you can expect a certain ambivalence when the circumstances are so suspicious, and the goal seems to be so elusive, even to the main participants engaged in conflict. I have omitted the theater that has been generated by Rambo types (I, II, III, IV) who saw some merit to the 'Cause," but which I accuse of having dark patriotism confused with commercial exploitation. I'm glad I put Tim here.
Folk singing has had a long tradition in America, going way back before the original Tom Dooley, was alive on the Ohio Canal and the Mississippi Riverboats on which my great-grand father was a boatman up to the Mexican War. He left several poems in his 'River Boat Diary.'
In the 50's we also were treated to a book by Burdick and Lederer which is reviewed in Wikipedia ---
---The UGLY AMERICAN---- is the title of a 1958 political novel by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer. It became a bestseller, was influential at the time, and is still in print.
The novel describes how the United States is losing the struggle with Communism - What was later to be called ''the battle for hearts and minds'' - ;in Southeast Asia, because of arrogance and failure to understand the local culture.
The book takes place in a fictional nation known as Sarkhan. In the novel, a Bamar/Burmese journalist says "For some reason, the people I meet in my country are not the same as the ones I knew in the United States. A mysterious change seems to come over Americans when they go to a foreign land. They isolate themselves socially. They live pretentiously. They're loud and ostentatious." The phrase "ugly Americans" came to be applied to Americans behaving in this manner.
Ironically, the "ugly American" of the book title actually refers to one of the heroes, a plain-looking engineer named Homer Atkins, who lives with the local people, comes to understand their needs, and gives genuinely useful assistance with small-scale projects such as the development of a simple bicycle-powered water pump. It is argued in the book that the Communists are successful because they practice tactics similar to Atkins'.
According to an article published in Newsweek in May 1959, "The Ugly American," himself, was identified as an ICA technician named Otto Hunerwadel, who served in Burma from 1949 until his death in 1952.
Another of the book's heroes, Colonel Hillandale, appears to have been modeled on the real-life Air Force Lieutenant General Edward Lansdale, an expert in counter-guerrilla operations.
== 1963 film ==
The book was made into a 1963 film starring Marlon Brando as Harrison Carter MacWhite. Critics mostly agree that the film is uneven and does not convey the book's message clearly. The film was directed by George Englund.
The late Kukrit Pramoj, a Thai politician and scholar, played the role of Sarkhan's Prime Minister Kwen Sai. Later in 1975 he became the 13th Prime Minister of Thailand."
What is not mentioned in the 'Ugly American' are American Military who represent the antithesis of the hero, Homer Atkins. Americans have always had a soft-spot for those of us who become missionaries to foreign lands, and come back with an appreciation of other humans and have almost totally lost the xenophobia of youth, fresh from our educational system. And, which is also apparent in Peace Corps Volunteers, and unlike many typical returning veterans.
I do not want to be misinterpreted, I am the exception in my family, which had nearly 100% participation in these wars giving me a label, draft-dodger, though I honorably served my two years in ROTC Uniforms. My younger brother, Ron, was a particularly obvious Viet-Nam warrior, whom I recently lost. My son, Ed, was a Viet-Nam soldier but in Germany, from which he came back disabled. What follows is a fair statement, which avoids conflict, mostly.
"A HISTORY OF VIETNAM was strangely interwoven with the total history of the world: indeed, the story of the latter could be told in terms of the former, for here a renovated nationalism sought to emerge in a situation permeated with the ideological jealousies of the Great Powers beyond Vietnam herself.
Like Indonesia, Vietnam, or French Indochina, of which it was then a part, was declared liberated from its former colonial status by the Japanese invaders. Even during the Japanese occupation guerrilla warfare had been started up against the Japanese troops by Ho Chi Minh. In 1945 he set up his own independent Democratic Republic of North Vietnam. As the French refused to recognize this, he organized further resistance (Viet Minh) against the French attempt to reassert their position. Under the brilliant leadership of General Giap the French were continually harassed, and 15,000 French soldiers were trapped by Giap in the fortress of Dien Bieu Phu and finally forced to surrender in May 1954.
Such an event bred alarm among all the leading powers for the future of Indochina as a whole, and under their auspices the Geneva Conference convened. Here it was decided to make a fourfold division of the region: a communist North Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh, a noncommunist South Vietnam and two neutral states to the west, Laos and Cambodia. The plan was that all foreign troops should then vacate Indochina and that within two years free elections should be held in both parts of Vietnam to elect a government of the people's own choice for the whole area.
However, the very act of partition had serious consequences: essential rice supplies from the Mekong Delta were cut off from North Vietnam; moreover former Viet Minh now found themselves existing in the South, although many were communists and some were Buddhist-nationalists linked, if in nothing else, by their common hatred of the South Vietnam regime in Saigon, which was headed by the Roman Catholic Premier Diem.
In the years 1955-56 sporadic fighting against Diem's regime broke out, the rebels calling themselves Viet Cong (Vietnamese Communists). Diem appealed to the United States for help in suppressing them, and 16.000 American 'military advisers' soon arrived. In spite of this, the Viet Cong had by 1961 gained control of more than half the South Vietnam countryside. A group of discontented army officers then turned on Diem and murdered him in 1963. One short-lived South Vietnamese government followed another, each supported more and more by the Americans, for the US government now began to see the Vietnam struggle as a great world issue and applied to it their theory that if what they regarded as the communist threat were not countered here, one after the other the other cards in the pack, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Burma. India, Pakistan, would collapse and go communist.
In August 1964 the war began to spread: communist torpedoes menaced US warships in the Bay of Tonking; US planes bombed North Vietnamese naval bases. Thousands more US troops were brought over from America, numbers of communist soldiers came down from the North by the 'Ho Chi Minh Trail' to help the Viet Cong. Soon a full-scale war was in progress around and among a piteously suffering native population. A military impasse seemed to have been reached, and largely because of war-weariness in America and a fear shared by other powers that the Vietnam issue could at any moment spark off a world war, negotiations for a settlement at last began in Paris in January 1969 at a round table at which were seated representatives of North Vietnam, South Vietnam. the National Liberation front and the US Government. (In fairness, the American Population were also engaged, through witnessing almost nightly the self-immolation of Buddhist Monks on the streets of Saigon, the South Viet Nam capitol,)
THE FAR EAST
"There are two main features, the course of the Vietnam war and the 'Cultural Revolution' and its aftermath in the People's Republic of China. After some four years of savage strife, in January 1969 North Vietnam received her first diplomatic recognition from Sweden. In January 1973. after months of private and public diplomatic activity a cease-fire between North and South was arranged. Fighting continued, however, and it was not until 30 April l975 that President Minh of South Vietnam surrendered unconditionally to the Vietcong. In April 1976 the two halves of the country were reunited and Vietnam was recognized as one state. The most important aspect of the whole Vietnam war was that it demonstrated the inability, short of involvement in total war, of a great power (in this case the USA) to impose its will when met by determined opposition from a society (North Vietnamese) ideologically inspired and in some measure militarily supported from without.
After 1966 Chinese-Russian relations deteriorated, and the Chinese mainland scene was dominated by a mighty struggle within the governing Communist ranks. In August of that year the so-called Red Guards made their first appearance at one of Chairman Mao Tse-tung's huge rallies, and this marked the beginning of what came to be known as the 'Cultural Revolution'. This was an attempt by the ageing Marshall and his colleagues, 'the Rule of Four', to (in the words of its friends) preserve the purity of the original revolution, (in the words of its critics) to fasten a harsh, totalitarian regime on the whole country. In early 1967, after an incident between Russian diplomats at Peking airport and a period of closed schools and considerable social dislocation. Premier Chou en-lai called for discipline, and the Red Guards were ordered to desist from violence. In April 1975 General Chiang Kai-shek died in Taiwan, and on the mainland a Chinese National People's Congress, adopting a new constitution, headed the country in a new direction, towards some degree of domestic ideological relaxation, and of ----"
One of the defects in the US Foreign Policy during this era was a persistent lack of purpose other than opposing pernicious communism in every single instance, no matter where it cropped up in the World, though former victims of Japanese and German W.W.II aggression, seemed to be the most likely spots for eruptions to occur. The US has normally gone to war with clear purposes, and when they were not stated emphatically, speakers rose up to enunciate them:
""UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER
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Unconditional surrender is a surrender without conditions, except for those provided by international law. Normally a belligerent will only agree to surrender unconditionally if completely incapable of continuing hostilities. Announcing that only unconditional surrender is acceptable puts psychological pressure on a weaker adversary. It has also been criticized for forcing an opponent into a position where he has nothing to gain by negotiation or diplomacy, and might as well fight to the bitter end. The most notable uses of the term have been by the United States in the American Civil War and World War II.
In the era post World War II, the comparable example of unconditional surrender is that of the Pakistani army in East Pakistan at the hands of the Indian army and the Mukti Bahini during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 or the latter half of Bangladesh Liberation War. Here 93,000 Pakistani soldiers surrendered unconditionally to the Indian Allied Forces (Mitro Bahini) commander Lt. Gen. Jagjit Singh Aurora.
United States usage
The most famous early use of the phrase occurred during the 1862 Battle of Fort Donelson in the American Civil War. Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant of the Union Army received a request for terms from the fort's commanding officer, Confederate Brigadier General Simon Bolivar Buckner. Grant's reply was that "no terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works." When news of Grant's victory—one of the Union's first in the Civil War—was received in Washington, D.C., newspapers remarked (and President Abraham Lincoln endorsed) that Ulysses Simpson Grant's first two initials, "U.S.," stood for "Unconditional Surrender," which would later become his nickname.
However, subsequent surrenders to Grant were not unconditional. When Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Court House in 1865, Grant agreed to allow the men under Lee's command to go home under parole and to keep sidearms and private horses. Generous terms were also offered to John C. Pemberton at Vicksburg and (by Grant's subordinate, William T. Sherman) to Joseph E. Johnston in North Carolina.
The use of the term was revived during World War II at the Casablanca conference when American President Franklin D. Roosevelt offered it to the other Allies and the press as the objective of the war against the Axis Powers of Germany, Italy, and Japan. The term was also used at the end of World War II when Japan surrendered to the United States.
"Unconditional Surrender" is also the name of a statue dedicated to the city of San Diego, California, a sculpture based on the famous "V-J Day Kiss" photograph taken by Alfred Eisenstaedt of a sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square, New York City, in 1945.
A similar statue was erected in Sarasota, Florida in 2006 as part of their street art display. Many area residents and visitors were so impressed with the forty-eight foot tall statute that it became "the place" to have your picture taken. The statute was dismantled in May of 2006 but is said to be replaced by a permanent statute in the same area in the near future. No erection date has been announced.
It was also seen at the Battle of the Alamo, when Santa Anna asked Jim Bowie and William B. Travis for unconditional surrender. Even though Bowie wished surrender unconditionally, Travis refused and retaliated by firing a cannon at Santa Anna's army ----------""
Other voices and actions besides unconditional surrender have to be stressed, as will be seen in several articles to follow. Later the issues involved in 'just war' and 'pacifism' will be given some room. ---
"Thomas A. Dooley Foundation-Intermed-USA, Inc.
Acronym/Code: DOOLEY
Updated: 1/89
Categories:
Political, Service
Background:
Dr. Thomas A. Dooley III was "the famous jungle doctor of Laos," a Navy doctor who operated medical clinics near the Chinese border in the 1950s. (3) In 1958, he founded MEDICO and established 17 medical programs in 14 countries with a statement of purpose which included the words: "We are in no way a religious or political organization." (9) As he gave medical care to Laotian refugees within five miles of the Chinese border, he also collected intelligence, gave reports on people's movements to the CIA, as well as provided cover for Special Forces medics who were posing as civilian doctors. (3) The private nonprofit organization World Medical Relief (WM.) became a steady supplier of Dooley's clinics during this time. (3) According to the Pentagon Papers, Dooley's activities were part of a CIA effort designed to increase U.S. military presence in the area. Dooley distributed books about his Vietnam experiences to raise U.S. public support for his clinics. The fundraising campaigns described in his books were conducted by individuals and groups associated with the CIA and the U.S. Agency for International Development. (3) During this period, the Air Forces' Air Commandos Wing, under Brig. Gen. Harry C. "Heinie" Aderholt, began working with WMR in the same border area. Aderholt, who is also an editor for Soldier of Fortune magazine, later founded the private medical relief organization Air Commando Association (ACA). (3) In 1961, Tom Dooley died of cancer at age 34. President Kennedy presented Dooley's mother a Special Congressional Medal of Honor, saying, "Dr. Dooley typified the best of our country." (9) Dooley's friend, Dr. Verne Chaney, founded The Thomas A. Dooley Foundation in 1961 as "a non-profit, non-sectarian, non-government, non-political private voluntary organization... dedicated to the memory of Dr. Tom Dooley and his pioneering works." (9) In 1976, INTERMED, Inc. was founded in Geneva Switzerland as "a non-political, non-profit health association." (9) The joint group in the United States is known as The Thomas A. Dooley Foundation-Intermed-USA, Inc. Fundraising in the United States is carried out by the Dooley Foundation, and all projects outside the country are managed by INTERMED, Inc. (9) The organization has concentrated its efforts on areas of conflict, including Southeast Asia and Central America, and, twenty-five years after it was founded, DooleyIntermed still collaborates with World Medical Relief and the Air Commando Association.
Funding:
The Dooley Foundation's l985 budget showed revenues and support of $878,267 from the following Sources:
AID Freight-$55,055; Donated Supplies & Equipment (Private)--$191,420; Private Contributions--$603,763; and Private Revenue-$28,029. (6)
ACTIVITIES:
According to the organization's literature, "Following his untimely death from cancer in 1961, The Thomas A. Dooley Foundation was founded and continued his medical programs for the Laotian people until December 1975, when there was a change in government." (8) Dr. Verde Chancy, a military surgeon in Korea and "a surgical consultant in 1960 to Tom Dooley's programs in Cambodia and Viet-Nam," is the founder of Dooley Foundation and has been its president for over 25 years. (7,9) The organization is accredited by the Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid of the US Agency for International Development (AID). (9) The Dooley-Intermed Foundation's programs include preventive medicine, health education, professional training, care for the sick, paramedical training, immunizations, research, health surveys, clinical care, sanitation, nutrition, and family planning. The foundation reports that its refugee assistance programs in Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia continued until 1975, and in the last 25 years it has also worked with refugees and "primitive tribal groups" in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras (Nicaraguan refugees), India (Tibetans), Lebanon, Nepal, Pakistan (Afghans), Somalia, and Uganda. (9)
El Salvador: The Dooley-Intermed Foundation provides medical supplies to the right-wing Catholic lay organization Knights of Malta. Gerald Coughlin, who is the country representative for both Dooley-Intermed and Knights of Malta, described their work with refugees in counterinsurgency terms: "If you're not eating and a private organization brings you food, then you're less likely to be recruited by the guerrillas." (1)
Costa Rica: Dooley-Intermed reportedly works with Nicaraguan refugees in Costa Rica. (5,9)
Honduras: The Dooley-Intermed Foundation has assisted refugees, as well as the contras, with direct and indirect shipments of supplies. (2,3,5) According to Dr. Chaney, this refugee aid goes to support "refugees in general, families of contras, and the contra fighters themselves." (2) The Dooley-Intermed Foundation has sent assistance to the contras via Friends of the Americas and the Air Commando Association, and also directly to the FDN (the largest contra force). (2,3) The majority of the supplies originated from World Medical Relief (WMR), much as it did more than 25 years ago. (3,4) Dooley-Intermed president Dr. Verne Chaney verified a 1985 shipment of $300,000 in surgical supplies from WMR destined for the contras. (2,10) Dr. Chaney has also championed the contras' cause in the United States. In 1985, Chaney told interviewers that he fully supported the contras as "freedom fighters" struggling against communism. (2) That year, Chaney was appointed the volunteer medical advisor of the UNO (United Nicaraguan Opposition) contra force, and it has been reported that he plays an active, behind-the-scenes role in supplying the contras. (3,8) According to the group's newsletter, Gen. John Singlaub (president of the World Anti-Communist League) requested in 1985 that Dr. Chaney conduct a survey of the medical services and needs of the contras in Honduras and Costa Rica. The article says: "Dr. Chaney's subsequent report was influential in the recent decision of Congress to appropriate $27 million for humanitarian aid to the freedom fighters." (8)
GOVERNMENT CONNECTIONS
Dr. Tom Dooley provided intelligence for the CIA in the 1950s. (3) The Dooley-Intermed Foundation reported in 1987 that "we receive no government funding." (5) However, the organization has received AID assistance with shipping, and a 1988 AID report indicated that a cooperative agreement was under consideration to "provide support to the [contra] Resistance medical care system." (6,11)
PRIVATE CONNECTIONS:
For the past 25 years, the Dooley-Intermed Foundation has received medical supplies from the Detroit-based World Medical Relief. (2,3,4) Some of these supplies have been routed through the Air Commando Association (Ft. Walton Beach, FL) and Friends of the Americas (Baton Rouge, LA). (1,2) Some of them were distributed through the Knights of Malta in El Salvador. (1) Gerald T. Coughlin is country representative for Dooley-Intermed, Knights of Malta, and Direct Relief International. (1)
MISC:
On July 3, 1986, President Reagan wrote in a letter of praise to Dr. Verne Chaney: "It's a quarter of a century now since the legendary American physician and humanitarian Dr. Thomas A. Dooley III left this life... On this, the 25th anniversary of your [Chaney's] service to fellow man, I send you my heartfelt admiration and commendation." (9) The Tom Dooley Heritage Foundation (P. O. Box l907, Grand Central Station, New York NY l00l7) may be a related organization. Its basic operations are the same as the Dooley Foundation's, but its target area is Thailand. (6)
Comments: (Note: sources from the original article have been omitted)
Address: 420 Lexington Ave. , Room 2428, New York City, New York, 10170, (212) 687-3620." ---------
Dr. Dooley was only a small actor in the grand anti-Communist scheme, great institutions made themselves known with less than popular appeal, like what follows:
" Spellman and Kennedy also helped form a pro-Diem lobby in Washington. The rallying cries were anti-Communism and [Roman] Catholicism. Through their connections, they soon had a high-powered committee, which was a lumpy blend of intellectuals and conservatives.
Two men of national prominence, the former O.S.S. chief "Wild Bill" Donovan and General "Iron Mike" O'Daniel, were co-chairmen.
