America Invades Venezuela

It hasn't quite happened yet.

But it's highly likely.

So likely, in fact, that in two of the last three novel manuscripts I've sent to my agent, it's a given.  They're both set in the near future, and both operate under the assumption that we've gone into the Big Sticky to liberate all that oil.  In the one I wrote in 2019, our invasion costs more lives than expected, which stirs us to build more AI systems to reduce all the pesky bad publicity.  Which, of course, leads to the robot uprising.  In the one I wrote in 2020, a vet struggles to right his life after a crippling non-combat injury sends him into a spiral of addiction.  He writes a novel that reimagines his life and injury in a heroic way, which, of course, includes aliens.  Where was he injured?  Venezuela.  Where was his alter-ego injured?  Venezuela.  

None of that sparked interest among publishers, though.   Ah well.  So it goes.

Since Venezuela discovered it was sitting on the largest remaining reserve of oil on the planet, an American invasion has seemed a possible future.  The probability of that conflict required several factors to shift, though.

First, were we able to kick our national addiction to fossil fuels?  O Lord no.  Sure, we've gotten around that as a short-term challenge.  America is now the world's largest oil producer, as we've used hydraulic fracturing to access deep new resources beneath our own soil.  But while fracking is an engineering marvel, it's also an end-stage technology.  Once we're done, we're bone dry.  That, and it's expensive.  Fracked oil is hard to get to, and requires far more work to refine.  In order to make a profit from fracked oil, the cost of a barrel of the good stuff needs to be well above seventy bucks, which puts fuel prices at a politically punitive level.  Were we playing the long game, we'd be well into the transition away from our dependence.  Efforts to begin that transition were met by howls of protest from the reactionary right, and picked up by populist hucksters, all of whom are well funded by the fossil fuel companies.  We're just as addicted as ever.  Without cheap fuel, our already tottering economy would collapse.

Second, do we as a nation have a moral compass?  Are we, in other words, a decent and honorable people?  A nation that invades another nation to take their resources...openly, transparently, obviously...isn't an honorable nation.  For decades, the enemies of the United States claimed that we're a decadent, corrupt, "imperialist" monster.   Now, we are that monster, because Donald J. Trump is precisely the sort of person who takes what he wants, morality and honor be damned.  He speaks, thinks, and acts like a mobster.  We find that entertaining, and use that to excuse the indecency of it all.

Third, what is the likelihood of success, were we to invade?  Even an amoral brute can be dissuaded by the prospect of a thrashing, after all.  Given the comparative strengths of our militaries, the likelihood is high.  Venezuela is not China.  Their military is a small fraction the size of ours, and they aren't anywhere near as well equipped.  It'd be a rout.  

At first.  Holding and defending refineries and oil production facilities in a subjugated nation with a restive population might be a tricky wicket, particularly as it'd give our geopolitical adversaries the opportunity to bleed us a little bit.  But who cares about the long term?  If we were the sort of country that had any meaningful sense of the future, we'd never have elected Donald J. Trump.

Finally, are the necessary staging events occurring?  Are we prepositioning military units?  Are we producing rationales for an invasion so that supporters of our current regime can rationalize such brazen anti-republican rapaciousness?  Of course we are.  We've assembled a strike force in the Gulf of Mexico.  We've declared Venezuela a fentanyl producer, even though they're transparently not, and declared fentanyl a "weapon of mass destruction," even though it transparently isn't.  Remember when Russia was holding "military exercises" near Ukraine?  We're past that stage.  We've started blowing things up, and seizing ships.  It's all sloppily done, of course.  Messaging from the White House is an incoherent shambles, as Dear Leader both says it's all about fentanyl and at the same time can't stop publicly drooling over the oil.  We're clearly all geared up.

So will we invade?  Not necessarily.  It's not inevitable.  I hope, honestly, that we don't, and that my stories about our misadventures in The Big Sticky describe a future that never comes to pass.

But it feels very, very likely now.

When The Sword Opens Its Eyes

The last few days, I've been reading more about the increasing use of drone and robotic tech in America's military.  Even with our conveniently marginalized all-volunteer army, it's still difficult to justify shedding blood in regions of the world where the hatred seems to hang in the air like the dust, and corruption and tribalism are etched into the rocky soil.

