All Posts Tagged With: "War"

As one of his last acts as president, George W. Bush has proclaimed January 18th to be “National Sanctity of Human Life Day.”

All human life is a gift from our Creator that is sacred, unique, and worthy of protection. On National Sanctity of Human Life Day, our country recognizes that each person, including every person waiting to be born, has a special place and purpose in this world. We also underscore our dedication to heeding this message of conscience by speaking up for the weak and voiceless among us.

The most basic duty of government is to protect the life of the innocent. My Administration has been committed to building a culture of life…

He goes on to outline what his administration has done in defense of the unborn. What he didn’t outline was what his administration has done in defense of the already born — especially those whose lives were put in peril by our nation’s own actions and policies.

I wholeheartedly believe in and support the sanctity of human life. But I believe in the sanctity of human life from womb to tomb. That means that human life has utmost value and we must act prudently in all things so as to honor and respect that sanctity of life — and it’s not restricted to American citizens or our allies only.

Sanctity of human life recognizes that war must be avoided whenever possible and should only be the very last resort — not a foreign policy tool or prematurely preemptive action later proven to be unfounded. Sanctity of human life recognizes that every human being has basic human rights — one of those rights is the right not to be tortured as well as those rights specifically outlined in the Geneva Convention. Sanctity of human life recognizes that genocide must be stopped with actions, not just words. Sanctity of human life recognizes that extreme poverty is not something to be ignored or wished away, but rather it’s a “war” that’s worth waging with at least as much energy and resources as we wage our other wars.

Mr. President, I welcome this day as one who believes in the sanctity of human life. I just wish your administration’s policies and actions matched up with your words and encompassed the totality of human existence, not just that of the unborn.

Commentary by Bill Moyers worth considering…

A provocative point worth pondering from Jim Henley:

The United States government has always engaged in war crimes and human rights violations. What’s different this decade is that, under the leadership of a terrible president, our elites have become vociferous advocates of the goodness and rightness of war crimes and human rights violations. After the period from Grant and Sherman’s Indian policies to the aftermath of the Spanish-American War, America’s powerful learned to at least talk a good game. This led to real improvement in people’s lives when proles and poobahs from Portugal to Poland to the Philippines took our rhetoric seriously. Now our rulers and their auxiliaries view their highest calling as insisting on torture, panopticon and aggressive war as the highest ideals. Esthetically, this may represent a gain in frankness. Practically, I don’t expect it to better the world.

“Jimmie Dale Martin, Esquire” rarely disappoints when it comes to non sequitur, straw man and pull-it-out-of-my-ass hilarity. In response to one of my posts yesterday, “Indignant about the indifference,” Jimmie Dale commented…

Thank you President Bush for the low gas prices and for keeping us terrorist killing spree free.

First of all, I don’t know how President Bush can be credited for the low gas prices other than his policies that have contributed to a global economic downturn, which in turn reduced demand for oil and gas because more and more people couldn’t afford it, which led to a sudden and drastic drop in oil prices. But for the sake of argument, let’s accept Mr. Martin’s premise that this is something to thank Bush for.

What are some other things we can “thank” President Bush for? Continued

In an interview with Charles Gibson set to air this evening on “World News,” President George W. Bush makes a refreshingly honest admission:

“I think I was unprepared for war,” Bush told ABC News’ Charlie Gibson in an interview airing today on “World News.” “In other words, I didn’t campaign and say, ‘Please vote for me, I’ll be able to handle an attack,’” he said. “In other words, I didn’t anticipate war. Presidents — one of the things about the modern presidency is that the unexpected will happen.”

Unfortunately for the rest of us, an all-too-eager Vice President (and his minions) helped ramrod the unprepared President into an ill-advised war.

Yesterday, I posted about the worsening crisis in Congo. This afternoon comes this news.

Government officials said two mass graves were discovered in eastern Congo containing as many as 2,000 bodies.

Here’s the video I posted yesterday from Doctor’s Without Borders new campaign, Condition:Critical.

Alan Taylor writes:

Eighteen days ago, I published an entry titled “Conflict in Congo, refugees on the move“, which showed some of the initial chaos resulting from the war erupting once again in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo). In the days since, the civilian population has endured more continued fighting amongst multiple factions, cholera outbreaks, separation from family members, hunger, and further losses (of life, property, safety and trust) as both rebel forces and government soldiers have committed many acts of theft, rape and murder while thinly-stretched UN forces have been unable to provide much help. The organization Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) has recently launched their own multimedia initiative to “bring global attention to the humanitarian consequences of the intensifying war in eastern DR Congo”, called Condition:Critical …

I really don’t have strong feelings one way or another on Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State in Obama’s administration. She’s surely capable. The cynical side of me wonders what the back story is on all of this as well as what problems might result from such a pick, especially given the animosity of Bill Clinton toward Obama. However, the president-elect seems committed to a “team of rivals” in his administration, a concept employed by President Lincoln that I heartedly agree with. (I’ll write more about this in an upcoming post.)

