Let's brush up on our history. Lets examine the history of Christians over the last century or so. The following list of war crimes and war atrocities, by no means all inclusive, demonstrates that a case could be made that Christians have proven themselves to be evil murderous thugs hellbent on imposing their will on others.
In 1890 at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, at least 300 Sioux Indians were massacred. By 1902 in the Philippine Islands, 200,000 civilians had been slaughtered. In 1945, in Dresden, Germany, 35-100,000 civilians were murdered by incendiary bombs. In 1945 in Japan, 140,000 people were killed from atomic bombs. By 1973 in Laos and Cambodia, nearly 1,000,000 civilians were bombed to death. In 1989 in Panama, over 1,000 people were killed during the arrest of a CIA operative on drug charges. Between the Gulf War and Operation Iraqi Freedom, thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians died due to the bombing of civilian infrastructure and economic sanctions.
This is only a partial record indicating what American Christians are capable of.
"May God Almighty give our work His blessing, strengthen our purpose, and endow us with wisdom and the trust of our people, for we are fighting not for ourselves but for Germany."
Adolph Hitler made that statement. Does this statement indicate he was a Christian? Well, he speaks of God, not Allah, so we can rule out Islam. Given the fact that he committed genocide agaist the Jews, we can rule out Judaism. He is speaking as a Christian, but would any reasonable person consider Hitler to be a Christian?
Yet, some who claim to have "moral clarity" and a knowledge of history paint the entire Muslim religion with the broadest of brushes when some kook invokes the name of Allah in connection with an act of terrorism. Should rational people consider Osama or his cronies to be good Muslims? Good Muslims consider Jews and Christians to be "people of the book", not infidels, and they don't kill innocents.
Should we look at the history of aggressive actions taken by some Muslims and condemn all Muslims everywhere? Only if we are willing to condemn all Christians everywhere for their history of aggressive acts. I don't consider those who advocate killing millions of Muslims based on the actions of a few politically motivated terrorists to be good Christians or Jews. I would put them in the same catagory as Hitler or Osama.
The constant drumbeat to destroy Islam is Un-Christian and Un-American. It is based on the vicious and inflammatory rhetoric of a group of neocons, Zionist Likudniks, Christian Zionists, and war profiteers. Many of these people have been beating this drum long before 9/11. People like Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, William Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, James Woolsey, Donald Rumsfeld, Daniel Pipes, Charles Krauthamer, and John Bolton have made their positions clear for years regarding their notion of reshaping the Mideast.
These men have used the politics of fear to enrich themselves and influence policy. They have used criminals like Ahmed Chalibi to provide disinformation to lead America into war - rather than rely on their own geopolitical theories to persuade people. How many Americans would have gone along with the Iraq war in order to reshape the Mideast? These neocons are deceptive liars and the worst sort of war profiteers.
Americans are subjected to countless hours of propaganda and lies fed to them each day by radio talk show hosts such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and "libertarian" Glenn Beck. Anyone who is well informed can listen to any of these propagandists for 10 minutes and hear misleading information being touted as fact.
The compliant statist television media is only marginally better than talk radio. More often than not, they report only what the government press releases say. When the neocon propagandists whine that the "liberal media" doesn't report any good news about the war, they neglect to mention that it is because the Pentagon is not providing the media with any good news in their press releases or press conferences. Nor are they able to stop whining long enough to report any good news themselves.
The propagandists feign moral outrage and shout, "Where is the outrage among Muslims", while Muslim clerics all over the world denounce the tactics of "Muslim" terrorists. As a mountain of evidence and testimony accumulated regarding violations of the Geneva Conventions at Abu Ghraib and other prisons, the propagandists continued to say that only a handful of low ranking GIs were responsible, that the violations were no big deal, and that the leaders (who ordered the interrogations) were not responsible.
The brownshirt propagandists continue their tirades against Islam and their unwavering support of a failed foreign policy. They deny that America has created a political environment which nurtures terrorism and that America has, in some cases, helped build the rogue regimes and terrorist organizations which they now want to eliminate - proving that interventions lead to further interventions to deal with blowback or the unintended, but forseeable, consequences of the earlier interventions.
America does not need these brownshirts. They rely on lies, distortions and half-truths to advance their agenda and refuse to discuss their true motivations. The neocons want to "project American power", reshape the Mideast, and place American military bases in the Mideast and Central Asia for purposes they don't wish to discuss in public. They insist we need to do these things without explaining why.
Too many questions go unanswered. How many Muslims must we kill in order to be "safe"? Once America accomplishes the goals of the neocons, what then? What will America accomplish in the long term by going along with this insane agenda? Ultimately, is it about oil? Is it about creating a "Greater Israel" from the Tigress to the Euphrates? What desirable outcome is likely to result from following the neocon agenda?
Americans paying for this nonsense deserve to know the answers to these questions. The neocons that are preaching fear, hatred and global domination must be held accountable for their deceptive assertions and dubious record of veracity. Americans should refuse to sit by any longer and tolerate this march towards real fascism.
Those who insist that "Islamofascists" are on the verge of taking over the world need to defend their statements before dragging America into an endless war that will only create more terrorism. These people need to explain how unorganized cells of radical Muslims could possibly achieve the goals that are attributed to them.
Terrorists can slip into America and detonate dirty bombs which cause little damage but create fear. They can walk into a Pizza Hut or disco and blow themselves up. They can hijack planes and fly them into buildings while our President reads childrens' books and government agencies twiddle their thumbs knowing they won't be held accountable. But, these acts, as horrible as they are, will not cause America to fall. The so-called "Islamofascists" only win if Americans adopt their theology and politics, or in the unlikely event they kill us all.
Americans must realize that terrorists can't take over America. If Americans decide that the US should continue to engage in maintaining a military empire across the globe and engage in economic imperialism rather than free trade, the price they will pay is terrorist attacks against America. This has been true of all empires. While many neocons shy away from the word "empire", some like Max Boot openly use this term and see nothing wrong with it.
I recall listening to the Rush Limbaugh show one day before the invasion of Iraq and some rabid idiot called in to satarize the old John Lennon song, "Give Peace A Chance". The caller chuckled as he told the almighty Rushbo that we should "give war a chance".
Why not give noninterventionism a chance? After all, it has been over 100 years since America tried that.
This article contributed by Tom Blanton of Richmond, Virginia.