America-Modern Romans 4

Vietnam Kill Stats, The C.I.A. And Other Things Under Johnson, Nixon & Thereafter

Things are back to “normal” on the Truman Doctrine, with the addition of the Mann Doctrine for good measure. Resulting from the Johnson and Nixon White House: 3.4 to 3.8 million Vietnamese died during the Vietnam War, with the United States loosing 58,000 dead. 9,000 South Vietnam’s hamlets were destroyed out of 15,000, over half of their hamlets, and in the North 6 industrial cities were destroyed and 28 of their Provincial towns out of 30, and 96 of their 116 District towns were destroyed. Unexploded ordinance is still everywhere. 19 million gallons of herbicide has poisoned the environment, which for years caused nasty deformities in children and causing many unborn fetuses to be aborted. Almost all of Vietnam’s triple-canopy forests are gone. We never apologized to Vietnam for this, and didn’t recognize them as a nation officially until 1995 under President Clinton. President John Adams (1797-1801) said, “Power always thinks that it has a great soul, and that it’s doing God’s service when it is violating all His Laws.”

President Johnson quickly established what became known as “the Mann Doctrine” in 1964 as part of our foreign policy. (Thomas C. Mann was a U.S. diplomatic specialist in Latin American affairs.) This Doctrine basically made it U.S. policy that all Latin American countries would be judged on how they protected the 9 billion dollars in U.S. investments, not on the interests of their own people. The U.S. would no longer discriminate against right-wing dictatorships and regarded military aid as a wiser investment than Kennedy’s economic aid. That was the Mann Doctrine in a nutshell. It brought evil into the Latin American countries. Any nation’s democratically elected government in Central and South America seeking to implement land reform and controls over foreign investment in their nation would find itself being overthrown by a C.I.A.-backed right-wing dictatorship. And starting in Brazil in 1964, the Latin American governments started to fall like dominos. We will look briefly at two of those governments as an example of this. But first we’ll look briefly at the U.S. Petro-dollar system President Nixon put the U.S. on in 1974.

In 1968 the CIA assisted in the overthrow of Indonesian communist-leaning leader Sukarno, resulting in the mass-murder of 500,000 Indonesian people, mostly peasants, in the process (see William Blum’s “KILLING HOPE: U.S. MILITARY AND CIA INTERVENTIONS SINCE WORLD WAR II”, chapter 31).

Marin Katusa in his fine book “The COLDER WAR” explains the U.S. Petro-dollar system set up by President Nixon through Henry Kissinger, to replace the gold standard the U.S. operated on. All U.S. military actions in the Middle East, covert and overt, are based on the necessity of us protecting this Petro-dollar arrangement we have with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

Viewed through this lens, whenever you see U.S. aircraft carrier battle groups in the Persian Gulf rushing in to quell a threat (such as Iranian ships heading to Yemen recently, under Obama, this explains why this is so essential to the financial security of the United States (something Vladimir Putin would like to destroy, our Petro-dollar system). It also puts the Gulf War I & II into perfect context. Now for Mr. Katusa’s explanation, which is excellent. Through this economic system, it allowed the U.S. to be financially irresponsible and make money at it.

“With gold no longer part of the system, something had to be done to maintain the dollar’s preeminence as the world’s reserve currency. Washington might have sought to ease the country’s trade deficit (the counterpart of which is a buildup of dollars in foreign hands), but that would have required a slowdown in the printing of new dollars. So, of course, it didn’t take that approach. Quite the opposite. It sought a way to gain a grip on the global financial system that would be so strong it would protect the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency even as the flood of new fiat dollars continued. The power to pass off ever more units of the world’s reserve currency made everything produced outside the United States both cheap and plentiful for U.S. consumers…Conveniently, an opportunity for protecting the dollar’s status was ready and waiting. It came from a commodity far more important to the world economy than gold: oil. Though rightly disdained for much of what he did, Richard Nixon underwrote his country’s dominance for decades to come by devising the petrodollar system. [emphasis mine]

“After closing the gold window, Nixon dispatched Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to Saudi Arabia to offer the ruling House of Saud a four-part deal. The U.S. government would provide military protection for Saudi Arabia and its oil fields. It would sell the Saudis any weapons they needed. It would guarantee protection from Israel and any other Middle Eastern state, such as Iran, that might attempt to destabilize the kingdom. And it would secure the Saud family’s place as rulers of the country in perpetuity…In return, the Saudis would do two things. They would make oil sales in U.S. dollars only. And they would invest their surplus oil proceeds in U.S. Treasuries…[ibid. p. 53]

“It was a brilliant maneuver. The world’s demand for U.S. dollars would soar with the world’s increasing demand for oil…It was quite a feat, and with knock-on effects. Everyone needed oil. Since it could be purchased only in dollars, countries needed to stockpile them, which meant more demand for currency units that the Federal Reserve could produce at zero cost.

