by Chuck Baldwin
Published: Thursday, April 25, 2019
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.
As I have noted several times in this column:
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 toldCongress 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