Five years into the Iraq war

THE WAR IN IRAQ: FIVE YEARS

CULTURAL FALLOUT
Since U.S. forces began bombarding Iraq in 2003, the impact of the war has been felt far beyond the battlefields.

Monday, March 17, 2008

2004 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry rallies support around anti-war sentiment. During debates with President Bush, he reminds voters that Bush failed to gain international support for the Iraq invasion, and that his major premise for the war - weapons of mass destruction - proved untrue. He calls for more NATO troops to be sent to Iraq and expanding the training of Iraqi security forces.

2006 CONGRESSIONAL ELECTIONS

Democrats take control of Congress after polls show a majority of Americans want a withdrawal or an end to U.S. military involvement in Iraq. "This election is about Iraq. If indeed it turns out the way that people expect it to turn out, the American people will have spoken, and they will have rejected the course of action the president is on," says San Francisco Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi.

2008 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

The Iraq war is a dominant campaign issue. On the Democratic side, Sen. Barack Obama, an early opponent of the war, and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who voted to authorize military force in Iraq, say they will end the war. While Obama says he will withdraw U.S. troops within 16 months, Clinton says she will bring them home "as quickly as we can." Both want to keep some U.S. troops in Iraq to battle al Qaeda in Iraq and protect diplomats and aid workers, and both are vague about how long those troops would stay.

Presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain, on the other hand, revives a floundering candidacy over renewed optimism over the success of Bush's "surge." McCain says he will fight the Democrats on early withdrawal, which he dubs "a date for surrender." McCain says U.S. troops could spend "maybe 100" years in Iraq.

THE 'SURGE'

Jan. 10, 2007: Bush announces a plan to send 21,500 additional U.S. troops to Baghdad and Anbar province to improve security, avert civil war and provide time for political reconciliation among Iraq's major factions. Another 8,000 support forces are later deployed. The troop increase, which has dramatically reduced violence in those areas, is scheduled to end in July 2008. Critics, however, say the decline in violence is due more to anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's August 2007 unilateral cease-fire.

FUTURE U.S. TROOP WITHDRAWAL

To date, one of the five extra Army brigades sent to Iraq as part of the increase has returned without being replaced, reducing the number of brigades from a peak of 20 to 19. Lt. Gen. Carter Ham, operations chief for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says the number will drop to 18 this month. By July, it will drop to 15, with troop levels likely to be about 140,000 U.S. soldiers. That compares with 132,000 when Bush approved the increase and the current total of 159,000.

BLACKWATER

Blackwater Worldwide, the largest of the private security firms in Iraq with some 1,000 employees, has received millions of dollars in contracts from the State Department to protect U.S. officials and some foreign diplomats. The North Carolina firm also has been involved in controversy:

On March 31, 2004, four Blackwater employees are killed in Fallujah and their bodies hung on a bridge. U.S. forces attack the city in response.

On Sept. 16, 2007, Blackwater employees shoot and kill 17 Iraqi civilians, at least 14 of whom are killed "without cause," according to an FBI investigation. Whether the group will be legally prosecuted is not clear.

On Oct. 5, 2007, the U.S. State Department announces new rules for Blackwater's armed guards in Iraq. Under new guidelines, State Department security agents will accompany all Blackwater employees in and around Baghdad, install video surveillance equipment in Blackwater armored vehicles, and record radio communications between Blackwater convoys and the military and civilian agencies that supervise their activities.

REFUGEES

The Iraq war has created nearly 4 million refugees, almost 16 percent of the population. This includes 2 million people who have fled the country - mostly to Syria and Jordan - and 1.9 million internally displaced people. Although Christians make up just 5 percent of the population, they comprise 40 percent of refugees now living in neighboring countries, according to the United Nations.

MOVIES AND DOCUMENTARIES

When filmmakers started weighing in on the Iraq war, ideologies clashed. No sooner had "Saving Jessica Lynch" painted a picture of heroism in a 2003 made-for-TV movie than heavyweight documentarian Michael Moore unleashed his "Fahrenheit 9/11" broadside in 2004. That film, along with Robert Greenwald's "Uncovered," scorned the Bush administration's case for going to war in the first place. "Gunner Palace," a documentary released in 2005, offered a ground-eye view of soldiers gritting it out under fire in Baghdad four months after Bush's "Mission Accomplished" declaration.

Many other documentaries followed, from "The Ground Truth" (about Iraq war vets) to "The War Tapes" (made from video footage shot by National Guardsmen in Iraq) in 2006 to last year's widely praised "No End in Sight" (about the mangled conduct of the war).

Steven Bochco broke new ground with his 2005 TV drama "Over There," a fictional treatment of both the Iraq war zone and the home front. The first major wave of Iraq war feature films hit theaters in 2007. They included the mournful "In the Valley of Elah," the angry "Rendition," Robert Redford's dogmatic "Lions for Lambs" and Brian de Palma's rough-hewn "Redacted," about the rape and murder of an Iraqi girl by American soldiers in 2006. Audiences stayed away from all of them, prompting many critics to speculate that the public wasn't ready to see an ongoing war and its fallout reflected back at them onscreen.

BOOKS

Books about the war came thick and fast, with many of them, like Tomas E. Ricks' best-selling "Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq" (2006) and George Packer's "The Assassins Gate: America in Iraq" (2006), capturing wide attention.

