Pastor Rick Warren Backs Assassination Of Foreign Leaders

[Bluebear]

Last night, on Fox News, Sean Hannity insisted that United States needs to "take out" Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Warren said he agreed. Hannity asked, "Am I advocating something dark, evil or something righteous?" Warren responded, "Well, actually, the Bible says that evil cannot be negotiated with. It has to just be stopped.... In fact, that is the legitimate role of government. The Bible says that God puts government on earth to punish evildoers. Not good-doers. Evildoers."

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/12/rick-warren-bac.html


President George W. Bush receives the "International Medal of PEACE" from Pastor Rick Warren on Monday, December 1, 2008

[sakabatou]

1. Should Rick Warren be arrested now?

I'm thing, "Yes."

[Pavulon]

3. Why

it is perfectly legal to discuss us policy. This was direct policy (see s. vietnam) and indirect action against other leaders.

It is however against us policy to directly kill heads of state. Others dont have that same right under our policy.

[GreenPartyVoter]

2. How can he make that line of thinking work with "thou shalt not kill?"

[amdezurik]

4. Seeing dumbaya never negociated, is he then evil?

et tu Brute?

[Sex Pistol]

5. Do you think it would have been a bad thing if Adolph Hitler had been assassinated?

I don't.

[Bluebear]

6. Well good for you, Sex Pistol. And we need the clergy urging this on, why?

And days after handing out his homemade "Medal of Peace" to Bush?

[Sex Pistol]

11. I don't know that much about Rick Warren, but I don't see this as a "clergy thing".

Rather, would be a simple matter of world security.

The long and the short of it is this: If Hitler had been assassinated shortly after coming to power, the world would have been more secure, millions of people who died would have been lived and millions of others would have lived far more prosperous lives.

So, you tell me, would it have been worth it?

[bullwinkle428]

13. So you're saying that your crystal ball would have been working

perfectly had you been alive at that time?

[Sex Pistol]

15. You wouldn't have needed a crystal ball; you just would have had to know how to read.

Hitler telegraphed his intentions in Mein Kampf.

[asteroid2003QQ47]

23. Advocates of assassination, in reading the situation, would have chosen pre-Hitler targets thus...

nipping Hitlerism in the bud!
For a plethora of suitable pre-Hitler targets read on--

The Horrifying American Roots of Nazi Eugenics

By Edwin Black
...>
"Hitler and his henchmen victimized an entire continent and exterminated millions in his quest for a co-called "Master Race."

But the concept of a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed master Nordic race didn't originate with Hitler. The idea was created in the United States, and cultivated in California, decades before Hitler came to power."
<>
In 1934, as Germany's sterilizations were accelerating beyond 5,000 per month, the California eugenics leader C. M. Goethe upon returning from Germany ebulliently bragged to a key colleague, "You will be interested to know, that your work has played a powerful part in shaping the opinions of the group of intellectuals who are behind Hitler in this epoch-making program. Everywhere I sensed that their opinions have been tremendously stimulated by American thought.…I want you, my dear friend, to carry this thought with you for the rest of your life, that you have really jolted into action a great government of 60 million people."
<>
More than just providing the scientific roadmap, America funded Germany's eugenic institutions. By 1926, Rockefeller had donated some $410,000 -- almost $4 million in 21st-Century money -- to hundreds of German researchers. In May 1926, Rockefeller awarded $250,000 to the German Psychiatric Institute of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, later to become the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Psychiatry.
<...
This article was first published in the San Francisco Chronicle and is reprinted with permission of the author.

http://hnn.us/articles/1796.html

[Sex Pistol]

34. Oh boy... So, the US was responsible for Nazism...?

Does that mean that we are all Nazis?

[asteroid2003QQ47]

43. You're certainly free to interpret it that way if you wish. n/t

[14thColony]

24. It's an unprovable hypothesis

that Hitler's death in, say, 1933 would have led to a more secure world with less devastation and loss of life.

In some alternate universe historians may be lamenting the fact that if Hitler hadn't died in that auto accident soon after becoming Reich Chancellor, he would have been able to reign in Himmler and Heydrich, whose Aryan supremacy ideas became radicalized to the point that all non-Aryans were seen as inferior and expendable, which as we all know led to the Nazi decision to de-populate most large European cities through the widespread use of VX nerve agents, which accounted for more than 150 million European dead and the complete collapse of the world economy once Germany was finally defeated, which led to the Second Great Depression, which set the stage for Europe's incorporation into the Soviet Union, which of course is the sole superpower today.

The Law of Unintended Consequences seems to counsel that the devil you know may really be better than the devil you don't.

[Sex Pistol]

35. You are absolutely correct--it is merely a hypothesis.

Nevertheless, I don't believe it could have gotten any worse than "the devil we knew."

[a la izquierda]

27. Ahistorical arguements...

POINTLESS.
You don't know and never will.

[Sex Pistol]

36. That is true, but that is what we are all here for, isn't it?

[a la izquierda]

39. No...I'm an historian.

I don't make ahistorical arguments. It would be an epic fail on my part.

[Sex Pistol]

40. All hypothetical discussions of history are ahostorical.

But hypotheses are essential when one is evaluating historical decisions.

[snake in the grass]

10. Reductio ad Hitlerum!

Congratulations!

[Sex Pistol]

12. Reductio ad Hitlerum cannot be logically applied to this question.

[snake in the grass]

14. I disagree...

...because the question is not whether bad foreign leaders should be killed but whether the clergy should be promoting it. The Hitler comparison has no bearing on the argument.

