We just finished a 12-Day War in which all sides claimed victory and a President claimed to have masterminded the most complex military strike in history which also ended the war. All three leaders of the nations involved claimed victory. Will the real truth teller(s) please stand up?
The 12-Day War was started because the Israeli Prime Minister claimed that Iran was on the verge of creating nuclear weapons that would be used to utterly destroy his own nation. BTW, he has been making that claim for decades but now he has found a willing partner in the White House to act on his claims. And now he claims that what his nation and the US did will change history in the Middle East. Besides the fact that we are talking about changing one prediction for the future, we need to ask the Rocket J. Squirrel question regarding that change: Is it friendly change?
We have heard other claims too but let's just consider the ones above. Which claims are true and which ones are false. We should note that all key national leaders have political reasons for claiming victory. While the approval ratings of the Israeli Prime Minister and President Trump have been sliding down, the Iranian leader could possibly face possible removal if the war went too far south. And so each of these leaders have reasons to interpret the war opportunistically.
As adults, we have a sound reasons for ignoring the claims made by all opportunists whether they are made by national leaders, their supporters, or their critics. Instead, we should let time determine what we should believe. And indeed, time has already spoken on some of those claims. For example, intelligence garnered and interpreted by our military says that the damage done by our 'Bunker-Busting Bombs' was not as great as the President claimed it was. This caused the President to lash out at that intelligence information and double-down on his claims. Again, who is right? Time will tell.
In the meantime, one lesson from the 12-Day War is clear: the powerful need friends, not enablers. The difference between the two is that friends tell us the truth in order to help us; enablers tell us what we want to hear for their own sake. The problem that exists here is that the powerful are often all too eager to see enablers as friends and friends as mortal enemies. What we see with each of the key leaders in the 12-Day War is that their lust for power and, for 2 of those leaders, their desire to outrun the laws of their own nation have blinded them so that they are unable to distinguish between friends and enablers. And so we should further define our terms here.
We could define an enabler as a person who contributes to another person's efforts to perform malevolent or unhealthy actions. In contrast to that, a friend will not only help make another person do what is good or healthy, a friend will speak out against those actions that are immoral or unhealthy.
Unfortunately, national and other leaders who are focussed on garnering as much power as they can tend to surround themselves with enablers. Here we could compare and contrast the current set of enablers who currently serve in Trump's Cabinet from most of those who served in his Cabinet during his first term. Many of Trump's Cabinet members who served during his first Presidential term insisted on telling Trump the truth. In so doing, they acted as his friends and faithful advisors. Most of Trump's current Cabinet advisors are acting as his enablers in order to enjoy riding in on his coattails. Tulsi Gabbard, Trump's Director of National Intelligence has, regarding the effectiveness of American airstrikes on Iran's nuclear facilities, decided to speak truth to power and report what her intelligence resources shared with her. Of course a question becomes what will her future job status be.
Both enablers and many opponents act as opportunists. While enablers are more than eager to provide either positive spins on or deny potentially damaging news and stories, opponents provide either negative spins on or deny favorable news and stories. Both are way too eager to accept the first news report or story that serves their purposes.
At this point, those of us who are Christians have choices to make. As has been made apparent by the facts, most of my fellow religiously conservative Christians voted for Trump and many of them still support his Presidency. They need to choose being a friend to the President rather than an enabler.
Those of us religiously conservative Christians who oppose some of policies or his whole Presidency have choices to make too. We must choose to be Trump's opponents who are also his friends. That means that we oppose his policies and even his Presidency while caring about him as a person. But we must also choose to resist the temptation to be the opportunists with the news like his opportunists are.
We religiously conservative Christians need to take such an approach to President Trump for a few reasons. The first reason is that our regard for and treatment of Trump must reflect how God has treated us in Christ. If God has not treated us as our sins deserve, then how dare we not do the same for those in our lives including our public officials. Because of that, we religiously conservative Christians cannot respond to our government with the animosity and rancor that many unbelieving fellow opponents to Trump often respond with. Here, though forgiven, it is important for us Christians to remember the sins we have committed in the past so that we understand what we are capable of doing in the future. Such understanding can help us to properly respond to our leaders when they do what is wrong.
The second reason is that the Scriptures tell us to respect those in authority over us. Many times, that respect includes obedience. But when our government practices or promotes social injustices, either domestic or foreign, then we need to speak out and sometimes engage in civil disobedience.
The third reason for us religiously conservative Christians must avoid being opportunists with the news is the prohibition against bearing false witness that one of the Ten Commandments warns against. Being too quick to comment on the news can lead us to, because of carelessness and overeagerness, to bear false witness against those in power.
Certainly, it should be clear by now that our President and the Prime Minister of Israel are pursuing pathological policies. The attacks on Iran are an example of those pathological policies. Iran posed no immediate threat to the existence of Israel. That is despite the atrocities that it enables through its proxies. We need to ask whether Israel's Occupation and treatment of the Palestinians is the driving cause for Iran's opposition to the current form of Zionism that Israel passionately embraces. After all, the Occupation serves as camouflage for Israel's often brutal ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the land. And Trump joined in Netanyahu's pathological practices by being Israel's tag-team bombing partner in the 12-Day War along with his support for Netanyahu's unconscionable war against Gaza where civilians are daily slaughtered with no remorse. As Rita Corriel wrote in an article on Israel, and this was written a while ago, Israel is showing that they have learned more from their oppressors than from the experience of being oppressed (click here for the article).
What about Trump? His immigration policies alone show an extreme favoritism toward those who already have more than enough as well as a cruel disposition toward many who emigrated here to escape life-threatening poverty and/or violence in their own countries that are south of the border. His immigration policies not only look to deport people, but to deport many without due process to nations that practice cruelty on its own prisoners. And Trump's deportation of immigrants has not taken sufficient care to distinguish between law-biding immigrants from those with criminal records.
His big beautiful bill shows the same kind and similar level of favoritism as he wants tax cuts for the wealthy at the expense of social safety net programs that serve those in need. Trump's tariffs shows his approach to foreign policy to being that of shoot or threaten first hoping that his targets will grovel to make a deal second.
And what Netanyahu and Trump also share is their attempts to use their positions in government to outrun the law with the former having been investigated for corruption and the latter being a convicted felon. Is either one morally superior to Putin who brutally suppresses political support at home and has his military slaughtering civilians in Ukraine?
What leaders like Trump, Putin, and Netanyahu teach us is that the powerful are, on a practical level, above international law while the rest are not. That the powerful only need to make claims about threats and injustices made by the weak in order to move against them without having to rely on international due process to attack. And so here we can conclude that power hungry leaders like Trump, Putin, and Netanyahu need help, not power. But they are getting the latter thanks, in large part, to their enablers.
Thus, we need to avoid being enablers for leaders like Trump and Netanyahu. We could also include Putin and Iran's leader, Ali Khamenei, and a host of others And one way to avoid being such an enablers is to refuse to be opportunistic with the news.
And how can we avoid being opportunistic with the news? One of the first ways by which we can avoid doing so is to be patient. We need to let time tell which claims are true and which ones are false. And that means not being eager to selectively report the first tidbit of news that favors our own agendas and perceptions. The more we let time speak, the more complete will be our knowledge and understanding of the world around us.
