www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Crimes Against Humanity

Dear Dr. Eric,

And I've been searching my books for an old prophecy I had come across once, that said the anti-Christ will come from the land of the Huns. Now that could be Hungary, or maybe Western China. Isn't that where the Huns originated? Could be the Dalai Lama? Nah! Too timid!

Then again, what about that Jewish billionaire from Hungary... I forgot what his name is? You know the one that contributes to all the far left causes? He's supposed to wear a turban though...a blue one. Which kind of makes me wonder about Zawahiri. But then again it can't be him, he's Egyptian.

Oh how I love prophecies. They're so vague.

Zenovia

Dear Administrator:

Reasonable people can disagree, for example, about whether the invasion of Iraq was compliant with just war criteria. Unreasonable people take that disagreement to indicate, alternatively, support for Hussein or for the evil one. Such tactics are smear tactics pure and simple and show vacancy. And so forth fr other points of disagreement.

I just watched "Frontline: World". I no longer have doubts about the rightness of going into Iraq.

CDL

Well good for you. Nothing like a well-made TV show to reveal the truth... :rolleyes:
You know, Zenovia, by Dr Eric's criteria the Antichrist could well be....GREEK!!!
What do you think about that?

[According to Rev. LeHaye, he is named "Nicholas Carpathian", which should give all our Carpatho-Rusin friends pause...}
-Daniel

After Church tonight I heard a veteran speaking about the war.

Great thing--he made Daniel's case quite well. I'll give weight to experience almost every time, and especially when it comes from a grunt. And more especially so when its backed up by Bishop John Michael Botean and those like him.

So forget whatever was on tv tonight. We have enough salacious propaganda in our lives as it is.

This veteran did make several points that I'm still thinking about.

First, he brought out the point that this is not "Bush's war." It belongs to all of us and we share responsibility for it. Bishop John Michael Botean made a similar point, but it did not really strike me until now.

Second, he cautioned us not to react to Bush & Co. From a political standpoint, this gives me much pause for thought. I'm so deeply opposed to the admistration that I have become quite reactive. From a spiritual standpoint, it is probably good advice; when we debate these issues here the tempers flare and a kind of whackiness takes over that cannot be good for the soul. Daniel took the spiritually correct approach by saying that he would not answer the abuse directed at him, I think.

Third, the veteran drew an interesting line between being a pacifist and being antiwar. Somthing more than strategy and tactics are at stake here and its worth thinking about.

Nothing convinced me of the need to be antiwar as much as having grown up around veterans and partisans. But the level of discussion in this forum on this topic has pushed me towards a stronger pacifist stance which I'm considering in light of the Bishop's remarks and what I heard this evening.

A friend reading over this the other day said, "They certainly are mean, those people, aren't they?"

Be well.

bob r.

Bob,

You may have thin skin or you may not like people to disagree with you. I don't know. But there was no attack upon Daniel and I'm sorry your friend who thought this was a mean forum is perhaps himself mean. Who knows?

At any rate the Frontline story was the uncovering of many of the bodies of those killed by Saddam in his reign of terror. What compelled the researcher was the cries of the widows and orphans whose fathers had been kidnapped, tortured, murdered, and buried in mass graves. I suppose one could make an argument that there power bears no responsibility or that men are simply to observe while people are brutalized. I don't find such arguments compelling.

Maybe PBS is a right wing dupe of Bush's evil empire. That conclusion had never crossed my mind before. Maybe it's also true that we have never set foot on the moon.

CDL

Bob and Daniel,

I should add something else. While sensing no personal animosity against either of you by anyone on this board I still wish to offer an apology for any sin I may have unknowingly committed. Moreover, I'd love to visit Daniel and discuss the deeper things of God that he has learned through his iconographic work and with Bob to discuss some political matters.

I think that we all would have to swear not to take offense when we disagreed on some matters or at least if we did to be specific about the offense.

While I disagree with you both on the issues discussed here I still appreciate your devotion and intelligence.

