(Don’t) Mention The Word J**

Mention the word Jew in anything except reverential tones and it’s like calling the Pope a paedophile. Talk about walking on soft-boiled eggs as Muddy Waters used to sing.

Such is the lock the Zionist propaganda machine has on the way anything to do with Israel is reported that even ‘Jews’ are not exempt from the wrath of the Zionist disinfo blitz as the various vicious campaigns being conducted on university campuses amply demonstrate against so-called self-hating Jews who don’t fall into line behind the mythology of the Zionist state testifies to.

Now many in the West excuse this craven obeisance by putting it down to some kind of collective guilt about the ‘Holocaust’, oh that such guilt should extend to my Roma brethren, who were also exterminated in their millions and to this day, remain the ‘niggers’ of Europe, excluded, ghettoized and victimised. Where are the endless stream of documentaries and rending of garments concerning our treatment of the Roma people? Where are the daily news stories about the continued treatment of the Roma right across Europe, let alone what the Nazis did to them sixty years ago?

However, talk of Jews as a ‘race’ controlling the media, banks etc, is not only incorrect, it entirely misses the point about the role Zionism plays in the imperialist project and indeed the key role that Zionism has played throughout the 20th century as a weapon of imperialism. Worse still, Zionism has virtually nothing to do with being Jewish, it’s yet another sleight of hand pulled by imperialism. Being Jewish, which aside from its religious connection is very much a state of mind, which just goes to show how successful the propaganda has been in creating an illusion about the Jewish ‘race’.

We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimeter of Eretz Israel … Force is all they do or ever will understand. We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours.

– Rafael Eitan, chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, quoted in Yediot Ahronot, April 13, 1983, and The New York Times, April 14, 1983
Can you imagine what the reaction of the Western media would have been if the statement above had been made a Palestinian, or indeed anyone who is not Jewish? So how is it that Israeli Zionists can get away with such obviously racist statements?

Central to the issue of Israel and ‘Jews’ is the ideology of racism as an essential element in the class war being waged against all who oppose the imperium. An ideology used to divide and rule, an ideology so pervasive that it completely determines any and all debate about Israel, whether it be the ‘right’ that Jews allegedly have to ‘return’ through to the way the West regards Palestinians and its brazen acceptance of being ‘Jewish’ as a justification for theft, murder and oppression.

Israel may have the right to put others on trial, but certainly no one has the right to put the Jewish people and the State of Israel on trial. – Ariel Sharon

For anyone has been following the massive propaganda campaign that has been conducted over the ‘evacuation’ of settlers in Gaza, one thing is clear; Palestinians are obviously non-people for how else can one explain the gulf between press coverage of the relocation of the settlers with the following statistics

1,719 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip from the end of September 2000 until today; and according to various estimates, some two-thirds of them were unarmed and were not killed in battles or during the course of attempts to attack a military position or a settlement.

Based on figures from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, of those killed, 379 were children under the age of 18; 236 were younger than 16; 96 were women; and 102 were the objectives of targeted liquidations during the course of which the Israel Defense Forces also killed another 95 individuals who, according to the military too, were “innocent” bystanders.

Some 9,000 Gaza residents were injured; 2,704 homes to some 20,000 people were razed by the IDF’s bulldozers and assault helicopters; 2,187 were partially destroyed. Some 31,650 dunams of agricultural land were left scorched.
‘The remaining 99.5 percent’ Amira Hass

Were such statistics to be about Israelis, again, imagine the clamour in the Western media! There is only one explanation for the existence of such a vast chasm between press coverage of Israel and that of the Palestinians and that is the role racism plays in reducing Palestinians to that of sub-humans, but don’t take my word for it, let the Zionists own words speak for them

[The Palestinians] are beasts walking on two legs – Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, speech to the Knesset – New Statesman, June 25, 1982.

And these words are by no means the exception, they underpin the central thrust of the Israeli state’s propaganda war which is to project ‘Jews’ as the eternal victim, and of course, the epithet ‘anti-semite’ is synonymous with any criticism made of the Israeli state’s colonial/imperialist objectives.

May the Holy Name visit retribution on the Arab heads, and cause their seed to be lost, and annihilate them.

It is forbidden to have pity on them. We must give them missiles with relish, annihilate them. Evil ones, damnable ones – Israeli Rabbi Ovadia Yosef , Ha’aretz April 12, 2001

Is this Osama bin Laden speaking or the so-called pinnacle of Western civilisation, our ‘Judeo-Christian’ culture? And the propaganda campaign is endless without a day passing when there isn’t some reference to the ‘plight’ of the Jews in the Western media. Interminable documentaries on the suffering of the Jews at the hands of the Nazis but rarely a mention of the many millions of others who were exterminated using the same methodical and ruthless system. So complete is the appropriation of the Holocaust by the Zionists I am surprised the word hasn’t been trademarked.

And the following statement sums up the policy of the state of Israel and points to how fundamental the role of racism is in relegating first and foremost Palestinians and then the Arabs to that of a sub-human species from the very beginning of the founding of Israel, hence betraying the notion that the current response is to Palestinian ‘terrorists’.

The state… must see the sword as the main if not the only, instrument with which to keep its morale high and to retain its moral tension. Toward this end it may know it MUST invent dangers, and to do this it must adopt the method of provocation and revenge… And above all, let us hope for a new war with the Arab countries so that we may finally get rid of our troubles and acquire our space – Diary of Moshe Sharett, Israeli’s first Foreign Minister from 1948-1956, and Prime Minister from 1954-1956.

The parallels with the Nazi concept of ‘lebensraum’ or living space is not lost on me even if it is ignored by the Western media.

Instead, Western media coverage continues to misrepresent the reality of the illegal Israeli occupation, so we read in an article titled ‘Israeli PM faces West Bank gamble’ on the BBC News Website today, 25/8/05

Even as Israeli forces moved in to clear four West Bank settlements, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon reaffirmed his commitment to settlement construction.

Mr Sharon was referring to the large blocs of Ariel and Maale Adumim, and controversial plans for new suburbs linking the latter to Jerusalem.

He has made no secret of his intention to hold on the major West Bank blocs.

No mention of the fact that all the settlements on the West Bank are illegal, instead they are presented to us “controversial”. The piece ends once again by placing the responsibility on the Palestinians

Much now depends upon what happens in Gaza.

