George Walker Bush's "Liberation" of Iraq Has "Liberated" Iraq of Most Its Chaldean Rite Catholics

American involvement in Iraq, which began late in the evening (Eastern time in the United States of America) on March 19, 2003, after a six-month public build-up prior to the onset of hostilities, lasted longer than World War II.

What is called the Iraq War but should be more appropriately called the invasion and occupation of that sovereign nation has lasted longer than World War II, which began with the invasion of Poland by the armed forces of the Third Reich of Nazi Germany on September 1, 1939 (Poland was invaded from the East by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on September 17, 1939, as Josef Stalin kept his part of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact that had been entered into by the foreign ministers of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union on August 24, 1939), and ended with the unconditional surrender of the Empire of Japan to General Douglas Mac Arthur aboard the U.S.S. Missouri on September 2, 1945, nineteen days after the announcement of Japan announced on August 14, 1945, that it would surrender. World War II lasted for six years. American involvement in the war, which started when both Houses of the United States Congress voted to declare war on the Empire of Japan on December 8, 1941, lasted for approximately forty-five months. American involvement in Iraq has lasted for approximately one hundred four months if one considers Obama/Soetoro’s announcement of December 18, 2011, as marking the “end” even though the war continued for the Iraqis even with American assistance thereafter (see Iraq War "Ends"--Again,)

Although many articles have been written on this site about the Iraq War (several articles on the subject were published in The Remnant between January of 2003 and March of 2006, including A Tale of Two Speeches), it is worth repeating once again several points to remind the very few readers of this site that the predicates necessary to engage in a just war were not fulfilled and that tremendous atrocities have been committed by the government of the United States of America and by the various private contractors that were hired to provide "security" in the wake of the power vacuum created by the American invasion and overthrow of the dictator Saddam Hussein and that Iraq and to "rebuild" a country whose infrastructure was eviscerated by American bombing. (For a review of the predicates of the just war theory as I attempted to apply them to the possibility of an Iraq War in late-2002, please see The Real Enemies Are Within, part 1; The Real Enemies Are Within, part 2 ; and We Have No "Rooting" Interest in the Russo-Ukraine War Other Than for a Just Peace.)

The push on the part of the neoconservative war hawks in the administration of then President George Walker Bush to use the attacks that took place on September 11, 2001, as the pretext to plan a war with Iraq had its roots in the "Project for the New American Century," which was cooked up by some of those who would later plan and execute the Iraq War as a means of effecting a "regime change" in Iraq that would benefit "America's only ally" in the Middle East, Israel, by creating a peaceful, democratic Arab nation that world conform to the principles of American "exceptionalism" (which contends, of course, that the American "way" is the and only model for all countries in the world in order to know true "progress" and social and economic growth and stability, that it is the "mission" of the United States of America to spread its "way" around the world).

Among the charter signatories of the "Project for the New American Century," which released its statement of principles on June 3, 1997, were John Ellis (JEB!) Bush, Richard B. Cheney, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Norman Podhoretz, James Danforth Quayle (yes, that James Danforth Quayle), Donald Rumsfeld, the Catholic neocon war hawk and mocker of the Social Reign of Christ the King named George Weigel, and Paul Wolfowitz. Among those who made contributions to the work of the "Project for the new American Century were Richard Armitage, John Bolton, William Kristol, and Richard Perle. Readers will surely recognize that several future officials in the administration of President George Walker Bush were very active in an organization which sought to promote "regime change" in Iraq as the means to "stabilize" the Middle East as to make the region safe for the country that persecutes Palestinians and sees fit to invade the sovereign country of Lebanon and to bomb its civilians at will, Israel. 

Richard Cheney, of course, was Vice President of the United States of America, from January 20, 2001, to January 20, 2009.

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was the Chief of Staff for Vice President Cheney from 2001 to 2005.

Donald D. Rumsfeld was the United States Secretary of Defense from January 20, 2001, to December 18, 2006.

Richard Perle was the Chairman of the Defense Board Advisory Committee in the White House of President George Walker Bush from 2001 to 2003.

Paul Wolfowitz was the Deputy Secretary of Defense of the United States of America from January 20, 2001, to June 1, 2005.

