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Category: War and Peace

Quote of the Day: Quaker Declaration to King Charles II on War and Peace

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Declaration made in 1660 to King Charles II, as published by Quaker.org

Our principle is, and our Practice have always been, to seek peace and ensue it and to follow after righteousness and the knowledge of God, seeking the good and welfare and doing that which tends to the peace of all. We know that wars and fightings proceed from the lusts of men (as Jas. iv. 1-3), out of which lusts the Lord hath redeemed us, and so out of the occasion of war. The occasion of which war, and war itself (wherein envious men, who are lovers of themselves more than lovers of God, lust, kill, and desire to have men’s lives or estates) ariseth from the lust. All bloody principles and practices, we, as to our own particulars, do utterly deny, with all outward wars and strife and fightings with outward weapons, for any end or under any pretence whatsoever. And this is our testimony to the whole world.

And whereas it is objected:

‘But although you now say that you cannot fight nor take up arms at all, yet if the spirit do move you, then you will change your principle, and then you will sell your coat and buy a sword and fight for the kingdom of Christ.’

Answer:

As for this we say to you that Christ said to Peter, ‘Put up thy sword in his place’; though he had said before that he that had no sword might sell his coat and buy one (to the fulfilling of the scripture), yet after, when he had bid him put it up, he said, ‘He that taketh the sword shall perish with the sword.’ And further, Christ said to Peter, ‘Thinkest thou, that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?’ And this might satisfy Peter, after he had put up his sword, when he said to him that he took it, should perish by it, which satisfieth us. (Luke xxii,36; Matt. xxvi.51- 53). And in the Revelation it’s said, ‘He that kills with the sword shall perish with the sword: and here is the faith and the patience of the saints.’ (Rev. xiii.10). And so Christ’s kingdom is not of this world, therefore do not his servants fight, as he told Pilate, the magistrate who crucified him. And did they not look upon Christ as a raiser of sedition? And did not he say, ‘Forgive them’? But thus it is that we are numbered amongst fighters, that the Scriptures might be fulfilled.

That the spirit of Christ, by which we are guided, is not changeable, so as once to command us from a thing as evil and again to move unto it; and we do certainly know, and so testify to the world, that the spirit of Christ, which leads us into all Truth, will never move us to fight and war against any man with outward weapons, neither for the kingdom of Christ, nor for the kingdoms of this world.

First:

Because the kingdom of Christ God will exalt, according to the promise, and cause it to grow and flourish in righteousness. ‘Not by might, nor by power [of outward sword], but by my spirit, said the Lord.’ (Zech.iv.6) SO those that use any weapon to fight for Christ, or for the establishing of his kingdom or government, both the spirit, principle and practice in that we deny.

Secondly:

And as for the kingdoms of this world, we cannot covet them, much less can we fight for them, but we do earnestly desire and wait, that by the Word of God’s power and its effectual operation in the hearts of men, the kingdoms of this world may become the kingdoms of the Lord, and of his Christ, that he may rule and reign in men by his spirit and truth, that thereby all people, out of all different judgements and professions may be brought into love and unity with God, and one with another, and that they may all come to witness the prophet’s words who said, ‘Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.’ (Isa.ii.4; Mic.iv.3)

So, we whom the Lord hath called into the obedience of his Truth have denied wars and fightings and cannot again any more learn it. This is a certain testimony unto all the world of the truth of our hearts in this particular, that as God persuadeth every man’s heart to believe, so they may receive it. For we have not, as some others, gone about cunningly with devised fables, nor have we ever denied in practice what we have professed in principle, but in sincerity and truth and by the word of God have we laboured to be made manifest unto all men, that both we and our ways might be witnessed in the hearts of all people.

And whereas all manner of evil hath been falsely spoken of us, we hereby speak forth the plain truth of our hearts, to take away the occasion of that offence, that so we being innocent may not suffer for other men’s offences, nor be made a prey upon by the wills of men for that of which we were never guilty; but in the uprightness of our hearts we may, under the power ordained of God for the punishment of evildoers and for the praise of them that do well, live a peaceable and godly life in all godliness and honesty. For although we have always suffered. and do now more abundantly suffer, yet we know that it’s for righteousness’ sake; ‘for all our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our consciences, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation in the world’ (2 Cor.i.12), which for us is a witness for the convincing of our enemies. For this we can say to the whole world, we have wronged no man’s person or possessions, we have used no force nor violence against any man, we have been found in no plots, nor guilty of sedition. When we have been wronged, we have not sought to revenge ourselves, we have not made resistance against authority, but wherein we could not obey for conscience’ sake, we have suffered even the most of any people in the nation. We have been accounted as sheep for the slaughter, persecuted and despised, beaten, stoned, wounded, stocked, whipped, imprisoned, haled out of synagogues, cast into dungeons and noisome vaults where many have died in bonds, shut up from our friends, denied needful sustenance for many days together, with other like cruelties.

And the cause of all this our sufferings is not for any evil, but for things relating to the worship of our God in obedience to his requirings of us. For which cause we shall freely give up our bodies a sacrifice, rather than disobey the Lord. For we know, as the Lord hath kept us innocent, so he will plead our cause, when there is none in the earth to plead it. So we, in obedience to his truth, do not love our lives unto the death, that we may do his will, and wrong no man in our generation, but seek the good and peace of all men. And he that hath commanded us that we shall not swear at all (Matt. v.34), hath also commanded us that we shall not kill (Matt. v.21), so that we can neither kill men, nor swear for or against them. And this is both our principle and practice, and hath been from the beginning, so that if we suffer, as suspected to take up arms or make war against any, it is without ground from us; for it neither is, nor ever was in our hearts, since we owned the truth of God; neither shall we ever do it, because it is contrary to the spirit of Christ, his doctrine, and the practice of his apostles, even contrary to him for whom we suffer all things, and endure all things.

