CLOSING U.S. FOREIGN BASES WILL SAVE OUR ECONOMY
EMPIRES SUCK THE LIFE OUT OF THEMSELVES
In 1776 a segment of the New World threw in its lot to become the United States of America. It signaled the beginning of the decline of history’s largest empire, the British Empire.
The phrase, ‘the sun never sets on the British Empire’ was a proud saying for hundreds of years. The English fought the French, Dutch Spanish and indigenous peoples to hold on to foreign bases and colonies in places from Burma, Malaysia, and India, to Kenya, Nigeria, Zambia and Zimbabwe (Northern Rhodesia and Southern Rhodesia to the Brits).
The British also had strange and self-serving agreements with Egypt and the Middle East. Creating national boundaries where none belonged and still create pain from Amman to Pakistan. Their hold over others made England the commercial power it became. Among other Empire money-makers were to trade India opium to China for tea. (The Chinese demanded Queen Victoria stop this trade to no avail.) Empire builders are an arrogant branch of humanity.
When empires stretch thin they begin to wane. It happened to the Greeks, Persians, Assyrians, Romans and Egyptians in the misled belief they were “the greatest of all peoples.”
Today’s map of the world presents an empire that is following in the same blood-drenched trail. Though many deny it, others rather not think about it, the United States military has for years been expanding overseas bases at a whirlwind clip.
It is time to look at ourselves and consider if we want to continue along that road. In the economic crisis that just gets scarier by the hour, can America afford some 1,000 military bases overseas.
One Pentagon report counts only 865 base sites, without including Iraq (possibly 100) and Afghanistan (80 and counting) and other secretive bases.
Why should we have bases in Europe? Can’t these democracies handle their own security? World War II has been over since 1945 and there are still 268 bases in Germany. At last count there were 124 in Japan, 87 in South Korea.
What does America’s national security have to do with a ski center in the Bavarian Alps and the 234 golf courses the Pentagon runs worldwide? With hungry and dying children in the third world, what kind of an image are we giving to the world? Does anyone care?
The NATO Watch Committee reports that America operates and/or controls between 700 and 800 military bases worldwide. Noam Chomsky gives about the same number in his books and lectures. In total there are 255,000-plus military personnel deployed abroad. Just imagine the annual rent money the U.S. military pays for the privilege of using their real estate. All in the name of “security.”
Another thought on expenses of the growing American Empire. (An empire that began with the Spanish-American War over a hundred years ago.) Why spend a dime on training Afghans to be soldiers when their Taliban cousins seem to fight fairly well without such training? Why continue teaching Central and South American military types at the special school in Georgia? After years of teaching Iraqis to fight for their country, little, if any progress, is evident.
The annual multi billion dollar cost of bases alone would make a huge dent in the U.S. sagging economy. I am encouraged that a senator last week began to question the wisdom of so many bases. Congress is so tied to the corporations that build war materials they look the other way. The Pentagon is snug in bed with them also. No need to be ignorant any longer, this information is in the public domain as well as in Annual Reports of the US Congress. If only they would read and get informed. Is it too much to ask congress and the White House to grow a backbone. America was sinking in a sea of red ink before the black gold began destroying everything in the Gulf of Mexico.
Empires (military or corporations) always suck the life out of themselves.
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Saturday, July 10, 2010
Thursday, July 8, 2010
From The Bleachers
With the Baseball All Star game just ahead it is time to do some serious reflections of my life in the bleachers.
While a student at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, the Cleveland Indians and the Chicago White Sox came through Fort Worth, on what was then called a barnstorming tour.
Back then, following spring training in Florida, major league baseball clubs headed into the new season by playing their farm teams or each other in exhibition games.
Barnstorming, like so many good things, is a distant memory; when football players played offense and defense; and basketball was artistic, not bombastic. So wander back with me to the time sports were fun, not dictated by agents, millionaire bench-warmers and back-up quarterbacks; and “look at me!” showoffs.
I may sound like an old grouch at a hot-stove league gathering, but I think baseball announcers should cease using the stupid term: “a walk-off home run.” It is merely a home run that won the game. The San Angelo Colts announcers have not used the term as far as I know. (We are fortunate to have such professional sports announcers.)
