A Rabid Flock of Lying Killers
How American Christians and Jews
justify the mass murder of innocents
in the name of "the Lord"
by John Kaminski
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DOES GOD want us to kill innocent Iraqi children? Judging by the
apparently unanimous approval in the Senate chamber from all those
truth-immune political celebrities watching President Bush's most recent
State of the Union address - all of whom are at least overtly religious
churchgoers - the message is clear: HE does.
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Apparently there is not a single member of Congress who opposes the
idea of dropping more bombs on Iraq. Sure, there are a few who want U.N.
endorsement, but if they get that - that is to say, if they can
ultimately avoid blame for this atrocity by later saying the U.N. said
it was OK to do it - there is nobody in the entire U.S. government
apparatus who opposes obliterating Iraq, and murdering still thousands
more of its defenseless women and children.
If there were, we would have heard them booing that speech, and we
didn't.
If there were, we would have heard an outraged Democratic response,
instead of the cowardly endorsement of the principles of the Bush plan
for continuing genocide that we did hear.
Imagine - not a single member of Congress who will stand up for the
most important teaching of Jesus, for the idea that killing large
numbers of innocent people for some nebulous and unprovable political
assertion is wrong - not only wrong but evil and contemptible. Not only
nebulous and unprovable, but deliberately deceitful, because it is not
Iraq that has weapons of mass destruction, but Israel - and Americans
have no objection to that, even though Israel has unjustly murdered a
thousandfold more innocent victims than Iraq has over the past decade.
We don't want freedom for the Iraqis; we just want their oil, and the
whole world knows this.
The shadow of death is the heart of darkness emanating from the
teachings of Jesus Christ and his bloodthirsty father Yahweh, according
to these sanctimonious posers in Washington who describe themselves as
born-again Christians and devout Jews.
It is now clear that the real axis of evil runs right through the
heart of Washington, D.C., and - judging by the polls - right through
the hearts of the American people.
For it is the most righteous churchgoers - the followers of
Bible-thumping, Armageddon-preaching, Moonie-funded televangelists - who
are at the rabid forefront of this call for unjust mass murder, as they
nod their heads in agreement and applause at the obviously false
rhetoric of George W. Bush preaching massacre and mayhem against all the
dark-skinned peoples of the world as his latest "faith-based"
initiative. Obedience to a corrupt church is easily twisted into
obedience to a corrupt government.
Yet while the evangelical fundamentalists lead the charge toward
their desired Armageddon, it is the level-headed respectable
Episcopalians and Methodists and Jewish liberals who by their criminal
silence provide the real ballast in the immoral inaction of the status
quo, by their failure to condemn the bloodthirsty hysteria of their
less-temperate brethren.
They bow their heads and feign sublime theological conviction as
they utter their devout prayers that their leaders fry the innocent
children of foreign countries with radioactive weaponry devised in the
deepest bowels of hell.
And for this sincere wish, they contemplate their own reward of a
peaceful afterlife in a righteous heaven. None for me, thanks. Can you
imagine hanging out with these freaks for eternity?
I HAD an argument a long time ago with someone very close to me. It
was that classic "follow the words of God's
holy law vs. doing good works" debate.
I contended that it really didn't matter what religion you
practiced, or if you practiced one at all. As long as you
lived an honest life, tried to help the downtrodden, were kind to the
less fortunate, and took the stand of rightness
against opinions you deemed to be unjust, then you were more likely to
be regarded with favor in the eyes of God than you would be if just went
to church on Sunday and screwed people the rest of the week.
Being a devout and vociferous Christian, she vehemently disagreed
with my assessment. She said, basically, that it
didn't matter what kind of good works one did, but rather, that as long
as people failed to sincerely accept Jesus
Christ as their Lord and Savior, and followed verbatim the words that
were written in the Holy Bible, they were going
straight to hell, and that was the end of it.
If you'd just read the book of Revelation, she said condescendingly,
you'd know the rules of the game. We win in the end. That's all there is
to it.
And that was essentially the end of the argument. There was no
bridging the gap.
At the time, I perceived her inflexible protestations as the very
definition of madness.
Many years later, I now contend that this is the very argument that
keeps the world ever on the brink of war, as
people who insist "holy" laws must be followed to the letter and not
challenged extend that self-centered
self-righteousness to their political leaders, as their church, ever
eager to improve its influence on the powers that be, encourages them to
do.
The feigning faithful fervently declare that the judgments of their
leaders must not be questioned. These leaders must have our best
interests at heart, they reason, because they are our leaders. This is
why politicians rush to embrace religious factions. This kind of voter
loyalty is not something you could get from a sane person.
By this method, I believe that piety leads to tyranny, that
wholehearted devotion to creed results in a kind of kneejerk fascism
that prevents critical scrutiny of decisions by parable-parroting
politicos who just might, when they make political pronouncements,
possibly have motives that are less than sincere.
Those who believe in the infallibility of Scripture are a lot less
likely to perceive these dishonest motives, because
they have been taught to believe, rather than to think. They have been
taught to blindly hope, rather than percipiently
perceive.
So when these leaders murmur familiar phrases about Christian values
and ideals, and their voters choose to
believe them, the people extend this same blanket allegiance to
politicians that they voluntarily give to their chosen
church, and because so much of their own delusional self-image is tied
up in this allegiance, they are unable or unwilling to perceive faults
in these leaders that are blatantly obvious to others who are not
shackled by the profound handicap of blind faith.
These are the shackles of religious belief. This is the prison of
God, which now threatens to destroy the planet.
