Echoes of Wars

DESERT STORM AND ENDURING FREEDOM (formerly "Eternal Justice")

By Charles E. Carlson

President George W. Bush is following in his father's footsteps by presiding over what he has promised will be a very long war. The destruction of Afghanistan was already long ago completed in 19 years of war, most of it with the Soviet Union. The leveling of what little remains and has been rebuilt will require only a matter of days for the American military. G. W. Bush commenced the war called "Enduring Freedom" with many parallels to Father George Herbert Walker Bush's "Desert Storm," the Gulf War. The current President’s ultimatum to the Taliban chief, who was previously unknown to most Americans, rejected all suggestions of negotiation. The Taliban commander asked for evidence of Osama bin Laden's guilt before turning him over the USA. President Bush ignored it.

George Bush Sr. also made ironclad ultimatums to Saddam Hussein and rejected all efforts at negotiation before bombing. Bush Sr.'s war has survived three administrations and still goes on as we speak; bombing raids on remote Iraqi targets are no longer considered to be newsworthy. George Bush Jr. referred to the Gulf War as "quick and decisive," but if "quick" means 11 years and still running, then one might wonder how long his new "long" war might last.

Both wars commenced in a similar style, with a few weeks of massing enormous forces in neighboring countries, followed by rejection of all counter-offers to the respective presidents' demands. In both cases, this buildup was followed by massive "surprise" nighttime strikes with overwhelming firepower consisting of cruise missiles and B-52s. The new war is enhanced by the amazing manta-winged stealth bombers--an innovation since the Gulf War--and no doubt by other advancements we have yet to learn of.

The condition of the indigenous populations of the two targeted countries is also similar in several ways. Both are predominately Muslim. Both were decimated by wars before their respective Bush attacks. Iraq fought an eight-year war with Iran, in which its primary support came from the USA; the Afghans fought an even longer 15-year ordeal with the USSR, in which its primary support was thought to come from the U.S., though some witnesses, including author Kurt Lohbeck, Author of Holy War, Unholy Victory claimed support was meager. Iraq used mostly inferior Russian equipment. Afghanistan has no industry and depends on mostly obsolete, captured Russian armaments. Both were poor; if anything, the Afghan population is poorer today than the Iraqis were in 1990.

Both Bush wars are also similar in that the U.S. continued to provide taxpayer-funded aid to the targeted countries even while bombing was going on. In the case of Iraq, the aid was suspended when it was discovered that the U. S. Department of Agriculture made an embarrassing oversight in failing to shut off food aid until well after the bombing commenced on January 19, 1991; the food aid by starvation sanctions, which continue to this day.

In Afghanistan, the food drop began on the first day of the war, as untold numbers of civilian Afghans fled the cities in anticipation of an Iraq-style raid. The food drops are supposed to land on the good Afghans, and the bombs are supposed to hit the bad guys. However, bombs are already killing civilians, including four United Nations aid givers who were killed and an unknown number of workers injured by a Tomahawk missile that hit the UN headquarters. The food will most likely be eaten by the fighters, for this is the nature of war--those who have the guns always get the food first. Only U.S. taxpayers and church leaders are fooled by this pale humanitarianism, for no amount of food drops will replace destroyed homes, jobs, and bodies.

We think it is appropriate to offer readers a review of the Gulf War, not as we view it now after more than a decade, but as your author saw Operation Desert Storm before it began. We hope this will convince you that you should examine our logic in challenging the misnamed "Enduring Freedom" war very carefully and honestly. The following letter written by me was printed and circulated on the eve of Desert Storm, December 26, 1990. It was republished at various times through 1996 with postscripts. We reprint it with the addition of one terrible postscript, lest we forget why some of the survivors of that war might have reason to hate our leaders enough to die bombing us.

AMERICA'S FIRST WAR OF AGGRESSION

December 26, 1990, by Charles E. Carlson

Please permit me to speak boldly to a fellow believer,

We are in danger from a hidden enemy within. This is why I am writing to you. It will be your war to fight and pay for. Will you help to stop it?