It was the spring of 1954 when we drove over to North Fort Worth’s LaGrave Field, home of the minor league Fort Worth Cats. The White Sox and Indians of the American League were playing an exhibition game.
Exhibition games as a rule are boring. Not this game. Seeing Bobby Feller on the mound “live” was well worth the high-priced fifty cent tickets. During his 18-year career “Rapid Robert” struck out over 2500 batters. The Indians Al Rosen, a favorite of mine at third base, had won the American League Most Valuable Player award a year earlier. Al, sometimes called the “Hebrew Hammer,” was four times an All Star.
Cleveland also had Larry Dobie in center field, the second black to make the major leagues. Which is proof that coming second in anything is soon forgotten. Jackie Robinson made the history books by being hired a few months ahead of Larry Doby. Early Wynn, and Bob Lemon along with veteran Bob Feller went on to the 1954 World Series (with 111wins), against the New York Giants, the National League champions. Wanted to write more about Virgil Trucks and the White Sox but found the piece too long for the papers.
The underdog Giants swept the Series in four games defeating the heavily favored Indians, who had won an American League record 111 games during the regular season. It was the Giants first championship since I was three years old (1933), a season I have no memory about.
It was the first World Series we saw on our black and white Admiral TV (remember those) in the parsonage of the First Baptist Church in Eustace, Texas. In the very first game we still remember “The Catch,” as it has been dubbed by sports writers ever since. That was the running catch made by Giants center fielder Willie Mays. With his back to the infield, Willie snared Vic Wertz’s long drive near the outfield wall.
I had been to LaGrave Field once earlier when the Cats were in the Dixie Series, a best-of-seven-games contest between the champions of the Texas League and the Southern Association. Not having the money for a ticket, us boys sat on the outfield fence and had a great view until a big fellow with a bigger stick spotted us.
The Dallas Rebels set an all-time Texas League attendance record of 53,578 for a baseball game in the Cotton Bowl in 1950. By 1960 the Dallas Eagles (they had many names and owners) and archrival Fort Worth Cats, were combined into one team as the Dallas-Fort Worth Rangers, later called the Dallas-Fort Worth Spurs in a revived and short-lived Texas League.
When the American League Washington Senators moved into the ballpark in Arlington, Texas minor league baseball went on hard times. The Spurs are now basketballers in San Antonio and a bunch of rowdy Cowboys cornered the market in the metroplex. That’s the view from the bleachers this week.
(First appeared in the Brownwood Bulletin and San Angelo Standard-Times, July 9, 2010)
While a student at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, the Cleveland Indians and the Chicago White Sox came through Fort Worth, on what was then called a barnstorming tour.
Back then, following spring training in Florida, major league baseball clubs headed into the new season by playing their farm teams or each other in exhibition games.
Barnstorming, like so many good things, is a distant memory; when football players played offense and defense; and basketball was artistic, not bombastic. So wander back with me to the time sports were fun, not dictated by agents, millionaire bench-warmers and back-up quarterbacks; and “look at me!” showoffs.
I may sound like an old grouch at a hot-stove league gathering, but I think baseball announcers should cease using the stupid term: “a walk-off home run.” It is merely a home run that won the game. The San Angelo Colts announcers have not used the term as far as I know. (We are fortunate to have such professional sports announcers.)
It was the spring of 1954 when we drove over to North Fort Worth’s LaGrave Field, home of the minor league Fort Worth Cats. The White Sox and Indians of the American League were playing an exhibition game.
Exhibition games as a rule are boring. Not this game. Seeing Bobby Feller on the mound “live” was well worth the high-priced fifty cent tickets. During his 18-year career “Rapid Robert” struck out over 2500 batters. The Indians Al Rosen, a favorite of mine at third base, had won the American League Most Valuable Player award a year earlier. Al, sometimes called the “Hebrew Hammer,” was four times an All Star.
Cleveland also had Larry Dobie in center field, the second black to make the major leagues. Which is proof that coming second in anything is soon forgotten. Jackie Robinson made the history books by being hired a few months ahead of Larry Doby. Early Wynn, and Bob Lemon along with veteran Bob Feller went on to the 1954 World Series (with 111wins), against the New York Giants, the National League champions. Wanted to write more about Virgil Trucks and the White Sox but found the piece too long for the papers.
