On the Coming Syrian Intervention

My views on Syria: oh, please, NO! We shouldn't go!

I've been listening to the news and now understand that the Obama administration wishes to commit us and allies to the support of the Syrian rebels. I am going public to declare myself a dissenter and critic of this policy.

First of all, I am not a man of the Left who instinctively sees in the exercise of US power a force for evil. I view myself as a God, country, property rights, gun ownership (by the law abiding), anti-sexual revolution, limited government conservative. I also believe that historically, America has been in the right. I believe that our confrontation with the Communist states throughout the Cold War was right--and a position forced on us by the machinations of Stalin and his minions (including China's Mao Zedong and Viet Nam's Ho Chi Minh, both of whom I view as fundamentally vicious).

But where is the pressing national interest in Syria? Are we defending allies' oil supplies? No. Are we stopping an aggressive ideology that has pledged itself to our destruction? No. Will the Middle Eastern balance of power be radically altered? Possibly, but in ways that are problems for Turkey, Israel, and Iran rather than us. Will this bring us closer to a comprehensive Middle Eastern peace settlement? Absolutely not, and may even make such a quest the modern equivalent of the search for the Holy Grail.

I agree that the Assad regime is odious. The Ba'ath Party was founded in imitation of the Fascist and National Socialist parties of interwar Europe. The Ba'athis have presided over the liquidation of millennia-old Jewish communities in the lands between upper Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean. They are cruel and relentless towards dissent. They were also faithful partners of the Communist Bloc throughout the Cold War. I would not want a wooden nickel of my taxes to go to helping the Ba'athis in any way.

But what of the rebels?

It has been clear to anyone who cares to look and think that the Syrian rebellion is not the benign "democratic" movement our administration (and its media shills) has been telling us it is. Its leadership is made up of Qaida sympathizers and members of the Muslim Brotherhood. As for the latter, I refer all to the writings of its chief ideologue, Seiyyid Qotb, to see how the MB hates us not simply for anything we've done, but for who we are and what we value--not least of which are political liberty, the right of dissent, and equal treatment under law for women and minorities. Qaida and the Muslim Brotherhood, in case anyone has forgotten, are the wonderful fighters for equality and justice who brought us the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001. It is a complete and utter disgrace that Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others were killed probably during an attempt to carry out secret talks with Turkish representatives about arming the Libyan rebels. Now that we seem to want to put together a whole coalition to hand Syria over to the Qaida and MB fighters, it has gone beyond disgraceful.

Further, the Syrian rebels are busy attacking, killing, driving out, and raping Christians in the areas they control. Like the Ba'athi liquidation of Syria's Jewish communities, this is also the liquidation of communities that go back to the very beginning of Christianity. Paul the Apostle was himself baptized by the church in Damascus, and sheltered by first-generation Christians there by the names of Judas and Hananiah (Ananias--see Acts 9:10-19). I would urge all to peruse the web pages of the Barnabas Fund to keep up to date on the plight of these communities now.

The treatment meted out to non-Sunnite Muslims by the Syrian rebels is also disturbing. 'Alawites and Shi'ites are also targets.

Yes, our allies in Sa'udi Arabia and Turkey are backing the rebels. But whatever for? Sa'udi Arabia has a long-running feud with the Ba'athis, and now that the Cold War is over, this is no longer a community of interest between the House of Sa'ud and the USA. Turkey's regime has become Islamicist of the Sunnite variety, and it may be wiser for US policy to take close looks at how Turkey is now treating its own minorities, apostates from Islam, and other such vulnerable categories. We would do well to consult with such other allies as Greece and Bulgaria over how they may feel about a resurgent Islamicism in their former colonial master.

The Obama administration is committing us to the support of an implacable enemy force. It has never addressed the odious ideology animating the Syrian rebels, nor their links to other movements that continue to demonize and vilify the US. But it is all the more disconcerting to see the Republican Party failing in its role as opposition, and the major media's shocking complicity when it should be a watchdog against an unnecessary waste of American treasure and lives.

I would love to know if anyone else out there feels as I do.

