Sixteen Years Later

With the news of hurricanes and the endless political squabbling among the spoiled children that "represent" us in Congress and the White House, it is perhaps understandable that we neglect September 11th. But it is not forgotten in our home. My wife and I talked about how raw the emotions still are today, how videos of that day still give me that feeling of being punched in the stomach. I still remember being on the phone with my wife from work and her telling me another plane hit the World Trade Center and just like that we all knew this was no accident.

The days that followed were like a waking nightmare as we learned more, or at least thought we learned more. Three days after the attacks President Bush gave a speech at the National Cathedral. Like pretty much every American I watched our President speak from the pulpit and offer both soothing words and the threat of violence to come.

Some of the language he used that night was inspiring at the time but seems almost ominous now...

Just three days removed from these events, Americans do not yet have the distance of history, but our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil. War has been waged against us by stealth and deceit and murder. This nation is peaceful, but fierce when stirred to anger. This conflict was begun on the timing and terms of others; it will end in a way and at an hour of our choosing.

A Christian man standing in a pulpit pledging to rid the world of evil, something that he and I should have known was foolish. Just three days had passed but the wheels of vengeance were already turning. Not just vengeance toward those that had carried out the September 11th attacks but those we felt helped or inspired them, those that supported terror or those we just didn't like. I went as far as getting a military physical in Columbus, Ohio and was really just days away from going into the Air Force Officer Candidate School, inspired by a need for vengeance.

Weeks after September 11th, U.S. and NATO forces entered Afghanistan. By the end of January 2002 President Bush gave his "Axis of Evil" speech. About a year later we invaded Iraq.

Osama bin Laden is long dead, killed in Pakistan while living like an animal. Saddam Hussein is dead, executed by his people, after being captured and dragged from his hole. Taliban leader Mullah Omar is dead of natural causes. We have killed and killed and killed.

We won!

Right?

The images above are the sort of images that have dominated the last 16 years. My son that was 2 at the time is now old enough to enlist, although he absolutely is not, to fight in the wars we started after September 11th and that we still are fighting. Three of my kids were not even born yet. Almost 7000 Americans have died in the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and untold tens of thousands more are wounded and maimed in body and mind. The butcher's bill for Iraq and Afghanistan among their civilians is staggering. Still there is no end in sight, especially in Afghanistan, a nation rightly called the place where empires go to die.

The current instability of the Middle East is a direct result of our meddling in the area. When you look at the conflagration in Syria, Libya, Yemen, etc. along with the rise of ISIS and the endless sectarian wars in Iraq, you can draw a line straight back to the decision to use 9/11 as cover to invade and "liberate" Iraq. The Taliban in Afghanistan are poised to take back over the moment we leave and this has led to a deadly standoff where we can't afford to stay when we have no mission but we don't dare leave and allow the Taliban to take back over.

You can say many things about the aftermath of September 11th and most of them are some variation of "We screwed up" and thanks to that screw-up, tens of thousands of people are dead. Radicalism is ascendant across the Middle East. Terror attacks are a weekly occurrence in Europe. I and many other suspect very strongly that there is a lot about September 11th itself as well as the aftermath that we don't know and could only guess at but it is certainly true that our trust in our government is at an all-time low.

Decades of meddling in the Middle East led to the September 11th attacks and the years following have only made things worse. I can only hope that at some point we finally learn our lessons before something even worse than 9/11 happens. I can't say I am terribly optimistic that will be the case.

Never forget September 11th and never forget what happens when a nation uses a tragedy to start an even greater tragedy.

Fifteen Years Seems Like An Eternity

This morning the skies above my home are a piercing, cloudless blue, so blue it is almost painful to look at. The temperature is perfect and the forecast is for a perfect day.

This morning looks like that same morning 15 years ago. I am watching the news from that day on Youtube leading up to the planes hitting the buildings and everything is light and fun on the news. It was just that kind of a day. I went to work at my office for Fidelity Investments anticipating a typical boring day. It wan't long when things started to go haywire. The first reports came out. The internet kept crashing and pages like CNN.com went down so we didn't know what was going on. I got on the phone with my wife at home who was watching he news live and reporting what was going on. Most of my co-worker's spouses were also at work so I had one of the few contacts that could see what was going on. My wife and I were talking when the second plane hit. I knew something was wrong, really wrong and that this couldn't be just a terrible accident. I remember getting more and more agitated because at first we didn't know what was happening but then we sort of started to realize that this was a serious attack. The rumors started immediately and I remember a co-worker who was kind of a liberal of sort going on and on about not assuming they were Islamic terrorists. It turns out of course that they were. I don't remember when it happened but I went from agitation to white hot anger, an anger made all the worse by the complete impotence I felt in an office building in northern Kentucky. It must have been like this on December 7, 1941 when the attacks were reported a world away and I am sure people knew that day that something changed.

