Of Heroes, Cowards (and Morons)

Of Heroes, Cowards (and Morons)
Vol: 31 Issue: 30 Friday, April 30, 2004

Army Ranger Pat Tillman put a face on the war on terrorism when he was killed on April 22 in Southeastern Afghanistan. Most knew Tillman as a football player for the NFL Arizona Cardinals.

In June 2002, Tillman walked away from a three-year, 3.6 million dollar contract with the Cardinals in order to satisfy his need to serve his country. By all accounts, Tillman was deeply influenced by the attacks of 9/11, and set out to do what so many have done since: He voluntarily put himself in harm s way for his country.

Sgt. Tillman’s death seems to have angered the morons of the world, most of whom have taken the time to write me to prove they are still out there.

Here’s one example:

“Jack, I must take issue with you regarding Tillman and your comment that he “died defending that system”, referring to the current political system in the US.

Anyone who gives up his life for a corrupt system like the one this has become is either too stupid to understand the truth, or is suffering from an overdose of testosterone, thinking that he was going to the battle to “save the world”, little doubt the goal of which is (was) to impress someone back home with his bravery, and not understanding the reality of war. (an attitude so typical of jocks, young and old).

Why all the fuss about Tillman? How about all the other “little people” who lost their lives, their souls, and other body parts fighting a war that benefits only Israel?

Why not tell these people the truth about this dirty little “war” illegal and unconstitutional as it is, BEFORE they lay their lives on the line for something about which they know little, and can change even less?

Sgt. Tillman did not die for his country, he (and all the rest of them) died for an ideology foreign to ours, and if they had knowledge of the truth, very few would chose the action they did.

John”

Assessment:

“John’s” email is a textbook example of how easy it is to be brainwashed by the mainstream media. It is unlikely that John learned such garbage from any other source.

“Anyone who gives up his life for a corrupt system like the one this has become is either too stupid to understand the truth, or is suffering from an overdose of testosterone” — sounds like Peter Jennings in an unguarded moment, doesn’t it?

Sgt. Tillman died in Afghanistan fighting the forces that attacked New York and Washington on September 11, and NOT in a ‘war that only benefits Israel’ but you wouldn’t know that if you got your news from the same source as our correspondent, ‘John’.

He seems to suggest he has some secret knowledge not available to the ordinary American, saying, “if they had knowledge of the truth, very few would chose the action they did.” John doesn’t specify the ‘truth’ they are unaware of, but he somehow ties it to Israel.

He speaks of the ‘reality of war’ as if he knew it, but his comments suggest he knows what he has seen on TV. And suggests the ‘corrupt’ system of the United States can somehow be fixed by sitting at home in his armchair watching television and criticizing those who are standing in his stead on the battlefield.

The Bible says that, “the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.” (2nd Timothy 4:3-4)

I know nothing of my correspondent, ‘John’, beyond what he wrote to me in this email. But I have heard his comments repeated on an almost daily basis by the mainstream networks anchors since the beginning of the election cycle.

‘Sound doctrine’ for a country at war would be to win that war as efficiently as possible. It is a ‘fable’ to believe that al-Qaeda will give up if America pulls out its troops and goes home.

But there are plenty of ‘Johns’ out there. And plenty of fables. Just turn on the news. I couldn’t have built a more convincing argument for the power of propaganda than the one ‘John’ dropped in my lap.

“A wicked doer giveth heed to false lips; and a liar giveth ear to a naughty tongue.” (Proverbs 17:4)

And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh. (Luke 21:28)

Note:

I had some network problems this morning and was unable to send out your Omega Letter on time. My apologies for being late.

No Wonder Nobody is Talking

No Wonder Nobody is Talking
Vol: 31 Issue: 29 Thursday, April 29, 2004

This morning’s headlines are inaccurately reporting that a peace deal had been negotiated between the Fallujah fighters and the US and that the Marines were pulling out and being replaced by elements of the Iraqi military. Shortly after the story hit the wire services, the Pentagon denied it, saying that at the moment, the two sides aren’t even talking. Such a deal seems unlikely, in any case.

The uprisings in Fallujah and Najaf were organized and often carried out by members of Saddam Hussein’s secret service, who planned for the insurgency even before the fall of Baghdad, according to a Pentagon intelligence report.

The report states that Iraqi officers of the “Special Operations and Antiterrorism Branch,” known within Hussein’s government as Force M-14, are responsible for planning roadway improvised explosive devices and some of the larger car bombs that have killed Iraqis, Americans and other foreigners.

Suicide bombers are using explosives-laden vests made before the war under the direction of of M-14 officers, according to the report, prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency. The report also cites evidence that one such suicide attack last April, which killed three Americans, was carried out by a pregnant woman who was also an M-14 colonel.

The report’s findings were based on interrogations with high-ranking M-14 members who are now in American custody, as well as on documents uncovered and translated by the Iraq Survey Group.

The seven-page “Special Analysis” was written under Defense Intelligence Agency guidance by the Joint Intelligence Task Force, which includes officers and analysts from across the civilian and military espionage community.

The document says that “cells of former M-14 personnel are organizing and conducting a terrorist I.E.D. campaign against coalition forces throughout Iraq. The explosives section of M-14 prepared for the invasion by constructing hundreds of suicide vests and belts for use by Saddam Fedayeen against coalition forces.” The fedayeen are former government paramilitary forces that attacked American forces on the initial offensive toward Baghdad, and are said to be among the insurgents still fighting today.

The report says that under Saddam, M-14 was responsible for “hijackings, assassinations and explosives,” and that its officers are responsible for “the majority of attacks” today. In one detailed section, it describes how M-14 organized “Tiger Groups” of 15 to 20 volunteers trained in explosives and small-arms who would organize and carry out bombings, including suicide attacks.

Assessment:

Much is being made of the breadth and depth of Iraqi resistance to the US-led occupation, particularly by the press. They are fond of pointing out that, far from being greeted as ‘liberators’, our troops are occupying conquerors fighting against Iraqi ‘resistance’.

Now would be a good time to point out that a significant number of these alleged ‘Iraqi’ resistance fighters aren’t Iraqis, but members of al-Qaeda. According to the Pentagon, one in ten resistance fighters are foreign, and the rest are members of the Feyadeen Saddam and Force M-14.

So, why would these guys fight for Saddam, even after he was toppled, arrested and imprisoned as an enemy POW? It is obvious to even the most dedicated Ba’athist fighter that Saddam isn’t coming back to power. There is no reward awaiting them from Saddam’s treasure chest — that’s in custody as well.

To the global press corps eager to give the US a black eye, it is evidence that America is an overbearing occupation force that bit off more than it can chew. Saddam wasn’t REALLY as evil a dictator as Washington made him out to be. After all, look at all the loyalists still willing to die for Saddam.

Unspun, there are, according to military estimates, about 1,500 fighters out of an Iraqi population of about fifty million people. These are the guys who, during Saddam’s reign of terror, cut out the tongues of their fellow citizens.

