Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Iraq War as War Crime (Part Two)

Go to Original
By Robert, Sam and Nat Parry


Editor’s Note: From the start of George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, the toll on Iraqi civilians and on out-gunned Iraqi soldiers was staggering. Indeed, that appears to have been part of the message Bush’s neocon advisers wanted to send to other countries that might think of resisting Washington’s imperial ambitions.


Yet back home, most of the horror was kept out of view for Americans watching on TV who wanted to feel good about their brave soldiers and not think much about how their country was crossing a line into an imperial aggressor.


On the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq -- and in honor of all who have died -- we are publishing the second part of an excerpt from Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush:


Despite the stiffer-than-expected resistance, the U.S. military continued to blast its way toward its goal of toppling Saddam Hussein.


From the first days of the war, that violence took a heavy toll on Iraq’s civilians, though the bloody images were often sanitized from the American broadcasts so as not to dampen the war enthusiasm and depress the TV ratings.


The Bush administration’s lack of sensitivity about civilian casualties was reflected in the hasty decision to bomb a residential restaurant where Hussein was thought to be eating. It turned out that the intelligence was wrong, but that wasn’t discovered until after the restaurant was leveled and 14 civilians, including seven children, were killed.


One mother hysterically sought her daughter and collapsed when the headless body was pulled from the rubble.


"When the broken body of the 20-year-old woman was brought out torso first, then her head," The Associated Press reported, "her mother started crying uncontrollably, then collapsed."


The London Independent cited this restaurant attack as one that represented "a clear breach" of the Geneva Conventions ban on bombing civilian targets.


Hundreds of other civilian deaths were equally horrific. Saad Abbas, 34, was wounded in an American bombing raid, but his family sought to shield him from the greater horror. The bombing had killed his three daughters – Marwa, 11; Tabarek, 8; and Safia, 5 – who had been the center of his life.


"It wasn’t just ordinary love," his wife said. "He was crazy about them. It wasn’t like other fathers."

The horror of the war was captured, too, in the fate of 12-year-old Ali Ismaeel Abbas, who lost his two arms when a U.S. missile struck his Baghdad home. Ali’s father, pregnant mother and siblings were all killed.


As he was evacuated to a Kuwaiti hospital, becoming a symbol of U.S. compassion for injured Iraqi civilians, Ali said he would rather die than live without his hands.


For its part, the Bush administration announced that it had no intention of tallying the number of Iraqi civilians who were killed in the war.


Outgunned Iraqis


On the battlefield, rather than throwing down their weapons, the Iraqi army sometimes fought heroically though hopelessly against the technologically superior U.S. forces.
Christian Science Monitor reporter Ann Scott Tyson interviewed U.S. troops with the 3rd Infantry Division who were deeply troubled by their task of mowing down Iraqi soldiers who kept fighting even in suicidal situations.


"Even as U.S. commanders cite dramatic success in the three-week-old war, many look upon the wholesale destruction of Iraq’s military and the killing of thousands of Iraqi fighters with a sense of regret," Tyson reported. "They voice frustration at the number of Iraqis who stood their ground against overwhelming U.S. firepower, wasting their lives and equipment rather than capitulating as expected."


"They have no command and control, no organization," said Brig. Gen. Louis Weber. "They’re just dying."


Commenting upon the annihilation of Iraqi forces in one-sided battles, Lt. Col. Woody Radcliffe said, "We didn’t want to do this. Even a brain-dead moron can understand we are so vastly superior militarily that there is no hope. You would think they would see that and give up."


In one battle around Najaf, U.S. commanders ordered air strikes to kill the Iraqis en masse rather than have U.S. soldiers continue to kill them one by one.


"There were waves and waves of people coming at them with AK-47s, out of this factory, and they [the U.S. soldiers] were killing everyone," said Radcliffe. "The commander called and said, ’This is not right. This is insane. Let’s hit the factory with close air support and take them out all at once.’"


This slaughter of young Iraqis troubled front-line U.S. soldiers.


"For lack of a better word, I felt almost guilty about the massacre," one soldier said privately. "We wasted a lot of people. It makes you wonder how many were innocent. It takes away some of the pride. We won, but at what cost?"

Bush seemed to share none of these regrets. Commenting about the Iraqi soldiers to his war council, Bush said they "fight like terrorists."


To Bush, Iraq had become a demonstration of both America’s military might and his own itchy trigger finger, Bush had made Iraq his Alderaan, the hapless planet in the original Star Wars movie that was picked to show off the power of the Death Star.


"Fear will keep the local systems in line, fear of this battle station," explained Death Star commander Tarkin in the movie. "No star system will dare oppose the emperor now."


Similarly, the slaughter of the outmatched Iraqi military sent a message to other countries that might be tempted to resist Bush’s dictates.


At a Central Command briefing, Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks took note of this awesome power on display as he described the "degrading" of Iraqi forces south of Baghdad.


"They’re in serious trouble," Brooks said. "They remain in contact now with the most powerful force on earth."


The enthusiasm of many Americans for the war in Iraq – and their lightly considered acquiescence to this crossover to imperial power – delivered another chilling message to the world.


The message was that the American people and their increasingly enfeebled democratic process would not serve as a check on George W. Bush, at least in the near term.


Iconic Ending


The fall of Baghdad after three weeks of fighting washed away most of the remaining doubts for a majority of the American people.


The iconic image of an American soldier and tank helping Iraqis topple a statue of Hussein in Baghdad’s Firdus Square on April 9 became Exhibit A to prove that Bush was right about "liberating" the Iraqis.


After being pulled down by the U.S. tank, the toppled statue was set upon by dancing Iraqis who carried off the head as a prize.


For many Americans the scene was a catharsis, bringing relief that the war might end quickly and satisfaction that the Iraqis were finally acting like the grateful people that administration officials had said they would be.


However, Americans seeking a fuller understanding of the moment needed to search the Internet or access foreign newspapers. Those who did found the victorious images were misleading.


Rather than a spontaneous Berlin Wall-type celebration by hundreds of thousands, the toppling of the statue was a staged event with a small crowd estimated in the scores, not even the hundreds. One photo from a distance showed the square ringed by U.S. tanks with a small knot of people gathered around the statue.


Indeed, given the political importance of the images, some intelligence experts expressed surprise that so few Iraqis were present. One CIA veteran told us that such images are never left to chance because of their psychological warfare potential.


He said all U.S. battle plans include a "psy-war annex," a kind of public-relations script meant to influence the target population – in this case, the Iraqis – as well as the larger world public, including the American people.


Despite the scene’s shortcomings, it served its purpose.


The ouster of Hussein – and the apparent U.S. victory after a three-week campaign – solidified Bush’s reputation as a decisive leader who wouldn’t tolerate petty tyrants getting in America’s way.


For his neoconservative enthusiasts, the conquest of Iraq also marked an important step in establishing an American global empire that would punish any upstart who threatened U.S. interests and would send a message to potential American enemies everywhere.


As Hussein fled into hiding, Bush gained the political advantage over his domestic critics, too. The anti-empire side found itself pinned down by accusations that its opposition to the Iraq invasion had been naïve and even disloyal.


The war skeptics still tried to warn their fellow citizens of the dangers from the neoconservative plan to transform the American Republic into a new-age empire.


But many Americans were too caught up in the joy and excitement of military success to worry about such concerns as whether some fundamental change was occurring to the U.S. system of government.


The Iraq War naysayers also were a scattered lot, a disorganized mix of political interests, including old-time conservatives and traditional liberals, from the likes of Pat Buchanan to Howard Dean. The anti-imperial groupings also emphasized different points.


For instance, Buchanan made the case to his conservative backers that neoconservative ideologues had won over Bush and were pushing their strategies in the interests of hard-liners in Israel’s Likud Party who opposed ending Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories.


"We charge that a cabal of polemicists and public officials seek to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America’s interests," Buchanan wrote in The American Conservative.

In contrast, former Vermont Governor Dean, one of the few Democratic presidential contenders at the time who opposed Bush’s Iraq War resolution, stressed the damage Bush was doing to international cooperation needed to protect American long-term interests.


"This unilateral approach to foreign policy is a disaster," Dean wrote in explaining his opposition to the so-called Bush Doctrine. "All of the challenges facing the United States – from winning the war on terror and containing weapons of mass destruction to building an open world economy and protecting the global environment – can only be met by working with our allies."


Early Concerns

Without doubt, Bush and the neoconservatives were on a roll. But there were early signs that not everything was going as well as the neocons had hoped.


Chaos and looting followed the removal of the Hussein government. While U.S. Marines guarded offices associated with the oil industry, other unprotected government buildings were burned, including the central library where ancient Arabic texts were stored.


The national museum – one of the prides of the Islamic world – was ransacked with many priceless antiquities stolen and others smashed.


"They lie across the floor in tens of thousands of pieces, the priceless antiquities of Iraq’s history," wrote Robert Fisk of London’s Independent newspaper. "The looters had gone from shelf to shelf, systematically pulling down the statues and pots and amphorae of the Assyrians and the Babylonians, the Sumerians, the Medes, the Persians and the Greeks and hurling them on to the concrete.


"Our feet crunched on the wreckage of 5,000-year-old marble plinths and stone statuary and pots that had endured every siege of Baghdad, every invasion of Iraq throughout history only to be destroyed when Americans came to ’liberate’ the city."

The CIA veteran told us that the post-combat chaos was partly the fault of inadequate Pentagon deployment of civil affairs personnel with the troops.


The wishful thinking about capitulation immediately after the demonstration of "shock and awe" left U.S. forces without enough experts to deal with the breakdown of police operations, the need for riot control, and the lack of electricity, food and medicines, he said.


As Marines and other front-line combat troops were forced into controlling anti-American demonstrations, killings of civilians resulted.


In the northern city of Mosul, Marines fired into angry crowds, killing 17 Iraqis in the city’s main square, the director of the city’s hospital said. Marines said they had been fired upon, but Mosul residents denied those claims.

"We must be united and support each other against the Anglo-American invasion," declared Sheik Ibrahim al-Namaa, who emerged as a rising leader in Mosul, where the looting of that city’s ancient treasures also fed anger over the U.S. occupation. "We must try to put an end to this aggression."

Thousands of Iraqis also demonstrated against the U.S. occupation in Baghdad, with nearly 100 Islamic leaders calling for the ouster of Americans and the creation of an Islamic state.


"You are the masters today," said Islamic leader Ahmed al-Kubeisy about the Americans. "But I warn you against thinking of staying. Get out before we kick you out."

But in those heady days, after the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s government, Bush was living the life of a conquering emperor.

Iraq War as War Crime (Part One)

Go to Original
By Robert, Sam and Nat Parry


Editor’s Note: The Iraq War – now ending its fifth bloody year – represents not only a human tragedy of enormous consequence and possibly the greatest strategic blunder in U.S. history but also a systemic failure of American political and journalistic institutions.


Instead of checking George W. Bush’s imperial impulse for the good of the Republic, the Congress – including Sen. Hillary Clinton and other prominent Democrats – and the national press corps tended to their careers and their political viability.


In recognition of this tragedy – and in honor of the thousands of American dead and the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead – we are publishing the first of two excerpts from Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush:


Iraq’s "Day of Liberation" – as George W. Bush called it – was supposed to begin with a bombardment consisting of 3,000 U.S. missiles delivered over 48 hours, 10 times the number of bombs dropped during the first two days of the Persian Gulf War in 1991.


Officials, who were briefed on the plans, said the goal was to so stun the Iraqis that they would simply submit to the overwhelming force demonstrated by the U.S. military. Administration officials dubbed the strategy "shock and awe."


In his 2003 State of the Union speech, Bush had addressed the "brave and oppressed people of Iraq" with the reassuring message that "your enemy is not surrounding your country – your enemy is ruling your country."


Bush promised that the day that Saddam Hussein and his regime "are removed from power will be the day of your liberation."


But never before in history had a dominant world power planned to strike a much weaker nation in a preemptive war with such ferocity. It would be liberation through devastation.


Many projections expected the deaths of thousands of Iraqi non-combatants, no matter how targeted or precise the U.S. weapons. For those civilians, their end would come in the dark terror of crushing concrete or in the blinding flash of high explosives.


In the prelude to the invasion, the United Nations predicted possibly more than 500,000 civilians injured or killed during the war and its aftermath and nearly one million displaced from their homes.


The International Study Team, a Canadian non-governmental organization, raised similar alarms. The invasion of Iraq would cause a "grave humanitarian disaster," with potential casualties among children in "the tens of thousands, and possibly in the hundreds of thousands," the group said.


Assuming U.S. forces succeeded in eliminating Saddam Hussein and his army with relative speed, the post-war period still promised to be complicated and dangerous. The Bush administration outlined plans to occupy Iraq for at least 18 months, installing a military governor in the style of Gen. Douglas MacArthur in Japan after World War II.


But it was not clear how the United States would police a population that was certain to include anti-American militants ready to employ suicide bombings and other irregular tactics against an occupying force.


Bin Laden’s Message


There was the risk, too, that the U.S. invasion would play into the hands of Osama bin Laden, who circulated a message portraying himself as the defender of the Arab people.


"Anyone who tries to destroy our villages and cities, then we are going to destroy their villages and cities," the al-Qaeda leader said. "Anyone who steals our fortunes, then we must destroy their economy. Anyone who kills our civilians, then we are going to kill their civilians."

Some U.S. military strategists saw Bush’s war plan as the worst sort of wishful thinking.


What if the Iraqi army – instead of making itself an easy target for the U.S. missiles – melted into urban centers and began coordinating with an armed civilian population to resist a foreign invasion of their homeland? What if the Iraqi people chose to fight the American invaders, rather than shower them with rose petals?


Already, Saddam Hussein had begun concentrating his troops in urban centers and passing out AK-47s to Iraqis, young and old, men and women.


But Bush’s biggest gamble was whether the "shock and awe" bombardment from the air and the stunning American firepower during the ground invasion would intimidate the Iraqis into surrendering.


The relatively light invading force of a couple hundred thousand troops would be enough to take Baghdad, most military analysts believed, but significant resistance during the invasion would be an early sign that the Army’s chief of staff, Gen. Eric Shinseki, was right when he told Congress that the occupation could require "several hundred thousand troops."


After that alarming estimate, Shinseki was pushed into early retirement and drew a public rebuke from Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who called Shinseki "wildly off the mark."


A similar dispute erupted over the expected cost of the war. White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsay had estimated a figure as high as one or two percent of the gross national product or about $100 billion to $200 billion.


