International Affairs: June 2008 Archives
Spengler's most recent article describes a rarely-before-seen opportunity for Christian evangelism among Muslims, largely in Europe but also via the emerging Chinese church. There's no mention of Christianity's ascension in Africa, so add that on too.
In that sense, the president's war policy and the pope's pacifism arise from a common source, the politics of faith. Despite the exigencies of state security, which make necessary the employment of deadly force as well as harm to civilians, someone must speak the voice of mercy, and pray that the stern decree will pass from the world. A religious leader must say, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," while a head of state must follow the maxim, "Do unto others before they do unto you." What divides the president and the pope is not so much their conflicting positions, but rather a difference in the existential vantage point from which each must respond to the great events of the world.Benedict XVI may preach against violence, but in his own fashion he takes a tougher stance than the American president. That surely is not the way it looks at first glance. Bush invaded an Arab country, while Benedict preaches reason to the Muslim world, receiving in the past few months Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah as well as delegations from Iran. He has agreed to a meeting with a group of 138 Muslim scholars at the Vatican in November. Why should Muslims fear Benedict?
For the first time, perhaps, since the time of Mohammed, large parts of the Islamic world are vulnerable to Christian efforts to convert them, for tens of millions of Muslims now dwell as minorities in predominantly Christian countries. The Muslim migration to Europe is a double-edged sword. Eventually this migration may lead to a Muslim Europe, but it also puts large numbers of Muslims within reach of Christian missionaries for the first time in history.
That is the hope of Magdi Allam, the highest-profile Catholic convert from Islam in living memory (see The mustard seed in global strategy Asia Times Online, March 26, 2008).
The Islamification of Europe is generally seen as a foregone conclusion, a dour and irreversible demographic trend projected by Anglophiles like Mark Steyn (who I greatly like). Spengler's reversal, granting the advantage to Christianity rather than to encroaching Islam, is a very different and intriguing perspective. I pray that he's right, as I pray nightly for missionaries to Muslims.
The Inside Zimbabwe blog has some horrific stories about the atrocities being committed in that hellish country. Despite my support for the war in Iraq, one of my regrets is that it has left our military stretched too thin to decapitate the regimes that torment places like Zimbabwe, Sudan, and Burma. Forget "nation building" for a while... we could do a lot of good just by killing the right sets of people all around the world.
Fred Hiatt's recent column about Senator Rockefeller's investigation into President Bush's alleged lies about pre-war intelligence on Iraq should be plastered around the blogosphere. Despite the Democrat senator's intentions and proclamations, his committee report appears to be a thorough and compelling defense of the President.
On Iraq's nuclear weapons program? The president's statements "were generally substantiated by intelligence community estimates."On biological weapons, production capability and those infamous mobile laboratories? The president's statements "were substantiated by intelligence information."
On chemical weapons, then? "Substantiated by intelligence information."
On weapons of mass destruction overall (a separate section of the intelligence committee report)? "Generally substantiated by intelligence information." Delivery vehicles such as ballistic missiles? "Generally substantiated by available intelligence." Unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to deliver WMDs? "Generally substantiated by intelligence information."
And so on for quite a ways. In 2002, even the honorable senator from West Virginia believed these very same intelligence reports.
After all, it was not Bush, but Rockefeller, who said in October 2002: "There has been some debate over how 'imminent' a threat Iraq poses. I do believe Iraq poses an imminent threat. I also believe after September 11, that question is increasingly outdated. . . . To insist on further evidence could put some of our fellow Americans at risk. Can we afford to take that chance? I do not think we can."
The real disgrace is how very wrong some of these intelligence reports turned out to be. We may never know how close the ties were between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, or whether Hussein believed his scientists were working on WMD, or even whether Iraqi WMDs were moved to Syria in the run-up to the invasion. But it's crystal clear that American intelligence agencies bungled their job horribly and were never held to account.
Given what we know now, I would still have favored the invasion of Iraq in 2003 -- though with our present hindsight we could have administered it better. But even those who opposed and still oppose the war must eventually admit that it wasn't instigated as a grand hoax on the American people by an oil-crazed idiot-savant, but that the decision was in fact based on the best information available at the time.
