As we have discovered, Barack Obama is not withdrawing our troops from Iraq. They are being thrown out by a supremely ungrateful people.
What do we have to show for 4,400 American deaths and the billions and billions of dollars we have spent in Iraq? Nothing.
Objective observers are in a veritable panic about what will happen in Iraq when the last of our troops is gone. They know the place will descend into faction, chaos and disintegration.
I remember telling my pastoral colleagues when President Bush invaded Iraq in 2003 that there would be one measure and one measure only of the success of our mission: did we leave behind a nation which protected the religious liberty for Christians?
By that measure, this venture has been a spectacular failure. Estimates are that over half of Iraqi Christians have fled Iraq for their lives, after we came into their country to liberate them from bondage.
Christian churches are being bombed and Christians are being hunted door to door by Muslims looking to shed infidel blood. And this while our military is there! What will happen to these poor brothers and sisters in our common faith when we leave for good? The heart shudders.
Saddam protected the Christian community when he was alive because he needed Christians to help him manage the affairs of state. They were the only honest, trustworthy people he could find in his Muslim country. Once he darted into his hidey-hole, protection for Christians ducked out of sight along with him.
The sad, disturbing, pathetic fact is that United States involvement in Iraq has made Christians vastly more vulnerable than they were under Saddam Hussein. It’s hard to imagine a more severe indictment, especially since the ruse under which we stayed after deposing Saddam is that we were there as guardians and protectors of liberty.
And things are, if anything, much worse in Afghanistan. There is one lonely Jew left in the entire country, and the last Christian church was turned to rubble in the spring of 2010.
We had an absolute moral and legal right to send troops into these countries to neutralize the threat they posed to our national security. Once the threat had been neutralized - Saddam toppled, the Taliban deposed, Osama on the run - it was sheer folly for us to stick around under the utterly naive assumption that Muslims want any of the political and religious freedoms we cherish in the West.
We think that because freedom is so precious to us, it will be precious to others. But we cherish liberty because of the transforming effect of the Judeo-Christian tradition, which states plainly, “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Corinthians 3:17). There is no “Spirit of the Lord” in Islam, and hence there is no liberty.
To make any attempt to erect a structure of freedom on the rotting foundation of Islam is a fool’s errand and doomed to failure. There is no liberty in the DNA of Islam. There is only darkness, terror, tyranny and death, and it is dangerous naivete to believe otherwise.
Bottom line: no more nation-building in Muslim countries. It can’t be done. It is a colossal waste of American blood and treasure. Our new foreign policy must be: not one drop of American blood nor one American dollar to rebuild Muslim nations.
A mentor of mine once referred to the stupidity of trying to teach a pig to sing. “It won’t work, and will only annoy the pig.”
All we’ve managed to do in Iraq is annoy the Muslims to the point where they have thrown us out of their country. It’s time to bring our troops home, declare nation-building an utter failure, and tell Iraq there’s no reason for us to come back unless you give us another Saddam who threatens our security. You do that, we’ll come back and bomb you back to the Stone Age. If you don’t, we’ll leave you alone to build whatever benighted nation you want to build under the darkness of Islam.
If you decide you want freedom, just ask and we’ll happily introduce you to the religion of Jesus Christ, and he will bring freedom to your land as he did to ours. You don’t want his help, good luck. We’ll know where to find you: somewhere back in the 7th century.
(Unless otherwise noted, the opinions expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Family Association or American Family Radio.)
Twitter: @BryanJFischer, on Facebook at “Focal Point”
Bryan Fischer is the Director of Issue Analysis for Government and Public Policy at the American Family Association, where he provides expertise on a range of public policy topics. He hosts the "Focal Point" radio program on AFR Talk,which airs live on weekdays from 1-3 p.m. Central on American Family Radio's nationwide talk network of 145 stations.
