Sgt Justin Griffith wants atheists to be given more respect in the armed forces

In a land of faith and flag, Justin Griffith is challenging the US military to abandon its religious ties.

When he was a child growing up in Plano, Texas – a place he describes as the “oversized, goofy buckle on the Bible belt” – he would bring his bible to science class and debate his teachers on the finer points of evolution.

“In my head, I won every time,” says Mr Griffith, now 29.

But somewhere along the way, his penchant for picking ideological fights with the non-religious got him in trouble. He found it harder and harder to argue with the points they were making. At 13, he suffered a crisis of faith.

“It was so painful. I lost my religion before I lost my first girlfriend. Nothing that big had ever happened to me, and I didn’t have any coping skills,” he says.

Mr Griffith found peace with his atheism, but he is not done sparring with the opposite team.

As an active-duty sergeant in the US Army, he’s leading the charge to get atheists more respect in the armed forces. In the process he is earning attention, both positive and negative, from around the world.

Protest rock

Mr Griffith’s most ambitious project is Rock Beyond Belief, a day-long event on the military base Fort Bragg, North Carolina, complete with children’s activities, rock concerts and a lecture by atheism’s most visible proponent, author and scientist Richard Dawkins.

It is an ambitious plan in an organisation still respectful of religious traditions and in a town that holds Christian values dear.

Scheduled for 31 March, Rock Beyond Belief comes two years after another controversial concert at Fort Bragg, “Rock The Fort”.

Sponsored by the Billy Graham Evangelical Association, Rock the Fort was billed as an “evangelical event” with Christian bands, family activities, and an emphasis on spreading the gospel to the entire community.

Despite attracting criticism for hosting the event, the top brass at Fort Bragg said they would be willing do the same for an event thrown by a different religious group.

“So the next day, I raised my hand and said, ‘Fort Bragg, I’ve got an event’,” says Mr Griffith.

The concert was originally scheduled for 2011, but was postponed until his group could secure the same location as Rock The Fort: an outdoor field capable of hosting thousands of people, in view of the Main Post Chapel.

Though the Rock Beyond Belief concert is the most public of Mr Griffith’ s efforts to make the military more accepting of atheists, it is not his only one.

“We have a lot of work to do,” he says.

Military culture is full of religious ideology and symbolism, says Griffith. For instance, he cites the traditional flag-folding ceremony, which cites faith in God in multiple instances.

“These things have been here for years. It’s tradition,” he says. “How do we go about getting them out?”

Prior to planning the concert, he registered his complaints against the army’s spiritual fitness test, a campaign that he continues.

That test, implemented last year as part of a wider resiliency and suicide-prevention program, rates service members on the strength of their spiritual life.

He’s also working to ensure that servicemembers can have “atheist” listed on their official military records.

“It took me a year and a half to get my records changed to atheist. When I told them I was atheist, they put ‘no religious preference’,” he says. “I told them that’s unacceptable. I do have a preference, and that’s atheism.”

These records are important, he says, because of the end-of-life services provided to soldiers who may have been wounded in war.

“I want them to know that I am an atheist: do not pray; do not do last rites; do not do any goofy ceremonies for me,” he says.

Bigger microphone

Mr Griffith counts about 100 members in Fort Bragg’s atheist community, which meets weekly off-base, since it is not yet recognised as a distinctive faith group by the military.

He also works with other atheist groups on military bases across the country.

Through his efforts, Mr Griffith has become a figurehead within the atheist movement. His bloggets around 100,000 hits a month and he says he puts in about 40 hours a week of activism on top of his military duties. In July, he was appointed the military director of American Atheists.

“I definitely have a bigger microphone now,” he says.

But with that bigger voice comes bigger criticism. Because atheists so often fight to keep religion out of public property or government activities, they are perceived as being anti-Christian.

When Fox News reported on Rock Beyond Belief, it focused on a music video by Aiden, one of the bands performing at the concert. That video featured images burning churches and references to burning synagogues and holy books.

Mr Griffith says the band was referring to sectarian violence in the name of religion, not an appeal for atheists to incite violence.

Still, the article resulted in an influx of hate mail and death threats.

Military microcosm

Though the general public is not always receptive to atheism, the military itself offers a promise of acceptance.

