As the war becomes more deadly, costly and counter-productive each day, a growing majority of citizens want to see a change of course in Iraq and U.S. foreign policies that better reflect American values.

With mid-term elections approaching, Peace Action's Peace Voter 2006 campaign will bring the occupation of Iraq and other key foreign policy issues to the forefront of the electoral debate.

We will put our elected officials on record on critical peace and security issues and demand their commitment to a more responsible foreign policy for our country.

By making peace the top priority in 2006, you can make a big impact at the local level, helping to build a powerful movement of people willing to organize for peace on Election Day, and beyond. This November, let's hold Congress accountable to the rising tide of public opinion that's urging an end to the war in Iraq and a new direction for U.S. relations with the world.

Become a Peace Voter today.

1100 Wayne Ave. Ste 1020, Silver Spring MD 20910 (301) 565-4050 www.Peace-Action.org

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Pasta for Peace

Hoosiers for Peace requests the honor of your presence…

What: Share Sunday Gravy with Local Progressives at Pasta for Peace. Good Food, Stimulating Conversation, Inspirational Music, Film, and Art and a Silent Auction. Did we mention the pasta was shaped like peace signs? To reserve your seat, call 202-9302 or e-mail heather@hoosiersforpeace.org. Seats are limited and going fast.

When: June 25, 2006 from 1 to 4 p.m. (with dinner at 2 p.m.)

Where: Indianapolis Peace and Learning Center (6040 DeLong Rd.) in Eagle Creek Park.

Why: Now is the time to spread the word to mainstream America to unite and stand up for peace. Hoosiers for Peace is sponsoring a statewide advertising campaign, which is focused on uniting the community to call for peace. This campaign will cost $14,000. This money will be used to pay for a full-page ad in the Indianapolis Star to ask more than 700,000 Hoosiers to call for peace. To find out more visit www.hoosiersforpeace.org

Cost: Adults $20, Children 5-12 $7, Children under 5 eat free. All proceeds will go towards the advertising campaign. Seats are limited, contact Heather for tickets today: 202-9302 or e-mail heather@hoosiersforpeace.org.

Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.  -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

May 7, 2006

Dear Peacemakers,

Will you help to spread and encourage peace? With a record number of American soldiers dying in April 2006 and possible military action against Iran becoming daily news, now is the time to spread the word to mainstream America to unite and stand up for peace.

Hoosiers for Peace is sponsoring a statewide advertising campaign, which is focused on uniting the community to call for peace. This campaign will cost $14,000. This money will be used to pay for a full-page ad in the Indianapolis Star to ask more than 700,000 Hoosiers to call for peace. We are contacting dozens of organizations to make a proposal to form a coalition to raise funds and send a collaborative message to Hoosiers to Call for Peace. The message is: Call your friends, your family, and your representatives and ask them to support the Call for Peace.

Like most Americans, we oppose war based on the following, which will be reflected in the advertisement:

A. War Kills. More than 2,400 American Soldiers have died and nearly 1,000 Hoosier soldiers are in harms way.

B. War depletes our resources. Billions of dollars are going to sustain war efforts while ordinary citizens struggle for social services.

C. War will not make us secure. Studies have shown that the U.S. is no more secure today than it was before 911.

Hoosiers for Peace, a website sponsored by Progressive Indiana, requests your support to make this advertisement a success. We will use the advertisement to call for peace. Each group in the coalition working on this project will be listed in the ad. Each group will be asked to raise $1000 by October 1, 2006. Below are some suggestions for fundraising:

1. Letter Writing Campaign: Contact your family and friends and ask them to support this call for peace. Tell them how many people we can reach and ask them to make a generous donation and spread the word. You may collect the money through your organization or you may refer them to Progressive Indiana. Donations may be sent through our secure online giving by going to www.progressiveindiana.org and click on donate now or log onto www.hoosiersforpeace and click on donate now. Checks may also be made payable to Progressive Indiana and mailed to:

Progressive Indiana

P.O. Box 55253

Indianapolis, Indiana 46205-0253

2. Host a house party. Go grassroots and organize a pasta dinner or backyard barbecue and ask for a donation from each guest. Play poker and donate half of each pot to the campaign for peace. Have a bake sale through your church or place of employment.

3. Plan a small event. Invite your community to an event and ask for donations for the ad. Small concerts, speakers, and socials are some ideas for these events. Get creative and network!

We need at least 14 groups to join the coalition and many more people to join the campaign to help fill in possible gaps. If we join together we can make this happen and we can bring Hoosiers together through this ad. As we Honor the Dead, Heal the Wounded, and call for an End to the War we can stand united for peace. We can make a difference by showing ordinary Hoosiers that there are many people like them working for peace. Please contact us as soon as possible if you would like to participate in this campaign. With a little work and collaboration we can make a large impact on our community.

In Peace,

Heather Allen-Garde

Director, Hoosiers For Peace

heather@hooisersforpeace.org

heatherreneeallen@yahoo.com

317/202-9302

It isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it – Eleanor Roosevelt

About the Author

Dr. David C. Korten has authored numerous books, including When Corporations Rule the World, and The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism. He is a co-founder and board chair of the Positive Futures Network, which publishes YES! A Journal of Positive Futures; founder and president of The People-Centered Development Forum; an associate of the International Forum on Globalization; and a member of the Club of Rome. A former Harvard Business School professor, Air Force captain, and USAID advisor, he has more than thirty years experience living and working in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. He also serves on the boards of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies and the Bainbridge Graduate Institute.

David Korten

Butler University

June 26, 2006

7pm

Reilley Room

Atherton Hall

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The Not Your Soldier Project gives youth the tools we need to stop the military invasion of our schools and our communities.

Not Your Soldier Action Camps bring together young people who are heavily targeted by military recruitment. At the camps, youth learn how to take action to fight military recruitment, the poverty draft, and the corporations that profit off of war.

In 2006, Not Your Soldier will be hosting a national camp for youth and adult allies.

>>Go to the Pick a Camp section to find out more!

If you're interested in hosting a regional Not Your Soldier gathering, find out more here.

Not Your Soldier National Days of Action are coordinated days of creative, non-violent direct action where youth take leadership and tell recruiters, "We are Not Your Soldiers!"

>>Sign up for our action alert e-mail list!

