An argument with Jon Wilson, continued

By the way, Jon, I am glad you think enough about this to discuss it at length.

BACEVICH/AUTHORITY By that measure, quoting the Book of Mormon, or a former Harvard-trained psychiatrist who is now a journalist, is an argument from authority. To me, at least, Bacevich's experience easily trumps Krauthammer's. Bracevich's pleas for national humility and his tragic sense of history also, to my mind, fit rather rather better with the Book of Mormon than Krauthammer's progressivist neopaternalism.

GIDGIDDONI: You mistook my point, which was that his people asked for a preventive war, but Gidgiddoni knew that his people were unready to face the Gadiantons until they had repented. They needed repentance, despite being a people that would choose prophets as civil and military leaders, and despite asking Gidgiddoni to pray before going out to battle. In wars with the robbers of Gadianton, the Book of Mormon always attributes Nephite woes to Nephite wickedness. Let me repeat that because I believe I may not have made it clear enough the first time. In every war with the robbers of Gadiantion, the Book of Mormon always attributes Nephite woes to Nephite wickedness. The only security available in a Nephite war with Gadianton robbers is through thorough Nephite repentance, and even that doesn't guarantee light Nephite causalties. If, as you and I both agree, the United States is facing modern reprises of the Gadianton robbers at home and abroad, and if, again, as you and I both believe, the inhabitants of this land are supposed to liken the Book of Mormon to themselves---this is sure proof, if it were otherwise needed, that this nation is in critical need of repentance. A nation is in a very bad way whether it is supporting secret combinations or simply fighting them---it needs repentance either way. A nation in such dire need of repentance is not a nation that has a mandate from heaven to forcibly stamp its image on any other nation.

But I could not see it clearly
For my sight was very dim (Hymn no. 273)

JUST WAR: I nevertheless welcome the chance to respond to what I had only taken a jibe at---you do not misunderstand my disgust at preventive wars. And it astonishes and perplexes me that you find, in comparing approaches to war, Catholicism to be more conscientious than Mormonism.

Nephite wars with Lamanites were fought on Nephite territory, in response to Lamanite invasion. They leave no garrisons on Lamanite soil after the Lamanites lose a war. (The US has over 700 foreign military bases.)The Nephites even give land to prisoners of war who make promises and want to re-establish themselves. (For comparison, the United states has resettled rather less than 10,000 Iraqis. Sweden, population around 7 million, has resettled around 80,000 Iraqis.)

Moroni and other Nephites regarded it as essential to act justly in military action:

Now it came to pass that when Moroni had received this epistle he was more angry, because he knew that Ammoron had a perfect knowledge of his fraud, yea, he knew that Ammoron knew that it was not a just cause that had caused him to wage a war against the people of Nephi. (Alma 55:1)

And now, Moroni, I do joy in receiving your epistle, for I was somewhat worried concerning what we should do, whether it should be just in us to go against our brethren. (Alma 61:19)

But behold, this was not the desire of Moroni; he did not delight in murder or bloodshed, but he delighted in the saving of his people from destruction; and for this cause he might not bring upon him injustice, he would not fall upon the Lamanites, and destroy them in their drunkenness. (Alma 55:19)

The Nephites were also taught to obey the law of the third offense.

And they were doing that which they felt was the duty which they owed to their God; for the Lord had said unto them, and also unto their fathers, that: Inasmuch as ye are not guilty of the first offense, neither the second, ye shall not suffer yourselves to be slain by the hands of your enemies. (Alma 43:46)

This law of the third offence sets a higher threshold than just war theory. And it is still applicable. (Doctrine and Covenants 98:23-48)

There is, of course, a sense in which all warmaking, like all civil punishment, is both pre-emptive and preventive. As George Savile, Marquess of Halifax, aphorized, "Men are not hanged for stealing horses, but that horses may not be stolen." Out of the pre-emptive or preventive actions we can take, some are forbidden to us, both in civil matters and as between nations. These limits come from something akin to the presumption of innocence. As Kingman Brewster observed,

The presumption of innocence is not just a legal concept. In commonplace terms, it rests on that generosity of spirit which assumes the best, not the worst, of the stranger.

Another important principle is accountability. I am aghast at the kind of thinking which says something like "Well we believed he had WMD. If we made a mistake, at least in was an honest one. So no-one should beat up on us too badly for that. It is the kind of error that anyone could have made..." Except it isn't. People with a real sense of accountability are much more cautious. If one starts a war, killing many thousands of people directly and then many thousands more indirectly, one is responsible for that bloodshed. If one does it on poor evidence---and the evidence was, on objective grounds, extremely poor---the blood of those killed cries from the ground against the perpetrators of the war.

Behold what the scripture says---man shall not smite, neither shall he judge; (Mormon 8:20)

If bloodguilt stains those who supported this based on false evidence, how much worse is it for those who knew, or should have known, better?.

