Did the Military Assassinate Dr. King? Part II

I remember my mother running through the house forty years ago this day, struck with the most emotion that I had ever seen in a person, weeping over the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In one of the great speeches of American history, Robert Kennedy summed up Dr. King's life in two sentences as he addressed a mostly black crowd in Indianapolis – “Dr. Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in the cause of that effort.” Forty years later, Dr. King, ironically, would not recognize the world that we live in. His dream, which seemed so distant during the Civil Rights’ struggles of the 1960s, has not quite become a reality; however, it would be dishonest to suggest that America has not made long strides in the direction of fulfilling one of the great ideals of the 20^th Century: the dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed; holding a self-evident truth that all men are created equal…the dream that black children would one day live in a nation where they would not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content
of their character.

Despite the enormous progress in American race relations, the dream of a color blind society has yet to be achieved. We keep hearing, of Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy, that he may be the country’s first “black” President. In a truly color blind society, Barack’s ethnicity is irrelevant. The media didn’t call President Bush the 43^rd white President of America. The attention that has been given to Obama’s skin color demonstrates how much work is necessary to achieve Dr. King’s dream.

The 40-years between Dr. King’s death and Obama’s presidential bid is heroic in one respect; that the descendant of a slave can have a serious prospect of holding the highest public servant position in the country. However, it is tragic in another respect; that the U.S. Government saw Dr. King as a national security threat. At a minimum, one could argue that America helped preserve the climate of hate that caused Dr. King’s death, and at worst, one can argue that she created it. Whether one agrees that America has a level of culpability in his death, one thing is certain, military presence in Memphis on April 4, 1968 is very, very troublesome.

The military spying on an American citizen seems like a paradox of sorts since any concern that Dr. King would fuel social unrest would appear to fall under the responsibility of the FBI. Part of the FBI's mission is to provide leadership and law enforcement assistance to federal, state and local agencies; and to perform these responsibilities in a manner that is responsive to the needs of the public and is faithful to the Constitution of the United States. Any concern that Dr. King’s involvement in peaceful, social protests would lead to social unrest would clearly fall under the purview of the FBI and state and local police agencies. Therefore, I am deeply troubled that the military took the lead to spy on Dr. King instead of the FBI, who had monitored his every move since the Birmingham Bus Boycott.

Given the social climate of the 1960s, it is in fact not much of a stretch for people to believe that the military was responsible for Dr. King’s death. What is curious, however, is that James Earl Ray was charged and later convicted of his death; however, the King family later granted him a clemency of sorts, by publicly acknowledging that they did not believe he killed their father/husband. This is dramatic, since Coretta Scott King and her children would have been more closely connected emotionally to Dr. King’s death. Consequently, for them to publicly declare Ray’s innocence, it would suggest that they strongly believed that he was not responsible for his assassination.

Ray claims to have confessed to the murder of Dr. King to prevent the possibility of a capital case, leading to conviction and a possible death sentence. He later recanted his confession and spent the remainder of his life trying to obtain a trial in order to prove his innocence. Twenty years after his verdict, a friend of Dr. King, Dr. William Pepper, began an intense research effort to help secure a trial for Ray in order to clear his name. In the process, Pepper discovered evidence that led to a wrongful death civil suit by the King family in 1999. The centerpiece of the civil suit was a bar owner named Loyd Jowers, who claims to have disposed of the murder weapon at the request of a local mob figure.

Pepper called dozens of witnesses and according to Publishers Weekly, they contributed to a forceful, detailed case that accused the FBI, the CIA, the U.S. military, the Memphis police, and local and national organized crime leaders. And after only an hour of deliberation, the jury found for the King family. In order to suppress any claims that they were in it for the money, the family only sought $100 in the suit. They wanted the facts of the case to receive wide circulation. However, in what should have been one of the biggest news stories of the decade, it barely made it beyond one news cycle. Determined to enlighten the public on the facts of his research and subsequent trial, Pepper wrote An Act of State, The Execution of Martin Luther King, a comprehensive examination into the assassination of Dr. King.

As we remember the death of a great American patriot, there are still many unanswered questions, like –

· Why were Floyd E. Newman and Norvell E. Wallace, black firefighters who worked at Fire Station 2, directly across the street from the Lorraine Hotel, telephoned at home on the night of April 3, 1968 and advised that they had been temporarily transferred to fire stations far removed from the Lorraine Hotel?

· If James Earl Ray was the lone assassin, then who placed sophisticated listening devices on Dr. King’s telephone and television in his room at the Lorraine Hotel?

· What was the United States Army doing in Memphis on April 4, 1968?

· Why did Walter Fauntroy, who chaired the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) that investigated Dr. King’s death, believe that Ray did not kill Dr. King, but that there was a larger conspiracy that “possibly involved federal law enforcement agencies?”

· What about reports that the FBI sent a swat team to Tennessee’s Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary to shoot Ray after an escape to prevent his testimony at the HSCA hearings?

· Why did Carthel Weeden, captain of Fire Station 2 take two U.S. Army officers to the roof of the fire station on the morning of April 4, 1968, which gave them a perfect line of sight to Dr. King’s balcony doorway?

· Why did the Army’s 111^th Military Intelligence Group keep Dr. King under 24 hour surveillance during 1968?

· Why did the owner of Jim’s Grill (the back door of which opened into the dense bushes across from the Lorraine Motel), Loyd Jowers, tell Sam Donaldson on Prime Time Live in 1993 that he had been asked to help murder Dr. King and was told that there would be a decoy (Ray) in the plot if it was not true?

· Is it true that Merrell McCullough, an undercover Memphis Police Department officer, who later began working with the CIA, infiltrated a Memphis community organizing group, the Invaders, which was working with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference? (Note: McCullough can be seen holding Dr. King’s head in the famous photograph of him lying on the balcony of the Lorraine Hotel.)

(To keep the above bullet points from reading like a trial transcript, I simply offered a summary; however Probe Magazine published an expose of the King Family’s wrongful death suit against Loyd Jowers, which brought to light a number of questionable events that I have identified. Also, the King Center has published an online transcript of the court proceedings.)

The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is a constant reminder that we live in a very cruel world, where ambitions, aspirations and dreams can come in for a crash landing in an instant. The power of Dr. King’s life, however, demonstrated that his was sprinkled with God’s grace, which caused it to be immortalized in the lives of, not just his family, but all men and women of good will. The world was truly a better place with him in it, and ironically, because of his life, the world became an even better place when he left it – what a great epitaph to have engraved on ones gravestone; however, that choice is yours.

As I leave this series on Dr. King’s assassination, I wish to offer a tribute to his legacy by quoting one of my favorite passages from his many speeches – “An individual has not started living fully until they can rise above the narrow confines of individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of humanity. Every person must decide, at some point, whether they will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness. This is the judgement. Life=s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’@

Did the Military Assassinate Dr. King? Part I

Tomorrow is the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I will examine his death in a two part series and layout what I believe to be some disturbing questions that still deserve answers.

Before I am charged with being unpatriotic or anti-American, I better swiftly say that there is no hard evidence to prove military involvement in the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. However, the evidence that is available does provide a scary connection between his death and our Government. According to The Commercial Appeal, a conservative newspaper in Memphis, Tennessee, the U.S. Government had spied on the King family for 30 years and they were in Memphis on the day of Dr. King’s assassination. As his popularity grew and he began to speak out against the Vietnam War, enlisting the support of many anti-war advocates, the military increasingly viewed him as a threat to national security.^*

Dr. King was in Memphis in early April preparing to lead a demonstration in support of striking sanitation workers. A few weeks later, he was planning to bring his Poor People’s Campaign to Washington, D.C. to demand that less attention be given to the war in Vietnam and that the government provide more resources for the poor.