Parents: have questions? Check out Info for Parents, and our FAQ's to find out what the camps will be like.

Today's News and Views

Steve Young: If the Media Reported on Democrats the Way they Report on Republicans

Steve Young

Sat Jun 17, 3:06 PM ET

(Another Lords of Loud Post by Steve Young)

It was a great week for the Democrats!

A grand jury refused to indict Rep. Carol McKinney (D-Ga). The indictment pass clearly indicates that McKinney did nothing wrong, most likely never hit the police officer, nor outed a covert CIA agent as political and personal retribution.

Ann Coulter continued to open her mouth, all but calling for the killing of John Murtha.

With Tom Delay, Karl Rove, etc, etc, being investigated for months (and years), neither was castigated by the President nor his party yet the Democratic leadership took about two seconds to eject discredited Rep. William Jefferson (news, bio, voting record) (D- La) from the House and Ways committee.

More prison abuse reports under an administration that continues to abuse the Geneva Conventions.

Presidential Spokesperson, Tony Snow, called the 2500 American soldiers who have been killed in Iraq, "a number."

Ann Coulter.

But the Democrats' scored their biggest advantage this week when most of them did not get behind a Republican resolution to support the Bush policy that has resulted in the deaths of 2500 American soldiers as well as the over 100,000 Iraqis who never asked for the policy in the first place.

The politically-motivated vote will likely backfire on Republicans as a large majority of Americans believe that the President's decision to invade Iraq was not worth it. Now the Republicans have gone on record saying that the majority of Americans are wrong.

The Republican-controlled congress will be facing a tough uphill battle as the resolution also put Republicans on record saying to U.S. soldiers - and their families - that it's okay that we have no idea when they'll be coming home unless they are dead, horribly injured or gay.

While House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), declared that "Achieving victory is our only option," the Republicans refused to outline what that "victory" would entail. That in itself could seal the majority party's fate as most Americans no longer seem to buy rhetoric over action.

This was also a week where Republicans re-energized the obvious Karl Rove-supplied talking point, "cut and run," to describe John Murtha and John Kerry. It's still hard to gauge how difficult it will be to defend the fact that both men volunteered for war time duty while so many Republicans led by the likes of Rove, Vice President Dick Cheney and just about every radio talk show host, "cut and ran" when they had a chance to serve in the Armed Forces during wartime, yet seem to have no problem sending someone else's children into harm's way. Add to that the fact that neither Murtha or Kerry actually advocates either "cutting" or "running," but rather a careful watch from the borders of someopne else's civil war, should also give Democrats another arrow in the quiver as Republicans will surely be facing tough questioning on the Sunday morning talk shows concerning their continued shams and misleading phraseology.

If the Republicans continue to throw up wedge non-issues like gay marriage, flag-burning and the still pending, swallow prohibition, while ignoring problems that Americans really care about - affordable healthcare, outsourcing and bringing our boys and girls home - issues that the Republicans have indeed "cut and run" from, this November mid-term could truly turn Washington upside down.

It will be difficult for President Bush and his Congress to bounce back from a week that Democrats may ride all the way to the fall election.

Oh, and I almost forgot. Ann Coulter.

Back to you, Brit.

Steve Young is author of Great Failures of the Extremely Successfuland can be read every Sunday on the L.A. Daily News Oped Page right above Bill O'Reilly.

From the issue dated June 23, 2006

Jesus Is Not a Republican

By RANDALL BALMER

In November 2002, 30 years after my previous visit to Wheaton College to hear George McGovern, I approached the podium in Edman Chapel to address the student body. At evangelical colleges like Wheaton, in Illinois, there are two kinds of required gatherings: chapel and convocation. The former is religious in nature, whereas a speaker at convocation has the license to be far more discursive, even secular — or political. The college's chaplain, however, had invited me to preach in chapel, not convocation, and so, despite temptation, I delivered a homily that was, as I recall, not overly long, appropriate to the occasion, and reasonably well received.

I doubt very much that I will be invited back to Edman Chapel. One of the benefits of being reared within evangelicalism, I suppose, is that you understand the workings of the evangelical subculture. I know, for example, that when my new book on evangelicals appears, the minions of the religious right will seek to discredit me rather than engage the substance of my arguments. The initial wave of criticism, as an old friend who has endured similar attacks reminded me, will be to deny that I am, in fact, really an evangelical Christian. When that fails — and I'll put up my credentials as an evangelical against anyone's! — the next approach will be some gratuitous personal attack: that I am a member of the academic elite, spokesman for the Northeastern establishment, misguided liberal, prodigal son, traitor to the faith, or some such. Another evangelical friend with political convictions similar to mine actually endured a heresy trial.

The evangelical subculture, which prizes conformity above all else, doesn't suffer rebels gladly, and it is especially intolerant of anyone with the temerity to challenge the shibboleths of the religious right. I understand that. Despite their putative claims to the faith, the leaders of the religious right are vicious toward anyone who refuses to kowtow to their version of orthodoxy, and their machinery of vilification strikes with ruthless, dispassionate efficiency. Longtime friends (and not a few family members) will shuffle uneasily around me and studiously avoid any sort of substantive conversation about the issues I raise — and then quietly strike my name from their Christmas-card lists. Circle the wagons. Brook no dissent.

And so, since my chances of being invited back to Edman Chapel have dropped from slim to none, I offer here an outline of what I would like to say to the students at Wheaton and, by extension, to evangelicals everywhere.

Evangelicals have come a long way since my visit to Edman Chapel in 1972. We have moved from cultural obscurity — almost invisibility — to becoming a major force in American society. Jimmy Carter's run for the presidency launched us into the national consciousness, but evangelicals abandoned Carter by the end of the 1970s, as the nascent religious right forged an alliance with the Republican Party.

In terms of cultural and political influence, that alliance has been a bonanza for both sides. The coalition dominates talk radio and controls a growing number of state legislatures and local school boards. It is seeking, with some initial success, to recast Hollywood and the entertainment industry. The Republicans have come to depend on religious-right voters as their most reliable constituency, and, with the Republicans firmly in command of all three branches of the federal government, leaders of the religious right now enjoy unprecedented access to power.

