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How to Win a War

America could possibly be on the brink of war with Iran. It may be mere coincidence that three Naval Groups are now in the Persian Gulf area. It is not unusual for America to keep one of its fleets there, nor is it unusual to see fleets rotated. In this case the Enterprise group has been stationed there for some time, and it is now supposed to be replaced by the Eisenhower group.

But coincidentally (?) the Iwo Jima group happens to be in the area as well, conducting military exercises in Kuwait with the Jordanians. This may prove to be a chance occurrence, of course, but if America's war planners were secretly planning a war, they would certainly want to build up their strike capability under cover of plausible excuses. This makes the present situation an opportune time for war, if they have so planned it.

The fact that the Eisenhower group was sent before its scheduled time, and that its crew was given only a one-week notice, does nothing to put our minds at ease. The crew was not at all happy about this sudden deployment.

Another factor that some may consider to be important is that we are nearing an election in which the ruling party might be seeing itself in trouble at the polls and may feel the need to do something to rally support. Wars tend to provide such a reward, as long as it can be assumed that the other side started the war.

This brings me to the point that I have made in earlier web logs. America has a long history of starting or at least provoking wars but blaming the other side for it. To my knowledge, Iran has no history of doing this. With all this experience, we have shown our capability in such tactics. There are now reports being leaked to the pro-Zionist Debka-file reporters that Iran does not plan to sit around and wait for America to attack. They are implying that Iran will attack American ships first in a pre-emptive strike.

But is this really true? I doubt that Iran is that stupid. On the other hand, I do not trust our own pro-Zionist government, which clearly wants a war with Iran and Syria in order to protect the Israeli state from nations that threaten its existence. Our government has the motive and the past history to make me mistrust it. Provoking Iran is easy, because we only have to tweak their pride to put them up in arms. What is not clear is if we can provoke them into actually attacking prior to the November elections.

If not, then there is likely a Plan B, which is a small strike against Iran that can always be denied as Iranian propaganda if they claim that we struck first. All that is required in this case is that the Iranian president be painted in the media as a madman and a liar. He may be both, of course, but in his recent visit to the U.N. he was interviewed by the media and came across as much more reasonable than our own President. That caused a furor for seeming to give him favorable press coverage.

America makes it a policy to isolate and marginalize "the enemy" and, above all, never talk with them, at least not in public. The fact is, we talk to those that we want to avoid fighting. We avoid those we want to fight.

In the laws of war in Deut. 20, we are not allowed to attack an enemy without first working for a peaceful solution (vs. 10). This law was written for the same reason that we must always give a suspected lawbreaker opportunity to answer the charges against him to determine guilt or innocence. We cannot simply execute him on the assumption that he is a criminal. Being tried in the media is unacceptable. Yet this is what we are doing in the case of Iran, and it is wrong.

Five years ago, when the Twin Towers were struck by planes, the whole world sympathized with us. Imagine that. We had the support of the whole world. We squandered that support when we struck back. The more we declared war, the less the world respected us. And now we are the pariah of world opinion.

How did this happen? Does the world not realize that everyone has a right to defend itself? The principle is really quite simple, even if radical. In the way the carnal mind thinks, the winner is the one who ends up killing the most people on the other side. But according to the mind of God, the real winner is the one who is willing to love.

In the way the carnal mind thinks, a nation should never allow itself to be "humiliated," for if it does not strike back, the enemy will perceive it as weakness and will do it again. This is also the gangster mentality on the streets of big cities. But according to the mind of God, humility is evidence of great strength of character. If we try to maintain our pride, rather than repent when we have done wrong, God will see to it that we are indeed humiliated, and our fall will not be pretty.

Back in January of 2001, eight months before the 9-11 disaster, a few of us were led by the Spirit to begin preparing for spiritual warfare on behalf of America. The initial battle began in late February of 2001. Within a month, we learned the names of the seven ruling spiritual princes over America and took steps to overthrow them. One of the first was the spirit of Revenge.

By late March the Lord told us to begin to pray a simple prayer, "God Bless America." By July of 2001 the spiritual warfare expanded, and on July 11 we saw (in the spirit) America being attacked. Knowing an old revelation from 20 years earlier that "July is like September," we related July 11 with September 11. The rest is history. On Sept. 11, 2001, and immediately the whole country was praying, "God Bless America."

What they did not understand was that to "bless" is defined in Acts 3:25, 26 as meaning "turning away every one of you from his iniquities." The attack on Sept. 11, 2001 was the answer to our prayer, and the whole country agreed with it after the event. God has been answering that prayer ever since, for this entire war scenario is designed to bring us to the place of repentance--not to the place of military victory.

For this reason, I believe the war will continue until we repent (change the mind and heart). How much humiliation will this take? I do not know, but I hope it happens sooner rather than later. We did not repent after the war in Afghanistan. We have still not repented after fighting in Iraq. Perhaps a war with Iran and Syria might bring us to that place.

I have great confidence that America will indeed repent, and that this will bring God's intervention to prevent us from utter disaster. But we are not going to win a great military victory in these wars of revenge for the 9-11 disaster. We willl win only when we align ourselves with the Kingdom of God. This will require the fall of Mystery Babylon which has ruled us for the past century. When we begin acting like Christians instead of Babylonian, we will win the respect of the whole world by the power of humility and love.

Such an approach is novel, to be sure. I find no example in history where it has ever been tried on any great scale. So perhaps I am just crazy. But in my view, this is the mentality of the Kingdom of God and the foundation of the Age of Peace that is to come. Peace will not come by force of military might, but by humility, equal justice, and love. Christ is "the desire of all nations" (Hag. 2:7), but as long as His children are no different from the rest of the world, the world will not know that He is the One they desire.

It is time for a radical change in our thinking. We must stop setting aside our Christian virtues the moment we declare war. When God removed His hand of protection from us, we ought to have inquired of Him where WE went wrong, instead of invoking His wrath upon those He raised up to spank us for our sin (in this case, particularly our unjust foreign policy).