John Bolton was the United States Ambassador to the United Nations from August 1, 2005, to December 9, 2006, and in a remarkable display of Donald John Trump’s poor judgment of personnel, served as the forty-fifth president’s National Security Adviser from April 9, 2018, to September 10, 2019,

Richard Armitage was the United States Deputy Secretary of State from March 26, 2001, to February 22, 2005.

Mind you, this is only a sampling of the individuals whose neoconservative war hawk roots who served in the George Walker Bush administration who had an association with the "Project for the New American Century."

It was on January 26, 1998, that several of the participants in the "Project for the New American Century" sent an open letter then President William Jefferson Blythe Clinton to urge "regime change" in Iraq:

We are writing you because we are convinced that current American policy toward Iraq is not succeeding, and that we may soon face a threat in the Middle East more serious than any we have known since the end of the Cold War.  In your upcoming State of the Union Address, you have an opportunity to chart a clear and determined course for meeting this threat.  We urge you to seize that opportunity, and to enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies around the world.  That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power.  We stand ready to offer our full support in this difficult but necessary endeavor.

The policy of “containment” of Saddam Hussein has been steadily eroding over the past several months.  As recent events have demonstrated, we can no longer depend on our partners in the Gulf War coalition to continue to uphold the sanctions or to punish Saddam when he blocks or evades UN inspections.  Our ability to ensure that Saddam Hussein is not producing weapons of mass destruction, therefore, has substantially diminished.  Even if full inspections were eventually to resume, which now seems highly unlikely, experience has shown that it is difficult if not impossible to monitor Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons production.  The lengthy period during which the inspectors will have been unable to enter many Iraqi facilities has made it even less likely that they will be able to uncover all of Saddam’s secrets.  As a result, in the not-too-distant future we will be unable to determine with any reasonable level of confidence whether Iraq does or does not possess such weapons.

Such uncertainty will, by itself, have a seriously destabilizing effect on the entire Middle East.  It hardly needs to be added that if Saddam does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, as he is almost certain to do if we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil will all be put at hazard.  As you have rightly declared, Mr. President, the security of the world in the first part of the 21st century will be determined largely by how we handle this threat.

Given the magnitude of the threat, the current policy, which depends for its success upon the steadfastness of our coalition partners and upon the cooperation of Saddam Hussein, is dangerously inadequate. The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.

We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your Administration's attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power. This will require a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts. Although we are fully aware of the dangers and difficulties in implementing this policy, we believe the dangers of failing to do so are far greater. We believe the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf. In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.

We urge you to act decisively. If you act now to end the threat of weapons of mass destruction against the U.S. or its allies, you will be acting in the most fundamental national security interests of the country. If we accept a course of weakness and drift, we put our interests and our future at risk.

Sincerely,

Elliott Abrams    Richard L. Armitage    William J. Bennett

Jeffrey Bergner    John Bolton    Paula Dobriansky

Francis Fukuyama    Robert Kagan    Zalmay Khalilzad

William Kristol    Richard Perle    Peter W. Rodman

Donald Rumsfeld    William Schneider, Jr.    Vin Weber

Paul Wolfowitz    R. James Woolsey    Robert B. Zoellick  (See Letter to President Clinton on Iraq,)

There was, therefore, a predisposition on the part of the neoconservative war hawks in the administration of then President George Walker Bush to use the tragic events of September 11, 2001, as the pretext to launch an immoral, unjust, unconstitutional invasion of a sovereign nation that posed no immediate or any kind of real, legitimate threat to the national security of the United States of America. This unjust war has cost the lives of nearly five thousand American citizens, including three thus far this year 2023,, including civilians, and has been responsible for the deaths of somewhere between 100,000 and 600,000 thoroughly innocent Iraqi civilians (estimates vary), some of whom have died as a result of American military actions, others of whom have died as a result of terrorist attacks launched by various warring Mohammedan factions within Iraq and by those who used the country's porous borders after the invasion as a sieve to seek to attack American forces in Iraq that they could not otherwise reach from their home countries.

The financial costs of the war have been staggering. The social costs for Americans at home have been staggering as the family lives of regular military service personnel and, most especially, of reservists in the United States National Guard have been disrupted and, in all too many instances, entirely broken, shattered. As I wrote The Remnant on early-2003 in in anticipation of these costs of the pending war, "for what?" To make Iraq safe for a "democracy" it did not want and will always be threatened by rival factions? For what?

