The political posturing over Iraq is intensifying and a reality check is needed.  Allow me to review the salient features of what is happening.

• First, last week former VP Al Gore gave an address at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco.  In the words of Washington Post columnist, Michael Kelly, “It was dishonest, cheap, and low.  It was hollow.  It was bereft of policy, of solutions, of constructive ideas, very nearly of facts. . . . It was breathtakingly hypocritical, a naked political assault delivered in tones of moral condescension from a man pretending to be superior to mere politics.  It was wretched.  It was vile.  It was contemptible.”  It was filled with lies and misrepresentations:
1. Gore said, “Those who attacked us on September 11 and who have thus far gotten away with it.”  FACT: The government of Gore’s country has led a coalition of nations in a war against al Qaeda, “those who attacked us on Sept.11;” has destroyed al Qaeda’s central organization and much of its physical assets; has destroyed the Taliban, which made Afghanistan a state home for al Qaeda; has bombed the forces of al Qaeda from one end of Afghanistan to the other; has killed at least hundreds of terrorists and their allies; and has imprisoned hundreds more and is hunting down the rest around the world. 
2. Gore said, “The vast majority of those who sponsored, planned and implemented the cold-blooded murder of more than 3,000 Americans are still at large, still neither located nor apprehended, much less punished and neutralized.”  FACT:  The men who “implemented the cold-blooded murder of more than 3,000 Americans” are not at large.  They are dead; they died in their act of murder.  In addition, the “vast majority” of those who “sponsored,” “planned” the crimes are also dead, in prison or on the run.  The inmates at Guantanamo Bay, the hunted survivors of Tora Bora and the terrorist cell members arrested nearly every week, and the thousands of incarcerated Taliban would certainly disagree with Gore as to whether they have been “located, apprehended, punished and neutralized.”
3. Gore charged Bush with playing politics in “this high political season,” pushing for war in order to gain politically and to divert attention from his administration’s failure against al Qaeda by attacking “some other enemy whose location might be easier to identify.”  FACT:  The President is seeking Congressional approval because that is what the Democratic Senate demanded.  Further, he is going before the UN because that also is what the Democratic Senate demanded.  Later in this perspective I will review the results of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, which shows incontrovertibly the threat of Iraq.  This is hardly politics.  Bush is risking his presidency on Iraq—hardly a political motivation!
4. Gore dismissed in contemptuous language the US victory over Afghanistan as a victory over a “fifth-rate military power.”  FACT:   As Charles Krauthammer observes, “If the Taliban were a fifth-rate military power, why didn’t the Clinton-Gore administration destroy it and spare us Sept. 11?”  During their administration al Qaeda declared war on the US.  Witness the destruction of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the attack on the USS Cole.  The Clinton-Gore administration fired a few missiles at Afghanistan and destroyed a factory in Sudan, then did nothing.  Even Vladimir Putin was perplexed that Clinton-Gore did nothing.  Gore has lived in a glass house so he had better be careful!
5. Gore characterized the Bush policy on postwar Afghanistan as “this doctrine of wash your hands and walk away.”  FACT:  Our current policy is to secure Kabul, restrain the army, protect the new president, and establish a small central government that can eventually expand its control over the entire country.  Our soldiers are always in harm’s way—tell them the US has walked away. 
6. Krauthammer shares that Gore sought the advice of Hollywood producer and director Rob Reiner as he prepared for the speech.  FACT:  President Bush seeks the advice of Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Paul Wolfowitz and Dr. Condoleezza Rice.  Whom would you rather seeing advising our national leadership? 

See Charles Krauthammer, “Gore’s Glass House,” Washington Post (27 September 2002) and Michael Kelly, “Look Who’s Playing Politics,” Washington Post (25 September 2002).

• Second, President Bush is taking advantage of an extraordinary moment in world history to remake American foreign policy, to shape the international order.  He wants to deal with the monstrous evils of our world that threaten democracy, freedom and order throughout the world.  You cannot understand his policy towards Iraq without understanding this.  As Gary Milhollin and Kelly Motz have made clear, Hussein’s regime “makes verification an endless chase” with few other options except military ones.  They observe that UN inspections as they now stand will never work.  “Iraqi obfuscations prevented [the UN] from ever getting a full picture of the entire weapons production effort.”  Despite the many opportunities to launch surprise inspections, “Iraq’s intelligence operatives defeated it more often than not.  It was a rare inspection when the Iraqis did not know what the inspectors were looking for before they arrived.”  Added to this, since 1998, Iraq has gone to considerable lengths to make its weapons programs mobile.  Labs, components and materials are ready “to hit the road at a moment’s notice.”  Under current rules, Iraq is allowed to designate vast swaths of land that the inspectors can visit only after announcing the visit in advance, disclosing the composition of the team and taking along a special group of diplomats.  “The world needs an Iraqi government that will stop lying and surrender the weapons programs.  That is not likely to happen as long as Saddam Hussein remains in power.”  Is it any wonder that President Bush wants the UN to toughen the inspection rules before going in?  It is a ludicrous contention to say that inspections will work and “let’s just give Saddam another chance.”  Those who claim that are not living in the real world.

