http://www.creators.com/opinion_show.cfm?columnsName=rsc<clip>
I believe that my German uncle, the spitting image of my American father, was a decent man who >>>>>> like the new pope who once joined the Hitler Youth <<<<<< was swept along by events far beyond his control. He recalled that as a teenager, Hitler was a distant voice on the radio promising to return order and prosperity to a depressed country. Little did he know that the highway built near the town in the '30s, eagerly welcomed for creating local jobs, was intended to carry tanks to conquer Paris, or that the coming war would leave him near death on the Russian front.
That would explain why one of his first moves was to convince the liberal minded priest Father Thomas Reese that he wanted to resign from American Magazine which he edited.
One of the articles Reese probably wrote has Penraker lying up a storm...
original article exerpt:
http://www.americamagazine.org "For those of us who grew up under the terror of the mushroom-shaped cloud, this was an extraordinary achievement. And he (referring to Pope John Paul II) brought it all about as a nonviolent revolution without shedding blood, proving foolish the conservative hawks who had counseled violent confrontation and first strikes that would have cost the lives of millions."
Per Penraker:
http://www.penraker.com/archives/001441.html The left has to lie in order to make its case; no conservative ever "counseled violent confrontation and first strikes that would have cost the lives of millions". Catholic priests should not be spreading lies like this. Anyone responsible for this editorial should lose their job. I thought it was part of being a priest to tell the truth.
and also per Penraker
1. Father Thomas Reese of America, The National Catholic Weekly Magazine.
http://www.americamagazine.org The Media loves to put Father Reese on display, because he agrees with them. Reese is a Jesuit, and nowadays you have to be careful of Jesuits. They used to be considered a tough and disciplined order; now it is widely reported that they have been taken over by a "lavender mafia". An unusual number of Jesuits are dying of AIDS, and many of the priests accused of teenager abuse were Jesuits. The order has fallen from about 8,000 priests several years ago to about 2500 now. It is said there are more ex-Jesuits than Jesuits. Garry Wills, a liberal, confirms the rot, as reported here.
http://theviewfromthecore.com/20020408/column.html Shall I forgive the Penraker in advance for I'm sure they know not what they speak of even without looking it up, but... let's find the facts.
That didn't take long. Doesn't anyone at Penraker know how to Google? 943,000 hits for communism first strike
http://www.georgetown.edu/centers/woodstock/publications/article18.htm"Bush's 'first strike' threat: Can it be justified?", Our Sunday Visitor, June 23, 2002.
<clip>
Speaking to West Point graduates earlier this month, Bush began floating a doctrine of preemptive military action against nations viewed as terrorist threats, especially Iraq.
"If we wait for threats to full materialize, we will have waited too long," the president said. His defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, followed by saying the United States should not wait for "absolute proof" of an impending terrorist attack before acting militarily.
Since September 11, those in the mainstream of Catholic thinking on a "just war" have affirmed that the use of deadly force against terrorist havens in Afghanistan and elsewhere is a moral option. However, in Church doctrine a just war is a defensive war, and the tradition has offered little ground for justifying offensive military action.
On top of that, in recent years the Church has voiced growing doubt about whether war can solve deep-seated social and political conflicts, and therefore about the likelihood of a "just cause" of armed conflict. Pope John Paul II has seemed to put greater hope in the prospects of non-violent resistance to evil, and in healing wounds between fractious parties and addressing injustices through non-military means.
"The Church has been narrowing the just-cause categories," said Jesuit Father Drew Christiansen, an international ethicist who reflects the thinking of the U.S. bishops and Holy See, referring to one of the just-war conditions. "The Holy Father has been increasingly skeptical about the use of force being able to accomplish the aims" of restoring peace and order.
http://www.voiceoftheturtle.org/library/porthuron4.php <clip>
Universal controlled disarmament must replace deterrence and arms control as the national defense goal.
