Jerusalem and Georgia

Obadiah is the shortest of the books of the Old Testament of the Bible, a mere twenty-one verses long. Most religious scholars believe it was written by one of seven “post-exile prophets,” the book is self-titled, and has much in common with the Old Testament books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Amos in their criticism and condemnation of the ancient Middle-Eastern nation of Edom. It clearly must also be associated with other prophecies of Hebrew/Israelite/Jewish restoration within the community of nations on Earth, such as those noted in Joel 3:17-21, Amos 9:11-15, and Micah 7:8-20.

Little known outside the halls of biblical scholarship, the book of Obadiah may well be one of the most profound in dealing with the rights and justice of nations toward one another in the eyes of the single God of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Almost nothing is known of the prophet Obadiah. His name is translated as “servant of the Lord” and is one of at least a dozen others by the same name referred to in the bible, and there is no autobiographical information within the scriptures or in any other known source about the prophet. There, too, is some question as to exactly when the Book of Obadiah was written. It is felt that there are two potential eras in which it could have been recorded – after the Arab-Philistine attack on what is now the Holy Land, c.844 B.C., or more likely two-and-a-half centuries later in the years after the sacking of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonian Empire in 586 B.C.

Edom, a nation to the south and east of the Hebrew monarchy of Judah, aided and abetted Babylon in the conquest and destruction of Jerusalem. This might be considered a continuation of Edomite-Judean antagonism whose origins stretched back at least as far as the Exodus of the Hebrew nation from Egypt 839 to 651 years previously. During this initial encounter between the nations, Edom refused to grant the Hebrews passage toward their destination of Canaan. And while there was a period of peaceful co-existence in the intervening years, by the time of Jerusalem’s destruction relations were poor. Soldiers of Edom helped to sack the city, carrying off innumerable riches and wealth alongside their Babylonian allies. All this antagonism, ironically, occurred despite the common lineage of the nations to the biblical patriarch Isaac’s sons Esau and Jacob – Edom descended from Esau and Judah’s lineage traced to Jacob. Whatever was the cause and reasons of the animosity, the result was that the destruction of Jerusalem led to a long Diaspora of the Israelite nation that would continue for some 2534 years.

Edom straddled what is today’s southern Israeli border areas with Egyptian Sinai to the west and Jordan to the east, from the central Negev to the north, down to today’s Red Sea seaport of Eilat on Israel’s southern tip. Edom’s capitol was Bozrah, today the small Jordanian town of Bouseira.

Interestingly, many modern Christians believe that Bouseira will be one of the major venues of the Last Judgement. It is their belief that here the Messiah will return to earth to judge the holy and the wicked.

Nevertheless, it was the destruction of Jerusalem and the following Diaspora that apparently led to Obadiah’s short Biblical book.

Today, Edom’s most widely known city is the famed cave-city of Petra, of which there may be some reference within Obadiah’s work: “…Your capital is a fortress of solid rock...” although Bozrah’s ruins appear to have also been built of rock. But there is no doubt that Obadiah accurately predicted the utter and total destruction of Edom and its eventual absorption by a Hebrew nation some two-and-a-half millennia after the sack and destruction of Jerusalem. Obadiah 19 states, “People from southern Judah will occupy Edom; Those from the western foothills will capture Philistia; Israelites will possess the territory of Ephraim and Samaria; The people of Benjamin will take Gilead…”

This eventually occurred beginning in 1947 as the newly established United Nations (knowingly or otherwise) began the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy and mandated the re-establishment of a Jewish nation. And it did indeed lead to the fulfillment of Obadiah’s prophecy when on May 15, 1948, Israel declared independence. Outmanned and outgunned, owning a rag-tag air force and navy barely deserving of the names, and an army of militia, the new Israeli nation fought overwhelming and incredible odds beginning even before independence. This new Hebrew nation, miraculously, was able to defeat the combined might of six Arab nations, the Palestinians living in the region, and the benign neglect of its British colonial predecessor. It conquered Israel, Judah, and Philistine of Biblical times, and drove south to secure what had been the Edomite heartland of 2500 years before. The Israeli Order of Battle followed the prophecy of Obadiah almost to the letter, though its complete fulfillment would eventually come within a generation in later years and in later wars.

