Book: Thomas Merton: Peace in the Post-Christian Era

Author: Thomas Merton
Orbis Books, Maryknoll, NY, pp.165

An Excerpt from the Jacket:

“In this long-withheld manuscript, Thomas Merton identifies the readiness of many nations – led by our own – to prepare for and threaten mass murder as the most urgent moral crisis of our time. Ringing across four decades, his profound warning is more timely than tomorrow’s headlines.” Daniel Ellsberg

An Excerpt from the Book:

(Click here to read the Forward to the book)

This then in conclusion: the Christian is bound to work for peace by working against global dissolution and anarchy. Due to nationalist and revolutionary ideologies (for Communism is in fact exploiting the intense nationalism of backward peoples), a worldwide spirit of confusion and disorder is breaking up the unity and the order of civilized society.

It is true that we live in an epoch of revolution, and that the break-up and re-formation of society is inevitable. But the Christian must see that his mission is not to contribute to the blind destructive forces of annihilation which tend to destroy civilization and mankind together. He must seek to build rather than to destroy. He most orient his efforts towards world unity and not towards world division. Anyone who promotes policies of hatred and of war is working for the division and destruction of civilized mankind.

We have to be convinced that there are certain violences which the moral law absolutely forbids to all men, such as the use of torture, the killing of hostages, genocide (or the mass extermination of racial, national or other groups for no reason than that they belong to an “undesirable” category). The destruction of civilian centers by nuclear annihilation is genocide.

We have to become aware of the poisonous effect of the mass media that keep violence, cruelty and sadism constantly present to the minds of unformed and irresponsible people. We have to recognize the danger to the whole world in the fact that today the economic life of the more highly developed nations is in large part centered on the production of weapons, missiles and other engines of destruction.

We have to consider that hate propaganda, and the consistent heckling of one government by another, has always inevitably led to violent conflect. We have to recognize the implications of voting for extremist politicians who promote policies of hate. We must consider the dire effect of fanaticism and witch-hunting within our own nation. We must never forget that our most ordinary decisions may have terrible consequences.

It is no longer reasonable or right to leave all decisions to a largely anonymous power elite that is driving us all, in our passivity, towards ruin. We have to make ourselves heard.

Every individual Christian has a grave responsibility to protest clearly and forcibly against trends that lead inevitably to crimes which the Church deplores and condemns. Ambiguity, hesitation and compromise are no longer permissible. We must find some new and constructive way of settling international disputes.

It is clearly the mind of the Church that every possible effort must be made for the abolition of war, even though the theory of the “just war” and the right of legitimate self-defense remain intact. But appeal to this right must not blind us to the much higher and more urgent duty of working with all our power for peace.

This may be extraordinarily difficult. Obviously war cannot be abolished by mere wishing.

We have still time to do something about it, but the time is rapidly running out.

Table of Contents:

1. Preamble: Peace – A religious responsibility

2. Can we choose peace?

3. The dance of death

4. The Christian as peacemaker

5. War in Origen and St. Augustine

6. The legacy of Machiavelli

7. Justice in modern war

8. Religious problems of the cold war

9. Theologians an defense

10. Working for peace

11. Beyond east and west

12. Moral passivity and demonic activism

13. The scientists and nuclear war

14. Red or dead? The anatomy of a cliche

15. Christian perspectives in world crisis

16. Christian conscience and national defense

17. The Christian choice

This book has my highest reccomendations. It has helped seal my understanding of the issue of the Christian perspective on warfare once and for all.

Concerning the term "post -Christian" Merton writes this:

"Whether we like to admit it or not, we are living in a post- Christian world, that is to say a world in which Christian ideals and attitudes are relegated more and more to the minority. It is frightening to realize that the facade of Christianity which still generally survives has perhaps little or nothing behind it, and what was once called "Christian society" is more purely and simply a materialistic neopaganism with a Christian veneer... Not only non-Christians but even Christians themselves tend to dismiss the Gospel ethic on nonviolence and love as "sentimental". "

Merton's book was written in 1961 at the onset of the "Cold War" and the Vietnam conflict. Not only was it very prophetic for that time as well as this, but it recognizes the rise of the hardline neopagan pseudo- Christianity that holds sway in today's toxic political discourse. If one were to substitute the word "terrorist" each time Merton wrote the word "Communist" he would be speaking directly to us today about the "War on Terror".