Here is a brief synopsis of the misrepresentations that were made in the propaganda build-up to the Iraq War in 2002-2003 here in the United States of America: 

1) Saddam Hussein had no "weapons of mass destruction." He destroyed his stockpile of biological weapons in the 1990s. The biological agents that he used on the Kurds in 1991 were sold to him by the United States of America in 1985 to be used in the then ongoing Iran-Iraq War. Hussein, who was certainly a brutal thug responsible for the deaths of about 1.5 million Iraqis between 1969 and 2003 (about the same number of innocent human beings put to death under cover of the civil law by means of surgical abortions each year) simply stockpiled those weapons to be used in his own country at a later date. Who was the American envoy who arranged for the sale of these biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction. Look for yourselves:

Shaking Hands: Saddam Hussein greets Donald Rumsfeld, then special envoy of President Ronald Reagan, in Baghdad on December 20, 1983.  (National Security Archive, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/ There is an interesting, fact-based article, replete with links to national security documents, available at: Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein.)

As noted just above, Hussein stockpiled these weapons sold to him by the United Sates of America, choosing not to use them in the war against Iran, which did not end until 1988, and used them instead on the Kurds in northern Iraq following the conclusion of the Persian Gulf War in 1991, a war that was launched to expel Iraq's forces from a country, Kuwait, which Hussein believed that American Ambassador April Glaspie on July 25, 1990, had signaled to him was not of significant enough interest for the United States of America to do anything other than express a verbal condemnation in its behalf should he, Hussein, decide to reclaim Iraqi land that was taken away from it following the end of World War I.

2) The Iraqi government had no involvement in the September 11, 2001, attacks upon the World Trade Center towers in the City of New York, New York, and upon the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia.

3) The Iraqi government had no involvement with Osama bin Laden or al-Qaeda. Saddam Hussein was a thug who governed Iraq in the style of a Mafioso don. Mobsters protect their territories very carefully. Saddam Hussein, a very secular and non-observant Mohammedan and a xenophobe who had no use for foreigners of any type (save for the Soviets when it served his purposes to have them train his military forces), never wanted a rival gang of mobsters to enter and possibly destabilize his country.

4) According to then President Bush, in an address given on October 7, 2002, Saddam Hussein's Iraq had a "growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas" (see George W. Bush: Address to the Nation on Iraq From Cincinnati, Ohio). This last point was particularly laughable. Growing fleet? How about two unmanned aerial vehicles? That's right, two. Their range? About 650 miles, which means that these unmanned aerial vehicles would had to have been transported by the nonexistent Iraqi navy undetected by satellite reconnaissance in order to get close enough to the United States to drop the nonexistent "weapons of mass destruction" that Saddam Hussein was alleged to have possessed or was in the "process" of developing. Absolute absurdity designed to frighten the American public and win international support for his scheme of "regime change" to aid the not-so-"democratic" State of Israel and American corporate interests.

5) Saddam Hussein was not attempting to purchase enriched uranium from the country of Niger to foment another attack on the United States of America, contrary to the claim made by President George Walker Bush in his State of the Union Address on January 28, 2003: 

The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.

Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide.

The dictator of Iraq is not disarming. To the contrary, he is deceiving. (President Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address.) 

No, it was George Walker Bush and his neoconservative war hawks who were deceiving the world. Saddam Hussein, caught up in his delusional world of paranoia and thuggery, was content to rattle the cages of the United States of America. He had no credible means to attack this country whatsoever.

The unjust, immoral, unconstitutional invasion of the sovereign country of Iraq to impose upon its people the "American way" so as to make the Middle East safe for Israel has also devastated Iraq's population of Christians, including Chaldean Rite Catholics. Mohammedan violence against Catholics and members of various Orthodox sects has been relentless in the past seven years. As bad as Saddam Hussein was, and he was a brutal thug, to be sure, he was a clever politician who wanted to have the support of as many groups as possible in Iraq, which is why he protected the small Christian minority in that country. One of the consequences of Hussein's overthrow has been to make Christians "fair game" for Mohammedan murderers, who have long desired to kill off or to drive into exile the "infidels."  (See More Christians Killed in Iraq, Chaldean bishop says U.S. accountable for death of Archbishop of Mosul, and Go Tell Iraq's Catholics--and American Babies--About The "Lesser of Two Evils".)

