In a short time, good friends of ours, two couples we've known for most of our years in this area, will join us for a Raclette dinner. The son of one of the couples has done one tour in Iraq and may go back next month.
I bring this up because I would be remiss if I didn't mention on this blog, the extraordinary vote, involving Sunnis, Shia, and Kurds, that took place in Iraq yesterday. No matter what one's feelings about the war there may be, the President is, as Chris Matthews is saying on his show right now, to be commended for his stick-to-itiveness and his big gamble for democracy.
Of course, the Iraqis themselves are to be commended for courageously going to the polls, ignoring the enormous risks, voting not just for a new government, but for democracy itself.
Freedom and democracy appear to be on the march, sprouting up insistently in a region of the world where many have deemed it an impossibility. Much work, prayer, and sacrifice have made this happen.
It was an extraordinary day there, no matter what one's politics!
I continue to pray for peace in Iraq and for the moment when American military personnel, along with our friends' son, are all back home!
To me, almost as extraordinary as the Iraqi voting yesterday, was the deal worked out between the White House and the Republican Congress to say empahtically to the world that torture is not the policy of the US government. The reports of torture, of renditions, and of US prisons in Europe concerned me at several levels. First, as a Christian, torture ought to be the policy of bad guys, not of those protecting the safety and well-being of the free. Second, as an American, I was concerned by the possibility that if we torture, others will later feel free to do the same to American combatants.
There was another reason behind my concern over torture reports. Several days ago, I received an email from a German Lutheran pastor with whom I correspond. This is a guy who reveres and respects America and unlike the majority of his countrymen and women, supported the US invasion of Iraq. But he told me that he was terribly concerned about reports of torture. We in the West don't advance our cause, he told me, begging me not to be offended in light of his love for America, if we act like the thugs and madmen we fight. In short, reports of torture, the lion's share of which have not been corroborated, hurt the cause of freedom. It was that fact that caused the US to originally press for the Geneva Conventions on these matters in the first place.
In two different parts of the world yesterday, the world saw America at its best. Uninterested in domination or colonization, the people of Iraq voted in a government under the approving eye of America. Uninterested in going down the path of dehumanization, America bluntly repudiated torture.
It was a very good day!
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