See Milhollin and Motz’s article in the New York Times (16 September 2002).

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THE MEDIA AND RELIGIOUS VIOLENCE

It is fascinating to study how the press and how academics often deal with religious issues in the news.  Let’s think about two recent examples:

• First, nearly two weeks ago, gunmen entered a Christian charity in Karachi, Pakistan, separated Christian from Muslim workers and methodically shot seven Christians in the head.  Although this is the sixth in a series of attacks aimed at Christian targets in Pakistan, much of the media has played down religion’s role.  For example, as Paul Marshall has observed, The New York Times described this attack as ending a lull in assaults on “Western targets” and suggested that the charity was chosen because it was not as well guarded as “foreign embassies and Western companies.”  The French service Agence France-Presse argued that the attack was against those “striving for a tolerant society.”  The Associated Press contended that the assaults were “directed against western interests.”  However, the terrorists who committed the act (members of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi) said they “planned to kill Christians” in revenge for Muslim deaths in Afghanistan.  They announced they “killed the unbelievers.”  They made the same claim in their October 2001 attack against a Christian church in Pakistan.  Those who killed Daniel Pearl said they did so because he was Jewish.  Al Qaeda in SE Asia are killing Christians in anti-Christian violence.  The point is that these terrorist acts are not related to geopolitical affiliation but because their victims are Christians or Jews.  When al Qaeda was formed in 1998, it was named the “World Islamic Front for Holy War Against Jews and Crusaders [i.e., Christians].”  Osama bin Laden made clear that his target has been “World Christianity,” which is allied with “Jews and Zionism.”  As Marshall argues, “Religion shapes politics from Palestine to Chechnya, from the Sudan and Nigeria to Sri Lanka and Indonesia.”  It is time for the world to recognize this reality.  It is intellectually dishonest to deny this.  It shapes a correct understanding of our world. 

See Paul Marshall, Wall Street Journal (27 September 2002).

• Second, in response to the causes of 9/11, the British atheist and evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins, when asked what caused the terrorist strike, wrote “religion—all religion.”  He continued, “To fill a world with religion. . . is like littering the streets with loaded guns.  Do not be surprised if they are used.”  The absurdity of this argument is that it denies the entire 20th century, when you had atheistic communists and atheistic Nazis murdering millions of people.  The audacity of his dishonesty is amazing.  Atheists nearly destroyed the world in the 20th century.  The religious wars of history have been ugly and brutal, especially those stemming from the Reformation of the 16th century.  No one can defend them.  But the fault is people’s sin.  When one reads Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, then one sees how far the Reformation wars were from God’s truth.  I am willing to admit the sins of Christianity.  Is Dr. Dawkins willing to admit his short-sightedness and the sins of his fellow atheists?

See the Dawkins comments in “Breakpoint" (30 September 2002).

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DEATH AND THE PROVISION OF JESUS

The death of 3,000 people on September 11, 2001 is still haunting!  However, in a recent article, John Piper puts this in perspective.

• First, on the same day that the 3,000 died in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, at least 35,000 people died of starvation.  Earlier in 2001, 20,005 people died in a deadly earthquake in Bhuj, India.  A total of 2,400,000 people died in the US in 2001—700,000 from cancer, 160,000 from stroke, 120,000 from chronic respiratory disease, 93,000 from accidents, 68,000 from diabetes, 67,000 from pneumonia, 49,000 from Alzheimer’s, 41,730 in car wrecks and 15,000 from murder.   In addition, about 56,000,000 people died on planet earth in 2001.  The ravages of war have brought untold deaths, including the over 500,000 in World War II for America and the horrific American Civil War which brought 620,000 deaths, the worst in our history.  Finally, the Bible does not hide death.  It pervades the Scriptures.  Humans cannot ignore it, nor deny it!  It is part of the human condition. 

• Second, as Piper also shows, one of the central aspects of the 9/11 event was the steel cross at the World Trade Center site.  It illustrates the hope that delivers us from death.  God understands the horror of the human condition and sent His Son to deal with it.  God so hates evil and its sister death that in Christ He became a victim of that evil.  And that is the cross!  That most horrible death purchased the redemption of humanity so that death need no longer reign!  May the world see the symbolic power of that steel cross in the rubble of 9/11 as the hope of the world.  God sent Jesus so that death need no longer reign over us.  There is the hope, and that cross captures that hope.

See Piper’s profound essay in World (28 September 2002).

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