{"id":8099,"date":"2006-08-02T12:32:09","date_gmt":"2006-08-02T16:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8099.html"},"modified":"2006-08-02T12:32:09","modified_gmt":"2006-08-02T16:32:09","slug":"of-all-the-reasons-to-fight-the-war-in-iraq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/of-all-the-reasons-to-fight-the-war-in-iraq\/","title":{"rendered":"Of all the reasons to fight the war in Iraq…"},"content":{"rendered":"

[tag]James Dobson[\/tag]’s [tag]Focus on the Family[\/tag] hosted a forum this week for candidates in Colorado’s 5th congressional district, home to the Focus empire. There was plenty of the usual palaver, but the Republicans’ perspective on the [tag]war[\/tag]<\/a> was particularly troubling.<\/p>\n

Bentley Rayburn spoke of opening [tag]Iraq[\/tag] to the word of [tag]Jesus[\/tag]. […]<\/p>\n

Rayburn, a retired Air Force major general, framed several answers in terms of what “we as Christians” would do. As he has throughout the campaign, he described the war in Iraq as a battle against radical Islam and said establishing a democracy in Iraq would send a message.<\/p>\n

“That will open up hope within these countries for the gospel of Jesus Christ to change hearts,” he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I suppose there are reasonable arguments to support the president’s open-ended commitment in Iraq — I can’t think of any, but it’s possible — but creating an environment in the Middle East that’s hospitable to [tag]Christianity[\/tag] isn’t much of a selling point. It may fit in with Bush’s talk of a “crusade<\/a>,” but it’s probably not helpful, diplomatically.
\n
\nIt’s worth noting, of course, that the forum was not an all-Republican affair. Democrat Jay Fawcett, a Fighting Dem, was on hand to make his case<\/a> to the ministry.<\/p>\n

Fawcett explained his pro-choice stance by saying: “I have no desire to dictate your faith to you, and I hope you have no desire to dictate mine for me.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I wasn’t there, and the media accounts don’t go into any detail, but can you imagine the reaction from 220 employees of Focus on the Family to the idea that they shouldn’t dictate everyone’s faith? I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that there was audible laughter in response to Fawcett’s remark.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[tag]James Dobson[\/tag]’s [tag]Focus on the Family[\/tag] hosted a forum this week for candidates in Colorado’s 5th congressional district, home to the Focus empire. There was plenty of the usual palaver, but the Republicans’ perspective on the [tag]war[\/tag] was particularly troubling. Bentley Rayburn spoke of opening [tag]Iraq[\/tag] to the word of [tag]Jesus[\/tag]. […] Rayburn, a retired […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8099\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}