Nov 29, 2005

So getting back to the question of the Iraq war. . . President Bush was listening not only to his Israeli-agent advisors like Scooter Libby. He was also listening to his pro-Jewish Evangelical conservative voter base.

My voice was too tiny for him to hear, of course, but if he had listened to me, he would have received one more vote against the Iraq war. As I said back then, the Lord showed us in March of 2001 (six months before 9-11) that a spirit of revenge was operating in America. After 9-11, we understood that a mid-east war was inevitable, because most American people demanded revenge. President Bush responded accordingly.

I wrote in 2001 that revenge is not a proper motive. I wrote that if we intended to respond by revenge, we were going up against the world champions of revenge. We could not possibly win such a war. We could, of course, defeat them militarily, but there were too many Muslim religious revengers for us to ever defeat them in the long run.

The real solution was for America to repent of our support for the Israeli state from the beginning, when we rewarded Jewish terrorism in the 1940's with recognition for statehood. See my book, "The Struggle for the Birthright."

The world will not see peace until we repent in this way. Meanwhile, however, we are now trapped in Iraq. Now that we have overthrown the previous dictator and put an end to his torture chambers, we have filled his shoes quite well with torture chambers of our own. Thank Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney for that. The alarms are going off, and President Bush is still asleep at the wheel.

Rumsfeld is being legalistic when he says we do not practice "torture." To him, torture is inflicting injury on American soil that leads to "organ failure." Anything up to that point is not really torture at all. And even those boundaries do not apply if we do it on foreign soil.

Where are all the Christian evangelicals and Catholics in this? How can they be so rabidly anti-abortion and so mute when it comes to torture? Is it because Roman Catholicism has such a long history of torturing "heretics" in the past centuries? Why must they leave it to the Democrats to object to torture? By leaving it to the Democrats, they have allowed the issue to become politicized, when it is really a moral issue and a Christian issue.

Tell me, you Christians, what would Jesus do? Would He condone torturing suspects? How does the Golden Rule apply here? If the government suspects you of doing something, would you want them to treat YOU like they treat al-quaida suspects?

President Bush's "core constituency" ought to be up in arms, demanding Rumsfeld's immediate resignation for even suggesting that their tactics are not torture. They ARE torture, regardless of the legal loopholes, and regardless of WHERE these things are done. Setting up "black prisons" in other countries to get around the torture laws in America ought to be a capital offense.

The churches quoted above are now demanding that we get out of Iraq. But once again, the "facts on the ground" make this the worst possible thing we could do right now. We have made a mess of it; it is our responsibility to clean it up. Yes, it will cost lives, and American soldiers have no choice but to pay the price for this. Yes, it could cost so much money as to deflate our economy and destroy the dollar. But it is OUR MESS. We have no choice but to see it through to the end. So I do not believe that we ought to just pull out and leave the Iraqis to the mercy of the violent extremists. I just think we should admit we made a mistake and apologize to the world for our behavior.

We do NOT have to base our foreign policy on "preemptive strikes". Such a policy only creates more injustice and creates more fanaticism and more terrorists, which then fuels an American "I-told-you-so" response.

We do not have to copy the Israelis in this. Yet we have taken a play out of Ariel Sharon's playbook. He is the king of preemptive strikes and collective punishment. If we allow this to become ingrained into our thinking, it will not be long before American citizens will be arrested too on suspicion of committing a future crime. Where will it end?

Secondly, we do NOT have to make it our foreign policy to impose Democracy on the rest of the world. Democracy does not work when a nation has a significant number (5% or more) of religious fanatics who are willing to die AND TO KILL OTHERS to fulfill their agenda.

The only reason Democracy works in America and in Europe is because the number of Christian fanatics is so tiny. The reason for this is because Christianity specifically teaches us to be peacemakers, not warmongerers or torturers. Jesus did not organize a revolution against Rome. The disciples did not take up arms, and when Peter did so once, Jesus rebuked him. Jesus was willing to die for His beliefs, but He will NOT willing to KILL OTHERS for His beliefs. We have positive Christian examples AGAINST such revenge motives. Only a few Christians manage to overlook those New Testament examples. Usually, they do so by using the Old Testament as their playbook.

If anyone thinks that the Old Testament justifies such things, please read chapter 2 of my book, "The Laws of Spiritual Warfare."

In contrast to Christianity, Islam was founded largely by war. Yes, Muslims want peace, too, just like anyone. The question is what violent steps do we think are justifiable to achieve the peace that we all want?? They gained most followers by conquest and coersion. (Much like Catholicism in the New World. The justification was the same in both cases. Conquer now, and the next generation will thank you, once they have been converted to the "true" religion.)

The bottom line is that my position on the Iraq war has not changed at all from its beginning. I opposed it even before 9-11 when I saw war looking for an excuse to happen. I opposed it on Christian principles--first, that revenge is not a fruit of the Spirit. I saw the American presidency forming a new doctrine of war, taking as their example the Israeli policies of the past half-century.

I saw the rise to political power of the Evangelical pro-Israeli lobbies who want to radicalize both Jews and Christians in order to force the world into Armageddon. Why? Because they believe it is inevitable; and secondly, because they want a little too badly to see Christ's second coming, and they believe that Armageddon must come first. Thus, they push and fund the most radical of the Zionists, though they themselves believe that the coming Armageddon will destroy all but 144,000 Jews. Let's see, that means about .5% of them will survive. That is what these Zionist Christians are going to get for their money and political support. Is that not a little crazy?

By working to bring about Armageddon and the destruction of most of the world's Jews (to force Christ to manifest Himself), Christians are betraying Christ in His second coming, even as Christ was betrayed by Judas in His first coming. Judas, too, tried to force Jesus to manifest Himself, and thus he betrayed Him, thinking that this would force Him into the open. (Jesus would thank him later, he thought, because the end justifies the means.) When the plan backfired and he saw his friend crucified, he hanged himself.

I believe that this is what is really going on from a biblical perspective.

This is the final part of a series titled "The Iraq War Background." To view all parts, click the link below.

The Iraq War Background