Today's Stories

December 9, 2008

Mike Whitney
Card Check

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Us vs. Them

Ghada Karmi
The UN Resolution That Time Forgot

Dave Lindorff
A Car Dealer Explains Why the Bailout is a Raw Deal

Steve Breyman
Notes on a Green Economy: Managing Stuff in the 21st Century

Lee Sustar /
Nicole Colson
Raising the Stakes at Republic

Sam Husseini
How Holbrooke Lied His Way Into a War

December 8, 2008

Steve Early
Is Obama Backing Off a Crucial Pledge to Labor?

Michael Hudson
Obama's Favoritism: Wall Street, Not the Auto Industry

Patrick Cockburn
Talking to a Lashkar Militant

Diane Farsetta
An Officer and a Conflicted Man: McCaffery, the Pentagon and Fleishman-Hillard

Paul Craig Roberts
Chapters in Imperial Hypocrisy

Daniel Gross
The Chicago Sit-Down Strike

Saul Landau
To Bail or Not to Bail?

Harvey Wasserman
Why John Bryson is Unfit for Energy Secretary

Mike Ferner
The New Generation of "Non-Lethal" Weapons

Norman Solomon
The Silent Winter of Escalation

David Michael Green
The Other Foot

Website of the Day
The Remains of Detroit

December 5 / 7, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Honeymoans From the Left

Brian Cloughley
Shambles in Afghanistan

Paul Craig Roberts
Muslim Revolution: How Washington Arrogance Helped Drive the Mumbai Attacks

Liaquat Ali Khan
Mumbai and the Kashmir Tinderbox

Farzana Versey
Mumbai's Charge of the Lightweight Brigade

Peter Lee
Pakistan Nears the Breaking Point

Peter Morici
Slouching Toward a Depression?

Ralph Nader /
Toby Heaps
Junk Cap-and-Trade

Yinon Cohen /
Neve Gordon
Obama Could End the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Will He Meet the Challenge?

Wajahat Ali
Perverse Justice: the Holy Land Foundation Convictions

Johnny Barber
Aswad's Story: Illegal Detention and the Declaration of Human Rights

Alan Farago
Fallout from the Pass-Through Economy

Jeremy Scahill
Obama Doesn't Plan to End Occupation of Iraq

Mike Whitney
Powergrab in Ottawa

Ranjit Hoskote
Jahiliyya Versus Jihad

Carl Finamore
Thank God I'm an Atheist! (Or Boy is Bill O'Reilly in for a Big Surprise)

Marjorie Cohn
Obama and Women's Rights

Norm Kent
Tommy Chong, the Unanticipated Warrior

Missy Beattie
What Lies Ahead

Binoy Kampmark
Committing Suicide On-Line: the Briggs Case

David Macaray
The Best and the Brightest Redux: Too Many Brains, Not Enough Humility

Nancy Stohlman
Relational Activism

Ron Jacobs
Irreverent Politics Then and Now

David Yearsley
Thematics From the Golden Past

Lorenzo Wolff
Troubled Songs of Home and War

Poets' Basement
Orloski: The Door Opener

Website of the Weekend
In Prison My Whole Life

December 4, 2008

Ece Temelkuran
Inside the Ergenekon Case

Ralph Nader
Turning Crisis into Opportunity: Who Will Seize the Moment?

Harry Browne
The Bush-Obama National Security Strategy

Eamonn Fingleton
The American Car Industry: a Riposte to the Knockers

Conn Hallinan
The Syria Attack

Mike Whitney
Fiasco in Somalia: Another CIA Cock-Up

Stewart J. Lawrence
Obama and Latinos: Richardson, Alone, is Not Enough

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Message to Obama: Stop Killing Afghanis

Karyn Strickler
Show Us the Green, Before We Show You the Money

Jennifer Matsui
Obama-Cola: the Great National Temperance Beverage

Website of the Day
"He Ain't Got Laid in a Month of Sundays..."

December 3, 2008

Andrew Cockburn
What's Wrong with the U.S. Military

Sheldon Rampton
Mormon Homophobia: Up Close and Personal

Robert Weissman
Nationalize GM

Yifat Susskind
From Mumbai to Washington

William Blum
The Obama Bummer: Vote First, Ask Questions Later

Alan Singer
The Ghost of the Defunct Economist

David Macaray
Trampled Under Foot at Wal-Mart

Martha Rosenberg
Born With a Statin Deficiency? Line Forms to the Left!

