I was able to see most of Ken Burns' new series, The War, the past two weeks. It was a very inspiring reminder of the sacrifices of what has been called "the greatest generation." We still have several veterans from the war who are members of our church. I have the privilege of meeting with a few of them each Tuesday morning for prayer, and every now and then we go out for breakfast. During one such excursion a few weeks before the documentary, they spent most of the time relating stories from their war time experiences. Later, one of them apologized to me for taking all of the time up with stories from the war. I assured him it was neither boring nor a waste of time for me; it fact, it was very interesting to hear first hand from these men stories of their individual pieces of the war. I admire them all.
Ken Burns did a great job, I thought, of weaving the story of the war for us through the eyes and ears of citizens from four cities in the U.S., which I am sure were indicative of every city in the nation. What a blessing we have in the sacrifice of so many. We saw first hand the horrors of the war on every side; the first episode, however, was entitled (I think), A Necessary War.
A Necessary War--what a good way to put it. It was simply that--necessary. It is hard to imagine the rationale of anyone thinking otherwise.
Of course, it is impossible to watch such a documentary without considering the current war we are waging. Is it a necessary war? Many people question the motives of the administration. Others point to the lack of evidence of weapons of mass destruction found. Still others bemoan the slow progress of the Iraqi people in seeking to establish a stable and just government.
I know that I personally always hoped we would wait a bit longer before going into Iraq. Certainly, we needed to be in Afghanistan. I felt that the President had more information at his disposal than I did. Previous administrations had also believed Saddam was seeking to make WMD. At this point, however, questions of whether we should have gone into Iraq when we did are moot. We are there, and the enemy has followed us there. Whether that particular bit of geography could have been avoidable, we are in the midst of a war against international terrorism. There are people who want to destroy and kill everything that doesn't look and think exactly as they do. In fact, they likely want to kill people who may share some of their thoughts if their citizenship is in the wrong country.
In my mind, we are in a necessary war against an ideology of hatred. Wherever the battle is fought, it is a necessary war. I would like to think that we as Americans hold ourselves to a higher standard than do others, of course. I am not ready to give up all civil liberties, nor would I ever condone torture. It pains me to see reports that we at times hide behind technicalities to circumvent rules that we helped write and use methods that we would not want used on our troops. Why not show others that we are as different from them as we claim? I hope these reports are false or are rare aberrations. Unfortunately, it is hard to know what sources of news to trust on every occasion.
In the final analysis, war at times may be necessary, but war is still hell. Let us pray that God would have mercy on us. Let us repent of our sinfulness and selfishness so that God will forgive our sins and heal our land. Let us live up to the highest calling of the American experiment, in times of war and peace.