So increasingly, we're getting machines to do it for us.  Our Predators and Reapers prowl the skies, implacable, inhuman, unkillable, for all the world mirroring the Mechanical Hounds of Ray Bradbury's prescient Fahrenheit 451.

The Central Intelligence Agency oversees most drone strikes, which has the interesting effect of making it now a fully functioning branch of the United States Military.  The head count from drone strikes continues to rise, and is now well up into the thousands.

They are an increasingly effective way to kill from the safety of your cubicle.  But as we ramp up the strikes, and increase the number of drones, we're finding their effectiveness hampered by the limitations of their human overseers.  Humans need to go for coffee.  And nap.  And sometimes, they might not act quickly enough, and that Hellfire might not take down its target.

So the new goal is to create combat systems that can autonomously assess threat levels and autonomously act to eliminate that threat.  Meaning, hunter-killer robots.  We're not there yet, but we're close.  This has caused some consternation amongst those who for some reason are stressed by the idea of implacable inhuman killing machines.  I mean, why?  It's not like they'll just go berzerk and kill us.

There is much hum and clucking about the need to put clear parameters in place to define the ethical use of such machines.  There's also earnest concern that we program ethics into the machines, so that they adhere to the rules of war, accept surrender, don't harvest us for our precious bodily fluids, and other stuff like that.  It's a new era for ethicists, they say.

Here, though, I find myself doubting that.  War is war.  War never changes.  That a new technology is transforming the ability to project lethal force is without question.  But that has happened before.

It's like the arrival of the stirrup, which allowed archers and swordsmen to strike on the move.  Or like iron, which the Philistines used to cut through the bronze armor of their opponents.  Or the longbow, which tore through the cavalry at Agincourt.  Or the Panzers and Stukas of Blitzkrieg.  Or Fat Man and Little Boy.

The ethics of coercive power remain the same.  The relationship between that ethic and the ethic of Christ remains the same.

But then, perhaps that's what worries us.   What if the sword opens its eyes, and understands its purpose?

How We Can Save Three. Hundred. Billion. Dollars.

As our current POTUS starts spooling up a semi-serious response to dealing with the deficit...an issue that has been kicking around since I was a child...I find myself preparing to be unsurprised by one nearly inevitable outcome.

Cutbacks will be proposed, of course.  Some tax hits for the richest of the rich and major corporations will be pitched out there, right on cue for the 2012 election cycle.  But one particular thing is unlikely to be brought to the table.  Obama is unlikely to address our out of control military spending.

Yes, we all Support Our Troops (tm).  We all love America, and want her to be safe and secure.

But there is simply no sane argument for our current level of military spending.  None whatsoever.  Where we are, as 2009, is in a place where we spend $687 Billion dollars every year for our military.

As context, in 2009, number two in the military spending race was China.  The People's Republic of Selling Us Stuff That We Used Make Ourselves devoted $114 Billion dollars to their various military branches in Oh Nine.  Next up was France, at $61 Billion, and then Great Britain, at $57 billion and change.

Using a little second grade math, we see that...hmm...we spend...ahh...hold on...got it!  We spend almost exactly six times as much on our military as China.   Assuming that spending equals military competence on the field of battle (dubious, I know, but let's run with it), America might be taxed in a military exchange in which we found ourselves faced by a hostile coalition comprised of China, France, the UK, Russia, Japan, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Italy, India, Brazil, South Korea, Canada, Australia, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Israel, the Netherlands, Greece, Columbia, Taiwan, and Poland.   Those militaries, combined, are roughly a match for ours on a dollars-spent basis.

Is that the future for which we are preparing?

'Cause if it ain't, what in the Sam Hill do we think we're doing?

There is no reason for a Constitutional Republic to be so inordinately overarmed.  Were we an imperial power, or an expansionist fascist state, I could see the rationale.  It would be an evil rationale, but at least it would jibe with the broader story we tell ourselves about the values of our nation.  Now, though...we've got a coherence problem.

John Boehner's basement...and he's still afraid...

Yeah, yeah, we all like to feel secure and strong.  But at a certain point, feeling insecure stops being about reality, and starts indicating that there's some real mental problems going on.  We are, as a nation, just a little crazy.  Those who argue that our current level of spending is necessary for our defense are like that highly twitchy neighbor down the street who has a wall-full of AR-15s, a man-portable M-134, and 15,000 rounds of assorted ammunition in his basement because he's sure someone is out to get him.