The membership included Senators [John F.] Kennedy and Richard Neuberger; Representatives Emmanuel Celler and Edna Kelly; and Angier Biddle Duke, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Max Lerner, socialist leader Norman Thomas, and conservative Utah Governor Bracken"
MORE
THE AMERICAN POPE (Cardinal Francis J. Spellman)
The Cardinal's message was clear. The fall of Vietnam brought the day closer when Communists would dominate the United States. "We shall risk bartering our liberties for lunacies, betraying the sacred trust of our forefathers, becoming serfs and slaves to the Red ruler's godless goons," he swore.
The other speakers needed no introduction: Madame Chiang Kaishek and Admiral Arthur W. Radford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who was a familiar figure at the Powerhouse. Both speakers were friends of the Cardinal and shared his conservative views. Madame Chiang lamented that the Soviets had corrupted the "minds and souls of those who became its puppets--the Chinese Communists." Radford asserted that the United States should be ready to police the world. The audience wildly applauded each speaker, but it was Spellman who brought them to their feet in a thunderous ovation. At the conclusion of the meeting, the Cardinal asked the legionnaires to pray for God's intervention. If Eisenhower wouldn't listen to Spellman, perhaps he would heed the Almighty. "Be with us, Blessed Lord," the Cardinal intoned, "lest we forget and surrender to those who have attacked us without cause, those who repaid us with evil for good and hatred for love."
The day after the convention the impact of Spellman's address was noted in the press. New York Daily News columnist John O'Donnell, for example, reported: "From a political viewpoint-- global, national and New York State--the speech delivered by Cardinal Spellman was by far the most significant and important heard here at the convention....''
Spellman's attack on Ho Chi Minh's revolution was the first sign of his involvement in the politics of Vietnam. Though few people knew this, the Cardinal played a prominent role in creating the political career of a former seminary resident in New York who had just become Premier of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem. In Diem, Spellman had seen the qualities he desired in any leader: ardent [Roman] Catholicism and rabid anti-Communism.
Cardinal Spellman had met Diem in New York in 1950, when the Vietnamese had been at the Maryknoll Seminary in Ossining, New York. A staunch [Roman] Catholic from a patrician family, Diem was at the seminary at the intercession of his brother, Ngo Din Thuc, a Roman Catholic bishop. A lay celibate and deeply religious, Diem had cut himself off from the world, especially his war-shredded nation, and had been known only to a small, politically active circle in the United States. In his homeland his name had hardly evoked enthusiasm. On an official level in the United States, Diem was an unknown quantity, a situation Spellman helped rectify. Diem's background meant that he inevitably came to the attention of Spellman.
The man responsible for bringing them together was Father Fred McGuire, the anti-McCarthy Vincentian who worked for the Propagation of the Faith. A former missionary to Asia, McGuire's intimate knowledge of the Far East was well known at the State Department. One day the priest was asked by Dean Rusk, then head of the Asian section, to see that Bishop Thuc, who was coming to the United States, met with State Department officials, McGuire recalled. Rusk also expressed an interest in meeting Diem."
THE RISE OF AMERICANISM
McGuire contacted his old friend Bishop Griffiths, who was still Spellman's foreign affairs expert. He asked that Thuc be properly received by the Cardinal, which he was. For the occasion Diem came to the Cardinal's residence from the seminary. The meeting between Spellman and Diem may well have been a historic one. Joseph Buttinger, a prominent worker with refugees in Vietnam, believed the Cardinal was the first American to consider that Diem might go home as the leader of South Vietnam."
In October 1950 the Vietnamese brothers met in Washington at the Mayflower Hotel with State Department officials, including Rusk. Diem and Thuc were accompanied by McGuire as well as by three political churchmen who were working to stop Communism: Father Emmanuel Jacque, Bishop Howard Carroll, and Georgetown's Edmund Walsh. The purpose of the meeting was to ask the brothers about their country and determine their political beliefs. It soon became clear that both Diem and Thuc believed that Diem was destined to rule his nation. The fact that Vietnam's population was only ten percent Catholic mattered little as far as the brothers were concerned." Such a step seemed unlikely. Before World War II Diem had been a civil servant connected loosely with nationalists. Later, he repeatedly refused to accept government offices under Emperor Bao Dai; the job he wanted was Prime Minister, but that had been denied him.
As Diem spoke during the dinner, his two most strongly held positions were readily apparent. He believed in the power of the [Roman] Catholic Church and he was virulently anti-Communist. The State Department officials must have been impressed. Concerned about Vietnam since Truman first made a financial commitment to helping the French there, they were always on the lookout for strong, anti-Communist leaders as the French faded.
After Dienbienphu, Eisenhower wanted to support a broader-based government than that of Emperor Bao Dai, who enjoyed little popular support and had long been considered a puppet of the French and the Americans. Thus U.S. officials wanted a nationalist in high office in South Vietnam to blunt some of Ho Chi Minh's appeal. The result was that Bao Dai offered Diem the job he had always wanted-Prime Minister. Diem's self-proclaimed prophecy was coming true. He returned to Saigon on June 26, 1954, or several weeks after the arrival of Edward Lansdale, the chief of the C.I.A.'s Saigon Military Mission, who was in charge of unconventional warfare. U.S. involvement entered a new stage.
THE AMERICAN POPE
Spellman's Vietnam stance was in accordance with the wishes of the Pope. Malachi Martin, a former Jesuit who worked at the Vatican during the years of the escalating U.S. commitment to Vietnam, said the Pope wanted the United States to back Diem because the Pope had been influenced by Diem's brother, Archbishop Thuc.
"The Pope was concerned about Communism making more gains at the expense of the [Roman Catholic] Church," Martin averred. "He turned to Spellman to encourage American commitment to Vietnam."
Thus Spellman embarked on a carefully orchestrated campaign to prop up the Diem regime. Through the press and a Washington lobby, the problems of confronting anti-Communism in Indochina became widely known in America. One of the men Spellman aided in promoting the Diem cause was Buttinger, a former Austrian Socialist who headed the international Rescue Committee, an organization that had helped refugees flee Communism after World War II and now helped people fleeing North Vietnam.
The Geneva Accords provided that people moving between the north and south should have three hundred days in which to do so. The refugee problems were enormous. When he visited New York, Buttinger met with Spellman and explained the situation. The Cardinal placed him in touch with Joe Kennedy, who arranged meetings for Buttinger with the editorial boards of major publications such as Time and the Herald Tribune. Editorials sympathetic to the plight of refugees fleeing Ho Chi Minh's Vietnam began appearing in the American press.
Spellman and Kennedy also helped form a pro-Diem lobby in Washington. The rallying cries were anti-Communism and [Roman] Catholicism. Through their connections, they soon had a high-powered committee, which was a lumpy blend of intellectuals and conservatives.
Two men of national prominence, the former O.S.S. chief "Wild Bill" Donovan and General "Iron Mike" O'Daniel, were co-chairmen.
The membership included Senators [John F.] Kennedy and Richard Neuberger; Representatives Emmanuel Celler and Edna Kelly; and Angier Biddle Duke, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Max Lerner, socialist leader Norman Thomas, and conservative Utah Governor Bracken Lee.
Spellman's man on the board was Monsignor Harnett, who headed the Cardinal's Catholic Near East Welfare Association and now served as the Vietnam lobby's chief link with the Catholic Relief Services.
To a large extent, many Americans came to believe that Vietnam was a preponderantly [Roman] Catholic nation. This misimpression resulted partly from Diem's emergence as ruler. With the help of C.I.A.- rigged elections in 1955, Diem abolished the monarchy and Bao Dai was forced to live in exile. The heavily [Roman] Catholic hue to the Vietnam lobby also accounted for much of the widespread belief. Still another factor was [Cardinal] Spellman's identification with the cause.
THE RISE OF AMERICANISM
Then there was the role of a winsome young [Roman] Catholic doctor working in Vietnam named Tom Dooley. A navy lieutenant who operated out of Haiphong, Dooley worked with refugees. At one point Dooley, a favorite of Spellman, even organized thirty-five thousand Vietnamese Catholics to demand evacuation from the north. Dooley's efforts were perhaps even more successful in the United States than in Vietnam. He churned out newspaper and magazine articles as well as three best-selling books that propagandized both the [Roman] Catholic and anti-Communist nature of his beliefs.
He fabricated stories about the suffering of Catholics at the hands of perverted Communists who beat naked priests on the testicles with clubs, deafened children with chopsticks to prevent them from hearing about God, and disemboweled pregnant women. A graduate of Notre Dame in Indiana, Dooley toured the United States promoting his books and anti-Communism before he died, in 1964, at age thirty-four. One of the last people to visit his sickbed was Cardinal Spellman, who held up the young physician as an inspiration for all - another martyr. Dooley's reputation remained untarnished until a Roman Catholic sainthood investigation in 1979 uncovered his C.I.A. ties."
Dooley had helped the C.I.A. destabilize North Vietnam through his refugee programs. The Catholics who poured into South Vietnam provided Diem with a larger political constituency and were promised U.S.-supported assistance in relocating. The American public largely believed that most Vietnamese were terrified of the cruel and bloodthirsty Viet Minh and looked to the God-fearing Diem for salvation. Many refugees simply feared retaliation because they had supported the French.
Within his first year in office, however, Diem became so closely identified with the United States that American officials grew worried about his effectiveness. This became apparent when Spellman had Harnett arrange travel plans for him to Vietnam. The monsignor contacted General L. Collins, head of U.S. military operations in Vietnam. When he heard of Spellman's proposed visit, the general became concerned. He cabled Foster Dulles that the Cardinal's presence would encourage propaganda within Vietnam that Diem was "an American puppet....... The fact that both Diem and the Cardinal are Catholic would give opportunity for false propaganda charges that the U.S. is exerting undue influence on Diem." The general noted, however, that if Spellman came he could serve a useful purpose, "dramatizing once more the great exodus of refugees from the North, the greater part of whom are Catholics." He concluded, though, "I think it would be wiser if he did not come."
=Spellman wasn't about to be put off. The Pope had asked him to intervene and he wanted to see the situation firsthand. His physical presence in Saigon, he knew, would place him and the Church firmly in Diem's camp in the public mind. When Spellman arrived at the Saigon airport, he was greeted by a wildly cheering crowd of about five thousand. The sixty-seven-year-old prelate was once again dressed in the army khaki attire that he loved to wear in military zones.
THE AMERICAN POPE
Spellman's propagandizing of the [Roman] Catholic nature of Diem's regime reinforced a negative image of the [Roman Catholic] Church's position in Vietnam. The sectarian nature of Diem's government and the problems of that government were noted by the writer Graham Greene, himself a Catholic, in a dispatch from Saigon printed in the London Sunday Times on April 24, 1955:
It is Catholicism which has helped ruin the government of Mr. Diem, for his genuine piety . . . has been exploited by his American advisers until the Church is in danger of sharing the unpopularity of the United States.
An unfortunate visit by Cardinal Spellman ["He spoke to us," said a Vietnamese priest, "much of the Calf of Gold but less of the Mother of God"] has been followed by those of Cardinal Gillroy and the Archbishop of Canberra. Great sums are spent on organizing demonstrations for the visitors, and an impression is given that the Catholic Church is occidental and an ally of the United States in the cold war.
On the rare occasions when Mr. Diem has visited the areas formerly held by the Viet Minh, there has been a [Roman Catholic] priest at his side, and usually an American one
The South, instead of confronting the totalitarian north with the evidences of freedom, has slipped into an inefficient dictatorship: newspapers suppressed, strict censorship, men exiled by administrative order and not by judgment of the courts. It is unfortunate that a government of this kind should be identified with one faith. Mr. Diem may well leave his tolerant country a legacy of anti-[Roman] Catholicism.
During his visit Spellman presented a check for $100,000 to the [Roman] Catholic Relief Services, which was active in the refugee-relocation program and later administered a great deal of the U.S. aid program, which closely bound the CRS to the U.S. war effort and later led to the suspicion that the CRS had C.I.A. ties. Turning to the [Roman Catholic] Church to perform such a function was done in Latin America, among other places, but in Vietnam it eventually seemed to bear out Graham Greene's warnings that the [Roman Catholic] Church and the United States were being tied to a cause unpopular among Vietnamese.
The potential for corruption in Vietnam was tremendous and also harmed the CRS's reputation. Drew Pearson estimated that in 1955 alone, the Eisenhower administration pumped more than $20 million in aid into Vietnam for the [Roman] Catholic refugees. Though it did a great deal of good, the CRS eventually encountered a great deal of resentment. Unavoidably, there was much graft and corruption involved in getting food, medical supplies, and other goods from ships to villages. By 1976 the National Catholic Reporter, a hard-nosed weekly newspaper, reported apparent CRS abuses in articles such as one entitled
"Vietnam 1965-1975. Catholic Relief Services Role:
Christ's Work - or the C.I.A.'s?"
THE RISE OF AMERICANISM
The abuses cited included using supplies as a means of proselytizing; giving only Catholics aid meant for everyone; being identified with the military; and giving CRS goods to American and Vietnamese soldiers rather than to the civilians for whom the goods were meant. 41
Moreover, there was much speculation that the CRS leadership in Vietnam had C.I.A. links, although this was never proved.
Long before the National Catholic Reporter began its investigations, both the U.S. government and Spellman backed away from the increasingly arrogant and difficult Diem, who, by the early 1960s, lost support among his people almost daily. Buddhists held massive protest marches against the government and clashed in the streets on occasion with Catholics. Finally, on November 2, 1963, Diem was assassinated during a C.I.A.-inspired coup d'etat.
Two years after the assassination, Spellman told of his knowledge of Kennedy's involvement to Dorothy Schiff, the Post publisher, who again visited him at the chancery. According to her notes:
"He [Spellman] knew that President Kennedy had been asked to make a decision as to whether or not Diem would be removed and had decided that it was all right for this to happen--this on a recommendation from American officials in Vietnam. The Cardinal said he knew that Kennedy had thought about it overnight, changed his mind and that he knew that he would have rescinded his decision of the night before had the event not already taken place and Diem been dead." 42
The publisher was amazed by the revelation, but there was nothing she could do with the information. Once again, she had promised not to reveal what she heard at the Powerhouse. Shortly before the coup Spellman disassociated himself from Diem. When Bishop Thuc [ Diem's brother .... JP ] visited New York, Spellman refused to see him, and he personally asked Bishop Fulton J. Sheen not to receive Thuc as well. Spellman and Sheen were feuding. Sheen disregarded Spellman's request and had Thuc to lunch while Spellman simmered.
Though Spellman backed away from Diem, he didn't turn his back on Vietnam any more than the U.S. government did. The Cardinal became one of the most hawkish, arguably the most hawkish, leaders in the United States. By 1965 he clashed with the Pope, who desperately tried to bring peace in Vietnam as Spellman pounded the drums of war.
[The papacy plays the role of "peacemaker" after getting USA into the war in Vietnam on the side of the Roman Catholic ruling class .... JP]
- END QUOTE - END CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
THE PRINCE OF POWER
SPELLMAN EXPECTED DEFERENTIAL TREATMENT NOT ONLY from legions of politicians and millions of laymen but also from members of the hierarchy. Indisputably, he did more for the Church than all the rest of the American hierarchy combined.
His cleverness, contacts, and persistence enabled the Vatican to play a forceful international role, after centuries of limited political power. Spellman was the indispensable source of riches and favors for churchmen in both Rome and America. The Pope depended on Spellman and the Cardinal could get whatever he wanted. At times it seemed impossible to tell where the power of the one left off and that of the other began. It was clear that in America Spellman was the Church's kingmaker. He bestowed the title "monsignor" with the regularity of a commander making battlefield promotions, and he made many bishops in his busy, modern court. If anything, Spellman's power increased after Pius became ill.
The health of a pope is always taken seriously. When it appeared in December 1954 that Pius was dying, Spellman was continually on the telephone to Rome. He had visited the Pope months earlier when Pius was first suffering from violent bouts of hiccuping that left him exhausted and unable to hold food down. Spellman sat by his old friend's side in the Pope's bedroom, with its two windows overlooking St. Peter's Square and its simple furnishings--a brass bed, a chest of---
-END QUOTE- end page 246 -------
QUESTION? Just who are the Ugly Americans who give our whole country a reputation? I should like to digress and examine a phenomenon that extends from Racism and Bigotry -
XENOPHOBIA
{{wiktionarypar|xenophobia}}
'''Xenophobia''' denotes a phobic attitude toward strangers or of the unknown. It comes from the Greek language/Greek words ????? (''xenos''), meaning "foreigner," "stranger," and ????? (''phobos''), meaning "fear." The term is typically used to describe fear or dislike of alien (law)/foreigners or in general of people different from one's self. For example, racism is sometimes described as a form of xenophobia, but in most cases racism has nothing to do with a real phobia. Xenophobia implies a belief, accurate or not, that the target is in some way foreign. Prejudice against women cannot be considered xenophobic in this sense, except in the limited case of all-male clubs or institutions. The term xenophilia is used for the opposite behavior, attraction to or love for foreign persons.
The American Psychiatric Association's 'DSM-IV/Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,' 4th edition ("DSM-IV") includes in its description of a phobia an "intense anxiety" which follows exposure to the "object of the phobia, either in real life or via imagination or video..." For xenophobia there are two main objects of the phobia. The first is a population group present within a society, which is not considered part of that society. Often they are recent immigration|immigrants, but xenophobia may be directed against a group which has been present for centuries. This form of xenophobia can elicit or facilitate hostile and violent reactions, such as mass expulsion of immigrants, or in the worst case, genocide.
The second form of xenophobia is primarily cultural, and the objects of the phobia are cultural elements which are considered alien. All cultures are subject to external influences, but cultural xenophobia is often narrowly directed, for instance at foreign loan words in a national language. It rarely leads to aggression against persons, but can result in political campaigns for cultural or linguistic purification. Isolationism, a general aversion of foreign affairs, is not accurately described as xenophobia. Additionally, in the world of science fiction, xenophobia usually refers to a fear or hatred of extraterrestrial cultures or beings.
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Some leaders, in a misguided attempt to increase their power choose to use labels like 'Evil, or Axis of Evil' to describe their xenophobic choices. A recent article by Maureen Dowd in the New York Times gives examples of Mental Abberations, which some world leaders have used to draw a nation into War. ----
MAUREEN DOWD
February 17, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Captive to History's Caprice
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
"Maybe we are the ones we've been waiting for. Or maybe we are not.
Perhaps when Barack Obama uses that trippy line, he is just giving false Hopi, since the saying, which he picked up from Maria Shriver's New Age-y L.A. endorsement speech, is credited to Hopi Indians.
The passionate palaver about Hillary versus Barry rages on, with each side certain it is right about our fate if we end up with a President Obama or another President Clinton.
Hillary says Obama is "all hat and no cattle." You'd think she'd want to avoid cattle metaphors, so as not to rile up those with a past beef about her sketchy windfall on cattle futures. She could simply say he's all cage and no bird.
