Professional Documents
Culture Documents
There once was a man who lived in Sudan. He prayed a lot and gave to the poor.
The country needed a road, so he built it, from Khartoum to Shendi and all the way
to the Red Sea. He was well-liked by the people; those who knew him said, “He is a
good man, a holy man.”ii He was polite and respectful, and he tried to make the
world a better place. Sounds like a pretty nice guy, right? Now what if this guy
Why did bin Laden take up the sword, and why did he find such support in Sudan?
There Bush is not well-liked, but Clinton is called “Shaytaan.”iii Satan? Why? They
say it is because Clinton was the one who bombed North Khartoum,iv landing
warplanes in the Muslim Holy Land along the way. Clinton either did not consider or
did not care about the consequences of this action. From their standpoint Muslims
repercussions.
There is a single thread of history, and it is impossible to go back and see how
things could have been different. Would bin Laden have gone berserk if the U.S.
hadn’t stationed thousands of troops in his holy land? Or armed and trained him to
fight off the Soviets from Afghanistan, and then left the war-torn country to rot? Or
had him kicked out of his own country, Saudi Arabia, and then Sudan, prompting
him to return to Afghanistan, where his group planned the 9/11 attacks?
This we cannot know. But much of America’s future – our safety, our national debt,
our energy usage, our retirement, our children’s prospects – will be shaped by our
foreign policy. Defense spending, trade, and foreign aid all influence the lives of
each of us. Again, it is impossible to say exactly how it is all related, but on the
Let’s take an example: Jimmy Carter and Iran. The deposed Shah was ailing, and
Carter let him into the U.S. This was a caring gesture, but it enraged Iran’s new
1980 Iraq invaded Iran, offering the U.S. an indirect angle for retribution.
Throughout the Iran-Iraq War the U.S. and NATO supported Iraq despite Iraq’s
extensive use of outlawed chemical weaponry. The war ended in 1988, establishing
a fragile balance of power between Iran and Iraq. Shortly thereafter, Saddam
Hussein, saddled with over $130 billion of war debts, decided to invade oil-rich
Kuwait. The U.S. easily fought back the Iraqis, and stopped at the border. Bush Jr.
blamed this for his father’s election loss in 1992, and in 2003 Bush Jr. invaded Iraq
and finished off Saddam. The fall of Iraq empowered Iran, who has since been
making severe threats against Israel’s very existence. If Iran and Israel go to war it
will be the conclusion of a long chain of events, from Bush Jr.’s vendetta all the way
Granted, these are not nearly all the factors involved (see the oil chapter for
instance). The point here is that if Carter turns the Shah away and acknowledges
the Iranian Revolution, maybe none of this happens. No hostages, no Iran-Iraq War,
no Kuwait invasion, no Iraq invasion, no nuclear Iran, and much less worldwide
animosity toward the United States. Can we blame all our ills on Carter and
Clinton? Sure we can. We could blame them all on Reagan and Bush, too. That
does not matter. The point here is that our leaders really, really need to think
How would Jesus have invaded Iraq? Well after the events this question burns fresh
and fierce. At the time the “What Would Jesus Do?” crew favored the war,vi but so
did over half the country.vii Thousands of casualties and a trillion dollars later we
can only shake our head and ask, “What in the world just happened?” This merits a
deeper look.
How can one prove one has no weapons of mass destruction? Can you prove you
have never committed a felony? You can prove particular instances, certainly, but
can you account for every second of your life, with corroborating witnesses?
Saddam was faced with a logical impossibility. Naturally, he could not prove he had
no weapons of mass destruction, nor did he want to reveal this weakness and invite
invasion from Iran.viii As a result, the U.S. unilaterally invaded a sovereign, secular
regime, one that we greatly supported throughout the 1980’s in its war against
fundamentalist Iran. Saddam was Reagan’s ally. In 2006 we wiped him off the face
of the earth.