The Washington Post's Bob Woodward, of Watergate fame, wrote two popular histories of the Bush war years - "Plan of Attack" (2004) and "State of Denial" (2006).

Bernard Lewis' presciently timed "The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror," came out in March 2003.

U.N. inspector Hans Blix recounted his aborted search for weapons of mass destruction in "Disarming Iraq" (2004).

Larry Diamond, a Stanford professor and colleague of Condoleezza Rice, published "Squandered Victory: The American Operation and the Bungled Attempt to Bring Democracy to Iraq" (2005).

Everyday soldiers told their side of the story - Colby Buzzell's "My War: Killing Time in Iraq" (2005) and John Crawford's "The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell: An Accidental Soldier's Account of the War in Iraq" (2005).

So did prominent figures such as former chief U.S. counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke - "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror" (2004).

Satirists haven't sat out the conflict either - Matt Wuerker's "The Madness of King George" appeared in 2004.

DIXIE CHICKS

An all-woman country band from Texas became front-page news just before the war began. At a March 10, 2003, concert in England, band member Natalie Maines introduced the song "Travelin' Soldier" with the widely circulated remark, "We do not want this war, this violence, and we're ashamed that the president of the United States is from Texas." Less well reported was band member Emily Robinson's statement that they supported the American troops 100 percent. The Dixie Chicks became an instant cause celebre. Their concerts were boycotted (about half their appearance dates dried up) and their recordings were publicly destroyed in anti-Dixie Chicks demonstrations. Maines apologized on March 14: "I love my country, I am a proud American." But both the damage and the flash-point fame had taken over. In May of that year, the Dixie Chicks appeared on the cover of Entertainment Weekly, their nude bodies inscribed with words about the pressures of exercising free speech in wartime - "Boycott," "Dixie Sluts," "Peace," "Traitors." A 2006 documentary film, "Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing," told the story of the band's tribulations.

PEACE MARCHES

Protesters took to the streets before the invasion began. The largest prewar demonstrations took place on Feb. 15, 2003, when millions marched in cities around the world.

The San Francisco protest took place the following day in what turned out to be a contentious event. Organizers said 200,000 showed up; The Chronicle used its own photographs to peg the number at about 65,000.

Protests continued internationally through the spring as combat neared and began; they included thousands of candlelight vigils on March 16 and a March 20 protest that blocked some San Francisco city streets. Signs, stilts, costumes, speeches and music helped conjure a form of political street theater not seen since the Vietnam era.

On April 7, 2003, protesters skirmished with police at the Port of Oakland. The occupation of Iraq drew marchers back to the streets later that year and on subsequent anniversaries of the war's onset and other dates. A June 5, 2004, protest march in San Francisco was answered by a healthy number of pro-U.S. policy demonstrators.

Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, camped out near Bush's vacation home in Crawford, Texas, in August 2005.

Peace marches lost momentum as the war ground on, but have continued to the present, with actions planned around the world for this month's fifth anniversary of the invasion.

NAKED PROTESTS

Women began stripping in Marin in the fall of 2002, assembling on a beach, a playing field and a pasture to put their bodies on the line to protest the impending war. Unreasonable Women of West Marin Baring Witness, sometimes more than 200 of them at a single showing, gathered to spell out "No War" or a giant human peace symbol with their naked forms.

"It got your attention, didn't it?" asked organizer Donna Sheehan of a Chronicle reporter. Critics called it an empty stunt by bored housewives and exhibitionists.

In London a group called Bare Witness spelled out its feelings on a lawn in front of the Houses of Parliament when Bush visited in November 2003. Hundreds of naked protesters assembled in Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere.

And then there were the freelance soloists, like the woman who paraded naked through New York's Washington Square in 2005 with "Stop the War" painted on her backside and something written in Arabic on the front.

ABU GHRAIB

The abuse, humiliation, torture and alleged murder of Iraqis held at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison shocked the world in 2004 when photographs appeared on "60 Minutes," in the New Yorker magazine and around the world.

Prisoners were stripped, menaced with dogs, forced to simulate sexual activity, sodomized and posed with hoods over their heads and wires attached to their bodies.

A number of U.S. soldiers were court-martialed, convicted and sentenced, all of them of relatively low rank.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld testified to Congress, "These events occurred on my watch." He said, "I am accountable for them." Rumsfeld resisted calls for his immediate resignation. He remained in office until 2006.

VALERIE PLAME WILSON

In July 2003, a former U.S. ambassador named Joseph Wilson published a New York Times opinion piece about his 2002 mission to Africa to investigate a possible nuclear build-up in Iraq.

He found no evidence that the Iraqi government had purchased or tried to purchase yellowcake uranium from Niger. The Bush administration, Wilson wrote, had distorted the truth to "exaggerate the Iraqi threat" as a justification for going to war.

The following week, newspaper columnist Robert Novak revealed the name of Wilson's wife, a covert CIA operations officer named Valerie Plame Wilson. Allegations that White House insiders had leaked her name to Novak and other reporters led to a grand jury investigation, the appointment of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and the 2005 indictment and 2007 conviction of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff. Bush commuted the 30-month prison sentence.

2004 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry rallies support around anti-war sentiment. During debates with President Bush, he reminds voters that Bush failed to gain international support for the Iraq invasion, and that his major premise for the war - weapons of mass destruction - proved untrue. He calls for more NATO troops to be sent to Iraq and expanding the training of Iraqi security forces.

