We’re going to fail in Iraq. It isn’t for military reasons,
and it isn’t primarily for strategic reasons. It’s for ideological reasons. To
put it very briefly:
We’re trying to get them to build THEIR culture on an
ideology that can’t even sustain OUR culture.
I mean, down on the dirt, the reasons we are failing are
strategic. Our enemies have safe haven in Iran and Syria to attack with
impunity, just as our North Vietnamese enemies did. We cannot defeat them
because we will not attack them. Our only hope is if they get bored and quit.
And they won’t. But more fundamentally, God didn’t draw the boundaries of
Iraq—the Brits did. And they botched it, leaving Iraq with three
people/religious groups who hate each other. We think maybe we can get them all
to live together happily in the name of Democracy, something of which they have
no history, experience or background, and the prerequisites of which are
totally absent. This is idiotic. If we weren’t being idiots, we’d carve it into
three nation-states so that they wouldn’t feel the need to fight each other.
And then we would lose anyway, for the initial reason cited.
I don’t think invading Iraq was the wrong thing to do. I
suppose I could discuss why I think that for a long time, but that’s not what
interests me at the moment. (Suffice it that, in my opinion, when Saddam tried
to assassinate Bush 41, it was time to take him out.) What is closer to the
point is this: when a country/culture/civilization does the right thing, the
wisest thing, and fails at it, that is emblematic of a failing
country/culture/civilization. You can’t pursue a better course than the right
one. If you fail at that, then that’s natural selection at work- you didn’t
make the grade.
So this is a pretty serious thing to say: invading Iraq was the right thing to do; we’re going to fail; and that means that as a culture we are kaput. Yeah, hard to get more serious than THAT!
So why will we fail? Because our Secular Humanist ideology
is wholly incapable of supplanting their Islamic one. We claim it’s Democracy,
and Democracy is what we want to see. But Democracy is not an ideology- it’s a
political system. Political systems don’t exist in vacuums- they ride atop
ideologies. In America we have a democracy riding atop a Secular Humanist
ideology, fueled and sustained by a Christian ideology that has been sidelined
and excluded. We think maybe we can get a Secular Humanist Democracy to exist
in Iraq, similarly sidelining and excluding Islam and instead imposing its own
values. But Islam doesn’t work that way. Muslims won’t fight and die to
establish or sustain a secular Democracy.
Islam expects and intends to be in charge of the government. So even if
we can win militarily, we will never install a viable government of the type we
are seeking.
Sure, Muslims are just people. They want peace and stability
so that they can live quiet lives. But they also believe something. It’s
important to them, and it is totally opposed to the notions of culture and
government we want them to embrace. They will not accept peace and stability
wrapped in that package, and I don’t blame them.
Sec-u-lar adj. Of or pertaining to the temporal
rather than to the spiritual. Pertaining to or advocating Secularism.
Sec-u-lar-ism n. The view that consideration of the
present well-being of mankind should predominate over religious considerations
in civil affairs or public education.
(Thanks, American Heritage). A few observations. First,
Secularism is mainly negative. It stands for NO RELIGION. In the absence of
that which it opposes, it has an identity crisis. It has precious little
substance of its own- certainly not enough to sustain a culture. Second, “the
present well-being of mankind” is problematic. Defining a value statement such
as “well-being” requires reference to an objective higher truth. (If you think
we are capable of determining our own well-being, then read Ecclesiastes.)
Since Secularism specifically excludes objective truth, the “present well-being
of mankind” is slowly being recognized as “every person pursuing what they
want, answerable to no one.” Since very few people identify their present
well-being with sacrificing or even dying for the greater good, a Secular
society has no basis for sustaining itself. It gives no reason to pursue truth
because it is true, or to do right simply because it is right. Our society is
running on the dwindling fumes of its Christian heritage. It’s just about
finished up.
So, ideologically, we are cooked. And ideology is
everything. It really is. That’s why we lost in Vietnam- they believed in their
wrong notions more than we believed in our right ones. That’s why Communism
collapsed. They gave up on their wrong notions. If you watched the coup that
overthrew Gorbachev in hopes of preserving the Soviet government, it was
clearly a group of people who didn’t really believe in what they were doing,
but had no choice, no alternatives. They were so confused and desperate they
all got drunk at the crucial moment. Communism as an ideology died, followed by
Communism as a system.
Our only hope would have been to go into Iraq as Christians,
and to aggressively evangelize Iraq. The claims of Christ are much more
compelling than the claims of Mohammed. This is real truth, and it can overcome
Islamic falsehood. But we aren’t going to do that. Federally, as a nation, we
would rather die than confess Christ. And it is very likely we are going to do
exactly that.