Green Grass, Cake, and the EBT Card

When trying to persuade an individual or entity to the merits of an argument, I often vacillate between whether to present the strongest reasons first or last.  It seems logical to finishing strong – the most compelling point being the final thing in the audience’s mind.  Gradually persuading them, then closing the deal – “setting the hook“ so to speak.  

Conversely, the Army writing style calls for the “BLUF” – bottom line up front.   Get right to the point – the foremost reason first.  When engaging targets, you start with the closest – the most immediate threat and your highest probability of a kill.  

What about a list where all of the items are essential?  The Army had what they called a METL – mission essential task list – those tasks that a unit must master in order to be mission ready.  No need to prioritize – you had to master all of them to be deemed proficient.   

Consider the Ten Commandments.  The last one says, “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”   Is the final one the most important?    

Jesus was confronted by an expert in the law (a constitutional scholar perchance?) who, hoping to stump him, asked, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”  Jesus boiled it down to two.  Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’  This is the first and greatest commandment.   And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’  All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

I don’t think it’s happenstance that the final commandment is all about our neighbor.  How would one show love to his neighbor?  That tenth commandment says it’s by our not doing something – specifically, not coveting what is rightfully his.  That’s the way we do right by our neighbor.  The apostle Paul told the Corinthians, “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy...”    Quite simply, you cannot covet or envy what your neighbor has.  Even if it’s newer, better, or more attractive.

The benefit to the individual who obeys that commandment is self-evident.  Solomon wisely said, “A heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones.”  Paul said, “Godliness with contentment is great gain.  For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it.”  Presumably, if you’re  not coveting your neighbor’s stuff, you’ll find more satisfaction in what you do have. 

When I was stationed in Korea, I always enjoyed sharing American idioms with my Korean soldiers.  One in particular was, “The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.”  We even went outside to see that it’s actually true -- no matter which side of the fence you’re on.  After our hands-on experience, SGT Kim knowingly smiled and said, “We have one like that too.  We say your piece of cake is bigger than my piece.”  Anyone who has two or more kids knows the truth of that one. 

The benefit to oneself by not coveting is obvious.  But how does it benefit my neighbor by not envying or coveting “his wife, or his ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor”?  Frankly, it’s an act of love to not desire what’s his.  It will change your attitude towards him.  You’ll be able to be able to rejoice with him.  Arguably, it’s an act of hatred to covet his stuff.

America’s president is playing a very, very dangerous game.  His “fairness” and “income-inequality” talk is fueling covetousness.  Envy may motivate, but it also makes monsters.  Waging class warfare is like playing with fire.  Demonizing the more successful is simply sowing seeds of discontent.  It’s shortsighted and sinful.

As Ben Franklin said, “I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.”  

The belief that the solution is government handouts to the able-bodied may be a good way to buy votes, but it in actuality is robbing people of

the dignity that only honest work provides.  Handouts are also a perverse disincentive for those who’d otherwise want to improve their lot in life.   

EBT cards may buy votes, but they’ll never buy love.

The Islamic State and Climate Change

I’ve had some great jobs during my thirty-five years in the Army.  One of my favorites was serving as the Strategic Planner for Army Forces in Afghanistan for the transition to Phase 4 of the Campaign.  My immediate boss was one of the greatest Generals our Army’s ever produced.  I had two goals in that job; first, make my boss the smartest guy in the room, secondly, not get yelled at.  Key to achieving that end: devour mounds of data, information and intelligence, analyze and synthesize it, then brief him accordingly.  With that mindset, I’ll use this brief column to tell you what you need to know about the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

First, why should you care about ISIS?  Because they want you to convert or die.  Secondly, they‘re on the march; gathering up territory, resources, followers and enslaving captives across the Middle East,  Africa, and the cyber world, leaving a trail of death and destruction in their wake. 

ISIS or ISIL?  President Obama says ISIL.  Some speculate it’s because ISIS reminds him of his Syria failure.  Since June 2014 the correct answer, is "Islamic State" -- the areas they’ve conquered in Iraq and Syria forming the foundation of this new Islamic state.   Unlike America, IS has a strategic objective -- a Worldwide Caliphate -- Islamic rule over the entire globe.  Every good caliphate needs a caliph; Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is theirs.  Lest Obama say he’s not Islamic, intelligence analysts say he has a BA, MA, and PhD in Islamic studies from the Islamic University of Baghdad.

As Dr. Sebastian Gorka recently wrote, “The spread of ISIS influence is not just about territorial control, it is about the staggering success of its international call to holy war, with an estimated 19,000 westerners having left their homes to wage jihad.”  They’ve been joined by followers from over 90 countries.   They’re also gaining the loyalties of numerous other Islamic franchises.  The most recent being Africa’s Boko Haram.  Further, the FBI reports there are active investigations into ISIS related activity in all fifty of the United States. 