2006 CONGRESSIONAL ELECTIONS

Democrats take control of Congress after polls show a majority of Americans want a withdrawal or an end to U.S. military involvement in Iraq. "This election is about Iraq. If indeed it turns out the way that people expect it to turn out, the American people will have spoken, and they will have rejected the course of action the president is on," says San Francisco Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi.

2008 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

The Iraq war is a dominant campaign issue. On the Democratic side, Sen. Barack Obama, an early opponent of the war, and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who voted to authorize military force in Iraq, say they will end the war. While Obama says he will withdraw U.S. troops within 16 months, Clinton says she will bring them home "as quickly as we can." Both want to keep some U.S. troops in Iraq to battle al Qaeda in Iraq and protect diplomats and aid workers, and both are vague about how long those troops would stay.

Presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain, on the other hand, revives a floundering candidacy over renewed optimism over the success of Bush's "surge." McCain says he will fight the Democrats on early withdrawal, which he dubs "a date for surrender." McCain says U.S. troops could spend "maybe 100" years in Iraq.

THE 'SURGE'

Jan. 10, 2007: Bush announces a plan to send 21,500 additional U.S. troops to Baghdad and Anbar province to improve security, avert civil war and provide time for political reconciliation among Iraq's major factions. Another 8,000 support forces are later deployed. The troop increase, which has dramatically reduced violence in those areas, is scheduled to end in July 2008. Critics, however, say the decline in violence is due more to anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's August 2007 unilateral cease-fire.

FUTURE U.S. TROOP WITHDRAWAL

To date, one of the five extra Army brigades sent to Iraq as part of the increase has returned without being replaced, reducing the number of brigades from a peak of 20 to 19. Lt. Gen. Carter Ham, operations chief for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says the number will drop to 18 this month. By July, it will drop to 15, with troop levels likely to be about 140,000 U.S. soldiers. That compares with 132,000 when Bush approved the increase and the current total of 159,000.

BLACKWATER

Blackwater Worldwide, the largest of the private security firms in Iraq with some 1,000 employees, has received millions of dollars in contracts from the State Department to protect U.S. officials and some foreign diplomats. The North Carolina firm also has been involved in controversy:

On March 31, 2004, four Blackwater employees are killed in Fallujah and their bodies hung on a bridge. U.S. forces attack the city in response.

On Sept. 16, 2007, Blackwater employees shoot and kill 17 Iraqi civilians, at least 14 of whom are killed "without cause," according to an FBI investigation. Whether the group will be legally prosecuted is not clear.

On Oct. 5, 2007, the U.S. State Department announces new rules for Blackwater's armed guards in Iraq. Under new guidelines, State Department security agents will accompany all Blackwater employees in and around Baghdad, install video surveillance equipment in Blackwater armored vehicles, and record radio communications between Blackwater convoys and the military and civilian agencies that supervise their activities.

REFUGEES

The Iraq war has created nearly 4 million refugees, almost 16 percent of the population. This includes 2 million people who have fled the country - mostly to Syria and Jordan - and 1.9 million internally displaced people. Although Christians make up just 5 percent of the population, they comprise 40 percent of refugees now living in neighboring countries, according to the United Nations.

MOVIES AND DOCUMENTARIES

When filmmakers started weighing in on the Iraq war, ideologies clashed. No sooner had "Saving Jessica Lynch" painted a picture of heroism in a 2003 made-for-TV movie than heavyweight documentarian Michael Moore unleashed his "Fahrenheit 9/11" broadside in 2004. That film, along with Robert Greenwald's "Uncovered," scorned the Bush administration's case for going to war in the first place. "Gunner Palace," a documentary released in 2005, offered a ground-eye view of soldiers gritting it out under fire in Baghdad four months after Bush's "Mission Accomplished" declaration.

Many other documentaries followed, from "The Ground Truth" (about Iraq war vets) to "The War Tapes" (made from video footage shot by National Guardsmen in Iraq) in 2006 to last year's widely praised "No End in Sight" (about the mangled conduct of the war).

Steven Bochco broke new ground with his 2005 TV drama "Over There," a fictional treatment of both the Iraq war zone and the home front. The first major wave of Iraq war feature films hit theaters in 2007. They included the mournful "In the Valley of Elah," the angry "Rendition," Robert Redford's dogmatic "Lions for Lambs" and Brian de Palma's rough-hewn "Redacted," about the rape and murder of an Iraqi girl by American soldiers in 2006. Audiences stayed away from all of them, prompting many critics to speculate that the public wasn't ready to see an ongoing war and its fallout reflected back at them onscreen.

BOOKS

Books about the war came thick and fast, with many of them, like Tomas E. Ricks' best-selling "Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq" (2006) and George Packer's "The Assassins Gate: America in Iraq" (2006), capturing wide attention.

The Washington Post's Bob Woodward, of Watergate fame, wrote two popular histories of the Bush war years - "Plan of Attack" (2004) and "State of Denial" (2006).

Bernard Lewis' presciently timed "The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror," came out in March 2003.

U.N. inspector Hans Blix recounted his aborted search for weapons of mass destruction in "Disarming Iraq" (2004).

Larry Diamond, a Stanford professor and colleague of Condoleezza Rice, published "Squandered Victory: The American Operation and the Bungled Attempt to Bring Democracy to Iraq" (2005).