My Views on "New" Gospels and their Purveyors

Recently, on Huffington Post, I read an interview with Elaine Pagels discussing her new book on Revelation.  After I read that she thinks John was a Jew who believed in Jesus and didn't like the Roman state, I nodded in agreement, and said a hearty "Ho-humm" to myself.

Franky, Elaine Pagels is one of the most over-rated scholars writing about New Testament-related themes.  I've been profoundly unimpressed with her work ever since people near and dear to me gave me her _Gnostic Gospels_ (1979) to "set me straight" about my confessional Protestant orthodoxy.

In _Gnostic Gospels_, Pagels resoundingly flunks Ecclesiastical History 101.  She posits that the Nag Hammadi texts were hidden by Coptic monks facing persecution from Athanasius, the 4th century orthodox bishop of Alexandria.  However, Gnosticism was a phenomenon of the 2d and early 3d centuries, not the 4th.  Athanasius and his colleagues at Nicaea in 325 whose opinions he defended were fighting Arians and Semi-Arians, not Gnostics.  Moreover, Athanasius was more often than not on the receiving end of persecution, being exiled three times to the Rhine frontier by Constantine's Semi-Arian successors.  As for the Coptic monks, their dean, the redoubtable hermit Anthony, came out of the desert to show support for the beleaguered Athanasius.

Further, Pagels seems to think that the Coptic "Gospel of Thomas" (probably written a couple of generations after Judas Didymus Thomas was martyred) is more pro-woman than the canonical Scriptures.  The work ends with these words:

Simon Peter said to them: Let Mary go away from us, for women are not worthy of life.  Jesus said: Lo, I shall make her a male, that she too may become a living spirit, resembling you males.  For every woman who makes herself a male will enter the kingdom of heaven. (Logion 114).

It seems that the pseudo-Peter and the pseudo-Jesus of the pseudo-Thomas are in agreement that women as women aren't subjects of salvation.  Yet for all its supposed "misogyny", the canonical, 66-book Bible never seems to suggest that Sarah, Rebecca, the Hebrew midwives, Zipporah, Miriam, Mary, Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Priscilla, and all those other wonderful sisters will not be walking around the new heavens and new earth after the resurrection of the saved with two X chromosones, or will somehow sprout external genitalia.

Pagels apparently likes the Jewishness of John of Patmos.  Yet this is quite an inconsistency with her long championship of 2d century Gnosticism, which demonized the Old Testament and relegated its God to something far inferior to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Had Pagels' beloved Gnostics "won", Christianity would never have developed a bad conscience over anti-Semitism.

Pagels is the purveyor of a myth that mitred, monarchical 4th century bishops determined the New Testament canon on the basis of whether or not a text would support their claims to power. Yet somehow, she never explains why these same purveyors of monepiscopacy allowed Luke-Acts and Philippians into the canon, when the former uses presbyter and bishop interchangeably in Acts 20, and the latter begins with a salutation to plural bishops in the single city of Philippi. She isn't alone in purveying this myth (Bart Ehrman also comes to mind). Perhaps her unsubstantiated reconstructions of Christian history are necessary to get around Irenaeus in Lyons, Clement in Alexandria, Origen in 'Eretz Yisroel, and Tertullian in North Africa all seeing four and only four Gospels during the 2d century.  Or, perhaps, Pagels is someone without the slightest feel for the flow of history.  Or, perhaps, as a latter-day Gnostic, she is more comfortable with myth; and thus joins a crowd of people who, claiming to find the true "historical" grounding of Christianity, are themselves lousy historians.


Pagels, the Jesus Seminar, and their ilk are lionized and feted by the media because liberal religion is finally waking up to the fact that it gets no aid or comfort from the canonical Scriptures.  It must therefore clutch at straws like the mystical but misogynistic Pseudo-Thomas. No wonder the academic study of the Bible and religion are in such a sorry state.

Psalm 121--A Guard and Guide for the Journey

Psalm 121  \: A Song of Ascents

I will lift up my eyes to the hills—

From whence cometh my help?

My help comes from the LORD,

Who made heaven and earth.

He will not allow your foot to be moved;

He who keeps you will not slumber.

Behold, He who keeps Israel

Shall neither slumber nor sleep.