Will the Palestinians focus on peaceful reconstruction or will radical groups seek to use the abandoned settlements as launch-pads for attacks into Israel?

Will violence simply move from Gaza to the West Bank, where the Israeli Army will still patrol the area of the evacuated settlements?
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4176822.stm

Thus the issue of the vast bulk of the illegal settlements on the West Bank is neatly sidestepped as the BBC’s report is already setting the stage for the next series of hoops that the Palestinians will have to jump through.

Through continually misrepresenting the reality of continued land grabs, not to mention the genocidal policies of Sharon’s government in carving up what’s left of any putative ‘Palestinian state’, as being dependent on the actions of Palestinian “radicals”, the media avoid the issue of Israel’s illegal policies. And in fact, the BBC article, quoted from above, doesn’t once mention that the actions of Israel are in fact illegal under international law as well as innumerable UN resolutions going back for thirty years.

What has to be emphasised is the fact that I picked the BBC article pretty well at random, it could have been one of literally dozens of articles from a wide range of ‘news’ sources, all of whom ignore the fundamental reality of Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians and focus instead on how ‘unreasonable’ the Palestinians are, or how they had to ‘curb’ the actions of ‘radicals’ before Israel even conceded to rehousing a mere 2% or so of the 450,000 illegal settlers on what’s left of any future Palestine. And note here that unlike the 2700 Palestinian homes destroyed by the Israelis since September 2000, with armoured bulldozers and helicopter gunships, sometimes with the inhabitants still inside, the Israeli settlers will be rehoused (at US taxpayers expense), many on the continually expanding settlements on the West Bank. The same cannot be said of the Palestinians whose lives and livelihoods have been destroyed.

As some reportage has made plain, Gaza is now one big prison instead of four, yet what this means, what it says about Israeli policies toward the Palestinians is still ignored by the mainstream press, even as the words are uttered. There can only be one explanation for such a deliberate myopia and that is a racism so entrenched in Western news coverage that it can blatantly ignore the awful injustice of Israeli actions and policies. It points once more to something I will continue express ‘til I die, that the ideology of racism is the major stumbling block to opening peoples’ eyes to what is going on in the world and that until we face this reality, we cannot begin to deal with our rulers actions, let alone our own role in allowing the continuance of such an unjust world.

William Bowles - Visit his website http://www.williambowles.info/

Articles of Impeachment and Indictment for High Crimes and Misdemeanors

During the build-up to the illegal invasion of Iraq, some, particularly in the foreign media, accused Bush of wanting war simply for the sake of war

Prologue

As I was researching and preparing notes for this article, the bombings in London occurred. In the wake of these tragic events, I became outraged by the number of right-wing warmongers in America who callously exploited these attacks in a vacuous attempt to justify the Bush dictatorship's war against Iraq.

Naturally these hypocrites ignored the fact that those opposed to the illegal invasion of Iraq had already argued that such an invasion would cause America to lose the international support it enjoyed after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, and INCREASE the potential for terrorism. Now that these arguments had proven prophetic, it was contemptible to witness the warmongers attempting to distort them for their own advantage.

In several previous Pravda.Ru articles, I discussed my hypothesis that the primary motivating force in the world resides not in the struggle between “good and evil,” but in the competition between various forms of evil.

Saddam Hussein, for example, represented a recognizable form of evil with his overt use of repression, torture and murder. Yet during the Cold War Hussein's evil was perfectly acceptable to, and even encouraged by, the United States government. Only after Hussein's usefulness to the United States expired did his evil arouse members of the Bush dictatorship, lusting for war and eager to disseminate their lies about Iraq's alleged “weapons of mass destruction,” and Hussein's alleged “connection” to the events of September 11th.

George W. Bush and his criminal cabal, however, represent a more seductive, and therefore more dangerous, form of evil. This is the evil that deceives people into thinking that by supporting wrongdoing they are somehow supporting righteousness, that waging a war based upon lies somehow encourages peace and honesty, that creating the conditions for terrorism to thrive somehow “combats” terrorism, that promoting oppression somehow supports freedom, and that engaging in immoral and/or criminal conduct somehow makes one a moral person.

During the build-up to the illegal invasion of Iraq, some, particularly in the foreign media, accused Bush of wanting war simply for the sake of war. Yet even “mainstream” newspapers that opposed the war dismissed this statement as hyperbole. What these newspapers overlooked in their dismissal, however, were the two psychological characteristics of George W. Bush that make him the exemplar of the seductive brand of evil.

First, he is the epitome of the classic “bullying coward,” always willing to spew bellicose bluster as long as somebody else is doing the fighting and the dying. From the safety of the White House, one of the most fortified buildings in the world, he recklessly increased the risk to American troops by challenging Iraqi insurgents to “bring it on.” Yet, during the Vietnamese war, he did not hesitate to use his parent’s wealth and influence to avoid combat duty.

Second, he is a megalomaniac with delusions of being remembered as an Abraham Lincoln or Franklin Roosevelt, boldly leading the nation through a time of crisis—a crisis which, not surprisingly, he and his minions helped to create. When British Prime Minister Tony Blair chose to ally himself with Bush's form of evil, it was the innocents in his nation who suffered.

Although the “high crimes and misdemeanors” committed by George W. Bush and his criminal cartel may never spawn impeachment proceedings or criminal prosecutions, there should, at the very least, be a record of their crimes. Therefore, I present the "Articles of impeachment and indictment for high crimes and misdemeanors."

Count One

Theft

These articles and indictment hereby charge the following persons - George W. Bush, Jeb Bush, Katherine Harris, The Dishonorable Justices of the United States Supreme Court, and unnamed election officials in the States of Florida and Ohio - with engaging in, encouraging and/or permitting, through act or omission:

1. The theft of the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004, which fraudulently, and in defiance of the will of the American people, placed the Bush dictatorship into power;

2. The illegal occupation of government property known as The White House;

3. The denial of the right to vote based upon the race and/or political disposition of the prospective voter, by illegally purging registered voters in direct contravention of the United States Constitution and the Voting Rights Act of 1965;

4. The destruction of democracy by unlawfully placing the nation's government into the hands of a venal oligarchy, also known as the military-industrial complex.