Worse, these same pious politicians deliberately pander to these
poor folk who believe rather than think, further
ingratiating themselves in the minds of people who are desperate to
believe the best and pretend the worst does not exist, especially in
their own midst.
I believe that these are the people who are really responsible for
the callous and needless murders the United States government commits
every day, all around the world. I believe it is the people who dress up
every Sunday morning and tuck their bibles under their arms, smile at
their neighbors and partake of Christian fellowship who are ultimately
responsible for the cynical high-tech butchery that continues to ravage
the innocent population of Iraq, and so many other defenseless Third
World countries.
They profess that their faith in God is unshakeable even as they
see with their own eyes that the leaders they put their trust in are
murdering innocent people in the name of the very God they worship
devoutly.
Americans (and Europeans before them) have a penchant for killing
and then inventing some kind of excuse to justify it as God's work.
Devout Christians tortured and murder countless millions of "heathens"
thoughout the Middle Ages because the victims refused to accept Jesus
Christ, or the perpetrators refused to accept as truth when people said
they did accept HIM, or worst of all, as in the case with Columbus and
the Conquistadors, people were killed because they couldn't speak the
proper language, and the killers interpreted this as proof they didn't
believe in Jesus Christ.
Of course, Christians are not alone. The Jewish people are currently
engaged in a pogrom of their own that matches the most horrid behavior
of any people in history as they gun down babies and old women in their
quest to complete the theft of land from its underprivileged and
persecuted Arab inhabitants. And the Muslims have their own religious
horrors to be ashamed of as well: the beheading of minor miscreants for
misdemeanors, and demanding women live their lives in shrouds because
men can't control their own penile fantasies.
But persecution of women is what religions of that type are all
about, and it exists in spades in all three creeds. Remember that Jewish
prayer: thank God I was not born a woman. Or the Christian ban on birth
control to keep women from ever attaining equal status with men. And
those Muslim burkas.
It is religious conviction that keeps us from seeing the truth, the
priests and rabbis and mullahs who preach hatred of the stranger, and
the deep-seated fear of ordinary people who are afraid to speak the
truth for fear of persecution that grips the entire world.
Perhaps the last group is the worst offender against the religious
precepts they insist they espouse. Because this fearful silence allows
hypocritical killers to ply their trades, the really guilty party in the
continuing U.S. war against the entire world are ordinary churchgoers
whom you see every Sunday dressed in their finery, because it is their
cowardly silence amd unquestioning obedience to authority that
ultimately allows these horrors to continue,
It is the silence of ordinary Americans too busy with their trivial
pursuits or too cowed by their striving for illusory status that is
ultimately to blame for the needless extermination of so many fine and
innocent souls all over the world.
As a disaffected ex-CIA agent now living in another country once
told me, "Americans are not a very nice bunch of people."
NOW, AT this juncture, many of you have no doubt noticed my failure
to be as vehement in my contempt for Muslims and Hindus and other sects
as I have been for hypocritical Christians and Jews, and therefore, I
must be spreading Muslim or Hindu propaganda as my way of undermining
the the principles of moral, God-centered America. Let me assure you
that it is only because I have lived my whole life in America, and have
met insufficient numbers of Muslims and Hindus that I am unable to
comment on their practices as directly as I can about Christians and
Jews.
Having said that, I can also say that the paradigmatic parable of
the insanity of all religions that I use most often derives from the
Hindu epic Bhagavad Gita, in which Lord Krishna advises Prince Arjuna
that it doesn't really matter how many people are killed in battle
because all souls eventually come to him anyway, so go ahead and begin
the slaughter.
And although I have recently heard an evocative passage from the
teachings of Mohammed about his prescription for tolerance and care of
the shrines of other religions, I certainly can be no fan of a
philosophy that prescribes death to women for flirting.
Nevertheless, it is obvious to me - and precious few others - that
the events of 9/11 were a ruse principally designed to defame the
Muslims of the world, to provide an excuse for their persecution and a
justification for the invasion of the Middle East oilfields by Western
corporations. Every political event of the 20th century - and in some
respects long before that - has masked a subtext involving the
collective enslavement and defamation of all people in that part of the
world, and all these events since the Crusades have been generated by
Christian and/or Jewish colonial interests. Just look at the histories
of all the Middle Eastern countries, which were all (except Iran)
initially constructed out of nothing for political convenience by
British Petroleum and its allies.
Just look deeply into the creation of al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden,
Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Saddam Hussein, the Saudi princes and presidents
of Egypt and Pakistan and see how the tentacles of their histories
always slither back to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
As is the case now in the American aggression against Iraq,
religious propaganda always serves as the convenient cover story for
naked political motives, a righteous rhetoric by which to cloak hideous
crimes.
We can continue to blame our leaders for their duplicity, but the
real fault lies in the hearts of ordinary, God-fearing people. Because
they refused to ask the hard questions about the inconsistency of their
own beliefs, and particularly in the fascist vilification of strangers,
they are now unable to bring themselves to ask the same hard questions
of their own leaders. And as a result, much of the world - including
themselves - is now dying for no good reason.
If there is any group against whom a preemptive strike is needed in
this world, it is those who cower inside chapels of worship and conclude
that the power of their chosen belief exempts them from the need to
think clearly and feel sincerely about all those people who are being
killed in their names.
- – John Kaminski
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John Kaminski is a writer who lives on the coast of Florida and gets
really queasy when he passes houses of worship, because he knows the
real reason for all this needless death and destruction dwells inside
them.
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