An April 4, 1968, Dr. King was slain by an assassin’s bullet.

For those who understood the climate that led to Dr. King’s assassination, it would be impossible to disregard his evolution as a human rights leader. Dr. King was thrust into the national spotlight with his courageous leadership of the Birmingham Bus Boycott in 1955 and 1956, which led to the Supreme Court’s decision prohibiting segregation on city buses. This was the prelude to a short, but very influential career as a social leader. The turning point in Dr. King’s career came on April 4, 1967.

I’m not quite certain if I should categorize this turning point as coincidence, ironic or tragic. However, this date should be regarded as the moment in his ministry that he challenged an even greater evil than racism: In New York City’s Riverside Church, Dr. King preached a sermon that is affectionately known as Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence, where he delivers a blistering attack against the United States’ involvement in Vietnam, while America’s poor languished in poverty. In Beyond Vietnam, Dr. King uses very harsh language against his country that would be considered anti-American or even subversive, if someone with his celebrity status gave it today in light of Iraq.

I call it Dr. King’s turning point, because essentially he called it his turning point. During his experience in the ghettos of the North, he claims to have grown to a deeper level of awareness regarding his calling as a minister. This experience motivated his active participation in the anti-war effort. He shared his insight into the evolution of his ministry on April 4^th, 1967 in New York, which coincidentally (or is it ironically, or tragically?) is exactly one year to the date of his assassination – April 4, 1968:

My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the [ghettoes] of the North over the last three years -- especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent [emphasis mine].

Dr. King called for the “radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam,” and he began to embark upon a course where some white people, who opposed his civil rights stance, along with those who didn’t, embraced his anti-war sentiment. This anti-war theme brought blacks and whites together to form a common bond of major public dissent. This concerned the war planners, because a successful military campaign in a democracy hinges on public support, and Dr. King’s presence in the anti-war movement began to contribute to the erosion of such support.

By most post-war accounts, Vietnam was a failed foreign policy that was aggressively pursued under the Johnson and Nixon Administrations. In fact, Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense from 1961 through 1968, offers an unabashed apology for his involvement in Vietnam in his book, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam. I believe that this is one of the most significant books written in the United States in the last 25 years, because it is so rare for a public official at McNamara’s level to give this type of extraordinarily candid view of his errors in judgement over a failed policy.

History vindicated Dr. King over his anti-war stance; however, his position fueled an anti-King reaction within the military and Federal government. Of course, it is legend the stories of illegal spying by the FBI on the Civil Rights Movement, but what is not so widely known is that the military illegally spied on Dr. King as well. In fact, according to The Commercial Appeal, “[the] U.S. Army spies shadowed Dr. [King] the day he died in Memphis. They watched him closely through most of the 1960s, but stepped up their observation of him in early 1968 because of fears that his planned ‘Poor People’s Campaign’ on Washington would lead to widespread violence.”

...to be continued

^{* (The following link will take you to a search page at The Commercial Appeal regarding its investigation on Dr. King's Assassination.)} http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=CA&p_theme=ca&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_text_search-0=army%20AND%20secretly%20AND%20watched%20AND%20King&s_dispstring=army%20secretly%20watched%20King%20AND%20date(1993)&p_field_date-0=YMD_date&p_params_date-0=date:B,E&p_text_date-0=1993&xcal_numdocs=20&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:A&xcal_useweights=no.

Barack Obama's Pastor

I initially chose to remain silent over the controversy surrounding the sermons preached by Barack Obama’s former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright. However, after thoughtful consideration and after seeing the unfair way that this has played out in the media, I feel compelled to address the subject. For those who have not heard his comments, I direct you to a two-minute clip that has been showing on You-Tube (click here). In it, he claims that the cycle of drug addiction and incarceration in the black community has been made fertile by the U.S. Government, and because of this, God will not bless America, but God will damn America:

“The government gives them the drugs; builds bigger prisons; passes a three strike law; then wants us to sing God bless America. No. No. No. Not God bless America; God damn America. It’s in the Bible for killing innocent people, God damn America for treating her citizens less than human [comments by Reverend Jeremiah Wright].”

We can argue the merits of Wright’s remarks; however, it only takes a casual look at history to see the long, harsh list of egregious acts that America has fostered upon its non-white citizens and people of color around the world. I will not bore you by recounting dozens of instances of injury that has been sustained by people of color at the hands of white people. However, I will name just a few to demonstrate that the "so-called" rants of men like Pastor Jeremiah Wright are not really that far fetched: Slavery; the Dred Scott decision at the U.S. Supreme Court; the Tuskegee Study, the Scottsboro boys, COINTELPRO; the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which annihilated hundreds of thousands of Japanese citizens; and Jena Six.

These examples, with the exception of the nuclear bombing of the Japanese cities and Jena Six, are epic in regards to their impact on blacks and demonstrate the total disregard that America has had for its people of color. I mention Jena Six to demonstrate that Jim Crow is still alive and well in America. I also reference the nuclear annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to show that the United States is committed to its own preservation even at the expense of more than a quarter-million innocent lives.

The public reactions to Wright’s sermons show the deep racial divide that still exists in America: While many blacks can relate to most of what Wright has said, many whites are shocked that black people can demonstrate this type of “anti-American” sentiment. Although I am convinced that the timing of the media blitz regarding Wright was politically calculated to weaken Obama during his campaign for president, it graphically demonstrates the need to have a serious, national discussion on race relations. It reminds me of the racial divide during the trial of OJ Simpson for the murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Goldman: while 90 percent of blacks believed that OJ was innocent, 90 percent of whites thought he was guilty.

One hundred years later, the words of W.E.B Du Bois still rings true that race would be an enduring problem for America – “The problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line…”

Notwithstanding the appalling treatment that blacks have suffered at the hands of white people, it would be difficult to quantify how that treatment has impacted the black community to this day. However, it is safe to say that the Wrights of the world are speaking out of their own experience, the experience of their predecessors, and the experience of their ancestors. Consequently, I was troubled to see Obama repudiate Rev. Wright's comments, because it demonstrated his lack of courage to face an issue that is inherent to the Black Church and family.

Andrew Hacker’s Two Nations, Black and White, Separate, Hostile and Unequal, asserts that all white people sometime in their lives go through what Psychology 101 calls “denial.” They seek to convince themselves and others that they are innocent of any blame for creating and perpetuating the misfortunes of the black community:

At one time or another, all of us have refused to admit certain truths about ourselves. By engaging in what Psychology 101 calls “denial,” we seek to convince others – and ourselves – of our innocence of blame. All white Americans regardless of their political persuasions, are well aware of how black people have suffered due to the inequalities imposed upon them by white America. As has been emphasized, whites differ in how they handle that knowledge. Yet white people who disavow responsibility deny an everyday reality: that to be black is to be consigned to the margins of American life. It is because of this that no white American, including those who insist that opportunities exist for persons of every race, would change places with even the most successful black American. All white Americans realize that their skin comprises an inestimable asset. It opens doors and facilitates freedom of movement. It serves as a shield from insult and harassment. Indeed having been born white can be taken as a sign: your preferment is both ordained and deserved. Its value persists not because a white appearance automatically brings success and status, since there are no such guarantees. What it does ensure is that you will not be regarded as black, a security which is worth so much that no one who has it has ever given it away. This helps explain why white conservatives so vehemently oppose programs like affirmative action. They simply do not want to admit to themselves that the value imputed to being white has injured people who are black (Two Nations, Black and White, Separate, Hostile and Unequal, page 60).

