Respect, Yes; Fear, No

At the risk of sounding terribly naive, I dare to again respectfully (I will try, anyway) take issue with Cal Thomas in his article of December 6th ("World no longer respects, fears U.S.). I am grateful that in this piece he does not quote Scripture to support his views, nor even are there any references to faith at all. Perhaps because even he would have a hard time finding any support in the Bible or Christian tradition for what he says.

It is true that the U.S. has lost the respect of much of the world. The apparent complete collapse of any law and order in Iraq, due to the complete incompetance of the Bush administration to "win the peace" after our invasion and occupation of that country, goes a long way toward our loss of respect among other nations. Then too, inconsistancies in how we deal with the world -- now claiming to foster the growth of democracy, now supporting this or that distatorship if it serves our purposes -- doesn't win the respect of anyone. So yes, our respect-quotiant is low, and that is a terrible thing for us and the world.

But do we really want the world to fear us? Cal thinks so. He thinks that if we got tough, the world would start behaving the way we'd like. "Whatever happened to 'if you touch us, it will be the last thing you touch'?" he says, like a bully on the playground.

How much more of a bully could we be than what we have done in Iraq? "Shock and Awe" did not put the Iraqis in awe of us, nor even afraid, it seems. Who cannot look at the mess we have created there and not see the utterly folly, the total uselessness of thinking we can with our military might -- as powerful and expensive as it is, carried out by courageous and skilled warriors -- bring order, much less democracy to any nation?

The Bush administration's ability to deny reality was further demonstrated this week when they sent Donald Rumsfeld off to his retirement with fanfare and high honors for his role in the whole sordid affair. I would think that the world out there, if it was watching, seeing our honoring of the man who played such a key role in the Iraq debacle, thinks even less of us than it did. I don't think we win any respect by continuing to deny the obvious, refusing to take any responsibility for the misery we have caused, not the least of which is to our own military people and their families.

When will we stop mistaking fear -- the primary tactic of the terrorists we say we are fighting -- for diplomacy? Could it be that Jesus was on to something when he talked about loving one's enemies? Killing them doesn't seem to be working . . . . at all.