CGR THURSDAY 113023 Col Eric Buerr

My passion is the fight for freedom. My father fought for a World War II defending our country. Today, we are no longer fighting with guns. Instead, we are fighting an ideological battle for control of our country by contributing to causes that support your constitutional rights.

I am Patriot Mobile. That was a shooting gallery up there. I could hear the tremble in his voice. She suffered a very severe being. The video is pretty graphic. Justice for us seems almost impossible.

It's not fun to watch somebody die. And they knew she was in mode of peril. They have not asked the hard questions. Why was the Capitol intentionally unsecure that day? The FBI had information about security concerns before January 6th. They're out for blood and they're getting it. They appear to be winning. Were the actions of the Capitol Police out of line? Were there violations in use of force?

Now I describe it as an inside job. I'm ready to do whatever God calls me. There's an old Chinese saying my ancestors learned before the Communist Party took over our country. The family is the essential unit of human society and that you must have honor and defend your family.

But it's not always easy to do. When the regime gives the order, you have to kill. My heart was pounding. I felt my body bouncing and twisting on the floor. They put numbers on our shoulders, then separated us into rows of even and odd numbers.

I was number nine. My brother, he's still in prison. And my sister, she was sent to a labor camp without a trial. But there's one piece of evidence they haven't been able to destroy yet.

I left everything behind. If I can expose what they did to us. Then all of our suffering would be for nothing. Welcome to Chosen Generation with your host, Pastor Greg Young. But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people, that you should shoe forth the praises of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light, which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God, which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.

And now, Chosen Generation, where no topic is off limits and everything is filtered through biblical glasses. And now here's your host, Pastor Greg. And welcome to the program. Great to have you with me. Thanks so much for being here. I know you have a choice of where you can listen each and every day. And I thank you for keeping it tuned here to Chosen Generation Radio, where no topic is off limits and everything is filtered through biblical glasses.

And I thank you so much for being with me. I've got a great program lined up for you today. We have our live India broadcast that we'll be coming up with, and that'll be happening at the bottom of this hour through the end of the program. We are going to be ministering the gospel there again in an unreached part of Punjab, India, just outside of Amritsar. And we're very, very excited to be able to bring that to you. And again, just a reminder that we do need your help and your support. We got some bad news regarding support that came to us right before the Thanksgiving break.

And so we are in desperate need of some assistance with regards to that. But we show you what we do here. Our sewing machines, we just graduated 24 women that we trained for four months. Widows whose husbands were murdered because of their faith. And we trained them in how to become seamstresses so they could take care of themselves and their young children without the threat of being assaulted when they went into homes to do cleaning in wealthy Indian homes where they were where they were regularly sexually assaulted. So we've did that 43 freshwater wells so far, serving about 3000 persons per well, roughly 120,000 people's lives touched every single day.

And then of course, we've gone from at the beginning of this year we had 600 churches we're now at 1200. And you can be a part of that by making a contribution. Well, I am very excited. I want to get him onto the program.

He is the author of Ghosts of Baghdad. And I want to welcome to the program Colonel Eric Buehler. Colonel, welcome. Good to have you. Hey, good morning. How are you?

For a guy that got in a fight with a truck and won I'm doing quite well, sir. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. Well, it's good to have you with me. What a what a timely what a timely title and and such correlation between your experiences and and what's happening in our world today.

It's amazing. You know, I woke up this morning. You think we might have a couple days of calm, particularly in the Middle East and and we've got, you know, further Hamas terrorists or sympathizers, you know, again, killing innocents and wounding, you know, another dozen. So let me so, Colonel, let me ask you this, because I've gotten actually I'm I'm a veteran of the Cold War. But let me ask you this, because I've gotten into some of these conversations with guys that have some similar backgrounds to yourself who are saying, oh, you know what? Listen, you know, we get along with these people.

It'll all be good. And now I have other friends who've been over there that are like, no, not exactly. And I have former Muslims that I talk with who say, no, this is this is our belief system.

This is this is what I came out of. This is what I was taught when I was taught the Koran, taught the Hadith. How how do you frame this and why is there such confusion over who these people really are? That's a big question. So first off, you're right.