Obadiah’s prophecy is clearly a lesson to all nations that they are their brothers’ keepers. Edom was a neighbor and, by their common ancestry to Isaac, a brother nation in the region. With Edom’s lack of assistance to Judah and support of the Babylonian Empire, Nebuchadnezzar was able to effectively destroy Hebrew governance in the area for two-and-a-half millennium. While for the vast majority of that period this looked to be the end of the Hebrew nations of Israel, Judah, and the Northern and Southern Kingdoms, clearly it was not. Israel’s re-establishment in 1948 is ample testimony of God’s power over the nations. Over seven million Jews live today within the borders of the State of Israel, the new Hebrew nation, as do millions of others all over the World.

God stated in the prophecy of Obadiah 8-10:
"On the day I punish Edom, I will destroy their clever men and wipe out all their wisdom.
The fighting men of Teman will be terrified, and every soldier in Edom will be killed.
Because you robbed and killed your brothers, the descendants of Jacob, you will be destroyed and dishonored forever."

Today, one can see and tour the sites and ruins of Bozrah and Petra and marvel at the incredible architecture and craftsmanship of the artisans and workers who built an apparently talented, great, and wealthy nation. Thousands do today and the Edomite city of Petra has even been featured in an Indiana Jones movie. Yet today there is not a single Edomite alive. Not one.

This is a stark and important lesson to other nations today. I would even argue that even now God is at work through his lessons in Obadiah. Barely three generations ago the earth saw two of the World’s greatest nations refuse to come to the aid of their fellow weaker nations and those great powers have since paid a heavy price.

In 1938, France and Great Britain, at the time the greatest colonial and military powers on Earth, pledged to stand by Czechoslovakia as a resurgent, newly bellicose, Godless and pagan Germany threatened. Both nations failed to assist the endangered nation, approving an agreement allowing Germany to roll into the disputed western Czechoslovakian region of Sudetenland effectively destroying the nation’s sovereignty. Eleven months later, to the day, Germany invaded Poland as both Britain and France again stood by. The best that either nation could or would do was when the Royal Air Force dropped propaganda leaflets instead of bombs over the German Ruhr and the French Army occupied three square miles of uninhabited Germany territory for three days before retreating back into France.

Of course, these tepid responses plunged the earth into the Second World War, which then led both directly and indirectly to the nearly complete dissolution of both the French and British empires within a single generation. Today, both nations are slowly being absorbed into the greater nation of the European Union and may be but a memory by the end of this century.

The lesson of Obadiah’s writing and prophecy is that God is the king over the Earth and of all nations and man. It is the responsibility of man and the nations of man to assist and defend their neighbors, and to do so for the glory of God and his people on Earth. The failure of the great European powers led to the loss of empire and their relegation to rump nations and their eventual loss of sovereignty into the European Union. The failure of Edom to do the same two-and-a-half millennia previously led to the total and utter destruction of the nation. Today, Edom has its portions divided between Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, with a vast majority within the boundaries of Israel.

Does this lesson bode poorly for America’s and Europe’s response to Russia’s aggression in the tiny Republic of Georgia? What happens if we do not stand up to an identically resurgent, newly bellicose, Godless and pagan Russia? Is Georgia a new Czechoslovakia?

This is an issue that needs to be closely and carefully studied. Edom will never be restored as a nation as there is not a single Edomite left to return. God’s prophecy has been fulfilled – completely and totally.

AMAZING, BUT TRUE

An amazing thing is happening in America today. Nearly every other nation on earth avoids it so fiercely and completely that an international organization has been formed to perform the act in their stead. This thing occurs in but a handful of nations and it is the United States that has and will likely be the leader in this field for the foreseeable future.

What am I writing about here? War crimes trials. That’s right. Since the Nuremburg War Crimes Tribunal at the end of the Second World War, the US has been the leader in the prosecution of war crimes BY ITS OWN TROOPS. Really. Outside of Western Europe and North America it’s almost unheard of. But to date, we have or are prosecuting at least a dozen soldiers and marines for war crimes ranging from mistreatment of prisoners, to torture to murder of enemy soldiers and combatants, and even the rape and murder of a teenaged girl and her family, in Iraq and Afghanistan.

That’s an amazing thing in this world. Can you imagine Syria prosecuting a soldier for shooting a handcuffed Israeli prisoner? Or Mexico trying its military personnel for torturing Zapatista rebels? Neither Japan, Germany, the Soviet Union, or Italy ever prosecuted any of their troops during World War II for committing war crimes. Certainly, the Soviets never did for any of the war crimes committed by their troops in Afghanistan, which was an ugly, vicious contest that saw children targeted with booby-trapped toys.

So why do we? I have a hypothesis.

