I realize that the vast majority of Christian conservatives will
choose to totally ignore this column (just as they do most of my columns), but
the stark reality is that under so-called Christian conservative presidents
G.W. Bush and Donald J. Trump, America’s wars are way up, while church
attendance is way down. And, yes, I absolutely believe there is a direct link
between these two trends.
That wars increased
exponentially under Bush is not debatable. The ramifications of Bush’s illegal
and immoral military invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan are still strongly
reverberating around the world to this very day. Much of the ongoing “war
on terror” in the Middle East is a direct result of the
Bush/Cheney military adventurism (putting it mildly) almost two decades ago. And
Trump has escalated America’s missile wars to unprecedented levels.
Trump
has dropped more bombs and missiles on Middle Eastern countries in a comparable
period of time than any modern U.S. President. Presidents Bush, Obama and now
[2017] Trump have dropped nearly 200,000 bombs and missiles on Iraq,
Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Trump’s rate of bombing
eclipses both Bush and Obama; and Trump is on a pace to drop over 100,000
[180,000 to be precise] bombs and missiles on Middle Eastern countries during
his first term of office—which would equal the number of bombs and missiles
dropped by Obama during his entire eight-year presidency.
The
United States Government, under the Trump administration, reportedly drops a
bomb every 12 minutes, which means that 121 bombs are dropped in a day, and
44,096 bombs per year. The Pentagon’s data show that during George W. Bush’s
eight years he averaged 24 bombs dropped per day, that is, 8,750 per year. Over
the course of Obama’s time in office, his military dropped 34 bombs per day,
12,500 per year. This shows that even though American presidents are all war
criminals, Trump is the most vicious of them all.
Yes, Trump is dropping almost FOUR TIMES MORE BOMBS than Barack
Obama and over FIVE TIMES MORE BOMBS than G.W. Bush—which included military
invasions of two countries.
We also know that Trump expanded America’s wars in Afghanistan and
Syria (and, no, he is NOT bringing U.S. troops home from Syria) and is ramping
up America’s war machine against Venezuela, Iran, China and Russia. And this
does not even take into account the way Trump has given Benjamin Netanyahu’s
raunchy racist regime the green light to expand its wars against the Palestinians,
Lebanon, Syria and Iran or the U.S./Israeli proxy war (with Saudi Arabia taking
the lead) in Yemen.
In
the age of Donald Trump, wasn’t that [the Battle of Mogadishu—Black Hawk Down] a million
presidencies ago? Honestly, can you even tell me anymore what in the world it
was all about? I couldn’t have, not without looking
it up again. A warlord, starvation, U.S. intervention, 18
dead American soldiers (and hundreds of dead Somalis, but that hardly mattered)
in a country that was shattering. President Clinton did, however, pull out
those troops and end the disastrous mission — and that was that, right? I
mean, lessons
learned. Somalia? Africa? What in the world did it all have to
do with us? So Washington washed its hands of the whole thing.
And
now, on a planet of outrageous tweets and murderously
angry white men, you probably didn’t even notice, but more than
two years into the era of Donald Trump, a quarter-century after that incident,
American airstrikes in… yep, Somalia, are precipitously on the rise.
Last
year’s 47 strikes,
aimed at the leaders and fighters of al-Shabaab, an Islamist terror outfit,
more than tripled the ones carried out by the Obama administration in 2016
(themselves a modest increase from previous years). And in 2019, they’re
already on pace to double
again, while Somali civilians — not that anyone (other than
Somali civilians) notices or cares — are dying in significant
and rising numbers.
And
with 500 troops
back on the ground there and Pentagon
estimates that they will remain for at least another seven
years, the U.S. military is increasingly Somalia-bound, Congress hasn’t uttered
a peep on the subject, and few in this country are paying the slightest
attention.
So
consider this a simple fact of the never-ending Global War on Terror (as it was
once called): the U.S. military just can’t get enough of Somalia. And if that
isn’t off the charts, what is? Maybe it’s even worth a future book (with a very
small print run) called not Black Hawk Down II but U.S. Down Forever and a Day.
And
now that I’ve started on the subject (if you still happen to be reading), when
it comes to the U.S. military, it’s not faintly just Somalia. It’s all of
Africa.
After
all, this country’s military uniquely has a continent-wide Africa Command (aka
AFRICOM), founded in 2007. As Nick Turse has often
written for TomDispatch, that command now has its troops, thousands of them, its
planes, and other equipment spread across the continent, north to south, east
to west — air bases, drone bases, garrisons, outposts, staging areas, you name
it. Meanwhile, AFRICOM’s outgoing commanding general, Thomas Waldhauser, only
recently told Congress
why it’s bound to be a forever outfit — because, shades of the Cold War, the
Ruskies are coming! (“Russia is also a growing challenge and has taken a more
militaristic approach in Africa.”)
And
honestly, 600-odd words in, this wasn’t meant to be a piece about either
Somalia or Africa. It was meant to be about those U.S. wars being off the
charts, about how the Pentagon now feeds eternally at the terror trough, al-Shabaab
being only a tiny part of the slop it regularly digests.
