Category Archives: News and current events

March 23, 2018 · 00:02

“If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes…” Reflections on the Invasion of Iraq in Light of Nuremberg

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Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I am continuing to write about the invasion of Iraq in 2003, an invasion that by any standard of measure fit the definition of War Crimes as defined by the American who headed the prosecution of the major Nazi War Criminals at Nuremberg. Justice Robert Jackson stated in his opening:

“If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.” Justice Robert Jackson International Conference on Military Trials, London, 1945, Dept. of State Pub.No. 3080 (1949), p.330.

In March 2003 I like many of us on active duty at the time saw the nation embark on a crusade to overthrow an admittedly thuggish criminal head of state, Saddam Hussein. The images of the hijacked airliners crashing into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were still relatively fresh in our minds. The “evidence” that most of us had “seen,” the same that most Americans and people around the world were shown led many of us to believe that Saddam was involved in those attacks in some manner and that he posed a threat to us.

Now it wasn’t that we didn’t have doubts about it or even the wisdom of invading Iraq. It didn’t matter that there was also credible evidence that maybe what we were being told was not correct, and it didn’t matter that some of our closest allies voted against a mandate to invade Iraq in the United Nations Security Council. We were emotionally charged by the events of 9-11 and “we knew” that Saddam was a “bad guy.” We also believed that we could not be defeated. We had defeated the Iraqis in 1991 and we were stronger and they weaker than that time.

We really didn’t know much about Iraq, its history, people, culture and certainly we paid little attention to the history of countries that had invaded and occupied Iraq in the past. T.E. Lawrence, the legendary Lawrence of Arabia wrote in August of 1920 about his own country’s misbegotten invasion and occupation of Iraq, or as it was known then Mesopotamia.

“The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Bagdad communiqués are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It is a disgrace to our imperial record, and may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are to-day not far from a disaster.”

The sad thing is that the same could have been written of the United States occupation by 2004.

But even more troubling than the words of Lawrence are the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. Somehow as a historian who has spent a great deal of time studying the Nazi period and its aftermath I cannot help but look back in retrospect and wonder what Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson and the other Nuremberg prosecutors would have done had they had some of our leaders in the dock instead of the Nazis.

In his opening statement before the tribunal Jackson spoke words about the the Nazi plan for war that could apply equally to that to the United States in 2002 and 2003:

“This war did not just happen-it was planned and prepared for over a long period of time and with no small skill and cunning.”

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The indictments against the Nazis at Nuremberg are chilling if we were to be held to the same standard that we held the Nazis leaders at Nuremberg. True, we did not have massive death camps or exterminate millions of defenseless people, nor did we run slave labor factories, but we did like they launched a war of aggression under false pretense against a country that had not attacked us.

At Nuremberg we charged twenty top Nazi political officials, as well as police and high ranking military officers with war crimes. The indictments included:

Count One: Conspiracy to Wage Aggressive War: This count addressed crimes committed before the war began, showing a plan by leaders to commit crimes during the war.

Count Two: Waging Aggressive War, or “Crimes Against Peace” which included “the planning, preparation, initiation, and waging of wars of aggression, which were also wars in violation of international treaties, agreements, and assurances.”

Count Three: War Crimes. This count encompassed the more traditional violations of the law of war already codified in the Geneva and Hague Conventions including treatment of prisoners of war, slave labor, and use of outlawed weapons.

Count Four: Crimes Against Humanity, which covered the actions in concentration camps and other death rampages.

While count four, Crimes Against Humanity would be difficult if not impossible to bring to trial because there was nothing in the US and Coalition war in Iraq that remotely compares to that of what the Nazis were tried, some US and British leaders could probably have been successful prosecuted by Jackson and the other prosecutors under counts one through three.

The fact is that none of the reasons given for the war by the Bush Administration were demonstrated to be true. Senior US and British officials knowing this could be tried and very probably convicted on counts one and two. We also know that some military and intelligence personnel have been convicted of crimes that would fall under count three.

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Saddam Hussein was a war criminal. He was also a brutal dictator who terrorized and murdered hundreds of thousands of his own people. But we went to war over his alleged ties to Al Qaeda and WMDs and he had not attacked us. Looking back at history and using the criteria that we established at Nuremberg I have no doubt that had Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld been in the dock that Justice Jackson would have destroyed them and the court would have convicted them.

So 15 years later we need to ask hard questions. The war cost nearly 5000 US military personnel dead, 32,000 wounded, over 100,000 afflicted with PTSD, and other spiritual and psychological injuries; an estimated 22 veterans committing suicide every day.  Somewhere between 1 and 2 trillion dollars were spent, helping to bankrupt the nation. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed, wounded and displaced from their homes; their country was destroyed and they have not recovered. Yet somehow those that decided to take us to war roam free. They write books defending their actions and appear on “news” programs hosted by their media allies who 15 years ago helped manipulate the American public, still traumatized by the events of 9-11-2001 to support the war.

Despite all of this and the passage of 15 years with which to reflect a new poll revealed that some 43% of Americans still believe that the war was worth it.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=No06Lwk_TAg

Saddam and many of his henchmen are dead or rotting in Iraqi prisons for their crimes against the Iraqi people. However good this may be one has to ask if how it happened was legal or justified under US or International Law, if it was worth the cost in blood, treasure or international credibility. Likewise why have none of the men and women who plotted, planned and launched the war been held the standard that we as a nation helped establish and have used against Nazi leaders and others?

If we cannot ask that and wrestle with this then we as a nation become no better than the Germans who sought to minimize their responsibility for the actions of their leaders.  If we downplay, minimize, or deny our responsibility regarding Iraq we will most certainly enable future leaders to feel that they can do the same with impunity. That is a terrible precedent and one that may very well lead us into disaster.

