Special Christmas Message, 2009

\Christmas Message, 2009/

[The forecast for Christmas Day is below this. Obviously, in the Christmas Eve message, I was in error when I said the Russians celebrate Christmas on December 7 and Twelfth Night is December 5! I meant January 7 and January 5, and apologize for the confusion. I hope that mistake in the first paragraph did not hinder you from reading the rest of my Christmas Eve message. The feast of the Epiphany is between those two, January 6. My mistake perhaps had "Final Cause" behind it, for now I will suggest that during the Twelve Days of Christmas, December 25 through January 5, and also Epiphany and the Eastern Christmas, we spend some time each day praying for peace in the world and especially Afghanistan, and also, to make our prayers more potent, learning more about the situation there. More of that in what follows. This fourteen-day special attention to practical, as well as spiritual, paths toward peace could have far-ranging impact.]

I got up early on Christmas morning and, after my usual Bible reading, pondered what I would write. It was not pleasant. What I was getting from "on high" was not "peace on earth, good will to men" but a very sober commandment to WARN my fellow Americans of the dangers they have assumed and the responsibilities they have gotten themselves into.

This is not unconnected with the movements of the planets (as nothing is). The intense squares of Venus, Pluto and the sun in Capricorn with Saturn in Libra are not letting us rest in inertia and ethical mindlessness.

Libra is the sign of justice. Saturn is the planet of the very slow working-out of the laws of karma. "The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine." That is what we are facing, like it or not; and why this is a very sober Christmas.

Whether you personally like it or not, you are involved in Afghanistan and in the Muslim world. You may care not a fig for Mohammed or his followers but you have contracted to be yoked with them in ways you do not like. You contracted for that by being an American citizen. 57 cents of every dollar you will be paying to the federal government by April 15 will be going to warfare. Do you want to kill wedding parties in Afghanistan and Pakistan? No, but you did. Your money did it and you paid that money willingly.

Yes, you are guilty and you cannot escape the fact. This is not my opinion, it is the way things are, and no matter what you do you will have to pay the price of your guilt. And if you think I am "laying a guilt trip on you," no. The guilt is there and it is my sad responsibility to point that out. Otherwise I would be an utter failure as a Cosmic Piper.

Did you vote for President Obama? He said, in no uncertain terms, that he would pursue a war in Afghanistan and even said, in one of the debates before the election, that he would kill Osama bin Laden. So you knew what you were voting for.

I voted for him because he was, in my view, the lesser of two evils, and I still believe that. I did not believe I had the option of voting for a third party candidate such as Ralph Nader because I felt that the obvious alternative to Obama was much more likely to precipitate disaster than Obama.

Nevertheless, I share in the evil karma which our country has generated and could continue to generate, and most likely is generating on this Christmas day. (Richard Nixon bombed and killed thousands of the civilians citizens of Hanoi on a Christmas day.) If you did not write a letter to the President or your Senators or Congressman opposing the funding of the war, you are more guilty than I, because I did that twice. It is an important thing to do. I am not so naive as to believe that the President read my letter, but his staff did and tallied my opinion before sending me the expected form letter the President had written to send to all who opposed the war.

It is important to find out about this war, understand it as well as you can, and take a position one way or another. I am afraid it is not as simple as supporting or opposing the war. It is much more complex than that. I am not as informed about this war as I should be. We and our President have imposed on us an enormous burden. It is your responsibility to do your homework about this war. You are paying for it, and you need to know why. Or, if you do not want to pay for it, you need to know what is going on and exactly why you don't want to pay for it, and state that opinion boldly to your government. That is your responsibility.

It is also mine, and I have a lot of homework to do. I need to find and read good books about Afghanistan, and read more carefully the press accounts of what "we" are doing there. I realize that millions of Americans believe that this is a just war and a well-planned one, even a necessary one. I would say to them, Be sure about that! And the only way you can be sure is to inform yourself very carefully, including reading and hearing the opinions of those who disagree with you, for they may have important information you are lacking and will continue to lack if you do not listen. I intend to do that also, reading and trying to understand the viewpoints of those who support the war. I have already done a lot of that, indeed, it is hard to escape it since a current government's position is usually the predominant one expressed in the media. That is why it is important also to understand what those who oppose the war are saying and why they are saying it.

Did you not vote for President Obama? Many who did not, nevertheless support this war. In fact it may have more support among Republicans than Democrats. If you support the war in your thoughts and words, you also are responsible, whether or not you voted for the current President. Then you also need to do your homework, and it will take you many hours. If the citizens of a great country do not know what their government is doing or why, especially when that government is at war, which means killing and doing other very intense things which coerce other peoples in one way or another (while prating of "freedom"), then they are doomed to let that government do very odious or evil things. That is what happened to the citizens, for example, of Nazi Germany and of Soviet Russia. (The latter did not know the horror of what Stalin was doing to his own countrymen, or looked the other way.)

Again, I am not saying that you must oppose the war, after your study, if in fact you find that you can support it when you have assimilated a huge number of facts not now known to you about (a) Afghanistan, (b) Islam, (c) the tribes of Afghanistan, of which ther are many, (d) the Taliban, painted usually as just plain evil but supported by thousands of Afghans who trust them more than Americans, (e) al Qaida and its true place in the situation, (f) exactly what your troops are doing in Afghanistan, (g) what the police of Afghanistan are doing under American guidance or without it, (h) whom the government of Afghanistan really represents, since it took office through fraud (this is not disputed by anyone who knows the situation), (i) what the lives of ordinary Afghans are like and what they think about Americans and the war, (g) what non-governmental organizations are trying to do in Afghanistan to help the people, (h) who the legitimate opposers of the current government of Karzai are and what they propose, (i) who precisely are being targeted by American missiles and bombs, and why, (j) how much "collateral damage," in other words, killing of innocent people and destruction of property, is going on, paid for by your tax dollars, and . . . I do not have time to complete the alphabet. Your homework is cut out for you.

How did we get ourselves into this mess, we ask, again and again. Well, you will need to study the history of the U.S. involvement in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. If and as I find good books about all this I shall recommend them. I invite you to do the same.

And, a very important question, what are the real motives of "our involvement" in Afghanistan? Oil? No? What then? And to what degree is the military-industrial complex warned against by General and President Dwight David Eisenhower behind all of this, not for "us" but for themselves? Please watch the film Why We Fight, available on DVD. It might change your "take" on the U.S. military forever.

As you have guessed, I tend to be anti-war and very skeptical of the Afghanistan "adventure" (not exactly an adventure for those Afghans who suffer it, or for the thousands of American servicemen with Post-Traumatic Distress Disorder many of whom have committed suicide). But if someone thoroughly understands all of the above points I have outlined as essential to an understanding of this war, and still supports it, then I would say, I would be glad to have a discussion with him or her and perhaps learn something.

Meanwhile I cannot support 90 per cent, or perhaps 80 per cent, of what I read "we" are "doing" "over there." It is all so remote and unreal to us. That is why it is our responsibility to know what "we" are doing if we are to be honest men and women. Just assuming that the government knows what it is doing, and offering a little prayer now and then, will not cut it. It did not cut it for the citizens of Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. They went on for decades letting their governments pursue utterly evil and hideous policies, torturing and murdering millions of innocent human beings. If we think we are above that, we need to prove it.

{Christmas 2009}

Cosmic Piper