Afghanistan: Our Most Costly War Goes On

The liberal media have trained themselves to exploit any misstep or inconsistency that President Trump makes. When he announced his plan to continue the Afghanistan war, it’s very strange and ominous that the press gave little coverage to President Trump’s previous twitter comments on the subject:

“It is time to get out of Afghanistan. We are building roads and schools for people that hate us. It is not in our national interests.” (February 27, 2012)

“Afghanistan is a total disaster. We don’t know what we are doing. They are, in addition to everything else, robbing us blind.”  (March 12, 2012)

“We should leave Afghanistan immediately. No more wasted lives. If we have to go back in, we go in hard and quick. Rebuild the U.S. first.” (March 1, 2013)

President Trump freely admitted that he has changed his mind about our involvement in Afghanistan. The war will go on, but our focus will be on killing terrorists and not nation building. He promised to pressure Pakistan to crack down on terrorist cells along its border with Afghanistan. He called on the Afghan government to rein in corruption. President Trump also wants India to become more involved in the situation.

The war in Afghanistan is America’s longest military conflict. Unlike earlier wars, most American families don’t feel impacted by the Afghanistan War. Unlike the Vietnam War and World War II, there has not been a draft, and no ration cards have been issued for goods and services. There has not been a special tax imposed to pay for the war.

The 2,400 death toll from the Afghanistan  War is very low. In the Civil War and World War II we lost half million people in each conflict. Our losses in Afghanistan are so light, every time a soldier dies his or her name is reported in the national news.

The problem I have with Afghanistan war is this: money. War is an expensive endeavor, and a military campaign cannot be sustained without bleeding a nation dry. The Cost of Wars Project at Brown University has estimated that total war spending in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan since 2001 is approaching $5 trillion. Of that, roughly $2 trillion is attributable to Afghanistan. This massive price tag will only keep rising, as President Trump has now vowed to increase troop levels in Afghanistan.

The cost of this Afghanistan War doesn’t include future spending that will be needed for the Department of Veterans Affairs. Because of the advances in medical science, we have been able to save soldiers who lost their limbs or have suffered profound brain injuries. The cost related to Iraq and Afghanistan veterans over the next 40 years will be more than $1 trillion.

The government can only think in the short term, so budget planners have no grasp of the long term cost of an endless war. Linda Bilmes, a senior lecturer in public finance at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government said, “The cost of caring for war veterans typically peaks 30 to 40 years or more after a conflict.” But we are already at the point where we face a financial crisis every three or four months—which shows how much financial peril we are in.

World War II, in inflation-adjusted dollars cost $4.1 trillion. In the 1940s people were willing to pay that high price tag because they deemed it necessary to save the world from the likes of Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo. I don’t think our investment in Iraq and Afghanistan has been worth $5 trillion. After we pulled out of Iraq, the military that we had painstakingly built-up collapsed in spectacular fashion, and ISIS used “our weapons” to completely destroy dozens of cities.

Afghanistan has been a hopeless cause for any empire trying to colonize or tame it. The British and the Soviet Union tried and failed to subjugate that land of warring tribes. Our wishful goal of just making Afghanistan a peaceful place is delusional.

Our relationship with Afghanistan is so disorganized; we don’t even have an ambassador to Kabul. A good reason why that post is empty is because every single year there has been at least one major attack against a Western embassy. Our troops operate from behind fortified compounds because the natives hate us.

I have to wonder if the reason why America is not clearly mentioned in Bible prophecy is because we will implode under the financial weight of our vast military complex. It might not be Afghanistan that breaks us, but someday the dollar is going to collapse and the reformed Roman Empire may just step in to take our place.

“After this I saw in the night visions, and behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it: and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it; and it had ten horns. I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots: and, behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things” (Daniel 7:7-8).

–Todd

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Bannon vs Globalists and Bible Prophecy

Observers of end-times events who believe there is an advancing power grab by the globalists elite look with interest at Steve Bannon’s exit as President Trump’s chief strategist. National politics that make up part of the intrigues going on in the White House are secondary at most, so the thinking goes. Matters involving the long-sought changed world order is all-important in considering the most recent developments in Washington, D.C.

On the secular side, many–perhaps most–media pundits speculate that the Republican establishment types have succeeded in convincing Trump to get rid of the ultranationalist Bannon (as they view him), so Congress will work with Trump in achieving a more rational legislative agenda. These, of course, have no concept that there is a much deeper meaning to all of this.

I take that back to some extent. They do have a strangely twisted thought process that touches on Bible prophecy yet to unfold.