Today we have a President who may very well act on his worst instincts and thrust the nation into even worse wars.  To ensure that war occurs Trump fired General H.R. McMaster yesterday as his National Security Advisor and replaced him with John Bolton. Bolton is one of the most responsible and unapologetic of the Iraq War planners and he has made multiple attacks on the International Criminal Court, a court established in light of Nuremberg. He should be rotting as a war criminal rather than be appointed as National Security Advisor. This is truly a lawless and reprehensible regime that will destroy the United States and bring disaster upon the world.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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March 21, 2018 · 07:00

“My Oath did not Expire When I took off the Uniform” Ralph Peters Resigns from Fox News

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Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I have called Fox News and many of its hosts a propaganda network for some time. At one time, back in the late 1990s and up until I went to Iraq in July of 2007 I watched Fox nearly nonstop along with my daily diet of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity on the radio. It took a number of years of their listening incessantly to their propaganda before I became revulsed by it while serving in Iraq.

Sitting in a dining facility late one evening after coming back from an intensive mission I saw some Fox News talking heads discussing the war on a television. What they were discussing was pure propaganda and had no relationship to what was going on in that country. At that point I made up my mind that what I had tried to believe was true was all lies; lies spun by the Bush administration and aided by the supposedly “Fair and Balanced” team at Fox News. When I returned home in 2008 every time I heard a Fox pundit or saw them on the news I became very angry. To this day I cannot watch them and when I see the lies and propaganda that they spread today I can only compare many of their hosts to the propagandists of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, except neither the Nazis or the Soviets claimed to be ‘fair and balanced.”

Yesterday I was pleasantly surprised to find out that retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters quit his post as a commentator for Fox. I met him in 1999 not long after I had transferred from the Army to the Navy and was serving at Camp LeJeuene with the Second Marine Division. Peters was doing a book tour for his first non-fiction title Fighting for the Future, and I got to meet and talk to him at the bookstore in the Main Exchange. He had enlisted in the Army five years before me and was commissioned three years before me. Both of us had served tours in Germany. He was an Intelligence officer with a specialization on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. I was a history major who in the wisdom of the Army assignment gods had been branched as a Medical Service Corps officer. Peters retired in 1998 as I was preparing to leave the Army for the Navy.

He certainly, like many military officers is very conservative but at the same time a realist. While initially supporting the war in Iraq he would become a critic by 2006 and in 2009 recommend pulling out of Afghanistan. He recently stated that assault weapons should be banned, something that is anathema to Fox and most of its loyal viewers.

Peters thought that President Obama was too soft on Putin and Russia, and despite being a big supporter of President Obama I had to agree with him. I think that while President Obama was in a no-win situation had he confronted and opposed Putin in 2016, he could have done more in 2015, and despite being in a no-win situation politically in 2016 that he should have hammered Putin and exposed the Russian attempts to undermine the country and elect Trump in 2016. His actions were too little and too late.

In his resignation from Fox, Peters showed something that is seldom seen in the media. He demonstrated courage and honor over personal gain. He had a good following on Fox and certainly could have stayed at the network and continued to make good money. But he finally hit the point with them that I hit in 2007, his honor and his commitment to his office would not allow him to stay.

His resignation latter was published by Buzzfeed on Tuesday. It is one of the most remarkable resignation letters I have ever read. It was an indictment of Fox and many of its hosts and commentators as pure propagandists “for a destructive and ethically ruinous administration.” I heartily agree with him. I have posted his letter in its entirety below.

On March 1st, I informed Fox that I would not renew my contract. The purpose of this message to all of you is twofold:

First, I must thank each of you for the cooperation and support you’ve shown me over the years. Those working off-camera, the bookers and producers, don’t often get the recognition you deserve, but I want you to know that I have always appreciated the challenges you face and the skill with which you master them.

Second, I feel compelled to explain why I have to leave. Four decades ago, I took an oath as a newly commissioned officer. I swore to “support and defend the Constitution,” and that oath did not expire when I took off my uniform. Today, I feel that Fox News is assaulting our constitutional order and the rule of law, while fostering corrosive and unjustified paranoia among viewers. Over my decade with Fox, I long was proud of the association. Now I am ashamed.

In my view, Fox has degenerated from providing a legitimate and much-needed outlet for conservative voices to a mere propaganda machine for a destructive and ethically ruinous administration. When prime-time hosts–who have never served our country in any capacity–dismiss facts and empirical reality to launch profoundly dishonest assaults on the FBI, the Justice Department, the courts, the intelligence community (in which I served) and, not least, a model public servant and genuine war hero such as Robert Mueller–all the while scaremongering with lurid warnings of “deep-state” machinations– I cannot be part of the same organization, even at a remove. To me, Fox News is now wittingly harming our system of government for profit.

As a Russia analyst for many years, it also has appalled me that hosts who made their reputations as super-patriots and who, justifiably, savaged President Obama for his duplicitous folly with Putin, now advance Putin’s agenda by making light of Russian penetration of our elections and the Trump campaign. Despite increasingly pathetic denials, it turns out that the “nothing-burger” has been covered with Russian dressing all along. And by the way: As an intelligence professional, I can tell you that the Steele dossier rings true–that’s how the Russians do things.. The result is that we have an American president who is terrified of his counterpart in Moscow.

I do not apply the above criticisms in full to Fox Business, where numerous hosts retain a respect for facts and maintain a measure of integrity (nor is every host at Fox News a propaganda mouthpiece–some have shown courage). I have enjoyed and valued my relationship with Fox Business, and I will miss a number of hosts and staff members. You’re the grown-ups.

Also, I deeply respect the hard-news reporters at Fox, who continue to do their best as talented professionals in a poisoned environment. These are some of the best men and women in the business..

So, to all of you: Thanks, and, as our president’s favorite world leader would say, “Das vidanya.”

