Vice President Joe Biden stopped in Baghdad this week to put a positive spin on the U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq, to be finished by the end of this month. But no amount of spin can change the fact that this pullout represents a shameful defeat for America in Iraq and an irreversibly massive setback in the war against terrorism.

“It may be some time before the full weight of this defeat is apparent in newspapers or on television,” the Weekly Standardwrote on November 7. “Its effects will be felt increasingly, however, as America’s leaders grapple with a rising and nuclearizing Iran and the reemergence of al Qaeda franchises in the Arab world” (emphasis added throughout).

Iran is already crowing over its conquest. Retreat from Iraq is only the beginning of America’s complete withdrawal from the entire region, said Iran’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The Associated Press reported last month that Iran’s presence in Iraq is already visible. “It’s a natural step, most agree, for the only two Shiite Muslim-led governments in the Sunni-dominated Mideast to expand their relationship.”

The AP then concluded with this statement—one that could easily be mistaken for what the Trumpet has been saying for the past 15 years: “Ironically, it was the U.S. who opened Iraq’s door to Iran by ousting Saddam’s Sunni-dominated regime, allowing Shiite parties with historic ties to Tehran to rise to power.”

America opens the door, Iran waltzes in—and now Iran shows America the door!

Ten years ago, President Bush promised to relentlessly march against terrorism “until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.”

Two months ago, President Obama was pleading for Nouri al-Maliki to allow a measly 3,000 U.S. troops to remain in Iraq for the sake of security. But the Iraqi prime minister sharply rebuffed the request and instead bowed before intense pressure coming from Tehran and the pro-Iran factions in Iraq.

American power is now in full-scale retreat. And this rapid decline has been on full display throughout the war against terrorism. From the very beginning, in fact, the United States has been fighting a losing battle.

America waged war against an elusive battle tactic, rather than confront the real enemy. It turned a blind eye to the “axis of evil” and instead targeted small fries—al Qaeda and affiliates, Saddam, the Taliban, etc. And even then, instead of fighting to win the wars and to guard U.S. interests, America’s military attempted to build nations and win the hearts of unfriendly peoples.

“This shifting of the American military mind—transforming war into nation-building—started during Vietnam and accelerated in this decade,” Angelo Codevilla recently wrote in an essay titled “The Lost Decade.” Along the way, because of this changing mindset, America’s military strength has been downsized and degraded. A generation ago, Codevilla noted, America’s Navy had 600 combatant ships. Today, it has fewer than half of that.

Who needs a large fleet of battleships when the greatest threat we face today comes not from powerful nation-states—the thinking goes—but from shadowy networks of international terrorism? And so the Pentagon mothballs ships, cancels a sophisticated remote-controlled artillery system and stops production on the F-22 fighter-bombers.

Worse still, Codevilla wrote, is the moral decline within the armed forces. “The fact that more officers who have finished their initial military obligation (Army and Marine captains, Navy lieutenants) now choose to leave the military than new officers choose to join is an accurate barometer of their discontent. They, and the military families that discourage their children from becoming officers, blame the top brass for designing operations that please politicians at the cost of wasted lives and lost wars. Endorsing the military nonsense of the war on terror has become the prerequisite for successful military careers.”

In other words, if you want to move up the ladder in the U.S. military, you’ve got to promote the failed policies coming out of Washington!

“And I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them,” God says about our very day in Isaiah 3:4. Later in that same passage, He blames the leaders primarily for the mess we have gotten ourselves into. “… O my people, they which lead theecause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths” (verse 12).

The leaders are responsible! And it’s leading to total disaster, as it says in verse 1: “For, behold, the Lord, the Lord of hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem and from Judah the stay and the staff, the whole stay of bread, and the whole stay of water.”

When the economy collapses—and we’re already at the beginning stages of that collapse—food and water will be scarce. Shelves will empty. God, it says, takes it away!

And notice what else is taken away: “The mighty man, and the man of war, the judge, and the prophet, and the prudent, and the ancient, the captain of fifty, and the honourable man, and the counsellor, and the cunning artificer, and the eloquent orator.”

God is talking about a dearth of strong, masculine male leadership—the men of war, the great military generals; the captains of fifty. Where are they? God has taken them all away! And the nation falls apart at the same time true leaders disappear. It’s all connected—so says the Prophet Isaiah.

For more than two decades now, the Trumpet has been heralding the end of the American empire—and it has all been based on prophecies like this one in Isaiah 3.

From the beginning of the war against terrorism, we told you that the United States did not have the “necessary will” to win the war (November 2001). That forecast was based on another prophecy—Leviticus 26:19.

We told you early on that as active and aggressive as America would be in the war, in the end, its strength would be spent in vain (Leviticus 26:20). Now, everyone else is writing about it.

This month, the United States of America is accepting defeat in Iraq—the “mother of all disasters,” to use the words of the Weekly Standard. Its military power has been shockingly diminished. America’s economy is broken. And social unrest is now spilling into our streets.

What a decade of defeat this has been for the United States of America.

“Do you think so great a fall could not come to so great powers as Britain and America?” Herbert W. Armstrong asked in The United States and Britain in Prophecy well over a half century ago. Back then, it would have been easy to scoff at the prophecies of God.

Not now.