As the images and footage came out we began to realize just how bad it was. People below the impacts rushing out of the buildings while firefighters and cops rushed in. People looking out of windows waiting for rescuers that never made it. Then some people ended up jumping like the infamous "falling man" photo. I don't remember seeing a lot of these photos until much later. It was already too horrible to see the burning and then collapsing towers on TV over and over. I don't think we could have handled seeing pictures like the one above. At some point we began to look at each other and realize that a lot of planes were still in the air and we were in buildings with thousands of workers and that maybe we should get out of there. We ended up leaving early and I still remember a friend that I worked with joking about going to play 18 holes because the course would be pretty much empty and I still want to punch him in the mouth 15 years later. I went home to my family and was glued to the TV and internet.

Those first few days were incredible in so many ways. When I went back to work I drove up I-75 to get there and the sky always was full of planes taking off and landing at the Cincinnati airport but the skies remained empty for days. When the first places did get back in the air I remember seeing them with fear. I remember those early days mostly in iconic photos and events. President Bush being alerted at the elementary school, his speech ate the National Cathedral. The first foray into Afghanistan to put the terrorists on notice that we were coming. For me the brief comments President Bush made at the site of the collapsed towers were his finest moment, his "Day Of Infamy" moment.


That moment still, all of these years later, brings tears to my eyes. We knew that someone had taken a shot at us and scored a major hit. Thousands were dead. We thought a new era of terrorism was upon us. But most of all we wanted vengeance. We would clear the rubble, bury our dead and rebuild but something else had to happen. Those people we saw later cheering and celebrating the successful attacks needed to be dealt with, and dealt with violently, and America was pretty universal in the opinion. To my deep shame I would say that in those early days if someone has proposed bombing the entire Muslim world into a parking lot I would not have objected. Looking back through our history I understand why America felt virtually no qualms about targeting civilian centers in Germany and Japan during World War II. They started the war, we were going to finish it and even the women and children were guilty by association. The same with 9/11, if we killed some non-combatants, so be it. It is an ugly memory of myself in my own mind.

It wasn't very long after that day that I started to look at options for entering the military even though we had five kids and I had a career making good money. I cam awfully close to entering, even to the point of getting the required physical at the recruitment center. I didn't go to office candidate school and I am glad now that I didn't (for the most part).

15 years ago on 9/11/01 my oldest child was 8. My kids, three of whom are now adults, grew up with the reality of 9/11. So much of our life as a people has been impacted by this event. One third of my life has been post 9/11 and everything from air travel to endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has been changed.

Looking back now at the events that followed 9/11 brings a different kind of anger. I see a lot of people who, like Rahm Emmanuel would say later, didn't want to let a good crisis go to waste. The grossly misnamed "Patriot Act", the loss of civil liberties, the excuses to invade Iraq, the thousands of dead and maimed Americans and far more civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our response to 9/11 was understandable at the time but almost indefensible now.

This morning as I reminisce and bring those painful memories back to the surface I realize how raw those emotions still are. I still am not sure what the terrorists hoped to achieve that day but neither they nor us could have anticipated what we have now, the utter disaster that is the Middle East from Iraq to Syria to Yemen. All of those intervening years with almost no terrorist activity in the West and suddenly we have terror attacks from San Bernadino to Orlando to Paris. We live in a world shaped by 9/11.

Never forget. Never forget that day and those who died. Never forget how quickly men sought to use this tragedy to their advantage. Never forget that it is always foolhardy to respond without thinking. My prayers today are with the families who have had to deal with the death of loved ones for a decade and a half. My God grant them the peace that can only come from His Son.

Book Review: It Is About Islam

It is bitterly ironic that I finished Glenn Beck's book It Is About Islam last night amid the worldwide coverage of the coordinated terrorist attacks that struck Paris on November 13th, 2015. If there is ever a time since 9/11 when the Western world needs to understand the massive cultural struggle taking place, it is right now.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I pretty much loathe Glenn Beck. As a Christian I freely place him in the category of a wolf among the sheep, a popular false teacher who wiggles his way into a place of trust with Christians because of alleged common values we share. I say alleged because for all his emotional ranting on a slew of issues that changes with the cultural winds, Beck admitted in an interview with Forbes in 2010 that he is first and foremost an entertainer:

"With a deadpan, Beck insists that he is not political: “I could give a flying crap about the political process.” Making money, on the other hand, is to be taken very seriously, and controversy is its own coinage. “We’re an entertainment company,” Beck says. He has managed to monetize virtually everything that comes out of his mouth."

So basically his whole shtick is just a means to make money.  I am all in favor of people making money, I just want to remind any Christian or conservative reading this that Beck is not "one of us". He is out for himself. Nevertheless the book was an interesting premise and I was able to get it for free from library because I refuse to financially support Beck in any way.