But is she right, that he'd be a callow leader, too trusting of Republicans, dictators and terrorists? Is Bill right, that voters should not be swayed by eloquence and excitement? (Unless he's running.)
Or is Obama right, that Hillary would ensure that the acrid mood of the last 15 years would continue to paralyze Washington, appall Americans and shrink our standing in the world?
Who knows? As a Henry James character said about art: "We work in the dark. We do what we can. We give what we have."
Gingerly, I would like to inject a note of uncertainty into this season of certainty. Covering seven presidential campaigns has made me realize that when it comes to predicting how presidents will perform, "nobody knows anything," as William Goldman said about Hollywood.
You'd think it would be safe to vote on issues, but politicians often don't feel the need to honor their campaign promises. I covered Bush Senior saying, "Read my lips: No new taxes." I also covered him raising taxes and saying, "Read my hips." I covered W. promising a humble foreign policy and no nation-building. I also covered the Iraq fiasco.
Voters try to figure out who they trust to have life-and-death power over them, but there's so much theatricality and artifice in campaigns you can get a false impression of who someone is.
And you never know who they will become once they move into the insular, heady womb of the White House — or how they will be buffeted by the caprice of history, and the randomness of crises.
At the very moment when politicians should be on top of the world, Ma, embraced by the voters, enhanced by the toys and levers of power, their gremlins surface. They inevitably get hit with trouble that they never could have imagined or prepared for, and that can trigger self-doubt and self-destruction and self-pity.
Why didn't J. F. K. simply toss out the C.I.A. plan developed under Eisenhower to send 1,200 exiles to overthrow a popular Cuban leader with a force of 200,000? He felt the need to prove himself.
Why did L. B. J. ignore his own solid political instincts to listen to Robert McNamara and Dean Rusk about Vietnam — falling under their stupid sway because they had been J. F. K.'s advisers?
Nixon, driven by the same pathology of envy about Kennedy and other golden boys, conspired in a political crime while coasting to re-election.
Why did W. let Cheney and Rummy lead him into hubristic disaster? He, too, needed to prove himself — and outdo Daddy. How could the "compassionate conservative" bike through Katrina?
The self-destructive impulses that consumed Bill Clinton detracted from his policy achievements and distracted him from achieving all he could have.
The press tends to swallow campaign narratives of sin and redemption, hard lessons learned.
After giving up drinking and becoming Texas governor, W. had supposedly changed from an arrogant, obdurate, Daddy-competing loser to a genial, bipartisan, mature winner. As it turned out, a total makeover is not possible after 40.
Hillary's narrative echoes W.'s: After the scalding partisanship of the '90s, she became a senator and turned the other cheek, working on legislation with Republicans who had pursued the impeachment case against her husband. She has supposedly learned from her White House mistakes on health care, Travelgate and legal issues, from her battles with the right and the press. She knows now that being obstructionist and secretive don't work.
An appealing arc, but is it true? Her campaign shake-up showed that she continues to rank loyalty and secrecy above competence and ingenuity. She is still so guarded that she began answering questions from the press and voters only after she lost Iowa.
All of us have known big shots who keep a check on their real feelings and dark tendencies until they get the top job. Then they throw off the restraints and revert to their worst instincts, bullying others and insulating themselves with sycophants.
Hillary could be ready on Day 1 — to make up her Enemies List and banish Overkill Bill to a cubbyhole in the Old Executive Office Building. But it's Day 2 that I'm really worried about."
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Some go for higher ground, and since there seems to be little danger in that, (hey, we've already taken a look at efforts to promote peace through Folk Singing, haven't we"), let's take a look!
UU World Magazine
PROPHETIC NONVIOLENCE
Toward a Unitarian Universalist theology of war and peace.
By Paul Rasor
Spring 2008 2.15.08
RECENT ARTICLES
The 2006 General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association posed this provocative question for congregations to consider over the next few years:
Should the Unitarian Universalist Association reject the use of any and all kinds of violence and war to resolve disputes between peoples and nations and adopt a principle of seeking just peace through nonviolent means?
The four-year process launched in 2006 to take up this question will lead to a "Statement of Conscience" for consideration by the 2010 General Assembly. A resource guide distributed to all UUA congregations asks:
Should we, the Unitarian Universalist Association and member congregations, adopt a specific and detailed "just war" policy to guide our witness, advocacy, and social justice efforts?
I suspect the denomination as a whole is ambivalent, as I suspect are many of us as individuals. I do not see any inevitable outcome, no single "right" answer to these questions. Unitarian Universalists have historically followed the just war model, but there have always been pacifists among us and we have long affirmed peace as a core value.
Many people assume that just war and pacifism are opposing positions, but they actually have much in common. Properly understood, both are anti-war traditions. Both seek to limit the use of violent force, and they will be on the same side in nearly all cases. More importantly, both pacifism and just war share several core commitments that are also reflected in Unitarian Universalist theological principles. By recognizing these commonalities, we can move beyond old divisions toward a position that integrates the two traditions. I will explore both traditions before introducing my own proposal.
Some people now argue that peacemaking should be recognized as a third anti-war theory. Practices that focus on preventing violent conflict are crucial, but many peacemaking advocates believe that pacifism or just war theories are still necessary to help us make moral judgments about actual wars, something that peacemaking itself does not do. Peacemaking, then, complements rather than replaces these traditions.
THE JUST WAR TRADITION
The just war tradition is a framework for making moral judgments about war. There is no "official" version of just war theory. It originated in the Catholic Church during the fourth century CE, and since the sixteenth century it has also been part of Protestant thought, secular philosophy, and international law. The theory continues to be developed and debated.
Two very different understandings of the just war model have emerged. Although just war theory is used by some to justify most uses of military force, a more restrictive approach sees the theory as a tool for limiting the violence of war. The restrictive model is far more consonant with our liberal theological principles, and it is the perspective I will assume in this discussion.
The most familiar part of the just war tradition is probably its list of criteria. But just war analysis begins with a presumption against war; the criteria are applied to determine whether this presumption might be overcome in specific cases. There is no universally recognized list of criteria, though the main ones are widely recognized. They are usually divided into two groups. The first names the conditions that must be met before going to war (jus ad bellum, or the justice of war); the second addresses the actual conduct of war (jus in bello, or justice in war). I will focus on the first group since these are most relevant to our own question. (Omitted here)
Probability of success requires a reasonable expectation that a nation can achieve both its immediate goal—fending off the invading army, say—and the restoration of justice that is always the ultimate goal of a just war. Otherwise, we end up with both the suffering we create by going to war and the evil we sought unsuccessfully to prevent.
The just war tradition raises many difficult issues, even apart from the difficulty of applying the criteria in specific cases. First, the name "just war" seems to imply that war can sometimes be just. But this is not what the theory claims: a "just war" is never just. As Michael Walzer explains:
Just is a term of art here; it means justifiable, defensible, even morally necessary (given the alternatives)—and that is all it means. . . . [J]ustice in the strong sense, the sense that it has in domestic society and everyday life, is lost as soon as the fighting begins. War is a zone of radical coercion, in which justice is always under a cloud.
The term justifiable is better, but still problematic. John Howard Yoder, a leading Mennonite peace theologian, argues that to say that a war is justifiable within the meaning of the tradition is to say only "that a case can be made" for it.
Second, just war theory is often criticized for making war easier to justify by rationalizing it. This can happen if the criteria are applied as a checklist to go over during war preparations, or if they are seen as a hurdle to get over rather than a moral boundary we should be reluctant to cross. Yoder uses the term "toothless just war talk" to describe those who misapply the just war tradition by using its language to justify war rather than to restrain it.
A related danger is what Glen Stassen calls "tunnel vision." Just war theory provides a basis for moral critique of inappropriate military force, but it does not propose constructive alternatives. "If the only ethical theory we have is one that focuses on when military action is right or wrong," he writes, "its tendency is to focus our discussion on military action and away from other effective actions."
On the other hand, the restrictive model has brought just war increasingly closer to pacifism. One factor in this trend is the reality that in modern warfare, several criteria are probably impossible to meet. Some argue that since all wars will violate at least some of the criteria, no war can ever be justified. The result is that the peace presumption has been strengthened, and just war analysis is now, according to Todd Whitmore, "much more likely to condemn a particular instance of war than to justify it." Philosopher Jenny Teichman describes this view as just war pacifism.
For Unitarian Universalists, a key benefit of the just war approach is its assumption that decisions about war and peace are always subject to moral criticism. Walzer argues that just war "is a doctrine of radical responsibility" because it holds officials morally accountable for decisions that affect the lives of thousands of human beings. The restrictive just war model is therefore a valuable tool that can help us frame our prophetic critique.
PACIFISM
Pacifism is a philosophical or religious stance of opposition to war. Beyond this simple description, however, pacifism is difficult to define. Yoder points out: "There is no such thing as a single position called pacifism, to which one clear definition can be given and which is held by all pacifists." In fact, he counts twenty-nine different types of pacifism. In addition, a variety of terms is used to describe these different positions, and these terms are not always used consistently.
The word pacifism did not appear until the early twentieth century. Previously, nonresistance was the term used by most Christian pacifists to describe what we now call pacifism. Today, nonviolence is probably the term most commonly used as a synonym for pacifism, though nonviolence is also used in other contexts. Because of these ambiguities, none of these terms should be used without clarification. (Webster's says it was applied to French Soldiers refusing to fight after seeing so many of their fellows dead).
It is common to distinguish between absolute and conditional pacifism. Absolute pacifists are opposed to any form of participation in war. For many, pacifism is a personal stance, and not necessarily a political stance. Pacifists might refuse to participate in war by becoming conscientious objectors without necessarily opposing a government's decision to go to war in a particular case. But for most absolute pacifists, opposition to war is both a personal and a political commitment. They not only refuse to participate in war, they reject war itself as an option for settling disputes among nations.
Absolute pacifism is normally based on adherence to a core principle, such as the biblical command "do not kill." At first glance, this appears to be an easy form of moral decision making, since the same rule always applies. But this appearance is deceptive. Does it mean no war, or no violence of any kind, or no killing? Should the biblical commandment be translated as "do not kill" or "do not murder"? And absolutes are difficult to maintain in practice because there are always hard cases. (I think of Quakers in reference to absolute pacifism).
Conditional pacifism begins as an anti-war position, but allows that force may be justified in particular circumstances. This stance raises several issues as well. First, we have to be clear about what the exceptions are, and whether we are open in principle to other exceptions. Then, we need a mechanism for identifying the kinds of real world circumstances that trigger the exceptions. Is there a principle we can apply, or do we just decide on a case-by-case basis? If there is a principle, how is it different from the just war model? After all, just war is basically a form of conditional pacifism.
As with the just war theory, pacifism raises difficult issues. Some critics charge that pacifism precludes prophetic critique because it offers no standards for evaluating particular wars. If war is never justified, then no analysis of government policy is ever necessary, and no critical judgments need to be made—or can be made. Walzer sees this form of pacifism as a kind of cop-out, "the radicalism of people who do not expect to exercise power," and who therefore "are not prepared to make the judgments" that may be required. What he is really objecting to, it seems to me, is a lazy pacifism, a pacifism of avoidance.
This criticism makes an important point, but it overstates the case. Most pacifists I know, certainly among Quakers, are very concerned with making critical judgments about appropriate uses of power. It is also misleading to suggest that there is no critical message in the pacifist stance. Even absolute pacifists often point to the horrible consequences of particular wars, although the message is meant to be a general one against all war. Yet this general message can be seen as a form of prophetic witness against the idolatry of war. But the criticism nevertheless raises an important issue for UUs: Prophetic critique is an important part of our tradition, and any stance we adopt should make room for this.
Some have suggested that Unitarian Universalism might become a peace church. While I agree that we should affirm a basic commitment to nonviolence, I believe peace church communities would point to a radical difference in self-understanding. The just war model developed largely through principles of natural law, not through articles of faith or interpretation of scripture. To put it in terms we liberals are familiar with, just war is grounded in reason, not in revelation. (Several paragraphs have been omitted) -----
Both pacifism and just war thinking have been part of Unitarian and Universalist religious practice since the early nineteenth century. Unitarian minister Noah Worcester (1758–1837) is considered the "founding spirit" of the first sustained pacifist movement in North America outside the historic peace churches during the 1810s. William Ellery Channing (1780–1842), the defining theologian of early American Unitarianism, wrote several sermons and extended discourses on war between 1810 and 1838. These have a strong anti-war flavor, but in the end, Channing held what can only be called a just war position.
Channing begins with a peace presumption: "There is always a presumption against the justice of war; always reason to fear that it is condemned by impartial conscience and God." He limits the reasons for war in terms that are remarkably similar to the standard criteria:
War, as it is commonly waged, is indeed a tremendous evil; but national subjugation is a greater evil than a war of defense; and a community seems to me to possess an indisputable right to resort to such a war when all other means have failed for the security of its existence or freedom.
And when war comes, it should always be engaged in "with a full consciousness of rectitude and with unfeigned sorrow."
Channing also touches on the element of proper authority, and he includes a moral theory of government similar in some ways to the Catholic theory:
Government is instituted for the very purpose of protecting the community from all violence, . . . whether of domestic or foreign foes. . . . The very end and office of government is to resist evil men. For this the civil magistrate bears the sword.
But for Channing, war is ultimately a moral and spiritual problem, and this means that "peace without can come only through peace within." (more examples have been omitted here, but I would like to refer the reader to Henry David Thoreau for clear thoughts on peace & action).
The Civil War witnessed a sharp decline in liberal pacifism, and the tradition of Christian nonresistance remained marginalized through the end of the nineteenth century. World War I, however, brought a resurgence of pacifism, and one of the leading figures in this movement was John Haynes Holmes (1879–1964), probably the most well-known Unitarian pacifist in the twentieth century.
The minister of what is now the Community Church of New York, Holmes developed his own theory of nonresistance in his book New Wars for Old, published in 1916. Like Ballou, Holmes grounded his pacifism in Jesus' teaching and agreed that nonresistance does not mean passive acquiescence; evil must be resisted. What Jesus meant was "do not resist evil with its own weapons"—violence with violence, force with force. Instead, we are "to meet injury with service and evil with good."
Unlike Ballou, Holmes applied these principles to international relations as well as personal relationships and argued that war is never justifiable, even in self-defense. If a nation is attacked, it should not resist with violent force even though it may be conquered. War cannot conquer the human spirit, he said, and this is what matters. Our ultimate loyalty should not be to the nation, but to the world, "the great circle of humanity."
While Holmes was an important figure in the pacifist movement, most Unitarians and Universalists supported World War I. The Unitarian General Conference voted overwhelmingly to support the war, and in 1918 the American Unitarian Association imposed economic sanctions on congregations whose ministers were not "willing, earnest, and outspoken" supporters of the war. Many pacifist ministers in both denominations lost their positions or were ostracized by their colleagues.
We did better during World War II. The AUA again supported the war, but, under the leadership of President Frederick May Eliot, it was far more supportive of pacifists and conscientious objectors.
Unitarian theologian James Luther Adams (1901– 1994) was among those who supported American involvement in World War II. Indeed, he regularly spoke out against pacifism before and during the war. He opposed the Vietnam War, however, at least partly because it violated the just war criterion of proportionality: "a nation should not undertake a war, if military success was obviously impossible, and if the damage inflicted was disproportionate to the good sought." Yet the only extended writing he seems to have done on just war theory is a lengthy essay in 1970 in which he applied the just war criteria as a test for determining when it was appropriate to engage in civil disobedience.
The Vietnam War proved divisive for Unitarian Universalists. Widespread anti-war activism in some ways reenacted in reverse the experience of World War I. This time it was non-pacifists who felt ostracized, and many people left our churches in the face of what they saw as anti-war absolutism.
It is precisely this sort of divisiveness we must avoid as we move forward with our denominational discernment. Among other things, we must explore ways in which the just war and pacifist traditions can be seen as mutually supportive rather than mutually exclusive.
BEYOND JUST WAR AND PACIFISM
I believe we can move beyond this old divide by adopting an integrated model I call prophetic nonviolence. To move "beyond just war and pacifism" is not to abandon either tradition; it is to recognize that both perform important roles in our ongoing efforts to reduce the violence of war.
I begin with a fundamental commitment to nonviolence. Unitarian Universalists have always affirmed peace as among our most basic values. We have always worked to create the kinds of just communities out of which peace emerges, and we have long supported the use of nonviolent methods of conflict resolution. This is the legacy we share with pacifism.
At the same time, Unitarian Universalism has always been an engaged religion, one that tries to make a difference in the world. An important part of this engagement is our tradition of speaking prophetically—of bringing reasoned judgment and critique to bear on the social conditions that generate injustice and violence. In the context of war, this commitment has been well served by the just war model.
My proposal for prophetic nonviolence links our deep commitment to nonviolence with our historical practice of prophetic critique, and it is supported by several commonalities between the pacifist and just war traditions. Both share a presumption against war, a presumption based in part on a moral duty not to harm. Both put peace in the center of their ethical thinking and relegate war to the margins. Keeping peace in the center helps focus our critique and reminds us of the importance of peacemaking and other violence-prevention strategies.
In addition, both just war and pacifism are concerned with the limits of loyalty to the state. This is more obvious in religious pacifism, which often speaks of a higher loyalty to God. But this concern is also present in the just war model. By placing the burden of proof on those who would justify the use of force, the presumption against war reflects a basic suspicion of official claims. Ethicist Joseph Fahey says: "Today's nation states presume that young men and women are willing to kill other young men and women for their flag." This presumption is reflected in our national policies toward conscientious objectors, for example, who must make a case for not taking up arms. Both the pacifist and just war traditions take a principled stand against the official presumption that young people must be prepared to kill at the behest of the state.
Finally, the recent trend toward pacifism in many non-peace churches suggests a growing convergence of the two traditions. Roman Catholic teaching now recognizes just war and nonviolence as "distinct but interdependent methods of evaluating warfare" for both individuals and states. Fahey notes a similar shift in the liberal and mainline Protestant churches, which traditionally have depended on the just war model. "The return in the late twentieth century to pacifism," he writes, "is perhaps the most notable feature of contemporary Christian teaching on war and peace." Our denominational study process may tell us whether Unitarian Universalists are moving in a similar direction.
BASES FOR CRITIQUE
In our prophetic critique of the government's justifications for war, we will naturally draw on the just war criteria. These have a built-in familiarity and a rich set of interpretive traditions that make them extremely useful for this purpose, and public discourse about particular wars is likely to be carried on in just war language. However, as helpful as these criteria may be, we must remember that our real criteria—the true bases for our prophetic critique—are our own theological principles. Our critique must be our critique, grounded in our religious values and historical practices. Unitarian Universalist theological principles relevant to a UU response to war include these: (I chose to omit these 'principles' because I want UU's to assert the creedless nature of this church).
