RLL #19 | The Bible Foreign Policy And the Syrian Civil War

You're listening to Radio Luke's Lucid. I'm your host Steve Matthews. This is episode number 19. Thanks for listening in today. Well, today I'm going to be talking about a subject that has been interesting to me for a long time.

Foreign Policy, Syria, and the Case Against U.S. Intervention

I'm going to talk in general. My subject is going to be foreign policy. In specific, I'm going to be talking about the civil war in Syria and the U .S.' involvement in that particular war. Over the last number of years, you may be aware that there's been a big push by the U .S. federal government to remove Bashar Assad.

He's the duly elected president of Syria, to remove him from office going back at least to 2012 and maybe before that. Hillary Clinton was very adamant when she was Secretary of State, Assad must go. We were, she said this on, I think, more than one occasion.

Of course, others in the government and others in the media have echoed that same idea, whether they said Assad must go or whether they put it in some other way. They made it very clear that the U .S. had a responsibility to remove Bashar Assad from power.

Of course, this has been the constant theme that if you follow the comments of government officials, if you follow comments of the mainstream press, we're all told this, and it's just as a matter of common knowledge, of common sense that Bashar Assad must go.

Well, I want to challenge that idea here today. I don't think that there is a good reason for Assad to go. And I think that the U .S. government is very much overstepping its bounds when it makes that argument.

And that's what I'm going to discuss here today. Now, one of the main reasons that we're told that Assad must go is because we've heard time and time and time again that he gassed his own people. We heard that just recently, just a few weeks ago, I think it was on April 7th, that supposedly there was a gas attack in the Douma region of Syria, which is near Damascus, and that there were 40-some people who were killed.

And of course, this prompted international outrage. And we were shown pictures of people suffering and people dying. And we were told this was all because of a gas attack. Well, the response was swift and sure from the U .S. and from France and from Great Britain.

There was a coordinated attack on Syria. I think the day after that supposed gas attack took place, Israel also bombed Syria. And then maybe about a week later or so, the U .S., France, and Great Britain engaged in bombing Syria as well.

I think the U .S. launched quite a few cruise missiles at Syria. I don't know if they did anything else. I think it was just the cruise missiles that were launched. And again, this was all in response to Bashar Assad's supposed gas attack on his own people.

Well, that whole thing never really made a great deal of sense to me. And it was very interesting because just the week prior to that, Donald Trump had come out and said, well, we're going to leave Syria and we're going to leave soon.

And this was actually something that was in keeping with what Donald Trump said while he was a presidential candidate. You may recall that as a presidential candidate, and even before he was a presidential candidate, he tweeted and spoke out and talked about the U .S. involvement in Syria was a big mistake.

And he made that point very clear. And one of the reasons why I did support Donald Trump in the 2016 election was because even if he wasn't necessarily consistent about it, he did make a number of very good statements about staying out of foreign conflicts, about normalizing relations with Russia.

And that's considered to be something of a controversial stance. I don't think that it should be, but some people consider that to be very controversial. Well, about a week prior to Bashar Assad's supposed gas attack on his own people in early April, Trump had said, OK, well, you know, we're going to be pulling out of Syria and we're going to do it soon.

We're going to bring the troops home and we're going to make America great again. That's what he was saying. And this was just about a month ago. Well, lo and behold, the very next week you had a big gas attack, supposedly.

And it's interesting because that same series of events that happened about a year earlier in late March or so of 2017, Trump had talked about, well, you know, the fact that, OK, Bashar Assad can stay as president of Syria.

And he made some noises about the U .S. pulling out. Lo and behold, about a week later, there was another, there was supposedly a gas attack. So it's been two years in a row here where we've had the same sequence of events where Trump has made some noises about withdrawing from Syria.

And then that's followed up in almost within a week or so of an event where there was supposedly a gas attack. Well, the gas attack, when you think about it, doesn't make a lot of sense if you're Bashar Assad.

If the president of the United States comes out and says, we're pulling our troops out, why would you do the one thing? I mean, when you're winning the war, and Bashar Assad is winning the war to regain or to stabilize his rule in Syria, he is winning this Syrian civil war.

And when you're winning and you're on the verge of your major opponent, and of course, the United States military has been in Syria, there's a number of bases that they built there, and they spent years trying to overthrow Bashar Assad.