The underdog Giants swept the Series in four games defeating the heavily favored Indians, who had won an American League record 111 games during the regular season. It was the Giants first championship since I was three years old (1933), a season I have no memory about.
It was the first World Series we saw on our black and white Admiral TV (remember those) in the parsonage of the First Baptist Church in Eustace, Texas. In the very first game we still remember “The Catch,” as it has been dubbed by sports writers ever since. That was the running catch made by Giants center fielder Willie Mays. With his back to the infield, Willie snared Vic Wertz’s long drive near the outfield wall.
I had been to LaGrave Field once earlier when the Cats were in the Dixie Series, a best-of-seven-games contest between the champions of the Texas League and the Southern Association. Not having the money for a ticket, us boys sat on the outfield fence and had a great view until a big fellow with a bigger stick spotted us.
The Dallas Rebels set an all-time Texas League attendance record of 53,578 for a baseball game in the Cotton Bowl in 1950. By 1960 the Dallas Eagles (they had many names and owners) and archrival Fort Worth Cats, were combined into one team as the Dallas-Fort Worth Rangers, later called the Dallas-Fort Worth Spurs in a revived and short-lived Texas League.
When the American League Washington Senators moved into the ballpark in Arlington, Texas minor league baseball went on hard times. The Spurs are now basketballers in San Antonio and a bunch of rowdy Cowboys cornered the market in the metroplex. That’s the view from the bleachers this week.
(First appeared in the Brownwood Bulletin and San Angelo Standard-Times, July 9, 2010)
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Peppy Blount, Maryland 7, SMU 0
When football was football and Peppy Blount the official
On a flight from Baltimore to Dallas, seated next to me was Ralph Eugene Blount, better known as Peppy, Southwest Conference official and Texas Judge. This was Sept. 22, 1962. He was returning to Texas after refereeing the Southern Methodist University–University of Maryland football game.
I had just ended a conference led by Frank Laubach, famous for his literacy work and the Each One Teach One program that later was added as a program of the United Nations. (An unexpected treat of the week, besides meeting Laubach, was watching my first Major League baseball game between the New York Yankees and the old Washington Senators. More on that in coming weeks.)
Having always been a fan of the Southwest Conference it was special to get to know Peppy and a feel for the games from the inside. Game announcers like Jim Wiggins and
Kern Tips kept us glued to the radio in those days.
Peppy Blount was a direct descendant of William Blount, one of the signers of the United States Constitution. I learned that bit of history from his obituary in the San Antonio Express-News. He died June 22 at his home. He played football for Big Spring High School; at age 19 the youngest pilot of B-25 bombers in the Pacific during WWII. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal with three clusters and two Presidential Unit citations.
He went on to star in football at the University of Texas as well as being elected the youngest House of Representatives from the 91st District of Texas. As far as I know he is the only elective politician to spend his Saturdays playing football.
His life seemed to be filled with “firsts.” He was elected Gregg County Judge, on a write-in ballot. The highest office ever reached in Texas with a write-in ballot. That event happened in 1962, the year I met the “legend.”
He was a Sunday school teacher. He wrote four books and with his wife, Eva Jean Finch, had three sons.
The football game score was Maryland 7, SMU 0. It was Hayden Fry’s first season as SMU coach. The former Baylor quarterback, and a West Texas whiz won only two games that fall, over Rice and Texas Tech. USC was the only team to embarrass them. Texas beat SMU by six; A&M 12-7; Arkansas 9, SMU 7; TCU 14-9. Baylor won over Fry’s Ponies 17-13. Football Hall of Famer Fry was born in Odessa, Texas, went on to upgrade Univ. of Iowa for years. He turned 81 last February. (I hope he feels better in his 80s than I do!)
Hayden Fry’s sense of humor and realism is shown in the many quotes attributed to him: “Welcome to the Salvation Army. I've never been associated with an offense so nice about giving the ball away.”
And Baylor he made Baylor proud with this quote: “The preparation I had in college was the most valuable.”
While on the subject of SMU football, on August 12, 1977, I had the pleasure of performing the wedding ceremony for Virginia Flack and W.T. “Tug” Sanders. Tug was on the 1935 SMU team that lost to Stanford 7-0 in the Rose Bowl.