Well, that's why I bring experts like you on the program to answer the big questions. What is your distrust in anything non-Muslim and that gets broken down? Certainly when you talk about Hamas and when you look at both Sunni and Shias and then when you look at who supports them.

Right. You know, the big gun here is Iran and Iran supports Hezbollah and they've trained all Hamas terrorists. They funded the Hamas terrorists. It's really it's what they do. They're looking to be the hegemon in the region. They're looking to be a nuclear power and put to foot all their Muslim brothers and Arab neighbors.

And if we if we lose that target, we're making a big mistake. That is what they're there to do. It seems to me that that, you know, that you would be able to rationally understand who these people are. I've had Al-Rasouli on who's an expert. He's been studying the Koran for 30 plus years.

And and I've had him we did a series with him explaining and going through and he doesn't he doesn't grab anything outside. He he takes their writings and and he says, OK, well, this is what they say they're going to do. You know, and and you talk about, you know, what what how they're going to talk. They talk in a term called taqiyya. You and I are infidels.

So anything they say to us, any lie that they feed us is OK. Because in their minds, it's in the pursuit of their ultimate goal, which is literally to subjugate the world. But we're on their target because of Tripoli. I mean, that's where it goes.

It goes back there. If if we jump out of this right now and tell me if I'm if I'm wrong in what I'm saying. But if we jump out of this right now, that doesn't mean they're going to stay over there and leave us alone. They believe they're supposed to subjugate the United States, predicated on the fact that we paid them Jerusalem back in the late seventeen hundreds and early eighteen hundreds. Am I am I wrong? No, I don't think you're wrong. I think what happens is kind of a modern spin is that each one of these are now nation states.

Right. They have all these tribals and all these divisive and often divided. I'll just use tribal mentality has come together. They form nation states and they're they're runs. Look, they're run by they're run by strong men. This is Iraq. This is Iran. This is Egypt. This is Syria.

That's what that's what that's how they act with one another. And oftentimes those religious rights are often they're as highly persecuted as any. If you were a Christian or you were a Jew or you were any other denominator, they don't care. And if you're a Shia compared to a compared to a Sunni, you're as much at risk because there are fundamental disagreements within the religion period. I think what happens, it makes things even more divisive as we look at American campuses and we see what I would call very intellectually immature young men and women on our most storied campuses. You know, spewing what they hear in five or 10 second tick tock videos.

Right. They just don't really have an understanding of the fundamental issues that Hamas could care less about a young man or woman. They see them as just as much a threat as they do the Israelis. So any American saying, you know, hey, you know, free the Palestinians. Now, we are all very empathetic and no one wants to see any any population, anything inhumane happen, anyone. It's trumped by what the goals and state goals are.

Hamas, Hezbollah, and of course, both their trigger pullers, which are the Iranians. How do we you know, and I think that the indoctrination question is is it is a huge portion of of what it is that we're facing, especially as you mentioned on the college campuses in particular. How do we turn that back? How do we how do we grab the attention of these young people? I know because in my mind, there's a mixture there. There's those that are sold out on on the agenda, if you will. There's those that are following along who have bought a line of of of empathy and those that are following along because it just seems like the the the I don't know the right thing to do. They're kind of drug in by their friends. How do we address the last two, the hardcore individuals in this that are stirring all of this? I don't know how well we can reach them. I think I think only God can change their hearts. But how do we reach the ones that are mentally and emotionally compromised?

You know, great question again. I think a certain part of every generation believes the last generation created all their problems. And there's all this in this in particular, this current generation sees everything wrong.

Right. It's a it's a it's a tear down generation. It's really hard to build things.

It's really hard to have new ideas. Look at the world through a different lens. In particular, I mean, this social media driven 15, 20 seconds of tick tock or wherever they grab their information, they let that let that influence them. And there's this sense of this kind of fake, this false outrage you see everywhere. Right. Where every every issue is the issue.

And I love to tell them that, you know, if everything's the problem, then nothing's the problem. In particular, what is dangerous is any support, any anti-Semitism we see in this country based on support for Hamas. It's it's wholly un-American.