On to the book. On the positive end it is very accessible and a light read. Reading about Islam can be daunting because of the unfamiliar terminology and confusing names that make it easy to lose track of who you are talking about. Beck quotes a scattering of Muslim leaders that espouse jihad and sharia but it doesn't bog the book down. He does a decent job of laying out the landscape between Sunni and Shia, something that is often confusing for Westerners. If anything the book encouraged me to do more studying on my own to understand the culture of Islam that is at enmity with the culture of the West. I don't see this as a clash between Islam and Christianity but rather a clash between Islam and the culture of the West because very little in Western culture is reflective of Christianity

The negatives largely outweigh the positives.  Right at the outset Beck does not properly cite the works he references. In place of numbers or letters in the text, the lumps what he is referencing into a jumbled mess sorted by chapter in the back. There is no bibliography. In his epilogue he writes: "I want you to be among the righteous too, You may not know what to do but just sharing his book and doing your own research to verify the truth of it will help you do your part." I agree with that and mention it as a strength but he makes it very difficult for someone to independently research his book. I get that this is in no way an academic book but if you are going to ask readers to research what he writes for themselves and you base your book in large part on the quotes you provide, it behooves you to take the time to properly document it. Beck makes millions a year, he could afford to pay a lackey to footnote the book.

Further Beck's entire book is a polemic designed to reinforce and provide ammo for those who are already sold out to the "War On Terror" narrative. He regularly slips into hopping on a soapbox and does an admirable job of finding combinations of invectives that leave no doubt that Beck doesn't much like Islam. After the first few chapters I was saying to myself "OK I get it, Islam is bad." It would have served the reader far better to dig a little deeper instead of ranting about Muslims. Most of the book is barely scratching the surface of what motivates radicalized Muslims like those who slaughtered over 100 people in Paris last night. Instead of formulating a cogent explanation Beck relies on out of context quotes of Muslim scripture and teachers. It struck me as being very similar to the methods of those who critique Christianity by yanking Old Testament quotes out of context and lumping all Christians in with the anti-Christian kooks like Westboro Baptist.

Overall a disappointing treatment of an intriguing concept. I didn't expect much from Beck and he still managed to underwhelm. 

70 Years Since The World Unleashed The Worst Weapon Of Mass Destruction Ever

70 years ago on this day the world saw the first of two atomic bombs unleashed on a mostly civilian population in Hiroshima, Japan. A few days later we did it again to the city of Nagasaki, Japan. With those actions hundreds of thousands died or were maimed and the world changed forever. If you have a streak of the macabre you can look at your own city and see what it would look like if the Hiroshima bomb was dropped on it today. You can also see the original orders for the atomic bomb strikes. What struck me was that the military was thoughtful enough to schedule religious services for Catholics and Protestants to worship Jesus right before they flew off to incinerate women and children. I wonder if they sang "Jesus Loves The Little Children"?

The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was an act of state-sponsored terrorism. That sounds harsh and not at all right to American ears. After all, we stopped the Nazis and then we stopped Imperial Japan, stomping the Japanese so badly that they still officially don't have a military (good news though, we will spend ourselves our of existence to defend Japan so they don't have to). Terrorism is what them Arabs and other people with funny names do, not what America does. Not so fast my friend. One of the prime definitions of the word "terrorism" is: Violence against civilians to achieve military or political objectives. That is exactly what happened and it doesn't make much difference to the civilians being killed if the plane was a commercial flight flown into a building in New York or a B-29 dropping a bomb on Hiroshima. Keep in mind that in both Germany and Japan, the U.S. used mass firebombing of cities to break the will of the people. The difference of course was that the U.S. and our frienemies the Soviets were already closing in on Berlin while we firebombed the Germans while an invasion of Japan proper was still in the works. Thanks to the fact that Hitler was nuts and the Red Army and the U.S. army were rampaging toward Berlin, German surrender was rendered moot. The Japanese however were more recalcitrant and harder to get to, even though the atomic bombing were preceded by months of firebombing of Japanese cities, including a raid on Tokyo that might have killed outright more people than the Hiroshima bombing, although firebombs don't have the radiation impact that the atomic bombs did, burning people alive in their homes.

