"Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts. . . . America was targeted for attack because we’re the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world." ~ George W. Bush, address to the nation, September 11, 2001

"They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other." ~ George W. Bush, address to Congress, September 20, 2001

Of all the lies of the Bush administration used to justify the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, this one has proven to be the most enduring – and the most wrong.

According to a 2004 report on strategic communication prepared by the Defense Science Board Task Force, "a federal advisory committee established to provide independent advice to the secretary of defense":

American direct intervention in the Muslim World has paradoxically elevated the stature of and support for radical Islamists, while diminishing support for the United States to single-digits in some Arab societies.

Muslims do not "hate our freedom," but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the longstanding, even increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf states.

Furthermore, in the eyes of Muslims, American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq has not led to democracy there, but only more chaos and suffering. U.S. actions appear in contrast to be motivated by ulterior motives, and deliberately controlled in order to best serve American national interests at the expense of truly Muslim selfdetermination.

Therefore, the dramatic narrative since 9/11 has essentially borne out the entire radical Islamist bill of particulars. American actions and the flow of events have elevated the authority of the Jihadi insurgents and tended to ratify their legitimacy among Muslims. Fighting groups portray themselves as the true defenders of an Ummah (the entire Muslim community) invaded and under attack – to broad public support.

A 2006 National Intelligence Estimate concluded that the war in Iraq increased the threat of terrorism rather than reduced it. "Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States" points out the "centrality" of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in fomenting terrorist cells and attacks and describes how the American presence in Iraq has helped spread radical Islam by providing a focal point for anti-Americanism.

According to Michael Scheuer, who headed the CIA’s bin Laden unit from 1996 to 1999: "In the long run, we’re not safer because we’re still operating on the assumption that we’re hated because of our freedoms, when in fact we’re hated because of our actions in the Islamic world. There’s our military presence in Islamic countries, the perception that we control the Muslim world’s oil production, our support for Israel and for countries that oppress Muslims such as China, Russia, and India, and our own support for Arab tyrannies."

Peter Bergen, who produced the first television interview with Osama Bin Laden in 1997, says "that in all the tens of thousands of words uttered by bin Laden, he was strangely silent about American freedoms and values. He didn’t seem to care very much about the beliefs of the ‘crusaders.’ His focus was invariably on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East."

Political scientist James Payne, in a review of twenty-four official pronouncements of Osama bin Laden from 1994-2004, found that 72 percent of the content amounted to "criticism of the United States and other Western countries for their aggression against Muslim lands and the need to defend against and punish this aggression." Only 1 percent criticized American culture or the American way of life.

If we really want to know why American is hated by terrorists, insurgents, jihadists, militants, and Islamofascists, then we should just ask them. Actually, we don’t even need to ask, just listen.

Listen to Osama bin Laden, the late leader of al Qaeda. First, from his 1996 fatwa:

It should not be hidden from you that the people of Islam had suffered from aggression, iniquity and injustice imposed on them by the Zionist-Crusaders alliance and their collaborators; to the extent that the Muslims blood became the cheapest and their wealth as loot in the hands of the enemies. Their blood was spilled in Palestine and Iraq. The horrifying pictures of the massacre of Qana, in Lebanon are still fresh in our memory. Massacres in Tajakestan, Burma, Cashmere, Assam, Philippine, Fatani, Ogadin, Somalia, Erithria, Chechnia and in Bosnia-Herzegovina took place, massacres that send shivers in the body and shake the conscience. All of this and the world watch and hear, and not only didn’t respond to these atrocities, but also with a clear conspiracy between the USA and its’ allies and under the cover of the iniquitous United Nations, the dispossessed people were even prevented from obtaining arms to defend themselves.

The latest and the greatest of these aggressions, incurred by the Muslims since the death of the Prophet (ALLAH’S BLESSING AND SALUTATIONS ON HIM) is the occupation of the land of the two Holy Places – the foundation of the house of Islam, the place of the revelation, the source of the message and the place of the noble Ka’ba, the Qiblah of all Muslims – by the armies of the American Crusaders and their allies.

Second, from his 1997 CNN interview:

We declared jihad against the US government, because the US government is unjust, criminal and tyrannical. It has committed acts that are extremely unjust, hideous and criminal, whether directly or through its support of the Israeli occupation of the Prophet’s Night Travel Land.

A reaction might take place as a result of the US government’s hitting Muslim civilians and executing more than 600,000 Muslim children in Iraq by preventing food and medicine from reaching them. So, the US is responsible for any reaction, because it extended its war against troops to civilians.

And third, from his 1998 Fatwa:

The Arabian Peninsula has never – since God made it flat, created its desert, and encircled it with seas – been stormed by any forces like the crusader armies spreading in it like locusts, eating its riches and wiping out its plantations. All this is happening at a time in which nations are attacking Muslims like people fighting over a plate of food. In the light of the grave situation and the lack of support, we and you are obliged to discuss current events, and we should all agree on how to settle the matter.

No one argues today about three facts that are known to everyone; we will list them, in order to remind everyone:

First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples.

If some people have in the past argued about the fact of the occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it. The best proof of this is the Americans’ continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, but they are helpless.

Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million … despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation.

So here they come to annihilate what is left of this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors.

Third, if the Americans’ aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews’ petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there. The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel’s survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula.

All these crimes and sins committed by the Americans are a clear declaration of war on God, his messenger, and Muslims. And ulema have throughout Islamic history unanimously agreed that the jihad is an individual duty if the enemy destroys the Muslim countries.

The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies – civilians and military – is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim.

