Ultimatums and Disjointed Musings

I'm supposed to be working on scholarship applications, but that's hard to do with all the pre-war news on the radio in the background. Pontificating pundits, and journalists reporting unverifiable tidbits. Listening to the repetition does no good, and yet I can't seem to turn it off. And my heart sinks at what I'm hearing.

Unlike many of the good people with whom I live and work, I am not a committed pacifist. I can see an end point where violence, or the threat of violence, becomes a viable, defensive alternative. I've been in that spot. My problem with what I see in this situation is that it is not, strictly speaking, defensive response; it's proactive: intended to prevent the potential of future evil.

Make no mistake, I find Hussein's behavior loathesome. AKMA says it quite well: Saddam Hussein is a bloody, foul tyrant, and Iraq would have to be better off without him. There’s nothing, so far as I know, to be said on his behalf. Part of me thinks it never should have been allowed to go on this long. It's been 12 years that Iraq has been allowed to lead the United Nations around by the nose; and passing resolutions scolding him has accomplished nothing.

But I have to question the appropriateness of this deadline, at this time.

Another event layered on yesterday: one of the sturdy souls who keeps the Dean's office running at Seabury saw her son, her youngest child, off to Marine boot camp. She asks us to pray for him, for "wise leadership and for peace." One thing we can do amid the turmoil.

Prayer For those in the Armed Forces of our Country (Taken from the BCP, pg. 823):
Almighty God, we commend to your gracious care and keeping all the men and women of our armed forces at home and abroad. Defend them day by day with your heavenly grace; strengthen them in their trials and temptations; give them courage to face the perils which beset them; and grant them a sense of your abiding presence wherever they may be; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.