Can Iraq Be Free?

President George Bush has stated repeatedly that it is his opinion that freedom is a universal goal for all mankind.

With that statement, I do not disagree. That is because the desire or yearning for freedom is common to mankind. But there is a wide gulf between desire for freedom and the implementation and maintenance of liberty.

Our nation is a dramatic exception to most countries throughout time. Our founders created a different kind of nation based on the premise that certain rights (life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness) are given by the God of the Bible to people through the principle of government, which God established.

Only through Jesus Christ can mankind find true freedom. Jesus Christ fulfilled the Old Testament law and in John 13:34-35 gave a new commandment to; "love one another just as I have loved you, by this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." Paradoxically, he also commanded his followers to love their enemies, something that is impossible apart from the Holy Spirit.

It is only through this that our nation has continued to exist for the past 231 years. As we have moved toward a progressively secular society, we have seen our freedoms restricted or infringed. Drifting apart from the God of the Bible, it is increasingly difficult to hold on to our liberty.

Shift now to Iraq. The U.S. is bogged down in a valiant attempt to project our freedom and our bastardized form of government (we have helped them set up a democracy with no freedom of religion) upon a people who openly reject the God of the Bible. They hate us. They hate each other. They have rejected the true source of man's freedom, Jesus Christ and are therefore, incapable of implementing or maintaining freedom or liberty, regardless of their desire for freedom.

We would be better served as a nation by sending in Christian missionaries for a couple of generations, so they might then have a basis for self-determination, and the chance for holding onto it.