More startling was the massive propaganda on the major networks. Even CNN (the
put his political rivals in acid baths, he gassed the Kurds – honestly, was any of this
‘news?’ Saddam was the same ruthless autocrat he had always been. Why support
him in the 1980’s and destroy him in 2003? And why does the press pound us with
The administration did its best to manufacture consent. Bush flat-out lied, saying
“The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought
significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”ix The most credible member of the
administration, Colin Powell, was sent to the U.N. to convince the world of this. An
aide estimated a $100-200 billion cost to the war,x then was quickly disparaged and
replaced. Joe Wilson was sent to Nigeria to link Saddam to uranium mines. In a
New York Times editorial Wilson went public with his belief that there was no such
link, nor could there be.xi One week later his CIA wife’s identity was revealed, the
fact that the administration took office with a plan to attack Iraq indicates the war
Certainly, avenging his father’s victory was strong in Bush’s mind. But the rationale
for the invasion was concocted, weak, and misleading,xiv as millions of Americans
liberal criticism of the war? The far-left Friedman was a vocal supporter, and
remained so, arguing that it was necessary for the “redignification” of its people.xv
Liberal senators waffled. Senator Clinton voted to authorize the war; later she
offered a half-baked apology: “Had I known then what I know now I never would
know before you go. None of the major questions were answered. Why attack Iraq
miniscule chance of harming your homeland? Forget voices of dissent – where were
Yes, Saddam was immoral. But America can’t invade a sovereign nation just
because an immoral regime is in power. Think of how many times we would have to
invade ourselves.
Morally, how is the U.S. invasion of Iraq different from the Kaiser’s invasion of
provided divine justification for war. In ancient Christianity, the rise of the “Just
apparatus of the state it was required to do so. Yet the Book of Matthew quotes
Jesus as stating that those who take the sword will die by the sword.xviii This applies
peacemonger Walter Wink. In his exegesis of turning the other cheek and walking
the extra mile, Wink describes a lawful, non-violent response that seizes power and
initiative. “If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.”xix Do you
know what this means? In the Jewish culture at the time, the left hand could only
be used for unclean tasks, not for gesturing or hitting people. Therefore the initial
blow was a backhand with the right hand; intended to humiliate, not to injure. If the
servant ‘turns the other cheek’ the master cannot slap with the right hand or use
the unclean left; he must punch with the right, which would be an act among
equals. Therefore turning the other cheek is not an invitation for more abuse; it is
an act of non-violent resistance that demands equality and respect. Likewise, under
law the Roman soldier could only force a civilian to carry his pack for a mile.
Walking a second mile forces the soldier to take back his load or risk legal
prosecution. In a third parable, if someone would take your robe, give him your
undergarments as well. Nakedness was taboo, and brought more shame on the one
causing the nakedness than on the naked person himself. Again, this response
is that we are the soldier, we are the aggressor. Inconveniently, the formative
Christians believed the world was about to end, so they did not leave guidelines for
overseas oil interests, but he posed no threat to us. Of course, some might say
Wink grossly distorts the meaning by taking it in context. What do real church
leaders say?
Public church leaders supported the war, some even calling it a new ‘Crusade.’ The
religious peacemongers lost the war of words.xxi How would Jesus have invaded
Iraq? Simple. Massive aerial bombardment followed by a heavy cavalry blitzkrieg
then infantry to clean up what’s left. You don’t need to be a born-again to figure
that out.
In Sum
destroying his family name by trying to save it and Carter of causing three wars by
an act of Christian charity. I am accusing the moral right of immorality and the
Today the U.S. has troops in 130 countries and many entangling alliances (case in
point, if Georgia had joined NATO we would have been at war with Russia in 2008).
such an interventionist foreign policy? This is the height of hypocrisy. The cold war
brave soldiers back home. This would greatly diminish the number of terrorist
attacks (see Lebanon, early 1980’s) and make the world a safer place.
George W. Bush advocated this position in the 2000 presidential debates: “I’m not
so sure the role of the United States is to go around the world and say, ‘This is the
way it’s got to be.’…I think one way for us to end up being viewed as ‘the ugly
American’ is for us to go around the world saying, ‘We do it this way; so should
you.”xxiii Bush spoke out for a humble foreign policy, not a heavy-handed policing of
the world. Say what you will; that man would make a fine president.
Alexander asked him, “What is your reason for infesting the seas?” The pirate
replied, “For the same reason you infest the earth! But because I have one ship I
am a pirate; because you have a large fleet you are an emperor.” The pirate was
executed, of course. His point, however, has lived for millennia. Both Alexander
and the pirate acted the same; the difference was one of degree and power. Put
In the ancient world, what was the difference between civilization and barbarism,
orthodoxy and heresy, the elect and the fallen? The power of the pen. All religions
began as cults, and whichever cult fought off the others – the Gnostics, Ebionities,
Marcionites, Arians, and pantheists – that strain became the one ‘true religion.’ Its
scholars then rewrote history, marginalizing its competitors and positioning its
triumph as inevitable, divinely ordained. As Berger & Luckmann put it, “He who has
the bigger stick has the better chance of imposing his definitions of reality.”xxiv
Today the U.S. is the most powerful country in the world. Compare U.S. GDP versus
the 2nd-largest economy (Japan) from 1986 to 2006.xxv Measure the size and
sophistication of the U.S. war machine against anything the world has to offer.
