Speaking of the vast Obama/Paul conspiracy, I was challenged today by a Paulista in the middle of his rant about how evil George Bush was. He challenged me to "...tell me what GOOD has came (sic) out of "The Idiot's" lame adventure ? How bout ONE thing?" Okay. I can do that. He also asked what Jesus would have done in George W. Bush's place? Obviously he's thinking "turn the other cheek", not the sort of political answer he might have received from the God of the Old Testament. An omniscient God might give my friend a rather different answer than the one he expected. So let me answer my isolationist friend's two major questions.
1. What would Jesus have done in George W. Bush's place?
If Jesus had been in Dubyah's place, we'd all be in heaven now. It would mean He'd come back to get us and he would have taken home the innocent and let the guilty burn down the world around themselves. Unfortunately, President Bush (my hero), had no divine powers. He couldn't take us off planet. His job was to protect and defend people who are stuck here on this planet with no other place to run. He did that, I believe, to the best of his ability. Your characterization of the former president, paints a very different picture of the man than either his words or his deeds in his personal life would match up with. The man is a humanitarian of the first order, working thousands of hours and donation millions of his own personal wealth to fight AIDS in Africa. He greets soldiers coming home at DFW airport whenever he can. He was the first politician to reach the hospital at Ft. Hood after the shootings and, unlike your hero, Barak Obama, he didn't bring an entourage of press photographers. In fact, he was in and out before the press could react. He seems a decent man who does good works out of sight of the press. Not the sort of evil arrogant plotting Machiavelli your conspiracy theory suggests. His charity work goes largely ignored by the media which is too busy vilifying him.2. Can you tell me what GOOD has came out of "The Idiot's" lame adventure? How bout ONE thing?
Bush responded to an escalating war by terrorists by doing something rather more energetic than crashing some helicopters in the desert or bombing an aspirin factory. I think he was wise to do so. Osama Bin Laden had issued a very public declaration of war against America. Bush took him at his word. I personally think one should believe one's enemies when they say they want to destroy you. To not do so is the height of stupidity. To believe that surrendering to the demands of someone who not only says they want to kill you, but also has just killed 3000 innocent civilians is to invite them to go even further than they did. See Neville Chamberlain in the history books for an object lesson in how the whole appeasement policy works. Please tell me how pulling our troops out of the Middle East (which was what Osama was demanding) would have brought about "peace in our time"
Finally, as to how God might have instructed George W. Bush had God rung him up on the red phone......well, one need only go to the Old Testament to suss out how an omniscient God instructed Israel to treat its foes (the original Palestinians). That is not a policy any man should institute in today's world, since we have not got His unerring advice on the subject. Personally, we are instructed by Christ to turn the other cheek, a practice I adhere to when the cheek being threatened is my own. However, should someone threaten my family, I will act to preserve their life and safety. The commandment "Thou shalt not kill" in the original Hebrew reads more like "Thou shalt preserve life." It expands the meaning of that command to read it that way.
God has not left our current political leaders direct advice with regard to how a nation-state should act with regard to protecting its people. The Old Testament principle dictated that the judges were to raise up armies when innocent people were threatened by bullies and terrorists and to root them out and destroy them wholesale. When the Israelites failed to do that, it always came back to haunt them, even thousands of years later when the descendants of those bullies and terrorists are firing missiles at their schools and synagogues.
To be fair, I copied my friend's question just as he wrote it. One should probably use somewhat better grammar if one is going to call a former president an idiot. I can tell you one big thing right off.I noticed the complete failure in my friend's challenge to express any sympathy towards the tens of thousands of Christian and Muslims who have lost their lives to these evil people. I would challenge everyone who reads this to stop and spend some time in prayer for the people being slaughtered by ISIS forces while our President plays golf and dithers impotently.
NO TERRORIST ATTACKS ON THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA FOR THE REMAINDER OF BUSH'S PRESIDENCY. As soon as Bush was gone and the Obama/Paul retreat policy was implemented, they started hitting us at home again with attacks on Ft. Hood, a recruitment depot in Arkansas and other attacks or attempts. So we reward them for committing acts of terror and it can only be seen by them as a reward. I'm sure the terrorist leadership and rank and file Islamic militants see themselves as having successfully frightened America - a nation of cowards to their way of thinking - into releasing the Taliban's terrorist board of directors.
SECOND GOOD THING WAS THAT IT GAVE JEWS, BUDDHISTS AND CHRISTIANS A WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY TO GET OUT OF IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN. Tens of thousands have left Iraq and Afghanistan and apparently just in time if the Christian death toll is any indication. And oddly enough, I still don't hear a single word of sympathy from the Paulistas for the victims of the ISIS jihadi army.
