Spilling American blood to build Islamic states -- a really bad idea

By Bryan Fischer

We should get out of Iraq and Afghanistan for one simple reason: we are spilling American blood to build Islamic states.

I have never believed in the use of the American military for nation-building purposes. The job of the military is to go in, kill the bad guys, and leave. What kind of nation people build when we leave is up to them. It's their country.

Now the only thing worse than using the military to do nation-building is to use the military to do really bad nation-building. And that's what we have done with American power in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

The constitutions of both Iraq and Afghanistan — which, God help us, we helped create — make both states officially Islamic republics in which sharia law is the supreme law of the land. No law in either state can contradict sharia law.

This means, of course, that there is no such thing as religious liberty in either place.

Conversion from Islam to Christianity is a capital offense in both places, and Christians are virtually unheard of in Afghanistan. If they get heard from, they get their heads chopped off which makes them understandably reticent.

The Christian population of Iraq is less than half of what it was before our invasion, and many of those who still live in the country have had to flee their homes for parts unknown just to keep from being killed by adherents of the religion of peace.

Saddam Hussein actually protected the Christian churches in Baghdad to a large degree because Christians were the only honest, trustworthy civil servants he could find. He needed them to help him run his country.

I told my pastoral colleagues at the time the invasion of Iraq began in 2003 that there was one and only one metric of success in Iraq: whether we left behind a nation with genuine religious freedom for Christians.

We now have our answer. Neither President Bush nor President Obama seemed to care one straw for protecting religious freedom in Iraq, and consequently there is none today.

So in terms of the only yardstick that counts — religious liberty — our efforts in both Iraq and Afghanistan are miserable, sorry failures. This is especially grievous since we are a Christian nation whose leaders — Republican and Democratic alike — seem careless about the lives and liberties of our brothers and sisters in the faith. This callousness is grossly irresponsible at best and deeply immoral, unjust and wrong at worst.

In the ancient book of Genesis, God gives the secret to a nation's success. If a nation wants his blessing, he told Abraham, it need only do one simple thing: bless the descendants of Abraham.

"I will bless those who bless you," says the Lord, "and him who dishonors you I will curse" (Gen. 12:3). God has never revoked that promise.

You can hardly find two places on earth where the descendants of Abraham — whether they are physical descendants of Abraham (the Jews) or spiritual descendants of Abraham (Christians) — are treated with less honor than they are in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In other words, we have done a positive disservice not only to our brothers and sisters in the faith in these two countries, we have also done a grave disservice to the countries themselves. They have no hope of prosperity, of enjoying God's blessing, until they begin to bless and protect the seed of Abraham.

Until that day comes, they will continue to rest under the curse of God, and we — the greatest and most powerful nation on earth — will have kept them there. Shame on us.

© Bryan Fischer