Tag Archives: terrorism

June 15, 2017 · 06:30

The Dangers of Political Violence: The Lesson of the Reichstag Fire


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Yesterday a man named James T. Hodgkinson opened fire on members of the Congressional Republican baseball team as they practiced for their annual game against the Congressional Democrats which is a charitable event that helps a number of local agencies that help children. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise was critically wounded and several police officers were wounded during the exchange of fire in which Hodgkinson was killed. I was shocked and infuriated by his actions. Political violence and the attempted assassination of any elected official in a democracy where we still have the ability to remove people or parties from office at the ballot box is never justified. I would call his act an act of terrorism just as I have other acts by so many others. 

But unlike other times when a white shooter killed or wounded multiple people based on their race, religion, or politics I was joined by many GOP leaders. Sadly, some like Newt Gingrich, Repreantive Steve King and a host of Right Wing pundits blamed it on “typical left wing violence” while ignoring the constant attacks and threats from Right Wing extremists including members of the militia movement, the KKK, and various new-Nazi and Alt Right groups and individuals. 

At least President Trump, for the first time in his presidency urged unity and extolled the best part of Americans working together. I was pleased to here his words which I think were genuine, and I hope that this will be a moment that defines his presidency in a positive way for all Americans. That being said I have reasons to doubt, not that I want to but because of his past actions which I will mention later in the article. 

From was we know Hodgkinson was very active politically and quite angry at the GOP and President Trump but until today no one, even friends who knew him well would have expected him to cross the line to commit political violence. The congressman from his district from Illinois said that Hodgkinson was angry in his communications about issues but never crossed a line for the office to think that he was potentially dangerous. However, he had a history of domestic violence, destruction of property and a number of other issues. One of Hodgkinson’s Facebook posts from 2015 was a editorial cartoon criticizing Scalise. Hodkinson had been in the D.C. area a couple of weeks and had been spending time at the YMCA near the ball field where the shooting occurred. The former Mayor of Alexandria saw him a number of times and reported that he appeared to be living out of a gym bag and had offered to help Hodgkinson get a job.

I’m sure that there will be more information about Hodgkinson coming out so I will not go into any more detail or speculate why he committed this act, but I will discuss the very real dangers to civil liberty and legitimate peaceful political dissent that his act could lead.

Despite my initial optimism about how the President Trump responded today and many of his advisors have shown spoken in very authoritarian language about political dissent, demonizing their opponents, first during their GOP opponents in the primaries, then all who opposed them during the general election and afterwards. The president even blessed violent acts committed by his supporters during the campaign. Any time a protester physically responded to bullying or intimidation at Trump rallies they were set upon and then were blamed for the resulting violence even if they were the victims.

But what I am afraid is that acts such as Hodgkinson’s will result in draconian measures to limit dissent. People forget that it was the action of a single Dutch Communist acting on his own to burn down the Reichstag that gave Hitler the ability to pass the Enabling Act in March of 1933. That act gave his government unprecedented authority to arrest and detail opponents without due process rights, as well as to shut down opposition newspapers. It was followed up by other laws during the course of the Third Reich which further restricted political opposition. Often people arrested in the round ups would be acquitted of any crime but then upon release would be taken by the SA or SS to concentration camps.

Another incident was the assassination of a junior German diplomat at the German embassy in Paris in November 1938. When he died Hitler gave Josef Goebbels permission to launch a pogrom against the Jews now known as Kristallnacht. Hundreds of synagogues were burned, thousands of Jewish businesses looted, and hundreds of Jews killed, with thousands rounded up and sent to concentration camps.

The problem is that individual acts of violence against leaders who are predisposed to authoritarian responses give those leaders license to suspend laws and civil liberties on what are called exceptional circumstances. The attack by Hodgkinson could easily be construed as an act of political terrorism. As Timothy Snyder noted in his book On Tyranny:

“Modern tyranny is terror management. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power. The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of opposition parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. Do not fall for it.”

That is a warning to all who think that individual acts of political violence can be excused or tolerated, they end up threatening the liberties of all. While I do not think this particular attack is a Reichstag Fire moment, the next one might be and anyone who thinks that their act of violence will help the country is sadly mistaken. For that matter it is also possible that a group or individual sympathetic to Trump could create a false flag incident in order to prompt him to suppress legitimate dissent. 

Like I said we will find out more as the days go by about the shooter, the attack, and the possible executive or legislative responses to it, not to mention possible violence against protestors or politicians committed by armed Trump supporters who have often threatened to respond violently to any attack against Trump or the GOP.

This is a very dangerous moment. I do pray that Representative Scalise will recover from his wounds and hope that I will not see progressives rejoice regarding the crime committed by Hodgkinson. Likewise as I mentioned earlier in the article I am heartened by President Trump’s response yesterday and I pray that it will be something that defines the rest of his presidency. I may oppose many, if not most of his policies and actions, as well as hoping that the investigation of his advisers interactions with the Russians goes forward; but I will never continue to hope and pray for the best for our country and yes even for him. That being said I am very wary based on his past words and actions and will never give up my right as an American to speak openly and honestly. I learned that lesson from many great American military men including General Smedley Butler and Colonel David Hackworth. Dissent is still an act of patriotism no matter what some people claim. 