They ran the prisons and torture chambers, rounded up people in the middle of the night, participated in public torture and executions, and stood behind the weapons that mowed down the victims found in all those mass graves.

They aren’t willing to ‘die for Saddam’ — they are fighting because they have no other choice. They can die fighting Americans, or they disarm and subsequently be torn apart by their Iraqi victims and their surviving relatives.

Meanwhile, they roam the countryside in heavily armed groups, threatening death and destruction to anybody who cooperates with the Americans. Ordinary Iraqis know Americans won’t kill them if they don’t talk, but that the insurgents will if they do.

A similar situation exists with the weapons of mass destruction. The media has concluded those weapons don’t exist because captured Iraqi scientists failed to give any up after the fall of Saddam. Therefore, the weapons don’t exist, since those scientists have no loyalty to Saddam and Saddam has no power over them anymore.

Wrong. At least eight Iraqi scientists have been killed in the past few months by Iraqi terrorists. No wonder nobody is talking!

An examination of the mainstream news coverage of the situation in Iraq says little or nothing of any of this. Instead, the Fallujah and Najaf uprising are evidence of Iraqi discontent with their American occupiers. Ambassador Bremer dropped the ball and should be fired. The Bush administration went to war without a post-war plan. The US should have waited for UN support. Inspections were working. Vote for John Kerry!

‘Truth’ in the 21st century, isn’t what is actually true, but is instead what people BELIEVE to be true. The world is already preconditioned for the eventual fulfillment of Paul’s prophecy for the last days; “And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:” (2 Thessalonians 2:11)

And there are no shortage of liars to help move things along.

In the Days of These Kings . . .

In the Days of These Kings . . .
Vol: 31 Issue: 28 Wednesday, April 28, 2004

To forestall congressional investigations into a multibillion-dollar U.N. scandal, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has just approved appointment of a three-man outside commission, headed by Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, to look into the oil-for-food scandal.

The investigation is a slam-dunk. They don’t even need to meet. The findings are obvious as are their conclusions, which say something like this:

1) There was indeed a ripoff by UN officials of Iraqi oil money; and, 2) Kofi Annan is innocent of wrong-doing. All the blame will fall to underlings, who will never be charged with a crime.

Some may be fired, like program administrator Benon Sevan, but he is due to retire, anyway. And the estimated $3.5 million he skimmed off in the form of oil vouchers from Saddam will cushion the blow.

The intent of the program was to sell Iraqi oil to pay for food and medicine for the Iraqi people, who were suffering under UN sanctions designed to contain Saddam Hussein and possibly bring down his government from within.

Instead, the nightly news programs treated us to stories about the crippling sanctions that were starving Iraqis as Iraq’s child mortality rate shot through the roof.

Photos showed pitiful thin Iraqi men, women and children suffering under the cruelty of the US-led containment policy. (I recall noting at the time that Saddam and his cronies appeared to be putting on weight)

So much publicity was engendered for the plight of the poor Iraqis that the UN hammered out the ‘Oil for Food’ scheme to buy food and medicine for innocent Iraqi citizens.

Instead, vouchers were doled out as gifts or as payment for goods imported into the country in violation of U.N. sanctions. The recipient would then turn the voucher over to one of a number of firms operating in the United Arab Emirates, in exchange for commissions ranging anywhere from 5 cents to 30 cents per barrel, depending on market conditions.

(This translates into a profit of $50,000 on the low end and $300,000 on the high end for every 1 million barrels worth of oil vouchers.)

Here’s how the scam worked:

(1) Saddam sold oil at below-market prices to his chosen customers.

(2) They in turn sold the oil to third parties at a fat profit. Part of the profit was kicked back to Saddam and paid into bank accounts outside the U.N. program and in violation of U.N. sanctions.

(3) Saddam began smuggling out oil through Turkey, Jordan and Syria making a mockery of Oil-for-Food that was supposed to help the Iraqi people. This was reported in the press but ignored by the U.N.

None of this was unknown to Secretary Annan, despite his denials. In 2002, Annan signed a letter to the Security Council authorizing use of $20 million from the Oil-for-Food funds to pay for an “Olympic sport city” in Iraq and $50 million to equip Saddam’s “Ministry of Information”.

In 2003, Minister of Information Mohammed Saed (Baghdad Bob) used that equipment to amuse the West with comments like, “American soldiers are committing mass suicides at the gates of Baghdad.”

Before the famous list of kickbacks was discovered in Iraq and made public, Annan carefully denied everything, saying, “As far as I know, nobody in the Secretariat has committed any wrongdoing.”

Afterwards, Annan grudgingly conceded, “It is highly possible there has been quite a lot of wrongdoing.”

That ‘wrongdoing’ consisted of the U.N. Secretariat being officially on Saddam’s payroll and collaborating with Saddam instead of, as was their duty, supervising him.

Despite the fact that the evidence proves the UN’s complicity with Saddam, the UN has insisted on playing a leading role in Iraq’s transition to sovereignty, claiming that Iraq is once again under UN jurisdiction. U.S. officials have given the UN the lead in shaping a new governing arrangement in Iraq ahead of the planned transfer of sovereignty on 1 July.

As the newly-appointed UN envoy to Iraq told the Security Council in a report, the problem with insurgency in Iraq is largely due to its lost sovereignty. “The sooner a credible Iraqi government is in place to lead the way the better, especially because the absence of such a sovereign government is part of the problem in the first place.”

The ‘sovereign government’ that is ‘absent’ forming ‘part of the problem in the first place’ was jointly that of Saddam Hussein and the UN’s Oil For Food administration program that kept Iraqis in chains of misery for a decade so that each could enrich themselves at the expense of the suffering Iraqi people.

In testimony before House Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats, and International Relations on the United Nations Oil-for-Food scandal, delivered on April 21, 2004, investigative journalist Claudia Rosett explained;

“It bears noting upfront that the U.N. has no effective mechanisms of checks, balances, and disclosure. What finally began to bring some daylight to this program was certainly not any initiative on the part of the U.N. where Secretary-General Annan and his senior staff at every turn sought to continue and expand Oil-for-Food.”

“Nor was it any initiative of the Security Council where the project of funneling relief through sanctions quickly became a rationale for huge flows of corruption-laden business between Iraq and such major U.N. players as France, Russia, and China. What finally flushed Oil-for-Food into the open was that Saddam’s regime fell.”

“It is obvious that there were many parties to Saddam’s business who expected him to remain in power, protecting the confidential records of dirty deals; and it may be more than coincidence that some of his favored business partners notably Russia and France, but also the U.N. Secretary-General himself (flush with its Oil-for-Food commissions and clout) lobbied to keep Saddam in power.”

