Dear Members and Friends,
We have now undertaken an action I publicly supported back in June of last year, as I had for many years prior to that - well before and apart from any discussion of weapons of mass destruction. Therefore, I feel obliged to point out some of the incredible ironies that have emerged within this “hell” called war. I do so because I believe how we perceive the world around us has a tremendous influence on how we share the Good News of Jesus Christ.
Presently, we have an actor, Martin Sheen, who “plays” President on TV, and in real life uses his unscripted free speech to call our current President “a moron”. This is all the more revealing considering that Mr. Bush has earned degrees from Yale and Harvard, while Mr. Sheen was unable to gain acceptance into the University of Dayton.
At this writing, American doctors are operating on Iraqi enemy soldiers, earlier than Allied casualties if injuries warrant, while some of our POWs’ look as though they have been summarily executed. As happened in the first Gulf War, Allied forces are sometimes being attacked while they are in the act of accepting “surrenders”. And in Baghdad, conveniently in front of the Al Rasheed hotel where the press is kept under guard, Iraqi soldiers “searched” for two supposedly downed pilots by firing machine gun rounds into the water and setting the river grass on fire.
Meanwhile, coalition forces have had to call off air-strikes on military installations because innocent civilians have been turned into human shields. Units have had to move very quickly into certain unstabilized areas to prevent more Iraqi oil wells from being torched. In Naseriah, American soldiers uncovered more than 3000 Iraqi “chemical suits”, along with atropine, a nerve gas antidote. And in Basrah, Saddam’s militia are firing on their own people trying to rise up against their cruel oppressors.
Far more verifiable than Mr. Hussein’s physical condition is the fact that, because we will carry out this battle with an already obvious level of discernment and restraint, we will definitely incur more coalition casualties. Because we care about Iraqi civilians more than their own leaders do, we will have to extend the duration of this conflict and the enormous risk our own soldiers face. Implicit in the act of using civilians as shields is the confidence the Iraqi leaders have in American integrity. I hope this will not result in becoming a display of American naïveté.
Yet, this approach is in part what we are fighting for, and about. When this is over, the siege of “rape squads”, mass genocide, and the systematic torture of children will be over. My greatest admiration and affection goes out to those men and women who have put themselves directly in harm’s way, not losing their decency while risking the loss of their own lives. I am praying hard for those courageous souls killed in action or taken prisoner - sacrificing their own safety for something greater than themselves, when they might easily be staying home, taking in the vast profundity of the Academy Awards.
Unlike many “learned” Hollywood actors, I think President Bush is simply and formidably a human being doing the very best he can in a most incredibly difficult and dangerous time. When he says God gives him courage and strength, I believe him. I pray for the clear, rapid and abiding success of this endeavor.
From Reverend William J. Keane,
Senior Minister of First Baptist Church of Branford
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