Def Con God

Life presents the faithful with occasions for spiritual council, to give pause for prayer or meditation. The most popular time to turn to God, is when there seems to be no other solution. Asking God is, at the very least, a way of letting go of the problem.

Recently, I read Bush saying something about how there should be, everyday, someone fasting on behalf of his spiritual well being.

And the situation may indeed be bleak. One report says that the arrival of worldwide peak oil production, with depletion looming near, will trigger an imperialistic oil grab among any nation states with the means. It's been said oil is important to war making, from which we might conclude, whomever has the oil is to be feared.

I've, as have many, accepted that Iraq is no threat to anyone. So I've concluded Bush, and company, think oil is pretty important. And I've generously thrown in, for the sake of argument, the benefit of the doubt in concluding that it's not greed, but that national security is the concern. The US is making it's play for the oil before anyone else does - perhaps that's what's preemptive about attacking Iraq.

But if we're so exposed and defenseless without oil, you'd think we could come up with a better way to protect our interests than killing thousands of Iraqi citizens. And we've had decades to reduce our oil dependency. Instead of rushing to war, maybe we should be rushing shelved energy solutions to market.

World leaders, throughout history, have used religion to move their followers to war. But our present situation appears to be more about oil, and energy policy mismanagement than God and country, or divine providence.

Perhaps the faithful among us should take a moment to reflect on whether the Iraq question is one for which we require Godly wisdom. Given tough times, we are all prone to get a little distracted, and short on answers - we've got a horrid economy, civil liberties decaying at an alarming rate, and a set of eye catching color codes to reflect the joyous beauty of it all.

Meanwhile, in government offices, one can often see a sign reading something like, 'A failure to plan on your part, does not constitute an emergency on my part.' Do we really need to raise the terrorist threat level all the way up to Def Con God?

Bryan McGregor Hoover
bhoover@wecs.com

Article sources include:

You're Not Crazy, The World Is Falling Apart