Bad Theology Leads to Bad Foreign Policy

Once upon a time, back when he was one of the House managers of the Clinton impeachment trial, we thought highly of Lindsey Graham.  But over the years he has taken some positions that have changed our attitude – famously following John McCain’s footsteps in ‘walking across the aisle’ to try to pass amnesty legislation for illegal aliens with Senate Democrats (earning him one of Rush Limbaugh’s best epithets – Lindsey Grahamnesty).  And more recently being the promoter of the US’s ‘forever wars’ overseas.

The new disaster unfolding in the Holy Land brings new reasons to distrust him.  On Oct. 13th, he met with Christian leaders in South Carolina where the following statements were made:

COLUMBIA, SC (WOLO) — A group of mostly Baptist and Presbyterian ministers from around the state came together at the Columbia Chamber of Commerce to declare their support for Israel and have an open discussion with Senator Lindsey Graham about the conflict.

“I have a simple message. I have chosen sides. Israel has nothing to apologize for. Israel did not cause this,” says Graham.

At a press conference after the roundtable, Senator Graham outlined how he believes the U.S.  should move forward regarding the Israel-Hamas war, also calling for a statewide day of prayer this Sunday, October 15th.

“Hamas has declared today, Friday, the ‘Day of Rage.’ I am seeking South Carolinians declare this coming Sunday a day of prayer. To all houses of worship in the state of South Carolina, please pray for Israel this Sunday. They want rage, I want prayer. They seek destruction, we seek peace. They seek a one state solution — Hamas — the destruction of Israel. I see a world where Palestinians can live in dignity and in peace with Israel,” says Graham.

. . .

Should the war continue to escalate, Graham believes America should go after Iran, who he says continues to fund Hamas and provide them with weapons.

“The desire to not engage evil seldom works out well. Iran is evil. I don’t want a war with Iran, but I am tired of Iran financing terrorism all over the globe. We have 24 dead Americans, families destroyed and others held captive because of Iran’s support for Hamas. So to the American people, it is long past time we dealt with the Ayatollah and his henchmen,” says Graham.

A pastor present at the meeting gave the religious underpinning for the sentiments of Sen. Graham:

Tony Beam, Interim Pastor at Five Forks Baptist Church in Simpsonville, attended the roundtable.

“I definitely will be encouraging the church where I’m Interim Pastor, to enter in to that day of prayer and to pray for the peace of Jerusalem, which is what the Bible calls us to do, and to pray that God will protect his people of Israel, and that the evil of Hamas will be destroyed, and that innocent life will be protected as much as humanly possible,” says Beam.

Beam also says, “For me, as a Christian, war means making sure that we’re on the side of those who are right, not the aggressors, and making sure that innocent life is protected as much as humanly possible.”

What is at the back of all these statements and actions and promised actions is the doctrine of Dispensationalism taught by John Nelson Darby and Cyrus Scofield, that, despite the founding of the Christian Church by Jesus Christ, the Jews remain a chosen people by God, to whom He will always show special favor.

There are problems with this teaching.  Historically, it is an outlier.  It was never accepted by the Church; only in the last several decades has it become fashionable in certain circles, mainly in what are called the ‘evangelical’ Protestant churches (which makes it particularly problematic for the South, which is where most of those kinds of churches are located).  Most others – Roman Catholics, Orthodox, and other Protestant churches – do not accept its tenets.  The Orthodox priest Fr. John Whiteford, a good ol’ Texas fellow, goes into further detail:

St. Paul’s teaching in Romans 11 is clear that those Jews who rejected Christ are like branches cut off from the olive tree, which represents the people of God — and that gentile converts are like wild olive branches that have been grafted on to that same tree. The Church is the Israel of God (Galatians 6:16), the Israelites formed the Church of the Old Testament, but the New Testament Church is in continuity with the old. However, Romans 11 is equally clear that there is still a future in God’s providence for those who are the physical descendants of the Old Testament Israel, who rejected Christ and so have been cut off from the Church, but who will one day be saved. And so we do speak of the Church as the new Israel, but this does not mean there is no sense in which we can still speak of the Israel according to the flesh.

We do not accept the notion of some Protestants that teach that there is still a separate covenant for the Jews, and that they may be saved by the Old Covenant, while Christians are saved by the New. Nor do we believe that the descendants of those who rejected Christ have some special claim on the Holy Land that entitles them to steal land from Arab speaking Christians, many of whom are no doubt descended from those Jews that embraced Christ. Christians are children of Abraham in the truest sense, and as such are the true heirs of God’s promise to him:

“Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed. So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham” (Galatians 3:7-9).

