Ramblings on ISIS and Iraq

Last week my twin brother and I texted back-and-forth the names of cities in Iraq as they fell to the insurgents of ISIS, hell-bent on creating a (Sunni) Islamic Caliphate in the middle of the Middle East.  While exchanging texts might be an academic exercise for some, with the names nothing more than black dots on a map, they mean something more to him and to me.  We’ve been there along the Euphrates River as it winds its way through Al Anbar Province and have driven through the streets of Mosul, and Tikrit, Fallujah and Ramadi. 

Michael was there for the first push into Iraq and ended up in charge of nine Kurdish villages around Mosul.  His second sojourn to the desert found him in the capital, fighting all around the Green Zone against the army of Muqtada Al-Sadr, who today has raised a new legion to defend the gates of Baghdad against the ISIS hordes.   His deployments were certainly more violent than mine, but both of us saw death and destruction.

 I was in Al-Anbar during the surge in the summer and fall of 2007 which gets too much credit in the US press for bringing a measure of peace to the region at the expense of the “Al-Anbar Awakening” led by Abdul Sattar Abu Risha and others.  A Sunni, Sheik Abu Risha led his people in resisting the foreign fighters of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, and yet he was most likely at least a passive encourager of the initial insurgency in the region, if not an active participant.  He was killed on a Thursday in September just a stone’s throw away from the perimeter of Camp Ramadi, just three days before I was due to take my monthly turn at the base chapel.  That Sunday from the pulpit I mourned the loss of a man who had been so bold to stand up against Al-Qaeda and wondered if peace would ever come to the country.  My conclusion was that ultimately true peace comes into our lives only when we surrender them to Jesus Christ.

Religion; there’s the rub.  I still believe that faith in the Triune God is the only hope we have for lasting peace, and yet I am mindful that most of those who live and die in Iraq will do so as Muslims.  How then, can they find peace? Is it even possible? ISIS has joined with the wider Sunni insurgency, made up of those dissatisfied with the Shiite-dominated government of Nouri al-Maliki and Iraq seems destined to sink ever further into violence defined along sectarian lines, which is making for some odd-bedfellows.  Imagine a coalition of the governments of Iran-Syria-Iraq, tacitly supported by the US, against ISIS.  What implications will this have with our relationship with other Sunni nations that are our allies, especially Saudi Arabia? Deep down, do the leaders of Saudi Arabia and elsewhere want to see a Sunni Islamic Caliphate arrayed against the Shiite threat, a buffer against Iran? Or do they believe it to be too destabilizing, a potential threat to their own rule? I don’t pretend to have the answer, and I doubt that there is a clear answer.

Even so, while the histories of both Christianity and Islam have been marked by periods of violence driven by religious fervor, I am confident that the average Iraqi citizen no more desires a holy war than the average peasant in Middle Age France desired a crusade against the Moslem infidels.  Yet the crusades still happened and the modern jihad blankets the airwaves and newspaper front pages.  The one definitive conclusion I can draw is this: the ongoing war in Iraq is ultimately about power.  Religion is a fantastic weapon to use in support of gaining or maintaining that power, whether in 12^th Century Europe or the 21^st Century Middle East.  Those seeking power would prefer not to die in the quest to obtain it, so recruitment of those willing to die for a just cause becomes essential to the success of the mission.

What does all this mean for US foreign policy? What is our best option? Is there a good option at all? Should we trust anyone in the Middle East? Can we count on our allies to always be our friends? Will long-time enemies become comrades-in-arms against a common threat? Again, I have no answer but I do know this: the pursuit of power is sinful, because it presupposes that there are to be both those who govern and those who are governed, yet in the eyes of our Creator, we are all equally his children.  I can’t bring peace to Iraq, but I am called to bring peace to my family, to my workplace, to my neighborhood.  How do I best do that? By laying down my claims (even though they may be legitimate) for vengeance, for power, for control,  for self-righteous condemnation of those who have wronged me.  In its place: love.  Not the love of Hallmark Cards, but a masculine love that actively resists evil by turning the other cheek and binding the wounds of the broken in body and the broken-hearted, a love that transcends every cultural, ethnic or religious boundary, a love that invites one’s enemy over for a home-cooked meal around the dinner table.  If I cannot love, I have no place to share the truth, and if I share the truth without love, I am but a clanging cymbal—a noise signifying nothing, and solving nothing. If we love, we may not find peace in our time, but we will find peace in God’s time.

As I close, I note that while Michael and I saw some of the same things during our deployments, he was a combatant and I was not.  I am profoundly grateful for men and women like him who aren’t afraid to take up arms to resist evil, and yet I know that evil remains all around us and within us.  I cannot pretend that I will always turn the other cheek, and if someone should ever directly threaten my family, I too would find violence justified.  And yet, and yet a part of me knows that God did not create us to live as such, but we ourselves have created this world of violence, pain and suffering.  So it is that I pray: Come quickly, Lord Jesus! May the lion again lay down with the lamb in peace!

God’s grace and peace for the journey, my friends . . .