First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
Pastor Martin Niemöller

When I was a child attending Hebrew School in New York in the late 1960's, in addition to learning to read and write Hebrew, studying Jewish heritage and spiritual practices, and practicing the melodies of prayer in the Torah, we also learned a lot about the Holocaust.

Through films, photographs, and stories, each of us had etched in our minds the horrors of people being rounded up, taken away from their homes, brutalized, tortured, raped and killed.

Because our elders wanted us to remember, and never let things like that happen again, to ANYONE, despite the trauma that it might cause to children so young, we were exposed to atrocities that no child should even have to imagine.

That's why, when I read the newspapers this week, my skin crawls and my blood boils, and I wonder how we can sit idly by.

I think people will be surprised to learn a central reason the four members of the Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT4) were in Iraq. It raises questions about whether the kidnappers are jihadists or something even worse.

Today, I heard author and blogger Andrew Bard Schmookler speak about the problems in our society. The reason he says that liberalism frequently doesn't have spine is because it has difficulty recognizing the concept of good and evil. I think that this concept can very easily be applied to our Democratic leaders frequently. Although they have done better this time around, especially in their questioning of Chertoff, they still have a long ways to go before developing the kind of spine that we would like to see here in this community.

Schmookler discusses spirituality in applying his concepts. He says that spiritual well-being and goodness involves wholeness, while evil involves brokenness. Before the 1960's, there were very clear institutions that defined right and wrong. They were the school, parents, churches, and society. All our movies had black and white endings in which the good guys had a clear point of reference to look forward to.

The much-belated, poll-prompted outcry of a few American elected officials against the widespread use of torture by the Bush Administration – following years of silent acquiescence in the face of incontrovertible evidence of deliberate atrocity – is a welcome development, of course. But it has left an even more sinister aspect of Bushist policy untouched, one that likewise has been hidden in plain sight for years.

On September 17, 2001, George W. Bush signed an executive order authorizing the use of "lethal measures" against anyone in the world whom he or his minions designated an "enemy combatant." This order remains in force today. No judicial evidence, no hearing, no charges are required for these killings; no law, no border, no oversight restrains them. Bush has also given agents in the field carte blanche to designate "enemies" on their own initiative and kill them as they see fit.

This is an extended version of a column appearing in the Dec. 2 edition of The Moscow Times (tomorrow).

Cross posted at Empire Burlesque - Chris Floyd's Blog

The recent revelations about the virulent spread of death squads ravaging Iraq have only confirmed for many people the lethal incompetence of the Bush Regime, whose brutal bungling appears to have unleashed the demon of sectarian strife in the conquered land. The general reaction, even among some war supporters, has been bitter derision: "Jeez, these bozos couldn't boil an egg without causing collateral damage."

But what if the truth is even more sinister? What if this murderous chaos is not the fruit of rank incompetence but instead the desired product of carefully crafted, efficiently managed White House policy?