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Podcast: War, Foreign Policy, and the Church (Part 1)

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Tags: church, ethics, foreign policy, theology, war, war on terror

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See folks, don’t forget that morality doesn’t suddenly change for you when you enter the oval office or when you enter a battlefield (whether legitimate OR illegitimate). But in fact, presidents have a knack for just ignoring “conventional” morality, take Nixon for example, who said, “Well, when the president does it that means that it is not illegal.” Given, there is a great difference at times between what is legal and what is moral, but Presidents who believe they are above the law probably won’t have a problem being above morality either. From the UK report:

Missiles fired from suspected US drones killed at least 15 people inside Pakistan today, the first such strikes since Barack Obama became president and a clear sign that the controversial military policy begun by George W Bush has not changed.

Security officials said the strikes, which saw up to five missiles slam into houses in separate villages, killed seven “foreigners” – a term that usually means al-Qaeda – but locals also said that three children lost their lives.

So while pro-war conservatives should be thrilled that Obama is continuing the Bush foreign policy, we should call evil for what it is – unlike most mainstream media shills for Obama or Bush.

Hat tip to Rob Wicks for the story and for this quote:

So, while you can look into the loving eyes of your own beautiful daughters, somewhere in Afghanistan, a grieving family will never look into the loving eyes of three children again.

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Obama Orders First Murder

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“Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.”

~Niels Bohr

I know as well as anyone that the future is uncertain and that much has yet to transpire. But now that Obama is officially the 44th President of the United States, I will reveal my thoughts, much like Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com, regarding what I think will happen in 2009 with Obama as President. For the most part, I expect more of the same. As we eagerly professed on campus today, there is little to no substantial difference in the policy of George W. Bush and Barack Hussein Obama.

1. Inflation will reach record levels not seen since the 1970s, at least 10%.

Bailouts will continue. Government debt will spiral out of control. The Federal Reserve will keep pumping money into the economy. Already we have seen upwards of seven trillion dollars promised as the result of bailouts and the Fed – over one-half of the annual GDP of the USA. How this can be expected not to result inflation is beyond comprehension. I also expect the price of gold to soar at to at least $1000/oz. However, I doubt inflation will reach Weimar levels, though I admit it is something that we should be wary of over the horizon.

2. Economic protectionism will begin to be legislated from Congress in the name of our “economic national security.”

Of course, we know that this is already happening, but I think that unless other currencies fall with respect to the dollar to the levels of five years ago or more we will see industry continue to exit America. And as they attempt to do so, they will be extremely penalized. This will contribute further to cost-of-living increases (as protectionism always does), hurting the poor the most and further influencing those of fewer means to cry out to the government for even more intervention.

3. Universal Health Care will become reality.

With both houses of Congress and the Presidency controlled by the same party and the inevitable inflation coming, I fully expect that Universal Health Care will finally be shoved down our throats. The cost of health care will rise even further, and care quality will drop just as it does in all medically-socialized countries.

4. The Patriot Act will not be repealed, and we will not see an end to illegal wiretapping.

Ultimately, this prediction comes back to the presidential powers that Il Duce Bush took to new heights in the last eight years. I do not expect that those powers will be given up by Obama. Consequently, the encroachments upon civil liberties will continue in all the ways we have experienced thus far and likely moreso.

5. More war. We will not exit Iraq, and interventions in Afghanistan and Pakistan will expand to greater extents than we have ever seen.

Every indicator points to an expansion of Middle East interventions. Rahm Emmanuel, Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates, “the surge is working” rhetoric, influence from the Israel lobby – it all screams “I’m going to continue the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war, we ain’t leaving!” While this should thrill pro-war conservatives, it should make all those who oppose war – whether liberal, conservative or libertarian – nothing short of livid. Change? I think not. What’s more, expect the liberal media pundits to begin to shill for Obama’s further interventions, and for conservatives to say things like “finally things are going our way in the media coverage of the War on Terror.”

So that’s what I think we’ll see. I pray to God that I’m wrong about any of these at all. Never would I be so happy to be wrong, but I don’t see much coming out of the Obama administration that favors the cause of liberty.