Mats Svensson
The Crimes Have No Period of Limitations

Website of the Day
Why Bill Richardson's Nomination Should be Opposed

December 2, 2008

Jeremy Scahill
Obama's Kettle of Hawks

Paul Craig Roberts
The New Arms Race

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
The Mumbai Terror Attacks: Is Pakistan to Blame?

Sarah Anderson /
John Cavanagh
Skewed Priorities: How the Bailout Dwarfs Spending on Other Global Crises

William Blum
The Mythology of the War on Terrorism

John Ross
Mexico's Drug War Goes Down in Flames

Dave Lindorff
A Tale of Two Terror Attacks

Nicola Nasser
A Peace Process That Makes Peace Impossible

Steve Conn
Operation Redskin Removal

Robert Bryce
Coal Hard Facts

Website of the Day
Country, Funk, Soul

December 1, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
From Baghdad to Mumbai, by Way of Pakistan

Damien Millet /
Eric Toussaint
Obama's Economic Team: Records of Failure

Vijay Prashad
The Fires in South Asia

Deepak Tripathi
Obama's Foreign Crises

Joshua Frank
Madam Secretary Clinton and the Middle East

P. Sainath
The Unlikely Martyrdom of Free Market Jihad

Alan Farago
The Right's War on Regulators

Binoy Kampmark
Sydney's Ball and Chain

Chris Genovali
Silent Fall

David Michael Green
Hope You Die Before You Get Old

Stephen Martin
The Chinese are Coming, the Chinese are Coming!

Website of the Day
Robert Rubin: Coward, Liar or Both?

November 28-30, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
In Time of Trouble

Mike Whitney
The Obama "Dream Team": Rubin Clones and Other Fakers

Ted Honderich
What is the Meaning of Obama's Election?

Tom Kerr
Preserving Filthy Lucre (Or Becoming My Dad)

Mike Ely
The Conquest of New England

David Yearsley
Hymns of the Conquest

Deepak Tripathi
Uproar in Police-State Britain

Sonja Karkar
Gaza's Death Throes

Ramzy Baroud
Salvation in a News Broadcast

Robert Weitzel
Israel's Settlement on Capitol Hill

Robert Roth
Can We Create a Movement for Change?

Carlos Fierro
Obama and the End of Racism?

David Macaray
How to Kill a Union

David Rosen
A New Sexual Agenda

James Cockcroft
Indigenous People Rising

Stan Cox
The Most Disappointing Gift

Steve Conn
Talking Turkey About College Basketball

Stephen Martin
The Electromagnetic Pulse and Economic Warfare

Richard Rhames
Busty Bimbettes, Bombs and Brand Obama

Kim Nicolini
Women as Products and Cannibalistic Achievers

Lorenzo Wolff
A Battle Cry for the Confused and Vulnerable

Poets' Basement
Woods, Harrison and Corseri

November 27, 2008

Tariq Ali
The Assault on Mumbai

Steve Hendricks
Thanksgiving We Can Believe In: Justice in Indian Country

Ralph Nader
Open Up Those Corporate Tax Returns

John Walsh
The Root Cause of the Crisis of 2008

Dave Lindorff
The Department of Homeland Lunacy

Christopher Brauchli
Thanks A Lot, Mr. Meese: How Alberto Gonzales Learned to Get You to Pay for His Legal Bills

Matthew Koehler
Giving Thanks for Burned Forests

Website of the Day
John Trudell: "Crazy Horse We Hear What You Say"

November 26, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Obama Letdown

Alan Farago
Bailouts and the New Math

Stanley Heller
Don't Bail Them Out, Take Them Over

Kevin Zeese
The Real Cost of the Bailout

Steve Conn
Now It Can Be Told (Except in North Carolina)

Ray McGovern
Kafka and Uighurs at Guantánamo

Ron Jacobs
King George is Gone: Now It's Time to Organize

Eric Walberg
Obama's Odious Entourage

Martha Rosenberg
Pay No Attention to That Turkey Being Slaughtered (Or How Sarah Palin Created a Whole New Generation of Vegetarians)

Matt Siegfried
Back to the Future With Barack

Website of the Day
"Every Time I've Compromised, I've Lost"

November 25, 2008

James Abourezk
Of Arrogance, Bailouts and the Big Three

Ralph Nader
Don't Suppress Carter

Patrick Irelan
PBS Reports for Big Oil on Venezuela

John Ross
Obama in Bedlam

Fred Gardner
Dr. Goodwin and the Infinite Con

Dan LaBotz
The Auto Crisis: a Big Caravan to Washington?