Aside from recognised Christian, Jewish and Muslim groups, Fort Bragg has resources for other faiths, including Buddhists and Wiccans, a Pagan religion.

“The army really is a microcosm of the entirety of our nation,” says Benjamin Abel, a spokesman for Fort Bragg. “We serve the people, and we have an incredibly diverse population of people in the United States.”

He notes that there are steps religious groups can go through to gain more visibility on base.

The fight by atheists, he says, reminds him of the struggle the base’s Wiccan members endured years ago.

“Through history, the military has generally been out in front of a lot of social issues. We integrated the military first, we just had the recent change of ‘don’t ask don’t tell’, [and] women have been integrated in the military for a long time.

“We’re not out there as a force for social change, but we certainly don’t shy from it,” says Mr Abel.

While Mr Griffith does not believe in God, he does believe in the military.

A few months ago he re-enlisted for another five-year tour of duty, and plans to make his career in the service.

“I never would have gotten anywhere without the army. It taught me to be a man,” he says.

“The army is so good, it deserves these little corrections – and I do consider them little, in the scale of how great the army is.”

A former employee of one of the world’s largest international banks has provided WND with more than 1,000 pages of documents, including customer account ledgers for dozens of companies through which the financial institution was laundering money each month, according to the whistleblower.

“I found many accounts through which hundreds of thousands of dollars were being flowed as a conduit on a monthly basis,” John Cruz, an account relationship manager who worked in the HSBC southern New York region. told WND.

As WND reported, Cruz has a raft of customer account records he claims are evidence of an international money-laundering scheme involving hundreds of billions of dollars by London-based HSBC, which reportedly is under investigation by a U.S. Senate committee.

To illustrate the point, WND and Cruz selected the bank checking account ledger for a particular HSBC commercial account, called “Company ABC” for the sake of this article, for the months May through August 2009.

In the exhibits below, WND has redacted all information that might be used to identify the account holder, including removing the account number from the bank statements.

Company ABC was identified in HSBC records with the following information:

• “Delivery Service, DHL, office products, packages.”
• Located on West 39th Street in New York City, in operation for four years and organized under New York corporate laws.
• The account was identified as being 100 percent owned by a person from Malaysia who had non-resident status in the United States and a permanent address in West Hempstead, N.Y.
• The account registration was deficient in any meaningful “Know Your Customer” information, expect to list for the owner a New York drivers’ license number.
• The file described the business as: “SHIPPING COMPANY, OFFICE ON THE 9TH FLOOR, EMPLOYEES, DESKS, COMPUTERS, PRESIDENT’S OFFICE, OPERATIONS ON 13TH FLOOR.”
• The file noted that the business was last paid a site visit on March 10, 2009, by the HSBC branch manager in E. Northport, Long Island.
• The file listed the annual revenue of the company as $2 million. But also lists the gross for the 2008 tax return as $2,782,857.

“The first words out of my mouth when I first visited Company ABC in person were that this company is bogus,” Cruz said. “There were a few small boxes lying around and a few envelopes – but nothing of value, no large packages or anything else that would justify hundreds of thousands of dollars of business being transacted here on a monthly basis.”

Cruz said he found two women on Company ABC’s 13th floor, but they seemed to be only sitting at desks and talking.

“It turned out that the two women did not speak English,” he said. “So, when I said, ‘Hello,’ they just nodded. There were no managers or other employees around, so I left.”

As seen in Exhibit 1, for the month from May 7, 2009, through June 5, 2009, Company ABC started with an opening balance of $628,081.74 and a closing balance of $328,228.99.

On May 15, 2009, a debit reflects that $300,100 was wired from the account to an unspecified location via a telephone transfer.

Other than to be credited $247.25 on May 28, 2009, the account shows no other activity.

Mexico’s epidemic of violence first erupted in 2006, according to most accounts. But an ex-Muslim from India, who serves as a Christian pastor along the Texas-Mexican border, believes the problem began much earlier, with human sacrifice, witches, and the adoration of death in ancient Aztec days.

Bombay-born Mujahid Hussein, 41, who found Jesus aboard a cruise ship in the Caribbean 17 years ago, is now known as David Elijah. He was ordained by Kings Revival Church International of Dubai, United Arab Emirates, the largest and fastest growing congregation in the Middle East.

