SERVANTS OF LIGHT:

Lucky Break for Jordan (Arnaud de Borchgrave, 3/21/2003, UPI)

A group of American anti-war demonstrators who came to Iraq with Japanese human shield volunteers made it across the border today with 14 hours of uncensored video, all shot without Iraqi government minders present. Kenneth Joseph, a young American pastor with the Assyrian Church of the East, told UPI the trip "had shocked me back to reality." Some of the Iraqis he interviewed on camera "told me they would commit suicide if American bombing didn't start. They were willing to see their homes demolished to gain their freedom from Saddam's bloody tyranny. They convinced me that Saddam was a monster the likes of which the world had not seen since Stalin and Hitler. He and his sons are sick sadists. Their tales of slow torture and killing made me ill, such as people put in a huge shredder for plastic products, feet first so they could hear their screams as bodies got chewed up from foot to head."

On reading this story, John Resnick writes:

Information's free flow is a great treasure of true liberty. Merely forming and voicing an opinion is NOT what makes free speech so valuable. The protected right itself is surely sacred, but it is powerless or even harmful without truth (e.g. yelling "fire" in the crowded theater or words from the Iraqi "Information" minister). Like all rights, free speech exists in a tenuous vacuum unless counterbalanced by a correlative responsibility.

Mindless slogan chanting, while clearly free speech, is indicative of exercising a right in the absence of its responsibility. One could argue that it is freedom - but only for personal freedom's sake. It surely is not freedom for truth's sake. It's like running an engine on dirty or improper fuel.

Freedom to form and voice an opinion based on access to unimpeded information or that which would lead to deciphering the truth -- now THAT's liberty's treasure at its fullest.

In Iraq's case, there are surely 100's of thousands if not millions who would trade their oil for truth. They know the only way to operate their burgeoning engine of free speech is on truth's cleanest fuel. After all, they've lived under the antithesis for generations. They embrace anybody who will listen with the truth about the evil oppression in their country rather than stories of untold oil riches that could be plundered.

In the end, as from the beginning, fully embracing the Truth is the only way to real freedom - physically and spiritually.

"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." (John 8:32, KJV)
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We pray without ceasing for Victory: Swift, Clean, Decisive and Liberating

John Resnick

Unfortunately, this also is true:

And this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their deeds were evil.
-John 3:19-21

Look at the folks cited in various posts below--Ron Brownstein, James Carroll, Martin Indyk--presumably all decent men personally, who are apparently incapable of accepting that our cause is right at all or that it is right without UN approval. Like the peoples of France, Russia, Canada, Germany, the Arab World, etc., we too are all too close as a society to falling in love with the darkness and ignoring stories like the one above and like this one, Son of Saddam: As Iraq's top Olympic official, Uday Hussein is accused of the torture and murder of athletes who fail to win (Don Yaeger, 3/24/03, Sports Illustrated).

But, for the nonce, it is a great honor to be a citizen of one of the few countries that are taking our responsibilities as seriously as our rights, fighting against the darkness, and hopefully helping the Iraqi people to find their voices, speak the truth, and see the light after a long, long night.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 25, 2003 8:57 PM