She continued: “It must also be kept in mind that once Saddam had done a tainted deal, delivered a bribe, received a kickback, given a gift of those now-infamous oil vouchers; he had the goods on the other party to the deal. Along with the graft came ample opportunity for blackmail, a danger to which the U.N. was also, apparently, indifferent.”

“Very likely, Saddam’s partners in graft had more to lose than he did especially as the program proceeded, and Saddam’s regime, having tested the U.N. envelope again and again, discovered it could game the system almost any way it chose.”

Assessment:

The UN may survive the Oil-For-Food scandal, but its survival will only be temporary. Iraq is the UN’s ‘Abyssinia’. In the mid-1930’s, Italian forces invaded and occupied the African nation of Abyssinia. The League of Nations ordered Italian forces out. Mussolini rejected the League’s ultimatum out-of-hand and promptly withdrew.

Italy’s withdrawal from the League sparked a mass exodus that culminated with the League sitting out World War II in exile before being disbanded as ‘irrelevant’ in 1945.

The United Nations took the same route with Iraq as did the League with Abbyssinia, with one notable exception — that of motive. The League was weak.

The UN is crooked.

It was Kofi Annan who compliantly condoned Saddam’s ever-escalating schemes and conditions, and who lobbied to the last to preserve Saddam’s totalitarian regime while the U.N. Secretariat was swimming in his cash.

In the final analysis, there are only two conclusions one can reach concerning the UN — and neither gives any reason for optimism for the UN’s future.

Either the corruption at the UN is so endemic that it reaches all the way to the UN Secretary General’s office, or Annan is so incompetent that he didn’t know. In either case, the fact he remains in charge makes it all academic.

The UN’s days are numbered — but the UN is not just a debating society on the East River. Over the past six decades, the UN’s infrastructure has reached into every facet of international relations. UN Treaty Law, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, the World Health Organization . . . the list is endless.

Even if the UN collapses under the weight of its own corruption and incompetence, those organizations are a necessary part of the international system. Without them, entire national economies would also collapse. So would treaties that maintain peace and define international law.

The void left by the collapse of the UN would have to be filled somehow. The only likely candidate for the job is multi-national Europe.

The prophet Daniel identified the final government as “the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. (Jerusalem and the Temple)” (Daniel 9:26)

That destruction was accomplished seven hundred years later in AD 70 by a Roman general named Titus who went on to become Emperor of Rome.

Daniel further identified the final form of world government as a confederation of ten ‘kings’. (The EU actually only has ten full members. The ‘expanded EU’ consists of nations holding either ‘associate’ or ‘observer’ status. But the power remains with the original ten)

Daniel described them as ‘partly strong and partly weak, like iron mixed with miry clay’ and said “And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken.” (Daniel 2:42)

Sounds more like the EU all the time. Daniel says of this coming global system:

“And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever.” (Daniel 2:44)

Happiness is Vietnam in My Rear-View Mirror

Happiness is Vietnam in My Rear-View Mirror
Vol: 31 Issue: 27 Tuesday, April 27, 2004

Senator Ted Kennedy said Iraq is, George Bush s Vietnam. Given the fact that, that U.S. forces are committed there for the long haul, what steps do we need to take, Ambassador Bremer, to make sure that Iraq does not turn into another Vietnam? NBC s Matt Lauer to Ambassador Paul Bremer, the chief U.S. administrator in Iraq, on Today, April 6.

You say commit more troops. But that s the same thing LBJ did in Vietnam. Do you worry that this is another Vietnam? Katie Couric to Hillary Clinton on Dateline, April 16.

Retired Major General William Nash: It s an insurgency against a public security mission that the soldiers are trying to perform for the people of Iraq. And so they are not able to engage regular military forces using the strengths that we have to attack their weaknesses.

Peter Jennings: Well, that sounds like Vietnam. ABC s World News Tonight, April 7.

In Najaf, the militant Shiite cleric Al-Sadr echoed the refrain Iraq could become quote, another Vietnam for America. Dan Rather on the April 7 CBS Evening News.

“We are asking Americans to think about that because how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?….We are here in Washington to say that the problem of this war is not just a question of war and diplomacy. It is part and parcel of everything that we are trying as human beings to communicate to people in this country – the question of racism which is rampant in the military, and so many other questions such as the use of weapons; the hypocrisy in our taking umbrage at the Geneva Conventions and using that as justification for a continuation of this war when we are more guilty than any other body of violations of those Geneva Conventions; in the use of free fire zones, harassment interdiction fire, search and destroy missions, the bombings, the torture of prisoners, all accepted policy by many units in South Vietnam.” — Vietnam Veterans Against the War Statement by John Kerry to the Senate Committee of Foreign Relations, April 23, 1971

“I did obviously fight in Vietnam, and I was wounded there, and I served there and was very proud of my service . . .To have these people, all of whom made a different choice, attack me for it is obviously disturbing.” — John F. Kerry, Presidential Candidate, Fulton College, Mo, April 26, 2004

Assessment:

The War in Vietnam began during the Kennedy administration, escalated during the Johnson and first Nixon administrations, and ended when the Democrats in Congress voted to pull out and leave South Vietnam to the tender mercies of the communist North.

The Tet Offensive that so many credit as the reason for America’s defeat in Vietnam was a disastrous military defeat for the North and a massive military victory for the United States.

But at home, there were people like John Kerry telling the American public that Vietnam was a ‘peaceful agrarian society’ that had been invaded by the US ‘military-industrial complex’ so that ‘fat-cats’ could ‘get rich’ etc., etc.

Groups like Vietnam Veterans Against the War turned on their country and their fellow veterans, and worked actively to secure an ignominious American withdrawal from Vietnam, betraying the South Vietnamese whose generation-long war of liberation ended in defeat and absorption by the Communists.

One legacy of John Kerry, Jane Fonda and other anti-war activists protesting America’s ‘unjust war’ in South Vietnam is the current practice throughout ‘reunited’ Vietnam of martyring Christians for their faith.

“In Vietnam, police reportedly killed hundreds of Christians at a peaceful prayer protest over Easter weekend. More than a thousand Christian Montagnards had been protesting religious repression and confiscation of their tribal lands.Vietnam’s communist government has been persecuting the Montagnards for years. One reason is because massive numbers of Montagnards have converted to Christianity since the early 1990s. A Montagnard Christian who escaped to the U.S. says his people are ‘crying out for freedom.’ ” — Christian World News, April 16, 2004.

THIS is what those 56,000-plus Americans who died in Vietnam died to protect. Freedom. Not some ‘military-industrial complex of fat cats.’ And NOT so some political hopeful could denigrate those sacrifices to advance his own political career, as Kerry did in ’71. Or cynically exploit it to get elected president in 2004.

This week, answering charges that he lied about throwing his medals over the White House fence, John Kerry stood tall, faced the cameras, and said something to the effect that because he served in Vietnam and neither Bush nor Cheney did, it was thirty years ago, and anyway, Kerry went to Vietnam and neither Bush nor Cheney did . . . or something.