Bannon, it seems, according to a number of these pundits, has an apocalyptic view of the world. He believes that Trump and America somehow are destined to be involved in world history as it winds up.

The media types who purport this to be the case don’t go far into this accusation. That is, they don’t give us details about how Mr. Bannon’s end-times view might possibly have affected any outcome he personally desired to achieve while advising the president.

It is indeed strange…the secular media types sensing and commenting that there is some weird connection to apocalyptic matters in all of these goings-on.

There is such visceral hatred for this president that when anything bad happens, his enemies in media and everyone else find ways to link Trump to the evil involved. For example, this was the case in the recent white supremacist activities and the clashes over confederate statues in Charlottesville. Trump’s statements on the matters involved were made to look by mainstream news types like the president took the side of the KKK and the neo Nazis. Anyone who actually heard the president’s remarks knows the opposite is true. He plainly called out the evil. But, he made the mistake of saying there was evil on both sides. That gave the haters all the fodder needed to link him directly to the skinheads and all the rest.

In the same sense, Steve Bannon is linked by the mainstream news types to a mindset like the Ayatollahs who want to bring on their version of the apocalypse. That is as deeply into Bannon’s “apocalyptic” worldview of geopolitics as they wish to delve. If they can make that linkage in the mind of the American voters–the evil of Steve Bannon to the Iranian religious madmen–their mission is achieved.

Evil that lurks within the mainstream media as it currently exist, in my view, is the real linkage to the chaos now being perpetrated. It is luciferian. It is part of the Saul Alinsky blueprint–being utilized by the George Soros-globalist types–to bring America down so her power to influence is diminished. So her wealth can be redistributed to the have-nots in order to secure power bases for the globalists constructing the changed world order they desire.

There seems to me something boiling beneath the obvious–Bannon’s being dismissed from Trump’s advisory team in the White House. I have no idea of what that might be. Steve Bannon made the following statement shortly after leaving his post: “The Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over.” Bannon said further, “We still have a huge movement, and we will make something of this Trump presidency. But that presidency is over. It’ll be something else. And there’ll be all kinds of fights, and there’ll be good days and bad days, but that presidency is over.”

He said also, his statement unfortunately laced with profanity, that he was going to fight the globalists every step of the way. Well, you had better have the Lord at your side in that effort, Mr. Bannon. The globalists–knowingly or unknowingly–have the most powerful being ever to be created as their leader. Lucifer the fallen is determined to prepare the planet for the coming of his man of sin. There is no political strategy–even by a top strategist like yourself–that can alter Satan’s plan for his Antichrist regime.

But the Lord did so–and with ease–in this last presidential election. He is still in complete control. Trump is God’s man for this troubled hour as we move swiftly toward the Rapture of the church.

Meantime, it is much prayer by God’s people that is the primary Tool that must lead the fight against the globalists. Prophetically speaking, the battle is already won!

“He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure. Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. I will declare the decree: the LORD hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.” (Psalms 2:4-9)

–Terry

The North Korea Problem Points West Not East

Following a series of successes of North Korea’s ICBM program, the game of brinkmanship between the U.S. and North Korea has escalated in recent weeks. The Pyongyang government is now close to having a miniaturized nuclear bomb that could fit on its missiles.

North Korea has engaged in 14 missile tests this year, including its July 4th test of an intermediate-range missile that could have reached Alaska. Less than a month later, it tested a missile that could reach the lower 48 states. North Korea is also working on a sub-based missile that would not need a long range to strike the U.S.

Our intelligence on the hermit kingdom is about as reliable as a fall weather forecast in June. The experts at these agencies said last year that North Korea would need four years to have a missile that could span the Pacific, and it managed to achieve this goal in less than 12 months. The 5 to 6 nukes that North Korea was initially said to posses are now estimated at 60. There is no nuclear crisis to compare to this one.

While President Trump is trying to stand up to threats from fat boy Kim Jong-un, the left is doing everything it can to undermine our president. The running joke in Washington is that there is a stand-off between a mad, ruthless tyrant who is the embodiment of evil and the president of North Korea.

Keith Ellison, the Deputy Chair of the Democratic National Committee, would make you wonder if he was thinking about emigrating to North Korea when he said this to a crowd at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Atlanta:

You have this guy making bellicose threats against somebody else who has very little to lose over there. Kim Jong-un, the world always thought he was not a responsible leader well he’s acting more responsible than this guy is. And what I’m telling you is once you start seeing missile launches, you’re going to see—the time for cranking up the anti-war machine is right now. So if you don’t want to get caught, deer-in-the-headlights, start calling for diplomacy in North Korea immediately.