Until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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June 8, 2017 · 06:30

Tweeting His Way to Oblivion: Trump’s Tweets and Terrorism

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Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

So far this has been a very troubling couple of weeks. First there was the murder of a newly commissioned African American United States Army lieutenant by a White Supremacist in Maryland. Then in Portland Oregon, the murder of two men and wounding of another who stepped between a crazed White Supremacist and his intended Muslim victims. Across the “Pond” in Britain there was the horrific suicide bombing of the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester and the crazed attack on the London Bridge and a nearby restaurant district. To keep on point let’s not even go into domestic American politics, the growing controversy regarding the Trump-Russia intrigue, and the continued North Korean threat, and the emerging crisis among the Gulf States, and Trump’s withdraw from the Paris Climate accords, although all of them are important and worthy of our attention.

These were all terrorist attacks done by people with racial or religious motives and in the case of the Oregon attacker maybe a combination of both. But the response by the President was markedly different. The White supremacist attacks received almost no attention from the official White House sources and none from the President, even on his incredibly active personal Twitter account which he used repeatedly to voice his opinions about the Manchester and London attacks. Sadly, his tweets about London were most embarrassing focusing on his domestic agenda, his attacks on the courts, and personal attacks and criticism of London’s mayor. As someone who had been a life-long Republican until my return from Iraq in 2008 I could not imagine Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, or Gerald Ford doing anything similar, nor could I have imagined Dwight Eisenhower, Barry Goldwater, Bob Dole, Mitt Romney, or even Richard Nixon diminishing the office as badly as President Trump has done.

Long before Trump was elected I knew that we were in trouble should he become President, I wrote about that last week. After he was elected I said I would pray for him and hope that his Presidency would benefit Americans and the world with the caveat that I prayed that he wouldn’t do anything to screw things up too badly. Sadly, he is well on the way to doing just that both at home and abroad and I cannot see him changing course, he seems to relish destroying the heritage of the country, grinding our ideals into the mud, destroying our alliances, and making us a pariah nation. Now I can only hope that either through impeachment or the use of the 25th Amendment that he will be removed from power. But if that happens I expect him to call his most ardent supporters to arms and violent opposition.

So anyway, we’ll see what happens next.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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May 24, 2017 · 10:19

The Banality of Evil: Terrorism in Manchester


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Another day and another heinous terrorist attack on people attending a concern in Manchester, England. Over twenty were killed and many more wounded in the attack which also left the terrorist dead. Among the victims were young children, innocent by any standard.

Terrorists of all kinds share a common hatred for human beings who are not like them, people for whom they blame their condition on. It has been so since people discovered that terror, committed in the name of a religion or ideology either by state or non-state actors works. Monday’s attack by a twenty-two year old Salman Abedi who according to neighbors dressed “in traditional Islamic dress.” The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack but at present little is known about Abedi other that he was born and raised in Britain and might be of Lydian descent. His actual connections to ISIS are unknown. It appears that he deployed an Improvised Explosive Device that was loaded with explosives as well as nails, metal scraps, and screws which made it a perfect anti-personnel weapon which he set off at a time guaranteed to cause maximum casualties. His act, as are all terrorist attacks aimed at innocent non-combatants can only be described as evil. The fact that it appears to be done in the name of his Islamic God does make it any less so. It was an act of evil. But the problem is that his act will inspire other Islamists to conduct similar attacks and provide grist to those who want to blame all Muslims for the attack, provoking violence against innocent Muslims who detest and oppose the kind of attack made by Abedi. Th Islamic State claim of responsibility included the statement that the attack “was in revenge for Allah’s religion, in an endeavor to terrorize the [infidels], and in response to their transgressions against the lands of the Muslims.” In the United States fundamentalist Christian extremist Theodore Shoebat said “he feels no sympathy for these people. The people who died, the people who were injured… I really don’t care. The types of people who go to these concerts are the same people responsible for the degeneracy that you see in society…” In other words the murder of children is just as fine to self-proclaimed Christian Shoebat as it is to ISIS. Both would have fit in well with the Nazi troops who killed Jews by the millions and killed innocent children up close and personal. They are all evil and they all think that they are the righteous. 

However, it doesn’t have to be this way as historian Laurence Rees notes, we do not need to succumb to the bloodlust of revenge and retaliation. We can seek justice without victimizing other innocent people. We do not have to give in to what Hannah Arendt referred to as the banality of evil.” We have the choice as individuals as how to behave towards our fellow human beings. Rees noted: “…human behavior is fragile and unpredictable and often at the mercy of the situation. Every individual still, of course, has a choice as to how to behave, it’s just that for many people the situation is the key determinate in that choice.” The fact is that we cannot allow the situation to determine what is right and wrong in how we respond to terror and in doing so condemn the innocent along with the guilty. 

