The Spinning Pinwheel Flame War

by Luke Jackson

part 1

A motley group of participants in an Internet forum take widely differing positions on various social issues, including a war in the Middle East. Note the date: 2024.

From: Liberal
To: Fat Toe
Sent: Saturday, December 18, 2024 7:59 AM
Subject: Re: Newsweek Dismisses Christ’s Birth

Your “arguments” were funny, once. But this is old hat: the Liberals are “close-minded” because they don’t follow you Fascist’s docile subservience to this Administration, or to preposterous mythology that defies basic common sense. Keep on fighting the brave fight against common sense — it looks like you have many inbred allies scattered through the red state wasteland.

Maybe someday your ilk will be successful, and we will have a hellish theocracy with mandated worship (see V.S. Naipaul’s “Among the Believers,” Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale.”) But I would rather die than live in YOUR vision of a Christian nation-state, and there are plenty of brave blue-staters who feel likewise and won’t let your ilk destroy everything this nation stands for. (My wife says that we should be a Hindu state, and that you should be forced to pay obeisance to Shiva and Vishnu on pain of death.)

But, for the umpteenth time, remove me from your spam list.

Liberal

THE WAR

Cynic,

You wrote:

I am interested in hearing your theories on how the liberals may have already lost the war for us, considering they have had no say in the war so far. And, if as you say, telling people we cannot win aids our enemies is it wise to try to convince people that liberals will lose the war? Even if Straw Man wins, shouldn’t we keep our firm resolve that we will win, even if we lose, lest we give further strength to the terrorists?

The answer is simple. There will always be an antiwar movement. Some people are opposed to war no matter what the circumstances may be. But now that we are committed to the war in Turkmenistan, we must win it.

The only way that we can lose it is we lose our will to win. This is what happened in Iraq. Iraq believed that Americans are soft and gutless, that we would give up if they only persevered. They persevered, and the antiwar movement persuaded us to give up. Yet every time we met the enemy on the battlefield, we won. Iraq did not win; we gave up to them.

The current antiwar movement could bring the same result. With the substantial victory of Iron Man, this is much less likely. But with the provisional government of Turkmenistan running the show and their tendency to back off from strong military action, I could see the same “no win” political philosophy developing in Turkmenistan that led to the downfall of Iraq.

Wars are to be won outright, or they will be lost. The “you can attack this enemy position but not that one” approach based on political considerations does not lend itself to winning. If the Turkmenistanis constrain the generals as happened did in Iraq, we will end up with the same results.

Let the military do their ugly job. Removing a cancer is painful, but the body is better after it is removed. Leave the political considerations until after the war is won.

The coming campaign in Ashgabat will determine much about the outcome of the war. Hopefully the military will be given a free hand to attack and destroy the enemy no matter where he is hiding. Otherwise it will be “deja vu all over again”. Your conspiracy theories about the nation of Israel, which you dub “a radioactive wasteland,” only serve to weaken our resolve, as you liberals always do.

The Evangelical Man

----- Original Message -----
From: “Cynic”
To: The Evangelical Man
Sent: Monday, November 01, 2024 11:19 AM
Subject: Re: The Faith of Iron Man

Was the intelligence faulty? The president and vice-president knew that the only physical evidence they had of possible WMDs was false, yet they ignored that and pressed for war. Why? Well, the article suggests that it is a pattern of they way Iron Man made his decisions based on faith. I don’t necessarily believe the article, but it does raise some concerns when Iron Man has made inexplicable decisions with disastrous results.

Hindsight is 20/20, but criticism of Iron Man’s handling of Turkmenistan is not hindsight. These criticisms existed long before the invasion, and they have proven to be true. If nothing else, Iron Man should have listened to what the critics were saying at the time and put plans in place to prevent and handle the turn of events they were predicting. Faith-based or not, when Iron Man has to make admittedly tough decisions, he ends up making poor ones.

When you say that the “renationalization” of Israel is “based on historical fact,” I have a hard time believing you’re serious. Of course, leaders of the Jewish community (mostly former neoconservatives) have come forward to attest to the importance of “the Project,” but I haven’t heard many Jews on the street here on Fairfax propounding on their eagerness to “return” to a radioactive wasteland they’ve never visited.

--- The Evangelical Man wrote:

Cynic,

You wrote: “The problem is that he relies on that faith to the apparent exclusion of everything else.”

Did IM go to Congress and say, “I’ve had an epiphany. We should attach Turkmenistan”? No. This is what you are claiming. The so-called “closed eyes” are the blind haters of Iron. The same people who despise strength and resolve, and always collapse into complaint and gibbering. The ones that shoot guns into Republican campaign offices and the ones who want anybody but Iron Man.

I sincerely doubt the gossip that this article is based on, that Iron Man governs by instinct to the exclusion of any facts, and only a fool would believe it. But the President has to make hard decisions where the facts do not determine what should be done. In those situations, God help us if we have a leader who does not seek to place himself subservient to a moral higher power to whom he must answer. Humbly seeking God’s guidance has been a presidential trait since George Washington.

