Balance of power and quagmire in Iraq

By WND Staff

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There are a number of things about life that appear “unfair” and others that appear to contradict our deepest convictions about how a loving God should run things on His earth. To judge God, however, is an exercise in both stupidity and futility; stupidity because He has a vast amount of information and wisdom about what’s really going on that we don’t, and futility because He can and will do what He thinks is right in any event. Beyond all that, His character is both truly loving and just, balancing justice with mercy for fallen people living in a fallen world.
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Of all the phenomena in the human drama, the use and misuse of power is by far the most pivotal of all issues. Power can be used to unlock new levels of life for others, and power can be used to take life away from them. God’s view of the use of power is best exemplified by Christ living a sacrificial life for the sake of saving others and releasing them into the possibility of their God-given destiny. On the contrary, power which is self-serving uses people to enhance the perceived needs of self and becomes perverse and abusive in direct proportion to the insecurities and absence of virtue in the one exercising that power. Satanic power would be the best example of that phenomenon and has shown up in his “children” repeatedly in history. From Caligula to Hitler and Stalin, we have seen obvious examples of this hideous manifestation of authoritarian abuse of power. If one studies the life of Christ as contrasted with the life of Mohammed and his writings, the contrasts in their actual usage of power become evident.
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This takes us to the quagmire in Iraq. Setting aside the judging of the motives of President Bush or his numerous critics, including the European leaders who seemed quite content to accept billions of dollars in highly questionable oil revenues from a dictator they knew to be a ruthless power abuser, the current situation in Iraq is all about the philosophical foundations of the use of power in that population base. Mr. Bush’s stated policy of bringing democracy to Iraq and the Middle East seems fatally flawed, precisely because he is presupposing that nation has a cultural foundation relative to the redemptive use of power that would permit democratic representative government to be planted there and flourish. On what is this presumption based? Is it their Islamic philosophy of power? Is it their history of majority rule with minority rights? Is it their experience with constitutional government? Is it their more recent experience of the use of power under Saddam Hussein? Upon what is Mr. Bush’s highly desirable goal based?
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History teaches us that the more self-governing people are, the less external government is required by the political structures of that culture to govern them. Conversely, history also shows us, most recently in the Balkans and Iraq, that in the absence of a redemptive view of power, strong dictators are required to rule the people through fear in order to keep the various ethnic factions from destroying each other. This isn’t “rocket science”; it is historically obvious. There are some really smart people surrounding the President who should know this. What has happened, and Mr. Kerry’s rhetoric don’t help things much.

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Representative government is built on power sharing amongst all the players, not power gathering by a few. When will the politicians, media “experts,” and the rest of those pontificating regarding the complex situation in Iraq bring this bottom line to the table?

Visit Dennis Peacocke at www.gostrategic.org or contact him.