And what has the religious right done with its political influence? Judging by the platform and the policies of the Republican Party — and I'm aware of no way to disentangle the agenda of the Republican Party from the goals of the religious right — the purpose of all this grasping for power looks something like this: an expansion of tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, the continued prosecution of a war in the Middle East that enraged our longtime allies and would not meet even the barest of just-war criteria, and a rejiggering of Social Security, the effect of which, most observers agree, would be to fray the social-safety net for the poorest among us. Public education is very much imperiled by Republican policies, to the evident satisfaction of the religious right, and it seeks to replace science curricula with theology, thereby transforming students into catechumens.

America's grossly disproportionate consumption of energy continues unabated, prompting demands for oil exploration in environmentally sensitive areas. The Bush administration has jettisoned U.S. participation in the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, which called on Americans to make at least a token effort to combat global warming. Corporate interests are treated with the kind of reverence and deference once reserved for the deity.

The Bible contains something like 2,000 references to the poor and the believer's responsibility for the poor. Sadly, that obligation seems not to have trickled down into public policy. On judicial matters, the religious right demands appointees who would diminish individual rights to privacy with regard to abortion. At the same time, it approves a corresponding expansion of presidential powers, thereby disrupting the constitutionally mandated system of checks and balances.

The torture of human beings, God's creatures — some guilty of crimes, others not — has been justified by the Bush administration, which also believes that it is perfectly acceptable to conduct surveillance on American citizens without putting itself to the trouble of obtaining a court order. Indeed, the chicanery, the bullying, and the flouting of the rule of law that emanates from the nation's capital these days make Richard Nixon look like a fraternity prankster.

Where does the religious right stand in all this? Following the revelations that the U.S. government exported prisoners to nations that have no scruples about the use of torture, I wrote to several prominent religious-right organizations. Please send me, I asked, a copy of your organization's position on the administration's use of torture. Surely, I thought, this is one issue that would allow the religious right to demonstrate its independence from the administration, for surely no one who calls himself a child of God or who professes to hear "fetal screams" could possibly countenance the use of torture. Although I didn't really expect that the religious right would climb out of the Republican Party's cozy bed over the torture of human beings, I thought perhaps they might poke out a foot and maybe wiggle a toe or two.

I was wrong. Of the eight religious-right organizations I contacted, only two, the Family Research Council and the Institute on Religion and Democracy, answered my query. Both were eager to defend administration policies. "It is our understanding, from statements released by the Bush administration," the reply from the Family Research Council read, "that torture is already prohibited as a means of collecting intelligence data." The Institute on Religion and Democracy stated that "torture is a violation of human dignity, contrary to biblical teachings," but conceded that it had "not yet produced a more comprehensive statement on the subject," even months after the revelations. Its president worried that the "anti-torture campaign seems to be aimed exclusively at the Bush administration," thereby creating a public-relations challenge.

I'm sorry, but the use of torture under any circumstances is a moral issue, not a public-relations dilemma.

And what about abortion, the issue that the religious right decided in the early 1980s was its signature concern? Since January 2003, the Republican and religious-right coalition has controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress — yet, curiously, it has not tried to outlaw abortion. Why? Could it be that its members are less interested in actually reducing the incidence of abortion itself (in which case they should seek to alter public opinion on the matter) than in continuing to use abortion as a potent political weapon?

Equally striking is the rhetoric that leaders of the religious right use to motivate their followers. In the course of traveling around the country, I have been impressed anew by the pervasiveness of the language of militarism among leaders of the religious right. Patrick Henry College, according to its founding president, Michael Farris, "is training an army of young people who will lead the nation and shape the culture with biblical values." Rod Parsley, pastor of World Harvest Church, in Ohio, issues swords to those who join his organization, the Center for Moral Clarity, and calls on his followers to "lock and load" for a "Holy Ghost invasion." The Traditional Values Coalition advertises its "Battle Plan" to take over the federal judiciary. "I want to be invisible. I do guerrilla warfare," Ralph Reed, former director of the Christian Coalition, famously declared about his political tactics in 1997. I wonder how that sounds in the ears of the Prince of Peace.

Such rhetoric and policies are a scandal, a reproach to the gospel I honor and to the Jesus I love. I went to Sunday school nearly every week of my childhood. But I must have been absent the day they told us that the followers of Jesus were obliged to secure even greater economic advantages for the affluent, to deprive those Jesus called "the least of these" of a living wage, and to despoil the environment by sacrificing it on the altar of free enterprise. I missed the lesson telling me that I should turn a blind eye to the suffering of others, even those designated as my enemies.

The Bible I read says something quite different. It tells the story of ancient Israel's epic struggle against injustice and bondage — and of the Almighty's investment in the outcome of that struggle. But the Hebrew Scriptures also caution against the imperiousness of that people, newly liberated from their oppressors, lest they treat others the way they themselves were treated back in Egypt. The prophets enjoin Yahweh's chosen people to "act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God" and warn of the consequences of failing to do so: exile and abandonment. "Administer true justice," the prophet Zechariah declares on behalf of the Lord Almighty. "Show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor. Do not plot evil against each other."

The New Testament echoes those themes, calling the followers of Jesus to care for orphans and widows, to clothe the naked, and to shelter the homeless. The New Testament I read says that, in the eyes of Jesus, there is no preference among the races and no distinction between the sexes. The Jesus I try to follow tells me that those who take on the role of peacemakers "will be called the children of God," and this same Jesus spells out the kind of behavior that might be grounds for exclusion from the kingdom of heaven: "I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me."

We could have a lively discussion and even vigorous disagreement over whether it is incumbent upon the government to provide services to the poor, but those who argue against such measures should be prepared with some alternative program or apparatus.

The agenda of the Republican-religious-right coalition, moreover, is utterly disconsonant with the distinguished record of evangelical activists in the 19th century. They interpreted the teachings of Jesus to mean that, yes, they really did bear responsibility for those on the margins of society, especially for the emancipation of slaves and for the rights of women.

In addition to distorting the teachings of Jesus, the religious right has also been cavorting with some rather unsavory characters in its quest for political and cultural power. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, who last year pleaded guilty to accepting $2.4-million worth of bribes, had earned a 100-percent approval rating from Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition while a member of the House of Representatives. During more than two decades as a member of the state Legislature, Jim West, a former mayor of Spokane, Wash., sponsored various bills aimed at curtailing the rights of gays and lesbians, as well as a bill that would have outlawed any consensual sexual contact between teenagers; the voters of Spokane recalled West last December, after he admitted to arranging gay sexual liaisons over the Internet and offering city jobs in exchange for sexual favors.