    

A recent must-read piece in The Atlantic by Canadian journalist Graeme Wood titled “What ISIS Really Wants” is a comprehensive primer on the Islamic State.  It also warns the reader against underestimating the tremendous threat their ideology represents.   Sadly, the article points out President Obama is the poster child for denial.  His “jayvee” comment and insistence that they’re not Islamic being delusional and dangerous. 
   

Wood is clear, “The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic…the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam.”  In fact, they go to great lengths to be true to Islamic teaching,   “Virtually every major decision and law promulgated by the Islamic State adheres to what it calls…‘the Prophetic methodology,’ which means following the prophecy and example of Muhammad, in punctilious detail.”

Dr. Gorka explains, “Religion is so important to this war that it even defines the way in which the terrorists will kill you.”   Gorka uses the beheadings of infidels as a case in point, “the Koran teaches, the infidel must be ‘smitten on the neck’ (Koran Ch. 47 V. 4).”  When they killed Lt. Kaseasbeh, the Jordanian Muslim pilot, they dealt with him as an ‘apostate.’ Thus, “he had to be killed not as an infidel but as one who committed the sin of leaving Islam and therefore, he was to be treated as if he were in hell, i.e. burnt alive.”   

Princeton scholar Bernard Haykel, the leading expert on the group’s theology explains, “People want to absolve Islam…it’s this ‘Islam is a religion of peace’ mantra…Slavery, crucifixion, and beheadings are not something that freakish jihadists are cherry-picking from the medieval tradition.”  Islamic State fighters “are smack in the middle of the medieval tradition and are bringing it wholesale into the present day.”  

Perhaps most interesting – their eschatology.  The caliphate expands -- some believe it will cover the entire Earth.  Then “an anti-Messiah, known in Muslim apocalyptic literature as Dajjal, will come from the Khorasan region of eastern Iran and kill a vast number of the caliphate’s fighters, until just 5,000 remain, cornered in Jerusalem. Just as Dajjal prepares to finish them off, Jesus—the second-most-revered prophet in Islam—will return to Earth, spear Dajjal, and lead the Muslims to victory.”

Now, if only the Obama administration can convince the Islamic State that climate change is the biggest threat the world is facing today. 

Creation Creates a Problem

Wisconsin Governor and likely 2016 Republican Presidential contender, Scott Walker, is no rocket scientist.  In fact, his lack of a four-year degree has caused some on the left to question his credentials to be President at all.  Walker was recently in England on a trade mission hoping to burnish his foreign policy bona fides.  While there, a member of the British press asked him, “Are you comfortable with the idea of evolution? Do you believe in it? Do you accept it?”

Walker seemingly stumbled, "For me, I am going to punt on that one…I'm here to talk about trade, not to pontificate about evolution."  Recognizing that answer might indicate indecisiveness, his team later released a statement saying he believes, “faith and science are compatible.” 

Unlike Walker, Dr. Robert Jastrow was a rocket scientist.  Jastrow earned a PhD in theoretical physics and joined NASA when it was formed in 1958. He was the first Lunar Exploration Committee chairman and the Chief of its Theoretical Division. He was later the founding director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies until he retired in 1981.  After NASA, he became a Professor of Earth Sciences at Dartmouth College, the Founder and Chairman Emeritus of the George C. Marshall Institute, and Director Emeritus of Mount Wilson Observatory and Hale Solar Laboratory.  

Jastrow’s view on understanding creation is, "the curtain drawn over the mystery of creation will never be raised by human efforts, at least in the foreseeable future."   Donald Rumsfeld famously said, “As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are some things we do not know…”  

How do we deal with the “known unknowns?”   Typically, we develop theories to explain them:  Creation – The Big Bang Theory; Man – The Theory of Evolution; Summer and Winter – Climate Change.  But theories are just that, theories.  Jastrow theorized that science can’t explain the universe without the supernatural.

Although Jastrow was an "agnostic, and not a believer,” in an interview with Christianity Today, Jastrow said "Astronomers now find they have painted themselves into a corner because they have proven, by their own methods, that the world began abruptly in an act of creation to which you can trace the seeds of every star, every planet, every living thing in this cosmos and on the earth. And they have found that all this happened as a product of forces they cannot hope to discover. That there are what I or anyone would call supernatural forces at work is now, I think, a scientifically proven fact."  

