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Posts Tagged ‘Foreign Policy’

ISIS, America’s Ally

Posted in Politics, Uncategorized, tagged , on November 29, 2015| 4 Comments »

isis-army-700x430-300x184

ISIS fighters

 

As the war in Syria heats up and greater attention is focused on events there, a disturbing fact has come to light from several credible sources. The terrorist organization known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), rather than being a foe of the United States and the West, is actually their agent, acting to carry out the West’s stated agenda of ousting Syria’s leader, Bashar al-Assad.

Ron Paul talked about the alliance between ISIS and the US in a recent video posted on his YouTube channel titled Does ISIS Exist?. A transcript of this video can be read here. At about the 1:38 mark in the video Paul comments,

But the question is raised, Where did ISIS come from? And there are so many questions: how did it pop up, and gained so much favor and have financing putting out magazines and you know where do they get their weapons and it’s pretty easy to put some of these pieces together and find out that they probably were working to some degrees with some of the people in the West like the United States and maybe some others and got some advantages rather than it being a spontaneous small group of people that all of the sudden took over a large swath of land in Syria and in Iraq. That is probably not true.

As supporting evidence for US involvement with ISIS, Paul’s co-host Daniel McAdams paraphrases a report released by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) which calls for the establishment of a, “Salafist [Sunni extremist] principality…in eastern Syria,” which is exactly what ISIS is. Paul gives the reason why he believes the US has elected this course of action, explaining,

I think their [the US government] goal probably was to use ISIS to do our battles, because we are the ones who declared war against Assad, to go in there and get rid of Assad and then they think this is a cheap way. We don’t have to put boots on the ground, we get them to do the fighting and American people will think they are fighting radical Islam and will win the victory, will have this victory in a short period of time, but that’s where things go wrong, because no victory arrives.

And not only does no victory arrive, but to horror of the US foreign policy establishment, Vladimir Putin has involved Russia in the war in support of Syria’s government, the very government they are attempting to oust.

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The Syrian Refugee Crisis

Posted in Politics, tagged , , on November 22, 2015| 5 Comments »

Syrian refugees

Syrian refugees

 

The uproar surrounding how to deal with the waves of Syrian refugees surging through Europe and the US reached a new high this past week, with several governors and Republican presidential candidates pushing back on President Obama’s refugee resettlement plan. While opinions on how to handle this situation run hot, what generally is not well understood is what caused the crisis in the first place. It is well worth asking, why is it that so many people just now have decided to flee an ancient nation dating back to the time of the Old Testament?

Regime Change Blowback

Since the end of WWII, the US federal government has engaged in what amounts to a high-stakes, global game of thrones, overthrowing regimes its views as hostile to perceived US interests and installing compliant puppet rulers who will go along with the State Department/CIA program. In short, the US has acted less like a republic and more like a global empire, which indeed it has become. And, as was the case with its imperial predecessors, imperial Washington sees nothing wrong with this high-handed policy. It’s just business as usual.

Bashar Assad

Bashar al-Assad, President of Syria

 

The situation in Syria is just one of the more recent examples of this long-standing policy. Since the Syrian civil war began in 2011, the US has supported the Free Syrian Army, a rebel group attempting to overthrow the government of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. According to an article the New York Times, “Under the administration’s division of labor, the State Department is in charge of supplying nonlethal aid, while the C.I.A. runs a covert program to arm and train the Syrian rebels.”

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Isolationist: The Neo-Conservatives’ Favorite Swear Word

Posted in Politics, Scripturalism, tagged on November 13, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Republican Sen. Marco Rubio at the Republican debate, November 10, 2015.

Republican Sen. Marco Rubio at the Republican debate, November 10, 2015.

There is no bigger swear word in the neo-conservative vocabulary than “isolationist,” and Marco Rubio showed his true neo-con colors by employing it against Rand Paul during Tuesday’s Republican presidential debate. Said Rubio of Paul, “I know that Rand is a committed isolationist; I’m not.” When a neo-conservative uses the “I” word, his intention is not to have a discussion, but to smear his opponent’s foreign policy views as beyond acceptable and shut down the debate.

In truth, the term “isolationist” is simply a caricature of the historic foreign policy of the United States: non-interventionism. As proof, consider the following statements on foreign policy from the founding fathers;

  • “Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none” (Thomas Jefferson).
  • “The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible” (George Washington)
  • “Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her [America’s] heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own” (John Quincy Adams).

To put it another way, the foreign policy of the United States originally was based on Christ’s Golden Rule, “Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 7:12). From the response Ron Paul received in South Carolina four years ago, apparently Jesus would not be welcomed in today’s Republican party.