PROPAGANDA: There is a great deal to suggest that they did not believe their own stories, starting with the succession of rationales offered for the invasion: first, it was Osama Bin Laden, and then weapons of mass destruction, and then the spreading of democracy throughout the Middle East. There were a great many lies attending the invasion of Iraq. I remember at the time seeing things that looked like rather thin propaganda at the time. I was right too. Here is a long and damning summary by Sam Gardiner, detailing about 50 propaganda stories. You must have heard at least some of these, and been dubious about others. The depth, tenor, and systematicity of the lying should tell you something, if you are listening:

http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/papers/pmt/exhibits/722/gardinerfullversion.pdf

HEADING AMALICKIAH: The example you give, Moroni's attempt to head Amalickiah, is no preventive war. It does not even rise to the status of a pre-emptive strike against a foreign army apparently mobilizing to invade. Amalickiah is a renegade Nephite who, after an abortive attempt to start a civil war, takes flight. Moroni's operation is a police action against a fleeing army of traitors. It is probably true that Moroni goes to as much trouble as he does here because he is trying to prevent Amalickiah from joining forces with the Lamanites---prevention is his stated motive. Nevertheless, had he succeeded in capturing Amalickiah, he would have put him to death not because of what he (rightly) guessed Amalickiah would do, but rather because of what Amalickiah had already done.

PREVENTIVE WAR: Preventive war, by the way, is different and worse than pre-emptive war. Pre-emptive war is when, seeing an army mobilizing to attack you, you seize the initiative and attack first. Preventive war is when, fearing that a prospective enemy may acquire the capacity to do you harm, you attack to prevent the development of that capacity. In a pre-emptive war, you are throwing away the opportunity that the other party may yet stand down the mobilization. In a preventive war, you are throwing away more---the chance that your presumptive enemy, whatever their attitude towards you, may never actually intend to act against you. (There is no evidence that Iraq ever wanted to go to war with the United States. Even in their earlier invasion of Kuwait, they checked in with the American ambassador, April Glaspie, first, and felt that they had blindeye permission. That is what Indonesia did with Ford and Kissinger on their visit to Jakarta---so Indonesia rolled into East Timor just after Ford/Kissinger left, and annexed it. I remember lefties complaining about the Indonesian annexation at the time. It took two decades, around 0.1 megadeaths, and an oil discovery offshore for the powerful nations to develop a conscience about what the East Timorese suffered at the hands of the Indonesians. It is simply easier to profitable deals with small states that have considerable oil wealth, like Kuwait or East Timor, than it is to deal with larger states that might be tempted to take appreciable shares for the national budget, like Iraq or Indonesia. There were other issues between Kuwait and Iraq. The Iraqis claimed that Kuwait has been diagonal drilling into Iraqi oil reserves---that had. But most of all, the Gulf States and the US had used Iraq to fight a long proxy war in which millions died, against the Islamic Republic of Iran, which they feared. Iraq provided the lives, and the other parties the money. After the Iran-Iraq war concluded, Kuwait welched on the deal.)

AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM AS A GUARANTOR OF US MOTIVES FOR WAR: You appear to believe that when the US acts militarily abroad, it acts from much cleaner motives than its chosen opponents. With even a little perseverance, one finds the truth to be rather less flattering.

Even the War of Independence was tainted by the colonists haste to expand into---i.e. invade---Indian lands, in contravention of recent British treaties with the natives, and also to some degree by Southern insecurity after the Somerset(t) court decision issued by Mansfield LCJ of the Court of King's Bench resulted essentially in the freeing of all slaves in England in 1772.

It is no defense of subsequent US motives to acknowledge a divine hand in the establishment of the land---if anything, past grants of divine sustenance only aggravate subsequent wrongdoing. As it is written concerning the Nephites:

And now behold I say unto you, that if this people, who have received so many blessings from the hand of the Lord, should transgress contrary to the light and knowledge which they do have, I say unto you that if this be the case, that if they should fall into transgression, it would be far more tolerable for the Lamanites than for them. (Alma 9:23)

First, the scriptures claim for the Lord an overall guiding destiny in the affairs of all nations, and also that he gives to all nations "all that he seeth fit that they should have". Providential treatment at a particular moment in history does not warrant the self-applauding exceptionalism to which both ancient Nephites and modern Americans are prone.

Second, divine protection for the ideal of liberty in the founding of the United States does not mean either that liberty was perfectly established---it was not---or that what Americans wanted in other respects had divine support---not all of it did---or that liberty as it is understood in the scriptures is now found here in any exceptional degree---it is not.

Third, the mandate of heaven can be lost---it is the children of the American revolutionaries who gave us the Trail of Tears, the murder of Joseph, Hyrum and many of the early brethren, the rape and murder of many of their women and children, their expulsion from the then United States. In particular, the fact that the US is not now at war with Mormons or Indians does not, ipso facto, mean that US has now learned to be governed by good motives, or to pick only deserving victims.