The LORD is your keeper;

The LORD is your shade at your right hand.

The sun shall not strike you by day,

Nor the moon by night.

The LORD shall preserve your going out and your coming in

From this time forth, and even forevermore. (NKJV)

            From the alienation of Psalm 120, the Psalmist moves on to hope—his eyes rise to the hils, from whence his help comes.

            The Bible is full of mountains and high places.  Jerusalem, the site of the Temple itself, is built on the crest of a ridge, as can be seen from looking at a relief map of ‘Eretz Yisroel. Before the building of the Temple under Solomon, or even the moving of the Ark of the Covenant to that city by David, the tabernacle—the Temple’s prototype, stood on a mountain at Shiloh. Mount Zion is the symbolic heart of the city of Jerusalem. The Covenant of God was ratified by the tribes of Israel on the mountains of Ebal and Gerizim.  The Torah was given at Mount Sinai, or Horeb.  Abraham was forbidden to sacrifice his son Isaac and received God’s provision of a sacrifice on Mount Moriah, the future site of the Temple.  With the coming of Jesus the Messiah, mountains play an important role as well.  Jesus delivers his ethical instructions in the Sermon on the Mount, he is transfigured and communes with Moses and Elijah on a mountain, and he was crucified to make atonement for our sins on the hill Golgotha.

            Hence, when the Psalmist raises his eyes to the “…hills, from whence cometh my help”, he is looking to a place from whence God speaks or acts for the salvation of his people.  This is why the collection of Psalms 120-133 are Psalms of Degrees, or, as more recent translations put it better, ascents.  The journey to Jerusalem is one that climbs upwards.

           To the Psalmist, God is Shomer Yisroel, the keeper of Israel, his church.  This word shomer, or its verbal form, appears in verses 4-8. It may refer to either an armed guard protecting a party of travelers or one who is concerned with the day-to-day tending to the necessities of the journey—indeed, it refers to one preserving the travelers.Some scholars have suggested that in ancient times, a party of pilgrims might sing the first two verses, to be answered by a priestly guide with the remainder.  The Psalm thus speaks of God's care for his pilgrims.

            In an age of good roads, air travel, well-paid police forces, and air-conditioned, fast-moving vehicles, we tend to be a little heedless of the possible dangers of a long journey.  But the ancient Israelite moved from his home—perhaps in the Galilee, the Hill Country of Ephraim, the Golan, or the Negev on foot.  His roads were stony pathways where he could easily stumble and fall.  The Middle Eastern sun might easily give him sunstroke.  Nighttime, when he camped in the open, could provide cover for wild animals, bandits, or military scouts from hostile surrounding nations. Hence, it was necessary for the pilgrim to have some assurances of safety, and these the LORD gives.

            As New Testament Christians, we know that this Keeper of Israel has taken on our nature and walked with us.  We know he has suffered the pains of our lives, even to criminal execution when innocent.  But we know as well that he has also conquered death on our behalf, and now hold all power in heaven and earth (Mt. 28:18), including the keys of hell and death (Rev. 1:18).

            Such is the one higher than we are under whose eye our “goings out” and “comings in” occur as we make our pilgrimage through this life to the heavenly city.  Yes, the road is rough and dangerous, but we have a strong guard as we travel it, one who wants us to reach our heavenly destination.

A thumbs up to another blogger.

Follow this link:

http://englishmanif.blogspot.com/2013/07/how-you-can-fight-for-childrens-rights.html#comment-form

As a former consular officer who worked in countries with human trafficking problems, I felt a lot of sympathy for what I read here.

I further believe that our hell-for-leather rush to "normalize" homosexuality will result in some serious problems in the trafficking of children under the guise of "adoption".

Happy independence Day!

As an American, I wish a happy Independence Day to all.

I say this even though I have a President who orders my brethren in the Christian faith to go against God and conscience and provide abortion and contraceptive coverage to employees.

I say this even though Mr. Justice Kennedy and four of his colleagues on the SCOTUS have declared that I am an immoral bigot because I believe, along with 99.9% of the human race, that marriage is between a man and a woman, not two men or two women.  And, I am an immoral bigot even though I have never advocated denying a homosexual freedom of speech, or, if accused of a crime, due process of law.