For instance:

"At one extreme we have the "hard" and "realistic" view. It excludes all other considerations and concentrates on one inescapable fact: the "terrorist" threat to western society. It considers that negotiation with "terrorism" is for all practical purposes futile. It is thoroughly convinced that only the strongest pressure will be of any use in stopping "terrorism" and the victory over "terrorism" by any available means takes precedence over everything else. Hence this "hard" position is in fact favorable to nuclear war and makes no distinction between preemption and retaliation, except perhaps to favor preeemption as more likely to succeed...
...they tend to regard anyone who strongly favors peace and disarmament as a "terrorist" dupe or fellow traveller, simply because of the worldwide propaganda given to the "terrorist strategy for peace".

The simplicity and ruthlessness of this view makes an immediate appeal to a very large proportion of the American middle class. It is simple. It is clear. It promises results. It has the advantage above all of permitting disturbed and frustrated people to discharge their anxieties upon a hated enemy and thereby achieve a sense of meaning and satifaction in their own lives. But unfortunately this kind of satisfaction leads to moral blindness and to the stultification of conscience. The fact that this "solution" at the same time favors nuclear war, and considers it fully morally justified by its "good cause" and also appeals to certain types of Christians, shows that it is a SERIOUS danger. To be succinct, it produces a state of invincible moral ignorance. It consecrates policies that have very dubius justice, blurring the ethical clarity of Christian thought, making base emotions and hatreds with the specious appearance of christian zeal."

This book is the most refined, comprehensive and persuasive tesament on this subject i have ever read.

"This is serious business but it was not dangerous business"

This story will give S. Starr a little chuckle.

Notice the reporter's name, she could be kin, Scott.

I note that you've been posting your genealogy, was she in there?

From Barbara Starr
CNN

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Six nuclear warheads on cruise missiles were mistakenly carried on a flight from North Dakota to Louisiana last week, prompting a major investigation, military officials have confirmed.



A B-52 is seen on the ground at Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, in this file photo.
(not really, this is a scale model B52 that crashed, as you can tell there was no spread of radio active debris, no one was glowing.)

The plane took the cruise missiles from Minot Air Force Base to Barksdale Air Force Base for decommissioning Thursday, the Air Force said.

"This is a major gaffe, and it's going to cause some heads to roll down the line," said Don Shepperd, a retired Air Force major general and military analyst for CNN.

The warheads should have been removed from the missiles before they were attached to the B-52 bomber, according to military officials.

The crew was unaware that the plane was carrying nuclear weapons, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the extraordinary sensitivity and security surrounding the case.

The mistake was discovered after the plane's flight to Louisiana.

Minot Air Force Base is in north central North Dakota and Barksdale Air Force Base is in northwest Louisiana near the Texas border.

Lt. Col. Ed Thomas said that while the military does not publicly discuss nuclear weapons procedures, in this case the Air Force decided to acknowledge the incident in order to reassure the public.

"The public was never in any danger," Thomas said.

But officials also said the incident was a major breach of security rules surrounding nuclear weapons. One Air Force official said that he could not recall anything similar happening.

The Air Force announced that all flights of fighters and bombers in the United States will be halted on September 14 to allow for a review of procedures.

Because the incident involved nuclear weapons, it was serious enough that President Bush was notified, according to military officials. Once the mistake was discovered, the Air Force immediately began an inventory of all of its nuclear weapons, a military official said.

Maj. Gen. Douglas Raaberg, director of Air and Space Operations at the Air Combat Command in Langley, Virginia, has been ordered to investigate how the nuclear-tipped missiles were flown across the country without anyone knowing, officials said.

One officer already has been relieved of duty, and several others "decertified" from handling nuclear weapons, officials said.

A military official told CNN there was no nuclear risk to public safety because the weapons were not armed. Officials believe that if the plane had crashed or the missiles somehow had fallen off the wings, the warheads would have remained inert and there would have been no nuclear detonation, though conventional explosive material in the warhead could have detonated.

Military officials also say the missiles could not have been launched because of multiple security procedures required to be enacted before any launch would have been authorized.

Shepperd said the U.S. had agreed in a Cold War-era treaty not to fly nuclear weapons. "It appears that what happened was this treaty agreement was violated," he said.

He agreed with military officials that the situation could not have caused a nuclear detonation, but added, "Any time you have nuclear material on board, if the airplane crashes, nuclear material can be spread in the immediate area of the crash, so you get radioactivity in the immediate area of the crash."