For the better part of three decades now, we've been treated to the moral sermonizing of William J. Bennett, who wrote The Book of Virtues and served as Ronald Reagan's secretary of education and as one of Bill Clinton's most relentless critics. We now know that Bennett is a compulsive gambler. Ralph Reed, currently a Republican candidate for lieutenant governor of Georgia — the first step on his road to the White House — has always preached against gambling as part of his "family values" rhetoric. He has also done consulting work for Enron (which engaged in other forms of gambling) and accepted as much as $4.2-million from Indian tribes intent on maintaining a regional monopoly for their casinos. "I need to start humping in corporate accounts," he wrote to the lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Tony Perkins, a graduate of Jerry Falwell's Liberty University and head of the Family Research Council, arguably the most influential religious-right organization aside from Focus on the Family, has had ties to white-supremacist organizations in his native Louisiana.

The purpose in ticking off a roll call of rogues associated with the religious right (and the list could have been longer) is not to single individuals out for obloquy and certainly not to suggest the absence of moral failings on the other side of the political spectrum — though I must say that some of this behavior makes Bill Clinton's adolescent dalliances pale by comparison. The point, rather, is to argue that those who make it their business to demand high standards of moral rectitude from others ought to be able to approach those standards themselves. My evangelical theology tells me that we are, all of us, sinners and flawed individuals. But it also teaches the importance of confession, restitution, and amendment of behavior — whether it be an adulterous tryst, racial intolerance, or prevarication in the service of combating one's enemies. We have seen nothing of the sort from these putatively Christian power brokers.

"Do not be misled," St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians. "Bad company corrupts good character." Jesus himself asked: "What good would it be for you to gain the whole world, yet forfeit your soul?" The coalition with the Republican Party is blasphemy, pure and simple.

It has also led to a denigration of the faith. The early years of the religious right provide a case in point. The pursuit of political power and influence in the 1980s came at a fearsome price. For most of the 20th century, evangelicalism had existed primarily within its own subculture, one that protected individuals from the depredations of the world. It was an insular universe, and the world outside of the subculture, including the political realm, was corrupt and corrupting. Believers beware. Along about 1980, however, evangelicals, newly intoxicated with political power and cultural influence, succumbed to the seductions of the culture. It was during the Reagan years that we began to hear about the so-called prosperity gospel, the notion that God will reward true believers with the emoluments of this world. Evangelicalism was still a subculture in the 1980s, but it was no longer a counterculture. It had lost its edge, its capacity for cultural critique.

A number of people have asked me what the religious right wants. What would America look like if the religious right had its way? I've thought long and hard about that question, and the best answer I can come up with is that the religious right hankers for the kind of homogeneous theocracy that the Puritans tried to establish in 17th-century Massachusetts: to impose their vision of a moral order on all of society.

The Puritans left England and crossed the Atlantic in the 1630s to construct what John Winthrop called a "city on a hill," an example to the rest of the world. The Puritans configured church and state so the two would be both coterminous and mutually reinforcing, but only one form of worship was permitted.

Without question, Puritanism in 17th-century Massachusetts was a grand and noble vision, but it ultimately collapsed beneath its own weight, beneath the arrogance of its own pretensions. By the middle of the century, Puritanism had become ingrown and calcified, the founding generation unable to transmit its piety to its children. By the waning decades of the century, in the face of encroaching pluralism — Anglicans and Quakers — and the rise of a merchant class, the Puritan ministers of Massachusetts were making increasingly impassioned, frantic calls for repentance. What frightened them — no less than the leaders of the religious right at the turn of the 21st century — was pluralism.

Despite the best efforts of the Puritan clergy, spirituality in New England continued to languish into the 18th century. The tide began to turn when fresher and more energetic preachers entered the scene in the 1730s. George Whitefield, Gilbert Tennent, Isaac Backus, and others challenged the cozy relationship between church and state and thereby reinvigorated religion in New England. The force of their ideas and their assault on the status quo spread throughout the Atlantic colonies in an utterly transformative event known as the Great Awakening.

The lesson was clear. Religion functions best outside the political order, and often as a challenge to the political order. When it identifies too closely with the state, it becomes complacent and ossified, and efforts to coerce piety or to proscribe certain behavior in the interests of moral conformity are unavailing.

Thankfully, the founding fathers recognized that wisdom and codified it into the First Amendment, the best friend that religion has ever had. The First Amendment was a concession to pluralism, and its guarantee of a "free market" of religion has ensured a salubrious religious marketplace unmatched anywhere else in the world.

Unfortunately, some of the clergy in New England still refused to concede their prerogatives and surrender to the religious marketplace. Congregationalists in Massachusetts and Connecticut clung stubbornly to their establishment status, not wanting to forfeit the tax subsidies afforded them by the state. From his post in Litchfield, Conn., Lyman Beecher resisted "the fall of the standing order" in Connecticut. In 1820, however, a scant two years after Connecticut did away with state-subsidized religion (Massachusetts would follow suit in 1833, the last state to do so), Beecher was forced to repent. Although he and his fellow Congregationalist ministers had feared "that our children would scatter like partridges," the effect of disestablishment was quite the opposite. "Before we had been standing on what our fathers had done," Beecher recalled in his autobiography, "but now we were obliged to develop all our energy." After disestablishment, he wrote, "there came such a time of revival as never before."

The leaders of the religious right are also frightened by pluralism. That's understandable, especially for a movement that propagates the ideology that America is — and always has been — a Christian nation. Pluralism is messy. It requires understanding, accommodation, and tolerance, especially if we hope to maintain some semblance of comity and social order. The Puritans hated pluralism, as did the Protestants of the 19th century in the face of Catholic immigrants from Ireland, Germany, and Italy. Changes in the immigration laws in 1965 brought to the United States new hues of ethnic and religious pluralism, a rich and diverse palette unimaginable to the Protestants of the 1950s, let alone to the Puritans of the 1650s.