Tom Barry
Napolitano and Immigration Policy

Norman Solomon
The Ideology of No Ideology

Richard Morse
Memo From Haiti: Where the Culture of Corruption Meets the Corruption of Culture

Chris Strohm
The Missing Rules of Engagement in Cyberwar

Website of the Day
Green vs. Green?

November 24, 2008

Mike Whitney
You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet

Pam Martens
The Rise and Fall of Citigroup

Laray Polk
Bush's Library: the Kurds, Oil and Missing Records

David Ker Thomson
American Friends: With Friends Like These, Who Needs Canadians?

Uri Avnery
Likud Rising

Joe Mowrey
Deprivation and Desperation in Gaza

Ramzi Kysia
An Administration in Search of a Progressive: the Team Obama Should Have Picked

Kevin Zeese
The Causes of the Auto Crisis

Dave Lindorff
Rescuing the Blob: Idiots and Bailouts

David Macaray
Seven Reasons You Should Join a Union

Howard Lisnoff
Inaugurations Past and Present

Website of the Day
I Hate the Beatles

November 21 / 23, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The Honeymoon is Looking a Bit Wan

Michael Hudson
Paulson's Cascade of Lies

Mike Whitney
Time to Move to Plan B ... If There is One

Barbara Rose Johnston /
Holly M. Barker
Cautionary Tales From a Nuclear War Zone

Serge Halimi
The Gloom of Empire: Downhill All the Way

Alan Farago
The Suburbs March On

Ralph Nader
Changing With Retreads: the Third Clinton Administration

Saul Landau
When Old Axioms Don't Apply

Robert Bryce
From LBJ to Obama: the End of Texas Dominance

Shannon May
Ecological Crisis and Eco-Villages in China

Binoy Kampmark
The End of the Yugo

Jack Ely
The Fate of the West's Wild Horses

Ramzy Baroud
The Rights of Women in War Zones

Missy Beattie
Why Vote, Anyway?

Larry Portis
Women Soldiers Serving in (and Barely Surviving) the Israeli Army

James McEnteer
Colombia's Laboratory of Failure

Christopher Brauchli
A Tale of Two Whales

David Yearsley
Real Swords, Fire and Don Giovanni

Adam Engel
Power Down

Ron Jacobs
The Continuing Saga of the White Album

Lorenzo Wolff
Honky Tonk Heroes: When Country Got Real

Poets' Basement
Raza Ali Hasan

Website of the Weekend
Lips and Fingers

November 20, 2008

P. Sainath
The Jurassic Auto and Idea Park

Brian McKenna
How Dow Chemical Defies Homeland Security and Risks Another 9/11

Paul Craig Roberts
What Uncle Sam Has to Say to His Creditors

Andy Worthington
How Guanántamo Can be Closed

Peter Lee
India Doubles Down in Afghanistan ... Maybe

Dr. Eyad al-Serraj
At the Erez Crossing

Sen. Russ Feingold
The Bush Pardons

Lance Selfa
Who Made the New Deal?

Ray McGovern
Keeping Gates

Benjamin G. Davis
Ending Torture; Prosecuting the Torturers

Tracy McLellan
Obama's Crony Democracy: the Return of Tom Daschle

Website of the Day
Finally, a Victory for Palestinians

November 19, 2008

M. Shahid Alam
Obama and the Politics of Race and Religion in America

Mario A. Murillo
Holder, Chiquita and Colombian Death Squads

Martine Boulard
Escaping the Dollar's Shadow

Robin D. G. Kelley
Will Obama be the First "Freedom" Democrat?

Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi
Obama and the Iron Cage

Jonathan Cook
Who Will Stop the Settlers?

Steve Conn
Spare Change or No Change at All

George Wuerthner
The NYT and the Beetles of Mass Destruction

Michael Winship
This Just in From Middle Earth

Stephen Martin
The Other Side of the Pleasure-Dome

Website of the Day
An Important Holiday Message From Kristen Johnston

November 18, 2008

Chellis Glendinning
Cheering for Morgan Stanley

George C. Wilson
Perils of Pakistan: Will It Prove to be Obama's Cambodia?