“There are few places in America more evil, or more steeped in witchcraft and demonic influences, along with false prophets, divination and corruption, than the border region of northern Mexico and the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas,” Elijah told The Christian Post.

He pastors a church, leads an evangelistic healing and deliverance ministry, and hosts a weekly broadcast, “Avivamiento Del Rey,” on Radio Vida, a local Christian station in McAllen, Texas, just across the border from Reynosa, Mexico. The weekly program is heard in Spanish and English in Mexico, Latin America, the Caribbean, Texas and the western U.S., on a variety of AM frequencies.

“The worship of Santa Muerte (Holy Death, or Saint Death) is widespread, especially among the drug cartels, but it’s also rapidly growing among the general population in Mexico and in Hispanic communities in the U.S.,” he said.

Human blood is sometimes offered to gain the favor of this idol, which is depicted in illustrations and statues as a skeleton wearing a hooded robe, holding a scythe or globe. Some link Santa Muerte to the Aztec goddess of the dead, Mictecacihuatl.

“Beheadings, like the ones we see the cartels doing, were part of ancient Aztec human-sacrifice rituals. The adoration of death and the use of witchcraft have been practiced in Mexico for longer than anyone knows, and are regaining popularity,” he said.

While the violence in Mexico fills headlines, problems in the border area of south Texas seldom make the news but are just as serious, he said, especially in the spiritual realm. The population of the Rio Grande Valley is at least 90 percent Hispanic, and thousands of Mexicans from Mexico are flooding into the region, fleeing the violence in their homeland.

“A large majority of the Valley’s population is Catholic, but the Catholicism here is mixed up with ancient pagan rites, witchcraft, false religions like Santeria, Voodoo, Palo Mayombe, and other demonic cults, and the worship of false saints like ‘Saint’ Death and Jesus Malverde,” Elijah said.

“Basically, it all adds up to Satan worship, which feeds the violence and every other problem, like poverty, drought, hunger, chronic ill health, lack of jobs, and hopelessness,” he said.

While the main focus of his ministry is evangelism, he said there’s so much demonic activity it has to be dealt with in order to reach the lost.

“Intercessory prayer, prayer walks, extended worship, planting churches, setting up a school to train evangelists and pastors, these are just some of the things we’re doing, in addition to deliverance. I grew up in India where I learned at a young age about demons and demonization. I saw what it did to people. It’s real. When evil spirits invade a person’s life, that person needs deliverance. Jesus set the example by casting out demons,” Elijah said.

He shook his head and smiled. “Just about every Baptist who visits India becomes a Pentecostal.”

Then he grew serious.

“From the syncretism here along the border, from the mixture of Catholicism, witchcraft and idolatry, come blasphemies that always arise whenever something is exalted above God. Worshiping anyone, anything, or any idol instead of the Lord God Almighty brings escalating violence, mutilations, bombings, murders and slaughters for the sake of money, power and pride.

“Mexico is now the greatest exporter of cocaine, more than Columbia. In 2004, the mayor of Matamoros (directly across the border from Brownsville, Texas) officially recognized Santa Muerte as a saint. When the local seat of authority is recognizing a demonic cult as legitimate, all hell breaks loose. There are several Satanist churches operating openly in Matamoros that used to have to hide their existence. The local population supports them. Also in 2004, videos of al- Qaida beheadings went viral on the Internet, and now that old Aztec human-sacrifice ritual is being carried out all across Mexico.”

Elijah said the unclean spirits controlling the cartels have slithered into many levels of Mexican society and have also invaded the church on both sides of the border.

“When anyone begins dabbling in the occult and witchcraft, it brings spiritual defilement by attracting unclean spirits. You can’t be messing around with the devil and say you’re a Christian. Here in the Valley, the spirit of divination is taking over pulpits through false prophets and false prophetesses who are prophesying over people, laying on hands, causing all sorts of problems.

“The lack of discernment in the body of Christ is huge. People are impressed by what seem to be spiritual gifts, but they don’t realize there’s a ‘familiar spirit’ that counterfeits the Holy Spirit. They haven’t been taught that all signs and wonders aren’t from God. They don’t understand that even apparent healings can be deceptions in these end times when the Bible says wickedness will abound.”

In addition to the almost 50,000 estimated to have died in Mexico’s drug violence, another 10,000 have disappeared without a trace. Many of these, Elijah is convinced, are the victims of Satanic rituals that require human sacrifice.