The head of North Korea may look like a clown with his freakishly fat head and comical hairstyle, but he is as deadly as a character from a Steven King novel. Kim Jong-un had his half-brother murdered with a nerve agent; he broke up with an ex-girlfriend by dispatching a firing squad, and he killed his aunt Kim Kyong-hui by having her poisoned.

The most dangerous act that Kim Jong-un has been involved with was the bombardment of the island of Yeonpyeong, on 23 November of 2010. His dad had just appointed him as head of the military, and they decided it would show Kim Jong-un’s leadership ability by bombing a South Korean island. This move could have easily reignited the Korean War. This reckless nature is found in most authoritarian leaders. The only thing that keeps these tyrants at bay is the threat of military force.

With President Trump being wrongly depicted by the press as a weak leader, there is no telling what stunt Kim Jong-un will attempt. Fat boy may fire an unarmed missile aimed at the coast of California expecting to only cause panic. If President Trump saw the coming missile as an act of war, I’m sure he and his generals would use the nuclear option.

By allowing North Korea to reach the point where it can draw attention to itself with missile tests and inflammatory statements, it is a given that other nations would like to join in on the act. Iran’s president warned last week that it could restart its nuclear program “within hours or days” if the Trump Administration continued its confrontational policies toward the Islamic Republic.

The greatest risk of proliferation would come from Japan changing its nuclear policy. It has outlawed the atomic bomb and maintains a pledge of nuclear pacifism. In reality, Japan has a stockpile of 65 tons of plutonium. This huge quantity was accumulated by reprocessing old fuel rods for a reactor system that doesn’t exist. China has frequently grumbled about Japan’s obvious intention with its plutonium stock. Since it only takes 10 pounds of plutonium, Japan could make up to 13,000 weapons.

Bible prophecy seems to imply that there is not going to be a nuclear conflict in Asia. When the four demonic angels are released in the latter part of the Tribulation, they raise up an army of 200 million soldiers. This massive feat would be very hard if North Korea’s military was wiped out and the Chinese were needed to police the mess.

The Antichrist will likely take control of the Middle East oil fields; this would probably bring together China, North and South Korea, and Japan. That entire region is addicted to Arab oil. In order to fight their way to the Middle East, they would need to kill about a “third of mankind.” A standoff between China and India exists today. If the head of India knew the Bible, he would give China and company free passage through its land.

“The sixth angel sounded his trumpet, and I heard a voice coming from the horns of the golden altar that is before God. It said to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, “Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.” And the four angels who had been kept ready for this very hour and day and month and year were released to kill a third of mankind. The number of the mounted troops was two hundred million. I heard their number” (Revelation 9:13-16).

–Todd

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Ezekiel 38-39 and Nukes

Today’s sense of impending nuclear exchange hearkens somewhat back to when I was a teenager. I remember sitting in the high school library looking at a daily newspaper. The headline was about Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet premiere, threatening the use of hydrogen bombs if his plans for eastern Europe were resisted by the West.

Rumor had it amongst us high schoolers that nuclear war would commence on this particular Friday I was in the library thinking on such possibility. The world would end this very day, so the tale was told.

I guess I was sort of into issues and events of the times, just as I am these many decades later. Although a kid, I was concerned, but certainly couldn’t let on to my fellow students–especially not my macho pals, who all were saying “bring it on” to the Ruskies.

They seemed to have no fear or regard for what would happen if  ol’ Khrushchev decided to nuke America. I did think about it and was, frankly, quite worried.

Now we have a 30-year-old, north Korean despot even uglier than was Nikita, threatening to send his newly developed, nuclear-tipped missiles to Guam and even to somewhere within the U.S. homeland. I haven’t paid much attention during the current “crisis” to the threat, even though issued by a true lunatic rather than the calculating, totally aware Khrushchev–i.e., the Soviet dictator realized what it would mean for him, personally, should he be so foolhardy as to initiate nuclear war. I’m not certain Kim Jong-un has the same degree of realization.

Being  three-quarters of a century old currently might make the difference in my degree of concern–then, in 1958, versus now. Even though sense of my own mortality at 16 was almost nonexistent, I was fearful. The present threat has many people today thinking like I did back then. The current nuclear threat doesn’t concern me at all, although my knowledge of my own mortality now is with me every waking hour.

What’s the difference in the young Terry’s concern and the old Terry’s lack thereof, do you think? It must be more than merely naïveté about geopolitical, diplomatic interaction that might bring on or avert nuclear catastrophe that caused me at 16 to worry. It can’t just be that I can now, through reasoning ability guided by experience, assuage fear because I’m much wiser at this advanced age about how nuclear-armed states always pull up short of using those weapons of mass destruction.

