The National Football League\u2019s Dallas Cowboys provide a commentary on the imperialism undermining the soul of America. The commentary is seen in The Dallas Morning News reports of the mammoth new, $1.15 billion, Cowboys Stadium: it drew 105, 121 fans on opening day, which was \u201cthe largest regular-season crowd in NFL history.\u201d The \u201chuge stadium crowd finally got their first look at the stadium\u2019s . . . 160-foot-long Mitsubishiis [,] the largest HDTV in the world. . . . The $40 million display is 54 yards long, more than 71 feet tall and hangs only 90 feet above the playing field.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is about bigger being better. Before kick-off, \u201cphotos of architectural wonders flashed on the team\u2019s world-record video board,\u201d including \u201cThe Great Wall of China. The Taj Mahal. The Roman Colosseum. And finally Cowboys Stadium.\u201d Fans paid as high as \u201c$40,000 per seat for the right to buy tickets, in addition to the tickets themselves: $340 per seat per game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even \u201cGod\u201d is a fan. \u201cAt the Cowboys\u2019 previous home,\u201d a news story states, \u201cit was said that Texas Stadium had a hole in the roof so God could watch his favorite team. Now, one fan mused, God has an obstructed view, because of the gigantic video board hanging in the new Cowboys Stadium.\u201d<\/p>\n
But \u201cGod\u2019s\u201d favorite, prayerful, warmongering former president was on hand, and provides the bottom line of the commentary: \u201cThere was a countdown to the opening of the roof, a [pre-game] coin toss by\u201d and \u201cwarm reception\u201d for \u201cformer President George W. Bush,\u201d with an American flag, held by members of the armed forces, covering the whole football field for the singing of the national anthem. (reports by Jeff Mosier and Jason Sickles; other staff reports; and \u201cDallas Cowboys season-ticket holders pay hundreds to thousands for seats, but say it was worth every penny,\u201d by Theodore Kim and Scott Farwell, Sept. 21, 2009)<\/p>\n
It is about \u201cGod\u2019s . . . favorite team.\u201d His favorite nation. His favorite Christian religion cradling \u201cHis only Son\u201d and \u201cSaviour of the world.\u201d It is actually about an \u201cendless war\u2019s\u201d roar of ethnocentric patriotism and imperialistic Christianity drowning out the reason of democratic humanness.<\/p>\n
It is about the American flag covering and suffocating to death over one million Iraqi civilians, uprooting over four million more, destroying a country\u2019s life-sustaining infrastructure, triggering terrible sectarian violence to this day, and unjustly sacrificing American lives and resources in a war based on lies. A criminal war launched by a self-professed \u201cChrist . . . changed my heart . . . I pray daily . . . for peace,\u201d American president. An openly religious president who repeatedly redefined America\u2019s blatant so-called \u201cOperation Iraqi Freedom\u201d war crime as an act of God: \u201cFreedom is not America\u2019s gift to the world, it is Almighty God\u2019s gift to every man and woman in this world.\u201d And a significant majority of evangelical Christians said \u201cAmen!\u201d While many others said nothing.<\/p>\n
Former President Bush\u2019s religious battle cry evidently had a Biblical-like ring to most evangelical Christians: \u201cFor God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.\u201d Bush\u2019s religiously legitimized warmongering words also echoed the Christian Gospel\u2019s imperialistic mission: a supposedly resurrected Jesus appeared to and commanded his disciples with, \u201cAll authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. (Matthew 28: 16-20)<\/p>\n
Imperialism by any other name . . . Whether in the name of \u201cfreedom\u201d or in the name of \u201cChrist.\u201d It is about believing or perishing.<\/p>\n
It is about one of the worst war criminals in the eyes of the world showing his face on the Dallas Cowboys Stadium\u2019s 50-yard line and receiving \u201ca warm reception\u201d from 105,121 fans. A United Methodist war criminal, whose presidential library, museum and institute are now housed at his hierarchically-controlled and therefore predominately conventional denomination\u2019s Southern Methodist University in Dallas. It is about imperialistic crimes against humanity legitimized by piety and patriotism.<\/p>\n
It is about the American flag unfurled against the people of Afghanistan in an immoral eight- year war. Hundreds of innocent men, women and children in Afghanistan and Pakistan have been indiscriminately killed by US drone and other air strikes. As reported in The New York Times, \u201cThe [United States Special] forces have often been blamed for nighttime raids on villages, detentions and air strikes that have the population in southern Afghanistan to the point of revolt. (May 7, 2009) (See Alberts, \u201cFirst the Torture of Truth . . . ,\u201d CounterPunch, June 10, 2009)<\/p>\n