Because we do not equate the modern state of Israel with the Israel of the Old Testament, some Protestants attempt to argue that this constitutes antisemitism, but we reject this claim. Furthermore, I would argue that this abuse of the label of antisemitism in an attempt to defend even the most indefensible actions of the state of Israel only cheapens the term, and has the effect of providing greater credibility for real antisemitic voices.

The intensity of the Dispensationalist voices over the attack on Israel is striking.  Not one of these folks, to our knowledge, have voiced even the smallest syllable of protest over the unremitting, violent persecution of the Orthodox Christians in the Ukraine by the Zelensky regime.  But they have gone histrionic over the Hamas attack on Israel, likening it to the 9-11 attacks on the US ‘times seven or eight,’ as we heard repeated a number of times on American Family Radio recently.

We do not condone at all what Hamas has done, but why do the Dispensationalists have far, far greater sympathy for the Jewish people of Israel than they do for their fellow Christians?  The distortions caused by their belief system lead to this sort of thing, which if we are not careful will drag us into another horrible war in the Middle East.

All the 9-11 references at this point become rather ominous.  As credible investigators have shown from a number of different angles, the official narrative, that the jet impacts and their resulting fires brought down the World Trade towers, and then WTC Building 7, is not believable.  It appears that the attack was a deliberate standdown by the US deep state in order to allow it to initiate the plans it had drawn up by a think tank called the Project for a New American Century.  The Guardian reported in 2003,

Massive attention has now been given – and rightly so – to the reasons why Britain went to war against Iraq. But far too little attention has focused on why the US went to war, and that throws light on British motives too. The conventional explanation is that after the Twin Towers were hit, retaliation against al-Qaida bases in Afghanistan was a natural first step in launching a global war against terrorism. Then, because Saddam Hussein was alleged by the US and UK governments to retain weapons of mass destruction, the war could be extended to Iraq as well. However this theory does not fit all the facts. The truth may be a great deal murkier.

We now know that a blueprint for the creation of a global Pax Americana was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice-president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld’s deputy), Jeb Bush (George Bush’s younger brother) and Lewis Libby (Cheney’s chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America’s Defences, was written in September 2000 by the neoconservative think tank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

The plan shows Bush’s cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says “while the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.”

The PNAC blueprint supports an earlier document attributed to Wolfowitz and Libby which said the US must “discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role”. It refers to key allies such as the UK as “the most effective and efficient means of exercising American global leadership”. It describes peacekeeping missions as “demanding American political leadership rather than that of the UN”. It says “even should Saddam pass from the scene”, US bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will remain permanently… as “Iran may well prove as large a threat to US interests as Iraq has”. It spotlights China for “regime change”, saying “it is time to increase the presence of American forces in SE Asia”.

The document also calls for the creation of “US space forces” to dominate space, and the total control of cyberspace to prevent “enemies” using the internet against the US. It also hints that the US may consider developing biological weapons “that can target specific genotypes [and] may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool” [Covid/Gain of function research anyone?—W.G.].

. . .

Finally – written a year before 9/11 – it pinpoints North Korea, Syria and Iran as dangerous regimes, and says their existence justifies the creation of a “worldwide command and control system”. This is a blueprint for US world domination. But before it is dismissed as an agenda for rightwing fantasists, it is clear it provides a much better explanation of what actually happened before, during and after 9/11 than the global war on terrorism thesis. This can be seen in several ways.

First, it is clear the US authorities did little or nothing to pre-empt the events of 9/11. It is known that at least 11 countries provided advance warning to the US of the 9/11 attacks. Two senior Mossad experts were sent to Washington in August 2001 to alert the CIA and FBI to a cell of 200 terrorists said to be preparing a big operation (Daily Telegraph, September 16 2001). The list they provided included the names of four of the 9/11 hijackers, none of whom was arrested.

It had been known as early as 1996 that there were plans to hit Washington targets with aeroplanes. Then in 1999 a US national intelligence council report noted that “al-Qaida suicide bombers could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the CIA, or the White House”.

. . .

Was this inaction simply the result of key people disregarding, or being ignorant of, the evidence? Or could US air security operations have been deliberately stood down on September 11? If so, why, and on whose authority? The former US federal crimes prosecutor, John Loftus, has said: “The information provided by European intelligence services prior to 9/11 was so extensive that it is no longer possible for either the CIA or FBI to assert a defence of incompetence.”

. . .

Given this background, it is not surprising that some have seen the US failure to avert the 9/11 attacks as creating an invaluable pretext for attacking Afghanistan in a war that had clearly already been well planned in advance. There is a possible precedent for this. The US national archives reveal that President Roosevelt used exactly this approach in relation to Pearl Harbor on December 7 1941. Some advance warning of the attacks was received, but the information never reached the US fleet. The ensuing national outrage persuaded a reluctant US public to join the second world war. Similarly the PNAC blueprint of September 2000 states that the process of transforming the US into “tomorrow’s dominant force” is likely to be a long one in the absence of “some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor”. The 9/11 attacks allowed the US to press the “go” button for a strategy in accordance with the PNAC agenda which it would otherwise have been politically impossible to implement.