Consider how much the U.S. dominates global discourse. The U.S. loses thousands
on 9/11 and the world bows in mourning. How many Palestinians die each year?
We don’t even know – that does not even make the news. Consider how little we
made of Saddam’s torturing in the 1980’s, how much we made of it in 2004, and
how little the world has made of U.S. torturing the last few years. (Who even talks
about Jose Padilla, who confessed to planning to set off a ‘dirty bomb’ after being
death threats, extreme cold?xxvi Honestly, after three years of that, who wouldn’t
confess?) Today there is no check to our power; if you openly attack the U.S.
government they will have you on the waterboard faster than you can say, “habeas
destroy our enemies and attempt to shape a world in our own graven image?
Is the U.S. so great that we should force the rest of the world to be like us? With our
national debt, hate crimes, political corruption, disparity of wealth, drug addictions,
rampant obesity, and forgotten people – are we the best of all possible worlds?
Maybe – just maybe – others might not want to live like this. If we truly believe in
liberty, why not respect the principle instead of imposing it on others? And even if
others choose to trade liberty for their traditions or their belief system, the
freedoms – we succumb to the police, we let the government take our earnings, we
limit our activity and speech constantly. This we all accept as the price to not live in
anarchy. But next time we unilaterally invade a sovereign nation let’s not lie and
say it is in the name of “freedom.” It is in the name of power and our own self-
interest. Don’t pee down their backs and tell them it’s raining.
Part Two:
Out of Africa
“Slowly and painfully, we are seeing worldwide acceptance of the fact that the
the underdeveloped ones. Not only though a sense of charity, but also because
only in this way can we ever hope to see any permanent peace and security for
ourselves.”xxvii
So helping alleviate suffering in the world also promotes peace and makes our
country secure – that’s a comforting notion, isn’t it? Yunus notes the global
consequences of not doing so: “Poverty and powerlessness are breeding grounds
for terrorism.”xxviii For this and other reasons many individuals and organizations
feel the urge to help, donating over a trillion dollars to Africa alone.xxix
Sadly, by many measures Africa is worse off today than it was forty years ago.
Africa’s real per capita income is lower in 2008 than it was in the 1970’s.xxx In 2009,
300 million Africans lacked enough food,xxxi and roughly half of sub-Saharan Africa
Theroux lived there in the sixties and visited again in 2005. He describes the
changes in bitter tone: “Africa is materially more decrepit than it was when I first
knew it – hungrier, poorer, less educated, more pessimistic, more corrupt, and you
can’t tell the politicians from the witch doctors. Africans, less esteemed than ever,
every turn. To be an African leader was to be a thief, but evangelists stole people’s
innocence, and self-serving aid agencies gave them false hope, which seemed
worse.”xxxiii
This is a scathing critique of everybody involved. Why did good intentions go bad?
What are the processes at work? Regarding the concentrated delivery of aid, a
dictator. You are justified – he is terribly corrupt, and he oppresses his people. Your
people need help, and you are the one who can save them. If you could better your
country and get billions of dollars for your trouble, why would you not?
If you are game, you would make a fine African charity-based dictator. The money
is intended for the people, but if you are simply handed billions of dollars, how
virtuous and abstemious would you be? Would you spend some to “keep the
peace,” fortifying your government against the next revolution? Naturally, you
would have to distribute some among your allies and ministers to reward their
loyalty in the past and ensure it in the future. Of course, you may want to use the
rest for the poor, but honestly, once you get the money it is yours. What you do
with it is entirely up to you. Think about it: when this happens in real life - when
you get some money in your pocket - how often do you immediately give it all
away? And what is more, if you did fix all of your people’s problems, the stream of
aid would stop. You would lose those billions of dollars, and with it the power to
protect your people from crazy insurgents. Who among us has the fortitude to do
that?
Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. The chief aim of power is to
sustain itself for as long as possible. This phenomenon is encapsulated in the myth
One could spend an entire academic career investigating the Golden Bough. Its
story of ambition, envy, strife, and ultimately death. Very simply, a king guards a
bough of gold. His life is wholly directed to this task because possessing the Golden
Bough has made him king. The king is ever-vigilant, watching and preparing.
Rivals will inevitably come, drawn by the Golden Bough and the prestige it brings.
No matter how many challengers the king wards off, eventually he will be slain and
replaced, just like his predecessor and successor. The king is dead; long live the
king.
Foreign aid is the Golden Bough. Its concentration of power makes it a self-
interested, self-perpetuating institution that defeats its own purpose. “Which is why
foreign aid foments conflict. The prospect of seizing power and gaining access to
Somalia’s unrest is largely a fight over large-scale aid.xxxv In the Ethiopian civil war,
aid extended the war by feeding the people, which freed the government to focus
on the war. In terms of leadership, Zaire’s President Mobutu stole about $5 billion,
the entire external debt of his country.xxxvi Nigerian President Sani Abacha stole the
same amount. These are not isolated examples. The World Bank admits as much
as 85% of aid flows are diverted and perverted, like power station funds going
from the World Bank’s ‘Heavily Indebted Poorest Country’ (HIPC) program, which
incentivized to fail – the more corruption; the worse the people are; the more aid is
Fifty years ago Zimbabwe was the most prosperous country in Africa. Then its
dictator Mugabe decided to appropriate all the white farmers’ land and give it to his
cronies.xxxix The cronies did not bother to farm the land and the economy collapsed,
necessitating a small flood of foreign aid - $300 million in 2006 alone.xl The worse
the country became, the more aid it received. The more aid it received, the more
Mugabe and his cronies were able to destroy their own country. This vicious cycle
spiraled so far the hyperinflation was downright silly: by September 2009 three
Thus, foreign aid’s concentration of power and corruption reduced the strongest
country in Africa to one of the weakest. Foreign aid is a “permanent drip feed”xlii
corruption and placates the masses who might otherwise rise up and depose the
Theroux cites example after example of African aid projects gone wrong. In Sudan,
he saw a school with no teachers, water, or food;xliii in Ethiopia were fancy yet
they were meant to mitigate;xlvii all over donated T-shirts and mosquito nets drove
What do these all have in common? They were all done from intermittent charitable
you do for others the less they do for themselves. Like an overload of natural
resources that drowns out industry and initiative, so too does charity foster a
infiltrates, the more it erodes, the greater the culture of aid-dependency.”xlix This
act and its intermittent, disjointed, inefficient application make the people worse off
than they were before. Kenyan economist James Shikwati beseeches, “For
These acts stem from bad theory and lack of accountability. The urge to give is
often sequestered by religion, yet such calls by our spiritual institutions, moral
leaders, and pop stars cloud the issue. They hold that whether you call it tithe,
zakat, alms, or goodwill, it is good to give, not that it is good to help the poor out of
poverty. The poor are viewed as objects, recipients of aid, not subjects, with whom
to work out of poverty and toward a better world. We throw them scraps from our
table of plenty. It is a school here, a road there, some food for a year or two; it is
growth, and whether it moves the greatest number of people out of poverty in a
sustainable way.”li
We see the hungry and want to feed them. That is a natural, healthy inclination.
Yet that impulsive reaction is often unhelpful and sometimes disastrous. Moyo (or
Fergusen?) shrewdly notes the conversation about what to do with Africa has been
colonized by white Westerners just like Africa itself was colonized two centuries
before.lii “Scarcely does one see Africa’s (elected) officials or those African
should be done, or what might actually work to save the continent from its
regression.”liii Theroux says the same: “No Africans are involved.”liv Consequently,
much of this one-sided conversation speaks out of ignorance. Did you know, as
Armatya Sen writes, that famines are rarely caused by a lack of food?lv Or, as
microfinancier Muhammad Yunus writes, “The fact is that there is plenty of money
in any country to lend money to the poor?”lvi Few of us know exactly what is going
on in these places. That is why when the West sees a problem and shows up with a
We have had enough of the twin evils of “kill them all, let Jesus sort them out”
versus “will somebody please think of the children?” This is a false choice. In logic,
it is a complex question, like, “On your descent into hell, do you want to have a
chocolate or vanilla ice cream cone?” Whether you answer chocolate or vanilla you
tacitly admit you are headed to hell. Is that the choice you want?
