A Mess of George Bush's Own Making

It is fair to say that a good many Americans perceive George W. Bush to be a doltish incompetent who does not know the first thing about fighting terrorism.

But, whatever the president's actual level of competence may be, it is now clear that he has even less respect for the intelligence of the American people than his critics have for his cognitive capabilities.

As the president struggles this week to make a case for the staying the course that leads deeper into the quagmire that is Iraq, he is, remarkably, selling a warmed over version of the misguided take on terrorism that he peddled before this disasterous mission was launched.

Apparently working under the assumption that no one has been paying attention over the past two and a half years, Bush delivered a speech to the National Endowment for Democracy Thursday in which he dismissed calls for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. "Some observers also claim that America would be better off by cutting our losses and leaving Iraq now," the president argued, before concluding that, "It's a dangerous illusion refuted with a simple question: Would the United States and other free nations be more safe or less safe with Zarqawi and bin Laden in control of Iraq, its people and its resources?" That's a scary scenario. Unfortunately, it is one that the president created. And it is one that the president still fails to fully comprehend.

To hear the president tell it, the U.S. went to Iraq to combat bin Laden's al Qaida network.

The problem, of course, is that going to Iraq to confront al Qaida in 2003 was like going to the Vatican to confront Protestants.

Saddam Hussein and his Baathist Party cadres were a lot of things, but they were never comrades, colleagues or hosts to the adherents of what Bush referred to in his speech as "Islamic radicalism," "militant jihadism" or "Islamo-fascism."

If any individuals on the planet feared and hated al Qaida, it was Hussein and his allies. The Iraqi Baathists were thugs, to be sure, but they were secularist thugs. Indeed, many of the most brutal acts of oppression carried out by the Iraqi regime targeted Islamic militants and governments aligned with the fundamentalists. The eight-year war between Iraq and Iran pitted the soldiers of Hussein's secular nationalism against the armies of the Ayatollah Khomeini's radical vision of Islam. That is why, while the United States remained officially neutral in the war that lasted from 1980 to 1988, it became an aggressive behind-the-scenes backer of Hussein. As part of that support, the U.S. State Department in 1982 removed Iraq from its list of states supporting international terrorism. That step helped to ease the way for loans and other forms of aid -- such as the U.S. Agriculture Department's guaranteed loans to Iraq for purchases of American commodities. It also signaled to other countries and international agencies that the U.S. wanted them to provide aid to Hussein -- and if the signal was missed, the Reagan White House and State Department would make their sentiments clear, as happened when the administration lobbied the Export-Import Bank to improve Iraq's credit rating and provide it with needed financial assistance. If any lingering doubts about U.S. attitude remained, they were eased by the December 20, 1983, visit of Donald Rumsfeld, who was touring the Middle East as President Reagan's special envoy, for visits with Hussein and Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz.

As it happened, the U.S. was reading Hussein right. In a region where the common catchphrase is "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," Hussein was not merely someone who was fighting a neighboring country. He was fighting the spread of the radical Islamic fundamentalism that the U.S. so feared because he was a committed secularist. Hussein promoted the education of women and put them in positions of power. Under Hussein, Christians, Jews and other non-Muslims enjoyed a greater measure of religious freedom than they have in most Middle Eastern countries in recent decades. Hussein included non-Muslims among his closest advisors, most notably Aziz, a Christian adherent of the Chaldean Catholic faith that remains rooted in Iraq. There was a paranoid passion to Hussein's secularism. He and his vast secret police network remained ever on the watch for evidence of Islamic militancy, and when it was found the response was swift and brutal. It was an awareness of the fact that Hussein was a bulwark against militant Islam that led key aides to President George H.W. Bush to argue against displacing him after the liberation of Kuwait by a U.S.-led force in 1991.

Nothing about Hussein's Baathist ideology changed during the 1990s. So it came to no surprise to anyone who knew the region that the 9/11 Commission, after aggressively investigating the matter, found no operational relationships existed between al Qaida and Iraq before the 2003 invasion that toppled Hussein.