“There’s lots of really gruesome stuff going on.”

Many of the murders and mutilations are so horrific and unwarranted, he said, there’s no reasonable explanation other than to conclude they’re inspired by the devil himself.

“There’s even a counterfeit Lord’s Supper where instead of bread and wine, human flesh and blood are used.”

Elijah said such abominations aren’t taking place only in Mexico.

“Come visit McAllen, Texas, sometime and take a look at the witchcraft shops operating on Main Street. They must have plenty of customers and be making good money to be able to afford the rent on such prime locations.

“On both sides of the border, so many people go to church on Sunday, then on Monday they go to a witch to get healed. They call them curanderas, faith healers. They don’t find any power in the church, so they go to someone who does have power. The only problem is, it’s Satanic power, and they get worse – they get demonized.”

That’s where Elijah’s deliverance meetings come in. They’re set up like prayer meetings, beginning with what Elijah calls “extravagant worship,” whereby the gathered believers sing praises to Jesus with great fervor for much longer than during a typical church worship session. He says it takes time to enter the presence of God, and many churches never get there because they seldom spend enough time worshiping.

Following praise and worship, those who feel they need deliverance are instructed to ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to them their unconfessed sins, and then repent. They are prayed for, and the unclean spirits troubling them are identified by name and commanded to depart in the name of Jesus Christ.

“And usually, they do,” Elijah said.

An observer for The Christian Post was present at a deliverance session involving a man from Mexico who’d heard Elijah’s program on the radio and had called in, asking for help. The man was invited to Elijah’s house church where, according to the man, a demon was cast out of him.

This is how he explained his experience, speaking in rapid, excited Spanish, while a woman translated.

“When the pastor commanded the evil spirit to come out, I felt like there was a kitten inside my stomach that was being pulled out of me by its tail. It was stabbing its claws deep into my stomach and holding on with all its strength because it didn’t want to leave.

“It hurt me very bad, but finally it went out, and I felt like heavy chains had been lifted off me. I haven’t felt this good in a really long time.”

Elijah said this sort of experience occurs regularly at his deliverance meetings.

He said demons often seem to “nest” in the stomach, and usually when they’re expelled, the person they’re cast out from will spit up a foul, dark liquid that doesn’t look or smell like ordinary vomit.

He said he’d seen much demonic activity in India, and knew it was real. He said most people in America don’t believe in demons because they’ve never encountered them, or aren’t able to recognize demonic influence for what it really is.

Conservatives are asking a reasonable question: Will a Mitt Romney candidacy turn into another debacle like Sen. John McCain’s in 2008? The Arizona maverick was said to be the most “electable” of the Republican nominees. ManyGOP voters held their noses and supported Mr. McCain. Yet he was defeated – convincingly – byBarack Obama. Following Mr. Romney’s crushing victory in Florida’s Republican primary this week, many rank-and-file activists are wondering whether history is about to repeat itself.

The emergence of Newt Gingrich isn’t being driven by a love for the former House speaker. Rather, many conservatives are rallying behind him because he is the only viable alternative to Mr. Romney. Unlike the former Massachusetts governor,Mr. Gingrich is willing to wage a frontal assault on President Obama’s leftist policies. He is not afraid to attack Mr. Obama relentlessly – and with passion, emotion and courage. Gingrich Republicans argue that Mr. Romney possesses no ideological core, that he lacks any fundamental conservative convictions.

Moreover, Gingrich supporters think Mr. Romney is simply another moderate Republican in the mold of Bob Dole and Mr. McCain. Just as those men crashed and burned, so will Mr. Romney, in their view. In their eyes, the Republican Party is about to commit suicide: By abandoning its principles in favor of power, the GOP will lose both. Hence, Mr. Romneymust be stopped – even if it means backing a flawed candidate like Mr. Gingrich. This is why his followers are urging him to fight on in the remaining 46 states.

There are similarities between Mr. Romney and Mr. McCain. Both are establishment Republicans. Both are distrusted and disliked by large segments of the conservative movement – especially talk radio. Both have signature issues – Romneycare, McCain-Feingold – that constitute major political liabilities. And both lack personality and charisma. Yet that is where it ends.

