Anyone who knows me knows I'm almost instinctively against any military resolution of conflict. I find it hard to even think of the idea of how much suffering civilians experience in war, a policy tool too many governments rush to all too quickly. Iraq is the classic example of it for me, a situation clearly local in scope that never needed to be resolved in a quagmire that has resulted in so many casualties among Iraq's civilian population and the US' military.
However, the leader of Iran and his pronouncements that so eerily echo those of Hitler's are making it very difficult for me to find the inevitable here objectionable. His latest claim is that Israel has no reason to exist, and soon won't. This is a chilling statement, and an example of exactly the kind of thing that necessitated Israel in the first place - with so many people determined to literally extinguish the Jewish people, the tools of statecraft (diplomacy and a standing army) do seem to be the only things that can warrant their safety.
What is particularly frightening about these tirades is that they portray this as a religious conflict. Past experience shows us that religiously motivated conflicts are not only brutal, but generational - look at Ireland. And yet here there's no reason for it! The chapters "Ta-ha" and "Al Isra" of the Quran clearly suggest that Islam incorporates the very idea of Israel as a promised land to the people following Moses - the Quran literally calls these people Israel, just as the Bible does. "Ta-Ha" particularly tells the whole story of Exodus in condensed form, even about how quail were blown into the desert en route to feed the people!
If conflict is to be averted, perhaps the answer lies with religious people. Perhaps the answer lies, as Bruce Feiler suggested in his most recent book, in the prophets. It didn't take kings and empires to turn the tide of history. It took ordinary and often reluctant men and women. Simple people, speaking truth to power. Maybe our job is to keep tirelessly pointing out to the world that the place governments rush to all too quickly is not a place God wants them to go. He does not command them to it, and does not march with their armies.
Maybe our job is to remind people that God is more sovereign than they think, does not need them blurting out genocidal proclamations on his behalf in the name of strange religious theories, and can leave the course of history to him.
Do not remember the formers things,
Or consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new thing,
Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
And rivers in the desert. (Isaiah 43:18-19)
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