Mark Siljander
speaker
279 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard Mar 2025
Mark Siljander’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
That's way back in the late 80s. I was in my 20s and early 30s. Okay. So in the 1980s, so you were operating as a...
rather straight-laced traditional evangelical in the 1980s. And a neoconservative. And a neoconservative. Yes. You should define neoconservative for everybody who's watching and listening.
Yes, that doesn't mean you're a Republican or Democrat particularly. But for example, Cheney, Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld during the Bush administration were considered neoconservatives. My definition is they're avid hawks They typically want to change regimes rather than cooperate and work with regimes by force if necessary.
I would say the Iraq war is emblematic of what a neoconservative, they don't mind lying, cheating, being scoundrels, if you will, causing wars if their ends are met. And the ends are? And that's exactly the question. The ends are democracy. Presumably, democracy is some of their deity.
In that, their hope that if we show these poor ignorant people overseas how marvelous democracy is, they'll beg for it, and the radical Muslims will denounce radical Islam to embrace democracy.
That was the hope that drove the Iraq War, for example. And I remember in the early stages of that, there was a delusion, I would say, that the democratic...
the distributors of democracy that constituted the American military would be welcomed with open hands, arms, and when the dictator tyrant was deposed, the freedom-loving people would rise up and democracy would prevail, which is, you might say, a somewhat naive view of how democracy works. And I know that's a bit of a parody, but that was my sense of the sentiment, the belief.
And so the neocons... They were convinced, let me see if I get it right, the neocons were convinced that if they put the might of the U.S.
military and the willingness to engage in warfare behind their pro-democracy words and threatened the stability of authoritarian regimes, that there'd be the possibility of eliciting something like, say, a genuine Arab Spring or a genuine transformation among the freedom-loving people of the Middle East, something like that. Am I parodying it too brutally, or is that...
Quite articulately. Okay. And it's critical to note that for several administrations, including a Democrat, there were regime change policies. And in the Bush administration, there was a secret policy revealed by General Wesley Clark some years ago, much post-Bush's term, two terms in office, that there were seven countries they wanted a regime change.
And they would do, as you know, anything to achieve it. So I felt it would be critical, since most of these countries were Muslim countries, and almost all conflicts, which are about 120 at the moment globally, have to do with Muslims, Christians, and or Jews, that perhaps a logical thing would be to study the Semitic holy books behind each. Yeah, right.
And then see if there's more common ground than we have known heretofore.
So I thought, well— Okay, and was that part of the epiphany? Yes, it was. Okay, so how did—okay, so how— So let's go back to the biographical details, and then I'll go into the neocon issue again with you. Well, you said that your initial stance—this was back in the 1980s—was rather traditional, straight-laced, evangelical, and you regarded yourself as an advocate for—
Christianity in the face of something approximating Muslim error and enmity. And then when you were in Congress, you realized that there was something wrong with that stance, even perhaps from a Christian perspective. But you also had a conceptual realization, which was there is some commonality of text between the three major Abrahamic faiths. And if you analyze that commonality, you'd be able to
Start to establish ground on which negotiation for peace might be established. Is that about right?
Well, I didn't realize there is so much common ground at the time, but that was the ambition and it was also Being a hawk, you know I was we were fighting communism at the time during the Soviet Empire and as young naive foolish And I was given the chairmanship of the Africa subcommittee, thinking that I was important. And it turned out to be they wanted to use someone young and naive and a dupe.
So certain people could sort of use me with certain legislative efforts. So I promoted anti-communist guerrillas supporting guns and arms and propped up despot regimes that were anti-communist regimes. Right, right. And in the epiphany, this is so contrary to what the Messiah taught. and who the Messiah was as an example of love and compassion and mercy, not killing and hate and arming.
So it was an overwhelming feeling of emotions. I actually teared up on the floor of the Congress, and I'm not one often given to tears like that. And it was just so powerful. And I can't tell you where it came from, but it was during the apartheid debate in South Africa where there were bills to condemn the white regime at the time. And I was in charge of it.
And I sat there in the House floor by myself and my African-American aide trying to defend a bill that as a weak, useless, toothless bill to condemn the white regime in South Africa, the Democrats and Republicans came up with an agreement. My job was to push it through. And the debates were for several days. I'm looking. There are 84 Democrats on the Democrat side and Republican.
I'm looking at my side. It's just me, my Aiden High. That was it. No one else. And it was obvious to me then, too bad it took so long to figure it out, that I was being used to prop up racism. So the most radical bill as an amendment to the wishy-washy bipartisan bill that wouldn't hurt the regime at all, but at least makes some subtle statements. I let that bill go through on a voice vote.
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