Thursday, July 15, 2010

Saint Joan: be very careful where you lead us


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Analyzing a Saint's Intelligence Data
(The Messenger, 1999)


Does a saint about to go to war "see what she wants to see."

When a saint goes to war, it is more than her motives she must check.

Her intelligence analysis must be sound. Does the evidence require the sword -- or are there other alternatives?

"God's signs" can be misleading even if the CIA approves them.

A saint's decisions are as sound as her "signs," her visions.

Did God really mean what he seemed -- or was the data ambiguous?

Even a saint such as Joan must face her "Conscience."

Did she sacrifice for God or kill for her own "pleasure?"

Here are some eternal questions for all who go to war.

Does it take a saint to wage a "just war?"

Can even a saint be corrupted once "just war" begins?

Does even a saint get dragged down into cruelty once battle flames?



The Banner and the Sword



"Just War" Defined


Even if noble at the outset, can the saint become addicted to a love of winning?

Even if she seeks to inspire with the banner, can she end up taking pleasure in conquests by the sword?

A saint can lead by inspiration -- but ultimately she must take responsibility for the deaths her sword caused.

Even in Joan's day, there was no free lunch.



The Seduction of Battle


Now, let us see how it can work if you are not a saint.

When men and women go into battle -- and get dragged beyond their "just" intentions into cruel results.

Meet former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara -- surely no saint.

He died in 2009 -- not before leaving as atonement this movie, The Fog of War (2003)

In it he takes upon his long anguished self to explain how he helped kill hundreds of thousands in WWII and Vietnam.

A man who woke up one day to be a villain examines how misplaced visions and flawed intelligence led him and others to be not saints but angels of death.

Saint Joan, President Obama, be very careful where you lead us.

We would be wise not to trust you.

For in your righteousness you may be deluded.

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Saint Joan, Is This Where You Led Us?


Ah, Saint Joan, explore thy motivation.

Here the secretly filmed hanging of Saddam Hussein reveals the final act of Bush family revenge.

George W. Bush went to war in part to eliminate a long time family enemy, the man who tried to assassinate his father, George H.W. Bush.

The leader of a great nation used an American invasion to execute by proxy a personal enemy.


Thy motive, dear Joan, keep thine eye on thy motive.

For motive can be one part of the puzzle when deciding if a war is "just."






Monday, July 12, 2010

Fire, light: but must it come so cruel, so bright?


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Hank Williams was no Catholic.

His lonely backwoods ballads were worlds away from the lonely suffering of a warrior saint.

It's a long, long road from the Alabama woods to the Canadian Jewish poet Leonard Cohen.

The singer song writer who has synthesized Jewish and Catholic traditions.

A poet and songster lights up a Catholic saint as only a Jew can.

For the two traditions are cut from the same cloth: martyrdom.

Let us honor those who sacrifice:

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"But the souls of the upright are in the hands of God, and no torment can touch them.

"To the unenlightened, they appeared to die, their departure was regarded as disaster,


"their leaving us like annihilation; but they are at peace.


"If, as it seemed to us, they suffered punishment, their hope was rich with immortality;

"slight was their correction, great will their blessings be. God was putting them to the test and has proved them worthy to be with him;


"he has tested them like gold in a furnace, and accepted them as a perfect burnt offering.


(often attributed to a Hellenistic Jew, of the 1st or 2nd century BC, Alexandria, Egypt)

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The Song: set against "The Passion of Joan of Arc" (1928)






It is Done: 1928



It is Done: 1999



In the spirit of Jean Anouilh's "The Lark:"
Let Us Honor not only the dying "Bird in Flames" --
but also the soaring "Bird in Flight
"

Now the flames they followed Joan of Arc
as she came riding through the dark;
no moon to keep her armour bright,

no man to get her through
this very smoky night.


She said, "I'm tired of the war,

I want the kind of work I had before,

a wedding dress or something white

to wear upon my swollen appetite."


Well, I'm glad to hear you talk this way,
you know I've watched you riding every day

and something in me yearns to win

such a cold and lonesome heroine.


"And who are you?" she sternly spoke

to the one beneath the smoke.


"Why, I'm fire," he replied,

"And I love your solitude, I love your pride."


"Then fire, make your body cold,
I'm going to give you mine to hold,"

saying this she climbed inside

to be his one, to be his only bride.


And deep into his fiery heart

took the dust of Joan of Arc,

and high above the wedding guests

he hung the ashes of her wedding dress.


It was deep into his fiery heart

he took the dust of Joan of Arc,

and then she clearly understood

if he was fire, oh then she must be wood.


I saw her wince, I saw her cry,

I saw the glory in her eye.

Myself I long for love and light,

but must it come so cruel, and oh so bright?


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Those Who Came Before

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Saint Joan of Arc or The Maid of Orléans (French: Jeanne d'Arc, ca. 1412 – 30 May 1431) is a national heroine of France and a Catholic saint.

A peasant girl born in eastern France, she led the French army to several important victories during the Hundred Years' War, claiming divine guidance, and was indirectly responsible for the coronation of Charles VII.

She was captured by the Burgundians, sold to the English, tried by an ecclesiastical court, and burned at the stake when she was nineteen years old.

Twenty-four years later, on the initiative of Charles VII, Pope Callixtus III reviewed the decision of the ecclesiastical court, found her innocent, and declared her a martyr.