We do not want to be that guy, no matter what John Boehner says.

What would make the most sense from a budgetary standpoint...not that it will happen, of course...is standing down our imperial army.  But to what level?

Let's imagine, for a moment, that our warfighters aren't the best in the world.  Blasphemy, I know, but it's just a thought exercise.  We can say forty Hail Pattons when we're through to make amends.

Let's say that the Chinese...the number two world power...could defeat America if we spent the same amount on our military as they do.  Yeah, we're not at war, or even formally enemies, but no-one wants America to be defeated.

So what if we spend twice as much as the People's Republic of China?  Would we feel secure being twice as armed as they are?

No?  Really?  Their command of kung fu coupled with their ability to put on some really amazingly coordinated Olympic opening events has you a little freaked out?   Alright, you wuss.  How about we spend three times as much as China?  For every one gun they have, we have three.   For every tank, we have three...or one that is three times as good.

And remember, our soldiers are the Best In The World.  Right?  Right?  Don't tell me you don't think so!  Given three times the resources, the men and women of the United States Military couldn't prevail?  You aren't going there, are you, my friend?

I thought not.

That would mean savings, on an annual basis, of nearly $300 Billion dollars that our government currently spends...and doesn't have. 


Sigh.  I really wish America wasn't so totally insane.

The Meaning of War

As American missiles rain down on the outskirts of Tripoli, and French and British jets begin the enforcement of a "no fly zone," I find myself really struggling with what Western leaders are saying.  For all of the protestations of concern for the well-being of the Libyan people coming from the mouths of Western leaders, I just can't bring myself to buy it.

The Libyan rebels are not, as some have misidentified them, freedom fighters.  Best I can tell, they are a random assemblage of folks who don't like Gaddafi.  That includes some liberal and progressive sorts who justifiably felt oppressed by his despotism.  But it also appears to include plenty of people who don't like him because they are from different tribal regions than his base, or who oppose him because he's a basically secular dictator and they are radically fundamentalist.   The rebels are an inchoate mess.  Images of them show functionally zero command and control, and no training.  They seem to be good at milling around in clusters, or firing semi-randomly at things, or running for cover. 

Gaddafi is hardly someone whose grasp on power I would support.  His regime has been kicking around forever.  Gaddafi's Libya doesn't have many friends in the Arab world, where his secular state socialism puts him out of sync with both the monarchists and the theocrats.  He's also almost universally disliked in Europe's social democracies, thanks to his support of some rather unpleasant terror activities.  We don't like him much, either, and for good reason.

But what we're seeing now is not about our concern the liberty of the poor oppressed people of Libya.  We aren't, as one commentator absurdly put it, siding with freedom fighters against a cruel and oppressive tyrant suppressing his people by force.  That is not why we are there, and not why the French are there, and not why the Brits are there.

We are there because of the oil.  There is no other national interest involved.

Of course, we won't hear this from our leaders.  Such a rationale seems too crass and self serving.  It makes us seem ignoble.   But were our noble rhetoric matched with action consistently, we'd have been on the ground in the Sudan for a decade.  The difference is petrochemical.  This is a clear and golden opportunity to replace the quixotic and suddenly vulnerable despot of an oil rich state with someone more beholden to the West for their grasp on power.   That new leadership will, of course, insure that some or all of Libya's significant reserves of oil are in the hands of a friend in this post-peak-oil time of dwindling resources.

So to do this, we have gone to war.  We are at war in Libya.  Now, we deny this.  We're just acting in an international coalition in a tactical and measured operation to protect the civilians of Libya.  But the actuality of it is clearly different.   War is the use of coordinated and intentional lethal and coercive force in a struggle for land or materiel between nation states.  That is what we are doing.  To argue otherwise is absurd.

Let us for a moment imagine that an international coalition...Canada, Belgium, and Costa Rica...had just levelled Andrews and Quantico.  The East Wing was in flames, punctured by a Canadian cruise missile.  The surface to air missile batteries that ring the nation's capital...they do, you know...were in ruins.   Belgian Sopwith Camels buzz ominously overhead.