Anyone knows me knows that all terrorism is evil regardless of its motivation. Over the years I have spoken out against all types of terrorism and that I have no sympathy or desire no mercy be shown to those who commit or sponsor it, but at the same time I do not believe that we should allow fear and hatred to cause us to seek retribution or revenge upon innocent people simply because they share a common racial, religious, or national origin of the guilty. To do so makes us no different than those who kill children at a concert simply because they live in a country opposed to ISIS, or because they or their ancestors belong to a country, religion, or race that we despise or believe are less than human. 

When will we ever learn?

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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December 31, 2016 · 06:30

New Years Eve: Our Hopes and Our Will to Try

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Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

It is New Year’s Eve and in some parts of the world it is already 2017, it is amazing how time flies.

After the year that was 2016 with its seeming unending cycle of violence, hate, war, destruction, and political turmoil including Brexit and the 2016 Presidential campaign that culminated in the election of Donald Trump is over. Overall 2016 was a difficult year, and some would even call it bad. One hundred years ago the world was engaged in a war that was killing thousands of men a day. Some hoped that 1917 would be better, but it wasn’t. In fact in some ways the conflagration that had erupted in 1914 would get far worse.

I hope that 2017 is different and turns out better than 2016, we certainly could use a break, but the forces of history and nature are sometimes greater than our hopes, but we can always hope. Even so more than hope we who believe in liberty, freedom, humanity, brotherhood, and justice must work against the forces of war, terrorism, dehumanization, and political ideologies that are designed to enslave, devalue, and marginal people based on race, religion, gender, color, or belief.

I believe that the forces that made 2016 so terrible will not take a break and that we need to stand up and do the right and sometimes the hard things in order to protect liberty. The time for safe zones is past, as progressives we have to toughen up; think rationally, and act strategically if we are to protect the liberties of all people, including people who will find out far to late that they placed their trust in the wrong place. But I digress…

Many people will see in the New Year singing Auld Lang Syne. I suppose that as Judy and I pop the Champagne and toast tonight when we watch the Ball descend in Times Square on our television, safe from all the drunk drivers that we will as well. Not that we will be isolated, we will go out earlier and see our friends at Gordon Biersch around dinner time and get out before the crowds get going and the place gets too loud and crazy for our tastes.

But my favorite song for the New Year is Abba’s Happy New Year.  Like Auld Lang Syne it is a melancholy song of the end of one year’s hopes, dreams and expectations and hopes and dreams for the New Year. I think one of the lines that I like, one which I think calls on us to actually do more than hope, but to act on hope, is “May we all have a vision…” A vision requires that we begin to imagine a better future, in a sense it is to dream, as Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed, I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

To fulfill that dream and vision we must live, work, dream and imagine that things can be better, and as Dr. King said, Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream…

The song, Happy New Year ends with this verse, May we all have our hopes, our will to try, If we don’t we might as well lay down and die, You and I

Here is wishing you the best New Year possible, and I for one will not lay down and die.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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December 17, 2016 · 06:30

Criminal Propagandists: Then and Now

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Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Over the past few weeks we have seen heinous acts of terrorism committed by people who believed that what they were doing was the will of God. They believed that their killing of innocent people was justified by their religious beliefs and their belief that they were the instruments of God to bring about God’s justice on sinners. But these are just the latest in a long series of such events in this country and around the world.

The people who commit the acts are certainly guilty of them, of this there is no doubt, but what about those from whom they draw their inspiration? Why are they not in the dock as well?

In the movie Judgement at Nuremberg, Spencer Tracy’s character, Judge Dan Heywood said, “The principle of criminal law in every civilized society has this in common: Any person who sways another to commit murder, any person who furnishes the lethal weapon for the purpose of the crime. Any person who is an accessory to the crime, is guilty.”

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At the trial of the major war criminals the Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher was condemned to death for crimes against humanity. He had never killed a Jew, nor was he active in planning the war. However, it was the incessant propaganda that Streicher published week after week for twenty-five years which made him an accessory to the deaths of millions of people. A generation of Germans who had been brought up on Streicher’s anti-Semitic hate speech committed acts “so vast and heinous that they beggar the imagination.”

The tribunal said of Streicher:

“For his 25 years of speaking, writing, and preaching hatred of the Jews, Streicher was widely known as ‘Jew-baiter Number 1.’ In his speeches and articles, week after week, month after month, he infected the German people with the virus of anti-Semitism, and incited the German people to active persecution… Streicher had charge of the Jewish boycott of April 1, 1933. He advocated the Nuremberg decrees of 1935. He was responsible for the demolition on August 10, 1938, of the synagogue in Nuremberg. And on November 10, 1938, he spoke publically in support of the Jewish pogroms which were taking place at that time. But it was not only in Germany that this defendant advocated his doctrines. As early as 1935 he began to call for the annihilation of the Jewish race… With knowledge of the extermination of the Jews in the Occupied Eastern Territories, this defendant continued to write and publish the propaganda of death… Streciher’s incitement to murder and extermination at the time when the Jews of the East were being killed under the most horrible conditions clearly constitutes persecution on racial grounds in connection with war crimes, as defined in the charter, and constitutes a crime against humanity.”

