On "Celebrating" the End of a War

I missed the parade. You know, celebrating the end of the war. Cheering the victory. Honoring the dead. But it’s hardly the only thing I’ve thought missing about our war in Iraq.

Yesterday marked the official end to our “combat operations” in Iraq. I heard it on the news, a little lower in priority than the 5-year anniversary of Katrina and the obsession with the recession. There was no fanfare. According to the website, http://nationalpriorities.org, military and non-military spending in Iraq now exceeds $745 billion, this for “incremental… additional funds.” (Regular military pay is not included, for example, but combat pay is included. Future anticipated costs are also not included.) “icasualties.org” lists the much greater costs, in human lives, at 4416 American troops killed in action. According to Patrick Goodenough, the International Editor for CNSNews.com, this is one death for every 15 hours of war. In addition to these grave numbers are the disturbing reports of the high number of combat injuries, especially traumatic brain injury, that are leaving thousands of our soldiers wounded – many with injuries that are not identified as combat related (mental health injuries), nor treated with the care which they deserve.

Because of the way the current and previous administrations and our news networks have chosen to provide coverage for this war, these losses are mainly nameless, faceless young people. Of course they are not nameless, nor faceless – that’s the point – they are beloved sons and daughters, parents, children, siblings, and friends whose faces and names are well-known, but they are largely forgotten because our War on Terror is a non-war in the traditional sense. In other words, we have conducted this war as if it were not costing us the precious resources, and the beloved children which are being lost every single day. At one point the former President remarked that the best we could do for this war was to “go shopping” – this war against the terrorists was about economic recovery – about not letting “them” steal “our way of life” (which may very well be caricatured by “shopping,” sadly enough) – not about deadly combat. There have been no calls for national participation much less for the kind of collective sacrifice that has been required of other national wars. As a result, while we have conducted life as usual, our daughters and sons have been giving their lives away – and the disconnect between those two concurrent lifestyles has far more serious consequences than we are prepared to admit. Though far harder to document (it was difficult enough to find a website that simply provided the numbers), another cost with which people of faith should be concerned is the loss of Iraqi lives. www.iraqbodycount.org places the estimate of documented deaths at between 97,461 and 106,348. To be sure, neither do those numbers represent nameless, faceless individuals.

While we should celebrate the end of this war’s combat operations, it should not be out of bravado or a sense of nationalistic superiority. We won! (I have never had any idea what “victory in Iraq” would really look like.) We should celebrate out of deep gratitude that this sad chapter is finally over. That the insanity of 7 ½ years is coming to an end. The sooner we can put this endless war behind us, work on repairing the broken relationships, the wounds of the horror of war, the better for our common humanity.

I don’t know what we have “won” in Iraq, if anything. I know that the quiet passing of “the end of combat operations” indicates a great defeat. We have conducted this war in a way that makes it clear that we mostly do not care. About the troops, the civilians, the “opportunity costs” lost in this nearly trillion dollar campaign. The commentators, hawks and doves alike, agreed that our plan for war was lacking. Now that the combat is over, I’d like to think we could do better with a plan for peace. To that end, I’ll be praying with you…

On Celebrating the Construction of New Mosques. A Baptist Response.

I watched with dismay and sadness a recent edition of Anderson Cooper's CNN news show as Rev. Flip Benham, of "Operation Save America," spoke out against the building of a mosque in New York's "ground zero" area. But the Right Rev. (better named, Rev. Wrong), hardly stopped there. His opinion is that no mosques should be built -- anywhere. "Islam is a lie born from the pit of hell." (I may not have that quotation exactly right, but this is close to his exact words.)

I am dismayed that this kind of biggotry exists, and though I support our freedom of speech, sad that such a misguided viewpoint is allowed a nation-wide viewing.

I happened to be listening to this with some family members, one of whom opined that Bentham's words seemed on target. Bentham had said that though not all Muslims are terrorists, all terrorists are Muslim. This family member couldn't separate the heinous acts of a handful of misguided fanatics from the religion which birthed their own prejudices and hatreds. And though it made for a slightly tense family moment, I could not not respond.

You simply cannot say this. It is NOT true that Islam is a religion of evil or violence. That some have perverted it as such is undeniable. So have some Jews and Hindus and Buddhists and Christians made their religion the basis for God's supposed sanction of their own violence. And I asked if this family member knew any Muslims. He did not. And I told him that he needed to meet the handful of active, participating, faithful Muslims that I work with on a regular basis, through Mecklenburg Ministries, and hear their stories... see their lives... They are living testimonies to the fact that of the world's 1 billion Muslims, the vast majority are God-fearing, peace-loving, justice-oriented members of a religion whose name, Islam, is derived from the Arabic word for "peace."

Fundamentalism is our enemy. Whether Islamic or Christian. And education -- and relationships -- are the keys to moving our world forward.

Skip Bentham is wrong. And we need to say it boldly.

I'm grateful to my Muslim friends whom I consider partners in faith, brothers and sisters on the journey of finding and knowing God. Through our distinctive understandings of our approach to God, there is, yet, more that draws us together than divides us.

To that common end, we should celebrate the construction of houses of worship around this great nation -- regardless their shape. (I understand that there are political issues at hand, with the proposed NY mosque. I am not addressing these issues, but the larger religious and philosophical framework of this conversation.) And Baptists should lead the way in this -- as historic supporters of the freedom of religion.

May it be so.