Fourth, while it is written that "the Lord raiseth up one nation", it is also written that He "shaves by a hand that is hired." Victory is no assurance of probity.

Even if you insist that the Lord has granted something in the nature of a permanent grant of favor upon the United States---a position I do not see as warranted historically, scripturally, or in any other way---you could at least consider a version of that exceptionalism similar to that offered by Joshua Reuben Clark, who at different points in his life was US Ambassador to Mexico and a member of the First Presidency:

For America has a destiny---a destiny to conquer the world---not by force of arms, not by purchase and favor, for these conquests wash away, but by high purpose, by unselfish effort, by uplifting achievement, by a course of Christian living; a conquest that shall leave every nation free to move out to its own destiny; a conquest that shall bring, through the workings of our own example, the blessings of freedom and liberty to every people, without restraint or imposition or compulsion from us; a conquest that shall weld the whole earth together in one great brotherhood in a reign of mutual patience, forbearance, and charity, to a reign of peace to which we shall lead all others by our own righteous example.

CHURCH LEADERSHIP SUPPORT FOR US SELF-PERCEPTIONS: It is not even a defence of US motives to point out that, at times, the church's leadership have been publicly supportive of US actions.

A particularly important example is Gordon Hinckley's address "War and Peace" in Sunday Morning closing address of the April 2003 general conference. It is all the more emphatic following his closing address in the preceding evening's priesthood session, "Loyalty". I took "War and Peace", and I think most members took it, as the closest President Hinckley could come to putting his blessing upon the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Rereading it just now, I am nevertheless impressed with the evenhandedness of the opening part of the talk, and with his explicit prefacing of the latter part of his talk, in which he comes down on the side of the war party, with the following:

However, we all must also be mindful of another overriding responsibility, which I may add, governs my personal feelings and dictates my personal loyalties in the present situation.

Did he come down on the wrong side here, even if only personally? I believe he did. Did he hope that much of the membership would come with him? It would seem so, and in any case, many did. I know that one of my sisters had doubts about the war before listening to this talk, and this settled it for her. Perhaps it still does. There were others, however, like my sister-in-law---who loved and loves President Hinckley as much as anyone I personally know---who saw the Lord's hand in how little President Hinckley was actually permitted to support his clearly prefered position.

My response followed a different track again. I talked to my then stake president, a member of a very prominent church family. You would recognize his last name. He told me not only that his view was the same as mine, but that his entire family, many of them lawyers, also regarded the invasion of Iraq as wrong and illegal.

I also studied scriptures, and reminded myself of church history. Balaam the son of Beor was a prophet, after all. He tried as best he could to support Balak the son of Zippor. In the end, his desire for Balak's friendship cost him his life. He was killed in a war ordered by another prophet---Moses.

Moses exemplifies a different kind of constraint. It is generally accepted in the modern church as in early Christianity that Moses brought the higher law with him when he returned from the mountain the first time. The people's behavior materially changed what their prophet-leader was able to receive on their behalf the second time. President Hickley said that he was prayerful, but he did not say that his prayers had been given any clear answer. I believe he got no clear answer, and then did what you or I do when we have done what we can to get guidance, and nothing has been given by the time we need to make a decision.

Captain Moroni might well have been inspired to threaten insurrection, but he was simply wrong to imply that Pahoran was a traitor.

Peter presided in the Church---but Paul tells us in words we take to be canonical:

But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed. (Galatians 2:11)

Joseph Smith did, in the end, get permission from the Lord to lend Martin Harris 116 pages of manuscript. He trusted Harris too much.

Joseph Smith also appointed John C. Bennett an assistant to the first presidency, and made him essentially his de facto first counsellor. It was John C. Bennett who was able to get the Nauvoo City Charter through the Illinois legislature. Bennett had claimed to be a bachelor, but he in fact had an estranged wife and family. Smith forgave him that. But then Bennett started seducing Nauvoo women using the claim that he was practicing a higher form of marriage, a claim made credible by rumors of an impending revelation on plural marriage. Smith did not forgive him that. Bennett stuck around Nauvoo for a while, but eventually left, and went on tour denouncing Joseph Smith. Joseph Smith trusted Bennett too much too.

It would have to have been Brigham Young that incorporated words into the sacred ordinances about avenging the blood of the prophets. Those words were subsequently changed, so it cannot be argued that they were an eternal necessity. Young also knew within days what not only that his response to their question hadn't got through in time, but also what had actually happened at Mountain Meadows. He did not punish the perpetrators. Instead, he marshalled men in expectation of a retaliation. (My wife's patrilineal ancestor was hastily called away to this muster, just a few weeks later, leaving his sick and pregnant wife. He returned to find their new child already in its grave.) It is, on the one hand, fair to note that President Young gave orders against the massacre, if too late. It is also somewhat less than the truth to say that he is without responsibility. Susan Easton Black says that there was a rumor among the Saints that the Fansher company had "the gun that killed Old Joe". Had President Young used different words in the relevant ceremony, it is possible that the outcome would have been different. I don't know if it can be said that he trusted John Lee too much.