The undefeated Ponies got to the Rose Bowl after defeating TCU and quarterback “Slingin” Sammy Baugh (another famous West Texan). That came to be known as the Game of the First Half Century. The game was tied with SMU on the TCU 37-yard line. From punt formation, SMU quarterback Bob Finley instead threw a deep pass to Wilson, who caught the ball at the four-yard line and waltzed in for the game-winning score. At the time the pass was dubbed “the $85,000 touchdown” (The SMU payout for appearing in the Rose Bowl). SMU was still named national champion, outscoring opponents 288 to 39.
Glad of a chance meeting with Peppy and the friendship of Tug.
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On a flight from Baltimore to Dallas, seated next to me was Ralph Eugene Blount, better known as Peppy, Southwest Conference official and Texas Judge. This was Sept. 22, 1962. He was returning to Texas after refereeing the Southern Methodist University–University of Maryland football game.
I had just ended a conference led by Frank Laubach, famous for his literacy work and the Each One Teach One program that later was added as a program of the United Nations. (An unexpected treat of the week, besides meeting Laubach, was watching my first Major League baseball game between the New York Yankees and the old Washington Senators. More on that in coming weeks.)
Having always been a fan of the Southwest Conference it was special to get to know Peppy and a feel for the games from the inside. Game announcers like Jim Wiggins and
Kern Tips kept us glued to the radio in those days.
Peppy Blount was a direct descendant of William Blount, one of the signers of the United States Constitution. I learned that bit of history from his obituary in the San Antonio Express-News. He died June 22 at his home. He played football for Big Spring High School; at age 19 the youngest pilot of B-25 bombers in the Pacific during WWII. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal with three clusters and two Presidential Unit citations.
He went on to star in football at the University of Texas as well as being elected the youngest House of Representatives from the 91st District of Texas. As far as I know he is the only elective politician to spend his Saturdays playing football.
His life seemed to be filled with “firsts.” He was elected Gregg County Judge, on a write-in ballot. The highest office ever reached in Texas with a write-in ballot. That event happened in 1962, the year I met the “legend.”
He was a Sunday school teacher. He wrote four books and with his wife, Eva Jean Finch, had three sons.
The football game score was Maryland 7, SMU 0. It was Hayden Fry’s first season as SMU coach. The former Baylor quarterback, and a West Texas whiz won only two games that fall, over Rice and Texas Tech. USC was the only team to embarrass them. Texas beat SMU by six; A&M 12-7; Arkansas 9, SMU 7; TCU 14-9. Baylor won over Fry’s Ponies 17-13. Football Hall of Famer Fry was born in Odessa, Texas, went on to upgrade Univ. of Iowa for years. He turned 81 last February. (I hope he feels better in his 80s than I do!)
Hayden Fry’s sense of humor and realism is shown in the many quotes attributed to him: “Welcome to the Salvation Army. I've never been associated with an offense so nice about giving the ball away.”
And Baylor he made Baylor proud with this quote: “The preparation I had in college was the most valuable.”
While on the subject of SMU football, on August 12, 1977, I had the pleasure of performing the wedding ceremony for Virginia Flack and W.T. “Tug” Sanders. Tug was on the 1935 SMU team that lost to Stanford 7-0 in the Rose Bowl.
The undefeated Ponies got to the Rose Bowl after defeating TCU and quarterback “Slingin” Sammy Baugh (another famous West Texan). That came to be known as the Game of the First Half Century. The game was tied with SMU on the TCU 37-yard line. From punt formation, SMU quarterback Bob Finley instead threw a deep pass to Wilson, who caught the ball at the four-yard line and waltzed in for the game-winning score. At the time the pass was dubbed “the $85,000 touchdown” (The SMU payout for appearing in the Rose Bowl). SMU was still named national champion, outscoring opponents 288 to 39.
Glad of a chance meeting with Peppy and the friendship of Tug.
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Sarah Palin Rides Again
Sarah "duh" Palin rides again, but she has never really been out of the saddle since Senator McCain introduced her to the world the summer of 2008. Back in '08 she came on the scene, glib of tongue, short on common sense and history, geography --- but she could see Russia from her front porch.
I am amazed so many people think Sarah Palin has anything to say. The poor grandmother should be home caring for her born-out-of-wedlock grandchild instead of off giving speeches that a six year old would be ashamed to give.