“The defendant Streicher is an accessory to the persecution of the Jews within Germany and in occupied territories which culminated in mass murder of an estimated six million men, women, and children. The propaganda in Der Stürmer and other Streicher publications, for which he had admitted responsibility, was of a character calculated to stir up fanatic fear and hatred of the Jewish people and to incite to murder…Through propaganda designed to incite hatred and fear, defendant Streicher devoted himself, over a period of twenty-five years, to creating the psychological basis essential to carrying through a program of mass murder. This alone would suffice to establish his guilt as an accessory to the criminal program of extermination.”

There are propagandists like Streicher at work in our own country and around the world today, who have for years advocated the exclusion, persecution, and even the execution of people whose lifestyles, religion, faith, or race, in this country and in others and we have seen the results. However, when a crime is committed against the targets of these propagandists they are seldom held accountable, in fact I cannot recall a time in recent memory where those who planted and nurtured the seeds of hate in the hearts and minds of terrorists have been brought to court. Why are not the propagandists who the Muslim terrorists who killed over 130 people in Paris and 14 in San Bernardino, the Tsarnaev brothers who attacked the Boston Marathon, the 9-11 attackers brought to trial? Why are those who inspired the Christian terrorists who killed and wounded a dozen people at the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic, or Eric Rudolph to bomb the Olympic Park in Atlanta not brought up on charges? What about those that inspired Dylann Storm Roof, the young white supremacist/neo-Confederate terrorist who killed nine people at the Emmanuel AME church in Charleston brought to justice? There are those who also attack, vandalize, burn, or desecrate churches, synagogues, mosques, and other religious shrines or schools, of course in the name of God. But I think that one of the most terrifying comments by a terrorist were those of Frazier Glenn Cross, a former KKK leader and militant white supremacist that killed three people near a Jewish Community center in Overland Park Kansas on the Eve of Passover, 2014. He claimed, “I had no criminal intent, I had a patriotic intent to stop genocide against my people,” and “I hate Jews…. They are the ones who destroy us.” He was convicted of the crime and sentenced to death.

I cannot speak for the rest of the world, but I know that in the United States that propagandists of all kinds, often hide behind our most cherished freedoms; those of freedom of speech, religion, and association, to proclaim their message of violence and murder in the name of God or their own perverted ideologies. We may never bring these people to trial, but they are by definition as guilty as the men and women who follow their words and commit these terrible crimes.

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The scary thing is that what we are seeing is just the tip of the iceberg the hatred is flowing, and as Randall Terry, the former head of Operation Rescue once exhorted his followers in 1993, “Let a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good…. If a Christian voted for Clinton, he sinned against God. It’s that simple…. Our goal is a Christian Nation… we have a biblical duty, we are called by God to conquer this country. We don’t want equal time. We don’t want Pluralism. We want theocracy. Theocracy means God rules. I’ve got a hot flash. God rules.”  [Randall Terry, Head of Operation Rescue, from The News Sentinel, Fort Wayne, Indiana, Aug 15, 1993]

The scary thing is that I went to the same church that Randall Terry attended for a while when I was stationed in Jacksonville Florida. The church of my former denomination, was a bastion of the “pro-life” movement. To be honest many of the people in the church were good people, but they were taken along by the propaganda of men like Randall Terry and others. I got to know Randall when I was there. He is a very smart and affable person, that being said, he had no empathy for any opponents, including his adopted son Jamiel who came out as Gay in 2004, or his two adopted daughters who became pregnant outside of marriage who he threw out of his home, with no-one in the pro-life movement to support them. He remains virulent in his bombastic statements about murdering abortion providers, punishing gays, and making blatantly racist political advertisements, and anti-Muslim videos.

I guess the thing that troubles me most about this now is how my former church embraced a man who was a well known extremist, a man who had left his wife for his secretary and then married her with no serious questions asked because they too were “pro-life.” It was as if Terry was some kind of folk hero to them. Interestingly enough Terry converted to Roman Catholicism a few years later and has had no problem attacking the leaders of that church when they fail to heed his uncompromising views, even so the leaders of that church not only welcomed him, but have not dared to discipline hi, even after his wife committed acts of vandalism on church property. But then, like them, Terry is “pro-life.”

When I was going to that church I found Terry’s methods and words to be extreme and they troubled me, but I said nothing to oppose or contradict them. If I had spoken out I would have been punished by the local bishop, and having been censured for my earlier writings in a theological journal which were considered “too Catholic” by another bishop of that church, I kept my mouth shut.

It was not until I came back from Iraq having seen the real world implications of what happens when religious fanatics inflict violence on their neighbors that I really understood and took a stand against such words and actions. It was only after I began to speak up against the church’s positions on rights for Gays and the LGBTQ community, the ordination of women, respect for Muslims, and the need to protect the legality of abortion that I was forced out of that church for being “too liberal.” You should have read some of the things that people said about me when I started speaking out after being thrown out of the church. It was amazing, I shake my head now, but then when I was still in the midst of post-Iraq PTSD crash the comments were very hurtful and destructive, and sadly the people who said them, many who knew me, didn’t seem to care.