I am inclined to believe that similar instances could be found in virtually every First Presidency, right up to the present day. In particular, I believe President Hinckley trusted George W. Bush too much.

Another example is the appointment of Richard Bitner Wirthlin to the Second Quorum of Seventy by his cousin, Gordon Bitner Hinckley. Richard Wirthlin is most famous as Ronald Reagan's pollster. I happen to believe that Richard Wirthlin did a great deal of evil in that position. A quote I don't think I shall ever forget the gist of this quote of Wirthlin's, from Reagan's campaign bible, as it was called:

American democracy is less a form of government than a romantic preference for a particular value structure. (http://www.newint.org/issue146/democracy.htm)

Wirthlin's states truly the condition of the republic. What horrifies me is that Wirthlin, rather than bearing down in pure testimony against it, used it secretly and for manipulation.

Wirthlin was also instrumental, while working together with his former Reagan White House buddy Craig Fuller, who had moved to PR powerhouse Hill and Knowlton, in helping sell the war that expelled the Iraqis from Kuwait.

When Fuller joined its management, Philip Morris's already longstanding association with Wirthlin blossomed. Philip Morris (now Altria) is a tobacco company. He helped them as they assessed their plans around the world to forestall antismoking legislation. He ran surveys, hidden-nand and otherwise, not only among regular people but also among politicians.

To find documentary involvement of Richard Wirthlin's involvement with Philip Morris, go to http://www.pmdocs.com and do a search on Wirthlin. There are so many documents that I haven't really had a chance to sort through them all properly. I can show, however, the Richard Wirthlin was personally involved with Philip Morris from at least as early 1983, that he was still involved at least as late as 1995, that his research for them spanned Australia, Asia, the US and Europe. Look for yourself. This man was Reagan's pollster, President Hinckley's first cousin, Elder Wirthlin's brother, and the Presiding Bishop Wirthlin's son.

I believe President Hinckley trusted his cousin, and his cousin's political circle, too much.

In responding to the US invasion of Iraq, President Hinckley was in a exceptionally delicate position. His talk would seem to indicate that he was in some measure aware of that. Had his position---which I take to be a personal position, despite the setting---matched mine instead than the war party's, there would have been some very distressed LDS servicemen sitting in Iraq. I am well aware of that. But I am also aware of a number of my friends who were not, despite President Hinckley's entreaties, treated respectfully about their distrust of the Bush/Cheney invasion, and whose isolation has proved costly to them and a loss to the church.

You can claim, if you wish, that I have insufficient faith in the leadership of the church. But it is not in fact my job to have faith in them.

Perhaps the best answer here is a close reading of Mosiah 29.

I know of one church that in theory at least regards official statements by that church's earthly head to be infallible. Like you, however, I am not a Catholic.

AFGHANISTAN: My point here is not that the Soviet government or the Afghan communist government were staffed by choirboys, but that a succession of American governments are perfectly happy to lie gratuitously to their own people, and conduct secret murders as it suits them. Since you appear to concur in their reasoning and their deeds, there is little more to say, beyond referring you to Mosiah 29, where the difference between the Nephite kingdom and the Nephite reign of judges is described in terms of the people equitably sharing in the burden of responsibility for acts of government.

SECRET COMBINATIONS We both agree that what the Book of Mormon says about secret combinations is highly relevant to present circumstances. We also both agree that there are secret combinations operating at home and abroad. Where we begin to diverge is on whether the people and government of the United States better resemble a Light unto the World or the Whore of Babylon. I suspect and hope that you are correct that it would be difficult to join a secret combination in complete innocence. Nevertheless, I rather expect that it would be like getting into drugs or adultery or violence---incremental:

And there are also secret combinations, even as in times of old, according to the combinations of the devil, for he is the founder of all these things; yea, the founder of murder, and works of darkness; yea, and he leadeth them by the neck with a flaxen cord, until he bindeth them with his strong cords forever. (2 Ne. 26:22)

The Book of Mormon certainly does put evil goals and intentions right beside what little it tells us of the oaths. I believe it is being emphatic about hidden or nascent motives and their longer consequences. Reading carefully, we are never told that the Gadianton oaths and covenants themselves contain direct promises either to be wicked or even to support wickedness preferentially. Rather, they are oaths of mutual support, of brotherly loyalty even in the most extreme circumstances.