Very subtle

Over the years as I have come to a place of non-resistance, I have found the excuses we use as a people to defend our use of weapons of mass destruction and terror to be increasingly hollow. I have run into all sorts of arguments, from new ones like nuking Japan saved them from being invaded and occupied by the Soviets (so see, we did them a favor. Sorry about incinerating those kids.) to old ones like the atomic bombing forced Japan's surrender and saved countless U.S. lives. I have even been told that the civilians had it coming because they were helping the war effort. Of course American citizens were doing the same thing on a massive scale but you can bet we wouldn't feel the same if Hitler had the bomb and used it on New York City. What made it more palatable then and probably secretly now was the very effective propaganda that dehumanized the Japanese people, just like Nazi Germany dehumanized Jews and ironically how pro-abortion forces dehumanize babies today. Watch some of the propaganda films from that era. Even Bugs Bunny got in on the act (watch the videos from that era and you will see what I mean). The Japanese were easy to dehumanize, even more so that the Germans, because they were foreign looking. The Germans looked like Americans but  the Japanese were an "other". They were called "Japs", "Nips", "little yellow devils" and all sorts of other charming names and the hatred for them was palpable up until recently. My maternal grandparents were Democrats but hated the Japanese people decades after the war. The vitriolic way they spoke about the Japanese seemed normal to me at the time but it is kind of shocking now that my sweet little Grannie had a hatred burning for an entire people decades after the war ended. It used to be a good way to get beat up where I lived if you drove a Jap car in the Rust Belt where American cars were built by American union autoworkers. If you Google search World War 2 propaganda posters you get pictures like the one above with the oh so subtle message that those dirty Japs were coming to rape white American women (search the "Tokio Kid" series for some particularly revolting pictures). In most of the propaganda posters the Japanese are portrayed as evil, leering subhumans with exaggerated slanted eyes and huge buckteeth, sometimes with fangs thrown in to reinforce the message. That message was clear, Japs aren't really humans. They are "The Enemy" and whatever we need to do to defeat "The Enemy" is OK, whether that means food and fuel rationing for the war effort or sticking those dirty Japs in internment camps or nuking women and children. This same tactic was used in Vietnam to excuse the war crimes perpetrated against the Vietnamese people. They were just "zipperheads" or "Gooks". Not people cuz the U.S. doesn't do that. We still see this today. So sorry kids got killed in that drone strike, they are "collateral damage" but we killed a high value target. USA! The U.S. has been acting like the drunkest guy in the party since World War II ended with the atomic bombings, stumbling around looking for a fight and generally making a mess of things, all the while killing lots of civilians while saving lots of other civilians. Ya want to make an omelette ya gotta break a few eggs. #amiright?

Militarily you can justify the atomic bombings. After all the goal was to force Japan to surrender and save American lives. Civilians always have and always will die in war in disproportionate numbers. I would not have wanted to be a civilian family in Germany that had a visit from Soviet troops or Americans because the stories are out there and they are ugly, often as ugly as the atrocities commited by the Japanese and Germans (I don't count the Italians because they were really useless in the war). Like I said, the goal was achieved. The Japanese surrendered, we won, the world was saved, USA! I am not minimizing the facts like the simple playground excuse of "They started it" and the reality of invading Japan leading to a lot of lives being lost among military and civilian alike. The Japanese were brutal in war, from the Bataan Death March to the practice of using teen-aged girls from occupied areas as "comfort women", a clever euphemism for sex slaves. Although less well documented than the Holocaust, Japanese war crimes are nausea inducing. Make no mistake, I am absolutely saying that the world as a whole is better off because we won and they lost although it is a lot more complicated. World War II didn't happen in a historical vacuum, just like the War on Terror isn't the result (entirely) of events since 9/11. I am personally glad that we got the bomb before the Nazis did (and also that Hitler was unhinged enough to invade the USSR, splitting his forces and changing history). That doesn't change the reality that the United States used terrorism as a weapon to subdue the Japanese people and we do history and humanity no favors by pretending that it was anything other than an atrocity, even if it was a "necessary" one. There are still many lessons to be learned today from the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima and I don't mean the lesson of "Don't mess with the U.S.".

The bitter irony of the United States being the only nation to use an atomic weapon in war while scolding others for seeking to gain access to the same is not lost on me and becomes more grating every year. I really don't want Iran to gain access to a nuclear weapon but I also am not super keen on Israeli already having them, or India or Pakistan or France or even the good ole U.S. of A. since we actually used them. After the Iraq invasion and occupation came up empty on WMDs, we could have sent the inspectors to America because we have them all over the central part of the country in innocuous looking concrete bunkers in Wyoming and Nebraska.

The Japanese people still remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We need to remember them as well, not as an opportunity to pat ourselves on our collective backs but as a bitter reminder of the cost of war that perhaps will dissuade us or at least give us pause before we get into the seemingly inevitable next war. We seem to look back with nostalgia on  the days of World War II and have been trying to recreate that heady feeling by getting into war after war ever since. Korea. Vietnam. Iraq. Afghanistan. Countless smaller wars and a decades long Cold War where only the threat of mutually assured destruction kept the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. from lobbing nukes at one another.

We like to pray for God to "bless our troops" and thank Him for our freedom but we must remember: The "freedom" you enjoy was purchased with the currency of dead women and children. That is an uncomfortable truth but a truth nevertheless.

The lesser of two evils is still evil. Remember Pearl Harbor but also remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Dresden and countless other places. Remember the mother in Dresden burned alive alongside her baby in a carriage. Remember the dead in Hiroshima and those maimed so horrifically that I couldn't bring myself to post a picture of them. If you are also a Christian remember the words of Christ...