The various oaths that I have sworn to the Constitution, first as an enlisted man and then as a Commissioned Officer in the Army, the Army National Guard, the Army Reserve, and the Navy are foundational to my life. I have served under six Presidents. I have agreed and disagreed with the various policies and positions of the first five, but never did I think that any of them were truly a threat to the Constitution and the foundation of the country as I believe that President Trump and his administration are such a threat.

It is my adherence to the Constitution; the radical proposition of the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” I could add the Gettysburg Address in which Abraham Lincoln gave new life to the propositions of the Declaration and the preamble of the Constitution. Now is the time for every American to be as recommit themselves to those ideals or lose them forever.

The President and his propagandists at Fox News are not patriots. One can place a thousand flags behind them or adorn the lapels of their suit jackets with American flag pins, but that does not mean that they are patriots. Patriots stand for those principles, and the Constitution; all of it, not just the parts that they agree with while working to undermine the protections of the Constitution to those who they may hate or disapprove.

In his book On Tyranny Dr Timothy Snyder wrote:

“The president is a nationalist, which is not at all the same thing as a patriot. A nationalist encourages us to be our worst, and then tells us that we are the best. A nationalist, “although endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat, revenge,” wrote Orwell, tends to be “uninterested in what happens in the real world.” Nationalism is relativist, since the only truth is the resentment we feel when we contemplate others. As the novelist Danilo Kiš put it, nationalism “has no universal values, aesthetic or ethical.” A patriot, by contrast, wants the nation to live up to its ideals, which means asking us to be our best selves. A patriot must be concerned with the real world, which is the only place where his country can be loved and sustained. A patriot has universal values, standards by which he judges his nation, always wishing it well—and wishing that it would do better.” 

Ralph Peters is a patriot whether you agree or disagree with him on various issues. He did the right thing for the right reason. Some may think that it took him too long to do so, but just how many others in the Fox News and Right Wing media vortex or the Republican Party have stated the truth as Lieutenant Colonel Peters did? Even those who publicly disagree with the President, with nothing to lose, often equivocate and show that they are cowards when after they say that they will stand against him, simply slink away until the next time.

So until the next time,

Peace

Padre Steve+

 

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March 20, 2018 · 00:30

Trust, if Lost Will Take a Generation to Regain: A Lesson from 1938 for President Trump

Friends of Padre Steve’s Word,

Thomas Paine wrote: “Character is much easier kept than recovered.”Those words apply to nations and government as much as they do to individuals.

As you might have noticed I have been spending much time writing about the corrosive effect of what the Trump administration’s strategy of willful deceit, the denial of factual truth, and the creation of so-called alternate facts, truth, and reality, on our life as a nation. I am going to return to that because it appears that the strategy is continuing to be used, and that the administration is now scrambling to hide inconvenient facts from the FBI and Congressional committees investigating the possibility of the collusion of Russian officials with Trump campaign and administration officials.

This effort  spread to Representative Devin Nunes who is the committee chairman of the House committee investigating the allegations and who closed down that investigation claiming that he found no evidence of collusion with Russia despite the testimony of Republican and Democrats on that committee that Nunes had not investigate or interviewed many of the principles involved and who maintained that there indeed was collusion between members of the Trump organization, campaign, and administration with the Russians. This action was followed by the firing of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and a fusillade of attacks on Robert Muller, James Comey, Ron Rosenstein, others involved with the investigation, and even Attorney General Sessions whose head is believed to be on the Trump chopping block.

Every day more evidence is revealed that there is a very good chance that the Russians have compromised the President and some of his closest advisors and family members. That being said there are so many people in the administration that appear to be connected to Russian officials, including former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, both who have been indicted by Robert Muller; Flynn even taking a plea deal in which he plead guilty to the charges against him. Likewise, others may have received large amounts of money from Russia sources to influence United States policy on the behalf of the Russian government and business oligarchy, particularly in regard to the Ukraine which Russia invaded and seized the Crimean Peninsula. Manafort appears to possibly be connected to Russian actions that led to the death of Ukrainians and quite possibly the shoot down of Malaysian Airline Flight 17.

The President’s attacks on American allies which have culminated in imposing tariffs on steel and aluminum that hurt our allies more than our enemies are weakening the United States. Likewise his refusal to take action against Russian attacks on the American election system and electorate, and the vast number of outright lies and distortions that he tells on a daily basis give anyone with cause to believe that his word is not to be trusted.

Such actions are quite dangerous, and one only has to look to the example of France in 1938 during the Czech crisis where conservative politicians, military officers, and the French right wing media allowed themselves to fall under the spell of Hitler, abandon Czechoslovakia, and with it their only chance of stopping the Nazi advance in Europe. But to them it did not matter. William Shirer recounts those days in his book The Collapse of the Third Republic: An Inquiry into the Fall of France 1940:

“Nor did the public realize how it was being poisoned and misled, not only by Fascist-minded leaders and newspapers, small in number but growing in influence, who on ideological grounds wished to accommodate Hitler and Mussolini, but also by Frenchmen who were being manipulated by German agents and money. It was at this time that Otto Abertz, the genial “Francophile” Nazi agent in Paris, became most effective. Easily penetrating political, business, social and cultural circles he worked tirelessly at winning their sympathies for Nazi Germany. He engineered trips with all expenses paid, for numerous politicians, intellectuals, industrialists, and leaders of the war veterans’ groups to Germany, where they were wined, dined, and otherwise feted, and fed with Nazi propaganda. He obtained lucrative contracts for French writers to have their books translated and published in Germany. He arranged interviews for French journalists with Hitler so that the Fuehrer could reiterate that he wished only peace and friendly relations with France. He was believed by the French secret police, which constantly shadowed him, to be the chief source of Nazi funds for buying French journals, journalists, and others of influence. Doriot’s openly Fascist daily, La Liberte, was almost entirely subsidized by Berlin. This was probably an exception. As Pierre Comert., chief of the Press Service at the Quai d’Orsay, testified to the Parliamentary Investigating Committee later: “The German agents at the time didn’t buy newspapers. They bought journalists. It was cheaper. And it was more effective.