Because of the many undocumented statements that have been attributed to bin Laden since 9/11, I have deliberately not included any of his purported post-9/11 statements.

Listen to Ramzi Yousef, convicted of bombing the World Trade Center in 1993, and now serving a life sentence. From his January 8, 1998, court appearance:

You keep talking also about collective punishment and killing innocent people to force governments to change their policies; you call this terrorism when someone would kill innocent people or civilians in order to force the government to change its policies. Well, when you were the first one who invented this terrorism.

You were the first one who killed innocent people, and you are the first one who introduced this type of terrorism to the history of mankind when you dropped an atomic bomb which killed tens of thousands of women and children in Japan and when you killed over a hundred thousand people, most of them civilians, in Tokyo with fire bombings. You killed them by burning them to death. And you killed civilians in Vietnam with chemicals as with the so-called Orange agent. You killed civilians and innocent people, not soldiers, innocent people every single war you went. You went to wars more than any other country in this century, and then you have the nerve to talk about killing innocent people.

And now you have invented new ways to kill innocent people. You have so-called economic embargo which kills nobody other than children and elderly people, and which other than Iraq you have been placing the economic embargo on Cuba and other countries for over 35 years.

The Government in its summations and opening statement said that I was a terrorist. Yes, I am a terrorist and I am proud of it. And I support terrorism so long as it was against the United States Government and against Israel, because you are more than terrorists; you are the one who invented terrorism and using it every day. You are butchers, liars and hypocrites.

Yousef and his co-conspirators (Mohammed Salameh, Nidal Ayyad, Mahmud Abouhalima, Ahmad Ajaj, and Abdul Rahman Yasin) sent a letter to the New York Times after the bombing that spelled out their motive:

We are, the fifth battalion in the LIBERATION ARMY, declare our responsibility for the explosion on the mentioned building. This action was done in response for the American political, economical, and military support to Israel the state of terrorism and to the rest of the dictator countries in the region.

OUR DEMANDS ARE:

1 – Stop all military, economical, and political aid to Israel.

2 – All diplomatic relations with Israel must stop.

3 – Not to interfere with any of the Middle East countries interior affairs.

IF our demands are not met, all of our functional groups in the army will continue to execute our missions against the military and civilian targets in and out the United States. For your own information, our army has more than hundred and fifty suicidal soldiers ready to go ahead. The terrorism that Israel practices (Which is supported by America) must be faced with a similar one. The dictatorship and terrorism also supported by America) that some countries are practicing against their own people must also be faced with terrorism.

The American people must know, that their civilians who got killed are not better than those who are getting killed by the American weapons and support.

The American people are responsible for the actions of their government and they must question all of the crimes that their government is committing against other people. Or they – Americans – will be the targets of our operations that could diminish them.

LIBERATION ARMY, FIFTH BATTALION

Listen to Richard Reid, the convicted "shoe bomber." From his 2003 court appearance:

With regards to what you said about killing innocent people, I will say one thing. Your government has killed 2 million children in Iraq. OK? If you want to think about something, 20 against 2 million, I don’t see no comparison. OK?

Your government has sponsored the rape and torture of Muslims in the prisons of Egypt and Turkey and Syria and Jordan with their money and with their weapons. OK? I don’t know, see what I done as being equal to rape and to torture, or to the deaths of the 2 million children in Iraq. OK? So for this reason, I think I ought not apologize for my actions.

I am at war with your country. I’m at war with them not for personal reasons but because they have murdered so many children and they have oppressed my religion and they have oppressed people for no reason except that they say we believe in Allah. This is the only reason that America sponsors Egypt. It’s the only reason they sponsor Turkey. It’s the only reason they back Israel. OK?

Listen to Faisal Shahzad, the Times Square car bomber. First, from his June 21, 2010 court appearance:

I want to plead guilty and I’m going to plead guilty a hundred times forward because until the hour the US pulls it forces from Iraq and Afghanistan and stops the drone strikes in Somalia and Yemen and in Pakistan and stops the occupation of Muslim lands and stops killing the Muslims and stops reporting the Muslims to its government, we will be attacking US, and I plead guilty to that.

Well, I am part of that. I am part of the answer to the US terrorizing the Muslim nations and the Muslim people, and on behalf of that, I’m avenging the attacks, because only – like living in US, the Americans only care about their people, but they don’t care about the people elsewhere in the world when they die.

And second, from his October 5, 2010, court appearance:

My statement should take about five minutes to ten minutes, and I hope that the judge and the Court will listen to me before they sentence me. In the name of Allah, the most gracious, the most merciful, this is but one life. If I am given a thousand lives, I will sacrifice them all for the sake of Allah fighting this cause, defending our lands, making the word of Allah supreme over any religion or system. We Muslims don’t abide by human-made laws, because they are always corrupt. And I had a firsthand experience when on the second day of my arrest I asked for the Miranda. And the FBI denied it to me for two weeks, effecting harm to my kids and family, and I was forced to sign those Mirandas. The sentence by the judge will not mean anything to me, for how can I be judged when the Court does not understand the suffering of my people. They don’t understand my side of the story, where the Muslim life of is no value. Therefore, the only true judgment will be on the day of resurrection when Allah will judge between me and you as to who is fighting for the just cause. So decree whatever you desire to decree, for you can only decree regarding the life of this world. The crusading U.S. and NATO forces who have occupied the Muslim lands under the pretext of democracy and freedom for the last nine years and are saying with their mouths that they are fighting terrorism, I say to them, we don’t accept your democracy nor your freedom, because we already have Sharia law and freedom. Furthermore, brace yourselves, because the war with Muslims has just begun. Consider me only a first droplet of the flood that will follow me. And only this time it’s not imperial Japan or Germany, Vietnam or Russian communism. This time it’s the war against people who believe in the book of Allah and follow the commandments, so this is a war against Allah. So let’s see how you can defeat your Creator, which you can never do. Therefore, the defeat of U.S. is imminent and will happen in the near future, inshallah, which will only give rise to much awaited Muslim caliphate, which is the only true world order. Soon the bailout money which is holding your fragile economy will run out and soon you will not be able to afford the war costs.