And whereas men come against us with clubs, staves, drawn swords, pistols cocked, and do beat, cut, and abuse us, yet we never resisted them, but to them our hair, backs and cheeks have been ready. It is not an honour to manhood nor to nobility to run upon harmless people who lift not up a hand against them, with arms and weapons.

Therefore consider these things ye men of understanding; for plotters, raisers of insurrections, tumultuous ones, and fighters, running with swords, clubs, staves and pistols one against another, we say, these are of the world and hath its foundation from this unrighteous world, from the foundation of which the Lamb hath been slain, which Lamb hath redeemed us from the unrighteous world, and we are not of it, but are heirs of a world in which there is no end and of a kingdom where no corruptible thing enters. And our weapons are spiritual and not carnal, yet mighty through God to the plucking down of the strongholds of Satan, who is author of wars, fighting, murder, and plots. And our swords are broken until ploughshares and spears into pruning; hooks, as prophesied of in Micah iv. Therefore we cannot learn war any more, neither rise up against nation or kingdom with outward weapons, though you have numbered us among the transgressors and plotters. The Lord knows our innocency herein, and will plead our cause with all men and people upon earth at the day of their judgement, when all men shall have a reward according to their works …

O friends offend not the Lord and his little ones, neither afflict his people, but consider and be moderate, and do not run hastily into things, but mind and consider mercy, justice, and judgement; that is the way for you to prosper and get the favour of the Lord. Our meetings were stopped and broken up in the days of Oliver, in pretence of plotting against him; and in the days of the Parliament and Committee of Safety we were looked upon as plotters to bring in King Charles, and now we are called plotters against King Charles. Oh, that men should lose their reason and go contrary to their own conscience, knowing that we have suffered all things and have been accounted plotters all along, though we have declared against them both by word of mouth and printing, and are clear from any such things. We have suffered all along because we would not take up carnal weapons to fight withal against any, and are thus made a prey upon because we are the innocent lambs of Christ and cannot avenge ourselves. These things are left upon your hearts to consider, but we are out of all those things in the patience of the saints, and we know that as Christ said, ‘He that takes the sword, shall perish with the sword.’ (Matt. xxvi.52; Rev.xiii.10)

This is given forth from the people called Quakers to satisfy the King and his Council, and all those that have any jealousy concerning us, that all occasion of suspicion may be taken away and our innocency cleared.

Given forth under our names, and in behalf of the whole body of the Elect People of God who are called Quakers.

Postscript: Though we are numbered with plotters in this late Proclamation and put in the midst of them and numbered amongst transgressors and have been given up to all rude, merciless men, by which our meetings are broken up, in which we edified one another in our holy faith and prayed together to the Lord that lives for ever, yet he is our pleader for us in this day. The Lord saith, ‘They that feared his name spoke often together’, as in Malachi, which were as his jewels. And for this cause and no evil doing, are we cast into holes, dungeons, houses of correction, prisons, they sparing neither old nor young, men or women, and just sold to all nations and made a prey to all nations under pretence of being plotters, so that all rude people run upon us to take possession. For which we say, ‘The Lord forgive them that have thus done to us,’ who doth and will enable us to suffer. And never shall we lift up a hand against any man that doth thus use us, but that the Lord may have mercy upon them, that they may consider what they have done. For how is it hardly possible for them to require us for the wrong they have done to us, who to all nations have sounded us abroad as plotters? We who were never found plotters against any power or man upon the earth since we knew the life and power of Jesus Christ manifested in us, who hath redeemed us from the world, and all works of darkness, and plotters that be in it, by which we know our election before the world began. So we say the Lord have mercy upon our enemies and forgive them, for that they have done unto us.

Oh, do as you would be done by. And do unto all men as you would have them do unto you, for this is but the law and the prophets.

And all plots, insurrections, and riotous meetings we do deny, knowing them to be of the devil, the murderer, which we in Christ, which was before they were, triumph over. And all wars and fightings with carnal weapons we do deny, who have the sword and the spirit; and all that wrong us we leave them to the Lord. And this is to clear our innocency from that aspersion cast upon us, that we are plotters.

George Fox Gerald, Roberts Henry Fell, Richard Hubberthorn, John Boulton, John Hinde, John Stubbs, Leonard Fell, John Furley Jnr, Francis Howgill, Samuel Fisher, Thomas Moore

Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Quote of the Day: The War Prayer by Mark Twain

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Explanatory note added by Quaker.org: Outraged by American military intervention in the Phillipines, Mark Twain wrote this and sent it to Harper’s Bazaar.  This women’s magazine rejected it for being too radical, and it wasn’t published until after Mark Twain’s death, when World War I made it even more timely.  It appeared in Harper’s Monthly, November 1916.

It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and spluttering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety’s sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way. 

Sunday morning came — next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams — visions of the stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender! Then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag, or, failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation 

God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest! Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!

Then came the “long” prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory — 

An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher’s side and stood there waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued with his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, “Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!” 

The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside — which the startled minister did — and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said: 

“I come from the Throne — bearing a message from Almighty God!” The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. “He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd, and will grant it if such shall be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import — that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of — except he pause and think. 

“God’s servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two — one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him Who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this — keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor’s crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it. 

“You have heard your servant’s prayer — the uttered part of it. I am commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it — that part which the pastor — and also you in your hearts — fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: ‘Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!’ That is sufficient. the whole of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory — mustfollow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen! 

