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The Mighty and the Almighty
Reflections on America, God,
and world affairs
by Madeline Albright

2006, HarperCollins, 314 pages

Ms. Albright starts the book by providing background on how Americans have best handled religion in general.  She gives several quotes from the founding fathers:

"George Washington disclaimed any interest in whether people were 'Mohametans, Jews or Christians of any sect, or Atheists.'  His sole concern was that they should have the right to exercise freedom of worship, expression, and thought."—Page 18.

She then almost ventures into political heresy by giving a meaningful historical-political context to the Jewish-Palestinian conflict:

"When, after WWI, the League of Nations granted to the British a mandate to govern Palestine, political authority over the Holy Land passed out of Muslim hands for the first time since ... the 12th century. The Balfour Declaration became official policy, enlisting the strength of the West to encourage, legitimize, and protect Jewish immigration.  This historic shift, the product of decades of lobbying by Zionists, had also been sought [in America] by influential [evangelical] Christians.  In 1891, a petition—the Blackstone Memorial—addressed to President Benjamin Harrison and other world leaders urged an international conference to establish a Jewish state.  Hundreds of prominent Americans signed the appeal, including the chief justice of the United States, the Speaker of the House, John D. Rockefeller, and J.P. Morgan [my emphasis]."—Page 124.

Hmmm.  I didn't know that.  Did you?

Okay, this is Madeline Albright, Secretary of State under that "adulterous wretch" Bill Clinton, according to the hate-talk radio crowd and its neoconista überlords.  The neocons— neoconservatism is basically the doctrine deriving from Leo Strauss and others that Adolph Hitler was the right man but at the wrong time and in the wrong country—despised more about Bill than the fact he got lucky more than they did.

They hated his connection to the people, his relative sanity in public policy, his relative success in foreign affairs, and that he left office with a $230 billion budget surplus.  All through those down-years after 1992 when George Herman Walker lost the White House, these pseudo-conservative "monster-imperial-government" agents plotted the return of the Bush syndicate to power and reassertion of that power.

And the story continues...

A good share of the story, especially what the PNACs (Project for a New American Century) and neocons are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan, shows the natural unraveling of any thuggish enterprise when it is finally exposed and resisted.  A good share of that unraveling, she points out, lies in the general ignorance by the current administration of what the Arabs, particularly the Iraqis, believe in.

That is the core of Albright's message, that religious understanding in the context of a people's history is required to prosecute a reasonable foreign or military policy.  Against that, George Bush went to war because it felt right.

"One criterion for a just war is 'right intention'.  Bush was undoubtedly sincere in telling the papal ambassador that he thought the war would 'make things better.'  The chain of his logic, as evidenced by his statements, is as follows: (1) good and evil exist in the world; (2) Saddam Hussein is evil; (3) removing him will therefore be good; (4) the newly democratic Iraq will become a model for other Arabs.  The main difficulty with this thinking is what it left out: the complexities created by history and religion [my emphasis]."—Page 171.

Some pertinent history on Islam:

"At the center of the Muslim world was Baghdad, which by the end of the first millennium had become an educational, scientific, and cultural capital.  Here, Muslims worked alongside Christians and Jews to translate and study the finest works of ancient China, India, Egypt, Israel, Greece, and Rome.  At a time when the practice of medicine was forbidden by the church in Christian lands, Arabs were using anesthetics and performing complex operations.  Muslims developed the numerical system still in use today and invented the pendulum, algebra, and trigonometry...." — Page 118

Hmmm, I never connected peak Islam with Baghdad.  I wonder if the president knows.  Let's send him a note.

The religious history of Iraq means that when the Americans invaded in spring of 2003 they encountered a predominantly Muslim people, divided and resistant to the idea of a Christian military force occupying a city that had for centuries been the center of the Islamic world during its golden age.

Maybe the Iraqis overreacted?  Here's a quote from the executive administrator of the National Association of Evangelicals: 

"After the battle for Baghdad, he stated, 'Iraq will become the center for spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ to Iran, Libya, and throughout the Middle East.  President Bush said democracy will spread from Iraq to nearby countries.  A free Iraq also allows us to spread Jesus Christ's teachings even in nations where the laws keep us out.'"—Page 181

I'm picking up on a pattern here.

Unfortunately, Madeline Albright's arguments are responsive only in a world where the leaders are well meaning, only stupid or irrational.  In our case they have, more precisely, criminal intent.

The fact is this soon-to-be-shriveling (we hope) warmongering branch of the Cartel planned the wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq well before the attacks of 9/11—which 9/11 attacks it orchestrated via an integrated black op of Western intelligence services.[1]

Why?  If war is the health of the state, perpetual war (against a CIA-fabricated vague terrorist threat with several CIA-executed false-flag terror attacks) promises a neverending Nirvana of tyranny with "Guess who?" in charge.

The fact is the American imperial oil junta cares not a whit what the people it is killing, maiming, and imprisoning in Iraq believe in.  Anymore than Lord Balfour cared what the displaced Palestinians would feel after the Zionists were decreed to be the new landlords in town: "I am quite unable to see why heaven or any other power should object to our telling the Moslem what he ought to think."—Page 125.

I recommend Albright's book for several reasons.  Though a person of faith herself, she actually knows stuff—you'll learn quite a bit you never picked up from mainstream media—and she cares what the people of other faiths think and believe.  In the murky world of foreign policy, she's a relative beacon of light... plus she has street credit.

[1] So many good books on the truth about 911, so little time.  But at least please read the book and watch the movie I reviewed in connection with this site: book: Truth Jihad, by Dr. Kevin Barrett; movie: Improbable Collapse, directed by Michael Berger.  Also, please watch V for Vendetta or The Matrix to get an encouraging vision of how the world may look after the monarchy (the pathocracy) falls.

2007 July 17
Copyright © Brian Wright | The Coffee Coaster™
The Mighty and the Almighty | Madeline Albright | Truth Jihad

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