So, the past nine years the war with Muslims has achieved nothing for the U.S., except for it has waken up the Muslims for Islam. We are only Muslims trying to defend our, people, honor, and land. But if you call us terrorists for doing that, then we are proud terrorists, and we will keep on terrorizing until you leave our land and people at peace. But if you don’t, then I remind you that we have watches and we have time. We will defeat you with time.

Listen to Najibullah Zazi, who pled guilty to conspiring to undertake a suicide attack on the New York subway system. From his 2010 court appearance: "I would sacrifice myself to bring attention to what the United States military was doing to civilians in Afghanistan by sacrificing my soul for the sake of saving other souls."

Listen to Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen living in Yemen. From his 2010 "Call to Jihad":

We the Muslims do not have an inherent animosity towards any racial group or ethnicity. We are not against Americans for just being Americans. We are against evil and America as a whole has turned into a nation of evil. What we see from America is the invasion of [inaudible] countries, we see Abu Ghraib, Baghram and Guantanamo Bay, we see cruise missiles and cluster bombs and we have just seen in Yemen the death of 23 children and 17 women. We cannot stand idly in the face of such aggression and we will fight back and incite others to do the same.

I for one was born in the U.S., I lived in the U.S. for 21 years. America was my home. I was a preacher of Islam involved in non-violent Islamic activism. However, with the American invasion of Iraq and continued U.S. aggression against Muslims I could not reconcile between living in the U.S. and being a Muslim.

And finally, listen to a statement from al-Qaeda’s American-born spokesman, Adam Gadahn, released last year:

The fact is, Barack, if you ever decide to get serious about improving America’s security, protecting the American people and preventing a sharp rise in the number of American casualties at home and abroad and in the air, at sea and on land, then there are a number of simple, sound and effective steps which you can take which can go a long way towards achieving those goals. The Muslim Mujahideen defending their faith and brethren against your nation’s evildoing have repeatedly made clear these steps, but because I suspect you have been living in the ivory tower and information vacuum in which arrogant Washington insiders like you often live, I shall summarize these steps here. I strongly suggest you heed and implement them, for your own good and the good of your people.

First, you must pull every last one of your soldiers, spies, security advisors, trainers, attaches, contractors, robots, drones and all other American personnel, ships and aircraft out of every Muslim land from Afghanistan to Zanzibar.

Second, you must end all support – both moral and material – to Israel and bar your citizens from traveling to Occupied Palestine or settling there, and you must impose a blanket ban on American trade with the Zionist regime and investment in it. Your security will not be improved by empty threats like those your special envoy made about the possible suspension of American loans, in and of itself a largely meaningless gesture. As Shaykh Usama told you, if you don’t heed our warnings and stop your support of Israel, we will have no choice but to continue to use other ways to get our message across.

Third, you must stop all support and aid – be it military, political, economic or otherwise – to the hated regimes of the Muslim world. This includes the so-called "development aid" which your secretary of state recently identified as being one of the most important elements of future American efforts to combat the Islamic renaissance and Jihadi awakening sweeping the Muslim world.

Fourth, you must cease all interference in the religion, society, politics, economy and government of the Islamic world. This means putting an immediate stop to the deployment of your economic hit men, CIA jackals, Peace Corps volunteers, USAID employees, and UN-and-US-sponsored non-governmental organizations, all of which, put together, represent the vanguard of American interference in our region and the world.

Fifth, you must also put an end to all forms of American and American sponsored interference in the educational curricula and information media of the Muslim world, and you must end all broadcasts targeting our region, especially those designed to alter or destroy the faith, minds, morals and values of our Muslim people.

And sixth, you must free all Muslim captives from your prisons, detention facilities and concentration camps, regardless of whether they have been recipients of what you call a "fair" trial or not. As our heroic brother Abu Dujaanah al-Khorasaani told you with his words and actions, we will never forget our prisoners.

Instead of listening or asking questions, the reaction of the United States has been bomb first, don’t listen or ask questions, and then bomb later – and invade, occupy, torture, maim, kill, incarcerate, rendition, assassinate, and destroy property and infrastructure.

And as Glenn Greenwald recently pointed out:

The fact that victims of American violence over the last two decades have easily outweighed, and continue to outweigh, those of the Dictators and Terrorists whom we so vocally despise is nonetheless an extremely important fact that should shape our understanding of 9/11.

The cry of the Muslim masses in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and elsewhere in the Middle East was not for Islamofascism, global Islamic conquest, a global Caliphate, the worldwide establishment of Sharia law, a new holocaust, suicide bombers, and terrorists attacks, but for more freedom – something they supposedly hate us for.

Muslims seem to be more interested in killing other Muslims than in killing Americans who aren’t bombing and occupying their countries – just look at the history of Sunni versus Shiite violence since Muhammad died in 632 and a disagreement ensued over whom should be his successor.