Now, after having removed the bulwark against militant Islam, Bush describes an Iraq that is rapidly filling up with followers of al Qaida, and warns that the withdrawal of U.S. forces would allow the militants to "use the vacuum created by an American retreat to gain control of a country, a base from which to launch attacks and conduct their war against nonradical Muslim governments."

What Bush did not say in his speech Thursday was that his own actions had created the dire circumstance he described.

If George Washington's mantra was that he could not tell a lie, George Bush's is that he cannot admit a mistake.

But the president's refusal to face reality has isolated him from those who are serious about fighting the spread of terrorism.

General Peter Cosgrove, the former head of Australia's Defense Forces, rejects the notion that staying the course is the smart response. In fact, the well-regarded former commander of the military of a key U.S. ally, says that withdrawal makes sense because it will "take one of the focal points of terrorist motivation away, and that is foreign troops."

It is Cosgrove who suggested the late 2006 withdrawal date that has been taken up by U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wisconsin, the first member of the Senate to urge the development of an exit-strategy timeline.

For those who do not trusts the assessment of an Australian, consider that Porter Goss, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, who says, "The Iraq conflict, while not a cause of extremism, has become a cause for extremists. Islamic extremists are exploiting the Iraq conflict to recruit new, anti-U.S. jihadists."

The president who argued that Iraq needed to be invaded in order to fight terrorism has instead opened up a new country to al Qaida's machinations.

The president who argued that the U.S. must continue to occupy Iraq in order to prevent the spread of terrorism has instead created a quagmire in which even the head of his own CIA says that the U.S. presence is being exploited by terrorists to recruit new, anti-U.S. jihadists.

Now, George Bush argues for staying the course.

Perhaps Osama bin Laden would agree with that strategy.

But the American people are wising up.

The latest Gallup/CNN/USA Today poll tells us that only 32 percent of those approve of Bush's handling of the war. A remarkable 59 percent now say that the invasion a mistake. And an even more remarkable 63 percent say they want to see some or all U.S. troops withdrawn.

John Nichols covered the first Gulf War and has frequently reported from the Middle East over the past two decades. For more of his analysis of the administration's misguided approach, check out his book The Rise and Rise of Dick Cheney, out in paperback November 2 from The New Press.

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?bid=1&pid=27274

The Police State Is Closer Than You Think

Police States are Easier to Acquire than Americans Appreciate.

The hysterical aftermath of September 11 has put into place the main components of a police state.

Habeas corpus is the greatest protection Americans have against a police state. Habeas corpus ensures that Americans can only be detained by law. They must be charged with offenses, given access to attorneys, and brought to trial. Habeas corpus prevents the despotic practice of picking up a person and holding him indefinitely.

President Bush claims the power to set aside habeas corpus and to dispense with warrants for arrest and with procedures that guarantee court appearance and trial without undue delay. Today in the US, the executive branch claims the power to arrest a citizen on its own initiative and hold the citizen indefinitely. Thus, Americans are no longer protected from arbitrary arrest and indefinite detention.

These new "seize and hold" powers strip the accused of the protective aspects of law and give reign to selectivity and arbitrariness. No warrant is required for arrest, no charges have to be presented before a judge, and no case has to be put before a jury. As the police are unaccountable, whoever is selected for arrest is at the mercy of arbitrariness.

The judiciary has to some extent defended habeas corpus against Bush's attack, but the protection that the principle offers against arbitrary seizure and detention has been breached. Whether courts can fully restore habeas corpus or whether it continues in weakened form or passes by the wayside remains to be determined.

Americans may be unaware of what it means to be stripped of the protection of habeas corpus, or they may think police authorities would never make a mistake or ever use their unbridled power against the innocent. Americans might think that the police state will only use its powers against terrorists or "enemy combatants."

But "terrorist" is an elastic and legally undefined category. When the President of the United States declares: "You are with us or against us," the police may perceive a terrorist in a dissenter from the government's policies. Political opponents may be regarded as "against us" and thereby fall in the suspect category. Or a police officer may simply have his eye on another man's attractive wife or wish to settle some old score. An enemy combatant might simply be an American who happens to be in a foreign country when the US invades. In times before our own when people were properly educated, they understood the injustices that caused the English Parliament to pass the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679 prohibiting the arbitrary powers that are now being claimed for the executive branch in the US.

