President Bush and the War in Iraq: Anti-War Demonstration in Washington D.C.

Ok, we know that there were no weapons of mass destruction. We know that the war in Iraq was based on a misreading of faulty intelligence information. But does that translate into, "George Bush lied?"

It's true that the war in Iraq should have never happened and I strongly sympathize with some of those who oppose the war because it was not justified on the basis originally claimed by the Bush administration. I strongly believe that Bush made serious errors in judgment by going to war against Iraq. However, to give him the benefit of the doubt, the war has to do with national security and international terrorism as it has been sponsored by terrorist organizations operating out of Arabic countries which are hostile to the United States. Sure, some of the blame goes to our nation because of unjust foreign policies in the past; but we should not forget that no matter what our policies are some Islamic fundamentalists are going to hate us anyway just on the principle of democracy.

Moreover, the fundamentalist Islamic belief is that western democracy leads to decadence and moral evil as well as the oppression of the poor. There does seem to be some truth to this characterization of our nation, a fact that Evangelical Christians have been pointing out for decades now.

The bottomline for me, however, is that we must finish what we started. Of course, it's going to look to the rest of the world as if we set up a paper government with puppet leaders so we can orchestrate western imperialism upon the developing Arabic nations in the middle east. President Bush's goals, while noble, overlooks the fact that historically setting up a puppet government has not worked. For Iraq to become a democratic nation the people themselves will have to want it. It remains to be seen if they truly want a free democracy in Iraq.

However, if we pull out of Iraq before there is at least a minimalist government in place, the U.S. will have wasted the lives of thousands of U.S. soldiers who died to bring democratic freedoms to Iraq and to insure our own freedoms here at home remain. The anti-war demonstrations are misplaced and just not well thought out. No one likes war but it looks like U.S. troops are going to be necessary for at least a few more months until Iraq can get its constitution ratified and put a stable military and police force in place to maintain peace and national security.

There is an old saying, "Freedom isn't free." Sometimes freedom must be fought and died for. Was the American Revolution a just war? I'm sure there were anti-war protesters in that war, too. Only those protesters were loyalists who did not want to see the colonies become a sovereign nation. In the case of Iraq, we ought to be slower to go to war next time around but it would be a huge mistake to let Iraq go into chaos now that the war is under way. We must do the responsible thing and help the Iraqs to establish the basics for a new democratic nation in the middle east. May God help our soldiers and our government to accomplish this end expediently.