Not only are white people aware of the historical perspective of Wright’s scathing words, but so is Obama. However, this subject is taboo, because few white people want to address the harm that they or their ancestors have inflicted on blacks and other non-white people, and the effect that those injuries still have on people of color today, and it is obvious that Obama doesn’t want to make those historical wounds part of his national platform.

Okay, okay…I can feel some of you saying that he is doing what is necessary to become the president, and that includes maintaining an arms length relationship with his own ethnic community. Perhaps, but preserving the courage of one’s conviction speaks to leadership and integrity, and if Obama is unwilling to defend what he knows to be an authentic grievance by blacks, one must consider, what other compromises he is willing to make to become president or how far will he bend to satisfy a certain constituency after becoming president. If Obama is the uniter that he claims to be, then the repudiation of Wright was a poor way of demonstrating it. It ‘kinda’ reminds me of a previous candidate for president that told us he was a uniter.

Western Christendom v. Islam? Part III

This is the final article of a three part series that is examining the theories of Samuel P. Huntington’s two most recent books - The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order and its sequel Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity

Samuel P. Huntington’s Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity picks up where the final chapter of The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order ends. This sequel describes Western Civilization as a society on the threshold of implosion due to the self inflicted wound of multiculturalism and Hispanic bilingualism. He maintains that if America is to survive as the pioneer of human achievement, then it must revive the ideal of its American identity and core culture, and foster this identity/culture on the new wave of immigrants that is flooding the country’s borders. He paints an ominous portrait for the future of this country if this does not happen.

I attended Huntington’s book signing in the Washington area after the publication of Who Are We, and I challenged him on something very disturbing that he wrote in the book. He predicted the response of Americans to the prospect of losing its current national identity, which he defines as a European cultural heritage and by extension, a Western heritage. This heritage, he cautions, should motivate the United States to strengthen its cultural impersonation of Europe instead of divorcing it through a melting pot of international assimilation.

After Huntington discussed his book, and during the question and answer period I expressed my alarm and concern that every book that he has written seems to portray people of color as the villain in society whose freedoms should be curtailed or eliminated altogether. In Who Are We, he gives his analysis and prediction of four possible outcomes regarding the loss of America’s national identity. I read to him and the audience the outcome that he seems to suggest in the book is the most likely to occur:

[T]he various forces challenging the core American culture and Creed could generate a move by native white Americans to revive the discarded and discredited racial and ethnic concepts of American identity and to create an America that would exclude, expel, or suppress people of other racial, ethnic, and cultural groups. Historical and contemporary experience suggest that this is a highly probably reaction from a once dominant ethnic-racial group that feels threatened by the rise of other groups. It could produce a racially intolerant country with high levels of intergroup conflict (Samuel P. Huntington, Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity, New York, Simon & Schuster, 2004, p. 20 – emphasis mine).

I asked Huntington, after reading the above passage, if he actually believed that native, white Americans would revive old forms of racism and embark upon a new social structure that would “exclude, expel or suppress people of other racial, ethnic and cultural groups?” He claimed that he really did not hold much faith in that outcome. His response is a vivid example of hypocrisy and a dramatic demonstration of how simple it is to perjure oneself when your back is against the wall. Huntington had no clue as to my motivation for extracting one of the more controversial components of his book; consequently, his response appeared to be more of an effort to divert attention away from this ugly passage.

If David Duke or some other avowed racist said the things that Samuel P. Huntington promotes, he would be castigated and his views discredited. However, Huntington has been able to peddle his less than favorable view of people of color since the 1950s, and he does it without the notoriety and scrutiny that they merit. As controversial as his books are, they are rarely discussed within the black community. This is significant, because Huntington is not a right wing zealot, spewing a message of hate from the margins of society. He is a respected Harvard professor whose views on race have been cleverly insulated within a social theory of European excellence, and this theory has currency within the conservative, white community.

One of the oldest forms of politics known to humans is “scapegoat” politics. It is the classical effort to gain the support of one group of people by demonstrating to them that their social ills are the result of another group of people. This propaganda usually fuels aggression towards the “scapegoat.” Adolf Hitler did a masterful job in Germany, with his brand of scapegoating, which lead to the Holocaust. The South African government practiced this social system during its Apartheid regimes and Communist countries thrive on “scapegoat” politics.

Propaganda is a particularly useful tool for scapegoating during times of social stress. Of course, Hitler seized the opportunity to turn the Jews into the German scapegoat by claiming that the Jewish bankers were the cause of the hyper inflation that placed the country on the threshold of financial ruins. He also declared that the high “German” unemployment rate was because the Jews were holding the best jobs. This Third Reich propaganda implied that if the Germans could remove the Jews, then that would solve the financial and employment crises. Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor on January 30, 1933 and before the end of the decade, his propaganda machine convinced the German population to participate in the annihilation of 6 million Jews.

America is now showing classical signs of a society prime to begin its own version of scapegoating: financial instability; high unemployment in entire segments of the workforce; and the degradation of the state of mind of the nation’s youth. In fact, I suggest to you that the scapegoating has already begun. Not only does Huntington’s books play the blame game for what he sees as the erosion of European values in America, but Tony Blankley, editorial page editor of the Washington Times, has written The West’s Last Chance, Will We Win the Clash of Civilizations, Alvin Schmidt, professor of sociology at Southern Wesleyan University, has written The Menace of Multiculturalism, and conservative commentator, Patrick Buchanan has written The Death of the West, How Dying Populations and Immigration Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization, to name a few books that seem to blame people of color for the ills of Western society.

In the famous words of Rodney King – “Why can’t we all just get along?”

Well, there is a cadre of influential thinkers who cannot imagine that “we all just get along.” In reality, America has never been able to “just get along.” If race wasn’t the demarcation, then it was age. When it wasn’t age, then it became class; and when class warfare ended, it became race again. Huntington’s message resonates deep into the fabric of American culture and if he had his way, he would “create an America that would exclude, expel, or suppress people of other racial, ethnic, and cultural groups,” in order to rescue the country from the “patriotic treason” of other ethnic groups.

Western Christendom v. Islam? Part II

On September 10, 2001, I met a federal official at L’Enfant Plaza, who worked for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. The security was so tight, it took about 30 minutes before I was permitted to see the official. I commented to him how strict security was at the facility, and he advised that the government didn’t want to take any chances on a terrorist attack. I said, “No terrorist organization would have the guts to strike in the heart of the nation’s capital.” Well…that wasn’t the first time I’ve had been proven wrong in an assessment on a particular subject.

A little less than 24 hours after my meeting with this federal official, Samuel P. Huntington’s phone began to ring off the hook, because his bestselling book, The Clash of Civilizations predicted the inevitability of September 11^th. He predicted that new patterns of conflict would emerge in the post-Cold War era, and they would be battles over the survival of civilization and not over ideological disagreements that plunged many nations into protracted wars during the 20^th Century.