It's embarrassing when I see it. The rest of the world must laugh thinking how our best and brightest turned to become so divisive and yes, so uninformed. You know, I was thinking about this as you're saying that, you know, relative to, again, as as a colonel, as someone who led troops, who had troops that you oversaw lots of troops. The propaganda mill, you know, we saw it in Vietnam, right? You know, we've seen it in the Iraq war and we've seen it in the Afghanistan conflicts and wars that we've been in. I mean, it has gone on consistently where the media and the left have done everything that they can to vilify American military, American soldiers to tear people down. I mean, I've I've highlighted a number of times the horrific suicide rate amongst veterans. But as as the commander on the field, how did you protect your soldiers from that kind of propaganda? Because we know the enemy is trying to get them confused about their mission, confused about why they're there and maybe even, you know, losing resolve.

So I don't I never had to deal with that. OK, young, you know, fortunately, young, young, young, young Marines, young men and women, just ordinary folks from across the country, across the kind of come across the globe that every day would do extraordinary things. They were well led.

Fantastic NCOs. OK, go ahead. We lost you for about a half a second there.

I'm so sorry. And let me let me reframe that, because I understand what you're saying. And and I admire these young people and I and I've argued that that it's our our best and our brightest that that generally are the ones that show up there, the ones that go over there and and and fight on behalf of this nation to defend us and defend our ideology and our and our way of life. So I'm not suggesting that they are turned or whatever, although I've seen, as I told you, I've seen some of this in some social media people saying, well, I was in, you know, this war and I was over in Afghanistan and I was in Iraq. And and and then their rhetoric that comes out is just you're like, where are you coming from? But my question is more to the point of they're being bombarded. You're saying you didn't have to do anything because they were committed to the cause.

Is that is that is that how I should interpret that? They were committed to the mission. They were right to each other as Marines.

They're well trained, well disciplined. They understood their mission. I think everyone knows in time there's going to be opportunity to question whether the morality or the ethics of what they people do.

And that's that's a personal journey you have to take. But that did not affect our mission, how we executed. These how how do these questions that I'm asking relate to the things that you've shared in your book, The Ghost of the Ghosts of Baghdad? Well, one thing is you get an unfarnished view, right? There's not you talked about disinformation, active misinformation that we see.

And you're actually right. The media has done that for since the media has been around. It's attempted to influence people with social media. It has become much easier to do. Social media is less regulated. Totally understand that when you deal with reporters, you deal with the press and the media, they have standards that they attempt to at least abide by. But social media is the Wild West.

They can say and do almost whatever they like. And it's up to you as a consumer to sift through it. And that's one of the great challenges I have is ensuring people have this intellectual curiosity and sift through it.

Don't accept the five second tech talk as the as the burning bush of very complex arguments. You know, your question on ghosts is that you get an unvarnished view of the war. You get to see young men and women at their best. You get to see great Americans. This is, you know, in context, 18 months after 9-11, it was a different world, absolutely different world. And we were thrust in to do some things that we couldn't ever anticipate doing. So it's my story.

You see the world through my lens. But it gives it gives you an opportunity to step into a cockpit, close the door and go on a ride that you would never be able to take. And maybe unwind as you're as you're saying some of the things that that the media has has gotten wrong, whether whether it was, you know, genuinely wrong or or or whether it was disingenuous. Either way, it's an opportunity to get a real behind the scenes look at what really happened over there. Absolutely right. It's it's as unvarnished as I could make it. You know, selfishly, I had hundreds of hours with with my copilot, my wingman, my commanding officers, my air group commanding officers.

And if there was any if there was any B.S., they would have called it. And so it gave me an opportunity to relink with, you know, link up with them again, let them tell their stories to me and then let me tell the story to you. And, you know, you have neighbors and brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews and aunts and uncles that all but served. And I think it gives them all a little bit different perspective and more of appreciation for what they did.

We talked a little bit about the history of what you have experienced, what you went through relative to that and your experience in dealing with the the Islamic and the jihad issue was what happened on October 7th. A shock or a surprise to you, really. It was a surprise. You know, I didn't I certainly didn't see it coming. I I can't anticipate it. You know, there's you know, the the Israeli Defense Force is going to study this for the next 20 years. Sure. And they're going to figure out how did this happen to us, how we let it happen.

