On Friday I said I was taking a weekend break from the news. I should’ve stuck to the plan. On Saturday morning I checked the headlines and read a story about Donald Rumsfeld saying the worse is yet to come regarding the prison abuses. Another story mentioned beatings and rapes of women and young boys. Some on videotape.
Despite all this, I don’t think President Bush should’ve apologized on Arab TV, and I hope I don’t ever hear those words coming out of his mouth again, especially directed toward the enemy (picture Roosevelt apologizing to Hitler). But I do like his toughness and determination to thoroughly investigate the matter.
Even if the video and other photographs are as bad as they say, I still believe this is a just war. So instead of obsessing over the horrible details, I took a step back to look at the big picture of war in general.
Some principles of a just war are: self-defense or defense of others, use of force that will have a reasonable likelihood of success, force used only when non-violent means will not work, and distinguishing between combatants and non-combatants (although “collateral damage” is possible). I believe the war in Iraq meets these qualifications.
Warfare is but one of many consequences of man’s fallenness. That some members of our morally degraded society are surprised that American soldiers may have tortured and raped is hypocritical. Democrats are notoriously soft on crime and other perversions, but when it comes to these developments in Iraq, they suddenly want to see heads roll.
My theory is that they can’t stand to see a follower of Christ in the White House, and they will use anybody or anything to get rid of him.
If I weren’t a Christian I’d sound like a conspiracy theorist. But we know that our adversary is very clever and subtle.
From a biblical perspective, we know that war exists because of sin. Sin is war with God (rebellion) and ourselves (resisting temptation to sin). And we know that every event has a purpose; God uses even sin to His glory.
In the Old Testament, God used war to His glory to chastise pagans and the nation of Israel. Although He righteously judges in the use of war, it is humans doing the fighting and there will always be the danger of outright cruelty.
Donald Lambro at the Washington Times offers a positive outlook on the prison scandal:
A few more things need to be said about the prison scandal.
(1) Some of the interrogation methods yielded intelligence information that helped save lives of U.S. soldiers and of Iraqi civilians who want the terrorist insurgency to end. In most cases the questioning of detainees has been professional, persistent — tough but humane.
(2) The prison population in the two cellblocks at Abu Ghraib was made up of Saddam henchmen, former Ba’ath Party security officers who ran his torture mills, and criminals who joined the insurgency just to kill Americans. Some of the detainees are accused of killing U.S. soldiers and would no doubt kill again if freed.
Torturing terrorists (as a last resort) for life-saving information is one thing; raping women and children is quite another. As disgusted as I am about this, I needed to write this post, urging everyone to keep in mind our objective of peace.
Ultimately, men will never achieve peace with one another. Only when the Prince of Peace returns will we even know what the word really means.