There are some things you have to understand to believe.  In other cases you have to believe to understand.   For most Americans the explanation “In the beginning God created…” was enough.  George Washington, our founding father and first President reasoned it this way, “It is impossible to account for the creation of the universe, without the agency of a Supreme Being. It is impossible to govern the universe without the aid of a Supreme Being. It is impossible to reason without arriving at a Supreme Being.  Religion is as necessary to reason, as reason is to religion. The one cannot exist without the other. A reasoning being would lose his reason, in attempting to account for the great phenomena of nature, had he not a Supreme Being to refer to.”   

Like Washington, Jastrow unifies God and the astronomical in his book, The Enchanted Loom: Mind in the Universe by explaining, “The details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis are the same: the chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy…For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountain of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."

The “mountain of ignorance" may not be the end of the bad dream for those that deny the Creator.  The book that Jastrow claimed got the creation account right, thousands of years before the astronomer, also declares that, “every knee will bow and tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” 

For those that deny the Creator, that confession could create quite a problem.

A Lack of Love or "Let's Roll"

For the past week, I had only one cable “news” option -- CNN.  Jane Fonda would be proud of her ex-husband’s creation.  The big story for CNN that week: Rudy Giuliani said that he didn’t think Obama liked America.  The only “proof” CNN offered was that Obama said he did.  Almost unbelievably, according to a new HuffPost/YouGov poll, like Giuliani, most Americans don’t think Obama loves America either.  Can you imagine that is being said about a sitting US president?  Less than half (47%) of the Americans polled think Obama loves America.  An astonishing 69% of Republicans say he doesn’t.

Although it may not be regarded as “history” yet, there was an event that took place on September 11, 2001 or 9/11 as it’s commonly known, that is well worth remembering. On that eventful September morning, Todd Morgan Beamer found himself the unelected leader of a   group of Americans aboard United Airlines Flight 93.  Coincidentally, Giuliani’s leadership surrounding that same event earned him the title of “America’s Mayor.”  

The parable of that plane has been on my mind for months now.  There are two aspects to that flight that are pertinent.  First, the plane had been taken over by those who don’t like America.  Secondly, there was a point in time where the passengers’ actions could, and could not, prevent the plane from plowing into that Pennsylvania field.  

For whatever reasons, my mind views Obama and his cronies at the controls of the levers of power in Washington, as dangerous to America as those terrorists were at the controls in the cockpit of that Boeing 757.   If not for the intervention of Todd Beamer and some of his fellow passengers, the airliner would likely have smashed into the Capitol of the United States.  If Obama and his ilk continue on their current flight path, it’s my conviction that investigators will soon be looking for the America’s Black Box to ascertain what caused our destruction.

Beamer and the boys of Flight 93 had some insight into their likely fate if they failed to act.  Their flight departed 42 minutes late due to runway delays. Six minutes after their takeoff, American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the World Trade Center's North Tower. Fifteen minutes after that, United Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower.  Flight 93 was over Ohio when the pilot radioed Cleveland to ask about an alert to "beware of cockpit intrusion."  Three minutes later, Cleveland controllers heard screams from the cockpit's open microphone. The radical Islamist hijackers had taken over the plane's controls and were overheard telling passengers, "Keep remaining sitting. We have a bomb on board."

Beamer tried to make a call using the GTE airphone but ended up connected to GTE supervisor Lisa Jefferson. As FBI agents listened in, Beamer told Jefferson that hijackers had taken over and the pilots and one passenger were dead.  Based on cell phone accounts, Beamer and three others developed a plan to take back control of the plane from the hijackers.

 

Beamer told Jefferson that they were going to "jump on" the hijackers to thwart their plan. Beamer, a Christian college graduate, Sunday School teacher, husband, father of two young sons and with a daughter on the way, recited the Lord's Prayer and the 23rd Psalm with Jefferson as others joined in. Beamer told Jefferson, "If I don't make it, please call my family and let them know how much I love them." She then heard Beamer say, "Are you ready? Okay. Let's roll." 

According to Flight 93's voice data recorder, there was pounding and crashing sounds against the cockpit door.  A passenger screams in English. "Let's get them!"  A hijacker shouts, "Allahu Akbar!"   Minutes later a hijacker orders, "Pull it down! Pull it down!" The plane turned hard to the right, rolled on to its back, and plowed into an empty Shanksville, Pennsylvania field at 580 miles an hour, killing everyone on board. 

There were two points where this all might well have been prevented.  Thorough intelligence of the radical Islamists training and intentions could have prevented them from boarding, making Beamer’s actions unnecessary.  The second point was after they realized the hijackers had seized control. 

Barrack Obama is now in control of the cockpit.  Most Americans have concluded he really doesn’t care for his country or its passengers.   His unwillingness to obey, abide by, preserve and protect our Constitution has caused a lot of concern in the cabin.

Wondering whether it’ll be impact or “Let’s Roll” that happens next.