The poor we will always have with us, but do we have to have SARAH?
A pretty girl is what brings out the crowd and those who do not know square one about the real needs of the country at this moment. No quick remedies, no instant changes but hard work, opening eyes of the "no" party (GOP), educate right wing radio hosts to share something of value and give some solutions, rather than hate and lies about our President. When did Hannity have an original or thoughtful, truthful word???
Check out RACHEL MADDOW on her MSNBC program each evening for the facts are researched and triple-checked and informative.
I am amazed so many people think Sarah Palin has anything to say. The poor grandmother should be home caring for her born-out-of-wedlock grandchild instead of off giving speeches that a six year old would be ashamed to give.
The poor we will always have with us, but do we have to have SARAH?
A pretty girl is what brings out the crowd and those who do not know square one about the real needs of the country at this moment. No quick remedies, no instant changes but hard work, opening eyes of the "no" party (GOP), educate right wing radio hosts to share something of value and give some solutions, rather than hate and lies about our President. When did Hannity have an original or thoughtful, truthful word???
Check out RACHEL MADDOW on her MSNBC program each evening for the facts are researched and triple-checked and informative.
Friday, June 18, 2010
For some," It was the Good Old Days"
THE GOOD OLD DAYS (FOR SOME OF US)
About five years after America’s Civil War ended, 1870, the majority of American Protestants were of the strong opinion that America was a Christian nation. Skeptics and non-Christians had another view, but there was in the nineteenth century indications that the Protestant majority carried the day. They took the lead in evangelizing the expanding frontier.
Out of these spiritual awakenings came the evangelicals’ courage to declare that America was God’s special gift to the world. From the black slaves came the sense of this being the Promised Land. They related deeply with Moses as he lead the Hebrew slaves out of bondage. This grew out of the African-Americans knowing personally the horror of slavery.
The Civil War violently exposed the 200 years of slavery as inhumane and not in the long-term interest of the nation, with the desire to be a Christian nation. England had outlawed the slave trade nearly a half-century earlier. Suffering of the war was seen, by some, as a result of having strayed from the path God planned for “His” country.
Isaiah, the Old Testament prophet, had stressed that a Holy God demanded a Holy people. (Slave owners like to point out the Hebrews, “God’s People,” had slaves.) Our nation was far from pure and treatment of foreigners or Roman Catholics and Jews has never been good. I am curious that such mistreatment in the midst of Protestant revivals was common. The Old Testament is filled with examples of what happened to the nation that forgets God and neglects the “Samaritan.”
My own experience growing up in the 1930s was typical of most small town Texans. I knew my barber dad’s shoe shine “boy,” the caretaker at the church and the janitor at the Lyric Theater. Whites, as a rule, never called a black person “Mr.” or “Mrs.” Use only their first name and too often with the demeaning term “boy.”
They lived in their own part of town that the whites, without any shame, referred to as “the flat.” I attended one black church service as a teenager with little insight into anything. They were gracious, I was uneasy. You see, they knew a lot more about our segregated, and generally better situations than we imagined. As late as 1970 the Department of Justice sued Texas for not following laws concerning desegregation of public schools.
The word "negro" means "black" in Spanish and Portuguese, from the Latin niger ("black") and Greek Négros ("black"). The usage was accepted as normal, even by people classified as Negroes, until the Civil Rights movement. It was the only respectful name we knew in those days, as in baseball’s Negro Leagues.
All-white public schools used McGuffey’s Reader which warned against hard drink, stressed rewards of attending Sunday school, hard work; virtue would always be rewarded. Most black schools appear to have old textbooks the white schools gave or sold to them.
Those were we the “good old days” (for some of us) as the 20th century got rolling. It rolled over the poor, the black and the Mexicans. At least that was the way it is stored in my memory. From stories of those times it is evident few gave “them coloreds” the time of day. Many a family had an uncle or two who never gave African-Americans much thought, and some actually said they had no souls.
Our society has come a long way, but to become what we could be is stymied until we learn to respect all peoples, weather we like them or not.
