The Religious Left

The Religious Left is a study in misplaced priorities. Jim Wallis and the Sojourners do an excellent job highlighting the injustice of poverty and the religious duty to steward the environment (as in Wallis' post-election article), and miss the boat on just about everything else.

Wallis also broaches the topic of abortion--and promptly dismisses it. He points out that "one side" talks about the "lives lost" to abortion, while the other "pointed to the 100,00 civilian casualties in Iraq", as if it is clear which is the more morally pressing issue. It is: in the reverse-negative he intends.

First, not even close to 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died in the Iraq War. The 100,000 figure comes from a study in The Lancet, a British medical journal, based on statistical sampling. The study concluded that 98,000 more Iraqis have probably died since the war began than in a similar timeframe prior to it. That is 98,000 Iraqis, including insurgents, have died of all causes, probably only 60 percent "of violence". So we're down to 60,000 war dead, and that includes casualties among Saddam's Iraqi Army, insurgents, terrorists; the new Iraqi Army, the US-trained Iraqi police force, and Iraqi civilians deliberately murdered by suicide bombers, not just Iraqi civilians accidentally killed by Coalition operations. Perhaps the more regularly cited figure of 15,000 civilian casualties is not far off. The venerable Economist also discusses possible methodological flaws in the study. Wallis is irresponsible to blithely toss off a six-digit number he clearly did not investigate.

Wallis' bias stems from his principled stand that the Iraq War was unjust, something readers of this blog--both of them--know to be contrary to The Cicero's position; but also one it can respect. What it cannot respect is Wallis' call for a withdrawal of Coalition troops from Iraq so the United Nations can be "given full political authority". Yes, the institution alternately too corrupt and too incompetent to administer Iraq's Oil-for-Food program (read here, here, and here) should now administer the entire country. This, because the United States is "the biggest cause of the security problem" in Iraq, not, apparently, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or remnants of the Baath Party senior leadership. Most who opposed the war in Iraq yet recognize the need to stay until a semblance of security returns to the country to prevent its slide into chaos, civil war, or theocracy. It is the just thing to do. And the Religious Left criticize their brothers on the Right for being anti-intellectual.

Compliment Wallis' misinformation and bad judgement on Iraq with the same on abortion. He dismisses the issue as of little consequence next to the moral horrors of 15,000 to 100,000 wartime deaths. You be the judge. 39,000,000 unborn have been aborted in the US since 1973, according to the pro-abortion Alan Guttmacher Institute.

A standard liberal is easier to understand, as they are pro-abortion and value personal autonomy as the highest good. The Religious Left just baffles. Wallis approvingly cites Cardinal Joseph Bernadin putting abortion on par with "euthanasia, capital punishment, nuclear weapons, poverty, and racism". Worrying about the crime rate while the Holocaust is happening. This exercise in moral equivalence should embarass, not persuade.

Wallis harps again and again on the need for Christians to be non-partisan and ideologically unpredictable. I agree. I also agre with Wallis' own pro-life policy recommendations, which echo my own, below--namely, tackling the causes of abortion as well as the permissive laws. And I further agree that Christians should recognize the moral duty to address poverty, the environment, and other social issues.

But some perspective is in order, some recognition of the magnitude of evils involved.