Power can be exercised for good or evil; it can create or destroy, liberate or oppress. War is an expression of coercive and violent power; peace and justice require cooperative forms of power. Power's ambiguous nature means that its use must be guided by our core values such as love and justice.
These principles suggest that in addition to applying the just war criteria, we must ask questions such as: Does this military action promote or inhibit unity among peoples? Does it express love and compassion toward our neighbors, or does it reflect fear and hate? Does it increase or restrict the possibilities for human freedom and fulfillment? Does it contribute to the creation of right relationships and just social structures, or does it harm these relationships? What kinds of power are being used, and by whom? These kinds of assessments will add power and depth to our prophetic practice.
OUR CHALLENGE
Whatever position we adopt as a denomination, we need to be as clear and as theologically grounded as possible. Clarity will best serve individual members and congregations in their own discernment processes, and it will provide the most effective basis for strong prophetic critique. Any stance we adopt will be ineffective if it is simply a reaction to the current political situation. Instead, it must be a genuine expression of our Unitarian Universalist theological principles and religious values.
We need to honor the differences that exist among us. Any statement worth making will surely provoke disagreement. This is not a reason to avoid the issue or to take so noncommittal a stance that we don't really say anything. But we need to be careful to welcome and honor those who hold different views, and perhaps to remind ourselves that one of the tenets of liberalism is that nothing is ever finally settled.
We must avoid the dangers of political correctness. We don't have a very good record on this count. The ostracism suffered by those who held minority positions during World War I and the Viet-Nam War reflects an unfortunate streak of illiberal self-righteousness that runs deep, as any Republican in our midst can testify. By drawing on the commonalities between the just war and pacifist traditions and by emphasizing our Unitarian Universalist theological principles, I have tried to show that it is possible to formulate a position that can be endorsed by pacifists and just war advocates alike. My own proposal is surely not the only possible synthesis. Yet a question that haunts me is whether our members who serve in the military would feel less welcome if my proposal were adopted as a denominational stance. I truly hope not.
Whatever our individual views, we need to treat each other with compassion, respect, and love as we move through this process. However inclusive our intentions and our language, we cannot eliminate all disagreement, nor should we try to do so. The very process of discussion through disagreement can help clarify our ideas and make us aware of the unintended consequences of our own words. At the same time, we need to remember that we belong to a shared religious tradition and that our disagreements reflect our deeper levels of agreement—our shared theological principles and our shared commitment to peace.
Our current study process presents an opportunity to clarify our thinking, to air some long-hidden differences, and to make a strong public statement in support of our deepest values on one of the most important issues of our time. May we accept the challenge in a spirit of love and grace.
© 2008 by Paul Rasor, who will be speaking on this theme at the General Assembly in June in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. See sidebar for links to related resources.
UU World Magazine | 25 Beacon Street, Boston MA 02108 | (617) 948-6518
© 1996-2007 Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations
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This concludes our dissertation on the war in the 1960's and 70's and we proceed to several points for discussion of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars that presently confront us; this is followed by quoting a chapter from Leo Tolstoy's book 'War and Peace' --- There are a hundred others!!!\ . ---- PAUL KRUGMAN ---
To understand what's really happening in Iraq, follow the oil money, which already knows that the surge has failed.
Back in January, announcing his plan to send more troops to Iraq, President Bush declared that "America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced."
Near the top of his list was the promise that "to give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country's economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis."
There was a reason he placed such importance on oil.
Oil is pretty much the only thing Iraq has going for it. Two-thirds of Iraq's GDP and almost all its government revenue come from the oil sector. Without an agreed system for sharing oil revenues, there is no Iraq, just a collection of armed gangs fighting for control of resources.
Well, the legislation Bush promised never materialized, and on Wednesday attempts to arrive at a compromise oil law collapsed.
What's revealing is the cause of the breakdown. Last month the provincial government in Kurdistan, defying the central government, passed its own oil law; last week a Kurdish Web site announced that the provincial government had signed a production-sharing deal with the Hunt Oil Co. of Dallas. That seems to have been the last straw.
Now here's the thing: Ray L. Hunt, the chief executive and president of Hunt Oil, is a close political ally of Bush. More than that, Hunt is a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, a key oversight body. Some commentators have expressed surprise at the fact that a businessman with very close ties to the White House is undermining U.S. policy. But that isn't all that surprising, given this administration's history. Remember, Halliburton was still signing business deals with Iran years after Bush declared Iran a member of the "axis of evil."
No, what's interesting about this deal is the fact that Hunt, thanks to his policy position, is presumably as well-informed about the actual state of affairs in Iraq as anyone in the business world can be. By putting his money into a deal with the Kurds, despite Baghdad's disapproval, he's essentially betting that the Iraqi government — which hasn't met a single one of the major benchmarks Bush laid out in January – won't get its act together. Indeed he's effectively betting against the survival of Iraq as a nation in any meaningful sense of the term.
The smart money, then, knows that the surge has failed, that the war is lost, and that Iraq is going the way of Yugoslavia, And I suspect that most people in the Bush administration — maybe even Bush himself — know this, too.
After all, if the administration had any real hope of retrieving the situation in Iraq, officials would be making an all-out effort to get the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to start delivering on some of those benchmarks, perhaps using the threat that Congress would cut off funds otherwise. Instead, the Bushies are making excuses, minimizing Iraqi failures and, in general, giving the Maliki government no incentive to do anything differently.
And, for that matter, if the administration had any real intention of turning public opinion around, as opposed to merely shoring up the base enough to keep Republican members of Congress on board, it would have sent Gen. David Petraeus, the top military commander in Iraq, to as many news media outlets as possible — not granted an exclusive appearance to Fox News on Monday night.
All in all, Bush's actions have not been those of a leader seriously trying to win a war. They have, however, been what you'd expect from a man whose plan is to keep up appearances for the next 16 months, never mind the cost in lives and money, then shift the blame for failure onto his successor.
In fact, that's my interpretation of something that startled many people: Bush's decision last month, after spending years denying that the Iraq war had anything in common with Vietnam, to suddenly embrace the parallel. Here's how I see it: At this point, Bush is looking forward to replaying the political aftermath of Vietnam, in which the right wing eventually achieved a rewriting of history that would have made George Orwell proud, convincing millions of Americans that our soldiers had victory in their grasp but were stabbed in the back by the peaceniks back home.
What all this means is that the next president, even as he or she tries to extricate us from Iraq — and prevent the country's breakup from turning into a regional war — will have to deal with constant sniping from the people who lied us into an unnecessary war, then lost the war they started, but will never, ever, take responsibility for their failures.
Krugman is a columnist for the New York Times 2008 ------------------------------
Bush is not the only leader who staked his legacy to winning a war. Try Afghanistan ----
Tangled web: How an idea spread and grew on the Internet.
Pipe Dreams - "The origin of the "bombing-Afghanistan-for-oil-pipelines" theory.
By Seth Stevenson in SLATE
Posted Thursday, Dec. 6, 2001, at 2:32 PM ET
Illustration by Robert Neubecker
A theory making the rounds on the Internet, on the airwaves, and in the press claims that the bombing of the Taliban has nothing to do with a "war on terrorism" but everything to do with the oil pipeline the West wants to build through Afghanistan. Where did this theory start, and how did it spread?
The California energy company Unocal seriously pursued building an Afghanistan pipeline in the 1990s, but back then the theorists, such as this Middle East specialist in 1998, argued that the West was propping up the Taliban in hopes that they would cooperate on building a pipeline. On March 8, 2001, a think-tanker and former CIA analyst noted in a New York Times op-ed that "[i]n 1996, it seemed possible that American-built gas and oil pipelines from Central Asia could run through an Afghanistan ruled by one leader. Cruelty to women aside, we did not condemn the Taliban juggernaut rolling across the country."
The beauty of conspiracy theories is that even the most contradictory evidence can be folded into a new conspiracy theory. For example, after the events of Sept. 11, the pipeline conspiracy theorists spun 180 degrees from …
We're supporting the Taliban so we can build a pipeline while we pretend we don't care about their links to terrorism (and, to a lesser degree, their cruelty to women).
to …
We're bombing the Taliban so we can build a pipeline while we pretend we care about their links to terrorism (and, to a lesser degree, their cruelty to women).
The turnaround can be tracked within a single news agency. On Oct. 7 of this year, right before the U.S. bombing began, Agence France-Presse wrote up the old theory: "Keen to see Afghanistan under strong central rule to allow a US-led group to build a multi-billion-dollar oil and gas pipeline, Washington urged key allies Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to back the militia's bid for power in 1996." Just four days later, AFP wrote that "experts say the end of the Islamic militia [the Taliban] could spell the start of more lucrative opportunities for Western oil companies."
Nearly all sites pushing the newer theory point to two pieces of evidence: 1) This U.S. Department of Energy information page on Afghanistan, updated September 2001, which espouses the pipeline idea but says Afghanistan is too chaotic for it to work. 2) This 1998 testimony by a Unocal vice president to the House Committee on International Relations, in which he states that a pipeline will never be built without a stable Afghan government in place.
How did the new theory spread? After the Sept. 11 attacks, no one says anything oil-related for a respectable mourning period. Then, in the cover story of its Sept. 21-27 issue, L.A. Weekly makes the case that "it's the oil, stupid." The piece doesn't mention the pipeline specifically, but soon after, someone else does. On Sept. 25, the Village Voice's James Ridgeway and Camila E. Fard write that the 9/11 terrorist attack "provides Washington with an extraordinary opportunity" to overthrow the Taliban and build a pipeline. Ridgeway fails to make the direct link to Unocal, though. On Oct. 1, we see the whole theory come together on the Web site of the Independent Media Center. This article links to both the Unocal testimony and the DOE page and says they "leave little doubt as to the reasons behind Washington's desire to replace the Taliban government." After this, the floodgates open. The theory never evolves much—it just gets passed around.
Oct. 5: An India-based writer for the Inter Press Service says Bush's "coalition against terrorism" is "the first opportunity that has any chance of making UNOCAL's wish come true." The story is reprinted the following day in the Asia Times.
Oct. 10: The Village Voice's Ridgeway makes his claim in stronger terms but still doesn't mention Unocal.
Oct. 11: A Russian TV commentator says oil is the real reason for the war. In a transcript from Russia's Ren TV, the commentator refers to Unocal.
Oct. 12: An essay on TomPaine.com and another by cartoonist Ted Rall both join the chorus.
Oct. 13: The Hindu, an Indian national newspaper, asserts that the pipeline, not terrorism, is driving the U.S. bombing. The Hindu quotes the DOE page and adds the point that both President Bush and Vice President Cheney are "intimately connected with the U.S. oil industry."
Oct. 14: The Washington Times reports that a Taliban ambassador says the war is more oil than Osama. Also, the International Action Center (an anti-militarism site) runs the Unocal theory.
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Once again, the almighty dollar has reared it's UGLY AMERICAN HEAD! Now let's see what the quintessential 19th century writer has to say- ----
LEO TOLSTOY
Literature Network » Leo Tolstoy » War and Peace » Chapter XII
Chapter XII
From the time the law of Copernicus was discovered and proved, the mere recognition of the fact that it was not the sun but the earth that moves sufficed to destroy the whole cosmography of the ancients. By disproving that law it might have been possible to retain the old conception of the movements of the bodies, but without disproving it, it would seem impossible to continue studying the Ptolemaic worlds. But even after the discovery of the law of Copernicus the Ptolemaic worlds were still studied for a long time.
From the time the first person said and proved that the number of births or of crimes is subject to mathematical laws, and that this or that mode of government is determined by certain geographical and economic conditions, and that certain relations of population to soil produce migrations of peoples, the foundations on which history had been built were destroyed in their essence.
By refuting these new laws the former view of history might have been retained; but without refuting them it would seem impossible to continue studying historic events as the results of man's free will. For if a certain mode of government was established or certain migrations of peoples took place in consequence of such and such geographic, ethnographic, or economic conditions, then the free will of those individuals who appear to us to have established that mode of government or occasioned the migrations can no longer be regarded as the cause.
And yet the former history continues to be studied side by side with the laws of statistics, geography, political economy, comparative philology, and geology, which directly contradict its assumptions.
The struggle between the old views and the new was long and stubbornly fought out in physical philosophy. Theology stood on guard for the old views and accused the new of violating revelation. But when truth conquered, theology established itself just as firmly on the new foundation.
Just as prolonged and stubborn is the struggle now proceeding between the old and the new conception of history, and theology in the same way stands on guard for the old view, and accuses the new view of subverting revelation.
In the one case as in the other, on both sides the struggle provokes passion and stifles truth. On the one hand there is fear and regret for the loss of the whole edifice constructed through the ages, on the other is the passion for destruction.
To the men who fought against the rising truths of physical philosophy, it seemed that if they admitted that truth it would destroy faith in God, in the creation of the firmament, and in the miracle of Joshua the son of Nun. To the defenders of the laws of Copernicus and Newton, to Voltaire for example, it seemed that the laws of astronomy destroyed religion, and he utilized the law of gravitation as a weapon against religion.
Just so it now seems as if we have only to admit the law of inevitability, to destroy the conception of the soul, of good and evil, and all the institutions of state and church that have been built up on those conceptions.
So too, like Voltaire in his time, uninvited defenders of the law of inevitability today use that law as a weapon against religion, though the law of inevitability in history, like the law of Copernicus in astronomy, far from destroying, even strengthens the foundation on which the institutions of state and church are erected.
As in the question of astronomy then, so in the question of history now, the whole difference of opinion is based on the recognition or nonrecognition of something absolute, serving as the measure of visible phenomena. In astronomy it was the immovability of the earth, in history it is the independence of personality- free will.
As with astronomy the difficulty of recognizing the motion of the earth lay in abandoning the immediate sensation of the earth's fixity and of the motion of the planets, so in history the difficulty of recognizing the subjection of personality to the laws of space, time, and cause lies in renouncing the direct feeling of the independence of one's own personality. But as in astronomy the new view said: "It is true that we do not feel the movement of the earth, but by admitting its immobility we arrive at absurdity, while by admitting its motion (which we do not feel) we arrive at laws," so also in history the new view says: "It is true that we are not conscious of our dependence, but by admitting our free will we arrive at absurdity, while by admitting our dependence on the external world, on time, and on cause, we arrive at laws."
In the first case it was necessary to renounce the consciousness of an unreal immobility in space and to recognize a motion we did not feel; in the present case it is similarly necessary to renounce a freedom that does not exist, and to recognize a dependence of which we are not conscious.
Literature Network » Leo Tolstoy » War and Peace » Chapter XII
From the author. I present the above authors to celebrate their skill in treating a very complex subject, which has surpassed all attempts to resolve it (war) and promote lasting Peace. I am honored to give myself the freedom of using their work without specifically asking permission. I have abbreviated some articles to protect their property, but still, there it is. I also want to suggest that it is not the leaders who are bigoted, racist, or xenophobic, though if the shoe fits ---- It is the peoples, who find themselves occupied by a foreign power, be they Russians in the Napoleonic era, Confederate Southerners, Frenchman under the Kaiser's will, Russians again at Stalingrad, Phillipinos, Viet-Namese of whatever persuasion, Afghanis or Iraqis, xenophobia is about as good excuse as any for their resistance to the (American) Military.
Be it an anxiety response. JIM O This blog is titled TOM DOOLEY, but it is actually an anatomy of the Viet-Nam War. You will see the part Tom Dooley plays, but he is not the central character, the United States Military is the primary instrument that conducted the war, but was manipulated from the beginning to effect a revival of a war in Korea, which had been sold as a 'Peace Action' by Pres. Harry Truman.
First you will see the verses of folksong, 'Tom Dooley' which was popular in the 50's and 60's and sung by The Kingston Trio, a group from New England. My source (NIEHS) had a forward: "This song tells the story of a condemned man named Tom Dooley. Many believe that Tom Dooley was not actually the guilty party in this particular case, and instead assumed the blame for others who he wished to protect -- but the overall message is still that "crime does not pay." Tom Dooley therefore is a metaphor for the criminal act perpetrated by the US Military against the people of North and South Viet-Nam, presumably in an attempt to stop the spread of Communism in that part of South Asia. -
"Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Poor boy, you're bound to die
I met her on the mountain, there I took her life
Met her on the mountain, stabbed her with my knife
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Hang down your head and cry (ah-uh-eye)
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Poor boy, you're bound to die
This time tomorrow,
reckon where I'll be
Hadn't-a been for Grayson,
I'd-a been in Tennessee (well now, boy)
Hang down (your head) your head (Dooley) and cry
Hang down your head and cry (ah poor boy, ah well-ah)
Hang down (your head) your head (Dooley) and cry
Poor boy, you're bound to die (ah well now boy)
Hang down (your head) your head (Dooley) and cry
Hang down your head and cry (ah poor boy, ah well-ah)
Hang down (your head) your head (Dooley) and cry
Poor boy, you're bound to die
This time tomorrow,
reckon where I'll be
Down in some lonesome valley
hangin' from a white oak tree
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Hang down your head and cry (ah-uh-eye)
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Poor boy, you're bound to die (ah well now boy)
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Hang down your head and cry (poor boy ah well uh)
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Poor boy, you're bound to die
Poor boy, you're bound to die
Poor boy, you're bound to die
Poor boy, you're bound to .......die
Contact NIEHS (NIH, DHHS)" ----
Only thing, the US Military did not die after the conclusion of the War, it hung on, absorbing huge sustaining funds, only to go on - and engage in more wars.
Other anecdotes to explain the war follow, first the folk singer, Pete Seeger, who I understand to have had a role as the "Pied Piper" who drew out The Kingston Trio; Peter, Paul and Mary; Joan Baez; Bob Dylan; and many others who brought the War home to Americans who were quite content to let the Draft take their sons, and only returned later as one of 50,000 names carved in granite on the Viet-Nam War Memorial on the grounds of the Capitol Mall, or as a Viet-Nam Veteran with issues like, why did we have to fight another Civil War?
PETE SEEGER
Published on NewsBusters.org (http://newsbusters.org)
PBS, the Communist Folk Singer Tribute Channel (25 in Cleveland).