By the late 1970s, the leaders of the religious right felt their hegemony over American society slipping away. One reading of the religious right is that many evangelicals believed that their faith could no longer compete in the new, expanded religious marketplace. No wonder the religious right wants to renege on the First Amendment. No wonder the religious right seeks to encode its version of morality into civil and criminal law. No wonder the religious right wants to emblazon its religious creeds and symbols on public property. Faced now with a newly expanded religious marketplace, it wants to change the rules of engagement so that evangelicals can enjoy a competitive advantage. Rather than gear up for new competition, as Beecher did in the 19th century, the religious right seeks to use the machinations of government and public policy to impose its vision of a theocratic order.

But pluralism is a good thing. It keeps religious groups from resting on their laurels — or their endowments, in the case of mainline Protestantism — and makes them competitive in the marketplace of ideas.

Ironically, the one movement that, more than any other, has in the past exploited the free marketplace of religion to its advantage is evangelical Protestantism. Evangelicals have understood almost instinctively how to speak the idiom of the culture, whether it be the open-air preaching of George Whitefield in the 18th century, the circuit riders and the camp meetings of the antebellum period, the urban revivalism of Billy Sunday at the turn of the 20th century, or the use of radio and television by various preachers in the 20th and 21st centuries.

America has been kind to religion, but not because the government has imposed religious faith or practice on its citizens. Quite the opposite. Religion has flourished because religious belief and expression have been voluntary, not compulsory. We are a religious people precisely because we have recognized the rights of our citizens to be religious in a different way from us, or even not to be religious at all. We are simultaneously a people of faith and citizens of a pluralistic society, one in which Americans believe that it is inappropriate, even oppressive, to impose the religious views of a minority — or even of a majority — on all of society. That is the genius of America, and it is also the reason that religion thrives here as nowhere else.

As I argued in my testimony as an expert witness in the Alabama Ten Commandments case, religion has prospered in this country precisely because the government has stayed out of the religion business. The tireless efforts on the part of the religious right to eviscerate the First Amendment in the interests of imposing its own theocratic vision ultimately demeans the faith even as it undermines the foundations of a democratic order that thrives on pluralism.

Jesus himself recognized that his followers held a dual citizenship. "Give back to Caesar what is Caesar's," he said, "and to God what is God's." Negotiating that dual status can be fraught, but it is incumbent upon responsible citizens of this earthly realm to abide by certain standards of behavior deemed essential for the functioning of the social order. Much as I would like all of my fellow Americans to be Christians or vegetarians or Democrats, I have no right to demand it. The leaders of the religious right have failed to observe even the most basic etiquette of democracy.

Is there a better way? Yes, I think so. It begins with an acknowledgement that religion in America has always functioned best from the margins, outside of the circles of power, and that any grasping for religious hegemony ultimately trivializes and diminishes the faith. The Puritans of the 17th century learned that lesson the hard way, as did the mainline Protestants of the 1950s, who sought to identify their faith with the white, middle-class values of the Eisenhower era. In both cases, it was the evangelicals who stepped in and offered a corrective, a vibrant expression of the faith untethered to cultural institutions that issued, first, in the Great Awakening and, second, in the evangelical resurgence of the 1970s.

For America's evangelicals, reclaiming the faith would produce a social and political ethic rather different from the one propagated by the religious right. Care for the earth and for God's creation provides a good place to start, building on the growing evangelical discontent with the rapacious environmental policies of the Republican-religious-right coalition. Once thinking evangelicals challenge religious-right orthodoxy on environmental matters, further challenges are possible. A full-throated, unconditional denunciation of the use of torture, even on political enemies, would certainly follow. Evangelicals opposed to abortion would be well advised to follow some Catholic teaching a bit further on this issue. As early as 1984, Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, the late archbishop of Chicago, talked about opposition to abortion as part of a "seamless garment" that included other "life issues": care for the poor and feeding the hungry, advocacy for human rights, and unequivocal opposition to capital punishment. Surely the adoption of what Bernardin called a "consistent ethic of life" carries with it greater moral authority than opposition to abortion alone.

As for abortion itself, evangelicals should consider carefully where they invest their energies on this matter. Both sides of the abortion debate acknowledge that making abortion illegal will not stop abortion itself; it will make abortions more dangerous for the life and health of the mother. The other complication is legal and constitutional. Especially at a time when the government's surveillance activities are already intruding on the privacy and the civil liberties of Americans, we should consider carefully the wisdom of allowing the government to determine a matter properly left to a woman and her conscience.

I have no interest in making abortion illegal; I would like to make it unthinkable. The most effective way to limit the incidence of abortion is to change the moral climate surrounding the issue — through education or even through public-service campaigns similar to those that discourage smoking or drugs or alcohol or spousal abuse.

Taking such a broader approach to "life issues" would affect evangelical attitudes not only toward abortion and capital punishment but also to matters related to race and to the poor. The social and economic policies of this nation seem to have created a permanent underclass. If evangelicals believe that God cares about the fate of a fetus, it shouldn't require a huge leap in logic to surmise that God also cares about people of color or prisoners or immigrants or people with an orientation other than heterosexual.

Finally, an evangelical social and political ethic would take into account the pluralistic context of American society and recognize the genius of the First Amendment. That requires respect for the canons of democracy and for the importance of public education to ensure its future. It acknowledges, for example, that the proper venue for the teaching of creationism or intelligent design is the home or the Sunday-school classroom, not the science curriculum. It means refusing to identify the symbols of the faith — the Bible, prayer, the Decaloguewith the political order. In short, our best hope for the recovery of an evangelical social and political ethic lies with recognizing that the faith functions best independent of the political order.

Indeed, one of the hallmarks of this grand experiment of democracy in America has been its vigilance over the rights of minorities. Evangelicals should appreciate that, for they were once a minority themselves. Evangelicals need once again to learn to be a counterculture, much as they were before the rise of the religious right, before succumbing to the seductions of power. The early followers of Jesus were a counterculture because they stood apart from the prevailing order. A counterculture can provide a critique of the powerful because it is utterly disinterested — it has no investment in the power structure itself.

Indeed, the most effective and vigorous religious movements in American history have identified with the downtrodden and have positioned themselves on the fringes of society rather than at the centers of power. The Methodists of the 19th century come to mind, as do the Mormons. In the 20th century, Pentecostalism, which initially appealed to the lower classes and made room for women and people of color, became perhaps the most significant religious movement of the century.

The leaders of the religious right have led their sheep astray from the gospel of Jesus Christ to the false gospel of neoconservative ideology and into the maw of the Republican Party. And yet my regard for the flock and my respect for their integrity is undiminished. Ultimately it is they who must reclaim the gospel and rescue us from the distortions of the religious right.