“Nixon’s petrodollar system kept the United States at the top of the global economic heap for decades. But the Great Game wasn’t over. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, on the eastern fringe of Europe, a master player was at work, rebuilding his shattered country and preparing it to return to the playing field.” [“The COLDER WAR” by Marin Katusa, p. 34]

What follows are some significant quotes from “KILLING HOPE: U.S. MILITARY AND CIA INTERVENTIONS SINCE WORLD WAR II ” by William Blum. “George Bernard Shaw used three concepts to describe the position of individuals in Nazi Germany: intelligence, decency and Nazism. He argued that if a person was intelligent, and a Nazi, he was not decent. If he was decent and a Nazi, he was not intelligent. And if he was decent and intelligent, he was not a Nazi.” [“KILLING HOPE”, p. 2, par. 1]

“The trillions of dollars spent on the American military machine instead of on the cities, the infrastructure, housing, schools, health care, etc., etc., did little to improve the quality of life for the average person in the United States, though it did wonders for the folks of the military-industrial-intelligence complex. The M-I-I-C and their supporters in Congress successfully fought off the menace of a “peace dividend”, and they show little sign of releasing their death grip on the society. Many years ago they insisted upon, and they got, a permanent war economy…A little earlier [from the merger of Lockheed and Martin Marietta], the Defense Department was not at all embarrassed to announce that it needed funding sufficient to enable it to fight two regional wars at the same time…And so it goes, Our rulers do their best to make sure that we shall never be at peace.

Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union…we must account sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them form challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order. … we must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional global role.” [“KILLING HOPE”, p. 2, portions par. 2-4]

“The American republic had been replaced after World War II by a national security state, answerable to no one, an extra-constitutional government, secret from the American people, exempt from congressional oversight, above the law.

As to what the rest of the world, primarily the Third World, derived from the cold war, the reader is referred to the pages that follow. It is not a pretty picture.” [“KILLING HOPE” p. 3, par. 4-5]

William Blum writes at the beginning his book “KILLING HOPE: U.S. MILITARY AND CIA INTERVENTIONS SINCE WORLD WAR II” “This is the primary focus of this book: how the United States intervened all over the world to combat this subversion by the I.C.C., wherever and whenever it reared its ugly head. Did this International Communist Conspiracy actually exist? If it actually existed, why did the cold warriors of the CIA and other government agencies have to go to such extraordinary lengths of exaggeration? If they really and truly believed in the existence of a diabolic, monolithic International Communist Conspiracy, why did they have to invent so much about it to convince the American people, the Congress, and the rest of the world of its evil existence? Why did they have to stage, manage, entrap, plant evidence, plant stories, create phony documents? The following pages are packed with double-density double-sided anti-commiespeak examples of US-government and media inventions about “the Soviet threat”, “the Chinese threat”, and “the Cuban threat.” And all the while, at the same time, we were being flailed with scare stories: in the 1950s, there was “the Bomber Gap” between the US and the Soviet Union, and the “civil defense gap.” Then came “the Missile Gap.” Finally, “the Laser Gap.” And they were all lies.” [“KILLING HOPE: U.S. MILITARY AND CIA INTERVENTIONS SINCE WORLD WAR II.” p. 7, par. 3-5]

29. Dominican Republic 1960-1966: Saving democracy from communism by getting rid of democracy [you could rename this whole book with that title]. 175

36. Bolivia 1964-1975: Tracking down Che Guevara in the land of the coup d’etat. 221

45. Grenada 1979-1984: Lying---one of the few growth industries in Washington. 269

As Nixon and Kissinger were trying to bomb North Vietnam into the Stone Age in an attempt to drive them to the negotiating table, these two turned to Latin America with this Mann Doctrine, in order to re-assert U.S. power in the interests of big business and Wall Street investors. Salvador Allende was a very modest socialist-communist who had managed to win the 1970 Presidential election in Chile. He honored and upheld the Chilean Constitution. His sin, he sought to bring much-needed land reform to the Chilean peasant farmers and to nationalize U.S. companies like A.T.&T., which controlled much of the Chilean economy.