What’s mildly surprising is the level of growing support amongst the right-wing punditry. The Weekly Standard’s Michael Golfarb certainly seems to like the choice:

There appears to be little angst among conservatives at the prospect of Hillary Clinton joining the Obama administration as Secretary of State. The idea was warmly embraced by Henry Kissinger, who our President-elect seems to hold in high-esteem, Governor Schwarzenegger, who likely has no more sway on Obama than the proverbial guy in the neighborhood, and Jon Kyl — surely Senator McCain put in a good word today as well. The love affair that was sparked last spring between Clinton and the Obama-fearing right continues to smolder, surely a surprise to those who suspected that such an unholy alliance couldn’t last beyond the convention. Whether Clinton would accept the job, or why she would want it, is not clear, but the right would be happy enough to have her.

[...]

Clinton would be a fine Secretary of State, and she is likely to be a nuisance to Obama whether she is inside or outside of his administration, but as our top diplomat she could reprise a role that made Powell a kingmaker in this year’s election. And perhaps she could even present the case for war with Iran to an insubordinate United Nations in the event that Obama’s personal diplomacy somehow fails to deter the mullahs from their present course.

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Something in his last sentence jumped out at me: “…perhaps she could even present the case for war with Iran…” Seriously… have we not had enough of war to satisfy our blood thirst at least for a little while? We’re not even finished with the two we’ve got going on right now, which is bankrupting us and stretching our military to the breaking point. Our economy is barely hanging on by a thread and we want to start up another conflict that will surely be more costly than the current conflicts, both in financial terms and in human lives.

If we think Iraq was a challenge, it will pale in comparison to a conflict with Iran. Let’s not make another mistake. Let’s recover from these last seven years first before we dig ourselves into any more war pits.

“The fate of empires is very often sealed by the interaction of war and debt. That was true of the British Empire, whose finances deteriorated from the First World War onwards, and of the Soviet Union. Defeat in Afghanistan and the economic burden of trying to respond to Reagan’s technically flawed but politically extremely effective Star Wars program were vital factors in triggering the Soviet collapse. Despite its insistent exceptionalism, America is no different.”

— John Gray

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(Hat tip: Daily Dish)

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This just plain irritates me. Jesus is not a Republican (or a Democrat). I believe with all my heart that He cares about more than just the abortion issue and the gay marriage issue.

Indeed, Jesus is pro-life, but pro-life is more than just about pregnancy and birth; pro-life extends beyond the womb and encompasses all the life issues each and every individual all around the world faces, including extreme poverty and obscene disparity of wealth, famine and hunger, genocide and war.

Jesus certainly cares about the sanctity of marriage, but that extends beyond the issue of a union between homosexual couples and encompasses the union and marriages of heterosexual couples, including fidelity and marriage “until death do us part.” Why do the divorce rates within the Christian Church so closely mirror that of divorce rates outside the Church? If fundamentalist Christians, like the gentleman in the video, care so much about the sanctity of marriage, why doesn’t he focus on the truest threat to the “traditional marriage” — rampant divorce rates among heterosexual couples who even occupy our church pews?

Do I condemn those who have been divorced? Absolutely not. I simply want the same standard of “sanctity” to apply to heterosexual couples as these Christianists want it to apply to non-heterosexual couples. I do not oppose civil unions between two adults, heterosexual or homosexual. Marriage is an institution that should remain within the religious context, and it can be defined by the respective religious institution.

What irritates and frustrates me most are that Christianists like this gentleman continue to reduce every election down to these two issues. And how successful has that proven to be. They’ve had eight years of a pro-Christianist presidency with control of at least two branches of government for the first six years. Look at where it has gotten us.

Has there been significant improvement in our nation and in the world with these two issues? Has the Christianist agenda really worked?

There are more issues than just these two that devoted followers of Christ should consider when voting this November. Failing to consider the other bigger issues — poverty, hunger, war, the Gospel message of faith, hope and agape love — is ignoring the larger messages of Jesus and the Bible.

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[Stepping down from my soapbox now.]