Truth is the first casualty of war. All sides in all wars lie, as it serves each party’s interests. That is fact, not opinion. The media of the nation universally and incessantly pounds its government’s lies into the brains of the locals for whom the media is their only source of information regarding the causes, details, explanations, conduct, justifications and all other whys and wherefores of the war. These lies become the content on which people, e.g., Catholics, Catholic priests, Catholic Bishops, Catholic theologians, etc. apply Catholic Just War Theory (CJWT) in order to determine whether the present war their country is slaughtering people in is morally just and therefore is a war in which they can morally participate and can tell others they can also morally participate and be following a Way acceptable to Jesus.
Normally, the lying victors and their religious allies write the definitive history of all wars. The lying losers are not permitted to have an historical voice that can be heard in the future. But, occasionally a suppressed word of truth from the past somehow breaches the beautiful wall of self righteous self deception within which the victors and their descendants enclose themselves. Then what?
Suppose a declaration of war is procured via intentional, calculate deceit? Can participation in that war be objectively morally just. Or, is all the killing in such a war by the side with the phony declaration of war unjustified killing and hence murder, or more precisely mass murder? Since the Spanish American War of 1898, which American war has not been initiated and justified under false pretense, that is by intentional lies? If you know of one I would be happy to hear about it?
Since today, December 7, 2023 is the 82nd anniversary of the destruction of about 2500 human beings at Pearl Harbor, beyond praying for the repose of their souls and the souls of those who brought about their destruction, it might serve some purpose to read the book below, if for no other reason than to be aware of one more drop in the ocean of evidence that it is gross moral negligence to give any government a presumption of truth in any matter to do with its war, let alone rely on government information to determine if as a Catholic (Christian) one can kill other human beings en masse and be acting in moral conformity with the strict and rigorous standards of CJWT. Without the availability of truthful factual information regarding the causes, details, explanations, conduct and justifications of a war, CJWT in both its ad bellum and in bello dimensions is impossible to morally apply. Likewise, it is moral turpitude in the extreme, where the mass destruction of human life is concerned, to put one’s faith in the veracity of institutions or people who have chronically and egregiously lied regarding similar matters in the past.
Christian Churches and Church leaders almost universally teach their fellow Christians, where a current national war is the topic, to bestow the presumption of truth on the government and its media minions, although their near universal history is one of deceit under such conditions. This playing the ostrich with its head in the sand is prima facie evidence of how far into the preposterously absurd a Church must fall once it departs from Jesus’ teachings in the Gospels of nonviolence and love of enemies and tries to justify as Christian the proclamation that the evils of violence and enmity are really in conformity with the teaching of Jesus in the Gospels regarding the will of the “Father of all.”
One can be sure when Christian Churches and their leaders choose to go down this spiritually and logically ludicrous path, they are not doing it to serve the bodily, moral or spiritual well being of the members of their congregation in the Body of Christ. They are doing it to serve the State and thereby hopefully maintain or even enhance its lucrative one-hand-washed-the-other relationship with the State.
A Second World War Navy radioman turned journalist, Robert Stinnett was in the National Archives in Belmont, California, researching a campaign-year picture book on George Bush’s South Pacific wartime navy career in aerial reconnaissance — George Bush: His World War II Years (Washington, D.C., Brassey’s, 1992) — and encountered unindexed duplicate copies of Pearl Harbor radio intercept records of Japanese Navy code transmissions — documentary evidence of what actually happened at Pearl Harbor and how it came about. After eight years of further research and a prolonged case at law under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain partial release of these materials, Stinnett published Day of Deceit.
The post December 7, 1941, A Day of Deceit as Well as Infamy appeared first on LewRockwell.