The Christian Imagination

As long as wer’re talking politics, I thought I would repost what I wrote on another blog back in December 2006. Rumsfeld is no longer in the picture, but his legacy lives on. Oh, and I just realized their website is no longer there, so my links to source material are no longer valid. I may have the source documents around, or feel free to do a search for the Project for a New American Century.

I was just reading a post from Jim Wallis’ blog. I found the following quote really interesting.

And don’t start in about Saddam. I was against him when Washington treated him like a pal—guess who was the liason to the Butcher of Baghdad: Donald Rumsfeld. We helped Saddam in his war with Iran and even helped him target his use of WMD’s against Iranians.

Rumsfeld, along with Dick Cheney, Gary Bauer, William J. Bennett, Jeb Bush, and Steve Forbes are part of a neo-conservative think tank called The Project for a New American Century. Back in 2000, they published a report called Rebuilding America’s Defenses. The report is not without merit, but it does draw some controversial concluions. Here are a few quotes:

About the US enforcing global security, not just US security (later called a Pax America):

At no time in history has the international security order been as conducive to American interests and ideals. The challenge for the coming century is to preserve and enhance this “American peace.”

How this security is meant to favor US interests:

The true cost of not meeting our defense requirements will be a lessened capacity for American global leadership and, ultimately, the loss of a global security order that is uniquely friendly to American principles and prosperity.

The following quote is from the NAC report Iraq: Setting the Record Straight. Do you know who said it?

What if [Saddam] fails to comply and we fail to act, or we take some ambiguous third route, which gives him yet more opportunities to develop this program of weapons of mass destruction….Well, he will conclude that the international community has lost its will. He will then conclude that he can go right on and do more to rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction. And some day, some way, I guarantee you he’ll use this arsenal.

That’s right. Bill Clinton. The NAC details all the reasons why they feel the Iraq war was justified. If you’d like to read a 100 page detailed explanation from the source, there it is.

This letter, written by the NAC to Bill Clinton in 1998 is rather eye-opening. They talk with a sense of urgency about the threat of Saddam, WMDs, and removing Saddam from power.

This article by Duane Shank of Sojourners (a Christian organization) explains in more detail.

So there you have it. We helped Saddam build his empire. The man who helped bring him down helped build him up, Mr. Rumsfeld. The NAC, including Chaney and Rumsfeld were largely responsible for the George W. Bush Administration’s foreign policy. The NAC wanted Saddam out of power, period, back in 1998. Their 2000 report reinforced that Saddam was a threat. This report also talks about maintaining a Pax Americana and policing the world, with US interests at the forefront. Thus, any talk linking Iraq to Al Qaeda as a justification is just that, a justification for what they already intended to do.

Yes, Saddam was a threat, but it’s hard to take talk about freeing the Iraqi people seriously when we don’t apply our ‘ethic’ consistently. Genocide is going on in Sudan, and we are doing what? China commits human rights violations (as do others), and we use economics as leverage. For the record, I do not think the Iraq invasion was just. When we strike first (a pre-emptive war) and there are significant civilian casualties, that breaks two just war principles. Do a search for ‘Just War’ in Google and see what you come up with.

Has the US ever done anything wrong? Is there any legitimate reason why anyone in the world would hate us? Yes and yes. The US has done a lot of good in the world too. We are loved and hated, rationally and irrationally. I embrace my country. I am an American. We have done great things as a country and made mistakes, and sometimes do things that are questionable (CIA anyone?). I was reading Thomas Merton once and he was talking about the lunacy of the Superpowers focus on Nuclear Weapons and destruction. Is something as powerful as a nuke ever justified? Is modern war even just? Two examples that I have a hard time with the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Bombing of Dresden. The Japanese cities were more significant militarily than Dresden. Still, all were civilian population centers. Dresden is still questionable. It is argued that nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war sooner and saved lives in the long run. If true, that is really disturbing to me. In the battle of us versus them, is it as simple as pragmatically deciding that our lives are worth more than theirs, and therefore, any means necessarily to win is acceptable, even if it means destroying thousands or millions of lives, even innocent lives? As a Christian, I just have a hard time with that, as it just doesn’t line up with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

It’s a complex world though, where people have layered motives for their actions, and where everybody is not as good as we’d like to believe. There are people who do evil things, and who will not stop doing evil things unless they are threatened with violence, and so we use violence. We seem to be rather uncomfortable though with the notion that there can be evil in our own hearts. We don’t like to think that we can possibly do anything wrong.

While violence is part of the world we live in, as a Christian, I believe in a higher ideal. Too often I think we take the easy way out, the way of the world, the pragmatic solution. Non-violent peacemaking isn’t always the best solution, but you know, if we took it seriously, and if we used it more often, I wholeheartedly believe it would be more effective. What’s that you say? It doesn’t work? It’s not reality? I beg to differ. Read A Force More Powerful: A Century of Non-Violent Conflict