Naive American General in Iraq

By daylightforum

Today General Ray Ordierno, Commanding General,United States Forces – Iraq, announced that our Army killed Al Qaeda’s #1 & #2 leader in Iraq. Big deal! 4 years ago, in my book titled, “ResoNation,” I offered the following perspective on killing “the bad guys” in the Mid-East. Referring to Osama bin Laden:

“Killing him and his followers will only cause them to be replaced. It would be like stomping out ants: as fast as you kill them a message gets back to the nest and they step up reproduction.” 

To use another analogy, the desert sands will fill their footprints before a new sun rises.

We need to stop spending a combined $16 Billion per MONTH (!) on fighting a no-win war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Every day we remain over there is another “poke in the eye” of the Iraqi and Afghan people.

Middle Eastern culture is oriented toward theocracy, not democracy, toward tribal infighting and intra-religion sectarianism, not unity. It is simply a different social dynamic compared to what we know. Give them credit; they’ve done pretty well on their own for a few thousand years longer than our nation has existed. As asserted previously, most, if not all, of what we are doing in Iraq – all of the lives that have been lost or ruined – will be for naught within months of our departure.

Describing the new Iraqi Constitution, an excerpt from The Washington Post (“War Supporters Concerned That ‘Theocracy’ Will Be Final Word in Iraq Saga,” August 29, 2005) sums it up eloquently:

“Islam is the official religion of the state and is a basic source of legislation,’ the constitution reads, according to the Associated Press. ‘No law can be passed that contradicts the undisputed principles of Islam.’ Even though the constitution also demands that ‘no law can be passed that contradicts the principles of democracy,’ some in the United States who have typically supported America’s foreign policies worried that the outcome could be yet another Middle Eastern, pseudo-democracy that tramples on the rights of women and religious minorities, including Christians and Jews.”

VAGUE TEA PARTY

The Tea Party continues to gain momentum. Today, at a Tea Party rally, radio personality, Eric “Mad Dog” Muller asserted that, “It isn’t left versus right, black versus white, conservative versus liberal, it isn’t any of that. It’s us against them!” This is a good, albeit a vague, start. Now it’s time for all of us to be more specific. A good start can be the DayLightForum.org IF we can raise the money to actuate it. You can help!

EASTER MESSAGE

Jesus is coming. Look busy!

Was Jesus Real? Who Cares?!

In February of 2007, there were press accounts of a purported discovery of an ossuary that held the remains of Jesus Christ ("Crypt Held Bodies of Jesus and Family, Film Says" The New York Times February 27, 2007).

An ossuary is a chest, building, well, or site made to serve as the final resting place of human skeletal remains. Ancient Jewish burial customs included primary burials in burial caves followed by secondary burials of just the bones in ossuaries placed in smaller niches of the burial caves. The crux of this reported finding is to suggest that Jesus was not bodily resurrected -- thereby contradicting the very core of Christian doctrine.

All of this brought to mind a summer's eve conversation, in the Colorado mountain town of Evergreen in the early 1970s. A reborn Christian was extolling the virtues and grace of Jesus. I respectfully posed what, back then, would have been called the "$64,000 Question" (a popular television quiz show): What if he wasn't who he said he was?" To which my host instantly replied, "Who cares? Look what he stood for? How many people's lives have been changed by 'Coming to Jesus?' If he wasn't who he said he was, but you followed his teachings anyway, would your life be better or worse for doing so?"

Question: In an environment where both the Jewish and Roman leadership wanted to discredit him as an anarchist, if Christ did not ascend into heaven, body and soul, but rather was interred in a place so easily found with his name written on the side of his burial box, how is it that his remains were not discovered and publicly displayed? Who could keep that kind of secret when the reward for exposing it would have been great? Why would sane men and women who witnessed his resurrection and return endure horrible torture and even be put to death rather than recant what they reported?

Or, as President Ronald Reagan so aptly put it:

“Meaning no disrespect to the religious convictions of others, I still can’t help wondering how we can explain away what to me is the greatest miracle of all and which is recorded in history. No one denies there was such a man, that he lived and that he was put to death by crucifixion. Where... is the miracle I spoke of? Well consider this and let your imagination translate the story into our own time – possibly to your own hometown. A young man whose father is a carpenter grows up working in his father’s shop. One day he puts down his tools and walks out of his father’s shop. He starts preaching on street corners and in the nearby countryside, walking from place to place, preaching all the while, even though he is not an ordained minister. He never gets farther than an area perhaps 100 miles wide at the most. He does this for three years. Then he is arrested, tried and convicted. There is no court of appeal, so he is executed at age 33 along with two common thieves. Those in charge of his execution roll dice to see who gets his clothing – the only possessions he has. His family cannot afford a burial place for him so he is interred in a borrowed tomb. End of story? No, this uneducated, property-less young man who... left no written word has, for 2,000 years, had a greater effect on the world than all the rulers, kings, emperors; all the conquerors, generals and admirals; all the scholars, scientists and philosophers who have ever lived – all of them put together. How do we explain that... unless he really was what he said he was?”

Tell me, what do you think?