Tread lightly on the things of earth

From The Sacramento Bee, Bush unmoved by protests (also Salon and NYT) —

“War is my last choice,” Bush said at the White House as echoes of anti-war protests circled the globe. “But the risk of doing nothing is even a worse option as far as I am concerned.”

Standing firmly against skeptical allies as well as the demonstrators, Bush said: I owe it to the American people to secure this country. I will do so.”

This stance in the face of unprecedented global anti-war protests implies one of the following:

• A sense of rightness perceived as too important to have been revealed to the masses

• Such low regard for the peoples of the world that their views are dismissed as irrelevant

Either, alas, reveals spiritual pride, which — when it afflicts a world leader — puts us all in danger.

Collectively, the millions of people around the world protesting war with Iraq exhibit a motive of remarkable purity, one you can know is untainted by greed or coercion: The only thing overarching enough to make so many people from so many countries from so much of the world step forward in unison — with conviction like this — is a revelation of truth resonating in millions of hearts.

In the tradition of “scripture interprets scripture,” discernment corroborates discernment. Without corroboration, one person’s discernment is suspect. Relatively few in the world corroborate Bush’s discernment that war with Iraq is imperative. Many, many in the world discern in unity that it is not.

The reason Bush gives for being unmoved by the protests is at best disingenuous. Many of us, including us Americans he purports to secure, recognize that the likely outcome of preemptively invading Iraq makes the U.S. — and the world — less secure, not more, as it stirs up anti-American sentiment throughout the world and cements the chaotic precedent that any nation can wage preemptive war against another.

[via Stand Down]