“O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle — be Thou near them! With them — in spirit — we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it — for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen. 

(After a pause.) “Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits!” 

It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.

Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Donald Trump Lied About “No New Wars”

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It shouldn’t surprise us that President Donald Trump lied to the American people when he said “no new wars.” Trump is a pathological liar who cannot tell the truth. He lies numerous times a day on social media, press announcements, speeches, and interviews. According to the Bible, Trump’s perpetual lying will land him in Hell someday; not that I care. I am far more concerned about the HELL Trump is causing in this life.

Yesterday, Trump ordered the U.S. military to bomb Iran, this after Israel’s repeated bombings. Iran has weakly responded, causing little to no harm to Israel or the United States. Today, Trump announced a ceasefire between Iran and the United States/Israel. Peacock-proud as a big-dicked man at a nudist colony, Trump suggested in a social media post that “regime change” might be on the menu.

Here’s what David Packman had to say about Trump’s declaration of war:

Video Link

Make no mistake about it, Trump and his administration have imperial ambitions, and that includes regime change for any country that dares to cross Trump’s rabid pursuit of raw power and wealth. You gotta know you are on the wrong side of history when former national security advisor John Bolton agrees with your course of action. Bolton has called for regime change in Iran for years.

Trump’s latest immoral, illegal bombing of Iran is a reminder that the “endless war” continues, with no end in sight. As long as the U.S. mainland remains untouched by the ravages of war, Americans will continue to approve of the “fighting them over there, so we don’t have to fight them here” endless war. Some day, though, our peace and tranquility will threatened by terrorist attacks. We can’t keep bullying people we disagree with without some sort of retaliation. As a young boy, I tried to catch a mouse that was in our garage. I chased him all over the garage until I finally cornered him. As I reached down to pick up the mouse, he bit me. There’s coming a day when the United States will corner an inferior enemy and, with no place to turn, our enemy will “bite” us.

Trump wrongly believes that violence against a nation deemed our enemy will bring peace. It won’t. Violence never brings peace. It brings a cessation of hostilities until the next war breaks out. Only peace begets peace. If the United States is truly interested in peace, nuclear disarmament is the first step in the process. It’s hypocritical for the United States to demand disarmament while refusing to do so themselves. It’s hypocritical to decry the possibility of Iran building and using a nuclear weapon when the United States is the only nation to ever use an atomic bomb on civilian population centers. Instead of demanding that the world do what the U.S. says and not what it does, perhaps peace would be better served if the United States led by example.

Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

The United States is at War, And Has Been My Entire Life

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According to many members of Congress — both Republicans and Democrats — and every president in my lifetime, the United States is NOT at war. In their minds, what common folks call “war” is something else: police action, hostilities, skirmish, collateral damage, surge, overseas contingency operations, shock and awe, pacification, nation-building, authorization for the use of force — anything but what it is, WAR.

Politicians and military leaders use euphemisms to hide from the American people that we are at war. War is what, exactly? Google AI defines war as “a state of armed conflict between different nations or states or different groups within a nation or state.” I suspect most of us would agree with this definition. I define war as sustained conflict between nations, states, tribal groups, ethnic groups, or organized militias. War is violent, bloody conflict that leads to destruction and death, but in this modern age, it is more than that. Cyberwarfare comes to mind, a tool the United States is currently using to wage war against an array of enemies. Are military actions that disrupt instead of outright killing people war? I would say, yes.

And then we have federal agencies such as the NSA and the CIA, who are committing acts of war against nations that oppose the United States, going so far as to assassinate heads of state and military leaders. These acts are war too, even if they are never reported in the New York Times.

Many Americans tell themselves that we are not at war unless Congress officially declares war. That means the United States has not fought a war since World War II. Never mind the carnage of the Korean War and the Vietnam War that led to millions of deaths. Korea and Vietnam weren’t wars because Congress didn’t say they were. I suspect the millions of people wounded and killed in these not-wars might disagree.

I am sixty-eight years old. There’s never been a day in my life that the United States has not been at war, either covertly or openly. We are currently at war with Russia, Iran, Yemen, and Palestine. Fighting proxy wars does not absolve the United States of culpability. Our money, our weapons, our support, our war. Just because there aren’t American boots on the ground doesn’t mean we are not at war with a nation. We have no troops on the ground in China, yet does anyone seriously question whether we are at war with them? I know, I don’t.

The United States is a bloody people; a nation willing to use violence to advance its agenda and “protect the American people” or any of the other cliches we use to deflect from the fact that we are the bully who uses its behemoth size to get whatever he wants. Individually this might not be true of us, but as a nation, we have made it clear we will, if necessary, use violence to advance the mythical American Dream, city on a hill, defenders of freedom, or other bullshit we tell ourselves to justify murderous violence and destruction done in the name of WE THE PEOPLE. We have never been a people of peace, and 400 million guns suggest that more than a few Americans are willing to use violence against their fellow citizens to ‘protect the American way of life.”

No, we are a violent people, and if you have evidence to the contrary, please provide it in the comment section.

Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

How Many Times Will It Take Before We Learn that Soldiers Are Not Peacekeepers?

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President Donald Trump has sent up to 4,000 National Guardsmen and 800 Marines to Los Angeles to combat and contain what he says is widespread, wanton violence. Remember, this is the man who asked if soldiers could shoot protesters in the leg. Trump is a petty little tyrant who loves to foment violence as he sits behind the safety of his desk in the Oval Office. I am of the opinion that the Toddler King is deliberately trying to stir things up so he can declare martial law. This will allow him to rescind many of the Constitutional protections we have. If this happens, there will be bloodshed in the streets of not only Lost Angeles, but other major cities.