Would we be at war?  Would we perceive ourselves as being at war?  Of course.  So what we are doing meets every set of criteria for war.  That we haven't taken certain formal constitutional steps is immaterial.  Reality is reality.

And in the reality of war, what a nation says never matches it's actions.  You say you're going to do one thing.  You do another, unanticipated thing.  In Sun Tzu's the Art of War, that ancient guide to the essence of effectively applying coercive power, this is made clear.  Let no one really know what you are doing, not even your own people.  Especially not your own people.

It's for this reason that America's "support role" means that we lob Tomahawk missiles at Libya by the hundreds.   It's for this reason that our "support role" involves British and French jets relying on us for targeting and mission coordination.  It's for this reason that our "support role" has American military power directly involved in striking targets.  It's for that reason that our "no-fly-zone" now somehow includes tanks and trucks and personnel, which only fly...briefly...after we've hit them with a JDAM.  It's for that reason that our "no-fly-zone" includes taking out Gaddafi's command and control, by which we mean taking out Gaddafi himself.

If it looks like a war, and smells like a war, and burns like a war, and kills like a war, it's war.

The Shadow of the Sword

As the streets of Egypt continue to roar and rumble with the discontent of the Egyptian people, most of the online chatter I hear from my progressive and liberal brethren and sistren seems to be enthusiastic.  Mubarak was, without question, a despot and an autocrat.  He was the classic military dictator, ruling his nation through the power of his connection with the armed forces and some pretty heavy-handed police-state unpleasantness.  For Americans, he seems no friend of democracy or tolerance.

But the challenge we face as Americans is that he was our despot.  His power is a reflection of ours.  Mubarak's armed forces were and are largely equipped and trained and supplied by the United States.   Those M-1 Abrams tanks we see rumbling the streets of Cairo are built in Egypt under contract with General Dynamics. 

Now that Mubarak is certainly gone, the protection his fist of American iron provided to minority groups in Egypt may also soon be gone.  Here, I'm thinking of the largest remaining Arab-world population of Christians.  The Coptic Christian community is ancient, and is 8 million people strong.  It's about 10% of the overall population of Egypt.

They look at the entropy on the streets, and they don't see the Velvet Revolution that freed the former Czechoslovakia from repressive communist rule.  They don't see the same peaceful and passionately democratic impetus.  It's just anger and frustration at decades of repression and decay.  It could be good, sure.  That is my hope and prayer.  But to my eyes, it is functionally leaderless, a populist venting that could quickly sour.  Revolutions against despotism may seem exciting in the abstract, but they are all too frequently horrors, populated by the glazed eyed depredations of Jacobins and Bolsheviks.  And the Al-Ikhwan would all too happily take Egypt to that familiar bloodstained room.

The Copts know this.  It isn't that they loved Mubarak.  There wasn't much to love.

But following the collapse of a despot, elements of a society that have only been held back by the power of the sword can rise up and prey on those they view as enemies, or scapegoats, or unbelievers.  The Christian community in Egypt is justifiably worried about this.

It's a reality that we as comfortable American Christians just can't quite grasp.  We look to a despot, and we see an oppressor, someone who must be overthrown.  But for as much as we hate government...particularly and justifiably dictatorial governments...the chaos engendered by mob rule and the rise of movements that direct popular anger against a convenient "other" are often equally unjust.

For Christian faith, this seems a dilemma of sorts.  We have a challenging relationship with power.  The power of the sword is not the power of Christ, and has been set against the purposes of his Reign since the moment He challenged it.

But while we do not live by the sword, even the most uncompromisingly committed of us live in its shadow.  Take, for example, the Amish.  They are, without question, followers of Jesus who take his uncategorical rejection of violence seriously.  They will not bring harm to another, even to protect themselves.

Yet they are, as we are, under the protection of the sword as wielded by our Republic.   The laws that provide a balance of justice between us, preventing violence and predation, those laws protect...even those of us who have moved on to the one Law.  

It has always been...and will remain...an awkward tension.

Toy Guns

This last weekend, I served as the Party Bus Dad for a minivan full of boys. My little guy was turning 10, and rather than one event, he wanted a smorgasbord of a party, a great heaping tapas plate of fun.