We will revisit these predictions at the end of 2009, and see how it turned out. Stick with me, we’ll make it!

What are your predictions? What do you think will happen? Comment below and discuss…

Post from: LibertarianChristians.com

5 Predictions for 2009

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Tags: bailouts, economics, foreign policy, inflation, Obama, reflection, universal health care, war

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How should Christians view the on-going conflict between Israel and Palestine? Total war upon civilian populations. Terrorism. Radicalizing one’s opponents. The Jewish peoples’ claim to the land. These are sensitive, but extremely important issues that the Christian or any person with a conscience must face head on.

First, Christians should make no distinction between an Israeli child and a Palestinian child. And regardless of the perpetrator, “collateral damage” is a disgusting euphemism that dehumanizes image-bearers of God and masks the evil nature of the deliberate slaughter that is modern warfare. The scores of innocent Palestinian civilians that have been killed in recent days did nothing wrong, and their deaths have not been an accident. Hamas is obviously bad, but Christians must also point out the evils of the state of Israel. We should make no distinction.

Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com helps us consider the excesses of the Israeli attacks.

Any minimally decent human being — even those who view the world through the most blindingly pro-Israeli lens possible, the ones who justify anything and everything Israel does, and who discuss these events with a bottomless emphasis on the primitive (though dangerous) rockets lobbed by Hamas into Southern Israel but without even mentioning the ongoing four-decades brutal occupation or the recent, grotesquely inhumane blockade of Gaza — would find the slaughter of scores of innocent Palestinians to be a horrible and deeply lamentable event.

And Linda Heard points out the disproportionate violence that has become customary for the Israelis:

I believe only one Israeli has died during this current onslaught that has robbed the lives of over 320 Palestinians and wounded up to 1,000, not including those still buried beneath rubble. Once more, Israel’s response has been disproportionate just as it was in 2006 when it slaughtered 1,200 Lebanese civilians in answer to Hezbollah’s kidnapping of IDF soldiers. [...] When it comes to Gaza, said to be one of the most densely populated areas of the world, there is no such thing as a surgical strike. Moreover, over half of Gaza’s population are children under 18. Even the smartest smart bombs could not cherry-pick between resistance fighters and innocents in such a packed environment. The Israeli government knows this and doesn’t care a jot, which translates to willful collective punishment

For Israel to bomb civilians is indeed a violation of the Geneva Conventions’ prohibition of “collective punishment.” To kill civilians because they live near Hamas militants is wrong and illegal, and Christians should point that out, just as we speak against Hamas‘ violent acts. As Congressman Dennis Kucinich stated,

The perpetrators of attacks against Israel must also be brought to justice, but Israel cannot create a war against an entire people in order to attempt to bring to justice the few who are responsible … All this was, and is, disproportionate, indiscriminate mass violence in violation of international law. Israel is not exempt from international law and must be held accountable. It is time for the UN to not just call for a cease-fire, but for an inquiry as to Israel’s actions.

As Raw Story explains, “Kucinich compared the latest bombing campaign to Israel’s earlier strikes at southern Lebanon targeted at Hezbollah. Then too, he said, civilians were killed, infrastructure was destroyed and lawlessness took hold in the country.”

Unfortunately the leadership of both parties, including Harry Reid and President Bush, don’t have the same moral courage as Kucinich, as they have only signaled support for Israel’s actions. Obama has sheepishly refused to comment.

Amira Hass in Haaretz helps paint a picture of the horrors of Gaza in recent days:

There are many corpses and wounded, every moment another casualty is added
to the list of the dead, and there is no more room in the morgue.

Relatives search among the bodies and the wounded in order to bring the dead quickly to burial. A mother whose three school-age children were killed, and are piled one on top of the other in the morgue, screams and then cries, screams again and then is silent.

Mustapha Ibrahim saw all this on Saturday at one in the afternoon, at Shifa Hospital in Gaza. As a field investigator for a human rights organization, he thought he’d been immunized, but nothing prepared him for what he saw. Wounded people whose situation was less than serious were asked to leave Shifa, in order to free up beds.

