I'm going to give people a cause to doubt my "liberal credentials." But before you complain, listen to my reasoning. You may find I still think very differently from conservatives.
As I write this the airwaves are full of news about violent and increasingly effective resistance movements in Iraq. It seems that not only the Sunni Muslims, but the Shiite's are tired of infidel boots tromping Iraqi soil. And they see this affront to Islam as serious enough to be worth their lives.
I'm going to diverge from "political correctness" and question George Bush and others on the assertion that Islam is a peaceful religion. It is not peaceful in practice and, if what I have read about it is true, it is not peaceful in its sacred writings. In its early years Mohammedanism spread through conquest.
But I can't say much better about Christianity. While the religion's founder refused to fight when arrested and taught his followers to "turn the other cheek," most Christians today solidly support George Bush's decision to attack Iraq. I've mused on that phenomenon before, so I'll pass on commenting about it here.
The willingness of Iraqi religious leaders to allow their mosques to be used to stage attacks on American occupiers testifies to their lack of a moral stance against violence and to their willingness to exploit our reluctance to "desecrate" a house of worship. A word of advice to American commanders: The desecration of a house of worship takes place when it is used to launch a violent attack, NOT when that attack is responded to with destruction of that building.
One of their complaints regards the killing of Iraqi "civilians" by American troops. I haven't heard the military take on this charge, but my guess is that they would say these "civilians" posed threats to our troops, or at least appeared to. And I would also guess that they wouldn't be entirely wrong. More on this point later.
In understanding the widespread public support for the war in Iraq, at least when it was going well, we have to understand how Americans were responding in the late 1990s. Saddam Hussein's increasingly arrogant restrictions on and complaints about UN weapons inspectors made Americans seethe with anger. I know; I was one of them!
We wanted President "Bubba" to drop a nuke on Baghdad with absolutely no advance warning. We wanted our soldiers to go in and capture Saddam, hang him by his privates, and inject him with life-sustaining drugs so he would suffer even longer than humanly possible. We would gladly have taken a whip to his bare body ourselves.
That, of course, was when we listened to news of his latest affronts. When we had had time to cool down we decided we should either fish or cut bait. In other words, we should demand immediate compliance, on threat of serious military consequences, or we should drop the issue entirely and let Saddam's neighbors deal with the consequences. Bill did neither.
With 20-20 hindsight it has become clear that the whole Iraq thing was a diversion from the really important national security issues of the time. I say hindsight because, at the time, most of us didn't recognize the real threat. Bill was trying to do something about it in Somalia, and when the people there demonstrated their hatred of Americans many of us (Republicans included as I recall) asked Bill to get us out of there.
Another 20-20 hindsight issue is that the attempt to impeach Slick Willie diverted both national and administration attention away from the increasingly obvious threat of "radical" Islam. No sooner did we see a second jet crash into the World Trade Center than the name "Osama Bin Laden" sprang to mind.
The extremely controversial election of 2000, coupled with the signs of an impending economic downturn, also served to distract national and, probably, administration attention from what we now know to have been a serious threat.
I, like many others, was skeptical about the effectiveness of attacking the Taliban. Questions had been raised about the "greatness" of the United States, usually in the form of people demanding that our children be taught that the United States is the greatest nation on earth. I believe the United States is great only when it does great things. Bombing a nation from miles up, and using native soldiers to do the ground combat and dying is not great, it is cowardly.
I still question that. We haven't captured Bin Laden, we haven't freed Afghanistan from the Taliban threat (or if we have, we've left the country in the grip of only marginally better warlords), and we certainly haven't increased political stability in that region of the world.
But then someone started suggesting an attack on Iraq. Those of us with a little historical sense knew that Iraq was a "cobbled together" country with a number of conflicting ethnic groups. We might have despised Saddam Hussein's heavy-handed tactics for ruling the country. But we understood that such dictatorial leadership might be necessary to hold the country together and to quell the forces of anarchy.
So when we heard someone suggest that we take Saddam out we thought it was a very stupid way to conduct a war on "terrorism." If Saddam was a terrorist, maybe we need to send troops to capture George W. Bush, who has instigated two unprovoked wars in less than four years.
But George, Donald, and friends didn't listen to us. Well, maybe they did, but they didn't accept our advice. They went ahead and started a war in Iraq. And it appears now that while they had great plans for starting the war they didn't have much of a plan for ending it. Hey, the current mindset was for a war on terrorism which, as they defined it, wouldn't have a clear-cut end.
They also didn't have a good plan to maintain civil order as our troops took control. The heavy looting that took place under the eyes of American troops chanting an "It's not my job" mantra should never have been allowed. It was easily predictable. Yes, it would have been more costly, but I'm a firm believer that if you're going to do something you should do it right.