Franklin Lamb
Who Will Evict Israel from Lebanon: Hezbollah or the UN?

Bill and Kathleen Christison
The Irresponsibility of Appointing Hillary Clinton Secretary of State

Roger Burbach
Orchestrating a Civic Coup in Bolivia: How Bush Tried to Bring Down Morales

John Ross
Drilling vs. Direct Democracy in Mexico

Wajahat Ali
Is Obama the Muslim World's Superman?

Damien Millet /
Eric Toussaint
What Really Happened in Washington? The G20 and the Inconsistent Script

Marc Gardner
When Mooning is a Sex Crime

Eric Walberg
Courting the Bear: a New Era for Russian/Western Relations?

Wendy Williams
The Bottled Water Con

Website of the Day
Where's Zappa When We Need Him?

November 17, 2008

Michael Hudson
Bankers Shake Down Congress and the G-20

Paul Craig Roberts
When It's a Clear Day and You Can't See GM

Mike Whitney
Busted in Washington

Steve Conn
Where is Nader Country 2008? Mapping the Nader Votes

Andy Worthington
Closing Guantánamo: Advice for Obama

Jonathan Cook
The Real Goal of Israel's Blockade of Gaza: "They Are All Hamas"

Rannie Amiri
Dual Loyalties Will Doom Obama

David Macaray
Bailing Out the Automakers

David Michael Green
Twelve Victories

Charles Modiano
Sports Illustrated and Sexism: Tokenism or a New Day?

Website of the Day
The South Sea Bubble

November 14 / 16, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Heading for the First Hundred Days

Jeffrey St. Clair
How Bill Clinton Doomed the Spotted Owl: a Cautionary Tale for Greens in the Age of Obama

Mike Whitney
Paulson the Bungler

Sasan Fayazmanesh
RIP: the Experts, 1929-2008

Moshe Adler
Keynes: China's Greatest Export?

Anthony DiMaggio
Transcending Race?

Jean Bricmont
Cats, Dogs and Creationism

Sheldon Rampton
The Eisenstadt Hoax: a Real Life Example of a "Fake Fake"

Douglas Valentine
Let the Trials Begin!

Joseph Nevins /
Timothy Dunn
Barricading the Border

Tom Barry
Rahm Emanuel's Political Pragmatism on Immigration

Ron Jacobs
Che Guevara Meets Trashman: the Genius of Spain Rodriguez

Larry Portis
The State of the Israeli State

Mary Lynn Cramer Obama's Brain Trust: Seems Like Old Times

Sherry Wolf
The Myth of the Black/Gay Divide

Peter Cervantes-Gautschi
Secretary of Greed: How Larry Summers Championed Wall Street by Impoverishing the Mexican People

Jacob Hornberger
The Conservative Malaise: Hey, Brother, Can You Spare Some Habeas Corpus?

Lance Selfa
The Center-Right Nation Con

Benjamin Dangl
Vermont Against General Dynamics

Seth Sandronsky
Lifelines in Hard Times

Russell Mokhiber
Time to Give the Friends of Big Coal the Boot

Allan Stellar
Nuke a Gay Whale for the Navy

Kelly Overton
Get Thee to a Shelter: the Obamas and the Million-Mutt March

Martha Rosenberg
Why Mink are Cheering the Economic Crisis

Richard Rhames
Palling Around with Ray the Plumber

David Yearsley
How I Played Hooky from "High School Musical 3"

Lorenzo Wolff
Zach is Back: Songs of Hurt, Rage and Resistance

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Ford and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
The Eyes Have It

November 13, 2008

Pam Martens
The Two Trillion DollarBlack Hole

Vijay Prashad
Guilt by Participation: Sonal Shah's Membership Has Expired

Patrick Cockburn
Who is Paying for the Iraqi National Intelligence Service?

Jonathan Cook
The Withering Palestinian Economy

Ralph Nader
Obama and the Rogue Regime

Bill Quigley
McCain Owes America an Apology

Lee Sustar
Bailing Out the Big Three

Omar Barghouti
Boycotting Israeli Settlement Products

Steve Conn
More Alaska Fun

Howard Lisnoff
The Last Bastion of Hate

Jeff Cohen
What Indy Media Heroes Can Teach Us

Website of the Day
Who are the Obamagelicals?

