Conversation Point

War Stats

Watching the evening news, despite my desire to stay aware of what is happening around the world, has become more heartbreaking than informative these days. Particularly difficult for me are the reports coming out of Iraq. The devastation to the Iraqi people, their homes, businesses, places of worship and the culture itself, may not be repairable. Ever. Building a country from scratch in the middle of a civil war is impossible at best. No matter how bad we may think it is in Iraq right now, it is much worse. Unless we have lived in a war zone, we do not understand the physical loss and human suffering caused by bombs and bullets fueled by fear and hatred. What we do have is an estimate of how many people we are losing to this latest military road show we are financing. Each nigh, Katie Couric, Charles Gibson and Brian Williams tell us how many U.S. soldiers have died that day, then give us the total for the week, month and/or year when those statistics hit gruesome milestones. These statistics are why I turn away from the news.

One of my earliest memories is sitting down to dinner each night with my family, and with Walter Cronkite, who also grimly shared the accumulating numbers of young men dying in another war halfway around the world. At the time it was all I knew. World War II and the Korean War were much closer memories, and our country was not so expert at questioning our government's authority, motives or integrity. We have gotten better at requiring the truth from our elected officials. We have also become more adept at discerning when it is time for war and when peace has not been given its due process.

The Old testament is filled with wars and rumors of wars, some resulting in victories for the Israelites, some never coming to be for reasons we can only ask God about in retrospect. We do not know how we will leave Iraq, as victors with supreme military might or as the defeated invaders with only moments to spare as our helicopters take off amidst a spray of hostile fire from below. What we don't want to face is the tremendous toll waging war in foreign countries takes on those of us minding the home fires. While we are pouring billions of dollars into this war machine, we are stealing money away from educating our children, maintaining our infrastructure and figuring out how to not be so dependent on the oil under the land we are fighting on in the Middle East. Complaining about the high cost of gas at the pump this summer became a national past time. Would that we had some impromptu discussions groups on how we can invest more money into our school systems.

Bill O'Reilly, host of Fox Television's The O'Reilly Factor, seems very fond of asking people who challenge his ideas whether they want the United States to win the war in Iraq. The question has no relevance, no foundation in logical thought or faithful perspective. Rather than asking if we want to win this ill-timed, ill-planned, ill-conceived blunder, perhaps the question should be more about hoping for what we can still manage to do to not make the situation any worse. What do we hope to accomplish before we are able to leave Iraq on our own terms or are booted out because we are no longer welcome?
The only statistic I am interested in seeing is how many days are left until every American troop is withdrawn from Iraq and the Iraqi people can breathe a sigh of relief that this war is over for them. It is time to move our focus from a need to win this war to making peace happen. Peace too can be measured in statistics, of lives saved and dollars redirected to building our future. Peace must also have its time. We are God's children when we make peace.

posted by Cory L. Kemp @ 6:24 PM