Aside from the cheapening of moral values which followed inevitably from the abandoning of Czechoslovakia, the Munich settlement further deepened and complicated the already calamitous divisions among the French…”

When a nation abandons its allies. When its leaders give every impression of siding with an age old hostile power while insulting and demeaning its closest allies. When it reneges on deals made in good faith with other countries on issues that are important to the whole world, such as global warming, when it abandons economic pacts that worked to balance power and maintain peace, it harms more than its physical, military, and economic power: it damages its credibility. As one newspaper wrote of France after the Munich agreement that destroyed Czechoslovakia:

“Who will again believe the word of France? Who will remain her ally? Why would the French government, which has just annulled “of her own accord” her pact with Czechoslovakia, respect the Franco-Soviet Pact?”

What will be said of the United States if its leaders betray its ideals, and its promises? That trust, if lost, will take a generation or more to regain, but the cost of that loss of trust will harm us all in ways that we cannot even begin to fathom.

Until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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March 19, 2018 · 00:44

A Sense of Foreboding: Trump, Fox News Propaganda and the Danger to the Republic

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Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I go to bed tonight with a sense of foreboding for our country and the world.

Hannah Arendt wrote: “When evil is allowed to compete with good, evil has an emotional populist appeal that wins out unless good men and women stand as a vanguard against abuse.

She was right. We are seeing a populist appeal that is embracing evil and it is happening before our very eyes.

I cannot shake the deep sense of foreboding I have regarding the country and the world as President Trump’s continues to attack the character of all that oppose him or simply want to ferret out the truth plethora of allegations concerning what appears to be treasonous activities by his closest advisers and his apparent attempts quashed with the acquiescence of a large number of Republican members of Congress.  There is something very wrong going on and it almost feels that I can see the disaster unfolding before it happens.

I am not the only one to notice, leading conservative writers, foreign policy experts, and constitutional scholars have pointed out the same things that I have been saying for over a year. I do try to be positive and to believe that things will work out for the best, but the more I observe the more my confidence in our leaders and for that purpose many of our people to do the right thing is diminished.

That being said I do not give in to the feelings of foreboding or intend give up without a fight. I want my country to live up to its ideals and I am concerned about the real world, our alliances, our environment, and especially the real threat to freedom posed by the unrestrained words and actions of our 45th President. He has proven that he has no regard for the Constitution, our laws, or simple human decency. With every tweet and remark he demonstrates that he believes that he is above the law. He demonstrates every trait of a sociopath incapable of empathy and capable of the greatest evil.

Since he had Attorney General Sessions fire former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe barely a day before he would have been able to retire, Mr. Trump has been on a rampage. In light of President’s twitter onslaught against Robert Muller and those appointed to investigate the likely treasonous activities of the President and his associates before and after his election, and the comments of his personal lawyer I am more convinced than ever that Mr. Trump will find a way to seize power. This may come in a Reichstag Fire moment where he, during a “national emergency” uses the powers given to the executive through standing Executive Orders, or legislated in the Patriot Act. Conversely he might do it with the help of his current GOP majority in Congress, even if it means that they doom themselves to irrelevance as a co-equal branch of government.

This itself is dangerous, but even worse is the poisonous and corrosive aspect of the President’s repeated lies, distortions, falsifications, and attacks on the Constitution, our laws, institutions, the free press, and individuals. The President not only uses his spokespeople and twitter account to do this, he uses the pundits of Fox News to do so. As such Fox has become nothing more than Trump’s personal propaganda ministry indoctrinating millions of gullible and desperate people to do his bidding. Arendt wrote about such behavior and its effect on people:

“In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. … Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.”

I believe in a particular universal ideal enunciated in the Preamble of the Declaration of Independence that All men are created equal. Likewise I believe the words of the Constitution matter and that it is all of our obligation to labor to build “a more perfect union.” As such that I must continually stand for what is right, what is true, and what is enduring for that is the oath that I swore and have re-affirmed for over 36 years of military service.

I am more worried than ever about our democracy and I agree with Timothy Snyder who wrote:

“Democracy failed in Europe in the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s, and it is failing not only in much of Europe but in many parts of the world today. It is that history and experience that reveals to us the dark range of our possible futures. A nationalist will say that “it can’t happen here,” which is the first step toward disaster. A patriot says that it could happen here, but that we will stop it.”  

We Americans do not like to think that what has happened to so many other countries can happen here; and in fact I never used to believe that it could. I believed that our system of checks and balances and the nature of our institutions could weather any threat. Today I question if they will hold. I agree with Russian exile and Chess Grand Master Gary Kasparov who wrote:

“First of all, people here should understand that nothing is for granted. There were many warnings in the past, you know, but every time, Americans and Europeans—they believe that it’s like bad weather. It comes and goes. But the danger is real. I always want to quote Ronald Reagan, who said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” Now, probably, it’s not even one generation. Things can happen very quickly, because there’s so much power that comes in the hands of people who have very little affection for the values that make up the core of liberal democracy and the free world.” 

Because of that I believe that we must stand for principle and work for a new birth of freedom even as it seems that freedom itself is in danger due to the actions of the American President. We must stand or we will lose everything that generations of Americans as well as others have fought so hard to preserve, but it is difficult. As Max Boot wrote on Saturday:

“Trump is sucking a substantial portion of America into his Orwellian universe. The rest of us have to struggle simply to remember that war isn’t peace, freedom isn’t slavery, ignorance isn’t strength.”

Until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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March 17, 2018 · 14:00

No One Will Be Spared: Beleaguered Sessions Fires McCabe

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

On Friday Night Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe just hours from his retirement. I expected this because of the incredible pressure being put upon him in public, and probably in private to dispatch McCabe. Last night McCabe maintained his innocence of any wrongdoing. For months President Trump has led the chorus of condemnation against McCabe so I am not at all surprised that the last minute firing was an act of personal vengeance by Trump calculated to instill fear in the heart of anyone in the FBI or Justice Department that dares to oppose him or investigate his actions in relation to Russia or any other potential crimes committed by him or his administration.