The strategy of mutual threat can only temporarily prevent thermonuclear war, and it cannot but erode democratic institutions here while consolidating oppressive institutions in the Soviet Union. Yet American leadership, while giving rhetorical due to the ideal of disarmament, persists in accepting mixed deterrence as its policy formula: under Kennedy we have seen first-strike and second-strike weapons, counter-military and counter-population inventions, tactical atomic weapons and guerilla warriors, etc. The convenient rationalization that our weapons potpourri will confuse the enemy into fear of misbehaving is absurd and threatening. Our own intentions, once clearly retaliatory, are now ambiguous since the President has indicated we might in certain circumstances be the first to use nuclear weapons. We can expect that Russia will become more anxious herself, and perhaps even prepare to "preempt" us, and we (expecting the worst from the Russians) will nervously consider "preemption" ourselves. The symmetry of threat and counter-threat lead not to stability but to the edge of hell.
http://www.cfr.org/pub5035/max_boot/who_says_we_never_strike_first.phpWho Says We Never Strike First?
By Max Boot
The New York Times, October 04, 2002
Some critics, such as Michael Walzer, the political theorist, argue that the current threat from Iraq is different from and less immediate than those faced in the past. Attacking Iraq now, they argue, would make this a preventive, not a pre-emptive, war, and hence less morally justified.
Boot, whom I think it safe to say is easily identified as a Conservative Hawk, continues.... This is a distinction that may have made sense in the past, when mobilization took time and diplomacy proceeded at a slower pace. But today weapons of mass destruction can be used without warning. For this reason, the distinction between pre-emptive and preventive collapses. "Preventive" actions like Israel's 1981 raid on Iraq's Osirak nuclear facility have become essential.
Nevertheless, as Congress and the American people debate war against Iraq, there is unease that pre-emptive war, even to eradicate weapons of mass murder, runs against the American grain. The presumption of those, like Dick Armey, the House majority leader, who have made this argument is that Americans are a generally pacific people who will put down their ploughshares and take up swords only if attacked first. Leave aside the question of whether we can afford for the enemy to strike the first blow when that blow might leave millions dead. What about the historical accuracy of this idea that we are a nation animated by the spirit of Cincinnatus?
As support for this proposition one can cite the defensive justifications offered for major American wars, from the attack on Fort Sumter to the attack on Pearl Harbor. But some supposed provocations do not stand up to much scrutiny -- as critics at the time pointed out.
Mexico attacked United States troops in 1846 because they had moved into disputed border territory; President James Polk used this as a convenient casus belli, but he was preparing a war message for Congress even before the attack. A half century later there was no credible evidence (there still isn't) that the Spanish sank the Maine in Havana harbor; Congress declared war anyway to liberate Cuba and flex American muscle. And the United States entered Vietnam not to avenge two attacks on American warships in the Gulf of Tonkin (one of which didn't occur) but because President Lyndon B. Johnson wanted to prevent the spread of Communism.
Geese, the rot runs deep and way back..
But I think Penraker is only referring to Reagan's forked tongue which said, "No" to preparing for First Strike Capabilities all the while he was deploying a program that could only be effective in a first strike situation.
I mean if you only look at Reagan as having the "millions of lives" in the balance that Penraker referred to then technically they were right... he didn't actually come our and say it. But then they did say "no conservative ever..." so they are still wrong.
http://www.clw.org/scoville/nyt-100881.html October 8, 1981
First Strike
By Herbert Scoville
Deploying the ''counter-ICBM'' MX in silos known to be vulnerable can only signal to the Russians that we plan to launch them in a first strike before their own attack could wipe them out. After their attack, we could not rely on having any missiles with which to retaliate. Thus, with this MX program we are giving the Soviet Union strong incentives to launch a pre-emptive strike in a time of crisis.
The entire MX program should be canceled now, and President Reagan should listen to his closest Senate advisers, Paul Laxalt of Nevada and Jake Garn of Utah, who urged in June early negotiation of a ''strategic nuclear offensive arms reduction agreement - particularly in those weapons which constitute first-strike counterforce systems.''
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