[NYTr] Billy Graham Was a Whore for War: This is NEWS?

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[Tricky Dick's good pal Billy Graham was a right-wing pig who supported
US aggressive wars -- just like New York's Catholic Cardinal Francis
"Fanny" Spellman, an ardent red-baiter, and closet queen according to
many accounts, who blessed the war machines going off to Vietnam and
then went back to his office to quietly transfer pedophile priests from
one parish to another. Like hey, man, this ain't exactly news. -NYTr]


Counterpunch - Sep 27, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/hughes09272007.html

The Dark Side of Rev. Billy Graham: A Prince of War Exposed

By WILLIAM HUGHES

"The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that 
their interests and his own are the same."  -Stendhal

The propaganda machine of the Evangelical Christian Right will soon be
in counter attack mode. One of its darling preachers is about to take
it on the proverbial chin. The Rev. Billy Graham, who has created a
multimillion dollar media empire, that a Rupert Murdock would envy, is
the subject of a shocking expose' due out on Nov. 15, 2007. It's
entitled, "The Prince of War: Billy Graham's Crusade for a Wholly
Christian Empire." The author is Cecil Bothwell. He hails from
Asheville, North Carolina and is an award winning investigative
reporter. Bothwell's unflattering portrait of Rev. Graham shows him as
a wily warmonger and a lackey for the Establishment. He describes Rev.
Graham as a public figure who: "Undermined the Founders' skeptical
Deism and sought to rebrand the U.S. as a Christian nation, [and] its
armies [as] the rightful instruments of [a] Christian crusade and
empire."

Bothwell documents that there wasn't a war the U.S. was involved in
that Rev. Graham couldn't bless. In fact, he reveals that during the
horrific Vietnam conflict, (1959-75), he had urged the then-President,
Richard M. Nixon, to bomb North Vietnam! In a 13-page letter, that Rev.
Graham had forwarded to the White House in April, 1969, it was stated:
"There are tens of thousands of North Vietnamese defectors to bomb and
invade the North. Why should all the fighting be in the
South?...Especially let them bomb the dikes which could over night
destroy the economy of North Vietnam." Mr. Bothwell underscored that
such a military action against the dikes, a huge complex of earthworks,
would probably "kill a million people and wipe out an already poor
nation's agricultural system" He added that the advice in Graham's
transmittal "fell on receptive ears. Not longer after, Nixon moved the
air war north and west."

There is more. After the deadly Kent State U. affair, (May 4, 1970),
where four students, who were protesting the Nixon-Henry
Kissinger-inspired bombing of Cambodia, were killed by Ohio's National
Guard troops, Rev. Graham invited the mostly unbalanced Nixon to
address his crusade. It was held in Knoxville, TN. While parents of the
students were still grieving and burying their dead, Rev. Graham
shamelessly shilled: "All Americans may not agree with the decision a
president makes--but he is our president..."

Also, every chance Rev. Graham got he ripped into antiwar protesters in
this country, while the Vietnam inferno was raging. After a large pro
peace demonstration in late 1969, he railed in a letter to then
President Lyndon B. Johnson, that the protesters were "radicals and
those seeking to overthrow the American way of life." When the Rev. Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke out, in 1967 against the war in a sermon
at the Riverside Church in NYC, Rev. Graham, jumped right in and tagged
his criticism as "an affront to the thousands of loyal Negro troops who
are in Vietnam." When Dr. King marched for Civil Rights in Selma,
Alabama, Rev. Graham was no where to be found. And, after Dr. King was
gunned down in Memphis, TN, he couldn't be bothered to attend his
funeral either.

Rev. Graham made a career out of sucking up to U.S. presidents. Mr.
Bothwell wrote how he loved those "endless photo-ops" at the White
House, and how he was always, "so eager to shake the hands
of...despots, movie stars and industrial kingpins, and to offer
grandiose approval of their greatness. Obsequy, more than money, seemed
to drive the man--though his pockets were never empty." Fortunately,
not all the presidents bought into Rev. Graham's bogus act. One of my
favorites, President Harry S. Truman, who was born in Lamar, MO, knew a
wide variety of people from political bosses to political hacks. He had
a built in b... s... detector. This is what President Truman had to say
about the war-loving, camera-mugging preacher: "Graham has gone off the
beam. He's...well, I hadn't ought to say this, but he's one of those
'counterfeits' I was telling you about. He claims he's a friend of all
the presidents, but he was never a friend of mine when I was president.
I just don't go for people like that. All he's interested in is getting
his name in the paper."