Saddam Hussein had a vested interest to protect the lives and the rights of Eastern rite Catholics in Iraq. As a secular Mohammedan, Hussein's Baath Party and his clan from Tikrit mattered far more to him than making Iraq into what it has become, a stronghold of Shiite Mohammedanism that has pitted Shiites against the Sunnis in pitched battles that were impossible during his brutal, autocratic rule (just as Josip Broz Tito held the warring ethnic and religious factions in the artificial entity known as Yugoslavia together by brute force until his own death in 1980, at which point the Balkans began to collapse and then dissolve into warfare and "ethnic cleansing," following by William Jefferson Blythe Clinton's NATO intervention and bombing of Serbia in behalf of the Mohammedans in Bosnia and Kosovo). Catholics are protected in Iraq no more. Their ranks have been decimated by the largely unreported, at least in the Western press, of attacks upon them by Mohammedans (that "religion of peace" George Walker Bush, the "lesser of the two evils," talked about enedlessly) and by the exodus of many thousands of them into other Middle Eastern countries to flee from the violence and destruction.

Thus, the Chaldean Catholic Archbishop of Mosul, the Most Reverend Paulos Faraj Rahho, was kidnapped on February 29, 2008. His body was found in Mosul on Wednesday, March 12, 2008. Leaving aside the late Archbishop's association with the counterfeit church of conciliarism (issues of survival in Iraq have taken precedence over issues of the Faith about which we have been so greatly and so rightly concerned here in the West), he was killed for his Faith in Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and for being a visible representative of the Catholic Church in Iraq. He was targeted because he was a Catholic, a true bishop of an ancient and venerable Eastern rite of the Catholic Church, whose episcopal lineage was entirely of the Chaldean rited.

Oh, there are those who will say that the United States launched a war against "Islamo-fascism: in 2003, which is nothing other than an empty slogan. How could have the United States presence in Iraq have been considered a "crusade" against "Islamo-fascism" when it is the believing, practicing Mohammedans of the Shiite sect who more or less "winked" at the civil war that took place between Shiites and Sunnis and as Catholics and members of Orthodox sects were being harassed. shot at and killed, their stores, churches, and homes burned to the ground in many instances. There was no legitimate reason to destabilize the country of Iraq.

This is what was written on this site fifteen years ago now:

Monies spent to make Americans "more secure" have gone to undergirding regimes that are as corrupt and only slightly more tyrannical than that of the United States of America, where the exercise of tyranny is masked under the usual fascist guises of "national security," patriotism" and the newer slogan of "the global war of terror." All the while, you see, Catholics in Iraq and Pakistan and elsewhere in the Mohammedan world were put more at risk and subjected to all manner of persecution without too many words of concern, no less, protest emanating from Washington, District of Columbia, United States of America.

The American invasion ousted a corrupt secular Mohammedan dictator and replaced him with equally corrupt religious Mohammedans who fought with each other as they squanderedAmerican aid money and did little to stop sectarian violence or to come to a meaningful, enforceable agreement on sharing the nation's oil wealth, oblivious to the suffering of Iraq's Catholic community. Please, the "global war on terror" was not a "Christian" crusade against Mohammedanism. Far from it. If it were, ladies and gentlemen, there wouldn't have been such silence in the wake of the persecution of Catholics in Iraq, now would there?

George Walker Bush’s “liberation” of Iraq has “liberated” Iraq of its Chaldean Rite Catholics, who, though always a minority of the predominantly Mohammedan nation, trace their complex origins, which intertwined with the heretical Nestorians until the establishment of the Chaldean Rite in 1552, to  Apostolic times, and had received the protection of Saddam Hussein during his thirty-four years as Iraq’s dictatorial president. All but a handful of Chaldean Rite Catholics remain in Iraq, and the conciliar patriarch of Baghdad, has been forced to take refuge in Kurdistan following Iraqi President Abdul Latif Rashid’s decree that revoked the regime’s recognition of Louis “Cardinal” Sako as the Chaldean Rite patriarch:

Iraq's Chaldean Catholic Cardinal Louis Sako has left his patriarchal residence in the capital, Baghdad, relocating to a monastery in the northern Kurdistan region after the president of Iraq recently revoked a decree that formally recognized him as Chaldean patriarch in the country.

The move by Iraqi President Abdul Latif Rashid July 3 is seen as a usurpation of the clergyman's position as the officially recognized head of Iraq's Catholic Chaldean Church and his position and powers to administer the Chaldean religious endowment.

