Analysis: Do Baptist leaders regret justifying Iraq war?

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.abpnews.com/1607.article

WASHINGTON (ABP) -- As the number of American soldiers killed passes 3,000 and Congress debates President Bush's latest strategy for winning the war, its planners Christians who supported invading Iraq in 2003 must now face a thorny theo-political question.

Was the invasion a "just war" after all?

While most progressive evangelicals, mainline Protestant leaders and the Roman Catholic Church opposed the war prior to the March 2003 invasion, many Baptists and other conservative evangelicals justified the war in Christian theological terms.

"Military action against the Iraqi government would be a defensive action. ... The human cost of not taking Hussein out and removing his government as a producer, proliferator and proponent of the use of weapons of mass destruction means we can either pay now or we can pay a lot more later," said Richard Land, head of the Southern Baptist Convention's ethics agency, in a Sept. 2002 article published by the denomination's news service.

Land later organized a group of prominent conservative evangelicals who signed an open letter arguing that the proposed Iraq invasion satisfied classic Christian theological criteria for justifying a war -- often referred to as "just war theory."

[porphyrian]

1. Jesus told them to support killing. - n/t

[Itchinjim]

2. F**k them.

Maybe Jesus will forgive them for twisting his words and teachings to support this war but I never will. Fuck them.