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Filmmaker’s
notebook #46
GOD’S IMPERFECT KILLERS
Debate: US Army War College vs. Pax Christi, USA April 1, 2003,
Buffalo
Topic: WAR ON IRAQ: JUST OR NOT JUST?
We’d just filmed Dave Robinson in DC, March 26. A few days later,
we catch up with him in Buffalo, debating a US Army War College
professor at the Jesuit-run Canisius College. Though we may never
get around to editing it, it’s potentially too good to pass up.
How will the War College express itself – in public debate and a
religious setting -- on the 11th day of the blatant imperial war on
Iraq? After all, the Pope condemned the aggression, and all war. And
even according to the Just War theory, it failed its case miserably,
as noted by Chicago United Methodist Bishop Sprague and Bishop
Gumbleton (RC, Detroit), March 26, Washington D.C.
The US Army War College is an integral part of brainwashing upper
echelon Army officers, domestic and foreign. Martin Cook, War
College prof, is the first speaker. He argues, by inference, that
the present war is a Just War.
The professor is dressed in black,
with a black turtleneck sweater. Before the debate, as we are
setting up mikes on stage, a middle-aged woman approaches Cook with
a question: “Father,” she begins…
During his remarks, he twice tells us he is a Calvinist,* and talks
about “God” with that reverent, genuflecting, unctuous quality
common to many cipher preachers.
Cook tells us he was an Air Force brat** who grew up on Strategic
Air Command (SAC) bases. His father, he says, “flew nuclear
weapons.” Young Mr. Cook stayed out of the Vietnam War, and went
instead into preaching and teaching religion. He had a PhD in the
subject from Rockefeller’s University of Chicago. Why are they so
big on religion there? Well, Mr. Cook is one answer.
The professor of religious studies left Santa Clara University, a
Jesuit school, for a job more to his liking: a professor of crime
justification at the U.S. War College. It’s for good reason
academic preachers were deferred during the draft. Having at best
second hand experience of war, they can pontificate ingenuously in
the service of the state.
THE US IS GOOD / THE THEM IS EVIL
The professor explains that his job is teaching the “very
thoughtful officers who lead the US military to prevent the success
of evil in the world.”
The above is the first of several occasions where Cook identifies
the United States (US) as “good.” Please note, his statement is
made 10 days after the US has initiated the most egregious crime a
nation has committed to date, via “stealth and deceit and murder,”
to use the President’s words (see footnote).
The concept of Just War itself arose, the professor reminds us, when
the Christian church got in bed with the Roman Empire (around 325
AD, Emperor Constantine).
As a professional liar,*** Cook’s job is to provide religious
justification for Christian believers who, if the programming takes,
will make the best cannon fodder and defenders of “legalized
killing.” Cook’s other job is to rationalize accidents and
purported anomalies of the GOOD SOLDIERS acting on behalf of THE
EMPIRE anywhere.
The professor says that, as a
Christian, you must, in post-September 11 America, accept the
legitimacy of Just War. The alternative is to surrender to an evil
“Al Qaida Dark Age.” Therefore, if you view the CURRENT WAR as
unjust (a legitimate option), then you must keep your mouth since
you know nothing about such secular matters; or more bluntly, you
know nothing; but your pious attitude is a luxury you will be
permitted by the state (if you keep your mouth shut). Cook cites his
mum Mennonite neighbors in Pennsylvania as representative of this
version of “serious deep pacifism.”
There is also, he says, the “deeply confused” version of
pacifism which rejects the concept of Just War. This is the group
represented by the Pope, and Pax Christi (Cook doesn’t point this
out; he’s sneaky) and much of the non-fundamentalist religious
community. The belief by the “so-called pacifists” in the “natural
goodness of humans” was “a relatively harmless fantasy” until
September 11, when it was “shown to be utter utopian.” The
reason, he says, is that those who “deny the persistence and depth
of human sinfulness,” undermine belief in the good (state). “They
confuse Christianity with a sentimentality and an unwarranted set of
optimistic assumptions about human nature and about the limits of
human conduct.”
September 11, 2001 was a defining moment for Prof. Cook. Never mind
the high probability that it was the first major use of “shock and
awe” on the American public, to set them up for participating in
shock and awe on “the enemy.”
In the bipolar world that the operatives in the Project for a New
American Century are creating, cause and effect are dismissed as
irrelevant when up against Evil. Our professor, of course, didn’t
cook any of this up. The group-think is outlined, e.g., in GW Bush’s
Sept. 14, 2001 speech at The National Cathedral, Washington
D.C.****
Cook dismisses the “so-called” pacifist who rejects the concept
of Just War – a concept explicitly outlined, for example, by Nobel
Peace Prize Laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire: “Militarism and war
are legalized killing, and it is evil.” (March 26, 2003,
Washington, DC)
The “so-called” or “crypto” pacifist, Cook says, “is
especially pernicious” in its rejection of Just War in the
post-9/11 world, because while “it is incapable of giving
practical advice to those who must bear the sword in modern,
practical politics…it may indeed undercut the will to act
effectively and decisively in the defense of our citizens, of our
civilization, and the relatively peaceful and stable world order
which, like it or not, is largely defended by American power.”