The American flag is also a symbol of oppression in Pakistan, as over three million civilians have been made refugees by the US-pressured Pakistani military\u2019s offensives against Taliban strongholds\u2014with untold more displaced civilians to come as more than 100,000 already have fled South Wazinistan, where Pakistan\u2019s air and ground forces, pushed and equipped by the US, are launching new attacks against the Taliban. (\u201cUnder Pressure, Pakistani Army Pushes into South Wazinistan,\u201d By Spiegel Staff, Spiegel Online International, 10, 19, 2009)<\/p>\n
The hatred toward America is reported to have spread from Afghanistan to Pakistan:<\/p>\n
It is quite possible that Pakistan is already the world\u2019s most anti-American country. From university professors to taxi drivers, most Pakistanis are convinced that the terror in their country is not homegrown, but a consequence of the US invasion of Afghanistan. (Ibid.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
And now an election fraud in Afghanistan, perpetrated by America\u2019s \u201cfavorite\u201d puppet president, Hamid Karzai. With a US-orchestrated new runoff election on November 7\u2014to give the appearance of legitimacy to the war and justify the continuing sacrifice of American lives and resources. A war that is itself a terrible fraud perpetrated on us American people by our political leaders in our name.<\/p>\n
Afghanistan is not about protecting America but about perpetual war for the profit of the arms and energy and reconstruction and security industries and for maintaining the political power of elected officials and the Pentagon. The so-called \u201cwar on terror\u201d by any other name will continue to create far more enemies rather than make America more secure. A Catch-22 for us Americans and our designated \u201cenemies\u201d: the more enemies the more justification for war. And the more profit for those for whom war is good business and power-maintaining.<\/p>\n
Tragically, many Americans still don\u2019t get it. How being \u201cGod\u2019s favorite team\u201d or nation or religion is a curse rather than a blessing. Thus President Obama may re-package and continue former President Bush\u2019s imperialistic policy by escalating America\u2019s crimes against humanity in Afghanistan\u2014and, like his predecessor, still show his face and receive \u201ca warm reception\u201d on a fifty-yard line or a pitcher\u2019s mound.<\/p>\n
\u201cForty-thousand dollars per seat\u201d just for the privilege of buying tickets, which themselves \u201ccost $350 per seat per game.\u201d Being the \u201cfavorite\u201d is a key to wealth, and breeds entitlement and privilege and often obliviousness to the needs and rights of those who are deemed disfavored. Such as the reported several thousand \u201crecently or soon to be homeless\u201d Detroit residents, who jammed a downtown convention center, pushing and shoving, \u201cseveral received medical treatment for fainting or exhaustion, all \u201cfrantically trying to obtain applications for federal housing assistance.\u201d (\u201cThousands Mob Detroit Center in Hopes of Free Cash,\u201d By The Associated Press,\u201d The New York Times, Oct. 7, 2009)<\/p>\n
A few pay $40,000 just for the privilege of sitting in a seat to watch a Sunday football game, while many thousands of other people struggle to find a place to sit down. The connection here: the \u201cfavorite\u201d ruling and privileged classes need the jobless, and thus prospective military-enlisting, poor to fight their profit-making wars and do their domestic \u201cdirty work.\u201d Economic injustice in the name of \u201cfreedom\u201d or \u201cGod.\u201d<\/p>\n
The belief that one\u2019s nation or religion is \u201cGod\u2019s favorite\u201d and thus the greatest and truest is imperialistic. Such assumed superiority leads people to justify imposing their will and way on other individuals and groups in violation of the latter\u2019s inalienable right to be who they are. Thus former President Bush\u2019s repeated statement that \u201cAmerica is the greatest nation on the face of the Earth\u201d is contrary to the very meaning of democracy, which he supposedly was trying to \u201cspread to the furthest corners of the earth.\u201d So also, the belief that Jesus is \u201cGod\u2019s only Son\u201d and the \u201cSaviour of the world,\u201d breeds being the \u201cfavorite,\u201d and thus contradicts his fundamental teaching, \u201cLove your neighbor as yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is about loving one\u2019s neighbor as oneself. Such love requires self-understanding. And it is about sowing self-understanding that we may reap understanding of others. It is about sowing understanding of others that we may reap appreciation of their humanness. It is about sowing humanness that we may reap justice. It is about sowing justice that we may reap peace\u2014and security and fulfillment. Surely the vitality of any political ideology or religious belief is to be judged by the extent to which it teaches people to love themselves and to value and love other persons for themselves.<\/p>\n
Rev. William E. Alberts, Ph.D<\/strong>. is a hospital chaplain and a diplomate in the College of Pastoral Supervision and Psychotherapy. Both a Unitarian Universalist and a United Methodist minister, he has written research reports, essays and articles on racism, war, politics and religion. He can be reached at william.alberts@bmc.org<\/a><\/p>\n