by Ken Sehested
Fifteen years ago today, 14 September 2001, the US Congress approved a 60-word joint resolution—with only one dissenting vote, by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA)—named The Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). It grants the president sweeping latitude for authorizing military action. The implications it carries have become so commonplace they no longer raise public attention. Not unlike the lyrics to some popular children’s songs, the AUMF’s assumptions are repeated so often we are numbed to their significance.
This is unfortunate, for the AUMF, approved amid the trauma and rage of the 11 September 2001 terror attacks, has brought us to the edge of a permanent state of war.
§ § §
"This is the future for the world we're in at the moment. We'll get better as we do it more often."
—Larry Di Rita, special assistant to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, responding in an
18 July 2003 news conference to reports of low morale of US troops stationed in Iraq, for whom
combat had not ceased despite President Bush’s “mission accomplished” speech two months prior
§ § §
Many parents shudder when paying attention to the lyrics of some traditional childhood lullaby and rhyming songs. You got an old man who died after bumping his head. Three blind mice having their tails cut off. An old lady who may die because she swallowed a fly. Bridges falling. A lamb’s eye being picked out. Ashes! Ashes! they all fall down.
Or my favorite, “Rock-a-bye Baby,” a broken bough, with cradle and child tumbling from the tree.
There are many folklorist theories, but little hard evidence, about the origins of such songs or explanations as to why they endured. The genesis of some may have been disguised political satire, particularly “Rock-a-bye Baby,” sometimes associated with the overthrow of England’s King James II. (The first known publication of this song came with this footnote: "This may serve as a Warning to the Proud and Ambitious, who climb so high that they may generally fall at last.") But the fact remains that mystery abounds and collateral damage endures.
The cause for shuddering in the adult world mirrors and compounds, in exponential fashion, the foreboding lines amid children’s verse.
§ § §
“I believe the perception caused by civilian casualties is one of the most dangerous enemies we face.”
—U. S. General Stanley A. McCrystal in his inaugural speech as
NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Commander in June 2009
§ § §
My vote for the most heinous euphemism of the 20th century is the phrase “collateral damage.” First used by Thomas C. Schelling, an economist and national security expert, collateral damage, in short, is the oops response to unintended damage in battle. So sorry. (See my “Sorry, sorry, sorry” poem.)
Former UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, Hans-Christof von Sponeck—one of a slew of ranking UN officials who resigned in protest to the US sanctions against Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War—made this assessment of collateral damage.
“The 21st century has seen a loss of innocent life at an unprecedented scale, especially in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan,” he wrote in 2011. “Nobody should even dare to ask the question whether it was worth it!” [1]
Like beauty, however, the calculation of worth is in the eyes of the beholder. A US Department of Defense document puts it this way. “Such damage is not unlawful so long as it is not excessive in light of the overall military advantage anticipated from the attack." Notice the blurry boundaries created by the words “excessive” and “anticipated.”
Who can forget when US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was interviewed in May 1996 on the "CBS 60 Minutes" news program. Reporter Leslie Stahl asked:
"We have heard that a half million children have died [as a result of sanctions against Iraq, documented by UNICEF]. I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?"
To which Albright replied: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it." A bough broken.
§ § §
“Having a war on terror is like having a war on dandruff.”
—Gore Vidal
§ § §
One has to wonder whose violence is driving whom? We forget that Osama bin Laden was once on the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) payroll, as a member of the Afghan mujahideen resistance fighting the occupying Soviet military—as, in all likelihood, was Saddam Hussein, whose Ba’ath party came into power in 1963 when the CIA engaged in an earlier regime change in Iraq. The US then supported Hussein’s war with Iran starting in 1980, including providing some of the ingredients for Iraq’s chemical weapons.
We forget that bin Laden formed al-Qaeda in his outrage over Saudi Arabia’s allowing the US to use Saudi bases as a staging area for the 1991 Gulf War. Though he was an archenemy of Hussein, bin Laden considered US troops on his home country’s soil an abomination and vowed to take revenge. A bough broken.