“In Valparaiso, while US military officers were meeting with their Chilean counterparts a young American, Charles Horman, who lived in Santiago and was stranded near Valparaiso by the coup, happened to engage in conversation with several Americans, civilian and military. A retired naval engineer told him: “We came down to do a job and it’s done.”: One or two American military men also gave away clues they shouldn’t have. A few days later, Horman was arrested in his Santiago residence. They knew where to find him. He was never seen again.” [That paragraph is the basis for the movie titled “Missing” staring Jack Lemon and Sissy Spacek, a true story put to film about Mr. Horman traveling to Santiago to try to find his son after the coup d’etat. Let’s continue the story] “Thus it was that they closed the country [of Chile] to the outside world for a week, while the tanks rolled and the soldiers broke down doors; the stadiums rang with sounds of execution and the bodies piled up along the streets and floated in the river; the torture centers opened for business; the subversive books were thrown to the bonfires; soldiers slit the trouser legs of women, shouting that “In Chile women wear dresses!”; the poor returned to their natural state; and the men in the world in Washington and in the halls of international finance opened up their check books.” [“KILLING HOPE” p. 214, par. 3-4] “Washington knows no heresy in the Third World but independence. In the case of Salvador Allende independence came clothed in an especially provocative costume---a Marxist constitutionally elected who continued to honor the constitution. This would not do. It shook the very foundation stones upon which the anti-communist tower is built: the doctrine, painstakingly cultivated for decades, that “communists” can take power only through force and deception, that they can retain that power only through terrorizing and brainwashing the population. There could be only one thing worse than a Marxist in power---an elected Marxist in power.” [ibid. p. 215, par. 3]

“Missing is a 1982 film directed by Costa Gavras, starring Jack Lemmon, Sissy Spacek, Melanie Mayron, John Shea and Charles Cioffi. It is based on the true story of American journalist Charles Horman, who disappeared in the bloody aftermath of the US-backed Chilean coup of 1973 that deposed President Salvador Allende. The film was banned in Chile during Pinochet’s regime; ironically, the nation is not mentioned by name in the film (although the Chilean cities of Via del Mar and Santiago are). Both the file and Thomas Hauser’s book The Execution of Charles Horman were removed from the market following a lawsuit filed against Costa-Gavras and Universal’s parent company MCA by former Ambassador Nathaniel Davis, and two others. After the lawsuit, the film was again released by Universal in 2006.

The film opens with Costa-Gavras’ statement that the events of the film are true, and ends with a disclaimer from the State Department, denying the events in the film happened. Set largely during the days and weeks following Horman’s disappearance, the film depicts his father and wife searching in vain to determine his fate. The film is based on a book first published under the title The Execution of Charles Horman: An American Sacrifice (1978) by Thomas Hauser (later republished under the title Missing in 1982).” [see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_film]

Salvador Allende took his case against the U.S. to a packed General Assembly at the United Nations in New York in December 1972, to wild applause and cheering. But his speech may well have been the final nail in his coffin. He said, “We find ourselves opposed by forces that operate in the shadows without a flag, with powerful weapons from positions of great influence. We are potentially rich countries, yet we live in poverty. We go here and there begging for credits and aid, yet we are great exporters of capital. It is a classic paradox of the capitalist economic system.” As General Pinochet’s right-wing military closed in on the Chilean Presidential Palace, Allende spoke these final words, “These are my last words. I am sure that my sacrifice will not be in vain. I am sure it will be at least a moral lesson and a rebuke to crime, cowardice and treason.” After speaking these words, as Pinochet’s military closed in, Salvador Allende took his own life with a rifle Fidel Castro had given him.