And when you're on the verge of the United States leaving, why would you do the one thing that you could be almost guaranteed is going to provoke the United States to remain and to continue to attack you?

I mean, that doesn't make sense. I mean, we're told that Bashar Assad is a madman. He's a lunatic. He's evil. Well, you know what a lot of people don't know is that Bashar Assad is by training, he's an eye doctor.

He actually went to school in England. And he's an eye doctor. He has his MD. So he's not a stupid fellow. And from what I've seen of him, I don't think that he's crazy. So those explanations really don't hold water, you know, this idea that he's just some madman.

I'm not here to carry water for Bashar Assad. I don't know everything he's done. And I'm not here to defend everything he's ever said or ever done. But as leaders go, he's actually a very tolerant Muslim leader.

He is an Alawite Muslim. And as a ruler in Syria, he has been been very tolerant of other religions. For instance, Christians, or at least, you know, I know a lot of times people are reported in Syria as being Christians.

I don't know if the Christians there are actually Christians in the sense that they actually believe the gospel. Maybe some of them do. I don't know if all of them do. But at least nominally, these are groups that name the name of Christ, and they are allowed to practice their faith openly in a Muslim country.

Now, that probably would shock a lot of people. It's interesting because our bestest buddy in the entire Middle East is, at least among Muslim countries, is Saudi Arabia. And you go try to practice Christianity in Saudi Arabia and see what happens.

Something probably not too favorable. Even in Israel. I mean, if you were to go over to Israel and you're openly too proselytized for Christianity, you would find yourself in a lot of trouble. If you were an American and you went over there and you did that, you probably would be arrested and deported.

But in Syria, Christians, or again, at least people who name the name of Christ, are allowed to practice openly. But yet we're told that Syria is the worst possible country and that Bashar Assad is the worst possible leader, and he has to go.

This is, again, it's taken as a matter of faith by all good and right thinking people, at least in the mainstream media. Well, one thing that, when I heard about that gas attack, the whole thing seemed, as I said, somewhat implausible.

It didn't make a lot of sense for Assad to have done what he did, a claim that he did. When he's winning the war and the U .S. is on the verge of pulling out, why would he go and do the one thing that he knows would get him in the most trouble?

Again, he's not stupid and he's not crazy. So that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. My thought, my own opinion on the matter is that I don't know necessarily even that there was a gas attack. It's hard to say exactly what happened here, but there have been reports coming out by, fairly credible people, that cast a great deal of doubt on this whole idea that Assad actually used chemical weapons to kill his own people.

Here's one example. There's a headline, and this is in Zero Hedge. It says, famed war reporter Robert Fisk reaches Syrian chemical attack site, concludes they were not gassed. And if you read through this particular article on Zero Hedge, you come down to a quote where there is a doctor who talks about what happened in Douma.

And what he claims is that those tapes that you saw, the video that you saw of these people who were dead or dying, supposedly from a gas attack, what this doctor said, he said that, well, these people really were suffering, but they weren't suffering from a gas attack.

What he said is that they were actually suffering from oxygen deprivation, that they had been living in these rubbish filled tunnels and basements. And he said that on a night of wind and heavy shelling, it stirred up a dust storm and these people were basically suffocating in their shelters.

So there were people who actually were suffering, but it wasn't from the supposed, it wasn't from the attack by Bashar Assad, at least according to Robert Fisk and this doctor that he interviewed. Now, Robert Fisk is a very famous war reporter.

He is, I guess you would consider him to be kind of a liberal, he's kind of a leftist. He's probably someone who maybe politically, maybe I wouldn't agree with on a lot of things, and maybe you wouldn't either, but that doesn't mean that he's wrong about what he says here.

And he's not the only one who's saying this either. This is the thing that's interesting. There was a, another gentleman I came across and his name is, is Pearson Sharp. And he went and also went to Syria, looked around, talked to people who were in the area.

And what he said after reviewing the area and talking to people who lived right in the neighborhood where the gas attack was supposed to have taken place, he said not one of the people I had spoken to in that neighborhood said they had seen anything or heard anything about a chemical attack on that day.

That was Saturday, April the 7th. So, you know, he was right there in the neighborhood. And he said here, just within a, you know, a few blocks of where the attack supposedly took place. And none of the people who lived right in that area had known anything about a gas attack.