The action has revoked a special presidential decree of 2013 by Rashid's predecessor that granted this authority to Sako.

Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Bashar Warda explained in a statement made available to OSV News that the rationale behind the move may have resulted from requests for a similar decree from the patriarch of the Assyrian Church and the patriarch of the Old Assyrian Church, which the president denied. Rashid said the retraction of such decrees does not impact the status of any church leader in any way, according to Asia News.

"Withdrawing the republican decree does not prejudice the religious or legal status of Cardinal Louis Sako, as he is appointed by the Apostolic See," Warda's statement said, adding that the patriarch continues to enjoy "the respect and appreciation of the presidency of the Republic as Patriarch of the Chaldean Church in Iraq and the world."

However, the Iraqi Kurdistan-based Rudaw news agency and other media reported that Rashid's revocation may be precipitated by Iraqi politics. It alleged the revocation followed a meeting between the president and Rayan al-Kildani, a leader of the Babylon Brigades, a nominally Chaldean Catholic militia in Iraq with close ties to the pro-Iran Popular Mobilization Forces (known as the Hashd al-Shaabi in Arabic) and Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Observers say the political wing of the militia -- the Babylon Movement party -- claims to represent Iraq's Christian community, but has little or no Christian support and primarily represents Kildani's personal interests. Analysts also see Iran further tightening its influence over Iraqi politics.

Iraqi Christian rights activist Diya Butrus Slewa speaking to The Christian Post called the action "a political maneuver to seize the remainder of what Christians have left in Iraq and Baghdad and to expel them."

"Unfortunately, this is a blatant targeting of the Christians and a threat to their rights," Slewa said.

"We hope the Iraqi presidency hears our people and revokes this (decision) as soon as possible, otherwise it will become an international matter and the Vatican will get involved," Slewa added.

"Personally, I believe the approach to revoking the decree was flawed," Warda said in a statement. "The President of the Republic could have convened a meeting with all the church leaders to explain the history of these decrees and his decision to retract them. Instead, the matter was played out in the media, leading the Patriarch to interpret this action as punitive," he wrote.

In a statement, Sako said he "decided to withdraw from the patriarchal residence in Baghdad … to one of the monasteries in the Kurdistan Region," due to the "deliberate and offensive" campaign by the Babylon Brigades and the revocation of the presidential decree, which he called "unprecedented" in the history of Iraq.

Warda cautioned that given "the prevailing political climate in Iraq, all occurrences carry a political subtext. … Hence, it's prudent for the President to handle this situation discreetly, liaise directly with church heads, and thwart political factions from leveraging these situations for their personal political and media gains."

In his statement, Warda further advised that a presidential visit to the cardinal "at his place of residence could serve to reinforce his previous assertions of Iraq's respect and acknowledgment for Patriarch Sako's religious, national, and international significance."

He added that "it would be beneficial if the Ministry of Justice quickly issued deeds for the religious endowments to all heads of churches, which would assure everyone that there are no plans for the state to take over these church endowments."

"These decrees have their origins in early Islamic periods," Warda said of the history of such decisions -- the caliph would traditionally issue an edict mandating the patriarch to oversee the personal status of Christianity, in accordance with the church's approved laws and customs.

"I personally see these decrees as a distinct infringement on human rights, as they treated non-Muslims as dhimmis, obliging them to pay a tax," Warda said. "The Ottomans further embraced this practice, making it a custom that persists to this day. It's noteworthy that similar decrees were issued to leaders of other religions and sects," he said. (Iraq's Catholic cardinal leaves Baghdad after president revokes decree recognizing church's authority.)

As far as I know, the lying “neoconservative” dimwit, whose eight years as the “conservative” statist made possible for the United States of America to be “safe” for the election of United States Senator Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro, has made no comment on what has happened to “Cardinal” Sako. As is the case with all other “neoconservative” war hawks, George Walker Bush lives in an alternative universe, oblivious to all the deaths of innocent human beings for which he is directly responsible, the destruction of Iraq’s infrastructure, which was “rebuilt” by American contractors in such a slipshod manner than much of its work had to redone one or more times, the transformation of Iraq into an Iranian client state, and the decimation of Chaldean Rite Catholics. All this must be ignored to perpetuate the abject myth that the world became a “safer” place following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Go tell that to Chaldean Rite Catholics.