I say this even though powerful interests, including some in government, declare my belief that Christ is Lord to be "hate speech".

I say this even though my president believes that the future must not belong to people like me--those who "slander" Muhammad of Mecca because we do not believe that he is a prophet of God (which all Muslims would see as slander).

But I believe this country can get back on track.  I continue to hope and pray that our people would awaken and see the swindle that has been foisted on them.  If God could be merciful to a repentant Assyria (the real point of the book of Jonah), maybe he can be merciful to my country, too (even when it looks as if our continued existence means that God must apologize to Sodom and Gomorrha).

Memories of the Cambodian Border -- Part II

I cannot say I saw the Cambodian tragedy happening "on the ground", as they like to say in  the State Department.  However, I saw its close after effects, and they were bad enough. The DP camps just inside Thailand were full of the maimed, stunted, dazed, and fearful; perhaps lacking in the starving because the international community, for once at its best, saw to it that starvation did not happen, and at least some of the ravages of disease were checked. Its effects on the people of Cambodia could not but elicit sympathy.  But it provided quite an education.

Much of my work involved interviewing Cambodian DP's for humanitarian parole into the USA.  This was a provision to reunite families divided when, in 1975, some Cambodians were allowed into the USA as refugees following the Communist Victory. Of course, there was little documentation to substantiate relationships, but after a certain date, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (since replaced by Immigration and Customs Enforcement) started asking resettled Cambodian refugees for detailed family trees.  These we used to determine whether the person in front of the interviewing officer was indeed related to the anchor person in the USA.

The process was pretty straightforward.  Groups of DP's were brought from the camps to a house rented in Aranyaprathet, Thailand, and allowed to wait under a large, circus tent-like structure until interviewed, and then at the end of the day return to the camps to either start packing for the trip to the USA or mope if denied.  Not knowing the Khmer language, I depended heavily on an able young Cambodian-born woman most lately from Virginia.  However, I quickly learned the words "Bat", "Otde", and "Salap", meaning "Yes", "No", and "dead" respectively.

The last was a sobering word to learn.  Of course I had known about the killing fields of Cambodia for some time.  Yet the people I interviewed had lived through them.  Often, when we asked for their precise relationships to persons listened in their US anchors' A-files, they would misunderstand and think we were seeking the status of the person named.  Hence, I often heard the word "Salap".  In numerous cases, this led to the realization that the large, extended clans given by the anchors had often been decimated during the years of the Democratic Kampuchea regime and civil war that followed the 1978 Vietnamese invasion.

In addition to Thai, which I had been taught for my service in Bangkok, I was a fairly competent Chinese linguist at the time, and anyone who seemed to be Sino-Cambodian tended to be sent my way.  Sure, I'm old enough to remember when Americans thought that all Far Eastern peoples looked alike; but persons of Chinese descent tended to be easy to pick out from a crowd of other DP's.  Whereas the indigenous Khmer tended to be brown, with large, sometimes deep-set eyes, broader noses, and sometimes wavy or curly hair, the Chinese descent of many Cambodian town-dwellers sometimes left fair skins and smaller eyes.  When such people were spotted, someone might send them to my interviewing table.

One such young Sino-Thai male came to my table, and we soon established that he was indeed the younger brother of a waiter living in Portland, Oregon, who had made it to the USA in 1975. He had learned Mandarin from a Taiwanese organization working among former Cambodian Overseas Chinese; although like so many others of his demographic, he was more comfortable with either Khmer or Teochiu.  Of the large, complex extended family described by the brother in Portland, the only survivors were the anchor and the young man in front of me. The case seemed rather straightforward, and had the young man not belonged to a group eligible for resettlement in the USA, any official connected with the immigration system would've immediately pegged him as someone likely to seek whatever possible employment might come his way should he enter the US.  Hence, I waived any affadavit of support (a document that is signed often and seldom honored in most cases), and signed off on the case. 

