Those who contemplate the beauty of the Earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of birds, the ebb and flow of tides, the folded bud ready for spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature–the assurance that dawn comes after the night and spring after the winter.
-Rachel Carson, Silent Spring
The following post is a commentary written by Robert Bowman, a catholic Bishop and ex-Fighter Pilot and U.S Air Force Lieutenant colonel and a former director of the advanced Space Program Development. He explains, with much more clarity and foresight, some of the ideas I presented in my previous post. Please take the time to read it.
The “Security” Charade
If deceptions about terrorism go unchallenged, then the threat will continue until it destroys us. The truth is that none of our thousands of nuclear weapons can protect us from these threats. No Star Wars system no matter how technically advanced, no matter how many trillions of dollars are poured into it, can protect us from a nuclear weapon delivered in a sailboat or a Cessna or a suitcase or a Ryder rental truck. Not one weapon in our vast arsenal, not a penny of the $270 billion a year we spend on so-called defense can defend against a terrorist bomb. That is a military fact.
As a retired lieutenant colonel and a frequent lecturer on national security issues, I have often quoted Psalm 33: “A king is not saved by his mighty army. A warrior is not saved by his great strength.” The obvious reaction is, “Then what can we do?” Is there nothing we can do to provide security for our people?”There is. But to understand it requires that we know the truth about the threat. President Clinton did not tell the American people the truth about why we are the targets of terrorism when he explained why we bombed Afghanistan and Sudan. He said that we are a target because we stand for democracy, freedom, and human rights in the world. Nonsense!
We are the target of terrorists because, in much of the world, our government stands for dictatorship, bondage, and human exploitation. We are the target of terrorists because we are hated. And we are hated because our government has done hateful things.
In how many countries have agents of our government deposed popularly elected leaders and replaced them with puppet military dictators who were willing to sell out their own people to American multinational corporations?
We did it in Iran when the US Marines and the CIA deposed Mossadegh because he wanted to nationalize the oil industry. We replaced him with the Shah and armed, trained, and paid his hated Savak National Guard, which enslaved and brutalized the people of Iran, all to protect the financial interests of our oil companies. Is it any wonder that there are people in Iran who hate us?
What about Japan? We did it in Chile. We did it in Vietnam. More recently, we tried to do it in Iraq.
And, of course, how many times have we done it in Nicaragua and all the other banana republics of Latin America? Time after time we have ousted popular leaders who wanted the riches of the land to be shared by the people who worked it. We replaced them with murderous tyrants who would sell out their own people so the wealth of the land could be taken out by the likes of Domino Sugar, Folgers, and Chiquita Banana.
In country after country, our government has thwarted democracy, stifled freedom, and trampled human rights. That’s why it is hated around the world. And that’s why we’re the target of terrorists.
People in Canada enjoy democracy, freedom, and human rights. So do the people of Norway and Sweden. Have you heard of Canadian embassies being bombed? Or Norwegian, or Swedish?
We are not hated because we practice democracy, value freedom, or uphold human rights. We are hated because our government denies these things to people in Third World countries whose resources are coveted by our multinational corporations. That hatred we have sown has come back to haunt us in the form of terrorism.
Once the truth about why the threat exists is understood, the solution becomes obvious. We must change our ways. Getting rid of our nuclear weapons unilaterally if necessary will enhance our security. Drastically altering our foreign policy will ensure it.
Instead of sending our sons and daughters around the world to kill Arabs so we can have the oil under their sand, we should send them to rebuild their infrastructure, supply clean water, and feed starving children. Instead of continuing to kill hundreds of Iraqi children every day with our sanctions, we should help Iraqis rebuild their electric power plants, their water treatment facilities, their hospitals, and all the things we have destroyed and prevented them from rebuilding.
Instead of training terrorists and death squads, we should close the School of the Americas [Ft. Benning, GA.]. Instead of supporting insurrection, destabilization, assassination, and terror around the world, we should abolish the CIA and give money to relief agencies.
In short, we should do good instead of evil. Who would try to stop us? Who would hate us? Who would want to bomb us? That is the truth the American people need to hear. We need to “respond” NOT “react”.