But behold, Satan did stir up the hearts of the more part of the Nephites, insomuch that they did unite with those bands of robbers, and did enter into their covenants and their oaths, that they would protect and preserve one another in whatsoever difficult circumstances they should be placed, that they should not suffer for their murders, and their plunderings, and their stealings. (Hel. 6:21)

I rather doubt that murder or plundering or stealing has any explicit mention in the Gadianton oaths. We have each other's backs...all for one and one for all...we are a band of brothers...my buddies, right or wrong. Fun, almost innocuous, high-minded even---rather like preparing for an excellent war. The Gadiantons even have their own internal system of law and adjudication (Hel 6:24). Wicked? Of course! But I doubt that the Gadiantons would have admitted that to themselves. As it is written "Every way of a man is right in his own eyes:" (Prov. 21:2)

In a secret combination, I would expect to find "I am the governor of this the secret society of Gadianton; which society and the works thereof I know to be good;" and also self-proclaimed conservatism "and they are of ancient date and they have been handed down unto us." (3 Ne 3:9)

Are secret combinations packaged as pacts with the devil? Hardly! Inductees swear "by their everlasting Maker" (Hel. 1:11), or "by the God of heaven, and also by the heavens, and also by the earth, and by their heads" (Eth. 8:14). Rather, these oaths, covenants, and plans---the loyalty, the belonging, the clarity of purpose---are highly appealing to a bestirred people. (Hel. 6:21) They are also tremendously seductive :

And now, my son, I command you that ye retain all their oaths, and their covenants, and their agreements in their secret abominations; yea, and all their signs and their wonders ye shall keep from this people, that they know them not, lest peradventure they should fall into darkness also and be destroyed.
For behold, there is a curse upon all this land, that destruction shall come upon all those workers of darkness, according to the power of God, when they are fully ripe; therefore I desire that this people might not be destroyed.
Therefore ye shall keep these secret plans of their oaths and their covenants from this people, and only their wickedness and their murders and their abominations shall ye make known unto them; (Alma 37:27-29)

You no doubt know what a false flag operation is. That is how I believe the secret combination thing works---would the Father of Lies put out job ads under his own name? Every secret combination, every tyranny must have its rich cloak of noble sentiment.

There is a generation that are pure in their own eyes, and yet is not washed from their filthiness. (Prov. 20:12)

Even when it tells us that the secret combinations combine to kill the saints, there is no reason to think that the name of deity is no longer being used:

...yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service. (John 16:2)

Again, however, you missed my point---the Gadiantons started among the Nephites, and the Book of Mormon is absolutely consistent that when the Nephites suffer from troubles with the Gadiantons, it is contemporary Nephite wickedness that is to blame, and there is no salvation without repentance. For the Nephites, Gadiantonism is only ever a kind of mirror.

--Alma

An argument with Jon Wilson---Bacevich, Krauthammer, and secret combinations

As Montaigne observes, "I quote others only in order the better to express myself". In like manner, Andrew Bacevich Sr. is hardly relying on Niebuhr. Bacevich is no ordinary Catholic or conservative---he graduated from Westpoint, is a Vietnam veteran, got his Ph.D. in diplomatic history from Princeton, is a former professor of history at West Point and then Johns Hopkins, is currently a professor of history at Boston University. Further, he lost his only son, 1 Lt. Andrew Bacevich Jr., to the war he publicly opposed from its beginning. If the truth of Bacevich's use of Niebuhr is not self-evident to you---if Krauthammer still seems more honest or accurate to you---I clearly need to look for a different starting point.

You mention "secret combinations", alluding to the Book of Mormon. Let's start there. The phrase "secret combinations" is often parsed, by unbelievers and also, unfortunately, by many believers, as if it were in the grand American tradition of conspiracy theories. Traditional conspiracy theories invariably demonize some internal or external Other---they are fingers of blame pointing outwards.

The Book of Mormon does just the opposite. After the Jaredites and outside Jersusalem, the secret combinations arise first, and flourish most greatly, among the Nephites. Even when they are established among Nephite dissenters and Lamanites, the Book of Mormon persists in naming them for, and they even name themselves for, Gadianton, a well-connected, political Nephite.

Their existence, their goals, even their methods, aren't really all that secret: "And it came to pass on the other hand, that the Nephites did build them up and support them, beginning at the more wicked part of them, until they had overspread all the land of the Nephites, and had seduced the more part of the righteous until they had come down to believe in their works and partake of their spoils, and to join with them in their secret murders and combinations." (Hel. 6:38) Their secrecy appears to lie mostly in their "secret works", their oaths and their operational particulars.

In the Book of Mormon, the fingers always point backwards. Consider the secret society of Gadianton led by Giddianhi, armed for war and occupying wilderness and mountains. The Nephite people wanted immediate military action, asking the Nephite commander Gidgiddoni to

Pray unto the Lord, and let us go up upon the mountains and into the wilderness, that we may fall upon the robbers and destroy them in their own lands. (3 Ne 3:20)

And what is Gidgiddoni's response to this call for preventive war, against an enemy they had already fought in the field?

