abortion and civilian death in iraq

I get so many emails from Sojourners that I fall behind in my ability to keep up with the volume. Many times I delete them or quickly peruse relatively interesting ones to see if there is anything striking. A few days ago, such a thing occurred. Jim Wallis wrote of the hundreds of thousands of deaths in Iraq due to our invasion.

Although I knew that some estimates put the total between 100,000 and 600,000, very few times do I see such a number in print. Sadly, I see very few Christian leaders, writers or blogger speaking candidly about the high volume of civilian deaths in Iraq. When we do, we quote the conservative Iraq Boy Count numbers, which still reaches 55,000 civilian deaths.

What struck me this time was the relative silence by Christians, outside of so-called liberals (including the Sojourner crowd), pacifists and Catholics on this issue from a justice standpoint. Many "Pro-Life" Christians have spent time telling us that we should focus solely upon the issue of abortion (oh, and gay agendas which kill none) since approximately 1.3 million children are aborted each year (according to some accounts- this is an impossible number to authenticate, like civilian deaths in Iraq), we should not focus on Capital Punishment (usually less than 100 per year), the environment (of course, we will be seeing abortion-like numbers in the near future if we are not careful) and war (where they ignore such collateral damage as a means to end, which is defense of liberty or some crap like that and use outdated just war arguments which are no longer valid).

However, as the human toll of our misguided war rise, the Conservative Christians groups that ignore everything but abortion are showing themselves to be undeniably hypocritical. How can they ignore tens (or more likely hundreds) of thousands of innocent deaths because they support troops, presidents and the Republican Party? How can a child in an American womb be of greater consequence that a 6 year old Iraqi boy that happens to be in the way of shrapnel? If we are looking a numbers they can do nothing but skew them lower (which they will to suit their agenda) or admit these civilian deaths are reaching a point they can not ignore (yes it is still lower than abortion, but in the ballpark).

Once more they are showing a preference for an American Way of life over the Kingdom of God.

I am tired and frustrated and am rambling due to my lack of practice on my blog, my lack of sleep and my lack of trust in most leaders (especially those of my denomination's heritage which ignore Biblical Justice on a regular basis). I may change this blog with more sleep, but wanted to get this out of my brain so I could sleep and focus on my life which has become work.

Good Night and Good Luck.