Stop number one on this multi-event delight involved unloading my bad self and six fired-up pre-teens at the local laser tag emporium. Both of my boys, and their dad, are most fond of laser tag. It's a hoot. The tactics and strategery of simulated combat are exhilarating. It doesn't hurt that we're not half-bad at it. Of the 45 players in the arena that afternoon, my oldest son rocked the highest score, my little guy came in slightly behind, and yours truly...who specializes in lower-scoring base defense...came in third. Our team, "Team Green," managed to completely rout our opponents. Of course, they were mostly panicked clusters of eight year olds whose grasp of close quarters combat tactics were woefully lacking, but why let a little detail like that dilute the glory? Hoooah!

That fascination with things martial extends deeply into the games my boys play. And, frankly, the games I play. Unlike many progressive parents, who hover and micromanage and try to get their boys to play with happy homemaker sets, I'm quite happy to have my pups charging around with giant squirtguns, or firing Nerf projectiles at one another. I, too, was once a boy. So long as they're aware of the difference between toys and real weapons, aware of the deep difference in cost between play combat and the blood and muck of real war, they know what they need to know.

I do wonder, though, just how many Americans grasp that difference. That wondering particularly applies to members of our Tea Party movement. One of the more dominant threads in American conservatism is the Second Amendment thread. It asserts, as was the intent of the folks who wrote that portion of our constitution, that unrestricted ownership of firearms is necessary if citizen soldiers are to be prepared to defend our nation. Every once in a while, one of the more...um...earnest folks who are affiliated with that movement will darkly grumble about the need for us to have that Glock in our dresser drawer to throw off the yoke of tyrants.

I understand that desire to defend the homestead and the nation. I also understand that fascination with weapons. What I can't quite understand is how you can 1) support gun ownership on the basis of the second amendment and 2) be utterly and uncritically supportive of our current approach to national security. America's warfighters are, by the standards of militaries throughout history, without parallel. Our immense and sprawling defense budget may include a whole bunch of waste, but it has also produced the single most ferocious fighting force in human history.

Because of our engagement in Afghanistan, that budget is increasingly dedicated to developing tools for use against insurgent populations and local militia. Sophisticated drones and Joint Direct Attack Munitions are really rather effective at disposing of little groups of human beings bearing small arms. We're a very short step away from a revolution in military robotics, one that is being actively funded and pursued and could be the biggest game-changer since iron swords sliced through bronze shields like they was buttah. The fantasy of local militia being able to put up any kind of meaningful resistance against an unfettered mid-21st century army is just that. A fantasy.

What I just can't quite figure out is how folks who ferociously proclaim that they own small arms because they don't trust the government to provide health care are simultaneously eager to provide that same government with the most impressive destructive tools in the history of humankind.

Human beings are strange, strange creatures.

A Reasonable Decision in Our National Interest

There's been a tension here in D.C. lately that troubles me. Well, there've been many tensions, but this one bugs me more than about 74.375% of other issues. On the surface, it's a little budget thing, but it feels to my admittedly overtuned sensibilities like a harbinger of a potential future. Let me elucidate, and you can tell me if I'm being paranoid. I do tend to be that way, you know.

There is a disagreement rumbling around the community here in DC between the Department of Defense and the Congress. The Secretary of Defense is deeply aware of the major crisis that our national debt will eventually cause. Defense Secretary Gates is particularly concerned that the military will be impacted by this debt, and is pressing for some reductions in military spending. In particular, he wants pay increases and benefits for our troops to be limited to a level that's rationally sustainable. There are also several weapons systems that both he and top military brass want discontinued as cost-savings measures, like the development of an unnecessary new engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter or building unneeded transport aircraft.

Arrayed against Gates and top military brass are our elected representatives in Congress. Congressmen and women want to be seen as Supporting Our Troops (tm), and have passed numerous laws increasing the mandated benefits for troops and vets and their families. That's a surefire way to get votes, kids. Surefire vote-getting way number two is to make sure that the defense contractors who have positioned factories and offices in their districts continue to produce the weapons systems that produce jobs for folks who vote.

They haven't raised revenue to pay for those expenses, of course. That would mean breaking their promise to Never Raise Your Taxes (tm). It's not one or two members of Congress who do this. It's the nature of the critter. This is just how our representative democracy works. It may also be how representative democracy finally fails.

