Okay, I'll Say It

Zarqawi is dead. I'm glad. There, I've said it. Before some of my friends want to sit down and fire off angry missives my direction from the comfort of their homes and with their full bellies, let me review:

1. Yes, every soul is precious.
2. Yes, we love everyone.
3. Yes, I would have rather he converted and given the keynote at next year's Tulsa worshop.
4. Yes, I'm sure his mommy loved him.
5. Yes, his current state is tragic and horrible beyond imagining.

Yet....

1. His death gives our soldiers and marines a better chance of coming home to their mothers.
2. He sawed the heads off living people on camera and sold the DVDs in the marketplace (and one of the most popular places to buy those DVDs was Haditha where the children sold them openly in the streets).
3. He called for the death of every Western citizen including, yes, France. C'mon, what did France do to anybody? (with the exception of that Jerry Lewis thing)
4. He trained, motivated, and financed hundreds of fascist fanatics and loosed them with suicide bombs and IEDs to slaughter his own people.
5. He marched fellow Muslims off buses and shot them in the head because they didn't agree with his his view on Mohammed's true heir was. Many of these were teenagers and women.
6. His ego was fed by a spirit of pure evil. If he is unreachable and unconvertable, and if he is determined to kill the innocent, what would Jesus do? Check the Old Testament. Jesus told us that it spoke of him. Those who stood against God and his people and refused to repent were sentenced, by God, to death, plagues, etc.


It makes you wonder: do those who mourn the death of Zarqawi, who claim that, as Christians, we must wail and be sad, think they can out-Christian Christ?

The Marine Corps is not a safe place for anyone, but my son will be somewhat safer because this fallen man is gone. I wish it could have been otherwise. I wish he would have been open to reason and revelation. But he wasn't. He dealt the cards, again and again and dared us to do anything about it. We called him and took him out of the game.

Allow me a moment to breathe easier this weekend and to hope for the safety of my son. Allow me to be happy that one more madman -- one who would kill me, take my daughter as a slave or worse, and end freedom of the press and freedom of religion -- is gone. Will others rise in his place? Certainly. And may God deliver them into the hands of just men.

If David -- a man after God's own heart -- could pray and sing for the destruction of his enemies, and if the Holy Spirit enshrined those songs as scripture, then allow me a song of praise this day.

Thank you, Father. And to the team? Hoo-rah.