God Bless
Bishop Bowman
Originally printed in The National Catholic Reporter, Oct. 2, 1998.]
I want my blog to be motivational and uplifting and I don’t’ want it to become negative Nancy but i feel the need to address the issue of War and i promise Corimagua will be back enlightening and motivating the lives of its readers soon. It’s of grave importance given the troubling times we find ourselves in. I write about it to vent and most importantly to inform others of the horrors of war in the hopes that they too will find it degrading and unacceptable and say no to War anywhere in the world.
Once again, we are on the brink of war. The U.S wants to deploy its military force on Syria because of their alleged use of chemical weapons. If true, a chemical attack is horrible and certainly should be condemned, but who will condemn the U.S military when they use chemicals in their weapons. It has in the past, and many argue it does so today because of its use of depleted uranium. Depleted Uranium is loaded on the tips of warheads and other munitions because its properties make it perfect to pierce through armor and rip through concrete and metal walls, penetrating deep into buildings. It’s touted as a great upgrade in military weaponry but it’s potential long term negative health effects are ignored. Depleted Uranium is nuclear waste and highly poisonous. DU was used in the attacks on Iraq in 2004 and the rate of birth defects for the city of Fallujah has surpassed those of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The rates of miscarriages, childhood leukemia and other types of cancers are much, much higher than in other parts of the world. In an interview with Democracy Now! Al-Jazeera reporter Dahr Jamail said, ” it’s common now in Fallujah for newborns to come out with massive multiple systemic effects, immune problems, massive central nervous system problems, massive heart problems, skeletal disorders, babies being born with two heads, babies being born with half of their internal organs outside of their bodies, cyclops babies literally with one eye–really, really, really horrific nightmarish types of birth defects.” I saw a shocking gallery of Iraqi babies born with birth defects and the images where horrific and heartbreaking and they left me both angry and on the verge of tears. It’s difficult to attribute long term health effects on weapons used years earlier, but anyone with a hint of common sense can see the connection between the use of chemicals like depleted uranium and the increasingly high rate of birth problems in Iraqi babies.
It might sound surprising to some that the U.S military would use such chemicals in their weapons but it shouldn’t be when one looks at the history of U.S military chemical weapon use. Remember how the U.S military used agent orange in Vietnam? I’m up to my neck with hypocrisy. War is a business and it will continue to run as long as people keep making insane profits from the proliferation of war. The U.S cannot keep meddling in the internal problems of other nations. The U.S empire has enemies all over the world and it keeps breeding hate by attacking more and more countries, by having unmanned drones drop bombs from the sky giving millions of innocent people nightmares of fire and explosions raining down on them. Do you think it’s possible that maybe the terrorist who attack America, do it not because they despise our way of life and our so called “freedoms”, but instead has something to do with the hundreds of military bases across the globe? with the constant spread of an Empire? With the oppression of people the world over?
If there is one constant in all empires throughout history is that eventually, no matter how mighty, they ALL collapse. But just because the American empire is collapsing doesn’t mean America will end. It means that America will cease to exist as an “empire”, thats all. I for one don’t want the U.S to continue playing the role of evil emperor anymore, it’s counterproductive and it’s consuming itself. Imagine all the military bases around the world shut down, all the military campaigns finished. How much hate would be directed towards us? How many terrorist will be breed then? How great could America be if it focus all its resources on it’s many internal conflicts. If it focused its resources on crossing the bridge from crisis to sustainability facing the seriousness of looming environmental threats. America can transform its role in the world. It can re-new itself, re-creating its infrastructure, its health system, its educational system and all the other crumbling systems in its great land. Another America, another WORLD is truly possible. Let’s fight for it and say no to WAR.
When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Wendell Berry, “The Peace of Wild Things”
When they want you to buy something they will call you. When they want you to die for profit they will let you know. So, friends, every day do something that won’t compute. Love the Lord. Love the world. Work for nothing. Take all that you have and be poor. Love someone who does not deserve it. Denounce the government and embrace the flag. Hope to live in that free republic for which it stands….. Expect the end of the world. Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts. So long as women do not go cheap for power, please women more than men, Ask yourself: Will this satisfy a woman satisfied to bear a child?… As soon as the generals and the politicos can predict the motions of your mind, lose it. Leave it as a sign to mark the false trail, the way you didn’t go. Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction. Practice Resurrection.
