You Can Iran, But You Cannot Hide
Acts 4:27
"For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together."
Back in 11th grade of high school, I had a World Cultures class with a long-term substitute teacher who had us order and read the weekly issues of Newsweek throughout the school year. I think her name was Mrs. Brown and she was a kindly soul who had the difficult task of replacing the regularly scheduled teacher. The substitute teacher...can be one of the most stressful jobs in America, especially daily subs. I think the replaced teacher was very sick...I don't really recall the details as it was about 30 years ago. Every so often I am reminded how old I really am.
The big story that year in the news was the Iranian Hostage crisis where 53 Americans were held captive for 444 days by Iranian student revolutionaries inspired by the Ayatollah Khohmeni...about the most misanthropic-looking Mullah ever. Not that any of them ever really look happy. We did a lot of reading weekly about the Hostage Crisis...and how it went on and on and on, making Carter looking weaker and weaker and weaker. Helpless in fact, especially after the failed rescue attempt. It was as chronic as a bad cold and he could not shake it. There was a saying at that time, "I ran, you ran, from Iran." This crisis of confidence did a lot emotionally to usher in Reagan's reign.
As is often the case, there is a back-story that makes America look less than just. The deposed government overthrown by Ayatollah Inc. was that of the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The Shah had been restored to power in a 1953 coup against a democratically-elected nationalist Iranian government organized by the CIA at the American Embassy and had recently been allowed into the United States for medical treatment.
Around the same time, the horrific (even by brutal 20th century standards of warfare) Iran-Iraq War was happening. I recall seeing a vivid flesh and blood picture of a battle in that class's Newsweek weekly edition of Iraqi and Iranian soldiers in hand-to-hand combat, where scores of soldiers were killing and being killed. We have all heard of a still life picture, how about a still death?...a frozen portrait of the dying and the dead. I still remember the face of one Iranian soldier's face as he peered upwards, perhaps hoping that Allah was soon to be welcoming him to Paradise.
Apparently, Iran had many more willing to die for the cause as an act of religious redemption than Iraq (the only certainly of salvation in Islam, from what I understand, is martyrdom. This helps explain the willingness to die of the terrorists and bombers...when people say that Islam is a "peaceful religion" as an absolute statement , they have to explain how Muslim tenets like this do not encourage violence and destruction).
Guess who America supported during that conflict? Saddam Hussein himself. Here is a picture of our Iraq War Maestro Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with his buddy bloody Saddam.
George Washington would not have been able to imagine how entangling and deadly, like a poisonous spider's web, such alliances would become. "It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliance with any portion of the foreign world" (George Washington's Farewell Address). A naive pronouncement perhaps, particularly since we were so heavily dependent on French munition support during the Revolutionary War, and the Prussian General Von Steuben to whip the Continental Army into shape. But, sage advice, nonetheless. As the great political philosophic publication Bazooka Joe comic said, "When two dogs get in a fight, the third should keep its distance." Maybe Washington saw these alliances as temporary...but temporary often has long-term and permanent effects. Like temporary illicit sex (i.e. King David)
This week's blogs will go from the global political to the intensely personal. Now more than ever, it is impossible to divide the two. Good to know that the Lord Jesus Christ experienced the nastiness of the Realpolitik collusion of the Jewish and Roman leaders and has triumphed over them (the verse above from Acts comes from Psalm 2.)
It is also bad news for thugs like Ahmadinejad and his desire to be the Don King-like promoter for the 13th Imam Smackdown. He can "Iran" but He cannot hide from the Lord's Anointed. And, He ain't Jimmy Carter.
"For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together."
Back in 11th grade of high school, I had a World Cultures class with a long-term substitute teacher who had us order and read the weekly issues of Newsweek throughout the school year. I think her name was Mrs. Brown and she was a kindly soul who had the difficult task of replacing the regularly scheduled teacher. The substitute teacher...can be one of the most stressful jobs in America, especially daily subs. I think the replaced teacher was very sick...I don't really recall the details as it was about 30 years ago. Every so often I am reminded how old I really am.
The big story that year in the news was the Iranian Hostage crisis where 53 Americans were held captive for 444 days by Iranian student revolutionaries inspired by the Ayatollah Khohmeni...about the most misanthropic-looking Mullah ever. Not that any of them ever really look happy. We did a lot of reading weekly about the Hostage Crisis...and how it went on and on and on, making Carter looking weaker and weaker and weaker. Helpless in fact, especially after the failed rescue attempt. It was as chronic as a bad cold and he could not shake it. There was a saying at that time, "I ran, you ran, from Iran." This crisis of confidence did a lot emotionally to usher in Reagan's reign.
As is often the case, there is a back-story that makes America look less than just. The deposed government overthrown by Ayatollah Inc. was that of the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The Shah had been restored to power in a 1953 coup against a democratically-elected nationalist Iranian government organized by the CIA at the American Embassy and had recently been allowed into the United States for medical treatment.
Around the same time, the horrific (even by brutal 20th century standards of warfare) Iran-Iraq War was happening. I recall seeing a vivid flesh and blood picture of a battle in that class's Newsweek weekly edition of Iraqi and Iranian soldiers in hand-to-hand combat, where scores of soldiers were killing and being killed. We have all heard of a still life picture, how about a still death?...a frozen portrait of the dying and the dead. I still remember the face of one Iranian soldier's face as he peered upwards, perhaps hoping that Allah was soon to be welcoming him to Paradise.
Apparently, Iran had many more willing to die for the cause as an act of religious redemption than Iraq (the only certainly of salvation in Islam, from what I understand, is martyrdom. This helps explain the willingness to die of the terrorists and bombers...when people say that Islam is a "peaceful religion" as an absolute statement , they have to explain how Muslim tenets like this do not encourage violence and destruction).
Guess who America supported during that conflict? Saddam Hussein himself. Here is a picture of our Iraq War Maestro Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with his buddy bloody Saddam.
George Washington would not have been able to imagine how entangling and deadly, like a poisonous spider's web, such alliances would become. "It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliance with any portion of the foreign world" (George Washington's Farewell Address). A naive pronouncement perhaps, particularly since we were so heavily dependent on French munition support during the Revolutionary War, and the Prussian General Von Steuben to whip the Continental Army into shape. But, sage advice, nonetheless. As the great political philosophic publication Bazooka Joe comic said, "When two dogs get in a fight, the third should keep its distance." Maybe Washington saw these alliances as temporary...but temporary often has long-term and permanent effects. Like temporary illicit sex (i.e. King David)
This week's blogs will go from the global political to the intensely personal. Now more than ever, it is impossible to divide the two. Good to know that the Lord Jesus Christ experienced the nastiness of the Realpolitik collusion of the Jewish and Roman leaders and has triumphed over them (the verse above from Acts comes from Psalm 2.)
It is also bad news for thugs like Ahmadinejad and his desire to be the Don King-like promoter for the 13th Imam Smackdown. He can "Iran" but He cannot hide from the Lord's Anointed. And, He ain't Jimmy Carter.
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