The Lord forbid; for if we should go up against them the Lord would deliver us into their hands; therefore we will prepare ourselves in the center of our lands, and we will gather all our armies together, and we will not go against them, but we will wait till they shall come against us; therefore as the Lord liveth, if we do this he will deliver them into our hands. (v. 21)

What is the chief judge Lachoneus' program for fortifying these Nephites against their enemies? Gathering: "they did dwell in one land, and in one body," preaching: "and they did fear the words which had been spoken by Lachoneus, insomuch that they did repent of all their sins," and prayer: "and they did put up their prayers unto the Lord their God, that he would deliver them in the time that their enemies should come down against them to battle." (v. 25)

What is the result of Lachoneus's preparation of his people? "And they were exceedingly sorrowful because of their enemies." Among the emotions coming from the promoters of this war, I have heard triumphalism, I have heard entreaties for patience, I have heard vexed frustration. I have yet to hear sorrow. Such people are not to be trusted. I do see real sorrow in Bacevich, and in what he quotes of Niebuhr. From this, military preparations follow, emphasizing strength in defense:

And Gidgiddoni did cause that they should make weapons of war of every kind, and they should be strong with armor, and with shields, and with bucklers, after the manner of his instruction. (v. 25)

The Book of Mormon is remarkably consistent about who is to blame when the Nephites are beset by Gadianton robbers---it is the profligate Nephites themselves who are to blame, and repentance is the precondition of deliverance.

If the foreign Gadiantons are spawned by the Nephites, if the Nephite Gadiantons are capable of becoming popular within the Nephite church, what is the modern equivalent? Let us turn to a tiny, indirect bit of Gates---the man George W. Bush replaced Rumsfeld with as US Secretary of Defence and who continues in that position under Barack Obama---and a lot of Brzezinski, original at http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BRZ110A.html :

The CIA's Intervention in Afghanistan
Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski,
President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser

Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998
Posted at globalresearch.ca 15 October 2001

Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs ["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?

Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?

B: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?

B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?

B: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.

B: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn't a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries.

Translated from the French by Bill Blum
Copyright, Le Nouvel Observateur and Bill Blum. For fair use only. [I believe this to be fair use.]

It is an irony that his daughter Mika Brzezinski, a New York television news anchor, covered 9/11 live only a few years later.

Or, closer to home, look at this, from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3340101/, on the 1998 embassy bombing in Nairobi, (Michael Moran, NEW YORK, Aug. 24, 1998) :

Indeed, to this day, those involved in the decision to give the Afghan rebels access to a fortune in covert funding and top-level combat weaponry continue to defend that move in the context of the Cold War. Sen. Orrin Hatch, a senior Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee making those decisions, told my colleague Robert Windrem that he would make the same call again today even knowing what bin Laden would do subsequently. “It was worth it,” he said.

“Those were very important, pivotal matters that played an important role in the downfall of the Soviet Union,” he said.

What Dr. Brzezinski and Sen. Hatch are proud of is stirring up a war that killed more than a million Afghans, disabled more than a million more Afghans, and displaced about two million Afghans internally and caused about 5 million Afghans to migrate to Iran or Pakistan.

Even the generally truthful Carter called it "Soviet agression". Reagan, who vastly expanded the Carter/Brzezinski initiative, castigated the Soviets for invading Afghanistan, calling them evil and expansionary, and called the Soviets liars for telling the truth---which is that the United States actively helped provoke the war, and the Soviets only reluctantly entered after being asked to by the Afghan government. (How reluctant only came out later---the Afghan government implored the Soviets many times over a period of months before the Soviet government reluctlantly acquiesced.)
I am old enough to remember Reagan saying such things, and I believed him at the time on this---after all what else had I been led to expect from the Soviet government? But Reagan, like Carter before him, was lying through his teeth, and the Soviets were telling the truth.

What do you call it when someone sitting in Nevada steers a drone somewhere in the Middle East to kill someone, and usually a number of innocent bystanders as well, without trial, without a chance to hear and answer charges? Where is thy glory, for it is darkness unto me!

Lies, murder on a massive scale, secret operations and accompanying oaths---thought they certainly exist elsewhere, do you really think that you need to look beyond the United States conducting business as usual to find them?

I should mention the oaths, which are always there in the Book of Mormon accounts of secret combinations. We can overlook the shenanigans of the highly respectable Skull and Bones for the time being---in any case, since Skull and Bones started admitting woman, they seem to have stopped sharing sexual histories as a way of bonding.

Do you not know that the security services of the US, as elsewhere, use entrapment and prostitution as well as killing and torture? They have a history of trading in illegal weapons and illegal drugs---you have to avert your eyes not to see it. Do you not understand that they, as elsewhere, use levels and compartments to manage secrets---and that each level, each compartment is secured by its own oath?

If you can't see these instrumentalities of government as secret combinations in their own right, I am going to have to think of another starting point. That they are popular among members of the church---well, that is hardly an argument, in the Book of Mormon context, that they are NOT secret combinations?

Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage

The following review also seems relevant to what happens when the definition of marriage changes... ---ATW



Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage

Book by Kathryn Edin

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and Maria Kefalas

Review by Richard Gibson, original at

http://www.amazon.com/Promises-Can-Keep-Motherhood-Marriage/product-reviews/0520248198/ref=cm_cr_dp_all_helpful?ie=UTF8&coliid=&showViewpoints=1&colid=&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending

at December 10, 2007.

