PA Farruggio

My 84-year-old pal John and I stand each Tuesday outside the local library with our protest signs. We’ve been out there, one hour each week, for over a year; before that for six years on a busy street corner during rush hour.

How correct she was. The Germans, the French and all the European peoples remember, or are taught, what it was like to be occupied and threatened by the Nazi police state. We Americans are lucky that our nation has never been occupied by a foreign power. Never! Thus, you would think that it might have been more difficult for us Americans to accept the propaganda pertaining to 9/11 and the phony wars that followed. The opposite was true, sadly. From Mathew in the New Testament: “And Jesus went into the temple of God and cast out all of them who sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers and the seats of them that sold (sacrificial) doves, and said onto them ‘It is written, My house should be called a house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves.’”

One day, this German lady approached us. She thanked us for taking the time out and added “You know, Americans don’t like to get out and protest. If this was Germany, and our government did what yours did, we’d have thousands outside this library, not just two people.”

Why did it take Jesus to initiate this action? How long had this process gone on in the Jewish religion? Why did not others, those who agreed with Jesus, take the mantle and challenge the powers that be? After all, this was not challenging the Roman Empire, which would have done harm to anyone who protested their edicts. This was not like a German in the mid-1930s challenging the Nazi regime. No, the similarities between the silence of those who agreed with Jesus and the silence of those who agree with modern activists is striking. Look at what occurred here in America before we invaded Iraq . . . and after. We had a group of so-called leaders and advisors to leaders who had a tattered track record on patriotism. Mitt Romney, in the late 1960s, supported the Vietnam War, yet refused to join up and fight the good fight.

We have the infamous chicken hawks of the Junior Bush gang, starting with Junior himself. Bush supported the Vietnam War and chose to stay safely at home in the Texas Air National Guard. Then we have Dick Cheney, who received at least five deferments, none of them medical by the way, yet he vociferously supported the war.

Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and others connected with the Bush crew cheered for ‘War War War’ yet never would dare go and fight. Years later all of these people, along with a compliant mainstream media, railed about the threat that Saddam Hussein and his army presented to us here at home. How he was connected with Al Qaeda and Bin Laden, and how he had WMDs ready to use on us in America or our surrogate in the Middle East, Israel.

All lies! Factor out the one day in February 2002 that many Americans stood up and spoke out, and after that . . . Silence! To this day . . . Silence! As with the Jews who agreed with Jesus about their religion being hijacked by liars, scoundrels and hypocrites . . . today we see the same thing here. Imagine for one minute if all of the Americans who know deep inside that our nation has become a military-industrial empire actually spoke up. Instead of a handful of us out there on the street corners and town squares, there would be thousands, as that German lady suggested.