To do this to McCabe he used Attorney General Jeff Sessions who has been the constant whipping boy of the President for recusing himself in the Muller investigation. It is believed that because of the President’s personal antipathy to Sessions because of his perceived “lack of personal loyalty” means that the the Attorney General will also soon be gone. Sessions may have acted against McCabe to spare his own job and prove his loyalty but I am sure that it will not be enough to save him.

I was reminded of two incidents following the failed attempt on Hitler’s life on July 20th 1944. The first was General Erich Fromm when he ordered the spot execution of Colonel Claus Von Stauffenberg, General Friedrich Olbricht, Lieutenant Colonel Albrecht Mertz Von Quirnheim, and Lieutenant Werner Von Haeften.

Fromm had known of the plans for the coup but would neither declare himself for it nor expose it. When it failed he rapidly declared himself for Hitler but to cover his tracks disobeyed orders to take the men alive ordered their execution and is told that he will not escape.

That moment is depicted in the 2008 film Valkyrie:

Von Haeften : You’re as guilty as any of us.

Fromm: [scoffing]  Spare me, Lieutenant.

Stauffenberg: No one will be spared.

Stauffenberg was correct. Two days later Fromm was arrested and interrogated. He was discharged from the Army in September 1944, tried before the Volksgericht and convicted of cowardice before the enemy. He was executed on March 12th 1945.

Sessions should have known better and in firing McCabe has given up any shred of honor that he might have retained during his tenure as Attorney General.

Likewise I thought about the words of Field Marshal Erwin Von Witzleben before Judge Roland Freisler and the Volksgericht following the July 20th 1944 attempt on Hitler’s life. Freisler was one of the most notorious of all the Nazis using his People’s Court, which was separate from the regular judicial system to viciously humiliate the accused before sentencing most (90%) to death. During his reign he personally pronounced the death sentence on over 5000 German citizens including distinguished military personnel, civil servants, and opponents of the regime including many people connected with the July 20th plot, as well as Sophie Scholl and the other members of the White Rose resistance.

After his death sentence was pronounced Von Witzleben who had been one of the earliest military opponents of Hitler used his last moments in public to tell Freisler:

“You may hand us over to the executioner, but in three months time, the disgusted and harried people will bring you to book and drag you alive through the dirt in the streets.” At their trial in February 1943 Sophie and Hans Scholl were convicted for having “published leaflets at a time of war, calling for people to sabotage armaments, and to overthrow our people’s National Socialist way of life. They propagated defeatist ideas and visciously insulted the Fuhrer.”

Hans Scholl told the court: “If you and Hitler weren’t afraid of our opinion, we wouldn’t be here.” Sophie told Freisler, “You will soon be standing where we stand now.”

Freisler was spared that ignominy when he was killed by an American bomb which destroyed his courtroom.

But the Nazi regime which had so twisted law and Justice that it was no longer recognizable ended up on the ash heap of history, leaving Germany devastated. Unless the Trump administration changes its ways it will do the same to the United States.

Luise Jodl, the wife of General Alfred Jodl was working at the Lützow Hospital when Freisler’s body was brought in, recalled that a worker commented, “It is God’s verdict.” According to Mrs. Jodl, “Not one person said a word in reply.”

I believe that when Sessions falls to Trump that few will mourn for him. He should have remembered the words of Stauffenberg, no one will be spared.

Until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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March 15, 2018 · 21:16

The Exploitation of the Military for Political Ends: The Military as Backdrop for Presidents

Bush Mayport

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Every President of the television age has used the military as a background for various speeches and announcements of policy, especially in regard to war. In February 2003 I was at one of these rallies when President George W. Bush rallied us to the upcoming war against Iraq. It was a “go to war” speech and he was cheered wildly and I joined in that cheering, and after all we all knew that the Iraqis had WMD, were part of the Axis of Evil, and were aiding Al Qaeda; and we were all wrong. As a result of that decision thousands of Americans were killed, tens of thousands wounded, and uncounted thousands of Iraqis killed, wounded, or driven from their homes. The result of that war was the complete destabilization and radicalization of the Middle East.  Fifteen years after that ill-fated decision to go to war the situation in the Middle East and the world is worse than it could ever been imagined it to be then.

But that was a go to war speech, the military personnel were used as a backdrop for enunciating the reasons to go to war. We were ordered to attend and ships were positioned for the best possible propaganda effect. My ship had just come out of the yards and had too much scaffolding to be a part of the display, but our crew was assembled as part of the backdrop for the speech.

That being said President Bush never attacked any political enemies or any other Americans, nor did he call opposition to his strategy by members of the media or anyone else as treasonous or called them the enemy. Instead, Saddam Hussein was the enemy and because we believed what we had heard in the media and from others in the military we approved.

Trump_Pledges_Pay_Raise_for_Military_During_Speech

On Tuesday President Trump gave a speech to Marines at Marine Corps Air Station, Miramar in San Diego.  In his speech the President talked of his wall, pay raises for the military, a “space force,”, and pointing to the assembled members of the media attacked the “fake news.” The Marines cheered wildly, and I shook my head because I knew that at one time earlier in my life, carried on by the emotion of being in the presence of the President and a lifetime of absorbing Fox News, talk radio, and conservative internet pundits for hours on end every day I probably would have cheered with them. I did that in 2003. It took me until 2007 while I was deployed in Iraq to figure out just how wrong that I was.

President Bush deserves legitimate criticism of his decision to attack Iraq, he has to be commended for not attempting to silence or demonize his opposition. The conservative media led by Fox News and radio personalities like Rush Limbaugh did but he didn’t. But unlike President Bush, President Trump backs hostile regimes and denounces critics at home. Say what you want about him but President Bush would not have done that in a million years.