To head off American worries about this high cost, Bush’s budget director Mitch Daniels slapped down Lindsay’s estimate as "very, very high," pegging it instead at between $50 billion and $60 billion. As for reconstruction costs, Wolfowitz and other administration officials suggested that Iraq’s oil revenues would pay for nearly all of that.


Lindsay was soon headed for the door, fired in December 2002 along with Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, an even more outspoken Iraq War critic.


Lost Objectivity


There is the old cliché about war, that its first casualty is truth. But – as U.S. forces began the invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2003, still the evening of March 19 in Washington – an even more immediate casualty was the journalistic principle of objectivity.


Many U.S. news outlets dropped even the pretense of trying to stay neutral and just report the facts. TV anchors were soon opining about what strategies "we" should follow in prosecuting the Iraq War.


"One of the things that we don’t want to do is to destroy the infrastructure of Iraq because in a few days we’re going to own that country," NBC’s Tom Brokaw explained as he sat among a panel of retired generals on the opening night of "Operation Iraqi Freedom."


There was little sensitivity to the sensibilities of the region. U.S. networks used large floor maps of Iraq so American analysts could stride across the country to point out troop movements. They looked like giants towering over the Middle East.


When American troops faced resistance from Iraqi paramilitary fighters, Fox termed them "Saddam’s goons." When Iraqi forces surrendered, they were paraded before U.S. cameras as "proof" that Iraqi resistance was crumbling.


Some of the scenes showed Iraqi POWs forced at gunpoint to kneel down with their hands behind their heads as they were patted down by U.S. soldiers. Network executives apparently felt no sense of irony when they ran these images over the words, "Operation Iraqi Freedom," the title for the coverage and the code name for the invasion.


Showing these degrading images of captured Iraqi soldiers generated not even the mildest concern. Neither the Bush administration nor a single U.S. reporter covering the war for the news networks observed that these scenes might violate the Geneva Conventions on treatment of prisoners of war.


But several days into the invasion, five American soldiers were captured in the southern city of Nasiriyah. When their images were broadcast on Iraqi TV, Bush administration officials immediately denounced the brief televised interviews as a violation of the Geneva Conventions, a charge that was repeated over and over by outraged U.S. television networks.


"It’s illegal to do things to POWs that are humiliating to those prisoners," said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.


In their collective outrage over Iraq’s alleged violation of international law, the U.S. networks seemed to forget the earlier scenes of the Iraqi POWs. They also left out how President Bush had stripped POWs captured in Afghanistan of their rights under the Geneva Conventions.


Prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were shaved bald and forced to kneel down with their eyes, ears and mouths covered to deprive them of their senses. Their humiliation was broadcast widely for the world to see.


There also had been leaks to the news media that terrorist suspects were being subjected to "stress and duress" tactics, which in some cases could be considered forms of torture. U.S. officials admitted to the use of sleep deprivation in their interrogations of prisoners.


But senior U.S. officials defended these tactics, with one official telling The Washington Post, "If you don’t violate someone’s human rights some of the time, you probably aren’t doing your job."


Virtually confirming the new U.S. policy of using forms of torture, Cofer Black, former head of the CIA Counterterrorist Center, told a joint hearing of the House and Senate intelligence committees that there was a new "operational flexibility" in dealing with suspected terrorists.


"There was a before 9/11, and there was an after 9/11," Black said. "After 9/11 the gloves come off."


This background left many in the world shaking their heads over the U.S. outrage when Iraqi TV broadcast the videotapes of American POWs. The Bush administration – and the major American media – seemed to prefer their international law a la carte, picking and choosing when the rules should apply and when they shouldn’t.


Patriotism Sweepstakes


As the invasion – or "liberation" – proceeded, Fox News and MSNBC competed in the sweepstakes to be the network that demonstrated the greatest pro-war patriotism.


Both Fox and MSNBC broadcast Madison Avenue-style montages of heroic American soldiers at war, amid thankful Iraqis and stirring background music. Fox News used a harmonica soundtrack of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic."


MSNBC brought even higher production values to its images of U.S. troops moving through Iraq. One segment ended with an American boy surrounded by yellow ribbons for his father at war, and the concluding slogan, "Home of the Brave."


Another MSNBC montage showed happy Iraqis welcoming U.S. troops as liberators over the slogan, "Let Freedom Ring."


Left out of these "news" montages – and much of the American news coverage – were images of death and destruction.


Rather than troubling Americans with gruesome pictures of mangled and dismembered Iraqi bodies, including many children, the cable networks, in particular, edited the war in ways that helped avoid negativity, boost ratings and give advertisers the feel-good content that plays best around their products.


Fox News may have pioneered the concept of casting the war in the gauzy light of heroic imagery, but the other U.S. networks weren’t far behind.


Not to be completely out-foxed, CNN offered startlingly different war coverage to Americans on domestic CNN than what other viewers saw on CNN International.


While domestic CNN focused on happy stories of American courage and appreciative Iraqis, CNNI carried more scenes of wounded civilians overflowing Iraqi hospitals.


"During the Gulf War in 1991, [CNN] presented a uniform global feed that showed the war largely through American eyes," the Wall Street Journal reported. "Since then, CNN has developed several overseas networks that increasingly cater their programming to regional audiences and advertisers."

Left unsaid by the Journal’s formulation of how CNN’s overseas affiliates "cater" to foreign audiences was the flip side of that coin, that domestic CNN was freer to shape a version of the news that was more satisfying to Americans.


Still, CNN – and MSNBC – lagged behind Fox in pulling in the viewers with super-patriotic war coverage, albeit not for lack of trying.


The U.S. networks fell over themselves to tell the glorious story of Pfc. Jessica Lynch, who was captured during the invasion’s early days. Her rescue was filmed by the U.S. military in the fuzzy green of night-vision equipment and played over and over again.


Only later was it revealed that the Lynch story had been embroidered for propaganda effect. The Iraqi doctors who had cared for Lynch said the rescue was staged, a kind of made-for-TV movie before it was destined to become a made-for-TV movie.


"They made a big show," said Haitham Gizzy, a doctor who treated Lynch. "It was just a drama" filmed after Iraqi fighters had fled the scene and with only doctors manning the hospital.


Impending Disaster


While Americans were fed a steady diet of cheerleading journalism, the stronger-than-expected resistance from Iraqi forces on the ground in the war’s early days raised warning signs about trouble ahead.


Robert Parry tracked down some of his longtime military and intelligence sources who painted for him a much grimmer picture than was appearing in the major U.S. news media.


With the war less than two weeks old, he described their portents of disaster in a Consortiumnews.com article entitled "Bay of Pigs Meets Black Hawk Down." It read:


"Whatever happens in the weeks ahead, George W. Bush has ’lost’ the war in Iraq. The only question now is how big a price America will pay, both in terms of battlefield casualties and political hatred swelling around the world.


"That is the view slowly dawning on U.S. military analysts, who privately are asking whether the cost of ousting Saddam Hussein has grown so large that ’victory’ will constitute a strategic defeat of historic proportions.


"At best, even assuming Saddam’s ouster, the Bush administration may be looking at an indefinite period of governing something akin to a California-size Gaza Strip.


"The chilling realization is spreading in Washington that Bush’s Iraqi debacle may be the mother of all presidential miscalculations – an extraordinary blend of Bay of Pigs-style wishful thinking with a ’Black Hawk Down’ reliance on special operations to wipe out enemy leaders as a short-cut to victory.


"But the magnitude of the Iraq disaster could be far worse than either the Bay of Pigs fiasco in Cuba in 1961 or the bloody miscalculations in Somalia in 1993. In both those cases, the U.S. government showed the tactical flexibility to extricate itself from military misjudgments without grave strategic damage.


"The CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion left a small army of Cuban exiles in the lurch when the rosy predictions of popular uprisings against Fidel Castro failed to materialize. To the nation’s advantage, however, President John Kennedy applied what he learned from the Bay of Pigs – that he shouldn’t blindly trust his military advisers – to navigate the far more dangerous Cuban missile crisis in 1962.


"The botched ’Black Hawk Down’ raid in Mogadishu cost the lives of 18 U.S. soldiers, but President Bill Clinton then cut U.S. losses by recognizing the hopelessness of the leadership-decapitation strategy and withdrawing American troops from Somalia.


"Similarly, President Ronald Reagan pulled out U.S. forces from Lebanon in 1983 after a suicide bomber killed 241 Marines who were part of a force that had entered Beirut as peace-keepers but found itself drawn into the middle of a brutal civil war."


Robert Parry continued: "Few analysts today, however, believe that George W. Bush and his senior advisers, including Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, have the common sense to swallow the short-term bitter medicine of a cease-fire or a U.S. withdrawal.


"Rather than face the political music for admitting to the gross error of ordering an invasion in defiance of the United Nations and then misjudging the enemy, these U.S. leaders are expected to push forward no matter how bloody or ghastly their future course might be.


"Without doubt, the Bush administration misjudged the biggest question of the war: ’Would the Iraqis fight?’ Happy visions of rose petals and cheers have given way to a grim reality of ambushes and suicide bombs.


"But the Bush pattern of miscalculation continues unabated. Bush seems to have cut himself off from internal dissent at the CIA and the Pentagon, where intelligence analysts and field generals warned against the wishful thinking that is proving lethal on the Iraqi battlefields. …


"Instead of recognizing their initial errors and rethinking their war strategy, Bush and his team are pressing forward confidently into what looks like a dreamscape of their own propaganda. …


"While the Bush administration once talked about administering Iraq for a couple of years after victory, that timetable was based on the pre-war assumptions that the war would be a ’cakewalk’ and that the Iraqi population would welcome U.S. troops with open arms.


"After that easy victory, a U.S. proconsul administration would weed out Saddam loyalists and build a ’representative’ government, apparently meaning that the U.S. would pick leaders from among Iraq’s various ethnic groups and tribes.


"However, now, with civilian casualties rising and a U.S. ’victory’ possibly requiring a blood bath, the timeline for the post-war ’reconstruction’ may need lengthening. Instead of a couple of years, the process could prove open-ended with fewer Iraqis willing to collaborate and more Iraqis determined to resist.


"A long occupation would be another grim prospect for American soldiers. Given what’s happened in the past 11 days, U.S. occupation troops and Iraqi collaborators can expect an extended period of scattered fighting that might well involve assassinations and bombings.


"U.S. troops, inexperienced with Iraqi culture and ignorant of the Arabic language, will be put in the predicament of making split-second decisions about whether to shoot some 14-year-old boy with a backpack or some 70-year-old woman in a chador. …


"Once the ’shock and awe’ bombing failed to crack the regime and Iraqis showed they were willing to fight in southern Iraqi cities – such as Umm Qasr, Basra and Nasiriyah – where Saddam’s support was considered weak, Bush’s initial war strategy was shown to be a grave mistake.


"The supposedly decisive ’shock and awe’ bombing in the war’s opening days amounted to TV pyrotechnics that did little more than blow up empty government buildings, including Saddam’s tackily decorated palaces. The U.S. had so telegraphed the punch that the buildings had been evacuated. …


"Unwittingly, Bush may be applying all the wrong lessons from America’s worst military disasters of the past 40-plus years. He’s mixing risky military tactics with a heavy reliance on propaganda and a large dose of wishful thinking.


"Bush also has guessed wrong on the one crucial ingredient that would separate meaningful victory from the political defeat that is now looming. He completely miscalculated the reaction of the Iraqi people to an invasion.


"More and more, Bush appears to be heading toward that ultimate lesson of U.S. military futility. He’s committed himself – and the nation – to destroying Iraq in order to save it."

Plan Colombia-Cashing In on the Drug War Failure

Documentary about the colombian armed conflict.

Iran - Friends or Enemies?



Mosaic News - 3/17/08: World News from the Middle East



Inside Story - Spotlight on Islamaphobia

Muslim leaders, meeting at last week's OIC Summit, have put together a plan to counter Islamaphobia. Inside Story asks how serious the problem is and if Muslim countries can work together to eradicate it.

America was conned - who will pay?

The South Sea Bubble ended in riots as trust was lost. Wall Street also duped the public

Go to Original
By Larry Elliott

Bear Stearns marks the moment when the global financial crisis went critical. Up until last Friday, it had been possible - just about - to believe that the worst was over and that things were about to get better. That pretence was stripped away when JP Morgan, at the behest of the Federal Reserve, stepped in when the hedge funds pulled the plug on the fifth-biggest US investment bank.

It is now clear that no end is in sight to the turmoil, and the reason for that is that the Fed and the US treasury are no closer to solving the underlying problem than they were eight months ago. The crisis will only end when house prices stop falling and banks stop racking up huge losses on their loans. Doing that, however, will require the US government to intervene directly in the real estate market to end the wave of foreclosures. Ideologically, it is ill-equipped to take that step and, as a result, property prices will fall and the financial meltdown will go on and on.

Ultimately, though, action will be taken because there will be political pressure for it. Indeed, it is somewhat surprising that there is not already rioting in the streets, given the gigantic fraud perpetrated by the financial elite at the expense of ordinary Americans.

The US has just had its weakest period of expansion since the 1950s. Consumption growth has been poor. Investment growth has been modest. Exports have been sluggish. But if you are at the top of the tree, the years since the last recession in 2001 has been a veritable golden age. Salaries for executives have rocketed and profits have soared, because the productivity gains from a growing economy have been disproportionately skewed towards capital.

Patriotic

For ordinary Americans, though, it has been a different story. Real wages have been growing slowly; at just 1.6% a year on average over the latest upswing, well down on the experience of earlier decades. Business, of course, needs consumers to carry on spending in order to make money, so a way had to be found to persuade households to do their patriotic duty. The method chosen was simple. Whip up a colossal housing bubble, convince consumers that it makes sense to borrow money against the rising value of their homes to supplement their meagre real wage growth and watch the profits roll in.

As they did - for a while. Now it's payback time and the mood could get very ugly. Americans, to put it bluntly, have been conned. They have been duped by a bunch of serpent-tongued hucksters who packed up the wagon and made it across the county line before a lynch mob could be formed.

The debate now is not about whether the US is in recession but how deep and long that recession will be. Super-bears have started to say that this is perhaps "The Big One", by which they mean the onset of a new Great Depression. The need to rescue Bear Stearns has done little to still those voices.

As the economics team at HSBC recently pointed out, there has been a "catastrophic breakdown" of trust, and when that has happened in the past - the US in the 1930s, Japan in the 1990s - chucking extra money at the banks in the hope that they will start lending again proves ineffective.