Everyday soldiers told their side of the story - Colby Buzzell's "My War: Killing Time in Iraq" (2005) and John Crawford's "The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell: An Accidental Soldier's Account of the War in Iraq" (2005).

So did prominent figures such as former chief U.S. counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke - "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror" (2004).

Satirists haven't sat out the conflict either - Matt Wuerker's "The Madness of King George" appeared in 2004.

DIXIE CHICKS

An all-woman country band from Texas became front-page news just before the war began. At a March 10, 2003, concert in England, band member Natalie Maines introduced the song "Travelin' Soldier" with the widely circulated remark, "We do not want this war, this violence, and we're ashamed that the president of the United States is from Texas." Less well reported was band member Emily Robinson's statement that they supported the American troops 100 percent. The Dixie Chicks became an instant cause celebre. Their concerts were boycotted (about half their appearance dates dried up) and their recordings were publicly destroyed in anti-Dixie Chicks demonstrations. Maines apologized on March 14: "I love my country, I am a proud American." But both the damage and the flash-point fame had taken over. In May of that year, the Dixie Chicks appeared on the cover of Entertainment Weekly, their nude bodies inscribed with words about the pressures of exercising free speech in wartime - "Boycott," "Dixie Sluts," "Peace," "Traitors." A 2006 documentary film, "Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing," told the story of the band's tribulations.

PEACE MARCHES

Protesters took to the streets before the invasion began. The largest prewar demonstrations took place on Feb. 15, 2003, when millions marched in cities around the world.

The San Francisco protest took place the following day in what turned out to be a contentious event. Organizers said 200,000 showed up; The Chronicle used its own photographs to peg the number at about 65,000.

Protests continued internationally through the spring as combat neared and began; they included thousands of candlelight vigils on March 16 and a March 20 protest that blocked some San Francisco city streets. Signs, stilts, costumes, speeches and music helped conjure a form of political street theater not seen since the Vietnam era.

On April 7, 2003, protesters skirmished with police at the Port of Oakland. The occupation of Iraq drew marchers back to the streets later that year and on subsequent anniversaries of the war's onset and other dates. A June 5, 2004, protest march in San Francisco was answered by a healthy number of pro-U.S. policy demonstrators.

Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, camped out near Bush's vacation home in Crawford, Texas, in August 2005.

Peace marches lost momentum as the war ground on, but have continued to the present, with actions planned around the world for this month's fifth anniversary of the invasion.

NAKED PROTESTS

Women began stripping in Marin in the fall of 2002, assembling on a beach, a playing field and a pasture to put their bodies on the line to protest the impending war. Unreasonable Women of West Marin Baring Witness, sometimes more than 200 of them at a single showing, gathered to spell out "No War" or a giant human peace symbol with their naked forms.

"It got your attention, didn't it?" asked organizer Donna Sheehan of a Chronicle reporter. Critics called it an empty stunt by bored housewives and exhibitionists.

In London a group called Bare Witness spelled out its feelings on a lawn in front of the Houses of Parliament when Bush visited in November 2003. Hundreds of naked protesters assembled in Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere.

And then there were the freelance soloists, like the woman who paraded naked through New York's Washington Square in 2005 with "Stop the War" painted on her backside and something written in Arabic on the front.

ABU GHRAIB

The abuse, humiliation, torture and alleged murder of Iraqis held at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison shocked the world in 2004 when photographs appeared on "60 Minutes," in the New Yorker magazine and around the world.

Prisoners were stripped, menaced with dogs, forced to simulate sexual activity, sodomized and posed with hoods over their heads and wires attached to their bodies.

A number of U.S. soldiers were court-martialed, convicted and sentenced, all of them of relatively low rank.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld testified to Congress, "These events occurred on my watch." He said, "I am accountable for them." Rumsfeld resisted calls for his immediate resignation. He remained in office until 2006.

VALERIE PLAME WILSON

In July 2003, a former U.S. ambassador named Joseph Wilson published a New York Times opinion piece about his 2002 mission to Africa to investigate a possible nuclear build-up in Iraq.

He found no evidence that the Iraqi government had purchased or tried to purchase yellowcake uranium from Niger. The Bush administration, Wilson wrote, had distorted the truth to "exaggerate the Iraqi threat" as a justification for going to war.

The following week, newspaper columnist Robert Novak revealed the name of Wilson's wife, a covert CIA operations officer named Valerie Plame Wilson. Allegations that White House insiders had leaked her name to Novak and other reporters led to a grand jury investigation, the appointment of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and the 2005 indictment and 2007 conviction of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff. Bush commuted the 30-month prison sentence.

The incident had several bizarre twists. Suspected leaker Karl Rove, Bush's closest adviser, said it was journalists who told him of the Wilson connection. New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who never wrote a word about the agent, went to jail for 85 days for refusing to reveal Libby as her source, even though he had released her from their confidentiality agreement.

According to various sources, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was the first to leak Wilson's name to the press.

Plame retired from the CIA in 2005. A civil suit (Plame vs. Cheney) was dismissed in 2007. Her memoir, "Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House," was published in 2007.

BUSH APPROVAL RATINGS

President Harry Truman had the lowest rating ever in the Gallup Poll with 23 percent approval in 1952 during the Korean War; President Richard Nixon reached 24 percent during the summer of 1974 before he resigned during the Watergate scandal. Bush reached his lowest approval rating in the Associated Press-Ipsos poll on Feb. 28, when only 30 percent said they like the job he is doing, including an all-time low in his support by Republicans.