“Throughout the 1960s, multifarious American experts occupied themselves in El Salvador by enlarging and refining the state’s security and counter-insurgency apparatus: the police, the National Guard, the military, the communications and intelligence networks, the co-ordination with their counterparts in other Central American countries…as matters turned out, these were the forces and resources which were brought into action to impose widespread repression and wage war. Years later, the New York Times noted:

“In El Salvador, American aid was used for police training in the 1950s and 1960s and many officers in the three branches of the police later became leaders of the right-wing death squads that killed tens of thousands of people in the late 1970s and early 1980s” [that New York Times quote would be covering the time-span starting from Truman and Eisenhower’s administrations and going all the way to President Carter’s and Reagan’s administrations, by the way.]

[“KILLING HOPE: U.S. MILITARY AND CIA INTERVENTIONS SINCE WORLD WAR II” p. 353, par. 5]

“The CIA and the US military played an essential role in the conception and organization of the security agencies from which the death squads emanated. CIA surveillance programs routinely supplied these agencies with information on, and the whereabouts of, various individuals who would end up as death squad victims.” [ibid. p. 354, par. 5]

“If Jimmy Carter’s trumpeted devotion to human rights was to be taken seriously, his administration clearly had no alternative but to side with the Salvadorean opposition, or at least keep its hands strictly out of the fighting. The Carter administration, however, with only an occasional backward glance at its professed principles, continued its military support of the government. Within days before his term ended in January 1981, Carter ordered a total of $10 million in military aid along with additional American advisors to be sent to El Salvador…” [ibid. pp. 356-357, par. 9 and 1 resp.]

“El Salvador did not turn into another Vietnam quicksand for the United States as many critics of the left and center warned. But for the Salvadorean people the war and its horror dragged on as interminably as it did for the Vietnamese, and for the same reason: American support of a regime---one even more loathsome than in Vietnam---which would have crumbled dismally if left to its own resources…” [ibid. p. 357, par. 3-4]

“During the Iran-Contra hearings in 1987, it was disclosed that at least until 1985, CIA paramilitary personnel had been organizing and leading special Salvadorean army units into combat areas to track down guerrillas and call in air strikes…In Duarte’s previous incarnation as a government opponent, his view of the Yanquis was even harsher. US policy in Latin America, he said, in 1969, was designed to “maintain the Iberoamerican countries in a condition of direct dependence upon the international political decisions most beneficial to the United States, both at the hemisphere and world levels. Thus [the North Americans] preach to us of democracy while everywhere they support dictatorships.” [ibid. pp. 358-359, pars. 9 & 1, emphasis mine]

“On 28 January 1982, President Reagan certified to Congress that the El Salvador government was “making a concerted and significant effort to comply with internationally recognized human rights” and that it was “achieving substantial control over all elements of its own armed forces, so as to bring to an end the indiscriminate torture and murder of Salvadorean citizens by these forces…Two days earlier, the American and foreign press had carried the story of how government troops had engaged in a massacre of the people of the village of El Mozote in December. From 700 to 1,000 persons were reported killed, mostly the elderly, women and children…people hacked to death by machetes, many beheaded, a child thrown in the air and caught on a bayonet, an orgy of rapes of very young girls before they were killed…”If we don’t kill them [the children] now, they’ll grow up to be guerillas,” barked an army officer to a reluctant soldier…anti-communism at its zenith…Two days after the president’s certification, the world could read how Salvadorean soldiers had pulled about 20 people out of their beds in the middle of the night, tortured them, and then killed them, meanwhile finding the time to rape several teenage girls.” [ibid. p. 359, par. 3-4, 6]

regular, often daily, reports identifying El Salvador’s regular security and military units as responsible for the torture, “disappearance” and killing of non-combatant civilians from all sectors of Salvadorean society … A number of patients have allegedly been removed from their beds or operating theaters and tortured and murdered … Types of torture reported … by those who have survived arrest and interrogation included beating, sexual abuse, use of chemicals to disorient, mock executions, and the burning of flesh with sulphuric acid.