It's not hard to see why trust has become such a rare commodity: Wall Street at the height of the securitisation mania had, in effect, become London at the time of the South Sea Bubble crisis in 1720. Vast quantities of funny paper were changing hands even though those involved in the deals had no idea of their true worth. Nor did they care. Inevitably, now the bubble has burst and the huge Ponzi securitisation scam has been exposed, there has been a reaction. The securitisation market is dead, there is less money sloshing round the system, banks are hoarding their cash.

Having allowed the housing boom to rage out of control for too long and then delaying cuts in interest rates until the housing market was gripped by recessionary forces, the Fed is now trying to make up for lost time with a burst of hyperactivity. It will cut interest rates on Wednesday and keep cutting them: financial markets expect the Fed funds rate to be 1% by the summer, and they are probably right. In most downturns, easier monetary policy does the trick. Lower interest rates make it cheaper to borrow and also change the trade-off between saving and spending. This may not be the usual sort of downturn, however, with consumers going through a period of debt revulsion after the excesses of recent years, even so the consensus is that after two or three quarters of falling output, a slow and sluggish recovery will be under way.

Deflation

These hopes are likely to be dashed, unless there is intervention at home and internationally to tackle the crisis. Domestically, the priority should be to stop homes that have been foreclosed being auctioned on the open market, since by selling them at a 50% discount property prices are driven down. The US does not seem to have learned the lessons from Japan, which encouraged a fire sale of property in the 1990s and was sucked into a classic debt deflation trap as a result. Those who argue, with some force, that it would be counter-productive to intervene in the market because the US needs to work the rottenness out of its system must recognise that the cold turkey option will be very long and painful.

The second form of intervention should be to shore up the dollar, the collapse of which is worrying countries that rely heavily on exports and is the main reason for the surge in commodity prices. Co-ordinated intervention by the major central banks needs to be at the top of the agenda at next month's G7 meeting in Washington, and there could be action even sooner if the dollar continues to tank.

In the longer term, lessons must be learnt from the turmoil. One is that you don't solve the problems of a collapsing bubble by blowing up another, which is what Alan Greenspan did after the dotcom fiasco in 2001 - the most irresponsible behaviour of any central banker in living memory.

The second lesson is that there has to be far stricter regulation not just of the US real estate market but of Wall Street, to prevent the return of irresponsible lending as soon as the recovery is firmly under way. If this is, heaven help us, The Big One, one of the only consolations will be that the repugnance at the orgy of speculation that has sapped the strength of the US economy will put a new New Deal on the political agenda.

But for this to happen there has to be a political response and even though this year's presidential election will be held in the shadow of recession, there appears not to be a potential FDR among the contenders for the White House. Yet if this crisis really does get as bad as some are forecasting, the public will rightly demand more than a slap on the wrist for Wall Street.

The Despoiling of America

The Despoiling of America


How George W. Bush became the head of the new American Dominionist Church/State


By Katherine Yurica


With Editorial and Research Assistant Laurie Hall
Originally Published by the
Yurica Report


The First Prince of the Theocratic States of America


It happened quietly, with barely a mention in the media. Only the Washington Post dutifully reported it.[1] And only Kevin Phillips saw its significance in his new book, American Dynasty.[2] On December 24, 2001, Pat Robertson resigned his position as President of the Christian Coalition.


Behind the scenes religious conservatives were abuzz with excitement. They believed Robertson had stepped down to allow the ascendance of the President of the United States of America to take his rightful place as the head of the true American Holy Christian Church.


Robertson’s act was symbolic, but it carried a secret and solemn revelation to the faithful. It was the signal that the Bush administration was a government under God that was led by an anointed President who would be the first regent in a dynasty of regents awaiting the return of Jesus to earth. The President would now be the minister through whom God would execute His will in the nation. George W. Bush accepted his scepter and his sword with humility, grace and a sense of exultation.


As Antonin Scalia, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court explained a few months later, the Bible teaches and Christians believe “… that government …derives its moral authority from God. Government is the ‘minister of God’ with powers to ‘revenge,’ to ‘execute wrath,’ including even wrath by the sword…”[3]


George W. Bush began to wield the sword of God’s revenge with relish from the beginning of his administration, but most of us missed the sword play. I have taken the liberty to paraphrase an illustration from Leo Strauss, the father of the neo-conservative movement, which gives us a clue of how the hiding is done:



“One ought not to say to those whom one wants to kill, ‘Give me your votes, because your votes will enable me to kill you and I want to kill you,’ but merely, ‘Give me your votes,’ for once you have the power of the votes in your hand, you can satisfy your desire.”[4]


Notwithstanding the advice, the President’s foreign policy revealed a flare for saber rattling. He warned the world that “nations are either with us or they’re against us!” His speeches, often containing allusions to biblical passages, were spoken with the certainty of a man who holds the authority of God’s wrath on earth, for he not only challenged the evil nations of the world, singling out Iraq, Syria, Iran, and North Korea as the “axis of evil,” but he wielded the sword of punishment and the sword of revenge against his own people: the American poor and the middle class who according to the religious right have earned God’s wrath by their licentiousness and undisciplined lives.


To the middle class he said, “I’m going to give you clear skies clean air and clean water,” then he gutted the environmental controls that were designed to provide clean air and water. The estimated number of premature deaths that will result: 100,000.[5] He said to the poor and to the middle class: “I’m going to give you a prescription drug program, one that you truly deserve.” Then he gave the drug industry an estimated $139 billion dollars in increased profits from the Medicare funds and arranged for the poorest of seniors to be eliminated from coverage, while most elderly will pay more for drugs than they paid before his drug benefit bill passed.[6] After that he arranged for the dismantling of the Medicare program entirely, based on the method outlined by his religious mentors.[7] He said to the people of America, “I’m going to build a future for you and your children,” then he gutted their future with tax breaks to the rich and a pre-emptive war against Iraq, and the largest spending deficit in history.[8]


This article is the documented story of how a political religious movement called Dominionism gained control of the Republican Party, then took over Congress, then took over the White House, and now is sealing the conversion of America to a theocracy by taking over the American Judiciary. It’s the story of why and how “the wrath of God Almighty” will be unleashed against the middle class, against the poor, and against the elderly and sick of this nation by George W. Bush and his army of Republican Dominionist “rulers.”


How Dominionism Was Spread

The years 1982-1986 marked the period Pat Robertson and radio and televangelists urgently broadcast appeals that rallied Christian followers to accept a new political religion that would turn millions of Christians into an army of political operatives. It was the period when the militant church raised itself from centuries of sleep and once again eyed power.


At the time, most Americans were completely unaware of the militant agenda being preached on a daily basis across the breadth and width of America. Although it was called “Christianity” it can barely be recognized as Christian. It in fact was and is a wolf parading in sheep’s clothing: It was and is a political scheme to take over the government of the United States and then turn that government into an aggressor nation that will forcibly establish the United States as the ruling empire of the twenty-first century. It is subversive, seditious, secretive, and dangerous.[9]


Dominionism is a natural if unintended extension of Social Darwinism and is frequently called “Christian Reconstructionism.” Its doctrines are shocking to ordinary Christian believers and to most Americans. Journalist Frederick Clarkson, who has written extensively on the subject, warned in 1994 that Dominionism “seeks to replace democracy with a theocratic elite that would govern by imposing their interpretation of ‘Biblical Law.’” He described the ulterior motive of Dominionism is to eliminate “…labor unions, civil rights laws, and public schools.” Clarkson then describes the creation of new classes of citizens:



“Women would be generally relegated to hearth and home. Insufficiently Christian men would be denied citizenship, perhaps executed. So severe is this theocracy that it would extend capital punishment [to] blasphemy, heresy, adultery, and homosexuality.”[10]


Today, Dominionists hide their agenda and have resorted to stealth; one investigator who has engaged in internet exchanges with people who identify themselves as religious conservatives said, “They cut and run if I mention the word ‘Dominionism.’”[11] Joan Bokaer, the Director of Theocracy Watch, a project of the Center for Religion, Ethics and Social Policy at Cornell University wrote, “In March 1986, I was on a speaking tour in Iowa and received a copy of the following memo [Pat] Robertson had distributed to the Iowa Republican County Caucus titled, “How to Participate in a Political Party.” It read:



“Rule the world for God.


“Give the impression that you are there to work for the party, not push an ideology.


“Hide your strength.


“Don’t flaunt your Christianity.


“Christians need to take leadership positions. Party officers control political parties and so it is very important that mature Christians have a majority of leadership positions whenever possible, God willing.”[12]


Dominionists have gained extensive control of the Republican Party and the apparatus of government throughout the United States; they continue to operate secretly. Their agenda to undermine all government social programs that assist the poor, the sick, and the elderly is ingeniously disguised under false labels that confuse voters. Nevertheless, as we shall see, Dominionism maintains the necessity of laissez-faire economics, requiring that people “look to God and not to government for help.”[13]


It is estimated that thirty-five million Americans who call themselves Christian, adhere to Dominionism in the United States, but most of these people appear to be ignorant of the heretical nature of their beliefs and the seditious nature of their political goals. So successfully have the televangelists and churches inculcated the idea of the existence of an outside “enemy,” which is attacking Christianity, that millions of people have perceived themselves rightfully overthrowing an imaginary evil anti-Christian conspiratorial secular society.


When one examines the progress of its agenda, one sees that Dominionism has met its time table: the complete takeover of the American government was predicted to occur by 2004.[14] Unless the American people reject the GOP’s control of the government, Americans may find themselves living in a theocracy that has already spelled out its intentions to change every aspect of American life including its cultural life, its Constitution and its laws.


Born in Christian Reconstructionism, which was founded by the late R. J. Rushdoony, the framers of the new cult included Rushdoony, his son-in-law Gary North, Pat Robertson, Herb Titus, the former Dean of Robertson’s Regent University School of Public Policy (formerly CBN University), Charles Colson, Robertson’s political strategist, Tim LaHaye, Gary Bauer, the late Francis Schaeffer, and Paul Crouch, the founder of TBN, the world’s largest television network, plus a virtual army of likeminded television and radio evangelists and news talk show hosts.


Dominionism started with the Gospels and turned the concept of the invisible and spiritual “Kingdom of God” into a literal political empire that could be taken by force, starting with the United States of America. Discarding the original message of Jesus and forgetting that Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world,” the framers of Dominionism boldly presented a Gospel whose purpose was to inspire Christians to enter politics and execute world domination so that Jesus could return to an earth prepared for his earthly rule by his faithful “regents.”


How Machiavellianism, Communism, Secular Humanism and Neo-Conservatism Inspired a New Militant and Evil Anti-Christian Religion

In the fifties and sixties, right-wing Christians worried about communists and communism taking over the world. Along with communism, another enemy to Christianity was identified by ministers. In 1982, Francis Schaeffer, who was then the leading evangelical theologian, called Secular Humanism the greatest threat to Christianity the world had ever seen. Soon American fundamentalists and Pentecostals were seeing “humanists” everywhere. Appearing on Pat Robertson’s 700 Club show, Schaeffer claimed that humanism was being forced on Christians; it taught that man was the “center of all things.” Like communism, secular humanism was based on atheism, which was sufficient enough for Schaeffer to conclude that humanism was an enemy to the Kingdom of God.[15]


“The enemy is this other view of reality,” Schaeffer spoke emotionally. Citing the Declaration of Independence as his authorizing document, he said:



“Today we live in a humanist society. They control the schools. They control public television. They control the media in general. And what we have to say is we live in a humanist society….[Because] the courts are not subject to the will of the people through elections or re-election… all the great changes in the last forty years have come through the courts. And what we must get in our mind is the government as a whole, but especially the courts, has become the vehicle to force this view on the total population, even if the total population doesn’t hold the view.”[16]


Schaeffer claimed that the major “titanic changes” to America occurred since 1942:



“If you don’t revolt against tyranny and this is what I call the bottom line, is that not only do you have the privilege but [you have] the duty to revolt. When people force upon you and society that which is absolutely contrary to the Word of God, and which really is tyranny…we have a right to stand against it as a matter of principle. And this was the basis upon which the founding fathers built this country.”


The appeal to evangelicals went further. On April 29, 1985, Billy Graham, the respected and world famous evangelist, told Pat Robertson’s audience on the 700 Club show that:



“[T]he time has come when evangelicals are going to have to think about getting organized corporately….I’m for evangelicals running for public office and winning if possible and getting control of the Congress, getting control of the bureaucracy, getting control of the executive branch of government. I think if we leave it to the other side we’re going to be lost. I would like to see every true believer involved in politics in some way shape or form.”


According to Schaeffer, Robertson, and Billy Graham, then arguably the three most famous and influential leaders in the American protestant church world, “God’s people” had a moral duty to change the government of the United States.[17]


Significantly, at the time, many other fundamentalist ministers were identifying communism and secular humanism as religions. However, the equating of a political ideology on the one hand, and a philosophy that rejects supernaturalism on the other hand, with religions was not accidental.[18] It allowed the preachers to revile an economic-political system as well as a philosophy as false religions, even demonic religions, which Christians should reject at any cost.[19]


Underneath the pejoratives, however, there was a grudging admiration on the part of Pat Robertson and the other politically astute Dominionists, for they saw that a political agenda that wrapped itself in religious robes had the innate power to explode exponentially into the most politically dynamic movement in American and world history.


The result of the new religion was that by the year 2000, thirty-five million Americans would declare war on the remaining 245 million. Karl Rove, President Bush’s political advisor, told the Family Research Council in 2002, “We need to find ways to win the war.”[20] One is tempted to respond, “Wait a minute, they’re in power so why do they need to continue the war?” That is the salient question. The answer is frightening.


Starting with a simple idea, Robertson perceived the enormous advantage of placing an otherwise unacceptable political theory into a religious context. By doing so it would stand Christianity up-side-down and end American democracy.



A Machiavellian Religion Was Born

American Christianity had already seen extremes. For Dominionists, perhaps the single most important event in the last half of the twentieth century occurred when the Reverend Jim Jones proved that the religious would follow their leader to Guyana and even further, to their deaths. That fact could hardly have escaped the notice of even the dullest of politically minded preachers.