November 12, 2008

Johanna Berrigan
Scattered Families: the Iraq Refugee Crisis

Steve Conn
The Big Mystery Election in Alaska

Patrick Bond
Against Volcker

Bokar Ture /
Dedrick Muhammad
Remembering a Black Radical in a Barack Obama America

Alan Farago
The Hispanic Vote in South Florida: Not Dyed Blue Yet

Dave Lindorff
Rescuing Joe Lieberman

Karl Grossman
Break Up Big Oil: Tyranny in the Tank

David Macaray
An Obama Litmus Test: Will Labor Have a Seat at the Table?

George Wuerthner
Act Now to Save America's Public Forests

Susie Day
Heavy Weather

Website of the Day
Does the Planet Have a Future? an Interview with Derrick Jensen

December 9, 2008

American, White, Christian, Imperialistic, Heterosexual, Male

God of Our Fathers

By Rev. WILLIAM E. ALBERTS

Instead of God “creat[ing] man in his own image,” as the Book of Genesis states,  “man” often creates god in his own image.  The god many people worship appears to be a reflection of their own wishes and needs, cultural and ethnocentric conditioning and biases, their unresolved and often unconscious sexual urges and aggressive and submissive tendencies.  Their unacceptable and guilt-producing impulses, and not Adam and Eve, cradle the “original sin” for which a righteous god sacrificed his “only begotten son” on a cross to save them--  and everyone else-- from eternal damnation in hell.  Their pent-up, hidden anger is echoed in the thunder of a judgmental god who uses national disasters to punish and bring sinful people to their knees.

Rev. Arnold Conrad, for example, was talking about himself and not his god during his invocation at a McCain presidential campaign rally:

I would also pray, Lord that your reputation is involved in all that happens between now and November, because there are millions of people around this world praying to their god—whether it’s Hindu, Buddha, Allah—that his opponent wins, for a variety of reasons.  And Lord, I pray that you would guard your own reputation, because they’re going to think that their god is bigger than you, if that happens.  So I pray that you will step forward and honor your own name with all that happens between now and Election Day.  In Jesus’ name.

Evidently, Rev. Conrad’s “Lord” did not “step forward and honor” his “own name” by willing victory for Senator McCain.  Thus the minister may be wondering, uneasily, about just how “big” and “reputable” his god and he are.

Since Rev. Conrad worships such a god, one could assume he, like many Christians, believes in “signs.”  There may have been a couple of heads up from heaven during the presidential campaign that he might have picked up on before putting his “faith” in his mouth.  The first sign came, unwittingly, from Focus on the Family, an evangelical Christian pro-life and anti-gay marriage, and thus pro-McCain-Palin group.  Focus on the Family briefly carried on its website a video of Stuart Shepard, the group’s digital media director, “ask[ing] people to pray for ‘rain of biblical proportions’ during  Barack Obama’s Aug. 28 appearance at Invesco Field at Mile High to accept the Democratic nomination for president. . . abundant rain, torrential rain . . . flood advisory rain . . . umbrella-ain’t-gonna-help-you rain . . . Rain that would create flash flood warnings and ‘swamp the intersections’ . . . Rain that would start ‘two minutes before the acceptance speech begins.’”

The sign: CBS Evening News reported, “Obama’s speech in front of 80,000 people at Invesco Field at Mile High was the biggest acceptance speech in history, topping the nearly 60,000 people who came out to see John F. Kennedy accept the Democratic nomination at the L.A. Coliseum in 1960.”

The second sign came in the form of a hurricane, and was reported by POLITICO: “John McCain said the Republican National Convention may be postponed, after federal officials said Hurricane Gustav was gathering to a devastating Category 5 as it headed toward star-crossed New Orleans.” 4  Not only did Hurricane Gustav delay the Republican Convention, it was a foreboding reminder of the Republican administration’s glaring failure in response to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.  What the world needs are not hurricanes as signs of a punitive god but rainbows as reminders of the diversity of divinity and the divinity of diversity.

President Bush is the worshiper-in-chief of the American, white, Christian, imperialistic god.  Following the terrible 9/11 attacks against America, he preached, “I want to remind the people of America, we’re still the greatest nation on the face of the Earth.” He began his administration’s knowingly falsely-based, criminal, pre-emptive war against non-threatening Iraq with the prayer, “I pray for guidance and wisdom and strength.  I pray for peace. I pray for peace.”  And when his lies were exposed (Iraq had no “mushroom-cloud” threatening weapons of mass destruction and no ties to the horrific 9/11 attacks against America), he diverted attention from his administration’s war crimes by repeatedly preaching, “Freedom is not America’s gift to the world, it is God’s gift to every man and woman in the world.” It was not about spreading “freedom” and “democracy” but about pursuing oil and empire—and the profiteering of the military industrial complex.