By the way, I agree with you that killing Hitler would have been a good thing so I guess that makes me guilty of Reductio ad Hitlerum as well.

:-)

[Sex Pistol]

16. I beg to differ with your interpretation.

If you had disagreed with me and I then made the assumption that you were a Nazi or supported Nazism; that would be Reductio ad Hitlerum.

Of course, if you had disagreed with me, we would have just disagreed. Nothing more, nothing less. :)

[SemiCharmedQuark]

26. Who gets to decide who is "bad" though?

And how bad do you have to be to warrant assassination? And since two enemies clearly think the other is bad, does justice come down to who has the faster hands?

[EstimatedProphet]

31. That's the crux of the biscuit

We talk and decide who is bad. We decide Hitler falls into this category - I would agree with him being there - but would the Germans of 1933 have agreed with that decision?

Jackass Warren thinks we should kill Iran's president, because of all the damage he's done to Iran and the world, but do you think he would say the same thing about the president of the United Fruit Company post-WWII? How much pain and suffering did the UFC cause in Central America?

[Sex Pistol]

37. Obviously, the decisions would have to be made by those responsible for the security of individual

nations or groups of nations with security agreements. And there is no way to know if the correct decisions would be made. One things for sure though, the "bad" guys are not going to agonize over ethics and morality of these types of decisions.

So, to answer your question, yes, we would have to trust that the good would be more resourceful than the evil. But, as history has shown us, that does not always happen.

[wuushew]

41. yes, it absolutely would have been to our detriment

Hitler's poor judgment on the Eastern front doomed Germany.

[tbyg52]

7. Not surprised. nt

[KitchenWitch]

8. Can these freaks please be raptured already?

I want my Earth back.

[Journeyman]

9. "Where are the murderers?" "We have murdered the murderers!" . . .

The problem with declaring people irredeemable and determining they must die is you set yourself on a level with God himself and declare your judgment unparalleled on the planet.

Or, as Kurt Vonnegut so aptly phrased it in Mother Night:

". . . there's no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you. Where's evil? It's that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side. It's that part of every man that finds all kinds of ugliness so attractive. It's that part of an imbecile that punishes and vilifies and makes war gladly."

How's that fit within your theology, Mr Warren? Quite neatly, I am sure, as you keep it -- above all else -- elastic enough to fit your needs at every given moment.

[Octafish]

17. Pat Robertson wanted to kill Hugo Chavez. ''Cheaper than invasion.''

The crazy NAZI turd, of course, wants to steal Venezuela's oil.

[sarcasmo]

18. More the Bible says so bullshit. Religion makes me ill

[Initech]

19. Saddleback Church should have lost its tax exempt status a long fuckin time ago.

[baldguy]

20. How very Taliban-ish of him.

We'll keep making the same mistakes if we don't learn from history. If we target their leaders they'll target our leaders.

[tnlefty]

21. Well, well, and people bitch and gripe about what

Rev. Wright says. And if, a BIG if, Warren is so concerned about evil, why is he standing beside Dimson** and giving him a medal of PEACE? The Lying (oh, that's a Commandment), murderous en masse, (oops that's another one), and perhaps the war criminal and Warren are both guilty of bearing false witness (ooops, ooops there's another one). :evilgrin:

Oh noes, I misread, this PASTOR approves of murder????!!!!????

I try not to watch, but is the M$M all over this? You know, all gaping eyeballs, endless blathering, wiping their brows over a PASTOR who approves murder??!!??

[davidthegnome]

22. What an idiot (the Pastor)

There may be a time when assassinating a political leader would be a good move for the world (if only someone had taken out Bush and Cheney) but to say that the bible permits it is pure idiocy. That is, it's pure idiocy unless you completely disregard the ten commandments.

I mean.. what part of "thou shalt not" is so hard to understand? The bible does not permit nor excuse such things. Some theologists argue that what was actually meant was "thou shalt not murder", in either case, this would clearly be that.

International medal of peace... ROFL

Give me a break.

[alarimer]

25. Well so does the CIA.

They have, in fact, assassinated foreign leaders and deposed others.

[PassingFair]

28. Spewage.

I hope we are delivered from this "evil" now.

[SidDithers]

29. It's a Purpose Driven Death...nt

Sid

[Solly Mack]

30. So..uh..was that on the 8th day that god put governments on earth?

And god said, "let there be governments"??? and *poof*, like magic, governments were born?

Were these ribbed governments?

Does little Ricky not understand that an American president is a foreign leader to others?

And quite a few people would suggest that advocating assassination is evil..and since evil can't be negotiated with, then little Ricky can't be negotiated with - and should just be stopped. Period.

[EstimatedProphet]

32. I'd love to see the actual biblical quotes for this

Because I don't remember them.

[guruoo]

33. "Not good-doers. Evildoers."

So, who are the "good-doers" that you seek to protect, Rev. Rick?

[xxqqqzme]

38. Someone should deflate warren

The Macy's parade is over.

[NNN0LHI]

42. I sure wish some kind person would return this Fu Manchu wearing whale to the ocean

Its the decent thing to do.

Don

[Political Tiger]

44. I consider Rick Warren to be an "evildoer"

So does that mean I can take him out or only the government can do that?

[IndianaGreen]

45. Any doubts that this guy and his Saddleback Church are just another fundie cult?

No wonder I find myself hating anything that has the whiff of religion.