This book examines why poor women have children prior to being married. The authors did a years-long, very intense, ethnographic study of dozens of poor women of all races in some of the worst neighbrhorhoods of Philadelphia.

The book is good. It is easy to read, and it maintains a nice balance between academic depth -- the authors are well read in their area, but are low key about it -- and engagement with their subjects. The authors care about these women, and that comes across.

The book has a number of conclusions, which are all, to some degree, unexpected.

First, the authors do not believe that the problem is poverty. Obviously, life for these women is more difficult, because they are poor, but that is not whey they have kids before they marry. After all, we have always had poor people, and, in the not so-distant past, the vast majority married before they had kids. No, the authors conclude, the fundamental reason why the poor have children before marriage is a massive cultural shift. Quite simply, marriage has been re-defined. It used to be that one could not have sex, have kids or be accepted as an adult, without being married. Now, marriage has been disconnected from all of these things. The authors see this shift as not being limited to the poor; indeed, they believe that the poor are simply following the middle class in this regard.

Second, although the authors see the poor as having the same basic values as the middle class, they believe that these values play out differently for the poor. The middle class generally gets married, prior to having children, because middle class women have alot to lose. They have careers. They have futures. Having kids, outside marriage, threatens all of this. Since the paramount goal is individual fulfillment, middle-class women do not threaten all of the good things in their lives by having children without any male support.

The poor, on the other hand, say our authors, basically have nothing in their lives which having children would threaten. They do not have a career. They work at lousy low-wage jobs, to which they can return after having kids, because what difference does it make. The authors portray their women as having so little in their lives that they see no downside to having kids by themselves. On the contrary, the authors report that poor women value children, and see the children as adding a great deal to their lives. Many of the subjects report that their lives were an out of control mess -- drinking, drugging, partying -- until they had kids, which is often reported as turning them around.

Third, this book reports a very bleak landscape between the sexes among the poor. Men are just no damm good, virtually all of the women in this book say. Men will not grow up, do not support their kids, chase other women, are often violently abusive and often wind up in jail. While most women report having a child as turning their lives around, and making them into responsibile adults, most of the men involved can not handle the responsibility and run away. It is deeply depressing to read how bitterly these women distrust the men in their lives. (I found that the account rang true, but, to be fair, the authors only spoke to poor women; they did not speak to poor men, who might give a different version.)

In the end, the book describes this odd paralled universe, in which poor women want children and marriage, but see children as easy to get and marriage as an impossible dream.

Very eye-opening book, and very depressing.

Against same-sex marriage---a reply to Matt Riddle

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/profile.php?id=647612425&ref=nf

thread beginning June 6 at 2:54am

...

It seems to me that support for same-sex marriage correlates strongly---not perfectly---with disbelief in the law of chastity, the idea that sex should be confined to marriage. Believers in the law of chastity tend to take marriage itself much more seriously. It is therefore vexing to have people who on the whole have been rather dismissive of marriage trying to change its character for those who of us who have taken it seriously all along. Another correlation is support for gay marriage and support for abortion. It is also rather vexing that a class for whom breeding is not a central occupation, and that usually supports those who prefer to abort rather than bear and adopt, now wish as a class to be considered equally valid adoptive parents, perhaps even irrespective of the wishes of the birth parent.

If the law changed to allow the marriage of same-sex couples, I concede that I am little more worried than you are for how our generation conducts itself. What most worries me most would probably take about two generations to really set in: widespread bisexual opportunism, increasing selfishness, increasing misery. A world in which it is particularly bad to be poor, or powerless, or a child.

An image of this is the roving band of male chimpanzees, who keep their testosterone levels up by homosexual activity. On meeting a female, they each try to persuade her to wander off alone for a few days for a consortship. If all are unsuccessful at persuasion, they take turns anyway. Think of what happens in prisons! You never really did answer my question as to why three or a dozen gay men should not be permitted to marry.

Among the relatively well-protected parts of the social order where we are, perhaps there will be little change. Our subculture was not immune to heightened divorce levels in the late seventies after the enactment of no-fault divorce, and it seems to be highly susceptible to internet porn right now. But perhaps we'd be okay at first. It would probably hit the less protected parts of our society first, and possibly with more ferocity than the no-fault divorce laws ever did.

Or maybe what will really smash things up is a nasty movement propelled into power in a kind of culture-war countercoup. I still can't really tell the extent to which fascism and nazism were reactions to, or heirs of, the campy permissiveness of impotent Weimar. Probably they were both.