The media is making an issue out of whether Kerry threw his ribbons over the fence, or whether he threw his medals. Kerry responded by saying he threw the ribbons, but kept the medals, saying that ‘ribbons’ and ‘medals’ were, to all intents and purposes, interchangeable terms.

I agree with Kerry. ‘Ribbons’ represent medals, and are, among military types, interchangeable.

When a medal is awarded, it comes with a ribbon that is worn on the Uniform of the Day instead, to show you earned the medal which remains in your presentation case.

So it doesn’t make any difference whether he threw away ‘ribbons’ or ‘medals’. The point is that he threw them away THEN, and is campaigning on them NOW. John Kerry testified under oath that Americans routinely tortured and pillaged and raped and burned and committed war crimes as ‘accepted policy by many units in South Vietnam’ in 1971.

He renounced the medals he earned by throwing the ribbons that representated them over the White House fence. Those medals weren’t his — they were given to him in trust. For every decorated veteran there is a dead veteran who didn’t survive to be decorated. Those medals are shared by the living and the dead.

When Kerry threw his ribbons over the White House fence, he broke that trust and renounced his right to claim them again. It is important to remember WHY Kerry said he was ‘giving his medals back’ as he put it.

It was because — in his own words — he earned them by committing war crimes simply by serving in Vietnam. Now he mentions them in every campaign speech.

Ok. So he gave them back. I once gave my brother back a valuable something he had given me as an expression of gratitude for something I did for him.

(Once I gave it back to him, it wasn’t mine anymore. Would be even less so, if I had thrown it in his face)

It wasn’t George Bush or Dick Cheney that ressurrected Vietnam as a campaign issue — it was John Kerry. According to Kerry, Bush/Cheney are less qualified because they DIDN’T participate in conduct so reprehensible that Kerry threw his decorations away in protest.

If the war in Iraq goes badly for George Bush, that means the election will go favorably for John Kerry. It is, therefore, in John Kerry’s best political interests that Iraq become ‘another Vietnam’.

What does ‘another Vietnam’ mean? Does it mean a military defeat on the battlefield? No. We won on the battlefield. We lost at home, thanks to propaganda speeches by anti-war activists like John Kerry gave in 1971. John Kerry was a veteran, so he was very convincing.

Aided by the mainstream media coverage of antiwar demonstrations and high-profile coverage afforded folks like Jane Fonda and John Kerry, pretty soon mainstream America was convinced we were bogged down in a ‘quagmire’ that we couldn’t win.

Now is a good time to scroll back up and read what the mainstream media is saying about Iraq. Jane Fonda is keeping a low profile, but Jeannine Garafalo, Al Franken, Sean Penn, Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins are there to pick up the slack. And so is the mainstream media.

Vietnam was thirty years ago. The loss in Vietnam won Jimmy Carter the White House in 1976. John Kerry hopes he can use Vietnam again, by recreating it in Iraq, to win the White House for him in 2004.

The propaganda message built into chants like, “No more Vietnams”, is what created the FIRST ‘Vietnam’ in Vietnam. John Kerry knows that. He helped perfect the technique while launching his political career. That’s why we keep hearing it now.

But Iraq isn’t Vietnam. Islam is not communism. The Viet Cong didn’t have access to weapons of mass destruction. After a John Kerry administration, will there be a Ronald Reagan waiting in the wings to pick up the pieces?

And even if history repeats itself this time, will there be any pieces left to pick up?

The Laodicea Factor

The Laodicea Factor
Vol: 31 Issue: 26 Monday, April 26, 2004

More than a half-million demonstrators descended on the National Mall over the weekend to protest what they call the ‘erosion’ of abortion ‘rights’ during the Bush administration.

It was impossible to find a news account that didn’t present the demonstration using the most glowing of terms, making extensive use of the phrases “pro-choice” and “anti-abortion” to describe the two sides.

Not one news account referred to abortion proponents as “pro-death” or abortion opponents as “pro-life”. After thirty-years of it, it sounds like hair-splitting now, but the fact is, those loaded terms have done more to sustain the pro-abortion lobby than any other part of their brainwashing campaign.

Decoding liberal-speak is a full-time job, and sometimes, it seems like that is all I do to the exclusion of almost anything else. The lies are so pervasive it is impossible to keep up with them.

The abortion debate in the United States is basically divided between two worldviews. Liberals overwhelmingly support abortion, while conservatives overwhelmingly oppose it.

Abortion in the United States is presented by its supporters invariably as a ‘woman’s right to choose’ or as a necessary medical procedure whose abolition would mean the deaths of uncounted women in back alleys, etc., etc.

Note the almost serpentine subtlety here. A ‘woman’s right to choose’ is the slogan, but how much support would be engendered if it were ‘a woman’s right to choose to KILL her baby’?

Since Roe v. Wade, the estimated number of abortions in America exceed one hundred and sixty-five MILLION. Only our Lord knows how many writers, philosophers, scientists, doctors, and future US presidents were among their number.

The sheer number, 165,000,000, exposes the lie that abortion is a ‘necessary medical procedure’ rather than a convenient method of birth control after the fact.

The liberals are loudly protesting the fact the Social Security trust fund won’t have enough workers to support the current generation of workers when they retire. They blame the Baby Boomer generation, poor fiscal planning, (usually by Republican administrations) and things like outsourcing of jobs overseas, but they NEVER MENTION the fact they KILLED the next generation of workers in the womb.

Uber-liberal Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton was among the luminaries chanting for the right to kill their own children.

Hillary urged the marchers to vote in big numbers on Nov. 2 to evict an administration “filled with people who disparage sexual harassment laws, who claim the pay gap between women and men is phony … who consider Roe v. Wade the worst abomination of constitutional law in our history.”

Roe v. Wade denies life to unborn Americans. The Bill of Rights includes the ‘right to life’. There’s a WORSE abomination?

Assessment:

Stirring anger and fear among abortion “rights”supporters are two pieces of legislation President Bush has signed into law in the past six months.

The first is a ban on partial-birth abortion; the other is the first federal law to endow a fetus with legal rights distinct from the pregnant woman.

Let that sink in for a moment, devoid of liberal spin. The marchers OPPOSE a ban on killing a fully-developed baby by plunging a seven inch pair of scissors into the back of its skull, (provided its feet haven’t completely cleared the birth canal).

And they OPPOSE granting legal rights that would make it separate crimes to injure a pregnant woman and an unborn baby, on the grounds they DILUTE women’s rights?

Ashley Judd, Allison Janney, Susan Sarandon, Whoopi Goldberg and other Hollywood celebrities shared the stage with politicians, diplomats and leaders of the abortion ‘rights’ movement.

Whoopi declared anti-abortion legislation was a ‘war on women’, while Gloria Steinham said of the Bush administration’s position on abortion, “This government is the greatest danger on earth.”