In light of the above, and many other reports of a similar nature, it can be appreciated that the Reagan administration had to exercise some creativity in getting around congressional hesitation about continued military aid to the government of El Salvador.” [[ibid. p. 360, par. 1-2] To see a true-to-life movie portraying some of this, based on a book by news reporter Richard Boyle and his experiences in El Salvador in 1980, order “SALVADOR” directed by Oliver Stone, staring James Woods, Jim Belushi, Michael Murphy and John Savage. Ambassador Robert White, U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador, 1979-1981, had this to say, “We spent 6 billion, probably 7 billion dollars, we killed 75,000 people. Many of them died horribly through torture. We drove a million refugees to the United States, and all this, to try in vain to defeat a revolutionary force that was ready to negotiate peace in 1981. Now if anyone can make sense out of that from the point of view of the United States’ national interest, I would like to hear it.” (Direct quote, taken from the special feature “Into The Valley of Death,” documentary part of the DVD movie “SALVADOR”)

Again, William Blum in “KILLING HOPE” has this to say about what we have studied about what President Harry Truman set in motion, and the ultimate negative affect it had on the proper development of the Soviet Union toward democracy and capitalism.

Oleg Kalugin, a retired KBG general (who applauded the changes under Gorbachev) wrote in his memoirs SPYMASTER, “In my first few years in Leningrad, tensions between the United States (where Ronald Reagan had now become president) and the Soviet Union reached a level unmatched since the 1960s. We felt it even in Leningrad when, in 1981, we received what I can only describe as a paranoid cable from Andropov [then head of the KBG] warning of the growing threat of a nuclear apocalypse. Reagan’s hard-line, anti-Communist stance, his Star Wars program, and the massive American military buildup scared the wits out of our leadership, and Andropov notified KGB stations around the world to be on the lookout for signs of an imminent American attack. A brand new program (the English language acronym was RYAN) was created to gather information on a potential American first nuclear strike.

“Not since the end of World War II has the international situation been as explosive as it is now,” Andropov wrote in a cable to KGB personnel worldwide.” [SPYMASTER, by Oleg Kalugin, p. 353] Oleg wrote this about the period of time near the end of his career in the KGB. The popular TV series THE AMERICANS depicts a married KGB couple (classified as “illegals”) living in the Washington DC area during the Reagan years. It is written and produced by an ex-CIA man, and reveals the honest concern the Soviet agents and Soviet Union had toward Reagan’s unhealthy nuclear brinkmanship. In this one aspect, the series reflects genuine Soviet feelings of unease toward Reagan and the United States. The series accurately depicts the KGB at this period of time more or less keeping a watchful eye on the United States due to what Oleg brought out about Reagan and Yuri Andropov’s fears toward him. By all appearances, judging from Oleg’s memoirs, the KGB by this time was behaving in a far less evil manner than the CIA (Latin America anyone?). What overall effect did US belligerence have toward hindering or helping the Soviet Union move from totalitarian Communist socialism to a democratic free-market capitalist economy? Let Georgi Arbatov answer that question.

“Long the leading Soviet expert on the United States, Georgi Arbatov, head of the Moscow-based Institute for the Study of the U.S.A. and Canada, wrote his memoirs in 1992. A Los Angeles Times book review by Robert Scheer summed up a portion of it:

Arbatov understood all too well the failings of Soviet totalitarianism in comparison to the economy and policies of the West. It is clear from this candid and nuanced memoir that the movement for change [toward democracy and capitalism] had been developing steadily inside the highest corridors of power ever since the death of Stalin. Arbatov not only provides considerable evidence for the controversial notion that this change would have come about without foreign pressure, he insists that the U.S. military buildup during the Reagan years actually impeded this development.”