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Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Winston Crawley passes
Dr. Crawley was our first area secretary as they were called in the 1950s. We met him at Glorieta the summer of 1956 and he shared with us the needs of the island of Formosa, the name used in those days for Taiwan. In 1958 he spoke in flawless Mandarin Chinese to the congregation of the Baptist Church of Keelung. He remains one of the finest people we worked with when we were with the SBC International Board. The following obit was sent from former colleague Faye Pearson. --- Britt Towery
CRAWLEY, James Winston, 90, went home to his Lord on June 14, 2010. He was preceded in death by his wife of 57 years, Margaret Lawrence Crawley; his brother, Owen Crawley; and one granddaughter, Adrienne Joanne Hesson.
He is survived by one son, Winston Jr. (Margaret); two daughters, Anne Fairchild (Ron) and Joy Bazemore (David); two grandsons, Gabriel Hesson (Ingrid) and Winston Crawley III; five granddaughters, Allyson Crawley White (Patrick), Grace Bazemore Yukich (Jonathan), Shelley Bazemore Spears (Shawn), Hillary Bazemore White (Evan) and Heather Bazemore Lee (Josh); and four great-grandchildren.
Dr. Crawley was born May 2, 1920 in Newport, Tennessee, and spent his life devoted to Jesus Christ and missions endeavors around the world. He was a graduate of Baylor University, Vanderbilt University and the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. He began his work experience as an English teacher at Baylor University and Blue Mountain College, but soon shifted into Southern Baptist denominational work as an editor and young people's worker. When he moved to Louisville to study theology, he was hired as the pastor of Hillsboro Baptist Church in Versailles, Kentucky. While in seminary he also worked as a fellow in the department of missions.
He and Margaret were appointed as missionaries to China in 1947. In late 1948, Communist advances in China led to the transfer of missionaries to other countries. Dr. and Mrs. Crawley moved to the Philippines where they helped to begin the Baguio Chinese Baptist Church, which he then served as pastor. Additionally, he was on the initial faculty of the Philippine Baptist Theological Seminary. From 1954 until 1987, Dr. Crawley was a missions administrator with the Southern Baptist International Mission Board.
While living in Richmond, he was an active member and Sunday School teacher at Derbyshire Baptist Church. Upon "retirement" in 1987, Winston became a wandering seminary teacher, about half the time in this country and half the time in Asia - most recently in Taiwan for the month of April 2008. Though traveling like this for months at a time, the Crawleys moved into Lakewood Manor in 1991, and that was Winston's final home. In addition to his vast experience as pastor, Bible teacher, church planter, missionary, missions administrator and seminary teacher, Dr. Crawley is the author of eight books - most recently, "God's Purpose for His People," published in 2006.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Bush & Bible Back In News
Evangelist Geo W. Bush Back In Headlines
In the publication “Free Inquiry - Secular Humanism,” May 25, 2010, James A. Haught began with this blockbuster of a paragraph:
“Incredibly, President George W. Bush told French President Jacques Chirac, in early 2003, that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible's satanic agents of the Apocalypse.”
James A. Haught, editor of the Charleston (WV) Gazette, without blinking an eye, wrote: “Honest. This isn't a joke.
I’ve spent a month searching for more about this story. I have yet to see it pronounced as true, false or a joke. Mainstream media apparently are ignoring this alarming revelation. Canada's Toronto Star recounted the story, calling it a "stranger-than-fiction disclosure ... which suggests that apocalyptic fervor may have held sway within the walls of the White House."
It is difficult to believe a former president (even of noble France) would make up such a story.
As the story goes Chirac did not jump at the chance to go to war. But in 2007, he includes this stunning story that President George W. Bush, in a top-secret phone call, said: “"Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East.... The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled.... This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people's enemies before a New Age begins."
This secured international phone call was supposed to have happened around the time President Bush was seeking a “coalition of the willing” for his bizarre and totally unnecessary Iraq invasion in 2003.
(For more on Gog and Magog see the Old Testament book of Ezekiel. Two of the chapters (38 & 39) in the prophet Ezekiel’s book has Israel up against these “enemies of the north” called Gog and Magog. If reading these chapters are no help (be warned it is not easy reading), any televangelist worth his collection plate will expound this fifth century B.C. poetry as the coming end-time prophecy that ends our world.
