The Dogs of War
Torture is a word that trips lightly off the tongue; we use it if someone plays their violin badly or our football team flirts with relegation. But when the real thing shows its ugly face on the front pages, it smashes into our sensibilities like a fist in the teeth or a knee to the groin.
We may live in a Playstation age of laser-guided missiles and clinical precision, but evil always lurks in the dark corners of any so-called theatre of war.
The shocking pictures of US and (allegedly) UK soldiers abusing their Iraqi prisoners help to remind us what one person can do to another, and how Western men - and women - can inflict terror on others just as readily as any non-Western 'extremist', given half the chance.
The Bible teaches that human nature doesn't change depending on who you are or where you are born. We are all created in the amazing, diverse, beautiful image of God, with the imprint of his original blessing upon us, and must treat each other accordingly. And yet we all 'fall short of the glory of God', and did so from the day we left the Garden.
Regardless of how honourably most troops serve, grisly scenes were likely to unfold on the ground. It would have been unique among wars if torture and sexual abuse had not been part of the plan. Soldiers are trained to hate the enemy enough to kill them, and grace and mercy can easily be caught in the crossfire or - far worse - deliberately shot in the back, like many of the hundreds of civilians who were recently killed by coalition forces in Fallujah.
What's shocking in this case is not - so much - the torture of Iraqis by a few sick Westerners. Instead, it's the conflict itself, and the way that the threshold for justifying such inevitable, resulting horror was brought so low in the first place. All in the name of freedom and democracy.
This week's terrifying pictures caution us, if nothing else, to do everything we can to ensure our leaders have very good reason for ever unleashing the dogs of war.
Brian Draper
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