We forget that on 11 September 2001 al-Qaeda was a force of a few thousand in Afghanistan with scattered supporters elsewhere. Now the spin-off groups and emulators are thriving throughout the Middle East and northern Africa. [2] And we’ve not yet come to terms with the substantial evidence that ISIS, our current Public Enemy No. 1, was spawned from Iraq’s killing fields.
It would appear, as the bumper sticker says, we are creating terrorists faster than we can kill them.
§ § §
“[T]here is enough evidence that a substantial part of terrorism is engendered by
military, intelligence, and economic intervention of the very same countries that consequently
make use of the pretext of terror to politically legitimize their military and geo-strategic expeditions.”
—Jens Wagner [3]
§ § §
Among the most notorious incidents of creating a terror pretext to justify intervention was “Operation Northwoods,” originating in a 1962 collaboration between the US Department of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff to covertly instigate violence in Cuba—bombing and hijacking were specifically mentioned in the document—sufficient to warrant military response. Here’s a quote from that recommendation, titled "Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba”:
“The desired resultant (sic) from the execution of this plan would be to place the United States in the apparent position of suffering defensible grievances from a rash and irresponsible government of Cuba and to develop an international image of a Cuban threat to peace in the Western Hemisphere.”
Luckily President John F. Kennedy quashed the top-secret plan that only came to light in 1997 when Kennedy’s records were released.
§ § §
"I think all foreigners should stop interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq"
—US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz in a 21 July 2003 news conference in Baghdad
§ § §
Fifteen years ago today Rep. Barbara Lee rose, alone, to speak against the AUMF. This past week she said:
"I voted against that resolution 15 years ago because it was so broad that I knew it was setting the stage and the foundation for perpetual war. And that is exactly what it has done," Lee notes. "It’s been used over 37 times everywhere in the world," including Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Somalia. (Listen to Rep. Lee’s original 2001 statement (2:19) on the floor of the House of Representatives and a recent Democracy Now interview with Lee.)
§ § §
“‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone,
‘it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.’”
—Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
§ § §
Among the things learned by those of us required to take a high school civics course was that only Congress has the power to declare war. The US hasn’t declared war on anyone since World War II. Vietnam, Korea, and 14 US military incursions in Muslim-majority countries since 1980, are not “wars” at all. That mechanism is now irrelevant as an instrument of international law. Its modern incarnation is a congressional Authorization for Use of Military Force. And the one approved in September 2001 has no expiration date.
In a mere 60 words Congress granted a virtual carte blanche credit card (and most of our wars since 9/11 have been funded by borrowing) to the President, for “he (sic) determines” when and where to use “all necessary and appropriate force” against “nations, organizations or persons” who “planned, authorized, committed, aided” . . . or “harbored” the 9/11 attackers in order to “prevent any future acts of terrorism.”
The latter phrase in the AUMF—“prevent future acts”—echoes President Bush Jr.’s “National Security Strategy Paper” of September 2002 which, for the first time in US history, lays the legal groundwork for “preventative” war.
The right to engage in preemptive war—to initiate hostilities when there is clear evidence that an enemy is on the verge of attack—is acknowledged in international law. Preventative war is not. Though the Obama Administration’s annual “National Security Strategy” doesn’t include “preventative” language, the precedent has effectively been set.
Now, powered by the open-ended AUMF, the President simply has to declare that something bad might happen, sometime, somewhere, and the troops saddle up. Shout 9/11 and the drones are launched to anywhere in the world.
This same preventative impulse emerges in the spate of domestic “stand your ground” state laws and the frequent exoneration of police shootings of unarmed black men. A perceived threat equals actual peril justifying acting with extreme prejudice.
So many boughs broken.
§ § §
"We have a choice, either to change the way we live, which is unacceptable,
or to change the way that they live, and we chose the latter."
—former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
§ § §
A single photo (below) has haunted me, by day and by night, all this past week, with our nation’s 9/11 remembrances prior to the infamous date’s fifteen anniversary. [4] Look at it closely. You see an unidentified Syrian 
man holding his dead son. Take in the background. Notice the torn jeans. The blood stains. The boy’s shirt ripped away. The utter grief on the father’s face. The boy’s limp body. The immediate association my mind made was to name this photo “The Final Cradling.” Bough broken, baby fallen.
