Kamikaze Christians on the March!

Last week, an insurgency of radical lobbyists descended on our nation's capitol, pressing lawmakers to encourage Israeli expansion in the West Bank, ditch any Israeli-Palistinian peace plan, and launch a pre-emptive strike against Iran. Led by Christian ayatollah John Hagee, the jihadists of CUFI (Christians United for Israel), are hell-bent on fulfilling the Biblical prophecies of Revelations. (See Max Blumenthal's first-hand report, including video, here.)

Logic has never been a strong point of the faith-based brigades, and they demonstrate a profound deficiency of it here:

The Rapture will only occur after the climactic battle of Armageddon, when Jesus returns as mayor of Jerusalem. And this is why we must pre-emptively attack Iran--to prevent the Persian infidels from threatening Israel and kicking off Armageddon. Which leads to the question: do they really want it, or don't they?

I guess there may be some merely strategic calculation here, like the Japanese imperialists thought--if a big war is inevitable, might as well start if off with a sneak attack and get the upper hand. Compounding their crippled sense of logic, the faith-based zealots also wallow in historical ignorance--Tojo's gambit proved a disaster, almost resulting in total nuclear annihilation of his nation. And one glance at the developing trends in the Middle East should give the warmongers in both the U.S. and Israel qualms about igniting a wider war.

Mushariff's days are numbered in Pakistan, which already has the bomb, with an ineradicable Muslim fundamentalist insurgency in Waziristan. Another unprovoked Western attack on a Muslim nation--by Christians and/or Jews--would most probably crumble Mushariff's eroding foundation of support, and unite (at least temporarily) the Shiites and Sunnis worldwide in hatred for the heathen aggressors. That includes Hezbollah, still bunkered down and unbowed on Israel's northern frontier. Plenty of kamikaze fanatics willing to strap on a suitcase nuke in the event of all-out war.

For 4 years, the Iraqi insurgency has been learning how to defeat a technologically superior military force. Just as Hezbollah learned in Lebanon--lessons now being adopted by the Palestinians. The U.S. military--Israel's ultimate guarantor of security--is close to bankruptcy. Still plenty of hardware, but getting desperate for manpower.

In Israel, there are some religious zealots , convinced that the U.N. grant of 60% of Palestinian land in 1948 was insufficiently generous--the real deed to the whole property is registered in the Old Testament. But it is mainly secular Zionists in the both the U.S. and Israel, devoted to the concept of Jewish lebensraum, who are thrilled to employ the goofy CUFI crowd as useful idiots.

But they are dangerous idiots as well--their mission is mass suicide, embracing the horrors of the Apocalypse as desiderata, contemptuous of the higher brains God gave us (do nothing about global warming--it's His will), and absolutely thrilled with the prospect of a holocaust of Jews, Muslims, and Christians from non-sanctioned denominations alike. Their sick delusions are most blatantly manifest in this article of faith: that the Anti-Christ will be a peacemaker. Whereas the Prince of Peace, in his next incarnation, will be as merciless and bloodthirsty as a Mongol horseman.

I would give them, all of them--Christian, Jewish and Muslim fundamentalists alike--this advice: in a hurry to see the Savior, or the Mahdi? Just can't wait for it? And suicide is a sin? Fine. Go base jumping with a surplus WWII parachute. Go diving with sharks, a Sushi snack packed in your wetsuit. Sample some pet food from China. Whatever. You have the right to your own primitive, self-destructive beliefs. But you don't have the right to take the rest of us down with you.