If the thesis of Huntington’s book is correct, then 21^st Century conflicts are simply a continuation of wars that have destroyed many civilizations; some as influential in their time as America is today. Carroll Quigley, in his book Tragedy and Hope, offers an explanation into the life cycle of civilizations. According to his analysis, civilizations go through a process of evolution from its birth, which is followed by a period of vigorous expansion, at the expense of its neighbors and possibly other civilizations. Once the civilization is recognized as such, it becomes stabilized and eventually stagnant. This period of stagnation is often accompanied by a Golden Age of peace and prosperity, where internal crises arise, and the question of the civilization’s ability to defend itself from outside forces come to bear.

If new ideas – modes of thought and action – become incompatible with its founding principles, the civilization will grow steadily weaker through internal conflicts until it is submerged by outside enemies and eventually disappears. These are not hypothetical notions, but time honored observations into the life and death of a society. Quigley traced the lifecycle of sixteen civilizations dating back to 6000 B.C., and he demonstrated that Europeans, bearing various names, including Western Civilization, have destroyed twelve possibly fourteen civilizations. This is so significant, I feel compelled to repeat it: Quigley traced the lifecycle of sixteen civilizations dating back to 6000 B.C., and he demonstrated that Europeans, bearing various names, including Western Civilization, have destroyed twelve possibly fourteen civilizations since the time of the Greeks in the 4^th Century B.C.

Quigley goes further to say, “When we consider the untold numbers of other societies, simpler than civilizations, which Western Civilization has destroyed or is now destroying, societies such as the Hottentots, the Iroquois, the Tasmanians, the Navahoes, the Caribs, and countless others, the full frightening power of Western Civilization becomes obvious (Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, New York, The Macmillan Company, 1966, pp. 7-8).”

In Tragedy and Hope, Quigley discloses an Anglo-American conspiracy for World Empire. He doesn’t place a value judgement on it as being right or wrong, but he makes it clear that its role is so important that it should be acknowledged:

“There does exist and has existed for a generation, an international Anglophile network which operates, to some extent, in a way the radical right believes the Communist act. In fact, this network, which we may identify as the Round Table Groups, has no aversion to cooperating with the Communists, or any other group, and frequently does so. I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960’s to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments...[I]n general my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known (ibid, p. 950).”

Quigley seems to encourage this furtive expansion of Western Civilization; however, he would rather see it be more open. Huntington, on the other hand seems to be concerned that this expansion will not occur if the United States continues to divorce itself from European culture with multiculturalism and multilingualism. Consequently, Who Are We is the roadmap to reclaiming America’s Anglo-European culture.

If Quigley in the 1960s and Huntington more recently realized the stakes that are at risk for Western Civilization, then there is no reason for me to doubt that many of our political, social and corporate leaders, along with Islamic scholars and political leaders see the same thing – the destiny of human civilization. According to Quigley, each time the Western world went through a stage of expansion, it caused the death of someone’s way of life.

Now this brings me to the question that has been debated since the destruction of the World Trade Towers – Is the current War on Terror a conflict of civilizations between Western Christendom and Islamic Civilization or is it simply America’s response to September 11^th? When you consider that people who have identified themselves as “Christian” have been fighting Muslims since the Crusades, and if you consider that the Western world has intervened in Middle Eastern affairs in ways that have harmed Muslims since the turn of the 20^th Century, this conflict certainly looks like a continuation of war between the West and Islam.

President Bush denied that the wars in the Middle East are conflicts of civilization, but he also denied that they were not about oil either. He’s probably right about the issue of oil, but I believe that he is twisting the facts to reject the idea that the war is a conflict between Western Christendom and Islam. He claims that we are defending our right to be a free nation: Do you remember the “They hate our freedoms” comment? If you buy that explanation, however, I humbly suggest that the standard of proof will be on you.

The war planners on both sides know the motivation for war, and although the Saudis, Jordan and other U.S. allies in the Middle East are continuing their public show of support for this war, they understand that this war could determine the fate of Islam. Although the war is not about oil, oil continues to be the commodity that runs the world; literally, so the unsavory relationship between the U.S. and its Middle East allies will only be as strong as the flow of oil to the West.

The United States knows a thing or two about strange bedfellows. It was allied with Saddam Hussein in the 1980s when he was engaged in war against Iran; however, as soon as that war was over, he became a villain. And the irony is not lost on anyone who studies Middle Eastern politics: America scripted Saddam’s overthrow and execution and did it under false pretenses. This country’s relationships with non-Western nations are purely for American self-interest, and once that self interest has been satisfied, the relationship will be severed. Self interest was why the U.S. sent the CIA to Afghanistan to train Osama bin Laden during the conflict between al Qaeda and the Soviet Union. However, after that war ceased, America rejected its ties with him as well and years later, bin Laden finds himself at war with his former lover.

Last week it was reported that after a meeting in Vienna, OPEC refused to boost production, although President Bush suggested that it would be a mistake if it allowed the U.S. economy to slow down as a result of higher energy costs. OPEC President told reporters that there was sufficient supply of oil, so there was no need to increase production. He went on further to say that world markets were reacting to “the mismanagement of the U.S. economy.” However, one must consider if this OPEC decision is the economic equivalent of launching a Tomahawk Cruise Missile at the United States. If anyone understands what’s at stake in the current volatile situation in the Middle East, the OPEC nations do.

…to be continued

Western Christendom v. Islam? Part I

I believe that you can tell a lot about a person by the books they read, the movies they watch and the music they listen to. That is why if I am engaged in conversation with someone who I recently met, within 15 minutes I will know these things about them. In the interest of full disclosure, you can find these things out about me by clicking on the “View my complete profile” under the “About Me” section to the right.

Books, movies and music can inspire people to act in ways that they ordinarily would not. This does not necessarily mean that these actions will be constructive, because they too often are destruction. Take a rap artist who inspires young people to spew hate out of their mouths by mimicking the lyrics of a popular song that debase women. Conversely, look at the patriotic songs that had Americans swelling with pride as they were repeated after September 11^th. Or in an extreme 20^th century example, how did Germans, who were otherwise at the pinnacle of Western culture and understood that murder, theft and adultery were actions of the depraved, come to believe that it was permissible to commit genocide?

I recall as a junior high school student when Roots was shown for the first time. It instilled a sense of black pride in me and most of my friends who attended the majority white Lord Baltimore Junior High in Fort Washington, Maryland. However, just like the rude youngsters who impersonate the latest hatemonger lyrics from a rap star, we were headed down a similar path to destruction. Me and about 10 friends were going to show white people that we were no longer going to be abused, so we challenged the white guys to a fight after lunch under the stairwell next to the metal shop class.

Expecting a dozen or so white guys, there were at least 100 of them; some not quite sure why they were there. Now five minutes before the black guys arrived, we had conjured notions of victory over what turned out to be more than half of the 8^th grade, male population at Lord Baltimore. Of course, after seeing 100 or more white guys, discretion became the better part of valor; consequently, at the first opening, we bolted.

The point that I make in all of these examples is that social influences shape our thinking and motivate our actions to a large degree; notwithstanding that in some cases, like the Holocaust, people’s actions are influenced by propaganda, whether it be in the form of a book, a speech or a pamphlet. In fact, the most influential instrument throughout history has been a book – the Bible (the Old and New Testaments). It has contoured the mode of thought and actions of generations back to the BC period of the Pharaohs, and to this day, the Gospel message is a multi-billion dollar enterprise that is beamed non-stop around the globe through satellite television.