The U.S. government has learned absolutely nothing since 9/11. Instead of the occasion being a time to reassess a century of bad foreign policy, it was used as an excuse to start two wars against countries that had nothing to do with 9/11 and accelerate the destruction of American freedoms. And now, ten years later, the anniversary of 9/11 will be used to lionize the police state, the warfare state, and the national security state while justifying even more wars.

U.S. foreign policy is an abomination in the sight of God, and I don’t mean Allah.

Originally published on LewRockwell.com on September 10, 2011.

Post from: LibertarianChristians.com

Why They Hate Us

However, I was pleased to see the following clip of Stossel on the O’Reilly Factor, where Stossel defends Ron Paul and begins to sound pretty good on issues of foreign policy. It was rather funny, honestly, to hear Stossel say that Ron Paul is “right on everything” – including foreign policy. While Stossel doesn’t talk about jus in bello (ethics during war), where I had the biggest problem with him before, he has the right idea on jus ad bellum (justification for war). Take a look, it’s entertaining to watch that snake O’Reilly squirm and look like an idiot trying to pronounce Keynes’s name to say the least.

I should note, though, that there was a Federal Reserve in 1920. They just didn’t do much in that recession, and thus it lasted for less than a year.

Post from: LibertarianChristians.com

Is John Stossel becoming anti-war?

In his new book Decision Points, former president George W. Bush complains about a 2004 tape by Osama bin Laden "mocking my response to 9/11 in the Florida classroom." What really upset Bush was that "it sounded like he was plagiarizing Michael Moore."

Moore is the documentary filmmaker and liberal political commentator who harshly criticized Bush in his 2004 film Fahrenheit 9/11, which he wrote, directed, produced, and stared in. As Lew Rockwell wrote about the film:

The movie decries the warmongering of the Bush administration, exposes the fraudulence of his excuses for invading and crushing Iraq, unearths the unseemly ties between the Bush regime and big oil and the Saudis, and blasts the Bush regime for its egregious violations of civil liberties and massive pillaging of the American taxpayer on behalf of the merchants of death.

This, of course, does not mean that Lew Rockwell or I endorse anything else that Michael Moore has ever done.

Like Mr. Rockwell, I am no fan of Michael Moore. He is a radical liberal, a union propagandist, a socialist, a gun grabber, an economic ignoramus, and a hypocrite who criticizes capitalism and poses as a spokesman of the working class while living an upscale life, sending his daughter to an elite private school, and boasting of his wealth. I even agree with Bush that Moore is a "slimeball."

But there is one thing Michael Moore is right about.

In a recent open letter to Juan Williams regarding his firing by NPR, Moore used the courtroom statements of the Times Square car bomber Faisal Shahzad to explain why many in the Muslim World hate us. Moore previously wrote an open letter to Bush on the eve of the Iraq war and to Obama about the war in Afghanistan.

Here is what Moore quotes Shahzad as saying at his June 21, 2010, appearance in the Federal District Court in Manhattan where he pleaded guilty to a ten-count indictment:

I want to plead guilty, and I’m going to plead guilty 100 times over, because until the hour the U.S. pulls its forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, and stops the drone strikes in Somalia and Yemen and in Pakistan, and stops the occupation of Muslim lands, and stops killing the Muslims, and stops reporting the Muslims to its government, we will be attacking U.S., and I plead guilty to that.

And here is what Moore quotes Shahzad as saying on October 5, 2010, when he was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole:

[Saladin] liberated Muslim lands … And that’s what we Muslims are trying do, because you’re occupying Iraq and Afghanistan… So, the past nine years the war with Muslims has achieved nothing for the U.S., except for it has waken up the Muslims for Islam. We are only Muslims trying to defend our people, honor, and land. But if you call us terrorists for doing that, then we are proud terrorists, and we will keep on terrorizing until you leave our land and people at peace.

The first thing to be determined is whether Moore accurately quotes Shahzad. In the court transcript from June 21, "100 times over" appears as "a hundred times forward." The only other difference between Moore and the official transcript is a few commas. In defense of Moore I should point out that the way he quotes Shahzad is the usual way the quote has been reported. In the court transcript from October 5, we can see that the first and second statements attributed to Shahzad actually come after the third statement. And just to be fair to Shahzad (yes, I know he’s a convicted terrorist, but that doesn’t give us the right to misquote him), here is what he said without the brackets and ellipsis: "He liberated Muslim lands from the Jewish crusade, Christian crusade. And that’s what we Muslims are trying do, because you’re occupying Iraq and Afghanistan." Moore quotes the third statement word perfect. So, what Moore quotes Shahzad as saying is essentially correct.

It is at the close of his short open letter that Moore reaches his conclusion I quoted above: "Terrorists aren’t trying to kill us because they hate our freedom. They’re killing us because we’re in their countries killing them."

So if Moore is right – and I have no doubt that he is – then Islamic terrorists don’t want to detonate bombs in Times Square or blow up U.S.-bound airplanes because we have a bill of rights or because they think Brittany Spears should wear a burqa.

But Michael Moore is not just right; he is by implication giving us the key to declaring the war on terror over: GET OUT. Get U.S. troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Get the CIA out of Yemen and Pakistan. Stop the Predator drone attacks. Cease flying the sorties. I’m not sure about Moore, but I would go even further. Close the overseas bases. Bring all the troops home. Retire as the policeman of the world. Discontinue the foreign wars. Halt the spreading of democracy. Freeze the nation building. End the interventionist foreign policy.

What Moore is saying is not new. The CIA calls it blowback. The Bible calls it reaping what you sow.