Randall Terry and so many others like him, be they Christian, Muslim, or any other religion or ideology are no different than Julius Streicher. What they are preaching is nothing more than hate, masked in the words of faith, which has been, and will continue to be used by terrorists.

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Sadly, Terry is not the only one out there doing this, in fact he is now minor league compared with the propagandists of the current day including Alex Jones, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and so many others, including those of the self-proclaimed Alt-Right, who are nothing more than Nazis.

yes my friends there are thousands of others like him, and many with much more of a following than Terry will ever command, and they are for more dangerous for their words will be the ones that terrorists will follow, and for which death squads will kill. They, like the tribunal said of Streicher create “the psychological basis essential to carrying through a program of mass murder.” For this reason, and every murder their followers commit they should be held accountable.

At Nuremberg an unrepentant Streicher was asked by a prosecutor, “And do you think to call them “blood-suckers,” “a nation of blood-suckers and extortioners“– do you think that’s preaching hatred?” Streicher replied, “No, it is not preaching hatred; it is just a statement of facts.” Sadly, this is the same attitude shared by the vast majority of the current propagandists. It does not matter who they demonize, gays, women, Christians, Jews. Muslims, immigrants, the targets of hate may differ for each of these propagandists, but the message is the same, it is hatred pure and simple.

With the election of Donald Trump as the next President expect these propagandists to expand their influence and ratchet up the conspiracy theories and hatred against minorities, Women, the LGBTQ community, as well as Liberals and Progressives in general.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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September 29, 2016 · 06:00

Traveling Amid Terror Threats

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Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

This is another one of my pre-posted articles for our Munich trip and I am offering a few thoughts on terrorism. With all of the recent attacks in Europe the authorities in Munich are taking the threat of terrorism very seriously and that is a good thing. There are a lot of extra police and security officers out and about and a fence has been placed around the fest grounds in order to keep people from sneaking in. I was asked before we left if I was thinking about terrorism or afraid. I answered that I think of it but I am not afraid I just stay alert and pay attention to my surroundings like I do anywhere. But as far as terrorism in Europe, it’s real, and there are dangerous elements who I am sure would love to create havoc at the Oktoberfest, but I am not afraid.

This is because Judy and I our old hands when it comes to living with terrorism. When we were stationed in Germany in the 1980s it was at the height of the second generation of the Baader-Meinhoff Gang/ Red Army Faction reign of terror. There were frequent bombings and murders committed by these East German supported terrorists throughout Germany, and we narrowly avoided being victims of two of them; one at the Frankfurt Airport, and one at the Frankfurt Military Exchange. Every day we had to look under our car for car bombs as that was a favorite method of killing. Likewise when we drove onto base, not only did we have multiple forms of identification verified, but our vehicles were checked for bombs underneath, as well as in the trunks and engine compartments, which had to be opened and inspected. Despite that on one occasion a bomb was found in the Mess Hall and defused, across town at another base a young enlisted man was kidnapped and murdered by a female terrorist posing as a date. When we were shopping one day at a German retail store we saw, and reported to the Polizei a group of people that we recognized too late from the wanted posters. We made our report and were interrogated for over two hours. I was actually glad for that, because what we said was taken seriously.

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Baader-Meinhoff/ Red Brigade Bombing in Germany

But sadly that was just the beginning of my experience with terrorism, both international and domestic. Terrorists may have different causes and motivations, but the one thing they desire to do is to is to terrorize and kill, that their victims often have nothing to do with their grievances, real or imagined, and are innocent of any crime against them does not matter; nor does it seem to matter to their western apologists who excuse the terrorists by blaming the societies and governments of the victims instead of placing the blame on the hate filled ideology of the terrorist.

The sad thing is the ideology of DAESH has been around for a long time, but that it would not made much progress had not President Bush destroyed Iraq and given them a place to flourish. Fareed Zakaria hit the nail on the head when he noted: “I should have paid greater attention to my mentor in graduate school, Samuel Huntington, who once explained that Americans never recognize that, in the developing world, the key is not the kind of government — communist, capitalist, democratic, dictatorial — but the degree of government. That absence of government is what we are watching these days, from Libya to Iraq to Syria.” It is the absence of the restraining force of government that has allowed DAESH to thrive, and which will allow it to continue.

But that being said I am not going to let those sonsofbitches or any other terrorist sonsofbitches frighten me from living life or keeping me from traveling.

I have traveled all over the world and I have been to war. I have seen horrible things and even when I admit the many things that this country has done that are wrong, and even criminal, I cannot allow that to color my view that the terrorists; be they the Baader-Meinhoff gang and the Red Brigades, or today the hate filled religious terrorists of DAESH deserve the slightest bit of sympathy, and just because our government and other governments, as well as the media sometimes label people as terrorists who are not, does not mean that the actual terrorists, like the ones who attacked Brussels yesterday are not terrorists. They are terrorist and that word has a definitive meaning for them, there is no moral equivalence of sleight of hand here. They terrorize and kill innocents in the lands that they occupy, and are taking their fight all over the world.