"This is serious business but it was not dangerous business," Shepperd said.

The story was first reported by the Army Times, a privately published newspaper.

Quantum Contemplations: Dialog Echoing In Eternity

I have decided to post some of the e-mails from the volumoinous, dusty archives of the ongoing conversation between D.S. Martin and myself. Here is the next installment.

From: Scott Starr To: D.S. Martin Date: Fri, 26
May 2006 08:23:06 -0500

Well, I have gone fishing about every night this week. I have found some prime locations all right in or real close to the city. I had great luck yesterday in a dirty flood control pond off of Meridian and I-40- back behind the Waffle house. I am going camping this weekend out at an awesome lake I found near Geary an hour to the west. We need to get together and catch some....and finish figuring out the cosmos.

Here it is, if your interested in the relative age of the universe.

A quick approximation for the age of the Universe can be approximated by the inverse of the Hubble constant. The calculated age turns out to be

Current best estimates of h₀ are

so the Universe is most likely somewhere between 12 and 16 billion years old, at least according to this method of estimation.
But recall that according to relativity, time is relative. We can guess the amount of time likely to have elapsed since the time when time was a meaningful quantity that could be measured. But we can't say anything about any processes that might have occurred before the notion of time made sense. In some sense, quantum gravity could be an eternal stage of the Universe, and the Big Bang could be regarded as the end of eternity and the beginning of time itself.

I like the end of eternity analysis.

But, it seems to me, it would only be the end of eternity for those of us who, may happen to be stuck in this quaint little space/time universe.

However, for the rest of us who exist, only temporarily in this temporally composed training facility, i.e. the Universe, we see eternity as still existing outside the bounds of this tiny, but ever increasing sphere.

Which leads to the question, can space eventually exceed or overtake eternity?

How much eternity exists beyond the bounds of space?

Is there a limited eternity, (maybe only 25 miles of eternity, that would certainly affect the effect of the title of the movie classic "From Here to Eternity", kind of like "From here to Shawnee" or to keep it in tropical paridise "From Peral Harbor to Waimea Bay)?

Or is eternity always just beyond the reaches of space/time, (and well, we might say eternal and infinite)?

Scientists, often naively limit reality to only what is thought to be knowable, or at least may be tested by empirical (carnal) tests.

DSM

DEPLETED URANIUM ALERT! Invisible War, Part 1

Click the arrow to jump to the hyperlink.
This video has several parts.

Excerpt:
"Depleted" uranium and the alarming claims of soldiers and Iraqis who have been exposed to it. Weapons of Mass Destruction in Washington DC? It is known world wide, he says, that DU weapons have long-term implications that, right now corporations and governments are hiding. The use of uranium weapons is absolutely unacceptable, and a crime against humanity. Consequently the citizens of the world and all governments must force cessation of uranium weapons use.

Do you remember "Gulf War Sickness"?

Could "DU" munitions be a possible explanation for that?

bonus- copy and paste the url: http://nucnews.net/2000/du/du.htm

Yellow Dust

click on the arrow at the corner of the screen to watch or listen while staying with this page.

What uranium on the Navajo Nation was really used for. Awesome clip!

Bonus Round; A trailer clip from the documentary "Trespassing"

Summary: By focusing on the Native American struggle for spiritual and cultural autonomy on disputed lands in the U.S. Southwest, "Trespassing" unpacks a deadly political and ethical controversy around land rights, uranium mining, nuclear testing and the disposal of nuclear waste, and examines the ability of a culture to bring itself to the brink of annihilation while simultaneously producing "gatekeepers" to combat that annihilation. Trespassing offers an in depth and provocative examination of historical survival and struggle designed to impact the present generation and alter a deadly course of action.

clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AbrlqoLdx4

In The Light Of a Thousand Suns > "Just Warfare Doctrine" and the A-bomb

click on the arrow at the corner of the screen to watch or listen while staying with this page.

BACKGROUNDS TO ETHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE BOMBING OF HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKE IN TERMS OF THE "JUST WAR TRADITION"

John Howard Yoder, unpublished, 1997. Overview subject to further editing as of spring 1997.


CALENDAR OVERVIEW

2 August 1939 Albert Einstein letter to FD Roosevelt suggest that nuclear technology could produce a new kind of weapon.

7 January 1943 FD Roosevelt says Japan should be bombed "heavily and relentlessly"

24-29 July 1943 Bombing of Hamburg, fire storm, 50,000 dead, 1,000,000 refugees.

