On December 26th I flew to Kiev to be an international observer for their Presidential election. It was their second attempt at the democratic process, the first being declared invalid because of voting fraud alleged against the non-democratic candidate, Viktor Yanukovich, a man of old communistic ideology and strongly backed by Vladimir Putin of Russia. The challenger and loser of the first election attempt was Viktor Yushchenko. He's the one who is married to the Ukrainian American from Chicago. You may recall that Yushchenko was the candidate who was mysteriously poisoned by dioxin in a failed attempt to eliminate a challenger to the old order of non democratic government. The vote counting went on for some days and was supervised under observance of mostly European observers.
Yushchenko won, this time by a decisive margin. On the 27th of December the Transportation Minister committed suicide. He had been accused of busing voters from one city to the other for multiple voting during the first attempt. Thereafter, five other old administration officials followed suit rather than live in a country which is poised to hold officials accountable for their actions in absolute contrast to the way things were and are now again becoming in neighboring "big brother" Russia. I came home on January 10th the day after Ukraine's Supreme Court dismissed Yanukovich's protest over having lost.
This was my twenty-third visit to Eastern Europe and I have been in Kiev many times. I have been to nearly all of the cities in Ukraine, Europe's second largest country of fifty two million, but this time things were noticeably different throughout the country. There was passion in the air, there was national pride. There in Independence Square in the city's center were two and a half million people from all parts of Ukraine who had camped in tents for nearly two months to assure that their election, their future, would not this time be stolen. The police, the army security, the state controlled newspapers and television stations refused to turn against the masses of young and old alike demanding democracy. They called it the "Orange Revolution" and everywhere there were orange scarves and flags.
Unlike Holland, Germany and France where I had been just prior to going to Kiev and where we are seen as irreversibly separated from what they see as rational thinking, there was very little anti-American sentiment in Ukraine. Although newly elected President Yushchenko plans to pull their small contingency of troops out of Iraq, Ukraine wishes to be a part of democratic Europe and the west. As I have always found, Americans are well received in all parts of Ukraine including the eastern regions as this time I spent much time in that area where Yushchenko is most unpopular and America is viewed somewhat suspiciously as having influenced the election outcome. The one question that young and the old repeatedly asked me this time is, "why don't Americans take to the streets as we did to stop what many in your country know is wrong?" They only referred to the war in Iraq. I thought about speaking of the democratic process' loyal opposition as for waiting for four more years but was reminded by university professors and students alike of how Ohio's exit polls favoring John Kerry resembled so closely the exit polls in Ukraine's first invalidated attempt. They wanted to know if all Americans now simply support what is seen as unilateral directives by our administration which, frankly, are nearly universally viewed as the world's largest threat to peace. I responded each time, "no, half the Americans don't."
This is an encyclical in the aftermath of my seeing our nation from the short distance of being overseas. So my words focus on not the policy which makes so little sense, but to the righteousness which spawns it. These thoughts have to do with the underlying religion of profit and how it has become cloaked in a warped Christian spin. I have watched as the faith that I believe in, Christianity, has been hijacked by fundamentalists who claim to speak for Jesus, but whose actions are anything but Christian.
We've heard a lot lately about so-called "moral values" as having swung the election to President Bush. Well I'm a true believer in moral values too, but we need to have a discussion, all over this country, about exactly what constitutes a "moral value" --I mean, just what are we talking about? Basically, we don't get to make them up as we go along, especially not if we are people of faith. We have an inherited tradition of what is right and what is wrong, and indeed we all know that moral is as moral does.
Let me offer just a few reasons why I take issue with those in power who claim that moral values are on their side:
1) When you start a war on false pretenses, and then act as if your deceptions are justified because you are doing God's will, and that your critics are either unpatriotic or lacking in faith, you are doing something immoral.
2) When you live in a country that has established international rules for waging a just war, built the United Nations on your own soil to enforce them, and then arrogantly break the very rules you set down for the rest of the world, you are doing something immoral.
3) When you act as if the lives of Iraqi civilians are not as important as the lives of American soldiers, and refuse to even count them, you are doing something immoral.