The big fear, Cook admits (it’s disguised as a threat) is that “attitudes
such as the crypto pacifists hold might guide or significantly
influence whole Christian communities…” What is feared is very
simply a “culture of peace,” as several religious and human
rights leaders call for in their March 26 civil disobedience.
Pretty clearly, as fellow War College professor and CIA analyst
Stephen Pelletiere noted (Q & A (part two), snowshoefilms), the
drive for war is orchestrated by a coalition (now called the
Coalition of the Willing). Pelletiere elaborated: The coalition is
made up of oil and gas interests (particularly U.S. based), the
weapons industry, Israel, and fundamentalist Christians and Jews who
support Israel.
SERVANT OF GOD
Cook’s reference to the legitimacy of bearing the sword (above) is
derived from Paul (Romans 13), whom he quotes with approval: “The
authority does not bear the sword in vain. It is the servant of God
to execute wrath on the wrong-doer. Therefore one must submit to it.
Not only because of the wrath, but also because of conscience.”
Professor Cook posits abject surrender to the belief structure of
imperialism (god, or the demi-god who heads the empire as
Christian). He quotes 2nd Century Tertullian as an appropriate
response of Christian subjects: “We pray for life prolonged for
the empire. For protection of the Imperial House…” Otherwise,
the empire will fall in a “mighty shock.” Only bombing (and
gassing, for it may come to that) people to death in large numbers
can prevent this from happening.
Revealing the depth of his group think, Dr. Cook said “for one
shining moment, the UN had a chance to act responsibly by joining
the First Bush in creating the New World Order, but it failed…”
NOT A PERFECT KILLER
The War College Prof. concludes his remarks by praising the
extraordinary accuracy of U.S’ weapons of mass destruction:
missiles that can “take out targets within 100 yards of our
troops, with a margin of error of about 50 feet.” Mistakes, he
said, are “technical error or mis-programming.”
The important question, Cook says, is whether the bombing “was
done in good faith.” He clarifies: “I think it’s fair to say
that no military in the world is as capable of being discriminate
[in its killing] if by that one doesn’t expect perfection… but
if the test is perfection, then we’re back to crypto-pacifism. In
any war, civilians will die, mistakes will be made.”
Prof. Cook says proudly that one of his student officers is
currently giving CENTCOM briefings in Kuwait, just like he practiced
at the mock briefings at the Army War College. The duty of such men
is to put best spin on collateral damage. Cook can admit this
because of his belief that America is Good, but sometimes does Bad
Things when it is up against Evil. Cook trots out no list, no
numbers, no arguments about why war on Iraq was Just. Instead, he
periodically mentions Al Qaida. Evil is pretty much whoever Good
says it is. The nation, herded by the corporate media, slides
further into bipolar madness.
As Phil Berrigan said before his death, we have only two rights of
the Constitution left, speech and assembly. Let’s make the most of
them.
* Calvinist: one’s “good” works or “bad” works won’t get
you into heaven or hell (or God’s grace or damnation) if you’re
not already on the roster, so you don’t have to really worry too
much about questions of morality if you are one of God’s Chosen
People, or the Elect, whatever.
** Being an Air Force brat myself (R. Harvey), I sympathize somewhat
with Mr. Cook’s psychological programming. Cook made clear,
though, that he was an officer’s brat. We were sons and daughters
of grunts; we rarely associated with sons and daughters of officers;
they were of another caste. We were rough and tough and did the
fighting; they only gave the orders. As a military dependant for my
first 15 years, I dreaded the day when I would lose my connection to
the Air Force and its purported special privileges and mission
(Peace Is Our Profession); I looked on civilians as THE OTHER.
*** Perhaps this is harsh; if Mr. Cook believes the lies that are
fed to him, is he a liar? Or only a believer? There is abundant
evidence, for example, that there is no connection between Al Qaida
and Hussein… And yet, this is the centerpiece of the
administration’s aggression.
**** “…our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer
these attacks and rid the world of evil. War has been waged against
us by stealth and deceit and murder. This nation is peaceful, but
fierce when stirred to anger. The conflict was begun on the timing
and terms of others. It will end in a way, and at an hour, of our
choosing.” President Bush, Washington, D.C. (The National
Cathedral), September 14, 2001 [The National Security Strategy of
the United States of America, p. 1, Sept. 2002].
In God: A Biography, Jack Miles’ interpretation of the Old
Testament as a work of fiction, the genocidal God dies, a failure.
After a silence of several hundred years, a self-conscious sequel to
the novel was enacted and recorded (New Testament): the new way to
resist is non-violent civil disobedience, and love. This tactic
might bring the empire down yet. Gandhi’s mistake was the
opportunistic use of Hinduism, as Eqbal Ahmad points out.
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