New Quaker Notebook

WASHINGTON (BBC) - The US Army has announced that it will apologize to the families of officers killed or wounded in action who were sent letters encouraging them to re-enlist.

The letters were sent in a December mailing to more than 5,100 Army officers listed as recently having left the military, but included about 75 officers killed in action and about 200 others wounded in action.

"Army personnel officials are contacting those officers' families now to personally apologize for erroneously sending the letters," the army said in a statement.

Among those receiving an apology was Major Zig Anderson, who was posthumously awarded a Purple Heart after his death in a firefight in Baghdad in 2004. "I gave everything I could to this conflict in Iraq, including the so-called 'ultimate sacrifice,'" said Maj Anderson, now a zombie in Milford, NY. "Besides, being dead is the only thing that keeps me out of the backdoor draft."

Satire using a shortened, loosely re-written news article published in BBC News, Saturday, January 6, 2007.

Christianism at War

Former New York Times bureau chief Chris Hedges explores a new strand of American fascism in a Truthdig report on the melding of Christianism and private security. Here's an excerpt:

One of the arguments used to assuage our fears that the mass movement being built by the Christian right is fascist at its core is that it has not yet created a Praetorian Guard, referring to the paramilitary force that defied legal constraints, made violence part of the political discourse and eventually plunged ancient Rome into tyranny and despotism. A paramilitary force that operates outside the law, one that sows fear among potential opponents and is capable of physically silencing those branded by their leaders as traitors, is a vital instrument in the hands of despotic movements. Communist and fascist movements during the last century each built paramilitary forces that operated beyond the reach of the law.

And yet we may be further down this road than we care to admit. Erik Prince, the secretive, mega-millionaire, right-wing Christian founder of Blackwater, the private security firm that has built a formidable mercenary force in Iraq, champions his company as a patriotic extension of the US military. His employees, in an act as cynical as it is deceitful, take an oath of loyalty to the Constitution. These mercenary units in Iraq, including Blackwater, contain some 20,000 fighters. They unleash indiscriminate and wanton violence against unarmed Iraqis, have no accountability and are beyond the reach of legitimate authority. The appearance of these paramilitary fighters, heavily armed and wearing their trademark black uniforms, patrolling the streets of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, gave us a grim taste of the future. It was a stark reminder that the tyranny we impose on others we will one day impose on ourselves.

Among the many issues at work here, warns Hedges, is what he calls the "politicization of the military, the fostering of the belief that violence must be used to further a peculiar ideology rather than defend a democracy." His brief report on "America's Holy Warriors" is a thoughtful piece, especially in view of our tolerance of new "citizen vigilance operations" such as the Minuteman Project operating along the southern US border.¹

1. And there is also this unsettling news story on the proliferation of private security firms being given wide police powers in some US communities: "The Private Arm of the Law," Washington Post, January 2, 2007; article is archived at Truthout.org.

Administrators of Death

If the Cheney-Bush administration couldn't quite make it in 2006 as leaders of a culture of life ,¹ they can certainly lay claim to leadership of a culture of death, which looks like it will extend well beyond this new year.

Saddam Hussein's death sentence, the result of a show trial after the fashion of Joseph Stalin, was an opportunity for the leadership of a so-called Christian nation to extend exemplary mercy to the man. Instead, the process became more like an assassination. It is a lie that the President of the United States could not influence this consequence.² Instead, the man who as governor of Texas presided over a record 152 executions,³ called the death sentence a "milestone"⁴ and then slipped off to bed as the deposed ruler of Iraq was taunted and hanged in the Green Zone:

Before the hanging was carried out in Baghdad, Mr Bush went to sleep here at his ranch and was not roused when the news came. In a statement written in advance, the president said the execution would not end the violence in Iraq.⁵

1. "Bush Hails Progress Toward 'Culture of Life'," Washington Post, January 25, 2005. The Culture of Life also became part of the 2004 GOP platform. See "2004 Republican Party Platform: A Safer World and a More Hopeful America" [pdf].
2. See Herald Tribune, December 30, 2006: "As Saddam's execution drew near, his lawyers lost an appeal in US court to try to stave it off.... But US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who heard arguments from attorneys by phone, rejected the challenge Friday night, saying US courts do not have jurisdiction to interfere in another country's judicial process."
3. See Sister Helen Prejean's "Death in Texas," New York Review of Books, 52:1, January 13, 2005.
4. BBC News, November 5, 2006.
5. "For Bush, Joy of Capture Muted at the End," New York Times, December 30, 2006. I suppose this also means the death of more compassion fairies.

US Army urges zombies to re-enlist

Christianism at War

Administrators of Death