Count Two

Treason

These articles and indictment hereby charge the following persons - George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Karl Rove, John Ashcroft, Paul Wolfowitz, and other conspirators - with engaging in, encouraging, and/or permitting, through act or omission:

1. The September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, to induce in the American populace the fear and hysteria necessary to facilitate the illegal invasion of Iraq;

2. The destruction of the American Constitution, more specifically The Bill of Rights, by exploiting this fear and hysteria to pass illegal and unconstitutional legislation, such as the so-called “Patriot Act”;

3. The illegal enforcement of laws, such as the so-called “Patriot Act,” by placing their “enforcement” into the hands of agencies, such as the FBI and the CIA, with histories of racism, lawbreaking, and human rights violations that have included, but are not limited to, illegal detentions and the encouragement of murder;

4. The destruction of America's “check-and-balance” system to create a neo-fascist dictatorship controlled exclusively by the executive branch of government, with the legislative and judicial branches remaining only as a facade.

Count Three

War crimes

These articles and indictment hereby charge the following persons - George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Karl Rove, Paul Wolfowitz, Tony Blair and other conspirators - with engaging in, encouraging and/or permitting, through act or omission:

1. The dissemination of lies to the American and British people in order to wage an illegal war designed to profit political cronies and private corporations;

2. The fabrication of evidence and the malicious, intentional and illegal manipulation of “intelligence” information to deceive the American and British people into supporting an illegal war;

3. The attempts to undermine the credibility and/or destroy the reputation of anybody who challenged or questioned these lies or the manipulation of intelligence information, including, but not limited to, the deliberate undermining of national security by illegally, and with malice aforethought, revealing, or causing to be revealed, the name of a CIA operative whose husband had exposed the Bush dictatorship's “State of the Union” lie that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from the African Nation of Niger;

4. The illegal wiretapping of the offices of United Nations officials who refused to accept the lies of the Bush dictatorship regarding Iraq;

5. The use of war as a first resort, as evidenced by the “Downing Street Memo,” and in direct contradiction to the Bush dictatorship’s assertion that war was “a last resort”;

Count Four

Criminal conversion

These articles and indictment hereby charge the following persons - George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Karl Rove, Paul Wolfowitz, Tony Blair and other conspirators - with engaging in, encouraging and/or permitting, through act or omission:

1. The illegal conversion of resources lawfully owned by the United States and British governments, and paid for by American and British taxpayers, by using said resources to enhance the profits of private individuals and corporations, including those corporations where one or more of the individuals charged in this indictment, such as Dick Cheney, had and/or has financial interests;

2. The awarding of lucrative “rebuilding” contracts, at taxpayer expense, to corporations where one or more of the individuals charged in these articles and indictment had and/or has financial interests;

3. The unlawful appropriation of American and British troops and military resources to satiate the “bullying cowardice” and megalomania of George W. Bush;

4. The misappropriation of American troops and military resources for cheap political gain.

Is it “Support the Troops” or “Exploit the Troops?”

As stated above, the lives of America's young men and women, and the resources of America's military are currently being exploited for the personal, political and financial gain of the corrupt oligarchs who rule America. This exploitation is possible because America no longer has a military draft, so the warmongers can argue that those who are now fighting in Iraq have voluntarily agreed to be there.

This was not the case several years ago, when America had compulsory military service. Those who opposed war and/or induction into the military were often taunted with the cry, “America, love it or leave it!” Today's all-volunteer military, however, now permits the anti-war movement to say to the warmongers and oligarchs, “You wanted war with Iraq. Now go fight in it!”

But even though there is a plethora of politicians, celebrities, pundits and everyday people who have applauded the illegal invasion of Iraq, most of them have conspicuously refrained from participating in it. Bush's own daughters have not supported “daddy's war” by joining the military, and one of the most rabid warmongers of the Bush dictatorship, Dick Cheney, was such a coward that, instead of facing the prospect of combat duty during the Vietnam era, he received five deferments to avoid military service.

So to counter the growing influence of “the Bush/Cheney School of Bellicose Cowardice,” perhaps it is time for a new form of military conscription, directed towards those who have interpreted “support the troops” to mean “exploit the troops.” After all, when the illegal invasion of Iraq began, the warmongers vociferously proclaimed that one could not “support the troops” without also supporting the war. What better way to “support the troops” than to become one of them? Therefore I propose that the people in the following categories be immediately inducted into military service, sent into combat “with all deliberate speed,” and not relieved of combat duty for the entire duration of the war:

1. All politicians who promoted and/or voted for the Iraqi war, yet avoided military service themselves, as well as their military-age children. Bush and Cheney would be the first draftees;

2. All celebrities, pundits or other public figures who have avoided military service, but who have used the war and/or the troops for profit, publicity and/or promotional purposes in venues including, but not limited to: songs, televised specials, newspaper columns, television or radio talk shows, interviews, sponsorship of pro-war rallies, or simply by taking steps to ensure that their alleged “support of the troops” is public knowledge;

3. All the people who attended pro-war rallies, who voted for George W. Bush, and/or who have “Support the Troops” stickers or ribbons affixed to their vehicles.

In addition these individuals would be required to perform combat duty regardless of:

1. Age (except for those under eighteen)

2. Gender

3. Social Status

4. Disability

5. Martial status

Of course a military draft this equitable has never, and probably will never, occur, because, as the late British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli once observed, “[C]ourage is the rarest of all qualities to be found in public life.”

Disraeli's words also reveal why it is unlikely that impeachment or criminal proceedings will ever address the crimes committed by the Bush dictatorship. Bush enjoys almost fanatical support from a powerful voting bloc collectively called the “Christian right,” but more accurately described as “the pseudo-Christians.” These are the individuals or organizations that exploit Christianity for profit or political gain while ignoring everything Christianity stands for. They claim that George W. Bush is a “moral” man, and see no dichotomy between his warmongering lies, avarice, and cowardice and the truth, selflessness and courage embodied by Jesus Christ, who is also known as the “Prince of Peace.” To these pseudo-Christians “morality” is narrowly confined to issues regarding human sexuality. Therefore, while lying about an affair with a White House intern is an impeachable offense, lying to promote an illegal war is not.

Ironically, these pseudo-Christians are often at the forefront of the battles to prevent the removal of Ten Commandments displays from government property. Yet, in their dogma, defending the physical location of a symbol apparently must absolve them and those they support from honoring what the symbol represents.

