Why Celebrate?

Here is the deal. If you did not receive last night’s news of Osama Bin Laden’s death as good news (the meaning of the word Gospel by the way) I don’t know that you will be persuaded by anything I have to say. But don’t think I am naïve about what this means and doesn’t mean.
That seems to be some of the hang up people have. They figure Osama has been out of the picture for some time now and another will just take his place. Oh that thought occurred to me. I am not about to call for our troops to come home, so we can play that reel over again. Take a lesson from “Charlie Wilson’s War” it is a good movie, perhaps not one you let your five year old watch like you would with “Red Dawn” or “Rambo,” it has some gratuitous adult content in it, but it also sort of illustrates the problem with the isolationist tendency in our country, that in many ways has become a reluctant empire.
I dabbled with all that at one time, isolationism. I used to think that if we left them alone, they would leave us alone. I tried to think that, despite my reading of Winston Churchill’s “History of the English Speaking Peoples” that gave me the book lesson in why I should not be so naïve. They say a conservative is a liberal beat by the club of reality. That was true of Winston in many ways. It is true of me. I like to day dream about utopian society. My faith rests on the hope of its attainment, but being in the world and not of it, 9/11 served as the club that divested me of my isolationist yearnings.
It probably did not take that much clubbing though. It was something I was dabbling with, or trying on for size more than anything. I remember in the Military reading a two paragraph article on the Taliban in the Washington Post, and thinking the vacuum can’t be maintained, we will be there sooner or later like it or not. We were wise not to let the Russians have it, and pave a highway to the ports in Pakistan, but stupid to turn our backs on it when we dealt the Russians payback for Vietnam. More or less I have always been an interventionist, it was the result of a twisted upbringing.
I don’t much remember living in the states much before my 8th birthday. Though, I grew up always conscious of being an American. My earliest memories are spent in northern Alberta, with a friend named Andrew and a redhead named Margot. We spent some time in Venice Beach after that. My dad was studying Setswana. We were on our way to Botswana. Our trip meant an extended stay in Germany. My parents didn’t seem to have much of a censure button when it came to adult content while we were there. This content though was anything but gratuitous. I have memories that haunt my childhood to this day. Memories of roaming about Bergen Belsen, and seeing pictures of dead mutilated, starved and naked bodies stacked up like cord wood and guarded over by Nazi’s with German Shepherds. It was hard for me to separate out those pictures as past realities as we crossed over to Berlin and East Berlin through Check Point Charlie, where soldiers had their guns trained on my Dad’s vehicle. Where we got delayed because my sister decided to trade places and sit with her friend in an accompanying vehicle.
Botswana was peaceful. Funny it was the vacations to the beaches in Durban that seemed to be a little more upsetting to me. There I was confronted with Apartheid and unrest. I remember hearing of a salon being blown up on one trip.
When I finally did get to the states I realized quickly that we were privileged. And we are. But that privilege does not come cheap, nor does Canada’s or Western Europe’s, and we Americans front the cost of that privilege with the blood of our soldiers. Sure, the cold war was somewhat uneventful, at least in Europe. But it was our tanks, our soldiers, our planes that ensured it was uneventful there.
Growing up, that is what I knew, I’d seen it. I’d seen the horrors of reality, and I like to think that if we can stop some of that from happening, then we ought to. I for my part was willing all the while I was growing up. I watched all the Rambo movies, and Red Dawn was a feast for my imagination.
I trained as best I could. I read all the books I could about the military. And I took up swimming, because that gave me the best work out. It was swimming that was going to get me into the elite. And it would have too, if it hadn’t also killed my hearing just enough to prevent it from happening. But it was while in the Air Force that I started to become a bit more convinced. I was lucky enough to be stationed in Italy through the nineties, while we did our best to make a parking lot out of the former Yugoslavia, and prevent WWIII, and more atrocities of the type that haunted my childhood if I only saw them in pictures then. But it was on leave in Berlin, and seeing that wall torn down that I became convinced that intervention, though it can be costly, and take a lot of time, was well worth it.
I understand the wish for peace. As they say wish in this hand…. in the other, see which one gets filled faster. “Freedom ain’t free” they say, neither is peace, not in this world. This world has too many Osama’s for that to be true. It is why we need those willing to be Navy Seals. It is why we should celebrate when they do their job, and when we find a little victory, even if it is for the most part symbolic. It is God who gave us these men to do the job they do.
It isn’t easy for them. Most of them to this day are haunted with what they have to do. In large part because our Sunday school teachers can’t decipher the difference between killing on a battle field, or with an executioner’s switch and murder. This morning I heard on the news an Email read that claimed those men were guilty of first degree murder. I don’t have words for the person who wrote that, not ones I haven’t already been chastised for using. These men are heroes, and you are a sick sick puppy if you can’t be thankful for what they did, and what they do. Don’t wrap your hand wringing up in pseudo Christian moralism, there isn’t a damn thing about it that is Christian, and I do mean a damn thing about it. This whole "Christ was a pacifist and Christians should be too" bit is a satanic lie. Sure he tells us to turn the other cheek, but he does not tell us to stand by and watch in cowardice as our neighbor is slapped on his. Christ honored the Centurion when he healed his servant. He praised that man of war for his faith, and did not stoop to chastise him for his job. John the Baptist told the soldiers to be content with their pay. Paul makes explicitly clear that Governments do not wield the sword in vain.
In my book, part and parcel of a soldiers pay is respect, and honor given for the job he or she does. And it is respect that we celebrate their victories, perhaps even a bit more than we celebrate the victory of the home team at Homecoming. It is the Christian thing to do. Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and what not. As Americans today we have reason to be happy, reason to be proud. Tomorrow should worry for itself.