Again, that seems kind of strange. Now, you know, there's kind of a history of this sort of thing. It's interesting because, as I mentioned, there was that attack, supposed attack in, it was either late March or early April of 2017.

And then there was supposedly another attack that had taken place in 2013. And everyone knows, as I said, everyone, you know, quote, knows that Bashar Assad gassed his own people. However, when you, you, you look at some comments that are made, recent comments that were made by James Mattis, this is the, the Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, he admitted that the U .S. has no evidence that Bashar Assad used sarin gas against his own people in 2013 or 2017.

Now, that's an extraordinary thing to say, don't you think? I mean, again, we've been told, we've been told this, that it's almost as a, as a matter of, of required belief that Bashar Assad gassed his own people.

But here we've got, we've got James Mattis, again, Secretary of Defense, very highly placed person, very highly respected person. He came out and this was in, oh, I see, I don't, I'm not sure where he made these comments.

But anyway, he was, he was and is the Secretary, Secretary of Defense. And he's saying that there's, there's no evidence. The U .S. has no evidence. He says we're searching for it. He's very emphatic that the U .S. is searching for it.

But he, we don't have evidence. I'll actually read you the quote here. Let's see, he says, we have other reports in the battlefield from people who claim it's been used. He's talking about gas. But he goes on to say, we do not have evidence of it.

We're looking for evidence of it. Again, it being gas use. Since clearly we are dealing with their shahadah regime that has used denial and deceit to hide their outlaw actions. Okay, well, yeah, how does he know that they have outlaw actions?

Well, they don't have any evidence of it. But he, you know, he, he kind of talks around the whole thing. On the one hand, he says, we don't have any evidence. But on the other hand, we know, we know that Bashar Assad is, is a criminal.

He's an outlaw, is what Mattis says. It's kind of funny, though, the way he couches that he, he, he kind of, kind of, kind of puts it in a bit of a parentheses. On one hand, he kind of says, well, you know, this guy's an outlaw.

But on the other hand, yeah, well, we don't really have any evidence of it. So there, even within Syria, there's, there is not good support for what so many people, at least in the mainstream media, take as gospel truth.

That is that Bashar Assad gassed his own people. There's just not much evidence out there of that. But, you know, someone might come back to all of that. In fact, maybe before I go on to that, I want to mention one other thing.

It's not just in Syria, where we've seen this type of thing, right? I mean, think about, let your mind go back, this isn't that long ago, back to 2003. Remember when the lead up to the Gulf War, the, the war against Saddam Hussein, you know, and Saddam Hussein was the most evil guy in the entire world.

He was the next Adolf Hitler. You remember all of the scare tactics that were brought up? Remember, we were told he had chemical, he had chemical weapons, he had weapons of mass destruction. I remember seeing some news reports from that time, where there were, there was talk that, you know, that he had these planes, these drones, or these things that could, he could fly over the United States, you know, spread anthrax around.

And we heard all of this stuff about weapons of mass destruction, we have to go in, we got to take him out, we got to, you know, because otherwise he's gonna, you know, gas or nuke or, or do something to, to the United States.

Well, we got over there, we, we removed Hussein's government, took over the country, and remember the big search for weapons of mass destruction? Yeah, yeah, nobody found any. That's the thing. So, you know, here's another example of a charge that was leveled against Saddam Hussein.

And again, I'm not going to sit here and argue that Saddam Hussein was a great guy, but we were told we had to go to war with him because there were weapons of mass destruction, and the US goes in, and they don't find any weapons of mass destruction by their own admission.

So I think it's fair to be skeptical of their claims. They don't have a very good track record, do they? Now, someone might come back, and, and let's, let's just maybe for the sake of argument, suppose, just for a moment, let's just suppose that Bashar Assad had in fact gassed his own people.

You know, suppose he had used chemical weapons. Well, does that mean that the US is obligated to go in and bomb Saddam or bomb Bashar Assad? You know, I would argue no, it does not. You know, is using chemical weapons on people a terrible thing?

Yes, it absolutely is. But, you know, the United States is, is best buddies with a lot of very horrible regimes. You know, I mentioned this, the, the Saudi Arabians. Well, you know, the, the Saudi Arabians, you know, Saudi Arabia is one of the most oppressive countries in the entire world.