Unfortunately and ironically, the Gospel has not always been used as a tool of virtue. History is littered with examples of evil men using this book to peddle wicked schemes: The Holocaust, slavery and the Inquisition are examples of how the Bible has been used as a propaganda weapon.

There are numerous books that have helped chart the course of American history. Of course, the Bible and the United States Constitution have had the greatest impact. However, when one considers influential books in American history they must consider Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations; Henry David Thoreau’s work on Civil Disobedience; Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom; Albert Einstein’s Relativity; Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species; Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged; and Sigmund Freud’s The Ego and The Id to name a few. I believe 25 years from now The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order and its sequel Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity by Samuel P Huntington will be considered two of the most influential books of the last past half century.

The Clash of Civilizations was initially published as a magazine article in Foreign Affairs in the summer of 1993. According to the editors of this distinguished journal, this article generated more discussion than any other article ever published. Three years later the article evolved into the book that cast a mark of distinction on Huntington as the most quoted authority on the events surrounding September 11^th. In the post-Cold War world, he predicted, conflicts will no longer run along ideological – political, economic – fault lines, but along cultural – religious, language, ancestry, and customs – fault lines. Conflicts along these fault lines will create a clash of civilizations. This clash, in some instances, will be the result of long standing grievances that Muslim countries have with the Western world.

Many third world nations have developed the type of revenue, mostly through oil and manufacturing that is allowing them to purchase sophisticated military weapons. Although these same countries are not prepared to face any Western nation in a conflict, they are less likely to be intimidated by them. Huntington warned America of the potential for conflict with Islamic nations who believe that many of their difficulties are the result of American intervention into their domestic affairs. According to Huntington, these nations have a special incentive to acquire weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and the means to deliver them, because it will give them a shortcut to becoming a regional, military power and it will give them the means to deter intervention into their region and country by the United States. It is believed by many scholars if Saddam had waited to invade Kuwait until after he developed a WMD program, America would not have interfered with his incursion.

After September 11^th The Clash of Civilizations became a best seller and Huntington emerged as one of the most insightful scholars in the country.

…to be continued

The Threat to America's National Security

I had not seen a movie at the theaters for 13 years until I broke my drought with JFK in 1991. JFK was Oliver Stone’s re-enactment of what some say is the greatest conspiracy of the 20^th Century – the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. This is one of those movies that you don’t want to see if you have faith in the purity of human government. Granted, the movie is a cinematic version of the events immediately preceding Kennedy’s death and a determined prosecutor’s effort to prove that his assassination reached into the highest levels of the American Government. However, Stone brings to bear enough information to make most reasonable people take a pause and consider, whether for a fleeting moment, the possibility of an American coup d’état of the 35^th President of the United States.

An American coup d’état? Whether it is true or false, it is a heavy indictment to suggest that the United States military was behind the assassination of its own commander and chief.

This article is not about the JFK assassination or JFK, the movie; however, I want to use a discussion between Kevin Costner and Donald Sutherland as my spring board to talk about a gap in our national security: New Orleans district attorney, Jim Garrison, played by Costner, is approached by X, a former military officer, played by Sutherland to help him solve the mystery of the Kennedy assassination. He informs him that Kennedy signed National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 263, which basically would have ended America’s involvement in Vietnam. However in less than two months Kennedy was dead and President Johnson signed NSAM 273, which effectively reversed NSAM 263. These top secret memorandums are pointed to by conspiracy theorists as evidence of a grand scheme to remove a sitting president.

Perhaps, but Sutherland also tells Garrison something that most American citizens either take for granted or have never considered – “The organizing principle of any society, Mr. Garrison……is for war. The authority of a state over its people resides in its war powers.” Now this social theory could certainly be debated; however, one thing is for sure – any society that does not develop a national defense or has gaps in its national defense stands in peril of destruction from outside forces with sufficient strength to destroy their way of life. It has happened throughout history and will continue to happen as long as men with insatiable appetites for power have an influence in society.

This brings me to my related point: The United States is investing $100 billion in the space station, and within two and a half years we will no longer have a spacecraft to transport astronauts and supplies to and from the station. As a result of safety concerns and the 2003 destruction of space shuttle Columbia, NASA plans to retire the remaining three shuttles by September 2010. Consequently, the American space program will have to rely on Russia and the technology of other countries to reach the station until a shuttle replacement is available; projected to be sometime in 2015.

NASA administrator Michael Griffin regrets that his agency is in this dilemma and has said, “we will be largely dependent on Russia and that is a terrible place for the United States to be. I am worried, and many others are concerned.” Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fl.), chairman of the subcommittee that oversees NASA, seems to be more troubled about America’s dependency on Russia – “This is a very serious betrayal of American interests. This will be the first time since Sputnik when the United States will not have a significant space superiority. I remain dumbfounded that we’ve allowed this serious threat to our national security to develop [emphasis mine].”

The space station, it must be understood, is first and foremost a national security post. Whatever other purposes it will serve, its primary objective will be a military outpost for the United States to develop and maintain military supremacy of outer space. And the notion that this country will have to depend on Russia for transportation puts us in a position of weakness where we must rely on the goodwill of the gangsters in Moscow. This is like a chess game where you see your vulnerability and your opponent sees it as well and will make every effort to exploit it.

What will the shakedown be in this instance? Will it be a doubling or tripling or even a quadrupling of the transportation fees? Or God forbid will it be the financial extortion plus political quid pro quo for transportation in exchange for American complicity in a Russian scheme? Who knows what it will be, but certainly the Russians understand their advantage for that five year period, and I have no doubt that they will take advantage of it.

Isn’t it ironic that President Bush campaigned on his national security experience and his ability to protect America from imminent dangers during his 2004 re-election campaign, but has permitted this threat to our national sovereignty? This is a serious lapse in executive responsibility, and for a country that has been at war since 2001, it could be argued that it is an impeachable offense. When Americans line up at the polls to elect a President, they cast their vote for the candidate who personifies courage, leadership, foresight and although he does not have to be the valedictorian of his graduating class, he must have a certain level of intelligence. And this failure of foresight certainly forces Americans to question whether they elected the most qualified candidate to lead and protect this great nation.

We live in a very complex world today, and the President of the United States sits in an office that imposes an unfair standard of responsibility on him (or her). As parents, as spouses, as employers, as pastors, etc., we are always faced with generally giving allowances for human frailty, because no one is perfect. However, the President has to deal with some of the world’s most complicated situations and he has to always respond correctly and efficiently, with no allowance for his own imperfection. And if not, he is excoriated severely by the press, the public, the opposing political party and sometimes by members of his own party.

The reason the President is held to such a high standard is because one error in judgement could bring the end of this society; or as we witnessed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the destruction of an entire American city. This is the dilemma that the President must face on an almost daily basis. During the Bush administration, we have witnessed some of the most colossal blunders ever from an American President: the poor planning for Hurricane Katrina; the Iraq War, which will cost America thousands of young lives and more than $1 trillion; the reckless spending binge that has increased the federal debt by nearly $4 trillion; the illegal, domestic spying; the multiple violations of the Geneva Convention; this nation’s fall, in the eyes of many world leaders, as a spectacle of unprecedented mismanagement; and now the national security gap.

Regardless of whether the organizing principle of any nation is its war powers, as X told Garrison in JFK the movie, America has a flank that will be defenseless to a formidable foe like Russia or China, or an oil-rich, Arab coalition that is able to ally itself with either of these communist superpowers.

God Bless America,
Land that I love.
Stand beside her, and guide her
Thru the night with a light from above.
From the mountains, to the prairies,
To the oceans, white with foam
God bless America, My home sweet home.