In March 2003, various polls, including ones conducted by ABC-Washington Post, CBS-New York Times and CNN-USA Today-Gallup showed Bush with an approval rating ranging from 62 to 70 percent.

Isabel's pic: on THE GRAND INQUISITOR

This is an Isabel pick hit .. I like it, it exposes the fundamental flaws of the Dominionists who are back trying to drag us back to the XIII century with torture, mayhem and authoritarianism.

A word on IS, she has been around fighting the good fight as long as I have - and we both have the scars to prove it. Do not quietly into that good night ...

V

A few words: The alleged Christ did not create a religion. In fact, the existence of the person - "Jesus of Nazareth" is highly disputable, although from gnostic writings, there are indications there was probably a person of radical perspective who challenged the status quo of Judaism of those times. IMO, the "teachings of Christ" have been corrupted by the Church, so as to weaken & disempower man. And what about all those books that were thrown out [of the Bible]?

Isabel.

http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/?p=595

“NOT BY BREAD ALONE” (Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevesky’s THE GRAND INQUISITOR)

By Gaither Stewart 2/16/08

“The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor” is the high point of Fedor Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov, which the author considered the culmination of his lifetime work. The 21-page “Grand Inquisitor” is also Dostoevsky’s final word on the question of man’s freedom.

Dostoevsky recorded that The Brothers Karamazov was also his most difficult book. He was afraid his creative force would not suffice. “The older I get, the harder it is,” he wrote in his diaries. The difficulty here was that he had not only the Karamazov’s to deal with, but also the complex problem of freedom.

Above all, this book was to become a work of art, and that, he wrote, “is a most difficult and risky affair.” In a sense he bet his creative life on it and on the question of freedom. I read this book therefore as both his commitment and his desperation.

In true Dostoevskian style, the “Grand Inquisitor” is more an idea than a story. The narrator of the “poem”, Ivan, fades from the reader’s mind, while his interlocutor, Alyosha, hardly exists except to smile and say ‘I don’t understand, Ivan!’ The legend is not even a legend. Dostoevsky calls it a poem. And the poem, if it is that, is an accusation against the organized Church, in this case and time, against the Roman Catholic Church.

The story is threadbare: Christ returns to earth in the sixteenth century in the city of Seville where people recognize Him immediately and want to benefit from His miracles. The ninety-year old Grand Inquisitor who runs things in Seville also recognizes Him; there is no doubt about His identity. Immediately the priest has Him arrested. At night in His cell the old man proceeds to interrogate Him. The interrogation is an accusation-monologue, for Christ never speaks. The Grand Inquisitor (that is, one side of Dostoevsky) prefaces his terrible accusations with one question: “Why did you come back?”

In this short chapter, the Grand Inquisitor articulates his (the Church’s) devastating message: God is God and the Church is the Church; the Church does not believe in God and man no longer needs God; the Church promotes His work like a product and uses His name, but it renounces Christ; the Church does God’s work for Him; it is a Church without God.

After threatening to burn Him at the stake as a heretic, the Grand Inquisitor is disconcerted by Christ’s silence. The prisoner only looks at him and then, at the end, quietly kisses the old man’s bloodless lips with a kiss that the reader knows will burn for all eternity.

The old man starts, something moves on his lips, he goes to the door, opens it and tells Him: “Go and never return again.”

The prisoner leaves.

That is the story line.

Yet the idea behind the story is terrible. With Christ’s wordless departure, Dostoevsky, whose faith is always shaky, pronounces the divorce between faith and the Church. In the poem, neither the atheist Ivan nor Dostoevsky the author attack Christ; they attack the Church. Ivan does not defend his atheism; he defends true belief. Dostoevsky charges the Catholic Church of having robbed Christ’s message for its own imperialistic ends, which rings familiar to American ears today. In substance the writer charges all churches or organized religions of what was then called Caesarism.

The priest-Grand Inquisitor does not believe in God or in man and he refuses to hear or listen to the God-Man. “You have no right to add one single word to what you have already said,” he tells his prisoner. He insists that the Christian doctrine of free choice between good and evil is too heavy a burden for humanity. Christ’s man could choose freedom but if he did his conscience would torture him because of his sins. The Christianity offered by Christ is a religion of pain and suffering. It is a religion for only a few; for an elite.

The Grand Inquisitor points out that on the other hand man can choose submission. The truth is, man prefers comfort, or even death, to the freedom of choice between good and evil. Man, he says, only wants to be happy. He wants earthly bread. And that, he tells Christ, is the Church’s job: man’s happiness on earth.

The Church, the Grand Inquisitor-Procurator claims, loves man more than does the creator who placed on man’s shoulders that heavy burden. He charges that Christ overestimated the strength of his creation when he gave him the freedom of choice: “You acted without pity for him, you demanded too much from him.”

The religion Christ created is impossible for the masses. It is only for the strong who can bear the responsibility. It is aristocratic. Religion, the old man claims, must be for the masses. It must comfort all, the ignorant and the weak and the mean and the sick. It must be vulgar. Instead of the freedom and the uncertainty and spiritual suffering that Christ offers, the Church offers happiness. Since the weak and hungry and mean masses are not interested in heavenly bread, the Church promises earthly bread.