But a neo-conservative of Rubio’s ilk isn’t happy unless the US is bombing, strafing or droning some hapless third world country, all the while uttering self-congratulatory platitudes about the world’s need for a strong America. But neo-conservative boilerplate aside, is it too much to ask Rubio and other militarists to provide even one coherent reason why, after 14 years, US forces are still in Afghanistan? Can he give us even a single coherent purpose behind America’s current attempt to overthrow the government of Syria? Why is it he wants to increase Pentagon funding at a time when US defense outlays are greater than those of the next ten biggest military spenders combined?

The United States is going bankrupt, in part due to the out of out of control militarism espoused by neo-conservatives such as Senator Rubio. He would do well to stop with the name calling and consider what the Bible, the only source of knowledge about foreign policy, has to say on the subject.


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May God Have Mercy on the West

Posted in Economics, Politics, Roman Catholicism, tagged , , , , , , , on October 26, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Zambia“God have mercy on the currency,” read the headline. Curious, I followed the link to an article about the president of Zambia calling for a national day of prayer and fasting to address country’s currency crisis. It turns out that Zambia’s national currency, the Kwacha, has fallen by 45% against the US dollar in 2015, causing Zambians a host of economic difficulty. It is eminently Christian and sensible to call on the Lord in times of trouble The Bible is filled with promises that God will deliver his people if they call upon his name. Typical is Ps. 50:15 which reads, “Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify Me. And because it is eminently Christian and sensible to call on the Lord in times of trouble, no Western president or prime minister would ever think of doing it. “We’ve got this,” they say, “no divine help needed.”

Such was not always the case. During the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln called for a national day of prayer and fasting. But that sort of thing doesn’t fly anymore. In the aftermath of the greatest national disaster of my lifetime – I’m speaking here about the 9/11/2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington D.C. – George Bush encouraged Americans to go to Disney World. What’s worse, he participated in a blasphemous ecumenical prayer service at the National Cathedral in Washington which featured, among others, a female Episcopal bishop, a Rabbi, a Muslim cleric and a Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church-State. Far from being an example of turning to God, this service was a double-minded affront to the Lord Christ Jesus. And because it was double-minded, those who participated had no reason to think they would receive God’s blessing or assistance. The failure of the Global War on Terror stands as a stark testimony to this principle.

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Is It 1938 Again?

Posted in Politics, tagged , , on March 23, 2015| Leave a Comment »

According to John Hagee, the answer to this question is a resounding “yes.” Israel, we are told, is on the verge of annihilation and it is incumbent upon Christians to take a stand for Israel now.  Hagee and others believe that Christians have an obligation to bless Israel, and this is generally understood by them to mean supporting whatever initiative is being pushed by the Likud party.     In his book In Defense of Israel, the first chapter of which is titled It’s 1938…Again, Hagee makes the following claim,

John Hagee

John Hagee

As an avid student of history, I am convinced that we are facing the same situation the world faced in 1938.

Iran is the new Germany, and its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is the new Hitler. Iran poses a threat to the State of Israel that promises nothing less than a nuclear holocaust. The only way to win a nuclear war is to make certain it never starts. We must stop Iran’s nuclear threat an stand boldly with Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East (Hagee, In Defense of Israel. 2,3)

Hagee, of course, in not the first or only person to make comments of this sort. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamen Netanyahu has built his career on statements of this sort. But since Hagee claims to speak for Evangelicals in general, his comments are of special interest to Christians.

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Searching for Monsters

Posted in Politics, tagged , on March 7, 2015| 9 Comments »

Benjamin Netanyahu address Congress, 3/3/15.

Benjamin Netanyahu address Congress, 3/3/15.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent speech before Congress, punctuated as it was with over twenty standing ovations, is the latest act in the decades long drama of US involvement in the Middle East. Growing up as I did in the 70s and 80s, America’s presence in the Middle East seemed a lot like the war between Oceania and Eastasia in 1984, we had always been there. The question was never raised whether this was a good idea. The only acceptable debate was over how much and what we should do.

An endless parade of American diplomats, military equipment, and of course, money flowed eastward, all which, we were told, were needed to make the world safe for democracy. But the funny thing was, no matter how much time money and effort was expended, the region never seemed very safe or very democratic. If someone did occasionally suggest, even mildly, that maybe, just maybe, the US should reconsider its activist foreign policy and perhaps at some future date possibly consider option of thinking about reducing our presence in this or that country or region, the poor fellow was immediately denounced and labeled with that most heinous of swear words – what really amounted to a scarlet letter for intellectual sinners. He was called the “I” word. He was dubbed an “isolationist.” And an isolationist was, by definition, someone so unstable, so untrustworthy, so obviously out of touch with reality that no serious person need pay him any attention whatsoever. Except, of course, to make him the butt of jokes.

This same mode of thinking is alive and well today. If anyone had any doubt, Netanyahu’s speech the past Tuesday, and the reaction by Congress, should have dispelled it. But is so-called isolationism really the foolishness the foreign policy establishment, the press, and much of the public say it is? What does the Bible have to say about foreign policy? These are questions worth asking. Some may find the answers surprising.

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