The terrible truth is that the war on terror creates terrorists. As the great Glenn Greenwald wrote after Faisal Shahzad entered his guilty plea:

The great contradiction of American foreign policy is that the very actions endlessly rationalized as necessary for combating Terrorism – invading, occupying and bombing other countries, limitless interference in the Muslim world, unconditional support for Israeli aggression, vast civil liberties abridgments such as torture, renditions, due-process-free imprisonments – are the very actions that fuel the anti-American hatred which, as the U.S. Government itself has long recognized, is what causes, fuels and exacerbates the Terrorism we’re ostensibly attempting to address.

But never mind what Glenn Greenwald has to say; never mind what Michael Moore has to say, and never mind what Laurence Vance has to say.

According to a report on strategic communication prepared by the Defense Science Board Task Force, "a federal advisory committee established to provide independent advice to the secretary of defense":

The information campaign – or as some still would have it, "the war of ideas," or the struggle for "hearts and minds" – is important to every war effort. In this war it is an essential objective, because the larger goals of U.S. strategy depend on separating the vast majority of non-violent Muslims from the radical-militant Islamist-Jihadists. But American efforts have not only failed in this respect: they may also have achieved the opposite of what they intended.

American direct intervention in the Muslim World has paradoxically elevated the stature of and support for radical Islamists, while diminishing support for the United States to single-digits in some Arab societies.

Muslims do not "hate our freedom," but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the longstanding, even increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf states.

Furthermore, in the eyes of Muslims, American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq has not led to democracy there, but only more chaos and suffering. U.S. actions appear in contrast to be motivated by ulterior motives, and deliberately controlled in order to best serve American national interests at the expense of truly Muslim selfdetermination.

Therefore, the dramatic narrative since 9/11 has essentially borne out the entire radical Islamist bill of particulars. American actions and the flow of events have elevated the authority of the Jihadi insurgents and tended to ratify their legitimacy among Muslims. Fighting groups portray themselves as the true defenders of an Ummah (the entire Muslim community) invaded and under attack – to broad public support.

But U.S. foreign policy blunders didn’t just begin on 9/11. As Sheldon Richman recently explained:

Contrary to those who think history began September 11, 2001, U.S. regimes have long pursued policies in the Middle East and Central Asia that have brutalized the Muslim world and cultivated a seething passion for revenge. That explains (though does not excuse) the terrorism against civilians that government officials now say they must spend so much to stop. The threat was created by American policy, and it can be ended by changing that policy to the Washington-Jefferson foreign policy of nonintervention. That will not only make us safer, it also will save the taxpayers money.

Richman ought to know, as he prepared the exhaustive study titled "‘Ancient History’: U.S. Conduct in the Middle East Since World War II and the Folly of Intervention."

The attacks of 9/11 were political acts. They were not undertaken because of our freedoms, way of life, culture, or religion. The problem is our government and its abominable foreign policy. It is because of our foreign policy that our soldiers are needlessly dying in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Now, to accept the fact that terrorists want to kill us because we’re in their countries killing them doesn’t mean that those killed on 9/11 deserved to die or that violence is justified or that the Koran is a holy book or that Islam is a religion of peace or that no act of terrorism against the United States would ever take place again if we withdrew our troops.

What it does mean – to anyone except red-state fascists, bloodthirsty conservative chickenhawks, Republican armchair warriors, Religious Right warvangelicals, theocon Values Voters, reich-wing nationalists, God and country Christian bumpkins, and other apologists for the U.S. military and its wars – is that maybe, perhaps, possibly there might be something terribly wrong with U.S. foreign policy, as the heroic Ron Paul has pointed out over and over again.

Michael Moore may be a liberal, he may be a hypocrite, he may be wrong on an innumerable number of issues, he may be overweight, he may even have bad breath, but on the subject of why terrorists want to kill us Michael Moore has never been more right.

Originally published on LewRockwell.com.

Post from: LibertarianChristians.com

Michael Moore is Right

Without Woodrow Wilson, there is no Federal Reserve and no entrance into World War 1.

Without American involvement in World War 1, there is no Treaty of Versailles, no powerful USSR, and no British and French domination of the former Ottoman Empire.

Without the Treaty of Versailles, there is no Nazi Germany and no Holocaust.

Without Nazi Germany, there is no Allied Powers and the USSR cannot dominate the scene at the end of World War 2. For that matter, there is no World War 2 at all, no saving Joseph Stalin from utter destruction from within. Moreover, there’s no communist China.

Without the USSR and communist China, there’s no Cold War, no Korean War, no Vietnam War.

Without the Cold War, there is no support for coup detat and dictatorship in Iran beginning in 1953.

Without Iran, there is no Saddam Hussein to contain the revolution and blowback. There is no Mujahadeen war in Afghanistan.

Without Mujahadeen, there is no Al Qaeda, no Osama bin Laden, no Desert Storm, no bombing the Middle East on average every three days from 1991 to 2001.

Without these Middle Eastern conflicts, there is no 9/11, no Iraq War, no Patriot Act, no accelerated erosion of liberty in America… the list goes on.

It’s like a chain of dominoes. Every time we intervene, we set up a situation that becomes the excuse for the next intervention and the next war and the next usurpation of individual rights and the next mass killing of innocents…

Until the whole world burns.

There is another way: that the people say to their leaders that enough is ENOUGH. Stop trusting these thieves and murderers to solve the problems of the world. They are incompetent and immoral, and their actions repeatedly reflect such.

Commit to live out liberty, with all its implications. Learn the principles of a free society. Win hearts and minds wherever you go. Live free, and die happy.