We Americans are immigrants all. Most of us left our homes to escape persecution, poverty, injustice or for the adventure. Almost none of our ancestors were wealthy. Some of us were forced here through indenture or slavery. The wealth of the nation and we as a people was built from hard work and the honesty of a handshake, in many cases. These are facts. So wealthy a nation are we that even our poor are wealthier than most of the rest of the world. We expect to be able to have one’s word and believe in it. We believe that there is justice for all and that most people deserve what it is they get and have.

And so, when we see injustice in the world we cringe. We feel that we must do something to make things right. And so it is in war.

War, by definition, is unjust. Waged flagrantly, it kills all people in its way – men, women, children, the elderly, the young. We have developed weapons in this country that have changed the face of war. We can target specific people, places or things and eliminate them with a minimal chance of hurting others. The US has built a military that is as discriminate as any that is available with current technology. It is all because of the nation’s sense of justice, of what is fair, of what is right and wrong.

So, when we see the people who have volunteered to defend us and the nation do something we believe is wrong, it is we who want justice as much as the people who have been harmed. This is perhaps unique in the world. We see ourselves as moral, kind and helping. And we expect all Americans to be the same.

This, clearly, is a good thing.

My hypothesis is that, “Americans expect all Americans to be as good, moral and honorable as we expect or want ourselves to be.” It’s as simple as that. We have expectations that our children, who inevitably are the young troops that fight the wars, are moral, chivalrous, kind and fearless at the same time. Occasionally, some stumble.

Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq was an incredible stumble by some of these same troops. I know a bit more about it than the average American as I know someone who was there. I’ve asked all the questions everyone would want asked, and the answers are frightening, but somewhat understandable in context.

How many of us have teased the geek or nerd in high school? Or made fun of someone we believed was “beneath” us? How many of us wanted revenge on people who did that to us? And how many have taken their anger out on someone who didn’t deserve it? We all have. And without someone or something there to correct, calm or counteract us, we would continue to do it. That is what crime and punishment is all about.

Those young soldiers at Abu Ghraib Prison were undermanned by about half, overworked and forced into positions and responsibilities that they weren’t trained to do. Animal instinct took over. I asked my contact, “So, just what happened in that cell block?” His answer was, “Remember that study years ago where they divided up kindergarten children into blue eyed and brown eyed kids and then told them that blues eyes were better?” Within two days the blue-eyed children had set up a hierarchy of violence and abuse that caused the study to be shut down. “That’s what happened at Abu Ghraib.”

Deprived of proper supervision due to the lack of personnel, they made their own decisions and their own rules. All this despite frequent requests up the chain for more personnel, equipment and materiel to perform their jobs.

The result? One young soldier reported the abuse and now a number of troops directly and indirectly involved have been tried or have been convicted and are serving time for war crimes. This is something that no Middle Eastern nation outside of Israel has ever done to its own troops. Does that really surprise anyone?

The United States, despite its detractors, is STILL the beacon of justice that it has been for 200 years. And we will continue to prosecute and punish our own, because that is what a just and fair nation should do. And we won’t need the U.N. or any other organization to do it for us.

This post will be the second in a row concerning issues of the Iraq War. I am not meaning to be a war blogger, but I have found that much of my thinking has be molded by my time in the Middle East. I assure ya'll that I will try to not post another war post the next time. RGB

BRIAN’S E-MAIL

I have a colleague who was with me in Iraq. He was SSgt Brian M. (I’ll keep his last name a secret for his privacy). He’s from a little town in South Carolina. An excellent NCO, a good father and husband, I enjoy working with him, as do nearly all his other colleagues.

He went home on his R&R (Rest and Relaxation) leave from Operation Iraqi Freedom III just before the school year was out. While at home he went to his daughter’s school to have lunch with her. She insisted he wear his uniform, so he did. Fathers do that kind of stuff, you know. He was, for all intents and purposes, mobbed by all his daughter’s classmates who wanted to meet a “real” soldier. He was then invited to give a talk to the class about his time in Iraq. This then led to a talk to his son’s class, too.

When he arrived back in Iraq he received an e-mail from a classmate of his daughter. It lamented the lack of coverage given to the good works we Americans, and people and soldiers from dozens of other nations are doing over in that country, and how the horrors of the Saddam Hussein regime are being downplayed, glossed over, or just ignored by the American media in its (still ongoing) feeding frenzy to destroy the military and the Bush administration. Of course, her words weren’t as condensed as mine, but it was nonetheless the gist of her e-mail.

Those are huge concepts for a little girl just short of middle school, but even she noticed the manner that the news is being delivered. That is an amazing thing. More amazing to me was that when Brian showed me this e-mail about a week after he received it I had already read it.