The Bible I read tells of freedom for captives and deliverance from oppression. It teaches that those who refuse to act with justice or who neglect the plight of those less fortunate have some explaining to do. But the Bible is also about good news. It promises redemption and forgiveness, a chance to start anew and, with divine help, to get it right. My evangelical theology assures me that no one, not even Karl Rove or James Dobson, lies beyond the reach of redemption, and that even a people led astray can find their way home.

That sounds like good news to me. Very good news indeed.

Randall Balmer is a professor of American religious history at Barnard College. This essay is excerpted from Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America: An Evangelical's Lament, to be published next month by Perseus Books. Copyright © 2006 by Randall Balmer.

http://chronicle.com
Section: The Chronicle Review
Volume 52, Issue 42, Page B6

Americans don't want an empire

June 16, 2006

BY ANDREW GREELEY

The United States of America is a paper tiger. It reverses the dictum of Theodore Roosevelt. It speaks loudly and carries a small stick. Americans are told by their leaders that their country is the last superpower in the world, that we have the duty to bring democracy to the rest of the world, that we have the might and the right, the power and the virtue, to impose by ourself our will on the planet.

This is rubbish, not to use a more scatological word. The United States is not much good as an imperial power because it lacks two of the qualities essential for effective imperialism: a population that is ready to absorb serious casualties in the cause of the empire and leadership that is sufficiently cynical to abandon moralism when there is a chance to deal.

It will do no good to lecture the American people on their obligation to endure substantial loss of life in a cause that the leadership thinks is a national duty. Americans will rise up in righteous anger if they have been attacked and destroy the foe, make no mistake about that -- as the Japanese did in 1941. But they quickly become impatient with the endless, small wars, in which young Americans die without any clear purpose and without any "light at the end of the tunnel."

That may be immature of Americans, but that's the way we are. We lack the stern moral determination that the Wall Street Journal preaches to us several times a week. We are not exactly passivists, but we are isolationists. We always have been isolationists. Tell us that we must do something about Darfur or Kosovo or Rwanda and we ask: Why us? If the rest of the world is interested in doing something, OK, but don't expect us to go it alone for long. After Korea and Vietnam, that should have been clear.

We went along with the Iraq invasion because our leaders were able to persuade us that it was a war to punish the Sept. 11 terrorists when in fact it was about the belief that a "democratic" Iraq would shift the balance in the Middle East.

The Journal likes to compare us to the Western Europeans who have been spoiled by prosperity and the failure of their virility. They want peace at any price, so they can continue to enjoy the socialist comforts of their consumerist lives. But such a description applies to Americans too, save for a birth rate that is a bit above replacement. Prosperous countries have no stomach for war, especially when they realize that the people they are fighting are not the people who attacked them. Americans never voted to become the enforcers of democracy and justice everywhere in the world all by themselves. Hence, wars like Korea and Vietnam and now Iraq always end badly.

After the Great War of 1914 to 1945, the idea of collective security emerged. The nations of the world would band together to protect one another. In practice this meant that the United States protected Western Europe's fragile emergent prosperity from the Russians. That notion has deteriorated into a theory that America is the great policeman of the world, with an occasional tiny "coalition of the willing" tagging along until the party in a given country that sent troops to Iraq was voted out of power.

Iran is not perceived as a threat now, so former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw called our plan to bomb Iran "nutty" -- which it surely is. If the rest of the world, including those most likely to be threatened by fanatical mullahs are not concerned, why should Americans be worried?

Since 1916 the United States has fought in five wars (excluding the first Iraq war). In each of these conflicts we came to the rescue of others and gained nothing for ourselves. Nor did we receive much gratitude for our efforts. How just those wars were is open to question. Some probably were, others certainly were not. But they were not self-serving conflicts. Somehow the hubris of power, which seems to possess our leaders every couple of decades, seduces them into conflicts they can never win. They cannot admit to themselves that the world's most powerful country is a paper tiger because its people are not imperialists.

Cut and Run? You Bet.

By Lt. Gen. William E. Odom

May/June 2006

Why America must get out of Iraq now.

Withdraw immediately or stay the present course? That is the key question about the war in Iraq today. American public opinion is now decidedly against the war. From liberal New England, where citizens pass town-hall resolutions calling for withdrawal, to the conservative South and West, where more than half of “red state” citizens oppose the war, Americans want out. That sentiment is understandable.

The prewar dream of a liberal Iraqi democracy friendly to the United States is no longer credible. No Iraqi leader with enough power and legitimacy to control the country will be pro-American. Still, U.S. President George W. Bush says the United States must stay the course. Why? Let’s consider his administration’s most popular arguments for not leaving Iraq.

If we leave, there will be a civil war. In reality, a civil war in Iraq began just weeks after U.S. forces toppled Saddam. Any close observer could see that then; today, only the blind deny it. Even President Bush, who is normally impervious to uncomfortable facts, recently admitted that Iraq has peered into the abyss of civil war. He ought to look a little closer. Iraqis are fighting Iraqis. Insurgents have killed far more Iraqis than Americans. That’s civil war.

Withdrawal will encourage the terrorists. True, but that is the price we are doomed to pay. Our continued occupation of Iraq also encourages the killers—precisely because our invasion made Iraq safe for them. Our occupation also left the surviving Baathists with one choice: Surrender, or ally with al Qaeda. They chose the latter. Staying the course will not change this fact. Pulling out will most likely result in Sunni groups’ turning against al Qaeda and its sympathizers, driving them out of Iraq entirely.

Before U.S. forces stand down, Iraqi security forces must stand up. The problem in Iraq is not military competency; it is political consolidation. Iraq has a large officer corps with plenty of combat experience from the Iran-Iraq war. Moktada al-Sadr’s Shiite militia fights well today without U.S. advisors, as do Kurdish pesh merga units. The problem is loyalty. To whom can officers and troops afford to give their loyalty? The political camps in Iraq are still shifting. So every Iraqi soldier and officer today risks choosing the wrong side. As a result, most choose to retain as much latitude as possible to switch allegiances. All the U.S. military trainers in the world cannot remove that reality. But political consolidation will. It should by now be clear that political power can only be established via Iraqi guns and civil war, not through elections or U.S. colonialism by ventriloquism.