Over one million Iraqi women and children and other civilians are dead.  The US-led  invasion and occupation of  Iraq also provoked a bloodbath, with thousands of Sunnis and Shiites  killing each other in a civil war.  Some four million Iraqis are refugees inside and outside their country.  And the Bush administration’s “Operation Iraqi Freedom” has devastated the country’s life-sustaining infrastructure.  On the American side: more than 4100 of our country’s men and women are dead, and estimates of from thirty thousand to one hundred thousand are wounded in body and mind and spirit.  And as our nation’s national resources continue to be wasted in an unnecessary criminal war, our related economic crisis grows worse.

President Bush is certainly projector-in-chief of the American, white, Christian, imperialistic god.  In the run-up to his administration’s war of choice, he continually accused Saddam Hussein of playing “games and deceptions” with his weapons of mass destruction: “How much time do we need to see clearly that he is not disarming. . . . The game is over.”   It was Bush who played the game of deception.  He also repeatedly projected his administration’s unprovoked murderous aggression on to the enemy:

Our enemies murder because they despise our freedom and our way of life. . . . They kill women and children. . . Terrorists are coming into Iraq because they fear the march of freedom. . . . We’re fighting the terrorists in Afghanistan, Iraq, and around the world, striking them in foreign lands before they can attack us here at home.  And we’re spreading the hope of freedom across the broader Middle East.

Another classic projection of American imperialism is exemplified by Vice President Cheney.  He reportedly “used the deck of an American aircraft carrier just 150 miles off Iran’s coast [italics added] as the backdrop yesterday to warn that the United States was prepared to use its naval power to keep Tehran from disrupting oil routes or ‘gaining nuclear weapons and dominating the region.’”

The projections of the president and vice president were intentional: designed to create fearful projections in Americans, and play on them to divert attention from American imperialism.  What better way to hide aggression and domination than to wrap them in “freedom” and interpret as “terrorist” the reactions of its victims.

Similarly, the Guantanamo Bay prison camp nearby the US mainland is designed to manufacture and manipulate fearful projections.  The administration-proclaimed dangerous incarcerated “terrorists,” so close, are a constant reminder of those who, in President Bush’s words, are a ruthless enemy determined to destroy our way of life.”

The greatest threat to America’s way of life comes from within not from without.  Loss of jobs, home foreclosures, shrinking pensions, deteriorating schools and infrastructure, inadequate healthcare, the higher cost of food and other basic necessities, the growing invisible poor.  America’s imperialistic, hate-producing reputation around the world, caused by the Bush administration’s UN-condemned illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, indiscriminate rounding up and imprisonment of so-called “enemy combatants” at Guantanamo Bay detention center, the denial of due process to those imprisoned, the use of torture and abuse of prisoners in violation of the Geneva Conventions.  These realities are a major part of the legacy of a president who used prayer and his god to wage a war of terror in the name of peace, in our name.       

President Bush is now engaging in a series of exit interviews with mainstream media in an attempt to redefine reality once again and thus refurbish his legacy.  The first interview was on December 1 with accommodating ABC Evening News anchor Charles Gibson who asked, “As you leave, what do you think the country’s feeling is about George W. Bush?”  The president spun reality his way:

I hope they feel that this is a guy that came, didn’t sell his soul for politics, had to make some tough decisions, and did so in a principled way. …  The thing that’s important to me is to go home and look in the mirror and say, I did not compromise my principles.  And I didn’t.

An obliging Charles Gibson followed with, “Was there a time when you thought, if I do this I will be compromising my principles?”  President Bush ran with the question:

The pullout of Iraq.  It would have compromised the principle that when you put kids in harm’s way, you go in to win.  And it was a tough call. …  I listened to a lot of voices, but ultimately, I listened to this voice: I’m not going to let your son die in vain; I believe we can win; I’m going to do what it takes to win in Iraq.”

When congenial Charles Gibson asked if there were anything he would do over as president, George Bush replied,

“I don’t know.  The biggest regret of all the presidency has to have been the intelligence failure in Iraq.  A lot of people put their reputations on the line and said the weapons of mass destruction is a reason to remove Saddam Hussein.”

