Daily Archives: March 13, 2008

CAMPAIGN 08 EDITORIAL: Rising to the Wright challenge

Rising to the Wright challenge
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, March 13, 2008

The “dirt” on Rev. Jeremiah Wright has been around for years, so why has ABC News chosen to highlight Obama’s controversial pastor now?

The race fire has been lit and those who believe it serves their political interests are happy to pour fuel on the flames.

How should Obama respond? It’s time for some jujitsu.

Let’s not confuse the package with the content.

In and of themselves, Wright’s statements are not totally outrageous. (I know. Some people will think it’s outrageous for me to say that.) What makes what he’s saying so inflammatory isn’t just what he’s saying but the way he’s saying it:

Wright is the scary, fiery, black preacher: the kind who might incite an insurrection. Contrast his tone, his body language, and his theatrical force with the calm, comforting, sensible message and sweet tone that comes from some of America’s favorite gentle men of God, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson:

Unless Wright’s passion — Wright’s unwhiteness — is really the issue, then instead of responding to his statements with some new formulation of reject-and-denounce, how about grabbing this bull by the horns and saying, OK, you want race to be a campaign issue? Let’s go for it!

“God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human,” says Rev Wright. Is this pure anti-American vitriol, or does Wright have a point?

One in a hundred Americans are behind bars.

That America, the land of the free, should have more people in prison than any other nation on earth is an issue that surely merits national attention.

If America’s prison population of 2.3 million was confined to one state, it would be a state bigger than New Mexico.

Among 20-34 year old black men, one in nine is incarcerated. This is a social disaster and it should be a national disgrace.

When it comes to issues such as this, the only people who can hold their hands on their hearts and say God Bless America are the shareholders of companies like Corrections Corporation of America who have seen their stock value and revenues steadily increase for the last eight years.

What should we be talking about? Rev Wright’s intemperate rhetoric? Or some of the things he’s calling attention to — even if he calls so loudly he might be hard to hear?

CAMPAIGN 08 & EDITOR’S COMMENT: What’s Hillary’s position on the Hitler Concept?

Hillary’s prayer: Hillary Clinton’s religion and politics
By Kathryn Joyce and Jeff Sharlet, Mother Jones, September 1, 2007

When Clinton first came to Washington in 1993, one of her first steps was to join a Bible study group. For the next eight years, she regularly met with a Christian “cell” whose members included Susan Baker, wife of Bush consigliere James Baker; Joanne Kemp, wife of conservative icon Jack Kemp; Eileen Bakke, wife of Dennis Bakke, a leader in the anti-union Christian management movement; and Grace Nelson, the wife of Senator Bill Nelson, a conservative Florida Democrat.

Clinton’s prayer group was part of the Fellowship (or “the Family”), a network of sex-segregated cells of political, business, and military leaders dedicated to “spiritual war” on behalf of Christ, many of them recruited at the Fellowship’s only public event, the annual National Prayer Breakfast. (Aside from the breakfast, the group has “made a fetish of being invisible,” former Republican Senator William Armstrong has said.) The Fellowship believes that the elite win power by the will of God, who uses them for his purposes. Its mission is to help the powerful understand their role in God’s plan.

Clinton declined our requests for an interview about her faith, but in Living History, she describes her first encounter with Fellowship leader Doug Coe at a 1993 lunch with her prayer cell at the Cedars, the Fellowship’s majestic estate on the Potomac. Coe, she writes, “is a unique presence in Washington: a genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide to anyone, regardless of party or faith, who wants to deepen his or her relationship with God.” [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — In a 2006 New York Times interview, Hillary Clinton said warmly that “Doug [Coe] was always very supportive of me.” One wonders then what her position might be on Coe’s promotion of the “Hitler concept”?

This is how Coe explained the concept in a conversation recounted in Harper’s:

“Do you know what a difference a friend can make? A friend you can agree with?” He smiled. “Two or three agree, and they pray? They can do anything. Agree. Agreement. What’s that mean?” Doug looked at me. “You’re a writer. What does that mean?”

I remembered Paul’s letter to the Philippians, which we had begun to memorize. Fulfill ye my joy, that ye be likeminded.

“Unity,” I said. “Agreement means unity.”

Doug didn’t smile. “Yes,” he said. “Total unity. Two, or three, become one. Do you know,” he asked, “that there’s another word for that?”

No one spoke.

“It’s called a covenant. Two, or three, agree? They can do anything. A covenant is . . . powerful. Can you think of anyone who made a covenant with his friends?”

We all knew the answer to this, having heard his name invoked numerous times in this context. Andrew from Australia, sitting beside Doug, cleared his throat: “Hitler.”

“Yes,” Doug said. “Yes, Hitler made a covenant. The Mafia makes a covenant. It is such a very powerful thing. Two, or three, agree.”

And Jeff Sharlet, the author of the Harper’s piece, in a subsequent interview went on to explain more about this concept as understood by members of Coe’s secretive organization:

All these guys Hitler, Lenin, Pol Pot and Osama bin Laden is another guy they cite a lot, are guys who understood the power of a political avant garde. That’s what they mean by the Hitler Concept.

If the evidence of disarray inside her campaign is any indication, it doesn’t seem that Hillary is making use of this Family principle. Even so, her association with Coe and his organization does little to burnish her Democratic credentials.