George W. Bush, for example, in his corrupt political career, has easily broken at least half of these commandments:

1. Thou shalt not kill. While governor of Texas, Bush executed over one hundred and fifty people, routinely denying DNA tests that could have potentially exonerated one or more of these inmates. This death toll is in addition to the thousands of civilian casualties and military deaths he caused in Iraq.

2. Thou shalt not steal. Bush and his co-conspirators stole the elections of 2000 and 2004, as well as billions in tax dollars to benefit private companies now profiting from the Iraqi war.

3. Thou shalt not bear false witness. In order to commit his crimes, Bush bore false witness by deceitfully proclaiming that war was a last resort, by manipulating intelligence information, and by lying about the reasons for invading Iraq.

4. Thou shalt not covet. Bush and his co-conspirators coveted Iraqi oil as well as the profits and political windfall war would bring.

5. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. Bush does this every time he professes to be “religious” “Christian,” “moral,” or “pro-life.”

So, to appease the “pseudo-Christians,” perhaps a compromise could be reached whereby the Ten Commandments would be replaced with the following “Bush Commandments”:

1. There is no “International Law,” only the concept that “might makes right.”

2. Only those who lose wars can be war criminals, even when the “winners” have engaged in similar misconduct.

3. There are no human rights you are bound to respect, since only one's enemies can violate human rights.

4. Always tell the populace that wars are being waged to promote democracy and freedom. Keep the truth to yourself.

5. Whenever troops are overseas purportedly fighting for this democracy and freedom, take the opportunity to undermine freedom and democracy at home.

6. Always condemn the evils of racial bigotry, religious intolerance, injustice, oppression and torture when utilized by your foes, but embrace these evils when they serve your own purposes.

7. Always preserve the illusion of democracy, even though you know it doesn't exist.

8. Always remember that the flag is a better blindfold than the truth.

9. Always remember that being “pro-life” should not inhibit you from killing people for ego or profit.

10. Always remember to sow the seeds of hatred and divisiveness while professing to “Love Thy Neighbor.”

Epilogue

At one point during his distinguished career, Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, looked at the America of his day and said, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever.”

Today Jefferson would not only tremble for his country, but for the world, in the realization that God apparently continued to slumber while George W. Bush and his minions illegally seized the most powerful office on earth, then abused the authority of that office to eviscerate the Bill of Rights and to deceive the nation into spending billions of tax dollars, and sacrificing thousands of lives, for a war based upon nothing but lies, all with the acquiescence of the United States Congress and the Courts, and with scarcely a murmur of outrage from the American people, even though it is they who suffer the most from his crimes.

For the sake of humanity I hope God wakes up soon!

David R. Hoffman

Legal Editor of Pravda.Ru


Pravda.Ru

Rebels Fight U.S. To Iraq Standoff

``You'll get killed on a nice day when everything is quiet.''

`A WAR OF ATTRITION' ECHOING VIETNAM CONFLICT HAS SETTLED ON AL-ANBAR

AL-FALLUJAH, Iraq -- Insurgents in Al- Anbar province, the center of guerrilla resistance in Iraq, have fought the U.S. military to a stalemate.

After repeated major combat offensives in Al-Fallujah and Ar-Ramadi, and after losing hundreds of soldiers and Marines in Al-Anbar during the past two years -- including 75 since June 1 -- many American officers and enlisted men assigned to Al-Anbar have stopped talking about winning a military victory in Iraq's Sunni Muslim heartland.

Instead, they're trying to hold on to a handful of population centers and hit smaller towns in a series of quick-strike operations designed to disrupt insurgent activities temporarily.

``I don't think of this in terms of winning,'' said Col. Stephen Davis, who commands a task force of about 5,000 Marines in an area of some 24,000 square miles in the western portion of Al-Anbar. Instead, he said, his Marines are fighting a war of attrition.

``The frustrating part for the audience, if you will, is they want finality,'' Davis said. ``They want a fight for the town, and in the end the guy with the white hat wins.''

That's unlikely in Al-Anbar, Davis said. He expects the insurgency to last for years, hitting American and Iraqi forces with quick ambushes, bombs and mines. Roadside bombs have hit vehicles Davis was riding in three times this year already.

``We understand counterinsurgency. . . . We paid for these lessons in blood in Vietnam,'' Davis said. ``You'll get killed on a nice day when everything is quiet.''

Most of Iraq is far quieter than Al-Anbar. But Al-Anbar is Iraq's largest province and home to the Sunni Arab minority, which dominated the government under Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. It's the strategic center of the country, and failure to secure it could thwart the Bush administration's hopes of helping to create a functioning Iraqi democracy.

Vietnam tactics

Military officials now frequently compare the fight in Al-Anbar to the Vietnam War, saying guerrillas, who blend back into the population, are trying to break the will of the U.S. military -- rather than defeat it outright -- and to erode public support for the war back home.

``If it were just killing people that would win this, it'd be easy,'' said Marine Maj. Nicholas Visconti, 35, of Brookfield, Conn., who served in southern Iraq in 2003. ``But look at Vietnam. We killed millions, and they kept coming. It's a war of attrition. They're not trying to win. It's just like in Vietnam. They won a long, protracted fight that the American public did not have the stomach for. . . . Killing people is not the answer; rebuilding the cities is.''

Minutes after he spoke, two mortar rounds flew over the building where he is based in Hit. Visconti didn't flinch as the explosions rang out.

During three weeks of reporting along the Euphrates River valley, home to Al-Anbar's main population centers and the core of insurgent activity, military officials offered three primary reasons that guerrillas have held and gained ground: the enemy's growing sophistication, insufficient numbers of U.S. troops and the lack of trained and reliable Iraqi security forces.

They described an enemy who is intelligent and adaptive:

• Military officials in Ar-Ramadi said insurgents had learned the times of their patrol shift changes. When one group of vehicles comes to relieve another, civilian traffic is pushed to the side of the road to allow the military to pass. Insurgents plan and use this opportunity, surrounded by other cars, to drop homemade bombs out their windows or through holes cut in the rear floor.

• The insurgents have figured out by trial and error the different viewing ranges of the optics systems in American tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles and Humvees.

• Faced with the U.S. military's technological might, guerrillas have relied on gathering intelligence and using cheap, effective devices to kill and maim.

