Papal Blessing For Washington’s Global Terrorism
By Finian Cunningham
Information Clearing House
September 28, 2015
Roman Catholic Pope Francis was hailed for his courage
in challenging the United States Congress on a range of
«leftwing» issues.
The pontiff can take some credit for raising issues
of social justice, reducing poverty, and homelessness,
averting deleterious environmental impacts, and
calling for more humane immigration policies.
But there was a flagrant omission in his address to the
American lawmakers, as there was in his earlier audience
with President Barack Obama.
Where was his forthright condemnation of Washington’s
rampant war-making and sponsorship of global terrorism?
The Bishop of Rome made no mention of US war-making
and conflict.
Silence is tacit acceptance, or even complicity.
And when one of the world’s foremost religious leaders
keeps silent, that is as good as a blessing for the
warmongers.
Washington is, by far, the world’s greatest war-maker,
having conducted wars, subversions, coups, covert
insurgency, and counterinsurgency operations, in
almost every year over the seven decades since the
end of the Second World War, as documented by
American Historian William Blum.
Yet Pope Francis – Argentinian-born and from a continent
that has been ravaged by Washington state-sponsored
violence – did not speak truth to power while addressing
the US Capitol.
If Francis had excoriated the US rulers for their habitual
warmongering, he may not have received applause, and
standing ovations, but the Pope would have at least
spoken the truth at a critical juncture.
Pope Francis seemingly opted for discretion as being
the better part of valour.
A less charitable view is that the leader of the Catholic
Church lacked the courage to speak out in defence of
millions of victims of US-sponsored wars.
He told the chamber of the House:
«Our world is increasingly a place of violent conflict, hatred,
and brutal atrocities, committed even in the name of God
and of religion».
But it’s not enough to merely describe «a place of violent conflict».
What about specifying the causes of conflict such as regime
change or coveting natural resources?
What about actually citing the governments that are responsible
for unleashing, orchestrating, and fueling violence?
It’s not as if there is no evidence.
Far from it, the evidence of criminality is replete.
This is where the spiritual leader of Iran, Ayatollah Seyyed
Ali Khamenei, shows more mettle that the Catholic Pope.
In recent days, Ayatollah Khamenei addressed Muslims making
the annual Hajj pilgrimage by condemning the United States
as the main «source of war, bloodshed and devastation in the
world».
This is not a subjective matter of one «political perspective»
at variance with another.
It is an objective factual reality.
The US government is the primary source of war and violence in
the world over many decades, as the reference above to William
Blum attests.
Currently, the US is primarily complicit in sponsoring a covert
war in Syria, along with a coterie of allies and client regimes.
Given Washington’s primacy as the most powerful political entity,
it consequently bears the most responsibility for the devastation
in Syria.
Up to 12 million people have been made homeless in a four-year
conflict, which has resulted in some 250,000 deaths.
Elsewhere, in the past week, more than 230 civilians have been
massacred in Yemen by the foreign military coalition headed up
and armed by Washington.
The fighter jets and bombs dropped on Yemen by Saudi pilots and
other Arab nationals are supplied and coordinated by the American
military.
Washington has also provided the political and diplomatic
cover for the six-month-long slaughter in that country.
Make no mistake, this is a US-sponsored criminal war on
the people of Yemen.
Whole families have been massacred in residential homes
deliberately targeted by American warplanes.
Hospitals, aid convoys, schools, markets, water and power
utilities have all been bombed, putting 80 per cent of Yemen’s
24 million population in dire humanitarian plight.
Only three days before the Pope addressed the US Congress,
30 civilians were reported killed by American-led coalition air
strikes in the provinces of Hajjah and Ibb.
In his address to Congress, Pope Francis did partially
condemn the international arms trade.
But his words were vague and scarcely directed at the
US in particular, as they should have been.
Here is what the Pope said:
«Being at the service of dialogue and peace also means being truly
determined to minimise and, in the long term, to end the many
armed conflicts throughout our world. Here we have to ask ourselves:
Why are deadly weapons being sold to those who plan to inflict untold
suffering on individuals and society? Sadly, the answer, as we all
know, is simply for money: money that is drenched in blood, often
innocent blood. In the face of this shameful and culpable silence, it
is our duty to confront the problem and to stop the arms trade».
Pope Francis’ point would have been more powerful and closer to the
truth if he had specified the US as the world’s biggest arms supplier
whose top clients include the dictatorships of Saudi Arabia and the
other Persian Gulf monarchies who together are committing heinous
war crimes in Yemen – at the very same time that he was speaking
to Congress.
Francis should have condemned the US government
for its criminality in no uncertain terms.
Yemen provides the irrefutable, horrendous facts
to support such a condemnation.
The Pope missed a crucial opportunity to confront corrupt power.
His vacuity only serves to obscure the bloodied hands
of the perpetrator.
Following his speech on Capitol Hill, the New York Times
reported thus:
«Pope Francis, the spiritual leader of 1.2 billion Catholics,
challenged Congress, and by extension the mightiest nation
in the world, on Thursday to break out of its cycle of paralysis
and use its power to heal the ‘open wounds’of a planet torn
by hatred, greed, poverty, and pollution».
So, according to the top US media outlet, the Pope is urging
Washington to «heal the world».
In other words, the Pontiff ends up reinforcing arrogant American
«exceptionalism» as a delusion that the nation is a force for good,
instead of being a rampant source of violence across the globe.
Pope Francis may be a breath of fresh air compared with his
predecessors from his humble embrace of the poor and socially
marginalised.
But he still retains the stench of sycophancy towards the
world’s biggest criminal state-sponsor of war and terrorism.
God Bless America indeed.
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