"But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. (Luke 6:27-29)

Foot washing and September 11th

I read a very thought provoking post today from Kurt Willems, The New “War” on Terror: 9/11 and Jesus’ Approach to Enemies of the State. While I don't always agree with everything he writes and sometimes vehemently disagree, I found his post today to be fascinating. The response to the events of September 11th for most Americans, including a great many Christians, was retribution. They hit us and now we are going to hit them back and anyone who doesn't stand with us is standing against us.

But the story of Jesus washing the feet of His disciples, including the false disciple Judas, paints a different story. Not only did He not call for retribution against Judas (Judas instead kills himself) and not only did He not boot Judas who would go down in history as a villain and enemy of Christ from the room, Jesus actually washed his feet:

Judas, by all measures of terrorism, could be classified as the worst traitor of all time. Not in the measure of lives he led to unjust death, but in measure to the Kingdom he committed his act of terrorism against. Judas as a “terrorist” led the King of Kings to his horrific execution! Our King, our President, Jesus the Messiah, died because of the actions of Judas. If anyone could be classified as a Terrorist, certainly Judas could! And even though Jesus knew in advance that this pseudo-disciple would turn out to be a terrorist, Jesus lovingly chose to wash his feet. He models how Christians are invited to approach enemies of the State – love and service.

What do you think about that? How should the response of Jesus in washing the feet of Judas just hours before Judas betrayed Him inform and change how we respond to our enemies, even enemies as heinous as Osama bin Laden?

No rejoicing here

Waiting to hear the President speak on the killing of Osama bin Laden. The long pursued enemy of the United States is dead. Osama bin Laden, public enemy number one and seemingly untouchable bogeyman, the name that taunted the U.S. for the last decade has gone to face his Maker.

There was a time when I would have been overjoyed at this news. Justice is done!

Not anymore.

Osama bin Laden is a murderer and has the blood of untold people on his hands even if he didn't fly planes into buildings or blow up bombs. He died, without much doubt, outside of Christ and will stand before the Judge with no excuse and be condemned. That is nothing to rejoice in.

There will be no chants of "USA, USA, USA!" in my home, no triumphal waving of the American flag. The eternal fate of Osama bin Laden is the same as that of anyone who dies outside of Christ: an eternal hell facing the righteous wrath of a just and holy God. The fate of Osama is something that we should take no pleasure in and is the same one that will be shared by your nice neighbor who waters his lawn and drinks ice tea on his porch but doesn't know Christ. If you are a Christian, bin Laden's fate is the same fate you would have suffered if not for the sovereign grace of God. You might not have plotted the 9/11 attacks but your justice would have been the same and being a tax-paying, flag-waving, patriotic American doesn't get you a different fate.

For Christians in America, this serves as a test of where our allegiance lies. Is it with the U.S. of A. or is it with the Prince of Peace, the Lamb who was slain? Instead of smiles, this event should make ever more clear the urgency of the Great Commission. We are called to take the Gospel to all people, not just Americans. As followers of Christ we are called to love our enemies, not to hasten their demise or applaud their death.

Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord." To the contrary, "if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head." Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Rom 12:17-21)

An important reminder for followers of Christ

Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord." To the contrary, "if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head." Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Rom 12:17-21)

We should never forget what happened on 09/11/2001 but neither should we set ourselves to seek vengeance for those events. The Gospel is never proclaimed faithfully by someone with a sword in their hand or screaming in hatred or burning books. Our first and highest duty is to Christ and His Kingdom, not the national security of America. We as a family will remember 9/11 today, not as a call to vengeance but repentance. We will pray today for Muslims, that Christ will be shown to them in all His glory by the humble and meek witness of His followers. We will also pray for the repentance of those who call for the death of unbelievers and seek to supplant God as the dispenser of justice.

Winning the war on terror will not win a single soul for Jesus Christ.

Leadership we can believe in!

Yessiree Bob! When America needs leadership, we have Barack Obama at the helm. We are fighting a war on two major fronts in Iraq and Afghanistan against an enemy that is spreading throughout the world. Our economy is in shambles with daily reports of new layoffs (today it is Caterpillar laying of 20,000 and Sprint Nextel eliminating 8,000). America is teetering on the brink. So what are some of the first few acts of our new leader, the man who is bringing us “change”? Sweeping economic reforms? A renewed emphasis on fighting the war on terror?

Well, no.

What we got in the first week was a kneejerk declaration that we were going to close down the Guantanamo Bay detention center and a reversal of rules that prevent U.S. tax dollars from funding abortions overseas. So let’s break that down…

Closing down Gitmo means that we will have a bunch of men, some of the most dangerous men in the world, men captured in combat operations against U.S. forces, men who are not welcome in their home countries, men who will almost certainly take up arms and seek to spill American blood as soon as they get loose, given the due process of law guaranteed to American citizens and quite likely set free. It has been argued, with a straight face, that closing Gitmo will make America safer. Safer how?! That is like saying that duct taping a t-bone steak to a baby in front of a pack of ravenous pit bulls will make that baby safer. That is not leadership, that is capitulation to the far left fringe of the Democrat party that doesn’t seem to realize that we are at war and Islamic terrorists don’t care about civil rights.