Dr. Haidar Eid is a lecturer in Cultural Studies at Al-Aqsa University. He, too, saw the bodies and the wounded on Saturday. Also the children whose limbs had been amputated.

Beyond this, Christians must recognize and point out that our media and political establishment are extremely biased in favor of Israel. Hamas are “terrorists”, but Israel “has every right to” bomb civilian populations? Really? And Kurt Nimmo points out that both sides have continually balked at ceasefires, not just Hamas, as the media portray:

Hamas has attempted to implement a ceasefire with Israel on numerous occasions. “Israel rejected a cease-fire offer from the Palestinian group Hamas as a humanitarian aid crisis erupting in the Gaza Strip threatened wider instability,” the Christian Science Monitor reported in April. “[The] Palestinian group offered to cease cross-border rocket attacks if Israel opens crossing points into Gaza and ends military incursions into the Palestinian territory,” Al Jazeera reported.

Christians must also ask difficult questions about Israel’s own ties to militant Islamic groups. Nimmo points out how, in 2002, Israel was caught creating fake al Qaeda operatives, presumably for the purpose of radicalizing and demonizing the Palestinians:

In 2002, “Palestinian security forces … arrested a group of Palestinians for collaborating with Israel and posing as operatives of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorist network,” the Sydney Morning Herald reported. “The arrests come two days after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon charged al-Qaeda militants were operating in Gaza and in Lebanon.” An anonymous Palestinian official told the newspaper the alleged collaborators sought to “discredit the Palestinian people, justify every Israeli crime and provide reasons to carry out a new (military) aggression in the Gaza Strip.”

And most ominously of all, it was actually Israel that helped to found Hamas in the late 1970s, with the goal of radicalizing Palestinians as a counterbalance against the secular nationalism of the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

Israeli intelligence created Hamas as a counterweight to the PLO and Arab nationalism. Israel “aided Hamas directly — the Israelis wanted to use it as a counterbalance to the PLO,” Tony Cordesman, Middle East analyst for the Center for Strategic Studies, told UPI correspondent Richard Sale. (see Yossi Schwartz, Palestine: The origins of Hamas and its role today).

Israel has funded and helped to create radical Muslim enemies. Why? Is it possible that the mainstream media are not reporting the whole story behind the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Should Christians think twice before anointing Israel as the “good guys” here? Why, in the realm of human kingdoms, do we even look for a “good guy” at all?

Last of all, how should the Christian approach the issue of the land that the Israelites were given in the Old Testament? The answer is quite simple. The Old Covenant, as it related to Israel and the Promised Land, was conditional: God told Israel over and over that if they were faithful to Him, they could remain in the land; if they were not faithful, then they had no right to the land. Therefore, since the Jews occupying the land today are not followers of the triune God, as revealed through Jesus the Son, they have no claim on the land. [Not to mention the fact that promises about the land of literal Israel have been fulfilled spiritually in the New Testament as the true Israel is the international church of God, made up of Jews and Gentiles alike, rather than one ethnic group with its national boundaries (See Chapter 6 of The Way, the Truth and the Sword).] The Christian should uphold the biblical teaching that the Jews, at a theological level, have no right to the land today, and that God’s Israel has gone global, transcending ethnic and geographic boundaries.

Christians will not be “cursed by God” if they expose the evils of the Israeli government, as the fear-mongering Christian Zionists claim. Instead, if we speak out against violence, we will be doing an important service to the gospel, since the world perceives the Israeli government as being in league with the Christian West (and with the U.S. sending 3 billion a year in military aid to Israel, who can blame them for drawing this assumption?). Since Christianity is associated with the excesses of the state of Israel, we must clarify for the world that we have nothing to do with and we do not support their crimes, but that we follow a Messiah who teaches non-violence. Christians must be known for being peacemakers.

See more articles on Israel and Zionism from Scott Ritsema on CivicsNews.com.

For further commentary on the Israel-Palestine Conflict:

Israel Ignores UN Security Council Resolution – Haider Rizvi

Israel’s Wars of Forced Regime Change – Helena Cobban

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Christian Thoughts on Israel-Palestine

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Tags: foreign policy, Israel, Palestine, war

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