You, you know, they behead people on a regular basis for criminal punishment. They, you know, they said you cannot openly practice Christianity in Saudi Arabia, the Saudi Arabian government has, or the country of Saudi Arabia has certainly spawned the Wahhabist movement.

And of course, the Wahhabist Muslims are the people who have been responsible for so much terrorism. The Saudi Arabian government has been running a long running war against Yemen, where many, many people have been killed, and the United States has supported the Saudi Arabian government in doing this.

So, you know, the Saudi Arabian government's done all sorts of horrible things. And yet, it's, it's okay when they do it, but it's not okay, if, if Bashar Assad, say, were to, to gas his own people, you know, we have to go in and fight him because of that.

But on the other hand, when Saudi Arabia commits all kinds of atrocities and all kinds of war crimes, well, we're going to support them. So there seems to be a certain amount of inconsistency there, even if you're looking at US foreign policy.

But, but more to the point is this, you know, where do we get this idea in scripture that because, and I'm arguing here as a scripturalist, do we, can you find any support in scripture for the idea that if a foreign government does something bad within its own borders, and in handling its, in taking care of its own internal business, that it is the responsibility of other countries to, to go get into a war with that person, you know, or get into a war with, with that particular ruler or that regime.

And I would argue that there is, is no support for that type of thing in scripture. Look at, I mean, and we can look at, say, Israel in the Old Testament, and think about this, I mean, there's a lot of foreign policy in the Bible, right?

There, I mean, we've got, got many, many books in the Old Testament that deal with sort of the, the, the history, the, the politics of, of the nations, of the nation of Israel, of Judah, the Southern Kingdom, the Northern Kingdom.

And nowhere in, in the Bible is Israel ever commanded to go out and smite other countries and make the world safe for theocracy. Nowhere has it ever said that. And, you know, I would say of any country that has ever existed in the entire history of the world, if there is one country that might be so charged with, with, with conquering other countries and going on an aggressive war, and imposing the law of God on other nations, I think Israel certainly would have been, been the choice for that, right?

I mean, it was, it was God's chosen people. It was, was his nation. And yet they were not commissioned to do any such thing. Basically, the Israelites were told to live in their land, to mind their own business, to honor God.

And, you know, they, they could trade with other people, they could talk to other people, but, but they were not encouraged to, to go on offensive wars against other people. Yes, they were commissioned to go and conquer the land of Canaan.

You know, God used the Israelite nation to punish the Canaanites for their many gross, gross sins. But Israel was not told to, you know, to go out and to smite the, you know, the benighted Egyptians, or to go out and to, to, to smite the Hittite nation, or to conquer other nations that were around them, all the pagan nations, and, and to, to impose the law of Moses on them.

Now, Israel did fight wars with some surrounding nations, that's true, but they were defensive wars. You know, Israel was not told to go out and, and go on a worldwide campaign, again, of, of making the, the world safe with theocracy.

And some of those other countries did terrible things internally. They did terrible things to their own people. But that wasn't the, the job of, of Israel to, to put a stop to all of that. You know, they were told to mind their own business, to live in the land, to honor God, you know, to keep the law, and, and that was the extent of their charge.

You know, mind your own business, that's really one of the big lessons I think we can, we can take from Scripture when it comes to foreign policy. Another, another aspect of foreign policy that we can get out of Scripture is the idea that we're to treat others as we ourselves would like to be treated.

You know, that is to say we're to apply the golden rule not just to, to personal interactions, but that also has a place in foreign policy. And I think that's a really fascinating thing to think about.

Probably not too often do Christians think about that. They, you know, they, they might be very much for the golden rule when it comes to, to maybe their own personal interactions with other people. And maybe they hope that other people certainly, certainly treat them that way.

But I don't think very often that we're encouraged to think about the golden rule as to how that would relate to foreign policy. There was an article several years ago, this was written back, oh, it was written back during the 2012 presidential campaign.

It's an article that appeared in Foreign Policy Magazine. Now, Foreign Policy Magazine, or Foreign Policy, I should say, it's just called Foreign Policy, it's a publication of the, yeah, what are those guys named?

I'm, the name of the outfit's escaping my mind here for the moment. But it's a, it's a very, very prestigious magazine. It's, it's the Council on Foreign Relations. Yeah, the CFR, Council on Foreign Relations.