4) When you find a way to avoid combat in Vietnam, and then question the patriotism of someone who volunteered to fight, and came home a hero, you are doing something immoral.
5) When you ignore the fundamental teachings of the gospel which says that the way the strong treat the weak is the ultimate ethical test, by giving tax breaks to the wealthiest among us so the strong will get stronger and the weak will get weaker, you are doing something immoral.
6) When you wink at the torture of prisoners, and deprive so-called "enemy combatants" of the rules of the Geneva Convention which your own country helped to establish, and then insist that other countries follow you blindly, you are doing something immoral.
7) When you claim that the world can be divided up into the good guys and ¿the evil doers,¿ slice up your own nation into those who are with you, or who are with the terrorists --and then launch a war which enriches your own friends and seizes control of the oil to which we are addicted to instead of helping us to kick the habit, you are doing something immoral.
8) When you fail to veto a single spending bill, but ask us to pay for a war with no exit strategy and no end in sight, creating an enormous deficit that hangs like a great millstone around the necks of our children, you are doing something immoral.
9) When you cause the majority of the world to hate a country that was once the most loved nation in the world, and act like it doesn't matter what others think of us, only what "God" thinks, you have done something immoral.
10) When you use hatred of homosexuals as a wedge issue to turn out record numbers of evangelical voters, and use the Constitution as a tool of discrimination, you are doing something immoral.
11) When you favor the death penalty, and yet claim to be a follower of Jesus, who said an eye for an eye was the old way, not the way of the kingdom, you are doing something immoral.
12) When you dismantle countless environmental laws designed to protect the earth which is God's gift to us all, so that the corporations that bought you and paid for your favors will make higher profits while our children breathe dirty air and live in a toxic world, you have done something immoral, as indeed the earth belongs to the soul of us all and not to Halliburton.
13) When you claim that our God is bigger than their God, and that our killing is righteous, while theirs is evil, we have begun to resemble the enemy that we claim to be fighting, and that is immoral. We have met the enemy, and in fact the enemy is us.
14) When you tell people that you intend to run and govern as a "compassionate conservative," using the word which is the essence of all religious faith ...compassion, and then show no compassion for anyone who disagrees with you, and no patience with those who cry to you for help, you are doing something immoral.
15) When you talk about Jesus constantly, who was a healer of the sick, but do nothing to make sure that anyone who is sick can go to see a doctor, even if he or she doesn't have a penny in their pocket, you are doing something immoral.
16) When you put judges on the bench who are racist and will set women back a hundred years, and when you surround yourself with preachers who say gays ought to be killed, you are doing something immoral.
I am tired of people thinking that because I'm a Christian I must be a supporter of President Bush, or that because I favor the civil rights of citizens and our guaranteed Constitutional protections that I must not be a person of faith.
I am tired of people saying that I can't support the troops but at the same time oppose this never-ending war, the same words that were heard when Vietnam was raging. The only question is how many people are going to die before these "make-believe Christians" are removed from power?
This country is being brought to brink of financial bankruptcy. The war and related corporate profit policies are morally bankrupt. The claim of this administration to be Christian is bankrupt.
Do not be afraid to speak out and tell the truth of how you feel. Don't back down when friends tell you that the cause is righteous and that the flag should be wrapped around the cross, and all of us are just supposed to keep our mouths shut. If you care about morality know that real Christians take chances for peace. So do real Jews, real Muslims, real Hindus, and real Buddhists. Every human being is precious. This is the central theme of the United Nations mandate. Arrogance is the opposite of faith. Greed is the opposite of charity, and the belief, that this man holds that he has never made a mistake, is the mark of a deluded man and quite certainly not a man of faith.
Evidently it is time to refuse to be a part of this madness. An earlier generation found it necessary to voice their opinions openly. They spoke up and ended a tragic and seemingly never-ending war. They threw a Vice President, an Attorney General, seventeen cabinet-post appointees into prison for breaking the law, and ultimately forced a dishonest President, one who consistently through his words and policy lied and deceived the American people, to leave office in disgrace. We all must be accountable again. Do not acquiesce in silence or we will all share in the responsibility for what is being done to our country and the world.
Richard Williams
Williamston, Michigan
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