“Brian, she sent this to you?”

“Yeah, Rupe, why?”

“Man, I got a forwarded copy of this exact same e-mail from a friend of mine two days ago!”

Yes, the world is a wired one and my copy of this e-mail was word-for-word the same as the one he received, except that the names were removed! I am told that this young student also forwarded this message to CNN. I’ll never know if it was ever read in Atlanta.

So, why is this important? For me, it is that you, John & Jane Q. Public, are not being told the whole truth. Like Sarumen in J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings who could not alter the scenes in the magic crystal by the regent in Gondor, he could control what images were seen. Selective editing made the leader of Middle Earth’s Gondor believe they were doomed. Likewise, NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, NPR, et al, don’t lie, they just simply control the truth you see and hear and can make it all seem to be rosy or catastrophic.

Case in point – I was out of South Carolina when Hurricane Hugo roared through in the Fall of 1989. I got back in early December, less than three months later, timidly wondering how badly my hometown would look. All I had seen were the pictures in the papers and on TV. I couldn’t have been blamed had I thought that Hugo wiped out the whole state and killed every living being here. What surprised me was not so much what was damaged and destroyed, but rather what was not.

The same applies in Iraq. Most of the damage inflicted upon Iraq was mostly done by the Hussein regime well before the invasion. Instead of maintaining roads, oil production, railways, and water and sewer systems, the Ba’athist regime ratcheted up the terror, denied certain areas and industries funds derived from the incredibly corrupt UN Oil-For-Food Program, and took the money to rebuild the army and build numerous incredible palaces and facilities for the military and the government.

The Coalition Forces in Iraq today are fighting the remnants of a mostly-foreign-led insurgency, an ingrained culture of corruption and deceit, and cultural and religious distrust that was cultivated in order to keep Saddam Hussein in power. Throw in a decade-and-a-half of willful neglect for the people and institutions, and you see just what we are up against. And yet, by mid-June 2005, the Coalition announced the completion of the first 1000 infrastructure projects to be performed there. The particular project that was counted as #1000 was a small eight-room school house in a small village that replaced a mud-and-thatch single-room hut that was being used to teach the local children. I feel certain that most of you heard nothing of that milestone, nor most of the other that have followed. Imagine what we’ve done in the past three years since!

That is but one of the myriad projects completed to date. Others include the upgrading of the Baghdad water and sewage systems, the rebuilding and upgrading of numerous electrical plants and lines, the nearly total rebuilding of the Iraqi rail system, the building of soccer fields in neighborhoods, not to mention the numerous efforts to take shoes and clothes, books and school supplies, and medical aid to outlying areas and villages.

And that is why I feel compelled to write this column. You need to know that what you may be seeing is filtered through human eyes and hands. ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’ is as true today as it was when the term was coined. Moving pictures are even more so. When you see those pictures and hear the words that come to you every day through the television, over the radio, and on the computer, you might ask “is this the whole story.” I can tell you that nearly every time, it isn’t.

The little girl in that classroom in northern South Carolina was “dead-on bullseye” with what she wrote. I see that every day the insurgency becomes more desperate, while becoming more organized. At the same time, I see an Iraqi army building from the ashes of a force of a police state that was used to subjugate, torture and murder tens of thousands of Iraqis, and to wage unjust and inept wars on Iran and Kuwait. It is a slow process, but it is happening. Don’t be fooled.

Iraq, as one of my superiors so aptly stated, “is doable.” He served in Vietnam and served as the First Sergeant of a sister unit that served in Iraq. The only stipulation: The nation must have the political and moral will to finish the job. Despite what you see and hear in the media, all is not all gloom and doom in Iraq. The terrorists and insurgents are being pushed to the limit, the people are willing and able to rebuild Iraq, and we can help them to do it.

Hopefully, the media will listen to a little girl and you’ll begin to hear the whole truth of the struggle in Iraq.

I won’t hold my breath waiting for it, though.

IF YOU DON’T FIGHT YOU LOSE

I originally penned this during the time I was in Iraq (2004-2005 for Operation Iraqi Freedom III), but it is still a valid piece. So I present it here now.

I’ve been reading in the papers both in Iraq and here at home a lot of things about the Iraq war. The one thing that jumps out is the effort to set a hard timetable for withdrawal, or even to simply get out now. Surprisingly, especially when it comes to the politicos taking up this mantle, these people should know better.