Charles Gibson then flirted with President Bush’s war crimes: “If the intelligence had been right, would there have been an Iraq war?”  Bush repeated the big lie: “Yes, because Saddam Hussein was unwilling to let the inspectors go in to determine whether or not the UN resolutions were being upheld.”  Here Gibson permitted Bush to continue distorting the intelligence.  Hussein allowed the UN weapons inspectors to go in, and they followed US intelligence leads; and, as chief weapons inspector Hans Blix reported, they found no “smoking gun.”  And their inspections were abruptly ended when Bush launched his administration’s pre-emptive invasion of Iraq.

President Bush obviously had something else on his mind when he said, “I wish the intelligence had been different.”  For he “put kids in harm’s way”needlessly, and they continue “to die in vain.”—not because of “the intelligence failure in Iraq” but because Bush ignored the intelligence that revealed Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.  Bush’s greatest regret is that the intelligence failed to justify his administration’s criminal invasion and occupation of Iraq.

President Bush ended his legacy -enabling exit interview with non-challenging Charles Gibson on an upbeat note.  He is going “to write a book,” and “build an institute at Southern Methodist University, along with the library and archives,” and “will leave the presidency with my head held high.”              

In January, President Bush and Vice President Cheney, two of the worst war criminals in the world, will leave office as free men.  Rather than censoring them, The United Methodist Church, of which both are members, is preparing to house the Bush library at Southern Methodist University.  Some United Methodist bishops and ministers and lay persons protested housing the Bush library there, but not enough.  And The United Methodist Council of Bishops did protest the Bush administration’s pre-emptive invasion and occupation of Iraq.  But their “Statement of Conscience” against the war, which called on “all United Methodists [to] object with boldness,hjk” was measured not “bold.”  They called for prayer not protest, and they avoided naming the two men most responsible for the death and destruction visited upon the people of Iraq and America: their own church members, President Bush and Vice President Cheney.  Their public statements followed, rather than led, public opinion against the war.  Political-- and many religious—leaders don’t care if people pray all day—as long as they keep their hands folded.

The United Methodist Book of Discipline states that two conditions are “incompatible with Christian teachings”: war and homosexuality.  Gay and lesbian persons, who pursue their natural sexual identity, are not allowed to be ordained as United Methodist ministers—and ministers face expulsion if they come out of the church closet and profess their love and commitment for another same sex person.  And United Methodist pastors who perform marriages of loving and committed same sex couples have their ministerial credentials revoked.  Yet a self-professed “war president” can commit mass murder and be embraced as a celebrity by the dominating hierarchy-- and lowerarchy-- of United Methodism—a hierarchy that controls its ministers’ appointments and advancements and thereby keeps the consciences of many-- the corrupting power of a hierarchy.  The greatest threat to hierarchical Methodism is apparently not hatred that leads people to war but love that brings certain of them together in marriage. 

There is, however, a growing movement within United Methodism to fully affirm and embrace gay and lesbian persons—a movement enjoined by retired ministers in the New England and other Methodist Conferences, who are committed to performing gay marriages and to the full inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons in The United Methodist Church.  While there are important exceptions, the god of hierarchical United Methodism is mainly American, very much imperialistic, and ever heterosexual.

The worshipper-in-chief of the all American, white, Christian, imperialistic god inspired similar godly projections across the evangelical horizon.  President Bush’s war of choice, wrapped in “I pray for peace,” elicited strong evangelical support. The Pew Research Center for the People surveyed the religious views of a potential war, and found that “80% of evangelical white Protestants support the war, the highest tally of any group measured.”   Charles Marsh, evangelical and University of Virginia professor of religion, elaborated on this support.  “The war sermons of influential evangelical ministers,” he wrote, “rallied the evangelical congregations behind the invasion of Iraq.  An astonishing 87% of all white evangelical Christians in the United States supported the president’s decision in April 2003.”  It was about projection: Marsh states, “The single common theme among the war sermons appeared to be this: our president is a real brother in Christ, and because he has discerned that God’s will is for our nation to be at war against Iraq [italics added], we shall gloriously comply.”  It was also about the imperialism at the heart of evangelical Christianity.  Marsh quoted a missionary whose article appeared in the Southern Baptist Convention Press: “American foreign policy and military might have opened an opportunity for the Gospel in the land of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”  Marsh continued, “As if working from a slate of evangelical talking points, both Franklin Graham, the evangelist and son of Billy Graham, and Marion Olasky, the editor of the conservative World magazine and a former advisor to President Bush, echoed those sentiments, claiming that the American invasion of Iraq would create exciting new prospects for proselytizing Muslims.”