Gee! Worse than al-Qaeda? What about North Korea? China? Iran? Cuba? The Clintons? Liberal-speak bears very little resemblance to reality, but what it ignores factually is more than compensated for by its application of hyperbole.

It’s little wonder that the worm is beginning to turn in America. The latest polls show more Americans oppose abortion than support it, and the future is trending toward the pro-life position. Majority support for Roe v. Wade is as mythical as Miz Steinham’s declaration that America is the ‘greatest danger on earth’.

There are lots of people who use the terms ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ as they are used in the United States, but not very many who can accurately explain the difference.

Politically, liberals in the United States are largely represented by the Democrats, whereas conservatives are identified, rightly or wrongly, with the Republicans. It is their worldview that separates them ideologically, and that separation is based on where each side claims its source of political authority.

The difference is explained by Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Law. Blackstone’s Commentaries are the basis for American Common Law and represent the Supreme Court’s reference of last resort.

According to Blackstone, there is a distinct difference between a ‘republic’ and a ‘democracy’. In a republic, Blackstone explains, certain things are outlawed by the Divine and cannot be overturned by a majority ruling.

The authority of government is limited. Those things prohibited by Divine Law, (such as murder) can never be made legal under a Republican government.

In a democracy, Blackstone says, the authority of government is derived from the people, not from the Divine. In such a society, the majority rules — there is no higher authority.

Conservatives trend toward being Republican, whereas liberals (or, as they like to label themselves, “Progressives”) trend toward the Democrats.

America is a Constitutional Republic, but has degenerated into a progressive democracy where the ‘right to life’ is a debatable concept.

At the heart of the debate is the existence of God. Liberals tend to worship a god of their own creation, if at all. Conservatives tend to worship the God Who reveals Himself in Scripture as He is.

In the Book of the Revelation, Jesus addressed seven letters to the Seven Churches of Asia that represented the characteristics and nature of seven church epochs from the first century to the last days. The final, last days’ church to whom Jesus addressed His comments was the Church of Laodicea.

The word ‘laodicea’ is a compound of two Greek words, ‘laos’ ‘the people’ and ‘dicea’ meaning ‘justice’ which could just as easily be translated as ‘democracy’ or ‘mob rule’.

Paul captured the worldview of the marchers advocating the destruction of the unborn, writing, “Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof:” (2nd Timothy 3:2-3)

Paul puts it in the context of the last days, warning, “This know also, that in the last days PERILOUS times shall come.”

Of the Laodiceans, Jesus said, “I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of My Mouth.”

What IS Salvation?

What IS Salvation?
Vol: 31 Issue: 25 Sunday, April 25, 2004

“Salvation: The act of saving; preservation or deliverance from destruction, danger, or great calamity.”

Generally speaking, the Omega Letter is primarily aimed at those who are already saved, and today’s is no exception, so don’t write this one off as a refresher that you don’t need.

It is one thing to experience salvation, but it is quite another to explain it. Especially to someone that has no Bible background. Being ‘saved’ — by definition — means that until the moment of salvation a person is ‘lost’. To someone that IS lost, this is a very difficult concept to communicate.

If salvation means to be ‘preserved or delivered from destruction, danger or great calamity’ the skeptic cannot even consider his need to be saved unless he first recognizes such destruction, danger or great calamity exists.

I never cease to be fascinated by the atheist who denies the existence of heaven and hell, but admits to fearing death. If there is no certain judgment beyond the grave, what is there to fear? Death is merely a cessation of consciousness, an end to existence. Without the fear of judgment, what is so terrifying about death? We aren’t terrified to go to sleep. We aren’t terrified of general anasthesia, in and of itself, before an operation.

Humanity fears death because of the existence of God, whether the atheist wants to admit it or not. We are all built with a God-shaped vacuum in our being. Humans try and fill that void with all kinds of things; money, drugs, sex, pagan religions, personal relationships, and on and on, but nothing ever quite fits except God.

One cannot communicate the need for salvation without first communicating what one is being saved from. The atheist demands to know, “how can a loving God condemn people to hell?”

It is the nature of all human beings to sin, which further separates them from God, which turns that aching void into an insurmountable chasm.

All human beings are sinners, by nature and by personal action, and none are righteous. Some may sin to a greater or lesser degree, but all have failed to attain to the standard of God, which is perfection of character, spiritual righteousness and performance (Romans 3:9-10)

Since God created man in His eternal image, all human beings have an eternal destiny. We were created to spend eternity in God’s presence, but the fall of man and our inherited sin nature render us ineligible for heaven. But being eternal, we have to go somewhere.

The Lord created the Lake of Fire for the devil and his rebellious angels, and not for mankind. But since sin bars us from heaven, and since we are eternal, when we shuffle off this mortal coil, our spirit has to go SOMEWHERE.

If not to heaven, well, then, there is only one other place left. God doesn’t condemn us to hell, we condemn ourselves by choosing to go there.

It IS a choice, but it is NOT God’s choice. If it were God’s choice, He would not have provided the way of salvation. Confronted with the choice of condemning the human race, God’s choice was to bear the condemnation in His Own Body at the Cross, so that the human race might be saved through faith in His accomplished work.

Through Jesus Christ, God paid our ransom to deliver us from the bondage (and the consequences) of sin.

Sin places humanity into a state of captivity from which a price must be paid in order that a person might be redeemed or purchased out of that state. The state of captivity, brought about by the sinful condition of humanity, is like a slave market where people are sold as the possession of the purchaser, and in order to be free, the slave must pay for a release or deliverance; this is a ransom.

Humanity is “sold under sin” (Romans 7:14) and therefore falls under the judgment of God.

The judgment has already been pronounced by God and the penalty is eternal death.

The death of Jesus Christ is the ransom paid in order to redeem the human race from the penalty of sin. The ransom is paid to God, as a payment for the release of humanity from the penalty of their sinful state. (cf. Matthew 20:28, 1 Peter 1:17-19, 1 Timothy 2:5-6, Galatians 3:13)

God’s perfect justice that a penalty for sin be paid. Jesus Christ is a propitiation that satisfies the justice of God and allows Him to forgive sinful human beings through His mercy and grace.

By committing sins, which all have their direction toward God, humanity has become separated and alienated from God. A reconciliation cannot be effected because humanity cannot meet the requirements of God in a sinful state and cannot be removed from the authority of judgment by God.

It is Jesus Christ who is the Mediator of the reconciliation between man and God.

Finally, God Himself provided a Substitute to pay that penalty for us. The perfect and sinless life of Jesus Christ is the substitute for that of sinful human beings, and His death is also a substitute for the eternal spiritual death that has been pronounced as the judgment against all sinful human beings.

The problem with salvation, from the perspective of the lost, is admitting that they have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Pride will not let them depend entirely on the substitutionary payment made on their behalf — pride demands that they participate in some way in the process.

But to the lost, participation in the process means giving up all the stuff they like, living like a monk, wearing a hair shirt and walking around praying all the time. It is too much to contemplate, so they prefer not to contemplate it at all.