Then we have the changes to the so-called Mexico City policy . So in a time when we are struggling with our own economy, President Obama sees fit to make it easier for us to send money overseas to promote abortion. Well, we are planning on a trillion dollars in new “stimulus” spending, so in order to build the American economy we will fund abortions overseas. Brilliant! You can hear the sputtering engine of the American economy gaining new life with every Brazilian or Nigerian kid that is aborted.

Obama said in a statement that family planning aid has been used as a "political wedge issue," adding that he had "no desire to continue this stale and fruitless debate."

I guess those babies being aborted may question whether or not this is a stale or fruitless debate. Or maybe this whole thing is just “above his paygrade” as President. Luckily, President Obama is being praised by some groups for this move.

The group Population Action International praised Obama's move, saying in a statement that it will "save women's lives around the world."

Um, it will save women’s lives? I guess they only abort males overseas because abortion is almost never about saving lives, it is about taking lives. Candidate Obama made a big fuss about reducing the number of abortions during the campaign, but one of his first acts will result in more abortions, abortions paid for in part with U.S. taxpayer dollars. I guess complete reversals of campaign promises is not “above his paygrade”.

There is no change here. It is the same old liberalism, the same old Democrat party cronyism. The only “change” is that we have a new face and a new name. The politics are the same, the paybacks are the same. Wake up America, you got sold a bill of goods and now we have a far left puppet in the White House for the next four years getting his strings pulled by the most liberal factions in America. Is that really “change” you can believe in?

Israel, Gaza and the Gospel

The conflict in the Middle East is rife with danger for Christians because many of us have been inundated with years of bubblegum pop eschatology that inextricably links the Israel of God with the current nation-state of Israel (see, this chart here shows that Hillary Clinton/Ted Kennedy/Barack Obama/insert liberal here is the anti-Christ!). That linkage causes many Christians to reflexively support Israel, no matter what. I happen to support Israel the nation in the current conflict; the same was that I support Taiwan against mainland Red China. I think people should support Israel, but I think we should support Israel for the right reasons.

To begin with I don’t think that the nation-state of Israel is the Israel of God because it bears the same name and is made up mostly of people of Jewish descent.

Is there a Gospel future for the Jews? I certainly think so, one that involves a massive (future?) conversion of Jews to Christ. Romans 11 bears this out. I do not think that this means that God is intending to fulfill the land promises of the Old Covenant. Why would He? So they can have a physical homeland when Christ has provided a spiritual home? So they can rebuild the temple and make sacrifices, putting the cross of Christ to shame? God has a plan for His people, Jews and gentiles, that is so much greater and more magnificent than a piece of property in the Middle East.

I think it is vital that the Christian manage to look at Israel as two separate entities, the Israel of God on the one hand and the political entity of the nation-state of Israel on the other. Being Jewish does not save you. Romans 11:26 says that all Israel will be saved but it is clear through the Bible that faith in Christ is the only way of salvation and many, many Jews have rejected Christ. So if all Israel will be saved, but not all Jews are saved than it must mean that being the Israel of God is not of necessity a Jewish thing. In Acts 2: , Peter was speaking to a Jewish audience and when the asked “Brothers, what shall we do?”, Peter didn’t say “Nothing, you are Jews so you are all set!”, he told them to repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. There are Jews and gentiles who are God’s elect and they are born-again and come to saving faith in Christ and are saved. There are likewise Jews and gentiles alike who are not elect, who do not come to faith and are lost. Romans 9: 6-8 tells us that “not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel”, and Galatians 3:7 and 3: 29 tell us that those of faith are the heirs of Abraham’s promises. So I don’t buy into the corollary that tells us that Jewish automatically equates to Israel. Nor do I think it is logical to assume that a Christian is duty bound to support Israel in her attacks against Hamas simply because they are Christians and Israel is Israel.

From a geo-political standpoint, the nation-state of Israel absolutely has the right to defend herself. Try to imagine living in a nation that is surrounded on all sides by “neighbors” who to some extent are committed to your destruction or at least reject the idea that Israel has a right to exist at all as a legitimate and free nation. We have been at peace with Mexico and Canada for more than a century, Canada probably since the end of the War of 1812, so nearly 200 years. But imagine if you will terrorists in Windsor, Ontario launching rockets into Detroit (pretend for a second that Detroit is a city that would be noticeably damaged by rocket fire). I would hope that the U.S. would take drastic steps to stop the rockets. In fact I think the Israeli response has been pretty measured and restrained compared to what they could be doing. The Israelis have one of the most powerful militaries in the world, even given the fact that the nation itself is tiny. It is not unthinkable that they could simply level the Palestinian settlements in the Gaza strip with minimal effort. So while they have been responding with necessary military force, and that force has caused civilian casualties, the Israeli’s have taken great pains to try to avoid civilian casualties. A spokesman for the IDF stated that they have scrubbed 90% of their proposed targets to avoid civilian casualties.