Indeed, Jim Jones’ surreal power over his congregants leaps out from the grave even today. If a man desired to change the laws in America—to undo Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal for instance, and allow corporations the unbridled freedom they enjoyed prior to the Great Depression (which included the freedom to defraud, pillage, and to destroy the land with impunity on the way to gathering great fortunes), what better way to proceed than to cloak the corruption within a religion? If a few men wanted to establish an American empire and control the entire world, what better vehicle to carry them to their goal than to place their agenda within the context of a religion? Jim Jones proved religious people would support even immoral political deeds if their leaders found a way to frame those deeds as “God’s Will.” The idea was brilliant. Its framers knew they could glorify greed, hate, nationalism and even a Christian empire with ease.[21]



The religion the canny thinkers founded follows the reverse of communism and secular humanism, it poured political and economic ideology into a religion and that combustible mixture produced “Dominionism,” a new political faith that had the additional advantage of insulating the cult from attacks on its political agenda by giving its practitioners the covering to simply cry out, “You’re attacking me for my religious beliefs and that’s religious persecution!”[22]



But how could a leader get away with a religious fraud that barely hides its destructive and false intent?



Jim Jones’s history holds the answer. He not only proved the obvious fact that people are blinded by their religious beliefs and will only impute goodness, mercy, and religious motivations to their leader, but Jim Jones proved the efficacy of the basic teaching of Machiavelli: a leader must only appear to have the qualities of goodness—he need not actually possess those attributes.



In fact, Machiavelli taught that it is dangerous for a leader to practice goodness. Instead, he must pretend to be good and then do the opposite. Machiavelli taught that a leader will succeed on appearances alone. A good leader puts his finger to the wind and changes course whenever it is expedient to do so. Machiavelli wrote this revealing passage that could be applied not only to false religious leaders but to a false President:



“Alexander VI did nothing else but deceive men, he thought of nothing else, and found the occasion for it; no man was ever more able to give assurances, or affirmed things with stronger oaths, and no man observed them less; however, he always succeeded in his deceptions, as he well knew this aspect of things.”



“Everybody sees what you appear to be, few feel what you are, and those few will not dare to oppose themselves to the many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them; and in the actions of men, and especially of princes, from which there is no appeal, the end justifies the means.” (p. 93)


Chillingly Machiavelli advises his readers:



“Let a prince therefore aim at conquering and maintaining the state, and the means will always be judged honourable and praised by every one, for the vulgar is always taken by appearances and the issue of the event; and the world consists only of the vulgar, and the few who are not vulgar are isolated when the many have a rallying point in the prince.” (p. 94)


Machiavelli also wrote how to govern dominions that previous to being occupied lived under their own laws. His words eerily reflect the Bush Administration’s decisions on how to rule Iraq:



“When those states which have been acquired are accustomed to live at liberty under their own laws, there are three ways of holding them. The first is to despoil them;[23] the second is to go and live there in person; the third is to allow them to live under their own laws, taking tribute of them, and creating within the country a government composed of a few who will keep it friendly to you. Because this government, being created by the prince, knows that it cannot exist without his friendship and protection, and will do all it can to keep them. What is more, a city used to liberty can be more easily held by means of its citizens than in any other way, if you wish to preserve it.” (p. 46)


However Machiavelli has second thoughts and follows with this caveat:



“…. [I]n truth there is no sure method of holding them except by despoiling them. And whoever becomes the ruler of a free city and does not destroy it, can expect to be destroyed by it, for it can always find a motive for rebellion in the name of liberty and of its ancient usages…”[24] (p. 46)


(The above quotes are from The Prince in the original Oxford University Press translation by Luigi Ricci, 1903; revised by E. R. P. Vincent, 1935)


Machiavelli’s books, The Prince and The Discourses are not abstract treatises. Christian Gauss, who wrote an important introduction to the Oxford edition, called them by their rightful name: they are in fact a “concise manual—a handbook of those who would acquire or increase their political power.” Gauss tells us that a long line of kings and ministers and tyrants studied Machiavelli, including Mussolini, Hitler, Lenin and Stalin.


How Can Evil Deeds Be Reconciled With Christian Beliefs?

It’s important to understand that the founders of Dominionism are sitting on the horns of a moral dilemma: How can a leader be both good and evil at the same time? For if biblical moral proscriptions are applicable to him, he will certainly suffer some form of censure. And if proscriptions are applicable, the leader could not lie to the citizenry with impunity or do evil so that “good” could be achieved. The answer to the dilemma of how a Dominionist leader could both do evil and still maintain his place of honor in the Christian community lies in the acceptance and adoption of the Calvinistic doctrine that James Hogg wrote about in The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. (W.W. Norton, N.Y. 1970.)



This novel, published in 1824, is concerned with psychological aberration and as such, anticipates the literature of the twentieth century. The protagonist is a young man named Robert, who drenched in the religious bigotry of Calvinism, concluded that he was predestined before the beginning of the world to enter heaven, therefore no sin he committed would be held to his account. This freed Robert to become an assassin in the cause of Christ and His Church.



Fifty years ago a variation on the concept was expressed disapprovingly as, “Once saved—always saved.” In this view, salvation had nothing to do with “good works or a holy life.” A drunk who had a born again experience would be among God’s chosen elect whether he stopped drinking or not. But the logical extension of the reasoning is the idea that Christianity could have within itself not ex-sinners but active sinners: as Christian murderers, Christian pedophiles, Christian rapists, Christian thieves, Christian arsonists, and every other kind of socio-pathological behavior possible. As we have sadly witnessed of late the concept is broadly accepted within the American churches.



But the Dominionists needed the aberrant extension of Calvinism; they believe as did Calvin and John Knox that before the creation of the universe, all men were indeed predestined to be either among God’s elect or were unregenerate outcasts. And it is at this point Dominionists introduced a perversion to Calvinism—the same one James Hogg utilizes in his The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner—its technical name is “supralapsarianism.” It means essentially that the man called from before the foundation of the world to be one of the elect of God’s people, can do no wrong. No wonder then observers noted a definite religious swing in George W. Bush from Wesleyan theology to Calvinism early in his administration.[25]



How comforting the Calvinistic idea of a “justified sinner” is when one is utilizing Machiavellian techniques to gain political control of a state. It’s more than comforting; it is a required doctrine for “Christians” who believe they must use evil to bring about good. It justifies lying, murder, fraud and all other criminal acts without the fuss of having to deal with guilt feelings or to feel remorse for the lives lost through executions, military actions, or assassinations.



If this doctrine seems too wayward to believe as it might have done had I not heard a recent interview with a Pentecostal minister—rest assured the twisted doctrine is horribly alive and thriving in America today.



The interview conducted by Brian Copeland a news talk show host for KGO, San Francisco on September 5, 2003, was with the Reverend Donald Spitz of Pensacola, Florida who is involved with a Pro Life group in Virginia and with the Army of God. The occasion was the execution of Paul Hill, another Pentecostal minister who murdered a doctor and his body guard outside an abortion clinic. Hill was caught and convicted of the crimes. Spitz admitted that he was Paul Hill’s spiritual counselor. He said Hill died with the conviction he had done the Lord’s work. Spitz who approved of the murder said, “Someone else is going to handle the publishing of Paul Hill’s book On How to Assassinate.”



Spitz believed that Hill was completely justified in murdering the physician because, according to him, “twenty-six babies’ lives were saved by the killing.” When Copeland pointed out that the scheduled abortions for the morning of the murders would have simply been postponed to another day—and that the lives of the fetuses were only extended for a day or so, Spitz refused to accept the argument.



Not surprisingly, Spitz opposed the use of birth control methods. Copeland asked, “If a woman is raped should she be forced to carry the fetus to term?” Spitz said, “Yes.”



“What if the pregnancy will kill the mother?” Spitz replied that under no circumstances could “the baby be killed.” When Spitz was asked, “Why haven’t you gone out and killed an abortionist?” he replied calmly, “God hasn’t told me to do the killing.”




The Neo-Conservative Connection with Dominionists and Machiavelli

I suspect that most Americans have never heard of Machiavelli, nevertheless, it should be no surprise to us that Machiavelli has been accepted, praised, and followed by the Neo-Conservatives in the White House and his precepts are blindly adopted by the so-called “Christian” Dominionists. Kevin Phillips tells us in his masterful book, American Dynasty that Karl Rove, political strategist for President George W. Bush, is a devotee of Machiavelli, just as Rove’s predecessor, Lee Atwater had been for the elder Bush.[26] In fact, there has been an incredible effort to dilute the immoral implications of Machiavelli’s teachings. Today’s best apologist for Machiavelli is one of the most influential voices in Washington with direct connections into the oval office.


Michael A. Ledeen was a Senior Fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a counselor to the National Security Council and special counselor to former Secretary of State, Alexander Haig in 1985. His relationship with Pat Robertson goes back at least to the early 1980’s.[27] Like Robertson, Ledeen was an advocate for military intervention in Nicaragua and for assistance to the Contras. (Ledeen was also involved in the Iran-Contra affair.)[28]


Today, in 2004, Michael Ledeen is a fellow at the conservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute and according to William O. Beeman of the Pacific News Service, “Ledeen has become the driving philosophical force behind the neoconservative movement and the military actions it has spawned.”[29]


Ledeen made a number of appearances on the 700 Club show during the 1980’s. Always presented as a distinguished guest, Robertson interviewed him on April 30, 1985 and asked him on this occasion: “What would you recommend if you were going to advise the President [Ronald Reagan] as to foreign policy?”


Ledeen responded:



“The United States has to make clear to the world and above all to its own citizens, what our vital interests are. And then we must make it clear to everyone that we are prepared to fight and fight fiercely to defend those interests, so that people will not cross the lines that are likely to kick off a trip wire.” (Emphasis added.)


If Ledeen’s advice sounds ruthless and Machiavellian—it may be because it is Machiavellian. (By definition his statement presupposes the existence of something or several things that are life threatening to the nation by the use of the word “vital.” Yet Ledeen asserts that which is life threatening must be made manifest or defined. If an interest must be defined, then it is not apparent; yet the nation will nevertheless ask its sons and daughters to fight and die for something that is not apparent. Therefore, whatever “interests” Ledeen wanted to be defined, cannot have been vital interests, which are apparent—so in reality he advised the President to call discretionary interests vital—which is a lie.)


Be aware that Ledeen is in complete accord with Machiavellian thinking. And so is Pat Robertson.[30] Robertson agreed to virtually every nuance Ledeen presented. In fact, it’s not clear which of the two first proposed invading Syria, Iran and Iraq back in the 1980’s,[31] a refrain that also echoed in the reports of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), one of the major homes for neo-conservatives in 2000. Both Ledeen and Robertson targeted the same nations that PNAC lists as America’s greatest enemies in its paper, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” (published in September 2000.)[32]


In 1999, Ledeen published his book, Machiavelli on Modern Leadership: Why Machiavelli’s Iron Rules Are as Timely and Important Today as Five Centuries Ago. (Truman Talley Books, St. Martin’s Griffin, N.Y. 1999.) Here is a sample of how Ledeen smoothes rough edges and presents a modern Machiavelli:



“In order to achieve the most noble accomplishments, the leader may have to ‘enter into evil.’ This is the chilling insight that has made Machiavelli so feared, admired, and challenging. It is why we are drawn to him still…” (p. 91)


Again, Ledeen writes:



“Just as the quest for peace at any price invites war and, worse than war, defeat and domination, so good acts sometimes advance the triumph of evil, as there are circumstances when only doing evil ensures the victory of a good cause.” (p. 93)


Ledeen clearly believes “the end justifies the means,” but not all the time. He writes “Lying is evil,” but then contradictorily argues that it produced



“a magnificent result,” and “is essential to the survival of nations and to the success of great enterprises.” (p. 95)


Ledeen adds this tidbit:



“All’s fair in war . . . and in love. Practicing deceit to fulfill your heart’s desire might be not only legitimate, but delicious!” (p. 95)


William O. Beeman tells us about Michael Ledeen’s influence. Writing for the Pacific News Service he says:



Ledeen’s ideas are repeated daily by such figures as Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz…He basically believes that violence in the service of the spread of democracy is America’s manifest destiny. Consequently, he has become the philosophical legitimator of the American occupation of Iraq.”[33]


In fact, Ledeen’s influence goes even further. The BBC, the Washington Post and Jim Lobe writing for the Asia Times report that Michael Ledeen is the only full-time international affairs analyst consulted by Karl Rove.[34] Ledeen has regular conversations with Rove. The Washington Post said, “More than once, Ledeen has seen his ideas faxed to Rove, become official policy or rhetoric.”[35]


Leo Strauss the Father of Neo-Conservatism

Leo Strauss was born in 1899 and died in 1973. He was a Jewish scholar who fled Germany when Hitler gained power. He eventually found refuge in the United States where he taught political science at the University of Chicago. He is most famous for resuscitating Machiavelli and introducing his principles as the guiding philosophy of the neo-conservative movement. Strauss has been called the godfather of Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America.” More than any other man, Strauss breathed upon conservatism, inspiring it to rise from its atrophied condition and its natural dislike of change and to embrace an unbounded new political ideology that rides on the back of a revolutionary steed, hailing even radical change; hence the name Neo-Conservatives.


The father of neo-conservatism had many “spiritual” children at the University of Chicago, among them: Paul Wolfowitz and Abram Shulsky, who received their doctorates under Strauss in 1972. Harry V. Jaffa was a student of Strauss and has an important connection to Dominionists like Pat Robertson as we shall see below. However, Strauss’s family of influence extended beyond his students to include faculty members in universities, and the people his students taught. Those prominent neo-conservatives who are most notable are: Justice Clarence Thomas, Robert Bork, Irving Kristol and his son William Kristol, Alan Keyes, William J. Bennett, J. Danforth Quayle, Allan Bloom, John Podhoertz, John T. Agresto, John Ashcroft, Newt Gingrich, Gary Bauer, Michael Ledeen and scores of others, many of whom hold important positions in George W. Bush’s White House and Defense Department.


To understand the Straussian infusion of power that transformed an all but dead conservative realm, think of Nietzsche’s Overman come to life. Or better yet, think of the philosophy most unlike Christianity: Think of pure unmitigated evil. Strauss admits that Machiavelli is an evil man. But according to Strauss, his admission is a prerequisite to studying and reading Machiavelli: the acknowledgement is the safety net that keeps the reader from being corrupted. One is tempted to talk back to Strauss and point out an alternative: the admission could be the subterfuge that keeps a man from being ridiculed and rejected for espousing Machiavellian methods.


