Memorial Day

“It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million human beings collected together are not under the same moral laws
which bind each of them separately.”
- Thomas Jefferson


“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
– George Orwell


Friends,

I received an email (see the end of this letter) from a well known Christian leader in our community on Memorial Day. It is similar to many I have received praising the lives of our military who selflessly give their lives “preserving our freedom” in Iraq. It is quite moving and I am sure accomplishing its intended purpose . . . and at the same time guaranteeing the premature death of more of our children not to mention innocent civilians in the Middle East for years to come.

I am reminded of what the atheist and Nobel Prize winner, Bertrand Russell said, “Most Christians would rather die than think, in fact they do.”

You may not want to read what I write below. It may make you angry. It will challenge all that you have been taught to accept at face value from your morning paper or favorite news show. Two years ago, I could not have accepted this. I don’t like having my worldview dumped on its head anymore than the next guy, but facts are facts. I have documented my sources and you can come to your own conclusion. I no longer believe that the church sincerely cares about life. Unborn babies from American families? Yes. Lives of our sons and neighbor’s sons dying on foreign soil and of folks living in foreign lands? No.

Life is a gift from God. It was not given to us by Thomas Jefferson or the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration merely testified to what men of every nation enjoy as gifts from our Creator.
That the right to life, liberty and property are God given and inalienable. Since they precede human government they also supersede all government. That is they cannot and are not to be encroached upon by another man or group except in self defense. Let me repeat. Men can only use force to secure these rights. Force cannot be used to encroach on another’s inalienable rights and still cohere with Scripture.


In this letter I will only address the right to life though I could easily address property right violations (8th Commandment) by our government to support foreign aggression and the silence of our churches the immorality as billions are taken by force from our savings and incomes via unconstitutional taxation. Theft is a moral issue and violates the most basic precepts of a just society. We are not thinking. In a future letter I will include documentation to demonstrate the plundering of billions of dollars of property (income) from American families to support a military that tonight is on 700 military bases in 132 foreign nations, so much for “National Defense”. Perhaps we can now call it for what it is, a ‘Worldwide Offense’.

Before I document why I believe the Iraq war is immoral and should never have been supported let me say that I agree with our founders in the necessity of a strong national defense. A strong national defense is consistent with the Scriptures, securing our inalienable rights and is a necessary deterrent to foreign aggression. (See Switzerland during WWII for a proper model of how our founders meant for this is to be exercised. Switzerland was the only nation in Europe Hitler couldn’t conquer.

If my family's life is threatened, I will be the first one to call for a declaration of war, but we must be able to prove conclusively that our lives are in immediate danger and who is responsible. We must do so with a declaration for war from congress as stipulated by our Constitution, something we have failed to do with every war since Korea. It cannot be delegated to the President.

Christians are not allowed to do evil that good may result (Rom 6).
I am going to make the case below that our lives and inalienable rights were never in immediate danger from Saddam Hussein/Iraq and there is no evidence tying Saddam to Al Qaeda or terrorism. It is humorous to think that a third world country, recovering from an overwhelming military defeat, on the other side of the earth, could threaten us. We must stop responding emotionally. This war was fought for other reasons upon which you may agree or disagree that had more to do with control of energy to the world, Iraq’s conversion to the euro from the dollar as their reserve currency, profits for the military industrial complex and perhaps the political capital it was supposed to give a new President.

If I succeed in making my case;
The media are not to be depended upon to accurately inform.
Our son’s are dying unnecessarily at the hands of their own government.
Billions of dollars are being forcefully redistributed from the private sector to the public sector as our paychecks are plundered to support the global goals of the military industrial complex. (See Eisenhower’s Farewell Address below). Violation of the 8th Commandment.
We are guilty for supporting a war that has killed an estimated 1,000,000 million Iraqi men, women and children who were born with the same inalienable rights we have as men and women
This evening 5 million Iraqi men, women and children, many of whom are believers, will go to bed homeless as we sleep in our warm beds.
The church must explain how we can be so sincere about “Right to Life” and be silent about the murder of innocent life abroad from weapons we pay for and place in our son’s hands. Violence and war have become standard fare in our lives. Christians have become quite desensitized to it. We even send pastors to accompany our soldiers and give them “peace” about using force to intervene on another’s inalienable right to self determine.
The church must explain how it reconciles its support of the military policies of Bush and Huckabee with the foreign policy and Christian worldview of our framers.
If the official definition of terrorism is, “the calculated use of violence or threat of violence to attain goals that are political, religious, or ideological in nature…through intimidation, coercion, or instilling fear,” then we must measure ourselves by the same definition.


Here is why I believe this war is immoral and a grievous error of historical proportion. If I have misunderstood the issues please correct me. I am interested in the truth as much as you.

Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act documenting Secretary of State Schultz desire to support Iraq despite the use of WMD from western firms to kill their own people. Letter depicts concern that American people would become aware of the use of WMD, not that Iraq was using them against their own citizens.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq24.pdf
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq25.pdf


05/12/96 UN Ambassador Madeleine Albright says on "60 Minutes" killing 500,000 innocent children is worth it. What if Saddam would have submitted to all of our foreign policy goals if President Bush was willing to fire a bullet through the head of one innocent Iraqi child? Would he have been justified before God? If not, how do we justify this many innocent deaths as a Christian nation?
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1084

In 1999, two years before 9/11, Presidential candidate George W. Bush tells his former ghost writer about the benefits of an attack on Iraq.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1028-01.htm

02/11/01 Sec of State Colin Powell says, "the U.S. has succeeded in containing Saddam Hussein and his ambitions...his forces are 1/3 their original size. They don't possess the capability to attack their neighbors they way they did ten years ago." (If Powell says their neighbors are not in danger, how could the U.S. be?)
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5680.htm

06/xx/04, CBS Anchor, Dan Rather, tells BBC what he cannot say on United States television about the war in Iraq.
http://gnn.tv/articles/111/The_Lynching_of_Dan_Rather
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/archive/2029634.stm


01/24/04 David Kay, President Bush's Chief Weapons Inspector resigns saying "No WMD"
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/01/25/sprj.nirq.kay/

02/16/04 CIA reports they have no "direct evidence" that Iraq had obtained WMD.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5680.htm

06/06/06 FBI Publicity Chief states they have no hard evidence tying Bin Laden to September 11th.
http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/16-no-hard-evidence-connecting-bin-laden-to-9-11/



Former FBI Translator says the U.S. maintained ‘intimate relations’ with Osama Bin Laden “all the way until September 11th.”
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/7/31/760117/-Bombshell:-Bin-Laden-worked-for-US-till-9-11


03/21/04 President Bush's top anti-terrorism advisor, Richard Clarke, tells "60 Minutes" there was no connection between Iraq and terrorism.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1028-01.htm


06/16/04 9/11 Commission reports no "collaborative relationship" between Iraq and Al Qaeda
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47812-2004Jun16.html


04/03/05 Pentagon understands deploying the American media is more powerful than any bomb.
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0403-25.htm


03/03/08 American media is not reporting the violence in Iraq. The number of civilian deaths in Iraq is now approaching the number (1.7 million) who died in Cambodia's infamous "Killing Fields" during the Khmer Rouge era of the 1970s. "Almost 5 million Iraqis have been displaced by violence in their country since 2003." No word in American papers. (In country poll conducted by prestigious British polling group, Opinion Research Business, in door to door interviews)
http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/1-over-one-million-iraqi-deaths-caused-by-us-occupation/

03/13/08 300 Iraq war veterans publicly testify to atrocities they witnessed and participated as U.S. soldiers.
http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/9-iraq-and-afghanistan-vets-testify/

So what is the war about if it is not about fighting “terrorism” and WMD?

“This war was fought for other reasons upon which you may agree or disagree that had more to do with control of energy to the world, Iraq’s conversion to the euro from the dollar as their reserve currency, profits for the military industrial complex and perhaps the political capital it was supposed to give a new President.”


Why are believers silent? Our founders only supported a defensive military because it was consistent with natural law and the bible. Our lives must be in immediate danger before we can justify force. We do not have the right to use force offensively to obtain some personal benefit for ourselves. NATO and foreign alliances that draw us into war are irreconcilable with the foreign policy of our founders and a Christian worldview. See if you can tell from the quotes below if our founders would have supported N.A.T.O. and the war in Iraq or Afghanistan.

George Washington’s Farewell Address . . .
“The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connections as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop.”

John Adams letter while Ambassador in France during revolution.
“Let us above all things avoid as much as possible entangling ourselves with their ways and politics.”

Thomas Jefferson, in his first inaugural address, called for “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.”

John Quincy Adams describing his foreign policy, “Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence; she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force . . . She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.

“Not a place on earth might be so happy as America. Her situation is remote from all the wrangling world, and she has nothing to do but trade with them.” – Thomas Paine, 1776.


“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
- President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Farewell Speech to the Nation, January 17, 1961


We need to start thinking with our heads and not our hearts. The church today and the thinking of our Christian leaders no longer reconciles with the foreign policy of our founders. There is no connection between terrorism and Iraq. We have become victims of propaganda like the animals in George Orwell’s Animal Farm. I voted for Bush twice. He was a Christian and campaigned on a non-interventionist foreign policy. I am part of the reason the boy in the article below is dead. Please forgive me. Christian presidents are no longer the answer. The answer lies in and educated populace uncompromised by media propaganda and state education, who support candidates who take their oath to abide by the United States Constitution and it’s legal principles seriously.

Eric Andersen
May 25, 2009