BuzzFlash Reviews

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“For forty years Jim Douglass has been our leading North American Catholic theologian of peace. But this monumental work on the witness of JFK is something deeper still. Douglass is trying to get us to connect the dots between our ‘citizen denial,’ the government’s ‘plausible deniability,’ and the Unspeakable. This book has the potential to change our narrative about our country, and our lives as citizens and disciples. May we have ears to hear these truths, hearts able to bear their burden, and hands willing to build a new story.”

—Ched Myers, author, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus

Are the years of turmoil that followed the assassination of JFK due to not just the killing of a President, but of a man who had turned from cold warrior to a visionary of peace?

Was JFK killed because he had evolved into a threat to the war machine upon which the American economy and powers that be so rely on for wealth and the continuance of world dominance?

This book, which is selling quite well, is oddly enough published by Orbis, which is owned by the Maryknoll Order, a "U.S.-based Catholic mission movement, includes: the Maryknoll Society (priests and brothers), Maryknoll Congregation (Sisters), the Maryknoll Lay Missioners (laity, priests and religious), and the Maryknoll Affiliates."

The author, James W. Douglass, "is a longtime peace activist and writer.He and his wife Shelley are co-founders of the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action in Poulsbo, Washington, and Mary’s House, a Catholic Worker house of hospitality in Birmingham, Alabama. His books include The Nonviolent Cross, The Nonviolent Coming of God, and Resistance and Contemplation."

Whatever one thinks of the multiple conspiracy theories concerning JFK's assassination, Douglass's book is gaining popularity because it can also be read as metaphor: JFK's belated effort to turn America from an armed culture of victory to a member of an international peaceful world was shot down in Texas for a reason.

And the reason is the legacy, among others, that we saw in Vietnam (if you accept that JFK was on the verge of pulling out), the Gulf War and Iraq, among other nightmares of war. The warriors in our military-industrial-intelligence complex could not tolerate the possibility of peace.

Yes, Douglass, like all the JFK conspiracists grounds his book in the details surrounding the November, 1963, assassination, with his own interpretation.

You can debate Douglass's specific prism into the events -- the JFK assassination will forever be subject to speculation -- but you can't argue with the reality that the shooting death of Kennedy put a hole right through the heart of our hope for a nation and world turned toward peace.

We have been devastated ever since.

Maybe that is why the simple promise of "hope" has proven so resonant in 2008.

“This book’s story of JFK and the ‘unspeakable’ is a stunning mix of political thriller and meticulous scholarship. Even as it points persuasively to rogue powers at work in the U.S. military-industrial complex, it also witnesses to the power of spirit, inspiring prophetic voices like Thomas Merton’s, turning a president like John Kennedy toward peace, thus also enabling readers to see into the current deep structure of U.S. war and empire. Douglass’s book offers a goldmine of information and is indispensable for building prophetic spirit and hope.”

—Mark Lewis Taylor, Princeton Theological Seminary

“A remarkable book: devastating in its documented indictment of the dark forces that have long deformed the public life of this country, while also illuminating JFK’s final vision of world peace and documenting beyond reasonable doubt the unspeakable assassination of our last partially admirable president. This book should be required reading for every American citizen.”

—Richard Falk, Milbank Professor of International Law Emeritus, Princeton University

“This is the most thoroughly researched and documented book ever written about President Kennedy’s determination to prevent a nuclear war—and how his success in that struggle cost him his life. And yet, Douglass leads us well beyond the ‘whodunit’ dimensions of the story. He leads us straight into the urgent implications for the present, into what Thomas Merton called the ‘unspeakable.’ In the shadows of our own time we begin to become better prepared to break free of the violence that threatens all of us today.”

—Don Mosley, co-founder Jubilee Partners

“A remarkable achievement, outstanding even in an overcrowded field. It is profoundly conceived, researched, considered, argued, and written. Douglass shows persuasively how Kennedy’s innovative steps in foreign policy produced dangerous opposition within his own national security establishment. Not all will agree with his detailed speculation as to what happened in Dallas. But Douglass’s large picture of America’s political agony is, I believe, incontrovertible and certain to last.”

--Peter Dale Scott, author Deep Politics and the Death of JFK

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