Setting a withdrawal deadline will damage the morale of U.S. troops. Hiding behind the argument of troop morale shows no willingness to accept the responsibilities of command. The truth is, most wars would stop early if soldiers had the choice of whether or not to continue. This is certainly true in Iraq, where a withdrawal is likely to raise morale among U.S. forces. A recent Zogby poll suggests that most U.S. troops would welcome an early withdrawal deadline. But the strategic question of how to extract the United States from the Iraq disaster is not a matter to be decided by soldiers. Carl von Clausewitz spoke of two kinds of courage: first, bravery in the face of mortal danger; second, the willingness to accept personal responsibility for command decisions. The former is expected of the troops. The latter must be demanded of high-level commanders, including the president.

Withdrawal would undermine U.S. credibility in the world. Were the United States a middling power, this case might hold some water. But for the world’s only superpower, it’s patently phony. A rapid reversal of our present course in Iraq would improve U.S. credibility around the world. The same argument was made against withdrawal from Vietnam. It was proved wrong then and it would be proved wrong today. Since Sept. 11, 2001, the world’s opinion of the United States has plummeted, with the largest short-term drop in American history. The United States now garners as much international esteem as Russia. Withdrawing and admitting our mistake would reverse this trend. Very few countries have that kind of corrective capacity. I served as a military attaché in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow during Richard Nixon’s Watergate crisis. When Nixon resigned, several Soviet officials who had previously expressed disdain for the United States told me they were astonished. One diplomat said, “Only your country is powerful enough to do this. It would destroy my country.”

Two facts, however painful, must be recognized, or we will remain perilously confused in Iraq. First, invading Iraq was not in the interests of the United States. It was in the interests of Iran and al Qaeda. For Iran, it avenged a grudge against Saddam for his invasion of the country in 1980. For al Qaeda, it made it easier to kill Americans. Second, the war has paralyzed the United States in the world diplomatically and strategically. Although relations with Europe show signs of marginal improvement, the trans-Atlantic alliance still may not survive the war. Only with a rapid withdrawal from Iraq will Washington regain diplomatic and military mobility. Tied down like Gulliver in the sands of Mesopotamia, we simply cannot attract the diplomatic and military cooperation necessary to win the real battle against terror. Getting out of Iraq is the precondition for any improvement.

In fact, getting out now may be our only chance to set things right in Iraq. For starters, if we withdraw, European politicians would be more likely to cooperate with us in a strategy for stabilizing the greater Middle East. Following a withdrawal, all the countries bordering Iraq would likely respond favorably to an offer to help stabilize the situation. The most important of these would be Iran. It dislikes al Qaeda as much as we do. It wants regional stability as much as we do. It wants to produce more oil and gas and sell it. If its leaders really want nuclear weapons, we cannot stop them. But we can engage them.

None of these prospects is possible unless we stop moving deeper into the “big sandy” of Iraq. America must withdraw now.

Lt. Gen. William E. Odom (Ret.) is senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and professor at Yale University. He was director of the National Security Agency from 1985 to 1988.

By their words they are known

Monday, June 19, 2006

ALGIE ABRAMS
GUEST COLUMNIST

In Thomas Jefferson's bible, "The Life and Moral of Jesus Christ," he abstracted the words of Jesus into a code of morals for ordinary living, removing any text regarding religious dogmas and supernatural beliefs and events. Jefferson called those who adopted Jesus' code of morals "Christians" and those who adopted the dogma and supernatural surrounding Jesus, "Anti-Christians"; belief in one mutually excludes the other.

In the 2000 presidential campaign, George W. Bush said, "When you turn your heart and your life over to Christ, when you accept Christ as the savior, it changes your heart." Jefferson writes, "His (Christ's) character & doctrines have received greater injury from those who pretend to be his special disciples."

During the 2004 election, the Rev. Pat Robertson said, "I think George Bush is going to win in a walk. I really believe that I'm hearing from the Lord it's going to be like a blowout election of 2004." But, Jefferson said, "In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own".

When asked if Osama bin Laden could go to heaven, the Rev. Jerry Falwell said, "Of course, we know the blood of Jesus Christ can save him and then he must be executed." Recently, Robertson said, "But if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him (Chavez), I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war."

But Jesus said, "Is it not written, my house shall be called the house of prayer for all nations? But you have made it a den of thieves ... Shame on you politicians and preachers, hypocrites!"

When speaking with a foreign ambassador, Bush said, "God told me to strike at al-Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam." But, Jesus said, "Do not resist evil-doers ... whosoever strikes you on your right cheek, turn your left one to him ... Love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you ... ."

Falwell said, "AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals." When the Rev. Ken Hutcherson of Redmond finds a gay parishioner unable to change, he says, "You kick them out." But Jesus said, "Judge not! ... Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy."

Recently Bush said, "It is fitting that we have a National Prayer Breakfast. It is the right thing to do, because this is a nation of prayer. I know, from firsthand knowledge, that this is a nation of prayer." But Jesus said, "Don't pray like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners, that they may be seen. ... But pray in secret, shut your door and be private."

It's astounding that of all the problems that peril all our lives on this planet, Bush also recently said, "Our priorities is (sic) our faith."

Really? This does not square with reality. "Man once surrendering his reason," wrote Jefferson, "like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors."

Christians and Anti-Christians. You shall know them by their words.

Algie Abrams lives in Snohomish.

Sixteen Bold Moves We Can Use

By Stephen Pizzo, News for Real
Posted on June 19, 2006, Printed on June 21, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/37628/

If you are like me, you just get weary listening to the weaselly crap both Republicans and Democrats peddle daily to us in the hopes that something they say will "resonate" with one demographic or another.

I was listening to Hillary Clinton's tortured logic earlier this week as she tried to explain to Democrat activists that she was against what Bush is doing in Iraq, but is also against setting a date for withdrawal. But what's she "for?" Hell if I know -- or, at this point, even care any longer.

So I was moping around this morning, feeling lower than the axles of a tricked-out low-rider, when it occurred to me that I am probably not alone... not by long shot. What I want more than anything else these days is for someone -- I don't even care which party they are in -- just someone, to take genuine bold action.

Bold. Not parsed to the Nth degree. Not Bermuda-triangulated to cognitive oblivion. But bold. The kind of stuff that makes you shoot coffee through your nose when you read it in your morning paper.