Post from: LibertarianChristians.com

Everything goes back to Woodrow Wilson

Featured on LewRockwell.com on September 11, 2010.

“If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”
2 Chronicles 7:14

People regularly email me with questions about how to communicate with other Christians about liberty and peace. The greatest conundrum the Christian libertarian has, it seems, is persuading other Christians to stop supporting the immoral wars that governments perpetrate across the globe. It is particularly difficult in the United States, where “supporting the troops” is essentially part of the new orthodoxy in most evangelical Protestant churches. You can publicly criticize a minister that he preaches too long and someone will support you, but say one word criticizing the military (or even the police) and you become anathema.

It is not as though we cannot defend our position adequately; the truth is on our side. We can easily bring forth historical data, ethics, and solid theology to make our case that war is wrong. This is good and right! We must never cease reasoning with those who disagree with us, and we should do so with gentleness and respect (1 Peter 3:15). However, we must admit that a large part of the problem is not merely failure to reason, but also a failure to show Christian compassion toward others. Churches all over forget that war really is hell, and neglect the suffering war causes. This is especially reflected in our public prayers.

In the past, even the Southern Baptists took the Word of God seriously and prayed for those affected by war. But when was the last time you heard a church pray for anyone in the Middle East, for instance, other than soldiers? When was the last time you heard a church pray for an end to war?

Recently, I was moved to step out and try something I have never heard of done before: ask the leaders of my congregation to take the lead in praying for those suffering in war. (In the Church of Christ tradition, the elders are the spiritual leaders of the congregation.) After consulting with some of my close friends, I attended the June 2010 elders’ meeting and presented the following letter to them to address the “Prayer for the Church” that we offer every Sunday morning worship service.

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To the Elders of the University Avenue Church of Christ,

We have noticed an unusual trend over the past few months during our prayers for the church in Sunday morning worship. On multiple occasions, we have heard people pray for men and women in the military, that they receive “special measures of protection” as they fight to “protect our freedoms” and “serve our country.” While we understand the concerns of church members who have friends and family in the armed forces, and while we sincerely hope for their safe return immediately, we find that these kinds of prayers are neglectful of another group – those victims who suffer wrongfully from this war, to whom we are indeed responsible in part for their suffering. Regardless of one’s opinion of these wars, we think that all can agree upon inspection that this practice can and should change to be more inclusive.

For instance, we never hear prayers for our fellow Christians who live in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since the US invasion in 2003, Christians who were tolerated in the past have been repeatedly persecuted and frequently even killed by indiscriminate warfare or surging extremist groups, and nearly half of the Christian population of 800,000 in Iraq has either fled the country or died. In March 2010 alone, over 4,000 Christians were displaced from their homes following unrest in the northern city of Mosul. Many more have confined themselves to their homes for their own safety.

Moreover, we rarely, if ever, hear prayers for the innocent people in Iraq that die on a daily basis, either from indiscriminate killing by our own military or civil unrest that results from a country torn apart by war. The lowest estimates of non-combatant deaths in Iraq number greater than 100,000. Unfortunately, over time our sensibilities and attitudes toward this war – which is now the longest prolonged conflict in American history – have become desensitized and lackadaisical, and thus we often forget these innocent people.

We appeal to the elders to lead the way toward recognizing this issue with two simple proposals. First, we propose to include in the bulletin prayer requests under “Family Members in the Military” a mention of the innocent and oppressed in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially our Iraqi and Afghan brothers and sisters in Christ, and for an end to these wars. Second, we propose that the elders take the lead in consistently mentioning the same in prayer with the congregation on Sunday mornings. If the prayers of the righteous are powerful and effective, then surely instituting this practice will do good both for these victims and for our own spirits.

We support this appeal with Scripture in two ways. First, if you consider these people as we do, that they are innocent victims and have been wronged by their own leaders, by extremists, and by our own military, then may we pray to God as Jesus taught his disciples: to be “delivered from evil.” If we can pray this for ourselves, surely we can do so for others. But second, if you still consider these people our enemies, then may we do as Jesus said in Matthew 5: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.” May this be the beginning of understanding what Jesus said moments before, “Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.”

Changing our practice to include praying for the oppressed is not a political statement. In fact, this is not a political issue in the least; on the contrary it is a moral and theological issue. If we are to pray “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” then we should take seriously that Jesus came and died to proclaim peace on earth and to liberate the oppressed. We may expect that “wars and rumors of wars” will always exist, but this does not require a condoning or defeatist attitude of such events. Rather, this understanding should make us more sensitive and more compassionate toward those who suffer.

To conclude, war is arguably the most destructive human activity ever devised, and it is an intensely serious moral and theological issue because of its finality for those involved either directly as soldiers or indirectly as innocents. It is right to earnestly pray for our family members participating in war, but let us not become callous to the suffering of others, especially those to whom we are indirectly responsible for their suffering. Therefore, we should let our congregational prayers reflect our concern for them.

In Christ,

Norman Horn [Others at my church signed this letter as well, names withheld for privacy.]

Sources:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,587345,00.html
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=33940&Cr=iraq&Cr1
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

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The response of the elders was, to my surprise, extraordinarily positive. We discussed some of the ramifications of them taking this position. Only one had any concern for it being “too political.” In response, I emphasized that the effects of war are apolitical and intensely real, and therefore to ignore what’s going on is potentially even more political than standing up for what is right.

The next Sunday morning service, during the “Prayer for the Church,” the elder assigned to the task prayed for peace and for the innocent affected by war. This has continued for many weeks on end, with both elders and non-elders doing the same. It isn’t a perfect record at this point, but something is changing.