An Appraisal on the Bush Presidency - Part IV

In my examination of the presidency of George W. Bush, I looked at his record on the Global War on Terror (GWOT) and the Iraq War; I compared the nation that he inherited in 2001 with the nation that he will deliver to his successor in 2009; and I explored his candor to the American public during his tenure. In my effort to render a verdict on his presidency, I have attempted to capture the essence of the last seven years, and sadly Bush fails miserably, with some historians wondering if he is the worst American President that this country has ever seen. There is no arguing that we have seen some of the most colossal blunders to ever come out of the White House during both Bush administrations: the lethargic response to Hurricane Katrina; the irresponsible venture in Iraq; Domestic Eavesdropping; torturing POWs; authorizing a mercenary army; the refusal to disclose the Energy Commission’s final report; the reckless spending binge that has increased the federal debt by nearly $3.5 trillion; the lack of fiscal policy leading to the current recession; and the list goes on.

Despite serving out the final 10 months of his administration with the prospect of unfavorable historical reviews on several fronts, Bush’s appointments to the Supreme Court have received mixed reviews. Conservatives see the appointments of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito as one of the bright spots of the Bush presidency, while liberals look upon Roberts and Alito with suspicion; and for good reason: Neither one of them were willing to give too much information on their legal theories during the confirmation hearings. Consequently, they were mostly judged on their affable demeanors.

Looking at how the President has added two more conservative justices to the Supreme Court, gives the country a reason to take a pause and consider what long term implications this presents. In June 2007 the Court restricted the ability of public schools to use race to determine which schools students can attend. This ruling did two things: It showed the aggressive nature of the court in usurping state’s rights, and it demonstrated the Court’s willingness to turn its back on previous Supreme Court rulings, known as precedent. In one of the most celebrated cases, the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that state laws that established separate public schools for blacks and whites denied black children equal educational opportunities.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the 5-4 majority which included Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. Justice Anthony Kennedy cast the deciding vote, but only signed on about half of Roberts’s 41 page opinion.

Meredith v. Jefferson County Public Schools and Parents Involved in Community Schools v Seattle School District is one of a number of 5-4 court rulings that are slowly chipping away at a half century of social progress:

· In Ledbetter v. Goodyear, the Court severely limited the ability of victims of pay discrimination under Title VII to recover wages unfairly denied to them, leaving thousands of workers who have suffered pay discrimination on the basis of sex, race, religion or national origin with no legal recourse;

· In Bowles v. Russell, the Court ruled that a litigant who trusted an order from a federal judge giving him 17 days to file an appeal was prohibited from appealing because the judge had given him the wrong deadline (a statute allowed only 14 days), a blow to anyone who puts faith in the promises of the judicial system.

Despite what may be a trend on the court to restrict individual rights, what concerns me even more is that the addition of Roberts and Alito gives the Supreme Court four justices whose legal theories and rulings tend to be ultra-rightwing – Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito. These justices consistently rule in favor of big business, expanded executive powers and restrictions on individual rights. This combination does not bode well for “little people” seeking redress at the top court in the land.

The notion of expanded executive power or the unitary executive doctrine is most troubling, because this legal theory holds that in the time of a national emergency, the President is not accountable to Congress or the courts. The idea of the unitary executive, which forms the core dogma of the ultra-right-wing Federalist Society, to which Judge Alito belongs, is more properly identified by its modern historical name—the Führerprinzip, authored by German jurist and political theorist, Carl Schmitt, who was also involved in the Nazi Party. Schmitt's doctrine, that the head of state is the law, and can assert absolute dictatorial authority during periods of emergency, has been used to legitimize every totalitarian regime in the West, from Hitler, through Gen. Francisco Franco in Spain, through Gen. Augusto Pinochet in Chile. ^*

George Bush has pushed the limits of his authority as President, seemingly disregarding Congress and the courts. I have addressed in previous articles how Bush has consistently operated off the grid in areas that have questionable constitutional implications: preemptive strikes; the One Percent Doctrine; violations of the Geneva Convention, including torturing prisoners of war; domestic spying; entering into International Treaties without Congressional approval; and the National Energy Policy Development Group, also known as the Cheney Energy Task Force, which the vice-president refuses to make public.

The Supreme Court’s shift to the right is alarming; however, the idea that Bush could stack the court with a fifth vote to uphold his furtive grab for power is even more troubling. Many Americans take their freedom for granted, despite the fact that a war was fought to attain it. If we are not vigilant, all it will take to lose it is one more right wing appointment to the Supreme Court.

Notwithstanding John McCain’s liberal tendencies, I do not believe that the Constitution can survive eight more years of compassionate conservatism.

^* http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2006/3302alito_fuehrerprinzip.html.

An Appraisal on the Bush Presidency – Part III

It has been alleged that George Bush tampered with the election results in 2000 during his race against Al Gore. I understand the suspicion, because the final state to have its votes tallied happened to be Florida, where his brother Jeb is the governor. As you may recall, it was not until December 13, 2000 that Gore conceded the presidential election to Bush, ending an election that should have been over five weeks earlier. The American public will probably never know what happened in Florida on election night; however, despite the dubious activity that took place, there has been no proof that Bush ‘stole’ the election. Plus, if Gore had won his home state of Tennessee, Florida would not have been an issue.

I don’t think we’ll ever know if Bush stole Florida in 2000, but one thing is certain, there has been a trail of dishonesty that has followed his administration from the time he took his initial oath of office. It has been said that all Presidents lie, and if this is true, then George Bush is simply one more in a parade of presidential perjurers who have deceived the public. In fact, every President going back to Lyndon Johnson was involved in policies that deceived the American public; with the exceptions of Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter:

• Lyndon Johnson lied about the Gulf of Tonkin;
• Richard Nixon lied about Watergate and then conspired to cover it up;
• Ronald Reagan lied about Iran Contra and conspired with his vice president, George H.W. Bush, in the October Surprise where they negotiated a deal with Iran to delay the release of the hostages until after the 1980 elections;
• George H.W. Bush lied about “no new taxes;” and
• Clinton lied about his illicit relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky.

If there is any truth to the saying that 'birds of a feather flock together,' then George W. Bush is right at home with his predecessors, with the only difference between he and his colleagues is that he seems to have rewritten the playbook on presidential deceit. It is ironic that he has a prominent position on the Mount Rushmore of presidential dishonesty, considering the fact that many of his supporters claimed he was bringing integrity back to the White House. The Bush presidency has been the most furtive of any administration in the 20^th Century, and his lack of candor to the American people is astonishing.

One week after his first inauguration, Bush signed an Executive Order that created the National Energy Policy Development Group. The task force, also known as the Cheney Energy Task Force, was made up of executives from the oil industry, and it produced a national energy policy report in May 2001. Despite numerous demands by special interest groups, including the impartial General Accounting Office, the task force has refused to disclose the report to the public. This is particularly troubling since gas prices and other energy costs have skyrocketed since the task force was created.

What is so confidential about the energy taskforce’s report that the Bush administration continues to refuse to make public? Certainly if sections of the report need to be kept secret as a matter of national security, that’s understandable, but it is difficult to fathom that an entire energy report needs to be classified. There may not be any state secrets in the task force’s report. However, refusing to make it public may suggest that President Bush is embarking upon a new road where the President is not accountable to anyone including Congress; which would be a striking departure from previous administrations. To buttress this theory, the Bush White House has classified more documents than any other administration since WWII.

