It's Still a Just War

It’s Still a Just War 2/07/08

The recent (2/7/08) news reports that Al-Qaida in Iraq used two teenage girls with Down’s Syndrome as suicide bombers to attack a pet market should give Christians a new take on our ongoing debate about the War on Terror.

We will always have a debate over whether our involvement in Iraq can be justified under Christian principles, but this debate rarely includes firm recognition of the sort of evil that is being opposed in the War on Terror.

Here are two people (and their families) being made the tools and victims of a plot to take many innocent lives. There was no reasonable military target. There could have been no consent on the part of the girls. There has been no credible refutation of the evidence, and there is no soul-searching about how these actions violate the essential ideals of Jihad(because they don’t).

To give a rough quotation of G.k. Chesterton, ‘when evil walks naked and stinking in broad daylight, a man is judged by whether he will condemn it or not’

A recognition in our debate of the terrible nature of these crimes would not constitute piling on or demonizing the enemy, it would actually promote a healthy debate within the church and on the national level.