“George F. Keenan agrees…He contends that the extreme militarization of American policy strengthened hard-liners in the Soviet Union. “Thus the general effect of Cold War extremism was to delay rather than hasten the great change that overtook the Soviet Union.”…Yet what were the fruits of this ultra-tough anti-communist policy? Repeated serious confrontations between the United States and the Soviet Union in Berlin, Cuba and elsewhere, the Soviet interventions into Hungary and Czechoslovakia, creation of the Warsaw Pact (in direct reaction to NATO), no glasnost, no perestroika, only pervasive suspicion, cynicism and hostility on both sides. It turned out that the Russians were human after all---they responded to toughness with toughness. And the corollary: there was for many years a close correlation between the amicability of US-Soviet relations and the number of Jews allowed to emigrate from the Soviet Union. Softness produced softness.” [“KILLING HOPE” pp. 4-6, selected portions] Proverbs 15:1 anyone? “A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger.” i.e. hate generates hate, love generates love. This is a spiritual law we’ve been breaking since Harry Truman took office upon Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s death. William Blum totally agrees with the premise made in this article, as well as from Oliver Stone’s “Untold History of the United States”, that it was the belligerent attitude of the United States that hampered and delayed the Soviet Union’s move toward capitalism and democratic principles, and ultimately to democracy itself. We have seen that Nikita Khrushchev was trying to get Eisenhower to end the Cold War as early as 1957, and then repeated his offered Olive Branch to President John Fitzgerald Kennedy in 1962-63. As Oliver Stone asked, ‘Where would the United States have been now had Henry Wallace been nominated as Roosevelt’s V.P. in 1944 instead of Harry S. Truman?’ Let’s fast-forward and take an honest look at Vladimir Putin and his regime and see if his security concerns for the Russian Federation are any different than the proper security concerns of Nikita Khrushchev or even Stalin for the Soviet Union. Is the West missing something here?

George Herbert Walker Bush, No Different From Truman, Eisenhower, Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Reagan

“While many nations have a terrible record in modern times of dealing out great suffering face-to-face with their victims, Americans have made it a point to keep at a distance while inflicting some of the greatest horrors of the age: atomic bombs on the people of Japan; carpet-bombing Korea back to the stone age; engulfing the Vietnamese in napalm and pesticides; providing three decades of Latin Americans with the tools and methods of torture [to say nothing of our CIA installing Nazi-type rightwing governments in most of these Latin American nations for those three decades], then turning their eyes away, closing their ears to the screams, and denying everything…and now, dropping 177 million pounds of bombs on the people of Iraq in the most concentrated aerial onslaught in the history of the world [in 1990, Desert Storm]. What possessed the United States to carry out this relentless devastation for more than 40 days and nights against one of the most advanced and enlightened nations in the Middle East and its ancient and modern capital city?” (KILLING HOPE: U.S. MILITARY AND CIA INTERVENTIONS SINCE WORLD WAR II, p. 320, par. 5-6)

Bush Must Find A War, And Fast, To Protect The U.S Military-Industrial-Intelligence-Complex…And Herein Lay The Foundation To The U.S.-Iraqi War—And All Others We’ve Fought In Since WWII

“It’s the first half of 1990. The dismantling of the Berlin wall is being carried out on a daily basis. Euphoria about the end of the cold war and optimism about the beginning of a new era of peace and prosperity are hard to contain. The Bush administration is under pressure to cut the monster military budget and institute a “peace dividend.” But George Bush, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, former Texas oil man, and former Director of the CIA, is not about to turn his back on his many cronies in the military-industrial-intelligence complex. He rails against those who would “naively cut the muscle out of our defense posture,” and insists that we must take a cautious attitude towards reform in the USSR.” In February, it’s reported that “the administration and Congress are expecting the most acrimonious hard-fought defense budget battle in recent history”; and in June that “tensions have escalated” between Congress and the Pentagon “as Congress prepares to draft one of the most pivotal defense budgets in the past two decades.” A month later, a Senate Armed Services subcommittee votes to cut military manpower by nearly three times more than recommended by the Bush administration…”the size and direction of the cuts indicate that President Bush is losing his battle on how to manage reductions in military spending.” During this same period Bush’s popularity was plummeting from an approval rating of 80 percent in January—as he rode the wave of public support for his invasion of Panama the previous month—to 73 percent in February, down to the mid-60s in May and June, 63 on 11 July, 60 two weeks later. George Herbert Walker Bush needed something dramatic to capture the headlines and the public, and to convince Congress that a powerful military was needed as much as ever because it was still a scary and dangerous world out there.” (ibid, pp. 320-321, par. 7 and 1-2 resp)

President George Herbert Walker Bush, like his predecessors before him—Truman, Eisenhower, Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Reagan—needed to find a war, and fast, to save the military-industrial-intelligence-complex. Saddam Hussein, with his invasion of Kuwait, which ordinarily would have gone almost unnoticed, or at best as a footnote in current events, handed President Bush, and the M.I.I.C. that war on a silver platter—and as Saddam at every turn tried to sue for peace and disengage from that war, we wouldn’t allow him to. It wasn’t good for Big Business and the Military-Industrial-Intelligence-Complex.

