People today are impatient and want their lives to be supplemented with quick, tidy, little recyclable packages. They want fast food, short waits, quick fixes and polite conversation.
The polite conversation figures into this subject because if we would all just agree that we can live our lives any old way we want it would save time over arguing. Besides it's not tidy to be angry, or have your ideology challenged.
With this kind of lifestyle, people expect that any war they may have supported in the beginning should be treated the same way. I am tired of reading and hearing about people who think the war in Iraq is taking too long. Guess what? It's a war and wars are messy.
When pressed to answer the question, "What do you suggest to shorten the war?" these quick war mongers say the U.S. military should pull out of Iraq and let the Iraqi people now rule themselves. I have yet to hear anyone ask them after that, "How do you think Iraq will manage that?" If the U.S. had just swooped in, set them free and then ran home would the Iraqi people still be free? I don't think so.
The real issue isn't that they want the Iraqi people to govern themselves, they just want the troops to come home so that no more will die, and the armed forces can't cause anymore deaths. Death is messy. Civilized people don't get messy.
I wonder what these people would think if God was in control of this war. (I know some people think He is, so for the sake of arguement, He is not in control like He was in the Old Testament.) God wanted his troops to go and kill the enemy. Every last one of them. When He didn't command the deaths of all those that opposed His purpose, God allowed the Israelites to take the people as slaves. It all sounds very messy, and long term. If only the Israelites would have stuck with what God had asked of them. It may have been brutal but in the long run it would have been so much tidier.
If you take a look at history, the shorter wars really didn't fare any better than the longer ones. Shorter usually meant that one side was annihilated or forced to surrender, only to come back another day for another war.
War is messy and should be avoided. Sometimes those that govern the earth have no choice. The civilized thing to do is to then help the people they have saved back on their feet so that they can't be knocked over by the next bully that comes along. Otherwise those that died for the cause have died in vain.
© Copyright 2005, 2006 High Desert Hi-Jinks, and Sagerat Scribbles. |
Oct. 12, 2006
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the war in Iraq
Even I shudder a bit at times when I think about wars in the Bible. How entire armies were destroyed and how there was complete destruction of some cities...men, women and children included. I'm glad GOD is control because I know I certainly would screw things up! I'm also glad that there are clear truth's in the Bible-- black and white, instead of the gray world that we currently live in!