What President Trump did was to lead young Marines who are sworn to defend the Constitution into cheerleaders for his attack against the First Amendment. As the did this I looked into the Marines assembled behind him, including officers and I wondered why didn’t anyone object by at least turning their head, or remaining silent instead of cheering or taking selfies.

This is so different than the lead up to the Iraq war. President Trump has declared war against his opponents at home while refusing to condemn the actions of the Russians, and appears by his words and actions leading us to war in the Middle East against Iran and its proxies, as well as North Korea.

General Ludwig Beck who commanded the German Army in 1938 resigned his post because he believed that Hitler in his desire to destroy Czechoslovakia by military force would lead to the destruction of Germany. Beck went into the opposition and died during the failed attempt to kill Hitler and overthrow the Nazi State on July 20th 1944.

Now Beck did have his flaws. He was not a supporter of the Weimar Republic. He was Anti-Semitic, and he was at heart a Monarchist. Despite that he joined with others of various political, ideological, and religious persuasions to try to overthrow Hitler. One thing that he said has stuck with me since my return from Iraq in 2008 and when I see things like the rally at Miramar I have to ask, where were the officers who should have known better?

Beck wrote:

“It is a lack of character and insight, when a soldier in high command sees his duty and mission only in the context of his military orders without realizing that the highest responsibility is to the people of his country.” 

I have spent almost half of my Navy career assigned to the Marines or supporting them. I am a graduate of the Marine Command and Staff College and a Fleet Marine Force qualified Navy Officer. I love and admire the Marine Corps. When I came to the Navy and was serving with the Second Marine Division as it was being readied for a possible invasion of Kosovo in 1999 I was asked by Colonel Robert Neller, “Chaplain, after all those years in the Army, what do you think about the Marine Corps?” My answer was “Colonel, this is the Army that I always wanted to serve in.” Colonel Neller is now the Commandant of the Marine Corps.

But what happened Tuesday reduced the Marines in attendance to political pawns in an ideological war to destroy the Constitution and replace it with a government based on xenophobia, greed, and fear. But then how could they not be?

Polls around the world show an increasing number of young people willing to ditch democracy in favor of authoritarian government models. This applies to both left and right wing variants. This is no different in the United States. The fact is that those who are old enough to remember the tyranny of the Nazi, Fascist, Nationalist, and Racist regimes of the Second World War have for the most part passed away. Likewise it has been nearly thirty years since the end of the Cold War and its existential threat of worldwide nuclear destruction, the Iron Curtain, the enslavement of tens of millions of people behind it, and the proxy wars between United States and Soviet surrogates not to mention the Soviet invasion  of Afghanistan and the Vietnam War. In the United States  and many, if not most of these young Marines were raised in homes where they digested a steady diet of Fox News, conservative talk radio, and right-wing websites. Coupled with the unique and almost mythological culture of the Marine Corps it is not hard to understand.

The terrible thing is, that if the President that these Marines were cheering does what he has repeatedly said he would do, attack North Korea or Iran, that many of the young men and women in attendance at the rally will die or be horribly wounded, and the country that they serve will suffer greatly.

SmedleyButler.jpeg

One of the greatest Marines to ever serve this country understood all too well the threat of men like President Trump to the country and the cost of war. That man was two time Medal of Honor winner Major General Smedley Butler. Butler warned of the costs of war nationalism, and fascism. He wrote:

“What is the cost of war? what is the bill? This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all of its attendant miseries. Back -breaking taxation for generations and generations. For a great many years as a soldier I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not only until I retired to civilian life did I fully realize it….”

Butler was cashiered, threatened with court-martial, and retired by President Hoover for speaking the truth about Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. He would certainly speak the truth about President Trump. If only more veterans and military men would do so today.

Until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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March 13, 2018 · 00:26

Trump and the Evangelical “Outburst of Folly”

D.Bonhoeffer im Gefaengnis Berlin-Tegel

D.Bonhoeffer im Gefaengnis Berlin-Tegel Bonhoeffer, Dietrich evang. Theologe, Widerstandskaempfer Breslau 4.2.1906 – (hingerichtet) KZ Flossenbuerg 9.4.1945. – Bonhoeffer im Hof des Wehrmachtunter- suchungsgefaengnis in Berlin-Tegel, Sommer 1944. – Foto.

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

As I watch those who bend over backwards to defend the indefensible actions and words of President Trump, especially those who are very prominent “Christian” leaders I shake my head.

The naked aggression and reveling in their new found political power seems to have made many Evangelical Christians fools who will sacrifice all to bow in obeisance to a man who while delivering what they want, mocks the very Savior that they say they serve.

Observing this I am reminded of the words of the German Pastor and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer who died at the hands of the Nazis in Flossenburg Concentration Camp on April 9th 1944 on the express order of Adolf Hitler. From prison Bonhoeffer penned these words which are most descriptive of our times:

“If we look more closely, we see that any violent display of power, whether political or religious, produces an outburst of folly in a large part of mankind; indeed, this seems actually to be a psychological and sociological law: the power of some needs the folly of others. It is not that certain human capacities, intellectual capacities for instance, become stunted of destroyed, but rather that the upsurge of power makes such an overwhelming impression that men are deprived of their independent judgment, and…give up trying to assess the new state of affairs for themselves.” 

President Trump found in Evangelicals people who would blindly follow him in actions that they would have never tolerated in any other political leader. Pastor Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Church of Dallas Texas defended Trump on Fox News saying that Trump paying hush money to silence porn-star Stormy Daniels:

“And let’s be clear — Evangelicals still believe in the commandment: Thou shalt not have sex with a porn star,” Jeffress continued. “However, whether this president violated that commandment or not is totally irrelevant to our support of him.” 

