Christmas 2011 and the Silver Lining of Iraq

Yes, it may seem a stretch to put together the promise and hope of Christmas with the disaster unfolding in Obama’s ‘America-free’ Iraq. And our take probably will not be widely shared. (But of course, unique takes are the reason to read the essays of Brushfires of Freedom!)

Obama’s decision to withdraw American troops from Iraq this year was and is indefensible on any substantive grounds, including basic humanitarian decency, and the already accumulating evidence of Iraq’s descent into pre-surge chaos proves it daily. Obama’s decision was pure appeasement of the radical anti-American left that constitutes his ‘base’ of financial and political support. He owns the death and destruction that are following his decision, and will owe the American people an explanation he will not be able to provide for why American soldiers’ lives were sacrificed toward the end of leaving a destabilized Iraq spiraling toward some kind of Islamist and/or Iranian takeover.

But we are putting aside the political calculations. Our confidence at this Christmas season is that Iraq’s disintegration in the wake of American troop withdrawal will cause a fresh awakening among thinking people everywhere along these coarse but rather simple lines: just what the hell is wrong with these people? And in the introspective version within Iraq: just what the hell is wrong with us?

After being freed of one of history’s most ruthless tyrants; after voting in droves for a new Iraqi constitution; after taking protected baby steps toward the idea of participatory democracy; after millions of dollars expended toward the training of Iraqi law enforcement personnel—why is it that civil society just cannot put down roots? Why the bombings and violence against fellow Iraqis? Why the immediate calls for the arrest of political opponents?

With American troops gone, the ‘blame it on America’ meme won’t ring true. And no matter how strongly the vacuous voices of the politically correct may hold out for sociological explanations and rationalizations, more and more thinking people in and out of Iraq will come to the realization that the answer to both versions of the ‘just what the hell is wrong…” question boils down to one factor: Islam.

Islam is a dark and malevolent theology, teaching adherents that man is the image of an oppressive, brutal, sexist, misogynist, warlord god. As surely as night follows day, the result of such a theology is a culture of oppression, brutality, sexism and violence.

The contrast with a culture anchored in Judeo-Christian theology and values could not be more stark and self-evident.

The good news at this Christmas season is that there is something inherent in the awakened human heart (especially as revealed in the life and teachings of Christ Jesus) that simply will not buy intellectual attempts to explain what is happening in Iraq as ok or understandable or morally equivalent to how Judeo-Christian western societies behave. When the buying of nonsense stops, the opening to truth starts—and positive change is given a fresh impetus. Muslims at all levels engage in useful questioning; reforms of Islam gain new visibility and consideration; even a few conversions occur; and in the meantime, Christian leaders gain new clarity and conviction as the core importance of theology and the very straightforward idea that one theology is better than the other. Even more, one is true and the other is false.

All of this moves humanity forward, though the pace is slow and the progress is rarely visible to what passes for media. But make no mistake, the movement is happening—and that is the silver lining to what is happening in Iraq at this Christmas season of 2011.

Paul Gable

December 22, 2011