02/04/2007
Republican Evangelical American Moralist politicians and preachers have shamed
what it means to be American, Christian and moral.
"Arthur, Since nothing in your article provided any kind of answer to the events
of 9/11/2001 and the problem of terrorism, I am wondering if you have any ideas or thoughts on the subject? Other than the
idea that we should love folks who murder innocent women and children and love the folks who go over seas and kill the enemy.
Your arguments seem from the same old school liberalism that opposed the effort of
America in World War II. You are removed from mainstream thought and you seem not to have any particular concept other than
objecting to the religious people getting involved in the military. Is that about it?"
Gosh, that must be about it ... don't ya think?
I doubt that any of us would hesitate to drop our cell phones, leave our keyboards and find some
sort of weapon to defend our homes, our streets, our towns and our country the moment real actual enemies put boots on our
homeland.
Would we be willing to kill to defend our families and country?
Mr. "State- of-the-Union with cliches", "Stay-the-Course with
cliches", "Mission-Accomplished with cliches" and "let-me-do-one-more-surge with cliches" continually throws September
11th into his speeches.
Now when others refer to 9/11 we listen. But when Mr. Bush returns again and again to the 9/11
well, we tune him out. My thoughts on 9/11 concern primarily a desire for justice to the victims, redress if possible, accountability
and harsh punishment for those guilty.
Those thoughts do not however obsess on a blind vengeance against non-specific individuals, countries
and peoples to whom guilt has not been justifiably and irrevocably assigned.
Those thoughts then do not have a need to construct some sort of a Cheneyesque "1% per cent solution", or a simple-minded declarative, "they hate us becaues
of our freedoms" or spreading democracy at the point of a gun as the wonderfully wise mandat given to a global incompentent
because an American electorate forgot how we are founded on core values that reflect generosity and a compassionate spirit.
Nor do my thoughts need to claim that God wants or approves of the sort of killing commenced by our Christian in the White
House who garnered support for killing people by lying.
That particular instance of bearing false witness really chaps my moral hide. My thoughts continually,
however, ignore the cesspool spoutings of those TV God-talkers who pretend that Jesus whispers foreign policy into their born-again and self-rightous minds or that God says it's okay to blow them away in his name.
My thoughts do move to dismay at any American citizen who publically attempts to justify killing
innocents because political demagogues labeled military invasion of Iraq as a key component of something else with the inaccurate
label if a "war on terror".
The implication that war is a dirty business in which innocent human beings will suffer and collateral
damage is acceptable so long as that damage doesn't come ashore here makes of us an accepting or apathetic electorate, a murderous
neighbor to every one else and a country the justifies international horror in the name of consumer distraction and voter
indifference.
The same people who are divided over abortion have not spoken out about the deaths of pregnant
women in Iraq due to bombs and military violence. And here I'll repeat what I've said many times before. I agree with Sister Joan Chittister who once said that the war-caused death of a pregnant Iraqi woman is in fact the military abortion of her unborn.
Put religion and patriotism in the same mixer, turn on the switch and one invokes a responsibility
to reconcile the tenets of the religion with the realities of patriotic involvement in war.
The righteous things we say about our religious and moral practices must also be the righteous
things we say about our patriotic and peace-making practices. Too many Christians in this country are looking the other way;
in fact have their heads buried in the sand or up their biblical butts whenever protest is made about so much killing.
When is the God of the morally indignant Christian Conservatives going to be satisfied?
When is the Lord going to tell Pat Robertson to tell the 700 Club to tell George W. Bush that
enough is enough? I assume then that based on civilian disinterest and distraction by less important things, "mainstream American
thought" is that we citizens have no moral accountability for indifference regarding the exportation of war in such a mindless
manner as we are seeing.
I assume that when any citizen's beloved soldier is redepolyed to Iraq, that citizen will find
solace in the comforting confidence and arrogance that asserts how supporting overseas invasions and killing whoever political
liars decide are our enemies is patriotically and religiously correct.
We can prepare for our beloved's possible death with the assurance that the current mainstream-thinking
American citizens will weep with me - except of course ole dumbass reverend "god hates faggots"
and his westboro wombats - and that my instinctive knee-jerk tempation toward hatred of those who kill beloved, their
race and their religion is a spiritual attibute prompted in me of God but approved by my fellow citizens.
So long as the approval is there, I'm OK and you're OK .... right?
© Arthur Ruger 2007