And of course, you know, one day, you know, each day that goes by, you have all this hindsight where you could make these great decisions. But there's a trust the Israelis have in so many ways. The Israelis and the Palestinians live side by side. The Israelis and other Arab neighbors live side by side.

They live in, you know, kind of communities that they live on the same box. And that whether that's in near Gaza Strip, whether that's further north, that's in Jerusalem, that's in places where, you know, the Israelis have given opportunities for their neighbors to join their communities. And so that's going to be a long road back for the Israelis. That's going to be a long road back for Muslims and their Arab neighbors who have nothing to do with this.

They have no political affiliations. They're living their lives. They're trying to live their best lives in and amongst their their Israeli neighbors. And those are some of the victims we'll never talk about is what has done their cities, what has done their communities. Which really has a great deal to do with how Hamas fights these battles, even the PLO.

I mean, hiding in the hospitals, hiding within communities, hiding in apartment buildings, hiding in residential housing. But by the same token, you had 80 some odd percent of the population that's there that voted these people in that that has, you know, when when when all of this happened on the 7th of October, they're out in the streets celebrating. Right. Right. And, you know, I was certainly not there. I don't know. And I don't know how far those celebrations went around the corner of those streets. But you have to hold them.

I do. You have to hold Hamas accountable. It's their job if they're elected officials. Clearly, they don't care about the Palestinian people. They were given billions of dollars over the last 20 some odd years to build infrastructure. There's no electricity in schools and education, women in education.

Most of their doctors are trained by the Israelis. All these opportunities. Never mind keeping the Rafa Gate open and having a relationship with your southern partners and your southern neighbors, with the Egyptians to have a plan for the people after you knew you would do something so despicable.

Right. You're going to do something so cowardly. You're going to slaughter innocent civilians.

It's literally what it was on the 7th of October. And so you think you're going to hide and you have no plan for your people. It really shows their true colors.

Yeah, I agree. You mentioned Iran, too. And I want to get your thoughts with regards to that because obviously they're really the biggest dog in this fight. And they are providing, you know, supplies to Hezbollah, supplies to Hamas. They're assisting on all three fronts of this battle, of this attack against Israel. And yet this administration keeps releasing money to them. They keep giving them funds.

What's your message to them and your message to my audience? What can people do to try to turn the tide with regards to kind of how this administration on one hand is smiling out the front, but they're passing bucks out the back? Well, it's that you conflate international and our foreign policy with domestic policy. I think this administration in particular thinks they can have it both ways.

They can appease some of their farthest left leaning by a word. We are we are looking at these disadvantaged Muslim communities and we're ensuring it's smoke. I think the real the real tool here, the real diplomatic firepower from America is to shut off all economic aid, shut off all diplomatic communications within reason with the Iranians, continue to isolate them.

You're spot on. Their support of Hamas and Hezbollah is going on for generations. They train Hamas attackers that came in on the 7th of October. And I said it before, if I were an Iranian planner, I would be worried about what keeps me up at night is a is a flight of four F-15s coming across the Israeli border striking targets. Israeli special forces coming off the border striking key targets they've done in the past. Israelis are on the moral and ethical high ground here and they have every right to defend themselves and defend themselves against such future attacks. And I'm sure they're planning it.

But you're you're you're spot on. The Iranians are the ones that need to be isolated. They're the ones who want to become a nuclear power or the ones who want to be the regional hegemon. They want to dictate policy. So that's in our final minutes.

You know, the the other player in the midst of all of this, that that doesn't get a lot of, you know, spotlight. But they're certainly right in the middle of it. And that's China. CCP has taken a very strong stand in support of Iran. You've got a Russian CCP, Iran triad, so to speak. And and how how serious should we be taking that?

And what would be your your suggestion with regards to dealing with the CCP? Well, I think when anyone's you know, when Russia sees America is looking weak, they dive in. When the Chinese see Americans looking weak or the West looking weak, they'll dive in. It's a global economy.