A THIRD GOOD THING WAS THAT IT OPENED UP IRAQ'S OIL INDUSTRY SO THAT THEIR ECONOMY HAD AN OPPORTUNITY TO RECOVER AND STARVING PEOPLE GOT FED AND GOT JOBS. It also helped bring down oil prices not for the United States, but for Europe, China, India and other countries. We get our oil from Central America by and large and Alaska and such places. A relatively small percentage of our oil comes from the Middle East. Opening oil supplies helped keep economies going and staved off recession for years until a grasping Democrat House and Senate succeeded in wrecking the economy during an ongoing war by politicizing the funding of the Iraq/Afghan wars. It's quite a remarkable achievement in the annals of history to have held our soldiers hostage to one party's socialist agenda. Within 18 months of the Democrat takeover of congress, the economy collapsed. Good job guys. And the Ron Paul solution was to surrender the war on terror and come home and to beg the Democrats, still flushed with success to make government smaller and do away with the Federal Reserve. Like that was EVER going to happen.
A FOURTH GOOD THING WAS THAT IT CREATED A POWER VACUUM. I know, "creating a power vacuum" is supposed to be a bad thing. Diplomats like to deal with powerful leaders. It gives them the illusion that they've accomplished something when they get powerful people to sign treaties and stuff. (again, see Neville Chamberlain waving around his peace of paper signed by Mr. Hitler that gave us all "peace in our time"). Now let me think. How exactly did that work out? Anyone remember? A power vacuum left by the removal of an evil dictator is always a good thing. You just have to make sure something worse doesn't come along. Unfortunately, the genius diplomats think they need powerful leaders to manipulate (they being geniuses and all - they think they can do that). Big bunches of free people make diplomats nervous. I mean, who is going to control all those people? I like power vacuums. Who says we need people holding that much power
A FIFTH GOOD THING WAS THAT IT TOOK BOTH THE TALIBAN AND SADDAM HUSSEIN OUT OF THE COMMANDER'S CHAIRS OF LARGE AND DANGEROUS ARMIES. Saddam had already tried to roll over his neighbors once. He saw himself as a great conqueror. He did have weapons of mass destruction which Syria is hauling out of storage now to use against rebels and any old enemies Assad can bump off in the confusion - Christians for instance. What did you people think was in those trucks rolling across the Syrian border contained? Humanitarian relief? Thinning out those armies gave everyone a break from the threat hanging over their heads.
A SIXTH GOOD THING WAS THAT WE KILLED OR CAPTURED TENS OF THOUSANDS OF THE WORST OF THE JIHADIS. The evidence (no terror attacks for 7 years) suggests that killing terrorists DOES reduce the number of incidents of terror. It also encourages people to tattle on terrorists when someone actually then acts on the information and removes the terrorists. It has been shown that if you lock up 5 or 6 criminals in a town, it can reduce and even almost eliminate crime there. So, I suspect that removing 50,000 or so terrorists from the playing field might reduce the number of bombs going off, people being stoned or beheaded. What might the death toll have been otherwise. It was getting pretty awful during the Clinton administration. Remember the attacks on our embassies, the USS Cole and the first attack on the World Trade Center? Now that we've renounced the war on terror as foolishness and made it a police matter, how's that working out? This administration has like one "arrest" of a terrorist and they're going to appoint him a lawyer and probably give his defense team copies of the anti-Islamic "movie" that the administration says made him rape and behead an American ambassador. Now, every time a jihadi shoots up a military base or recruiting office they have to relabel it "workplace violence". At least when we were in open war with them, we were winning. In the past five years, this president has imposed rules of engagement that are getting soldiers killed faster than they were during the "evil Bush years". Wonder how come the media doesn't celebrate those milestones of death like they used to?
A SEVENTH GOOD THING IS THAT THE ISSUE HAS POLARIZED THE COUNTRY. One can see clearly the dividing of the sheep and the goats - if not the actual makeup of the two sides. It matters not that both sides see themselves as the sheep. No one wants to be a goat. Jesus said that just before the end, the sheep would be separated from the goats. I think the divisions are actually more subtle than many of us think they are. I also think that it is Satan's purpose is to use this separation process to set us against one another. Better for Satan's purpose for us to think, "He is a liberal. She is a libertarian. They are socialists." I am a neocon (according to those who disagree with me). It's a false label. Man, we are told, looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks upon the heart. The true division among us is not some political boundary. It's a division of purpose. The true division is between those who would stand for the right though the heavens fall and those who stand for themselves.
Once again, I want to thank all those with differing opinions on this subject, whether they be conspiracy theorists, Paul-bots, socialists, smug, self-important know-it-alls or honest folk, for inspiring another stimulating blog post. This blog could not continue without you. God bless you all and keep you in his care until Christ comes to take us out of this mess we've made. I'm certain He's loading up the bus to come get us even as I write this.
© 2014 by Tom King
