America’s Decline Is a Choice

Britain’s Independent called it the “most profound financial change in recent Middle East history.” According to the October 6 report, Arab states, in collusion with Russia, China, Japan and France, had secretly agreed to a plan that would eventually abandon the U.S. dollar as the currency used in oil trading.

While Arab nations were quick to dismiss the report, it had a ring of truth to it considering the many international voices now calling for the dollar to be replaced as world currency. Just last month, the head of the World Bank warned that the dollar might soon relinquish its position as the world’s favored reserve currency. The euro, he said, offers a “respectable alternative if the dollar is weak.”

Since March of this year, the value of the U.S. dollar has depreciated by 14 percent. The price of gold is at a record high. Oil is now over $80 per barrel.

But rather than panic, those controlling the purse strings in Washington continue spending “money” like they just won the lottery. The Obama administration is now hard at work trying to pass health-care reform that will cost approximately $1 trillion. This year’s federal budget deficit, an incomprehensible $1.42 trillion, is nearly as large as Canada’s entire economy—and three times bigger than any previous U.S. deficit.

Incredibly, President Obama has pledged to reduce deficit spending only after the recession ends. The worse it gets, the more we spend!

The impact of such fiscal insanity, which has been the status quo for decades, is now beginning to hit home. And as Charles Krauthammer wrote this week, it “could ultimately lead to a catastrophic collapse and/or hyperinflation” (emphasis mine throughout).

We have been forecasting this for decades, as Robert Morley’s latest column summarizes. Dollar devaluation, the collapse in America’s banking system, the housing bubble burst, astronomical debt and out-of-control spending—these are all signs that the U.S. economy is now well past the point of no return.

In the war against radical Islam, the once-feared United States has humbly accepted surrender and defeat on nearly every battlefront. Upon becoming president, Barack Obama immediately announced, presumably with a straight face, that the “global war on terror” would be renamed an “overseas contingency operation.” During his much-ballyhooed Cairo speech in June, he never even mentioned the word terrorism.

In Iraq, as Joel Hilliker noted on Wednesday, the U.S. footprint has been steadily shrinking. In his meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Tuesday, President Obama reiterated his vow to remove all American combat troops from the region by next August—less than 10 months from now. Iraq, Charles Krauthammer wrote, is a prize “of great strategic significance that the administration seems to have no intention of exploiting in its determination to execute a full and final exit.”

And when we surrender Iraq, as we have often written, Iran will waste little time devouring our spoils of war.

As for Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons and its repeated threats to destroy Israel, here again, appeasement is Washington’s policy of choice. Judging by his words and deeds since the inauguration, President Obama is far more concerned about dismantling America’s nuclear arsenal than he is with preventing a madman from acquiring one.

Afghanistan, until August, had been the left wing’s baby—the real battlefront in the “overseas contingency operation.” But over the last two months, the Obama administration has backpedaled away from what used to be the “war of necessity.”

After receiving much criticism for its indecisiveness regarding Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s request for additional troops, the Obama administration has recently lashed out at its predecessor in the White House. In an interview earlier this week, the president’s chief of staff said the new administration is asking tough questions about Afghanistan “that have never been asked on the civilian side, the political side, the military side and the strategic side.”

In a speech at the Center for Security Policy on Wednesday, former Vice President Dick Cheney offered this stinging retort:

In the fall of 2008, fully aware of the need to meet new challenges being posed by the Taliban, we dug into every aspect of Afghanistan policy, assembling a team that repeatedly went into the country, reviewing options and recommendations, and briefing President-elect Obama’s team. They asked us not to announce our findings publicly, and we agreed, giving them the benefit of our work and the benefit of the doubt. The new strategy they embraced in March, with a focus on counterinsurgency and an increase in the numbers of troops, bears a striking resemblance to the strategy we passed to them. They made a decision—a good one, I think—and sent a commander into the field to implement it.Now they seem to be pulling back and blaming others for their failure to implement the strategy they embraced.

Pull back and blame others. These are choices that have “set us on a course for decline,” Charles Krauthammer argued in his essay. But decline is a choice, he wrote. “We can reverse the slide.”

On that point, he misses the mark. Because while America’s recent choices have certainly accelerated its decline, the U.S. has been on this course for some time now because God is against us. “Behold, I, even I, am against thee,” God wrote through His prophet Ezekiel, “and will execute judgments in the midst of thee in the sight of the nations” (Ezekiel 5:8).

Many cannot conceive of a God who actually sends curses. But look at what He says. Deuteronomy 28 and Leviticus 26 outline the blessings that the modern-day nations descending from ancient Israel would receive, and the curses that God would send if they rebelled against Him (write for The United States and Britain in Prophecy to understand these prophecies).

“[A]ll these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee,” God says in Deuteronomy 28:15, going on to outline all manner of economic, weather, military and social curses. “I also will do this unto you,” God says in Leviticus 26:16-19, “I will even appoint over you terror …. And I will set my face against you, and ye shall be slain before your enemies: they that hate you shall reign over you; and ye shall flee when none pursueth you. … And I will break the pride of your power ….”

That the most affluent and militarily-strong nation on Earth today can be on the back foot in so many arenas, and declining so rapidly, is evidence of these curses from God.

America’s decline is a choice—but also a curse. And these curses are prophesied to intensify, all for one end: to bring about the repentance of our peoples.