So I cooked up a wish list of bold positions that I want to see in my paper in the coming weeks and months. I don't care what order they arrive. I'll take any one of the following announcements on any day.

Health Care: Acknowledging that only a single-payer health insurance system can be both profitable and cover everyone, Congress passes America's first national universal health insurance system. The new entity would be a public/private partnership run by the private sector but regulated and underwritten by government, much the same way Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae serve the residential marketplace as GSEs -- "Government Sponsored Entities." (Minus, of course, the fat-cat abuse recently discovered at those two GSEs.)

Illegal Immigration: Forget the fence. Congress increases funding and staffing for a national network of workplace immigration auditors. Businesses are provided online tools to verify citizenship, much like the national database that gun shops are now required to use before selling someone a firearm. Businesses with more than 100 employees will have their employment records audited without notice at least once a year. Penalties for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants will be enforced, and violators listed publicly on the Web.

National Energy Policy: Congress funds "Manhattan Project II" - a 10-year crash program to replace oil and coal with renewable, sustainable, non-polluting energy sources. The Manhattan II Project would be funded by a 50-cent tax on all gas and oil products, except for those used for home heating.

Campaign Reform: Since the Supreme Court has ruled that money, in politics, is equal to free speech, Congress passes a constitutional amendment requiring that all national campaigns for House, Senate and Presidential be funded solely from a special, federal campaign fund. The money in this fund would come from a small surtax on all individuals, businesses and corporations, and the money distributed in equal amounts to any candidate that gathers at least 10 percent of the primary votes.

Lobbying Reform: Congress passes a total prohibition on all forms of lobbyist-provided gratuities, including trips on private planes at below-market ticket prices. Any "fact-finding" trips sponsored by interest groups must first be approved by the House and Senate ethics committees, and listed on a public website at least 30 days before departure to allow for public comment and/or protest.

Open Government: Congress passes an open government law modeled after California's Brown Act, requiring that all the public's business be conducted in public, excluding only matters involving personnel, national security and Supreme Court deliberations. (Under such a law, Cheney's energy task force meetings would have been illegal.)

Budgeting: Congress passes a balanced budget amendment requiring that the nation's annual budgets be in balance, except in time of congressionally approved war or formally declared national emergency.

Taxes: Congress repeals the Bush tax cuts for the top one percent of earners, and shifts those savings to individuals earning under $30,000 a year (or couples earning under $60,000.) For wage earners, these tax savings would be reflected as a cut in their payroll tax.

A Livable Wage: Congress mandates an increase in the minimum wage to $10 an hour -- and (this time) indexes the minimum wage to inflation so it will never again fall behind.

National Security: Congress formally adopts my "Don't Do That" national defense strategy.

Iraq: Congress ties further funding for the war in Iraq to a blueprint that requires the president to begin to disentangle the US from its presence in that country. The plan begins with a six-month deadline to move all US troops to Iraq's borders to provide border security, air and logistical support for the emerging Iraqi security force. Six months later, US troops must begin an orderly withdrawal from Iraq with all troops out of that country by the end of 2007.

General Motors: The company announces that the "GM" brand will no longer stand for General Motors, but for "Green Machines." In the 2008 model year, GM will begin a company-wide transition away from the internal combustion engine. Until better technologies are mature, GM will begin by producing only hybrid non-commercial vehicles. Ultimately the company's announced goal is to, within a decade, be the first auto company to offer a full fleet of fuel-cell/electric-powered vehicles.

Iran: Congress announces it will refuse to support any Iraq-style preemptive military action on Iran and instead sends the White House a copy of the "Don't Do That" strategy.

Venezuela: Butt out.

Cuba: Butt in -- but in a nice way for a change. Lift the travel ban and embargo.

Gitmo: Close it. Transfer the prisoners to a maximum security prison in the US and begin a 90-day review of each case, after which each prisoner must be either formally charged, provided a lawyer and tried, or released immediately and returned to their home country. Those that can make a case that they would be harmed if forced to return to their home countries could apply for temporary residence in the US and would have their petitions heard within 60 days of release.

As I said above, any one of those things would be a rare shaft of sunlight into what has become a very gloomy and dispiriting picture of America's leadership. If all of those bold moves came to pass, it really would finally be "morning in America."

Politicians misread Americans. We are not only ready for bold ideas, but starved for them. We don't lack bold ideas, what we lack are bold leaders. Which is why none of the above will come to pass, and why it is likely to instead remain 'mourning in America," at least for the foreseeable future.

Stephen Pizzo is the author of numerous books, including "Inside Job: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans," which was nominated for a Pulitzer.

Progressive Daily Beacon Opinion Piece

Insecurities of the Vietnam Draft Dodging ''Cut and Run'' Administration Prevent Them From Admitting Their Iraq Mistake

A. Alexander, June 19th, 2006

It requires quite a bit more courage to admit a mistake than it does to wallow in a state of insecurity, so overwhelming a person fears that admitting they were wrong will somehow make them less of a man. John Murtha, a Vietnam combat veteran, admits Iraq has been a huge mistake. Murtha voted for the war. He is a man of great courage and his 37 years of Marine Corps service bears that out. George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Karl Rove -- all men that dodged the Vietnam draft -- on the other hand, cannot muster the inner-strength to admit their Iraq mistake. Obviously, they are ruled by their personal demons rooted in their insecurities.

Truly, the hypocrisy and cowardice of Bush, Cheney, and Rove is writ large upon their foreheads. These so-called men, whose only contribution to any American war effort has been to be clever enough to patent the phrase "cut and run" were, incredibly enough, first among their peers to "cut and run" from their duty to fight in Vietnam. Yes, the original members of the Republican Draft Dodging "Cut and Run" Society now label those like Murtha, who have never "cut and run" from service to country, as the "cut and run" crowd.

Well, it is the way of the insecure cowardly type. They must project their own fears and insecurity upon others. How else to survive in a world where they are surrounded by men and women with great courage and heroism? The only option is to label them as being the very thing the truly insecure coward knows is his reality. That is why Bush, Cheney, and Rove have labeled the Murthas of the world certifiable yellow-bellied "cut and runners".

Now, of course, this very same insecurity also prevents them from admit

Indianapolis

Baghdad

Caracas

Tehran