But our intelligence turned out to be faulty. We went with the best information that we had at the time. Even Straw Man agreed to it at the time. Hindsight is 20/20. The liberals may have already lost the war for us. This is what they always do. They convince the people that we cannot win. That is what happened in Iraq, and that is what may very well happen in Turkmenistan.

I heard 2 people from The Nation Magazine clearly state this on the Charlie Rose Show on PBS just this last week. Iraq relied on it, and bin Laden and his fellow terrorists are hoping for it too. If Straw Man wins, we will be out of Turkmenistan in short order, but as with Iraq, there will be a terrible cost. All of those who worked with us will be dead, and the terrorists will be in charge. That is an outcome that I do not want to see.

But as with Iraq, where Straw Man predicted that only a couple thousand might be negatively affected, the effect of our failure will be tragic and massive.

Wars are not easy. They are costly. But the cost of not acting and not following through once committed can be much more than the terrible cost of war. If we back out now, no one in the world will trust us. Tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands and maybe millions will die or live in enslaved conditions. We will have no moral authority to lead the world, and our enemies will have no fear of us at all. We will be even more vulnerable to attack, because bin Laden’s prediction that we are a paper tiger will be believed and acted upon.

With regard to: “It is so much easier just to say you believe in God, so therefore he is on your side and you can defer all ethical matters to others who say they believe in what you say you believe in.” I am reminded of a story about Abraham Lincoln that David Barton tells.

“Once, upon overhearing a clergyman quip that he hoped ‘the Lord was on the Union’s side’ in the Civil War, Lincoln quickly confronted the thinking behind the statement: ‘I am not at all concerned about that, for I know that the Lord is always on the side of the right. But it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation should be on the Lord’s side.’”[2]

Obviously resting one’s faith in God does not relieve one of the work of wrestling with what is the right thing to do, but the Bible is a great guide to what is generally right and wrong, and therefore many of the issues are already determined and do not need to be revisited. It becomes a compass on which the other decisions can be weighed.

You liberals are always complaining that the renationalization of Israel has some sinister ulterior motive without any basis in fact. While I personally believe the biblical predictions to be inerrant, the renationalization comes from the desires of the Jews themselves, not from Christians.

You liberals so quickly forget the lessons of history, when Hitler slaughtered millions upon millions of helpless Jews. Israel was returned to the Jews so that there would at last be a place where Jews were safe and had their own land and nation, not in order to “spur the Rapture.” This is precisely why the liberals continue to lose, election after election: Your theories are based on pure fiction and conspiracy theories, not the facts of history.

The Evangelical Man

Endnotes:
1. David Barton, The Myth of Separation (Aledo TX: WallBuilders Press, 1992), page 99 quoting George Washington, The Writings of Washington, Jared Sparks, editor (Boston: American Stationers’ Company, 1838), Volume XVIII, page 452, from a letter on June 8, 1783. See also Malachi 6:8 to which Washington alludes, and note that “the Divine Author of our blessed religion” is Jesus Christ, so George Washington would be very comfortable with “What would Jesus do?” because he advocated doing what Jesus would do.

2. Barton, page 259 quoting Abraham Lincoln’s Stories and Speeches, J. B. McClure, editor (Chicago: Rhodes & McClure Publishing Company, 1896), pages 185-186; John Wesley Hill, Abraham Lincoln - Man of God (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1920), page 330.

----- Original Message -----
From: “Cynic”
To: The Evangelical Man
Sent: Friday, October 29, 2024 12:28 PM
Subject: Re: The Faith of Iron Man

Faith can be misplaced. Having faith in the bible and accepting Jesus Christ into your heart does not magically make you infallible. I’m constantly amused that the people who make biggest deal about faith are the ones who use it to avoid making religious and moral decisions.

It’s a lot of work to try to figure out what you believe and why and how best to apply that to your life. It is so much easier just to say you believe in God, so therefore he is on your side and you can defer all ethical matters to others who say they believe in what you say you believe in.

The irony is that the book of Revelations warns against exactly that. Christians are in such a hurry for the rapture, that they don’t bother to worry that they might be following the beast. The recent effort to “renationalize” the radioactive wasteland of Israel in order to spur the Rapture is a perfect example.

The fact that Iron Man is strongly religious and has faith is not the problem. Several if not most presidents have been. The problem is that he relies on that faith to the apparent exclusion of everything else. The article below alleges that he makes his decisons before he knows what the situation is. He ‘knows’

=== message truncated ===

=====
“Why, of course the people don’t want a war... That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship... All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.” — Hermann Goering

[NSA Note to File]
Date: September 27, 2026 12:47 PM
Agent: James Hawkins

Tag this correspondence as exhibit for future prosecution. Rationale: Self-appointed “Cynic” indicates that there cannot be a “valid reason” for the conservative [read Iron Man’s administration’s] position. “Cynic” further states that he cannot take the “high road,” implying that he will take the “low,” i.e. violence.

To be continued...