To provoke an attack, Mr. Bush has selected the age-old tactic of the bully--humiliation and insult to provoke the other guy to start the fight. Most recently the president has made it known he did not want the hostages released, and in fact stated he "gave no credit whatsoever to Hussein for releasing the hostages." I am told by a businessman who has spent much time doing business in Saudi Arabia that to call an Arab a dog is a mortal insult, yet Bush repeatedly refers to Hussein as a "dog" or "mad dog"--a deliberate insult in front of Hussein's people, which, in the Arab culture, calls for a fight to the death.

Deliberate acts of provocation are not new in our history. FDR used similar tactics to mortify the imperial rulers of Japan in 1939, as described in Charles Callan Tansill's Back Door to War, in which Tansill carefully documented the use of ethnic insult to the character of Japanese dignitaries, virtually forcing them to attack. The now widely accepted theory that these acts were intended to provoke attack is supported by the fact that President Roosevelt and his aides not only knew in advance of the impending attack, but arranged for the Pacific fleet to be a convenient target for the expected attack, all of which is documented in Admiral Theobald's book, The Final Secret of Pearl Harbor, and in other reliable sources.

Mr. Roosevelt, like Mr. Bush, made no secret of his desire to enter war, but it required no less than an attack in the Pacific to provoke the war-weary, depression-weary American people into the war FDR had secretly promised to his future ally, Joseph Stalin. Note that FDR and his staff manipulated a "back door to war," as Professor Tansill put it, by first, manufacturing an enemy where none existed, second, provoking an attack, and third, arranging for a convenient target for the expected first strike. This is the pattern being replayed by George Bush in front of our eyes.

Now we see the specter of Mr. Gorbachev, leader of the most bloody-handed regime in all of recorded history, being begged to become an ally with our Marines in Saudi Arabia. Consider the fact that Russia armed Iraq with the weapons they use today. I am sure you know from the news that the USSR has armed Iraq all the way back to the days of the Shah of Iran. But do you remember that only two years ago George Bush sided with and gave our money and arms to Iraq's Hussein against the Ayatollah of Iran? Mr. Bush has been inconsistent about whom he supports in the East, but his actions have been perfectly consistent in promoting instability in the Arab East by jumping from side to side and providing arms to all sides, including Israel.

While President Bush agitates for war, the institutional press is openly waging a hate campaign directed at Moslems--another example of brainwashing Americans with the idea that life is cheap and the government should not be questioned when it uses human lives as chess pawns. Ignored by the press are the lives of those on the other side. We are supposed to think we are in Desert Shield to punish dictator Hussein, but no one mentions that it will not be he who suffers from sanctions and war, but the widows and orphans of the thousands who are left mutilated and destitute, just as the Afghanis' families were destroyed by the Russian invasion. Mr. Bush is unashamedly selling war, but never does he discussing the consequences of war, which are death and misery.

Christians are also being taken in by the war scheme, based on the erroneous idea that believers are yoked to the modern Zionist nation of Israel and that, since all Moslems are considered enemies of Israel, anything we (or the Israelis) do to Moslems--no matter how cruel or inhuman--is not only OK, but in some inexplicable way, the will of God. I recently heard a Sunday School leader say, "Didn't God use the Israelites to wipe out entire populations in the Old Testament? Maybe he is using us to rid the world of Arabs".

Christians are also being subtly programmed to think of the Moslems as sub-human, just as we are supposed to think of unborn children as non-babies. I will not be surprised if George Bush, who is prepared for and demanding the pagan slaughter of thousands, will soon be telling us we must join in a Holy War against the Moslem people.

What then are Mr. Bush's motives for demanding war? We are left to guess at his motives and to rationalize the assumption that our leaders share our concerns about human life and that they know what is good for us and are acting accordingly. Not so. President Bush is carrying out someone else's agenda. This can be plainly seen in his effort to hand over military authority to United Nations. Let us examine the purposes of the UN.

What is the UN, who runs it, and for whose benefit is it run? Why is the United Nations asked to make the decisions affecting the lives of American boys, and why would our president want such a thing if he were not controlled by someone else? Under our Constitution, is not Congress solely responsible for declaring war? Who gave the President authority to give your and my representative vote to a world government? And have you noticed how frequently we hear the call for a United Nations-ruled "World Order"? Whose are these voices?