Now Israel, thanks to Hamas, has had its own ‘Pearl Harbor,’ its own ‘9-11,’ that will allow it to act without restraints to make changes in its neighborhood.  Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, former official in the Reagan administration and a veteran geopolitical analyst, continues this line of thought:

I have heard the official explanation of Palestinian perfidy, but I don’t have an explanation for the attack. It seems it would have to be more than perfidy.  I do agree with readers that it seems a curious thing for Hamas to do as it plays into Israel’s hands.  I also agree that there is something else strange about the attack. How did drones and so many rockets, allegedly from Iran, and some say Ukraine, get into the Gaza strip, and how did the Hamas attackers get into Israel?

The Hamas attack has something of 9/11’s flavor.  Just as every aspect of the US National Security State failed simultaneously on September 11, 2001, Israel’s security system, including the Iron Dome the US constructed for Israel, simultaneously failed.  Mysteriously, the Hamas fighters entered Israel on the ground and through the air and on the sea without being detected.  Mysteriously, large quantities of weapons entered Palestine through Israel without being detected. This is too much convenient failure to be believable. It will be interesting to see if anyone in Israel is held accountable for the total security failure.  In the US no one was held accountable for the security failures on September 11, which should have told us a lot.

Not knowing, we can but speculate.  We have a motive. Israel can now steal the rest of Palestine.  Another motive might be that Israel can expand the conflict into a wider war and succeed this time in grabbing the water resources of southern Lebanon.  It could even get nastier with Israeli moves against Syria and Iran.  Oil prices could go sky high causing world disruption.  A victorious war and the end of the Palestinian problem would free Netanyahu from his legal and political problems. There is a lot to think about.

But let’s move on to the security failure that made the attack possible. Why would Netanyahu enable Hamas to attack Israel by standing down Israel security?  It seems a nonsensical suggestion, but isn’t as it creates the conditions in which Israel can absorb all that remains of Palestine, just as 9/11 created the conditions for the neoconservatives to launch the wars they had planned in the Middle East.

The difficult question is why would the Palestinians bring on their own destruction by attacking Israel when Hamas has no prospect of defeating Israel?  Again, we can only speculate.  It could be an Israeli operation from start to finish.  Israel infiltrates Hamas, just as the FBI infiltrates Trump supporters and patriotic groups now called domestic terrorists.  The Israeli agents play up Israel’s abuse of the Palestinians. Netanyahu helps them along by blowing up the sacred Mosque. The agents come up with an attack plan made possible with weapons from Iran and devices from Iran to jam Israeli security.  They go about this carefully, relying on the decades of anger and hurt and the prospect of release from impotence to crowd out Hamas’ reason.

Dr. Roberts later offered some evidence to back up his speculation, and Egypt provides further reason to believe something is amiss with the official explanation:  They warned the Israeli government that an attack was possible days before the Hamas massacre was unleashed.  Nor can it be overlooked that Hamas was created by Western and Israeli officials to serve their purposes when appropriate.  And there is also the ‘Greater Israel Project’ to keep in mind, a plan to expand Israel’s borders to the Euphrates River in the east and into Egypt in the West, which has been around for decades and is still official policy in Israel.

The world is once again in a dangerous position.  The US, thanks to the Dispensationalist Protestants, tend to overreact when it comes to foreign policy matters, especially with regard to the nation of Israel (because they believe, following the fanciful Gnostic teachings of the New England Puritans, that America, like Israel, has been given a special blessing by God).  We got another taste of that with the Ukraine war.  But US policy there has not led to much good (similar to the results of our wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen, where hundreds of thousands of dead, starving, or maimed civilians and many mentally and physically scarred US veterans are all we have to show for them).

Instead, US involvement in the Ukraine war has had the effect of accelerating inflation here at home, increasing our debt, depleting stores of our military weapons, and distracting us from real, existential crises in our own backyard (floods of illegal immigrants, suicide and loneliness epidemics, drug overdoses, a surge in violent crime, a declining industrial sector, etc.), not to mention the death and destruction that it has brought to the civilians of the Ukraine and Russia, and the threat of nuclear war hovering in the background.

With the real possibility of Israel launching a wider war against Syria, Iran, and Lebanon in retaliation for the Hamas attack, which would likely draw in the major world powers who are allied in some way with all of them – China, Russia, and the US – now is the appropriate time to consider if we should follow Sen. Graham’s advice and support every action of Israel come what may, or if we should try to take a more balanced, less Dispensationalist, approach to the conflict before a truly devastating global war begins.

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