by Don Hynes
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| Vantage Point | Culture and Politics by Don Hynes |
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"No man is prejudiced in favor of a thing, knowing it to be wrong.
He is attached to it on the belief of its being right; and when he sees it is not so,
the prejudice will be gone." - Tom Paine
October 27, 2003 Posing for the Lord A man’s religious conviction is a personal matter. No one can fairly judge the depth of another’s heart or soul from the outside, but what can be evaluated is behavior, how described intent measures up with action. In President Bush’s case he refers to his “faith” religiously, interview after interview, as if whatever happens in the privacy of his own thoughts justifies his policies as President. The incongruence lies in the fact that nothing President Bush or his Administration does fosters the spirit and practice of true Christian principles, but rather the global corporate empire that has been his life long benefactor and employer. Military invasion of a non-threatening foreign country is hardly bedrock of the New Testament. Or the increasing impoverishment of the poor through the world wide corporate piracy of indigenous resources and water supplies by Bush allies like Bechtel. Or the obscene imbalance in wealth in America further stratified through Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, then established for generations to come through shredding the estate tax. Or the continual hypocrisy of funding supposed “faith based” initiatives that are often proselytizing wolves in soup kitchen clothing, while decimating public programs that care for the needy without religious directive. As Joe Hough, President of the faculty at Union Theological Seminary so aptly quoted the Book of Proverbs in a recent interview with Bill Moyers on Now: “Those who oppress the needy insult their maker.” The list goes on, from the charade of international AIDS funding that never arrives or is connected to moral bigotry, to foreign alliances with military regimes that suppress the powerless as in Israel and China, to support for governments that live off the backs of the poor as in Malaysia and Indonesia , secret foreign policies that undermine democratic expressions in Venezuela, Bolivia or wherever a populist challenge may arise to corporate hegemony. And the question which alludes the toothless press or mainstream voices of our country is what has any of this to do with the espoused principles of caring for the poor, clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, healing the sick. The practices of the Bush Administration are punishing the poor in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in America, and the only clothing going on are the costumes that Administration posers don for the evangelicals and others who are so happy to have a true believer in the White House, or their agenda voiced, that no attention is paid to the realities of actual practice. The same posing similarly infects two other protagonists in the current theater of empire. Just as Bush uses Christianity as his front, his supposed nemesis Bin Laden poses as a follower of Islam, but the awful terror and indiscriminate killing of al-Qaeda have no more to do with Mohammed than Bush pal Ken Lay of Enron fame has to do with Jesus. And the same should be said for Ariel Sharon, who may be the Prime Minister of Israel, but has done more to slander the Jewish tradition and faith than any world leader of the last century, who has turned the noble experiment of Israel into a fascistic military state that makes open war on the Palestinians, indiscriminately punishes any efforts they make in self defense, fires on international aid workers and peace activists, and describes the efforts of their own countrymen for peace as treason. What other repressive event of the 20th century is this reminiscent of? Bush, Bin Laden, Sharon, they’re all posing for the Lord, exporting military and corporate violence upon the weak and defenseless, forcing other nations to consider nuclear weaponry as a first line of self defense, shaming the religious traditions they seek to claim as their own, as if their nonsensical fundamentalism were representative of the spiritual traditions they in fact despoil. The Real Thing Parsing through these mountains of deception in the political landscape I sometimes forget the measure of a man I started with. It’s so easy to get lost in cynicism and sardonic humor; much more difficult to remain focused on the prize, on the quality of character that inspires and brings us up to the place we’ve been aiming for since the beginning. I’ve quoted Robert Byrd and his eloquent leadership in the Senate on many occasions, and another of the leading Senators in the fight for humanity is Ted Kennedy. The mistakes of his past and his privileged position have both haunted and helped him to mold a career in public service that have put him rightfully in the forefront of our government and the real progress of our nation. Kennedy recently took on the misdirection of our foreign policy in Iraq during the Senate’s rush to give the President more money for his failed policies, despite the fact that a recent Congressional Research Service study determined no additional funding is presently required: “The trumped up reasons for going to war have collapsed. All the Administration's rationalizations as we prepared to go to war now stand revealed as "double-talk." The American people were told Saddam Hussein was building nuclear weapons. He was not. We were told he had stockpiles of other weapons of mass destruction. He did not. We were told he was involved in 9/11. He was not. We were told Iraq was attracting terrorists from al-Qaeda. It was not. We were told our soldiers would be viewed as liberators. They are not. We were told Iraq could pay for its own reconstruction. It cannot. We were told the war would make America safer. It has not. Before the war, week after week after week after week, we were told lie after lie after lie after lie. And