Now bring up the most vivid image in your memory from 9/11. The Twin Towers on fire, and falling. The people who jumped to their deaths. The dust-choked, panicked survivors. The first responders digging through rubble, some in tears.
Can you make a connection between these images?
It’s almost certain that as many non-combatants died in the first few weeks after the 2003 “Shock and Awe” attack on Baghdad as died on 9/11. Wouldn’t that have satisfied an “eye for an eye” standard of justice?
It hasn’t. Current estimates of fatalities just from our wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria now stand at 1.3 million.[5]
Lamech’s threat, in the earliest pages of Genesis, is with us still. Lamech—great-great-great-great grandson of Adam and Eve—makes a vengeful vow that echoes to this day. With his two wives, Adah and Zillah, as his witness, he pledges “If Cain is avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold” (Genesis 4:23).
9/11 has now been avenged 433 times, and the meter’s still running.
§ § §
“If we have to use force it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation.
We stand tall. We see farther into the future.”
—Secretary of State Madeline Albright, 19 February 1998
Really? If true, I shudder over that future.
§ § §
The use of US military might is far more common than most of us think. In the 20th century there are but a handful of years when our troops were not actively engaged outside our borders. (See Wikipedia’s “Timeline of United States Military Operations.”) Now, however, with a preventative war precedent and the current AUMF in place—along with numerous national leaders speaking of the “long war” we face in the war on terror, I grieve.
Nevertheless—and Scripture is full of neverthelesses—there is a saying from the Hasidic tradition, “If you want to find a spark, sift through the ashes.”
Sisters and brothers, we have some sifting to do.
And at the same time we must ask and act on a series of questions: What would it require to catch some of those cradles? Arrange for sufficiently sturdy boughs? Support arborists to treat weakened boughs? Work diligently at preserving more forest land, along with the ecosystem needed for all life to thrive?
Lamech’s taunt awaits our response. There’s no better time than now to get started.
# # #
Above: “Farm Scene” painting by Walt Curlee.
into the fire.” —D.J. Antoine, “
one by one the signs of evil were transformed to flowers and hugs. The participants were black, white, hispanic, asian, young and old. Those are my New York values! Don't leave the house without your corrective markers my friends.” —Kaleda Davis, Facebook post
• Identify common ground such as similar values or concerns and utilize this as a foundation to build upon
today—think of the ongoing protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock, North Dakota—is a little known papal bull from the 15th century serving as legal justification for European conquest of the “New World,” based on the church’s alleged “Great Commission.”
massacre. —see more at Billy J. Stratton, “
the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good.” —
ethnicity, sexual orientation and gender identity are spiking nationwide. It's a crisis.
threatening crest. Video (5:53) of surfer Benji Brand.
• “
documents such problems are not simply the result of a handful of devious individuals. Berger illustrates the structural incentive for fraud.
—President Thomas Jefferson
¶ “If the environment were a bank, it would have been saved by now.” —Bernie Sanders
history screamed and plunged / into our personal weather.” —Adrienne Rich, “
of the poor/” —Bruce Cockburn, “
having been long and carefully examined with the most suspicious attention." —Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
flamethrowing and fetal crouch.’ Those are typically our immediate reactions to threat.” —Ken Sehested, “
Table of Delight. All you anear, welcome!. All from afar, ¡bienvenido!” —continue reading Ken Sehested’s “
bridges instead of walls.
Other features
(1) The congressional majority has virtually nothing to show for their dominance of the executive and legislative branches of government in 2017; (2) they know the slightly different House and Senate plans are highly unpopular with the general public and need to be wrapped up before a popular revolt emerges; and (3) wealthy donors are already calling to say get-it-done-or-stop-calling.