Ultimately the Palestinians are pawns in this struggle between the nation of Israel and the Islamic radicals who deny her legitimacy and seek the utter destruction of Israel and every Jew. Hamas will never defeat Israel by launching a few crude rockets or using suicide bombers. That is ludicrous and is not the intent. The goal of those who fund and supply these terrorists, terror patrons who live outside of Palestinian territories, is to provoke a response from Israel and use the resulting calamity to turn world opinion against Israel and by association against America. I am certain that there are many who are gleeful when Palestinian civilians are killed, especially children, because the graphic nature of that violence better serves their sick cause. I don’t think the terror financiers in the Islamic world care one bit for the Palestinian people as anything more than a means to an end. If hundreds or thousands of Palestinians have to die, whether in suicide actions or at the hands of Israeli soldiers, so be it. They are mere foot soldiers, pawns, expendable assets in the greater struggle against Zionism. The sooner the Palestinian people realize that they are being used by people who don’t care anything about them, the sooner there can be peace in the Middle East.

Should Christians cautiously support Israel in her actions against terrorist in Gaza? I think they should. Should Christians support Israel because they are Christians and Israelis are Jews? No. There is not a theological basis to support the nation-state of Israel in this or any other endeavor.

Barack Obama's America

Stuck in time

September 10th, 2001

The new rallying cry on the Right is that Obama is stuck on 9/10/01 and that criticism is dead on. For Barack Obama and most of the American left, we still live in a 9/10/01 world. We can still fight terrorism by UN resolution and economic sanctions. A lengthy excerpt from The National Review:

Barack Obama is the herald of the September 10 Democrats.

On Monday, Obama off-handedly reiterated his fondness for 1990s-style treatment of Islamic terrorists as if they were mere criminals to be managed by prosecution in the civilian criminal-justice system. By now, that should come as no surprise. Pressed on the subject again Wednesday, Obama insisted, “I have confidence that our system of justice is strong enough to deal with terrorists.” Top Obama backer Bill Richardson, a member of the Clinton Cabinet that delegated national defense to our system of justice while radical Islam killed Americans in New York City, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Yemen, told CNN on Wednesday that he “totally” rejected the Bush administration policy of branding jihadists as enemy combatants because doing so is somehow tantamount to “abridging our own freedoms.”

Appropriately, John McCain has slammed Obama and his fellow wishful thinkers as naïve and beholden to a “September 10th” mindset — the mindset that gave us the mass murder of nearly 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001.

The occasion for this latest dust-up was the Supreme Court’s ruling last week in Boumediene v. Bush vesting alien enemy combatants detained by our military with a constitutional right to habeas corpus — that is, to review by the civilian courts of the military’s determination that they are enemy combatants. In addition to raising the possibility that jihadists who pose a lethal threat to Americans will be released, Boumediene portends litigation chaos: The justices have dumped potentially hundreds of detainee cases on the federal district courts with no guidance about the rules and procedures that should govern those proceedings.

Naturally, this prospect has prompted intense debate. McCain called the decision one of the worst in American history. Obama, by contrast, is glowing in his praise and yearns for a return to the model of our treatment of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, when, he points out, suspects were apprehended and successfully prosecuted in the civilian courts.

Leaving aside that Obama here is once again not in command of the facts (not all of those responsible for the 1993 bombing were apprehended), the criminal-prosecution approach left America vulnerable. (For a powerful account of why, see our colleague Andy McCarthy’s book, Willful Blindness.) The civilian-justice system is incapable of apprehending and neutralizing more than a fraction of the Islamic radicals who target our country. That’s not deduction — it’s empirical fact: Major terrorists such as Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were under indictment for over a decade even as they continued to plot and execute attacks, including 9/11, with the authorities impotent to stop them.

Because of our system’s prohibitive due-process demands — demands that are reasonable for Americans accused of crimes but out of place when the “defendants” are foreign combatants — less than three dozen terrorists could be prosecuted in the eight years between the WTC bombing and the destruction of the Twin Towers. That’s fewer enemy operatives than our military often kills or captures in a single day in Afghanistan and Iraq. The trials of the Nineties, moreover, were a treasure trove for al-Qaeda, providing it with generous discovery of our national-defense secrets as well as insight into our methods and sources for obtaining them.

Worst of all, the September 10 approach was provocatively weak. It told an enemy, so committed to killing Americans that its operatives were willing to sacrifice themselves in the effort, that the world’s only superpower would respond to atrocities with subpoenas and indictments. Without the prospect of a vigorous response to acts of war, the enemy continued to attack. The result was 9/11.