now, despite the increasingly restless Iraqi population, despite the continuing talk of sabotage, despite the foreign terrorists crossing thousands of miles of border to attack U.S. servicemen and women in Iraq, the Administration still refuses to face the truth or tell the truth.” Interestingly, George Bush Sr. announced this same week that he was giving Senator Kennedy the 2003 George Bush Award for Excellence in Public Service. With long distance from Kennebunk Port to DC too expensive perhaps this is the best way to send Junior a message, while even conservative Bush appointees are seeking an exit strategy toward Iraqi sovereignty. Speaking of the real thing, read Dennis Kucinich’s formal announcement of candidacy for the Presidency. It doesn’t take a college degree to figure out that Kucinich’s candidacy is a long shot, but that doesn’t diminish the power and integrity of his message. “There is a fiery torch which lights the night skies over our beloved Cleveland. It rises from the furnace of a steel mill. I remember a time when that light played against the interior of our car. As a young child, I pressed my face against the car window and watched as the flame reached up. It filled me with wonder. It gave me a sense of hope, a spark of hope. It made me forget that my mom and dad, my brothers and sisters, all seven of us, were living in that car. Light has the power to enkindle dreams. And though we lived in 21 different places by the time I was 17, including a couple of cars, I breathed in the image of blazing light and I breathe it out at this very moment.” If you’re stuck on winners, like many who would vote for a baloney sandwich over Bush, keep your eye upon the doughnut and not upon the hole, as the old country song twangs. General Wesley Clark may be the one to restrain the perilous course of our current policies, but he’s no Washington outsider. Is Clark to be valued because of what’s he’s done and can do for America, or is this another celebrity challenge passing for the election of the most powerful office in the world as we know it? Wasn’t the selection of a “compassionate conservative” enough of a lesson in double speak and superficial assessment? Stuck on You As the occupation of Iraq continues to disintegrate, the head of the Congressional inquiry into 9-11 cannot get answers from the White House and is publicly considering subpoena. President Clinton recently spoke out about his exit interview with President Bush in which he failed to convince the President elect about the threat of al-Qaeda over Iraq. Seymour Hirsch describes what followed, the supposed intelligence snafu: “By early March, 2002, a former White House official told me, it was understood by many in the White House that the President had decided, in his own mind, to go to war. The undeclared decision had a devastating impact on the continuing struggle against terrorism. The Bush Administration took many intelligence operations that had been aimed at al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups around the world and redirected them to the Persian Gulf. Linguists and special operatives were abruptly reassigned, and several ongoing anti-terrorism intelligence programs were curtailed.” As the curtain of silence by intelligence officials comes down around this artifice, a senior aide to Secretary Powell who was responsible for analyzing the supposed Iraqi weapon threat described Powell’s speech to the U.N. as “one of the low points in his long, distinguished service to the nation." Ben Tripp writes an hilarious version of the CIA blowback coming on the Administration because of fingering Valerie Plame, blaming poor intelligence for the invasion, etcetera: “Colin Powell could be seen before the United Nations waving around a vial of white powder, presumably a sample gotten from either the CIA or Marion Berry; it looked like he meant what he said. They made up exact numbers of warheads and delivery systems and boxes of thumb tacks to be strewn in America's streets. They even gave us a timeline: we had 45 minutes from green light to deployment on all these nasty items in the Iraqi arsenal. We're talking about specific numbers. All of them completely and utterly made up.” Although the U.S. pressured Turkey to send mercenaries into Iraq by threatening to step down on Turkey’s immense debt to the IMF, U.S. troops on the ground are largely dissatisfied despite Administration propaganda to the contrary. How can they feel right about risking their lives to protect Halliburton and other corporate interests who are raping Iraq’s economy and gouging U.S. funding of the occupation? The military has been down this rotten path before and in the end it won’t be the suits in Washington or the corporate economic terrorists who will suffer but the soldiers themselves. UPI investigative reporter Mark Benjamin released an expose this week on the squalid substandard conditions at Fort Stewart Georgia where wounded GIs await proper medical care. Also this week, lacking photo opportunities for the President, the Administration banned news coverage and photography of dead soldiers' homecomings on all military bases. We’re Melting Global warming is a reality to most of the civilized world beyond Pennsylvania Avenue, with the most significant effects showing in the sub-arctic areas of northern Canada. Ironically, global warming is hitting home in California in the firestorm of the century caused in no small part by the excessive use of fossil fuels and resultant greenhouse gases that the governor elect may not be aware of from the flight deck of his Hummer. Ways to Help Help Environmental Defense keep the heat on Washington as they consider the McCain - Lieberman bill on global warming. Join Save Our Environment in standing up against Congressional sneak attacks against environmental legislation. Explore the cutting edge groups that are making a difference in innovative green technology. Support socially responsible investing, a great tool for the greening of capitalism. Peace. *** |
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