Marines raided a home near their base in Hit and found three Sudanese insurgents with a crude map they had drawn of the U.S. base, including notes detailing when patrols left the gate, whether they were on foot or in vehicles and the numbers of Marines on the patrols.

The three men also had $11,000 in cash in an area in which insurgents pay locals $50 to plant bombs in the road.

One of the two Marine positions in the city receives mortar fire almost daily. Patrols from the other base are hit by frequent roadside bombings.

Instead of referring to the enemy derisively as ``terrorists'' -- as they used to -- Marines and Army soldiers now call the insurgents mujahedeen, an Arabic term often translated ``holy warrior'' that became popular during the Afghan guerrilla campaign against the Soviet Union.

New strategy

U.S. commanders in Al-Anbar hope to fight the insurgency through a multi-pronged strategy of political progress, reconstruction and training Iraqi security forces.

But there's been less political progress in Al-Anbar than in Iraq's Kurdish north and Shiite Muslim south, because the violence has stymied progress in rebuilding towns destroyed in the fighting and Iraqi forces are still a long way from being able to secure the province.

U.S. officials hope that a strong turnout in national elections in December will turn people away from violence. They expressed similar hopes before last January's elections. While they were a success in many parts, in Al-Anbar the turnout was in the single digits.

``Some of the Iraqis say they want to vote, but they're worried there'll be a bomb at the polling station,'' Marine Capt. James Haunty, 27, of Columbus, Ohio, said recently. ``It's a legitimate fear, but I always tell them, `Just trust me.' ''

Less than five minutes after Haunty spoke, near Hit, a roadside bomb exploded down the street.

Many Sunnis in Al-Anbar say they will vote against the constitution in October, having felt excluded from the drafting of the document.

Though fighting has badly damaged many towns and precluded widespread reconstruction, Marines in Al-Fallujah are working to make that city a centerpiece of rebuilding. Al-Fallujah residences sustained some $225 million in damage last November during a U.S. assault aimed at clearing the city of insurgents, according to Marine Lt. Col. Jim Haldeman, who oversees the civil military operations center in Al-Fallujah.

Homeowners have received 20 percent of that amount to rebuild homes, and will get the next 20 percent in the coming weeks, Haldeman said. Families are walking the streets once again and shops have reopened. The sound of hammers is constant, and men line the streets mixing concrete and laying bricks out to dry.

Even so, of the 250,000 population before the fighting, just 150,000 residents have returned. And the insurgency has come back to the area.

Iraqis are still a long way from being able to provide their own security in Al-Anbar. As with much of the province, Al-Fallujah has no functioning police force. Police in Ar-Ramadi are confined to two heavily fortified stations, after insurgents destroyed or seriously damaged eight others.

The Iraqi national guard, heralded last year as the answer to local security, was dissolved because of incompetence and insurgent infiltration, as was the guard's predecessor, the civil defense corps.

The new Iraqi army has participated in all the Marines' recent sweeps in Al-Anbar, in a limited way. While the Iraqi soldiers haven't thrown down their weapons and run, as they have in the past, many of them are still unable to operate without close U.S. supervision.

By Tom Lasseter
Knight Ridder

http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/12498496.htm

The War Party Unhinged

Ms. Shea is royally PO'd:

"I keep saying that the American people are not going to support a regime where rape victims are either stoned for adultery or forced to marry their rapists, where political dissidents are imprisoned for blasphemy, and where the court testimony of religious minorities is worth half of a Muslim male. The American public is not going to sacrifice for such a regime, nor will it do justice for the promises and vision articulated eloquently by President Bush that Iraq be a new democratic model for the region."

The Iraqis, in short, must be forced to give up sharia law – they must ditch their customs, their religion, their right to self-determination, in the face of Ms. Shea's militant modernism, which trumps, by the way, a formal commitment to "democracy." In any conflict between the precepts of "democratic" governance and the cultural imperatives of feminist theory, the latter is bound to win out, at least in left-liberal war-hawk circles. No big surprise there.

Christopher Hitchens to Osama bin Laden: 'Thanks for 9/11.'


Washington's hawks are in a dither over the Iraqi constitution, as Eli Lake reports in the New York Sun, and the divisions illustrate the character and motives of the War Party, separating the everyday scoundrels from the truly villainous. Gauging the various reactions among today's neoconservatives to the prospect of an "Islamic Republic of Iraq" saddled with sharia law is rather like cataloguing the various responses of prominent left-wingers of the 1930s to the Hitler-Stalin Pact.

Some followed the party line, some quit the movement and spent the whole of their lives recanting: others withdrew from politics altogether, and went on to sell real estate. While we are unfortunately not about to see Christopher Hitchens give up writing pro-war polemics and take up a second career – say, as a bartender – there is turmoil aplenty in the pro-war camp, particularly on the left side of the spectrum. And it is precisely this self-conscious dedication to the old-line left-wing values of internationalism and universalism by these theoreticians of "regime change" that echoes the ideological tumult of the past, specifically the period leading up to U.S. entry into World War II.

After positioning themselves as the only alternative to Nazism, the Communists of that era turned on a dime and justified Stalin's deal with the Nazi devils on pragmatic grounds. So today the War Party, after pointing to "militant Islam" as the equivalent of Hitler's legions during World War II, is now seeking to rationalize the installation of sharia law under the terms of the Iraqi "constitution" – a document that delivers the nation we "liberated" over to the tender mercies of Shi'ite Muslim fundamentalist clerics. But not everyone is a happy camper…

First up to bat is the voluble Nina Shea, a big honcho over at Freedom House, the self-appointed arbiters of global "democracy" and "freedom," who scarf up millions in U.S. taxpayer dollars via direct and indirect subsidies from Washington. These international do-gooders apparently don't know which side their bread is buttered on, and Ms. Shea is royally PO'd:

"I keep saying that the American people are not going to support a regime where rape victims are either stoned for adultery or forced to marry their rapists, where political dissidents are imprisoned for blasphemy, and where the court testimony of religious minorities is worth half of a Muslim male. The American public is not going to sacrifice for such a regime, nor will it do justice for the promises and vision articulated eloquently by President Bush that Iraq be a new democratic model for the region."

