Iraq as a Holy War: Why Praying for Divine Support Is a Bad Idea

War is a logical consequence of religion. Since religion is based, by definition, on faith rather than facts, no mechanism exists to arbitrate between competing ideas. As soon as logic is removed from the debate, competing positions cannot be evaluated based on relative merit, but are supported as inherently right, immune to any reasonable counter-arguments. The only way to support a position is simply to assert supremacy as loudly as possible, since no objective facts are available to evaluate any particular claim. We are reduced to tantrums of "I'm right, you're wrong, I win." Without logic, in the absence of facts, nobody has any basis on which to claim legitimacy compared to another. All have equal claim to the truth, with no mechanism to prove or disprove the claim. Therefore, to the extent that we can ever know, all belief systems are equally true; but, since competing beliefs contain mutually exclusive concepts, all must be false. Herein we find the source of religious intolerance. Since you have no way to prove your beliefs correct, you must insist that all others are wrong. Simply the existence of other belief systems is a threat. One way, and sometimes the only way, to eliminate the threat is through violent suppression of non-believers.

That this is true is evidenced by humanity's violent succession of religious wars throughout history, dating back at least to the Sunni/Shiite split in 632 AD in the east and to 1000 AD in the west when Norwegian missionaries imposed Christianity in Iceland. (The fight between Gnostic and Orthodox Christians led to much persecution, but not widespread war, so I do not include that in the timeline). The wars continue today. Sudan's Muslim leaders seek to punish Ugandan President Museveni for his support of Christian-led rebels in southern Sudan. Mohammad Atta died singing the praises of his Prophet. Catholics and Protestants killed each other for generations in Ireland. The war in Bosnia-Herzegovina saw conflict between three faiths groups, Muslim, Roman Catholic and Serbian Orthodox. Hindus and Muslims brutally attack each other in Kashmir. In Nigeria, Yourubas and Christians in the south fight against northern Muslims. Buddhists and Hindus fight in Sri Lanka. Muslims and Jews routinely kill each other in the Middle East.

Both sides in any conflict will claim to have God's support. In all of these diverse wars over the past 1000 years or so, that belief in divine right is the one element that remains constant. In reference to African warlord Joseph Kony, President Bush said, "How can this guy call himself a soldier of the Lord? He is just a murderer." The clear implication is that Bush, in contrast, is legitimately a soldier of the Lord.

At the onset of the Iraq war, I posited that our Evangelical president was waging a new Crusade against Islam, and that religious fervor was driving our invasion rather than underlying concerns about national security. That assessment was soon bolstered when every week brought a new public justification for going to war, with each new rationalization undermining the credibility of the previous assertion. Exhibits A and B are weapons of mass destruction and the alleged link between Saddam and al Qaeda.

I was roundly criticized at the time, even though Bush himself said, "this crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take awhile." People just did not want to believe the obvious, claiming that Bush misspoke or did not mean to imply religious war. But the notion of a Christian Crusade against Muslim fundamentalists seems much more plausible now in light of secret internal Bush Administration memos that have been recently made public.

We know certainly that religious fanaticism led to the attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11; what is less know is how such fundamentalism guided our own response. I specifically exclude our war in Afghanistan, which was completely justified as an appropriate military response against those directly responsible for the attacks on our soil. Iraq is an entirely different story.

In a story first published in GQ magazine, we learned that Donald Rumsfeld peppered his daily national security reports with carefully selected bombastic biblical quotes. Rumsfeld superimposed propagandist images of the war supporting the idea that all was well in Iraq with bellicose passages from the Good Book that implied divine support for the war effort.

Here are just a few examples from Rumsfeld's selected quotes:

Ephesians: "Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand."

Isaiah 26:2: "Open the gates that the righteous nation may enter, the nation that keeps faith."

Proverbs 16:3: "Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and your plans will succeed."

1 Peter 2:15: "It is God's will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men." That would be all those who opposed the Iraq war in case that was not clear. So Rummy and Bush had God on their side.

Psalms 33:16-19: "The King is not saved by a mighty army; a warrior is not delivered by great strength. A horst is a false hope of victory; nor does it deliver anyone by its great strength. Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him, on those who hope for his loving kindness, to deliver their soul from death."

Daniel 5:5-28: "God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end." Of course here Rumsfeld was referencing Saddam rather than Bush.

So Bush was the holy warrior all along, confident that his actions were just because he went with God. Bush has said often that he prays to God for guidance. He must have received through his prayers the go-ahead from the Commander-in-Chief in the sky before launching the invasion.

But prayer makes a poor basis for national security decision-making. Even if you believe in prayer, many often are not fulfilled, leaving an obvious gap in the process. Let's take for example the mother accused of denying her child medical care in lieu of prayers for recovery. Leilani Neumann allowed her 11-year old daughter to die of untreated diabetes while surrounded by people praying for her. Clearly the prayers to keep the daughter alive did not work. There are only 3 scenarios possible here. One, God knew beforehand the fate of the child, and did nothing to prevent the outcome; two, God knew beforehand the child's fate, but could do nothing to change the outcome; or three, God did not know beforehand the child's fate and could do nothing about the outcome. In the first scenario, if God knew the outcome but would do nothing to change it, prayer would do no good since his mind was made up and the outcome preordained. In the second scenario, if God could do nothing about the child's fate, praying to him for a different outcome would be futile since he would be powerless to affect change. In the third scenario, God could not be expected to change the outcome of a story over which he was both clueless and powerless, which implies severe limits to his divine abilities since as a God he should be all-knowing and all-powerful.

Is there a difference between the mother's prayers for her daughter's health and Bush's for victory in Iraq? Those three scenarios about God apply directly to any prayers concerning the outcome of the Iraq war. And that is assuming that God is only listening to the American prayers, not those coming from the leaders of the Taliban.

The real problem with prayer and national security is that any outcome can be rationalized as the will of God. We can twist the worst possible result to be the consequence of God working in mysterious ways. When a young child dies, a priest comforts the parents by saying that the child was special and God brought her home early. Nothing on earth is more devastating than losing a child, but this is false comfort. If God "brought home" exceptional children, does that not imply that those remaining are less special in God's eyes? Wouldn't that then imply absurdly that we would actually wish for our children to meet God earlier than later? Or when a church is struck by lightning or crushed in an earthquake, we are told that God has a plan even if we are unable to understand, the ultimate cop-out.

In all cases these attempts to understand the world around us fail because we adjust our story to fit reality, after the fact. That is like making a stock prediction about yesterday -- not terribly useful, and awfully easy to justify any outcome, up or down. We can cite how "fear of unemployment" drove the market down or how investors who had "already discounted the employment numbers" drove prices higher. Retroactively you can of course make up any story to justify the reality before you. That we fall back on God working in mysterious ways to understand our world and justify our actions is nothing but explaining yesterday's market movement -- twisting our faith and changing our story to match the reality on the ground. We can make up any story about how and what God did because we already know the outcome.

Nothing could be more hazardous as a basis for international affairs than relying on God for guidance. The past eight years offer evidence for that conclusion. No matter what, you cannot get around those three scenarios, making prayer a dangerous method of intelligence gathering. Praying to God before launching an invasion, let alone a Crusade, is outrageously irresponsible. Calling upon God to justify your war is criminal.

Comments

[prostock69]

Brilliantly written blog!