By Tim Graham
Created 2008-02-25 07:39
"To those who make public fools of themselves saying that one-sided left-wing programming on PBS is an illusion, we suggest they open the Sunday Washington Post to the TV Week magazine. There on the cover is a picture of Pete Seeger, the radical-left folk singer-songwriter. "Raising His Voice: PBS Pays Tribute to Singer-Activist Pete Seeger," the cover says. Inside, readers learn PBS is offering a 90-minute documentary openly described as a "tribute." The headline is "Pete Seeger, a Force of Nature." [1] Even Seeger seems embarrassed that PBS is offering America this whitewash of his life and career:
Regrets? Seeger says he has "millions of them -- stupid things I've done here and there." His criticism of the PBS tribute is that it "didn't show any of the stupid things I've done." Director Jim Brown has known Seeger for a long time, said Susan Lacy, executive producer of the "American Masters" series, and Brown wasn't trying to make a totally balanced film. "That's not meant in a negative way," she said. "It's just that Pete Seeger is such a principled idealist, such a good man."
Post staff writer Judith S. Gillies mentioned in passing that the film would touch on Seeger's membership in the Communist Party, but the story just ran praise, including from famous liberal TV producer Norman Lear, listed as executive producer of this whitewash. In the New York Sun [2], Ron Radosh explained last summer that he was interviewed for Brown's film, with a predictable result: all his critical remarks were edited out.
Two years ago, Mr. Brown asked to interview me for the film. I was a former student and friend of Mr. Seeger's and have written critically about his life and politics. I asked Mr. Brown whether he would actually use what I said. Mr. Brown responded that Pete and his wife, Toshi, wanted a critical voice in the film and did not want just to paint him as a man without blemishes.
In my interview, I praised Mr. Seeger's contributions to music and reminisced about being his student in New York while in high school and as a counselor at Camp Woodland, a left-wing summer camp. I also asked why, after supporting Stalin's tyranny for most of his life, Mr. Seeger had never written a song about the Gulag. He often introduces his song "Treblinka" by saying how we cannot forget the past. Yet he still says nothing critical about Fidel Castro's Cuba, or any other "socialist" regimes.
Mr. Brown's film is beautifully crafted and photographed, with great footage and a lot of good folk music. But although my praise and personal memories made the final cut, my critical comments did not. When I spoke to Mr. Brown a few days ago, he told me my remarks weren't appropriate for a tribute to Mr. Seeger's spirit and his contributions to America.
Some will argue that Mr. Seeger deserves such praise. But our country has more than made up for the 17 years Mr. Seeger was blacklisted from both radio and TV. In the past decade, Mr. Seeger has received the National Medal of the Arts from President Clinton and has been feted at the Kennedy Center. A recent profile in the Washington Post style section proclaimed him a "national treasure" and America's "best-loved Commie." A few years ago, Mr. Seeger was invited to speak at the National Press Club. Just two months ago, the Library of Congress held an all-day tribute to him. After all of this, shouldn't a new documentary give its audience an accurate and honest account of his life?
Read the whole thing. Shouldn't accuracy and balance matter to PBS, and to the Congress that supposedly oversees it? Should American taxpayers subsidize films with all the objectivity and editorial integrity of a Soviet commissar?
Other Seeger posts:
-- NYT Writer Corrects Record: Pete Seeger 'Only' 40 Years Late in Denouncing Stalin [2]
-- Happy Fourth of July: Pacifica Radio Talked Communism With Pete Seeger [2]"
I hope you didn't miss the bipolar verdict by the author, Tim Graham, that Pete was awarded as much honors and tribute as the actual fighters of the Viet-Nam War. In a real Democracy you can expect a certain ambivalence when the circumstances are so suspicious, and the goal seems to be so elusive, even to the main participants engaged in conflict. I have omitted the theater that has been generated by Rambo types (I, II, III, IV) who saw some merit to the 'Cause," but which I accuse of having dark patriotism confused with commercial exploitation. I'm glad I put Tim here.
Folk singing has had a long tradition in America, going way back before the original Tom Dooley, was alive on the Ohio Canal and the Mississippi Riverboats on which my great-grand father was a boatman up to the Mexican War. He left several poems in his 'River Boat Diary.'
In the 50's we also were treated to a book by Burdick and Lederer which is reviewed in Wikipedia ---
---The UGLY AMERICAN---- is the title of a 1958 political novel by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer. It became a bestseller, was influential at the time, and is still in print.
The novel describes how the United States is losing the struggle with Communism - What was later to be called ''the battle for hearts and minds'' - ;in Southeast Asia, because of arrogance and failure to understand the local culture.
The book takes place in a fictional nation known as Sarkhan. In the novel, a Bamar/Burmese journalist says "For some reason, the people I meet in my country are not the same as the ones I knew in the United States. A mysterious change seems to come over Americans when they go to a foreign land. They isolate themselves socially. They live pretentiously. They're loud and ostentatious." The phrase "ugly Americans" came to be applied to Americans behaving in this manner.
Ironically, the "ugly American" of the book title actually refers to one of the heroes, a plain-looking engineer named Homer Atkins, who lives with the local people, comes to understand their needs, and gives genuinely useful assistance with small-scale projects such as the development of a simple bicycle-powered water pump. It is argued in the book that the Communists are successful because they practice tactics similar to Atkins'.
According to an article published in Newsweek in May 1959, "The Ugly American," himself, was identified as an ICA technician named Otto Hunerwadel, who served in Burma from 1949 until his death in 1952.
Another of the book's heroes, Colonel Hillandale, appears to have been modeled on the real-life Air Force Lieutenant General Edward Lansdale, an expert in counter-guerrilla operations.
== 1963 film ==
The book was made into a 1963 film starring Marlon Brando as Harrison Carter MacWhite. Critics mostly agree that the film is uneven and does not convey the book's message clearly. The film was directed by George Englund.
The late Kukrit Pramoj, a Thai politician and scholar, played the role of Sarkhan's Prime Minister Kwen Sai. Later in 1975 he became the 13th Prime Minister of Thailand."
What is not mentioned in the 'Ugly American' are American Military who represent the antithesis of the hero, Homer Atkins. Americans have always had a soft-spot for those of us who become missionaries to foreign lands, and come back with an appreciation of other humans and have almost totally lost the xenophobia of youth, fresh from our educational system. And, which is also apparent in Peace Corps Volunteers, and unlike many typical returning veterans.
I do not want to be misinterpreted, I am the exception in my family, which had nearly 100% participation in these wars giving me a label, draft-dodger, though I honorably served my two years in ROTC Uniforms. My younger brother, Ron, was a particularly obvious Viet-Nam warrior, whom I recently lost. My son, Ed, was a Viet-Nam soldier but in Germany, from which he came back disabled. What follows is a fair statement, which avoids conflict, mostly.
"A HISTORY OF VIETNAM was strangely interwoven with the total history of the world: indeed, the story of the latter could be told in terms of the former, for here a renovated nationalism sought to emerge in a situation permeated with the ideological jealousies of the Great Powers beyond Vietnam herself.
Like Indonesia, Vietnam, or French Indochina, of which it was then a part, was declared liberated from its former colonial status by the Japanese invaders. Even during the Japanese occupation guerrilla warfare had been started up against the Japanese troops by Ho Chi Minh. In 1945 he set up his own independent Democratic Republic of North Vietnam. As the French refused to recognize this, he organized further resistance (Viet Minh) against the French attempt to reassert their position. Under the brilliant leadership of General Giap the French were continually harassed, and 15,000 French soldiers were trapped by Giap in the fortress of Dien Bieu Phu and finally forced to surrender in May 1954.
Such an event bred alarm among all the leading powers for the future of Indochina as a whole, and under their auspices the Geneva Conference convened. Here it was decided to make a fourfold division of the region: a communist North Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh, a noncommunist South Vietnam and two neutral states to the west, Laos and Cambodia. The plan was that all foreign troops should then vacate Indochina and that within two years free elections should be held in both parts of Vietnam to elect a government of the people's own choice for the whole area.
However, the very act of partition had serious consequences: essential rice supplies from the Mekong Delta were cut off from North Vietnam; moreover former Viet Minh now found themselves existing in the South, although many were communists and some were Buddhist-nationalists linked, if in nothing else, by their common hatred of the South Vietnam regime in Saigon, which was headed by the Roman Catholic Premier Diem.
In the years 1955-56 sporadic fighting against Diem's regime broke out, the rebels calling themselves Viet Cong (Vietnamese Communists). Diem appealed to the United States for help in suppressing them, and 16.000 American 'military advisers' soon arrived. In spite of this, the Viet Cong had by 1961 gained control of more than half the South Vietnam countryside. A group of discontented army officers then turned on Diem and murdered him in 1963. One short-lived South Vietnamese government followed another, each supported more and more by the Americans, for the US government now began to see the Vietnam struggle as a great world issue and applied to it their theory that if what they regarded as the communist threat were not countered here, one after the other the other cards in the pack, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Burma. India, Pakistan, would collapse and go communist.
In August 1964 the war began to spread: communist torpedoes menaced US warships in the Bay of Tonking; US planes bombed North Vietnamese naval bases. Thousands more US troops were brought over from America, numbers of communist soldiers came down from the North by the 'Ho Chi Minh Trail' to help the Viet Cong. Soon a full-scale war was in progress around and among a piteously suffering native population. A military impasse seemed to have been reached, and largely because of war-weariness in America and a fear shared by other powers that the Vietnam issue could at any moment spark off a world war, negotiations for a settlement at last began in Paris in January 1969 at a round table at which were seated representatives of North Vietnam, South Vietnam. the National Liberation front and the US Government. (In fairness, the American Population were also engaged, through witnessing almost nightly the self-immolation of Buddhist Monks on the streets of Saigon, the South Viet Nam capitol,)
THE FAR EAST
"There are two main features, the course of the Vietnam war and the 'Cultural Revolution' and its aftermath in the People's Republic of China. After some four years of savage strife, in January 1969 North Vietnam received her first diplomatic recognition from Sweden. In January 1973. after months of private and public diplomatic activity a cease-fire between North and South was arranged. Fighting continued, however, and it was not until 30 April l975 that President Minh of South Vietnam surrendered unconditionally to the Vietcong. In April 1976 the two halves of the country were reunited and Vietnam was recognized as one state. The most important aspect of the whole Vietnam war was that it demonstrated the inability, short of involvement in total war, of a great power (in this case the USA) to impose its will when met by determined opposition from a society (North Vietnamese) ideologically inspired and in some measure militarily supported from without.
After 1966 Chinese-Russian relations deteriorated, and the Chinese mainland scene was dominated by a mighty struggle within the governing Communist ranks. In August of that year the so-called Red Guards made their first appearance at one of Chairman Mao Tse-tung's huge rallies, and this marked the beginning of what came to be known as the 'Cultural Revolution'. This was an attempt by the ageing Marshall and his colleagues, 'the Rule of Four', to (in the words of its friends) preserve the purity of the original revolution, (in the words of its critics) to fasten a harsh, totalitarian regime on the whole country. In early 1967, after an incident between Russian diplomats at Peking airport and a period of closed schools and considerable social dislocation. Premier Chou en-lai called for discipline, and the Red Guards were ordered to desist from violence. In April 1975 General Chiang Kai-shek died in Taiwan, and on the mainland a Chinese National People's Congress, adopting a new constitution, headed the country in a new direction, towards some degree of domestic ideological relaxation, and of ----"
One of the defects in the US Foreign Policy during this era was a persistent lack of purpose other than opposing pernicious communism in every single instance, no matter where it cropped up in the World, though former victims of Japanese and German W.W.II aggression, seemed to be the most likely spots for eruptions to occur. The US has normally gone to war with clear purposes, and when they were not stated emphatically, speakers rose up to enunciate them:
""UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER
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Unconditional surrender is a surrender without conditions, except for those provided by international law. Normally a belligerent will only agree to surrender unconditionally if completely incapable of continuing hostilities. Announcing that only unconditional surrender is acceptable puts psychological pressure on a weaker adversary. It has also been criticized for forcing an opponent into a position where he has nothing to gain by negotiation or diplomacy, and might as well fight to the bitter end. The most notable uses of the term have been by the United States in the American Civil War and World War II.
In the era post World War II, the comparable example of unconditional surrender is that of the Pakistani army in East Pakistan at the hands of the Indian army and the Mukti Bahini during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 or the latter half of Bangladesh Liberation War. Here 93,000 Pakistani soldiers surrendered unconditionally to the Indian Allied Forces (Mitro Bahini) commander Lt. Gen. Jagjit Singh Aurora.
United States usage
The most famous early use of the phrase occurred during the 1862 Battle of Fort Donelson in the American Civil War. Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant of the Union Army received a request for terms from the fort's commanding officer, Confederate Brigadier General Simon Bolivar Buckner. Grant's reply was that "no terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works." When news of Grant's victory—one of the Union's first in the Civil War—was received in Washington, D.C., newspapers remarked (and President Abraham Lincoln endorsed) that Ulysses Simpson Grant's first two initials, "U.S.," stood for "Unconditional Surrender," which would later become his nickname.
However, subsequent surrenders to Grant were not unconditional. When Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Court House in 1865, Grant agreed to allow the men under Lee's command to go home under parole and to keep sidearms and private horses. Generous terms were also offered to John C. Pemberton at Vicksburg and (by Grant's subordinate, William T. Sherman) to Joseph E. Johnston in North Carolina.
The use of the term was revived during World War II at the Casablanca conference when American President Franklin D. Roosevelt offered it to the other Allies and the press as the objective of the war against the Axis Powers of Germany, Italy, and Japan. The term was also used at the end of World War II when Japan surrendered to the United States.
"Unconditional Surrender" is also the name of a statue dedicated to the city of San Diego, California, a sculpture based on the famous "V-J Day Kiss" photograph taken by Alfred Eisenstaedt of a sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square, New York City, in 1945.
A similar statue was erected in Sarasota, Florida in 2006 as part of their street art display. Many area residents and visitors were so impressed with the forty-eight foot tall statute that it became "the place" to have your picture taken. The statute was dismantled in May of 2006 but is said to be replaced by a permanent statute in the same area in the near future. No erection date has been announced.
It was also seen at the Battle of the Alamo, when Santa Anna asked Jim Bowie and William B. Travis for unconditional surrender. Even though Bowie wished surrender unconditionally, Travis refused and retaliated by firing a cannon at Santa Anna's army ----------""
Other voices and actions besides unconditional surrender have to be stressed, as will be seen in several articles to follow. Later the issues involved in 'just war' and 'pacifism' will be given some room. ---
"Thomas A. Dooley Foundation-Intermed-USA, Inc.
Acronym/Code: DOOLEY
Updated: 1/89
Categories:
Political, Service
Background:
Dr. Thomas A. Dooley III was "the famous jungle doctor of Laos," a Navy doctor who operated medical clinics near the Chinese border in the 1950s. (3) In 1958, he founded MEDICO and established 17 medical programs in 14 countries with a statement of purpose which included the words: "We are in no way a religious or political organization." (9) As he gave medical care to Laotian refugees within five miles of the Chinese border, he also collected intelligence, gave reports on people's movements to the CIA, as well as provided cover for Special Forces medics who were posing as civilian doctors. (3) The private nonprofit organization World Medical Relief (WM.) became a steady supplier of Dooley's clinics during this time. (3) According to the Pentagon Papers, Dooley's activities were part of a CIA effort designed to increase U.S. military presence in the area. Dooley distributed books about his Vietnam experiences to raise U.S. public support for his clinics. The fundraising campaigns described in his books were conducted by individuals and groups associated with the CIA and the U.S. Agency for International Development. (3) During this period, the Air Forces' Air Commandos Wing, under Brig. Gen. Harry C. "Heinie" Aderholt, began working with WMR in the same border area. Aderholt, who is also an editor for Soldier of Fortune magazine, later founded the private medical relief organization Air Commando Association (ACA). (3) In 1961, Tom Dooley died of cancer at age 34. President Kennedy presented Dooley's mother a Special Congressional Medal of Honor, saying, "Dr. Dooley typified the best of our country." (9) Dooley's friend, Dr. Verne Chaney, founded The Thomas A. Dooley Foundation in 1961 as "a non-profit, non-sectarian, non-government, non-political private voluntary organization... dedicated to the memory of Dr. Tom Dooley and his pioneering works." (9) In 1976, INTERMED, Inc. was founded in Geneva Switzerland as "a non-political, non-profit health association." (9) The joint group in the United States is known as The Thomas A. Dooley Foundation-Intermed-USA, Inc. Fundraising in the United States is carried out by the Dooley Foundation, and all projects outside the country are managed by INTERMED, Inc. (9) The organization has concentrated its efforts on areas of conflict, including Southeast Asia and Central America, and, twenty-five years after it was founded, DooleyIntermed still collaborates with World Medical Relief and the Air Commando Association.