CDL

Do you recognize the image of Christ in Hussein�s victims? If you do, then why do you complain continuously only about the need to see the image of God in those killed unintentionally by America in the effort of liberation yet are almost totally silent about those purposefully murdered by Hussein? In the same posts that you complain about how evil America and the president are, you have praised the stability and civil society created by Hussein. Look at your posts. In your most recent posts you spoke of the image of God in the victims we have killed. Yet you said nothing about the image of God in those intentionally murdered by Hussein.

When you speak at length about unintentional harm caused by what can be equated as a doctor accidentally taking good tissue along with the cancer he is removing and say almost nothing about the cancer (other methods of removing it and alleviating suffering), and even praise the stability of the cancer, it seems clear that you really don�t care about the victim the cancer has taken hold of. The only alternative I can see is that you hate the doctor (America and/or the President) so much that you can not think rationally about the cancer.

But in your voluminous writings on this forum about the evils of this war of liberation you have yet to offer your suggestions on what you would have done. At least a dozen times I have begged you to tell us what you would have done to end the suffering under Hussein. I offer yet again a very simply formula: �I disagree with your position because of reasons A, B and C and I believe that the non-violent methods we should have used to relieve suffering in Iraq but did not try are D, E and F. If we had done D, E and F it would have guaranteed to end the suffering in Iraq without the loss of innocent lives.� Why do you keep refusing to give us your action plan?

You remove the responsibility for the deaths in the Iraq-Iran war from Hussein and reassign them as moral evils inflicted by America?

And you expect anyone to take you seriously?

John,

I thank you again for your insightful comments.

CDL

I suppose that in your opinion the virtuous man should spend his energy denouncing the sins of his neighbors and excusing his own.
I am an American citizen; assessing the actions of my own government, acting in my name, seems to be a priority, rather than concentrating on the sins of Saddam Hussein, which I abhor.
I have yet to see you express anything but excuses for the deaths inflicted by your own country.
Why is it so odd to assign the Iraqi war dead to America? It is as sensible as blaming Hussein; Iran was flexing its muscle, we armed and supported the Iraqi war against them.
And back to step 1 in SA's twelve step program: I have never "praised" Saddam Hussein, or claimed that life in his Iraq was idyllic. I merely mentioned, based on interviews I read by Iraqis, and the eyewitness reports of a longtime resident of the city, a Lebanese journalist, that it went from liveable to chaos. The murder rate alone, and lawlessness in general, have made the place a horror.
As for ways to bring down a tyrant, in our times we have seen remarkable examples of the possibilities of nonviolence. We are seeing an experiment in violence in building a Pax Americana , an imperialist false peace based on force.
So far, not so good.
And it is far from certain that no one is taking me seriously. Several people have spoken up in my defense and I have received several emails from still others, people who used to post in these political arguments but gave up in frustration when the Manichean Steamroller levelled them.
Really, John, let us reason together. If you want to engage in Step 1, stating the other's position in terms they would agree expressed their opinion, I will go first.
Deal?
-Daniel

Dear Daniel you said:

"You know, Zenovia, by Dr Eric's criteria the Antichrist could well be....GREEK!!!
What do you think about that?"

I say:

Wouldn't surprise me a bit! To clarify: I recall once hearing on TV about the meanest man in America. My immediate reaction was: "Oops, I bet he was Greek". He was!

Or the time I heard about the largest robbery in history. Again I thought, they must be Greek. Why? Because only Greeks can think in such large quantities.

Actually though, why did I assume that the meanest man was Greek? Well, because we in the West are a violent culture. We exress ourselves aggressively. Soooo, if a person lacks a sense of right or wrong, it is usually obvious, and they become outcasts in society.

Now the Greeks are indiscreet. A person could be a complete sociopath, and yet exist within a respectable society with no one the wiser.

Zenovia

Dear Bob,

Today I heard on CBN that the few Christians left in Bethlehem, (it was once totally Christian), and all who are not Muslims, will have to pay a special tax. It's back to the 'Caliphate' again. Or could it be the Ottoman Empire. I wonder?

