I watched The Fog of War last night, and read somke more of A People’s History (I’m up to the end of World War I now, about half way through the book), and I read a couple of selections in Voices of a People’s History, and then I watched a few Daily Show video archives of Stewart’s depiction of the State of the Union Speech, re-watched the interview with Howard Zinn about the Voices of a People’s History book, and watched the interview with Seymour Hersh after Hersh wrote the article about the neocons intentions to “liberate” Iran. Hersh described his series of articles in The New Yorker as ” a kind of alternative history “, and I thought, how very “Zinn like” (which is a good thing in my book; and in my THEOLOGY). This thing about Christians beng “good citizens” is only in the theocratic , Constantinian sense of Christianity. In the ACTUAL salvation history of God’s people, empires such as the United States, their claims to “civilzation”, “freedom” and “democracy” notwithstanding, the history is one of resistance, conflict, prophetic voice, martyrdom, and “speaking the truth to power”.

This group in the White House today often call upon certain images of freedom in American history which their political fathers adamantly opposed. Bush said :

When our Founders declared a new order of the ages; when soldiers died in wave upon wave for a union based on liberty; when citizens marched in peaceful outrage under the banner “Freedom Now” – they were acting on an ancient hope that is meant to be fulfilled.

The gall of this neocon laying any semblance of a claim to be on the side of a fight for freedom that his own heroes, like Goldwater, who adamantly opposed it as it was happening. (Civil rights, desegregation, etc.) I saw Goldwater condemning McNamara in his acceptance speech at the RNC in 1964, for not being tough enough in his response to Vietnam. Goldwater wanted to bomb the hell out of them (which Johnson later did; he wasn’t gonna have any accusations of being “soft” hurled in his direction. He’ll show them) This hero of the conservative stalwarts (and many attribute the bounceback by conservatives to the bitter defeat they experienced in the election of 1964, and led to the “anything goes” tactics of the Republican party such as the Watergate scandals. ) Place these guys (this neocon White House) in that day and they are staunch and brutal segregationsists in 1964, and who knows what happens.

Can you imagine these guys in the culture of the 50’s and 60’s, and their unapologetic drive toward their goals? Can you imagine the disinforamtion campaigns they would have unleashed against the Civil Rights they now so disengenously call up to fit into their shallow and meaningless talk of “freedom and liberty”?

McNamara was no pacifist. He was a rational man. He was still emeshed in the culture of war, and the idea that “to do good, then evil must be done” (this was one of his lessons from his experiences as Secretary of Defense under Kennedy and Johnson….Johnson ended up firing him for all the disagreements with Johnson’s hawkish and brutal tactics…..”100,000 PEOPLE IN one night” McNamara woudl say repeatedly throughout The Fog of War….btw, highly recommended; I rented it at Blockbuster)