Jihadist or Jingoist, what a choice!

Back in 2003, the USA invaded Iraq after a campaign of lies and misdirection (at worst) or after a campaign of misinterpretations (at best) to find and neutralize the weapons of mass destruction that were certainly present (WMD). This was justified on the grounds that it was inevitable that some of those weapons would either be stolen or given to terrorists by the then-President of Iraq, Saddam Hussein.

Of course, we now know that there were no weapons of mass destruction. We promptly built up a myth. The myth was that they were moved out to Syria, and for a long time there was a move to invade Syria based on that myth. [Note: there are actually some people who still believe the myth.] Having found no weapons of mass destruction, the USA promptly justified itself by claiming that even if there were no weapons of mass destruction the Iraqi people were better of because they had been saved from Saddam Hussein. We were going to be greeted as liberators, along with all the World War II imagery that this conjured forth.

In order to do that, the USA carefully ignored the warnings of other nations, the warnings of the Pope (who send a letter to President Bush), the warning of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, and the warnings of our own Metropolitan PHILIP of blessed memory. Any nation that did not agree with our assessment (before the invasion) was publicly insulted as being either allies of Hussein (Russia) or cowards (France). Do any of you remember Freedom Fries?

This is now 11 years later, and we have fertilized the weapons of mass destruction. They are called ISIS. Many American convert Orthodox clergy told Metropolitan PHILIP that he was wrong, particularly on his stance that Syria must not be invaded. They further insulted both the Arab clergy and the Arab hierarchs by the dismissive idea that they only thought that way because they had been brainwashed when they were children attending school in the Middle East. Sadly, I doubt that the convert clergy will repent. They will rephrase this counter-reaction to the American presence as further proof that somehow this fundamentalism was always there, that the USA could not possibly have anything to do with the counter-reaction, that the memories of the Arab clergy are wrong in not remembering this fundamentalist brand of Islam as being the common brand. But, many in the convert clergy need to openly repent.

In the same way, if you look at almost all of the Congress and the media, there is no sense whatsoever that any of this is happening because we invaded an innocent country. Yes, it was a country innocent of the charges of having WMDs. The Iraq of back then was guilty of other things, but not of harboring WMDs to be used against the USA, not of supporting Al Qaida, not of exporting terrorism to other parts of the Western World. There is no sense that we could have, in any way, been one of the causes that triggered this horrific counter-reaction by the jihadists. No, there is only talk of how we should have stayed longer in Iraq, how we should have been militarily tougher, how we should have taken over Syria (and maybe even Saudi Arabia), how we should be wiling to put boots on the ground.

There is no self-analysis; there is no concern for changing our interventionist national attitude; there is no sense of reevaluation. If anything, as parts of Islam have become jihadist, so have many of our countrymen (and Orthodox clergy) become jingoists. Violence seems to be the only answer increasingly given by both sides. Jihadist or Jingoist, what a choice this world has!