The PATRIOT Act has given the police autonomous surveillance powers. These powers were not achieved without opposition. Civil libertarians opposed it. Bob Barr, the former US Representative who led the impeachment of President Clinton, fought to limit some of the worst features of the act. But the act still bristles with unconstitutional violations of the rights of citizens, and the newly created powers of government to spy on citizens has brought an end to privacy.

The prohibition against self-incrimination protects the accused from being tortured into confession. The innocent are no more immune to pain than the guilty. As Stalin's show trials demonstrated, even the most committed leaders of the Bolshevik revolution could be tortured into confessing to be counter-revolutionaries.

The prohibition against torture has been breached by the practice of plea bargaining, which replaces jury trials with negotiated self-incrimination, and by sentencing guidelines, which transfer sentencing discretion from judge to prosecutor. Plea bargaining is a form of psychological torture in which innocent and guilty alike give up their right to jury trial in order to reduce the number and severity of the charges that the prosecutor brings.

The prohibition against physical torture, however, held until the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. As video, photographic, and testimonial evidence make clear, the US military has been torturing large numbers of people in its Iraq prisons and in its prison compound at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Most of the detainees were people picked up in the equivalent of KGB Stalin-era street sweeps. Having no idea who the detainees are and pressured to produce results, torture was applied to coerce confessions.

Everyone is disturbed about this barbaric and illegal practice except the Bush administration. In an amendment to a $440 billion defense budget bill last Wednesday, the US Senate voted 90 to 9 to ban "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" of anyone in US government custody. President Bush responded to the Senate's will by repeating his earlier threat to veto the bill. Allow me to torture, demands Bush of the Senate, or you will be guilty of delaying the military's budget during wartime. Bush is threatening the Senate with blame for the deaths of US soldiers who will die because they don't get their body armor or humvee armor in time.

It will be a short step from torturing detainees abroad to torturing the accused in US jails and prisons.

The attorney-client privilege, another great achievement, has been breached by the Lynne Stewart case. As the attorney for a terrorist, Stewart represented her client in ways disapproved by prosecutors. Stewart was indicted, tried, and convicted of providing material support to terrorists.

Stewart's indictment sends a message to attorneys not to represent too dutifully or aggressively clients who are unpopular or demonized. Initially, this category may be limited to terrorists. However, once the attorney-client privilege is breached, any attorney who gets too much in the way of a prosecutor's case may experience retribution. The intimidation factor can result in an attorney presenting a weak defense. It can even result in attorneys doing as the Benthamite US Department of Justice (sic) desires and helping to convict their client.

In the Anglo-American legal tradition, law is a shield of the accused. This is necessary in order to protect the innocent. The accused is innocent until he is proven guilty in an open court. There are no secret tribunals, no torture, and no show trials.

Outside the Anglo-American legal tradition, law is a weapon of the state. It may be used with careful restraint, as in Europe today, or it may be used to destroy opponents or rivals as in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.

When the protective features of the law are removed, law becomes a weapon. Habeas corpus, due process, the attorney-client privilege, no crime without intent, and prohibitions against torture and ex post facto laws are the protective features that shield the accused. These protective features are being removed by zealotry in the "war against terrorism."

The damage terrorists can inflict pales in comparison to the loss of the civil liberties that protect us from the arbitrary power of law used as a weapon. The loss of law as Blackstone's shield of the innocent would be catastrophic. It would mean the end of America as a land of liberty.

Paul Craig Roberts
http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=7556

Jesus Alone

Salvation cannot be bought except through the blood of Jesus. It doesn't get any clearer than that.

For some 2,000 years, people have used, abused, and shaped Jesus and Christianity to fit their personal and subjective construct.

Even in my own lifetime, I have heard Christ called "The Revolutionary Jesus," "The Marxist Jesus," "The Nazi Jesus," and "The Capitalist Jesus"—to mention just a few.