One thing sure…I have no such confidence in those human agents who have their fingers on the nuclear triggers. I have no doubt whatsoever that one day those triggers will be pulled.

Preparation is underway in every direction one looks. Nuclear war is looming like the mystical Sword of Damocles over this powder-keg world.

Pakistan and India threaten each other with their nuclear stockpiles. The big, nuclear-muscle boys–America, China, and Russia–look warily at each other through satellite-computer guardians 24/7.

Israel stands ready at all times to invoke the Samson Option. If it looks like the use of nuclear weapons is all that will stop an attack that would mean the end of the Jewish state, they will go to any such length necessary.

And this brings us to the title of our commentary today: Ezekiel 38-39 and Nukes.    

Iran stands on the brink of developing nuclear capability even more threatening than that of the North Koreans. Previous U.S. presidential administrations–particularly those of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama–made “deals” they promised would make the whole world safer from nuclear proliferation–from nuclear war. The deals they made with both North Korea and with the Iranian regimes, however, have brought us to now having to act perhaps precipitously, or else face certain nuclear war in the not-too-distant future.

Iran, as Bible prophecy students know, is the nation that occupies that area that was ancient Persia. Persia is foretold by the prophet Ezekiel to mount an all-out assault against Israel as part of the Gog-Magog coalition.

It is strongly expected that North Korea has provided the Iranians with nuclear warheads or with the technology necessary to produce nuclear weapons. Iran is far advanced in missile technology and it is only a matter of time until they will be able to fit nuclear warheads to those missiles–presuming they haven’t done so already.

 

The Trump administration has led the way in imposing sanctions on Iran to stop development of their missile program. If it can’t be halted, Israel will almost certainly at some point take military action to try to destroy Iran’s nuclear development capability.

America’s most recent action has caused the Iranian regime to ramp up its call for the destruction of America and Israel. The following tells of that  rogue nation’s anger:

DUBAI – Iran’s parliament gave initial approval on Sunday to a bill to boost spending on Tehran’s missile program and the elite Revolutionary Guards in retaliation for new sanctions imposed by the United States.

Lawmakers overwhelmingly approved the outlines of the bill to “counter America’s terrorist and adventurist actions” as some chanted “Death to America,” the state broadcaster IRIB reported.

The measure came in retaliation to legislation passed by US Congress and signed by US President Donald Trump in early August to impose new sanctions on Iran over its missile program. (“Iran eyes more funds for missiles, troops after US sanctions-Middle East,” Jerusalem Post, 8/13/17)

With one of the primary Gog-Magog force members about to go nuclear, there should be reason for greatly increased worry. Like the North Koreans, they are a regime blood-vowed to destroy its enemy. In the case of North Korea, it is South Korea–and America–that constitutes the enemies that inspire the blood vow. With Iran, of course, it’s Israel and America that must be obliterated.

However, in the case of Iran, we know from prophecy that they are going to act on their blood-oath. In North Korea, if they are a factor in bringing the world to nuclear Armageddon, it will be much later, in consort with the “kings of the east” of Revelation chapters 9 and 16.

So, why am I the calm (old) Terry as opposed to the 16-year-old, fearful Terry in the high school library, reading magazines and newspapers instead of studying in study hall? The danger is imminently more grave now than then.

The answer, of course, is Bible prophecy. The old Terry knows and believes what God’s Word has to say about what will be the outcome of all this nuclear saber-rattling.

Bible prophecy tells me that  Iran is not destroyed by the time of the God-Magog attack, which is yet future. Israel is not destroyed at that time–or ever.

Bible prophecy tells me that Iran, Russia, Turkey, and all the others of that force come in a conventional –not nuclear attack. Something has obviously happened by that time to cause nuclear weaponry to not be used–at least not in a world-rending way.

The other nations, we are told by Ezekiel in chapters 38 and 39, are there, too. They send only a diplomatic note of protest when they see that great, satanic, Gog-led force descend toward Israel. Nuclear weaponry, again it is obvious, hasn’t yet been used in a world-destroying way by that time.

Again, Jesus said it will be business as usual at the time of His “revealing.” That is, people will be doing business as usual, according to the Lord’s Days of Noah/Days of Lot prophecy (Matthew 24:36-42 and Luke 17:26-30). At the time of the Rapture, therefore, there will have been no world-shattering nuclear conflict–or major catastrophic event on a  global scale, either.

If only that worried, 16-year-old Terry had studied Ezekiel 38-39 in that study hall in 1958…

— Terry