I just couldn't think of it there for a moment. Foreign Policy is the publication of the Council on Foreign Relations. Now, the Council on Foreign Relations, if you're, you're familiar with them, or maybe that's, maybe you're not familiar with them.

But that is a, maybe like the ultimate movers and shakers club when it comes to, to foreign policy. I mean, everybody who's anybody is involved with, with the Council on Foreign Relations. You know, all the top politicians, top diplomats, like I say, the movers and shakers of the world, certainly in the West, are involved with, with the Council on Foreign Relations.

And there was this article that was published by this gentleman by the name of Uri Friedman. This was back in January 17th of 2012. So it's about a six-year-old article. And the headline says, Ron Paul invokes the Millard-Fillmore Doctrine.

And I'll quote a little bit of this article here. This is kind of leading up to the idea of using the, the golden rule as a, as a, as a, as a basis for relating to other nations, as a, as the basis for Christian foreign policy.

Here's what Ron, here's what the article says. Let's face it, when Millard-Fillmore, the undistinguished, uninspiring 13th president, 13th president of the United States comes up in political conversation these days, it's usually as the butt of jokes.

Quote, when five of your six candidates could not be elected president if they're running against Millard-Fillmore, I think you can presume that they will not, you know, dot, dot, dot, it kind of trails off.

But the whole idea is that, you know, that Millard-Fillmore was kind of a joke as a president, and anything that he thought was kind of a joke as a president. And that's important to this article, that we have to discredit Millard-Fillmore.

I mean, good grief, the guy's got a nerdy name, right? I mean, could you possibly have a more nerdy name than Millard-Fillmore? I don't know. It might be kind of hard to come up with one, certainly, at least among U .S. presidents.

I don't know if you could get elected these days with a name like Millard. But anyway, it's important for this Uri Friedman to discredit poor Millard-Fillmore, who's not around to defend himself, because Friedman doesn't like what Fillmore had to say.

And he goes on in this article to quote Millard-Fillmore, and he quoted his Fillmore's 1850 State of the Union Address, and it's very interesting. I'm not going to read everything that he quoted here, but this is kind of the money quote from Fillmore, and this is what Fillmore said.

He said, the great law of morality ought to have a national as well as a personal and individual application. We should act toward other nations as we wish them to act toward us. And justice and conscience should form the rule of conduct between governments instead of mere power, self-interest, or the desire of aggrandizement.

To maintain a strict neutrality in foreign wars, to cultivate friendly relations, to reciprocate every noble and generous act, and to perform punctually and scrupulously every treaty obligation, these are the duties which we owe to other states, and by the performance of which we best entitle ourselves to like treatment from them.

Or, if that in any case be refused, we can enforce our own rights with justice and a clear conscience. Now, how great of a quote is that? I would say that Millard-Fillmore, in those brief few sentences I just read there to you, shows more wisdom, more insight, more understanding of what the Bible has to say about politics than probably the entire foreign policy establishment of the United States put together today has.

That's extraordinarily insightful. That's great stuff. Wow. I just want to read that one sentence to you again. The great law of morality ought to have a national as well as a personal and individual application.

We should act toward other nations as we wish them to act toward us. Now, the writer of this article, this Uri Friedman fellow writing in Foreign Policy, he thinks this is just ridiculous. He thinks it's simply laughable.

And of course, he accuses Ron Paul of, oh, I don't know, expounding the Fillmore doctrine. Well, I don't think that Ron Paul would be embarrassed by that at all. In fact, what I just read there to you from Millard-Fillmore is pretty much what Ron Paul has been saying now since, oh, I don't know, at least publicly going back to the 1970s, at least the last 40 years, if not longer.

He has talked quite a bit about something called non-interventionism. That's his foreign policy. Now, when people challenge Ron Paul and they say, well, you know, we don't like what you're saying, what they do is they bring out the ultimate swear word and they call him isolationist.

You're an isolationist. So, I mean, if you don't favor sending American troops all over the world, if you don't favor massive amounts of military intervention wherever and under whatever circumstances, whether there's actually a crisis or whether it's a bunch of propaganda put out for one reason or another, if you don't favor that, well, you're an isolationist.

Of course, that's kind of a swear word. When you call somebody an isolationist, that's a swear word and it's meant to end the argument. It's meant to end the discussion. It's a little bit like calling somebody a racist.