Being saved means BEING saved. One doesn’t save oneself from drowning — in fact, a drowning person’s panicky flailing about can pull down both parties. Being saved means relaxing and allowing Jesus to save you. Your participation is limited to accepting the fact you cannot save yourself.

Imagine you have a child that gets lost in the woods for days. You are out there, searching under every bush for your lost child, when suddenly, you see him afar off. You run to the child, calling his name, as he runs to you, in slow motion, like in the movies.

Both of you have your arms outstretched, but, just as you are about to embrace your lost child, you notice that he is all dirty and smelly and matted from his time in the wilderness. So, instead of embracing your lost child, you hold him at arm’s length, scold him for being dirty, and tell him you will embrace him after he’s had a bath.

That is the way the lost generally understand salvation. That before they can embrace Jesus, and He them, they must first clean themselves up. That is too big a job to contemplate, and so they hide under a bush.

The lost fail to grasp the simplicity of salvation. Ephesians 2:8 explains, “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: “

Look at the elements: For BY GRACE are ye saved — through FAITH — and THAT not of yourselves — it is a GIFT of God.

It is so simple that most people can’t explain it, and even if they can, even more can’t accept it without further complicating it. God grants the ‘grace’ (an unmerited, undeserved gift) through faith that is ‘not of yourselves’ but is rather a gift from God. There is no room in that equation for us to play any greater role than accepting that gift with gratitude.

Thank you, Jesus, for the Gift of eternal life. I pray right now that You will burn its truth into my soul, and help me to communicate to others their need for salvation.

“Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy,To the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen.” (Jude:24-25)

Greater Love Hath No Man Than This. . .

Greater Love Hath No Man Than This. . .
Vol: 31 Issue: 24 Saturday, April 24, 2004

Another American fighting man has made the supreme sacrifice for his country in Afghanistan. Every one of our fighting men is special — the loss of one diminishes us all, but this particular Army Ranger was uniquely special.

Sgt. Pat Tillman walked away from a $3.5 million NFL contract in 2002 to join the US Army Rangers, leaving both his career and his new bride behind. He and his brother Kevin, (who walked away from a minor-league baseball career) served in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

After leaving Iraq, both men returned to the States for special elite training, before being sent back to Afghanistan, where the brothers served in the same platoon. Sgt. Tillman was killed while with his unit, part of the 75th Ranger Regiment, hunting for al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in southeastern Afghanistan. He was twenty-seven years old.

Pat Tillman was unique in that he embodied all that is good about America — and his life stands in stark contrast to the ravings of politicians like Charley Rangel or John Kerry, who claim the military is unfair.

Rangel is attempting to have the government reinstate the draft, claiming the all-volunteer force is disproportionately poor and consists mainly of minorities. According to Rangel, the only way to get guys like Pat Tillman into uniform is to draft them. The only ones currently serving, following Rangel’s line of thinking, are those Americans too poor, too disadvantaged and too stupid to get real jobs.

Then there are guys like John Kerry who, if given the authority of the White House, would turn it over to the United Nations. In John Kerry’s world, Sgt. Tillman would have died under the command of the organization that propped up Saddam Hussein for a dozen years in order to loot Iraq’s oil wealth.

But Sgt. Tillman didn’t join the US Army Rangers to serve the United Nations — Tillman gave his life for his COUNTRY, not for some universalist supra-national debating society whose interests almost always are at odds with what is good for America.

Assessment:

Sgt Tillman was an American — a real American. He wasn’t the kind of guy to talk out both sides of his mouth. He knew what needed to be done and he did it. Tillman is representative of an America that baffles the liberals.

Former Reagan speechwriter and Wall Street Journal Opinion columist Peggy Noonan summed it up, writing in 2002, “As the Vietnam-era song said, “Something’s happening here.” And what it is may be exactly clear. Some very talented young men, and women, are joining the armed forces in order to help their country because, apparently, they love it. After what our society and culture have been through and become the past 30 years or so, you wouldn’t be sure that we would still be making their kind, but we are.”

As the comedian Mort Sahl likes to say, “We live in the worst political system in the world — except for all the others.”

Pat Tillman died defending that system. But it goes beyond that. He joined the Army without expectation or agenda beyond doing what he believed to be the right thing. He was besieged by interview requests from all manner of media, for obvious reasons.

Tillman turned down all requests. He joined the Army to defend his country, not exploit his fame.

Sgt. Tillman lived for his country. And he died for it. Despite idiots like Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton who keep talking about ‘quagmires’ and ‘another Vietnam’ America is still capable of producing heroes like Sgt. Pat Tillman.

“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13)

Semper Fi

Crossing the Invisible Line

Crossing the Invisible Line
Vol: 31 Issue: 23 Friday, April 23, 2004

According to the most recent polls, in spite of all the negative publicity, body slams from both the mainstream media and John Kerry over the Iraq war, plus the efforts to blame him for 9/11, George Bush is inexplicably moving ahead of John Kerry.

An ABC News/Washington Post survey released on Tuesday recorded a five-point lead among registered voters for President Bush over Senator Kerry when Ralph Nader was offered as a choice (48 percent to 43 percent to 6 percent) and a one-point lead when the matchup was narrowed to President Bush and Senator Kerry (49 percent to 48 percent).

In a USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll released the same day, Bush led Kerry 47 percent to 44 percent, with Nader drawing 5 percent. Without Nader, it was Bush over Kerry 50 percent to 46 percent. The next day, a poll from Investor’s Business Daily confirmed the trend, showing Bush at 44 percent, Kerry at 40 percent and Nader at 4 percent.

The press is incredulous, as evidenced by a glance at the morning headlines detailing the results of the polling. MSNBC all but admits the existence of its anti-Bush propaganda campaign in its headline, “Despite Iraq News, Bush Hangs On”.

The Miami Herald led with, “Bush Leading, Despite Setbacks”, while Newsday moaned “Despite Criticism, Bush Still Leads in Polls”. In order to take some of the luster off polls favoring Bush, the Miami Herald had to reach clean to the Left Coast to justify its negative spin on the story, saying; “Poll: Bush Popularity in California at an All Time Low”.

How’s THAT for spinning a story about Bush leading Kerry in the polls? Do you think the Miami Herald has a political agenda?

On the Left Coast, the Los Angeles Times headlined its story, “Economy, War Mean Uphill Battle for Bush”.

Keep in mind these are headlines for stories detailing how Bush is moving AHEAD in the polls.

Assessment:

It is a mystery to the liberal establishment that they have been unable to fulfill the promises they made in 2000 to make George Bush’s presidency as unsuccessful as possible as payback for ‘stealing’ the election from Al Gore.

In fact, the establishment has been so single-minded in its focus on defeating George Bush that it has stripped away any pretense at objectivity, making necessary the creation of a new term for the political lexicon to describe the phenomenon of ‘Bush-bashing’.