Not Jesus, the Jewish prophet, who said, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39), and “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God (Matthew 5:9).  Not the one who, like numerous other Jewish insurgents, was crucified on a cross by Rome for seeking to liberate the Jewish people from Roman occupation.  But the three generations later resurrected Christ of the just formed Trinity, whose disciples used Christianity’s newly obtained power, as the official religion of the Roman Empire, to “go into all the world and baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”, i.e., do unto the Jews what had been done to the oppressed Jews in Jesus’ day.

The American, white, Christian, imperialistic god is seen in sincere, but sadly unreflective patriotic prayers.  Typical is a Real Estate Blog entitled, “Hot Weather in Iraq.  Please Pray for Our Troops.”  The Blog states, “You think you have it bad, according to the weather report, it is 122 degrees in Iraq right now—and the low will be 95!  Our troops,” the appeal continued, “need our prayers for strength, endurance, and safety.  Of all the gifts you could give a US Soldier, Sailor, Airman, Marine and others deployed in harm’s way [italics added] prayer is the very best one!”

“In harm’s way.”  The US troops were put “in harm’s way” by the Bush administration—as were the non-threatening Iraqi people.  “In harm’s way” is a projection on to the Iraqi people the harm created by Bush administration lies on which the pre-emptive invasion of Iraq was based.  The lies of a “freedom-loving” American, Christian, imperialistic god.

So many earnest but ethically hollow prayers, in sanctuaries across America and on countless websites, for the protection and safe return of US troops in Iraq.  How biased is such a god to whom many pray!  To pray for the safety of American troops invading and occupying Iraq is to ignore their ordered violation of Iraq’s sovereignty and the safety and rights and suffering of Iraqi sons and daughter and mothers and fathers, whose lives are just as precious and sacred as those of America’s sons and daughters and mothers and fathers.  To offer such prayers is to ignore—and sanctify—the international war crime committed by the Bush administration in our name.  To worship such an ethnocentric god is to seek favoritism and exemption in the face of injustice and truth.  It is understandably safer to pray for the troops and for peace than to pray and protest truth to power.  For truth does not exempt.  Nor love exclude or play favorites.  Not “support the troops” but America’s sons and daughters, by refusing to allow elected leaders to use patriotism and piety as camouflage for sacrificing them on the altars of corporate greed and political domination.

From liberating people to evangelizing them.  From empowering them to gaining power over them.  Christocentrism and ethnocentrism worship at the same imperialistic altar.

What if Christians controlled the world in the same way they biblically believe they control the gates of heaven.  The recent anti-democratic votes in California and Arizona and Florida denying marriage to loving and committed gay and lesbian couples are merely  indicators of what could happen to “the unsaved.”  How many other legal ways might be used to make “perish” those who believe that the god of John 3: 16, who supposedly “so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life,” is obviously not big enough to love everyone in the world?  What kind of hell would they create on earth for those who do not believe in their “heaven”?  If they had the power, what kind of holy holocaust might they create with their unexamined aggressive and submissive tendencies?  The Bible says, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of god is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23).  How frightening if “true believers” had the power to define and punish “sin” on earth as they preach knowingly about the “sin” their god in heaven condemns.  The belief in “The Rapture,” during which only those who accept Christ as their saviour will be resurrected to join him at his second coming, and in the horrible “Tribulation” that will befall everyone else “left behind” at “the end times” reveal a god who is capable of committing genocide of unimaginable magnitude.

Any god worth worshiping is far more than American, or White, or Christian, or heterosexual, or male.  Perhaps divinity is revealed in our humanity.  We do not look alike, nor speak alike, nor think alike, nor even worship alike.  But we do laugh alike, and cry alike, and love alike, and mourn alike.  Not a god “bigger” than other gods, but big enough to love all people, and inspire them to see each other’s tears and laughter—with no proselytizing strings attached.

Rev. William E. Alberts, Ph.D. is a hospital chaplain, and a diplomate in the College of Pastoral Supervision and Psychotherapy.  Both a Unitarian Universalist and a United Methodist minister, he has written research reports, essays and articles on racism, war, politics and religion.  He can be reached at william.alberts@bmc.org.

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