In one of the most important books for our times, Shadia Drury’s Leo Strauss and the American Right, undertakes to explain the ideas behind Strauss’s huge influence and following. Strauss’s reputation, according to Drury, rests in large part on his view that “a real philosopher must communicate quietly, subtly, and secretly to the few who are fit to receive his message.” Strauss claims secrecy is necessary to avoid “persecution.”[36]


In reading Strauss, one sometimes encounters coded contradictory ideas. For example, Strauss appears to respect Machiavelli because—as he points out—in contrast to other evil men, Machiavelli openly proclaimed opinions that others only secretly expressed behind closed doors. But we have just noted that Strauss teaches that secrecy is essential to the real philosopher. Strauss concluded, some would say that Machiavelli was after all, a patriot of sorts for he loved Italy more than he loved his own soul. Then Strauss warns, but if you call him a patriot, you “merely obscure something truly evil.”[37] So Strauss dances his way through the Machiavellian field of evil, his steps choreographed with duplicity and it’s opposite. The reader cannot let go.


In Strauss’s view, Machiavelli sees that Christianity “has led the world into weakness,” which can only be offset by returning the world to the ancient practices of the past. (Implied is not a return to the pagan past, but rather a return to the more virulent world of the Old Testament). Strauss laments, “Machiavelli needed …a detailed discussion revealing the harmony between his political teaching and the teaching of the Bible.” [38]These statements of Strauss, by themselves, were sufficient to send neo-conservative Christians to search for correlations between Machiavellianism, radical conservatism and the scriptures.[39]


Strauss’s teaching incorporated much of Machiavelli’s. Significantly, his philosophy is unfriendly to democracy—even antagonistic. At the same time Strauss upheld the necessity for a national religion not because he favored religious practices, but because religion in his view is necessary in order to control the population. Since neo-conservatives influenced by Strauss are in control of the Bush administration, I have prepared a brief list that shows the radical unchristian basis of neo-conservatism. I am indebted to Shadia Drury’s book (Leo Strauss and the American Right) and published interviews for the following:



First: Strauss believed that a leader had to perpetually deceive the citizens he ruled.


Secondly: Those who lead must understand there is no morality, there is only the right of the superior to rule the inferior.


Thirdly: According to Drury, Religion “is the glue that holds society together.”[40] It is a handle by which the ruler can manipulate the masses. Any religion will do. Strauss is indifferent to them all.


Fourthly: “Secular society…is the worst possible thing,” because it leads to individualism, liberalism, and relativism, all of which encourage dissent and rebellion. As Drury sums it up: “You want a crowd that you can manipulate like putty.”[41]


Fifthly: “Strauss thinks that a political order can be stable only if it is united by an external threat; and following Machiavelli, he maintains that if no external threat exists, then one has to be manufactured.”[42]


Sixthly: “In Strauss’s view, the trouble with liberal society is that it dispenses with noble lies and pious frauds. It tries to found society on secular rational foundations.”


Strauss’s Student, Harry Jaffa on the 700 Club with Pat Robertson

For four days in 1986, from July first through the fourth of July, Pat Robertson interviewed neo-conservative Dr. Harry Jaffa, a former student of Leo Strauss, on the 700 Club show. The topic was the importance of the Declaration of Independence. Joining with Jaffa was Robertson’s own man, Herb Titus, the Dean of CBN’s School of Public Policy. This series of interviews was one of the most important philosophical moments in the development of the political agenda and political philosophy of the Dominionists.


Robertson found in Harry Jaffa, the champion he needed, whose reasoning would influence how the Constitution should be interpreted by conservatives and would provide a “Christian” view of the establishment of the United States that excluded the secular social contract view. Harry Jaffa would influence both Clarence Thomas (who would be appointed to the Supreme Court by President George Bush senior in 1991) and Antonin Scalia (who would be appointed to the Supreme Court by President Ronald Reagan on September 26, 1986).


During the four days of interviews Jaffa and Titus agreed that the Declaration of Independence was the premier document and it superceded the Constitution. Titus said, “The Declaration…is the charter of the nation. It is what you might call the articles of incorporation, whereas the Constitution is the bylaws. The Constitution is the means by which to carry out the great purposes that are articulated in the Declaration.”


Robertson asked: “Let’s assume that eighty percent of the people are just totally immoral, they want to live lives of gross licentiousness and they want to prey on one another, that’s what they want and they want a government to let them do it. How does that square with the Declaration of Independence and its consent of the governed?”


Titus said, “Even the people can’t consent to give away that which God says is unalienable.”


Robertson then asked, “The principles enunciated in the Declaration of Independence, how far have we gone from it and what can we do to redress some of these problems?”


Jaffa responded cryptically:



“I’d say that today, for example in the Attorney General’s [Edwin Meese’s] warfare with the liberals on the Supreme Court, in his appeal to original intent, he appeals to the text of the Constitution. Jefferson and Madison said together in 1825, ‘If you want to find the principles of the Constitution of the United States, you go first to the Declaration of Independence.’”


First, Jaffa means by the term “original intent” that the Constitution must be interpreted according to what it meant when it was originally adopted. It is a revolutionary and brilliant idea that will allow the Dominionists to effectively repeal most of the judicial decisions made in the last century. [43]


econdly, if we take Jaffa and the Dominionists at their word and go to the Declaration of Independence, we can see just how radical the conservative revolution and Dominionism are. The only portion that is ever quoted publicly are these words:



“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,”


The quote stops in the middle of the sentence—the part that is never quoted is this:



That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”


Dominionism then, takes its authority to overthrow the government of the United States from our own Declaration of Independence. By the time all Americans wake up to the Dominionist’s intent, it may be too late.


Though Harry Jaffa speaks with a high minded sense of political righteousness, Shadia Drury exposes his Machiavellian side. Like Strauss, he “clearly believes that devious and illegal methods are justified when those in power are convinced of the rightness of their ends.”[44] Jaffa and Robertson saw eye to eye on more than one topic: for instance, Jaffa like his host Pat Robertson, found Oliver North to be a hero (and by extension Michael Ledeen) when both North and Ledeen went around the law to provide military aid to the contras.[45]


How Dominionism Stealthily Swept Over America

Within a period of twenty to thirty years beginning in the 1970’s, Dominionism spread like wild fire throughout the evangelical, Pentecostal and fundamentalist religious communities in America. It was aided and abetted by television and radio evangelists. More than any other man, Pat Robertson mobilized the millions of politically indifferent and socially despised Pentecostals and fundamentalists in America and turned them into an angry potent army of political conquerors.[46]


But it would be a mistake to limit Dominionism to the Pentecostals and fundamentalists alone: conservative Roman Catholics and Episcopalians have joined and enlarged the swelling numbers.[47] Robertson, like other media preachers, used every form of communication: television, radio, books and audio tapes available for sale. One book stands out. Originally published in 1982 and written with Bob Slosser, a key Robertson loyalist, Pat Robertson’s The Secret Kingdom soared on the bestseller charts. It underwent four printings during its first year. By 1984 Bantam published a mass paperback in cooperation with Thomas Nelson, the original publisher. (Though the book has since been revised, my quotes are from the original version.)


However, it was the Pentecostals and fundamentalists who made up the core of Robertson’s audience. To a people who were largely uneducated and who often remained ignorant even if they went through college because of their fear of becoming tainted by the “world and worldliness,” Dominionism came as a brilliant light that assuaged their deep sense of inferiority. Pentecostals in particular could take comfort from the notion that no longer would the world think of them as “Holy Rollers” who danced in the “Spirit” and practiced glossolalia. This time, they would be on top—they would be the head and not the tail—and the so-called elite, the educated of the world, would be on the bottom.


A new world was coming. To help the transition along, Pat Robertson, along with other pastors, evangelists and churchmen, founded schools, universities and colleges throughout the United States to train “Christians” how to run for office, how to win, and how to manage the affairs of government after they gained office. To get an idea of how successful the plan was, Robertson’s Regent University now has a $100 million endowment. After watching the Dominionists takeover the Republican Party and observing their ruthless methods, it is indeed apparent that Machiavellian principles are the fuel running their “How to Manual.”


Starting with a class of only twelve in 1985, Robertson began his Journalism Department at CBN University where 800 other graduate students were earning Master degrees in a fully accredited institution. Later Robertson changed the name of CBN University to “Regent University”—based on Dominionism’s teaching that the national government of America and governments of the world will be ruled by Dominionists, who will act as regents on an interim basis, that is, until the true King—Jesus Christ—will return to earth again and gratefully accept His Kingdom from the hands of His faithful regents.


The Dominionist Plan: Today Control the USA, Tomorrow the World

Significantly, Dominionism is a form of Social Darwinism.[48] It inherently includes the religious belief that wealth-power is a sign of God’s election. That is, out of the masses of people and the multitude of nations—wealth, in and of itself, is thought to indicate God’s approval on men and nations whereas poverty and sickness reflect God’s disapproval. The roots of the idea come from a natural twist of an Old Testament passage, which I discuss below. Essentially there were two elements necessary to establish Dominionism among Christians who previously believed helping the poor was a mandate of Christianity.[49]


First, Old Testament law had to be accepted as an essential part of a Christian’s theology.


Secondly, the Christian had to undergo a second conversion-like experience that went beyond being born again and demanded not only a commitment to reestablishing the Old Testament legal structure but required the implementation of that law in the nations of the world (including the U.S.) based upon a different understanding of the Great Commission (Matthew 28: 18-20).[50] Under this concept Dominionists are to go into all the world to take dominion and “make disciples” teaching the disciples to “observe all” that Jesus “commanded.” All nations under Dominionist’s teaching are to convert to biblical laws, which are ranked superior to secular laws that were not God given or God directed and are found wanting. The Christian therefore must be willing to overthrow all laws that are secular.


In other words, a measure of one’s spirituality rested upon the individual’s willingness to accept the concept of taking dominion over not only the people of America, but taking dominion over the people of the entire world. From Dominionists’ actual words, the taking of America is perceived as a violent act. Ben Kinchlow who co-hosted CBN’s 700 Club with Pat Robertson told an audience, “We need to grab the American dream by the short hairs and snatch it back to where it was originally designed to be.”


As Robertson wrote approvingly in his book, The Secret Kingdom, the kingdom of heaven “suffers violence, and violent men take it by force.” He explained, “Zealous men force their way in. That’s what it means.” (Page 82.)


What “Dominion” Means

There were an estimated 110,000 Pentecostal and fundamentalist churches in America in the 1980s. Robertson taught them—through his vast television network and through his books—that the role of the Christian is to rule over the wicked. Dominionism’s purpose is to create theocrats (a Christian class of rulers). But in order to successfully place only certain Christians in positions of power, Dominionism divides Christian believers into classes based upon political ideology and certain hot point issues such as the privatization of Social Security and Medicare, freedom to decide on medical procedures with ones own physician, freedom of the press and freedom of speech, freedom of the arts, and certain rights like the right to a fair trial and protection from governmental intrusion into the privacy of marriage and adult associations.


The believers who are destined to rule are called the “elect,” and are separated from those believers who do not and will not accept the predestined superiority of the chosen ruling class. A Christian who raises his voice against the “elect” could be labeled a “false prophet or a dreamer of dreams,” and therefore, according to the Deuteronomic law “shall be put to death.”


Placing his own words in the mouth of God, Robertson wrote in The Secret Kingdom:



“It is clear that God is saying, ‘I gave man dominion over the earth, but he lost it. Now I desire mature sons and daughters who will in My name exercise dominion over the earth and will subdue Satan, the unruly, and the rebellious. Take back My world from those who would loot it and abuse it. Rule as I would rule.’” (p. 201.)


On his 700 Club television show (5-1-86) Robertson said:



“God’s plan is for His people, ladies and gentleman to take dominion…What is dominion? Well, dominion is Lordship. He wants His people to reign and rule with Him…but He’s waiting for us to…extend His dominion…And the Lord says, ‘I’m going to let you redeem society. There’ll be a reformation….We are not going to stand for those coercive utopians in the Supreme Court and in Washington ruling over us any more. We’re not gonna stand for it. We are going to say, ‘we want freedom in this country, and we want power…’”


Charles Colson, the former Special Counsel to Richard Nixon, who was called “Nixon’s Hatchet Man,” pled guilty to charges in the Daniel Ellsberg case during the Watergate Scandal. He served a prison sentence, and started a prison ministry afterward. Pat Robertson has called him “the most brilliant political strategist in the world.” Over the years, Colson made many appearances on the 700 Club. On one occasion, he laid out the battle lines:



“It always has been a conflict between the kingdoms: the kingdom of God and the kingdom of man. When you really look at what Jesus is saying, He is saying the time is fulfilled, repent and believe, the kingdom is at hand. And He is calling for the kingdom of God to rule over the affairs of man. And so inevitably there’s going to be a conflict.” (The 700 Club 5-21-86)


Robertson said on his program the 700 Club (5-13-86):



“We’ve sat idly by long enough and said, ‘Well religion and politics don’t mix.’ Don’t you believe it. If we don’t have moral people in government then the only other people that can be in government are immoral. That’s the only way it goes. Either you have moral people in there or you have immoral people.”


On another show (5-7-86) he revealed a partial list of changes the Dominionists planned for America:



“We can change the government, we can change the court systems, we can change the poverty problem, we can change education…We can make a difference.”


Who Rules? And Who Are to Be the Ruled?

In an earlier section, I discussed the principle held by both Machiavelli and Leo Strauss that religion is necessary as a tool for a leader to control the masses. If conformity—not dissent is required, then religion is the power tool of choice, for it will insure a controlled populace. We’re about to examine its uses, its ingenious gifts and its powers, in this and the following sections. Be aware that Dominionism is in fact, a brilliantly executed road that leads to total power.


In his book, which tended to be more formal and less expansive, Pat Robertson began the listing of those Americans not fit for public office:



“Obviously the drunk, the drug addict, the lustful, the slothful do not have the discipline to rule the earth and to correct its evils.” (p. 82)



“If we remain unrighteous, the Bible says, we will miss the kingdom.” (p.83)


Then he quoted Paul’s epistle to the Corinthians:



“Or do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, shall inherit the kingdom of God.”(1 Corinthians 6:9-10) (p. 83)


If “Secular Humanists are the greatest threat to Christianity the world has ever known,” as theologian Francis Schaeffer claimed, then who are the Humanists? According to Dominionists, humanists are the folks who allow or encourage licentious behavior in America. They are the undisciplined revelers.



Put all the enemies of the Dominionists together, boil them down to liquid and bake them into the one single most highly derided and contaminated individual known to man, and you will have before you an image of the quintessential “liberal”—one of those folks who wants to give liberally to the poor and needy—who desires the welfare and happiness of all Americans—who insists on safety regulations for your protection and who desires the preservation of your values—those damnable people are the folks that must be reduced to powerlessness—or worse: extinction.



