Author: Laurence Vance

According to March 6, 2006, “Education Report” in The New American: “Home-schoolers will find it easier and more rewarding to join our nation’s military forces. They are now considered ‘preferred enlistees,’ and are on an equal footing with other top recruits.” In turns out that prior to 1998, home-schoolers were in the military’s “less likely to succeed” “Tier 2” category. A five-year pilot program and a one-year renewal “allowed a limited number of home-schooled recruits full access to the armed services.” Now it is permanent.

But is this a good thing? Why would a bright home-schooled student, who was probably raised in a Christian environment, want to waste his life (and maybe end his life) in service to the state by making his career the U.S. military–currently the greatest force for aggression in the world today? If this war is a monstrous evil–and it certainly is–why would any parent encourage his child to join the military? Duty, honor, country, you say? No one has a duty to kill for the state. It is not an honor to kill for the state. Killing for the state in a foreign land does not help protect the country. We need to deprive the military of cannon fodder, not supply it with cannon fodder.

This may be old news, but I had not seen it, and it is something we need to be reminded of everyday: According to an article by Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz in the LA Times, the final bill for the war in Iraq “will be much higher than previously reckoned—between $1 trillion and $2 trillion, depending primarily on how much longer our troops stay.” Every member of Congress who continues to vote for funding for this horrible war needs to be voted out of office.

They have got to be somewhere.

“Just in time for Father’s Day!” said the ad I recently received via e-mail. For only $22.99 I can get twelve double-side DVDs with a total of 50 war movies. Featured actors include Ronald Reagan, James Cagney, and Sidney Poitier. Why in the world would anyone think that a collection of war movies had anything to do with Father’s Day? Is not war the greatest killer of fathers and potential fathers?

See the entire collection here.

Perhaps you already thought of it, and perhaps I should have thought of it, but one of my readers (who wishes to remain anonymous) recently gave me something simple yet profound about Iraq’s WMD:

The thought that occurred to me from the first mention of WMD’s and continued through the entire push to get the war started was — if Iraq has WMD’s, why in the world aren’t the Iraqis using them to repel the U.S. invaders? Weapons of mass destruction would certainly be a potent defense against an invading army. And the following thought always was — there can’t be any WMD’s or surely Saddam would use them.

Many things about Bush’s war are anti-Christian, but the destruction of Christianity in Iraq is near the top of the list. Writing in the current issue of Chronicles magazine, Wayne Allensworth reports how Christians in Iraq have faced contiinuous attacks since the U.S. invasion began. Because Muslims have identified all Christians with the West, Christians in Iraq have been killed, kidnapped, and forced to flee their homes. They have had their businesses destroyed, and their women have been forced to wear the Muslim veil. Yet, under Saddam Hussein’s secular regime, Christians lived in relatively safety and had freedom to practice their religion. Christian held posts in the government. Hussein suppressed radical Islamic groups. No, Iraq was no Bible Belt, but it was a far cry from other Muslim countries. Are Christians in Iraq better off now than under Saddam Hussein? Is anyone in Iraq better off now than under Saddam Hussein? George Bush may claim to be a Christian, but his actions are decidedly anti-Christian.