The near-total extermination of the two brothers' family was chillingly common among Sino-Cambodians and Muslims.  Despite many of the Khmer Rouge leadership belonging to the former and sponsorship of the Cambodian Communists by Mao's China, the Sino-Cambodians were targeted for extermination because they tended to be townspeople, disproportionately educated past the elementary grades, and disproportionately likely to wear glasses. I suspect that perhaps to many sent their youngsters to Taiwan for education following Lon Nol's coup, which might have made them all the more odious.  As for the Muslims, they tended to belong to either the Cham or Malay ethnic groups, perhaps a little less pliable than Buddhists about hiding their religion, and hence another target.  However, I saw few of them.

A few cases after I sent off the lone Sino-Cambodian youth to rejoin his long-lost brother in the States, a family group consisting of an elderly grandmother, parents, and several small children approached. Their lighter skins, build, and small eyes made me suspect more Sino-Cambodians, so I wrote out on a piece of paper and said in Mandarin, "你们会不会讲中文?" ("nimen huibuhui jiang Zhongwen?--Can you speak Chinese?).  In unison, the whole family looked shocked and horrified and stepped back in terror with the "Uh-oh, he's found us out!" attitude. They loudly protested that they were 100% northwest Cambodian ethnic Khmer peasants, and knew no language other than Khmer. I therefore told my interpreter that she couldn't take her coffee break, for I'd need her.

Well, I was satisfied that the father was connected to two brothers in the USA, and that he and his wife would probably be ensconced in restaurant or retail sales following entry into the USA, and thus signed off on this case as well.

At the end of the day, I exited our interviewing site with my group of American officials, and walked past the shaded "bull pen" where the interviewees were waiting for the buses that would return them to Site B, Site 2, and other camps.  The young man with the brother in Portland saw me, walked over to the rope, and thanked me profusely in Mandarin.  I shook his hand, explained that I was only doing my job, and wished him good luck in the US.

A few yards away stood the grandmother from family group, tending one of her grandchildren.  As she witnessed my conversation with the other Sino-Cambodian, her jaw dropped in utter stupefaction.

I could not blame her.  My father's family were Jews from Central Europe, many of whom perished in the Shoah; and I'm sure any that survived were very careful to hide their ethnicity.  Perhaps the old grandmother hadn't quite fathomed that, whatever might have been the attitude of the Cambodian Communists, there were parts of the world where having been born an ethnic Chinese shopkeeper's daughter was not a crime.



In any event, I have never before or since, seen anyone who looked so sheepish.

Memories off the Cambodian Border -- Part One

The Land Rover with US Diplomatic plates bumped over the dirt road through the xerophytic forest along the Thai-Cambodian border, progressing eastwards from the border city of Aranyaprathet through the Thai Changwat of Surin, Buriram, and Sisaket.  Two officers of AmEmbassy Bangkok--Uncle Cephas and his senior colleague--sat in luxurious, air-conditioned comfort sipping cool, bottled beverages as they discussed their assignment of reporting on conditions in border camps for Cambodian displaced persons.  A plump, cheerful Thai Foreign Service National employee whom I will dub Khun Somchai for the sake of the narrative negotiated the potholes and clouds of laterite dust.  Occasionally, we would pass an irrigation ditch in which laughing, healthy, olive-brown children merrily splashed away the shimmering dry season heat, a few boasting briefs, others (generally male) completely naked.

The forest broke to reveal a clearing in which stood a simple baan, or house, built of wood, bamboo, and thatch standing on sturdy wooden piles.  A long clothesline extended from the house to a nearby tree, sporting a colorful array of drying laundry suiting every member of the household.  A telephone antenna perched on a bamboo pole swayed lazily over the roof, while electrical wire ran from a utility pole to power the house's utensils.  Underneath, where yesteryear's water buffalo would have sheltered, a small, red pickup truck was parked.

At that point, my senior colleague grew uneasy, noted the absence of road signs, and asked a question of the driver.

"Khun Somchai, how can we be sure we haven't driven across the border?"

After all, it was 1991, and civil war was still raging inside Cambodia, where the mines lay thick on the ground, and a carload of US diplomatic personnel that was supposed to be in Thailand blowing up inside Cambodia would be a messy international incident.