In 1990 Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev had just given the entire free world a tremendous “Peace Dividend,” and had tried to disarm the world’s nuclear arsenals as well as cut back on the world’s conventional arsenals—something any and every President of the United States since Harry Truman (with the sterling exception of John Fitzgerald Kennedy) could not allow. Rapidly, we helped destroy Gorbachev politically, bringing on the dissolution of what would have been a peaceful and friendly Soviet Union, and instead brought 10 years of poverty and economic chaos into the Russian Federation, which in turn brought the strong near dictatorial leadership of Vladimir Putin, as a very suitable replacement for our old adversary, the Soviet Union. This also brought a continued need for our military to remain in NATO, another plus for the Military-Industrial-Intelligence-Complex. In the final analysis the sins of the Communist Soviet Union in its 70-years of existence, along with the KGB outside of the Soviet Union, in its treatment of foreign nations around the world, were lily white, compared to the black sins of the United States military under the clandestine influence of the CIA reaching into the nations of the world. American Christians need to wake up to this very real historic reality and stop being patriotic flag-waving Christians. The Body, Bride of Christ cannot show national favoritism at the expense of the welfare of the worlds poverty-stricken humanity, much of which has suffered greatly under American influence, not Soviet influence. For William Blum’s complete account of our totally unnecessary war in Iraq, log onto http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/Iraq_KH.html. Concerning Wall Street’s and our Presidential motives for the entire Cold War and all the wars we’ve fought in since the end of WWII, don’t believe me, read William Blum’s comprehensive history of US Military and CIA interventions around the world since WWII for yourself. To access the online version of his book, log onto: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/KillingHope_page.html

“In this short book-length article we have taken a quick look at, a peek at true history, and at the political evils on both sides of American Party lines, both Democratic and Republican. America with its empire superpower status, under presidents from both political parties, have been responsible through its wars and black ops for the deaths of multiple tens of millions of innocent people, men, women and children. I came from a church denomination that didn’t believe a Christian should vote in an election for leaders within this present evil world of mankind. Now while I do not see anywhere in the Bible where voting is condemned or forbidden, I am coming to sincerely believe we Christians, especially in the United States, have unknowingly supported political parties and leaders, presidents, without full or a more complete understanding of what they and their policies have done down the road, the evils and wholesale deaths they’ve perpetrated in the name of democracy, freedom and social justice. And this perpetration of evil and death has been brought about by the active decisions and leadership of presidents coming from both the Democratic and Republican Parties.

I think it is high time we who call ourselves real Christians---those who are indwelt with God’s Holy Spirit---renounce our political affiliations, and make a real stand for God’s truth and social justice. If we fail to do so, we will end up with the same blood on our hands as the Presidents we vote for have on theirs. For example: President Johnson was responsible for the death of about 2 million Vietnamese (of both North and South Vietnam, men, women and children). He was a Democrat. President Richard Nixon was responsible for the estimated death of 2.5 million Vietnamese men, women and children. He was a Republican. Under Truman (Democrat), Eisenhower (Republican), Johnson (Democrat), Nixon (Republican), Carter (Democrat), Reagan (Republican) multiple millions of men, women and children were slaughtered as a direct result of US-installed right-wing Nazi-type dictatorships (via CIA black-ops) throughout Central and South America. Nor has the duplicity or black-ops stopped, going on from Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush, and yes, Barack Obama (Republican, Republican, Democrat, Republican, Democrat). Have I sufficiently made my point? I think so. I think, based on the facts of history, we as Christians should stop what we are doing in support of political parties, and wash the blood off our hands, and stand up for the social justice Jesus Christ stood for, and that we make a stand for the Kingdom of God.

As the apostle Paul stated, pray for the leaders over us, and that does mean you can pray for the election of a leader you feel might be better for the nation. Hey, he was praying for Nero, one of the worst tyrants going. He said we should pray for the political leaders over us, so that it might go well for us Christians, and yes, for the sake of our Gospel proclamation. Personally, I do not believe very many of us American Christians understand what our leaders have done, under the cloak of secrecy, leaders we have innocently voted for. If you do not believe praying for the candidate of your choice is a very effective way to vote, if your faith in God is that weak, then maybe you ought to go and cast your single ballot, and vote for the candidate of your choice.