In fact, the two men could not be more different. Mr. Romney is a much stronger candidate. He is more articulate, telegenic and disciplined and possesses a considerably deeper grasp of the issues. Mr. Romneywould be the first GOP nominee since President Reagan to be able to defend Republican positions effectively. The Bushes, Mr. Dole and Mr. McCain were all dismal failures regarding a key aspect of politics: communication. This alone makes Mr. Romney a serious threat to Mr. Obama’s re-election.

Most important, there is one overriding difference between Mr. Romneyand Mr. McCain: The former venture capitalist is not a creature of Washington. The Arizona senator had spent decades on Capitol Hill. He was and still is the consummate insider. During the 2008 campaign, he came across – like Mr. Dole in 1996 – as a career politician, someone obsessed with process and Senate wheeling and dealing.

Mr. Romney is the exact opposite. He has spent most of his life in the private sector, running a successful business and turning around troubled corporations. He has what Mr. McCain never had: genuine executive experience. Also, unlike Mr. McCain, Mr. Romney understands free-market capitalism. He is a pro-business Republican who will repeal Obamacare, slash burdensome regulations, cut government spending and unleash the economy’s animal spirits. The divergent perspectives of the two men can be seen on illegal immigration. Mr. McCain has championed amnesty; Mr. Romney staunchly opposes it. Mr. McCainembodies Beltway Republicanism, while Mr. Romney adheres to more traditional GOP beliefs such as states’ rights, market-driven growth and a thriving entrepreneurial class. Mr. Romney is running to loosen Washington’s suffocating grip on national life; Mr. McCain cannot imagine life without Washington’s daily involvement. This was Mr. McCain’s Achilles’ heel in 2008.

The great irony is that it was Tea Party conservatives – running on a platform of limited government, low taxes and balanced budgets – who propelled the GOP to make historic gains in the 2010 election. Yet the two leading candidates for the movement’s presidential nomination come from the establishment. The right is understandably demoralized.

His rhetoric notwithstanding, Mr. Gingrich is not an insurgent. In fact, he is less electable and less conservative than Mr. Romney. The former House speaker’s record is littered with betrayals on a wide range of issues – he supports massive ethanol subsidies, something even Al Gore concedes is a clean-energy boondoggle; he championed a health care individual mandate for more than a decade, including publicly praising Romneycare in 2006; he backed caps on carbon emissions and demanded government action to combat climate change, including filming a TV ad with then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; he voted to create the Department of Education; he believes in some form of amnesty; he took $1.6 million from Freddie Mac; and he wants to spend hundreds of billions of dollars in massive projects, such as building a space colony on the moon, establishing a huge power-grid corridor across the Northeast and modernizing ports in Charleston. S.C., and Jacksonville, Fla. In short, Mr. Gingrich is a big-government corporatist masquerading as a conservative populist.

Mr. Romney has serious weaknesses. He is certainly not a Reagan nationalist – my kind of Republican. But he has several indispensable qualities: He can beat Mr. Obama. He can stop America’s decline into a second-rate power. He can reverse our slide toward socialism and economic ruin. He can turn around the bankrupt corporation that is America. “The perfect is the enemy of the good,” wrote the French philosopher Voltaire. Mr. Romney is far from perfect. He is, however, good enough. He is not the second coming of John McCain. He can win in November. For that alone, he deserves conservative support.

A petulant, angry, and defiant Attorney General Eric Holder refused yesterday to take any responsibility for the growing scandal surrounding Operation Fast and Furious, the ill-conceived and incompetently managed program in which federal agents allowed thousands of guns to be purchased in the United States by known suppliers to Mexican drug cartels. The hope was to be able to use the weapons to link drug bosses to particular crimes, making it easier to prosecute them. But federal officials lost track of more than 1,400 of the weapons, two of which were used in the slaying of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry just before Christmas in December 2010.

In testimony last year before the House Oversight and Government Operations Committee chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa of California, Holder said he first learned about Fast and Furious only after media reports began appearing about the congressional investigation started in the wake of Terry’s slaying. He subsequently recanted that statement and acknowledged being told about the program by aides a few months before the media reports. He has since strenuously denied intentionally misleading Congress about when he first learned of Fast and Furious, and has accused congressional Republicans of using the program to concoct a partisan witch hunt.