Alas, Mohammedan violence against Catholics was tolerated by the government of the United States of America because it needed someone in Iraq to fill the power vacuum caused by the ouster of Saddam Hussein.

Remember, the government of the United States of America was actually complicit in the slaughter of over a quarter of a million Catholics in Mexico in the 1920s and 1930s. The government of the United States of American saw to it that Protestant "churches" and Masonic lodges were started in Catholic lands following its victory in the unjust and immoral Spanish-American War, taking untold numbers of souls out of the Church in the name of American "civil" and "religious" liberty. And the government of the United States of America was mostly deaf, dumb and blind to the plight of Maronite Rite Catholics in Iraq in 2006 as the forces of Zionism bombed their homes in Lebanon, displacing nearly a million of them in the process with hardly a word of this moral disaster being reported by the "mainstream" media. The government of the United States of America will only rarely criticize something done by their Zionist puppeteers in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. How ironic it is that Mohammedan violence against Catholics was tolerated in order to do the bidding of the Zionists in the creation of the "democratic" Iraq!

American lives were wasted in this effort to build "peace and security" on the basis of a war conducted under false premises and designed to pursue illusory objectives. American families were  torn apart for months and years on end as their loved ones, including mothers of children who had signed up to serve in the National Guard (which exists to deal with emergencies of various levels in the fifty states and, as a last resort, in other parts of the nation if pressed into service for that purpose), served in Iraq or were deprived of their fathers because of long stints in rehabilitation centers following injuries sustained in Iraq. The American invasion of Iraq was nothing other than a moral disaster from beginning to end, especially when one considers the war upon souls what the invaders' government unleashed in 2003 by sending in "family planning" information, pills and devices almost immediately in the aftermath of the invasion itself. Ah, yes, American "liberation." American "civil liberty." Americanism will solve all, right?

The United States of America is as vulnerable to attack from without now as it was twenty years ago. The leaders of Western countries, including the United States of America, have never understood that it is impossible to make any country secure from attacks from without as long as our laws sanction the deliberate assaults upon the innocent human life. The Rome of the Caesars fell to barbarian invaders in large measure because of the social decay found within the empire (in addition to the cost of needless foreign wars, over-regulation of the economy, bloated bureaucracies, the cult of personality of the ruling class--sound familiar?). The United States is not exempt from such a fate. (Please see We've Done This to Ourselves, Empires Come and Go--Including Ours, and No Homeland Security for the Preborn.)

To reject the sweet yoke of the Social Reign of Christ the King is to live under the iron rule of men who believe that they can "plan" or "will" "solutions" to domestic and international difficulties, convincing us that they need more and more of our money to do so.

To reject the sweet yoke of the Social Reign of Christ the King is to live under the iron rule of men who wind up having no regard even for the constitutions and just civil laws that they have sworn to uphold (see He Swore to Uphold the Constitution, Not the United Nations).

To reject the sweet yoke of the Social Reign of Christ the King is to live under the iron rule of men who are mad, men who never want to admit that their schemes for prosperity at home and for peace in the world are doomed to miserable failure time after time after time (see All Caesars Go Mad.)

This country has been in one war, or another, hot or cold, during most of the seventy-one years, four months, one day life as the military-industrial complex about which President Dwight David Eisenhower warned in his farewell address, delivered on Tuesday, January 17, 1961, accustomed us to accept unjust  wars, including wars without clearly stated goals and no true plans of what constituted victory, as just part of our daily lives. Consider again President Eisenhower's very prescient words:

Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small,there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defense; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research-these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.

But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs-balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage-balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between action of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration.

The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well, in the face of stress and threat. But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. I mention two only.

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.

Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peace time, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence-economic, political, even spiritual-is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. (Dwight D. Eisenhower -- Farewell Address.) 

Although Eisenhower did not understand that the authentic security of one's nation is premised upon its subordination to the Social Reign of Christ the King as it must be exercised by the Catholic Church, placing him in concert with today's conciliar officials in the counterfeit conciliar church, the late president and former five star General of the United States Army did have a keen insight into the dangers posed by the rise of what he termed so accurately as the military-industrial complex, which thrives on the constant warfare that former President George Walker Bush and his advisers envisioned as "necessary" to "secure" this country and "liberate" other peoples.