The Iraqis, in short, must be forced to give up sharia law – they must ditch their customs, their religion, their right to self-determination, in the face of Ms. Shea's militant modernism, which trumps, by the way, a formal commitment to "democracy." In any conflict between the precepts of "democratic" governance and the cultural imperatives of feminist theory, the latter is bound to win out, at least in left-liberal war-hawk circles. No big surprise there. What's interesting, however, is that Ms. Shea and her left-interventionist cohorts have allies in their dissent among our own fundamentalists of the Christian variety, notably the Family Research Council. The fundies are concerned – appalled, really – that the Bushies are allowing a Shi'ite takeover. The Sun reports:

"'It appears that the final draft will make Islam the 'main source' of law, and state that no law can contradict the 'fixed' principles of Islam,' the group said in an email addressed to its members. 'Who will determine which Islamic principles are fixed? Who will determine whether legislation would violate those principles?'"

These people really believed that it was possible to integrate Iraq into the American Commonwealth in all but the formal sense, and transform it – by force of arms – into an outpost of Empire no more alien than Puerto Rico or Guam. They are shocked – shocked! – that, after decades of repression by Saddam Hussein, the 60 percent Shi'ite Muslim majority is now asserting itself. How dare the Iraqis take seriously our trumpeting of the Iraqi elections as a "watershed" fated to transform the region: rather than violate their own sense of how Iraq ought to be governed, Freedom House and the fundies would rather nullify that much-vaunted exercise in the export of "democracy" – by force, presumably, since that is what such a radical reversal would require.

There has to be a special name for this sort of hypocrisy, which combines a childlike naïveté with the worst sort of brazen cynicism, so let's coin one: in the ranks of the War Party, Shea-ism is on the rise as the chief opposition to militant Shi'ism, and you have to admit that she has a point. She's right, for example, that the American people are not going to put up with their soldiers fighting and dying for an Islamist regime in Iraq, no matter how many speeches the president makes and how earnestly his supporters defend America's war aims. My question is: why didn't she think of that before the invasion, when it was apparent to war critics – and not just on this site – that the triumph of the mullahs would follow the fall of Saddam as inevitably as night follows the day? Why didn't the Family Research Council do a little research and discover that, alas and alack, the only organized prewar opposition to Saddam on the ground in Iraq was centered in the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and the Da'wa party – the two pro-Iranian parties that, not coincidentally, came out on top in the elections?

On the other hand, we have the hardheaded "realists" – for lack of a better word – such as neocon guru and Iran-Contra dealmaker Michael Ledeen:

"'I think it's a revolutionary document in the Middle East. It is imperfect like every other document. But the constitution does not say what some critics say it says. It explicitly protects minority rights, proclaims gender equality, and defends not only freedom of religion but freedom of conscience.' Mr. Ledeen added that the charter 'vests authority in the Iraqi people, not in the Koran, not in Allah. That's one revolutionary step.'"

Clifford May, of the fanatically pro-war Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, concurs, and tries to convince us that, as theocracies go, Iraq under the Shi'ite mullahs isn't going to be so bad:

"If it says Islam is a source rather than the source of law I am very encouraged. That is a huge and important distinction. I do not expect it to be substantially that different from the constitution in Afghanistan, which we all applauded. … I am cautiously optimistic because I am pretty confident that America's close allies, the Kurds, will reject anything that smacks of radical Islamism or gross inequality for women and minorities."

Ledeen and May are the equivalent of the old Stalinists who didn't flinch, beyond the twitch of an eyebrow or two, when the Hitler-Stalin Pact was announced, and swallowed Moscow's alignment with Berlin just as readily as a devout Catholic takes Communion. Back in the 1930s, the rationale for the Soviet alliance with Hitler was geopolitical: any measure, the Commies averred, was justified in defending the "workers' fatherland." The same sort of geopolitical calculation is utilized by our present-day Ledeenists when they hail the creation of a Shi'ite theocracy in Iraq as "revolutionary." What is being defended, here, is America's forward base for further military operations in the region. Ledeen has long called for the extension of the American "liberation" to Syria, Lebanon, Iran, and beyond: "Faster, please," he routinely implores the administration, and there surely isn't time to stop and haggle over irrelevant details like how Iraq is going to be governed. We have things to do, places to go, people to "liberate." The aim is not to create "democracy" but to break down the existing Arab states: "Creative destruction" is the announced Ledeenist principle, and this is certainly an entirely realistic goal given the present trajectory of postwar Iraq.

Via David Brooks, we get concurrence with this favorable view of the Iraqi constitution from the Ledeenist "realists," such as Reuel Marc Gerecht, one of the few neocon Bright Young Things who hail from the CIA. Gerecht now hangs his hat at the American Enterprise Institute, but we are all supposed to pay respectful attention while he applies the principles of doublethink to this latest Orwellian rhetorical and strategic turnabout:

"It's crazy, he says, to think that you could have an Iraqi constitution in which clerical authorities are not assigned a significant role. Voters supported clerical parties because they are, right now, the natural leaders of society and serve important social functions. But this doesn't mean we have to start screaming about a 13th-century theocratic state. Understanding the clerics, Gerecht has argued, means understanding two things. First, the Shi'ite clerical establishment has made a substantial intellectual leap. It now firmly believes in one person one vote, and rejects the Iranian model. On the other hand, these folks don't think like us."

This analysis disappears the real history of how Iraq came to have elections in the first place. It wasn't the Iraqis who made the "intellectual leap" of one-man one-vote, it was the Americans who were forced to do so by the Grand Ayatollah Sistani. It was Sistani, you'll remember, who effectively vetoed the initial American plan to implement a "caucus" system that would have given Washington's favored sock puppets a controlling influence in the makeup of the Iraqi government. The ayatollah insisted on direct elections, and after calling his followers out into the streets he got what he wanted.

Gerecht's argument essentially boils down to this: 1,800 American soldiers fought and died so that clerical fascism might replace Ba'athist fascism in occupied Iraq – and if you don't like it, then you can lump it. We have bigger problems to deal with than the complete intellectual dishonesty of the pro-war cause, says Gerecht, and David Frum agrees with him:

"I don't know at this point that we have a lot of room to have Iraqis write the best constitution they can write. Here we have a security problem that we are in danger of misinterpreting as a political problem. If we could put our hands on the finite number of insurgents and if we could break the will of the insurgent leaders, a lot of these other problems would work themselves out in a more or less acceptable way. But we are making a big mistake if we think a better constitution will help what is a security problem."