But he is not alone. As a whole Evangelicals have been the most loyal of all of Trump’s supporters and regardless of his actions they are willing to look past them because he dishing out policies that they approve; even if the majority of those policies go completely against the Gospel, the words of Jesus, the condemnations of the Old Testament prophets, the writers of the New Testament, and the words of every martyr of the ante-Nicene era; before Constantine made the Christian Church the State Church. Since men like Jeffress and countless others like him are complete Theocrats who desire to overthrow the religious liberty of the First Amendment propounded by our Founders the see nothing wrong with it.

Trump may be a scoundrel, but they are fools, and dangerous ones at that.

Bonhoeffer wrote:

“So the fool, as distinct from the scoundrel, is completely self- satisfied; in fact, he can easily become dangerous, as it does not take much to make him aggressive. A fool must therefore be treated more cautiously than a scoundrel.”

Their outburst of folly in support of the President has the potential to doom all of us.

This is something that any thinking person regardless of their faith or ideology must be aware of and must resist. So until tomorrow.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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March 12, 2018 · 00:24

“We Have to Show the World That Not All of Us are Like Him…” Resistance or Acquiescence?

tresckow

Major General Henning Von Tresckow 

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I wasn’t planning on writing anything new until sometime next week, but after President Trump’s off the cuff decision to meet with the North Korean dictator Kim Jung Un and the speech that he gave in Pennsylvania on Saturday night I must share a couple of thoughts.

Last night (Saturday) I watched the movie Valkyrie which is about the July 20th 1944 attempt to kill Adolf Hitler, and tonight the movie Conspiracy which is about the bureaucratic workings of the decision to eradicate the Jews from earth by the Nazis in the decision now known as The Final Solution. 

It is interesting the the British actor Kenneth Branagh stars in both. In Valkyrie he plays Major General Henning von Tresckow, a key member of the the anti-Hitler movement; and in Conspiracy he plays SS General Reinhardt Heydrich who helped engineer the Final Solution against the Jews.

In the past few days I have thought of the words of Von Tresckow, Heydrich, and General Ludwig Beck, another of the conspirators who attempted to kill Hitler and lost his life in the process.

Heydrich was the ultimate opportunist, who had he not been assassinated two months after the Wansee Conference might well have been a participant in the anti-Hitler conspiracy; not because of any ethical or ideological purity, but for the sake of his own power and survival. Heydrich was not an ideologue but a pragmatist, and many historians think that he would have joined a movement against Hitler in order to preserve his ideal of Germany. In Valkyrie Branagh played Major General Henning von Tresckow who was a Christian and opponent of the Hitler regime. Branagh played both parts very well, and was believable.

Ever the pragmatist Heydrich told a young SS Major at the Wansee Conference: “Politics is a nasty game. I think soldiering requires the discipline to do the unthinkable and politics requires the skill to get someone else to do the unthinkable for you.” Sadly I have to admit that he was correct. Since I have served in the military for nearly 37 years I can understand the comment, thankfully I have never been a politician so I cannot imagine having the skill to do the unthinkable for me.

That being said I have taken to hear the words of General Ludwig Beck who resigned from his position as the head of the German Army in 1938 over the planned invasion of Czechoslovakia and lost his life in the attempt to overthrow Hitler:

“It is a lack of character and insight, when a soldier in high command sees his duty and mission only in the context of his military orders without realizing that the highest responsibility is to the people of his country.” 

Von Tresckow would note in words that I would hope that Americans would heed today in terms of the current President: “We have to show the world that not all of us are like him. Otherwise, this will always be Hitler’s Germany.”

The question is: Will Americans simply roll over and do the unthinkable or will they decide to show the world that we are not like him?

That is the question. How we answer it is another matter.

Until tomorrow and my third installment of the six part series on Dan Sickles,

Peace

Padre Steve+

 

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March 7, 2018 · 00:05

“The First Duty of Every Officer is to the Truth”

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Most of my readers know that in addition to being a Priest and Navy Chaplain that I am a historian and have taught both ethics and Gettysburg as a faculty member at a Staff College. Many of the men and women that I taught will lead our military as commanders, planners and staff officers. I stay in contact with a number of my former students, including two from South Korea. Now I still write even as I lead the staff at one of the Navy’s largest and most active Chapel programs.

Since I figure that this will be my last duty station before I retire my goal is to help guide those who work with me to success in the military and set them up for success when they leave the military. They are a great group, I could not ask for better and when I have a bad day or seem to be off in some way I have given them permission to ask how I am doing and to ask me hard questions. I give them permission to tell me the truth. A lot of leaders won’t do that, but I try to be transparent and honest with them because I know that they have my back and we do a pretty good job at caring for people and doing the right thing.

As such my first duty, whether it is in teaching, writing or in ministry is to the truth. In fact I quoted Captain Jean Luc Picard, played by Sir Patrick Stewart in Star Trek the Next Generation: “the first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth, whether it’s scientific truth, historical truth or personnel truth…” I am not a Starfleet Officer but as an officer nonetheless I have always believed that the truth matters, but sadly I, like so many of us have turned the other way and not spoken out. But the older I get the more I realize that I cannot be silent about subjects that at one time I turned a blind eye to because they were uncomfortable, unpopular or might hurt my career either in the church or in the military.

I have been writing a lot over the past few months about subjects that many people are controversial and as such many people are uncomfortable with those topics. Whether the issue is civil rights, racism, Gay rights and marriage equality, voting rights, religious freedom and religious intolerance, and even xenophobia, or the connection of symbols such as the Confederate Battle Flag to a heritage that goes to a hatred that extends far beyond the battlefields of the Civil War; I am speaking out. Now I am fully aware of that many of these subjects are controversial. I have been asked in comments on this site and on my various social media accounts, particularly Facebook, why I keep bringing up the uncomfortable past. But I have to, I have a duty to the truth and as Oscar Wilde noted “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”

The late Howard Zinn, a brilliant historian whose work at one time I discounted, said: “But I suppose the most revolutionary act one can engage in is… to tell the truth.” Who would think that telling the truth could or would be a revolutionary act? However, when one lives in a society where the truth is bent, run over and shredded by politicians, preachers and pundits, what I call the Trinity of Evil; when state school boards whitewash history and force their religious views on children in public schools; where corporations and advertisers use the most crass means to deceive customers; and where established science is not met with denial under the guise of “skepticism;” telling the truth is a revolutionary affair.