-Wendell Berry
Farmer and Poet
A wonderful piece by Zen Pencil with illustrations to the words of the Great Carl Sagan, who reminds us to be grateful for this wonderful opportunity we have to experience the greatest miracle of all: life. I hope you make the most of your experience and help those around you make the most of theirs.
Focus on the evil of war. War begins by calling for the annihilation of the others but ends ultimately in self-annihilation. It corrupts souls and mutilates bodies. It destroys homes and villages and murders children on their way to school. It grinds into the dirt all that is tender and beautiful and sacred. It empowers human deformities–warlords, Shiite death squads, Sunni insurgents, the Taliban, al-quaida, and our own killers–who can speak only in the despicable language of force. War is a scourge. It is a plague. It is industrial murder. And before you support war…. look into the hollow eyes of the men, women, and children who know it.
Chris Hedges, The Pictures you Aren’t Supposed to See, January 4, 2010
What a crazy upside down world we live in where peace is used to rationalize war and people make a profit from misery and destruction. The wheels of the machine have to keep moving. Perpetual war is exactly what they want because war is a very profitable business. The people who make money from this business will ignore all the suffering and sacrifice human lives for profit, they will use any means available to rationalize the irrational. They use words like democracy,freedom, god and peace which have absolutely nothing to do with war, to justify it. It’s a bunch of bullshit and it angers me. People often forget that the essence of War is death. War turns us into animals and it plunges us into barbarity and perversion. It causes pain, destruction, suffering, violence and death. The continual use of military force, dropping bombs and shooting at people will breed more and more hate. The indiscriminate violence on one side is used to justify the indiscriminate violence of the other. You get caught in a vicious cycle of violence where the atrocities committed by one, real or imagined, make possible the atrocities of the other. If the only tool you have to solve problems is a hammer, everything becomes a nail.
Like always it is the innocent people throughout the world who suffer while the soulless political, industrial and military leaders sit safely in their board rooms and offices far away from any of the consequences of war. We can’t forget that it’s human beings who are on the receiving end of our bombs and bullets, Human beings just like me and you, who love, grieve, suffer, laugh and weep. Perpetual war is creating a world without empathy. We can’t allow madness to continue, no matter who you are or where you are from, we have to stand up and say enough. We can’t allow incomprehensible, destructive, irrational, and demented forms of humanity to thrive, we can’t allow the world to be distorted by hate. It’s becoming increasingly difficult at times but I still hold on to my fundamental belief in the goodness of human nature. We have to remain rational and compassionate and be true to the human in us and remember that we all have a stake in this, we are all helping to shape our world and its realities. Let’s be human beings and remember that we are all on the same team, team HUMAN, made up of people from America, Syria, Iraq, Russia, China, India, Brazil, Uruguay and all the other places on this wonderful and mysterious planet we call home.
“War is a poison. It is a poison that nations and groups must at times ingest to ensure their survival. But, like any poison, it can kill you just as surely as the disease it is meant to eradicate. The poison of war courses unchecked through the body politic of the United States. We believe that because we have the capacity to wage war we have the right to wage war. We embrace the dangerous self-delusion that we are on a providential mission to save the rest of the world from itself, to implant our virtues–which we see as superior to all other virtues–on others, and that we have a right to do this by force. This belief has corrupted Republicans and Democrats alike. And if Barack Obama drinks, as it appears he will, the dark elixir of war and imperial power offered to him by the national security state, he will accelerate the downward spiral of the American empire.”
-Chris Hedges, America’s Wars of Self-Destruction, November 17,2008.
We must convince each generation that they are transient passengers on this planet earth. It does not belong to them. They are not free to doom generations yet unborn. They are not at liberty to erase humanity’s past nor dim its future.
-Bernard Lown and Evjueni Chazov
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