So do I live with it? I decide to live in the  moment regardless of the threat. I refuse to be terrorized and I will speak out, even if I offend people. I think that Salman Rushdie, a man who has known the price of having a bounty on his head by religious fanatics for decades, said it right: “How to defeat terrorism? Don’t be terrorized. Don’t let fear rule your life. Even if you are scared.”

We are going through the airports and traveling on the subways, and going through train stations; and I will not be afraid.

Now if by some chance something does occur while we are over here I will let you know first hand, but even if terrorists strike I will refuse to be afraid.

Have a good day,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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July 15, 2016 · 00:10

Je Suis Francais 


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

One again the oldest ally and friend of the United States has been attacked by terrorists. While the details about the attacker are still scarce, this much is know; an attacker drove a tractor trailer rig loaded with grenades,mweapons and othe ammunition through a crowd that was celebrating Bastille Day in the port city of Nice on the French Riviera. At least 80 people were killed and another hundred or more wounded in the attack. It was the third major terrorist attack in the past year and a half on our French allies and friends, and more than 200 French citizens have been killed and hundreds more wounded in these brutal attacks committed by people allied with DAESH, the so called Islamic State. While it is yet undetermined who committed this barbaric act, it shows all the characteristics of DAESH. 

These attacks, along with others in Belgium and other countries in the past two years are a change in strategy for DEASH. They are losing in Iraq and Syria, their dreams of a Caliphate are dying. So now they have returned to the time honored methods of other terrorist groups, striking soft targets outside the battle area, killing innocents simply to show that they are still powerful. 

But the are not. In a war of ideas they come up short, they want a iron fisted theocracy with no freedom, no dissent, no Liberty. They stand against the proposition in the preamble of the Declaration of Independence which says “we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal.”  They stand in opposition to the national motto of France, Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, and no matter how many people they kill they cannot win, because their ideology is based on the proposition that they, and they alone represent God, and no one has any rights but them. History shows that their medieval and barbaric ideology is doomed to failure so long as people who believe in Liberty, equality, and fraternity do not give in to their terror. The same is true of any theocratic ideology of any religion. 

Unlike a lot of Americnas, I have always admired the French. They, like us are certainly not perfect, but they hold to same the ideals that we do. No king or queen, no state religion, but Liberty, equality, and fraternity. In 1958 when the people of France implemented their last Constitution, they adopted verbatim, Abraham Lincoln’s words from the Gettysburg Address as a “principle” into their own sacred instrument, which recites in Article II that the French Republic will be a “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” The French are the only other country in the world to put those words into their constitution. When I was watching the games of the Euro Cup, I was inspired to see members of the French National team, including men, people of color, whose families came from former French colonies in Africa signing Le Marseillaise at the top of their voices, proud to be Frenchmen. 


It is time to support our friends in France. It is time to stand against all forms of religious terror, and all who presume that their religion, no matter which one it is, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, or whatever,  entitles them to to rule over others in the name of their God. 

I stand with France today. Je Suis Francais, today, I am French. 

Peace,

Padre Steve+ 

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June 16, 2016 · 06:00

Who Will Speak? The Aftermath of Orlando


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Over the past few days I have written about the massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando which killed 49 people and wounded more than 50 more, mostly male homosexuals. The massacre was committed by an American born man whose father came to the United States from Afghanistan in the 1980s. While the killer swore his allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State in a call to 911 during the attack, it also appears that he was also Gay and a patron  night club. He grew up in a family where his father believed and still believes that God will judge homosexuals, and his father talked of the extreme anger that the killer supposedly exhibited a few weeks before the massacre when he saw men kissing in public. The psychological dynamics, the probability that the killing was as much motivated by self-hatred directed at the people most like him, as it was by religious ideology is rich. 

If this is the case it is an instance where a man killed because his religion condemned him. That is not surprising, it happens all the time, not necessarily the killing, but the outward manifestations of physical and verbal hatred toward homosexuals by people who cannot accept that they too are homosexual. We see it in examples some of the most vehement anti-gay preachers and politicians whose secret lives are revealed.

If this case was not so tragic in scale it would have been easy to ignore, but it cannot be ignored. It cries out to be heard, and the hatred that caused it, motivated by religious self-hate, terrorist ideology, and a culture in which Christian and some Muslim and Jewish preachers routinely call for the persecution, death, and eternal damnation of Gays, while politicians at the local, state and Federal level promote thousands of laws specifically designed to persecute and limit the civil, legal, economic, and social rights of LGBTQ people promotes a perfect climate for such crimes to be committed. One cannot promote discrimination, persecution, and demonize a group of people without expecting violence to result. 