I daresay that had this abuse of teaching been done to one of the founders of the other great world religions, the abusers might have been hacked to death in an attempt to avenge mischaracterization of the religion’s fundamentals. Yet those of us who consider ourselves to be orthodox Christians do not respond this way—both because we believe in Jesus’ injunction to his followers to turn the other cheek (see Matthew 5:39 and Luke 6:29) and because of our foundational belief in the sovereignty of God. Hence the statement attributed to Charles Spurgeon: "Defending the Bible is like defending a lion." The Bible speaks for and defends itself.

Nonetheless, from time to time, we are called upon to set the record straight, drawing upon 2,000 years of Christianity that is centered upon the God who is the Alpha and the Omega, the one “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty” (Revelation 1:8, NIV). Today it is imperative that we as Christians point out the way in which society is altering the unalterable. We must defend the notion that God has not changed.

Take the results of a survey conducted in early August 2005 by Newsweek and Beliefnet. More than 1,000 Americans were asked what they believe and how they practice their faith.

Perhaps what is most interesting—and disturbing—about the results is that 68 percent of evangelical Protestants and 83 percent of non-evangelical Protestants said that yes, according to their own religious beliefs, “a good person” who isn’t of their religious faith can “go to heaven or attain salvation.”

Here’s how Newsweek’s Jerry Adler put it: “Along with diversity has come a degree of inclusiveness that would have scandalized an earlier generation. According to the Newsweek/Beliefnet Poll, eight in 10 Americans—including 68 percent of evangelicals—believe that more than one faith can be a path to salvation, which is most likely not what they were taught in Sunday school.”

I certainly hope not, but I am no longer so sure.

This finding is startling. And I have to wonder where we, as a Church, have failed? Are we not communicating the Bible, which clearly teaches that Jesus is the only way to God and that no amount of good deeds or random acts of kindness can get anyone into heaven? Are we not making it clear that salvation cannot be bought—except with the blood of Jesus?

We must return to Scripture, which clearly indicates that salvation does not exist apart from Christ and that we can be saved only by grace and not by works.

These aren't my concepts—they're from the Word of God. Jesus Himself said: "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6, NIV).

To me, it doesn't get any clearer than that. And I am grieved, disheartened, and confused that people who profess to be evangelical Protestants would believe otherwise.

The one comfort we can draw from these statistics is that it has become easier to identify the goats camouflaged as God's sheep. Christ has always indulged a certain mixture of pretenders among the authentic believers in His Church, and today's cultural climate makes it easier for orthodox Christians to discern the difference.

Though it is a popular idea, we must make it clear that being "a good person" does not bring salvation. As Paul explains in Ephesians 2:8-9: "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast."

We are saved only by the grace of God, and salvation is possible because Christ died on the cross to pay the price for your sins and for mine. And praise God He did!

With these things in mind, as we consider any form of spirituality, we should ask three questions:

1. Is it consistent with the life and teaching of Jesus?

If someone claims to enjoy an emotionally fulfilling spiritual life but could not care less for his neighbors who are on a self-destructive journey that inevitably ends in eternal separation from God, that is contradictory to the command of Jesus to "love your neighbor as yourself." (Matthew 19:19)

2. Is it consistent with the totality of the life and teaching of Jesus?

There is no use in someone's claiming to be a follower of Jesus Christ who habitually and casually breaks the Ten Commandments, which Jesus declared that He came to fulfill, not to destroy (see Matthew 5:17).

3. Is it consistent with the teaching of the whole Bible?

It's quite easy to take a phrase from the Bible, to isolate it from its context, and to claim any sort of new-fangled idea. In point of fact, orthodox Christians believe that the two books—the Old Testament and the New Testament—of the Bible are very consistent. The first claims that the Messiah is coming, and the second claims that He came.

As a final warning, I would add that the word spirituality is used to justify all sorts of physical and external ecstasy—but in truth the word for some 2,000 years was used in reference to those who have invited the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, to dwell in them. When the Holy Spirit does dwell in a believer, He leads them into righteousness and purity, sanity and reason—not toward following their own whims.

While our society continues to evolve, we must remember that "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever." (Hebrews 13:8) He does not change. He alone is the way to God the Father, to heaven, to salvation. And nothing we can do or dream up will ever change that.

By Michael Youssef
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/173/story_17379_1.html