Tread lightly on the things of earth

Veteran war reporter Robert Fisk tours the Baghdad hospital and writes in the UK’s The Independent, This is the reality of war. We bomb. They suffer:

Donald Rumsfeld says the American attack on Baghdad is “as targeted an air campaign as has ever existed” but he should not try telling that to five-year-old Doha Suheil. She looked at me yesterday morning, drip feed attached to her nose, a deep frown over her small face as she tried vainly to move the left side of her body. The cruise missile that exploded close to her home in the Radwaniyeh suburb of Baghdad blasted shrapnel into her tiny legs — they were bound up with gauze — and, far more seriously, into her spine. Now she has lost all movement in her left leg. [via AlterNet]

On reading this, this verse leaped into my mind:

And the King will answer and say to them, “Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.” (Matthew 25:40 NKJV)

(Not to mention what we’re not doing for hungry/thirsty/lonely/naked/ sick/imprisoned brethren because we’re sinking an unbudgeted $80 billion into this war.)

Quickly thereafter I was struck by this wording in today’s Old Testament lesson (3rd Sunday in Lent, Episcopal lectionary Year B):

You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.

Note that we have in no small way used the name of the Lord to justify this war in Iraq. Wrongful use of his name? I think so, emphatically. (Because what we’re doing is the exact opposite of what Jesus commands.) Of course, what matters — and apparently it matters a hell of a lot — is what the Lord thinks.

2003-03-26 update: Full text of the Fisk interview here, including links to audio versions. Highly worthwhile reading. This paragraph jumps out at me:

Obviously, we know that with the firepower they have the Americans can batter their way into these cities and they can take over Baghdad, but the moral ethos behind this war is that you Americans are supposed to be coming to liberate this place. And, if you’re going to have to smash your way into city after city using armor and helicopters and aircraft, then the whole underpinning and purpose of this war just disappears, and, the world — which has not been convinced thus far, who thinks this is a wrong war and an unjust war — are going to say, “Then what is this for? They don’t want to be liberated by us.” And that’s when we’re going to come down to the old word: Oil.