Nobody said it would be easy, in fact, we know it is hard

http://mises.org/library/isaiahs-job

The purpose is to reassure the remnant, and to persuade those who are potential remnant. The masses are content to mutually loot.

100 years ago the Christian west paused in its self-imolation to remember the birth of Christ

Mary Theroux writes movingly about it at the Independent Institute.

http://blog.independent.org/2014/12/24/the-100th-anniversary-of-the-christmas-truce/

An excerpt:

Such warm fuzzies for “the enemy”, of course, undermined the cause of their rulers, and eventually all along the front officers retook charge of the situation, in some cases ordering their soldiers to take up arms or be shot themselves; in one case, a British officer shot a German soldier walking unarmed in no-man’s land, bringing the truce to a bloody end.
And thus the secret to maintaining war: we must never come to know our declared enemies, must never think of them as humans just as we are, loving their families, hoping for home and a better life. Faceless caricatures are so much better for keeping passions pitched.
And thus the secret every good ruler knows: divide and conquer. Portray “them” as different, sub-human, unworthy of the consideration we hold as our due, and certainly ones to whom Christ never intended the Golden Rule to apply.
“Them-ism” is equally effectively applied to our co-nationalists of a different color, socio-economic status, or religion. Keeping us suspicious of one another well serves our political masters, accruing ever-greater power.

Do you love Christ more than you hate those your rulers tell you are the cause of your problems and should therefore hate? They can, for the time being, fleece us and boss us around, but do we really have to let them stir up hatreds within our hearts for others, for whom Christ also died?

Why the torture?

Justin Raimondo makes an important point about the torture.

WHY was the Bush administration so eager to torture. Was it really afraid of 24 style ticking time bombs?

Um. No. They wanted to start a war with Iraq. And they needed justification for it.

The administration had already decided, early on, to attack Iraq: all that was needed was "proof" of Saddam Hussein’s connection to the 9/11 attacks – and they didn’t care how they got it. In a 2009 interview with the McClatchy news agency, a former highly-placed former US intelligence officer said:
"[F]or most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld were also demanding proof of the links between al-Qaeda and Iraq. … There was constant pressure on the intelligence agencies and the interrogators to do whatever it took to get that information out of the detainees, and when people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s people to push harder."
As Patrick Cockburn points out in the Independent, detainees were subjected to the worst torture "in the run-up to the war in 2003, suggesting that rather than preventing further action by al-Qaeda, the US administration was intent on justifying the invasion of Iraq. One prisoner, Abu Zubaydah, who was wrongly thought to be an al-Qaeda leader by his interrogators, was waterboarded 83 times in August 2002, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times in March 2003. The first questions asked of the latter after he was captured in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, were all about Iraq and not about forthcoming al-Qaeda attacks, according to The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of 9/11by Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan." The book also relates how Cheney’s office wanted to waterboard a top Iraqi official to get him to "verify" the alleged Iraqi connection to al-Qaeda.

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2014/12/18/why-did-they-torture/

So the even larger crime than the torture and imprisoning for over a decade of many people who'd just been turned in by locals to collect a bounty or to settle a private score is that the false "intelligence" gained from the torture was used to (re)start a war and kill in the neighborhood of a million people.

So while they resort to Jack Bauer torture porn situations to justify it, the torture that occurred was to extract a specific, pre-determined, response.

The joy of being the hyper-power is never having to say you're sorry, I guess. Destroying infrastructure so that people die from lack of sanitation, imposing sanctions which killed a half-million people (mostly children and the aged), all to "encourage" the people to rise up and throw off someone who previously was a US stooge... What guilt do the folks in D.C. bear from enabling and encouraging the 8 year war of aggression by Iraq on Iran? About 300,000 civilians killed. Many more soldiers. About $1 trillion in destruction.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God. Whose sons are the warmongers?

Christians for torture, atheists for sanity?

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/week-god-122014

This really challenges my faith, not in Christ, but in Christians.

Hahaha .... And more believable

From Bob Murphy

 

 

 

 

Torture?

Remembering back to the early 2000's when many of us were scared because D.C. wouldn't admit to why "they hate us for our freedoms", these articles about torture ring true to me.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/torturing-god-out-of-jihadis/

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/torture-and-seriousness/

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/millman/why-did-we-torture/

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/no-accountability-for-torture/

The last article is probably the most depressing one. There will be no accountability in this life for those who authorized, carried out and justify and defended it. The state, as the monopolist of violence, will only limit itself so much as is necessary to prevent outright rebellion/loss of legitimacy in the eyes of the subject population.

Christians' citizenship is not in this world. We have no reason to justify the evil these folks do. We shouldn't be identifying with them.