If It's Still There

The middlewife and I have been scheduled for almost a year now to go to Israel and Jordon on a study tour in September with our church. Sadly, the trip has just been cancelled. Doing so required a decision of the church elders, which is as high up as decision-making goes in our church. In other words, it was a tough decision.

Our own decision was easier - I've said all along that I'll still go "if Israel is still there" and if our leader still wants to go. At the moment, Israel is still there, but our leader will no longer be going, and therefore, we won't be either.

One of our beliefs is that our elders are given the spiritual gift of discernment, and all their decisions are unanimous, so I feel I'd have to be an idiot to think I know better than them on such a subject.

From discussions about why one might still make such a trip in time of war, we realized that there is still a good reason to make such a trip, but we lack the needed time before departure to make the needed changes in the purpose of the trip from study to service.

If we went anyway now, we would be a burden on Israel, which hardly needs another burden at the moment. Perhaps another day we can be there to help.

It's hard not to see this as another victory for the haters of this world. The non-refundable fees for this cancelled trip will add up to about $30K for our group, and that's all money that, had we known, could have been spent in other ways to help people more.

Worse, because we are not going, the people in Israel and Jordan who would have provided us services along the way won't see any of the money they expected, not only from our one tour, but from most tours that would be there if war were not. For just our group, that loss is at least $165K.

Still worse, all involved who know much about the area and its troubles agree that conditions for travel there are very unlikely to be better in a few months or another year.

This feels to me much more like Spain or Czechoslovakia in the mid 1930s than it does to another local "intifada." Speaking plainly, we seem to be at the start of something bigger than our current war on terror, rather than nearing its end. Sadly, now, as in 1938, there are many fools eager to cut and run, as though doing so wouldn't just make matters worse later, as became obvious last time in 1939.

Although I was anti-war in the Viet Nam years, I am very aware that over a million people died in Southeast Asia after we abandoned that war, and vowed not to again let such a decision of mine ignore its victims.

That has immediate relevance now, as sectarian violence threatens all we have accomplished to date in Iraq. If I were either a "cut and run" dove or a "to h*** with them" hawk, before abandoning Iraq, I'd have to be willing to allow another million or more persons God loves to die because I left.

Today's isolationists really ought to ponder on how many more people died in the 1940s, than might have died if World War II had started in 1938 rather than 1939. Being opposed to warfare as a solution to problems is fine with me, but please be intelligent about it and think through the consequences of getting your way.