Nothing's clean. Israel has a relationship. You know, they have an economic relationship with China. We still have economic relationships with China. I don't think China is doing anything more than trying to poke at the West again when they can. I don't there's not going to be a military support of that. I don't believe they would never I don't believe they would risk direct military support of the Iranians again. Hezbollah or as it would relate directly back into Hamas right now. They have in the past.

I think it's some your standard saber rattling by the Chinese. All right. Real quick. I want to make sure we get the book plugged. Eric Buehrer is the Web site. Eric Buehrer. B-U-E-R. You've been seeing his name listed underneath his picture on the screen or him on the screen.

It's not really a picture. He's live. And you can see right now that's his Web site up there up above him right now. Ghosts of Baghdad is the name of the book. Ghosts of Baghdad.

You can pick it up at Amazon. It's also on Audible and and really get a behind the scenes look and understanding. And quite frankly, it's it's you know, of of what is happening even right now. What the Israeli what IDF is facing as they face down Hamas in in the battle that they're fighting as well. We'll give you a much better understanding of what it is that's happening over there. Colonel, I thank you for being with me today and I greatly appreciate you writing this book and and bringing this information forward.

And hopefully we'll it'll clarify some of the disinformation the media has propagated. Thanks, Craig. Thanks for all your work you do.

It's a it's a it's a journey I know. I appreciate it. Thank you, sir. Thank you so very much.

All right. We will take a break. We'll be back with more right after this. We're going to go live to India coming up here momentarily.

I'll be back with more coming up right after this brief break. Look, I am for marriage between a man and a woman. I am for life from conception. I am for following the Bible, and I believe that our founders started this nation on biblical principles.

I am in support of our military and believe that America should play a role in world security. I believe our Constitution was intended for a moral people and that the Bible contains the only true moral code. I believe we are all born sinners and that God in his grace and mercy sent his son Jesus Christ to die for our sins. And that if we will confess our sins, he is just and righteous to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. I believe salvation is not just accomplished in a little prayer, but that it is found in how that transformation is lived out. Jesus is to be the Lord of our lives and we should follow biblical precepts. This is not legalism or works, but a life lived out in love and honor towards the one who died for my sins. Faith without works is dead and is no faith at all. I believe that we will fall and that we need to have a repentant heart and that God will ultimately bring us into perfect action through Jesus Christ. Spirit man perfected and soulish man in progress. I believe that we are not to live in guilt and shame when we fall, but we repent and get up and move closer to Jesus. I believe that if our nation will repent and turn from wickedness that God will heal our land.

I believe that as a Christian I must occupy until he comes and that to call evil wicked and to warn about those evil acts is a part of the mandated Christianity. That to love also means to be willing to take the risk necessary to confront a friend with the truth in hopes that their heart will be turned because their life matters. Even if it means in that moment they will possibly hate me. It means that I must risk scorn to stand for truth and that I can never sit silently by while evil attempts to conquer the world. God is my everything and Jesus is the love of my life. That does not make me weak but strong, not silent but bold and not fearful but courageous. Therefore if you are my friend while we may not fully agree know that I share what I share because I care.

If you strongly disagree with these beliefs they are not debatable for me and you can if you choose unfriend me. I do not say this in anger but in love. I wish for you eyes to see and ears to hear that Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation and that God not man gets to decide what is truth, life and the way. God bless you. It is a wonderful opportunity that we have put the Borval here in this community and with the prayer and support of Brad and Dr. Gigi on and the Children's and Children's Radio Ministry that has also this Borval.

We are so thankful for all our brothers and sisters who are praying for us and we are thankful to the program who completely has this Borval to put in this community. God bless you. And God bless you, Dr. Gigi on and God bless all the Children's and Children's Radio Ministry. Thank you. God bless you. Greetings, Children's Generation Army. I'm so grateful to be connected with you, my listeners. You are some of the most engaged, responsive, loving and caring people I know. I need to bring to your attention an urgent need for our ministries in India. While there has become a focus on the Uighurs in China, our ministries in Jammu, Kashmir and Punjab are being terrorized by those same Uighurs, the Taliban and the mounting CCP army at the border of India. Between these threats and the lockdowns, we find ourselves in need of additional financial support.