I'm pretty progressive, and would unabashedly accept the label "liberal." But when I see this disagreement between our unelected military leaders and our elected representatives, I find myself thinking the military is willing to act in the national interest, and Congress is not. By focusing on their own electability and narrowly drawn local interests, our representatives are making decisions that will cripple us as a nation. This seems obvious. They only do this because we make them do it, of course, but we'd rather forget that. Top brass, well, they're making the hard decisions that need to get made. It's the way the military works. That I should have that response is telling.

What worries me, seeing this, is that eventually the debt will hit the fan. We might see massive cutbacks in spending coupled with an increase in taxes. This would be painful, but would preserve the integrity of our republic. Being the pessimist that I am, I doubt this will happen. We would never, ever, ever elect anyone who would do this. If someone slipped through and started making the changes necessary to turn our debt around, we'd run 'em out on a rail.

More likely, we'll eventually see some form of default. When that happens, things will get bad in a way that makes the market seizure of 2008-2009 look like salad days. In that atmosphere of genuine crisis, I can see...and to a certain extent, feel...the temptation to set aside a clearly broken system of governance for one that gets the job done. If it's an emergency, then emergency measures would need to be taken for the security and well-being of the nation. Would we trust Congress to do this?

Or would we, perhaps, see how patriotic and hard-nosed and well-organized the decisions made by our military leaders can be in a time of crisis? Why not turn things over to them for a while, you know, until things have improved?

I can see how people might think this was a reasonable decision in our national interest.

The King You Have Chosen

During a conversation last night with another pastor who serves a congregation here in the Washington Metropolitan area, we found ourselves noting just how...well...rich everyone in DC is. Not everyone, mind you. There is plenty of poverty here. But when you step back for a second and look at the population in and around our nation's capital, you realize just how much money there is here.

That foundation of wealth just got a little bump upwards this week, as defense contracting giant Northrop Grumman committed to relocating it's headquarters to the Virginia suburbs of Washington. In fact, they're likely to locate themselves within walking distance of my home, right near my high school, in an office park where me and the missus...well...we used to...err..."hang out" in the empty parking lots there on occasion when we were dating. You know, talking about politics.

Ahem.

In the Forbes list of the wealthiest counties in the United States, for instance, six out of the top ten counties are here around the Beltway. That's a supermajority of American wealth, kids, the kind of majority that lets you ram any legislation you want through the hallowed [buttocks] of the Senate. Loudon, Fairfax, Howard, Fairfax City, Arlington, and Montgomery all have pretty stunning levels of wealth. How stunning? The median household income here in Fairfax is $106,000. Nearby Loudon County has us beat, with a median household income of $110,000. That's more than twice the national average.

Now, many of those households are two-income. Many fall below that level. It is worth noting that the folks who skew that median upwards are not federal workers, but rather the impressive array of industry lawyers and industry lobbyists and defense contractors. Civil servants aren't the folks living in the 10,000 square foot homes in Potomac and Loudon. Associate Vice Presidents of General Dynamics and Executive Counsels for Lockheed Martin are.

Honestly, though, the blame for this peculiar skewing of wealth to the power elites lies not with the increasingly fat cats here in Washington. This, my fellow Americans, is the government you want.

It's right there in the Bible, in 1 Samuel 8. We Americans have an obsession with defending ourselves, with being sure that we have the weapons and organization needed to protect our national interests. That's why military spending, which is the primary generator of inside-the-Beltway wealth, is entirely off the table as we consider ways to reduce our insane national debt. Only slightly crazy folks out on the margins like myself even think about cutting military spending.

That obsession should be familiar. It is the very same desire that spurred the demand of the Israelites for a king. We want that centralized power, because in that centralized power lies our ability to organize and plan and research the various ways to crush America's enemies under the boots of our shiny new orbital battle platform.

But, as with any king, our demand for that power has a cost:

This is what the king who will reign over you will do: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive grows and give them to his attendants. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. Your menservants and maidservants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day. (1 Samuel 8:11-18)

Jerusalem and Washington. Saul and the Military Industrial Complex. Six of one, a half dozen of the other.

For a nation purportedly steeped in Judeo-Christian values, it's impressive how utterly clueless we are about this.

"Those who do not know the Bible are doomed to repeat it."