If you call somebody a racist, it's meant to end the discussion. You don't have to define the term. You don't have to provide examples of how the person is a racist. You just simply call them a racist and that ends the discussion.

It's a little bit like that when it comes to foreign policy. You call somebody an isolationist and that's just the end of it. That person's views are so far beyond the pale and so ridiculous that they're not even worthy of being consideration and we're not even going to talk to you.

So, that's kind of the treatment that Ron Paul has gotten for a long time for his views. You're an isolationist. Well, what Ron Paul would argue is he would say that he is a non-interventionist. That is, he believes in the United States and other nations.

He would apply this to all nations that the job is to mind our own business, to take care of our own problems, to trade with people, to talk with people, to set a good example for other nations. But it's not our business to go and smite these sinners on the other side of the planet who pose no threat to us.

And that is, you know, even if Bashar Assad were as bad as what his worst enemies portray him to be, and I don't think that he is. As I said, I mean, Bashar Assad actually lets Christians, or again, those who at least name the name of Christ, openly practice in his country.

You know, there aren't too many countries in the Middle East, certainly in some of these countries that are run by some of these very radical Muslims, where that's possible. But yet we're told that Bashar Assad is the worst person in the world.

And on the other hand, we're told that the House of Saud are absolutely ideal and wonderful, even though they would never, ever, ever allow a Christian to practice in their country. There's another part of what the Bible says.

In addition to the golden rule, I also like to think that something that Paul said in Romans is applicable to foreign policy as well. Here's the quote, and this is from Romans 12, 18. He says, If it be possible, as much as lies in you, be at peace with all men.

That's the King James version. I think the New King James says, you know, that to the degree that it depends on you, live at peace with all men. It's the idea that you don't go out looking to pick a fight.

You don't go out looking to start trouble. Now, when Paul wrote that, he says, to the extent that it depends on you, to the degree that it depends on you. Now, it doesn't always depend on you. I mean, sometimes, you know, there are bullies in this world.

There are people who do want to pick a fight. And if somebody comes at you, well, you know, you do have, as an individual, a right to defend yourself. And of course, as a nation, you know, if you're being attacked, you have a right to defend your own territory.

You know, the idea of a defensive war is certainly consonant with Scripture. There's nothing wrong with that. But when you're talking about taking an offensive war or going on an offensive campaign, now that's something very different.

You know, that's not the golden rule. You wouldn't want other countries attacking, you know, as an American, I wouldn't want other countries attacking the United States. And I don't think the United States should be in the business of attacking other countries.

And yet, that's something that our foreign policy establishment doesn't have a problem with. And I think that the more we continue down this particular road, with the kinds of actions that we've done in Syria, it's very, very dangerous.

It's not just dangerous for us as the United States, it's dangerous for the world, because these things can get out of hand. You know, you think back on how World War I got started, what was it, there was a, they assassinated the Archduke Ferdinand, and one thing led to another, and you had all these interlocking treaties, and pretty soon you had this horrible pan-European war take place.

Well, you know, the United States, when it's involved up to its neck as it is in Syria, is really playing a very dangerous game. Because you're, you know, Russia backs Syria, you know, the United States backs the rebels, so I mean, you've got these two sort of proxy armies going at it.

Wars start over things like that, you know, maybe by accident. But nevertheless, you know, that is a real possibility that you could have a much bigger war than what we currently have. I think the right thing to do with Syria, as Americans, is to pull out.

I think that that's a proper deduction from scripture. You know, there's no good reason for the United States to be there. Syria does not pose a threat to the United States. It has, so far as I'm aware, never threatened the United States.

I don't think it has any interest in ever doing so. And as a result, there's no good reason for the United States to be there, and yet we've been there, and we have spent a great deal of time not only fighting against Bashar Assad, but we have supported, essentially, we've supported jihadists who fight against him.

And this is a big problem. You know, again, we're told that Bashar Assad is this horrible, terrible person, and yet the United States has been arming, fighting alongside, supporting Wahhabist jihadists.

Now, I'm not comfortable with that as an American, and I don't think probably most Americans would be if they knew that's what was going on. But that's not something that's really made very clear when we look at it in, when we hear press reports.

The Golden Rule in Foreign Policy

Well, that about wraps things up today. I think I've probably gone on about this as much as I care to at this point. Thank you very much for listening. I really do appreciate that, and hope to be back next week to talk to you.