CAMPAIGN 08 FEATURE: McCain adviser wants to destroy Islam

McCain’s spiritual guide: destroy Islam
By David Corn, Mother Jones, March 12, 2008

Senator John McCain hailed as a spiritual adviser an Ohio megachurch pastor who has called upon Christians to wage a “war” against the “false religion” of Islam with the aim of destroying it.

On February 26, McCain appeared at a campaign rally in Cincinnati with the Reverend Rod Parsley of the World Harvest Church of Columbus, a supersize Pentecostal institution that features a 5,200-seat sanctuary, a television studio (where Parsley tapes a weekly show), and a 122,000-square-foot Ministry Activity Center. That day, a week before the Ohio primary, Parsley praised the Republican presidential front-runner as a “strong, true, consistent conservative.” The endorsement was important for McCain, who at the time was trying to put an end to the lingering challenge from former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, a favorite among Christian evangelicals. A politically influential figure in Ohio, Parsley could also play a key role in McCain’s effort to win this bellwether state in the general election. McCain, with Parsley by his side at the Cincinnati rally, called the evangelical minister a “spiritual guide.”

The leader of a 12,000-member congregation, Parsley has written several books outlining his fundamentalist religious outlook, including the 2005 Silent No More. In this work, Parsley decries the “spiritual desperation” of the United States, and he blasts away at the usual suspects: activist judges, civil libertarians who advocate the separation of church and state, the homosexual “culture” (“homosexuals are anything but happy and carefree”), the “abortion industry,” and the crass and profane entertainment industry. And Parsley targets another profound threat to the United States: the religion of Islam.

In a chapter titled “Islam: The Deception of Allah,” Parsley warns there is a “war between Islam and Christian civilization.” He continues:

I cannot tell you how important it is that we understand the true nature of Islam, that we see it for what it really is. In fact, I will tell you this: I do not believe our country can truly fulfill its divine purpose until we understand our historical conflict with Islam. I know that this statement sounds extreme, but I do not shrink from its implications. The fact is that America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed, and I believe September 11, 2001, was a generational call to arms that we can no longer ignore.

Parsley is not shy about his desire to obliterate Islam. [complete article]

OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: The slow rise and meteoric fall of Admiral “Fox” Fallon

American Icarus
By Mark Perry, Rootless Cosmopolitan, March 12, 2008

There is a view abroad, commonly held, that Admiral William “Fox” Fallon has been sacrificed, has been gotten out of the way, by the Bush Administration because he disagreed with its policies on Iran. That Fallon stood in the way of the neo-Conservative cabal who is bent on expanding the Middle East conflict and that, when given the order for the attack (at some point in the future), Fallon would have courageously refused the order and reversed the tide of history.

What bunk.

William Fox Fallon was and is a Navy officer and a patriot. As such, if given a legitimate order from the President of the United States, as passed through the legally constituted chain-of-command, he would have obeyed the order. Of this we can have absolutely no doubt. To do otherwise is treason and to believe otherwise is to believe that Fallon would have rejected every moment of training, every tradition of his service, every law and custom that has governed U.S. civilian-military relations. The problem is not that Fox Fallon disagreed with George Bush.

The problem is that he talked to Thomas Barnett. [complete article]

See also, The man between war and peace (Thomas Barnett) and Commander rejects article of praise (WP).

Editor’s Comment — Sometimes it’s better to get out sooner than later.

As much as I respect the knowledge and views of my friend and colleague Mark Perry, it’s hard for me to believe that Fallon didn’t know exactly what he was in for when agreed to spend several days with Thomas Barnett. Indeed, in addition to spending four-and-a-half days with him, Fallon later welcomed Barnett as a speaker at an event the admiral was hosting.

Barnett blogs: “… since I’d offered him a speech in return for the favor of letting me on the tour, and since his staff took that offer up by asking me to address the Bright Star post-exercise gathering of senior Mideast military leaders (which Fallon was hosting) in Cairo the weekend after the trip, I figured I’d get some chance for F2F [face-to-face] follow-up if required.”

Far from thinking that Fallon took a calculated risk in responding to Esquire’s invitation, I’m more inclined to think that on some level he got what he was asking for.

Barnett is upfront in spelling out his own motives where — in a comment on his blog — he refers to “outing” Fallon:

It’s the secrecy by which decisions are made that has poisoned the well. If “outing” any opposition to the administration’s line puts that person at risk, then is the journalist’s choice simply to ignore the internal debate to spare the public such knowledge?

Cause if it is, then we’re offering descriptions of our own government that historically are better leveled at authoritarian regimes, where America constantly needs to be careful shining a light on dissidents lest they fall under attack by authorities.

If we place our military leadership in that category, then this country is in a world of trouble.

The public’s right to know of internal debates on matters as crucial as to whether or not we go to war with Iran is sacrosanct in my mind. Wars of choice have to be national choices, not just leadership choices.

Fallon is now a free agent. Will he use his influence to more effect outside than he did inside the Pentagon? The answer to that may depend on who wins the Democratic presidential nomination, but if after a diplomatic silence of a few weeks, Ret Adm Fallon lends some solid military credibility to the campaign of the young senator from Illinois, I wouldn’t be surprised. And then, speculating even further over the horizon, why should we not ask: Which position offers the greater potential for Fallon to fulfill his stated mission?

He said, “I’d like to continue to do things that will be useful to the world and its inhabitants.”

Was he seeing himself as head of CENTCOM when he said that, or might he have had had some inkling that a larger brief lay ahead? Secretary of Defense, or Secretary of State, perhaps….