The Grand Inquisitor and his Church have chosen for mankind. The Church’s work, he says, is to correct Christ’s work. The earth is the reign of mediocre happiness. “None of your great spiritual aspirations!” he says, “Oh yes, men will have to work!” But then during their leisure we organize their lives like a child’s game, childish songs and dancing. We even let them sin.

Here is Dostoevsky, the great visionary. He foresaw the role of organized religions of today, of America’s religions. This was the highest point of Dostoevsky’s dialectical genius: he is for man, his whole idea is the human problem; he believes that godlessness leads to the denial of the freedom of the spirit to be a true individual. He foresaw revolution in Russia; he wanted revolution, but a revolution with God and Christ. The Russian religious philosopher Berdyaev labels Dostoevsky “a socialist with Christ.”

Yet, his cry for freedom of the individual was anti-revolutionary, and for readers of today confusing. Dostoevsky aspired to an impossible brand of spiritual Communism in which all would be responsible for each other. He wanted both revolution and individual freedom.

Dostoevsky opposed the idea of an aesthetic state, of the aesthetic socialism the Grand Inquisitor proposes. In that sense too his novels are tragedies of the human condition—double tragedies in that they are never resolved, no more than are his great mysteries. No more than did he resolve his dubious form of Christianity. Yet universal ideas stand behind his decisions. In his revolutionary attack on the Church, he is attacking the Grand Inquisitors in every church, in every state.

Dostoevsky was the embodiment of the Russian idea of an all-human brotherhood (vsyechelovechnost). In fact, as Berdyaev suggests, Internationalism (the Internationalism of Soviet Communism) was a distortion of the Russian idea. Hence, at least until the Russian Revolution and the great wars of the Twentieth century nationalism was foreign to Russian mentality.

At this point emerge some fundamental contradictions between Dostoevskian Christian love and Christian churches that I long had trouble pinpointing until I read an article by Gustavo Zagrebelsky, the Italian philosopher-writer-jurist and President of Italy’s Constitutional Court, “The Church between Charity and Truth.”

Charity, Zagrebelsky points out, is a concrete act toward specific individuals; truth in the religious context is a series of doctrines expressed in codified beliefs concerning abstract behavior. Charity is experienced, truth learned. Charity acts internally, truth externally. Charity considers each human being an individual; for truth, each individual is assimilable to others, each is a number within classes or categories. Charity is free of general rules, which derive from truth. Charity resides in the human being; truth tends toward stabilization within institutions. Charity spurs one toward leading a good life; it forgives and reconciles. Truth formulates precepts and sanctions and separates the elect from the reprobates.

The literary representation of this dichotomy is manifest in Dostoevsky’s “Grand Inquisitor.” The silence and the compassionate charitable kiss of Christ is the ethical counter-position to the didactic verbosity of the Inquisitor. Maybe each of them loves, each in his own way. But Dostoevsky’s Christ loves the individual with a warm, real love; the Inquisitor loves the people, the weak, humanity as a whole, with a cold love that bypasses love for the single person.

Here one recalls the slogan of the Revolution Convention in Paris: “For love of humanity, we are inhuman.” And here the chasm between charity and truth begins to emerge

Charity, i.e. love for the individual can be extended to many, but it never loses the personal relationship and cannot permit itself to become a bureaucracy. Abstract truth, on the other hand, does not even need to know the persons it tends, while it creates bureaucracies to administer its orthodoxy.

So, the question remains: Is the Christian ethic an ethic of charity or an ethic of truth? That question plagued Dostoevsky. He attacked Catholicism and had his doubts about Orthodoxy. Convinced on one hand that man does not live by bread alone, he nonetheless paved the way for the revolution that promised bread to all, even though he remained forever full of doubts, forever looking over his shoulder. That is also the problem for those who abhor free market philosophies and believe in some form of Socialism.

In the nocturnal cell, the Grand Inquisitor reminds Christ of His rejection of the three temptations in the desert. First, He refused to use earthly bread to convince man to follow Him. Then, He refused to use authority to force man to follow Him because He wanted to be loved freely. Third, He refused to use miracles.

The Grand Inquisitor’s Church instead is founded on Christ’s rejections: earthly bread, authority and miracle. Man wants three things, the Grand Inquisitor says: someone to bow down to, someone to hand over his conscience to and a way to unite everyone in one common anthill. The Christianity of his Church is a Church for all, not only for the strong. For its purported and distorted love of mankind, the Church betrayed the idea of the Christian God.

As Dostoevsky’s oral poem develops, Alyosha begins to grasp that the great secret of the Inquisitor’s Church is that it does not believe in God. Yet for Ivan and for Alyosha, for the Church and for all Dostoevsky’s characters, God is the question. Disorder and anxiety are everywhere, in every character, caused by the question of God. Is He there or not? The mystery in The Brothers Karamazov is God.

In this big book an enormous number of events take place in a few days. The canvas is peopled by a vast cast. All talking about God! Everyone from the simplest of fools to the intellectuals to the monks have deep thoughts about God. Danger threatens, mystery reigns, presentiments and fates, crimes and passions, and secrets abound, but everywhere God is the question.