24 December 1944 intelligence reports indicate that in Japan a "peace party" is forming and that there will be a new cabinet headed by Admiral Baron Suzuki charged to prepare to surrender. (Baldwin 96, Fogelman 97)

13 February 1945 Bombing of Dresden, 2,750 British and USA aircraft, est. 35,000 dead

25 February "test" fire bombing destroys one square mile of Tokyo.

9-10 March fire bombing to "wipe [Tokyo] off the map" (Gen. LeMay) (Selden xivff) 100,000 dead, similar number wounded, 1,000,000 homeless

16 March obliteration of Würzburg, small city of no military significance

7 April: New Japanese cabinet appointed, prime minister Suzuki, with the mission from Emperor Hirohito to negotiate peace. Former foreign minister Shegenori Togo recalled from retirement to assist.

12 April Harry S. Truman becomes President on the death of FDR.

25 April War Secretary Stimson first informs Truman about the existence of the Bomb. No question was raised about whether to use it.

27 May: presidential aide Harry Hopkins cables President Truman from Moscow: Peace feelers are being put out by certain elements in Japan

20 June: Supreme War Direction Council: Emperor Hirohito, Premier Suzuki, Foreign Minister, Navy Minister argue for suing for peace; Army Minister and two chiefs of staffs for continuing war.

10 July: Emperor asks USSR to mediate surrender.

12-13 July formal notification of Moscow by Japan Moscow envoy.

17 July, Alamagordo NM successful test of the first atomic bomb. Several Manhattan Project scientists (led by Leo Szilard who had been the initial liaison with Einstein) petition President Truman not to use the bomb except subject to serious restraints and prior warning (Harwit 234). Truman apparently never saw this petition.

26 July: Potsdam ultimatum (Truman, Churchill, Chiang Kai-Shek) states terms for surrender. "We will not deviate from them." No reference to possible retention of the Emperor (although all major policy-makers in the US - Truman, Stimson, Grew - were on record as favoring that). The communiqué made no specific mention of a qualitatively new level of weaponry, although the ultimatum ended: "The alternative for Japan is utter destruction." Stalin was present in the Potsdam negotiations, and was informed about the existence of the new bomb, but did not sign this declaration because USSR was not yet at war with Japan.

27 July Togo leads a discussion in the "Supreme War Direction Council" Togo advocates acceptance of the ultimatum, and that is agreed upon, but then reversed. Togo wrote, "To my amazement, the newspapers of the following morning reported that the government had decided to ignore the Potsdam declaration." He learned that a rump meeting of chiefs of staff and war ministers had swayed Suzuki. (Fogelman 74) This news got mistranslated into English as "unworthy of public notice," which was taken by the pro-bomb parties in the US as an insult an a reason to go ahead with the bombing.

6 August 8:15 AM Hiroshima bombed. Truman announces by radio that it was a military target. Immediate deaths 85,000

8 August: USSR declares war against Japan and invades Manchuria. Stalin had been pressed by the allies to enter the Pacific war, and at Potsdam he agreed to do so within three months of the end of the war in Europe, which was May 8. Japan's ambassador at Moscow is informed of this but his telegram never reaches Tokyo, where the news is learned only later by monitoring Soviet news radio.

9 August Nagasaki bombed, immediate deaths 45,000

9 August President Truman: "... the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in the first instance to avoid, in so far as possible, the killing of civilians." (Fogelman 104)

9 August: Suzuki and Hirohito decide to accept the Potsdam ultimatum. A rump meeting of the Army Hawks opposes this.

10 August: Government accepts Potsdam terms subject to the condition that "said declaration does not comprise any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as Sovereign Ruler."

14 August The War council being deadlocked, with the hawks still wanting to continue the war [i.e., the two atomic bombs did not change their minds], Suzuki convenes the emergency Gozenkaigi [council of elder statesmen] which agrees with Hirohito's longstanding desire to surrender: formal acceptance of the ultimatum is announced.