Funding:
The Dooley Foundation's l985 budget showed revenues and support of $878,267 from the following Sources:
AID Freight-$55,055; Donated Supplies & Equipment (Private)--$191,420; Private Contributions--$603,763; and Private Revenue-$28,029. (6)
ACTIVITIES:
According to the organization's literature, "Following his untimely death from cancer in 1961, The Thomas A. Dooley Foundation was founded and continued his medical programs for the Laotian people until December 1975, when there was a change in government." (8) Dr. Verde Chancy, a military surgeon in Korea and "a surgical consultant in 1960 to Tom Dooley's programs in Cambodia and Viet-Nam," is the founder of Dooley Foundation and has been its president for over 25 years. (7,9) The organization is accredited by the Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid of the US Agency for International Development (AID). (9) The Dooley-Intermed Foundation's programs include preventive medicine, health education, professional training, care for the sick, paramedical training, immunizations, research, health surveys, clinical care, sanitation, nutrition, and family planning. The foundation reports that its refugee assistance programs in Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia continued until 1975, and in the last 25 years it has also worked with refugees and "primitive tribal groups" in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras (Nicaraguan refugees), India (Tibetans), Lebanon, Nepal, Pakistan (Afghans), Somalia, and Uganda. (9)
El Salvador: The Dooley-Intermed Foundation provides medical supplies to the right-wing Catholic lay organization Knights of Malta. Gerald Coughlin, who is the country representative for both Dooley-Intermed and Knights of Malta, described their work with refugees in counterinsurgency terms: "If you're not eating and a private organization brings you food, then you're less likely to be recruited by the guerrillas." (1)
Costa Rica: Dooley-Intermed reportedly works with Nicaraguan refugees in Costa Rica. (5,9)
Honduras: The Dooley-Intermed Foundation has assisted refugees, as well as the contras, with direct and indirect shipments of supplies. (2,3,5) According to Dr. Chaney, this refugee aid goes to support "refugees in general, families of contras, and the contra fighters themselves." (2) The Dooley-Intermed Foundation has sent assistance to the contras via Friends of the Americas and the Air Commando Association, and also directly to the FDN (the largest contra force). (2,3) The majority of the supplies originated from World Medical Relief (WMR), much as it did more than 25 years ago. (3,4) Dooley-Intermed president Dr. Verne Chaney verified a 1985 shipment of $300,000 in surgical supplies from WMR destined for the contras. (2,10) Dr. Chaney has also championed the contras' cause in the United States. In 1985, Chaney told interviewers that he fully supported the contras as "freedom fighters" struggling against communism. (2) That year, Chaney was appointed the volunteer medical advisor of the UNO (United Nicaraguan Opposition) contra force, and it has been reported that he plays an active, behind-the-scenes role in supplying the contras. (3,8) According to the group's newsletter, Gen. John Singlaub (president of the World Anti-Communist League) requested in 1985 that Dr. Chaney conduct a survey of the medical services and needs of the contras in Honduras and Costa Rica. The article says: "Dr. Chaney's subsequent report was influential in the recent decision of Congress to appropriate $27 million for humanitarian aid to the freedom fighters." (8)
GOVERNMENT CONNECTIONS
Dr. Tom Dooley provided intelligence for the CIA in the 1950s. (3) The Dooley-Intermed Foundation reported in 1987 that "we receive no government funding." (5) However, the organization has received AID assistance with shipping, and a 1988 AID report indicated that a cooperative agreement was under consideration to "provide support to the [contra] Resistance medical care system." (6,11)
PRIVATE CONNECTIONS:
For the past 25 years, the Dooley-Intermed Foundation has received medical supplies from the Detroit-based World Medical Relief. (2,3,4) Some of these supplies have been routed through the Air Commando Association (Ft. Walton Beach, FL) and Friends of the Americas (Baton Rouge, LA). (1,2) Some of them were distributed through the Knights of Malta in El Salvador. (1) Gerald T. Coughlin is country representative for Dooley-Intermed, Knights of Malta, and Direct Relief International. (1)
MISC:
On July 3, 1986, President Reagan wrote in a letter of praise to Dr. Verne Chaney: "It's a quarter of a century now since the legendary American physician and humanitarian Dr. Thomas A. Dooley III left this life... On this, the 25th anniversary of your [Chaney's] service to fellow man, I send you my heartfelt admiration and commendation." (9) The Tom Dooley Heritage Foundation (P. O. Box l907, Grand Central Station, New York NY l00l7) may be a related organization. Its basic operations are the same as the Dooley Foundation's, but its target area is Thailand. (6)
Comments: (Note: sources from the original article have been omitted)
Address: 420 Lexington Ave. , Room 2428, New York City, New York, 10170, (212) 687-3620." ---------
Dr. Dooley was only a small actor in the grand anti-Communist scheme, great institutions made themselves known with less than popular appeal, like what follows:
" Spellman and Kennedy also helped form a pro-Diem lobby in Washington. The rallying cries were anti-Communism and [Roman] Catholicism. Through their connections, they soon had a high-powered committee, which was a lumpy blend of intellectuals and conservatives.
Two men of national prominence, the former O.S.S. chief "Wild Bill" Donovan and General "Iron Mike" O'Daniel, were co-chairmen.
The membership included Senators [John F.] Kennedy and Richard Neuberger; Representatives Emmanuel Celler and Edna Kelly; and Angier Biddle Duke, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Max Lerner, socialist leader Norman Thomas, and conservative Utah Governor Bracken"
MORE
THE AMERICAN POPE (Cardinal Francis J. Spellman)
The Cardinal's message was clear. The fall of Vietnam brought the day closer when Communists would dominate the United States. "We shall risk bartering our liberties for lunacies, betraying the sacred trust of our forefathers, becoming serfs and slaves to the Red ruler's godless goons," he swore.
The other speakers needed no introduction: Madame Chiang Kaishek and Admiral Arthur W. Radford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who was a familiar figure at the Powerhouse. Both speakers were friends of the Cardinal and shared his conservative views. Madame Chiang lamented that the Soviets had corrupted the "minds and souls of those who became its puppets--the Chinese Communists." Radford asserted that the United States should be ready to police the world. The audience wildly applauded each speaker, but it was Spellman who brought them to their feet in a thunderous ovation. At the conclusion of the meeting, the Cardinal asked the legionnaires to pray for God's intervention. If Eisenhower wouldn't listen to Spellman, perhaps he would heed the Almighty. "Be with us, Blessed Lord," the Cardinal intoned, "lest we forget and surrender to those who have attacked us without cause, those who repaid us with evil for good and hatred for love."
The day after the convention the impact of Spellman's address was noted in the press. New York Daily News columnist John O'Donnell, for example, reported: "From a political viewpoint-- global, national and New York State--the speech delivered by Cardinal Spellman was by far the most significant and important heard here at the convention....''
Spellman's attack on Ho Chi Minh's revolution was the first sign of his involvement in the politics of Vietnam. Though few people knew this, the Cardinal played a prominent role in creating the political career of a former seminary resident in New York who had just become Premier of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem. In Diem, Spellman had seen the qualities he desired in any leader: ardent [Roman] Catholicism and rabid anti-Communism.
Cardinal Spellman had met Diem in New York in 1950, when the Vietnamese had been at the Maryknoll Seminary in Ossining, New York. A staunch [Roman] Catholic from a patrician family, Diem was at the seminary at the intercession of his brother, Ngo Din Thuc, a Roman Catholic bishop. A lay celibate and deeply religious, Diem had cut himself off from the world, especially his war-shredded nation, and had been known only to a small, politically active circle in the United States. In his homeland his name had hardly evoked enthusiasm. On an official level in the United States, Diem was an unknown quantity, a situation Spellman helped rectify. Diem's background meant that he inevitably came to the attention of Spellman.
The man responsible for bringing them together was Father Fred McGuire, the anti-McCarthy Vincentian who worked for the Propagation of the Faith. A former missionary to Asia, McGuire's intimate knowledge of the Far East was well known at the State Department. One day the priest was asked by Dean Rusk, then head of the Asian section, to see that Bishop Thuc, who was coming to the United States, met with State Department officials, McGuire recalled. Rusk also expressed an interest in meeting Diem."
THE RISE OF AMERICANISM
McGuire contacted his old friend Bishop Griffiths, who was still Spellman's foreign affairs expert. He asked that Thuc be properly received by the Cardinal, which he was. For the occasion Diem came to the Cardinal's residence from the seminary. The meeting between Spellman and Diem may well have been a historic one. Joseph Buttinger, a prominent worker with refugees in Vietnam, believed the Cardinal was the first American to consider that Diem might go home as the leader of South Vietnam."
In October 1950 the Vietnamese brothers met in Washington at the Mayflower Hotel with State Department officials, including Rusk. Diem and Thuc were accompanied by McGuire as well as by three political churchmen who were working to stop Communism: Father Emmanuel Jacque, Bishop Howard Carroll, and Georgetown's Edmund Walsh. The purpose of the meeting was to ask the brothers about their country and determine their political beliefs. It soon became clear that both Diem and Thuc believed that Diem was destined to rule his nation. The fact that Vietnam's population was only ten percent Catholic mattered little as far as the brothers were concerned." Such a step seemed unlikely. Before World War II Diem had been a civil servant connected loosely with nationalists. Later, he repeatedly refused to accept government offices under Emperor Bao Dai; the job he wanted was Prime Minister, but that had been denied him.
As Diem spoke during the dinner, his two most strongly held positions were readily apparent. He believed in the power of the [Roman] Catholic Church and he was virulently anti-Communist. The State Department officials must have been impressed. Concerned about Vietnam since Truman first made a financial commitment to helping the French there, they were always on the lookout for strong, anti-Communist leaders as the French faded.
After Dienbienphu, Eisenhower wanted to support a broader-based government than that of Emperor Bao Dai, who enjoyed little popular support and had long been considered a puppet of the French and the Americans. Thus U.S. officials wanted a nationalist in high office in South Vietnam to blunt some of Ho Chi Minh's appeal. The result was that Bao Dai offered Diem the job he had always wanted-Prime Minister. Diem's self-proclaimed prophecy was coming true. He returned to Saigon on June 26, 1954, or several weeks after the arrival of Edward Lansdale, the chief of the C.I.A.'s Saigon Military Mission, who was in charge of unconventional warfare. U.S. involvement entered a new stage.
THE AMERICAN POPE
Spellman's Vietnam stance was in accordance with the wishes of the Pope. Malachi Martin, a former Jesuit who worked at the Vatican during the years of the escalating U.S. commitment to Vietnam, said the Pope wanted the United States to back Diem because the Pope had been influenced by Diem's brother, Archbishop Thuc.
"The Pope was concerned about Communism making more gains at the expense of the [Roman Catholic] Church," Martin averred. "He turned to Spellman to encourage American commitment to Vietnam."
Thus Spellman embarked on a carefully orchestrated campaign to prop up the Diem regime. Through the press and a Washington lobby, the problems of confronting anti-Communism in Indochina became widely known in America. One of the men Spellman aided in promoting the Diem cause was Buttinger, a former Austrian Socialist who headed the international Rescue Committee, an organization that had helped refugees flee Communism after World War II and now helped people fleeing North Vietnam.
The Geneva Accords provided that people moving between the north and south should have three hundred days in which to do so. The refugee problems were enormous. When he visited New York, Buttinger met with Spellman and explained the situation. The Cardinal placed him in touch with Joe Kennedy, who arranged meetings for Buttinger with the editorial boards of major publications such as Time and the Herald Tribune. Editorials sympathetic to the plight of refugees fleeing Ho Chi Minh's Vietnam began appearing in the American press.
Spellman and Kennedy also helped form a pro-Diem lobby in Washington. The rallying cries were anti-Communism and [Roman] Catholicism. Through their connections, they soon had a high-powered committee, which was a lumpy blend of intellectuals and conservatives.
Two men of national prominence, the former O.S.S. chief "Wild Bill" Donovan and General "Iron Mike" O'Daniel, were co-chairmen.
The membership included Senators [John F.] Kennedy and Richard Neuberger; Representatives Emmanuel Celler and Edna Kelly; and Angier Biddle Duke, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Max Lerner, socialist leader Norman Thomas, and conservative Utah Governor Bracken Lee.
Spellman's man on the board was Monsignor Harnett, who headed the Cardinal's Catholic Near East Welfare Association and now served as the Vietnam lobby's chief link with the Catholic Relief Services.
To a large extent, many Americans came to believe that Vietnam was a preponderantly [Roman] Catholic nation. This misimpression resulted partly from Diem's emergence as ruler. With the help of C.I.A.- rigged elections in 1955, Diem abolished the monarchy and Bao Dai was forced to live in exile. The heavily [Roman] Catholic hue to the Vietnam lobby also accounted for much of the widespread belief. Still another factor was [Cardinal] Spellman's identification with the cause.
THE RISE OF AMERICANISM
Then there was the role of a winsome young [Roman] Catholic doctor working in Vietnam named Tom Dooley. A navy lieutenant who operated out of Haiphong, Dooley worked with refugees. At one point Dooley, a favorite of Spellman, even organized thirty-five thousand Vietnamese Catholics to demand evacuation from the north. Dooley's efforts were perhaps even more successful in the United States than in Vietnam. He churned out newspaper and magazine articles as well as three best-selling books that propagandized both the [Roman] Catholic and anti-Communist nature of his beliefs.
He fabricated stories about the suffering of Catholics at the hands of perverted Communists who beat naked priests on the testicles with clubs, deafened children with chopsticks to prevent them from hearing about God, and disemboweled pregnant women. A graduate of Notre Dame in Indiana, Dooley toured the United States promoting his books and anti-Communism before he died, in 1964, at age thirty-four. One of the last people to visit his sickbed was Cardinal Spellman, who held up the young physician as an inspiration for all - another martyr. Dooley's reputation remained untarnished until a Roman Catholic sainthood investigation in 1979 uncovered his C.I.A. ties."
Dooley had helped the C.I.A. destabilize North Vietnam through his refugee programs. The Catholics who poured into South Vietnam provided Diem with a larger political constituency and were promised U.S.-supported assistance in relocating. The American public largely believed that most Vietnamese were terrified of the cruel and bloodthirsty Viet Minh and looked to the God-fearing Diem for salvation. Many refugees simply feared retaliation because they had supported the French.
Within his first year in office, however, Diem became so closely identified with the United States that American officials grew worried about his effectiveness. This became apparent when Spellman had Harnett arrange travel plans for him to Vietnam. The monsignor contacted General L. Collins, head of U.S. military operations in Vietnam. When he heard of Spellman's proposed visit, the general became concerned. He cabled Foster Dulles that the Cardinal's presence would encourage propaganda within Vietnam that Diem was "an American puppet....... The fact that both Diem and the Cardinal are Catholic would give opportunity for false propaganda charges that the U.S. is exerting undue influence on Diem." The general noted, however, that if Spellman came he could serve a useful purpose, "dramatizing once more the great exodus of refugees from the North, the greater part of whom are Catholics." He concluded, though, "I think it would be wiser if he did not come."
=Spellman wasn't about to be put off. The Pope had asked him to intervene and he wanted to see the situation firsthand. His physical presence in Saigon, he knew, would place him and the Church firmly in Diem's camp in the public mind. When Spellman arrived at the Saigon airport, he was greeted by a wildly cheering crowd of about five thousand. The sixty-seven-year-old prelate was once again dressed in the army khaki attire that he loved to wear in military zones.
THE AMERICAN POPE
Spellman's propagandizing of the [Roman] Catholic nature of Diem's regime reinforced a negative image of the [Roman Catholic] Church's position in Vietnam. The sectarian nature of Diem's government and the problems of that government were noted by the writer Graham Greene, himself a Catholic, in a dispatch from Saigon printed in the London Sunday Times on April 24, 1955:
It is Catholicism which has helped ruin the government of Mr. Diem, for his genuine piety . . . has been exploited by his American advisers until the Church is in danger of sharing the unpopularity of the United States.
An unfortunate visit by Cardinal Spellman ["He spoke to us," said a Vietnamese priest, "much of the Calf of Gold but less of the Mother of God"] has been followed by those of Cardinal Gillroy and the Archbishop of Canberra. Great sums are spent on organizing demonstrations for the visitors, and an impression is given that the Catholic Church is occidental and an ally of the United States in the cold war.
On the rare occasions when Mr. Diem has visited the areas formerly held by the Viet Minh, there has been a [Roman Catholic] priest at his side, and usually an American one
The South, instead of confronting the totalitarian north with the evidences of freedom, has slipped into an inefficient dictatorship: newspapers suppressed, strict censorship, men exiled by administrative order and not by judgment of the courts. It is unfortunate that a government of this kind should be identified with one faith. Mr. Diem may well leave his tolerant country a legacy of anti-[Roman] Catholicism.
During his visit Spellman presented a check for $100,000 to the [Roman] Catholic Relief Services, which was active in the refugee-relocation program and later administered a great deal of the U.S. aid program, which closely bound the CRS to the U.S. war effort and later led to the suspicion that the CRS had C.I.A. ties. Turning to the [Roman Catholic] Church to perform such a function was done in Latin America, among other places, but in Vietnam it eventually seemed to bear out Graham Greene's warnings that the [Roman Catholic] Church and the United States were being tied to a cause unpopular among Vietnamese.
The potential for corruption in Vietnam was tremendous and also harmed the CRS's reputation. Drew Pearson estimated that in 1955 alone, the Eisenhower administration pumped more than $20 million in aid into Vietnam for the [Roman] Catholic refugees. Though it did a great deal of good, the CRS eventually encountered a great deal of resentment. Unavoidably, there was much graft and corruption involved in getting food, medical supplies, and other goods from ships to villages. By 1976 the National Catholic Reporter, a hard-nosed weekly newspaper, reported apparent CRS abuses in articles such as one entitled
"Vietnam 1965-1975. Catholic Relief Services Role:
Christ's Work - or the C.I.A.'s?"
THE RISE OF AMERICANISM
The abuses cited included using supplies as a means of proselytizing; giving only Catholics aid meant for everyone; being identified with the military; and giving CRS goods to American and Vietnamese soldiers rather than to the civilians for whom the goods were meant. 41
Moreover, there was much speculation that the CRS leadership in Vietnam had C.I.A. links, although this was never proved.
Long before the National Catholic Reporter began its investigations, both the U.S. government and Spellman backed away from the increasingly arrogant and difficult Diem, who, by the early 1960s, lost support among his people almost daily. Buddhists held massive protest marches against the government and clashed in the streets on occasion with Catholics. Finally, on November 2, 1963, Diem was assassinated during a C.I.A.-inspired coup d'etat.
Two years after the assassination, Spellman told of his knowledge of Kennedy's involvement to Dorothy Schiff, the Post publisher, who again visited him at the chancery. According to her notes:
"He [Spellman] knew that President Kennedy had been asked to make a decision as to whether or not Diem would be removed and had decided that it was all right for this to happen--this on a recommendation from American officials in Vietnam. The Cardinal said he knew that Kennedy had thought about it overnight, changed his mind and that he knew that he would have rescinded his decision of the night before had the event not already taken place and Diem been dead." 42
The publisher was amazed by the revelation, but there was nothing she could do with the information. Once again, she had promised not to reveal what she heard at the Powerhouse. Shortly before the coup Spellman disassociated himself from Diem. When Bishop Thuc [ Diem's brother .... JP ] visited New York, Spellman refused to see him, and he personally asked Bishop Fulton J. Sheen not to receive Thuc as well. Spellman and Sheen were feuding. Sheen disregarded Spellman's request and had Thuc to lunch while Spellman simmered.
Though Spellman backed away from Diem, he didn't turn his back on Vietnam any more than the U.S. government did. The Cardinal became one of the most hawkish, arguably the most hawkish, leaders in the United States. By 1965 he clashed with the Pope, who desperately tried to bring peace in Vietnam as Spellman pounded the drums of war.
[The papacy plays the role of "peacemaker" after getting USA into the war in Vietnam on the side of the Roman Catholic ruling class .... JP]
- END QUOTE - END CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
THE PRINCE OF POWER
SPELLMAN EXPECTED DEFERENTIAL TREATMENT NOT ONLY from legions of politicians and millions of laymen but also from members of the hierarchy. Indisputably, he did more for the Church than all the rest of the American hierarchy combined.
His cleverness, contacts, and persistence enabled the Vatican to play a forceful international role, after centuries of limited political power. Spellman was the indispensable source of riches and favors for churchmen in both Rome and America. The Pope depended on Spellman and the Cardinal could get whatever he wanted. At times it seemed impossible to tell where the power of the one left off and that of the other began. It was clear that in America Spellman was the Church's kingmaker. He bestowed the title "monsignor" with the regularity of a commander making battlefield promotions, and he made many bishops in his busy, modern court. If anything, Spellman's power increased after Pius became ill.