The LA police department is more than capable of handling what have largely been peaceful protests. We must not forget that Trump is opposed to protests. Just today, he warned people that if they protested his big, beautiful birthday parade on June 14, that their opposition would be met with violence.

We must never forget that soldiers are trained to use lethal force to eliminate their enemies. Simply put, they are trained to kill. Soldiers are not peacekeepers. War has never begotten peace. At best, it brings, for a time, a cessation of hostilities. Only peace begets peace.

What troubles me — well, hell, lots of things deeply trouble me these days — is that millions of Americans think it is okay for Trump to illegally use the military to advance his political and personal agenda. Years ago, Polly and I took her parents to Mexico. We took a drive around Juarez, the murder capital of Mexico. As we were driving down the street, three soldiers, armed with assault rifles, came around the corner, scaring the shit out of my mother-in-law. She immediately demanded to be returned to the United States, which I gladly did. Seeing soldiers with assault rifles on Mexican streets is not uncommon. In the United States, however, we don’t often see such things. We live in relative freedom and safety. Trump doesn’t want us to feel free and safe. He wants us to fear whatever “enemy” he has conjured up. Most of all, he wants us to fear him. What concerns me is Trump’s base; you know, the millions of Americans who seemingly are blind or indifferent towards his lawlessness. January 6 showed us what can happen if you stir up a crowd of zealots. Imagine what happens if he does this on a national level? Civil war is possible, even likely, if we do not neuter the MAGA movement and elect leaders who take seriously their pledge to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Bruce’s Ten Hot Takes for March 19, 2025

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The 2025 Major League Baseball season started yesterday with the LA Dodgers playing the Chicago Cubs in Japan. This is sacrilegious. The first game of the year was traditionally played by the Cincinnati Reds. They are the oldest team in baseball. I’ve been to one opening day. No team and community does opening day better than Cincinnati. Hope springs eternal. While it’s doubtful the Reds will win the division, league, or World Series, they hopefully will field a competitive team and keep them competitive after football starts.

Trump allegedly won a golf tournament over the weekend. I say “allegedly” since Trump is a notorious cheat.

Over 400 Palestinians were killed, and 500 were wounded, in Israel’s latest genocidal attack on Gaza — with the support of the Trump Administration. There is no moral justification for Israel’s continued slaughter of innocent Palestinian men, women, and children.

U.S. Attorney General Barbie Doll Bondi wants to arrest people picketing Tesla dealerships, charging them with domestic terrorism. Evidently, Bondi doesn’t know anything about the Bill of Rights.

Will the rule of law survive Donald Trump and his minions? Maybe, but it increasingly looks like Trump plans to break the government, even if it means violating the law. What are people to do when a branch of government willingly breaks the law and ignores court rulings?

Trump wants new coal mines built — operations that will produce “clean coal.” There’s no such thing as clean coal, but the Trump Administration denies reality, so all things are possible when you are delusional.

Egg prices are coming down. Thanks to Trump? Nope. Those of us who live in farm country know that if you cull millions of hens due to bird flu infection, the supply chain will be disrupted and prices will go up until flocks are repopulated.

Trump plans to bend over and give Vladimir Putin what he wants as Ukraine helplessly stands by. Ukraine is a sovereign state. They, alone, should be negotiating with Russia. Trump wants the world to see him as a shrewd deal maker. I suspect Putin thinks Trump is a useful idiot.

Trump bombed Yemen yesterday, killing scores of civilians. Is it any wonder that hundreds of millions of people hate the United States? Every immoral bombing plants seeds for more terrorists. War and violence NEVER bring peace. After two world wars and countless other wars, it’s clear that many American politicians of both parties are warmongers.

Just because I oppose Israel’s immoral war against Palestine doesn’t mean I’m an antisemite. Supporters of Israel use the antisemite label to shut off criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza. I’ve heard several Democratic leaders say protesters are “antisemites.” Others think protesters are “terrorists.” This tells me that some Democrats need a dictionary.

Bonus: After watching The Atheist Experience, Talk Heathen, and other atheist programs for the past fifteen years, I’ve concluded that Christians do not have persuasive arguments for the existence of God — the worst of which is Pascal’s Wager.

Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Bruce’s Ten Hot Takes for March 10, 2025

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hot takes

I find it contemptible that ten House Democrats voted to censure Rep. Al Green for disrupting Congress.

Democrats had many ways in which they could have protested President Trump’s State of the Union Speech. Outside of Rep. Al Green’s protest, Democrats did little to show/voice their displeasure.

Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have been holding rallies from coast to coast, condemning Trump’s decimation of the Federal Government. We need similar rallies everywhere.

Joe Biden blamed Donald Trump for the economy he inherited in 2021, and now Trump is blaming Biden for the current state of the economy. That’s politics. However, a few months from now, after Trump has caused a recession, the blame will be his alone.

Vladimir Putin is obsessed with returning Russia to the glory days of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Countries such as Poland rightly fear being invaded, especially now that the United States is no longer interested in helping and protecting their allies.

I predict Donald Trump will try to remove the United States from NATO.

Whatever one may think about Ukraine, we committed to help defend them from Russia’s immoral, violent assault on their sovereignty. Sadly, President Trump has abandoned the Ukrainian people.

“The Art of Making a Deal,” my ass. President Trump is not a deal maker, he’s a narcissistic bully who seems hellbent on destroying anyone and everyone he disagrees with. We can only hope, that as he rages against his alleged enemies and nuzzles up to dictators and fascists, he doesn’t drag us into a major war.

It’s doubtful the world will do much about global climate change now that the United States has abandoned renewable energy and electric vehicles. “Drill baby Drill” is our official climate policy now.

