“We’re on a mission from God,” declared Elwood Blues in the 1980 cult classic “The Blues Brothers.” It’s the story of off-kilter brothers who are convinced the Lord had spoken to them. The audience knows that because God doesn’t talk to musicians. But what if American presidents say they have had personal conversations with the Almighty? Who can say?
It’s just a theory, but it could be the crux of Republican presidential hopeful Jeb Bush’s problem when he is repeatedly asked if he would have invaded and occupied Iraq in 2003. Perhaps he wonders: “What if God told me I had to do it, just the way he told George?”
President George W. Bush was unequivocal on the subject. In his 2004 book, “Plan of Attack,” Bob Woodward wrote about asking President Bush if he asked his father (former President George H.W. Bush) for advice about going to war against Iraq. George W. Bush’s answer was that he had not asked his father for advice because: “He is the wrong father to appeal to for advice, the wrong father to go to, to appeal to, in terms of strength. There’s a higher father that I appeal to.”
Maybe Jeb Bush believes that despite the past dozen years, America needs the patience of Job to eventually see George Bush was correct: It was God’s plan to bring democracy to Iraq and, by coincidence, affordable oil to the United States.
God and weapons of mass delusion
Jeb Bush certainly wouldn’t be alone in believing that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was necessary. A phone poll taken at the end of last year by Fairleigh Dickinson University’s research center, PublicMind, reported that 42 percent of Americans believed that it was “definitely” or “probably” true that American forces found an active weapons of mass destruction program in Iraq. Even though key people in the Bush II administration admit that intelligent “mistakes” were made with regard to WMD, the poll showed that more than half of Republicans believe so.
I do not understand. If you are a self-respecting neocon and former Vice President Dick Cheney declares there were no WMD in Iraq, wouldn’t you take him at his word?
Yet multitudes of Americans love a good war. Truth is, millions like a bad war. I am shocked at the comments I get from readers who are angry about my anti-war stance and maintain that Vietnam was a good war and should have been won, if not for the politicians. I guess they don’t remember that many of those same politicians got America into that war.
To the extent that North Vietnam was a distinguishable enemy that would at least meet for peace talks, it was a good war. That it eventually ended and that God wasn’t brought into it also made it a good war. Today’s wars seem endless. True believers, fed by neocons, proclaim we are at the edge of victory in the Middle East.
As for committed conservatives, still reading such words are poison; and I will again be labeled an ultra-liberal. For the record, on March 4, 2010, I wrote a column for Personal Liberty Digest™ titled “Afghan Folly: Why we should have dropped the bomb.” I argued that a tactical nuclear strike against Osama bin Laden in the days or weeks following 9/11 would have saved trillions of dollars in treasure along with thousands of American lives. In it I quoted Douglas MacArthur, who said, “It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.”
I now believe there is zero will to win in the Middle East, but there is endless will to continue it. And who are the winners in all this? They are the military contractors, Big Oil and our elected politicians, whom they recruit. As to who our representatives serve, I do not know. But I do not believe they serve the American people.
It’s troubling to be the devil’s advocate, but it worries me that the only time American leaders invoke God’s word is with regard to America’s global strategic goals. I cannot recall presidents calling it God’s will for any domestic legislation.
The religious right loves it. And that plays right into the hands of our neocon masters, who exert a tremendous amount of influence on the Republican and Democratic parties.
I will let you decide the veracity of this quote reported by The Guardian October 7, 2005:
President Bush said to all of us: “I am driven with a mission from God.” God would tell me, “George, go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan.” And I did. And then God would tell me, “George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq.” And I did.
I’ll put satire aside by saying I believe George W. Bush or any other person on the planet should have the personal freedom to worship their God. If the members in the Church of Scientology believe that 75 million years ago Xenu brought billions of people to Earth in spacecraft resembling Douglas DC-8 airliners, I say knock yourself out. Where I have the problem is if you tell me that Xenu told the president that America must go to war.
Barack Obama works for the same bosses that George W. Bush did. Obama has a great public relations team that earned him his Nobel Peace Prize. Truth is Obama has been one of the worst war-mongering presidents in two generations. Which president has authorized military strikes against seven Muslim nations? Obama.
The neocons’ hit list
George W. Bush’s and Obama’s legacies were predetermined by the neocons and their bagmen. In a March 2007 interview, retired four-star Gen. Wesley Clark relayed this conversation he had with a Pentagon general a few weeks after 9/11:
[W]e were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, “Are we still going to war with Iraq?” And he said, “Oh, it’s worse than that.” He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, “I just got this down from upstairs” — meaning the secretary of defense’s office — “today.” And he said, “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.”
Deny it if you want, but that means a four-star-general was lying.
I predict the next president of the United States will engage Iran in the next “big” war. The propaganda machine is already spinning. Expect a mind-numbing number of retired U.S. military officers to explain why Iran is the greatest threat to civilization. I guarantee the next president will use words about how God’s will will be done. It should bother us that the people who everyone can agree are really crazy — the Islamists — will be dying to prove that Allah’s will will be done. In conclusion, I’ll share something my Middle East contact told me:
Peoples of the Middle East hold no value of life. They drive 110 mph down the wrong way of the road because God is looking out for them and if it is their time to go, then so be it. The last country in the world I would want to go to war with is Iran.
Yours in good times and bad,
–John Myers
The post God and America’s Blues Brothers appeared first on Personal Liberty.
from PropagandaGuard https://propagandaguard.wordpress.com/2015/05/20/god-and-americas-blues-brothers/
from WordPress https://toddmsiebert.wordpress.com/2015/05/19/god-and-americas-blues-brothers/
No comments:
Post a Comment