DUELING NUTSOS





While a president a lot of us voted for out of war-weariness chooses to make an attack in the Middle East his hill to die on, I can't help noticing that some of the right-wingers who are watching the rush toward war with trepidation are ... well, nuts.

Tim Murphy of Mother Jones introduces us to one set of crazies:

In early 2012, bestselling novelist Joel Rosenberg came to Capitol Hill for a meeting with an unidentified member of Congress to discuss the end of the world. "I thought the topic was going to be the possible coming war between Israel and Iran," Rosenberg explained on his website. "Instead, the official asked, 'What are your thoughts on Isaiah 17?'"

For the better part of an hour, Rosenberg says, the writer and the congressman went back forth on something called the "burden of Damascus," an Old Testament prophecy that posits that a war in the Middle East will leave Syria's capital city in ruins -- and bring the world one step closer to Armageddon....

Rosenberg is not the only Christian thinker making a buck off the burden of Damascus. Jan Markell, on whose End Times radio program Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) has frequently appeared, blasted out an email to followers last summer warning that the Burden of Damascus may be close at hand. She reiterated that position in an interview with OneNewsNow last week. Walid Shoebat, a self-described "ex-terrorist" who is a frequent guest at right-wing confabs, told birther news site WorldNetDaily in August that while he wasn’t sure the Burden of Damascus was imminent, "We can sense the beginning signs for the fulfillment of Isaiah 17's destruction of Damascus when we witness the influx of refugees from Syria to Jordan as predicted by the prophet Amos."

Hal Lindsey, a Texas-based evangelist made famous for his 1970 treatise, The Late Great Planet Earth, has been beating the Damascus drum for years. He addressed the subject head-on in a 2008 column at WorldNetDaily ..., inspired by fears that President-elect Obama might bring the world closer to a war between Israel and Iran.

As Lindsey explained, the prophesied ruination of Damascus did not mean the end for everyone else -- it would just bring the world one step closer to the final confrontation. "[A]ccording to Bible prophecy, Iran survives the Israeli strike and plays a major role in the coming Russian-led Gog-Magog Alliance foretold by the Prophet Ezekiel," he wrote. "Israel also survives, since the Gog-Magog Alliance eventually marches against it."

This isn't a fringe idea -- Rosenberg, in particular, has a lot of friends in high places:

He has been cited as an expert on nuclear policy by Fox News, where host Shannon Bream noted that he had been referred to as a "modern-day Nostradamus." Former (and future) Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum wrote a blurb for the hardcover edition of [Rosenberg's book] Damascus Countdown and brought the author onto his radio show, "Patriot Voices," to discuss the book last spring.

In March, Rosenberg met privately with Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Rep. Louie Gohmert in Austin.... In April, he discussed Damascus Countdown at the Heritage Foundation....

And then, further out on the fringe, we have this somewhat different apocalyptic scenario from a writer named Doug Hagmann and a site called Canada Free Press, which, despite its name, is an America-focused haven for the nuttiest of wingers. I found this post via Free Republic and Lucianne.com, where Canada Free Press's craziness is quite popular:

Syria will be the Waco of the Middle East

... Syria is about to become the international version of Waco, for it is the same lie that is being used now as it was then: "It's for the children." We know all too well how the children of Waco fared. It's not about the children, and never was. If anything, it's in spite of the children.

If you understand exactly what happened at Waco at the Branch Dividian compound, that is the truth rather than the official government and media account, then you will understand that we are on the verge of an international "Waco moment." The template of terror and tyranny has not changed, but has been expanded and exported.

... Syria is merely the pyrotechnic display to divert people's attention to a much bigger agenda -- a much bigger lie. The real target here is the total destruction of the United States, not with an attack by bullets and bombs, but an attack against our economy and the U.S. dollar. That's the real agenda, to take down the United States economically and replace the global transactional activity without the U.S. dollar as the world's reserve currency. To achieve a new economic order led by a new world order, the U.S. dollar must be destroyed. Wealth must be transferred and the future must be bought. By so doing, our sovereignty will be lost to a new economic order, or a new world order which does not permit our Constitutional Republic to exist. We are well on the way, far down that path....

As the politicians weigh in on Syria, we are seeing that there is only one political party, the party of royalty, and we are their subjects. It is the party of the globalists, those who are pushing for the "non-existent, kooky conspiracy" of a New World Order....

I'm not sure how Waco advanced the New World Order, but I guess the NWO could have been stopped by a bunch of personality cultists living in an armed compound. Or something like that.

So yeah, it's nice to know that our friends on the right aren't blithely accepting the notion that this Syria thing can be a simple, clinically precise military excursion rapidly leading to a neat, tidy resolution.

But our friends on the right are still nuts.