Translation: We need to kill an awful lot more people before we can begin to get picky about our allies. We need to break the Iraqis, and then we can talk about how to re-form them in our own image. This is the cold, hard voice of neoconservative "realism" in all its chillingly amoral – and immoral – arrogance.

Of particular interest is the case of Christopher Hitchens, the archetypal neocon – he went from Trotskyism to Bushophilia without making too many stops in between – whose gyrations on this most recent development threaten to result in what I fully expect to be a simultaneous mental and physical breakdown. The imposition of Islamofascism in the land he so strenuously urged Americans to "liberate" should probably cause his head to explode. It is, after all, definitely an understatement to say Hitchens hates religion: it often seems that, for him, his militant atheism is on the verge of becoming one of those tiresome monomanias that often afflict brilliant-albeit-eccentric intellectuals, like Reich's "orgone" boxes and the talented novelist Ayn Rand's apparent belief that she was the world's foremost philosopher since Aristotle. There is a kind of cosmic justice in the supreme irony that the war Hitchens argued so passionately in favor of has handed Iraq over to the mullahs, and no amount of alcohol is going to deaden the pain this must cause "the Hitch." The Sun reports his reaction:

"A columnist for Slate and Vanity Fair, Christopher Hitchens, yesterday said that reports of the draft constitution raised concerns for proponents of the war, himself included. 'There is a war within the war. Some of our allies are fundamentalists,' he said. 'It should not appear that the secularists and the Kurds are our clients and puppets. But at the same time, they should not have to wonder which side the United States is eventually on.' Mr. Hitchens noted that the Afghan constitution also included a phrase that technically makes it an Islamic republic: 'I did not like it there either. Civilization begins when democracy and religion are separated.'"

As a case history of the intellectual possessed by a demonic belief that he can and must mold the world to fit some ideological paradigm – by force, if need be – Hitchens is a textbook example of how and why this sort of sociopathic behavior represents a deadly dangerous error. Precisely because he is intelligent and seeks to uphold a consistent worldview based on the idea of American hegemony as the instrument of Progress, Hitchens cannot continue to defend the war and disdain its results. By proclaiming "a war within the war," this latter-day Max Shachtman with a highfalutin' British accent is merely announcing his own impotence: after all, how many divisions does General Hitch command? Far fewer than any Pope…

The agony of the liberal hawks is an occasion for unabashed schadenfreude on my part, and I'm not making any bones about it. In the New York Observer, we read about the exquisite forms this agony takes, and who among us in the antiwar camp can suppress a quiet smile?

"'Someone wrote that you knew who the surgeon would be, so you knew what the operation would look like. And there's some truth to that. I was not as aware as I should have been of just how mendacious and incompetent the surgeon was going to be,' said Mr. Packer by telephone from his office at The New Yorker on a recent afternoon. 'At the time, in March 2003, you had to make a choice: Are you going to say yes or no to this thing? Of course, it didn't matter – it was going to happen no matter what you said – but in an existential sense, you wanted to be counted.'"

Liberal New York intellectuals would much rather the surgeon was, say, John Kerry or Hillary Clinton: perhaps then they might be equal to the task of simply overlooking the large-scale mendacity that got us into this war in the first place. But criminal "incompetence" – wasn't that the main charge directed at Stalin by Trotsky? The Revolution has been betrayed, these intellectual progenitors of our war of "liberation" lament: this narrative allows the complainant to claim that his ideas weren't defeated, because they weren't ever really tried in the first place. If only we'd put in more troops, if only we'd poured in more money, if only we'd gotten the French and the Russians to go along, if only we'd given the inspections a little more time and then struck later on – these dissidents have no shortage of explanations for how and why the war they insisted on having has proved so disastrous.

What they will never acknowledge, however, is that it wasn't the implementation, but the principle itself that led to the bloody mess we are now witnessing. Such harsh assessments, however, are only for those of us in the "reality-based community." Hitchens, however, is having none of it:

"It's a matter of solidarity with the Iraqi and Kurdish opposition to Saddam, and trying to turn American policy in their favor. I'm on their side, win or lose…. I could never publish an article saying, 'Come to think of it, we never should have done this,' because I could never look them in the face…. So, no, I don't have any second thoughts."

Who cares about American interests, when our first duty is to the Kurds? The key role of Hitchens and his fellow "internationalists" is to utilize the American Gulliver in the interests of various Lilliputians around the globe, whether it be an independent Kurdistan, the al-Qaeda-allied Muslim separatists of the former Yugoslavia, or the Israeli Sparta. It is one of the chief hazards of becoming a global hegemon: the Imperial court in Washington is the scene of so many intrigues on the part of foreigners vying for favor and influence that overseas policies are largely determined by foreign lobbyists. We have become the prisoners of our own satraps and "allies."

As the consequences of this ill-conceived war begin to be felt, both here and in Iraq, and the costs escalate, the War Party sure has a lot of 'splaining to do – and so far they aren't doing a very good job of it. If I weren't enjoying the spectacle so much, I'd be embarrassed by Paul Berman's response to the New York Observer's inquiries on any second thoughts he might have about the war:

"It has been a painful few months indeed for the self-described liberal interventionists, who were anointed in the months leading up to the Iraq invasion as bold new forward-thinkers for their carefully parsed positions.

"'I have to go now,' said the writer Paul Berman, half-jokingly, when faced with the question of his present view of the conflict in Iraq. 'It's a painful topic.' Mr. Berman said he saw a 'wild inconsistency' among intellectuals who were in favor of promoting human rights but who were not doing more for the dissidents in Iraq. 'You have to remember that the intellectuals are usually wrong,' Mr. Berman said."

Presumably Berman – whose thesis that radical Islam represents a threat on a par with German fascism and Soviet Communism has been influential among liberal-leftish hawks – means to include himself.

Yes, it sure is "painful" to see what the War Party has wrought in Iraq – especially for the families of the fallen, both American and Iraqi. For Cindy Sheehan and her Iraqi equivalents, who grieve and ask "why" and get no answer either from Bush or from Berman and his brigade of babbling armchair generals, the pain just keeps on keeping on. Not that the neocons care one whit about the human tragedy caused by their folly: as the Stalinists used to say, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, and that's a small price to pay when you take into account the glorious utopia we're building.

