RUTHFULLY YOURS

The administration of Pres. Donald Trump is considering whether to disallow the sale of Boeing passenger planes to Iran.  This hideous addendum to the horrendous P5+1 deal with Iran, where the U.S. was the most important signatory, was another one of Pres. Barack Obama’s expressions of “goodwill” to the murderous, anti-American regime of crackpot ayatollahs.  Jonathan S. Tobin, writing at the time of the transaction with Boeing, tells us, “Not only has Boeing gotten into bed with terrorists, the same can be said of those who are counting on all the new business ties changing the nature of a terrorist regime.”

Presumably, having a big business deal with a terrorist nation (Iran is still on the U.S. State Department list of state sponsors of terrorism) does not, per the American left, make us complicit with terrorism; rather, it is a way of ameliorating “tensions” and “strains.”  Nonetheless, the American left is still fond of quoting Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell address caution that the U.S. constitutional republic faces threats from the “military-industrial complex.”  In light of this precedent, perhaps we may consider the “Boeing exception” as ushering in a new age: that of the terrorist-industrial complex.

This shift, whereby global business interests, the government of the United States, and our P+5 partners all collude with the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, is ominous for Europe and the U.S., as well as for the stability of the Middle East.  And the implications extend even farther than that.  This deal portends a great shift in the moral-ethical climate of the entire planet.  The entire power elite of the world is hereby going beyond mere greedy excess or dealing first and foremost in terms of expediency.

The deal with Boeing is the essence of the yetzer hara (bad tendency of mind or spirit) that Solomon Schechter wrote about in a couple of wonderful books.  The deal and its “exceptions” reek of the moral poison that comes from violating the Commandments “Thou shall not bear false witness” and “Thou shall not covet.”  It also reflects a failure to follow a New Testament teaching wholly consistent with the Hebrew Scriptures: “You cannot love both God and mammon.”  Please be forewarned: God will not be mocked.

Who says humans are basically good?  It is a fiction.  Were we good, there would be no need for the Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament).  There would be no need for a Christ.  The prophets and the forefathers would have no relevance.  There would be no need for prayer, study, tzedakah (charity), mitzvoth (good deeds), blessings.  There would be no need for repentance (tshuva).  There would be no need for grace and mercy.  There would be no need for atonement, for the Cross.  Anything honorable and worthy is honorable and worthy only in contrast with what is not honorable and worthy.  If expedience were the standard, then there would be no room for the moral, honorable, or worthy.

Years ago, when this writer was an officer in the Product Communications Division of Bankers Trust Co. (BTCo.) in New York City, I was taken on a tour of the offices that maintained the accounts of foreign banks.  My guide explained that the bank held deposits from Libya.  When asked how the bank could accept those deposits when there were so many terrorist acts by Libya, he answered, “Whatever their international behavior, we still officially have diplomatic relations with them, so it’s legal.”

Later, a friend who was a vice president of Merrill, Lynch, Pierce, Fenner, and Smith related that he had complained to his boss about certain lies being told to their customers and was told in no uncertain terms, “It’s not illegal to lie!”

In both cases, law was perceived as driving ethics rather than the other way round.  This is the complete reversal of Judeo-Christian values, where natural law drives legal constructs.  The Law of the Great Lawgiver, Almighty God, is paramount in all dealings on the face of the Earth.  Otherwise, our very raison d’être is denied.  There is a Higher Law on which our “natural rights” and daily social intercourse (both customary relational behaviors and those behaviors formalized into legal codes) are based.  The Iran deal and the Boeing exception represent a quantum leap forward in the suppression of godly Truth.

The industrial-terrorist complex now emerging with implications for the world may be destructive far beyond even the fate of individual states.  It may be a leap forward toward an even darker revelation.  In an amazingly prophetic story by Isaac Bashevis Singer entitled “The Gentleman From Cracow,” about life in the village of Frampol, where “the food was scarce and the water foul,” one day, a young Jewish man, a doctor, arrives in a carriage drawn by eight horses.  He told the villagers that his wife and baby had just died in childbirth, and his rabbi had advised him that his melancholy would disappear in Frampol.  He begins to spend a lot of money in the town, and the town prospers as never before.  He finally decides to marry one of the local women.  On the day of the wedding, “the gentleman from Cracow reveal[s] his true identity.”  Who is he?  Singer reveals him to us: “He was no longer the young man the villagers had welcomed, but a creature covered with scales, with an eye in his chest, and on his forehead a horn that rotated at great speed. His arms were covered with hair, thorns, and elflocks, and his tail was a mass of live serpents, for he was none other than Ketev Mriri, Chief of the Devils.”  Can it be that the prosperity for Iran and for the other beneficiaries of the deal, including Boeing, is but the prelude to a darker revelation?

The new terrorist-industrial complex may be a lurching forward toward a sinister revelation.  As much evil as we have already seen emanating from the terrorist regime of Iran, and its confreres throughout the Sunni world, events even more horrible are waiting to emerge.  A more hideous, diabolical panorama of nightmarish hatred may is on the horizon.  People are being murdered in Florida nightclubs, on the streets of Nice, at parties for workers who care for special-needs disabled persons in San Bernardino, and at wholesome public events like the marathon in Boston.  Our ordinary citizens by the thousands were turned into dusty bone fragments in a matter of minutes on 9/11.  How could it get any worse?  Yet great creative minds like Isaac B. Singer remind us that it can.

Permission for the Boeing deal must be withdrawn in order for the U.S. to begin to recover the moral high ground.  We cannot promote economic advancement for the enemies of the West and the U.S. with the puerile observation that this will better our employment statistics.