2 September formal signing of surrender

1 November: Projected earliest possible date for the US invasion of Kyushu (southern island) if there had had to be one.

Spring 1946: Projected earliest date for US invasion of Honshu (main Island)


MAJOR EARLY CRITICAL EXPRESSIONS

Atomic Warfare and the Christian Faith; Report of Commission on the Relation of the Churches to the War in the Light of the Christian Faith, Federal Council of Churches; Chairman Robert L. Calhoun (Professor, Yale Divinity School); March 1946:

* The march toward total war, which this commission and other theologians have judged irreconcilable with Christian principles, has been advanced a giant step further. ....atomic weapons clearly belong with the tools for obliteration, not precision attack.

...As American Christians, we are deeply penitent for the irresponsible use already made of the atomic bomb. ... whatever be one's judgment of the ethics of war in principle, the surprise bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are morally indefensible. ...As the power that first used the atomic bomb under these circumstances, we have sinned grievously against the laws of God and against the people of Japan. Without seeking to apportion blame among individuals, we are compelled to judge our chosen course inexcusable.

... these two specific bombing sorties cannot properly be treated in isolation from the whole system of obliteration attacks... We are mindful of the horrors of incendiary raids on Tokyo, and of the saturation bombings of Hamburg, Dresden, and Berlin. ... the policy of obliteration bombing as actually practiced in World War II, culminating in the use of atomic bimbs against Japan, is not defensible on Christian premises.

Memorandum of seven nuclear scientists, led by Leo Szilard, who had originally carried to President Roosevelt Einstein's suggestion that atomic fission might be militarily used, 11 June 1945:

* ...the military advantages ... achieved by the sudden use of atomic bombs against Japan may be outweighed by the enduing loss of confidence and by a wave of horror and repulsion sweeping over the rest of the world and perhaps even dividing public opinion at home.... If the United States were to be the first to release this new means of indiscriminate destruction upon mankind, she would sacrifice public support throughout the world, precipitate the race for armaments and prejudice the possibility of an international agreement on the future control of such weapons. (Borchert 89, Jungk 175)

William Daniel Leahy, Admiral, Chief of Staff to President Roosevelt:

* ...the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.

"Bomb" is the wrong word to use for this new weapon. It is not a bomb. It is not an explosive. It is a poisonous thing that kills people by its deadly radioactive reaction, more than by the explosive force it develops.

These new concepts of "total war" are basically distasteful to the soldier and sailor of my generation.... These new and terrible instruments of uncivilized warfare represent a modern type of barbarism not worthy of Christian man. (I was There 1950 pp. 439ff. in Fogelman 30f)

Toshikazu Kase, diplomat:

* One of the first questions asked me by the American war correspondents who swarmed into Tokyo...was: "Was it the atomic bomb or Russian participation in the war that was responsible for the surrender"?..... to us who knew the inner development it seems that neither of the two basically changed the course of the war. It is certain that we would have surrendered in due time even without the terrific chastisement of the bomb or the terrible shock of the Russian attack. (Journey to the Missouri 1950 212ff in Fogelman 79ff.

U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey; established 1944 by USA Secretary of War Stimson:

* ...it is the survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated. (pp9-13 in Wilds, 83-87 in Fogelman)

Harry Truman:

* ..."I wanted to make sure that it would be used as a weapon of war in the manner prescribed by the laws of war. That meant that I wanted it dropped on a military target. I had told Stimson... (Memoirs 1955 419f in Fogelman 10)

Hanson W. Baldwin (Former Naval officer, military analyst and journalist):

* ...We were ... twice guilty. We dropped the bomb at a time when Japan already was negotiating for an end of the war but before those negotiations could come to fruition. We demanded unconditional surrender, then dropped the bomb and accepted conditional surrender ... the Japanese would have surrendered, even if the Bomb had not been dropped, had the Potsdam Declaration included our promise to permit the Emperor to remain on his imperial throne." in Great Mistakes of the War Harper, 1950, 88-114 (Fogelman 95ff.)

Chester W. Nimitz, Admiral, 25 January 1946:

* "The atomic bomb merely hastened a process already reaching an inevitable conclusion..." (Baldwin 94, Fogelman 97)

Admiral Noel Gaylor (then) Pacific Commander in Chief:

* however much it may be justified in the aftermath as military necessity--incorrectly--[the attack] was nonetheless genocide." (Linenthal 16; testimony to the National Air and Space Museum Research Advisotry Committee October 1988).



Minimal summary: did the bombs hasten the end of the war?

Yes, in the sense that by strengthening the hand of Hirohito, Togo, and Suzuki, over against the hawks in the high command, the capitulation may have been facilitated, may have come a few weeks sooner than otherwise, and the capitulation made more abject, so that the occupation would go more smoothly.

