If God sent George W. Bush to Iraq, as Bush and his fundamentalist Christian supporters believe, then God shot himself in the foot.
A report on CNN today makes clear that Bush's crusade in Iraq is having an unintended but disastrous side-effect: the destruction of the Christian community in Iraq, one of the oldest in the world. The recent spate of church bombings in Iraq is only one of the attacks against Iraqi Christians, who are being persecuted for their perceived closeness to Western culture and their non-Muslim dress and cultural habits. Christians are coming increasing pressure to renounce their religion. Now, I can testify from personal experience that renunciation of religion can be truly liberating, but being forced to give up one's faith is to suffer one of the worst crimes that our species can commit.
For many Iraqi Christians, it appears that staying in the country is no longer an option. People are just trying to survive long enough to emigrate. This is the hell that Bush's war has unleashed on his co-religionists. The fact that the bombers and persecutors are evil does not relieve Bush of his own responsibility for their crimes, since he chose to unleash the forces in Iraq that are now ravaging the country.
Bringing chaos instead of order, destruction instead of justice, persecution instead of tolerance -- these are the accomplishments of a leader?
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