Take the 9/11 Commission, for example. It is a textbook example of ‘Bush-bashing’ — not to mention a perfect example of objectivity being thrown out the window in the pursuit of the goal of ‘getting’ George Bush.

Critics of the administration, especially among the media, simultaneously accuse Bush of not acting preemptively against the Taliban on one hand, while criticizing Bush for acting preemptively against Saddam Hussein.

All the while, they have to juggle the eight months of the Bush administration against eight years of Clinton inaction, without actually mentioning Clinton by name in the process.

After all, it was Clinton who declared regime change in Iraq to be official US policy back in 1998, not George Bush. Bush was acting on Clinton’s policy in 2003 when he deposed Saddam as a preemptive measure as part of the overall preemptive strategy of the war on terror.

And every previous terror attack on the US prior to 9/11 took during the Clinton administration. But somehow, the press has anointed George Bush the scapegoat and given the Clinton administration a pass.

It is hard to manipulate all that and still appear to be objective. So they aren’t even trying. America’s Fifth Estate has crossed an invisible line.

In the early days of the Nazi regime, the press was taken over by Nazi propagandists, but at first, they tried to maintain some semblance of objectivity. If they had simply taken over the press and begun broadcasting blatant propaganda from the start, nobody would have paid any attention to them.

Propaganda, to be successful, has to be believable, at least on the surface. The Nazis discovered after a while that people got used to being lied to, and then it really didn’t matter anymore. People came to expect it, in the same sense that during the Clinton administration, America came to believe that ‘all politicians lie’ — but then they voted for the candidate of their choice in the next election, anyway.

America is slowly being taught in the same way that ‘all newspapers have a bias’. Everybody knows the New York Times and CNN tilt to the left, while the Washington Times and Fox News tilt to the right.

Except that conservatives think Fox News and the WT are ‘balanced’ and the NYT and CNN are not. And liberals think CNN and the NYT are ‘balanced’ while Fox and the WT are not. BOTH sides are delusional.

Which is why both sides go to THEIR source of ‘fair and balanced’ news in a subliminal admission that both sides are biased, but one side leans their way.

Neither side realizes what has happened, but both have crossed over to where they openly accept a VERSION of the truth AS the truth, all the while knowing in the back of their minds it is a MANIPULATED truth.

The Nazis, once they crossed that threshold, were able to move from manipulating the truth into openly fabricating stories that fit the party line, and eventually, enslave a continent.

The Bible says that in the last days, the antichrist will seize control of the global propaganda machine and convince a willing world to accept him as a god and their savior, in much the same way the Nazi propaganda machine deified Hitler.

But in order for the antichrist to control the global propaganda machine, there must first BE a global propaganda machine to control. As we’ve seen, it takes some time to build, and even more time to condition the public to accept propaganda as ‘truth’. The antichrist only has seven years, so the global machine must already be up and functioning when he comes to power.

It wouldn’t take much fine tuning to use the one in place right now.

All Hail Mother Gaia

All Hail Mother Gaia
Vol: 31 Issue: 22 Thursday, April 22, 2004

The first Earth Day celebration was conceived by then U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson and held in 1970 as a “symbol of environmental responsibility and stewardship”.

What is interesting is the universal recognition — in this generation — that the Earth is in trouble. Everybody, regardless of their religious views — or lack thereof — can see the handwriting on the wall — even if they refuse to admit it was written in advance.

For the most part, the proponents of Earth Day are pagans who would scoff at the idea of a Creator God, preferring ‘Mother Gaia’ instead. While they laugh at the idea of a living God, the concept of a living, intelligent, planet seems perfectly rational to them.

“Earth Day” founder Senator Nelso explained, “When I first conceived of Earth Day, a global holiday to celebrate the wonder of life on our planet, I thought long and hard about the day on which it should fall. It must be meaningful. One that might be accepted universally for all of humankind. What could be more appropriate than the first moment of Spring, when day and night are equal around the world and hearts and minds can join together with thoughts of harmony and Earth’s rejuvenation.”

Senator Nelson adds, “Just as a single prayer can be significant, how much more so when hundreds, thousands, millions of people throughout the world join in peaceful thoughts and prayers to nurture neighbor and nature.”

Former Vice President Al Gore in his book, ‘Earth in the Balance’ wrote what he called the ‘Gaia Hypothesis’ using quotes from an ancient Hindu dictum: “The earth is our mother, and we are all her children.” He quotes from the gurus of Sikhism who claim that the “Earth teaches us patience, love; Air teaches us mobility, liberty; Fire teaches us warmth, courage; Sky teaches us equality, broad-mindedness; Water teaches us purity, cleanliness.

He quotes from Baha i that teaches that, Man is organic with the world. His inner life molds the environment and is itself deeply affected by it.” And he quotes from James Lovelock, the originator of the Gaia hypothesis.

Gore wrote in his book that the root problem in Western civilization is that “we lost our feeling of connectedness to the rest of nature.”

Near the end of his book, he offers an answer to this alienation by quoting from a prayer of the Onondaga tribe in upstate New York.

Assessment:

A single prayer CAN be significant, if it is addressed to God, but Nelson’s vision is of the prayers of millions addressed to the god of this world, just as Christian Southen Baptist Al Gore preaches any god will do.

Addressing a prayer to a mythical earth god in the expectations it will be answered is like addressing a letter with no return address to ‘Fred’ and dropping in a mail box, expecting it to be delivered to the correct Fred. And then expecting Fred, who doesn’t know you, to grant your request.

The results of praying to the earth are more obvious to the pagan earth worshippers than they are to the rest of us — they pray and pray, and the planet’s ecology gets worse and worse. You’d think they’d get the hint. Either Gaia isn’t listening, she doesn’t care, or — maybe, just maybe, GAIA IS A BIG ROCK FLOATING IN SPACE.

Because, according to the high priests of the god of this world, the planet isn’t healing itself, it is falling apart. That is the reason for Earth Day –to give Gaia a big hint that we’d like her to fix things, or, if Gaia won’t, (or CAN’T) then maybe everybody can meet together on Earth Day and give her a hand. (After all, the Earth doesn’t have any hands of its own)

According to guys like Al Gore, the earth is billions of years old, and man has been here for millions of years. Al Gore has been around for a bit over a half-century.

When Al Gore’s dad was born, the air was clean, the water was clean, the environment was largely unspoiled and few people thought about praying to the planet to please grow more trees so we don’t run out of oxygen. Thus had it been,(using Al Gore’s timetable), for millions of years.

(Amazing what a difference a half-century can make.)

So today is Earth Day, the day when millions of people will all come together, hold hands, sing ‘Kumbayah’, share a universal Coke and pray TO THE PLANET for the protection of the environment. They deny the God of Scripture, but embrace the god of this world, while giving him credit for God’s handiwork.

The skeptics can argue that they don’t believe in God, but Earth Day proves the opposite. They just prefer a god of their own design, one more in keeping with their own worldview.