Certainly No, in the sense of deciding that the war would end. The surrender process was already running, and would have run faster if Potsdam had promised that the surrender could be conditional, with Japan retaining the Emperor, which in fact the Allied authorities wanted and did ultimately accept.

Yes, in the sense that US contingency plans for invasion several months later were in the works, so that the US soldiers and sailors who knew that they were in those plans could feel that they were saved from that future jeopardy. Prisoners of war in Japanese camps credited the Bomb with the rapid collapse of Japan, without which some thought they might be killed by their jailers.

No, in the sense that in view of the total economic exhaustion of Japan that vision of a full-scale invasion would never have been needed. No in the sense that even if that invasion in November 1945 had been needed, the estimate of its cost in lives was 50,000, and not the worst-case estimate twenty times that large which came up in the later literature(Stimson in Fogelman 16). "The source of the large numbers used after the war by Truman, Stimson and Churchill to justify the use of the atomic bomb has yet to be discovered... The large estimates first appeared in their postwar memoirs"(Skates p. 77)


Selective bibliography

Robert C. Batchelder (Christian ethicist) The Irreversible Decision Houghton Mifflin Boston 1961.

Wilfred Burchett (Australian journalist), Shadows of Hiroshima London, Verso Editions, 1983. Documents policies of the US occupying authorities in Japan and of Washington administrations to suppress accurate reporting of the effects of the bombing. HML: D 767.25 .H6 B86 1983

Edwin Fogelman (ed) Hiroshima: The Decision to Use the A-Bomb Scribner Research Anthologies, Mew York 1964. Gathers eighteen documents from all sides of the debate. HML D 767.25 .H6 F6

Stephen A. GArrett Ethics and Airpower in World War II New York, St. Martin's Press, 1993 HML D 786 .G36 1993

Marin Harwit An Exhibit Denied; Lobbying the History of Enola Gay New York, Copernicus/Sprionger 1996

Edward T. Linenthal History Wars New York Holt 1996

Kyoko and Mark Selden (eds.) The Atomic Bomb: Voices from Hiroshima and Nagasaki M.E.Sharpe, Armonk NY, HML: D 767.25 .H6 A87 1989 The bulk of the book is Japanese testimonies, but Sleden's introduction (xi-xxxvi) is a good overview of the argument, including the record of censorship by the US occupation.

John Ray Skates The Invasion of Japan: Alternative to the Bomb U.Socar Press 1994

Summary Report on the Pacific War Strategic Bombing Survey, Government Printing House, 1946

Walter Wilds, (ed) Japan's Struggle to End the War Washington 1964

Pastor Strangelove

Texan John Hagee may not have his “perfect red heifer” yet. But he does have a huge following, the ear of the White House -- and a theory that an invasion of Iran was foretold in the Book of Esther.

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=11541

I believe this gentleman, John Hagee to be irresponsible and dangerous. With his kind of soothsaying and theology around, in the ears of the WHITE HOUSE for Pete's sake!, many people including some important world leaders are not even looking for solutions to the conflicts in the Middle East- they are instead gearing up for WW3 - lookng forward to it in fact. Their basic message is to strike Iran before it is too late. Too late for what?
If this is really the supposed end of the world sequence then why are they warmongering in total opposition to the actual teachings of Jesus who instructs us to love our enemies, make every effort to keep the peace with our fellow man, never return evil for evil etc.? If this is really the fulfilling of the last days prophecies then why is it important for us to strike Iran first- what with the Armageddon ball already rolling and all? Is he trying to do God's job of fulfilling prohecy? Does he believe he has some part in the popular translation of Revelation and things just won't turn out the way they are supposed to if he doesn't get his message out? Does he see himself somewhere in the symbolism of the book of Revelation? Or is he trying to alter the outcome of these supposed prophecies with a pre-emptive strike on Iran? Does he presume to know something that the Bible tells us that not even Christ knows- when the world will end? Is he a fundamentalist crazy on par with Osama Bin Laden? Or is he just a salesman trying to hock more videos and books?
Two things are for certain, this sort of fellow scares me to death....and men like this one have the potential to make the onset of WW3 a self fulfilling prophecy.

For a proper interpretation of the book of Revelation see this site:

http://www.jimmcguiggan.com/revelation/home.asp