In this work Dostoevsky does not question the existence of God, as Nietszche was soon to do. His Christianity is not of the vague type that Kierkegaard depicted. He is not interested in transforming the particular into the universal, or vice versa. He does not attack here Christ-God; he attacks the Church. His Church calls to mind the contradiction between the life of St. Francis of Assisi who opted for God and poverty and lived in simplicity and talked with birds and was distant from the institutions his followers constructed: a super rich order and the town of Assisi turned to gold, all in His name.

Dostoevsky does not search for the secrets of creation. He does not delve into the idea of two Creator Gods or search for the secret of two humanities. He does not take note that in Genesis God created one man on the sixth day and another on the eighth day, and that the confusion began then, with a good strain and an evil strain of man. [Isabel: this is why I've encouraged people to gain a knowledgeable understanding of Ponerolgy & psychopathy (which is not psychosis) & how the good strain is literally controlled by the evil strain to this day.] That He then planted a garden east of Eden and put there the man He had formed and named him Adam, that is, the man He formed on the eighth day. [Isabel: IMO, most people who claim to be christians have neither knowledge nor understanding of what I've emphasised in this para. In all the years I participated in the church (nearly 3 & 1/2 decades :(( ), I never heard an exposition on this crucially significant issue. Mouravieff's Gnosis explicates this.] He told the man Adam that he could eat from all the trees except the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

For Creationists the mystery of mankind should begin here. The sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful and took them as wives, as many as they wanted, and gave them children. But God quickly saw that this was evil, a bad mixture. Who then was the mother of Cain, the evil strain of humanity? From all that followed, apparently Cain loved Satan more than God, which raises the doubt that Adam’s second wife, Eve, was not his mother. Anyway, from the Bible and ancient texts of Hebrew legends and myths, one can deduce that from the very beginning a “created” earth was populated by two strains of men, by two humanities, one overlapping the other.

Through most of his work Dostoevsky examines the evil strain but he does not question God. He questions the Church. The Church that in “The Grand Inquisitor” does not believe in God.

I still find it strange that Ivan doesn’t bring up the two Creator-god theory. He should have. History instructs us that monotheism is not for all men. Primitive peoples saw the need for more. A plurality of gods, sometimes one against the other. A system of checks and balances. We recall that some philosophers contend that God needs man as much as man needs God. Even the God of the Old Testament complained through the mouth of His prophet Isaiah that He was a slave of man. That He needed help.

But the question remains that if there are two—or more—Creator gods, one good and one evil, which is the God of the Christian Church? Or, as Dostoevsky says, does it have no god at all? For the God of the Old Testament, the God of the chosen people, is truly terrible, committing all the sins He forbade to man. He blessed theft and treachery. He was jealous, no other God but Him! He fornicated with any woman He wanted under the eyes of their husbands. He favored genocide. He lied and made false promises. He cursed man in every way. And though He has absolutely nothing in common with Jesus of Nazareth, according to their Bible He even sent His own son to hang on a cross. Besides, why did He always hide his face? Some think because He was the evil God, ashamed to show His face. [As a child of 8yrs, I questioned the bold red above. I learned over time to silently question & keep my mouth shut! As an adult, I became an open challenger & was told I couldn't call myself a christian if I didn't believe. Of course, I did cease to call myself a "christian". :))))) but I remained involved for another 17 years! Talk about sado-masochism!!]

Dostoevsky continually mixes countless details and minute particulars with great universal truths. The Church of the Grand Inquisitor is the Roman Catholic Church of his times, the Church in incessant dispute with Russian Orthodoxy for the souls of European man. Yet the sickness of his Church is an old sickness.

The sickness infecting organized religions preceded Dostoevsky’s age and has now burgeoned in our times. Today religion is on the lips of all, of believers, false believers and non-believers in every part of the world. Most claim to know the right way and the true God or gods. And perform the vilest actions in His name.

GAITHER STEWART is a Senior Special Contributing Editor at Cyrano’s Journal and a seasoned professional journalist and essayist. A native of Asheville, N.C., Gaither is also Cyrano’s Journal’s European Correspondent. He left journalism four years ago in order to write fiction full-time. He has lived most of his life in Europe, chiefly in Germany and Italy. For many years he was the Italian correspondent of the Rotterdam daily newspaper, ALGEMEEN DAGBLAD. His has been a varied life: from university studies in Slavistics and political science in the United States and Germany, to correspondent for European and American radios, to public relations for Italian corporations, to full correspondent for a major European newspaper. His journalistic stories have appeared in the press of West and East Europe. During the last two years his fiction has appeared in a number of English language literary publications. In addition to Cyrano, his essays and reports are widely read on many Internet venues, including Online Journal, The People’s Voice, and other sites. His collections of short stories, Icy Current Compulsive Course, To Be A Stranger and Once In Berlin were published by Wind River Press. (www.windriverpress.com ). His recent novel, Asheville, was published by www.wastelandrunes.com. Gaither currently resides in the hills of north Rome with his wife, Milena

For the culturally famished (at torture season, 2007): GUEST blog Matt Janovic - Non Parlo di SALO

FOR NATO: PIER PALO PASOLINI'S SALO (1975) review ,

by Matt Janovic

Social order at the expense of liberty is hardly a bargain. ---The Marquis de Sade

So you say you've seen nearly-every major Italian giallo? You've seen your Argento, Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci, Michele Soavi, and even all of the "classics" of Italian film? You've seen your Leone, Fellini, DeSicca, Bertolucci, Martino, and even most of the "world classics"? By this point, you've probably seen it all, and you think there is no film that will shock you? If you haven't seen Pier Paolo Pasolini's "Salo: 120 Days of Sodom," you are flatly wrong. Pasolini didn't even live to see the release of this film. He was "murdered" by a male hustler (or so the official story plays). Who was Pier Paolo Pasolini? Pasolini was the most important postwar intellectual in Italy, period. Like a Renaissance polymath, he was adept at journalism, the novel, poetry, screenwriting, directing motion-pictures, painting and drawing, and more. He also liked teenage boys, was a real scandal, and yet truly was the conscience of postwar Italy until his murder on November 2nd, 1975.

