06/2005
"Since nothing in your article provided any kind of
answer to the events of 9/11/2001 and the problem of terrorism, I am wondering if you have any ideas or thoughts on the subject?
Other than the idea that we should love folks who murder innocent women and children and love the folks who go over seas and
kill the enemy.
Your arguments seem from the same old school liberalism
that opposed the effort of America in World War II. You are removed from mainstream thought and you seem not to have any particular
concept other than objecting to the religious people getting involved in the military.
Is that about it?"
Gosh, that must be about it ... don't ya think?
I doubt that either one of us would hesitate to drop our
cell phones, leave our keyboards and find some sort of weapon to defend our homes, our streets, our towns and our country
the moment real actual enemies put boots on our homeland. What we say to one another about whether or not we would kill to
defend our families and country is obvious.
My thoughts on 9/11 concern primarily a desire for justice
to the victims, redress if possible, accountability and harsh punishment for those guilty.
Those thoughts do not obsess on a blind vengeance against
specific individuals, countries and peoples to whom guilt has not been justifiably and irrevocably assigned. Those thoughts
then do not have a need to construct some sort of theological portrayal of God that justifies the resulting horror.
My thoughts do not need to claim that God wants or approves
of the sort of killing commenced by our Christian in the White House who garnered support for commencing killing specific
people with lies.
My thoughts do move to dismay at any Christian who publically
attempts to justify killing innocents because political demagogues labeled military invasion of Iraq as a key component of
something else labeled a "war on terror"; the implication being that war is a dirty business in which innocent human beings
will suffer and collateral damage is acceptable so long as that damage doesn't come ashore here.
The same people who oppose abortion have not spoken out
about the deaths of pregnant women in Iraq due to bombs and military violence. The war-caused death of a pregnant Iraqi woman
is in fact the military abortion of her unborn.
Put religion and patriotism in the same mixer, turn on
the switch and one invokes a responsibility to reconcile the tenets of the religion with the realities of patriotic involvement
in war.
Too many Christians in this country are looking the other
way; in fact have their heads buried in the sand whenever protest is made about so much killing.
We're coming up to 1500 deaths of sons and daughters from
American families, maiming and mutilation of more than 10,000 of our troops and the deaths of more than 100,000 Iraqi human
beings.
When is the God of the morally indignant Christian Conservative
going to be satisfied?
I assume then that "mainstream thought" is that the American
Christian community has no moral accountability for participating and supporting the exportation of war in such a mindless
manner as we are seeing.
I assume that when my son-in-law is redepolyed to Iraq
I'll find solace in the comforting confidence and arrogance that says going overseas and killing whoever political liars decide
are our enemies is patriotically and religiously correct.
I can prepare for his possible death with the assurance
that the current mainstream-thinking Christian citizens will weep with me and that my instinctive hatred of those who killed
him, their race and their religion is a spiritual attibute given me of God.
Is that what you're saying?
© Arthur Ruger 2005
