The State Department has taken a distinct and troubling new step by praising the assassination by car bomb of Imad Mughniyeh of Hezbollah. Not that I'd disagree too much, mind you -- the man who planned the 1983 Beirut bombing of the Marine barracks, and several of the Beirut Hezbollah kidnappings of the late 1980s, is probably indeed better off dead. A strict Christian approach to confronting evil would say that one can never rejoice over another's death. But let's face it, I was overjoyed the day Augusto Pinochet bit it, and will probably feel similarly for, say, Henry Kissinger or Dick Cheney (not the president, who is too much of a bumbling tool of the powerful). But I know I'm wrong to have a "party on the gravestone" view, and it seems troubling that the governments of the U.S. and Israel would make an official statement to praise a murder.
1 comment:
Well, it is a quandary. I suppose I do wish this would happen more often than war, if I have to choose. But I agree it is odd when a government praises it. And yes, there are lots of 'Thou Shalt Nots' that don't apply to governments apparently. In fact, I'm thinking our esteemed Christian leaders might not have adhered to anything in Exodus 20.
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