Pasolini's revolutionary philosophy was against fascism and communism, and he had many enemies in the political arena, as well as the religious one at the Vatican. All said, however, it's possible that Pier Pasolini was murdered by a right-wing assassination team under the aegis of "GLADIO," a NATO program of secret armies throughout Western Europe. GLADIO began, ostensibly, as a defense against a hypothetical Soviet invasion of Europe. Overall, GLADIO was more often used to attack legitimate Leftist political parties and groups, and was responsible for breaking the Marseilles dock strikes in the late-1940s as just one example of their handiwork. Their activities in Italy during the Cold War are known to be extensive.

In Italy, the Red Brigade bombings in the 1970s were even instigated-by GLADIO operatives to justify a law-and-order crackdown of the Italian Communist Party who were poised to take power at that time. It's a mystery as to how-much CIA influence this all had. The P-2 conspiracy (oddly, involving the Vatican, the CIA, KGB, and renegade Freemasons!) had yet to break. There were dozens of politically motivated killings in 1970s Italy, and Pasolini's was one-of-many. One has to ponder the Vatican's involvement in his murder, as they were a primary adversary of Pasolini. And so, "Salo" enters this bloody fray. It could not be more controversial, and it's a scream of rage against how little we all really care about or value human life. Pasolini was outraged and disappointed with the human condition, and Italian politics had become bloody chaos, leading director Sergio Leone to remark at the time that, "Italian politics have become ridiculous."

The scenario of Salo is fairly-simple: a group of Italian fascists retreat to a palace in Northern Italy (where there was a great deal of support for Italian fascism and the Monarch) with a group of sixteen captive-boys and girls. It is Mussolini's short-lived Republic of Salo, created for him by the Nazis. Hence, it's a title that any Italian of the 1970s (or today) would recognize. For 120 days, they degrade their victims in almost every imaginable manner. There is homosexual rape, buggery, forcing people to eat excrement, forced heterosexual couplings, sadism of every kind, and finally, death. Just about everything you could imagine occurs, and worse. Of course, it's all based loosely on DeSade's tale and stays pretty close to the text's themes and scenarios. Pasolini "chapters" each section with some of the structure of Dante's "Inferno," which is a real mark of his genius.

To say this film is merely a statement on fascism would be wrong, it is a manifesto on what cruelty rests within all human hearts, especially once one has supped on power. Pasolini understood that, under the right circumstances, we are all capable of these depredations. There's a little Hitler in everyone, and we all the potential to become assassins under the proper conditions. Beyond that, Pasolini is saying that humanity has a dark heart and that nothing is really true. This is where he was at artistically by 1975, though his existential crisis had begun much earlier. Some reviewers have stated that they didn't find the film shocking --they should check- themselves into a clinic somewhere, it is beyond shocking. But it should be remembered that DeSade was only writing about the sexual habits of his kind--the aristocracy before the French Revolution of 1789.

I've noticed that even friends who are into such directors as Takashi Miike, respect the power of this film. Miike has some similarities in style with Pasolini, but goes for a more genre, stylized-look. Even John Waters lists this film as sicker than his worst offenders. It could be argued that Desperate Living (1977) is a spoof of Salo! To say I was shocked by this film would be an understatement. But, besides being pretty-sick, this film looks astonishingly lush. This is another aspect of Pasolini's genius of showing us depredations in such a lovely setting. It transcends the subversive and never fails to shock. The late Tonnino della Colli's photography (who also worked for Fellini and Leone) lends the film a look that could be hung in the Louvre, and it gives the film a greater subversive edge. It should be noted that the film is not "legitimately-available" in the United State for copyright reasons. However, there are very good copies out there even though it's not in-print. I found one that is an exact-duplicate of the original US edition for a decent price, so it is out there to be found...with a little searching.

The Criterion edition is reportedly the most-expensive DVD in the world, going for as much as $1,000.00 USD. Criterion's was the best transfer in 1998, but it appears that there is a new Continental European DVD purported to be definitive. I've got a few Ken Russell DVDs ("Salome's Last Dance") that are worth as much as $300.00 USD, so this is a shocker! It's funny to see used DVDs of the big Hollywood fare at $3.99 USD, while these are in the hundreds! It says a lot about what is lasting and meaningful to people, and it isn't blockbuster movies. A dubious company called "Water Bearer" has sets of Pasolini's other works, but I have it on good word that they are of extremely poor-quality. It would be nice if Criterion did a Pasolini Box that included a new HD transfer of "Salo" with extensive restoration. It is one of the most important films ever made. We all stand accused, even the filmmaker, and that's the point. Be warned: not for children or adults who fear soul-searing, raw existentialism.

NOTE: The "ass-judging-scene" is similar to photos of the "flesh-pyramid" at Abu-Ghraib.
(Revised 10.19.2007)