The Iraqi "Quicksand"

      Over recent months I have refrained from writing on our current situation in Iraq. I chose not to add my voice to the multitudes expressing their opinion on U.S. policy in the region. I do not care for the role of the critic. I do believe in the sovereignty of God, and I recognize that the Scriptures teach that, "The heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord and He turns it wherever He so wills" (Prov. 21:1). I honor our president, and I do believe that he is a man of God. This does not make him infallible, or omniscient. I believe the proverbial "quicksand" we seem to have encountered in Iraq speaks more about us, as a nation, than it does about George W. Bush. I believe that God is revealing some things to us, about us, in the current situation. What is God saying to us as a nation through this present crisis? Here are some of the things I believe God may be showing us:

      1) Democracy without a Christian foundation is not easily exportable.

      In the May 2003 issue of Biblical Worldview, Gary DeMar astutely addressed the efforts of the Bush administration to turn Iraq into a democracy. He writes:

"The Bush administration is delusional if it thinks that "democracy" will cure the ills of Iraq and the surrounding Muslim nations. What if we give the ‘liberated’ people of Iraq the right to vote, and a majority votes for a Taliban-style social and political system whose goal is to defeat the infidel West? Democracy in the hands of wild-eyed fanatics is perilous.

“The west is built on the remains of a Christian moral order. Attempts to export our political form without the worldview that gives its heart could lead to unintended consequences. Democracy in the Mideast will only lead to the imposition of the prevailing worldview which is anti-Christian and anti-Western. There will be enough people in Iraq, especially after we’ve invaded their country, dropped thousands of bombs, and killed who knows how many civilians, who want to turn America into a burned out cinder. They would love to get the chance to vote in a ‘democratic election’ so they can see their dream realized."

      As I have expressed in times past, it appears that our State Department fails to take into account that we are dealing with an Islamic nation. Islam has not shown itself to be compatible with such things as, individual rights and freedom of speech. These ideas, which we take for granted in the Western world, are the result of the influence of Christianity. To assume that "democracy" is the answer reveals an ignorance of our own political history.

      2) Our own secularization has led us to false assumptions.

      It appears that some of our policy-makers have not taken the religious issues seriously enough. This is understandable, because religious issues are not very important to most Americans. We have become so secularized that it is difficult to imagine others who are not. There are people in Iraq that take the Koran seriously, and that seems to have escaped the notice of our State Department.

      In the April 26, 2003 edition of Arrows of Truth I wrote the following:

"Reuters has reported that "U.S. officials plotting the future of Iraq underestimated the organizational strength of the Shiite majority and are not prepared to prevent the rise of Anti-American, Islamic fundamentalist government, The Washington Post reported Wednesday (April 23, 2003). My response to this was "What?" How could our State Department be so seemingly ignorant? Do they not realize the power that the Islamic religion holds over the minds of the Iraqis? Do they think the Islamic world is as "passionless" about Islam as most Americans are about their religious faith? The Shiites are not like Baptists. Iraq is not the United States. These Islamic sects take their religion seriously. They will fight to the death over their theological differences, and history verifies that. They are not like American denominations, content to recruit each other’s members, and not much else. It is certainly possible that we will find ourselves in the midst of a civil war, between the Sunnis and the Shiites. The Iraq-Iran War was the Iranian Shiites fighting against the Iraqi Sunnis. Of course, the one thing that can bring the Sunnis and the Shiites together is their hatred for the Great Satan (that’s us). There is a slogan attributed to Islam: “My brother and I against our cousin; We and our cousin against the world."

      3) God wants us to see what we have, as a society, become.

      The photos from the Abu Ghraib prison show us that the "chickens have come home to roost." Could it be that God is holding up a "mirror" for us to see how far we have fallen?

      Rich Lowry in his May 10, 2004 column I believe spoke well to this issue. He wrote:

"So it is that in Abu Ghraib and its aftermath we see some of the seamy undercurrents of America magnified in a horrifying fashion -- in particular, the celebration of cruelty, the ubiquity of pornography and a cult of victimhood. Any society, of course, will produce weak and malicious people, and prison abuses are nothing new. Andersonville, Ga., is still notorious for the conditions in the Confederate prison camp there. But the distinct echoes of Abu Ghraib in our culture are unmistakable.

“Consider the iconic film of the 1990s, Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction." It includes a scene of the rape of a man imprisoned and kept as a sexual slave, which prompted laughs in theaters. The victim, "The Gimp," became a figure of fun. Tarantino's latest, the "Kill Bill" movies, present the same romance of power and violence, arbitrarily and stylishly wielded. Cruelty, Tarantino tells us, can be fun.

“This is not to say that the filmmaker, or anyone besides those who committed and condoned the acts, is in any way responsible for Abu Ghraib. It's just that Tarantino -- and he's not the only one -- touches something within us that enjoys exalting the strong and humiliating the weak. And not just on movie screens. Large men forcibly sodomizing smaller men in U.S. prisons is widely made light of America.

“So, it was shocking to see a large gloved man smiling in a picture with his arms crossed as he stood over a pile of naked Iraqi detainees, but there was something familiar about it too. The apotheosis of the strong. There was something familiar in the picture of Lynndie England, with a cigarette dangling from her lips, pointing her finger at the genitals of a naked detainee. We know what she's doing in that picture -- she's trying to seem cool. She thinks that cruelty is a game, that the strong engage in it casually.

“Then, there is the very fact of the pictures. The American jailers, who live in a country where pornography is a $10 billion-a-year business, became amateur pornographers. They videotaped themselves having sex with one another. One of the officers disciplined at Abu Ghraib allegedly took pictures of a female soldier showering. The Americans sexually humiliated Iraqi prisoners, forcing them to masturbate, to wear women's underwear, and to commit (or feign committing) unnatural acts, and captured it on film. If they had done this stateside in different circumstances, they might be very rich and perhaps even up for an Adult Video Award."

      As believers we are to do more than listen to the political pundits on the right or the left. We are to be a prophetic people who seek to discern the mind of the Lord. May we as God’s people have both the ears to hear and the courage to collectively declare His Word to our nation.

Don Walker