Pay no attention to those bloody bombing photos

By Jeff Hawkes
Intelligencer Journal
Published: Oct 24, 2006 12:37 AM EST

LANCASTER COUNTY, PA - Americans, finally, are calling the war in Iraq a mistake.

Sixty-four percent of people surveyed last week in a CNN poll said they now oppose the war.

Sixty-six percent disapprove of President Bush’s handling of the war, a USA Today/Gallup poll found. And 54 percent in a Newsweek poll don’t think invading Iraq was the right thing to do.

Surely, that will be history’s judgment as well. Options short of sending in the Marines could have continued to contain Saddam Hussein.

But the administration led Congress and the American people to believe differently.

The result has been a disastrous campaign built on half-truths, distorted intelligence and wishful thinking. The cost to America in lives and international good will can’t be calculated.

Three-and-a-half years into the war, the administration persists in claiming it can be won. If we hang in there, we’re told, the Iraqis will achieve security and democracy.

On such promises the killing goes on and on.

Apathy and acquiescence

Speaking at a forum Sunday sponsored by Lancaster Interchurch Peace Witness, Peter Schmiechen, past president of Lancaster Theological Seminary, wondered why there isn’t greater outrage.

“There’s not a whole lot of screeching and yelling and screaming about how we got into this mess,” he said.

Schmiechen’s right. While sentiment is turning against the war, feelings of discontent don’t run deep. A new attack on American soil would likely rally the nation around the president’s agenda once more.

Why is opposition a mile wide but an inch deep? I think it’s because the war for most of us is an abstraction.

No one in my circle of family and friends has served in Iraq, much less come home in a box.

And those who are risking their lives in places like Tikrit and Anbar Province are there by choice. There is no draft to protest.

Other than at tax time, I don’t think much about paying for the war. Meanwhile, dramatically lower gasoline prices have taken the edge off the suspicion the war is all about oil. Hey, the stock market’s at record highs, too.

Americans are cows — easily contented.

“We could ask the question: How did we allow this (apathy) to happen?” Schmiechen said. “Were we distracted for the last 20 years by a material culture that basically said your job is to get rich?”

Schmiechen left his rhetorical question hanging. I’m not sure I blame apathy toward the war on consumerism. The answer is simpler than that.

Moral questions

We went to war because enough people in Florida got tired of the Clinton/Gore administration and decided to vote for a president who, unbeknownst to them, was capable of invading a country we had humbled in an earlier war, that had been under rigorous international scrutiny ever since and that hadn’t done one thing we could point to with certainty that posed a credible threat to our security.

In short, no President Bush, no war in Iraq.

Schmiechen’s critique of Bush’s leadership in taking us to war is one of moral failure.

Schmiechen faults Bush for going to war without being open and honest about motives, for closing off diplomacy when opportunities remained open, for invading a culture that has reason to be hostile toward Christian intentions.

Schmiechen closed with a quote by Yitzhak Rabin. As prime minister of Israel, Rabin tired of the bloodshed and made peace with the PLO.

“Peace is not made with friends,” Rabin said. “Peace is made with enemies, some of whom ... I loathe very much.”

Schmiechen’s point is worth considering. Bush thinks killing leads to peace. Events in Iraq are proving him wrong.

“Maybe it’s time to make peace, not with our friends, but with our enemies,” Schmiechen said.

At the very least it’s time to admit this war is wrong.