Defeating the Terrorists – Can Jesus Help?

The sheer amount of pain, misery and death wrought by the Islamic extremist and our war on terror blows the mind.  Be-headings, people jumping out of burning buildings, little kids being blown apart, a daughter saved because the blood from her mother’s dead body covering her fooled the soldiers in to thinking she was dead.  We’ve gotten almost numb to it.   It’s in the paper everyday.

Somehow, sometime soon, we’ve got to quit all this and get back to our normal lives.  Almost five years now, stay the course just ain’t cutin’ it.  What do you think Jesus would tells us to do?  Well,  I think He’d have of us first take a look at what we’re doing. 

And boy are we’re giving it back to ‘em - pound for ounce – teaching them not to mess with us.   But are we winning?   Hey look, they deserve it, they attacked us!   What about the innocent?   Hey, man those people killed on 9-11 were innocent too.  And we had right to get mad and hit back - hard!  Can’t help it if some innocents get caught in it.  But the guys in Iraq didn’t hit us. Well, maybe we made a mistake, but it’s done now.  But now they’re mad and hitting us back.  And we hit back, harder.  And they …  and we… and here we are.  So what do we do?  Cut and run?  Just let the terrorists win?  Is that what Jesus wants?

Let’s set retaliations aside and look at what started this.  Why did they do that, kill all those people on 9-11?  Just hate freedom, I guess.  But Bin-Laden hated the Saudi royal family more.  True, and they were smarter than striking the seat of Islam. It wouldn’t gather much support in the region.   Better would be to kick a decedant, overindulging, arragant, easy to hate nation like us in the shins.  if we’d then be foolish enough to invade and inspire an army of angry Muslims, Al-Qaeda needs only keep up a hit and run gureilla war until they wore us out.  Ali’s old rope-a-dope.  (It’s the same strategy that one the Amercian Revolution.)

Why? – to raise a great Mujahadeen army to rebuild the Islamic Empire, which once reached as far a Spain. Uniting the Arab world, a perpetual mess of squabling factions, is a very tall order.   A common enemy from the West, the perceived return of crusaders is what it would take.  Is it working? Pretty much.  Our war on terror catapulted a criminal, Asama Bin Laden, to the level of a head of state, and the inevitable carnage has filled the new tv sets over there with plenty of images to get mad at.   The result: In every election since, voters have rolled to the side of extremists - Hamas in Palestine, Mahmoud in Iran, Mubarik in Egypt. 

Al-Qaeda still has a long way to go. While they have somewhat unified Sunnis, they’ll have to topple the Shiites leasership to bring them in.  The new Shiite majority government in Iraq is bound to us by association.  So every time we kick in a door, accidently bomb the wrong house, or refuse to say when we’re leaving, we play to Al-Qaeda’s hand. 

Hey man, if we don’t fight them over there, we’re going to have to fight them over here.  Really?  Just where do you think an army with no C130′s, no troop ships, no means of extending any logistics wants to fight us?   Where can they sustain the fight long enough to unite the arab world?  What land do they want to conquer?  Keeping our foot soldiers in target range with bullseyes on their backs in not a successful strategy. It plays right in to their playbook.  The only reason I can think of for not redeploying would be if we don’t really plan on leaving.  That’s not our plan, is it?

So how can Jesus help? Pray and ask Him.