3

Fallen From The Desk of Pastor Wayne

I fear when it comes to current US foreign policy, we’ll bomb that bridge when we come to it.  For the record:  I’m already against the next war!  And the one after that.  [When I first began this article it was not known that we, the US, had substantially helped Ethiopia to invade and overthrow the Union of Islamic Courts that had finally brought an end to the decades of lawlessness by warlords in Somalia.   Our own Bishop Nelson was in Ethiopia when this invasion began and I look forward to hearing from his perspective.]

 

 The war we’re hoping to prevent now is with Iran.  With the recent move of Patriot missiles into Iraq, F16s to Turkey and US battleships and submarines to the Persian Gulf, I fear the reckless decision has already been made to attempt to win the Iraq war by expanding it to include Iran.  To hear Secretary of State Rice testify that the increase of 21,500 more soldier lives being sent to Iraq is “not an ‘escalation’, but an ‘augmentation’” is the kind of double talk that makes you check to see that your wallet has not been pick pocketed.  The verbal posturing is now as obvious as that of the military.  We hear rumors of nuclear weapons activity by the Iranians as the threat necessary to justify US attacking preemptively.  Many argue, however, that Iran has no desire to build nuclear weapons.  Iran’s Supreme Religious Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has issued a fatwa that there are no circumstances that would ethically justify Iran’s use of nuclear weapons and that “we consider using nuclear weapons against Islamic rules.”  If religious and ethical justification is not sufficient, maybe motivations of greed and money will comfort us. Iran is actually on the brink of being THE world’s financial leader.  Iran sits on huge oil fields and has signed 25 year deals with Russia, one with India, two with China, and now with the new European Union to supply billions of barrels of oil to all of these economies.  Iran’s greatest threat to the US may in fact be that the artificially inflated US petrodollar will be replaced by the very stable petroeuro, the currency of Europe.  The real threat is to our US economy and our way of life.

 

 In his detailed book, Target Iran, by Scott Ritter, (New York: Nations Books, 2006) the US Marine who served as lead weapons inspector for the first President Bush paints a very sobering picture:

Ritter argues that any naval or ground attack on Iran would be doomed to failure, thus the risk of escalating to a nuclear attack on Iran.  He argues this would be fatal for US standing in the world and with the loss of 4-20% of the world’s oil supply; the price of oil would explode to $150-200. per barrel and the American economy would collapse along the lines of the Great Depression.

While the Iraq war was initially paid for by the inherited surplus, we have since borrowed to pay for it by selling $600 billion in US currency reserves to China. (Some see that as an economic risk.)

 

 With our taxes, we also pay for these wars.  They are OUR wars.  We may have wanted to believe the pre-war assurances that Iraqi oil would pay for the war.  How ethical is it that we could invade a country and then expect them to pay for it?  But that is the history of warfare.  If it was a just war, why would we not want to pay for it, or at least have our great-grandchildren pay for it?  Those who now decry the war effort because of its financial toll fail to appreciate the true costs of war.  We fail to count the Iraqi costs of 36,000 dead per year.  We fail to appreciate the loss of American lives and its impact on their families.  We see that the United States of America is at war around the world.  Actually it is the US soldiers, sailors and Marines that are at war in Afghanistan and Iraq (and Somalia).  America is at the mall!  Let’s liberate our own troops by bringing them home.

 

 The destruction of the Second Jerusalem Temple and the attack on the Twin Towers.   There may be other Biblical parallels that await us; the Babylonian exile might pale by comparison to economic collapse here in America.  Do we place our trust in God or in our weapons?  Do we place our trust in God or in our economy?  Do we learn from the lessons of history, both ancient and recent, or are we destined to repeat this tragic history?  I pray we will pursue a nonviolent solution by recognizing Iran diplomatically, lifting the economic embargo and establishing a sound Iranian-American relationship based on mutual respect, non-aggression and increased economic interaction to stabilize the Middle East and the world at large. We can show our faith is in God as we follow Jesus’ own path to peace: “Love Your Enemies!” Let’s walk the walk and talk the talk!