This post late last night from Juan Cole is absolutely chilling as the underlying motives become clear. I combine in my head all these recent concerns about the “torture Bill”, with my reading of Isikoff and Corn’s book, Hubris, and I see the dark side at work. These people are evil. We are allowing Hitler to grow again. Not a Hitler who “exterminates”, but a Hitler who proceeds under the guise of a deception based “threat” to democracy and (what they say less, “free-market”, which means freedom for OUR markets. Those who stand in the way are targets for “aiding and abetting terrorists”). We have seen all along, and most clearly of late, how the “war on terror” is being used as license to become thugs and sadists, and therefore, very much like the Hitler and his Nazis.
So how do you prove to yourself and others a big terror threat that requires a National Security State and turn toward a praetorian society? You torture people into alleging it.
Global terrorism is being exaggerated and hyped by torture just as the witchcraft scare in Puritan American manufactured witches. It is even to the point where 5 African-American and Haitian Christian cultists in Miami can be identified by the FBI as an “al-Qaeda threat” interested in “jihad” after an FBI informant offered to hook them up with al-Qaeda.
Source: Informed Comment
It’s well past time for Christians to speak up, to pray for the wisdom and courage to declare resistance and seek the removal of this regime we have running things in this country to hell in a handbasket. Be afraid, for all our sakes. We’re getting a wake up call here. The time is running late.
When I say “wake-up” call, more than a “write your congressman” or “fill the streets”, I envision a movement of churches that have become fed up with being nice and diplomatic and “politically correct”. Quit worrying about “offending members” (I know, MUCH easier said than done. But really. How much is too much? (Actually, we’ve already reached that point. We have “toned down” , in this American Christendom of ours, the Jesus of the gospels and replaced him with a “therapeutic Jesus” that helps us with our individual problems and helps us through to the next week. We are not listening to the Jesus who calls us together as the church ; as his body; calls us together to stand up against the deceptions of culture and to help each other resist the addictions of culture. MLK once said, “A threat to justice ANYWHERE is a threat to justice EVERYWHERE”. The Bush administration should be our best lesson. In the neocons we have an importation of pure evil; a representation of what happens when the lies of power, empire, and greed reign supreme. Their successful manipulations of the barely existing “safeguards” show just how inadequate this liberal democracy is. It is SO susceptible to being steered into disastrous directions by the folly of people who tell us this in our best interests in the long run (but it’s all in the name of protecting THEIR best interests in the here and now, so that they might live “high on the hog” in their privileged world. They represent what happens when protecting this way of life is God. The God Bush calls upon bears little to no resemblance of the God of Abraham, Issac, Jacob, and Jesus. I know that’s harsh, but Bush has never been able to articulate just what Christianity means to him. He;s been asked point blank, and he gave no answer. He’s not willing to say. I’m not sure he has much depth at all to offer there. I believe he cynically uses the whole “religion thing”. Nowhere did he exemplify this better than when he said “Sometimes you have to put religion aside when you have a job to do” when asked about his war on Iraq and his faith. What kind of Christian can even think such a thing? It can’t happen. Someone once told me when I confronted them with this “Bushism” that this was “an unfortunate choice of words”. I think it an unfortunate kind of person to have as President, and unfortunate that this man is a victim of such shallow understanding, and from all indications, has no interest in improving his knowledge of the world or its workings.