Dear Daniel you said:

"The Holy Father John Paul II judged that the inspections were effective. As I have suggested before, encouragement of Iraqi initiative to resist Hussein would have been appropriate."

I say:

I believe we tried to do that after the first Gulf War. It failed, and many innocent Iraqi's were killed. They lost faith in us because of that. The Iraqi's felt that we had betrayed them, and our Pres. George Bush will never repeat his father's error.

Also, the sanctions were not working because Suddam kept building his palaces, while the hospitals remained empty. I recall at the beginning of the war, that our troops were finding the medical supplies in ware houses.

All in all, I think both you and Bob are quite naive.

Zenovia

Have you checked the facts of the story you heard on CBN or is this just more of the same anti-Muslim propaganda? Have you checked with Palestinian Christians to see if this is true and what they think of this? I previously provided links and contacts which will enable you to do this. Check in with them and get back to me about this.

When was the last time that Bethlehem was entirely Christian and how did it become so?

Thanks.

bob r.

Regarding the Frontline story referred to above:

I have had for many years graphic and upsetting footage shot and distributed detailing Saddam's crimes. This was as far back as when he was regarded as an American ally. There is no doubt in my mind that he was a criminal then and that he is a criminal now.

And, you know, if I got these tapes so long ago its a pretty good bet that the CIA and others got them earlier.

And if they had them earlier and did not act then they are complicit.

A free-handed investigation of everyone's crimes is needed. And all of the guilty need to go to prison. I said this several posts back.

And its a pretty good bet that no action was taken against Saddam then for some political reasons which today--I hope you will admit and agree--are regrettable and were avoidable.

No doubt many of the "cries of the widows and orphans whose fathers had been kidnapped, tortured, murdered, and buried in mass graves" came from Kurds.

When the dominant Kurdish group fighting Saddam was the Kurdish Workers Party, however, the situation was ignored.

Now that the two Iraqi Kurdish enclaves are governed by competing mafias--one claiming to be solidly right wing and the other masquerading as left of center and both of them basically corrupt--and Apo is in prison the Kurds become allies and suddenly we are hearing their cries again.

In between then and now the Kurds got used.

If the Kurds were really allies and Saddam was really the enemy Apo would not be in prison today, and would certainly not be in prison today with full US compliance and involvement in his capture.

And it turns out the Kurds are sitting on land also claimed by Assyrians and Iraqis and that there are regular clashes between the competing groups.

It gets more complex. And if you're the occupier, or supporting the occupation, it becomes your responsibility to adjudicate this complex situation.

If Daniel and I are charged with having to come up with an alternate scenario--and I provided a series of steps I think are reasonable and prudent--it should also be your charge to provide all of us with a fully adjudicated settlement of claims between Kurds, Iraqis, Assyrians and others. If you can't provide this, or are unwilling to, I'm not inclined to listen to incomplete justifications for the war and occupation.

These other "cries of the widows and orphans whose fathers had been kidnapped, tortured, murdered, and buried in mass graves" no doubt came from the leftists. No one fought Saddam harder than the Iraqi Communist Party.

Are you going to defend the rights of Communists and their opposition to Saddam?

The current Iraqi government contains many leftists, including members of the Communist Party.

This is the government set up and supported by the occupiers.

And these people in government who fought so hard against Saddam and suffered so much under him want the US out now.

I suppose one could make an argument that the US and Europe have some reasons to intervene, but complexity is not the strong suit of men who simply observe while people are brutalized and wait for a more opportune political or economic moment to act. I don't find such arguments compelling.

Maybe PBS is a right wing dupe of Bush's evil empire. The Wall Street Journal and The New Criterion certainly are.

Today's "Fresh Air" program on NPR features a great interview with a journalist from The Washington Post who was in Iraq and nearly kidnapped there. I don't think that she is Christian, but she displays most of the Christian virtues and the sort of character which draws people to Catholicism. The interviewer doesn't really get this and is incredulous at some points. She (the journalist) does a great job of making many of the points made by Daniel.

Be well.

bob r.