Dominionists determine who is among God’s elect—not solely by a religious experience such as being born again, but by a political determination of whether one is a Republican or a Democrat, a liberal or a conservative or simply a person who questions the deeds of Dominionist political figures. The politics of exclusion, including bigotry, is in fact wide spread throughout the United States.



Take, for instance, Sean Hannity’s remarks to Time Magazine, “You can play golf with liberals, be neighbors with them, go out to dinner. I just don’t want them in power.”[51] Or take Ann Coulter’s assertions: “Liberals have a preternatural gift for striking a position on the side of treason.” Or, “Whenever the nation is under attack, from within or without, liberals side with the enemy.” (It turns out that every single “liberal” in the country is a member of the Democratic Party and therefore is a traitor.)[52]



The Machiavellian nature of the Dominionist cult explains why Bill Clinton who is a Christian believer was attacked so viciously for his sexual folly but Newt Gingrich, Bill Livingston, Henry Hyde, Strom Thurmond and scores of other Republicans escaped the punishment of public ridicule, verbal abuse, and humiliation for the same sexual peccadilloes. (It appears only Democratic “liberals” must be held to the fire of biblical standards and biblical punishments because as we all know, they are “unregenerate from the beginning of time.”)



Robertson’s book acknowledges that his followers, the “Christian” army raised up for political purposes are the elect chosen to rule. Robertson’s transcribed television interviews and dialogs give shocking evidence to the legitimization of greed, hatred, violence and cruelty by members of the various fundamentalist branches of the American clergy and by elected officials of the Republican Party, which can be cited as evidence that Dominionism is not a Christian religion—that above everything else, Dominionism is synonymous with Machiavellianism: the ends justify the means. Under Dominionism, true Christianity is a target to destroy, not a goal to achieve.


Who Lives and Who Dies? How Justice Scalia Would Expand the Death Penalty

In one of those peculiar moments when a host on television seems to have a disconnect with his guest, I realized that Pat Robertson was using “code” with Herb Titus, his “guest” on the show on May 27, 1985. Titus was the Dean of CBN University’s School of Public Policy and was a known Christian Reconstructionist (Dominionist) who had written position papers arguing that government has exceeded its authority by requiring individuals such as doctors, lawyers, and teachers to be licensed by the state. Robertson, himself, revealed what the School of Public Policy was teaching on a later show (July 5, 1985). “What are we going to teach them? We’ll teach them the foundation of our government. We’re going to teach them how to win elections.”


This exchange with Titus occurred on May 27, 1985:



Robertson: “We have with us today Constitutional authority, Herb Titus. Herb . . . . How about the biblical concept of war? You know there are many people who don’t think we should ever fight wars and yet we’re talking about brave men who died for freedom.” (Emphasis added)


Titus: “Well I believe the scripture is very clear that if you are attacked by evil whether within the country or outside the country, that it’s the duty of the civil authorities to defend the nation and the people of the nation from evil whether it comes from an aggressor outside or an aggressor inside. We can see that in Romans 13 for example.”


Curious about the meaning of what was being said, particularly since Robertson had asked a question about war, and Titus’ answer included war against one’s own population, I looked up Romans 13. I had always read this passage to be St. Paul’s concept of a good government providing beneficial services to the governed and I restricted its meaning to only a lawfully constituted government that rules justly.


But read Romans 13 in the light of Machiavelli’s and Leo Strauss’s discourses on religion and its uses by a political leader, and one glimpses the danger that Dominionism represents to the American people and to the American way of life. For it can be read to mean that any lawful government is ordained by God to execute retribution and punishment upon those who challenge (resist or rebel against) unjust policies of a government. When read this way, it takes on a new and sinister meaning. Or, it can be read to mean that once a new government of the United States of America has been established under biblical law—then no citizen will have the right to resist it or rebel against its edicts. In other words, the Declaration of Independence will no longer be applicable to the regency established by the Dominionists. This is how Romans 13 reads in the New English Version:



“Every person must submit to the supreme authorities. There is no authority but by act of God, and the existing authorities are instituted by him; consequently anyone who rebels against authority is resisting a divine institution, and those who so resist have themselves to thank for the punishment they will receive. For government, a terror to crime, has no terrors for good behaviour. You wish to have no fear of the authorities? Then continue to do right and you will have their approval, for they are God’s agents working for your good. But if you are doing wrong, then you will have cause to fear them; it is not for nothing that they hold the power of the sword, for they are God’s agents of punishment, for retribution on the offender. That is why you are obliged to submit. It is an obligation imposed not merely by fear of retribution but by conscience. That is also why you pay taxes. The authorities are in God’s service and to these duties they devote their energies.”


This section, if taken literally as fundamentalists are apt to do, appears to prohibit any kind of resistance against the policies of a government, including peaceful protests, petitions, and writings. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia appears to endorse that position, for he quoted this same Romans 13 passage in his article, “God’s Justice and Ours,” to prove that Christian doctrine states “government—however you want to limit that concept—derives its moral authority from God.”[53] Government is not only the “minister of God” but it has the authority to “execute God’s wrath.”


The power of the sword is surely the power to kill or maim and certainly the power to intimidate. Scalia believes the power of the sword in this passage is “unmistakably a reference to the death penalty.”


At this point, Scalia demonstrates the absolute brilliance of the judicial rule created by neo-conservatives that requires a judge to determine the “original intent” of the writers of the Constitution. As Scalia himself describes it, “The Constitution that I interpret and apply is not living but dead…It means today not what current society…thinks it ought to mean, but what it meant when it was adopted.”[54] Once the original thinking is determined, the judge can enforce the Constitution only as a document that is bound by the time zone in which a particular passage was written.


When I first read articles by authors who were exposing the Dominionists’ intention to extend the death penalty to cover “crimes” like adultery, rebelliousness, homosexuality, witchcraft or effeminateness, I found the death penalty extension goal to be laughable. It couldn’t be done in America.


I was wrong. I now realize that we are very close to seeing the Dominionists achieve their goal. All they need to do is to appoint a majority of judges who will adhere to the “dead Constitution” construction rule of Scalia (or what Harry Jaffa called “the original intent” construction rule). At the point when the Dominionist’s control the judiciary—that judiciary can roll back America’s body of legal jurisprudence to a century or more ago as Law Professor Patricia J. Williams pointed out.[55]


Scalia spilled the beans in his article, “God’s Justice and Ours” when he explained how he would determine whether the death penalty is constitutional or not. His reasoning goes like this: since the death penalty was “clearly permitted when the Eighth Amendment [which prohibits ‘cruel and unusual punishments’] was adopted,” and at that time the death penalty was applied for all felonies—including, for example, the felony of horse-thieving, “so it is clearly permitted today.”[56] Justice Scalia left no doubt that if the crime of horse stealing carried a death penalty today in the United States—he would find that law constitutional.


All a willing Dominionist Republican controlled congress need do to extend the death penalty to those people who practice witchcraft, adultery, homosexuality, heresy, etcetera, is to find those particular death penalty laws existing as of November 3, 1791, and re-instate them. No revolution is required. That’s why the battle over Bush’s judicial appointments is so crucial to the future of the America we know and love. And that’s why the clock is running out on freedom loving Americans.


Scalia himself appears to be a Dominionist, for he believes that Romans 13 represents the correct view— that government authority is derived from God and not from the people; he asserts his view was the consensus of Western thought until recent times. Like Pat Robertson, he laments that the biblical perspective was upset by “the emergence of democracy.”[57] Taking his cue from Leo Strauss, Scalia argued, “a democratic government, being nothing more than the composite will of its individual citizens, has no more moral power or authority than they do as individuals.” Democracy, according to Scalia, creates problems, “It fosters civil disobedience.”[58]


As Patricia Williams wrote: “God bless America. The Constitution is dead.”[59]


Dominionism’s Theocratic Views

What would a “reconstructed” America look like under the Dominionists? K.L. Gentry, a Dominionist himself, suggests the following “elements of a theonomic approach to civic order,” which I strongly suggest should be compared to the Texas GOP platform of 2002, which reveals that we are not just talking about imaginary ideas but some things are already proposed on Republican agendas.[60] Dominionism’s concept of government according to Gentry is as follows:



“1. It obligates government to maintain just monetary policies ... [thus prohibiting] fiat money, fractional reserve banking, and deficit spending.


“2. It provides a moral basis for elective government officials. ...


“3. It forbids undue, abusive taxation of the rich. ...


“4. It calls for the abolishing of the prison system and establishing a system of just restitution. ...


“5. A theonomic approach also forbids the release, pardoning, and paroling of murderers by requiring their execution. ...


“6. It forbids industrial pollution that destroys the value of property. ...


“7. It punishes malicious, frivolous malpractice suits. ...


“8. It forbids abortion rights. ... Abortion is not only a sin, but a crime, and, indeed, a capital crime.”[61]


The fourth item in Gentry’s list, “abolishing of the prison system and establishing a system of just restitution” has been worked on extensively by Dominionist Gary North, who holds a doctorate degree in Economics. North has written volumes of books, essays and articles, (many of which falsely predicted that the year 2000 computer problem would bring down modern civilization.) He is most famous among Dominionists for reconciling economic theory with Old Testament passages.


Gary North describes the ‘just restitution’ system of the bible, which happens to reinstitute slavery, like this:



“At the other end of the curve, the poor man who steals is eventually caught and sold into bondage under a successful person. His victim receives payment; he receives training; his buyer receives a stream of labor services. If the servant is successful and buys his way out of bondage, he re-enters society as a disciplined man, and presumably a self-disciplined man. He begins to accumulate wealth.”[62]


The Immorality of the Medicare and Medicaid Programs

If the blithe acceptance of slavery isn’t shocking enough, here is one of the coldest attitudes I ever heard expressed in an interview on American television. I can’t help reading it in light of the coercive bullying tactics resorted to by Dominionist leaders in the House of Representatives to get the necessary votes to pass the controversial new Medicare Prescription Drug law.[63] The following interview reveals the deep seated hatred Dominionists have against governmental medical assistance to the elderly. The interview was conducted on August 1, 1985 with Dr. Walter Williams, professor of economics at George Mason University and author of thirty-five books. Danuta Soderman was a co-host on Pat Robertson’s 700 Club. She began the interview with a question about Medicare and Medicaid fraud, suggesting cost possibly “millions and billions” of dollars:



Williams: “Well, I think that the abuse and fraud in and of itself is a relatively minor problem. That is, the bigger problem is the whole concept of funding somebody’s medical care by a third party. And I might also mention here, that is, I saw in the audience many older and senior citizens. Now whose responsibility is it to take care of those people? I think it lies with their children and it also lies with themselves. That is, I think Christians should recognize that charity is good. I mean charity, when you reach into your pocket to help your fellow man for medical care or for food or to give them housing. But what the government is doing in order to help these older citizens is not charity at all. It is theft. That is, the government is using power to confiscate property that belongs to one American and give, or confiscate their money, and provide services for another set of Americans to whom it does not belong. That is the moral question that Christians should face with not only Medicare, Medicaid. But many other programs as well….Well, people should have insurance. But I would say if our fellow man is found in need, does not have enough, well that’s a role for the church, that’s a role for the family, that’s a role for private institutions to take care of these things.”


Danuta Soderman: “I thought it was interesting you talked about Medicare and Medicaid as not being a moral issue. A lot of people would think that to want to eliminate the program is rather uncompassionate—that there is something immoral about taking away something that people are relying so heavily upon, but you said that there is no moral issue here.”


Williams: “I think the moral issue runs the other way. That is, we have to ask ourselves, ‘What is the moral basis of confiscating the property of one American and giving it to another American to whom it does not belong for whatever reason?’ That is, I think we Americans have to ask ourselves is there something that can justify a legalized theft? And I think that even if the person is starving in the street that act, in and of itself, doesn’t justify my taking money from somebody else.”


How to Destroy the Social Security Program

On August 14, 1985, Pat Robertson unveiled his ingenious program on how to get rid of Social Security. The plan amazingly resembles sections of the Bush Administration’s Medicare Prescription Drug bill passed in December of 2003. Robertson, however, outlined what to do twenty years ago as follows:



1. “We should say to all the elderly, ‘You’re going to be taken care of. The government’s going to pay you. Don’t worry about it. [You’ll] get your Social Security like you’re expecting, ‘cause you’re counting on it.”


2. “There should be a gradual moving [up] of [the retirement] age to reflect the fact that we’re healthier and we live longer and people should have dignity and be allowed to work a little bit longer.”


3. “The last thing we should do is to begin to let the younger workers slowly but surely go into private programs where the money is tax sheltered and over the years build up their own money and that would in turn, through the intermediary organizations, banks, insurance companies, would invest in American industry. They would buy plants and equipment, put people to work and it would help a tremendous boom. Imagine …$100 billion dollars a year flowing into American industry. It would be marvelous.”


Wealth is a Sign of God’s Favor, Poverty is a Sign of God’s Disfavor

How did the Dominionists get so far from the Lord’s edict to help the poor, the sick, and the elderly? Using the text of Deuteronomy 28, which is a list of God’s blessings and curses, Robertson and other Dominionists believe that the chapter reveals God’s covenanted economic law. God only bestows “material wealth or blessings” upon those who are among his elect and he does so because these are the individuals and nations who obey his commandments and laws. So what about the poor? Dominionist Gary North explains it this way:



“God is sovereign over the poor. He raises them up—not all of them, but some of them. ‘The Lord maketh poor, and maketh rich: he bringeth low, and lifteth up.’”[64]


I grant that the verse cited leaves government assistance out of the picture. North claims, the blessings and sanctions of Deuteronomy 28 are historical. He says, “They are predictable. Covenantal rebellion by a society will lead to God’s imposition of these sanctions.”[65] North then ties the package up neatly: “The blessings and cursings of God under the Mosaic Covenant were sure. They were not disconnected from God’s law. There was a bedrock objectivity that united covenant-keepers and covenant-breakers.”[66]


To understand what North is talking about, we have to read a portion of the text of Deuteronomy 28:



“The Lord shall establish thee an holy people unto himself, as he hath sworn unto thee…and the Lord shall make thee the head and not the tail; and thou shalt be above only, and thou shalt not be beneath…”


A conclusion drawn by the scripture itself is that a nation who follows the commandments or laws of God will be “high above all nations of the earth…and all people of the earth shall see that thou art called by the name of the Lord, and they shall be afraid of thee.” On the other hand, the Dominionists believe those who are poor, sick, and weak are so situated because God’s wrath has been visited upon them—they are the “wicked” of this earth and they deserve the wrath of God because their behavior is bringing the entire nation under condemnation.