The health of a pope is always taken seriously. When it appeared in December 1954 that Pius was dying, Spellman was continually on the telephone to Rome. He had visited the Pope months earlier when Pius was first suffering from violent bouts of hiccuping that left him exhausted and unable to hold food down. Spellman sat by his old friend's side in the Pope's bedroom, with its two windows overlooking St. Peter's Square and its simple furnishings--a brass bed, a chest of---
-END QUOTE- end page 246 -------
QUESTION? Just who are the Ugly Americans who give our whole country a reputation? I should like to digress and examine a phenomenon that extends from Racism and Bigotry -
XENOPHOBIA
{{wiktionarypar|xenophobia}}
'''Xenophobia''' denotes a phobic attitude toward strangers or of the unknown. It comes from the Greek language/Greek words ????? (''xenos''), meaning "foreigner," "stranger," and ????? (''phobos''), meaning "fear." The term is typically used to describe fear or dislike of alien (law)/foreigners or in general of people different from one's self. For example, racism is sometimes described as a form of xenophobia, but in most cases racism has nothing to do with a real phobia. Xenophobia implies a belief, accurate or not, that the target is in some way foreign. Prejudice against women cannot be considered xenophobic in this sense, except in the limited case of all-male clubs or institutions. The term xenophilia is used for the opposite behavior, attraction to or love for foreign persons.
The American Psychiatric Association's 'DSM-IV/Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,' 4th edition ("DSM-IV") includes in its description of a phobia an "intense anxiety" which follows exposure to the "object of the phobia, either in real life or via imagination or video..." For xenophobia there are two main objects of the phobia. The first is a population group present within a society, which is not considered part of that society. Often they are recent immigration|immigrants, but xenophobia may be directed against a group which has been present for centuries. This form of xenophobia can elicit or facilitate hostile and violent reactions, such as mass expulsion of immigrants, or in the worst case, genocide.
The second form of xenophobia is primarily cultural, and the objects of the phobia are cultural elements which are considered alien. All cultures are subject to external influences, but cultural xenophobia is often narrowly directed, for instance at foreign loan words in a national language. It rarely leads to aggression against persons, but can result in political campaigns for cultural or linguistic purification. Isolationism, a general aversion of foreign affairs, is not accurately described as xenophobia. Additionally, in the world of science fiction, xenophobia usually refers to a fear or hatred of extraterrestrial cultures or beings.
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Some leaders, in a misguided attempt to increase their power choose to use labels like 'Evil, or Axis of Evil' to describe their xenophobic choices. A recent article by Maureen Dowd in the New York Times gives examples of Mental Abberations, which some world leaders have used to draw a nation into War. ----
MAUREEN DOWD
February 17, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Captive to History's Caprice
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
"Maybe we are the ones we've been waiting for. Or maybe we are not.
Perhaps when Barack Obama uses that trippy line, he is just giving false Hopi, since the saying, which he picked up from Maria Shriver's New Age-y L.A. endorsement speech, is credited to Hopi Indians.
The passionate palaver about Hillary versus Barry rages on, with each side certain it is right about our fate if we end up with a President Obama or another President Clinton.
Hillary says Obama is "all hat and no cattle." You'd think she'd want to avoid cattle metaphors, so as not to rile up those with a past beef about her sketchy windfall on cattle futures. She could simply say he's all cage and no bird.
But is she right, that he'd be a callow leader, too trusting of Republicans, dictators and terrorists? Is Bill right, that voters should not be swayed by eloquence and excitement? (Unless he's running.)
Or is Obama right, that Hillary would ensure that the acrid mood of the last 15 years would continue to paralyze Washington, appall Americans and shrink our standing in the world?
Who knows? As a Henry James character said about art: "We work in the dark. We do what we can. We give what we have."
Gingerly, I would like to inject a note of uncertainty into this season of certainty. Covering seven presidential campaigns has made me realize that when it comes to predicting how presidents will perform, "nobody knows anything," as William Goldman said about Hollywood.
You'd think it would be safe to vote on issues, but politicians often don't feel the need to honor their campaign promises. I covered Bush Senior saying, "Read my lips: No new taxes." I also covered him raising taxes and saying, "Read my hips." I covered W. promising a humble foreign policy and no nation-building. I also covered the Iraq fiasco.
Voters try to figure out who they trust to have life-and-death power over them, but there's so much theatricality and artifice in campaigns you can get a false impression of who someone is.
And you never know who they will become once they move into the insular, heady womb of the White House — or how they will be buffeted by the caprice of history, and the randomness of crises.
At the very moment when politicians should be on top of the world, Ma, embraced by the voters, enhanced by the toys and levers of power, their gremlins surface. They inevitably get hit with trouble that they never could have imagined or prepared for, and that can trigger self-doubt and self-destruction and self-pity.
Why didn't J. F. K. simply toss out the C.I.A. plan developed under Eisenhower to send 1,200 exiles to overthrow a popular Cuban leader with a force of 200,000? He felt the need to prove himself.
Why did L. B. J. ignore his own solid political instincts to listen to Robert McNamara and Dean Rusk about Vietnam — falling under their stupid sway because they had been J. F. K.'s advisers?
Nixon, driven by the same pathology of envy about Kennedy and other golden boys, conspired in a political crime while coasting to re-election.
Why did W. let Cheney and Rummy lead him into hubristic disaster? He, too, needed to prove himself — and outdo Daddy. How could the "compassionate conservative" bike through Katrina?
The self-destructive impulses that consumed Bill Clinton detracted from his policy achievements and distracted him from achieving all he could have.
The press tends to swallow campaign narratives of sin and redemption, hard lessons learned.
After giving up drinking and becoming Texas governor, W. had supposedly changed from an arrogant, obdurate, Daddy-competing loser to a genial, bipartisan, mature winner. As it turned out, a total makeover is not possible after 40.
Hillary's narrative echoes W.'s: After the scalding partisanship of the '90s, she became a senator and turned the other cheek, working on legislation with Republicans who had pursued the impeachment case against her husband. She has supposedly learned from her White House mistakes on health care, Travelgate and legal issues, from her battles with the right and the press. She knows now that being obstructionist and secretive don't work.
An appealing arc, but is it true? Her campaign shake-up showed that she continues to rank loyalty and secrecy above competence and ingenuity. She is still so guarded that she began answering questions from the press and voters only after she lost Iowa.
All of us have known big shots who keep a check on their real feelings and dark tendencies until they get the top job. Then they throw off the restraints and revert to their worst instincts, bullying others and insulating themselves with sycophants.
Hillary could be ready on Day 1 — to make up her Enemies List and banish Overkill Bill to a cubbyhole in the Old Executive Office Building. But it's Day 2 that I'm really worried about."
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Some go for higher ground, and since there seems to be little danger in that, (hey, we've already taken a look at efforts to promote peace through Folk Singing, haven't we"), let's take a look!
UU World Magazine
PROPHETIC NONVIOLENCE
Toward a Unitarian Universalist theology of war and peace.
By Paul Rasor
Spring 2008 2.15.08
RECENT ARTICLES
The 2006 General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association posed this provocative question for congregations to consider over the next few years:
Should the Unitarian Universalist Association reject the use of any and all kinds of violence and war to resolve disputes between peoples and nations and adopt a principle of seeking just peace through nonviolent means?
The four-year process launched in 2006 to take up this question will lead to a "Statement of Conscience" for consideration by the 2010 General Assembly. A resource guide distributed to all UUA congregations asks:
Should we, the Unitarian Universalist Association and member congregations, adopt a specific and detailed "just war" policy to guide our witness, advocacy, and social justice efforts?
I suspect the denomination as a whole is ambivalent, as I suspect are many of us as individuals. I do not see any inevitable outcome, no single "right" answer to these questions. Unitarian Universalists have historically followed the just war model, but there have always been pacifists among us and we have long affirmed peace as a core value.
Many people assume that just war and pacifism are opposing positions, but they actually have much in common. Properly understood, both are anti-war traditions. Both seek to limit the use of violent force, and they will be on the same side in nearly all cases. More importantly, both pacifism and just war share several core commitments that are also reflected in Unitarian Universalist theological principles. By recognizing these commonalities, we can move beyond old divisions toward a position that integrates the two traditions. I will explore both traditions before introducing my own proposal.
Some people now argue that peacemaking should be recognized as a third anti-war theory. Practices that focus on preventing violent conflict are crucial, but many peacemaking advocates believe that pacifism or just war theories are still necessary to help us make moral judgments about actual wars, something that peacemaking itself does not do. Peacemaking, then, complements rather than replaces these traditions.
THE JUST WAR TRADITION
The just war tradition is a framework for making moral judgments about war. There is no "official" version of just war theory. It originated in the Catholic Church during the fourth century CE, and since the sixteenth century it has also been part of Protestant thought, secular philosophy, and international law. The theory continues to be developed and debated.
Two very different understandings of the just war model have emerged. Although just war theory is used by some to justify most uses of military force, a more restrictive approach sees the theory as a tool for limiting the violence of war. The restrictive model is far more consonant with our liberal theological principles, and it is the perspective I will assume in this discussion.
The most familiar part of the just war tradition is probably its list of criteria. But just war analysis begins with a presumption against war; the criteria are applied to determine whether this presumption might be overcome in specific cases. There is no universally recognized list of criteria, though the main ones are widely recognized. They are usually divided into two groups. The first names the conditions that must be met before going to war (jus ad bellum, or the justice of war); the second addresses the actual conduct of war (jus in bello, or justice in war). I will focus on the first group since these are most relevant to our own question. (Omitted here)
Probability of success requires a reasonable expectation that a nation can achieve both its immediate goal—fending off the invading army, say—and the restoration of justice that is always the ultimate goal of a just war. Otherwise, we end up with both the suffering we create by going to war and the evil we sought unsuccessfully to prevent.
The just war tradition raises many difficult issues, even apart from the difficulty of applying the criteria in specific cases. First, the name "just war" seems to imply that war can sometimes be just. But this is not what the theory claims: a "just war" is never just. As Michael Walzer explains:
Just is a term of art here; it means justifiable, defensible, even morally necessary (given the alternatives)—and that is all it means. . . . [J]ustice in the strong sense, the sense that it has in domestic society and everyday life, is lost as soon as the fighting begins. War is a zone of radical coercion, in which justice is always under a cloud.
The term justifiable is better, but still problematic. John Howard Yoder, a leading Mennonite peace theologian, argues that to say that a war is justifiable within the meaning of the tradition is to say only "that a case can be made" for it.
Second, just war theory is often criticized for making war easier to justify by rationalizing it. This can happen if the criteria are applied as a checklist to go over during war preparations, or if they are seen as a hurdle to get over rather than a moral boundary we should be reluctant to cross. Yoder uses the term "toothless just war talk" to describe those who misapply the just war tradition by using its language to justify war rather than to restrain it.
A related danger is what Glen Stassen calls "tunnel vision." Just war theory provides a basis for moral critique of inappropriate military force, but it does not propose constructive alternatives. "If the only ethical theory we have is one that focuses on when military action is right or wrong," he writes, "its tendency is to focus our discussion on military action and away from other effective actions."
On the other hand, the restrictive model has brought just war increasingly closer to pacifism. One factor in this trend is the reality that in modern warfare, several criteria are probably impossible to meet. Some argue that since all wars will violate at least some of the criteria, no war can ever be justified. The result is that the peace presumption has been strengthened, and just war analysis is now, according to Todd Whitmore, "much more likely to condemn a particular instance of war than to justify it." Philosopher Jenny Teichman describes this view as just war pacifism.
For Unitarian Universalists, a key benefit of the just war approach is its assumption that decisions about war and peace are always subject to moral criticism. Walzer argues that just war "is a doctrine of radical responsibility" because it holds officials morally accountable for decisions that affect the lives of thousands of human beings. The restrictive just war model is therefore a valuable tool that can help us frame our prophetic critique.
PACIFISM
Pacifism is a philosophical or religious stance of opposition to war. Beyond this simple description, however, pacifism is difficult to define. Yoder points out: "There is no such thing as a single position called pacifism, to which one clear definition can be given and which is held by all pacifists." In fact, he counts twenty-nine different types of pacifism. In addition, a variety of terms is used to describe these different positions, and these terms are not always used consistently.
The word pacifism did not appear until the early twentieth century. Previously, nonresistance was the term used by most Christian pacifists to describe what we now call pacifism. Today, nonviolence is probably the term most commonly used as a synonym for pacifism, though nonviolence is also used in other contexts. Because of these ambiguities, none of these terms should be used without clarification. (Webster's says it was applied to French Soldiers refusing to fight after seeing so many of their fellows dead).
It is common to distinguish between absolute and conditional pacifism. Absolute pacifists are opposed to any form of participation in war. For many, pacifism is a personal stance, and not necessarily a political stance. Pacifists might refuse to participate in war by becoming conscientious objectors without necessarily opposing a government's decision to go to war in a particular case. But for most absolute pacifists, opposition to war is both a personal and a political commitment. They not only refuse to participate in war, they reject war itself as an option for settling disputes among nations.
Absolute pacifism is normally based on adherence to a core principle, such as the biblical command "do not kill." At first glance, this appears to be an easy form of moral decision making, since the same rule always applies. But this appearance is deceptive. Does it mean no war, or no violence of any kind, or no killing? Should the biblical commandment be translated as "do not kill" or "do not murder"? And absolutes are difficult to maintain in practice because there are always hard cases. (I think of Quakers in reference to absolute pacifism).
Conditional pacifism begins as an anti-war position, but allows that force may be justified in particular circumstances. This stance raises several issues as well. First, we have to be clear about what the exceptions are, and whether we are open in principle to other exceptions. Then, we need a mechanism for identifying the kinds of real world circumstances that trigger the exceptions. Is there a principle we can apply, or do we just decide on a case-by-case basis? If there is a principle, how is it different from the just war model? After all, just war is basically a form of conditional pacifism.
As with the just war theory, pacifism raises difficult issues. Some critics charge that pacifism precludes prophetic critique because it offers no standards for evaluating particular wars. If war is never justified, then no analysis of government policy is ever necessary, and no critical judgments need to be made—or can be made. Walzer sees this form of pacifism as a kind of cop-out, "the radicalism of people who do not expect to exercise power," and who therefore "are not prepared to make the judgments" that may be required. What he is really objecting to, it seems to me, is a lazy pacifism, a pacifism of avoidance.
This criticism makes an important point, but it overstates the case. Most pacifists I know, certainly among Quakers, are very concerned with making critical judgments about appropriate uses of power. It is also misleading to suggest that there is no critical message in the pacifist stance. Even absolute pacifists often point to the horrible consequences of particular wars, although the message is meant to be a general one against all war. Yet this general message can be seen as a form of prophetic witness against the idolatry of war. But the criticism nevertheless raises an important issue for UUs: Prophetic critique is an important part of our tradition, and any stance we adopt should make room for this.
Some have suggested that Unitarian Universalism might become a peace church. While I agree that we should affirm a basic commitment to nonviolence, I believe peace church communities would point to a radical difference in self-understanding. The just war model developed largely through principles of natural law, not through articles of faith or interpretation of scripture. To put it in terms we liberals are familiar with, just war is grounded in reason, not in revelation. (Several paragraphs have been omitted) -----
Both pacifism and just war thinking have been part of Unitarian and Universalist religious practice since the early nineteenth century. Unitarian minister Noah Worcester (1758–1837) is considered the "founding spirit" of the first sustained pacifist movement in North America outside the historic peace churches during the 1810s. William Ellery Channing (1780–1842), the defining theologian of early American Unitarianism, wrote several sermons and extended discourses on war between 1810 and 1838. These have a strong anti-war flavor, but in the end, Channing held what can only be called a just war position.
Channing begins with a peace presumption: "There is always a presumption against the justice of war; always reason to fear that it is condemned by impartial conscience and God." He limits the reasons for war in terms that are remarkably similar to the standard criteria:
War, as it is commonly waged, is indeed a tremendous evil; but national subjugation is a greater evil than a war of defense; and a community seems to me to possess an indisputable right to resort to such a war when all other means have failed for the security of its existence or freedom.
And when war comes, it should always be engaged in "with a full consciousness of rectitude and with unfeigned sorrow."
Channing also touches on the element of proper authority, and he includes a moral theory of government similar in some ways to the Catholic theory:
Government is instituted for the very purpose of protecting the community from all violence, . . . whether of domestic or foreign foes. . . . The very end and office of government is to resist evil men. For this the civil magistrate bears the sword.
But for Channing, war is ultimately a moral and spiritual problem, and this means that "peace without can come only through peace within." (more examples have been omitted here, but I would like to refer the reader to Henry David Thoreau for clear thoughts on peace & action).
The Civil War witnessed a sharp decline in liberal pacifism, and the tradition of Christian nonresistance remained marginalized through the end of the nineteenth century. World War I, however, brought a resurgence of pacifism, and one of the leading figures in this movement was John Haynes Holmes (1879–1964), probably the most well-known Unitarian pacifist in the twentieth century.
The minister of what is now the Community Church of New York, Holmes developed his own theory of nonresistance in his book New Wars for Old, published in 1916. Like Ballou, Holmes grounded his pacifism in Jesus' teaching and agreed that nonresistance does not mean passive acquiescence; evil must be resisted. What Jesus meant was "do not resist evil with its own weapons"—violence with violence, force with force. Instead, we are "to meet injury with service and evil with good."
Unlike Ballou, Holmes applied these principles to international relations as well as personal relationships and argued that war is never justifiable, even in self-defense. If a nation is attacked, it should not resist with violent force even though it may be conquered. War cannot conquer the human spirit, he said, and this is what matters. Our ultimate loyalty should not be to the nation, but to the world, "the great circle of humanity."
While Holmes was an important figure in the pacifist movement, most Unitarians and Universalists supported World War I. The Unitarian General Conference voted overwhelmingly to support the war, and in 1918 the American Unitarian Association imposed economic sanctions on congregations whose ministers were not "willing, earnest, and outspoken" supporters of the war. Many pacifist ministers in both denominations lost their positions or were ostracized by their colleagues.
We did better during World War II. The AUA again supported the war, but, under the leadership of President Frederick May Eliot, it was far more supportive of pacifists and conscientious objectors.
Unitarian theologian James Luther Adams (1901– 1994) was among those who supported American involvement in World War II. Indeed, he regularly spoke out against pacifism before and during the war. He opposed the Vietnam War, however, at least partly because it violated the just war criterion of proportionality: "a nation should not undertake a war, if military success was obviously impossible, and if the damage inflicted was disproportionate to the good sought." Yet the only extended writing he seems to have done on just war theory is a lengthy essay in 1970 in which he applied the just war criteria as a test for determining when it was appropriate to engage in civil disobedience.