Americans should be concerned over Trump’s attacks on institutions of higher learning, professors, media companies, and journalists. His goal is to silence anyone who speaks ill of him or challenges his policies. In doing so, he is trampling under foot the constitutional rights of every American.

Bonus: I continue to ponder my political future. If, as I fear, the national Democratic Party is broken beyond repair, is it time for me to leave the party? Or, do I remain a Democrat and focus on local issues, even though there is zero chance of a Democrat beating a Republican in my lifetime? Or, do I act on that increasingly nagging feeling I have; that it is time for me to invest my time, money, and talent in a third party?

Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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Anti-Personnel Landmines: U.S. President Joe Biden Said He Wouldn’t, But He Did

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joe biden warmonger

President Joe Biden seems hellbent on stoking the flames of war, both in Ukraine/Russia and Palestine before he leaves office. It is hard not to conclude that Biden is a warmonger — one who urges or attempts to stir up war. Instead of trying to broker peace between Ukraine and Russia, Biden stokes the war by giving Ukraine increasingly sophisticated offensive weapons. U.S. armaments have slaughtered countless Russian soldiers — many of whom are conscripts. Recently, Biden permitted Ukraine to use U.S.-provided missiles in Russia. Russia’s response was to shoot a new kind of ICBM missile armed with a conventional warhead into Ukraine. These missiles could be armed with nuclear warheads.

Anti-personnel land mines are indiscriminate weapons that kill and maim civilians, and especially children, for generations after wars end. These weapons cannot distinguish between civilians and combatants as required by international humanitarian law.

Hichem Khadhraoui, executive director of the Center for Civilians in Conflict

In 2022, Biden released the following statement about changes in U.S. policy on anti-personnel landmines:

Today, the Biden-Harris Administration is announcing important policy changes to U.S. Anti-Personnel Landmine policy. After conducting a comprehensive policy review, the United States is joining the vast majority of countries around the world in committing to limit the use of anti-personnel landmines (APL).These changes reflect the President’s belief that these weapons have disproportionate impact on civilians, including children, long after fighting has stopped, and that we need to curtail the use of APL worldwide. They also complement longstanding U.S. leadership in the clearance of landmines and other explosive remnants of war.
 
The new commitment announced today will align U.S. APL policy outside of the Korean Peninsula with the key requirements of the Ottawa Convention – the international treaty prohibiting the use, stockpiling, production, and transfer of APL – which has more than 160 parties, including all of our NATO Allies. This means that the United States will:

  • Not develop, produce, or acquire APL;
  • Not export or transfer of APL, except when necessary for activities related to mine detection or removal, and for the purpose of destruction;
  • Not use APL outside of the Korean Peninsula;
  • Not assist, encourage, or induce anyone, outside of the context of the Korean Peninsula, to engage in any activity that would be prohibited by the Ottawa Convention; and
  • Undertake to destroy all APL stockpiles not required for the defense of the Republic of Korea.

Additionally, the United States will undertake diligent efforts to pursue materiel and operational solutions to assist in becoming compliant with and ultimately acceding to the Ottawa Convention, while ensuring our ability to respond to contingencies and meet our alliance commitments. 

The new policy announced today represents a further step to advance the humanitarian aims of the Ottawa Convention, and to bring U.S. practice in closer alignment with a global humanitarian movement that has had a demonstrated positive impact in reducing civilian casualties from APL.   

Even as the United States takes this further step, the unique circumstances on the Korean Peninsula and the U.S. commitment to the defense of the Republic of Korea preclude the United States from changing anti-personnel landmine policy on the Korean Peninsula at this time.  As the United States commits to continuing our diligent efforts to pursue material and operational alternatives to APL, the security of our ally the Republic of Korea will continue to be a paramount concern.

World Leader in Humanitarian Mine Action

The United States is the world’s single largest financial supporter of steps to mitigate the harmful consequences of landmines and explosive remnants of war around the world, including through land clearance and medical rehabilitation and vocational training for those injured by these weapons.  Since the United States Humanitarian Mine Action Program was established in 1993, the United States has provided over $4.2 billion in aid in over 100 countries for conventional weapons destruction programs. Through this assistance, the United States has:

  • Helped 17 countries become free from the danger of landmines;
  • Provided assistive devices and other rehabilitation services to over 250,000 people in 35 countries through the U.S. Agency for International Development-managed Leahy War Victims Fund.

This vital U.S. assistance has helped post-conflict countries consolidate peace and set the stage for reconstruction and development.  Clearance efforts and victim assistance programs return land and infrastructure to productive use and assist in the rehabilitation and reintegration into society of survivors of mine and explosive remnants of war incidents.
 
— end of statement

This statement is little more than the Biden Administration’s attempt to gaslight the American people; presenting the United States as being aligned with 160 other nations in banning anti-personnel mine use. Of course, the U.S. is NOT a signatory to the Ottawa Convention! Biden wants to tell the rest of the world what to do, but reserves the right to use anti-personnel mines.

Ukraine is a signatory of the Ottawa Convention. Explain to me, then, Biden casting aside what he said in 2022 and sending anti-personnel mines to Ukraine to use in their war against Russia. Explain to me, then, Ukraine’s use of these mines in direct contravention of the Convention they signed in 2022.

Politico reports:

Human rights groups are fiercely criticizing President Joe Biden’s decision to give Ukraine anti-personnel land mines as it fights off a Russian invasion.

The decision reverses a pledge Biden made to limit the use of such land mines in 2022. It comes as Biden prepares to leave office and reflects mounting U.S. concerns over Russia’s battlefield gains in eastern Ukraine.