The honest truth is that I never expected to be a revolutionary in terms of what so much of society, especially the conservative Christian movement that I spent much of my life in expects. Truthfully, upholding tradition, and for that matter defending myth, is much easier when backed by the certitude of an unbending theology and political is much easier than asking the hard questions. Barbara Tuchman once wrote: “The reality of a question is inevitably more complicated than we would like to suppose.” I guess that is why so many people would rather be content with myth than to ask the really hard questions; be they about history, religion, and science or for that matter anything. One of the must uncomfortable things to admit is that truth is always evolving as we learn more, it is dynamic, not static and to attempt to force people to live by the “truth” of our ancestors is disingenuous, dishonest and denies the reality of the universe that we live. Thomas Jefferson recognized this and wrote:

“I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.” 

So why do I write? I write so that we never forget or push aside the great evils that human beings are capable of committing: The Holocaust, slavery and Jim Crow, the extermination of Native Americans by the millions in the name of God and Manifest Destiny, the enslavement, exploitation, and sometimes the extermination of whole peoples by colonialism; the witch trials, the religious wars of the Reformation, the Inquisition, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Stalin’s purges, the Tuskegee experiments, the Japanese barbarity in the Rape of Nanking and other places in Asia, the Srebrenica genocide and the Rwandan genocide, just to name a few.

All too often the perpetrators of those events and their descendants as all too willing to last the past lie dormant. But at what cost do we do so? Do we sacrifice justice on the altar of prosperity and peace; do we sacrifice uncomfortable truth in order to remain undisturbed and comforted by myth? Do we condemn our descendants to live under the myths of our ancestors? Would we sacrifice the truth and justice in order to ensure obedience? Howard Zinn correctly observed, “Historically, the most terrible things – war, genocide, and slavery – have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience.”

President John F Kennedy spoke these words at Yale in 1962: “The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie–deliberate, contrived and dishonest–but the myth–persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”

Personally I would rather ask the questions and confront the past so we might have a better future, because though I am a realist, I also believe in my heart that humanity is capable of overcoming hatred, prejudice and ignorance. The problem is that times get difficult those attitudes can overcome our better nature. As Spencer Tracy’s character in the movie Judgment at Nuremberg said:

“But this trial has shown that under a national crisis, ordinary – even able and extraordinary – men can delude themselves into the commission of crimes so vast and heinous that they beggar the imagination. No one who has sat through the trial can ever forget them: men sterilized because of political belief; a mockery made of friendship and faith; the murder of children. How easily it can happen. There are those in our own country too who today speak of the “protection of country” – of ‘survival’. A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient – to look the other way. Well, the answer to that is ‘survival as what’? A country isn’t a rock. It’s not an extension of one’s self. It’s what it stands for. It’s what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult! Before the people of the world, let it now be noted that here, in our decision, this is what we stand for: justice, truth, and the value of a single human being.”

That my friends, is why I write: for justice, truth, and the value of a single human life.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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March 5, 2018 · 00:07

“Afraid of Words and Thoughts” Panic Engulfs the Trump Administration

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

It seems like nearly every day we are treated to a new round of manic midnight tweeting by our President, usually because he has been criticized by someone or has went into a rage over after watching the conspiracy theorists and propagandists who support him.

He lashes out like a trapped animal the rage barely concealed by the power of his office. Even his official photograph looks like he is about to scream and rip someone’s head off. I have seen the official photos or portraits of every American President and while some show some sense of serious strength, none exude the anger that drips from the pixels of his photo.

In the past thirteen months I have observed that it is criticism of any kind that gets the President most worked up, it is as if his skin is so thin that any criticism will make him bleed. He shows all the signs of being a narcissistic personality, and seems to revel in his role as the enfant terribles of the Western World.

His response to criticism is that of the quintessential bully, or the abusive husband or father who cannot be criticized without fear of punishment. Now his temper is moved beyond attacking perceived enemies at home to threatening nuclear war in Korea, launching a trade war with our closest allies under the guise of national security, and protecting Vladimir Putin and Russia, foreign power that not only has set out to divide us, interfere with our elections, but which threatens us with new nuclear weapons.

He doesn’t fear power or institutions, he has done his best to undermine all three branches of government and has no respect for the Constitution.  He attacks and Yet at the same time he demonstrates a profound fear of words and ideas that he cannot control, thus his constant attempts to shut down debate, discredit democratic institutions, the institutions of government, the press, and even private citizens. Of course there is his unusual penchant for going after very same critics who have no power other than their ideas and the words that they speak.

I am reminded of Winston Churchill’s who wrote:

“You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police … yet in their hearts there is unspoken fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts: words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home — all the more powerful because forbidden — terrify them. A little mouse of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic.” 

That is what I believe we are seeing from our President and those closest to him. They have power, real power that with the exception of the courts, neither the Congress nor much of bureaucracy has not seen fit to check. Even so one after another they have resigned, been fired, or come under investigation. Reputations have been ruined by mere association with the President and others are imploding. Former associates are speaking with Special Prosecutor Muller, and he still lashed out berating and humiliating those

These are not the actions of a leader committed to the democratic ideals of our Republic nor the constraints of the Constitution, law, precedent, and tradition.

This is frightening to watch as the President more isolated than ever flails against enemies real and imagined while bringing the nation and world closer to a Götterdämmerung of the President and his party’s making, provided words do not fell him before he can.

Until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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