Now, I understand that Americans hate war. I hate war. I, my brother and father, my grandfather and his grandfather have all been to war. We all hated war. It is an ugly, nasty, terrible thing. I didn’t want to go and I don’t want to go to another. But, if I am told to do so I will. I do know one thing that is certain in this world – If you don’t fight you lose. And if you lose, the people who beat you TELL you how to live. No, they FORCE you. This really is a bad thing. Just ask the Czechs, Slovakians, Poles, Jews, Gypsies, Dutch, Belgians, French, Danes, Norwegians, Yugoslavians, Albanians, Greeks, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Ukrainians, and Russians who fell to the might of the Nazi juggernaut in World War II. If it weren’t for an overzealous Japan forcing the American sleeping giant into the war, all of Europe and Asia could quite well be under Fascist control today. It took a destructive sneak attack at Pearl Harbor to bring America to reality.

Then ask the Czechs, Slovakians, Poles, Yugoslavians, Albanians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, and Ukrainians (again) who felt the weight of Soviet oppression. It took the fear of nuclear attack, a slow economic war, and some hot wars – the Greek Civil War, Korea, Vietnam, Angola, Nicaragua, El Salvador and others - to finally destroy the Evil Empire. It will take at least another generation for Russia, the other former Soviet republics, and Eastern Europe to overcome the social, economic and political stagnation and destruction wrought upon them.
I can also tell you that the Ba’athist regime of Saddam Hussein was as much a Fascist regime as any that was bred in Europe. It is said by some that Hussein admired both Hitler and the late Soviet leader Josef Stalin. Like Hitler and Stalin, Hussein attacked his neighbors, murdered ethnic and religious opponents, and systematically murdered thousands of citizens of his own country – even going so far as to gas Kurds much as Hitler gassed Jews.

America’s greatest military and foreign policy problems stem directly from the legacy of the war in Vietnam. A military success for much of the sixties, and a political disaster for much of the war, Vietnam established the American reputation to the world as the greatest world power ever known, and that we, incidentally, will cut and run.

We have a unique opportunity in Iraq. We can place power in the hands of the Iraqi people, and with that show the rest of the Middle East’s people that they can have a say in what happens in their nations. That’s a radical concept everywhere there, except in Israel and perhaps Lebanon. The stabilizing effect of the democratization of Iraq on the region could have long-lasting implications in an area of the planet second only to Africa in the corruption and mismanagement of their governments.

Or, we Americans can do what we have done for the past thirty-five years. Pack up and go home with our metaphorical tails between our legs, leaving the death of every American who has died in Lebanon, Somalia and Haiti, and now here in Iraq, in vain. Nothing, in the eyes of this soldier, is more cruel, destructive, and unjust than sacrificing our troops to a cause that we are unwilling to complete. Today Lebanon is struggling to reestablish a national identity after a long and destructive civil war and Somalia is a basket case. We left before the mission was complete. It is the same in Haiti where we did even worse by turning over the nation and its people to the most corrupt international entity on earth – the United Nations. Haiti is quite arguably worse off today than it was when we ousted the military junta that had overthrown President Jean Bertrand Aristide.

As a soldier, I must ask the nation, “Are you willing to throw away the sacrifices and efforts of brave, dedicated troops who have given their lives for the cause of justice?” Every war that the United States has fought and won in the last seven-plus decades has ended with the stabilization of the country, the rebuilding of its government along democratic lines, and the rebuilding of the nation and its infrastructure. This model has led to the most peaceful periods that Europe and the Far East have ever experienced. This can’t be coincidental and it’s not.

The United States has established a standard for the world from which we cannot back down. The people of the world expect America to rebuild Iraq and leave it better than we found it. Why? Because it is what America does and has done for around a century. We are a stronger and better nation, and so too the world, for our post-war efforts in Japan, Europe, Korea, and even El Salvador and Bosnia. Peace and democracy are flourishing there. Those nations where we allowed our troops to die vainly, failing to follow through - Somalia, Haiti and Lebanon - continue to struggle politically, socially and economically. We and the world continue to spend time, effort and money to fix the problems we sent our men and women to fix too long ago. These problems would very probably have been dealt with had the USA the wherewithal to finish the job we started.

So, again, are we willing to allow the deaths of American troops to be in vain, or will we finish the job that we’ve set out to do? The cause there is just. The Iraqi people are as deserving as any in the world. By what moral compass should we leave this nation to terrorists, thugs and murderers?

America, don’t allow my brothers and sisters - soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen and coast guardsmen all - to die in vain. We must finish this task. It is morally, politically, financially and militarily right. And we must prove to these terrorists – and the rest of the world – that we can STILL finish a fight. They won’t believe it unless we do.