But at yesterday’s hearing, Issa and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who has also been probing the Fast and Furious program, released a detailed report about their investigation, saying new documents they obtained demonstrate Holder’s department “had much greater knowledge of, and involvement in, Fast and Furious than it has previously acknowledged.” Despite the widespread knowledge within the department, however, the report said “senior Department officials showed a serious lack of inquisitiveness when it came to discovering details about Operation Fast and Furious. They knew as early as April 2010 that ATF’s Phoenix Field Division … had previously used this same tactic of gunwalking. Still, these officials failed to ascertain the true scope of the program. Later, when whistleblowers came forward with information and supporting documents, these same officials provided false information to Congress and refused to get to the bottom of the matter.”

Holder’s attitude before the committee yesterday could only be described as contemptuous. At one point, Rep. Raul Labrador read a dozen quotes from Holder over a period of more than a decade in which he had claimed his staff did not inform him about assorted matters. The attorney general disdainfully replied, “maybe this is the way you do things in Idaho or wherever you are from.” Labrador was born in Puerto Rico and represents an Idaho congressional district.

Rather than the country bumpkin Holder appears to consider him, Labrador is a lawyer and the former managing partner of a law firm. More important, he is an elected member of Congress tasked by the Constitution to ask whatever questions he deems appropriate in in a congressional oversight hearing probing executive branch law enforcement activities. As much as he clearly chafes under such oversight, Holder should be relieved of his duties.

Recently the BBC saw a secret NATO report which says that the Taliban in Afghanistan are being directly supported by the Pakistani security services – the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence). There is nothing particularly new about this revelation, as we have heard much on this alignment before. It is the fact that the co-operation between the Pakistani ISI and Taliban is in black and white in a (formerly secret) NATO document.

What does the NATO document tell us?

-         Information garnered from over 27,000 interrogations of over 4,000 Taliban, Al-Qaeda and other Afghan insurgents.

-         The Taliban generally and more and more so have the backing of the people.

-        Pakistan knows the locations of the Taliban leadership.

-         Report itself states that it should be taken as informational and not necessarily analytical.

-         Widespread collaboration between insurgents and Afghan police and military.

-         Unprecedented interest from Afghan government officials in joining Taliban.

-         Where ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) has withdrawn, Taliban influence increases with no resistance from Afghan forces and police who are supposed to fill the void. In fact they often join the Taliban.

Additional Information:

-         Haqqani family resides immediately west of ISI office at the airfield in Miram Shah inPakistan. (The Haqqani family used to be the CIA-backed anti-Soviet group, which has now become one of the most feared anti-western militant organizations in the area.)

-         Taliban weary of war, but see little hope of negotiated peace.

-         Narcotics trade provides funding, but not indirectly from donations made to the Taliban by farmers or smugglers or others along the production line of the drug.

-         This past year (2011) more funds than in any previous year given to the Taliban.

There is much more contained in the report, but I have highlighted the main points.

So why are we in Afghanistan? There is more reason to wonder why. The Karzai government is corrupt and the last elections were unfair, Osama bin Laden was captured in a compound inPakistan  – most probably set up by the Pakistani ISI for his safety.

Deadly attacks by Afghan army personnel on US, British and most recently French troops amongst others. (Possibly a reason President Sarkozy has moved up the French withdrawal to the end of 2013 in addition to the French soldiers’ deaths is the likelihood that he saw, or got wind of the NATO report.)

Again, Why Are We Still in Afghanistan?

The real reason for going intoAfghanistan, or so we were told, was to capture Osama bin Laden. That has been done, he is dead (according to theUSauthorities as we have seen no proof).

We sent over 100,000 troops between NATO and US forces intoAfghanistanwhen a much smaller specialist force of Marines and Rangers could have done the job of tracking down Al-Quada, and much quicker. Instead we decided to nation-build, putting US and NATO forces in harm’s way by having them build schools, act as public liaison officers with the locals, and playing a politically correct game which has reduced significantly the ability of US and NATO forces to act as soldiers in order to win the war.

Cost of the War

-         Going on 3,000 US and NATO troops lives.

-         Financial burden is half a trillion dollars and rising.

-         Billions of dollars in aid toPakistan.

Where Do We Stand Right Now?