Foreign charity has been a disaster. Trying to police the world will bankrupt our
For a moment, remove morality from the equation. The purpose of defense
spending is to defend the country. From a purely economic standpoint, what is the
Think about Charlie Wilson’s War. We spent billions on CIA actions and nothing on
CAI actions. If we had overcome aid’s self-serving solipsism and helped Afghanistan
rebuild and stabilize, we wouldn’t have had to come back. This would have been
much cheaper over time. Likewise, the trillion spent on Iraq could have made the
national security. After a trillion dollars of aid, Africa is a poorer, more dangerous
place than it was forty years ago. Instead of improving the world through
trillion annual national defense budget is almost as much as the rest of the world’s
combined.lvii Clearly, the current ways are not working. The only people benefitting
are charity owners, defense contractors, and dictators. The people themselves are
forgotten.
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ii
Paul Theroux, Dark Star Safari (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2003) 71.
iii
Theroux 73.
iv
Theroux 58.
v
See Michael Scheuer’s Imperial Hubris; summarized at
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/scheuer1.html
vi
Religious leaders favored the war: http://erlc.com/article/the-so-called-land-letter/
vii
USA Today poll: http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2003-03-16-poll-iraq_x.htm
viii
Secular regime: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1097288.html
ix
“Learned:” http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2003/01/print/20030128-
19.html
x
“Bush Economic Aide Says Cost of Iraq War May Top $100 Billion.” The Wall Street Journal,
xi
What I Didn’t Find In Africa: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/06/opinion/06WILS.html?
pagewanted=1
xii
War was a foregone conclusion:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/09/04/september11/main520830.shtml
xiii
Paul O’Neill: http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/01/13/oneill.bush/
xiv
Misleading rationale: http://www.americanprogress.org/kf/priraqclaimfact1029.htm
xv
Yes, “redignifcation:” http://www.slate.com/id/2093620/entry/2093763/
xvi
“Had I known then:” http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2006/12/hillary_clinton.html
xvii
The latter by Constantine, the former by Augustine, both in the 4th Century C.E. See J. Denny
Weaver, noted in Walter Wink, The Powers That Be (New York: Galilee Trade, 1999) 90. Even by
this standard Iraq fails: “the war must be formally declared; it must be a last resort; prisoners
xviii
“Live by the sword, die by the sword:” http://bible.cc/matthew/26-52.htm
xix
Book of Matthew verse 5:39b.
xx
See Wink pp 101-106. If we do not understand what ‘turning the other cheek’ really means, how
xxi
Peacemongers’ statements: http://lutheran_peace.tripod.com/statements_on_iraq.html
xxii
See Ron Paul, The Revolution (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2009) 179.
xxiii
Paul 11.
xxiv
Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality (New York: Doubleday,
1966) 109.
xxv
1986: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_gdp-economy-gdp&date=1986; 2006:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_gdp-economy-gdp&date=2006
xxvi
Paul 121.
xxvii
Sir Edmund Hillary – Schoolhouse in the Clouds, quoted from Mortenson p. 53.
xxviii
Muhammad Yunus, Creating a World Without Poverty (New York: PublicAffairs, 2007) 117-118.
xxix
Dambisa Moyo, Dead Aid (New York:Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009) xviii.
xxx
Moyo 5.
xxxi
300 million lacked food: http://www.agra-alliance.org/section/news/chairman_speech
xxxii
Moyo 5, also see p. 47.
xxxiii
Theroux 1-2.
xxxiv
Moyo 59.
xxxv
Moyo 60.
xxxvi
Moyo x.
xxxvii
Moyo 39.
xxxviii
Moyo 53.
xxxix
Appropriate the land:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/09/22/zimbabwe.farmers/index.html?eref=igoogle_cnn.
xl
Moyo 147.
xli
Bus fare: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090816/ap_on_re_af/af_zimbabwe_zimdollar
xlii
Theroux 292.
xliii
Theroux 74.
xliv
Theroux 113.
xlv
Theroux 165.
xlvi
Theroux 254.
xlvii
Theroux 294.
xlviii
Theroux 194, also see Moyo p. 44.
xlix
Moyo 37.
l
Paul 99.
li
Moyo 45.
lii
Moyo ix.
liii
Moyo 27.
liv
Theroux 272.
lv
See Sen’s Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (1981) online at:
http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=85190755
lvi
Yunus 70.
lvii
Trillion-dollar defense budget: http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1941