Isn't it?

As Americans begin to understand that this is really the question posed by George W. Bush's foreign policy – a strategic doctrine fully supported, at least in principle, by his Democratic opponents – their answer is becoming clearer by the day: No, no, a thousand times no.

Let the pro-war "liberal hawks" write all the fancy polemics they want, and, as the full tragedy of our involvement in Iraq unfolds, it won't affect public opinion one iota. What's more, they know it, and this knowledge of their own ineffectiveness – the suspicion that the louder they shout, the more they can be certain no one is listening – has unhinged some of them. Certainly this is true of Hitchens, whose public meltdown climaxed in his giving thanks to bin Laden for the horror of 9/11:

"I am one of those who believe, uncynically, that Osama bin Laden did us all a service (and holy war a great disservice) by his mad decision to assault the American homeland four years ago. Had he not made this world-historical mistake, we would have been able to add a Talibanized and nuclear-armed Pakistan to our list of the threats we failed to recognize in time. (This threat still exists, but it is no longer so casually overlooked.)"

The cautionary modifiers – "mad," "world-historical mistake" – don't quite do the trick of reining in the unmistakable glee with which Hitchens contemplates the worst terrorist attack in American history. Aside from the off-the-wall implication that Pervez Musharraf is about to launch a nuclear attack on the United States, one has to wonder if this is just the alcohol talking or if something a bit stronger than mere spirits is the source of such a Pat Robertson-esque ululation.

Hitchens is surely correct in describing the madness of bin Laden, whose own hubris is about on a par with that of our own War Party, but what he misses is his own slippage into the abyss of sheer nuttiness, out of which – like the Iraqi quagmire itself – there is little if any hope of extrication short of immediate and unconditional withdrawal. In Hitchens' case, this means withdrawal from public life, a premature retirement on account of having made such a complete and utter ass of himself.

Hitchens' implosion is symptomatic of a larger phenomenon: the impending breakup of the War Party, and, with it, the liberal interventionist consensus. This world-saving, world-shaping, dangerously meddlesome doctrine, which formed during the Clinton era and solidified in support of a Democratic administration's incursions into Haiti and the Balkans, led to the passage of the Iraq "Liberation" Act in 1998, which legalized the war – insofar as such an enormous crime can be legitimized by legislative fiat. 9/11, for which The Hitch is perversely thankful, gave it the impetus to become a kind of holy war.

The creation of the Islamic Republic of Iraq under U.S. auspices is by no means the last act in what promises to be a long, drawn-out drama: it is only a matter of time before we are told that our own creature, midwifed by ourselves, is itself a great danger, or perhaps a manifestation of an even greater danger headquartered in Tehran.

Then the party line will change, once again, as we fight a monster of our own making – and that, in a nutshell, is the whole story of this endless "war on terrorism": it is a self-renewing monster that can, in theory, never die. We slay it and it keeps reappearing – and how convenient is that?

– Justin Raimondo

United States Needs To Cease Being the Global Warlord

President Bush assured the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Salt Lake City last Monday that we must continue the war on terrorism and our troops must stay to bring freedom and democracy to Iraq. A steadily shrinking minority now support the president's view and methods.

More than 1,000 demonstrators in Salt Lake City's Pioneer Park disagreed with the current U.S. policy and demanded that our troops be brought home soon to end the destructive wars in the Middle East. Various speakers, veterans, parents of dead and injured veterans, Mayor Rocky Anderson, respected constitutional law professor Ed Firmage all strongly disagree with the idea of fighting terrorism and spreading democracy and freedom using aggressive war.

Using the horrendous violence and destruction of war to fight and defeat terrorism is obviously hypocritical and counterproductive. The gross injustice of aggressive or "preventive" warfare that kills and injures many more noncombatants - women and children - than combatants only fuels the hatred and the resulting increase in those willing to die fighting the United States and its allies.

Our behavior in Iraq and Afghanistan and in various detention centers involving torture of prisoners has seriously damaged our stature and possible role as champions of human rights, freedom and democracy. Instead of the sympathy we enjoyed as victims of violence after 9/11, we are now more likely seen as imperialists, aggressors, war criminals and gross offenders of human rights.

We have given our brave soldiers the impossible task of first destroying countries and killing thousands of their citizens and then acting as "therapist" to teach the traumatized survivors nonviolent methods of establishing democratic principles. It is particularly impossible as we do not speak their language, nor do most of us understand their culture and religion.

The idea that meeting terrorism and suicide bombers with greater military violence has been tried by Israel for more than 30 years and has been a spectacular failure. If it did not work in a tiny area of land where the military has overwhelming power, how could it work for the large areas of the Middle East, Indonesia and Africa?

We must consider alternative solutions to reduce and eliminate most of the terrorist threat facing the United States. That solution should begin with the withdrawal of our troops from foreign countries. We now have troops and training camps in more than 100 countries. In many cases we are supporting dictatorial regimes such as in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Pakistan, Uzbekistan and Egypt to name a few.

It is that support and the presence of our troops in Saudi Arabia that was one of the main reasons for the 9/11 attack.

Major bases in Europe and Japan, maintained decades after the possible rationale of fighting the Soviet and Chinese empires has disappeared, are no longer necessary. We need to cease being the global warlords or policemen. The maintenance of such bases not only antagonizes people in those countries but also adds to our trade deficit and tax burden.

A recent report by the conservative Cato Institute (Policy Analysis No. 539, 3/28/05) claims that we could reduce our active-duty military by half by eliminating our foreign bases without impacting our defense capability. It would also reduce our expenditures for personnel and operations by $84 billion per year.

We need to restore global respect for our country and the universal human rights enshrined in our own Constitution and the Charter of the United Nations. That restoration will start when we are perceived as supporting the rights of all people, their culture and religion.

It requires that we act in accordance with the globally accepted universal human rights and ethical rules based on the teachings of Christianity and most other religions. We will then be respected not out of fear of our overwhelming military power, but for the example we show to the world of how to run an effective democracy within our own borders and use nonviolent means to achieve peace and justice.
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Andy Schoenberg is a Road Scholar of the Humanities Council on the topic of "Just War Theory," leader of the Citizens for Global Solutions and emeritus professor at the University of Utah who taught the World Peace Seminar.