The question is when do good people finally speak up against this toxic climate of hate which produces such avoidable tragedies? Thankfully, some are now doing so, including Lieutenant Governor Spencer Cox of Utah, a conservative Reupblican who delivered some of the most poingent remarks that I have heard in the wake of the massacre. His remarks can be found here:  Cox Speech I found them to be incredibly heartfelt and moving. I do hope that others will make the same kind of stand, not just in word, but in deed. 

We all have to make a stand as Americans to honor, respect, and care for each other; to defend the weak against the hated of those who will stop at nothing to harm them in any way possible, legal and illegal alike. If we do not we too may one day be faced with the words of the German pastor, Martin Niemoller, a war hero and conservative who initially supported Hitler because Hitler promised to “protect Christian values.” However, Niemoller, a man who despised Socialists, atheists, and had little love for the Jews, discovered that Hitler’s rule was tyranny. Niemoller ended up being sent to the concentration camps and imprisoned. After the war Niemoller wrote this penetrating verse:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a Socialist. 

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. 

Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me. 

When we hate people for their lifestyle, sexual orientation, gender, religion, race, ethnicity, or political beliefs. When we allow demagogues to preach those hatreds and and even give them our vote and political power, we cannot expect that one day, once they are done with their first enemies that they will not someday come after us. Thus it is imperative that we stand against hate in all its forms. 

Over the next few days I will be meeting a group of Army officers at Gettysburg, so I do not know how much I will post the rest of the week. I do plan on doing another follow up article on my post A Pause to Think  dealing with the hard choices of the war that we will have to fight against the Islamic State and other terrorist groups who revel in the terror and carnage that occurred in Orlando, it is not a fight that we can spurn because there are more Orlandos waiting to happen. 

Have a great day, and I do wish you all the best.

Peace

Padre Steve+ 

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June 15, 2016 · 06:00

A Pause to Think


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Just a few words this morning. The past day or two have been emotionally draining, mostly due to the negativity and attacks of some friends on social media due to my strong condemnation of the massacre in Orlando and the silence of so many Christians and conservatives about it. The lack of empathy for the victims was astounding as a number of people jumped the shark so to speak and went all out not just to disagree with me, but to condemn me. 

I handled them all well. I refused to degrade myself by sinking to their level and refused to let their venom ruin my day. It was just sad to see otherwise good people be so deluded by their hatred of Gays, Liberals, and Muslims that they couldn’t understand what I was saying. This included conservatives and liberals alike. I am just amazed at the lack of empathy or critical thinking that is the norm in the United States, and while I would like to say that it is just on one side, it spans the spectrum. 

I am a very pragmatic and realistic Liberal. As I said last week there are times that I feel like B.H. Liddell-Hart’s description of Willam Tecumseh Sherman in 1861, “a realist in wonderland.”  

Tomorrow I will be posting what some of my liberal and progressive friends will consider to be a very politically incorrect article about how to fight the Islamic State. In fact it will be similar to what I have written about that subject over the past few years. That being said it will certainly piss off some allegedly conservative people who think that a bomb a day keeps the terrorist away. 

I have grown a rather thick skin over the past few years. I can nuance this, and I can let the personal attacks runoff my back, but I will not stop speaking up for realism, nor will I condemn whole races and religions for the acts of a few. In fact I am so tired of the idiocy of those that condemn all Muslims for the actions of some that I want to throw up. The same is true for those that simply say to “bomb them into the stone ages” or “carpet bomb” them; such people know nothing of war, nor the mindset of those that we fight. 

Likewise, I am equally disgusted by supposed Liberals and progressives who make excuses for cold blooded terrorists and instead blame the United States and Western Europe for things that are often the making and toxic concoctions of well off fundamentalist Muslims who control incredibly oil rich nations, or nations which have nuclear weapons. 

That being said, I will not let those few, or those that support or condone their actions off the hook. The current wars, which came about after the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001 have been going on for almost 15 years. Since I anticipate that they will still be going on when I retire from the military in 2020 that means that many of the young men and women entering the military when I retire would not have been born when those attacks happened. For me that is unacceptable. Maybe I have become more like William Tecumseh Sherman than I thought that I ever would. He wisely said, that “War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.”  And then this, “War is the remedy that our enemies have chosen. I say let us given them all they want.” My God, how many more young people will have to continue a war that began before they were born if we do not commit ourselves to winning it now? 

This war has to be fought and those committed to terrorism destroyed root and branch. Their families and supporters will have to feel the terror that their terrorist husbands, fathers, and sons have brought upon this world.  Yes, as Sherman said, war is cruelty, but the time for half measures is at an end, otherwise it will be war without end and I can imagine nothing worse for the world than that;  especially for the people, (mostly Muslims) that are already suffering under the yoke of the Islamic State or other Muslim radical and terrorist groups or nations. 