The litany of the curses of God on those who do not keep his laws and commandments are among the most horrendous descriptions of torture in literature. Here is a sample from Deuteronomy 28:



“The Lord shall cause thee to be smitten before thine enemies…thy carcass shall be food unto all fowls of the air…The Lord will smite thee with [boils]…and with …tumors, and with the scab, and with the itch, whereof thou canst not be healed. The Lord shall smite thee with madness and blindness and astonishment of heart [fear]; thou shalt grope at noonday; thou shalt not prosper in thy ways; and thou shalt be only oppressed and spoiled evermore…thou shalt betroth a wife and another man shall lie with her; thou shalt build an house, and thou shalt not dwell therein, and thine ox shall be slain before thine eyes, and thou shalt not eat thereof; thine ass shall be violently taken away from before thy face and shall not be restored to thee; they sheep shall be given unto thine enemies, and thou shalt have none to rescue them. Thy sons and thy daughters shall be given unto another people, and thine eyes shall look, and fail with longing for them all the day long; and there shall be no might in thine hand. The fruit of thy land, and all thy labors, shall a nation whom thou knowest not eat up, and thou shalt be only oppressed and crushed always…”


Gary North explained: “The point of Deuteronomy 28 is this: the way to wealth, both individual and corporate, is through systematic adherence to God’s Bible-revealed law.”[67]


Hence the idea that should a nation minister to the poor or attempt to lift the poor out of poverty or save people from poverty and ill health, that nation is contravening the will of Almighty God and such legislation is contrary to the laws of God. It is only one step further to say that if this is God’s attitude toward the poor, it is morally wrong to help them. So it’s easy to see how Social Security and Medicare are viewed by Dominionists as “evil” programs that rob money from some citizens to enrich others.


There’s one other little trap for the unwary Dominionist; when a government is seen to be the enforcer of the Deuteronomic laws, it’s easy to take the next step and say that it is the duty of the “Christian” Dominionist government to subdue the wicked of the world, especially the vast American middle class, because its collective licentious life style is bringing the nation down as a whole; therefore the government must “minister the wrath of God” against the citizens of America as punishment for “rebelliousness.” That the entire scheme is an unending circular argument, escapes the notice of the rank and file sitting in the pews.



In their new role as ministers of God’s wrath against this nation, Dominionist political strategists are aware they must not be seen as being cruel and hateful. So at first, until the population is completely subdued and dominated by the elect, Dominionists are forced to devise laws that will create the political, social, and medical environment that will ultimately ensure that the wicked are punished—but it will appear—at first blush to be a gift. The truth, of course, according to Machiavellian/Straussian dictates, must be hidden from the population; not just once or twice, but over and over again.



In the end, Dominionism should be viewed as a backboard that bounces the New Deal and FDR’s social safety net programs, social security (as well as Medicare) into its political opposite: laissez-faire economics (the motto of 18th century French economists who protested excessive government regulation of industry.) Laissez-faire is a doctrine opposing governmental interference (as by regulation or subsidy) in economic affairs beyond the minimum necessary for the maintenance of peace and property rights. Dominionism opposes the licensing and regulating power of the government.



One last comment on Pat Robertson. On November 3, 1986, the 700 Club ran a piece on the use of computers in counting votes. Robertson ended his Perspective by saying there should be some kind of control on computer voting to assure an honest count. How prescient this man is! And how worrisome his prescience is.


Who Is on the Side of Freedom? Let Him Speak Now!

There is an infection, a religious and political pathology that has corrupted our churches. Those we trusted the most have embraced evil. That knowledge is almost more than we can bear. Who among us will stand in the gap and make up the hedge to save our nation?


When we look for help—for the wealthy leaders with the means to help rescue America, we find they have all defected to the Dominionists. They do not realize that if the middle class of America is wiped out—there will be no one to buy their cars, their computers or their products. Only one or two brave souls like George Soros have made massive contributions to combat the think tanks and the organized political machine of the Dominionists. The corporate press lies sleeping, not realizing they will be allowed to report only what they are instructed to report.


Freedom is under siege. There is only one free major political party still left in America. I know the Democrats look chaotic, unfocused and generally unsmooth and thank God, unprogramed. Make no mistake, these plain ordinary citizens are holding the candles that together form the great torch of liberty. For all their faults, they love America and they love freedom and they love the Bill of Rights. America’s independents, its true Conservatives, its sensible Republicans, and its Libertarians must join hands together with the homely Democrats and take back America for all Americans.


The livelihood of the working people of America is at stake. The Dominionists have lost more American jobs in the last three years than since the days of Herbert Hoover. And now they want to eliminate the minimum wage laws too. America’s unions have helped to create a better life for millions of workers. The Dominionists want to break all unions apart (especially the teacher’s union). As Americans, we love our schools and are proud of our educational system. The Dominionists want to destroy all public education in America and force Americans to be educated in their religious schools. Americans love our culture and the arts. The Dominionists want to destroy that culture.



The election of 2004 is not just another election. It is the battle of the century. It is the gravest political war since the Civil War, which if lost, spells the end of Independence Day and every right in the Bill of Rights that we have fought so hard to preserve. Is there an American, regardless of his or her party, who would not fight for our Democracy? It’s in jeopardy now. Our friends and cousins in Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand and scores of other nations have seen our jeopardy and have been crying out for months and days and years to wake up America!


Let me see your face and look into your eyes. Let me hear you say, “There is no difference between the two parties.” May God help us and grant us discernment when we vote.


[1] “Religious Right Finds Its Center in Oval Office,” Washington Post, December 24, 2001.


[2] Kevin Phillips, American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush, Viking Press, 2004, at page 224.


[3] Antonin Scalia, “God’s Justice and Ours,” in First Things 123 (May 2002): 17-21, http://www.firsthings.com/ftissues/ft0205/articles/scalia.html


[4] Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, University of Chicago Press, 1978, at page 9. The actual quote is: “…[O]ne ought not to say to someone whom one wants to kill, ‘Give me your gun, I want to kill you with it,’ but merely, ‘Give me your gun,’ for once you have the gun in your hand, you can satisfy your desire.”


[5] Osha Gray Davidson, “Dirty Secrets,” Mother Jones, September/October 2003 at page 53. “The Bush administration has been gutting key sections of the Clean Water and Clean Air acts, laws that have traditionally had bipartisan support and have done more to protect the health of Americans than any other environmental legislation.” The subtitle reads: “No president has gone after the nation’s environmental laws with the same fury as George W. Bush and none has been so adept at staying under the radar.”


[6] Alan Sager, Ph.D. and Deborah Socolar, M.P.H. “61 Percent of Medicare’s New Prescription Drug Subsidy Is Windfall Profit to Drug Makers,” Health Reform Program, Boston University School of Public Health. http://www.healthreformprogram.org You may read the report in a PDF file by clicking here:


[7] See Pat Robertson’s prescription on how to eliminate Social Security on page 27.


[8] Pat Robertson ironically outlined the drastic effects that follow rash government spending in 1985. He stated that it will wipe out the middle class and destroy the Social Security and Medicare programs. (Taped and transcribed by the author.) Read Robertson’s description by clicking here: http://www.yuricareport.com/Campaign2004/PatRobertsonCongressBuyingVotes.html


[9] If my words appear extreme, consider that in January of 2004, Walter Cronkite broke a lifetime rule, saying, “I must speak out.” Mr. Cronkite continued, “I am deeply disturbed by the dangerous and growing influence of people like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell on our nation’s political leaders.”


Former Governor of Delaware, Russ Peterson in his new book, Patriots, Stand Up!, wrote, “Our cherished American way of life is under attack by the far right-wing Republicans who are now running the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives. This is the product of a conspiracy that has been growing over the past few decades through the use of evil tactics and strategies, lies and deceptions to transform America.


“Deception is now the hallmark of the Bush administration. Read of the frightening chicanery in furthering an imperial strategy, nurturing the military-industrial complex, waging war on the environment, plunging the nation into debt, demeaning the needy, antagonizing the world and using terrorism to frighten and exploit.”


The author calls on patriots to apply the principles of democracy now to retake America from a conservative elite that controls the country.


The author’s background: Russ Peterson, scientist, citizen activist, former executive with the DuPont Co., Republican Governor of Delaware, assistant to Republican Gov. Nelson Rockefeller of New York, head of the U.S. Council on Environmental Quality under Presidents Nixon and Ford, head of the Office of Technology Assessment, reporting to six Republican and six Democratic members of Congress, president of the National Audubon Society, internationally acclaimed environmental leader, United Nations goodwill ambassador, and faculty member at Dartmouth College, Carleton College and the University of Wisconsin Madison. His numerous national and international awards include 15 honorary doctorates. In 1996 he became a Democrat. http://www.governorpeterson.org/


[10] “Christian Reconstructionism: Theocratic Dominionism Gains Influence,” by Frederick Clarkson, The Public Eye Magazine, Vol. VIII, Nos. 1 & 2, March/June 1994, Part 1 of a four part series. See http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v08n1/chrisre1.html


[11] Gary North, Ph.D., in Econonmics, the President of the Institute for Christian Economics (ICE) and is also the son-in-law of R.J. Rushdoony, the founder of Christian Reconstructionism, advises his followers not to give out his literature to everyone—just to interested people. “Let word of mouth tell the story. You need not become very visible if you choose not to.” From Replacing Evil With Good http://reformed-theology.org/ice/books/conspiracy/html/8.htm on page 9 of 11. For a complete understanding of how good and evil are inverted and the "conspiriators" become us--see this entire collection titled: "Conspiracy: A Biblical View" by Gary North at http://reformed-theology.org/ice/books/conspiracy/index.html Click on each section of the Table of Contents at the site. This web site can be reached only by entering from the root directory.


[12] See Joan Bokaer’s article in “The Rise of the Religious Right in the Republican Party,” a public information project from TheocracyWatch.org http://www.4religious-right.info/taking_over.htm


[13] Ben Kinchlow, co-host of the 700 Club with Pat Robertson, was made Vice President of CBN in charge of CBN’s charities program “Operation Blessing.” On March 27, 1985, while criticizing farmers for wanting a government bailout he said: “What’s wrong in this country is that so many people have substituted the government for God. Instead of looking to God to supply their needs, they’re looking to government.” Railing at financially stressed people was very common on the show.


[14] Tim LaHaye predicted on Pat Robertson’s 700 Club show on September 25, 1985 that 110,000 evangelical, fundamentalist, and Pentecostal churches could sponsor one person per church to run for office and win, that in a decade they would hold every office in the U.S. At the time, he said there were only 97,000 public offices in the U.S. so “we would have more Christians in office than there are positions.” By 1994, for the first time in forty years, Republicans regained control of Congress. Similarly Ralph Reed predicted that by the year 2,000 they would control Congress. Gary North wrote in 1985: “I propose a program. Some variant of this program must be adopted if we are to have any meaningful hope in recapturing the machinery of civil government, the media, and the educational institutions. It will be done. It has already begun. How long it will take is problematical; I think we will begin to see major victories before the year 2005.” http://reformed-theology.org/ice/books/conspiracy/html/8.htm at page 5 of 11 pages.


[15] Francis Schaeffer originally appeared on the 700 Club with Pat Robertson in 1982. The series of interviews with Schaeffer were repeated on the show in the week of July 7, 1986 as Robertson presented the legal and biblical foundations for Christian political action. Francis Schaeffer, however, died between the first and second airing. The Schaeffer interviews were tape recorded and transcribed, my quotes are from my transcript. The accuracy of my transcript can be compared to the video tapes of the shows. At the time, People for the American Way were recording the shows and establishing a Pat Robertson 700 Club library for future reference.


[16] All 700 Club quotes in this article were recorded and transcribed by the author and her assistant unless otherwise indicated.


[17] Although neither Robertson nor Schaeffer used the words “Dominionism” or “dominion” in this interview series they used the word “dominant” when asking which culture was dominant in the United States: the Christian culture or the humanistic culture. They asserted the humanistic culture was the dominant force in America and “Christians” had to regain dominance.


[18] The most successful ministers knew the psychological importance of creating “enemies” that were attacking the church. Jerry Falwell maintains the rule: “To be successful, keep a good fight going all the time.”


[19] Psychiatrist Scott Peck has written about the phenomena groups resort to almost universally in his book, The People of the Lie, “There are profound forces at work within a group to keep its individual members together and in line...Probably the most powerful of these group cohesive forces is narcissism…group pride….A less benign but practically universal form of group narcissism is what might be called ‘enemy creation,’ or hatred of the ‘out-group.’”


[20] “War on Secular Society” at http://www.4religious-right.info/introduction2.htm


[21] In short, they needed a religion of their own to justify evil acts and to counter the political acceptance by many Christians who were attracted to the communal and “communistic” principles of the early church (Acts 2:42-47), where the early Christians sold all their possessions, gave them to the needy, and held “all things [in] common.” Such Christian ideas were a direct threat to capitalism’s future robber barons. How could great fortunes be amassed if one had to give it all away to the poor and follow Jesus? (Matthew 19:16-30.)


[22] Pat Robertson is particularly adept at changing the issue from questioning an aggressively religious political agenda into an attack on religion. The Constitution prohibits a religious test for office in America (Article 6). However, a battle over the nomination of Herb Ellingwood in 1985 to the position of Assistant Attorney General for Legal Policy caused a fire storm. (That office screens candidates for the federal judiciary.) During the same period dominionists like Ellingwood and Tim LaHaye were advocating that twenty-five percent of all government positions should be handed to Christian fundamentalists (dominionists) since they made up twenty-five percent of the nation’s population. Pat Schroeder, former Democratic congresswoman from Colorado and chairman of the Civil Service Committee strongly opposed the view as a religious quota system and a violation of Article VI of the Constitution. She said the questions that were asked of judicial candidates, apparently prepared by Ellingwood, amounted to a religious test for office. She spoke on the Phil Donahue show on (September 6, 1985):


“If you look at some of the questions that are being asked by some of the senators of judges, they don’t have to do with their background, their training, whether or not they understand the law, they have to do with personal beliefs. That’s not where we have been in the past, and that’s a very dangerous turn…”


During the same period of time (August-September) Pat Robertson easily turned the legitimate questioning of Herb Ellingwood’s agenda into an attack on Christianity by framing it this way on his 700 Club Show on August 9, 1985:


“Can an evangelical Christian hold high office in the United States of America? Now that is the question. Or are evangelical Christians going to be discriminated against? And indeed will there be a religious test for public office which disqualifies anybody who speaks to a religious group? . . . .Herb Ellingwood is Chairman right now of the Merit Protection Review Board and he has done a superb job. He was the former legal counsel to President Reagan in California and has worked closely with Ed Meese for years. He’s been a very distinguished attorney. It just seems like this campaign of assassination that goes on against good men like that should be brought to a stop. . .And if you feel that Christians ought to be allowed to serve in positions of responsibility in the government…and you don’t think that Christians should be discriminated against…here’s the number of the White House: 202 446-7639…” (700 Club 8-9-85)


[23] One cannot help comparing this passage with the fact that 27,000 bombs were dropped on Iraq in the 2003 air war and in a demonstration of cold indifference, the Bush administration ignored the advice of prominent archeologists to protect Iraq’s museums, which contained the greatest collection of ancient relics, art, and ancient treasures in the world, and in so doing, allowed the looting—the despoiling—of that nation’s treasures.