Amen!

Now, I have to admit that I have the ear of the eldership already. I am a part-time minister in this congregation, and thus they could have been generally more receptive of my proposal because it came from me. It could be that if you tried the exact course of action I did, it might not work out so well. But I still contend that anyone could work with their church in an analogous manner to change it even a little toward peace. Here are some ideas that might help you:

1) Start by setting the example yourself. When you are asked to pray in public for the congregation and its concerns, include those oppressed by war with any prayer offered for family and friends in the military. Furthermore, make sure that you are praying for peace in your private life.

2) If and when you engage your congregation more directly, initiate it by making a request that requires no justification at all. Don’t be afraid to just ask! Send one of your church leaders a very simple request, something like this: “When we pray for soldiers in Iraq, could we also pray for the Iraqis who are suffering, especially our Christian brothers and sisters there, and that God would bless our enemies and bring them peace.” You don’t even have to justify such a request. That’s straight out of Scripture, right?

3) Find others to make the same request together. Talk to some of your elders/leaders together. Again, keep it simple, but up the ante a little bit each time.

4) Keep it apolitical. You are not trying to “make people into libertarians” or anything of the sort. This message is first and foremost about the people affected by conflict. Our concern is for them, not for our egos or political views.

5) If at first you don’t succeed, try again. You may not get a good hearing initially, but be patient. Gently keep pushing back. If it becomes necessary, use the letter above as a model to give to your church leaders. Keep in mind, I really think this should be a “letter of last resort” to be used if your leaders refuse to listen to simpler reason. I carefully constructed this with feedback from multiple sources, so that it could easily show the self-evident principles involved. It gives no quarter and I don’t apologize for that, but know your audience and appeal to their sensibilities.

Of course, some in your church will respond negatively to this kind of request. They may ask how you can ask a church to pray for this war, for instance, when there are millions of other things for which we could pray. What about apartheid in South Africa, earthquakes in Haiti, or persecuted Christians in China? Could not the list go on forever if we wanted?

Those critics have a point, but our response should be that there is a fundamental difference between, say, praying for apartheid in South Africa – where we are aware of no national influence (and in my church’s case, have none of our church members as missionaries there) – and these wars. The difference is that this country, the United States, claims responsibility for their country now, and hence we are already involved. It is not “our fault” that Haiti had an earthquake or that Christians in China are being persecuted (though we may pray for them anyway), but it is in part our fault that the United States has torn apart the Middle East. Moreover, churches continue to condone and support such aggression with little thought either to the consequences for the Arab peoples or the internal subconscious changes that this has on our own churches. And what better way to change our own hearts than through the power of prayer? And what better way to start that process than through the leadership of the church?

Imagine what would happen if churches across the United States (and internationally!) were to stop praying for the military alone and to begin including those oppressed by war in their public prayers as well. Don’t you think that God will help make our hearts ever more attuned to the oppressed?

If the Bible says that the prayers of the righteous are effective, and if we believe that prayer affects us as much or more than prayer affects God, then let us never cease to pray for and support those who suffer from the horror of war and let us encourage others to do the same.

Think about some ways that you can be a peaceful voice for peace in your church. Maybe emulating the story above is one way you can make a difference. I truly believe this simple idea can change hearts and minds across the world if, with God’s help, we are brave enough to try.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.”
Matthew 5:9.

A modified version of this text will become a permanent page at LCC as an open letter to all American churches.

Post from: LibertarianChristians.com

How to Promote Peace in Your Church

Now, before someone objects to the revelation of this “classified” information, you need to know that none of this stuff puts soldiers immediately at risk in their current operations. Wikileaks made sure of this. All of it is history, records of the past actions of the military. That is to say, in this case everything kept “classified” is simply stuff they don’t want you to know, and why might they not want you to know? Because the government knows you won’t like it. Because it reveals the side of the war they don’t want you to see. Because it might cause you to change your mind and stop romanticizing a senseless, barbaric, immoral war. Hence, the Pentagon and the White House immediately condemned this revelation as criminal and threatening to the security of the US and its allies.” Well yeah, it does threaten them. If your already unpopular gets even more unpopular, then your power is threatened. Good. Following suit, the mainstream media seems more interested in debating whether or not the information should have been leaked rather than the content of the leak itself. Typical.

Wikileaks has published all of this in what they are calling the Afghan War Diary. Even before going public, they released all the documents to three prominent newspapers: Der Spiegel, The Guardian, and the New York Times, on the condition that all three waited until July 25th, 2010 to write about them.

These war logs provide the most revealing inside look at the war that we mere citizens have been able to see, showing the true nature of this war. They tell of hundreds of civilian deaths, shadowy special forces operations, and even information about how Pakistan’s spy service, which receives over $1 billion from Washington to help combat militants, was assisting the Afghan insurgents. Talk about blowback…

From the BBC:

After being asked repeatedly by reporters whether he believed some of the incidents described in the documents constituted war crimes, Mr Assange said: "It is up to a court to decide, clearly, whether something is, in the end, a crime."

"That said, prima facie, there does appear to be evidence of war crimes in this material," he added.

He cited as an example an attack in June 2007 by a secret US special forces unit, Task Force 373, which used a Himars (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System) to begin a raid on a compound where a senior al-Qaeda leader, Abu-Laith al-Libi, was thought to be hiding. Seven children died.