One of the most important policies of the Bush Administration is his Iraq War. This war, we were told, was necessary, because Saddam Hussein was vigorously pursuing an atomic weapon’s program and would be willing to launch a nuclear attack against the United States or one of its allies. This report was bolstered by a speech given to the United Nations by, then Secretary of State, Colin Powell. Powell urged the administration to obtain support from the U.N. prior to launching its offensive against Saddam. However, he did not realize until after the fact that his speech, written by Vice-President Cheney’s former Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby, contained dubious intelligence regarding Saddam’s quest to obtain weapon’s grade nuclear material from Niger known as yellow cake.

The theme of the yellow cake acquisition was not only forcefully presented in Powell’s speech to the U.N, but President Bush also made it the centerpiece of his 2003 State of the Union Address. This is highly disturbing, considering the fact that the CIA had already discounted this intelligence report as false (see former CIA director George Tenet’s statement on this issue). But what is more disturbing is that it appears that the WMD diversion and the alleged link between Saddam and bin Laden were smokescreens to obtain public support to overthrow Saddam; a foreign policy goal that the Bush Administration had developed prior to the September 11^th terrorist attacks.

Now, after nearly $500 billion, 4,000 America lives and 50,000 Iraqi lives, no series public official, Democratic or Republican, will testify that Saddam had a WMD program or was in anyway linked to the September 11^th bombing. So public support for the War in Iraq hinged on the feedback from an unreliable source in the intelligence community; however, according to the Downing Street Memo, senior officials from the Prime Minister’s office believed that Bush had already formulated his intention to overthrow Saddam in early 2001.

The secret memo recorded the head of MI6 (British equivalent of the CIA) as expressing the view following his recent visit to Washington that "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

The Downing Street Memo was leaked to the Sunday Times and was first published on May 1, 2005. It is considered by many to be the smoking gun of an alarming abuse of presidential power; especially when one attempts to reconcile Bush’s public comments concerning the buildup towards war in Iraq with the facts of the secret memo. In a March 8, 2003 Radio Address President Bush is quoted saying, “We are doing everything we can to avoid war in Iraq. But if Saddam Hussein does not disarm peacefully, he will be disarmed by force.” However, the memo quotes the head of the MI6 as saying, “Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD.”

The bigger issue is not that George Bush fixed the facts and intelligence around a pre-September 11^th policy to invade Iraq, but why was an Iraq invasion important to his administration. Since the “why” question is beyond the scope of our current subject, I will address it in a subsequent article. However, the Downing Street Memo demonstrates an unprecedented betrayal of the public trust by the President of the United States.

…to be continued

An Appraisal on the Bush Presidency - Part II

President Bush narrowly won a second term in the 2004 election against Democratic rival John Kerry. This victory was largely due to the support from the Christian conservatives, who firmly held that Bush was God’s selection to run this country…Well the only response I have to that is the same Christian leaders more recently threw their support behind Rudy “pro-choice” Giuliani, who dropped out of the campaign after losing every primary. Although hindsight is 20/20, one would think that spiritual leaders claiming to have a direct connection with the Lord would demonstrate foresight when making decisions that indirectly affect the entire world, like who to endorse for President of the United States.

I had a friendly debate with an internationally recognized minister of the Gospel shortly after Bush’s first election. He sang the party-line that Bush was God’s man and that he would advance Christian principles while in office. Although I can’t claim to have had a conference with the Good Lord on this subject, I gave this minister numerous reasons why Bush was most likely not God’s choice to run America. After about 30 minutes, I concluded my discussion by saying “If George Bush is God’s man who will support Christian principles, then let’s see if he fights for an anti-abortion law the same way he fought for tax breaks for the wealthy.”

Bush did sign the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act into law on November 5, 2003; however, there is no record of him actively promoting the Pro-Life cause in more than whispered tones. He campaigned on a Pro-Life platform, but he did not sponsor or promote this limitation on abortions. The chief sponsors of the bill that he signed were Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) and Congressman Steve Chabot (R-Ohio). Unlike President Clinton who vetoed a similar bill when it was passed by Congress in 1995, I’ll give Bush credit for signing the bill into law. This law surprisingly describes the heinous nature of the partial birth abortion procedure:

The Congress finds and declares the following…A moral, medical, and ethical consensus exists that the practice of performing a partial-birth abortion--an abortion in which a physician deliberately and intentionally vaginally delivers a living, unborn child's body until either the entire baby's head is outside the body of the mother, or any part of the baby's trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother and only the head remains inside the womb, for the purpose of performing an overt act (usually the puncturing of the back of the child's skull and removing the baby's brains) that the person knows will kill the partially delivered infant, performs this act, and then completes delivery of the dead infant--is a gruesome and inhumane procedure that is never medically necessary and should be prohibited (emphasis mine).

President Bush’s support of this bill should not be mistaken as the campaign of a Pro-Life President who is on a crusade to outlaw abortion. This medical procedure is so grotesque, that many Pro-Choice physicians refuse to perform it. If Bush was out to ban abortions, certainly he would have given the issue more than the lip service that he offered. It would have been much more meaningful to the Pro-Life lobby if President Bush had campaigned for an abortion ban. Despite his support of the partial birth abortion ban, this abortion procedure is only performed between 2,200 and 5,000 times per year, while the traditional abortion procedure is performed more than 1 million times per year.

Perhaps the partial birth abortion ban will rescue a few children from the abortion mills of America; however, all the law really does is put women on notice that they must seek to terminate their pregnancy at an earlier stage. But for sake of an argument, let’s say that this law does save the lives of all 5,000 children whose lives would have ended through partial birth abortions. This hypothetical example still leaves more than 995,000 unborn children whose lives will be ended by abortion. Real protection against the rights of the unborn will only come when this country sees abortion for what it is – state sanctioned murder.

What was implied in Bush’s 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns, but has not been delivered was a Pro-Life President that will fight for the rights of the unborn. One should not expect a leader to champion the Pro-Life cause who doesn’t embrace it. However, President Bush claims to be a defender of the unborn, and many of his followers claim that he is Christian; therefore, he should be judged on the effort he made towards banning abortion.

If you use yourself as a focus group, how often have you heard him defend his tax cuts? or stubbornly pursue his war aims? or discuss his “Roadmap” of the Middle East? Now compare his enthusiastic defense of these three issues with the number of times you have heard him advance the anti-abortion theme.

Other than the campaign promises Bush made concerning his stance on abortion, I’ve never heard him promote the Pro-Life agenda. Now that is not to say that he has never mentioned the issue away from the campaign trail; it simply means that he certainly is not pushing it with the same enthusiasm as he has his other domestic and foreign policies.

…to be continued

An Appraisal on the Bush Presidency - Part I

As President George W. Bush enters the final year as Commander and Chief of the United States, the bright optimism that he possessed after his second campaign victory has taken on a more subdued nature. This restrained posture was evident as he delivered his last State of the Union (SOTU) address the other evening. As he recalibrated his approach to a congress now controlled by Democrats, I saw a chameleon of sorts standing at the rostrum. Gone were the bold assertions that he would not pander to the demands of North Korea, or waste time mediating between the Israelis and Palestinians or he would not extend diplomacy to rogue nations.