And, while America’s wars are way up, according
to Gallup, church attendance in America is way down:
As
Christian and Jewish Americans prepare to celebrate Easter and Passover,
respectively, Gallup finds the percentage of Americans who report belonging to
a church, synagogue or mosque at an all-time low, averaging 50% in 2018.
U.S.
church membership was 70% or higher from 1937 through 1976, falling modestly to
an average of 68% in the 1970s through the 1990s. The past 20 years have seen
an acceleration in the drop-off, with a 20-percentage-point decline since 1999
and more than half of that change occurring since the start of the current
decade.
Most interesting is this Gallup observation:
Although
the United States is one of the
more religious countries, particularly among Western nations, it
is far less religious than it used to be. Barely three-quarters of Americans
now identify with a religion and only about half claim membership in a church,
synagogue or mosque.
The
rate of U.S. church membership has declined sharply in the past two decades
after being relatively stable in the six decades before that. A sharp increase
in the proportion of the population with no religious affiliation, a decline in
church membership among those who do have a religious preference, and low
levels of church membership among millennials are all contributing to the
accelerating trend.
Obviously, America’s Jewish and Muslim populations pale compared
to its Christian population. The vast decline of attendance to religious
services, therefore, primarily means church attendance. Notice, also, that this
steep decline commenced at the beginning of this century (2000)—when G.W. Bush
became President of the United States.
I tried to warn readers—and listeners to my nationwide radio talk
show—that due to his insatiable war fever, G.W. Bush was going to forever warp
the perception in people’s minds of Christianity. And, sadly, I was absolutely
right. After eight years of the warmongering G.W. Bush in the White House,
millions of Americans came to associate Christianity with wars of aggression.
As a result, the exodus out of America’s churches began in earnest.
Enter Donald Trump.
As noted above, Trump has expanded Bush’s war fever exponentially.
But Trump has done more than that: He has aggressively put the United States
smack dab in the middle of Israel’s wars. It could even be argued that Donald Trump
has turned the U.S. military into a proxy army for the Israel Defense Forces
(IDF).
Don’t get me wrong: I am very cognizant of the fact that G.W.
Bush’s “war
on terror” was nothing more than a proxy war for Israel.
But the Israeli connection was covert and completely covered up. Not anymore.
Donald Trump is unabashedly and explicitly partnering the mission of the U.S.
military with that of the IDF. No wonder Benjamin
Netanyahu promises to name a community in the Israel-seized, Israel-occupied
Golan Heights after Donald Trump. (Trumplinka would fit
Netanyahu’s concentration-style occupation nicely.)
So, not only are millions of Americans now associating
Christianity with G.W. Bush’s wars
of aggression, they are associating Christianity with Donald
Trump’s wars of aggression for the racist apartheid State of Israel. The
result: the steepest decline in church attendance and church affiliation in
U.S. history.
The longer evangelical
Christians continue to support Donald Trump’s radical pro-Israel, pro-war
agenda, the deeper America will plunge into an anti-Christian country.
The good news is that all
over America, people are waking up to the
Israel deception. Support for the erroneous doctrine of
dispensational eschatology is in a giant free fall; the myth of Zionist Israel
being a resurrected Old Testament Israel is being repeatedly exposed; the attempts by
Israel’s toadies to characterize people whose eyes are open to the truth of
Zionism as being “anti-Semitic” is losing more and more credibility by the day;
and more and more people are becoming aware of the utter wickedness of the
Zionist government in Israel. Plus, more and more people are beginning to
understand the plight of the persecuted people (including Christian people) in
the Israeli-occupied territories of Palestine.
Ron, maybe your shipmates on the USS LIBERTY didn’t
die in vain after all.
From an historical perspective, overextended wars are the downfall
of any empire; from a financial perspective, warfarism is the precursor to an
economically depressed middle class; and from a Scriptural/spiritual
perspective, God
cannot and will not bless a warmongering nation.
Let’s be clear: God is not
building a “Greater Israel.” God is not building a third Jewish temple. God is
not speaking through phony prophets who are attributing some sort of divine
calling to Trump’s pro-Israel warmongering. God
is not blessing America because we are blessing Zionist Israel.
Just the opposite: The more America aligns itself with Israel’s belligerence, bullying
and bombing of innocent people, the more God will deliver us over to becoming
an antichrist country. After all, one cannot idolize and partner with
antichrists without becoming one himself.
After Trump finishes this term in office, two-thirds of this young
century will have seen a “Christian” warmonger in the White House. It is no
coincidence that during this same period of time, wars are way up and church
attendance is way down.
P.S. I urge readers
to watch this short eight-minute
video clip of my Palm Sunday message. In this clip, I
illustrate the blasphemy of Jewish Zionists by playing a video clip from an
interview with conservative darling Ben Shapiro. I also make the observation
that the foundation of the faith and fellowship of Christian Zionists is NOT
Jesus Christ, but Israel. Please watch this brief video and share it with your
friends.
© Chuck Baldwin
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