In 2007, Thomas Romer, a theologian at the University of Lausanne, In 2007, Dr. Romer recounted Bush's strange behavior in Lausanne University's review, Allez Savoir. A French-language Swiss newspaper, Le Matin Dimanche, printed a sarcastic account titled: "When President George W. Bush Saw the Prophesies of the Bible Coming to Pass." France's La Liberte likewise spoofed it under the headline "A Small Scoop on Bush, Chirac, God, Gog and Magog."
Ex-President Chirac confirmed the event in an interview with French journalist Jean-Claude Maurice, who relates the tale in his book, “Si Vous le Repetez, Je Dementirai,” released last March and not yet available in English.
Slowly it began to dawn on me why the American media or the late night talk shows were not having a ball with this story. It could be that it blends with so much we do know about George W. Bush’s religious leanings.
He stormed into Iraq claiming it was a “crusade,” reminding the Muslim world of the ravages the Western Christians brought on the Orthodox Byzantium churches as well as the Muslims from A.D 1091 to 1205.
Our former president went around calling countries evil just like in the Old Testament. “Your are for us or against us,” has the distinct ring of fundamentalist interpretations of the Bible.
The dogmatic certitude President Bush had on things “Christian,” is well documented by both friends and foes. In a 2003 summit in Egypt the Palestinian foreign minister later said Bush told him he was “on a mission from God” to defeat Iraq."
I will leave it to the readers, now that they have the facts, what this strange, but plausible, report tells us.
--30--
In the publication “Free Inquiry - Secular Humanism,” May 25, 2010, James A. Haught began with this blockbuster of a paragraph:
“Incredibly, President George W. Bush told French President Jacques Chirac, in early 2003, that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible's satanic agents of the Apocalypse.”
James A. Haught, editor of the Charleston (WV) Gazette, without blinking an eye, wrote: “Honest. This isn't a joke.
I’ve spent a month searching for more about this story. I have yet to see it pronounced as true, false or a joke. Mainstream media apparently are ignoring this alarming revelation. Canada's Toronto Star recounted the story, calling it a "stranger-than-fiction disclosure ... which suggests that apocalyptic fervor may have held sway within the walls of the White House."
It is difficult to believe a former president (even of noble France) would make up such a story.
As the story goes Chirac did not jump at the chance to go to war. But in 2007, he includes this stunning story that President George W. Bush, in a top-secret phone call, said: “"Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East.... The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled.... This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people's enemies before a New Age begins."
This secured international phone call was supposed to have happened around the time President Bush was seeking a “coalition of the willing” for his bizarre and totally unnecessary Iraq invasion in 2003.
(For more on Gog and Magog see the Old Testament book of Ezekiel. Two of the chapters (38 & 39) in the prophet Ezekiel’s book has Israel up against these “enemies of the north” called Gog and Magog. If reading these chapters are no help (be warned it is not easy reading), any televangelist worth his collection plate will expound this fifth century B.C. poetry as the coming end-time prophecy that ends our world.
In 2007, Thomas Romer, a theologian at the University of Lausanne, In 2007, Dr. Romer recounted Bush's strange behavior in Lausanne University's review, Allez Savoir. A French-language Swiss newspaper, Le Matin Dimanche, printed a sarcastic account titled: "When President George W. Bush Saw the Prophesies of the Bible Coming to Pass." France's La Liberte likewise spoofed it under the headline "A Small Scoop on Bush, Chirac, God, Gog and Magog."
Ex-President Chirac confirmed the event in an interview with French journalist Jean-Claude Maurice, who relates the tale in his book, “Si Vous le Repetez, Je Dementirai,” released last March and not yet available in English.
Slowly it began to dawn on me why the American media or the late night talk shows were not having a ball with this story. It could be that it blends with so much we do know about George W. Bush’s religious leanings.
He stormed into Iraq claiming it was a “crusade,” reminding the Muslim world of the ravages the Western Christians brought on the Orthodox Byzantium churches as well as the Muslims from A.D 1091 to 1205.
Our former president went around calling countries evil just like in the Old Testament. “Your are for us or against us,” has the distinct ring of fundamentalist interpretations of the Bible.
The dogmatic certitude President Bush had on things “Christian,” is well documented by both friends and foes. In a 2003 summit in Egypt the Palestinian foreign minister later said Bush told him he was “on a mission from God” to defeat Iraq."
I will leave it to the readers, now that they have the facts, what this strange, but plausible, report tells us.
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