She was beatified in 1909 and canonized in 1920. She is, along with St. Denis, St. Martin of Tours, St. Louis IX, and St. Theresa of Lisieux, one of the patron saints of France.

Joan asserted that she had visions from God that told her to recover her homeland from English domination late in the Hundred Years' War.

The uncrowned King Charles VII sent her to the siege at Orléans as part of a relief mission.

She gained prominence when she overcame the dismissive attitude of veteran commanders and lifted the siege in only nine days. Several more swift victories led to Charles VII's coronation at Reims and settled the disputed succession to the throne.

--From Wikipedia



With thanks to another Joan:
a friend who knows the meaning
of sacrifice


Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Tipping point: some bridges are not worth taking


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No, folks, it's hardly rocket science.

True, it is not yet "closing time."

Men still chase women. Nations still chase empire.

But the "tipping point" is very near.

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It has been an easy assumption that anything is possible.

That "no bridge is too far."

Now is the time to put aside the illusions.

Some bridges, no matter how enticing, just cannot be taken.




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We must ask if the American superpower has approached, is approaching, or will approach what the Prussian military strategist Carl von Clausewitz called the "tipping point"

We must ask whether for a well seasoned man, well seasoned women are still worth the trouble of the chase. Everyone has just too much "baggage."

Tipping Point:


When a nation on the military offense reaches the point in its aggressive operations where it is ever more costly to defend its acquisitions.

Or when a well seasoned man decides that new relationships are no longer worth the "lifting of never ending heavy baggage."

Where garrisoning troops, supplying them, defending them drains a nation's power and eventually requires retreat.

As did
Napoleon after he sent his forces in to occupy Russia in 1812.

As did
Hitler after he attempted to do the same thing in 1941.

As the
U.S. did after it attempted to occupy and and shape Vietnam.

Both men and nations must stop to ask "is the objective worth the cost of the chase?"

In their sixties men and women are like firmly potted plants, more like rigid Redwood trunks than like flexible saplings. Preformed by decades of living, they are unlikely to freely dance in a rhythm of fresh romance, of new union.

Yes, there can be friendship and an occasional date.

But no more overseas "wars of occupation."

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Now is a magical moment.....

Let's put together President Obama, Carl von Clausewitz, Afghanistan, Iraq, the American Medical Association, healthcare reform...

Let's add to that shrinking credit cards, shrinking credit, unending exploding deficits -- and the prospect of spending one million a year for every additional American soldier sent to Afghanistan.

Remember "Hey, Hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?"

A slogan by Americans who resisted the Vietnam war....

Back when President Lyndon Baines Johnson thought he could have "both guns and butter."

The choice is different today.

"Can we have both guns and doctors?"

As Obama has ramped up his decision on more troops to Afghanistan, scarcely anyone has asked the question:

"What can the United States afford?"

It has been an easy assumption that anything is possible.

That "no bridge is too far."

Now is the time to put aside the illusions.

Take note, 'O Men and Nations.

Some bridges just cannot be taken.

Ah, but maybe it is not quite too late. Maybe just one more...




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Sunday, July 4, 2010

Berkeley: where ignorance and idiocy triumphed


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It was 1964, 1965 -- the "Free Speech Movement" at the University of California, Berkeley.

Long ago -- surrounded by the swirls of Berkeley radicalism -- this writer found the seeds of independent journalism amidst the deafening rhetoric piped out to enraptured crowds.

The lesson I learned:

Do not trust the rhetoric of establishment professors; do not believe the rantings of power seeking radicals, do not let the authoritarian posturing of any kind of ideologue kill the quest for learning.

Rely instead on direct investigation, talking with people of all backgrounds and belief.

Establishments both Left and Right can be cacoons which block out the sunlight and justify the most horrendous atrocities. They can exploit emotion and rhetoric to draw the crowd into a vise of predictable orthodoxy.

And so there was an abysmal slide toward idiocy.

Berkeley's staid Establishment apologized for the savagery of America's war in Vietnam.

While the screaming Left, as it did with Stalin's totalitarianism of the 1930's, surrendered any consistent concern for human rights.

It championed civil rights in the American South, but portrayed the brutality of China's Communism with its millions of death as "paradise on earth."

Idiocy and ignorance triumphed at one of the world's great universities.

There lies a lesson for today.



Bottom feeders: "suckup artists" of the modern world


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A "bottom feeder" seeks sustenance from others

One of America's greatest industries is the care and feeding of the "bottom feeder:"

That would be a person with total lack of responsibility for him or herself -- who relies on friends, family, neighbors, social workers, judges, lawyers, or anyone else for sustenance.

A defining characteristic of the bottom feeder: one who makes bad decisions and then expects someone else to bail him or her out.

President Dwight Eisenhower once cited the growing importance of this group when he warned of the "the bottom feeder industrial complex."

Bottom feeders of all races cycle through the prisons and courts, the child custody hearings, divorce courts .

They rely on social services such as Medicaid to treat their unwanted pregnancies, relying on lawyers and judges to sort out the complexities of their lives.

Bottom feeders live off of public indulgence and chew up billions of dollars in social services. They cloak themselves in controversies about spousal abuse and child support

They leech off those who work hard but have real unmet needs. They fuel the practices and line the pockets of lawyers and social workers.

In the end, despite their ability to "work the system," bottom feeders frequently fall victim to both themselves and others.