McCain has learned these lessons and maintains that we must stay on offense in the war against radical Islam. That means a real war footing: military and covert operations, aggressive collection of intelligence, and Treasury tracking of terrorism finances. The justice system has a role, but it’s a subordinate one: Instead of prosecutions after Americans have been killed, it now pursues the lower-profile but more effective task of breaking up terror cells before they can attack. Although the U.S. could be hit again at any time, it says something about the success of this approach that seven years after 9/11 we have not suffered another attack on our soil.

This aggressive post-9/11 approach is what an Obama spokeswoman has called “stupid.” The candidate himself says he’s not going be “lectured” on national security by the people responsible for the Iraq war. But he might benefit from some time listening to and learning from McCain on Iraq, since McCain advocated the surge that has beaten back al-Qaeda in Iraq while Obama wanted to pull combat troops out in what would have amounted to a surrender. This is a debate McCain should welcome, and win.

Barack Obama apparently subscribes to what is known as the "law enforcement" model of fighting terrorism, the Bill Clinton mentality that seeks to treat terrorists, that seeks to deal with the thugs we are at war with the same way we deal with car thieves and drug dealers. Note again the contrast with Senator McCain, a man who knows a little something about war.

We tried chasing down terrorists like common criminals after the first World Trade Center attack, and that worked so well that they tried again and succeeded on a grander scale. After 9/11/01 we stopped playing games and went after the terrorists where they were instead of waiting for them to blow up a building in America and then trying to find and arrest them.

For all the criticism leveled at Bush, some of it justified, what is truly incredible is that we have not had a single large scale terror attack in America since that horrible day almost seven years ago. No buildings blown up. No suicide bombers. Nothing. I can hardly imagine what attacks have been thwarted that we will only find out about in the years to come as the information comes to light. That is not because terrorists have stopped desiring to destroy America, it is because we have stepped up prevention efforts in America and we have taken the fight to the terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq. The War on Terror never stopped, it just changed fronts and I would rather have the best trained and equipped armed forces in the world fighting the terrorists over there than having our citizens on the front lines and relying on local police departments to fight terror.

Obama also lives in the past when it come to energy independence, operating in the sub-$2 gas mentality. In kowtowing to the radical environmental movement, Obama is opposed to anything that would actually lower gas prices, instead focusing on pie in the sky "alternative energy"and "higher fuel economy standards". Instead of the government getting out of the way, he seeks to have the government be more intrusive. This is his "plan" for energy independence...

Set America on Path to Oil Independence

Obama's plan will reduce oil consumption by at least 35 percent, or 10 million barrels per day, by 2030. This will more than offset the equivalent of the oil we would import from OPEC nations in 2030.

Increase Fuel Economy Standards: Obama will double fuel economy standards within 18 years. His plan will provide retooling tax credits and loan guarantees for domestic auto plants and parts manufacturers, so that they can build new fuel-efficient cars rather than overseas companies. Obama will also invest in advanced vehicle technology such as advanced lightweight materials and new engines.

I guess you could call it oil independence when no one has jobs or cars to put gas in. Contrast that with Senator McCain who is calling for us to finally start drilling more and building nuclear power plants. Obama's path leads to shared misery and poverty. McCain's leads to greater independence from foreign oil and more jobs for American. Senator Obama, you want to help the poor? Make it cheaper for them to go to work, make it cheaper to go on vacation so that people visit resorts, make it cheaper to move freight. That will really change their lives, not bowing down to pseudo-science about climate change and electric cars.

In Barack Obama's America, the primary function of government is to a) collect money from tax payers, b) filter it through the bloated D.C. bureaucracy and c) dribble it back in the form of political favors to some of the people it came from. That is progressive? This news story captures that mentality...

Obama raps McCain on flood prevention programs

MIAMI - With communities in the Midwest still under water, Democrat Barack Obama on Saturday criticized Republican John McCain for opposing federal spending on flood prevention programs and opened a new debate in the White House race.

McCain's campaign said Obama was confusing the facts and engaging in typical political attacks that the Democrat rejects in his speeches.

So anytime we get natural disasters, it becomes a Republican issue. I guess to Barack, every American home (tax payer funded homes of course) should be encased in Teflon and surrounded by a wall lest anything happen (at tax payer expense of course). The Midwest is a flood prone area, it is what makes the soil so rich (the soil we pay farmers not to farm). At least McCain had the fortitude to veto a bill that no doubt contained enormous spending on every pet project under the sun, hidden under the guise of an omnibus bill. Almost none of these pork spending bills would pass if forced to stand alone. Liberals like Barack Obama see America and her people as a giant piggy bank, to be shaken and finally broken by our wise masters in Washington while they control every nickle. We certainly can't be trusted to make our own spending decision, can we? I mean, if we left some of that money in Iowa, maybe Iowans would build levees. Or maybe not, but at least the decision would be theirs.

But none of this matters to Barack Obama, candidate of "change" and "hope". The only "change" in an Obama administration is whatever change you can jingle in your pocket when the government gets done fleecing you and the only "hope" you will have is the hope that the next tax cut hits someone else and you get a little piece of the action from Uncle Sam.