Relations between the US and Pakistan are at one of their lowest points ever, since the US raid that captured Osama bin Laden, the killing of Pakistani soldiers by US aircraft through a misunderstanding on both the Afghan and Pakistani sides of the border, as a result of which Pakistan closed a vital NATO supply route into Afghanistan. Now this no-holds-barred NATO report has ratcheted the whole mess up even further.

This Correspondent says we cannot trust the Pakistanis, if we ever could, and there is no reason to believe that we ever can. They control, one way or another, the whole Afghanistan/Pakistan picture. We cannot win and never could. It is time to leave. Not in 2014, not in one year, but RIGHT NOW.

So Why Are We Still in Afghanistan? Answer: For No Good Reason Whatsoever.

By Doug Giles

Obama, in his State of the Union address and during his initial five-state, multi-million dollar taxpayer funded re-election jaunt has stated repeatedly that his platform and policies are not about class warfare, which means, of course, that his ticket is all about class warfare—or “fairness,” as he likes to call it … or as the Scripture labels it, envy.

You don’t hear much about envy anymore, do you? We hear a lot about greed being bad, but in Obamaland envy is no longer a rank vice but a right and a virtue. However, historically speaking, envy has always been seen as a high-ranking sin. Envy, matter of fact, is second on the Seven Deadly Sins list as it lags behind pride a wee bit in being the nastiest and most common vice.

Ancient in its poison, envy forms a big chunk of the foul compost heap that stimulates the growth of human stupidity. Envy is an extremely toxic sin that doesn’t get the verbal hailstorm that other sins receive in our current entitlement culture with its totemic view of vice. Someone who has been saddled by the envy monkey will probably not make the evening news like a politician who has been caught in bed with a live man or a dead woman or who keeps his freezer stuffed with cash.

No, envy is not that sexy and doesn’t have the buzz that zings around a greedy Goldman Sachs exec. Because this sin doesn’t get MSNBC’s attention like the more juicy transgressions, we tend to see it as less naughty. But be not deceived, my brethren: This sin is disastrous once it sticks its talons into a person, party, religion, or nation.

Another distinguishing feature of the funk of envy is that it is no fun. All vices sport a momentary spice. All of them, that is, except for envy. Envy is the one sin the sinner will never like or admit. You’ll never see someone who is envious chilling out, laughing his butt off, or relaxing with his friends while this demon rules the roost. The more envy grows, the more it drives its impenitent coddler nuts.

So, what is envy? Well … let’s start with what it is not. It’s not admiring what someone else has and wanting some good stuff also. This desire will make you get off your butt in the morning and get busy. It is good to crave; a man’s appetite will make him work. Where envy differs from admiration/emulation is that envy is “sorrow at another’s good” (said Thomas Aquinas). Someone who is centered can watch another person, party, or nation prosper and not grow hateful because of it.

The whacked, petty, envious dolt, however, sees someone else excel and is slapped in the face with the reality that he just got dogged. So, instead of sucking it up and working harder and smarter, the unwise envious freak allows his pride to fuel his wounded little spirit. This sets the dejected perp down a path of disparagement of the prosperous that eventually morphs into the desire to destroy the person, party or nation that has just trumped this sad little person.

Os Guinness, best-selling author and renowned lecturer, states that the sin of envy has several common characteristics:

1. Envy is the vice of proximity. We are always prone to envy people close to us in temperament, gifts or position.

2. Envy is highly subjective. It is in the eye of the beholder. It is not the objective difference between people that feeds envy, but the subjective perception. As a Russian proverb says, “envy looks at a juniper bush and sees a pine forest.”

3. Envy doesn’t lessen with age. It gets worse as we run into more and more people of happiness and success, offering more fodder for envy.

4. Envy is often petty but always insatiable and all consuming. However small the occasion that gives rise to it, envy becomes central to the envier’s whole being. The envier “stews in his juice.” Envy begins with pride and then plunges the person into hatred.

5. Envy is always self-destructive. What the envier cannot enjoy, no one should enjoy, and thus the envier loses every enjoyment. The envier’s motto is “if not I, then no one.” As an eighth-century Jewish teacher put it, “the one who envies gains nothing for himself and deprives the one he envies of nothing. He only loses thereby.”

Y’know, there are many forces tearing at this land and many nations that would like to level our nation. That said, I believe this envious entitlement funk that’s speedily weaving its way into the fabric of our national life will destroy it faster than al-Qaeda could ever al-Hope to.