There is no doubt in my mind that war is, in fact, a tool to eliminate our Constitution and with it the remaining legal protection we enjoy. War is a tool with which to transfer control of our defense from Congress to an internationally-controlled United Nations. Iraq is only a pawn. When the war ends, more of our freedoms will be gone, just as prayer in schools and protection for the unborn are gone. Our right to protest, petition and vote meaningfully will be gone, too--conceded to a one-world United Nations government that is controlled by those with dictatorial designs who already control our President, George Bush. Mr. Bush has shown himself to be right in the middle of someone else's plans for our freedom.

If you consider the facts behind the news in the light of my arguments, I believe you will recognize the tactics of those who control Mr. Bush's actions. These tactics are (1) create an enemy where none exists, (2) provoke an attack that can be branded as the "unprovoked act of a mad man, Hitler, etc.", and (3) create a sitting target, like the Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor, to arouse the wrath of the American people and American Congress enough to go to war. Such a target has been created with 300,000 American troops sitting on the desert of Saudi Arabia.

It is up to Christians to say an unconditional "no" to war. I have heard every argument and excuse for war, but I know of no scriptural or practical justification for our presence in Saudi Arabia, and if you know of one, I would like to hear it. Christians are misguided in supporting this action without consideration of consequences or alternatives. Our President and those who control his actions are pagans, proven by their willingness to participate in a slaughter involving their own people. In another time, Mr. Bush might have been tried for crimes against his fellow men. We have become so used to misdeeds in high office that we no longer call them by their right names. Treason is not too strong a word for such misuse of trust, and if it is to be stopped, it must be you who stop it.

May God forgive us if, by our inaction, we allow genocide against Moslem women and children and the sacrifice of even one of our own children. The average Christian could not even tell you the name of the deposed King of Kuwait (Emnir Shaikh Iabir alAhmad al-Jabir as Sabah) or provide a single reason why we should sacrifice the life of one American boy to put him back in power. If you agree with even a small part of what I have presented, please write to your Congressman before January 15, 1991. Better yet, call him while he is home on Christmas vacation and tell him, "No war and no United Nations One-World Government now or ever." Dec 26, 1990 –END

Postscripts to Desert Storm: By most counts, over a million people of Iraq have been killed outright or starved by the U.S. sanctions, most of them children and the aged. As I read the accounts of the round-the-clock clock bombing in Afghanistan it brings back memories of the similar bombing of Iraq.

On February 13, 1991, at 4:30 a.m., the U.S. military launched two guided missiles into the Amariyah civilian air shelter in Baghdad. It was Day 25 of the war, and like today in Afghanistan, where it is likely no military targets were left that had not been bombed to rubble. Even the sewage, water and electrical plants were destroyed, leaving the entire population without water, heat, or light, and with the river Tigris an open sewer for the city. That night an estimated 1750 women and children were sleeping in the huge reinforced shelter built to defend against Iranian war attacks.

The first American guided bomb--a special, massive bomb released from a high-flying U.S. plane and laser-guided to the shelter--blasted a 10 foot wide hole in the thick, reinforced roof. The explosion propelled 30 cubic Yards of crushed concrete and steel onto the sleeping inhabitants below. Four minutes later the screams of the victim were ended by the second bomb was precisely guided through the hole made by the first bomb, into the shelter, where it ripped through the floor into the sublevel below before exploding. Everyone in the shelter was killed, many were incinerated and the bodies not recoverable, as in the World Trade Center. Only 17 civilians sleeping in the entrance hall where they were protected from the enormous pressure generated by the missile survived. *

We hope you will join us in our mission for infinite justice, not through corrupt and callous government, but through Christ's Holy Law and universal standards of decency. For only in Him is there "infinite justice." President Bush knows this too, for it seems the name of the war was changed to "Enduring Freedom" when some objected to "Infinite Justice" because it diminished God.

*Report of A.W. Blumhorst available on audiotape, "Effects of Sanctions on Iraq"(http//www.whtt.org/bookstor.htm).