But although the type of land mine the Biden team is handing to Ukraine has certain safeguards, rights groups nonetheless warned that the weapons pose special and long-term dangers.

“Anti-personnel land mines are indiscriminate weapons that kill and maim civilians, and especially children, for generations after wars end,” said Hichem Khadhraoui, executive director of the Center for Civilians in Conflict advocacy group. “These weapons cannot distinguish between civilians and combatants as required by international humanitarian law.”

Ben Linden, a top official with Amnesty International USA, said, “It is devastating, and frankly shocking, that President Biden made such a consequential and dangerous decision just before his public service legacy is sealed for the history books.”

The Biden administration defended the move on multiple grounds. It noted that the types of mines it is providing are “non-persistent,” meaning they become inert after a time.

“They are electrically fused and require battery power to detonate. Once the battery runs out, they will not detonate,” said a U.S. official, who was granted anonymity to candidly explain the administration’s choice.

The Biden administration in July 2023 began to supply Ukraine with cluster munitions that had been held in large numbers in U.S. military stockpiles since the end of the Cold War, but which the United States had previously been barred from sending. But it held off on sending anti-personnel land mines, such as the ones it is sending now, which can be effective in stopping massed infantry assaults that Ukraine is likely to face from thousands of North Korean troops that have arrived in the Kursk region of Russia, but can be left on the battlefield for generations, potentially long after the conflict is over.

More than 50,000 square miles of Ukraine needs to be searched for land mines and explosives, according to Ukrainian government estimates, an area larger than England.

Biden in 2022 issued a new policy to bar the U.S. use or transfer of anti-personnel mines outside of the Korean peninsula. This came after then-President Donald Trump in 2020 undid Obama-era restrictions on U.S. land mine uses.

The latest decision underscores growing unease within the Biden administration over the desperate battlefield situation as Russia makes slow and costly but incremental gains against Kyiv’s forces in eastern Ukraine.

The land mine decision follows another Biden reversal: He recently agreed to let Ukraine use American-supplied long-range missiles for strikes deep inside Russia following months of pressure from Ukraine and its strongest supporters in the West.

In providing the mines, Biden said to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, “Hey Volod. How ya doing, buddy? Hunter says, Hi! Please don’t use these in Russia or Ukrainian civilian areas. Promise, pinky swear?” Zelenskyy replied, with fingers crossed behind his back, “I promise, Uncle Joe.”

Here’s what I know about war. Nations start with high ideals, promising to adhere to international law such as the Geneva Conventions and making appeals to just war theory. The longer wars go on and political and military leaders become more desperate for victory, international law falls by the wayside and warring nations use any and every means to win — including dropping atomic bombs on Japanese civilians in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, firebombing citizens in Dresden and Tokyo, and dropping napalm on helpless Vietnamese.

The United States has a long, continuous history of military intervention, violence, and bloodshed. Biden’s actions are unsurprising. He is just another president in a long line of presidents who think war begets peace. This is a delusional lie; one that warmongers use to convince themselves that they are good people.

Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Are Pro-Palestinan College Protesters Anti-Semetic?

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college protests texas

By Howard Winant, Used with Permission from Common Dreams

Like the Black movement and the anti-Vietnam War movement, the movement for a free Palestine is global, not just a U.S. domestic movement. Central to the movement is opposition to the war on the civilian population of Gaza, rightly labeled genocidal. This combines with ongoing opposition to the slower-moving but still brutal Israeli offensive against Palestinians in the West Bank.

Yes, the destruction of Gaza was in reaction to the unprecedented and unjustifiable October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas (rightly labeled terrorist) on Israeli civilians. But there is no equivalence between these two criminal acts, at least not in quantitative terms. To equate them is to engage in ideological posturing, not credible political analysis. Indeed the parallel between the terms “genocide” and “terrorism” is a lot more intelligible.

I have been told by family members I have in Israel that “all Palestinians are terrorists” (full disclosure: I am Jewish and the child of survivors of the Shoah), but I don’t think they really believe that; they are expressing their rage rather than thinking deeply. I’m sure some Palestinians would say that Zionism equals genocide, but I don’t think they really believe that either. They are expressing their rage rather than thinking deeply.

The student-led movement for a free Palestine is not antisemitic. Thousands of Jewish students have joined it. Hundreds of rabbis and cantors too, as well as leaders of Jewish organizations and prominent Jews across U.S. society and beyond. Despite fervent attempts to stigmatize anti-Zionism as anti-Jewish, despite strident efforts on Israel’s part to merge its national identity with Judaism itself, or indeed with Jewish culture and ethnicity, despite the wildly inappropriate calls from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the U.S. to crack down on student protest, Israel does not represent all Jewish people or types of Jewishness. So the movement for a free Palestine is not a movement to destroy Israel and expel Jews. Everybody knows that the Israeli Jewish population is not going anywhere, any more than the Palestinians are. The phrase “from the river to the sea” is frequently used both by both Palestinians and Israelis. The movement for a free Palestine and the Israeli peace movement (small but important) should demand that that language be rearticulated so that it applies to both peoples.

Efforts to repress the student movement for a free Palestine will never succeed. It is too big and too broad. It is part of a worldwide struggle for justice. It is a working-class and poor people’s movement. It is an anti-racist movement and a feminist movement. It is an anti-colonialist movement, connected to the long struggle against European empires and the U.S. empire. It closely resembles the movements against South African apartheid and the Black Lives Matter movement, among many others.