Indeed, the Apostle Paul makes that exact point:

“Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.”

(God is dead, but the EARTH is alive — and worthy of prayer and worship?)

“Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.” (Romans 1:19-25)

The Burdensome Stone

The Burdensome Stone
Vol: 31 Issue: 21 Wednesday, April 21, 2004

British Prime Minister Tony Blair began to distance himself a bit from his war ally, George Bush, following the US announcement of support for Ariel Sharon’s unilateral disengagement plan. While the White House responded to Israel’s killing of Hamas leader Abdel Rantisi by saying Israel has a right to self-defense, Tony Blair denounced it as an ‘assassination’.

That seems an odd posture for any country engaged in the war on terror to take.

Abdel Azizz Rantisi was a terrorist killer who was directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of innocent Israelis. Osama bin-Laden is a terrorist leader who is directly responsible for the deaths of tens of Britons.

It is worth asking the question; if a British sniper in Afghanistan got Osama in his cross hairs and took the shot, would he be a hero, worthy of praise? Or an ‘assassin’, worthy of condemnation?

The British press is following its political leader in damning Israel enthusiastically for deciding to pull out of Gaza and withdraw from most of the West Bank.

The Palestinians want it all, and will accept nothing less than ‘all’ and that’s all there is to it, goes the British view of the situation. “Since Israel stole it from the Palestinians in the first place, the thinking goes, any portion the Palestinians lets the Jews keep is more than they have coming.”

(The irony is that it was Great Britain that created a much-larger Jewish homeland via the 1917 Balfour Declaration in the first place -after Britain ‘stole’ it from the Ottoman Empire in World War I)

In any case, the fact Israel wants to retain control of six long-established settlement blocs out of all of Gaza and the West Bank is unacceptable to the Brits. Just as it is unacceptable to the whole of the Arab world. And unacceptable by the United Nations entire; but for the US, the Marshall Islands, and Micronesia.

Think about it for a second — I mean, really THINK about what we are talking about. Virtually unanimous global support for the ethnic cleansing of all Jews from the West Bank! There are about a quarter million Jews concerned, many of whom have lived in their homes for thirty years or more! It staggers the imagination.

What really staggers the imagination is the global uproar that would ensue if Israel attempted to ethnically cleanse the Jewish State of its Israeli Arab population.

Think this through. Israel is surrounded by hostile Arab states. Some of its own Israeli-Arab citizens have been been directly involved in terrorist acts against Israel on the behalf of those Arab enemy states. Israel possesses about 1/6th of one percent of the entire Middle East — the rest is in Arab hands.

If Israel tried to expell a relative handful of Arabs into an Arab world more than one hundred times its size, Israel couldn’t even count on Micronesia, let alone America, to support it. But let the Arab world try to expell a quarter-million Jews from its territory into tiny Israel — and it takes a US veto to stop the UN from sending troops in to help with the cleansing operation.

Assessment:

The global reaction to the Israeli unilateral withdrawal is the exact opposite of what one should expect. Ever since Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza, the world has demanded an Israeli withdrawal. The UN General Assembly has passed resolution after resolution demanding an Israeli withdrawal, going all the way back to 1947. (Most of them were unanimous, except for dissenting votes from Israel, the US, the Marshall Islands and Micronesia.)

So now, Israel is pulling out, asking only that the quarter million Jews already settled for a generation be allowed their homes. Instead of having Palestinian Arabs dancing for joy in the streets, while diplomats clink together celebratory glasses of champagne, the disengagement plan is meeting universal opposition.

What about the Arab ‘Right of Return’? Where will the Palestinians work? Who will take care of Gaza when the Israelis pull out? How will the Arabs govern their war-torn new state and shattered economy?

(Those answers should provide clues about the true nature of Israel’s ‘brutal occupation’? IF one were looking for the truth, that is.)

That nobody can see the deliberate, systematic effort on behalf of virtually the whole world to drive the Jewish state out of existence (or turn a blind eye to it) is no more acceptable to me than that Europe ‘didn’t know’ where its Jews went when they boarded those trains headed east during WWII.

In 1947, the Palestinians were offered a state larger than the one they claim to demand now, but they rejected the UN Partition Plan in favor of a plan to wipe out the Jews and take it all. The Arabs who lived on the UN’s Jewish Mandate fled, expecting to return after the Jews were annihilated. They gambled and lost. (Those Arabs and their descendants are the ones affected by the ‘Right of Return’)

The ‘Right of Return’ is analogous to betting against the house in a casino, losing, and demanding your bet back as a ‘Right of Refund’. But it enjoys the backing of every nation on earth except Israel. And now, the United States, and (possibly) Micronesia and the Marshall Islands.

The Arabs didn’t want a state in 1947, they wanted to deny the Jews one. Subsequent history proves that goal remains unchanged. And secretly shared.

Following the 1967 Six Day War, Golda Meir, then-Israel’s prime minister, offered to return virtually all the territories Israel had just captured in exchange for peace. That included the entire West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians and Arab States answered with the famous “three nos” — no recognition, no negotiation, and no peace.

In 1979, the Palestinians turned a joint Egyptian and Israeli invitation to join the peace negotiations at Camp David. Had they accepted, they could have had an independent state decades ago.

In 2000, Yasser Arafat turned down the Camp David proposal that would have given the Palestinians the beginnings of a thriving Palestinian state. It included all of Gaza and 97 percent of the West Bank.

Not only did the Arafat turn down the offer, he unleashed the second intifada. There is now little left to rule, but the Arab goal was never statehood from the beginning.

At each historic opportunity, what scuttled the Palestinian chance at statehood was the Arab insistence on evolving terms they knew Israel could never accept, like demanding all of Jerusalem, or holding out for an eventual ‘Right of Return’.

The UN endorsed it, for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that, institutionally, the UN shares the Arab vision of a Jew-free Middle East. Israel has been the catalyst for most of the UN’s headaches since the day it first raised its flag and declared its existence. The world would a much simpler place to govern if Israel were an Arab state.

And the Right of Return would give the Arabs an overnight electoral majority, meaning Israel would be an Arab state at the next election. George Bush, in his endorsement of unilateral disengagement, took the ‘Right of Return’, not to mention Jerusalem, right off the table.

That is one of the reasons behind a new Palestinian tactic being tested now. Ahmed Queria threatened recently to abandon claims to the West Bank and Baza and to demand equal citizenship in a ‘bi-national’ state. It would have the same ultimate effect of creating an instant Palestinian majority. And the eventual end of a Jewish State in the Middle East.

President Bush was stating the obvious when he said: “It seems clear that an agreed, just, fair, and realistic framework for a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue . . . will be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state and the settling of the refugees there rather than in Israel.”

But as obvious as it is, it is evidently only clear to Israel, the US, the Marshall Islands and Micronesia.

“And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it.” (Zechariah 12:3)