In the short run, though, things would be pretty normal. I've lived elsewhere, Matt. I spent much of my teenage years in a subdivision in Auckland where many of the surrounding families where headed by single woman who counted themselves lucky if they could drag some sorry thing back home from the disco on a Friday night, and maybe keep him for a day or two. I've lived in Sydney, in Canberra, in Melbourne. I am well aware how easily Chicken Little arguments are offered here for things that work reasonably well elsewhere---single payer health care, national curriculum, national education funding, government regulators with teeth, family support transfer payments, vastly smaller military budgets, vastly smaller prison systems.

Even in the short run, however, and even in the judgment of those most directly affected, I do not believe that the effect of the change you propose would be entirely positive.

I once worked for a non-profit that had its office in a United Methodist Church building complex that somewhat resembled an LDS stake center. Apart from a few differences in dress code and dietary laws, and the fact that their church ran a day care, these people had between them much of the social feel of an LDS ward, and were even similar in racial compostion. I did not my self see anyone who was manifestly homosexual, but this particular parish, led by its chief pastor, dissented from the mainline UMC view that deprecated same-sex relationships. A major part of my job back then was conducting brief interviews with a variety of people. Some of the people I interviewed were members of that parish.

I remember one woman, in particular, who was getting ready to move out of the "retirement palace"---her words---that she had built with her husband, so that they could sell it. A few years earlier, the husband had decided, after two decades of marriage and the raising of a daughter together, that he was gay. So this couple separated and divorced, but still they continued attending this parish. Within a year of separating, the ex-husband was living with a male partner he had found. She described coming to their church for Christmas Eve services, to see her ex-husband and his new partner both singing in the choir. I wondered what their daughter thought about all this, but it appears she turned out to be "accepting" of all this. This woman had lost her intended future, and was of an age when she would likely remain single for life. She came across not bitter, not angry, just sad. Her ex had thought it would be a great idea for their daughter, her, him, and his new partner to all have Thanksgiving together. She was struggling with this a bit, but it was not a forgone conclusion that she would reject the idea. She was trying to be as accepting as she could be, and succeeding about as well as possible I suppose. In a way, she was a model of what her parish thought a Christian should be under such circumstances. I, on the other hand, left that interview with heightened appreciation for LDS church discipline.

All that occured under current law, of course, and it is even possible that broader availability of same-sex options might have prevented that particular marriage in the first place. I find it unlikely, however, that the change you propose would lower the number of such cases. This is where it really matters that the incidence of bisexuality in practice is higher than the incidence of exclusive homosexuality, and that self-perceived orientation can drift or remain broad over a lifespan.

Still, there are troubling glimmers even now of new insolence. What gives some bureaucrat who runs the Provo City Pool or Utah Transit the right to decide how large a 'family' may reasonably be? Why is it that it now not uncommon to find self-described feminists who consider pornography okay, even liberating? The feminist old guard would have burned to the ground the offices of the on-campus porno magazines that Ivy League schools now openly harbor.

At present, I have little problem with polygyny, or even polyandry. For each of those, I can find at least some historical cases when they seem to work. Maybe they make sense now, at least in some settings.

I am not holding up our current system of marriage as perfect. From my mid-teens until marriage lasted just over two decades for me, and I never really liked being single or childless during any of that time: I simply accepted with regret that I did not yet have a wife, did not yet have children. That acceptance did me some good and no harm. I remember a bishop once telling me that about 30% of faithful LDS women would not get the chance to marry a faithful LDS man in their lifetime. Long-term singleness or childlessness are simply not things I would wish on any adult capable of treating a spouse or children with consistent decency. I do not wish that on my single LDS friends and relatives. I do not wish it on other decent adults either.

Several years ago, in Glen Burnie, Maryland, I took my family to a sandwich bar for a rare treat. My two eldest children were eyeing rubber balls in vending machines---we had little left after paying for the food, and the price looked a little steep, in any case, so we said no when they asked. A little later, the two eldest were each playing with such a ball. At the next table were the only other people in the room, a clearly lesbian couple. One if these women was enjoying my children's pleasure in their new acquisitions. My wife and I are extremely careful who gets access to our children and under what conditions. We are careful, insistent, even loud, about who is permitted to take pictures of our children. Under most circumstances, someone who furtively slipped gifts to our children would invite incandescent wrath. But not here. The couple stayed a little longer, and then left, never glancing in the direction where my wife and I sat. I am far from sure that that couple would make bad parents.

Nevertheless, and here is where allowing same-sex marriage starts to really bite: if my wife and I were to die tomorrow, and if no married sibling could take them, their faithful LDS aunts would nevertheless rate ahead in our eyes of any unmarried couple or same-sex couple we could imagine, however decent and resourceful. I am not averse to having other parents choose differently for their children---with agreement of the adults involved it is already possible under current law for a child to be sent by its parents to a gay friend or relative, complete with an affidavit that essentially confers guardianship. But I would want our wishes for our own children to be respected, and not second-guessed by a court, the way it would likely be if same-sex couples are permitted to marry.

Frankly, issue is the issue. If it weren't for the bearing and rearing of children, what real need is there for marriage?