Call me what you want. I can handle it. I am not a warmonger as anyone who knows me or who has read my writings knows. I hate it as only one who has seen it first hand as well as who has studied it can. As Colonel Strong Vincent, who died leading his brigade at the age of 26 on the slopes of Little Round Top during the Battle of Gettysburg said, “We must fight them more vindictively, or we shall be foiled at every step. We must desolate the country as we pass through it, and not leave a trace of doubtful friend or foe behind us; make them believe that we are in earnest, terribly in earnest…” 

Simply bombing people or calling in drones, and relying on less than one percent of the population to fight our wars for us will never convince those who celebrate the killing of innocents like what happened in Orlando last week that we are in earnest. This has to be a fight that every American that no matter what his or her race, religion, political association or ideology may be needs to have a hand in the fight. We all need to have skin in the game. Those who have killed so many innocents in Orlando, San Bernardino, New York and Washington, Paris and Brussels, London and Madrid, and so many other places need to feel the hard and cruel hand of war, or well will never see the end of it. 

That may not sound pleasant, but it is reality, and I dare ask anyone that disagrees with me to show me from history that I am not correct in saying this. 

Like I said, I will write more about these things tomorrow, and maybe Thursday as well. But until then, have a great day. 

Peace

Padre Steve+

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June 14, 2016 · 06:00

The Appalling Silence of Good People

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Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I have been asked by some people why I as a chaplain, priest, and military officer, not to mention the fact that I am heterosexual, so strongly support my Gay and Lesbian friends, as well as the LGBTQ community. My answer has to echo the words of Albert Einstein who said “If I were to remain silent, I’d be guilty of complicity.”

Many times the question is crouched in theological terms, and those that ask presume that I am supporting sin, and aiding as some say the “enemies of God.” The problem is, that if being Gay is a sin, then why are not all those concerned about them doing something other than condemning them unto their last breath? Likewise why are the sin hunters who hate LGBTQ people with unmatched passion; who use local, state and when possible attempt to use the Federate government to legislate against equality for LGBTQ people, and who remain dreadfully silent when Gays are attacked and killed, never condemn those that practice what are called the Seven Deadly Sins? If you don’t know them here they are; pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed, and sloth. They infect our society root and branch, and dare I say our hallowed religious institutions, from which so much of the anti-Gay venom spews forth.

I wish I knew the answer to that, but for some reason it seems that religions in general tend to condemn, persecute, and even sanction the killing of Gays, especially Gay men, more than any other institutions. Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Jews, there are elements in all these religions who are not content with simply preaching against homosexuality, but wherever they have control of government to persecute and kill LGBTQ people.

Early Sunday morning a man whose personal hatred toward Gay men, and radical Islamic religious based terrorist ideology formed a nexus of evil that allowed him to kill about fifty men and women, while wounding over fifty more. This was certainly a terrorist act, in the words of the man who committed the massacre an act done in the name of his understanding of Islam, and in accordance with the overall goals of the Islamic State.

We will find out if there is a deeper connection between the killer and the Islamic State, but that is not the biggest question here. Why did he strike a Gay nightclub versus any other soft target? There are hundreds if not thousands of soft targets in South Florida, including some which would have just as easy, and symbolic as symbols of America or even Christianity. Why not a sporting event, a non-gay nightclub, a park, a school, or even a church? Well, because here is what many Americans don’t want to admit, he hated Gays, and specifically targeted them on Pride weekend. Those two factors my friends are the key. He could have attacked anything, but he chose to kill mass numbers of Gays and others gathered at the Pulse nightclub.

Sadly he is not alone and has found significant support from anti-Gay Christian leaders like Pastor Steven Anderson and Walid Shoebat who both would prefer Gays to be killed, in fact Anderson’s only issue was the fact that it should have been the government that killed them, not the terrorist. Shoebat said that the only people mourning over the victims of the massacre are “liberals, idiots, and Gay lovers.”  I will not repeat rest of their hate filled venom here because it boggles the mind. How such people can even call themselves Christians is beyond me.

Mercifully others who are often at the front in condemning Gays have been relatively silent and mentioned that they will be “praying for the victims and their families.” But such prayers are cheap, unless you actually care about the people you are praying for, and unless you can empathize with them. Sadly, many of these religious leaders and their political allies have no intent of backing down on their work to curtail, limit, or roll back the rights of LGBTQ people, even to the point of criminalizing homosexuality.

But then there are others who are genuinely good people, who have friendships with Gays and even have Gay family members but still refuse to take the necessary step to support the basic human and legal rights of their friends and family members, and who for whatever reason, fear of being ostracized by their church or any number of a myriad of other reasons remain silent when horrible, inhuman crimes take place. But then Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. noted, “Not only will we have to repent for the sins of bad people; but we also will have to repent for the appalling silence of good people.”

All I know is that I will continue to speak out for LGBTQ people, and I will not be silent. I am sure that will lose me some friends, but I cannot stand by and remain silent, it would make me complicit with the man that killed and wounded all of those innocent people, and with the religious leaders that harbor the same views.

That is all for now. Have a good day, and please, even if you do not agree with me on anything else, and please take the time to try to feel a measure of empathy for those killed, those wounded, and those who grieve for them, and if you can take the next step to speak up for them. I promise that you will not regret that decision.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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