The Vietnam War proved divisive for Unitarian Universalists. Widespread anti-war activism in some ways reenacted in reverse the experience of World War I. This time it was non-pacifists who felt ostracized, and many people left our churches in the face of what they saw as anti-war absolutism.
It is precisely this sort of divisiveness we must avoid as we move forward with our denominational discernment. Among other things, we must explore ways in which the just war and pacifist traditions can be seen as mutually supportive rather than mutually exclusive.
BEYOND JUST WAR AND PACIFISM
I believe we can move beyond this old divide by adopting an integrated model I call prophetic nonviolence. To move "beyond just war and pacifism" is not to abandon either tradition; it is to recognize that both perform important roles in our ongoing efforts to reduce the violence of war.
I begin with a fundamental commitment to nonviolence. Unitarian Universalists have always affirmed peace as among our most basic values. We have always worked to create the kinds of just communities out of which peace emerges, and we have long supported the use of nonviolent methods of conflict resolution. This is the legacy we share with pacifism.
At the same time, Unitarian Universalism has always been an engaged religion, one that tries to make a difference in the world. An important part of this engagement is our tradition of speaking prophetically—of bringing reasoned judgment and critique to bear on the social conditions that generate injustice and violence. In the context of war, this commitment has been well served by the just war model.
My proposal for prophetic nonviolence links our deep commitment to nonviolence with our historical practice of prophetic critique, and it is supported by several commonalities between the pacifist and just war traditions. Both share a presumption against war, a presumption based in part on a moral duty not to harm. Both put peace in the center of their ethical thinking and relegate war to the margins. Keeping peace in the center helps focus our critique and reminds us of the importance of peacemaking and other violence-prevention strategies.
In addition, both just war and pacifism are concerned with the limits of loyalty to the state. This is more obvious in religious pacifism, which often speaks of a higher loyalty to God. But this concern is also present in the just war model. By placing the burden of proof on those who would justify the use of force, the presumption against war reflects a basic suspicion of official claims. Ethicist Joseph Fahey says: "Today's nation states presume that young men and women are willing to kill other young men and women for their flag." This presumption is reflected in our national policies toward conscientious objectors, for example, who must make a case for not taking up arms. Both the pacifist and just war traditions take a principled stand against the official presumption that young people must be prepared to kill at the behest of the state.
Finally, the recent trend toward pacifism in many non-peace churches suggests a growing convergence of the two traditions. Roman Catholic teaching now recognizes just war and nonviolence as "distinct but interdependent methods of evaluating warfare" for both individuals and states. Fahey notes a similar shift in the liberal and mainline Protestant churches, which traditionally have depended on the just war model. "The return in the late twentieth century to pacifism," he writes, "is perhaps the most notable feature of contemporary Christian teaching on war and peace." Our denominational study process may tell us whether Unitarian Universalists are moving in a similar direction.
BASES FOR CRITIQUE
In our prophetic critique of the government's justifications for war, we will naturally draw on the just war criteria. These have a built-in familiarity and a rich set of interpretive traditions that make them extremely useful for this purpose, and public discourse about particular wars is likely to be carried on in just war language. However, as helpful as these criteria may be, we must remember that our real criteria—the true bases for our prophetic critique—are our own theological principles. Our critique must be our critique, grounded in our religious values and historical practices. Unitarian Universalist theological principles relevant to a UU response to war include these: (I chose to omit these 'principles' because I want UU's to assert the creedless nature of this church).
Power can be exercised for good or evil; it can create or destroy, liberate or oppress. War is an expression of coercive and violent power; peace and justice require cooperative forms of power. Power's ambiguous nature means that its use must be guided by our core values such as love and justice.
These principles suggest that in addition to applying the just war criteria, we must ask questions such as: Does this military action promote or inhibit unity among peoples? Does it express love and compassion toward our neighbors, or does it reflect fear and hate? Does it increase or restrict the possibilities for human freedom and fulfillment? Does it contribute to the creation of right relationships and just social structures, or does it harm these relationships? What kinds of power are being used, and by whom? These kinds of assessments will add power and depth to our prophetic practice.
OUR CHALLENGE
Whatever position we adopt as a denomination, we need to be as clear and as theologically grounded as possible. Clarity will best serve individual members and congregations in their own discernment processes, and it will provide the most effective basis for strong prophetic critique. Any stance we adopt will be ineffective if it is simply a reaction to the current political situation. Instead, it must be a genuine expression of our Unitarian Universalist theological principles and religious values.
We need to honor the differences that exist among us. Any statement worth making will surely provoke disagreement. This is not a reason to avoid the issue or to take so noncommittal a stance that we don't really say anything. But we need to be careful to welcome and honor those who hold different views, and perhaps to remind ourselves that one of the tenets of liberalism is that nothing is ever finally settled.
We must avoid the dangers of political correctness. We don't have a very good record on this count. The ostracism suffered by those who held minority positions during World War I and the Viet-Nam War reflects an unfortunate streak of illiberal self-righteousness that runs deep, as any Republican in our midst can testify. By drawing on the commonalities between the just war and pacifist traditions and by emphasizing our Unitarian Universalist theological principles, I have tried to show that it is possible to formulate a position that can be endorsed by pacifists and just war advocates alike. My own proposal is surely not the only possible synthesis. Yet a question that haunts me is whether our members who serve in the military would feel less welcome if my proposal were adopted as a denominational stance. I truly hope not.
Whatever our individual views, we need to treat each other with compassion, respect, and love as we move through this process. However inclusive our intentions and our language, we cannot eliminate all disagreement, nor should we try to do so. The very process of discussion through disagreement can help clarify our ideas and make us aware of the unintended consequences of our own words. At the same time, we need to remember that we belong to a shared religious tradition and that our disagreements reflect our deeper levels of agreement—our shared theological principles and our shared commitment to peace.
Our current study process presents an opportunity to clarify our thinking, to air some long-hidden differences, and to make a strong public statement in support of our deepest values on one of the most important issues of our time. May we accept the challenge in a spirit of love and grace.
© 2008 by Paul Rasor, who will be speaking on this theme at the General Assembly in June in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. See sidebar for links to related resources.
UU World Magazine | 25 Beacon Street, Boston MA 02108 | (617) 948-6518
© 1996-2007 Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations
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This concludes our dissertation on the war in the 1960's and 70's and we proceed to several points for discussion of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars that presently confront us; this is followed by quoting a chapter from Leo Tolstoy's book 'War and Peace' --- There are a hundred others!!!\ . ---- PAUL KRUGMAN ---
To understand what's really happening in Iraq, follow the oil money, which already knows that the surge has failed.
Back in January, announcing his plan to send more troops to Iraq, President Bush declared that "America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced."
Near the top of his list was the promise that "to give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country's economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis."
There was a reason he placed such importance on oil.
Oil is pretty much the only thing Iraq has going for it. Two-thirds of Iraq's GDP and almost all its government revenue come from the oil sector. Without an agreed system for sharing oil revenues, there is no Iraq, just a collection of armed gangs fighting for control of resources.
Well, the legislation Bush promised never materialized, and on Wednesday attempts to arrive at a compromise oil law collapsed.
What's revealing is the cause of the breakdown. Last month the provincial government in Kurdistan, defying the central government, passed its own oil law; last week a Kurdish Web site announced that the provincial government had signed a production-sharing deal with the Hunt Oil Co. of Dallas. That seems to have been the last straw.
Now here's the thing: Ray L. Hunt, the chief executive and president of Hunt Oil, is a close political ally of Bush. More than that, Hunt is a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, a key oversight body. Some commentators have expressed surprise at the fact that a businessman with very close ties to the White House is undermining U.S. policy. But that isn't all that surprising, given this administration's history. Remember, Halliburton was still signing business deals with Iran years after Bush declared Iran a member of the "axis of evil."
No, what's interesting about this deal is the fact that Hunt, thanks to his policy position, is presumably as well-informed about the actual state of affairs in Iraq as anyone in the business world can be. By putting his money into a deal with the Kurds, despite Baghdad's disapproval, he's essentially betting that the Iraqi government — which hasn't met a single one of the major benchmarks Bush laid out in January – won't get its act together. Indeed he's effectively betting against the survival of Iraq as a nation in any meaningful sense of the term.
The smart money, then, knows that the surge has failed, that the war is lost, and that Iraq is going the way of Yugoslavia, And I suspect that most people in the Bush administration — maybe even Bush himself — know this, too.
After all, if the administration had any real hope of retrieving the situation in Iraq, officials would be making an all-out effort to get the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to start delivering on some of those benchmarks, perhaps using the threat that Congress would cut off funds otherwise. Instead, the Bushies are making excuses, minimizing Iraqi failures and, in general, giving the Maliki government no incentive to do anything differently.
And, for that matter, if the administration had any real intention of turning public opinion around, as opposed to merely shoring up the base enough to keep Republican members of Congress on board, it would have sent Gen. David Petraeus, the top military commander in Iraq, to as many news media outlets as possible — not granted an exclusive appearance to Fox News on Monday night.
All in all, Bush's actions have not been those of a leader seriously trying to win a war. They have, however, been what you'd expect from a man whose plan is to keep up appearances for the next 16 months, never mind the cost in lives and money, then shift the blame for failure onto his successor.
In fact, that's my interpretation of something that startled many people: Bush's decision last month, after spending years denying that the Iraq war had anything in common with Vietnam, to suddenly embrace the parallel. Here's how I see it: At this point, Bush is looking forward to replaying the political aftermath of Vietnam, in which the right wing eventually achieved a rewriting of history that would have made George Orwell proud, convincing millions of Americans that our soldiers had victory in their grasp but were stabbed in the back by the peaceniks back home.
What all this means is that the next president, even as he or she tries to extricate us from Iraq — and prevent the country's breakup from turning into a regional war — will have to deal with constant sniping from the people who lied us into an unnecessary war, then lost the war they started, but will never, ever, take responsibility for their failures.
Krugman is a columnist for the New York Times 2008 ------------------------------
Bush is not the only leader who staked his legacy to winning a war. Try Afghanistan ----
Tangled web: How an idea spread and grew on the Internet.
Pipe Dreams - "The origin of the "bombing-Afghanistan-for-oil-pipelines" theory.
By Seth Stevenson in SLATE
Posted Thursday, Dec. 6, 2001, at 2:32 PM ET
Illustration by Robert Neubecker
A theory making the rounds on the Internet, on the airwaves, and in the press claims that the bombing of the Taliban has nothing to do with a "war on terrorism" but everything to do with the oil pipeline the West wants to build through Afghanistan. Where did this theory start, and how did it spread?
The California energy company Unocal seriously pursued building an Afghanistan pipeline in the 1990s, but back then the theorists, such as this Middle East specialist in 1998, argued that the West was propping up the Taliban in hopes that they would cooperate on building a pipeline. On March 8, 2001, a think-tanker and former CIA analyst noted in a New York Times op-ed that "[i]n 1996, it seemed possible that American-built gas and oil pipelines from Central Asia could run through an Afghanistan ruled by one leader. Cruelty to women aside, we did not condemn the Taliban juggernaut rolling across the country."
The beauty of conspiracy theories is that even the most contradictory evidence can be folded into a new conspiracy theory. For example, after the events of Sept. 11, the pipeline conspiracy theorists spun 180 degrees from …
We're supporting the Taliban so we can build a pipeline while we pretend we don't care about their links to terrorism (and, to a lesser degree, their cruelty to women).
to …
We're bombing the Taliban so we can build a pipeline while we pretend we care about their links to terrorism (and, to a lesser degree, their cruelty to women).
The turnaround can be tracked within a single news agency. On Oct. 7 of this year, right before the U.S. bombing began, Agence France-Presse wrote up the old theory: "Keen to see Afghanistan under strong central rule to allow a US-led group to build a multi-billion-dollar oil and gas pipeline, Washington urged key allies Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to back the militia's bid for power in 1996." Just four days later, AFP wrote that "experts say the end of the Islamic militia [the Taliban] could spell the start of more lucrative opportunities for Western oil companies."
Nearly all sites pushing the newer theory point to two pieces of evidence: 1) This U.S. Department of Energy information page on Afghanistan, updated September 2001, which espouses the pipeline idea but says Afghanistan is too chaotic for it to work. 2) This 1998 testimony by a Unocal vice president to the House Committee on International Relations, in which he states that a pipeline will never be built without a stable Afghan government in place.
How did the new theory spread? After the Sept. 11 attacks, no one says anything oil-related for a respectable mourning period. Then, in the cover story of its Sept. 21-27 issue, L.A. Weekly makes the case that "it's the oil, stupid." The piece doesn't mention the pipeline specifically, but soon after, someone else does. On Sept. 25, the Village Voice's James Ridgeway and Camila E. Fard write that the 9/11 terrorist attack "provides Washington with an extraordinary opportunity" to overthrow the Taliban and build a pipeline. Ridgeway fails to make the direct link to Unocal, though. On Oct. 1, we see the whole theory come together on the Web site of the Independent Media Center. This article links to both the Unocal testimony and the DOE page and says they "leave little doubt as to the reasons behind Washington's desire to replace the Taliban government." After this, the floodgates open. The theory never evolves much—it just gets passed around.
Oct. 5: An India-based writer for the Inter Press Service says Bush's "coalition against terrorism" is "the first opportunity that has any chance of making UNOCAL's wish come true." The story is reprinted the following day in the Asia Times.
Oct. 10: The Village Voice's Ridgeway makes his claim in stronger terms but still doesn't mention Unocal.
Oct. 11: A Russian TV commentator says oil is the real reason for the war. In a transcript from Russia's Ren TV, the commentator refers to Unocal.
Oct. 12: An essay on TomPaine.com and another by cartoonist Ted Rall both join the chorus.
Oct. 13: The Hindu, an Indian national newspaper, asserts that the pipeline, not terrorism, is driving the U.S. bombing. The Hindu quotes the DOE page and adds the point that both President Bush and Vice President Cheney are "intimately connected with the U.S. oil industry."
Oct. 14: The Washington Times reports that a Taliban ambassador says the war is more oil than Osama. Also, the International Action Center (an anti-militarism site) runs the Unocal theory.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Once again, the almighty dollar has reared it's UGLY AMERICAN HEAD! Now let's see what the quintessential 19th century writer has to say- ----
LEO TOLSTOY
Literature Network » Leo Tolstoy » War and Peace » Chapter XII
Chapter XII
From the time the law of Copernicus was discovered and proved, the mere recognition of the fact that it was not the sun but the earth that moves sufficed to destroy the whole cosmography of the ancients. By disproving that law it might have been possible to retain the old conception of the movements of the bodies, but without disproving it, it would seem impossible to continue studying the Ptolemaic worlds. But even after the discovery of the law of Copernicus the Ptolemaic worlds were still studied for a long time.
From the time the first person said and proved that the number of births or of crimes is subject to mathematical laws, and that this or that mode of government is determined by certain geographical and economic conditions, and that certain relations of population to soil produce migrations of peoples, the foundations on which history had been built were destroyed in their essence.
By refuting these new laws the former view of history might have been retained; but without refuting them it would seem impossible to continue studying historic events as the results of man's free will. For if a certain mode of government was established or certain migrations of peoples took place in consequence of such and such geographic, ethnographic, or economic conditions, then the free will of those individuals who appear to us to have established that mode of government or occasioned the migrations can no longer be regarded as the cause.
And yet the former history continues to be studied side by side with the laws of statistics, geography, political economy, comparative philology, and geology, which directly contradict its assumptions.
The struggle between the old views and the new was long and stubbornly fought out in physical philosophy. Theology stood on guard for the old views and accused the new of violating revelation. But when truth conquered, theology established itself just as firmly on the new foundation.
Just as prolonged and stubborn is the struggle now proceeding between the old and the new conception of history, and theology in the same way stands on guard for the old view, and accuses the new view of subverting revelation.
In the one case as in the other, on both sides the struggle provokes passion and stifles truth. On the one hand there is fear and regret for the loss of the whole edifice constructed through the ages, on the other is the passion for destruction.
To the men who fought against the rising truths of physical philosophy, it seemed that if they admitted that truth it would destroy faith in God, in the creation of the firmament, and in the miracle of Joshua the son of Nun. To the defenders of the laws of Copernicus and Newton, to Voltaire for example, it seemed that the laws of astronomy destroyed religion, and he utilized the law of gravitation as a weapon against religion.
Just so it now seems as if we have only to admit the law of inevitability, to destroy the conception of the soul, of good and evil, and all the institutions of state and church that have been built up on those conceptions.
So too, like Voltaire in his time, uninvited defenders of the law of inevitability today use that law as a weapon against religion, though the law of inevitability in history, like the law of Copernicus in astronomy, far from destroying, even strengthens the foundation on which the institutions of state and church are erected.
As in the question of astronomy then, so in the question of history now, the whole difference of opinion is based on the recognition or nonrecognition of something absolute, serving as the measure of visible phenomena. In astronomy it was the immovability of the earth, in history it is the independence of personality- free will.
As with astronomy the difficulty of recognizing the motion of the earth lay in abandoning the immediate sensation of the earth's fixity and of the motion of the planets, so in history the difficulty of recognizing the subjection of personality to the laws of space, time, and cause lies in renouncing the direct feeling of the independence of one's own personality. But as in astronomy the new view said: "It is true that we do not feel the movement of the earth, but by admitting its immobility we arrive at absurdity, while by admitting its motion (which we do not feel) we arrive at laws," so also in history the new view says: "It is true that we are not conscious of our dependence, but by admitting our free will we arrive at absurdity, while by admitting our dependence on the external world, on time, and on cause, we arrive at laws."
In the first case it was necessary to renounce the consciousness of an unreal immobility in space and to recognize a motion we did not feel; in the present case it is similarly necessary to renounce a freedom that does not exist, and to recognize a dependence of which we are not conscious.
Literature Network » Leo Tolstoy » War and Peace » Chapter XII
From the author. I present the above authors to celebrate their skill in treating a very complex subject, which has surpassed all attempts to resolve it (war) and promote lasting Peace. I am honored to give myself the freedom of using their work without specifically asking permission. I have abbreviated some articles to protect their property, but still, there it is. I also want to suggest that it is not the leaders who are bigoted, racist, or xenophobic, though if the shoe fits ---- It is the peoples, who find themselves occupied by a foreign power, be they Russians in the Napoleonic era, Confederate Southerners, Frenchman under the Kaiser's will, Russians again at Stalingrad, Phillipinos, Viet-Namese of whatever persuasion, Afghanis or Iraqis, xenophobia is about as good excuse as any for their resistance to the (American) Military.
Be it an anxiety response. JIM O
posted by James E. Opfell @ 1:36 PM
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