Lies Our Fathers Told Us

"And this, children, is the reason we are at war in Viet Nam..."

Or so I was told as a child. If we let the Communists win in Viet Nam, there would be no stopping them. The Communists hated freedom, you see, and they wished to take away our shiny new modern appliances and enslave us all. If Communists had their way, we would all be subject to Five-Year Plans and sentenced to concentration camps for wanting to make a profit, or for laughing in public. Or for wearing bright clothes instead of a drab, military-style uniform. Yes, if the Communists were allowed to prevail, the future looked grim indeed.

In the 1960's through the 1980's, the phrase "Communist bloc" hit one's ears with such a heavy thud--much like the phrase "Muslim world" does today. And like the Cold War era of my youth, a similar rhetoric confronts us: "If we let the Taliban win in Afghanistan, children, there will be no stopping them. The Taliban hate freedom, you see, and they want all women everywhere to wear the burka. So if they are allowed to win in Afghanistan"--where, we conveniently forget, they were CIA-trained freedom fighters in a struggle to the death with Communism--"there will be minarets in every American town, blasting their hated Arabic propaganda at all hours of the day and night, and we will be forced to go to mosques and pray to their Moon god instead of our sweet Jesus and, if we refuse, they will chop off our heads."

I'm no fan of the Taliban, but neither do I appreciate being lied to. Similar lies are being told about the Palestinians--and have been for as long as I can remember. But the state of Israel is not an island of civilization in a sea of savage barbarism: it is an apartheid state engaged in the systematic liquidation of an indigenous population. There has to be an end to the lies, and to the theft and the violence that they are meant to cover up and justify.

Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us (Ecclesiasticus 44:1); but let us banish the liars from our midst and their lies from our ears, for we have suffered them gladly for far too long and they have profited mightily at our expense and at the expense of the weak and the vulnerable.

Where are the prophetic voices to call us back from further bloodshed? To call us back to what sense we have left?