The “neoconservatives” never learn. They did not learn any lessons from their self-made moral, political, geopolitical, economic, and international catastrophe that was their unjust, immoral, and unconstitutional invasion, occupation, and destruction of Iraq, they have played an active role, along with their globalist allies, in the evisceration of Ukraine in order to effect “regime change” in Russia. This has resulted, as noted at the beginning of this commentary, a renewed Sino-Russian alliance that hath not the interests of Christ the King nor His Catholic Church in mind. Quite the contrary is true, of course.

Father Charles Arminjon wrote the following prophetic words in 1888 in The End of the Present World and the Mysteries of the Future Life, the book that helped inspire Therese Martin to apply for entrance into the Carmel of Lisieux:

Already, the distant peoples are adopting our inventions, casting rifled guns, and beginning to build armored ships and arsenals. China--that vast empire swarming with people, where, each day, the seas and rivers engulf a huge excess of human beings whom the rich, fertile soil can no longer feed--she has her mechanics, her engineers, and is learning our strategy and industrial progress. Now, have our latest wars not shown that, at the present time, the issue of battles lies above all in numbers, and that, in armies, as in the realm of politics, what determines success and wins the victory is the brutal, inexorable law of superior numbers?

Thus, the hour bids to be not far off when these millions  . . . who populate the east and north of Asia will have at their disposal more soldiers, more ammunition, and more military leaders than all other peoples; and the day can be foreseen when, having become fully conscious of their number and strength, they will hurtle themselves in countless hordes upon our Europe, enfeebled and forsaken by God. There will then be invasions more terrible than those of the Vandals and the Huns . . . Provinces will be pillaged, rights violated, and small nations destroyed and ground down like dust. Then, a vast agglomeration of all the inhabitants of the earth will be observed, under the scepter of a single leader, who will be either the Antichrist, or one of his immediate predecessors. That day will see the death of human freedom.

The unity of all peoples will be built, for the last time, upon the ruins of all the suppressed nationalities. The empire of evil will be accomplished. Divine Providence will scourge the world, by subject it, body and soul, to one master . . . who will be moved solely by hatred of men and contempt of God.

Accordingly, any careful observer of the events of the present time cannot escape the conviction that everything is being done to bring about a social environment where the man of sin, by combining in his person all the depravity and very false doctrine of his age, will be produced spontaneously and effortlessly, like the parasitical tapeworm that breeds naturally in the gangrenous flesh and organs.

Yet the apparently incomprehensible thing that, at first sight, no sign seems to presage, is that the seat of his empire will be Jerusalem.

Well, it is easy to see that, if the materialistic, atheistic civilization, whose impending coming the free-thinkers and the irreligious press are always predicting, ever dawns on the world, its center of action and seat of public will be Jerusalem.

In fact, when the Christian Faith has finally died out in the hearts of men--when pleasure and well-being have become the gods of the day--human activity will then have one single goal: the power of the state; one single lever and stimulus: public opinion, one inspiration and driving force: and this stimulus, this sinew, this driving force, will be gold. Gold will take precedence over religion and morality, becoming the basis of politics and the keystone of all institutions. The pontiffs and kings will be the financiers; and the people who possesses the most gold will be the ones who will soon exercise the greatest control over us. (Father Charles Arminjon, The End of the Present World and the Mysteries of the Future Life, translated by Susan Conroy and Peter McEnerny. Manchester, New Hampshire: Sophia Institute Press, 2008, pp. 59-61.) 

Quite prophetic, wouldn't you say? Quite applicable to our current circumstances today.

What more needs to be said?

We need to pray and to work for the restoration of the Social Reign of Christ King as we plant seeds by offering all that we have and to Him through the Immaculate Heart of Mary according to the formula of Saint Louis de Montfort, making sure to pray as many Rosaries each day as our state-in-life permits.

May we pray to Our Lady and to her Most Chaste Spouse, Good Saint Joseph, the Patron of the Universal Church and the Protector of the Faithful, so that their Divine Son will indeed conquer all of his enemies in the ranks of the worldly wise, both those in the world and those in the counterfeit church of conciliarism, and so that we, who have been His enemies all too frequently by means of our sins, will be conquered once and for all by His ineffable grace to eschew the honors and riches of this world to be faithful to Him as He has revealed Himself to us through His true Church.

Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon!

Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.  

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.