"An unspoken reason why there's such, almost like a desire for war in the region has to do with bad theology."
The conversation followed an eventful Monday in which Iran launched missiles at US bases in Qatar and Iraq in retaliation for American strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites on Saturday.
Lisec began by describing how elements within the US foreign policy establishment have pushed a narrative tying the Pennsylvania shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks to Iran: “We wrote about the intended escalation by the military industrial complex over the Iranian plot hypothesis that Thomas Crooks, the Butler, PA shooter, was in fact in league with the Iranian intelligence service,” Lisec said.
“We found that there was simply no evidence of that scenario. It’s a little bit plausible, but we point out that the sustained military engagement and defense spending, which benefits the military-industrial complex, could very well be behind that narrative for which we found no evidence for.”
Lisec argued that beyond profit motives, neoconservative war fervor may be driven by apocalyptic theology. “An unspoken—by most—reason why the neoconservative crowd, who call themselves Christians in many cases—an unspoken reason why there's such, almost like a desire for war in the region has to do with bad theology,” he said.
“There is a type of eschatology, which has to do with one's belief in an end times, called premillennial dispensationalism. That is a lot of syllables in that mouthful, but characters like Mike Pence, the former Vice President, who is praising President Donald J. Trump, we have Mark Levin, we have other characters on the right, they are evangelical Christians who subscribe to this idea that—and Ted Cruz spoke about this on the interview with Tucker Carlson—that the modern state of Israel founded in 1948 is somehow the fulfillment of Old Testament biblical prophecies that the Jews return to their homeland following the Babylonian exile.”
Lisec continued, “I don’t think that’s the case, folks. Sen. Ted Cruz is giving his religious motivations for intervening in the Middle East, so the fact that the United States is not an intruding force and not declaring war… is in the set of beliefs that it will somehow set the rapture back a number of years and decades and that Jesus isn’t going to come back until's there a war in the Middle East and the United States gets wiped out.”
Posobiec, pointing to his own background, said, “So let me run that through, if I can, and folks know I’m Roman Catholic, I’m Polish, we pretty much only come in one flavour in terms of that. We don’t have that eschatology at all. So you’re saying this is a version of—I don’t want to get into a theology debate of it, but you’re saying that this is a different version of what our good friend Scott Adams, peace be upon him, that can be a sort of ‘same movie, different screens.’”
“We’re all watching the same movie yet other people who believe in this, they view all of these as the fulfillment of a, if I understand it correctly, a series of prophecies that indicate the return of Christ."
"So, while a lot of people look at this and say wait a minute, we don’t like nukes, we don’t like religious nut jobs and theocrats like those in Iran getting nukes… okay, that’s number one, but we also don’t like World War 3, so we don’t want that, and we certainly don’t like the idea of the price of gas going up to $6 a gallon in the summer, but what you’re saying is that there’s another group that looks at it—and this by the way, if you’re someone who has these beliefs, there are people who don’t who are also Christians. So what you’re saying is that they might actually be rooting this on because of this world view?”
Lisec agreed with the analysis and went deeper into the theological lineage. “Yes this view I’m laying out, this eschatology of end times prophecy was popularized first among the baby boomer generation in the late 1970s and 1980s by a character called Hal Lindsey. The number one bestselling book in the 1980s was called The Late Great Planet Earth and it was laying out everything I just said.
"The 1948 refounding of the state of Israel is ‘literally’ in the bible, the modern Jewish state is ‘literally’ God’s chosen people. ‘Israel is the clock’ is something Lindsey said, and something that tens of millions of Americans grew up with.”
“Many of them then became bureaucrats, politicians, and neocons… Part of the set of these prophecies is that the biblical lens of Gog and Magog are referring to modern-day Russia and Iran. So when evangelical Christians who have this eschatological background, when they see these headlines of Russia and Iran saying that, they say ‘that’s literally in the bible.’”
The episode aired just after Iran fired roughly 10 missiles toward US bases in Qatar, all of which were intercepted, according to Qatari and US officials. Qatar responded by reserving the right to retaliate and temporarily closed its airspace.
Explosions were reported over Doha and warning sirens sounded at American installations in Iraq and Bahrain.
According to NBC News and Reuters, no casualties were reported in the strikes. Iran reportedly gave advance warning to Qatar in an apparent effort to signal strength while avoiding mass casualties.
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