Letter from America

And so it happens. American soldiers are caught on camera performing acts of barbaric cruelty. Not only so, but acts within the same old haunts as frequented by the Butcher of Baghdad himself, Saddam Hussein. The prison, Abu Ghraib, was infamous for its torture cells under the previous regime. Bush's most powerful rhetoric in favour of the war had been to stop the torture. Now, in the same prison, American soldiers are doing the same thing.

And so it happens. An American civilian is brutally and sadistically decapitated, and the murder is recorded on video tape and published on the internet. There may be no direct link between these two news stories but the cycle of violence - of crime leading to hate leading to crime - has become vicious.

American news channels duly report the outrages with sad astonishment. Time magazine describes the deflation in the sense of American moral superiority. CNN's web pages give links that implicitly discuss the political fallout for President Bush in this election year. Your 'average American'? I have yet to have any American initiate a conversation with me about the appalling news. Perhaps they simply have other things to think about. Perhaps it's beginning to remind them of Vietnam.

Foolishness of revenge

Reading some of the defences of 'mild' forms of torture in 'restricted' situations, albeit of a kind that would not be allowed on American soil, one cannot help but feel the great foolishness of rolling back the rule of law in seeking revenge after September 11, with other unexamined institutions like Guantanamo Bay still quietly doing its work in secret. What stories will emerge from there? And even if all is truly just what will persuade us now to see that it is just?

Some Americans, of course, have the feeling that this only goes to show what is wrong with George Bush. They view him as faking pietism in the cause of patriotic domination. Others will, inevitably, consider that such stories to which we have recently been exposed are merely the records of a 'few bad apples' in an otherwise exemplary attempt to free Iraq. Whichever is the truth, the reputation of American even-handedness, perhaps also Western democracy, perhaps even Christian morality, has been sullied. It is no accident that that vicious and despicable video tape spoke of the 'crusaders' in Iraq. It is not merely the spectre of Vietnam that is being evoked but the ghost of crusades past as well.

Without doubt many if not all of the Americans involved in this campaign are there with the best and highest of intentions. The poor man who was killed went to attempt to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure, not as a military man or hired by the Pentagon, but as a private individual putting his skills to the service of the needs of a struggling country.

Americans are not naturally imperialistic. Your 'average American' has no desire to rule in Iraq, though perhaps their SUVs do have a thirst only quenched by the oil of the Middle East.

The real tragedy may not be American imperialism, or neo-imperialism as the fashion of academia will describe it, but American idealism that genuinely believes that democracy plus opportunity will lead to prosperity. Iraq is proving a tricky marketing challenge.

Perhaps a more vigorous doctrine of sin is the antidote needed: 'There is no one righteous, not even one' (Romans 3.10). It is neither democracy nor capitalism that is the cure-all but Christ. Somehow now he has to be distinguished from these other competing agendas.

Josh Moody,
Connecticut

© Evangelicals Now - June 2004
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