Further, language would not have distinguished the people on the two sides of the border.  Most of the inhabitants were either ethnic Khmer or Soay and spoke those languages at home and in their villages, with those on the Thai side having learned the Thai of Bangkok in school and from media, and those on the Cambodian side having acquired that same language out of the necessity of getting access to the only functioning economy in the area.

Khun Somchai, blessed with the good-natured smile that seems the birthright of every Thai, was quick with his reply.  "You saw that house back there.  If we run across one that has only a quarter of the laundry, no TV, and no truck, we'll know we're in Cambodia and will have to turn around."

Perhaps a mile after the next fork in the road, a brown-clad, heavily armed man with all the badges and insignia that marked a member of the Aw Saw, or Thai Border Police, stepped out of the underbrush and hastened to flag us down.  He gave the typical polite wai of greeting, then pointed to a tree scarcely a hundred yards away:

"Bai mai dai, khrap!  Mai nan yu Khameen!"--"You can't procede!  That tree is in Cambodia!"

A little more give-and-take between the Aw Saw and Khun Somchai revealed that a week earlier, guerrillas--whether Democratic Kampuchea, Sihanoukhist, or the Sonn Sann faction is immaterial--had laid out mines in the road.  Hence, I felt very thankful to a merciful Providence that the Aw Saw had just happened to reach that point on his rounds at that time.  Otherwise, I could have been blown to smithereens; and if not killed instantly, probably left lying in agony in the twisted wreckage of the Land Rover with nobody knowing or caring until it would have been way too late.

Back on the right road, we ultimately reached a town to meet up with a member of UNBRO--the United Nations Border Relief Organization--a group separate from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, and set up to allay the Royal Thai Government's unease with declaring the Cambodians "refugees" rather than "displaced persons".  Compared to the larger organization, it was an efficient, well-run outfit with its ear to the ground and ready to report any problem to both the Thai and international authorities.  It was also necessary for us to deal with them, for while we were free to deal face to face with internal administrations of DP Camps that were of the Sihanouk and Sonn San factions, we could deal with the Democratic Kampuchea people (Pol Pot's people) only under UN escort--and this was necessitated from time to time due to the US government's donations of vegetable oil and its humanitarian concerns over whether the camp populations were being abused in any way.

Well, normalcy genrally prevailed in the camp, which was called OTrao, even though it had been the seen in the past of DP's being moved back over the border to serve as porters for the Democratic Kampuchea faction and sometimes summarily executed.  DPs managed an in-camp economy, which, thankfully, did not include too egregious siphoning off of US-donated food aid.

However, there were Democratic Kampuchea troops on R&R in the camp--the very faction that had killed between one quarter and one third of the Cambodian population during the time it had held power (1975-1978). I was face to face with the very people who had given the world the killing fields, alhtough, thankfully, these soldiers were not armed at the time. The DK men were physically small and quiet, impeccably uniformed in Chinese-style olive drab. None spoke as camp officials spoke with the UNBRO people through an interpreter, but they watched us nonetheless.

And it was then that I suddenly developed a belief in zombies.  Yes, the camps were full of people fatigued beyond endurance from the horrors of war, famine, disease, the loss of loved ones, and displacement.  Yet these physically small, quiet men were more blank-faced and emotionless as slaughtered cattle, despite their being able to move and breathe. There eyes were, perhaps, the most perfect blanks of any I had ever seen.  Perhaps it was the strain of recent fighting, perhaps there actually was something soul-killing about participation in gruesome atrocities, perhaps a combination of the two.  Either way, these men seemed to be more of the netherworld than of that of the living.

Mao Zedong had told Pol Pot (aka Saloth Sar), their leader, that he was accomplishing things of which Mao himself had only dreamed.  Quite an admission from a ruler whose political victims numbered several tens of millions, and whose visionary programs trained a generation of Chinese to accept state-imposed suffering while beguiling and dazzling gullible Western intellectuals. Pol Pot himself, as well as his henchman Khieu Samphan, were themselves products of the best education the French Left could provide its erstwhile colonials, and were themselves working out a variant of the Marxist vision adapted to a Third World agrarian country.  And they had brought little save a vicious cycle of want, misery, violence, and death.