[24]Again, because we will learn in this article that Machiavelli is a handbook in the Bush administration, one must ask if the George W. Bush administration perceives despoiling as a plan of action to control the American populace. The question must be asked.


[25] See Kevin Phillips, author of American Dynasty, Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush. Viking Press, 2004, at page 239-240.


[26] Ibid. at page 321.


[27] Robertson’s and Ledeen’s relationship continues. For a recent CBN interview of Ledeen conducted by Pat Robertson and transcribed by CBN.com go to: http://cbn.com/CBNNews/News/030623e.asp?option=print


[28] Ledeen tried to arrange the sale of arms to Iran in order to divert the profits to the Contra militants who were fighting the Nicaraguan government’s Sandinistas. However, Congress had voted to cut off U.S. aid to the Contras and therefore any such transaction was illegal.


[29] William O. Beeman’s article, “Who Is Michael Ledeen?” was published on May 8, 2003 and may be read at the alternet.org: http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15860


[30] Gerard Thomas Straub worked at CBS for eight years before joining the 700 Club as executive producer. After leaving CBN’s employment, he went to work for ABC’s “General Hospital” as associate producer. His 1986 book, Salvation for Sale, (Prometheus Books, N.Y.) offers insights to how Pat Robertson conducted business off camera from the perspective of an insider. The dichotomy between his public friendly “pastoral” role and his actual business conduct is stark evidence that he understood Machiavelli’s rule that only appearance counts. Straub wrote: “In reality Pat is a pompous pope of the video Vatican of Christian broadcasting, and he rules his empire with absolute authority. He does not tolerate debate, discussions, or dissent…His television followers never get to see the tough-minded, hard-driving cut-throat leader.” In addition, over the years, Pat Robertson revealed his Machiavellian political philosophy repeatedly and openly on his show in discussions of how to handle foreign policy and in his ruthless approach to the poor and needy of America.


[31] On June 19, 1985: Danuta Soderman, the second member of Pat Robertson’s daily team, asked Pat Robertson how the United States should deal with middle-east terrorist groups: “Speaking about being decisive in dealing with terrorists’ groups, yesterday you offered some opinion on how Iran should be one of the places we should target our energies on; any other thoughts on this?


Robertson: “Just like the last guest in that clip our news department did, he said it’s pretty much undeclared war. Khomeini has declared war against the United States. He has told people that if they die against the infidel, they go to heaven. The Islamic Jihad is controlled out of Iran, and the other factor of course is Syria, which is giving some sanctuary to all of these people. Syria controls the Becca Valley now— practically all of it, since Israel withdrew its forces. So up in the Becca Valley the Shiite Muslims from Iran are forcing the Lebanese women to wear veils and practice the various extreme views of the Islamic faith in the Shiite traditions. We’ve got to go after the source. If you want to go after a snake you don’t cut inches off his tail.”


Robertson also focused on the Becca Valley on July 12, 1985 and on several other occasions. The refrain has not changed in nineteen years. A recent January 2004 article published in the Jerusalem Post states Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is considering invading the Becca Valley, which is still controlled by Syria.


[32] See: Project for the New American Century “Principles”: http://newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm and “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” http://newamericancentury.org/publicationsreports.htm


[33] William O. Beeman’s article, “Who Is Michael Ledeen?” was published on May 8, 2003 and may be read at the alternet.org: http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15860


[34]The BBC article may be read at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/3031803.stm The longer and more important article, “Veteran neo-con advisor moves on Iran,” by Jim Lobe, writing for the Asia Times can be found at: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EF26Ak03.html Another very interesting article is “Flirting with Fascism: Neocon theorist Michael Ledeen draws more from Italian fascism than from the American Right,” by John Laughland and published in the June 30, 2003 issue of The American Conservative. You may read this article at: http://www.amconmag.com/06_30_03/print/featureprint.html And for a recent interview with Ledeen, conducted by Pat Robertson on CBN.com, go to endnote 14 above.


[35] As quoted by Jim Lobe in “Veteran neo-con advisor moves on Iran” published in the Asia Times. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EF26Ak03.html


[36] Shadia Drury, Leo Strauss and the American Right, St. Martin’s Press, 1999 at page 1.


[37] From Thoughts on Machiavelli by Leo Strauss, University of Chicago Press, 1958 at pp. 10-11.


[38] Ibid. pp. 176-178.


[39] The only example of this possibility I have found so far is in the work of Dominionist Gary North who wrote tirelessly on the correlations between conservative economic principles and the Old Testament laws and rules. See Gary North, “The Covenantal Wealth of Nations,” from Biblical Economics Today, Vol. XXI, No 2, February/March 1999. It can be read at: http://reformed-theology.org/ice/newslet/bet/bet99.02.htm See also an article by J. Ligon Duncan, III, “Moses’ Law for Modern Government: The Intellectual and Sociological Origins of the Christian Reconstructionist Movement,” Premise, Vol. II, Number 5, May 27, 1995, page 4 and on the web at: http://capo.org/premise/95/may/ssha2.html Ligon states: “...Reconstructionism is attempting to make a systematic and exegetical connection between the Bible and the conservative ideology of limited government and free market economics. For instance, Gary North has written volume after volume deriving principles of economics from his studies of the Pentateuch.”


[40] Shadia Drury, Leo Strauss and the American Right, St. Martin’s Press, 1999 at page 11-13.


[41] Shadia Drury is quoted in an analysis by Jim Lobe for the Inter Press Service News Agency. http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=18038


[42] Shadia Drury, Leo Strauss and the American Right, St. Martin’s Press, 1999 at page 23.


[43] I’m indebted to Patricia J. Williams, Professor of law at Columbia University for this insight. See her article, “Infallible Justice,” The Nation; October 7, 2002 at http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20021007&s=williams Not only is the concept of “original intent brilliant and revolutionary, it in fact goes further than any other political format to legitimize the conversion of present day jurisprudence back to the judicial weltanschauung (world view) of eighteenth century jurists. It is the key factor in the Dominionist’s intent to establish biblical law over all Americans. Two Supreme Court justices subscribe to it already. In other words, as Law Professor Patricia J. Williams has pointed out, the rule would effectively repeal most of the judicial decisions made in the last century.


[44] Ibid at page 106.


[45] Ibid.


[46] See the excerpts from my book, The New Messiahs which trace the political machinations of the Dominionists within the Republican Party and the plot to take over all three branches of the government of the United States.


[47] J. Ligon Duncan, III “Moses Law for Modern Government: The Intellectual and Sociological Origins of the Christian Reconstructionist Movement,” Premise, Vol. II Number 5, May 27, 1995. http://capo.org/premise/95/may/ssha2.html.


[48] Social Darwinism is the discredited extension of Darwin’s evolutionary theory to the human social condition. Social Darwinism takes Charles Darwin’s concept, “the survival of the fittest,” and applies it to the idea that the ladder to material wealth and to the “good life” may be climbed only after one has successfully engaged in group battles and conflicts and prevailed in the pit of life by drop kicking one’s opponents. Those who climb out of the pit and up the ladder become the socially recognized victors in the competition and are considered biologically superior to those who fail. The illogical fallout from this concept is the circular argument that the existence of a socially elite class must be proof that those who possess wealth and power are necessarily superior to those in economic classes below them.


[49] Dominionists may argue with some credibility that they do believe in helping the poor; however, they want churches to undertake that task and adamantly fight against government social aid programs funded from tax monies—unless of course—it is a so-called “faith based” initiative. Pat Robertson forgot his objections to the government handing out money and gratefully accepted the $500,000 Mr. Bush sent him early in his administration for “good faith based charitable work.” Regardless of their protestations, however, the churches of America cannot and do not have the billions of dollars to provide the social safety net for the poor, elderly and sick among America’s population. In 1985, for example, Robertson bragged CBN gave $50 million worth of food, clothes, and supplies to 8.5 million people, but that was what he called “leveraged” contributions, in which CBN had joined with other charities. Robertson admitted they gave only $10 million. Deducting the $2 million of CBN’s contributions to the Contras in Central America, CBN’s total contribution amounted to only about eighty-eight cents to every hungry, needy person he said CBN helped.


[50] Pat Robertson wrote in The Secret Kingdom: “Unhappily, evangelical Christians have for too long reduced the born-again experience to the issue of being ‘saved.’ Salvation is an important issue, obviously, and must never be deemphasized. But rebirth must be seen as a beginning, not an arrival. It provides access to the invisible world, the kingdom of God, of which we are to learn and experience and then share with others. Jesus Himself said it clearly before His ascension: ‘All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.’ [Matthew 28:18-20 New American Standard Bible]. The commission was to make followers and learners—converts—and to teach them the principles of the kingdom. Entry into the body of believers was not enough. They were to learn how to live in this world…The invisible was to rule the visible. Christ has authority over both.” Emphasis is Robertson’s. (p. 51)


[51] James Poniewozik, “10 Questions for Sean Hannity,” Time Magazine, Nov. 11, 2002.


[52] Mark S. Zaid, “The New, Unabashed McCarthyism: A Review of Treason: Liberal Treachery From The Cold War To The War On Terrorism Originally published by Findlaw.com and reprinted with permission at the Yurica Report.com: http://www.yuricareport.com/RevisitedBks/ZaidonCoulterTreason.htm


[53] Antonin Scalia, “God’s Justice and Ours,” in First Things 123 (May 2002): 17-21, http://www.firsthings.com/ftissues/ft0205/articles/scalia.html


[54] Ibid.


[55] Patricia J. Williams, Professor of law at Columbia University. See her article, “Infallible Justice,” The Nation; October 7, 2002 at http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20021007&s=williams


[56] Ibid.


[57] Antonin Scalia, “God’s Justice and Ours,” in First Things 123 (May 2002): 17-21, http://www.firsthings.com/ftissues/ft0205/articles/scalia.html


[58] Ibid.


[59] Patricia J. Williams, Professor of law at Columbia University. See her article, “Infallible Justice,” The Nation; October 7, 2002 at http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20021007&s=williams


[60] The platform of the Republican Party of Texas may be found at: http://www.4religious-right.info/texas_gop.htm. Here are excerpts: “The Republican Party of Texas reaffirms the United States of America is a Christian Nation ...



“1. GOVERNMENT: We reclaim freedom of religious expression in public on government property, and freedom from government interference. Support government display of Ten Commandments.


Dispel the "myth" of the separation of church and state. A strong and vibrant private sector [should be] unencumbered by excessive government regulation. Oppose Campaign Finance Reform. Oppose any form of gun control. Abolish: Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms; Position of Surgeon General; EPA; Department of Energy; Department of Housing and Urban Development; Department of Education; Department of Commerce and Labor; National Endowment for the Arts.


“2. ECONOMY: Abolish the dollar in favor of the gold standard. Abolish the IRS. Eliminate income tax, inheritance tax, gift tax, capital gains, corporate income tax, payroll tax and property tax. Repeal minimum wage law. ... Gradually phase out Social Security tax for a system of private pensions.


“3. UNITED NATIONS: .. We immediately rescind our membership in, as well as all financial and military contributions to the United Nations." We should " ... evict the United Nations from the United States and eliminate any further participation.


“4. FAMILY: We believe that traditional marriage is a legal and moral commitment between a man and a woman. We recognize that the family is the foundational unit of a healthy society and consists of those related by blood, marriage, or adoption. The family is responsible for its own welfare, education, moral training, conduct, and property.


“The practice of sodomy tears at the heart of our society... The party oppose[s] decriminalization of sodomy. Oppose all forms of abortion - even in cases of rape or incest. We unequivocally oppose United States Senate ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.


“5. EDUCATION: We call for the abolition of the U.S. Department of Education and the prohibition of the transfer of any of its functions to any other federal agency.


“Support official prayer in public schools Oppose Early Childhood Development Programs. We support ... a program based upon biblical principles... Terminate bilingual education. Since Secular Humanism is recognized by the United States Supreme Court as a religion ... Secular Humanism should be subjected to the same state and federal laws as any other recognized religions.


“6. THE ENVIRONMENT: Oppose the myth of global warming. Reaffirm the belief in the fundamental right of an individual to use property without governmental interference. Oppose EPA management of Texas air quality.


“7. THE MIDDLE EAST: ... Jerusalem is the capital of Israel ... therefore, the United States should move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.”


To read the complete Texas GOP Platform click here to go to a PDF file: more


[61] J. Ligon Duncan, III “Moses Law for Modern Government: The Intellectual and Sociological Origins of the Christian Reconstructionist Movement,” Premise, Vol. II Number 5, May 27, 1995. http://capo.org/premise/95/may/ssha2.html.


[62] Gary North, “The Covenantal Wealth of Nations,” from Biblical Economics Today, Vol. XXI, No. 2, February/March 1999. It can be read at: http://reformed-theology.org/ice/newslet/bet/bet99.02.htm


[63] Katherine Yurica, “Rogue Republican Dons in Congress Tear Up the Constitution, Exclude Democrats and Accept a New Title: The Godfathers,” at http://www.yuricareport.com/Corruption/RogueRepublicanBillsUnconstitutional.htm


[64] Gary North, “The Covenantal Wealth of Nations,” from Biblical Economics Today, Vol. XXI, No. 2, February/March 1999. It can be read at: http://reformed-theology.org/ice/newslet/bet/bet99.02.htm


[65] Ibid.


[66] Ibid.


[67] Ibid.