Which brings me to my main point. We should never have started this war. But we can't go back and change that. For good or for ill the war has been started. We owe it to the Iraqi people, we owe it to the country's neighbors, we owe it to ourselves and to the world to assure that a stable and less dictatorial government gets established there.
The current news makes it clear this is going to be an expensive task. And there are some liberals calling for us to cut and run. But while there may not have been much of a link between terrorism and Iraq in 2002, there is a very clear link now. We've already planted the seeds for a future crop of virulent terrorists from Iraq. If we respect the lives of the soldiers who have already died, if we respect the lives of the Iraqis who have died, we must take action to keep those seeds from ripening.
And that's why I suggest that it may be important to reelect George Bush. It seems the choice American voters will have in November of 2004 is already set. And the Democratic contender has said he wants to pull us out of Iraq. Can we doubt that he might neglect the necessary herbicide before he leaves?
You can say many things to criticize Mr. Bush. He's a liar, he's an idealogue, he shamelessly exploits his religious connections. But you must agree that he's a man of resolve. As galling as it might be domestically, as expensive as it might be to pay off the debt he's running up, the world's security interests might best be served by another four years of Bush.
That's an awful lot to expect, however. Will George stay the course when it becomes politically unpopular? Will American public opinion demand a withdrawal before the job is done right? If either should fail, keeping George in office will have been a waste. So will the deaths of American soliders (600 and counting) and the deaths of Iraqi fighters and civilians. Iraq will be a worse place to live, the world will be a worse place to live, and we already know that we can no longer isolate ourselves from world unrest.
I rarely bring my religious beliefs into discussions here. I have a separate section of this site for that. But I'm going to change that in this paper. I'm going to state my view of the situation in Christian terms.
ALL human life is sacred. We cannot give it, we can only prolong or shorten it. If we cannot give it we have no right to take it. What do we do when some people (most people, really) ignore that reality and kill anyway? Do we let them take over the world because they've killed off all of us who believe in fundamental, God-given human rights?
Earlier I mentioned the possible confusion between "civilian" and combatant in Iraq. In my religious viewpoint there is NO difference. God made every one of us, and he recognizes no uniform or affiliation. To kill a human is to kill a human, regardless of whether he has you in his crosshairs.
To understand what I'm about to say you must understand the religious beliefs that undergird it. I believe God will one day destroy this earth and take his followers away to await the day when he will recreate this earth to be our eternal home. This world as it stands, with all the economic, social, and political systems that make it work as it does, is NOT my home. If we allow the violent to kill all the non-violent, there will be no one left on earth to prevent God from destroying it.
But when God's people keep linking their lives so closely to worldly economics, culture, and politics, he can't speed up the process. And so he waits while more children are born to poverty, more people suffer hunger and persecution, and more and more hotheads inflict terror on people worldwide.
Jesus once said, "To the extent that you have done it to one of the least of these brothers of mine, you have done it to me." What are Christians doing to Christ today, in Iraq and Afghanistan, in America's poverty-stricken neighborhoods, and in our underfunded, assembly-line schools?
There has been much discussion recently regarding Mel Gibson's cinematic portrayal of Christ's passion. A member of my own church has criticized it for its Biblical inaccuracy and excessive gore. But I think there's a metaphorical sense in which the picture is more accurate than we'd like to admit.
If Jesus really does take what's done to people on this earth as if it's done to him, can any cinematic portrayal accurately convey the terrible treatment he's getting? Mel may have been expressing his extremist religious views, he may have been playing the Hollywood gold-digging game by giving audiences the violence they so clearly want, but he has stumbled on a metaphor for the current world situation.
I am rather cynical about ever finding a solution to the world's problems. And it may sound callous, but it really doesn't bother me because this world is not my home. I'm not saying that I don't have sympathy for the world's suffering people. But I despair of helping them when the bulk of Christianity eggs the current administration to continue its warmongering ways.
When Christians call for laws to increase the number of births, when they call for a reduction in government assitance to the needy (without putting up enough of their own money to more than make up the difference), when they preach that war can be justified, they demonstrate that they are Christians in name only. They have taken the name of Christ in vain and violated the third commandment.
I personally believe that the Holy Spirit is being withdrawn from the earth. Humanity is being increasingly allowed to act as it wishes without any moral restraints other than the limited restraits they selfishly wish to impose on others. The news will continue to get worse, and the God-given rights of people worldwide will be increasingly restricted in the name of security. God's people will suffer persecution for opposing the morally-focused majority. Some will die.
But I see a light at the end of the tunnel -- the light of divine intervention. Wrongs will be set right, to the eternal detriment of all who have chosen violence for aggresive or defensive purposes.
Back to this benighted world. Who will I vote for in November? It depends on whether George still shows the resolve in November he shows today. If I see signs that he is wavering or is about to waver on his comittment to get Iraq right I will most certainly vote against him.