The slogan above is the theme of the UN embraced ‘2030 Plan’. Does it sound familiar? It should! It’s been posted publicly in front of their headquarters in New York. Does it sound reasonable? This is the type of question which caused Solomon to become what some would call cynical, or possibly wise, in his old age as he penned the words of Ecclesiastes; often ending a verse with, “This too is vanity.”

In the USA, it’s Memorial Day weekend; a time to remember personnel who gave their lives while performing their duty serving in the US military. My war was in Laos, during the Vietnam era, and we “weren’t there”. I wasn’t in the military and even when my friends were dying, it was considered “The Secret War”. So, these are memories I chose not to recognize until last year, which was 50 years after I had left Laos.  

The US contingent was involved in deception from the time we got there, and when we left, we were warned not to speak of it. I remember being involved in a plot to convince a top aid of Senator Edward Kennedy that US military personnel were not involved in fighting in Laos. He left believing the lie, even though the busiest airbase in the world in 1968 was in Long Cheng, Laos. Consequently, I have never believed much of the information coming out of the C.I.A., even though I do believe the goal to stop the expansion of communism was just. So, whom do I trust? The truth is, I trust those led by the Holy Spirit. Thus, I judge what I hear through the filter of the Spirit in my heart. I accept Scripture and respect the proven prophets (2 Peter 1:20-21). I say all that to say this:

Deception is a common political practice and most people truly believe their political persuasions. In 1968, the “experts” from the USA thought the Laotian/S.E. Asian unrest was due to economic inequality; that through the existing governments being assisted in the development of their nations, the citizenry would love and support them. US taxpayers built hospitals, schools, roads, bridges, irrigation systems, even cared for refugees and helped them fight their war. But inequality was never the issue. The communists sincerely believed the system was rotten from the foundation up and wanted it destroyed.  Infiltrators, posing as sympathetic friends, gained political power and much of the collapse of the governments the USA supported (with blood and treasure) came through infiltration from within. Some, unbeknownst to me, even worked on my staff. 

They used similar tactics to what we are seeing today; dissemination of propaganda via rumor and print, pointing out grievances and enflaming them. They recruit followers and develop slogans like, “jackapot”, which is hard to translate, but construed the meaning of “colonialist slave master”, thrown around like the term “racist” is today. There were demonstrations against the government. Village leaders, police, priests, and aid workers were routinely assaulted and assassinated, eventually leading to open civil war. I lost close friends and co-workers. This spread from Laos and Vietnam into Cambodia, where the result was the most brutal genocide in history based upon percentage of population. Why? Because we quit the war. People were deceived into believing different variations of, “You will own nothing and you will be happy”. This too is vanity.

Ironically, the U.S. lost the Vietnam War, not because of military performance, but because of another deception. When Walter Cronkite came out after the ‘Tet Offensive’ of 1968 and declared, “The war is lost”, the American public started buying into the narrative, even though the truth was that the ‘1968 Tet Offensive’ was a total US and South Vietnamese victory. The North Vietnamese were militarily and emotionally defeated. It is an amazing fact that has only recently been exposed by Luke Hunt in his book, ‘The Punji Trap’. The entire ‘western media’ was infiltrated and deceived into believing the communist propaganda. Through the efforts of a single US educated operative, the war was abandoned for lack of support at home. Those who served came back to be spit upon. Now, no one seems to care and history repeats itself. Are you really ready to, “Own nothing and be happy?”