It is not an accident that attacks on the movement have concentrated on repressing student voices. As they have so many times before, students have shown that they are our leaders in struggles for freedom, equality, and democracy. As has been true so many times before, opposition to the movement is concentrated among the wealthy and the right wing. It is wealthy donors who play the most significant role in opposing freedom for Palestinians, pressuring universities to prohibit pro-Palestinian speech and seeking to curtail nonviolent student protests. It is right-wing politicians who have become the new “snowflakes,” madly canceling students and faculty for the “antisemitism” of criticizing Israel. Not just the students, but the university itself is their frequent target.

Notably, universities were already under sustained attack before October 7, indeed long before that awful day. Universities are one of the most central institutions in society. They have not yet effectively been brought under the control of the wealthy, of anti-democratic governments and political parties, of racist and sexist power structures, and of repressive religiously based groups. This is because universities are institutions where knowledge and culture are produced, where democratic debate happens, where the wisdom of the past is preserved and studied, and where youth are able to develop their ideas and skills. Even though attacking universities is attacking their own children and destroying the futures of their own country, U.S. holders of wealth and power are willing to carry out those attacks, because they feel threatened by their own children’s views of the world. They fear the future they themselves are creating: one of permanent warfare, global heating and ecocide, and planetary apartheid. They hate being reminded, especially by their own kids, of their hypocrisy and violence.

The movement for freedom in Palestine shows us what a different future looks like. The movement demands university divestment from the Israeli warfare state and from Israeli apartheid. It calls out the oligarchs who threaten their own type of divestment, threatening to withdraw their funding from Penn, or Harvard, or the University of California, my own professional home. Let them go! Let them support Bob Jones University or Bari Weiss’ ridiculous University of Austin. Let them subsidize notorious political hacks like Christopher Rufo and political poseurs like Rep. Elise Stefanik (D-N.Y.). By and large rich donors’ funding is based on a hunger for prestige, not on any commitment to education. They seek tax write-offs. They subsidize their businesses through their donations. They hardly care about poor or working-class students, and even less about the humanities, arts, and social sciences, which are the fields where most undergraduate students major, and where the future of civilizational knowledge resides. Higher education is a public trust; it cannot be entrusted to the rich. As elsewhere in the world, it should be financed by the public, not greedy and blind billionaires.

The movement for freedom in Palestine is a new kind of movement, because it is not siloed. Students supporting freedom in Palestine have learned from Palestinians. Many have noted the connections between the Black Lives Matter movement and Palestinian freedom struggles. For example, in 2014 after the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Palestinians who had long experience with the repressive police tactics of the Israelis taught Black protesters how to resist militarized police repression. (Meanwhile the Anti-Defamation League ferried U.S. cops to Israel to learn torture techniques practiced upon Palestinians.)

Movements resisting U.S. ecocide, like the Oceti Sakowin water protectors in the Standing Rock reservation, as well as anti-pipeline protesters and other climate justice activists, have learned from the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank defending their land against settlers who cut down their olive groves and destroy their water wells. U.S. feminists have learned from Palestinian women, like the then 17-year-old Ahed Tamimi, who in 2018 slapped an Israeli soldier as he tried to enter her family’s house in the occupied West Bank town of Nabi Saleh. U.S. LGBTQ activists have repudiated Israeli “pinkwashing” to express their support for Palestinians. U.S. doctors and nurses are supporting their Palestinian counterparts, reacting in horror as Israel has destroyed every hospital and health facility in Gaza. U.S. educators are supporting Palestinian scholars and teachers as Israel has blown up every university in Gaza, and has razed schools in the West Bank. People in the U.S. who take their religion seriously, rather than using it to score political points, recognize that Israeli policies imposing mass starvation would make Jesus weep. And Rabbi Hillel, and the Prophet Mohammed, and Mohandas K. Gandhi too. What would Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. say about Israeli policy in Gaza?

The movement for the freedom of Palestine, led by students, has emerged at long last as the leading political current in the worldwide struggle for freedom in general. Just as the student-led Black freedom movement led the global freedom struggle in the years after World War II, joined by anti-colonial movements and the student-led anti-Vietnam War movement, the movement for the freedom of Palestine has taken its place in the struggle’s leadership today. Or course the movement has its flaws: There are unsavory allies like Hamas and Iran whose politics hardly coincide with those of the student movement; Jewish students get harassed on campus just as Muslims do; not only Islamophobia but antisemitism lives on in the U.S., notably on the Christian right where the Quran is defiled and Rev. Hagee praises Hitler as an avatar of the Rapture.

But we have to look at the big picture: Anti-Zionism is not antisemitism. Israel/Palestine can become a safe home for both Jews and Arabs. The student movement for the freedom of Palestine teaches us that the people of the world demand social justice everywhere, including in the Middle East. Mass murder solves nothing.

Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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Is World War III Looming on The Horizon?

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WW III

— By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, Naked Capitalism, Are We Stumbling Into World War III in Ukraine?

President Biden began his State of the Union speech with an impassioned warning that failing to pass his $61 billion dollar weapons package for Ukraine “will put Ukraine at risk, Europe at risk, the free world at risk.” But even if the president’s request were suddenly passed, it would only prolong, and dangerously escalate, the brutal war that is destroying Ukraine.

The assumption of the U.S. political elite that Biden had a viable plan to defeat Russia and restore Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders has proven to be one more triumphalist American dream that has turned into a nightmare. Ukraine has joined North Korea, Vietnam, Somalia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and now Gaza, as another shattered monument to America’s military madness.

This could have been one of the shortest wars in history, if President Biden had just supported a peace and neutrality agreement negotiated in Turkey in March and April 2022 that already had champagne corks popping in Kyiv, according to Ukrainian negotiator Oleksiy Arestovych. Instead, the U.S. and NATO chose to prolong and escalate the war as a means to try to defeat and weaken Russia.