Just before Bush 1 (George H.W. Bush) launched the Persian Gulf War, he
invited Rev. Graham to the White House. On Jan. 16, 1991, they both
watched the "air war against Iraq on CNN." Later that same evening, he
prayed "three times" with the president before he delivered a
"televised address to the nation." In a phone call to Bush 1, prior to
that White House invite, Rev. Graham had supposedly referred to Saddam
Hussein as the "Antichrist." This conversation reportedly helped Bush 1
to resolve "all the moral issues in my mind. It's black and white, good
versus evil." Can anyone imagine Jesus watching a war on TV, without
weeping aloud for its innocent victims, and demanding that it be
stopped immediately?

As for the ongoing Iraq War, started by Bush 2 (George W. Bush Jr.),
and based on a pack of rotten lies, not one word of criticism has been
heard from Rev. Graham. Even after the notorious torture scandal at Abu
Ghraib was revealed, the preacher maintained his vow of silence on this
country's worst president, a man who deserves impeachment and jail time
for violating his oath of office. (1) The country has lost 3,801 of its
finest sons and daughters in Iraq and wasted $455 billion there.
Another 27,000 U.S. troops have been seriously injured. An estimated
one million Iraqis are now dead and about 3.7 million have become
refugees. Yet, Rev. Graham, a supposed follower of the "Prince of
Peace," has remained mute in his criticism of the outrageous conduct of
this president and his insane policies. Why have we rarely heard Rev.
Graham preach about Jesus' "Sermon on the Mount?" Why have we rarely,
if ever, heard him repeat these words that came directly from the mouth
of Christ: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called
children of God?"

Mr. Bothwell suggests a possible reason why Rev. Graham has failed to
speak out about the unjust Iraq War and Bush 2's responsibility for it.
At p. 164, he relates how the preacher, in 1985, had supposedly "saved"
Bush 2 from perdition. It was at the family compound at Kennebunkport.
Bush 2 was drunk and had allegedly "insulted a friend of his mother."
It was around the time of Bush 2's 39th birthday. Mr. Bothwell writes:
"George senior and Barbara blew up. Words were exchanged along the
lines of something having to be done. George senior, then the
vice-president, dialed up his friend, Billy Graham, who came to the
compound and spent several days with George W. in probing exchanges and
walks on the beach. George W. was soon 'born again.' He stopped
drinking, attended Bible study and wrestle with issues of fervent
faith. A man who was lost was saved."

We now know that Bush 2, although he may have stopped hitting the
bottle, never did anything in the realm of therapy about his alcoholism
problem. He's known by the experts in the field as a "dry drunk," a
potential danger to himself and to others. (2) As for Bush 2 being
"born again," the question must be asked: "Born again for what?" To
kill Iraqis? Invade Iran? Bankrupt our Republic? "Brother" Elliott
Nesch, an Evangelical and Peace advocate, believes that pro-War
Christians "should repent." (3) I agree with him. The bottom line is
clerics, like Rev. Graham, dominate today much of the Religious Right
in America. Bothwell's tome deals, however, with a lot more relevant
issues than just the preacher's disgusting war addiction. It's an
insightful book that I am highly recommending. It's well documented,
too, with 274 footnotes.

Finally, I wrote last year that "Rev. Graham wasn't a Phil Berrigan."
The latter, an ex-priest, was a true apostle of peace, who spent 11 of
his 79 years behind bars in the cause of justice. Unlike Rev. Graham,
who skipped out of WWII, Berrigan was involved in the Normandy invasion
and the "Battle of the Bulge" as a member of the U.S. Army. (4) I'm
convinced that unless the Christian community in this country,
Protestant and Catholic alike, opens its eyes to what Rev. Graham and
his Establishment-serving ilk have been doing "in Christ's name," this
nation is headed for a fall that will make the collapse of Rome look
like a Sunday picnic.

William Hughes is an author, video and print journalist. His videos can
be found at: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=liamh2. Email Contact:
liamhughes at comcast.net.

Notes.

1. http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/
2. http://www.counterpunch.org/wormer1011.html
3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYAdsAiwpBc and
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7122462581218576485
4.
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=11455

©2007, William Hughes.