Wikileaks front man Julian Assange is now a target for the US Federal Government. He has been advised by his friends not to enter the US after another prominent Wikileaker, Jacob Applebaum, was detained by US customs and had his computer and phones seized. It’s possible that Wikileaks is concerned for Julian’s life, considering they have now published an encrypted file on the War Diary page labeled simply “Insurance.”

Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com said it well:

Whatever else is true, WikiLeaks has yet again proven itself to be one of the most valuable and important organizations in the world.  Just as was true for the video of the Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad, there is no valid justification for having kept most of these documents a secret.  But that’s what our National Security State does reflexively:  it hides itself behind an essentially absolute wall of secrecy to ensure that the citizenry remains largely ignorant of what it is really doing.  WikiLeaks is one of the few entities successfully blowing holes in at least parts of that wall, enabling modest glimpses into what The Washington Post spent last week describing as Top Secret America.  The war on WikiLeaks — which was already in full swing, including, strangely, from some who claim a commitment to transparency — will only intensify now.  Anyone who believes that the Government abuses its secrecy powers in order to keep the citizenry in the dark and manipulate public opinion — and who, at this point, doesn’t believe that? — should be squarely on the side of the greater transparency which Wikileaks and its sources, sometimes single-handedly, are providing.

And as Julian aptly noted in his recent interview with Scott Horton of Antiwar Radio, the real heroes here aren’t even the people at Wikileaks but rather the brave sources who, by leaking this information, put their livelihood and perhaps even their lives at risk. God bless you, wherever you are.

I entitled this post “everything you need to know…” but in truth my own words could never be enough to capture the awfulness of the war nor the importance of the Wikileaks contribution to peace. However, perhaps with all the links I have provided you can become ever more educated about these important world events.

But here’s what you really need to know: This revelation is an incredible moment in the history of journalism and of the wars of the last decade, and hopefully will persuade many that interventions in the Middle East must be stopped. We continue to need Wikileaks more than ever.

Post from: LibertarianChristians.com

Everything you need to know about the Wikileaks Afghanistan Leak

I think I may scream. Hold on a second…

…

Ok, I’m done now.

Fine, so Obama talked a little about peace and changing stuff during his campaign. He has upon occasion criticized the war in Iraq. Yet, since he took office, peace has grown ever more distant. There is no other verdict to draw from his actions other than we are under Bush Number 3. As I have noted in various ways here, here, and here, Obama has not come close to acting like a President interested in peace. I even predicted some of the things that he has done (or not done). In fact, his egregious actions against peace are so numerous at this point it hasn’t even been worth cataloguing in blog posts. Just watch the news for a while or read Antiwar.com. Seriously.

But really, REALLY, would you ever expect someone interested in peace to…

• Not even supporting the rescinding of the Patriot Act (much less actually getting rid of it)
• Not stopping illegal wire-tapping
• Say you’re going to close Guantanamo Bay, but then move the prisoners to other secret prison locations?
• Say you’re against torture, yet not stop the practice of it
• Appoint ultimate war hawk Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State
• Send 20,000 more troops to Afghanistan (with room for more), escalating a conflict that cannot end
• Supports intervention in Darfur
• Supporting bills that allow for the President to shut down the internet at his discretion for a “cyber-security emergency,” while at the same time criticizing Iran for censoring Twitter.
• Escalating Federal spending on defense

The only thing Obama has done right for peace – and only thus far has he done it right – is to keep the United States out of Iran. And who knows, even that might come to a close sooner or later.

Perhaps this should not come as a surprise, however. The Nobel committee did give the Peace Prize last year to someone who likes to scare people into thinking they’re all going to die from the sun. At least the hawkish conservatives who believe that “war is peace” can be pleased that finally someone is getting recognized right – support war, get a Peace Prize.

We live in a bizarro world, folks, when you can get an Economics Prize for supporting the destruction of an economy (Paul Krugman), a Peace Prize for frightening people (Al Gore), and now a Peace Prize for supporting war (Obama). Of course, Hans Hermann Hoppe once said that to win a Nobel Peace Prize, one should be a mass murderer — or at least that helps. You’re well on your way, Barry…

Post from: LibertarianChristians.com

A Peace Prize for a War Hawk

Nevertheless, today’s podcast is a doozy, for it rips a new one against those famous “Christians” who use their public prominence to shill for a warmongering State. The “Christian Axis of Evil” is the title of today’s essay, and it is also the name Vance gives to that group of warmongering Christians. May their influence be ever-diminishing!

Right click here to download the entire audio file. [~14 minutes, mp3]

For those with podcast software, there is a special Podcast RSS Feed set up just for you.

If you are using iTunes, click on the following button to subscribe directly:

Post from: LibertarianChristians.com

Podcast: The Christian Axis of Evil

Today’s essay is entitled “The President’s Prayer.” It is worthy to note that in the original essay on LewRockwell.com, Vance posted a picture of a church sign (see the picture on the right) and referenced the caption in the essay. Since you obviously can’t hear the sign in the audio portion, I decided to add the words of the sign at an appropriate point: “We support our President.” It is rather important to know what it says while listening to the essay, so I felt it was a justified modification to the original text.

I think it is kind of funny that the picture Vance posted actually was created via Says-It.com and the “Church Sign Generator” there. There is no doubt in my mind that you could find church signs with this exact text all over the country (I know with all certainty I have seen them), so I guess he simply didn’t want to “name names” if you will… Anyway, enjoy the podcast!

Right click here to download the entire audio file. [~10 minutes, mp3]

For those with podcast software, there is a special Podcast RSS Feed set up just for you.

If you are using iTunes, click on the following button to subscribe directly:

Post from: LibertarianChristians.com

Podcast: The President’s Prayer