Two days before Biden’s State of the Union speech, Secretary of State Blinken announced the early retirement of Acting Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, one of the officials most responsible for a decade of disastrous U.S. policy toward Ukraine.

Two weeks before the announcement of Nuland’s retirement at the age of 62, she acknowledged in a talk at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) that the war in Ukraine had degenerated into a war of attrition that she compared to the First World War, and she admitted that the Biden administration had no Plan B for Ukraine if Congress doesn’t cough up $61 billion for more weapons.

….

The imperative must be to chart a path back from this hopeless but ever-escalating war of attrition to the negotiating table that the U.S. and Britain upended in April 2022 – or at least to new negotiations on the basis that President Zelenskyy defined on March 27, 2022, when he told his people, “Our goal is obvious: peace and the restoration of normal life in our native state as soon as possible.”

Instead, on February 26, in a very worrying sign of where NATO’s current policy is leading, French President Emmanuel Macron revealed that European leaders meeting in Paris discussed sending larger numbers of Western ground troops to Ukraine.

Macron pointed out that NATO members have steadily increased their support to levels unthinkable when the war began. He highlighted the example of Germany, which offered Ukraine only helmets and sleeping bags at the outset of the conflict and is now saying Ukraine needs more missiles and tanks. “The people that said “never ever” today were the same ones who said never ever planes, never ever long-range missiles, never ever trucks. They said all that two years ago,” Macron recalled. “We have to be humble and realize that we (have) always been six to eight months late.”

Macron implied that, as the war escalates, NATO countries may eventually have to deploy their own forces to Ukraine, and he argued that they should do so sooner rather than later if they want to recover the initiative in the war.

The mere suggestion of Western troops fighting in Ukraine elicited an outcry both within France–from extreme right National Rally to leftist La France Insoumise–and from other NATO countries. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz insisted that participants in the meeting were “unanimous” in their opposition to deploying troops. Russian officials warned that such a step would mean war between Russia and NATO.

But as Poland’s president and prime minister headed to Washington for a White House meeting on February 12, Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski told the Polish parliament that sending NATO troops into Ukraine “is not unthinkable.”

Macron’s intention may have been precisely to bring this debate out into the open and put an end to the secrecy surrounding the undeclared policy of gradual escalation toward full-scale war with Russia that the West has pursued for two years.

Macron failed to mention publicly that, under current policy, NATO forces are already deeply involved in the war. Among many lies that President Biden told in his State of the Union speech, he insisted that “there are no American soldiers at war in Ukraine.”

However, the trove of Pentagon documents leaked in March 2023 included an assessment that there were already at least 97 NATO special forces troops operating in Ukraine, including 50 British, 14 Americans and 15 French. Admiral John Kirby, the National Security Council spokesman, has also acknowledged a “small U.S. military presence” based in the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv to try to keep track of thousands of tons of U.S. weapons as they arrive in Ukraine.

But many more U.S. forces, whether inside or outside Ukraine, are involved in planning Ukrainian military operations; providing satellite intelligence; and play essential roles in the targeting of U.S. weapons. A Ukrainian official told the Washington Post that Ukrainian forces hardly ever fire HIMARS rockets without precise targeting data provided by U.S. forces in Europe.

All these U.S. and NATO forces are most definitely “at war in Ukraine.” To be at war in a country with only small numbers of “boots on the ground” has been a hallmark of 21st Century U.S. war-making, as any Navy pilot on an aircraft-carrier or drone operator in Nevada can attest. It is precisely this doctrine of “limited” and proxy war that is at risk of spinning out of control in Ukraine, unleashing the World War III that President Biden has vowed to avoid.

The United States and NATO have tried to keep the escalation of the war under control by deliberate, incremental escalation of the types of weapons they provide and cautious, covert expansion of their own involvement. This has been compared to “boiling a frog,” turning up the heat gradually to avoid any sudden move that might cross a Russian “red line” and trigger a full-scale war between NATO and Russia. But as NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned in December 2022, “If things go wrong, they can go horribly wrong.”

We have long been puzzled by these glaring contradictions at the heart of U.S. and NATO policy. On one hand, we believe President Biden when he says he does not want to start World War III. On the other hand, that is what his policy of incremental escalation is inexorably leading towards.

U.S. preparations for war with Russia are already at odds with the existential imperative of containing the conflict. In November 2022, the Reed-Inhofe Amendment to the FY2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) invoked wartime emergency powers to authorize an extraordinary shopping-list of weapons like the ones sent to Ukraine, and approved billion-dollar, multi-year no-bid contracts with weapons manufacturers to buy 10 to 20 times the quantities of weapons that the United States had actually shipped to Ukraine.

Retired Marine Colonel Mark Cancian, the former chief of the Force Structure and Investment Division in the Office of Management and Budget, explained, “This isn’t replacing what we’ve given [Ukraine]. It’s building stockpiles for a major ground war [with Russia] in the future.”

So the United States is preparing to fight a major ground war with Russia, but the weapons to fight that war will take years to produce, and, with or without them, that could quickly escalate into a nuclear war. Nuland’s early retirement could be the result of Biden and his foreign policy team finally starting to come to grips with the existential dangers of the aggressive policies she championed.

….

Reuters Moscow Bureau reported that Russia spent months trying to open new negotiations with the United States in late 2023, but that, in January 2024, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan slammed that door shut with a flat refusal to negotiate over Ukraine.

The only way to find out what Russia really wants, or what it will settle for, is to return to the negotiating table. All sides have demonized each other and staked out maximalist positions, but that is what nations at war do in order to justify the sacrifices they demand of their people and their rejection of diplomatic alternatives.

Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.