Gaelynn Lea, who was born with brittle bone disease, confining her to a wheel chair, but writes and performs ballads by playing a violin upright, like a cello. (
on coveting (Exod. 20:17).” —Walter Brueggemann, Money and Possessions
economist at Tax Analysts. By 2027, that share rises to 61% under the House bill, which phases down some of the provisions that help middle-class families.” —Catherine Rampell, “
measured countries [in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development] except Korea, Chile, and Mexico. . . . [D]eductions and other tax strategies mean relatively few US corporations actually get stuck paying the maximum nominal 35% rate, instead paying about 20% on average.” —
our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.” —
in 2012. In fact, 18 major companies actually got tax rebates.” —sources: 
families. —for more see Nathaniel Weixel, “
in low-tax havens and what that means for government coffers. He’s found that 63% of foreign profits made by American multinational corporations are stuffed in these subsidiaries and accounts, depriving the country of about $70 billion in tax revenue each year.” —Bryce Covert, “
Concerto in D after Vivaldi, 2nd movement" 
©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Language not otherwise indicated above is that of the editor, as are those portions cited as “kls.” Don’t let the “copyright” notice keep you from circulating material you find here (and elsewhere in this site). Reprint permission is hereby granted in advance for noncommercial purposes.
Virginia.) 
the New Yorker is 54 times more likely to be killed in the process. . . .
face from you so that God does not hear. For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, your tongue mutters wickedness.” —Isaiah 59:2-3
sharply restricted and only under licenses.” —for more see 
the products safer and to limit access by people who are most likely to misuse them.” —Nicholas Kristoff, “
tourism. “DeSoto County, Florida, Honolulu, and Las Vegas practice aggressive marketing to lure gun-avid tourism. Said one new business owners in South Carolina, “The more people that get to shoot machine guns, the better. Combined with large-scale machine gun shoots and silencer shoots, we hope that some things about who is allowed to own these things and who isn’t changes.” —for more see 
allow itself to be savaged again and again by its own citizens. We cannot understand how the long years of senseless murder, the Sandy Hooks and Orlandos and Columbines, have not proved to Americans that the gun is not a precious symbol of freedom, but a deadly cancer on their society.
(Thanks Don.) 
Papaver rhoeas, known variously as the Flanders poppy, corn poppy, red poppy and corn rose.
ident Woodrow Wilson, the “war to end all wars” which would “make the world safe for democracy.”
be’s first industrialized war. The exuberance of humankind’s burst of scientific discovery in the late 19th century dramatically increased the capacity for mechanized killing. Machine guns, submarines, airplanes, and tanks were “force multipliers” (to use current military jargon).
of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives….
mass destruction—brought a measure of confidence that the invasion would be further delayed. The anti-war war movement was indeed mobilizing like never before.
simultaneous commitment to the process of spiritual formation—only compound the crisis. Doing so has the effect of feeding our children to the very beast whose appetite swells with every fare. If our political vocation lacks anchorage in spiritual transformation, then we can only expect more of the same, only worse. You know what they say about computers: garbage in, garbage out.
Gentiles came on the heels of another night vision, of a “man from Macedonia pleading with him and saying, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us’” (16:9). The tradition continues—especially in works like St. John of the Cross’s Dark Night of the Soul—up through modern poets like Rilke and Berry.
s a ramshackle structure, long since forgotten by the landlord. Her only source of heat was one small gas heater, and she spent frigid days sitting next to it, wrapped in a blanket.
religious restrictions. It wasn’t until the 1850s that property requirements were dropped. It would be well over a century before women were granted the right; and another half century still before the majority of African Americans secured the right.
than in polling stations every year. Elections are but the end result of an advocacy for the common good that starts in each watershed.” —continue reading “
outings, when no strain threatens our budget. It takes little faith to acknowledge God’s goodness when terror remains at a distance. Bring us into the presence of widows whose faith is stronger than famine. Send Elijah to accompany us to the place where hope outstrips horror.” —continue reading “
• “It is more likely that an individual will be struck by lightning than he will impersonate another voter at the polls.” —
voters, 70% of them African American, under his “exact match” policy.
hey Would Have Given Us Candidates.” —Jim Hightower book title
ay that it gets metabolized into acts of love.” —Eugene H. Peterson
¶ Just for fun. Amazing 