For a president who prides himself in being decisive, he seemed to morph into his own Jimmy Carter moment when he asked Congress to send him a remedy for social security. This brought back memories of President Carter asking for suggestions on how to solve the financial problems of the late 1970s. When compared with his previous SOTU addresses, this appeared to be more on the scale of little league baseball. As President Clinton’s former speech writer, Michael Waldman, put it, “For him to aim for big-altitude, swing-for-the-fences moments at a time when both parties are competing for who could turn the page from his presidency faster would look silly.”

I believe we can take a four-pronged approach to adequately judge Bush’s presidency: How well has he managed what will be the defining policy of his eight years – the two wars that he is waging – the War on Terror and the Iraq War; compare the nation that he inherited in 2001 with the nation that he will deliver to his successor in 2009; was he forthright with the American public; and what type of judicial appointments did he make.

First, in regards to the War on Terror and the Iraq War, I believe the priorities were not properly established. The President sent more than 100,000 troops to overthrow Saddam Hussein, under false pretenses I may add (see the article titled, A Disturbing Update on the Global War on Terror), while sending only 15,000 troops to the mountainous terrain of Afghanistan to wage a war against the perpetrators of September 11^th. This strategic mistake of understaffing the war theater in Afghanistan is underscored by a recent report by the Atlantic Council of the United States that the U.S. is not winning the war in Afghanistan. And with terrorist attacks occurring on almost a daily basis in Iraq and the lack of public utility services, if it were not for the United States’ presence there with the ongoing war, the United Nations would probably have declare it a failed state by now.

On both war fronts, Bush has dragged the country into a quagmire that may take a decade or more for it to extricate itself. Colin Powell is attributed with using the pottery barn metaphor with regards to Iraq – “The Pottery Barn rule” says that if “you break it, you own it.” Despite the bipartisan call for withdrawing out of Iraq, it is unlikely that we will withdraw anytime soon, because Iraq’s government is less stable than it was under Saddam’s rule. And an American withdrawal will no doubt result in a total collapse of the fledgling democracy.

It is apparent to me that history will not be kind to President Bush’s handling of the two wars, the centerpiece of his administration. In fact, he boasted about his experience as a war-time leader as the main theme for his reelection campaign in 2004.

The second prong that we will examine in evaluating the Bush presidency will be to compare the nation that was handed off to him in 2001 to the nation that he will deliver to his successor in 2009:

· He received a balanced budget with a $236 billion surplus from his predecessor Bill Clinton; he will deliver an additional $3.5 trillion in debt to his successor.

· Bush inherited a middle class whose income rose by an average of $6,000 from 1993 through 2001; he will hand off a nation whose median household income has dropped by $1,000 during his tenure.

· During his eight years in office, health care premiums doubled from about $6,000 to $12,000 per family.

· Clinton handed President Bush a military that was at a high state of readiness, prepared to fight a two-front war; however, Bush will deliver a military to his successor that has such low morale it is unable to meet its recruitment goals.

· Bush inherited a nation where gasoline prices were less than $1.00 per gallon in many places; while he will deliver to his successor a nation that is paying more than $3.00 for a gallon of gasoline.

· America was respected as an international leader when George Bush took over as President; but as he is about to turn the reigns of power over to a successor, some countries believe that the United States in the biggest threat to world peace.

· Bush inherited a country that was strong economically; however, he will deliver a nation to his successor that must rely on foreign investments of treasury bonds to prop it up.

· The housing market was blazing when Bush took the oath of office; and he will hand off a mortgage crisis to his successor, not to mention the credit crisis that we are now seeing.

I believe on prong number two, history will judge Bush harshly as well. With this record, I kept wondering while he was delivering his State of the Union Address this past Monday if he would quote Mike Tyson after his final fight against Kevin McBride in 2005 – “I don't have the guts to fight anymore. My heart is not in it anymore. I don't want to disrespect the sport I love. I wish I could give the fans their money back.”

…to be continued

A Disturbing Update on the Global War on Terror

Hold the Presses! I was working on a critique of the Bush Presidency when I saw a very disturbing article in the Washington Post – NATO’s Not Winning in Afghanistan, Report Says. According to a report by the Atlantic Council of the United States, “Afghanistan remains a failing state.” This is after the United States has spent billions of tax dollars to capture the perpetrators of 9/11. After six years, the Taliban insurgents have fought the vaunted U.S. military to a strategic stalemate, according to an independent assessment released by NATO’s former commander, General James L. Jones. “It could become a failed state,” warned the report, which called for "urgent action" to overhaul NATO strategy in coming weeks before an anticipated new offensive by Taliban insurgents in the spring. “Make no mistake, NATO is not winning in Afghanistan,” said the report.

Before I examine this report more closely, I need to draw the distinction between the War on Terror and the War in Iraq.

The War on Terror, also referred to as the Global War on Terror (GWOT), is a military campaign that was initiated by the United States as a result of the attacks of September 11^th. The GWOT has been a source of controversy for some critics who believe that it has led to reckless domestic and foreign policy objectives like preemptive strikes; the One Percent Doctrine; violations of the Geneva Convention, including torturing prisoners of war; and domestic spying.

The War in Iraq; though initially put forward as part of the GWOT, has unraveled as perhaps the biggest foreign policy blunder in the history of this country. We were told by the Bush administration that Saddam Hussein had an aggressive weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program designed to create nuclear weapons to use against America and its allies. We were also told that Saddam was an ally of Osama bin Laden and that he was also responsible for the terrorist attacks of September 11^th. The American public later discovered that neither did Saddam have a WMD program, nor was he linked to September 11^th. Consequently, the war in Iraq was a preemptive strike for reasons still debated, while the GWOT is a war of retaliation against Osama bin Laden.

Iraq is the logical result of the One Percent Doctrine also known as the Cheney Doctrine since he is largely credited with its formulation. This policy basically states –

“If there's a 1% chance that [any country is] helping al-Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response. It's not about our analysis ... It's about our response.”

This is an absolute preposterous way to run a country’s foreign policy. At 1% certainty, the threshold for military action would be lower than if the president had a suspicion that al-Qaeda was prepared to launch an attack. I’m not a foreign policy expert; however, I would not think that the United States would launch a military attack based on someone's suspicion. America is not some third world country that has to rely on soothsayers to warn it of an impending invasion or attack. This country has the most unbelievable intelligence apparatus that the world has ever seen. It is not like U.S. secret agents (spies) send intelligence information back to the White House via carrier pigeon. America has an intelligence infrastructure that can basically listen to practically every telephone conversation on earth; can read practically every email message, fax message, text message on earth; and can spot a dime on the hump of bin Laden’s camel from 22,000 miles away. Don’t believe it? Click here to access TerraServer USA, which is a public website that has millions of satellite photographs of properties throughout the United States. Simply enter an address and watch the ‘eye in the sky’ from 22,000 miles away.

Does this sound like a country that needs to deploy military action over a dream that a policy maker may have had about an attack?

The Post article is disturbing on two fronts: First it obscures the fact that this is the GWOT that is suffering from a lack of forward motion; despite the President’s mantra that the “enemy is on the run.” And second, the article was printed on the last page of the World Section (page A18 of the print edition). Huh?! President Bush’s legacy will likely be defined by how he managed the GWOT. This is not like his social security or immigration proposals being shot-down in Congress. This is America defending itself from a band of nomads who have been charged with murdering nearly 3,000 American citizens. I would think that a news report of this magnitude merits the first page, above the fold.

The media has commonly been referred to as the fourth branch of government, and from the strategic placement of this article, a blind man would have to agree; unless, however, he is not smarter than a fifth grader.